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Lyanna

Queensgate looked much more like a ruin now than when Lyanna was a little girl. One fortress of the nineteen defending the hundred leagues of the Wall, situated between Nightfort and Deep Lake, the castle had never been manned by the Night's Watch in her lifetime. With the arrival of winter, it became a shadow of its former self, wrought of dark wood and crumbling stone; buried deeply under the heavy burden of freshly fallen snow.

Snowgate, as its old name said, before the visit of the Good Queen Alysanne and her dragon, Silverwing, who have changed the name forever.

A place for a wolf to meet a dragon and bring ruin to the Seven Kingdoms by sealing the beginning of a love that should not have been.

A ghost of a ghost castle. Ghost. My son's wolf. White with the red eyes of the weirwoods. Red or green eyes of the greenseers of old.

Howland had leaf-green eyes and he was never shy about what he was. At least not with Lyanna. Unexpectedly, her best friend had mourned for her as much as Ned did. Why haven't the trees told him the truth? She regretted they had not; Howland would have told Ned. Ned would have found her in Essos and admitted what he would not say to Ashara Dayne; that Jon lived. Lyanna would be back with her son as a mother should.

And married within a year.

At best she could hope to foster Jon as Ned's bastard in her new household. Because we would never be able to say who Jon's father was, would we? Not as long as Robert lived.

She shivered from the thought. The lie would be untenable and unbearable for her.

The Wall behind Queensgate gleamed vaguely in the faint daylight, majestic and cold as ever; it would never melt. After Winterfell, the Wall was the place Lyanna loved most in her homeland. Would Ned have told this to Jon?

She suspected he wouldn't have, honouring his promise to her to protect her son until the end. He kept it so well that he had never told Jon about his mother. But he had let him take the black.

So much for my memory.

How I wish to tell you all about myself, son. If you would only let me speak to you.

Drogon left Lyanna in the snowy courtyard and instantly flew away. By the number of errands the dragon recently fulfilled, he had almost become an ordinary raven and not the most dangerous beast in existence.

In front of the wolf queen there was the entrance to a stone tower, probably built in the times of Queen Alysanne, some two hundred years ago. There was light and smoke coming from inside. Lyanna lowered the hood of her cloak in the doorway, shook the snow that still clung to her clothes and hair and climbed a single flight of steps to a small solar, which must have once belonged to the castle's commander.

"Rhaegar?" she called out cautiously. In her heart, she wanted to run to him, wrap her legs around his waist and stay like that forever. She was not yet so heavy with child that the action would be impossible or harmful.

But Lyanna was born a Stark of Winterfell, so instead of running she walked, smiling, smiling, smiling. To see her husband again so soon brought her unmeasured, expanding joy. She had already resigned herself she would see him only much later, when either his latest war or winter were over. Maybe for the birth of their second child if that came first.

"Rhaegar," she said sternly, seeing him busy with cooking. "You're acting a boy again. You shouldn't be here. You should be where your fight is."

She wanted to say he ought to be with his men, but the word men did not sit well with Euron and his dead so she corrected herself just in time. Her words suddenly sounded to Lyanna as a piece of advice her father would have given her and not as her own thoughts. Commanders did not take breaks in war, Lord Rickard would say. There was no honour in that. I must be so old to think like him.

"Kill me for it, will you?" her husband retorted carelessly. "You have tried before."

"Twice," she recalled, grinning widely.

"At least," he mocked her. "I am fortunate that my sleep is light," he added hastily. "I needed to be alert at my father's court. It was a bit better in Dragonstone." He stirred the stew too fast and rekindled the fire brusquely.

His uncommon recklessness, bordering on impatience, frightened Lyanna. What are you up to, my love?

Two decades ago, Aerys' men kidnapped Lyanna after the great tourney in Harrenhal, claiming they had done it on Rhaegar's behalf, and for the crown prince's future amusement. Yet their actions toward her person denoted it was rather their own illicit pleasure they had in mind. Another man soon joined them, a high lord by his posture, wearing Rhaegar's armour. Much later, she learned he was Lord Hightower, brother of the legendary White Bull, Ser Gerold Hightower, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.

When an unknown, helmed saviour rescued Lyanna before any true harm had come to pass, Lyanna had assumed the worst of her mystery knight. In her nervousness, she had very nearly stabbed the real Rhaegar to death in his sleep with the obsidian knife she always carried.

A gift from the crow on the Wall. Mance Rayder. Who would know that we would all see each other again? Who could tell that the little wildling crow would become a brave man, fly away from the Shadow Tower and be elected King-beyond-the-Wall? Or that I would ever love and be Rhaegar's wife?

Fortunately for all, Rhaegar woke when she was about to strike him with her knife. He disarmed her, never showing his face, in what she later knew to be shame and fear of rejection. For the longest time, he hid his face from her and kept his sword between them as a true knight, whenever they shared a bed on the run from Aerys.

Until I removed it myself, the helm and the sword both.

As if any woman would reject Rhaegar Targaryen with that sad look in his eyes.

What is wrong with us women? Why do we have it in us, the desire to ease the pain of the man we love? Why do we even start to love a man for the pain he carries? And yet we can be as cruel as any man, if not more, to those who have wronged us… even so slightly.

Now, in the small solar Lyanna and Rhaegar shared, there was fire, a warm meal and a bed of sorts. Years of life in a septry certainly improved the household abilities of men.

Although Rhaegar had always been different, with his love for ignoble, labouring tasks. He could muck the stables as clean as any serving boy. To keep my mind clear and hands nimble, he told Lyanna when she caught him at it one sunny morning in Dorne, in the too short time they spent together after their secret marriage in haste.

In the end, he was nothing like Lyanna expected a prince should be. Except handsome, more handsome than any man has any right to be. Age and the ruined chest Robert gifted him took nothing away. On the contrary, the pleasure Lyanna and Rhaegar had always found in each other became sweeter with the passing of time, deepened by the years of loneliness.

Be that as it may, the household skills of men always had their limit.

"I still hate preparing meals and this wildling food is harder to cook than any other I have seen," Rhaegar said pointedly, unsatisfied, about the stew he was trying to make, which smelled of dried seal meat. "I suspect this is why I was elected Elder Brother so fast. No one could stand my porridges."

Lyanna doubted very much that was the only reason. The poor people in the riverlands were as sick as they were hungry; the cooks were many and the healers few. Even the monks must have seen that the talents of their new brother were wasted in the kitchens. He was allowed to learn more and do what he knew best; heal others. To be left in peace was a condition unheard of for a crown prince.

Twenty years of freedom. Do you regret being back, being yourself? The loving look in his purple, quiet eyes told her differently. She would never tire from the way he was studying her, as a rare book only he possessed and treasured.

Lyanna laughed noisily, her Stark reserve fully left on the outside, buried with the snows. "Why, if there is one reason I've always been happy for being highborn, it is that the duties of a lady don't include cooking. Even stitching is better. Let us have some of that stew. It smells good. Besides, I am starving. It is the little one's doing."

Her husband's hands never moved to serve her food. Instead, they offered her love, wandering deftly under the layers of clothing she wore, over her belly and swollen, sensitive breasts. Her cloak was abandoned. Her heavy gown and shift followed suit. She kissed him, lest he forgot to do so, in an urgency they both felt. She felt the false spring on his lips; the time past and a new hope.

She had just stopped being sick from expecting a babe and her belly now gently curved. In five or six turns of the moon this child will be with us. Not wanting to dwell on the inevitable changes in her body, Lyanna took to undressing Rhaegar in return.

"Please," he said, pulling her towards him a bit harsher than was his wont, and she realised that a quaint battle fever must have been upon him. His eyes narrowed and turned dark purple as old wine, from contemplating her curves in their field of vision. That, too, was the same as all those years ago, she realised. There was something in her swelling body he craved, and growing heavier with child unexpectedly made their coupling excruciatingly joyful for Lyanna. All her senses were heightened. Her entire body pricked with anticipation. The ancient womanly wisdom counselling avoidance of marriage bed in her state was completely wasted on her. She never wanted her husband more. His intent matched hers.

What have you been warring against? Wights, their masters or something else? Yourself, more like than not.

He pulled her hair up above her head and lay behind her on his side. She leaned into him, their bodies ending up flushed in parallel. His hands were on her breasts and woman's place; his lips on top of her back and shoulders. The onslaught of sensations was maddening. She could not wait any longer, using one of her hands to guide him inside her.

"Easy," she said, spreading for him, exhaling with singular pleasure.

Together, they burned with non-consuming fire. He slowly took her to a place where all her inner walls melted; where there was no winter.

When they were done, she was stuck comfortably in his long, bony arms. They never bothered to dress after bedding, now or before. The less there was between them, the better they both felt.

With passion clearing out of her mind, Lyanna realised there must have been a good reason Rhaegar changed his mind about seeing her in the middle of his war. In a moment of her own weakness, after leaving Arya and Gendry in Mole's Town, Lyanna begged Drogon to take her to Rhaegar, wherever he was, if only for an hour, but the dragon remained deaf to her pleas, more like than not following the express orders of the dragonlord in the matter of his willful wife.

To her great surprise, next morning, Drogon returned to Winterfell, with another note from her husband, hastily scribbled on damaged parchment, much like the one in which he had suggested Arya and Gendry might try to free Rickon. In it, Rhaegar asked Lyanna to meet him, ensuring her that Arya was successful and safe.

He didn't act a boy as she had first thought and hoped for. He hadn't been a boy for long, if he ever was one. His harp and weapons were missing so he must have flown back in great haste, unarmed and unarmoured, counting on Drogon's warmth to survive the cold. Are you saying farewell? What will you do this time? To what Trident will you ride?

Rhaegar didn't speak after their love making. He kissed her from time to time, here and there, on a whim, causing pleasant tingling and disturbing her sweet exhaustion. Fingers with harp string marks lovingly touched her body as she wistfully traced the tissue of the ruinous scar on his chest. They kept each other awake, both unable to sleep.

"The dragon hides from the wolf again?" she couldn't help asking after a while. She needed to know what he planned to do.

"I doubted I was a dragon before I met you," her husband replied very seriously. "I thought myself a tame hatchling at best; with my wings cut short, chained in the dragonpit. I had thought my blood diluted."

Others take me, my love, and you with your love for me, Lyanna thought. Why do you always find a way to make me cry?

She had wolfblood, never watered down, never condescending. When Aerys had Father and Brandon killed, she nearly rode back from Dorne to King's Landing and to her own death. Rhaegar restrained her in her outburst and she attacked him in return, wounding him. Then, just like now, she was with child and the concern for the well-being of her unborn babe made her stay in the place attributed to women, in the end.

They teach us to sing and dance, but the role of women is to cry.

Will it ever be any different?

She remembered Ned, murdered for his honour, and little Benjen, killed by Mance Rayder for doing his duty as a man of the Night's Watch. Yet Mance never burned Benjen, contrary to the wildling's firm beliefs in the matter, so maybe her little brother still ranged beyond the Wall as… undead. And not being killed by the white walkers, chance was he was free of them like Lady Jeyne used to be. The possibility frightened her, though she surmised that Ben might have wanted it for himself if he could choose, in order to guard the realm of men even after his death.

Lyanna wished to take the black as a young girl, in full knowledge she would marry and breed instead. She counted herself fortunate for not dreaming about any boy she met like other girls of her age. What for? She would never choose her husband. Best if she didn't care who he was. The young men who visited Winterfell with their noble fathers mocked her for being beautiful and cold as the Wall; she took their cruelty as the only true compliment she was ever given.

Until the ice melted and there was none left. I thought myself above love and the gods have laughed at me.

At the poor would-be Knight of the Laughing Tree.

"And what did you think when we met here in Queensgate all those years ago?" she asked, keeping her spirits up. This was not the occasion for crying. "I went on a riding escapade from my father's men only to run into you. That was our second chance meeting, after the woods of Winterfell."

"You know very well," he said quietly. "Or if you don't, you can guess. I wished I was king and not my father's son. I wished I could take a second wife in the old Targaryen way. In Winterfell I could still fool myself. But here I knew. I met my queen in Queensgate. I'm afraid it did little good to either you or the realm. And for all I knew my queen was a pretty peasant, pretending to be a lady of some castle that did not exist. Except in her head and mine."

She had never suspected he loved her then already.

"Shut up, will you?" she told him vividly. "I am as guilty of everything as you are. I thought you were some… Villain. Liar. Some silly southron knight who was after my maidenhead! Don't tell me that you regret this… regret us..."

They had… jousted in Queensgate, defeating each other in two tilts. Lyanna challenged him and won the first one, taking Rhaegar by surprise. He made her promise she would listen to a song if he was victorious the second time.

He played for her… Jenny of Oldstones.

He never touched her in any improper way and for the first time in her life Lyanna wished a young man had done so, not knowing who he was, nor how she wanted to be touched. She wondered if things would have developed differently if they had been properly acquainted. She suspected they would not.

"The only thing I regret is not stealing you sooner," he replied ardently, "This has been on my mind since I learned in more detail about the wildling wedding customs from our friend Mance Rayder."

"I would have most certainly killed you if you had stolen me from Winterfell," she argued heatedly and stared down the obnoxious dragon. "Later, I wanted… I wanted my unknown saviour to be you."

She'd never confessed to that before. She could just as well swallow her pride and tell him the rest.

"Few men would have been victorious with a lance in a close fight against Lord Hightower. You were the tourney champion for a reason. So I stared at the lance my mystery knight carried and imagined it was you. I tried to say to myself that any knight on the way home from Harrenhal would have a lance but I still hoped it was you. "

His silence was thick with wonder.

"I thought… I thought…" Rhaegar could not finish.

"You thought I didn't mean anything when I gave you a chaste parting kiss in Harrenhal? Despite and against my Stark upbringing and all the customs in the realm? You would have never seen me again if your father did not have me kidnapped?"

Rhaegar's face sank. "Yes," he said. "Do you hate me for it?"

"I don't blame you. I had made the same decision as you; I was going to forget you. That was honourable. Yet I dreamed as a stupid girl that you would go to my father and ask that I become your second queen, so he would break my betrothal to Robert."

"I thought you just came to offer a courteous farewell to a mad prince. That is what a southron lady would do. And you were so serious when I returned that kiss!" The accusation was unbelievable coming for Rhaegar, known for the extreme gravity of his nature.

"Me? I have never so much as smiled at another man. Not even at Robert, my betrothed, when they presented us. How could you think I would kiss anyone lightly?"

"Kiss me now," he demanded. "And please, not lightly."

She obliged. Lyanna could be a most dutiful wife if she wanted. And she was never able to forget Rhaegar's kisses, long and curious. Insistent. Mindtaking. A wolf's true kiss was different, powerful and bold. Passionate.

"So you did love me before." He was beaming now. "I thought… I feared it was gratitude at first. Had I known… "

He frowned and looked his age. "It matters not. My father would still be difficult to defeat without kinslaying and bloodshed. I didn't enjoy enough support for any serious attempt at conspiracy. The nobles of the realm have always been inconstant."

There was nothing reasonable she could possibly say to that. They would both carry the dead on both sides in Robert's Rebellion on their conscience until they died, and maybe after, in seven hells, if the Faith was right in its teachings. So she waited patiently for Rhaegar to reveal the main reason he was here.

Waiting, she replayed their intimacy in her head and wondered, as she often did, how many women Rhaegar must have been with in the capital, before his first marriage to Princess Elia, in order to learn everything he had showed her in their marriage bed. She had never heard about half of the things they did together in any ladies' gossip in any place she lived later on. Lyanna never doubted Rhaegar kept his faith with her after they were married. Just like he did with Elia of Dorne, until the maester announced they should avoid lying together unless the princess wanted to die in childbed. Moon tea did not always prevent the quickening of the womb.

Yet he was a man grown when he married, of an age when many men had already fathered bastards. Lyanna couldn't help but wonder… about before… about his early years, if there were many women in his company and if they were blond and pretty like Cersei Lannister; more elegant than her, the wilfull northern maid who purposefully stole their handsome southron prince, his voice and his harp, only for herself.

Lyanna retained well only one lesson about the marriage bed from her childhood. She never believed she would need it in life yet it had never left her mind; and it was not the lecture her mother and her septa had intentionally given her about obedience and duty.

Hidden in an old suit of mail, because she was obviously not supposed to be in the armoury but learning how to sing with her septa, an eleven year old Lyanna overheard Brandon talking to Father. Lord Rickard scolded Brandon for ruining girls and chasing after them, and told him to find one good woman who would keep him in his place.

"There is no such woman," Brandon protested.

"That is what you think," father insisted, very annoyed. "Why haven't you ever seen me wenching or molesting the wives and daughters of my bannermen?"

Brandon was mute for a while.

"Father, you are the Lord of Winterfell. You act with honour."

"Also true. But it is much easier to act honourably when you know you will not find anywhere else the marvel you already have in your own bed. Women can be as passionate as any man. Find the one who will be that for you, ask her to marry you, and your honour will come naturally."

Lyanna's septa provided an unwilling explanation of the word passionate and how unseemly it was to even think of it for a highborn maid who should set an example of propriety. Young Lyanna thanked her septa demurely and kept her knowledge for herself, determined not to use it. She didn't care about the honour of any man she would be forced to marry.

But, years later, when she unexpectedly said her marriage vows out of love instead of duty, she remembered her father's words. She matched and returned with force any action her husband began in bed, and she took great pleasure in making him weak from abandon, as he had made her.

So we both kept our honour.

"Lyanna, you will never believe this..." Rhaegar finally spoke, accomplished.

There. The reason you are here, other than your love for me.

"Jon is in Eastwatch with my sister. He is riding the green dragon, Rhaegal, the one Daenerys named for me. I saw them last night. They are…. they are good together as you said they might be. More than good I'd say. They are in love." Uncharacteristic, giddy happiness poured out of the normally morose corners of Rhaegar's being with every new word.

"Did you speak to him?" she inquired, realising she would not be pleased if he did, without her. Somehow she had always imagined that, when they finally saw Jon through their human eyes, they would do it together.

"No," Rhaegar shook his silver mane and illustrated that uncanny ability he'd always had to appease her inner fears, "I wouldn't, not if you were not there. And it wasn't a good time. He found Arya and Rickon. He was overwhelmed with their reunion. Seeing me was the last thing he wanted."

"How can you be certain?"

"I…" his thought did not bear saying.

Lyanna suddenly understood. "You saw him through the dragon's mind. That is how they trace people, especially their riders and family. They sense them."

"And I believe that Jon sensed me," Rhaegar finished his thought, "and wished I was not there. Though I am not certain. We are both new to… to this thing with the mind of the dragons. For as much as I was born to it. The written knowledge is insufficient and wrong."

Lyanna remembered the first time she warged into her eagle.

"Some things cannot be written down," she said simply. "Words don't suffice to describe them."

"He is all you, you know," Rhaegar blurted with pride. The giddiness returned to him, the short unease forgotten.

He is happy, Lyanna realised. He is recklessly happy for having a glimpse of his son being happy even if Jon doesn't want him near.

"But he has something of me as well," Rheagar stated with amazement. "Perhaps not the best of me, but a part of me nonetheless. It's incredible."

Lyanna embraced her husband tightly. "It is, isn't it? He is both you and me and most of all himself. It is beyond wonderful! That he has grown so… That we could have made him at all in the beginning..."

Rhaegar fell silent again, with odd smile gracing his lips.

After a while he spoke in his iron voice, the one he had for sad songs and battle command.

"Do you know any stories about ice dragons in the North?" he inquired very, very timidly.

"Ice Dragon is a star," Lyanna said. "From Winterfell, it points the way north, to the Wall, on the nightly sky."

"And when you are north of the Wall, Mance tells me, it points the way south, to the safety from the white walkers inside the Seven Kingdoms. But aren't there any stories about ice dragons as creatures, as you have stories about ice spiders and giants?"

Lyanna tried hard to remember every horror story Old Nan had ever told her, Ned, Brandon and Benjen when they were all children. There was one, but it didn't mean much, and she couldn't remember it entirely.

"The ice dragons, our old wet nurse told us, they lived in the northern skies above Essos," Lyanna said, "not Westeros. They were not slaves of the Others like ice spiders. They roamed the sky and chased the stars. Their fire and thirst for blood was quenched. They were beautiful to look at, silver and white."

"Silver and white," Rhaegar tossed backward his impossibly long hair. "But if the Others murdered such a creature, couldn't they enslave it and turn it into a wight serving them as they do with people and beasts, especially horses?"

"Here the stories are clear, all living beings slain by the Others rise as wights and their slaves. Except that we all thought them just that, stories, until this winter came."

"Well… your stories forget one particular case of living creatures," Rhaegar said bitterly, "and those are the fire-breathing dragons, who came to Westeros only three hundred years ago and who were perhaps not even in existence the last time the Long Night came… The beings that the fire cannot kill..."

Lyanna wondered where he was heading. "Others can surely kill dragons just like they can kill anyone else," she said, just to remind him, if he had some silly rescue on his mind.

"That they can," Rhaegar agreed, "we encountered a dead, enslaved dragon. We killed him. And ever since I couldn't stop wondering about one thing."

This is it, Lyanna knew. What is truly wrecking his mind.

"Say it, my love, maybe it will be easier if you do," she irreverently tousled his hair.

"Daenerys and I," he said roughly, hammering every word in his distress. "We were burned alive and the fire could not kill us. If anything, it has made us stronger. What would happen if a white walker turns one of us into a wight? Wights may be the living dead, but they walk and they fight. Euron even talks. Their life is foul and cursed but it is still life! What if Daenerys or I are burned as wights? I suspect we would rise again, but as what? Whom would we serve? What would we become? What kind of monsters? Perhaps worse than those that had created us, killing and enslaving for our own gain," Rhaegar sounded empty after his outburst.

"There is a very simple way to avoid this problem," Lyanna reacted firmly, every inch a wolf. "You never let them kill you. Never, Rhaegar, have you heard me? Never. Promise me."

"Would that I could," he said.

"Then promise you will return to deliver our child. I lied once about dying in childbed. The gods can punish such mummery. Don't make it come true."

Rhaegar promised, clenching his teeth, almost strangling her in his embrace. And when he reluctantly released her, Lyanna understood it was time to go.

"You have to be back before night time, that's when they attack," Lyanna suddenly understood and gestured north of the Wall. "Where exactly?"

"Western coast. Near the Shadow Tower or so Mance and his people tell me, for we haven't yet seen the Wall, nor the Bridge of Skulls leading to it. Only mountains. If Mance is right I should be back in three or four more days when the wildlings are safely behind the Wall. Then we will go and speak to our son." Rheagar appeared determined, and for the first time that day, calm.

The couple dressed and ate in well-practised silence, as two fellow soldiers who have known each other for long, each going to a different battle; he with arms and monsters, she with ledgers and daily goings of the castle. Sometimes she envied his part of the ordeal. She rubbed her belly to remind herself of her duty.

Outside, they waited for the dragon. Rhaegar looked at the grey sky and closed his eyes with concentration.

"You first," he said firmly when Drogon's wings darkened the evening sky. "I am not risking you being this far north at any time after sunset." His jaw was firm and she understood she should do him this kindness, but in Lyanna's nature woman's wisdom was often replaced with mule stubbornness.

"No," she denied him. "I would go with you as far as I can."

Rhaegar sighed. "Drogon can take me safely only to the western shore," he explained. "From there, I'll have to go on foot."

The dragons had their limitations as anyone else.

"Very well," she said. "Then I'll go with you until that point."

Rhaegar stopped arguing, lost in thought. He was still with her in body but his mind was not. His brooding continued during the very short flight west alongside the Wall and then north, above the Sunset Sea.

Lyanna's uneasiness grew as she carefully took note of the layout and shape of the mountainous bay and the tiny beach where Drogon brought them. She had been to Shadow Tower before, but this place did not look like it was close to the westernmost outpost of the Night's Watch, not at all. Yet Mance knew his native land better than anyone alive and he told Rhaegar they were nearing it. Perplexed, Lyanna committed the surroundings to her memory.

If you are not back in a few days, the eagle will come after you.

If I can find her first.

After she had lost trace of Jon through her eagle eyes, Lyanna kept flying north when she slept, hoping to see her son again. Days later, she stopped being able to open them in her sleep, or rather, if she did so, all she saw was darkness. Yet the bird was alive and fed at times for she could not feel her hunger. Trapped perhaps, but Lyanna couldn't fathom who would capture her there. No men lived that far north. Maybe giants have pets. They would be able to catch the eagle. They dare go farther north than men if the stories are true, even in winter.

And so many tales have come to life of late.

Rhaegar slid down the dragon's paw and into the shallow, ice-cold water. Knee-deep, he gallantly bowed to Lyanna as he did long ago when he had crowned her his Queen of Love and Beauty. Then she was on a high dais and now on Drogon's back. She decided she liked the dragon better.

"Don't cry," he said, knowing her well. "This time I will return."

Rhaegar waddled to the shore. His forehead wrinkled when he reached it, giving her one last look. The dragon obeyed the dragonlord's unspoken word and took flight. The great sea glimmered and shivered under his paws as Lyanna was lifted up again. Up between the clouds she slept. When she woke, Drogon landed in the godswood of Winterfell very silently. As soon as she was down, he dived sneakily into the black pool in front of the heart tree, in a habit he established inside the castle. Lyanna knew the dragon's head was buried in the crypt of her ancestors yet they had never risen to denounce the sacrilege.

How can they? They are dead, she repeated that truth to herself many times. Yet in her childhood the old Kings of Winter looked very much alive on their thrones, and all Stark children were in awe of them in their tombs. Lyanna had always felt they would rise had they been truly, genuinely offended.

The godswood was populated that evening. At the other end of the pool, her younger niece, Arya, slashed savagely at a large weirwood root with her thin Braavosi sword. A boy with shiny auburn hair like Sansa's, and the stubborn, rebellious face of Lyanna's older brother Brandon, only with blue eyes, caressed the white bark of the tree.

Rickon, Lyanna realised.

"Maybe I can go to Bran and Sansa and see if they are well," the boy said to the weirwood, "I also look like them."

But the tree remained mute despite that Arya kept cutting it.

"Arry," Gendry said gently, grabbing her sword hand just hard enough that she was forced to drop her weapon. "You've seen the heart tree in Greywater Watch and the long weirwood caves of the Brotherhood in the riverlands. She isn't gone. There must be a way of the old gods under here for those who know how to open it."

Arya's face darkened. She wrenched her arm free, but didn't pick up her sword. Her anger became muted like she was.

Gendry, on the other hand, turned impatient and loud. "I told you we should have come out and greeted the ladies. That would be proper. But you didn't want to see Daenerys for reasons only you know and won't share with me. Is this about your handsome cousin?"

"How could I know Sansa would just step into the tree!" Arya screamed back. "I thought she was going to whimper and cry and wait for him. How can she still be so stupid? She killed herself for missing her dog husband. Now she will never see him again. And what do you think he'll do when he finds out? He'll blame himself for leaving her and get himself killed in return! As if I didn't know him..."

Gendry was at a loss. "You don't know him that well. You don't even like him. The Hound kidnapped you once," he said cautiously.

"And kept me alive in his own way," Arya said solemnly as Ned might, or as High Septon would praise the glorious dead. "He wouldn't let me die even when I became useless to him as a hostage. Maybe he did it for the memory of my sister. It matters little. I know him well enough. But how Sansa can love him so much is beyond me. She was always simpering and mild in her affections."

"You wouldn't know what love is, would you?" Gendry said, very annoyed. "Or the force it has? You are just a little girl."

"What's wrong with you now?" Arya glared at Gendry, looked murderous.

Almost anyone in the king's household except Arya knew perfectly well what was wrong with Gendry. Lyanna cleared her throat. She would find no better moment to intervene.

"Gendry is right," she forced herself to speak queenly with the reassurance she didn't feel. On the inside, she was often as angry and as afraid as her niece. With years she merely learned to hide it better or to subdue her fears faster.

"Howland Reed told me about the ways of the old gods. The travellers go fast in them, as if by magic. Those who have their mark on their body can enter and others are banned from them. If a way is open, it can be used. The most frequent sign of a traveller are eyes, green or red. But I dare say that Sansa and Rickon do have the colours of the old gods in their hair and skin. If the tree opened up when she walked in, she should be safe."

"I can't believe the trees would let anyone pass. They would surely swallow and smother me," Arya said.

And me and my son, no doubt, without someone to guide us. Lyanna couldn't agree more, but she would not say it, not now.

Most Starks inherited the colours of ash, ice and death. The colours of winter on their face and hair. And she doubted that Jon's father's blood did anything to appease the old gods, always angry because their chosen kings of old knelt to dragons… Yet Jon did enter and come out, when the way was open by the dead child of the forest, liberated from the curse of serving the Others when Lyanna's eagle had instinctively clawed out her eye. It was one of the worst sensations Lyanna ever had to endure as a warg being present in her animal at the time.

"You've seen Jon, haven't you?" Lyanna asked. "If you did, you must know that he has been under the trees and came out alive. If he succeeded, why shouldn't Sansa?

"Jon is so tall now," Rickon said with adoration, oblivious of how much he must have grown in the years he was away. "Are you his mother?"

"Can't you tell?" Lyanna nodded enthusiastically, pulling a long face until Rickon laughed. "And I can fly with an eagle just as Arya, Jon and you can run with your wolves. I saw Jon taking the secret passage weeks ago. If he is alright then the trees did let him out."

"Boots," Arya said out of the blue, very vigilant and alert. "Heavy footsteps. Sandals as well."

The serious face of the heart tree turned long and Stark-like, or maybe it was just a trick of the fading light, playing with Lyanna's tired mind. Being with child meant she could fall asleep anywhere, at any time, most of the time. This would only stop when she gave birth.

Lyanna glanced over the walls separating the godswood from the rest of the castle, but she was a short woman, and they were too high to see anything.

"Sansa mentioned something about the mutiny," Rickon recalled with difficulty.

In barely a week since she held Winterfell, Lyanna had to address the rising tension between her and her husband's men; the blunt, outspoken northmen and the petty, well-spoken southron lordlings and landed knights from riverlands and crown lands. No great lord rode north with Rhaegar when he left the capital in haste. The wardens loyal to him would sail to the Wall later, when they called what they could of their banners; Robin Arryn from the East, Willas Tyrell from the South and Tommen Lannister from the West. The riverlands and stormlands were lordless until future times and mostly left to their own devices. Rhaegar had written to the Prince of Dorne, but as far as Lyanna knew he had received no answer.

After the departure of the Golden Company for Shadow Tower, the balance of forces in Winterfell clearly favoured the northmen. It was mostly the presence of Daenerys' Unsullied, loyal to her and thus to the House Targaryen, that kept the intrigues of those unsatisfied with the new order at bay. Some northmen whispered Lyanna was not a Stark any more and that her marriage brought shame and dishonour to her family. Foremost among those was Galbart Glover. She suspected he would also be the first one wishing to marry her and inherit Winterfell as her lord husband if she was suddenly widowed.

People will never change.

Lyanna sighed deeply and straightened her small narrow shoulders.

"Drogon!" She hated to shake the dragon out of his cooling stupor in the pool but it couldn't be helped. Unlike people who bathed in the hot springs when occasion allowed, Drogon preferred fresh water for his leisure.

"Drogon", she repeated quietly and clearly. Rhaegar said the dragon could hear her spoken word. It was a less precise manner to command him than through the mind, but it should work for those whom the beast perceived as linked to his rider. Riders. This dragon belongs to Daenerys and he only flies with my husband as his friend. This truth was self-evident to both Lyanna and Rhaegar.

The dragon's black-horned head came slowly out of the water. One eye was closed. The other studied them, ancient and cunning.

Clever, Lyanna thought. He shall not be tricked by anyone.

"Take all of them to Eastwatch, please," Lyanna said, pointing at Arya, Gendry and Rickon. "They will be safe in Jon's command."

"Or to a place where Jon would wish us to be," Arya would not be herself without notions of her own.

"As long as it is safe and far from here," Lyanna agreed, not understanding her niece fully, but needing to take two trueborn heirs to Winterfell out of harm's way as soon as possible, and that would be done easier if Arya went freely.

Lyanna married a Targaryen. Her husband was a living dragonlord. She could not be easily widowed and made an heir to the north, so her person was pretty much useless to whoever orchestrated the rebellion. If she was raped, she could not get with child. And she doubted that whoever took the castle would kill her with Rhaegar alive. Her house words did not bode well for her enemies, but the Targaryen words were even clearer. Fire and blood. Their meaning was understood across the Seven Kingdoms.

"Will you be alright?" Arya inquired from dragon's back with both honest concern and courtesy, making Lyanna proud. Rickon looked thrilled with the adventure of flying, and Gendry selfishly glad he was taking Arya away from danger.

"There always has to be a Stark in Winterfell," Lyanna said. "Being held hostage is a manageable situation for my age and station."

"Drogon, fly!" Please. The dragon obeyed, ending all conversation, disappearing in silence. He can mute the flapping of his wings if he so wishes.

Several hours later, Lyanna regretted her own pride and hasty statement. In an empty rage, she wished she was a true dragonlady who could call Drogon back and command him to burn her enemies. Yet even as she thought so, she knew her desire to be in vain; dragonfire would irreparably ruin Winterfell, barely renewed after the last sack done by the Boltons, on the verge of the Long Night.

We can't have that.

She ended up imprisoned on the first floor of the Great Keep with Lady Mormont, Lady Dustin, and, to her great surprise, Lady Greyjoy, who was supposed to be Stannis' prized hostage on the Wall.

Galbart Glover thrived as a self-proclaimed head of rebellion, but the muscle of it were Daenerys' Unsullied, who looked heathen and mindless, obeying Glover blindly. Why the most loyal army in the world suddenly changed allegiance was beyond Lyanna's understanding.

The Manderly men managed to run away. But it would be months before they reached White Harbor and brought help in winter, and they would be fortunate if they came home alive.

"Lady Cerwyn might be on our side, but the others are not," Lady Mormont said, counting their enemies and allies. "Glovers, Umbers, the mountain clans, Hornwood's bastard…. All of them men. They say…" the normally ruthless lady went blank.

"They say that the House of Stark is down to only women," Lady Dustin continued sweetly. "The two oldest ones are married to the enemies of the North, one to a known raper and madman against her will, and the second one to the Lannister dog by force. Only Lady Arya remains a maid and many are willing to marry her. They say Stannis is king and he has Rickon Stark as hostage, the trueborn male heir to Winterfell."

Lady Greyjoy was sulking at the window, not taking part in the conversation, so at least Lyanna was spared her opinion in the matter.

Lyanna had heard it all. She fumed inwardly and turned upside down in her head the only new information in Barbrey's tirade. Stannis is behind this. He somehow bought or bewitched the Unsullied.

The red woman. Howland spoke of the sorceress with concern.

But what can a priestess of a god from Essos do in the world ruled by the old gods?

It would seem more than enough.

"Who is guarding us?" she asked Maege, ignoring the other two ladies.

"Bolton men," Lady Mormont said, "Roose's, not Ramsay's. Those who can be trusted to do what they are told."

"Roose's you said? And as honest as guards can be?" Lyanna kissed Maege on the cheek. It was the first truly good news since the occupation.

Lyanna banged at the door of their quarters until a confused guard partially opened them. "My lady… Your Grace," he said, unsure how to treat her. His cloak used to be pink, but he had tried to dye it black to hide his allegiance to the Boltons. The result was a dirty grey hue of mud.

"Lady Lyanna will do," she said, "bring me Steelshanks."

"Our orders-"

"The Others take your orders!" Lyanna yelled from the top of her small lungs. "Bring me Steelshanks now or it will be your entrails adorning the godswood once I am free again. If you don't believe me, ask Greatjon about Walder Frey."

"There's the catch," Maege said sadly. "He ended up chained in the crypts just before they captured you. I think he's the only highborn northern man present here, who refused to side with the mutineers. He told them it was the Lannister dog, the wildling king and one of Ned's girls sent by you and Rhaegar who got his arse out from under the Twins and not Glover."

Lyanna almost choked laughing. There is hope. Winterfell had no proper dungeons. Justice was done at the block and disputes resolved by talking. Stifling her attack of good mood, she glared at the guard again.

"I said Steelshanks, now!" She wished she had the high heeled shoes she used when she posed as Ashara Dayne to make herself taller, but she wouldn't risk wearing those while being with child.

When Roose's captain was there, Lyanna asked. "Have I imprisoned you when I took Winterfell? Have I taken my revenge on you for what your liege had done?"

"No, lady, but-"

"But what? Roose is dead. You have no lord until the Warden of the North names one."

"Lady Walda is with child in Dreadfort…"

"Women die in childbirth every day," Lyanna said flatly, ignoring her own fears in the matter. This broke him.

"What is it you wish?" Steelshanks said despondently, but his demeanour was more condescending than before.

"Guard Lady Dustin and Lady Greyjoy in the other room while two men of your choosing are guarding Maege and me.

"Why?" Barbrey had to know.

"Because you are only here with us so that you can spy on me for Glover and kill any hope I might have left by your friendly words," Lyanna said coldly.

Barbrey paled, which was the same as if she had confessed what Lyanna only suspected to be true. Now I know.

"Lord Glover did say we can house the ladies in three separate rooms to make them more comfortable," Steelshanks said, undecided.

"Glover will hear of this," Barbrey threatened. "Stannis and his red witch too!"

"So be it," Lyanna cut her off, wondering if the unknown woman would approve of being called witch. "Tell them whatever you want."

"However, Barbrey, I do have to say this," the wolf queen continued with sweet poison in her voice,"If you spy on Glover for me, you will keep your head and estates and I will not hold you responsible for any of this when the odds change again in my favour. On my word as a Stark. I don't demand your loyalty as you would never give it to me. Only to betray him as you are betraying me. But since I don't want to make the task of double spying too easy for you where it concerns my person, you will go with Steelshanks now if you hold your life dear."

When Maege and Lyanna were alone, the queen lay on the large featherbed in the middle of the room, completely dressed.

"Why are you here and not with Glover?" she asked softly, searching for the truth in the older woman with cold eyes.

"I may look like a man, but that doesn't make me one," the bear lady said casually, dressed in boiled leather and mail in place of soft wool and velvet. "Why should I trust his wisdom above that of my own sex?"

"Only that?" Lyanna was hoping for more.

"And in winter the House Mormont will trust the House Stark over all others. I have eyes. I also have many different daughters. Yet they are no less bear ladies for it. You seem like a Stark to me. Your nieces as well. Both of them."

The admission gave Lyanna enough hope to trust Maege a little.

"Hold my hands," she pleaded. "I will look for help the only way I can. We need an army or a dragon with his rider. You need to wake me if I begin shaking and also for the evening meal. Don't let me sleep for more than three hours."

Yet she turned sideways on the bed and stretched her arms forward before Maege's huge palms obediently encircled hers. Loyalty or not, I would not have her touch my belly by chance.

The eyes of the white-headed eagle snapped open in the darkness. She tried to hop away but she could not, hitting the bars of her invisible cage. The animal consciousness she shared already knew that spreading wings would be equally in vain.

She screeched helplessly for hours. To no avail. Warm hands pulled her back to her human body and she devoured her supper as only a woman with child could. The salty gravy was better than Rhaegar's seal stew but it would not do to think about her husband, nor to cry. At night, all women imprisoned in Winterfell and their gaolers slept well and sound.

In the morning, after breaking her fast, Lyanna tried again.

She opened her eagle eyes and cried out with determination. Someone had been feeding her in her captivity or the eagle would be dead by now. She hoped that this someone would be irritated by the sound and come and see her. Then, she would attack and fly away.

After a long time, her prison shook tremendously, causing her fast beating bird's heart a very nervous flutter. Suddenly, she saw a pair of red eyes and a mass of pale fur which howled, in place of the darkness the eagle was used to by now.

Wolf, the eagle thought.

Ghost, the wolf said politely. Or was it her son? The huge white direwolf instantly lost the ability of speech, so Jon must have returned to his body if he had been in his wolf at all. She wondered how good her son was in mastering his gift.

Very good, if his animal just opened the cage for me. The action was exceedingly difficult for an enormous four-pawed creature.

Ghost! the eagle let out a harsh cry of both menace and joy, spreading her wings freely. Gliding under the high ceiling she looked down at the too small wooden box with bars where she had been imprisoned. One side was missing, torn out with sharp teeth. The dark cloth which must have been covering the cage lay ripped in pieces on the floor. The wolf was not gentle in his effort of opening. A look up revealed an oddly familiar ceiling. She was in a cold, shadowy room, resembling the one where her human body slept.

Resembling Winterfell.

A dishevelled young man barged in, his pale face bare and flushed. Lyanna didn't have to look twice to know who he was. Very carefully, he studied the eagle in her flight, as if they had all time in the world. It was too dark in the room to see with precision if he... smiled. This was dangerous, because the eagle could smell the cold, and the woman within her knew what it meant. The dead and their cold masters were near.

We must be far beyond the Wall. What are you doing here, Jon? You are supposed to be in Eastwatch, kissing Daenerys.

But then you wouldn't be my son, would you? The Starks are not made to sit still in winter and I, I could never do it.

Lyanna flew out through the stone window frame, amazed that there was no glass, nor shutters on it. How can anyone survive here?

Son! she rejoiced, waiting for Jon and Ghost to follow, but the only sound that came out of her beak was ugly croaking.

The view of the castle from the outside confirmed her eerie suspicion about the room. Every stone resembled Winterfell at first sight. Yet, in place of the wolfswood around it, the sea was near. She could hear the breaking of the waves and smell the salt in the air. And the cold, the devastating cold.

The castle was empty. Ghost castle. And it felt as evil as the cold inhabiting it to the animal consciousness she shared.

Lyanna finally spotted her son, and landed very carefully on his shoulder. It took her years of practice to be able to land in such a way, first on Benjen and later on Rhaegar. Benjen had to see a maester once for the scratches the eagle's claws had caused him.

Jon froze in place. Lyanna hopped from his shoulder onto the back of his wolf and croaked.

"Hello," Jon finally said, very cautiously, glancing around as if to make certain they were alone and that no other human witnessed his madness. "Can you hear me?"

Lyanna screeched briefly. Of course she could hear him. Answering, however, was an entirely different matter.. Birds did not speak, not even the eagles, the rulers of the skies.

"Why are you here?"

Lyanna wondered the same about her son. What made you embark on the ways of the old gods on your own?

She spread her wings and flapped them vigorously, enjoying the slow return of the eagle's strength and agility. She knew that speed would follow. Well, I came looking for help, son. But my troubles can wait, you see. First I shall help you, in any way I can. With sharp eyes, and sharp claws. And wings. Your dragon cannot follow here, only your wolf. And your mother. Unworthy as she may be.

Jon sighed, probably realising that the answer would not, could not be forthcoming.

"Is it really, truly you?" he asked, incredulously.

She wished fervently she could be with him in her human form and speak. Instead, she uttered a weak cry and bent her head down. Nodding did not come naturally to an eagle.

"Mother."

Jon added the word as an afterthought, as though he was becoming accustomed to the idea. His voice betrayed no feeling, only constatation; acceptance, no more.

It is better than hatred.

Lyanna's wings fluttered spontaneously. Son. A hoarse cry left her beak and it somehow appeased Jon.

"Why have another Winterfell built here?" he seemed more at ease about talking to, essentially, himself, since she could not answer, not truly. "And who would have done it?"

Lyanna wished she knew, but she was as baffled as her son about many things. Why are you having no cloak? No headdress? Are you not cold? It must be your father's blood… Yet even Rhaegar wrapped his head and hair in winter when he was not riding a dragon...

Let us take a good look around here while it is empty, she followed her premonition and soared upward, not flying too fast. Her son and his wolf took a hint and followed.

The moat was frozen; the portcullis rusty and designed very differently than the simple iron one in Winterfell. Lyanna had seen similar metalwork in another castle, but for as much as she cracked her eagle head about it, she could not recall where.

The castle missed the lower, outer walls. The moat was a frozen stream surrounding the higher, inner walls, which were intact and so very much like Winterfell that the illusion was almost perfect. Yet one or two towers and turrets were missing and some were built differently. There was no Guest House. There were no glass gardens, but some sort of stable on their place. The Great Keep looked older and less elaborate, missing the top floor. There was no rookery. The emptiness was dreadful. Winterfell was big, but this castle was probably even larger, covering many more acres of the grounds. Almost as a big as a small city.

"The Night's King has emptied his court," Jon said pensively, "but where have they all gone? His wolf padded silently next to him.

Who is the Night's King and why would he make his court look like Winterfell? Lyanna wondered.

She flew to the godswood. Her son followed. The weirwood was there, but it was blind. It had no eyes nor mouth. No one could use it to travel here. The old gods did not see what was done in their name. Ghost padded under the canopy of red leaves. Red eyes. Lyanna understood who must have opened the door of the old gods to Jon this time. But where is the door you took if not here?

"This is all wrong," Jon said.

The eagle followed her son's gaze to the final, shocking difference. Behind the enclosure of the godswood, behind the inner ward, the tower they both knew as the burned tower stood almost two hundred feet high, taller than any wall and undamaged. The highest watchtower.

"This castle can't be real," Jon concluded.

His mother could not agree more. Yet the stone and the timber the buildings were made of seemed real enough, as did the godswood and the exact number and shape of frozen pools in it; one black in front of the heart tree, and three smaller ones, which should have been heated, at the edge of the godswood and under the place where the Guest House should have been.

Mother and son had both seen and counted those pools so many times.

When they departed from the godswood, there was almost no light left. The full moon slowly conquered the sky. The winter day became utterly spent. The eagle heard it first, many feet at the main gates, thudding.

So they come back at night. The Night's court for the Night's king, Lyanna thought. How convenient. The simple way out of the castle was blocked for any wingless beings.

She screeched wildly and flew in the direction of the small postern gate which was blind in real Winterfell, ending in the outer wall. But there is no such wall here so it should take us out.

Fortunately, her son followed.

The ghost castle shrieked with eerie life of thousands and thousands of wights returning to it, filling every open space and every building on the inside. From above, as far as the eagle could see, there seemed to be almost as many wights as people in King's Landing.

In the inner ward, in the heart of the castle, Jon halted and looked back, troubled. His wolf lingered too close to the dead, sniffing them. Some might be able to see him.

"Ghost, to me," Jon had to call him before the man and wolf rushed after the eagle in her flight.

Lyanna thanked the old gods that the postern was still there, and that it did lead out. One of the oldest parts of the castle, just like the burned tower.

Old, she realised. This is Winterfell as it might have looked in the past. Thousands of years ago.

Behind the postern, a narrow path led through a flat, stony moor, and then slowly up, to the top of a low, mountainous, treeless ridge, white and desolate as death. The man and the wolf began climbing and the eagle flew above them.

In the bleak surroundings, Lyanna noticed the odd blade on her son's hip for the first time, glowing faintly red through the black headscarf serving as its scabbard. So you have found the sword of heroes. The eagle shivered, afraid, from the weapon or from what was before them, it was hard to tell.

Soon, they reached the top of the ridge and gazed over, at the large valley stretching in all directions for many leagues. The end of it could not be seen, disappearing in the night.

The heart of winter.

The place where the white walkers sleep.

Pale, wrinkled, unnatural beings lay down there by the thousands, ugly and threatening in their rest. Their bodies were partially covered with ice. A very small portion of the valley nearest to the imaginary Winterfell gaped empty. Of those who have already risen...

A few sleepers were waking up now, trying out the crystal blades buried with them as they did so. One cried shrilly, waking two Others who had slept behind him until then. Another sleeper turned into a blue mist and drifted up, towards the yellow moon.

The winter wind whistled merrily, mocking the odd group of scouts for their useless endeavour.

Jon's face became graver than his father's and Lyanna didn't need him to tell her what he had been thinking. The count was simple. The force gathered under their eyes was so great that it provoked despair.

Her eagle's face would have turned very long if birds could wear such expression.

There were so many Others sleeping in front of their eyes that the fire of three dragons existing in the world might not be enough to burn them. And when they all woke, maybe they could cut through the Wall with their blades and take the Seven Kingdoms for their own.

Lyanna remembered Old Nan's ancient voice, whispering hoarsely with horror, "The sleepers will all rise when the day becomes so short that it does not exist any more, and they will march on the Wall to bring it down when the Long Night comes… All who live to see such times shall cry bitter tears! And none of them shall live to tell the tale..."

"The odds have been worse before," Jon murmured as flatly as he could, patting his wolf.

"Haven't they… mother?" He raised his other hand to the air as if he might have wanted to caress the eagle as well and changed his mind.

The question rang painfully sincere. The second time Jon called her mother, his voice was very quiet. Almost… affectionate. Her bird heart raced and jumped from hope that it was not too late for them. Not too late for any of them. In the end of time as they knew it.

But a pair of warm hands pulled Lyanna back to her human body precisely at that moment. The enticing smell of chicken broth filled up her waking world.

She was shaking with cold despite the warmth of the fire in the great hearth. Maege Mormont looked at her with extreme worry.

"Have you found help?" the bear lady asked, voicing her concern.

"Not yet," Lyanna said, keeping her composure and willing her body to stop with spasms. "But I will. I have made progress this morning."

Lady Dustin joined them for the meal, as did the savagely pretty ironborn lady who had kept to herself the night before, probably driven by hunger. Steelshanks shrugged, as if he were saying it was the best he could do. Lyanna nodded briefly at her new captain of the guards who had not yet received his appointment. He had done better than she expected.

The Bolton men were replaced by the mute Unsullied in front of their door at noon.

Midday meal by moonlight, Lyanna thought wistfully, looking through the glass-paned window. The day is down to half a day now.

Mouthful by mouthful, she took her food, smiled at Maege and made insignificant womanly conversation to let them all see she was alright. Yes, the chicken was excellent. This is much better than Rhaegar's cooking. She swallowed hard and smiled again. Yes, they should compliment Glover's appointment of the new cook when the occasion presented itself.

Yes, Lady Dustin looked fresh this morning. As did Lady Greyjoy. The ironborn pointedly ignored the chatting, reminding Lyanna of herself in younger age. Weren't you with Stannis? Did you help cause this rebellion? Did your allies betray you after you did your part?

Soon she would know the answers. She only needed to keep her temper down, her mind sharp as her eagle's eyes and be patient.

It was not in Lyanna's nature to give up easily. Someone always lived to tell the tale. How else would Old Nan have learned her stories?

Stay well, son. Your father is out there as well.

You are not alone.

xxxx

This chapter ended up being greatly influenced by the death of David Bowie and his various songs, especially Rock n Roll Suicide.

Next up: Arya