She dreamed she was standing in the great hall at the Twins, at the very heart of the Red Wedding. Her mother was screaming and cursing and wailing in the demonic language of grief as blood spilled from Robb's mouth like the light that was spilling from his eyes. And then blood was spilling from Mother too, more and more and more of it as the soldier behind her, a man without a face, sawed hard at her throat with his dagger and cursed when her head wouldn't come off. But he let her body drop and crumple to the floor, and he ran to join the mob of men surrounding Robb as a group of soldiers brought them Grey Wind's corpse impaled on a spear. They formed a laughing, chanting circle around the bodies of her brother and his wolf, and though Arya could not see through their ranks, she knew what they were doing. She recognised the sound of flesh tearing and blood spilling and cruel men laughing; and she wanted to run away from them; she wanted to run for her life and her sanity; but her feet were leading her towards them anyway; her boots were squelching in the blood that stained the floor like mud; and bile was rising higher and higher in her throat. She wanted to stop; she didn't want to look; she wanted to run; but she had reached them and pushed through them and looked down at what they were doing; and she screamed as she saw that the corpses on the floor at the centre of the circle were Jaime and Nymeria; their lifeless mouths opening and shrieking and howling in agony as the soldiers set to work with needle and thread.

Arya jerked awake with the feeling of vomit in her mouth and poison in her lungs, positive that her screams must have been tearing out of her throat in red, raw, glistening slivers of flesh. But when she opened her eyes, she found Jaime lying fast asleep beside her; his arms wrapped tightly around her back and his lips nestled in her hair. The smell of him, and the feeling of his naked skin, was so familiar and so like home, that for a while she allowed herself to sink into him and to breathe him; hoping that her reality would become her dream. But then another wave of powerful nausea hit her; her half-dreams began to pull her back into the darkened blood-stained hall; and she was suddenly seized by a bursting and impatient need to be out of the Red Keep, and in the open air.

It was very early in the morning; the borders of the moon and the beginnings of the sun turning the world grey and cold like rain; and when she gently disentangled herself and sat up, Jaime groaned audibly and muttered something about her being mad.

'What is it, Stark?' he mumbled, his words fading into a sigh and a breath as his dreams began to reclaim him almost immediately.

'Nothing,' Arya whispered, softly kissing his forehead and stroking his hair, 'go back to sleep.'

Within moments, he was asleep again, and Arya was glad of it.

Since learning of Myrcella's role in Cersei's death, Jaime had barely slept at all; darkness claiming the skin beneath his eyes as his thoughts and feelings tore at him without mercy. Arya had begged him to talk to her; saying to him countless times that he didn't need to feign indifference for her sake…but he had refused to discuss Myrcella each time Arya mentioned her.

She didn't know if she appreciated that, or resented it.

Arya padded naked to the window, pulled her smallclothes on, and began to dress; shrugging into her simple black gown and deftly tying her laces, before buttoning the dress up to the neck. She pulled her boots on, took hold of her sword belt with one hand, and left the room as quietly as she could, though she doubted that Jaime would have heard her had she stomped to the door and slammed it.

'Stay here,' Arya told the guards who moved to follow her, 'and please make sure that Lord Jaime is not disturbed before I return.'

'Yes, my lady,' the guards chorused.

Arya glided demurely away from them in a thoroughly ladylike manner, broke into a run the moment she turned the corner, and raced to take the fastest route out of the Keep; the fastest route out of the place where propriety required her to act like a frightened deer and not like the wolf that she truly was.

After the Battle of the Blackwater, Arya had had to act like a lady in order to survive. She had forced herself to wear the gowns and she had forced herself to wear the shoes; she had folded her hands and kept her shoulders upright and said her courtesies and remained blank-faced when people sniggered behind their hands at the conservative way she dressed, or at the memory of the day that Joffrey had made her swear allegiance to him again and again and again. She had hated it, but she had done it; because being a lady was the only thing that kept her from being exposed to more punishment and censure than those she had endured already. Being a lady was the only thing that kept her from trying to recklessly murder both Joffrey and Cersei each time she saw them. Being a lady was being Tywin's child; the child of a father she hated, but who was in her, no matter how hard she tried to forget him.

Being a lady was a mask, and she was good with masks.

Her time on the road with Jaime, however – the distance that they had travelled after deciding to marry again – had almost completely obliterated whatever progress she had made in the painting of that particular mask, because people who were free didn't need to wear masks. She had worn breeches again and she had cursed again; she had climbed trees and she had slept on the floor; she had raised her voice and worn her sword at her hip; and when she and Jaime had lain together without being married, she had gasped and cried and moaned his name without giving a fuck who heard her. Adjusting to life at court after such freedom had been difficult; much more difficult than the first time, even though the same people who had spat at her feet and laughed at her were now clamouring to kiss her arse because 'Lady of Casterly Rock' had been slapped onto the end of her name.

Arya snorted and quickened her pace, buckling her sword belt as she went; and she smilingly found her thoughts drifting to the morning after Cersei's execution; the morning that she had first appeared at the breakfast table, dressed for court and armed to the teeth.

Jaime had grinned at her in amusement.

'Going to war, Stark?' he had asked, 'can I come? I'm in need of a proper battle.'

'No,' Arya had replied with exaggerated ire, 'I'm making sure that if you ever order our stupid guards to restrain me again, I'll be able to take them down before I jump on you.'

Jaime had laughed uproariously, before leaning over and deftly kissing her forehead.

'I love you, little wolf.'

'And I love you.'

She had worn the belt for the whole of that day, and for the whole of the next day, and for the whole of the next. She had worn it in the godswood, and in the gardens, and to court, and to several tedious interviews involving tea, apple cakes, gossip, and Lady Margaery and her ladies that Lady Arya Stark of Winterfell could very well have refused to attend but that Lady Arya Lannister of Casterly Rock could not. And to her amazement (and delight, though she would never admit it), it had only been a few days before a triumphantly significant number of the highborn ladies of the court had also begun to wear sword belts over their gowns; usefully equipped with ornamental daggers in elaborately-crafted sheaths. Arya swallowed as she felt nausea grinding in her throat again.

They treat weapons as though they were toys. Perhaps I should challenge one of them to a duel.

The air was cool around her as she left the Red Keep by the front entrance; taking no small pleasure in being able to ignore the obsequious greetings of every gold cloak, red cloak or Kingsguard she passed without fear of retribution, and she walked slowly around the perimeter of the castle to the edge of the Blackwater Rush; the sun beginning to peep over the clouds and promising another blistering hot day. It was ideal weather for falling asleep in court…though Arya doubted that anybody would be falling asleep today.

Today was to be the first time that Tommen held court entirely alone. Tyrion would be at his side, of course, as would the entire small council, but the boy king would announce the appointment of his uncle Kevan as Lord Regent, hear requests and petitions, and grant them or deny them entirely alone, with no help from any of them.

Tyrion is training him brilliantly, Arya thought, and he will be a great king. But Myrcella is the true ruler out of the two. It should be Myrcella rather than Tommen.

Thinking of Myrcella made her think of Jaime again, and as she beheld the sandy river bank on which she walked, and the walls of the Red Keep that towered above her in all their blood-stained sandstone magnificence, she was seized by a feeling, no, a certainty, that it had been here, at this spot, where Jaime had lost his hand.

She looked about her, trying to remember, and her nausea was getting worse at the very memory of how unspeakable and devastating and unjust it had been; how she had seen him fall and fall again because his armour was too fucking heavy for him; how he had gotten to his feet and tried to keep fighting, not realising what had happened to him; and how she had almost screamed aloud when the maester's assistants had removed the armour and boiled leather from his body, and she had seen how thin he was; emaciated, starved; in no condition to be fighting a war but fighting one anyway because of his own bloody stubbornness. And then she remembered everything else that had happened in the maester's tent; how so much blood had come running and gushing and bursting out of him that it had reminded her of paint, and the smell of it, in her and on her; and how she had convinced herself, when the maester had sewed him up, that this was happiness for her; that this was justice for her family and her ghosts oh gods.

Arya bent over and vomited spectacularly; her head spinning as her legs and arms turned to dust, and soon she was on her knees and retching, and staring down at her own sick wondering what the fuck she had eaten; and when a gentle hand came to rest on her shoulder; she whirled around in alarm and breathed a sigh of relief, to see that it was only Myrcella.

'Are you injured, my lady?' the princess squealed in concern.

'Last night's fish pie did taste a little strange –'

Arya turned rapidly away from Myrcella and vomited again, sheets of the bloody stuff landing with an obscene splat on the ground.

'You need a maester!' Myrcella insisted.

Arya stubbornly shook her head, forced herself to stand up, and tottered to a spot several yards away. She sat down in the sand, exhausted, and looked up to see that Myrcella had followed her and was still staring at her in worry.

'I don't need a maester,' Arya assured her, not quite willing to admit how touched she was by the princess' concern, 'if the problem does lie in the contents of my stomach, then I think we can safely assume that I've got rid of most of them.'

Myrcella was still staring at her, her green eyes bright and analytical.

'I also had fish pie last night, my lady,' she said simply.

'I am delighted for you, my princess,' Arya replied, puzzled.

'And yet here I stand, alive and well.'

'Yes, indeed you do.'

Myrcella rolled her eyes at her and put her hands on her hips.

'When was the last time you bled, my lady?'

Arya almost choked at the uncharacteristic impertinence of the question.

'The last time I…'

And suddenly she was casting her mind back over week after frenetic week of confusion and grief and emotion and joy and trying to remember and finding that she couldn't remember and realising what that meant, what it had to mean; and she was abruptly and incoherently panicking and rejoicing and starting to smile and starting to cry and starting to laugh, and wanting to tear back into the castle and tell Jaime, and shivering and laughing and doubting and thinking that she'd lost her mind, and I'm too young for this, I'm too clumsy for this, I'm not right for this, I'll probably drop the wretched child on its head before it's a week old and I don't think Jaime could do much better; we can't even take care of ourselves properly, the gods only know what will happen if we have a child to take care of too, but it'll be Jaime's and it'll be mine and it'll have me and him and it'll be ours; and seven hells does this happen inside me; will it actually grow inside me…

And her fingers were ghosting over her stomach, and she knew that she wouldn't be able to feel the child now; even she knew that; and she thought about Jaime that morning as he had fallen back into sleep like a dead man, and how her heart had been heavy and light and glorious in her chest; as it was every time that she looked at him, or heard him, or touched him. What she felt was nameless, and beautiful, and euphoric, and terrifying, and she did not try to find the words because they would be inadequate when they came; and her thoughts must have shown in her face, because Myrcella was sitting down opposite her; her eyes sleepless and green like his, and asking her in a tone that brooked no argument:

'Did you know about Uncle Jaime and Mother?'

Arya looked at the earnestness and innocence on Myrcella's face, and seriously considered lying.

'Yes. I did know.'

'How long have you known?'

'Approximately four years.'

Arya waited, expecting anger and condemnation and childish cries of 'Why didn't you tell me?' Instead, Myrcella demurely folded her arms, nodded politely in acknowledgment and gave every appearance of being grateful for her honesty.

'How could you marry Uncle Jaime if you knew?' the princess asked, with a disbelief that was heart-breaking in its sincerity, 'and…and Bran, didn't he try to kill Bran?'

'How do you know about that?' Arya asked in reply; surprised that Cersei would have permitted word of such things to reach her children.

'Joffrey brought Uncle Stannis' letter to the supper table one night –' Myrcella observed, shrugging.

That little shit.

'– and after that, though everyone had heard the rumours and knew about them, I did my mother the courtesy of refusing to believing that they were true.'

Arya nodded in approval, but said nothing.

'Did Uncle Jaime try to kill Bran?' Myrcella insisted.

'Yes,' Arya responded candidly, some instinct telling her that Myrcella shared Jaime's distaste for excessive gentleness in the bearing of bad news, 'Bran saw him and your royal mother together, and Jaime flung him out of a window to shut him up.'

The loveliness of Myrcella's face was contorted in horror and disgust, and her hands were clutching at each other as she stared at Arya in disbelief.

'How could you bear to be his wife, knowing all that?' she rasped.

Arya stared at Myrcella and fleetingly wondered how she could answer such a question in such a short space of time; and her thoughts went from the beautiful child in front of her to the beautiful child inside her to the man who had fathered both of them, and she somehow knew what she should say, and why.

'On…on the day that I first met your uncle Jaime,' she stammered, 'really met him, I mean – mumbling 'Ser Jaime' to him at Winterfell and never speaking to him again doesn't really count – it was just after his arrival at Harrenhal earlier this year. He'd been on the run for three weeks after escaping my brother, and I didn't know that he would be there. No one did. So I walked into Lord Tywin's solar, carrying his letters to him as I would on a normal morning. And I saw Jaime standing there, alive and whole after everything that he had done – and I tried to kill him. I knocked him to the floor, climbed on top of him, and ripped my dagger out of its sheath with every intention of cutting his throat. I didn't care if Lord Tywin had me tortured, raped and murdered afterwards. I didn't care what he did to me or what happened to me. I only knew that I would be avenging my brother. And my father. And my family.'

Arya glanced at Myrcella, but the girl showed no sign of wanting to interrupt, staring at her and listening intently as Arya continued.

'It took Jaime about half a second to knock the dagger out of my hand. He was so quick. He still is. And I screamed, and struggled, and tried to claw his eyes out with my nails. But he seized the front of my breeches and slammed me to the ground like a sack of potatoes that weighed nothing at all, and he held me hard around the wrists and pinned my arms to the ground, and I struggled and I screamed…and he looked at me.'

Myrcella was still staring, and still saying nothing.

'I'd…I'd been in hiding for four years,' Arya said, staring down at her hands, which were drawing patterns in the sand, 'I'd been in hiding from…from myself, really, far more than from your royal mother's spies. I'd been hiding from the things that I had inside my head; the things that I'd seen, they…they hurt me so much, you see? I'd hidden myself along with them, I'd…I'd stopped being Arya so I wouldn't have to think about them or feel them. It was a terrible way to exist, but it was still better than the alternative. The alternative would have turned me into a madman…but then when Jaime flung me to the floor and looked at me…his face was very close to mine; this close,' she gestured with her hand, 'I looked into his eyes…Jaime…and I saw that he was the same as me. I still don't know how I knew, it was more of…an instinct, than anything else…but I could tell just by looking at him, really looking at him, that he was running like I was…running from himself. And when I saw that, I…it was like all those horrible things went out of me at once, and my mask went out of me too, and suddenly I was Arya again and I knew who I was…and it didn't hurt anymore…because he was with me. This tall, beautiful, infuriating shit of a man who was old enough to be my father; that I didn't know at all; but that I hated. I think…I think I might have loved him even then. Even though I didn't know him, and hated him, and wished that he would die.'

Arya stopped herself, surprised and slightly disturbed at how open she was being with this sad, extraordinary child that she'd only spoken to once. Myrcella's elbow was resting on her knee, and her hand was cradling her chin, and she was still staring, entranced.

'Did Uncle Jaime feel the same way?' the princess asked, like a child begging her mother to continue a bedtime story.

'I haven't asked him,' Arya replied, smiling, 'but I doubt it.'

'Why?' Myrcella demanded.

Arya shifted uncomfortably, remembering.

'Let's just say that in the days and weeks that followed our first meeting, I took special care to make myself as disagreeable as possible. I insulted your mother a great deal, and it infuriated him beyond measure. He loved her very much; even though he'd never admit that to me now.'

'But…but if that's true,' Myrcella interrupted, angry at that last sentence, but clearly not angry enough to stop asking questions, 'if…if Uncle Jaime had been…conducting himself inappropriately with my mother for so many years, then… then how is it that he married you? Did he…stop loving her because he met you?'

Arya's head spun as she rapidly tried to formulate a version of events that wouldn't paint Cersei as a callous, manipulating bitch. Myrcella didn't need more fuel for her nightmares. She didn't deserve that.

'When…when your Uncle Jaime's hand was struck off during the Battle of the Blackwater,' Arya stated, 'it changed him. He was no longer the same person as before. It drove him and your mother apart.'

'And that drove you closer?' Myrcella enquired.

'Yes…and no,' Arya replied.

'But what does that mean, my lady?' Myrcella insisted.

Arya sighed, beginning to feel uncomfortable.

'We were already close before Jaime lost his hand,' she said, 'and I like to think that we would have grown closer, even if he hadn't lost it.'

'I thought you said you hated each other.'

'We did.'

'But then how…you're very strange.'

Myrcella was wrinkling her nose in confusion, and Arya smiled slightly as silence fell and Myrcella began to stare sullenly at the ground; her frustration and bewilderment glowing like embers in the vivid Lannister emerald of her eyes.

The silence didn't last long, however, and the princess was soon looking up in anger rather than curiosity and demanding more answers to more questions in a considerably more acrimonious tone than before; her anger at Jaime, and at her mother, lingering on the surface of her voice like fire.

'Has he ever expressed the slightest bit of shame?' Myrcella demanded; her voice heavy with contempt, 'has he ever said he's sorry for violating his own sister and getting children on her?'

Arya bit on her tongue and did not respond; hoping that the princess would interpret her silence as the disinclination to continue that it was. Because Jaime had never once said that he regretted fucking his sister, only that he regretted fucking Cersei. It was a subtle difference, but one that Arya kept hidden at the bottom of her soul with her nightmares and her ghosts; one that she knew she would never mention to Jaime, and that Jaime would never mention to her; and one that filled with her the certainty (or the almost-certainty) that the wrongness, or the un-wrongness of incest had had absolutely nothing to do with Jaime and Cersei's estrangement. And she could not bear the thought of that at all. Myrcella, on the other hand, seemed perfectly happy to bear the thought of it, and was glaring impatiently at Arya as she waited for an answer.

If I tell her the truth, she will hate both herself and Jaime for the rest of her life. There will be no redemption for her, no comfort, only disgust and agony.

If I lie, and say that he is ashamed; that he does realise that incest is wrong…then she may just have a chance at…what?

But I'd be lying to her. Shamelessly.

Fine. Tell her the truth and destroy her. Go on.

'He has expressed shame as regards his violation of your mother,' Arya told her, 'he recognises that for the insult to the gods that it is, and he prays every day for deliverance.'

'You're joking,' Myrcella scoffed.

'Do I look like I'm joking?' Arya snapped in reply.

Myrcella fell silent.

'But as to you and Tommen and Joffrey,' Arya continued, trying to purge the severity from her tone 'as to the three of you being born, and being his…he has never expressed the slightest regret on that score, and I would think much less of him if he did.'

'Then you have a kinder heart than me.'

The princess' words faded into the silence, and she seemed to look down into herself and far out to sea; where the clouds were banishing the sun from their depths and forcing it upwards into the sky.

Whatever she saw there only angered her further.

'But how could you marry him?' Myrcella insisted, 'after he pushed Bran out of a window –'

'He isn't the same man that he was when he pushed Bran out of a window,' Arya replied testily, trying to stay calm.

'And you changed him, did you?' Myrcella spat; alarming Arya with her sudden desire for confrontation, 'you did that all by yourself?'

Have I done something to offend her?

'Where in seven hells did you hear such nonsense?' Arya shot back.

'Uncle Kevan told me!' Myrcella exclaimed, her voice warped with ridicule and disbelief, 'he says Uncle Jaime has changed since he met you; that you've turned him into a good man; a better man than he ever was –'

'Jaime was always a good man!' Arya interrupted, 'he was just –'

'And my mother's influence made him wicked; is that what you're trying to tell me?' Myrcella demanded.

'I did not say that!' Arya shouted.

'You meant it!' Myrcella shouted back at her.

I shouldn't have held back when it came to painting Cersei as a callous, manipulating bitch.

Arya took a breath and attempted to calm herself.

'Your mother…your mother did play a role in his…badness,' she said, her fingers digging into the sand from the desire to scream and shout and tell Myrcella everything and be done with it, 'she did…she did put him on the wrong path, yes. But he didn't have to take it. That was no one's choice but his. And he'll have to live with it for the rest of his days.'

Myrcella's body, and her lips, were trembling as she bent over and placed her palms flat on the sand; groaning loudly and deeply beneath the weight, the ghastly weight, of everyone and everything. When she looked up at Arya again, her eyes were shining with tears, but her pride, and her mother's memory, did not permit a single one of them to fall.

'I hate him,' she declared, steadfast.

'You have every right to hate him,' Arya said gravely, 'but he is a good man, Myrcella, not a monster. You've known him for years; you must know that.'

Myrcella glared at her and scoffed; her lip curling in rage just like her mother's; but there was a glow at the heart of her anger, a beauty and a conviction, that had never been present during Cersei's fits of rage.

It was the fact that her anger was justified.

'He violated his own sister and tried to kill a ten-year-old boy for being unfortunate enough to see him doing it,' Myrcella snarled, 'he risked bringing monsters like Joffrey into the world, not once, but three times; each time knowing the risks; each time knowing what might happen. He guarded my father and smiled into his face and called him 'Your Grace' while insulting and betraying him and dishonouring him behind his back in the worst way possible. And before that, he stuck his sword into the back of the king he had sworn to defend. The man really does have shit for honour. So do not talk to me of Uncle Jaime's being a good man.'

Arya's heart sank as she stared out across Blackwater Bay; at the river that had burned alive with green flame and turned the skies to ash; the shadow of the dream of a king gone mad; and the shadow of the nightmare of a boy in white armour, who had done the only thing that could be done.

'Myrcella… do you know why the capital of the Seven Kingdoms is still King's Landing, and not Lannisport, or Storm's End?'

The disdain in Myrcella's eyes deepened.

'Your question is a rather pitiful attempt to change the subject, my lady,' she declared haughtily, 'but before I attempt to answer it…could you tell me what you mean by 'still'?'

Her heart hammering, and tears forming in her eyes, Arya rested her hand on her stomach, and told her.