Mother had warned against her doing this, but Myrcella had long ago learned that her mother was not an example to follow in this regard.

It was inappropriate for her to be here without an escort, she knew that, but Ser Arys was with Uncle Jaime, discussing plans for their return to King's Landing, Myrielle was fawning over Joff somewhere, and Rosamund was doing her best to ease things over with the Stark girls, which meant that, for once, Myrcella was alone.

Despite it all, she felt strange, without Ser Arys at her shoulder or one of her ladies at her side. She missed Elisa terribly, for her solid sense, for her help in hiding what schemes Myrcella wished to set in motion.

Such as this. If Father discovered this, he would likely assume that Robb Stark was more like him than Myrcella believed him to be, and would force a wedding immediately, a wedding that would shame them both and which would only put one more weight on Lord and Lady Stark's already burdened shoulders - and Father had done enough of that already, with his invitation for Lord Stark to become his new Hand.

As though any man could refuse an invitation from the King.

Robb's door looked much as all the other doors in Winterfell, but no door had ever seemed quite so significant to Myrcella - behind this door was the man she would marry within the year, the man who would be her partner for all of her life. She had so few examples of a happy marriage that she thought that perhaps it would be best to act differently to her mother, or to Aunt Selyse, in the hopes of creating a better life for herself than either one of them endured.

And so she lifted her hand, and knocked, hoping that Robb Stark liked almond tarts as much as she did.

"He never falls," Robb said, sitting sideways on his bed, one leg tucked underneath himself. "He climbs the whole of Winterfell, every day, and he never falls."

Myrcella wondered what it would be like to be so certain of something about one of her brothers, and did not know what to say.

"He once climbed up onto the roof and stayed there for so long that we thought he had run away," he said, shaking his head. "It started to snow, and we had to convince Mother that he was in the library, with Maester Luwin, until we could find him - and then he climbed in through Sansa's window, hair full of snow and blue with the cold, and told us that he had found a nest of redwing hawks tucked under the roof of the maester's turret. He..."

She dared to reach over and press her hand to his, shifting just a little closer, so that the basket of almond tarts was pressed to both their knees.

"He will recover," she said, surprised to find that she wished it. "The whole of Winterfell is praying for him, to your gods and to mine. They will see him well, Robb, I am sure of it."

She was not sure of it, of course, and knew from overhearing her father speak of it that the maester believed quite firmly that Bran Stark would never walk again, even if he did wake, but that was not what needed to be said. What needed to be said, in this moment, was that Bran would wake, and be himself once more, because Myrcella wished with all her heart to see Bran's brother smile at her as he had on her first night at Winterfell.

She had entertained so many suitors, over the years, but none of them had ever smiled at her like that, like she was just a pretty girl whose company they were enjoying. Like she was more than just a princess, whose hand might bring influence to whomsoever caught it.

Perhaps it was just because he did not need any more influence - he was heir to Winterfell, heir to one of the greatest powers in the Seven Kingdoms on his own, with no need of any sway becoming the King's goodson (and eventually, the King's goodbrother, because unfortunately Father would die someday) might give him.

And, perhaps, he was used to people looking at him and seeing Winterfell, and was pleased that Myrcella saw something else. He never needed to know that mostly she saw an escape, just so long as he believed that she saw him for something other than his inheritances.

She squeezed his hand, and tried for a smile. He returned it as best he could, given the circumstances, and for a brief instant, it was as if they were simply any other courting couple, and Myrcella wondered if this was what normal people felt like.

"It would be a mercy if the boy were to die," Uncle Jaime said over breakfast. "Better dead than a cripple."

Mother's mouth went terribly thin, then, but Uncle Tyrion smiled.

"We cripples are not so hard up as you seem to think, brother," he said, butting his shoulder against Jaime's arm. "I daresay that I manage well enough. Don't you agree, sweet sister?"

"Shut up," Mother said sharply, sipping her wine - of course it was wine, it was always wine - and scowling. Myrcella shifted a little, as if she could shield Tommen from any further unpleasantness, and smiled. "The boy will live, the maester says. His mother must be delighted."

"I am sure that Lady Stark is deeply thankful that the gods heard her prayers," Myrcella put in, before Mother or Jaime could sneer any more than they already had, at Lady Stark's expense. In truth, Myrcella admired Lady Stark immensely for how she had handled her grief, and wondered why Mother loathed her so.

Mother loathed most women, it was true, but Lady Stark had been nothing but courteous and welcoming since the day they arrived in Winterfell, excepting the three days since her son's injury, and she did not deserve the disdain of the Queen.

"She and Lord Stark have a great deal to be thankful for," Tyrion agreed around a mouthful of bread - not the soft white bread Myrcella was used to, but a heavier, coarser sample, of a darker colour. Lady Sansa had explained that it was because the grain here was different to that which grew in the south, and had laughed a little while recounting her brothers' distaste for the meals that had been prepared for them while visiting their grandfather at Riverrun.

Of course, she had turned pale and solemn again almost immediately, turning into the comforting embrace of her betrothed, but Myrcella had appreciated the effort Robb's sister had made, to create some semblance of normality.

"It is a miracle that the boy survived a fall from such a height," Tyrion went on, looking thoughtful. "I wonder what he might have seen, that shocked such a reportedly seasoned climber from his perch."

"It's obscene that children of such supposedly exalted birth are allowed to run so wild," Mother grit out. "Climbing walls and making pets of direwolves - nonsense. Filthy nonsense."

Myrcella thought that the Starks had all seemed wonderfully happy, before Bran's fall, but felt it best to keep that to herself. Her parents never seemed happy, not truly, and she suspected that neither of them cared much whether or not she and her brothers were happy or not, so it would do her no good to share such an opinion.

But then, it did no good for Jaime to share the opinion that Bran Stark would be better off dead, and he did so regardless.

Myrcella saw her first true Northern snowfall fifteen days into her stay in Winterfell, and something in her heart ached to see it.

Bran Stark was still sleeping, his mother still by his bedside, his father still resisting the request of Myrcella's father, that he come south with them. None of the Starks or their household seemed to even notice the snow, which she thought fair enough, but none of her own family or their household noticed, either, and that left her sad. She had never seen snow until they were two thirds the way to Winterfell, and had never seen it fall until now, and she felt that the others ought to be more amazed by the quietness and the beauty of it.

Robb laughed, when she said as much. Ser Arys was a little behind them, so their conversation was polite, almost idle, and they kept the proper distance between their almost-touching elbows, but only just, and Myrcella wondered how she was ever to come to know him without the odd intimacy they had shared just a few days before.

"I suppose we are all so used to the snow that we don't even think of it anymore," Robb said with a shrug. His hood was lined in dark silver-grey fur, and it made the russet of his hair burn redder, the blue of his eyes seem sharper, and Myrcella was glad of the cold pinking her cheeks, for it hid her blushes. "I cannot imagine being without it, in truth."

Myrcella tugged her own furs closer around her shoulders, and near jumped out of her skin when Robb reached over with a chilly, gloveless hand to tuck a stray curl under her hood. He was oddly free with touches - never inappropriate, not that, but simply easy in whatever company he found himself in, and Myrcella was jealous of him for it, just a little.

"It must seem very strange for you, though, Princess," he said carefully, as though aware of her surprise, of how uncertain she was of a proper reaction to what felt, to her at least, to have been a very intimate gesture. "I imagine that you are not used to it?"

"To put it mildly," she admitted, ducking her head against the wind and his laughter. "But I do not think it would be any hardship to become used to it - it is so... Clean."

The view from atop the walls was shockingly uniform, and Myrcella paused a moment to admire it, only half aware of Robb drawing to a halt beside her, of the clank of Ser Arys' plate as he shuffled closer to her.

"I've never seen so much space before," she said quietly, clutching her arms tight around herself under her cloak and furs. "It would not be any hardship to be here. I could become used to the snow very easily, for all this space."

Myrcella tried very hard to like both of the Stark girls, but found it next to impossible on both counts.

Sansa was simply too sweet - sensible enough, in her way, but painfully naive and desperately eager to please in a way that set Myrcella's teeth on edge. She was like Rosamund, except Rosamund's sweetness was cultivated, and under that sweetness lay a Lannister, and no Lannister could ever be called sweet.

Arya, meanwhile, seemed to mistrust every word Myrcella spoke, and since Myrcella had not actually told a single lie since her arrival in Winterfell - an unprecedented amount of time spent in pure honesty, she admitted ruefully, and that only to herself - she could not help but take offence to that. She had not given the little Stark any reason to mislike her, and since Myrcella prided herself on being likeable before all else, save for presentable, it hurt her feelings to be so obviously unliked, childish as that was.

As for the boys, well.

She got on better than she had dared to hope with Robb - he was charming, and flirted as easily as he breathed and near as often, and went out of his way to ensure that she was shown Winterfell at its best advantage. He was also exceedingly handsome without the associated vanity she had come to expect of pretty boys, and taller than her, even if only a little, which was a pleasant surprise.

Bran, before he had been laid low, had seemed more like Robb than either of them had realised - Sansa's sweetness cooled a little by a wry sense of humour that seemed almost out of place in a boy only a year older than Tommen, Robb's charm balanced by a shyness that Myrcella found utterly endearing, if only because it reminded her of Tommen. Little Rickon was half-wild, as only little boys could be, particularly athletic little boys who were spoiled and indulged not just by their parents but by their older siblings as well. Myrcella had seen it with some of her cousins, and thought it boded well for the general disposition of House Stark, if they all were so good to their youngest.

As for the bastard, he seemed to share Lady Arya's dislike of her, but Myrcella wondered if that was less personal and more a question of status - her bastard brother, Edric, was said to be the very soul of charm and grace, but Myrcella had never known him to be anything but a sullen bully who delighted in showing her and her brothers up, for anything from not knowing some minutiae of Storm's End to Joffie's endless incompetence with a sword.

Jon Snow's dislike of her did not worry her one bit - he would not be at Winterfell if, no, when she and Robb wed, she was sure, and even if he was, he was only Robb's bastard brother, and would rank far below his lawful wife.

Her own dislike of Sansa and Arya's dislike of her did worry her, though, and so she set about changing all of their minds as best she could, after her walk on the walls with Robb.

They always seemed to sew in the afternoons, which was not precisely unexpected, even if it was a little boring - Myrcella would have to enquire about other entertainments, in the future - and they always seemed to do so in the same room, a beautifully appointed chamber that made the best of the thin sunlight, with a view out across the practice yard.

Lady Sansa always took a seat by the window, and her perfect stitches never faltered, even when she spent most of the time staring down at her betrothed.

"Have you been betrothed to Lord Umber long, my lady?" Myrcella asked, settling into the seat on the opposite side of the window and smiling - in this, at least, she could not dislike Sansa's bottomless sincerity, because her affection for Jon Umber was so obviously returned hundredfold, and Myrcella was charmed by the pretty picture they made despite herself. Their children would be impossibly tall, of course, but that did little to take away from the fact that Sansa and Jon Umber made a terribly handsome couple, a couple who were patently smitten with one another, who could not wait to be wed.

"Since I was eleven, your highness," Sansa said, pale cheeks flooding rose-pink. "Jon was seventeen at the time - I think he thought me a silly little girl, at first."

Myrcella, despite only being two years Sansa's senior, half thought her a silly little girl now, but to say so would be terribly rude, so instead she laughed.

"His opinion is much changed since then, if that was the case," she teased, and was rewarded by Sansa's blush deepening to a sudden, shocking purple-red. "He looks at you as if you hung the moon, my lady - and don't deny it, it's plain for the whole world to see!"

Sansa made a point of clearing her throat then, much to Myrcella's genuine amusement, and dipped her head toward her sewing.

"Jon and I are much closer now than we were then," she conceded. "And will hopefully only grow closer - our wedding is yet two years away, after all. We have such an awful lot of time to learn one another."

Myrcella caught the wistful note in Sansa's voice, and almost blushed herself - she had never wanted anyone enough to long for them, not for friendship or company, and certainly not for love or sex, and Sansa Stark being so head-over-heels for the giant she was to wed made her seem less irritatingly sweet.

"I am sure your father could be convinced to move the wedding forward a little," Myrcella offered. "And even if he cannot, you are right, my lady - the journey between Winterfell and Last Hearth is at least direct, if not short, and I am sure that Lord Umber will spend near as much time here as he does there over the coming months."

"He already spends near as much time here as there," Lady Arya piped up, not looking away from her sewing - her stitches were not immaculate, as Sansa's were, but they were precise and regular, practised to a functional sort of perfection that Myrcella could appreciate, because it reminded her of endless dancing classes when she was small.

She had hated them near as much as Arya so clearly hated sewing, and had it not been for Uncle Renly's twinkle-eyed intervention, she suspected that she would hate dancing even now - but it was impossible to hate anything when Uncle Renly made a game of it, and Myrcella and Shireen had taken turns to stand on his boots as he guided them through the complex, adult dances they had been expected to know, when they were little.

"He does not," Sansa said hotly, sewing and view both forgotten in favour of defending her betrothed. "Jon would never neglect his duties so much!"

"Well," Arya said, something in her tone so reminiscent of Uncle Tyrion on the verge of a filthy jape that Myrcella felt a smile growing before Arya could say another word. "Mayhaps it's that he sees tending to you as a duty, one that he would rather die than neglect."

"Arya!"

"Ladies," their septa called, a warning in her face despite the mildness of her tone. "Remember, we have company."

Myrielle, lip curled in disgust rolled her pale eyes, but Rosamund was smiling a little, looking thoughtful, and Myrcella hoped she would remember to ask what was making Rosa think so hard, when they were alone later on.

"Would that we were all so lucky, Lady Sansa," Myrcella said, pointedly not looking at either the sisters Stark or her own ever-watchful Septa Eglatine. "To have such a dedicated betrothed is the dream of near every girl, I imagine."

Despite turning purple-faced once more, Sansa laughed, although not so loud nor so long as Arya did, and Myrcella felt that perhaps, she had made some headway in smoothing relations with her future sisters.

At least, so she hoped. The thought of being so at odds with her husband's siblings as Mother was with Uncle Renly and, particularly, with Uncle Stannis, made her stomach twist.

"I'm told," the King said, more focused on the pretty girl pouring his ale than on Myrcella, "that you are enjoying Winterfell. Oakheart thinks you quite settled."

"Winterfell is so different from anything to which I am used, Your Grace," she said lightly, refusing a cup of ale in favour of the honeyed milk only Tommen usually drank at dinner. "It is interesting, and I have been made very welcome, as have we all."

Mother, at the opposite end of the table, with Joffie to her right and Tommen to her left, scoffed loudly at that, but Myrcella followed her father's lead and ignored her mother.

"You know that I have been pursuing a match for you with young Robb," her father said, dragging himself away from the serving girl's breasts, meeting Myrcella's eyes as he so rarely did. His eyes were the same dark blue as Uncle Stannis', depthless and sharp, but Father's were brightened with laughter as Stannis' never were, and reddened with drink - again, as Stannis' never were. "Well, I've convinced Ned of the sense of it, and we'll be announcing it at the morning meal tomorrow. Does that please you?"

Myrcella wondered if her father would have been easier with her brothers had they, too, been girls, if they presented no threat to him, as Joffie and Tommen did simply for being male. He had always been his best with her, more readily affectionate and, sometimes, more aware of her than he ever seemed of her brothers.

"It pleases me because it pleases you, Your Grace," she offered, blushing when he began to grin, and blushing harder when he slipped into outright laughter - but not at her expense. Myrcella's father, for all his failings, never laughed at her expense.

"I want to see you happy," he said, one massive hand suddenly folding over hers atop the table. "You are a good girl, Myrcella, and you will do well here, away from all the squabbling and scrambling in King's Landing. Young Robb is a good lad, and handsome enough to balance even your pretty face, and I think you will be good for one another."

He seemed even more embarrassed than she was by his utterly unexpected outburst, and Myrcella had never loved him so fiercely as she did in that moment.

So of course, Joff had to ruin it.

"You're going to leave her here?" he demanded, lip curled in a frightening reflection of Myrielle's earlier disgust. "With these savages?!"

"These savages are the oldest House in Westeros, boy," the King said, leaning forward in his chair, so that his face was half in shadow and half aflame. "You would do well to remember that they are our hosts, and that you are not King yet. You have already shamed yourself and, by extension, me, with your conduct since we arrived here. Do not make me regret abiding by your mother's insistence that I not beat some manners into you."

"So," Robb said, hoodless and gloveless and lovely, in the dappled light of the godswood, near his heart tree. "We are to be married, then."

Myrcella blushed, harder than she ever remembered blushing in her life, and let him take her hands, let him tug off her gloves and fold his fingers through hers. His hands were so much bigger than hers, as dappled as the sunlight by freckles and tiny scars from swords and play, broad and strong and calloused, and she felt a million miles away from him as their palms pressed together.

She wished to feel closer, but did not dare try anything daring while Ser Arys was so close by.

"We are to be married," she said, her smile feeling tremulous and small, smaller still when he smiled and seemed, for a moment, like the sun. "Are you pleased?"

"Very," he said, the light in his eyes belying his serious expression. "I believe the King will prove a more amenable goodfather than Lord Karstark ever would."

Her nervousness fled, as did her fear, and she pressed so close that the backs of her hands were against his chest, his against her collarbones, and she could feel his warmth all along her front.

"I am sure," she said, matching his seriousness, "that my father would be glad to hear such a magnificent compliment."

And they laughed, and Myrcella wondered if this was how normal people felt, when they became betrothed.