Winter was ending.
Daenerys Targaryen, First of her Name, was crowned Queen of the Six Kingdoms, the Iron Isles having chosen not to bend the knee.
Sansa Stark was named Wardeness of the North, with the man she knew as her half-brother Jon going south to become a Targaryen prince and heir to the Dragon Queen.
By all means, it should have been the end of their story.
Time did not care for stories or their ends. Life went on.
"Your Grace, you honor us with your unexpected visit." Sansa's smile was cautiously polite, her courtesy sharpened to a knifepoint. She curtseyed with the perfect fluid grace and poise of a southern lady, though the heavy black dress and furs made her look every bit northern. She liked the air of solemnity they gave her. It certainly helped to look the part, being a woman ruling in her own name and at such a young age at that.
Winterfell's court had hastily lined up to greet the Dragon Queen, Arya still in her muddy training clothes and Bran in the comfortable clothes he had worn to spend hours in the Godswood doing Three-Eyed Raven things which Sansa still barely understood.
Drogon snorted, sending a puff of hot air out of his giant nostrils, and dipped his left wing a little lower so the Mother of Dragons could descend without any risk of faltering in front of her audience.
Sansa folded her hands in front of her chest and curtseyed once again when Daenerys Targaryen came to a stop in front of her. She looked lovely in her black and red riding dress, her elaborately braided silver hair the only nod to courtly lavishness. She was a vision indeed, but fact remained that she shouldn't be here.
"Your Grace," she said, voice perfectly demure, but her head held high, "when we spied a dragon, we expected Jon to be paying us a surprise visit."
Daenerys had to tilt her head back a little to look into Sansa's eyes. They were unreadable to her all the same, guarded as a queen's had to be. "Don't worry about him," she said, her voice gentler than her face would make you expect, "I'm not here to bring ill tidings."
You could not ask your queen what the hell she was doing here. Sansa dearly wished she could ask.
"If Drogon flies farther north he will find deer to hunt without worry of mixing it up with cattle," Sansa offered. She was, after all, sister-cousin to a Targaryen. She did know her dragons, or knew enough at least to give the appearance of knowing them. It would be the same to the people around her, discomfited by their proximity to needle-sharp teeth the length of a man's forearm and a mouth whose fire could turn armies to ash.
Daenerys arched a brow, the tiniest hint of amusement sparkling in her eyes. "Thank you, Lady Stark. I see my Wardeness is watching out for me, as always."
Sansa's smile could have frozen boiling water. "I live to serve Your Grace."
She could have sworn that Daenerys's eyes lingered on her lips a moment longer than strictly appropriate before she turned back to Drogon.
The feast wasn't worthy of a queen, Sansa considered herself lucky that Daenerys would have frowned upon such waste in meager times anyway.
Winter was ending, but it would be a while yet till spring filled up their granaries.
These were the concerns Sansa spoke of to the queen as they sat on the high table, next to another, heads tucked together to converse quietly over the din of chatter and minstrels' song.
She spoke of harvests and tithe quotas and the progress they were making in teaching the Free Folk to become farmers and craftsmen. She spoke of the ruins of ancient fortresses she wished to breathe new life into under the hand of loyal northern families, of her insistence that northern girls continued to be taught to wield arms just like the boys, though they were no longer needed to add manpower against the White Walkers.
Daenerys, in turn, spoke of the progress in improving the living conditions in King's Landing and of the Dothraki and Unsullied who had chosen to stay and make a home in Westeros, of the wondrous new creations the smiths were working on with the help of once-mystical dragon fire, she even mentioned news from her faraway court in Mereen.
They both noted the other's careful choice of conversation topics.
Sansa still didn't know why the queen had come north, and without her retinue at that.
She did ask of that, voicing concern at her lack of Queensguard and handmaids. "But am I not among friends?" Daenerys asked, her smile somehow managing to be at once disarmingly charming while it put an effective end to this line of questioning.
Sansa seethed and tipped her hat to the queen. Well-played, indeed.
Over the course of the night, Sansa's fascination with the queen only grew.
They had been wary of another when they first met, right after Jon had bent the knee without even telling Sansa ahead of time. Cautious, uncertain if they might not end up as enemies, until the Long Night had proven the other's mettle and steadfastness. In these days Sansa had learned to trust Daenerys as a general, and in the peace to follow as a monarch.
She had not permitted herself to think of her as more than her faraway monarch, no matter how fierce she had looked when calling her banners, or how her eyes had sparked with righteous fury during their inevitable clashes.
Now she was no longer far away and they weren't clashing over matters of war and peace.
But the queen was still enchanting, and though Sansa didn't give it much thought, they had eyes only for another all night.
The next morning started early, with Daenerys announcing her intentions to fly inspection where the Wall had once stood.
"With all due respect, Your Grace," Sansa said, her voice once more gentled to that of the demure royal subject, "it is unwise to go so far north on your own. I would feel better if you had Winterfell's best guards with you, or better yet my sister Arya and Lady Brienne, my sworn sword."
Daenerys never stopped patting Drogon's muzzle as she sized up Sansa. "I have been farther north during the war, Lady Stark, and I didn't need any protection but my children's."
"Of course, Your Grace," Sansa demurred, carefully covering her irritation beneath layers and layers of cordial ice.
If the queen came to any harm up north it would fall on Sansa's head, not on her own far too stubborn one. It was not that she worried about Daenerys, she told herself, only about the consequences it would have for the Starks. It was a concern any sensible lady would have.
She watched Daenerys climb Drogon and take her place right behind the huge dragon's head, felt her breath taken away by it just like she always had.
"I'm a friend of the North, and of you, Lady Sansa," she vowed, leaning down to give them at least an illusion of one last intimate conversation. "If I can ever do you any favor, you only need ask."
Sansa bit down on her bottom lip. She let a heartbeat pass. It would be daring, but sometimes there was no way to go but forward. "Would my Queen then consider taking a guard… as a personal favor to me?"
Daenerys's laughter rang sweetly in her ears and made something in Sansa's belly flutter.
Arya couldn't stop smirking at Sansa as she insisted on being the one to fly with the queen.
Arya was still smirking when she returned, quickly being dropped off by Drogon in front of the gates of Winterfell before the queen hastened back south.
She tilted her head at Sansa when she met her sister by the gates. "Disappointed she didn't stay to say goodbye to you?"
Sansa huffed and tucked her hands into the sleeves of her coat. "Of course not. That would be frivolous."
Arya hummed, making a grand show of looking bored by her protests. "Sure."
Sansa shot her a withering look. "I have work to do, and you need a bath," she declared and turned her back on Arya and her insufferable smirk.
Frivolous, she told herself all the way back to her study, she wasn't disappointed to have gotten not so much as another glance at the queen.
A month later, the first raven arrived.
That was not to say that Winterfell didn't regularly receive ravens from King's Landing, between coordinating rebuilding efforts and Jon wanting to keep in touch with his family the ravens never grew idle.
Yet when Maester Wolkan delivered a raven from the queen, for Lady Stark's eyes only, Sansa sat stunned for long moments before she even startled to unfurl the tiny scroll.
She barely had time to skim over the letter before Arya slipped into the room.
"Is she declaring war or sending a love letter?"
Sansa looked up, shooting her sister a stern look. She hated it when Arya snuck around without making a noise. Much to Sansa's dismay, Arya knew exactly how much she could annoy her with it.
"I'm just asking, because if it's a declaration of war I need to know, and if it's not I want to know." She studied Sansa expectantly for a moment. "Not war then. You're not looking worried, just like you want to pick up the inkwell and hurl it at my head."
Sansa exhaled. Inhaled. Exhaled again. When she looked down she realized her fingers had held onto the edges of the tiny parchment so tightly that it had crinkled. She hastily smoothed it out again. "It's nothing that needs to concern you."
"Fine. Find me when you're feeling more talkative. I'll leave you to blushing over your love letter."
Just before the door closed, her sister's smug parting words floated to Sansa. "I could just ask Bran, you know…"
Sansa rolled her eyes and traced her fingertips over Daenerys's neat handwriting.
It would have been a formal enough letter, thanking Sansa for her hospitality, if it did not start with a familiar My Lady Sansa and end with a glaringly informal Yours, Daenerys.
Sansa pressed her fingertips against her cheek. It burned hot.
Sansa Stark had thought she knew what it was like to be courted, that she had seen all there was to see and had had enough of that to last her a lifetime, thank you very much.
Somehow, she suspected that nothing could have prepared her for the whirlwind that was a Targaryen.
Everybody knew that Targaryens did nothing by halves, but this…
She looked down at the dagger of Valyrian steel blade and elaborately carved dragon bone hilt and felt more than a little overwhelmed by its implications.
It was the third gift to arrive, and like the others, the messenger had nothing to say but that it was, "a present by Her Grace, Queen Daenerys, to thank Lady Stark for her hospitality."
She had hosted the queen for a single night and had at such short notice not even had anything to offer but salted pork and questionable meat pies.
"Tell Her Grace that her present is far too generous," she said. It was the same thing she had said to the other two messengers. "But far be it from me to reject our queen's show of gratitude."
"Gratitude," Arya scoffed in a stage whisper at her side, followed by Brienne loudly shushing her.
Just the same as the other two times.
Sansa slid the dagger carefully back into the sheath, taking in the fine work of a dragon in the air, its huge wings tucked close to its body like Drogon when he was trying to delicately land in Winterfell's courtyard, while the wolf standing in front of it had its head thrown back to howl a greeting.
She felt her cheeks burn hotter.
Subtle, the queen was not.
She rose from the ornate chair in which she held court in Winterfell's hall.
The messenger was preparing to leave for the kitchens, he would be returning to King's Landing after a good night's sleep.
"Boy," she said, "see me in the morning before you leave. I'll have a letter for Her Grace."
There was a stack of scrolls piled up on her desk in a precarious tower, yet Sansa's eyes kept returning to the window of her study.
Gentle snowflakes were falling, the last of winter or first of spring, and they were making her yearn to escape her duties for a little while and let the soft, welcoming chill of Winterfell seep into her bones. Once she had dreamed of southern summers, but these days snow falling onto her cheeks felt like gentle kisses.
These days, her fanciful dreams of southern summers were carried on wings.
It wasn't until a commotion outside attracted her curiosity that she gave in and walked to the window.
She hadn't even unlatched it yet when a maid burst in, gasping, "my Lady, she's here! The Queen's here!"
Sansa's heart skipped a beat and picked up at a much faster pace. "Already? The scouts said they were at least a day away!"
She ran a hand over the rope of her long red hair, she wore it down with just a plain braid to keep it from falling into her face while she worked. The dark-grey dress she wore was just as plain, made of finely spun warm wool, but thoroughly sensible and hardly stately, meant for long hours spent pouring over correspondence and balance sheets.
"I'm in no state to be welcoming a queen - again!"
"Nobody is, my Lady, and we've been working so hard to make it perfect this time!"
She had flown ahead of her retinue then, Sansa surmised as she rushed down the stairs and onto the courtyard, barely taking the time to wrap the furs around her shoulders which another maid had hastened to bring to her.
She rushed through the gate, and yes, there was Drogon, majestically perched in the snow, and there was Daenerys standing by his head, tiny and smug and very much not in the place she was supposed to be.
Her eyes gleamed with mischief. Her nose crinkled when a snowflake landed on the tip of her nose and tickled her.
"Your Grace, you really ought to stop with the surprise visits before you give my chef a heart attack," Sansa blurted out before she could remember to wrap herself in courtesies.
"Should I, Milady?" Daenerys affected a look of polite surprise as she crossed the distance between them. She stopped so close to Sansa that she could have reached out and touched her. "I had hoped you like surprises."
"It wouldn't be your first surprise."
A spark of interest showed in Daenerys's eyes, eagerness too shallowly concealed to fool her. "You still owe me an answer, Lady Sansa. Did you like my surprises?"
Sansa recalled how wary she had been when she received the first present, how flustered by the second.
She raised her chin. "I invited Your Grace to Winterfell, did I not?"
Daenerys smiled. "So you did."
Their eyes met. Sansa felt a swarm of butterflies take flight in her belly.
She had found her first sign of spring.
The Godswood was still covered in a thick layer of snow when they wandered it together.
It was finally just the two of them, no servants, no guards, no bannermen vying for their monarch's attention. If Daenerys had hoped to avoid attention by flying ahead of her retinue, she had been proven wrong. It had taken hours, but here they were, only them and the hush of this sacred place, whose power could be felt even by those who didn't worship the Old Gods.
"I have been told your people speak their wedding vows under the heart tree," Daenerys remarked as she studied the face carved into the tree.
"We speak all of our most sacred vows under the heart tree."
"A place of truths then," Daenerys surmised.
Sansa nodded. It wasn't what she would have called it with her own experiences, but that explanation worked well enough for people who hadn't met the Boltons.
Daenerys tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked up into Sansa's eyes. She was so close to her again. "I wonder, what are Sansa Stark's truths?"
Sansa's breath caught in her throat. They were truly close. When had they gotten so close? When had Daenerys started to look at her with such intensity, and had anybody else noticed it?
"My truths are humble, Your Grace," she replied, her voice once more coated in ice as she pulled her armor closed around her.
No. She closed her eyes. Her fingers tightened around the edges of her coat. No. She could not let it end like this, because of fear.
"Daenerys," she tried again, and she could see the renewed tension seep out of her. "What are your truths, Daenerys? I sent you a letter and you rode north."
Daenerys's brows rose. "Nobody can command a queen. Nobody should even dare to try."
"I didn't command. I… hoped."
It was Daenerys who crossed what distance remained between them. Her fingers brushed Sansa's. They were cold, much like her own, yet when Sansa reached for her hand she glad that they had both foregone gloves.
"So did I. Hope drove me north."
Sansa cradled their tangled hands against her chest, right against the direwolf sigil she had embroidered over her heart. She averted her eyes. "We all know what happens when Targaryens ride north to court Starks."
"No." The determination in Daenerys's voice made Sansa look back to her. She looked so much like when she was about to ride into battle. Maybe that was exactly what she was doing now, insisted the little girl in Sansa who had once dreamed of valiant knights and courtly love. "We know what happens when Targaryens and Starks do it wrong. I don't plan on doing it wrong."
Sansa's lips twitched. There were a thousand reasons why it was impossible, these exact same reasons why she had kept her distance from Daenerys during the war and right after, no matter how alive she felt in her company.
Yet here she was and her heart was racing. "You did break one wheel. What's another to you?"
Daenerys chuckled. "And what use do wolves have for wheels?"
It was madness. But everything they had ever wanted had been called madness till they achieved it.
She ducked her head and Daenerys tilted hers back, lips ever so slightly parted. "What use do dragons have for wolves?" she whispered.
The Dragon Queen's fingers tangled into her braid and pulled her down to meet her lips.
Sansa tasted spring in her kiss. She began to understand why some would favor fire.