IV.
She was running. Of course, she was running. Branches and thorns, ravens, red wings and everything covered in snow and dead silence. She had been crying. Her cheeks were streaked with narrow lines of ice where the tears had frozen in place. She was so very cold and her bones ached with the heaviness of prolonged exposure to the blighted winter. But she couldn't let them find her. She would not let them find her.
She stopped under a grove of evergreens, her right hand grasping at the nearest sapling for support. Her gloveless hands had turned against her miles and miles back and her fingers refused to curl around anything but themselves. She bit back a cry of pain and held both hands to her chest, as if she might find the last embers of warmth within her own flesh. She was silent, so silent. An unnatural hush lingered in the wild forest but she knew better than to believe she was alone.
She had run too far this time. They chased her far north, farther than she'd ever been before. And now she was in unfamiliar territory, alone and out of time. They were right behind her. But her legs were lead weights and she was freezing to death as she stood beneath that evergreen tree, clothed in only thin leather boots and a blue silk dress that would have needed a cloak on even a mild midsummer night.
A distant crash in the underbrush! It echoed in the clear air and the dark night. She bit her lip to keep from crying out in despair and readied herself. Her feet moved numbly as she slid out from beneath the grove. Ice tears pricked at the sides of her tired eyes and her vision blurred. Snow from the lower branches fell onto her hair and eyelashes as she stumbled out from beneath the trees blindly.
The footsteps behind her hastened their pace. She sprinted through the snow but she was slowing too quickly. They were too close! She could hear their cold breath, their whispering voices as they called out her name…
"Beckah!"
She woke with a start, sitting half-way up in her own bed in Winterfell and taking in her surroundings with wide-eyed confusion until her fuzzy, dream-cluttered mind adjusted back to reality. She wasn't in the woods. No one was chasing her. She was home. Safe.
But why'd her skin feel like ice?
"Beckah! Wake up!" It was Robb's voice at her door, and he sounded grim. A shadow of anticipatory dread fluttered across her soul like butterfly wings on the surface of a still pond. Something had happened.
"What is it?" she called back as she rose from the bed, throwing a heavy wool around her shoulders. The air was relatively warm but her dream had left her chilled straight through. She opened the door immediately, finding Robb behind it, his face drawn and manner defeated.
"It's Bran," he managed, his voice faltering. "He's fallen from the tower."