CHAPTER ONE

SANSA I

"A blue sky and fair winds," Lord Harrold Arryn said, looking at his newly sewn banner as it snapped in the breeze. He had styled himself an Arryn since his wedding to Sansa Stark, now an Arryn herself. "A good day to march."

Lady Sansa Arryn sighed heavily. "Is there ever a good day to march to war?" she asked her husband, the new lord of the Vale, Warden of the East, and master of the army that would win the North for her. That was the price of her hand and a price that she would be sure that he paid.

"Would you rather ride in a storm?" Harry asked. "Or would you prefer to remain in the Eyre?"

A shiver went down Sansa's spine as she thought of that place and the prospect of remaining there for the duration of a war that promised to be long and uncertain. She would surely become like her aunt, Lysa if she allowed him to lock her away there. "No," she told her husband. "I must be with you when you go north. A Stark is what they will want and it is a Stark they will have."

"You think people care about who is the warden of the North?" he asked her, the hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his full lips. "You have little knowledge of the small folk if you think they will welcome yet more war on the threshold of winter. They want crops they can harvest and fat babes growing in safety."

The tension between the lady Sansa and her lord husband hung in the air, thick and impenetrable. Her charm and his handsomeness could not bridge the gap between them, one that he himself had created. Sansa looked at him with hard blue eyes. "Forgive me, husband," she said sharply. "I do not share your familiarity with the lower classes."

"So that is why you have been quiet all morning," Harry said, putting his heel to his stallion's flank and setting out on the road with Sansa dutifully riding beside him.

Sansa said nothing, looking up at the birds that circled her and the army that followed their lord. She wondered at them. Yellow birds were a strange sight in the Vale and she had heard the men whispering that they were a sign of a hard march or heavy snow. Sansa was not so superstitious. They reminded her not of snow but of a man she imagined was either dead or long gone from Westeros. "Little bird," she thought, a smile touching her lips.

"Are you listening?" her husband asked, looking at her with an increasingly frustrated look.

She lowered her eyes to Harry's face, blinking. "Truthfully," Sansa said, "I was lost in thought for a moment."

Harry liked that even less than if she had lied. "I was saying that I wish you would understand why I went to see the girls."

"I would rather not speak of them." Sansa straightened in her saddle, the smile replaced by a slight scowl at the mention of her husband's bastards.

Harry turned in his saddle to make certain that no one was riding too close before he turned to her. "You listen, wife," he said in a tone that made her eyes narrow. "Lowborn or no, they are my children. I will not have you pretending they are nothing to me."

Fear rose up in her. Would he ask to bring them north to Winterfell when he had won her back her lands and title? Would Harry dare make her suffer the same indignity that her mother had for so many years? Sansa had seen the wedge her half-brother's presence had driven between her mother and father and she did not want that life for herself. "They are yours," she said. "But they are not mine and they will not know you either beyond a name soon enough. We will be remaining in the North."

Harry glowered at her, his brows furrowing deeply. "Kind Lady Sansa," he said sourly. "I liked you better as a bastard." With that, he snapped his horse's reins and left her in the dust of its hooves. His men charged after him and soon Sansa was riding alone, between the knights who had sworn themselves to his service and those who had chosen to guard their lord's lady.

For the first time since her wedding, she had a moment alone. Sansa missed the days when her time had been her own and no one but young Sweet Robin had desired her company. "I should have remained Alayne," she thought, pulling her hood up over her auburn hair. "He is going to bring those girls North. I know it. How can I live with that? How will I raise my children with his bastards?" Fury rose in her as she envisioned her own bastard brother and the look of pure consternation that her mother had worn whenever Sansa's father had suggested making him more a part of their family. "I will not allow it," Sansa thought forcefully. "He'll forget them in time."

"Is that the way you make your husband love you, my lady?" a sly voice asked from behind her.

Sansa didn't need to look back to know who dared show such familiarity with her. "Lord Baelish," she said, straightening her back. "I don't believe that to be any of your business. My husband and I …"

"Cannot stand the sight of each other," Petyr said. He brought his grey dappled palfrey to join hers. "I have seen snakes with more love for a mate."

Narrowing her eyes, Sansa snapped, "All you know of love is what coin it will put in your pocket."

"I never sold love, my lady," Petyr said, his jaw tightening. "I sold pleasure and I have seen you deliver neither love nor pleasure. You should have let me show you the ways of such things."

Disgust made her stomach churn. "What pleasure I give or do not give to my husband is none of your concern."

"It should be yours unless you desire having a dozen of his bastards in your hall," he sneered. "I'm sure your mother wouldn't approve."

"My mother is in no position to approve or disapprove," Sansa said sharply. "And you are not my father to counsel me." His nearness made her blood run cold and when he reached out to touch the hem of her cloak she would have loved nothing more than to kick her horse into a gallop. Better to be beside an angry Harry than a man like Petyr Baelish who thought her an excellent replacement for her mother. It was only propriety that kept her from fleeing.

"I might have been," he said, voice slick with desire. He eyed her cloak. "Tell me. Where did you come by a cloak from a Kingsguard?"

Sansa jerked the cloak from his hand. "Don't be a fool," she snapped. "Kingsguard cloaks are white."

"And dye can hide a great many secrets," Petyr reminded her, "be that a girl's hair or a wayward cloak but it cannot hide the gold pattern at the hem."

The cloak was one of the few things that she had kept with her in her flight from King's Landing, a reminder of the one person that had kept her safe in those dark days. She hadn't thought that anyone would pay much mind to it once she had dyed it a dark green but Petyr was no ordinary man. He noticed everything. She pulled the cloak tighter around herself, guarding herself with it.

"Then I am right," he said in response to her silence. "A token from a lover? I thought you innocent."

Sansa squeezed her reins tightly. "Enough of your meddling. You willed me into this marriage. For that, I owe you nothing. Through my marriage, you have been given the power you long for. Now, my lord, you will leave me alone or I will see you sent back to the Vale."

"So forceful," he said dryly. "As you wish, my lady." Petyr fell silent but she knew that the wheels were still turning. He would try to find a way to make her need him and his protection. Sansa only hoped that she and Harry would be able to set aside their differences and build a real bond between them so that she would finally be free to live her life as she wished.