He'd gone over the words a hundred times in his head and still hoped each time he thought it it would make it untrue. He would return to the camp and his sister would be there waiting with messy hair and a cocky smile and tell them she'd been lost in the woods all day. Damon would yell at her, scold her for causing so much worry and then he'd hold her tight and wouldn't let her out of his sight again. But when he returned, he just returned to the strained expressions of his brother and his friend.
"Stefan!" He called, walking straight past his King and to his brother's side. "Any news?" There was no doubt in Damon's mind that the Lannisters had taken Faye, but Stefan insisted they couldn't do anything until they heard from the Lannisters themselves. They wouldn't kill Faye, he assured his brother, they'd just be using her as a hostage.
"There are worse things they can do than kill her, Stefan." Damon had glowered. He wasn't going to leave his sister with the little shit or the whore Queen. Damon would cut off all of the Lannister's heads for what they had done and he wasn't going to just leave his sister in their hands. Only the Gods know what they would do with her.
"They have Sansa too," Stefan reminded, as though it was supposed to be some comfort.
"And Robb should have stormed the place long ago to get her back!" He slammed his hand down on his desk, shaking a goblet of wine, a droplet of the blood red liquid spilled down the cool metal until it stained one of the maps Damon had opened days ago.
"It would be a death sentence to storm King's Landing," Stefan explained, exasperated. In that moment Damon again thought how Stefan should have been Lord of Boreal. He remembered his father's words on his deathbed, telling him he would never be good enough to be a Lord, that Boreal would come to ruin at his hands. He remembered his father trying to force him to take the black, telling him he should have slip Damon's throat as a child - he would ruin the Salvatore name. He felt anger bubble inside of him, he clenched his fists, trying to control himself. "We will get Faye back, but she wouldn't want us to wage war for her."
"Stefan's right," Damon's head snapped up as a new voice joined their procession. "We all want Sansa and Faye home, but King's Landing is too well guarded, they will expect and attack. If we try and-"
Robb's words were cut off as Damon threw his large, wooden table forwards. Stefan jumped back, staring in disbelief at his brother; Damon did not flinch, he just stared with eyes that shone with rage. His eyes bore into Robb, the man he had come to love like his own brother he now surveyed with suspicious eyes. "Your father never made it out of King's Landing alive," his voice had an eerie calm to it, but the anger dripped from his words. He used the voice of a Lord, with power and authority hanging from every word, he wasn't the small little boy that used to play with Robb in the woods anymore. "Are you such a fool as to think they'd let any northerner go free now? You lost us the Kingslayer. You lost us any chance of negotiating a return. The only option left is to fight. We draw first blood." He saw Stefan tense out of the corner of his eyes, the creed of their house drawing his attention back in.
"Drawing first blood doesn't mean drawing last blood," Stefan's voice was cool and level as always, which just made Damon even more angry. That little voice of rationality told him they were right, but he didn't quite care for rationality right now. His sister was in the lion's den and he couldn't just leave her there.
"Damon," he heard his old friend's voice again, calmer this time, the tone he used when they were young and Robb would find Damon sulking and would refuse to talk about his woes. Robb would coax him to come outside with him, put a sword in his hand and let him hack away at some tree until he was ready to talk. That had always been Damon's trouble, he held everything inside. He bottled it up and screwed the lid on tight. All of it went in, his anger, his kindness, everything that was Damon was kept locked away inside. That was why he pushed them away, why he taunted his siblings when they were young, why he's yelling at his best friend now. Damon never could open that bottle. "Faye won't come to any harm." He could see his friend was lying, they both knew Joffery, but it was still comforting to believe even slightly. "Both she and Sansa will be returned home soon. I promise you that." And that Damon believed unwaveringly. Robb's promises bound him in steel; he would never break them.
They stayed up the rest of the night talking out strategies, by the time the sun has risen in the sky they had decided. The Lannisters had two hostages, so they needed leverage too, the chances of capturing the Kingslayer again was slim to none and the others had hidden themselves away in King's Landing. What else did the Lannisters value? Casterly Rock. They would take their home and use that as leverage. On the surface they all seemed confident with the plan, they parted their ways to return to their tents for a few hours of rest, all knowing the plan would never work, they all just needed some hope to cling to. Damon had lay on his bed for hours, starting up at the ceiling, lost in memories of his childhood. He remembered the day his sister was born, they had to pry her away from him after he finally got to hold her; he remembered the books that he read her, the same ones their mother had read to him, that she would never be able to read to Faye. He remembered sneaking her out into the woods with a bow and arrow and sword and teaching her how to fire. It was his job to protect Faye, and he would be damned in some Lannisters were going to stand in his way. Within a flash he was to his feet and out of the tent, only a few people had began to stir but they would think nothing of Damon walking to his horse, mounting his black stallion and taking off into the woods. None of them knew that his destination was Kings Landing.