Chapter 7

She had always hated waiting.

Even when she was Pansy Parkinson, patience had never been her strong suit and it was one of the reasons she had done poorly in her first year of school. She had never had the patience to see any of her charms or potions through and it had cost her some rather easy grades.

But now she had the benefit of almost forty years of life experience in one brain so as much as it still annoyed her, Melara swallowed her aggravation and waited for night to fall.

At the moment she had been given a small but surprisingly comfortable tent not from that of the king's and she wasn't sure whether she should be pleased with the fact that he had seen to her needs or somewhat annoyed that she was in this position in the first place.

Either way she ahd nothing to do but wait until nightfall and stew in those so needless to say when the flap of her tent did open and all four of her brothers piled into the tent and shut it behind them she had had nothing to do but pace and fume.

Thankfully she only had to deal with three of her brothers because Wyn already knew.

That didn't mean that he was any less annoyed however.

"I thought we asked you to stay out of this!" Ben demanded as he paced about the tent that night. There was only one candle lit on the table in the middle of the tent to feign the idea of sleep. As it was, the camp was quiet and Melara had just been about to cast some preliminary safety wards around it until her older brothers had shown up.

Which had been right that second.

"Yes well, I think we're past that point at this juncture," she snapped back to Ben. "Besides, I am already involved whether I want to be or not. I've known of my impending marriage to Robb Stark for weeks. So how is it that I am not to be involved?"
"In the fighting Mel!" Will snapped. "In the fighting is where we did not want you to be. I think I speak for all of us when we learned that Robb Stark had requested permission to use the Crossing to get across to Riverrun. Father's been wanting to marry you off since you turned thirteen and turned half the heads of the minor lords he invited for a meeting at the Twins. You don't think that we might suspect he was looking for a high level match for you?"

"Suspect but not know!" Wyn snapped at his brother. "Suspicion is not the same as truth and now you and father have involved yourself in this war Mel!"

"So what is it that you are more upset about?" Melara demanded. "That I am to marry Robb Stark or that I am here actually seeing you and the man himself?"

"Both!" her three older brothers snapped.

Then they looked at Olyvar who had been strangely silent up until this point and had just then cleared his throat.

"Do you have anything to say brother?" Wyn ground out with barely restrained patience.

Olyvar shrugged. "I simply don't understand why the rest of you are so upset. This is Melara we are speaking of. When has she ever listened to any of us? Yes she has magic but she has never drawn attention to herself by using it in a public manner and as far as we are concerned, the king does not know who she is."

"He will in a few weeks when the two of them wed!" Benfrey snapped, glaring daggers at his younger sister. "What was your plan hmm? To simply carry on as if your name is really Talisa and you were nothing more than a simple healer and then when the King in the North returns to the Crossing to waltz down the stairs when father calls for you to meet Robb Stark has if you have never seen him before?"

When he puts it that way it really does sound asinine.

"Robb Stark was not a part of this plan to begin with," Melara snapped back at her brother. "What was the plan was checking up on you and making certain that you four were kept alive and had the means to get through this war. Robb Stark coming upon me at Oxcross weeks ago was merely an accident that could not have been foreseen. Yes I was wondering if I might get a glimpse of him while I was there but not to speak with him!"

"Well you did a fine job of that didn't you? Wyn demanded. "And now you have put Ben and I in a difficult position because not only are you deceiving the king, you are asking us to deceive him as well because we know who you are. Did you really expect this to end well?"

"I didn't know how this was going to end!" Melara shot back. "When I came to the Crag, I came for the purpose of checking up on the four of you. I did not ask Roose Bolton to come along and see me tending to Wyn by that rock in the glade! Nor did I ask for him to ask me to go with him to attend to a wound that Robb Stark had received. You act as if I planned this as some elaborate scheme to gain a rapport with my betrothed, but you four were the only purpose of my coming to the battles at all!"

Will sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "That may have been your purpose but that is not what happened. And now all five of us have been put in a difficult position. Robb Stark is a man of honor but he does not like being deceived. Suppose when he comes for the wedding at the Twins in a few weeks and learns the truth of who you really are, he decides to break off this marriage contract. I cannot imagine that father will be pleased."

"He will not do that," Melara said with certainty.

"And how do you know?" Wyn demanded.

"Because I will tell him the truth and I will tell him that you four had no knowledge of my being here. If I am to be in his army as a healer than I might as well be productive about it and serve the soldiers. I don't know how long we are going to be at the Crag so I'll think up a plan during the time that I do have."

That seemed to pacify Ben. "When will you tell him? The sooner you do it the better. The more you dig yourself into this madness the farther you drag us in and it will be easier for all involved if you do it as soon as possible?"

"I know," Melara ground out. "Do you think I wanted any of this? Robb Stark seems a decent man but deceiving my betrothed before we are to wed is not how I wanted to go about starting a married life. I did not intend to deceive anyone, all I wanted to do was ensure that you were alright and make certain that the potions I was providing you with are working."

Wyn's face softened and Benfrey ran a hand through his hair. "I know Mel, and these are all noble intentions but – "

But the road to hell is paved with good intentions…damn Granger, she had a saying for absolutely everything under the sun!

"But in the end it caused more problems," Melara finished for him. "I know. I'm sorry."

Ben sighed. "It's alright, it just makes things awkward that's all. Thankfully you have only had two conversations with the king so it makes it easier to nip things in the bud."

All of a sudden Ollie cursed and his other four siblings turned to him. "What is it?"

"If Melara tells Robb Stark the news that she is not this Talisa and is in fact our sister, how is she going to explain how she got here? Or the travel distance between here and the Twins for that matter? He hasn't seen her before this day since Oxcross. How do we explain her disappearance if all the healers that the army has employed have been with them for that time? We can't exactly tell him about her magic."

Wyn ran a hand through his hair and Ben let loose an interesting string of swear words without somehow managing to say the same words twice.

Someone has been paying attention to Father and Black Walder.

Will shook his head. "That's the least of our concerns right now. Mel has always come and gone like a ghost with or without her magic. And Robb Stark has a large enough army that walking back and forth through it would take a great deal of time so it is entirely possible that he could have missed her. We being her brothers and being aware of her presence would have helped to hide her. It can be somewhat easily explained away."

"Alright," Wyn said. He didn't look happy but he did look pacified. "But you will need to do it soon Mel, before this problem becomes any worse."

"Alright!" their sister snapped. "I'll deal with it."

"Good," Ben shot back.

Another moment passed in which there was silence in the tent. Melara was glad she had put up silencing charms about the place so that it ensured that no one would hear them. She had had a feeling there was going to be some yelling and cursing when her brothers arrived and as it turned out she was right.

"Now if you four are quite done," she said tightly. "I have some more moonstones to collect. I have been commissioned by his grace the king to make more of the mixture to serve as a poultice for any other wounds that I am presented with."

"Very well," Wyn said. "But for the love of the gods old and new, please be careful. We are in the west and sacking the keeps of Lannister vassals. The closer we get to Casterly Rock, the more dangerous this venture becomes and the harder it will be to keep this secret. Your wedding to Robb Stark will take place in a few weeks and things are already tense enough around here."

"I understand," Melara ground out.

"Good."

Her brothers left one by one until it was only Olly left in the tent and from the way he was lingering, the brunette had a feeling that there was something that he wanted to say.

"What is it Olly?" she asked.

He took a deep breath and finally met her eyes. "As much as they are worried about this getting out…I'm glad you're here Mel."

She blinked and stared at him. "You are?"

He smiled at her. "Yes. You've never really followed the rules and it figures that you would get yourself into a situation like this. I suppose having you as my sister is far more interesting than someone who would sit around and embroider all day."

Melara raised an eyebrow, her expression softening somewhat. "You always had an odd way of giving compliments."

"One of my many flaws no doubt."

"It is."

"Just be careful," he said to her. "Wyn and Ben and Will are all a little tense right now and the last thing that needs to happen is word of our sister being here. I know you know how to take care of yourself probably better than we do, but there is always room for caution."

"Noted."

"Good."

He left soon after and Melara closed her eyes and issued a deep sigh of exhaustion. Merlin when did this become so complicated?

She took her cloak down from the hook by the bed and wrapped it about herself before taking up her basket and venturing outside the tent. She had placed wards about it so that no one would enter when she was away and mess with her things and that no one would come in the middle of the night.

She was in a camp full of men, there had to be some sort of precautions.

The moment she was nothing more than a shadow in the night, Melara hurried through the camp, taking care to remain away from the fires so that she would not be seen and walking as quickly as she could to the edge of the camp.

She doubted that there would be many people moving about this late at night and no doubt the king had already gone to sleep so there was no chance of Melara seeing him, for which she was oddly grateful.

Two things were needed on this night. She needed to return to the Twins and confund her father into thinking that she had slept in her bed all night and the main servant who cleaned her chambers every morning.

The last thing that needed to happen was gossip.

That was something that Melara couldn't afford.

I'll retrieve some of the ingredients that I set aside in my chambers while I'm in the Twins and then I'll deal with confunding father and the servant and then come back. Something tells me I'm going to need all the help I can get if I am to service as a healer for this camp.

It had been odd seeing Robb Stark again, she mused as she walked. Thankfully they had not gotten into an argument this time and she had left him in better shape than she had found him.

I have a feeling that once we marry I'm going to have to get used to patching him up all the time until this thrice damned war is complete.

She still wasn't certain what she thought about the idea of marrying Robb Stark but it might as well be something she thought about more often as she had a feeling in no more than a moon she would be saying her vows in the sept in the Twins.

The thought made her stomach churn unconsciously and she glared down at it. Few things made her nervous as in her old life she had hunted down dangerous animals for a living and relocated them to different areas where they couldn't harm humans.

Granger had often said her resting bitch face was only a gateway to her nerves of steel complex but Pansy had only laughed her off.

Granger was still as frustrating as ever but there were times when Melara missed the annoying little bookworm. She wondered what Granger would have said about her marriage to Robb Stark.

She probably would blustered and sputtered about how arranged marriages were the definition of archaic and that people should choose who they wanted to marry and when they wanted to marry as it was part of a civilized society.

Bloody hell, I can still hear her voice in my head.

The moment Melara was outside of the camp, she lifted up her long skirts and ran like hell to the edge of the trees that bordered on the glade where she had found Wyn earlier that day.

The second her back was pressed to one of the trees and she was hidden from view by the entire camp, the brunette disillusioned herself and took a deep breath before spinning on her heel and apparating to the Twins.

Thankfully when she landed back in her chambers there was no one in them at the time and it allowed her a moment to catch her breath and take off her cloak. She was still disillusioned and she grimaced when she felt the slight draw on her strength from the effort of maintaining the spell through an apparition.

I need to build up my magical metabolism, she thought grimly to herself as she went searching for some of the books she had kept underneath her bed where no one would find them. Practicing magic with a wand and concentrating is difficult but trying to use magic without one is damn near impossible. Even when I was still in the DCRDC practising magic without a wand required a great deal of concentration and focus. It's become easier since I have done little else but practice it in this new body for the last sixteen years, but that doesn't mean that I still don't become tired when I use it too much. But I haven't figured out how to build a wand in this world or if even such a thing is possible.

Melara got down on her hands and knees and began pulling things out from under her bed and noted with satisfaction the leather bound book that she pulled out.

Since coming to Westeros and stealing a few moments to herself, Melara had begun to keep a journal of her memories of her old life. It was comforting in some ways to look back on the life she had left behind and remember all her memories of her time at school and the new friends she had made in Granger, Potter and Lovegood.

There were also detailed memories of Ron in the journal and some of the tender sweet moments they had shared together as they had become a couple.

Looking over one of the later pages in the journal, Melara felt a smile come to her face as she reminisced. I hope everyone back in England is well.

A moment later, she snapped the book shut and placed it in the basket she had brought with her before going to the dresser that was situated across the room near the fire and pulling out the lowermost drawer, the one that she had carved a false bottom into years ago.

She had stocked most of it with the leftover moonstone mixture that she had not been able to leave with her brothers at Oxcross and quickly filled her bag.

The pot she had strategically placed atop the dresser which was pretty high off the floor of her chambers had also not been found and she snatched that up as well before placing it under her arm.

I'll need to gather some more moonstones from the creek outside the keep before going back to the Crag tonight and I need to confund father and the maid so they say that they have seen me come the morning. Thankfully that is the easiest part of this entire juncture.

She glanced back at the bed and the then put her bag down before going back to dig out two more items that she had carefully placed there since she had come back from Oxcross. The two long knives Benfrey had given her as a gift on her fourteenth name day. It had been something she had cherished as when she was still Pansy she had often used similar blades to take down the dangerous animals that she and Granger couldn't capture. The blades themselves only went from the ends of her fingers to the middle of her upper arms and did not have the reach that a long sword did, but they served their purpose well enough.

"Now I hope you never have to use these Mel," Ben had told her the day he had given them to her in secret when the moon was high over the Twins. "They are only if you absolutely have to use them. For everything else, use your magic."

Fighting with two swords in this world was rather unorthodox and the only time it had ever been done was perhaps in Dorne or across the Narrow Sea in Essos. The Dothraki were famous for their unorthodox ways of fighting and using two swords to take the heads of their enemies was one thing the employed.

No one really fought using two swords in Westeros but that was the only way that Pansy had learned in England. If she were to employ the tactic here, it would require her having to get in closer to use them which put her within the reach of her opponent's longsword.

So it really was a plus or minus outlook.

Once she had packed the necessary items away, Melara strode to the door and slipped out into the hall before striding down it to the part of the Twins where she knew Walder Frey would be.

His solar.

Sure enough, when she peeked in through the door, the Lord of the Crossing was asleep at his desk, mouth open and loud snores pouring forth from it. There was a small drool stain coming from the corner of his mouth and Melara wrinkled her nose in disgust at the sight of it.

For the love of Merlin could you be any more disgusting!?

She took a deep breath before stealing up to him and muttering the charm underneath her breath. There was a small green flash of light as the magic took hold but the only thing that was a result of it was Walder Frey simply shifting in his chair and smacking his lips together as if he had just eaten a satisfying meal.

Her lower lip curling even further, Melara hitched her bag further up on her shoulder and hurried off to her sister's room. Confunding her own sister was not something that was high on her priority list but at the moment it was a means to an end.

Despite what a convenience magic was, she couldn't be in two places at once and the brunette had a feeling that her sister was going to notice before long that she was missing.

Her sister knew about her magic as well, but she was terribly shy and a dreadful liar. There was no way that she would have been able to keep this secret and it would only endanger her if she tried.

This way Melara was doing her a favor.

When the brunette peeked into her sister's chambers which were just down the hall from her own, she was pleased to see that the younger girl was also sleeping like her father. She had been doing that a lot lately, but Melara knew it was for a much different reason.

She had a feeling that the girl suffered from depression which had set in since Bethany died and had never really gone away. She had good days and bad days but since the war had commenced and their brothers were away fighting it, she had only worsened.

And there was really nothing that Melara knew how to do to help her. She had never met someone magical who had depression before and as far as she knew, there was no cure for it. Granger had told her once that she had had a cousin who suffered from depression and it had to do with the neurons misfiring in the brain which she had termed as clinical depression. Circumstantial depression had more to do with the situation that a person was in bringing on feelings of sadness and anxiety.

In this case, Melara had a feeling that her younger sister was suffering from both.

She sighed as she looked down on her, asleep in the bed and then noted the plate of untouched food that had been set on the bedside table.

"I wish it didn't have to be like this Ros," she whispered as quietly as she could. "But we both know you would only put yourself in danger trying to keep my secret. I'm only trying to protect us both."

She took a deep breath then and whispered the words of the Confundus charm under her breath. It was a hybrid of the charm they had used and learned when in school as a stunning and confusing charm was often needed in order to transport the dangerous animals she and Lovegood and Granger had worked with.

This charm would ensure that the maid, her father and Roslin were confused for a day but it would require her coming back every day to ensure that the confusion continued until she could release the charm.

The problem was that she didn't know when she would be able to release the charm…a few weeks? A moon perhaps?

The moment she strode outside of the Twins and was well into the trees, she felt comfortable letting out a stream of curses both at herself and her father and her present situation.

It was just a matter of fate and timing that this had happened but Melara was still frustrated. She had thought that the last time she would see Robb Stark would be on her wedding day and never in her imagination did she think that she would get into an argument with him.

Melara sighed to herself and hurried deeper into the trees where the creek was and where she knew she would find the moonstones.

Sure enough, after a few moments of silent marching the sound of splashing met her ears and she glanced down in satisfaction to see the small creek illuminated by the light of the moon that was shining through the trees.

What made her even more satisfied was to the see the small pearl white stones shining in the bottom of the creek bed and glistening up at her through the water.

Jackpot.

Melara reached into the bag she had brought with her and pulled out the rather large cloth that she often used for tying things of importance into.

She bent and down and began carefully placing the small pearl like moonstones into the cloth. Once the fabric was fit to burst with them, Melara tied the cloth shut and placed it in her bag.

It's a good thing I decided to come back at night because moonstones are twice as powerful once they have been bathed in their natural light. The potions I make with these stones will be far more effective now.

She pulled the hood of her cloak back over her head and then spun on her heel, apparating back into her own tent in Robb Stark's camp.

Thankfully it was just as she had left it and Melara immediately lit a candle on the table in the middle of the room before doing the same to the other candles that she had strategically hung in various corners of the tent.

She knew it was risky to have this much fire around cloth but she had charmed the flames to only blaze a certain height and they were far enough away from the tent walls that they would not cause a problem.

The moment the tent was filled with light, Melara stepped outside and assembled a few pieces of wood she had seen lying in the forest when she had returned from the Twins.

Once that had been completed, she cast a wary eye around, making sure that no one else was nearby.

As it was getting late, most of the cooking fires around the tents were out and the camp was mostly quiet save for a late night wind and the distant chattering of the crickets in the woods.

Melara let out a sigh and then knelt down by the pile of wood and muttered the word to the spell that would set it ablaze.

"Incendio."

Immediately a small flame blazed in the heart of the wood and she gave a sharp nod before taking the pot she had taken from the Twins out from under her arm and muttered the spell that would fill it with the slight amount of water that the spell required.

"Aguamenti."

Instantly a clear water filled the pot without making a sound and after constructing a makeshift spit with two long large sticks she had also retrieved in the wood, she hung the pot from them and sat down on a rock to wait for the water to heat up.

It would take some time for the water to become hot enough for her to add the moonstones for the temperature that was needed for them to melt and become liquid was quite hot.

She had always been fascinated by the process which caused moonstones to form which was merely a mix of moonlight, cold water and sand at a high concentration. It took an enormous amount of pressure for the stones to form so Melara was convinced that there was a natural fissure in the earth near the Twins that allowed for the right amount of pressure to be achieved.

There had always been an abundance of moonstones in the bottom of the creek bed so all she had to do was reach her hand beneath the surface of the water and pull handfuls out.

In the meantime she needed to wait until the water was steaming but not bubbling before she put the herbs and medicinal flowers into the mixture.

Something that was continuously annoying about this new land of Westeros that she was living in had to do with the very different plants and herbs and stones that she found which altered the potions she made some times.

In some ways, some of the ingredients she would use to make a potion were the same. The moonstones hadn't changed nor had the batwings, sea salt, bane berry or bezoar for that matter. Bezoars were always found in the stomach of a goat and so because there were also goats in Westeros like there were in England, that one aspect hadn't changed which comforting as a bezoar acted as a counter to most poisons. Frogs and eagle owl feathers were still applicable ingredients that hadn't changed as were lizards legs, mint, morning dew, mushrooms, daisies, dandelion roots, lavender, leeches, lemon grass, rose oil and rose thorns as well as salamanders as well as kelp horse hair honey water, hemlock, ginger, newts and nettles.

So fortunately for her a lot of the ingredients that she had used in potions in the past were still available here, she just needed to look for them as there weren't very many apothecaries around the Twins.

The only problem was that those were somewhat common ingredients to cure common ailments. If she wanted to take care of the big things, she would need the rarer ingredients and those were hard to come by.

Things like flying seahorses, horklump juice, griffin claws, basilisk venom and scales, dragon's blood and claws and doxy eggs were available to her.

One thing that would be the simplest to have if indeed this animal did in fact exist in Westeros were phoenix tears.

Ron had told her about his and Potter's adventures in the Chamber of Secrets when they were in their second year of school and how the boy wonder had almost gotten himself killed when a basilisk tooth had damn near punctured his arm. Fawkes, Dumbledore's enormous red chicken had come to his rescue and dripped tears into his arm which had expunged the poison allowing him to escape with his life and Ron's sister Ginny.

She had wanted to scream at her fiancé for doing something so stupid but he had quelled her by saying that not really any of it had been their fault, Moaning Myrtle the ghost in the girl's toilets and the resident entity in Hogwarts that Pansy had wished she could bring back to life to kill again because she was so annoying had decided for some reason that Harry and Ron needed to go down into the hole where the basilisk was.

She smiled a little to herself as she sat hunched on the rock by the fire reminiscing over all the adventures she had with the golden trio after the war had ended.

They weren't bad people, a little annoying perhaps with their saviour complexes but they were also Gryffindors who took the expression where dwell the brave at heart a little too seriously.

She still missed them sometimes.

Ron had a way of breaking into her thoughts when he thought she was beginning to brood a little too much and loosening her up when she was too high strung.

She had been the one to caution him to think before he went racing into something dangerous or went off on a tangent about something he knew nothing about.

He was the more idealistic in their relationship and she was the more pragmatic but in the end…they had worked.

She sighed again and eyed the water beginning to steam in the pot. Time to add the dandelion roots, daisies, eagle owl feathers, rose thorns, mint and the quill of a porcupine.

Aside from the moonstones, the mint was the most important aspect of the potion as it detoxified the wound and aided the inner cleansing and leeching of an infection.

She removed the necessary ingredients from the bag at her feet and tossed them into the steaming pot before retrieving a long wooden spoon from a hidden pocket in the same bag and sticking it into the mixture.

It would take at least an hour or so for the mixture to form a more stew life broth and then she could add the rose oil. It was the one part of the entire potion besides the mint that was pleasant and would serve as a thickening agent. Once that happened she could add about ten moonstones for maximum potency and simply wait for the mixture to thicken to a cream like substance that was supposed to be a milky green color from the mint and the moonstones. Then she could bottle it and put it away.

It's a shame dragons aren't prevalent here like they used to be, Melara thought to herself as she stirred the mixture clockwise three times and then counter clockwise another few times. Other than hearing a few odd rumors from across the Narrow Sea, dragons have been extinct here for centuries and their claws, blood and scales are excellent ingredients in potions that counter poison, relieve sickness and cure wounds. What I would give for a handful of dragon claws and a vial of dragon blood right now. The ancient Valyrians really didn't know what they had when they had it. They looked at the dragons and all they saw were weapons to conquer and crush. If they had actually possessed sense they would have looked into the connection that dragons had to magic and learned about how they could help people and not just harm them. But it makes sense that they were ignorant of this seeing as how the Targaryens were simply lesser dragon lords.

Melara had read all about ancient Valyria…well as much as she could and she had happened upon the names of several of the ancient Valyrian families who had been greater than the Targaryens before the Doom.

One of them was the Vespasians. This family had learned how to not only breed dragons but become them as well. They knew how to become animagi in the most powerful form possible and the secret had been lost when Valyria fell.

There were times when Melara wished instead of being born a girl she had been a lesser son of Walder Frey so that she could do whatever it was that she wanted. If she had a choice she would go to Old Valyria and the Smoking Sea and spend the rest of her life uncovering the secrets of that ancient place.

Even growing up as a student of in Slytherin House she had known that the most important thing above anything else was the knowledge was power. It was something Draco had always spouted. He claimed that Potter had had none of it and got by on sheer luck alone.

While some of that may have been true, Melara had been more interested in what came after having such necessary knowledge.

As it was, that phrase was true in any circumstance she was in.

And if she wanted to win, she had to win by knowledge and not honor.

The mixture hissed and she glanced up to see that it was beginning to thicken, causing the brunette to smile in satisfaction. Good, it's almost ready for me to add the moonstones.

She reached into her bag and pulled out the knotted cloth that contained the pearl like stones and dropped it into her lap.

She had no sooner untied the knot and reached inside when the sound of footsteps met her ears.

Out of the corner of her eye, the brunette glanced up and wanted to smirk to herself when she saw the familiar form of a man coming towards her.

"Shouldn't you be resting your grace?" she asked as she looked up into the deep blue eyes of Robb Stark before he stopped at the edge of the fire. "That potion is not going to be as effective if you assert yourself too much."

She was half kidding of course, he didn't appear as if he needed to rest. It had been a few hours since she had seen him after all. He was not wearing his armor but a dark grey tunic that spoke to his house colors and a thick fur cloak upon his back. It dwarfed his frame somewhat but Melara had a smirking suspicion that beneath the clothes he was all muscle.

I suppose I'll find out whether that's true soon enough, she thought absently to herself.

He was watching her intently and in the shadows of the camp and as well as the dancing flames, his deep blue eyes looked almost black.

Unconsciously she shivered and almost missed his next words.

"I find it difficult to sit still for too long," he replied and to her eyes he appeared somewhat amused.

"Somehow I'm not surprised," she countered with just a hint of sarcasm.

"Don't worry my lady I will endeavor to not over extend myself," he said his eyes not having moved from hers the entire time. "May I sit down?"

She blinked in surprise but nodded. "Of course your grace. I would offer you a seat but sadly my camp is lacking one."

He merely chuckled before sitting down across from her and peering into the pot where the mixture was bubbling.

A moment later, he wrinkled his nose and leaned back slightly, blinking somewhat. "Gods, that's strong."

Melara chuckled and stuck the spoon back in before stirring another three times counter clockwise. "It's the mint your grace, in order to employ that cooling sensation you felt earlier when I applied it to your wound earlier. The ginger and aloe cleanse the wound and then the mint revitalizes the cells around the wound before the moonstone works as a regeneration agent to speed up the healing process. In fact I believe I can add the moonstones right now."

The brunette carefully counted out the moonstones needed and then dropped them slowly into the pot one by one.

She glanced up at him to notice that he was watching her with an unfathomable expression and frowned. "Is something wrong your grace?"

He chuckled again and shook his head before running a hand through his dark curls. "Not at all. You are simply a surprising woman lady Talisa."

At the mention of her constructed façade, she had to fight not to grimace as her brother's words drifted into her head about needing to come clean before the wedding.

"I don't really aspire to be what the world tells me to be," she said quietly as she stirred the mixture.

"No I don't suppose you do," he said and then a faint smile of remembrance came to his face. "I have a sister who is like that. She wasn't interested in embroidery pretty dresses or the songs of knights and stories of romance. She would rather be the knight than be rescued by one."

Melara smiled, remembering the spirited girl she had met in King's Landing some moons earlier who was practicing with her small sword. There had been so much determination on her face that it had impressed the brunette.

Ben had been teaching her how to use a sword for around ten years and he often claimed she had been relentless in her desire to learn. Melara had lost count of the number of bruises, pulled muscles and sore arms and legs that she had amassed while learning under her brother.

But it had all been worth it.

The only thing she missed was her uniform. Wearing armor while running around with a sword and hacking at people was something that she absolutely hated.

It was fine if you were a Muggle but because of her magic, Melara did like to think that she had an advantage over the other people she may or may not be fighting.

However, seeing as how she was posing as someone else in this camp, it stood to reason that the only sparring she would be doing was verbal. And most of it would be with her brothers.

"You sound very fond of her," she said and instantly his eyes darkened again, but this time she could tell that it was with anger.

"She did get on my last nerve when we were still in Winterfell but yes…I am extremely fond of her."

Melara had the sudden itch to tell Robb that Arya was not under the control of the Lannisters, that she was somewhere in Westeros, perhaps even in the Riverlands looking for him.

But the truth was a sticky entity and the more layers that were pulled back, the uglier it became…much like a wound.

And the wound would be her magic in this instance.

Another time, she thought to herself. Another time.

"What is she like?" she asked, wondering talking about his sisters might be helpful in easing his clearly darkening mood.

Thankfully it worked.

Robb got a slight smile on his face and rubbed the side of his face wryly. "I was often told that Arya is much like my Aunt Lyanna, wild…impulsive and extremely reckless. She doesn't conform to what society tells her to be and for the life of me I couldn't find it in myself to tell her how to act. She would often want to make my mother tear out her hair."

Melara's lips quirked upwards slightly. That did seem like the girl she had met a long time ago in King's Landing.

"Life with her does sound like an adventure," she mused and Robb snorted to her surprise. "It was. It was a constant battle to keep her and my sister Sansa from arguing. At times it was amusing and at other times it was simply annoying."

"Such is how life is with siblings," Melara said with a shrug. "I have older brothers as well and they never cease to remind me of it."

Robb cocked his head to one side and looked at her with thinly disguised interest. "How many siblings do you have my lady?"

"Five," the beautiful brunette replied. "Four brothers and one younger sister. They can be quite overprotective at times."

"I'd imagine so," the king replied.

Melara suddenly began to feel uncomfortable and remembered in great detail her conversation with her brothers.

The longer she held out, the more difficult and complicated things would become.

She was just considering the merits of telling the truth in this very moment when all of a sudden a particularly loud air bubble in the pot popped causing her to flinch with surprise and peer into the mixture to see that it was creaming and thickening nicely.

"Ah," she said with satisfaction. "It's just about ready."

Robb's eyes were drawn to the contents of the pot which was now emitting a spicy sweet scent frowned slightly. "Is it supposed to be quite so thick?"

"It's an ointment your grace," Melara said calmly as she picked up the spoon she had been using to stir it with and began to rummage in her bag for one of the glass bottles she had brought with her.

Creating and keeping potions was a lot of work. Not only did she have to account for the ingredients needed, but also the necessary tools with which to make the ingredients and the tools to keep it cool and safe afterwards.

"And how much does this usually make?" the young wolf asked curiously.

"It depends," Melara explained. "I cannot account for the number of wounds that will be endured throughout the rest of this campaign and this potion is mostly effective when used to heal shallow stabbing wounds or wounds from arrows. If a person is stabbed through the stomach or has a limb amputated there is nothing I can do for them."

"What about that boy we met at Oxcross?" he asked and she blinked at the memory. "You seemed ready to amputate his foot and then you rummaged around in your bag before applying some sort of potion to the wound."

"That potion and this one are the same your grace," Melara replied quietly as she began to spoon the mixture into the bottles she had brought with her. "The ginger in the potion acts as a cleansing agent and the moonstones promote healing while staving off an infection."

"I see," he replied picking up one of the already bottled potions and looking intently through the glass at the opaque ointment. "Is it supposed to be this color?"

"The milky shade is from the moonstones and the pale green tone is from the mint," Melara replied.

She had run out of bottles at this point and resolved to apparating back to the Twins to retrieve some more once she and the king had parted ways.

"Are there any other ointments that you can make that help in illness and wounds?" he asked, looking up from the bottle to her face curiously.

Melara cocked her head to the side for a moment before running through the list of potions in her head. When she had reached her sixth year of school, as her summer reading project she had had to brew almost all of the potions in the sixth year text book.

Needless to say she had not left her room in Parkinson manor for about eight weeks.

"There is one such mixture called a blood replenishing potion," she said slowly. "But it is very difficult to make. Some of the ingredients I don't have and have no way of getting. It's a shame because if brewed correctly it can replace the blood lost from a wound in battle."

Robb's eyes had widened slightly and she felt someone pleased that she had managed to surprise him.

"Such a potion would be extremely helpful," he said. "It may save countless lives and prevent the shrinking of armies. Tell me, how would you brew it?"

He seemed excited about the prospect of a discovery and Melara flinched slightly, knowing she would have to disappoint him.

"It's not that simple your grace. In order to make a blood replenishing potion correctly, I would need something called Valerian root and it is something that I have never been able to find."

Here, she thought to herself. It's something I have never been able to find here.

He sighed and she could tell he was disappointed by the prospect. Frankly she was too. Being able to make a blood replenishing potion would be extremely helpful and could prevent the loss of lives, especially in the war time they were in.

"Are there any others?" he asked.

"There is one," she said. "And it only has three ingredients, but I've never learned how to make it."

"What is it?"

"It is a potion to regrow bones that have broken."

The young wolf blinked and then stared at her for a moment. "Such a thing would be possible?"

"With the necessary tools," Melara said carefully. She was treading a thin line here and knew that she needed to keep any knowledge of magic secret and right now they were getting into the realm of it.

"What tools are those?" he asked.

Melara sighed. "In order to make it, I would need something called a chomping cabbage, three puffer fish and what are called five scarab beetles. I can only conclude that such ingredients would be found in Essos, the Dothraki Sea perhaps, but I have never been able to find them here."

Robb muttered a faint curse under his breath and she smirked slightly. "My sentiments exactly. Making something like a potion that would aid re-growing broken bones would be vital to the war effort."

"It would," he said with a sigh. "But if the ingredients are not available than there is not much you can do now is there?"

"Unfortunately no."

"Where did you learn all of this?" he asked suddenly. "While healing is a fine occupation in and of itself, I do not often see women pursuing it."

Melara raised an eyebrow. "As I said before your grace, I do not aspire to be like other women. And in answer to your question, I learned it from my mother. She was a healer as well."

This was somewhat true, but not in the case of Bethany Rosby. Gwendolyn Parkinson had been an experience healer at St. Mungo's and one of their best to date, she had taught Pansy everything she knew and it had helped the brunette surpass Granger even in the class.

It was something Pansy had never left the bookworm ever forget.

"She must have been quite a lady," Robb said with a slight smile.

"She was," Melara said, her tone turning somewhat sad. As much as she did miss Bethany Rosby, Gwendolyn would always be her first mother and she knew for a fact that the woman was still alive.

I never did get to say goodbye.

"My apologies," Robb said softly and she looked up at him to see that he was watching her closely. There was understanding in those sapphire blue depths and for a moment she remembered that he did know what it was like to lose someone.

"It was a long time ago," she said softly.

"Losing someone is never easy," the young wolf replied, his expression turning somewhat dark. "Especially if that person was lost before their time or taken from you."

Melara felt herself soften slightly for she knew he was talking about his father

"Lord Stark must have been a remarkable man," she said softly and a muscle jumped in Robb's cheek. "He was."

Melara sighed, not entirely happy with the way that the conversation had gone but knowing that bitter truths were one of the few things they would have in common when they were wed.

I certainly hope that the conversations we have then are better than this, she thought to herself.

A slight rustle drew her attention and she glanced upward to see the young king getting to his feet. "It is getting late. I will leave you to your rest Lady Talisa, I have a feeling you're going to need it in the coming days. Thank you for the company."

"Your welcome your grace, she replied and he inclined his head to her before moving off through the tents back to his own no doubt.

The moment he was gone, Melara extinguished the fire and picked up the pot full of the moonstone mixture and the vials and strode back into her tent before storing the vials back into the bag and setting the pot on the table.

She erected her customary wards that would ensure no one came into the tent in the middle of the night and changed quickly into the night gowns he had brought with her and falling into the small cot.

It had been a long day, and she had a feeling that she would be in for a much longer one come the morning.

Ω

More conversations this chapter will mean more action next chapter. Don't forget to review!