Me, writing this chapter: *scheech*
This thing came outta no where after like 3 months of writers block and I really hope you enjoyed it :D...oh you know what it was? It was reading lovely GoT fanficiton and watching Pedro Pascal as Oberyn Martell.
Special thanks to the lovely and talented Darkwolf76 :D
Hope you enjoy and drop me a review!
Chapter 33: To Love a Traitor
Robb came to her the night they next set up camp, and presented a sheathed dirk to her. A beautiful, shining thing of steel, a weapon made to kill, not the tool of a princess. And yet, Sylvia felt a strange sort of arousal to see it held out to her, one so foreign to her that it seemed someone else had taken hold of her senses when she reached out for the weapon.
"You will never be helpless again." Her husband said when she took it into her hands. It was a plain weapon but the leather sheath was new, and shined in the light of the fire. When she took the blade and admired the metal, it was sharp and she could almost imagine how easily it could part flesh. She had thought of the man who attacked her, of what might have happened if she'd drawn this when he first approached her, if she'd pushed the sharp steel through his eye before he could lay a hand on her.
It doesn't matter now, she thought. Why must I mourn for things I cannot change?
Now, the blade was strapped to her waist, held by a thin chain belt. It was a little heavy, but Sylvia found herself comfortable with the weight of it, as though it should have always been there.
In the days that came after, Sylvia met the eyes of any man who dared look at her too long. She would not bow her head in shame for the marks that painted her skin. She would not be weak. Rather, let these hurts be a reminder to the men who doubted her, let them know that she had suffered at the hands of their enemies.
But, while daylight made her hard as iron, the intimacy of the darkness made her timid. In their shared quarters, Sylvia wrapped herself up in her cloak, shielding her body from her husband, saying the night was colder than it was. Robb had seen her abused body first hand, before the maester could wipe away all the ugliness and grime and piece her together again. He had seen, and Sylvia was afraid that was all he would ever see.
Sylvia had hoped to never let that monster have another thought of hers, but her hopes were futile, as they always were. Though her bruises faded each day, the mark he had left upon her went far deeper. His face was already fading from memory, but his words, his actions were still fresh. At night, when she woke trembling, she would think of how he died—his eyes so wide and frightened, more blood than she'd ever seen pouring from his opened mouth, the limp weight of him as life faded.
She had never been so close to death before, had never seen it firsthand. She had never killed anything before, not even when father had taken her and Joffrey to the kingswood for a hunt. Joffrey had called her a baby when she cried after his hawk brought back a dead mouse.
Sylvia did not understand what she felt, why she kept replaying those moments over and over. But when she remembered he was dead, she felt sleep come easier. It was something like comfort, dark as it was.
Even so, some nights there was no fighting off the nightmares. When she woke, stiff with terror, she would lie quietly beside her husband, refusing to wake him. She could not stand to see the look on his face if he should see her so frightened by a dead man. It had been the same look he'd given her when the maester told them their child was no more. Soft and sad. So very sad.
When he looked at her like that, she felt as helpless as she had before. It reminded her of what it felt like to be so weak, to be at someone's mercy. And so, in the dim morning light, Sylvia tried very hard to keep still. If she was still, she would not be bothered.
She thought of Robert, of his great wide body, of his war hammer, and wondered if he would have been proud of her for putting a poker through her attacker's neck. Or would he be disappointed he'd inflicted so much damage beforehand? She dared not think of Cersei—it put her in a foul mood to even think of the word 'mother'.
There was a phantom that haunted her now, the shadow of a betrayal that Sylvia never imagined, and she found herself eager to move farther south. Each step took her closer to answers. Closer to Renly and Joffrey and Cersei, those she had once trusted.
Each step brought her closer to justice. It just so happened that she started thinking of justice as a head on a spike.
Each day, the marks faded a little more and her body ached a little less. The bleeding had stopped as well.
Robb waited until they were camped to tell her he wished to send her away, to send her back north to keep her safe. She bit back the urge to remind him of Bran, and the attempt made upon him. It did not seem fair, and some part of her flinched from the knowledge. One attempt was enough, but another, far more successful than the first, cut her in two.
"It was foolish to bring you at all," he said as he warmed his hands by the fire. His words were a sharp poke from a blunt knife, but she would not admit it. It seemed silly now to be hurt by words. "Each mile has brought you nothing but misery. You would be happier in Winterfell, with Mini."
"As would you." She replied, standing from the bed. There was a breeze tonight and she shift fluttered about her legs. "In your cold castle, surrounded by your cold land, safe and tucked up with your family. I think it is what most of these men dream of." Sylvia was starting to forget how Mini felt in her arms, how her little hands tangled in her hair. "But if we were home, your lord father would still be waiting in the cold blackness of the cells beneath the Red Keep. And he would die there, while we stayed warm and happy." Her words were direct, and they twisted Robb's heart with their truth. He looked away from the fire, lowing his head. Sylvia reached for his face, her cold fingers turning his eyes to hers. "We are stronger together. If we separate now it only proves that we were defeated."
He turned back to the fire, unable to look her in the eye."You're too appealing a target for them to ignore. They've tried to kill you once already. It is likely they will try again." Joffrey, Renly, or even Lord Tywin, Robb would take their heads for what they'd done to Sylvia.
Silence filled the air, the fading bruises on her skin still too fresh to brush away the memories of the hands that put them there. "Me standing here at your side is the proof of their failure. I would not be parted from you and limp away like a beaten dog."
Robb turned his head sharply to look at her. "I spend my days thinking of how they escaped my notice, wondering how long they walked among us before they took their chance. Lord Bolton asks if I grow suspicious of the lords who march with me, and sometimes I wonder if one of them knew. If one of my men played a part in it." Sylvia swallowed dryly. Robb turned his body, facing her fully as his warm hands came up to cradle her face. She wanted to flinch away, to hide the damage that was healing, but she felt rooted to the ground, pinned by his gaze. "Loosing you would cripple me. The Lannisters know that. Renly knows that. I fear for the next time they set their dogs on you."
Sylvia had not thought of a next time, but really, it demanded to be acknowledged. A tiny part of her bid them to try, to take their man's head and send it back to them, showing what mercy they could expect when justice came. The rest of her recoiled, fearful and hurting. But to her husband, the man who acted on her behalf, she would not show the pain. She would show only the part of her that deserved and demanded, the one that ached for blood.
Her fingers brushed through the soft fur that collared his cloak, until her skin brushed against his. "You must not doubt the men that follow you. Remember, they came when you called for them. They love your father and fight to see him free." They had been suspicious and cold to her, but Sylvia did not believe they would allow harm to befall her. And her husband could not afford to loose any part of his army, especially not now.
"They're my family Robb. They would never hurt me," an old memory hadn't been true. It was the hope of a trusting girl, too stupid to realize brutality made wars end faster. And Tywin Lannister had helped to end the last war, and ordered the killing of two innocent children and their mother to make sure the old dynasty never rose again.
She would advise her husband to trust, but she would mistrust them all to keep him safe. Perhaps this is marriage, she thought without humour. Showing him once face but showing the world another.
Sylvia pressed her forehead against Robb's, closing her eyes and letting the calm of the tender act soothe her. "Keep me close to you." Her breath huffed against his mouth. "They want to tear us apart, let them try. They think you're green, they think I am weak. We will prove them wrong. Together."
When he pressed his mouth to her, a tender, chaste kiss, she let him.
Father is a traitor. It is treason to love a traitor.
When she'd begged for mercy on behalf of her father, she'd been certain that her prince would listen. Had been certain he loved her as she had loved him. That love had burned away and turned to ashes when he took her father's head on the steps of the Great Sept of Baelor.
Sansa could not recall how she came to be back in her room in the Red Keep, but she was left alone day and night. The maids came and went, bringing her food and the clearing it away once she managed to eat a bite or two, but they never lingered to speak to her. Not even the queen, who had always been so kind to her, came.
Not that she wished to see the golden queen. She looked too much like Joffrey, golden hair and eyes green as emeralds. Her words had been sweet and gentle, just as Joffrey's had been, and Sansa had wanted to be like her—graceful and beautiful, a queen from a song. No longer. Sansa would rather be a pox scarred merchant than like Cersei Lannsiter.
But sometimes, when the queen smiled, she saw a glimpse of her good-sister, Robb's wife. The queen's daughter, Joffrey's sister.
Sansa had counted Sylvia as her sister for years, and as a friend for longer. But before coming to Winterfell, she had spent her life in the Red Keep, growing alongside Joffrey, under Cersei's watchful green eyes. She must have known her brother's temperament, how effortlessly lies slipped from his lips, and how quickly his moods shifted. Sylvia had smiled softly when King Robert announced at the feast that she would wed Joffrey. She had kissed her cheek and laughed that they would be made sisters twice over.
Sansa's hands were clenched tight as she thought of her brother's wife. The woman who ought to have known best, had left her floundering in the sea, a woman she had considered her sister. Sansa cast the thought away from her. Sylvia was Joffrey's sister, she always had been. Not hers. Arya was her sister, and Arya was gone.
On the morning of the fifth day, a maid came, holding a fine lavender gown instead of breakfast. When she asked, the maid told her the queen had sent it for her, to wear it at Court. All she wanted was to lie back in bed, to shut out the light and sleep a hundred years, until she no longer felt the pain of her father's death, until Joffrey and Cersei and Ilyn Payne were dead. Until it no longer matter that her brother's wife was a Lannister, until it no longer mattered that his children had the blood of their father's killers.
Instead, Sansa stood quietly as the maid pulled the laces of her gown closed, she sat still as her hair was brushed and pulled up into a lovely southern style. She was indifferent when the girl dabbed behind her ears and at her wrists with sweet rose perfume. Sansa had once hoped that Joffrey would like the smell of her. She wept just as quietly when the maid left.
Father is a traitor, she thought again, her mangled heart throbbing. He tried to steal Joffrey's throne. It is treason to weep for a traitor.
He had been a raging ocean storm, her father.
Quick and wild and calm when you least expect it. She had feared him, she had loved him.
As a girl, father had taken her to Storms End, the land of his boyhood and now the seat of his baby brother, her favorite uncle, Renly. The castle was unlike anything she had seen, though she was still too young to have seen much. Yet even now, as a woman grown with a husband and child, Sylvia remembered the hundred foot thick seaward facing wall, the fast, racing waters beneath that promised death to any who dared climb them. In quiet moments, she thought of Argella, the last Storm Queen, and wondered if her people had not been so cowardly, if they might have resisted dragon rule longer.
She wondered if it was still as glorious now, years later. Under Renly's care, perhaps it had thrived. Perhaps the halls were brighter, grander. Perhaps it was in disrepair, the walls worn from years of storms of saltwater, the windows long since broken, the bricks of the foundation loose. Sylvia wished to see the castle again, longed for the smell of salt and sea, for the sounds of the ocean waves crashing and the gulls screeching overhead. She feared she never would see it again, for the lord of that castle was now an enemy.
Renly, her favorite uncle, usurper king who had possibly sent someone to hurt her.
Her husband still doubted it was Renly who sent the man, and Sylvia was growing more suspicious by the day that he desired the alliance Renly could offer over their justice. She hated to think it, almost as much as she hated thinking he was right in wanting allies.
It was easy to hate Joffrey, easy to think he had been the one to promise impossible things to the one sent to kill her.
It carved a hole inside her to think it had been Renly, but she had to think it. There was little reason her murderer would have to lie about who had sent him; he had planned to end her, so who would she have told? Renly or Joffrey, Sylvia had to accept the unacceptable fact that betrayal had come from someone she'd counted a brother.
Renly had taken her father's bastard as his ward, after all. She ought to have counted that as his first betrayal.
It is foolish to weep for a traitor, she thought, bitterly refusing to cry. They killed my child, and would have killed me and deserve nothing but a traitors end. Once, there was a king's daughter who flinched to think of men loosing their heads for breaking an oath. That girl died and she was better off for it.
Over the following days, she thought often of her childhood, of her life with her little brother and Renly at her side. Her resentment for her baby brother grew as she thought of all she'd endured from him as a girl. He would ruin her, given half the chance. Somehow, Joffrey hated her, a woman who was more a stranger to him than a sister. The thought had once pained her, but no longer. She would feed off his hatred, and let it fan the flames of her own, until she could take her revenge and face the god's punishment without regret.
Not once could she recall him being good to her, and oftentimes she thought of ways to be rid of him—childish, gentle ways to push him into another family so she and her true brother could live in peace. She had never put any plan into action, because she knew it would grieve Cersei to loose him. Joffrey was as good as gold to their mother, and whenever he did show her some of his wrath, the queen did not so much as flinch.
But Renly had been different. He never cared for Joffrey the way every one else had, and Sylvia had delighted that his attention had been solely set on her. He had been older than her, so much fun, so full of kind words and praise that he was easy to love. It had felt like a privilege to know him. But often he was called away, his duties as the king's brother and lord of Storms End had taken his company for days at a time.
Now she wondered if she ever truly knew the man. The Renly she had known did not want to be king, nor would he have sent a man to kill her. (It was this that gave her doubt, terrible and uncertain of which of her kin had sent a man to murder her).
One night, she dreamed of a black haired boy who held a babe with fine hair of spun gold. He smiled a sad smile at her and she could not remember the rest of it, but when she woke, she felt terribly sad. In the first drowsy moments of her waking, she thought it was of her and Joffrey, a faded memory of a time when she and her brother had been kinder to each other. But she had never had such short hair.
It wasn't long before talks of alliances returned to the war table. It wasn't a terrible shock to Sylvia for very few knew of her condition when she had been attacked. To them, an attempt was made, little else. It was a day shy of a sennight that Lord Karstark spoke of it at the table. She saw it coming a hundred miles away, but still, she felt herself tense beside Lady Catelyn.
"Who will ride to meet with Renly now?"
"My lord, I will happily meet with the cur myself, and take his head for Lady Sylvia." Umber offered at once. Robb shook his head, eyes set on the table and allowed his wife to refuse the offer herself.
"I am grateful to have someone so loyal to House Stark, my Lord Umber. For now, though, circumstances require Renly to keep his head." The great, burly lord nodded his head, his eyes shifting downward.
"Why must someone ride to treat with Renly at all? He aims to usurp the throne. We would all meet a traitors end to appear to listen to his madness." Spoke Lord Glover.
"We are all like to meet a traitors end regardless." There was an uncomfortable shifting about the table after Lady Mormont's words.
"The Crown broke our faith when they put my father in chains and named him traitor." Still, Robb was not eager to displace his good-brothers from the Iron Throne. The south was nothing to him, and he would be happy to get his family back north and never think of it again. Let the south leave them out of their games. Give him the heads of the ones who harmed his brother and wife, and the wolf would be content to retreat back to his homeland.
He knew that was a green boy's answer, simple and ideal, but he had no other at the moment.
"If my brother has any good sense, he will see that sending Lord Stark to the Wall is a path that will best avoid a war." Sylvia felt eyes on her, but refused to be silent. "If we align with Renly, however, war will break out between the North and the Crown, as we will be considered turncloaks. If we remain impartial to Renly's claim—"
Robb stared at his wife, a furrow on his brow. "War comes regardless. If it was not Renly, it was Joffrey."
"And if it was Renly, we shall have two enemies to destroy." Catelyn spoke, her voice soft and solemn.
"I understand. But it would be wiser to have Lord Stark ushered northward before war breaks. The queen will never release the girls, though."
"Aye," Lord Bolton interjected before the silence went on a heartbeat too long. "Your mother will make them matches." She felt Lord Bolton's eyes on her as he spoke, penetrating and cold. She hated that such a man agreed with her, for having the same thought as a man she imagined as slimy and cold as a leech unsettled her. Sylvia hated leeches, and had ever since Joffrey's cruel trick. "To Lannister cousins, no doubt. Wedded and bedded, hostages in a grand cage, making more, much smaller hostages."
"We have her brother in our grasp." Catelyn replied, her voice high with a desperate edge. "The kingslayer for my daughters. Surely old Tywin would make the trade for his favourite son." Something soft panged in Sylvia's heart at her good-mother's pain. They were both mothers, and Sylvia felt the two of them understood the uncontrollable instinct to protect far better than any of the men present. But Sansa and Arya were not her children, and so Sylvia could also see their value as pawns.
She felt herself shaking her head, but she would not say the words. Catelyn would hate her for it.
"We will get the girls back, mother." Robb replied before an argument could start. Later, she would learn his true thoughts on the matter, tell him that if they gave Jaime back, they would get imposters in return.
"We must have allies, though, m'lord." Spoke Lord Glover next, an old man with as much grey hair as black. "No war has ever been won without them."
"What of Stannis?" Sylvia blurted, having thought much of her cold and prickly uncle as of late. In her memory, he was a prickly man and had unsettled her with his lack of smiles and warmth. Even Uncle Jaime had given his smiles freely. Rumors, she found, usually had some shred of truth to them. People said Stannis was prickly and cold and never smiled, but they also said he always minded his duty, even when it displeased him, and held more honor than either of his brothers.
"What of him?" A lord Sylvia did not care to know scoffed. "He's been silent since leaving King's Landing. Doubtless his wife has refused to let him leave their bedchamber these long months." There was a wave of chuckles among the men after his words and Sylvia felt herself redden, her hands clenching. Even Robb laughed, though the two ladies present were much too proper to even smile at such a bawdy jape. It was no secret that her uncle's wife was just as homely as he was, their wedding night soured when her father took a noble whore to bed and got a bastard on her.
She had once heard the queen say that Stannis and his wife were equally stuck in their marriage. That had confused the young princess because the concept of marriage was anything but a trap to her.
"But not you, my sweet." She had whispered to Sylvia, her forefinger rubbing her chubby cheek. "You will have a good husband. I will find the perfect one for you." And Robert had chosen to bring the offer to Ned Stark.
"He also holds Dragonstone, and a fleet of ships." Sylvia replied once the laughter had softened. After her uncle departed from King's Landing, indignant over the king's decision to name Lord Stark his Hand over him, he had taken with him the royal fleet.
"Renly has the numbers, my lady." Lord Bolton replied. "The stormlands and the Reach. Stannis has naught but unmanned ships." His pale eyes and words of favor for her traitor uncle made her anger spark to life.
"We have the men. Stannis has the sea. He has years of battle behind him, and he managed to hold Strom's End for more than a year."
"What does a woman know of strategy?" Lord Manderly's voice was stern and irritated.
"My lord, if you think I know very little of battle and strategy, by all means, explain to me why it is I am a fool for mentioning Stannis' name?" Sylvia bit back, venom dripping from her fangs as she challenged the man who was more than twice her age. But, to her displeasure, the man did not so much as blink.
"My lady, we are not seafarers." The simple statement was enough to make her draw back, unprepared for the simple truth. She blinked. "At the end of it, it is the numbers that matter and the larger of the two lies with Renly."
Renly might have sent a man to kill me and we talk to aligning with him. My face still bears the marks, and you speak of Renly's merits.
A beat passed, and she made to open her mouth, but a little noise at her side halted her. Catelyn's hand moved back across the table, her gloved fingers trailing over the wood before settling in her lap. Sylvia breathed deep through her nose, stifling the urge to fidget as she felt the tension in the air.
Catelyn's had been a small gesture, but Sylvia had learned the meaning of them as a small girl, when her eccentricates had become a source of embarrassment for the royal family. A soft sigh, a gentle hand upon the table, the clearing of a throat, the tense set of a jaw…they all held the same meaning: be quiet, be still, or you will be sent out.
It hurt in the most unexpected way.
Sylvia took a deep breath, biting the words that had been on her tongue. She could feel it now, the tension in the air on the verge of snapping. She dared not look to her husband, for she would be named weak then. But if he felt the need to order her silence, she would be seen as insolent and untrustworthy. There was more she wanted to say, to talk more of Stannis and the merits of siding with him. But—she flicked her eyes to the table once more—it was clear this was not the place to do it. If she forced them to listen, she would force them to ignore her.
Let them have their pride, she thought, but let me have my vengeance.
She met Lord Manderley's eyes, and crafted her answer. "You are not wrong about needing greater numbers, my lord. Forgive me for any insult I've given you. It was not my intent." She lowered her eyes again, the image of repentance.
The older man looked quite uncomfortable, shifting on his feet. "Oh," he cleared his throat. "Well, my Lady you have been through such a terrible ordeal. I am not offended, you cannot be blamed for the emotional outbursts of your sex."
Catelyn raised a brow at him, and Sylvia's smile came half a heartbeat too late, but the matter was spoken of no further.
Talks struck up again, though this time it was more about how the harshness of a war council was ill-suited for the softness of gently bred ladies. Robb never ordered his mother nor his wife away and in the following days, he would invite them again. He valued his mother's insight, and the attack had made him uneasy to leave his wife alone.
That night, Robb reprimanded her as gently as he could. Soft and kind, he told her that his men were battle hardened, far more experienced than either of them combined. He was being kind to her, treating her gently because he thought her fragile as glass. He had done it before, when her father died.
She cared nothing for that, and felt rather insulted. But the energy needed to tell him to stop was set towards a more pressing issue. She held the words back until they started preparing for sleep.
"I wasn't wrong to suggest Stannis, was I?" She asked as she tied a cord around the end of her braided hair. Her husband paused a moment too long, and irritation prickled beneath her skin. "He has a fleet of ships, Robb. Ships that can take the Capitol by sea. He can cut off their access to the ports, starve them out, prevent them from fleeing on a ship." Robert had lamented that Rhaella and her children had escaped often enough, and she could never forget the manner of their escape.
Robb's lips twitched up. "Since when did you become so knowledgeable on siege tactics?"
"I took the same lessons as you." Sylvia's voice was dry, unappreciative of his offhand remark. "Everyday, under Maester Luwin's eye, listening to him drone on about warfare." Her septa had protested often about how improper it was for the princess to sit in on such lessons. Lord Stark told her the king would have his daughter tutored in all subjects.
"And you were more enthralled by tales of knights and queens." It was true, she had liked those stories best, but she didn't like how he said it—as though there was something wrong with it.
"History lessons." Her voice was hard. "I excelled in it, I'm not afraid to say it. Those who do not study the past are doomed to repeat it." If more people understood that, she thought, perhaps the world would be kinder.
"Careful now, you're starting to sound like Maester Luwin."
"That wouldn't be so terrible. Would you listen if it were him standing here, saying these things?" At once, the soft, teasing look on his face melted away. "Stannis has the ships, he has Dragonstone. When the time comes, we will need the sea on our side."
"Stannis has been silent ever since he left King's Landing." He reminded her, his hands clenching and relaxing at his sides. "He is, if truth be told, an honorable man. He would not move to support men who take up against the king. And it just so happens that the king is his nephew."
Sylvia had thought much of Stannis' fierce sense of honor and duty, but had hoped it would fall in their favor since taking Ned Stark prisoner was anything but honorable.
"He is also one I would not want to make an enemy of." Her husband continued, turning from her to face the bed. "I want to wait, to see what he does, to see who he declares for. I would not go to him, begging him to stand with me, only for him to betray me at the first chance."
"He would not do that. There's no honor in tricks." She found herself saying.
"No honor, but honor is of little importance to men at war with each other." Little was said after that, the heavy truth of his words weighed down on them. Her chest ached, hands flittering over her empty womb.
She wanted to ask him, definitively if he truly would side with Renly, but she was too tired to learn the answer.
Everything, all at once, came to a halt with the message carried by a raven. A message that would shake the foundation of the Seven Kingdoms, fracturing it for years to come, leading to the deaths of thousands more.
Ned Stark was dead, beheaded on the steps of the Great Sept of Baelor, his blood staining the holy ground red.
With an axe hanging above all their heads, Sylvia still felt as though the earth had fallen from under her feet when she learned her good-father had departed from this world. It was unbelievable—utterly unacceptable. While Robb's eyes stared dully into the air in front of him, Sylvia had tried to deny the news but was swiftly silenced when he left the tent, his movements quick and silent as a slash from his blade.
Left alone with her guards, Sylvia found herself sitting at the table, too stunned to cry.
Ned Stark had always been kind to her. He had taken her into his home, fed her, let her play with his own children and gave her a marvelous education. Never had he been too drunk to stand, or favor another woman over his wife in public. He had adored Mini when other men would have scorned her for being born a girl.
It couldn't be true. Joffrey was horribly cruel, she would laugh the day he died, but he was surely not stupid enough to murder a man as important as the Warden of the North, especially not when their uncle had taken up arms against him. The stupid fool needed allies, and while Sylvia never wanted to see his face again for the insult and pain he'd caused her good-family, she could not deny that if she were Joffrey, she'd want the Starks as friends.
But even if he were stupid and monstrous enough to…Cersei, their mother, would have stopped him. Wouldn't she?
Her good-father was well loved, by his family and his people and a war had erupted over his arrest.
If he is truly gone, Sylvia thought, whirling, not even the gods can stop the war now.
She had tried to deny it further, to think of reasons why her brother and mother would be so wretched as to lie like this. Joffrey, at least, was a terrible urchin, and it would not shock her greatly if he was a liar. But Joffrey found most of his joy in terrible truths, in making terrible promises a reality.
Fingers hid her trembling lips from the view of her guards, men under Lord Umber's orders that had come south from Last Hearth.
"Ensure that Lady Stark is made aware." Her voice was low, strangled. What right did she have to weep when it was her own brother who gave the order? She wanted to be alone, to go unseen by the northmen for the unforgiveable sin of the blood that ran through her veins. "Tell her gently, tell her you are at her command for whatever she needs." Tell her I am sorry, tell her I wish her husband was here with her, tell her I will curse Joffrey's name the rest of my days. When they did not move, she inclined her head sharply to the side, uttering a single order. "Go."
Three guards remained behind, and Sylvia would could not find the courage to order them away. Instead they remained where they were, all reeling and grieving for their beloved lord.
While the southern girl hid herself away, the northern widow and her son found themselves in the quiet stillness of the wood. The birds had gone silent, the wind did not blow, the sun hid itself away behind the clouds. The mother and son noticed none of it, too lost in their own grief to see that the world itself mourned with them.
A ruined sword lay limp in his hand, exhausted for a brief moment to stare dimly at the damage he'd done to the tree. In his mind, he saw Joffrey, his good-brother. He saw his golden hair and green eyes, his pale skin stained red, his flesh torn to ribbons, his eyes missing, his nose caved in, his bowls hanging from his body. He saw his good-mother, the queen, her head hacked from her shoulders with a blunt axe, her heart run through with a poisoned spear. He saw the kingslayer, and Lord Tywin and the Imp, too, all of them bloody and broken and dead.
But then he saw his father, his good and honourable father, lying dead on stone steps before a raging crowd of commoners.
Blind rage overtook him once more, swallowing up the incredible wave of pain that threatened to crash, and his aching arm was lifting the sword once more, slashing and hacking at the thick trunk of the tree.
Robb had never expected this, never thought this news would reach him quite like this. In quiet moments, especially after the birth of his first child, Robb had realized with grave understanding that one day his father would depart from the world, leaving his family and the north in his eldest son's hands. But in his head, Ned Stark had always been older, dying of illness or age, content with the live he'd led, the children and grandchild he had.
Instead, his father had died on his knees, labeled a traitor and given an end he had not deserved.
The young man roared at the thought, his rage and grief echoing through the trees.
So this was what his wife had felt when her own father died. An empty hole carved out where he had been, rage and disbelief and…Except Robert had died of his own stupidity, his love of the drink leading to an abrupt and bloody end. His father had been murdered.
Faster and faster he slashed at the faces of his enemies.
Cersei, Kingslayer—
Hit, hit, hit
The Imp, Tywin—
Hit, hit, hithithithit
Joffrey—
HIT HIT HIT HIT
"—b! Robb!" A voice suddenly broke through the haze. It was his mother's voice, the voice that called to him when he was ill with fever, when she greeted him after he'd been away, when he was afraid of the wind and thunder as a boy. Lady Catelyn stood there, her watery blue eyes flashing over him and lingering on his sword hand for a moment too long. "You've ruined your sword." She said, her voice breaking.
Strangely enough, it was her voice that calmed his rage, bringing his sorrow to the surface. His sword dropped, his heart breaking open in his chest in a way he had never felt before. The loss of the child that almost was had broken his heart, but this was much different. He had not known of the babe long enough to truly love it, not as much as he loved his Minisa. Truly, the loss of that babe pained him more for the fact that it had been taken from them.
Now, they'd taken his father too, his sire, his teacher.
For the first time since he was a child, a sob broke from Robb Stark's throat, and his mother rushed to wrap her arms around him to sooth the pain that would scar over slowly.
"I'll kill them all," he vowed brokenly against her chest. "I'll kill them, kill them all."
Lady Catelyn's heart ached for her husband, for her children and the terrible loss they had all suffered. But her heart hardened to everyone else.
"My boy," she whispered into his hair, the same shade as hers. "We have to get the girls back. We must get your sisters back home to us. And then we will kill them all." Hers was a dark vow, because it was made with no intention for mercy.
ooof, wowie. It's...gonna be difficult. Truly, there are a lot of conflicting emotions and desires and it is obviously very frustrating.
Anywhoo I hope you enjoyed! Thank you for reading ;D
