The world seemed empty. Dorea walked barefoot through the orchard with only her thoughts for company and with the only sound being the hiss of the leaves as they collided with her Morningstar and the dull thump of fruit as it hit the orchard floor. Tiny droplets of juice from the blood oranges spattered across her face as she went, but she found she did not care in the slightest.
This soothed her.
There was little time for silence with seven sisters, so Dorea had learned to appreciate these moments when she could get them. In truth, there had been a large number of awkward silences in Sunspear since the arrival of the newly crowned 'King in the North'. King Rickon Stark had no more courtesies than that overgrown wolf that never left his side, and Dorea could sense even from across the room how painful it was for the Princess Arianne to try and engage him in conversation during every feast. She was certainly glad it was not her duty to keep him entertained.
Her Morningstar crashed against a bundle of green leaves overhead, and suddenly she heard a low growl from behind her. The sound of the wolf chilled her blood. She swung around just in time to see a perfect, ripe pomegranate land in the hand of the man they called 'The Wolf King'.
Their eyes locked, and Dorea could see the same restlessness in his eyes that filled every nook and cranny of her body. Peace made the broken restless, she supposed. But even that restlessness could not mask the anger that burned hotly and fiercely inside him. She could see it now that he stood before her.
She knew what that was like too. Elia said she did not know much about life, but Dorea knew what being the child of a murdered father was like. She knew how the quest for vengeance began to eat your soul and how the ghosts came out to play in your dreams.
She knew how the rage slipped inside your bones, hardening your heart to steel, and how it never really went away no matter how much vengeance you wreaked. Nothing could hide the deep fury of the children who had become the judges and the executioners of those that had played the game before them, and she was beginning to suspect that nothing ever would. The only thing left to any of them now were blood, ashes and more regrets than there were stars in the sky.
He broke the pomegranate with his bare hands and offered her the seeds.
She did not miss how his Tully blue eyes never left her face as she stepped forward and took a small handful.
She saw it all before they had even begun. She saw the war of men who were doomed to repeat the mistakes of those that had gone before them; men that had never known peace so they would never be comfortable with it. She saw blood; blood as red as the pomegranate juice that slipped from her fingers and stained her lips.
And as the sweet juice filled her mouth, she thought of the time her mother had told her to beware of a boy who would drag her through all Seven Hells.
But, in that moment, Dorea could not find it in herself to heed that warning.