When Sansa was very small, she hated to share her lady mother's time. She used to become so jealous when it was Arya's turn to have her hair brushed, or Bran's turn to sit in their mother's lap for a story. She had given way willingly only to their lord father and very occasionally to Rickon, who was, after all, only a baby. Father had never intruded when Sansa and her mother sat together in the evenings, talking and telling stories and singing while Mother brushed Sansa's hair, but he had sometimes stood by and watched, or come to sit on Sansa's bed with Arya on his knee so that they could listen to Mother's stories too.
Mother had always told the best stories. Sansa missed the sound of her voice so very much.
Sansa had greedily stolen every moment she could at Lady Catelyn's side, sneaking into her mother's rooms while she was dressing for the morning or slipping around Maester Luwin as he left her solar with his ledgers so that they might share the midday meal. Best of all was when they sat together in the sept, thin Northern sunlight shattering into diamonds through the crystalline windows over each of the seven altars, because the others had all preferred the quiet and cold of the godswood. Arya had liked the music and Robb had liked the formality of the septon's prayers, but neither of them had enjoyed the solace of sitting before the Mother's altar. Sansa had always liked it, first simply for the chance to sit with Mother in the prettiest place in all of Winterfell, but later for the very real peace she found there.
Her mother had been her favourite, of their parents. Sansa had loved her lord father, no matter how badly she had betrayed him in the end. She did not think any of their companions would believe her if they knew the whole truth of it, but she had loved him, and he had loved her better than she deserved, right up until his last breath. That had been his greatest weakness, she sometimes thought, that he had given love even to the undeserving, like Sansa, or King Robert. She had always been closer to her lady mother, though and her father had never seemed to mind - perhaps Father had been more at ease with Arya's less refined affection, like that scraggly bunch of wildflowers she had given him on the road to King's Landing.
They had been purple, Sansa thought, with clay still clinging to their roots. Why did she remember that? Why was she even thinking about those little flowers, so bright against Arya's dirty skirts? Was it simply the circumstance of being on the road with Arya once again?
The creature's breath rattled, louder even than the howling wind outside their refuge. It was quiet inside other than the lowing and screeching of the wind, everyone too tired from riding into the brewing storm even just to talk over their meal, but Stoneheart's lungs wheezed low and rough so that no one might forget her presence. Sansa, who was tonight sitting nearer the thing than anyone else, had found herself unable to eat, and had instead split most of her rations between Arya, Alla, and Lady Brienne. She kept huddled tight around her cup of hot cider, her shoulder to the creature, and hoped it would leave them soon. It did, sometimes - it did not often spend the whole night in their company, for which she was thankful, but perhaps even monsters feared a Northern winter.
"You should rest, milady," Marian said gently, leaning over Sansa's shoulder. Alla, dozing between Sansa and Arya, stirred and stood all in one go, moving toward their shelter to help prepare for the night. "You as well, Lady Arya."
"I think I'll sit up with Mother a while longer, if it's all the same to you," Arya said, and Sansa thought she might be sick. How could Arya say that? Sansa could not help but think of the creature as Mother sometimes, because under the rot and ruin there was still some trace of Catelyn Stark to be found, probably, a thread of dark auburn among the rat's tails of its hair or a familiar tilt of its terrible head, but she would never say it aloud. That thing was no more Mother than the tarred head Joffrey had shown her had been Father.
But then, while Arya might have seen more terrors than Sansa, these past two years, but she had not seen that. The mouth had been open, the eyes gone under the tar. She remembered it. She would never forget it.
"You won't join us, Sansa?"
Sansa swallowed hard before trying to speak. Her voice was rough and hoarse anyway with the brutal weather and her stuffed nose, but the lump in her throat was not to be cured by Marian's possets and Humfrey's spiced wine, both portioned out as meanly as a maester's dreamwine. Arya's face was open, sincere and without guile, and Sansa wished very much that their mother was truly alive. She had not included much mention of Stoneheart in her chronicle, the one meant for Highgarden. How could she explain this to Willas? He would think her mad, addled by hard travel and harsh weather, and perhaps he would be right. Perhaps she was mad. Maybe they all were. How else could Arya and Lady Mormont and Master Glover all bow their heads to that thing as it passed?
In this, if in nothing else, Sansa considered Lord Reed her ally - he seemed as horrified as she was by the creaking shamble that had replaced her lady mother's smooth stride, by the clutching fingers and burning eyes. He seemed to both understand and hate it, which made Sansa feel less cruel when she flinched from the creature's touch.
"No," she said at last. "I- no, thank you, Arya. I have- No."
If she had the chance again, she would share Mother's time better.
She squeezed Arya's shoulder as she passed, as much of an apology as she could muster, and slipped away into the shadows. Humfrey was waiting for her, ready to inventory their stores as they did every evening now that they were camping in the caves, and he did not breathe a single word when she dropped to her knees beside him. He only wrapped a heavy blanket around her shoulders and drew her close, his face tight and angular in the dim light. Something about the twist of his mouth was very much like Lady Alerie, and that was as much a comfort as the little extra warmth.
"I'm sorry, sweetling," he said, his voice very soft. "How desperately I wish I could rid you of this haunting."
"There's naught to be done," she said, squeezing his wrist. "We must endure until her goal is met, whatever that may be." Humfrey might have looked like Willas, but the more time she spent with him, the more he reminded Sansa of Garlan - tucked under his wing like this, she felt as well guarded as ever she had with her goodbrother. His presence made Highgarden seem a little less distant, a little less of an impossible dream that lay beyond her reach.
Highgarden and all who awaited her there would have to wait, though, for even if this boy was RIckon and even if they somehow managed to reclaim Winterfell from the Boltons, the creature would not easily let her go. Whatever of her mother remained in that ghastly shell, it was focused on Sansa's family. Sansa had made it her business to avoid the Brotherhood during their journey, but she had overheard their stories about enemies hanging ripe across the Riverlands, and she had seen more than enough hangings in King's Landing to recognise the scarring on Lady Brienne's neck for what it was - a grim souvenir, but better those raw-edged wounds under her ears than the grave. Freys, mostly, but Lannisters too if they could be found, and anyone else who had ever crossed a Stark or Tully. It made no odds to Lady Stoneheart and her hangmen, not if it could be painted as justice for the Young Wolf.
Sansa wondered what Robb would say about the creature. He would hate it just as much as she did, she thought, and he would find his grief doubled just as she had. Robb had been so good, so sensible, that he would see that monster's existence for the insult it was, and he would find a solution-
"There now, my lady," Humfrey said quietly, nudging his neat ledger in front of them, waving one of the men closer with a candle. "Dry your tears before they freeze to your face, and help me look at our provisions - we've another week before we reach this city of mermen, and I want to be sure we're all at our best."
"We'll be safe in White Harbour," she told him, and felt mostly sure of it. Her lord father had always spoken highly of Lord Manderly, and even fierce Lady Mormont had little complaint about their would-be hosts. They were the richest family in the North, she knew that much, and Lord Manderly's heir had only daughters, somewhat older than herself. She could not remember ever meeting them, the lords or ladies of the house, but she would have to trust their history of loyalty to her family, and trust in Lady Mormont and Master Glover's trust.
Lord Manderly's granddaughters played on her mind a little, making her never-perfect arithmetic sloppier than usual. Humfrey said nothing, only adjusted her sums as they went, and Sansa lingered on the ladies of White Harbour. If Lord Manderly had been happy for his son to name a daughter his heir, Sansa hoped that meant they would not question supporting Arya, if this red-haired boy of theirs turned out not to be Rickon.
Behind them, by the fire, the creature croaked again, and Sansa shuddered. She hoped that the child was Rickon, of course she did, but she wondered if it would be fair to subject him to the monster that war had made of their mother.
"It's far quieter than it should be," Father said simply, rolling his shoulders once his squires had taken away his mailshirt. "I don't understand why the Lannisters have done nothing to shore up their borders - focused on Dragonstone, perhaps, or on the Stormlands. Either way, I won't complain. I dare not in case I tempt fate."
Willas was seated on his father's bed, exhausted by the exertions of the day. Father had only sent word that he was coming home when he was already at Cider Hall, so the past week had been a hectic rush to prepare the castle for his return and to shut Tyrion damned Lannister's mouth. Willas had become used to Lannister's constant venom for all the brothers and sisters of the world, but he would not suffer Lord Mace to face the special hatred Lannister reserved for fathers.
Willas did not even like Tyrion Lannister, but he wished for the Imp's sake that Lord Tywin had died sooner nonetheless. It might have shut him up for more than an hour at a time.
"Could it be that they remain diverted to the Riverlands, too?" Willas asked, wincing at the croak of his voice - Maester Lomas was mightily displeased with him, but he had no time to take tonics and eat healthful meals, not when he had ravens flying in from half of Westeros at once with reports and responses. "Or to the Westerlands, for that matter. Gargoyle said that the reavers have struck Feastfires, too, and Crakehall - the Kingslayer was close with the Crakehalls, I think. I remember Loras saying something about that."
Loras had been fascinated by the Kingslayer as a boy, sure that there was no one else who might be his peer with a sword in hand. The Kingslayer and the Sword of the Morning before him - how Loras had longed to hear the Knight of Flowers spoken of in such hallowed company. How disgusting a world this was, where Loras was dead and Jaime Lannister, even with the weight of his innumerable sins weighing him down, had avoided death thus far.
"According to some reports, the Kingslayer has not been seen in months," Father said, accepting a warm, wet towel and a clean shirt both from the boys. "Go on, lads, get on to your dinner, good boys - and not a word of what Lord Willas and I have said is to be repeated even to your fathers, d'you hear?"
"Yes, my lord!" the squires cried before bowing away through the door and slamming it gleefully behind them. One had Tyrell hair, curly and richly brown, but pale blue eyes, so a cousin of some sort, and the other was an unpleasant, narrow-faced boy - a Caswell, perhaps. Willas lost track of his father's squires and pages, because Lord Mace was not above farming out the training of boys he found annoying to other men, men who could hardly refuse an honourable request from their liegelord, and so it was inevitable that the boys would cycle through Highgarden quicker than Willas could learn their names.
Previously, he simply had not cared to - he had gone out of his way to avoid knowing anything about his father's business for years, but since their reconciliation he had made the effort to know better who exactly made up his father's household. The pages and squires continued to evade him, no matter how hard he tried.
"Hold this for me," Father said, passing his shirt to Willas while he cleaned himself down roughly. For all that he had turned to fat in middle-age, as most Tyrell men seemed to, he was still a powerfully built man, and Garlan was clearly built in his image. He was quicker both in mind and on his feet than anyone ever seemed to expect, and Willas was ashamed now to think that he had been among the doubters for so long. He had spent many years so embittered against his father that it had seemed as though Lord Mace had nothing at all to recommend him, but he had seen the truth of his father since their reconciliation - one more thing for which to thank Sansa.
Gods, how he missed her. He spent an hour every evening on knee-and-bolster, praying for her safety, and for Humfrey's - shameful though it was, he prayed for Humfrey more to be sure he was able to bring Sansa home than for his own sake, for no matter how dearly he loved his uncle, he loved his wife more.
"Your goodsister's Lady Brienne was the last person confirmed to have seen the Kingslayer, or so I'm told," Father said, tossing the towel down with his discarded shirt and doublet so that he could take the fresh from Willas' hands. "The Lannisters are doing what they can to reassure their thinning field of allies that he is busily clearing out the remaining rebel strongholds in the Riverlands and that he's working his way back through the Crownlands, but not one person seems to have seen him. Strange, isn't it?"
"You think him dead?"
"Ha! If only! No, that man won't die by any hand but his own, I think - he's too proud for aught else. No, I think there's something more that Brienne of bastard Tarth failed to tell us, and we must pray that it won't endanger your lady. I only wish there was a way to find him, be he living or dead."
Dread curled cold in Willas' belly, but he tried to hide it. By the look on Father's face, he only halfway succeeded.
"You think he would be useful?" he tried, and Father's face flashed vicious - Loras, more than Garlan, just for a brief moment.
"I think he might be the only possible hostage that would sway his whore of a sister into negotiating, and that is more useful than I can say."
Father's arm was warm around Willas' shoulders, and he drew him in close until their temples were pressed together. Willas' back was screaming, but he would not surrender this, not when he knew it gave them both so much comfort.
"I should not have given you fresh cause to worry for your Sansa," he said. "She is in the safest hands possible short of Garlan's, with that loud-mouth uncle of yours minding her. Come, let's see your mother before she seeks me out and skins me for delaying, what say you?"
"I say you'd best put on more than just your shirt if you want Mother to receive you with a smile, my lord," Willas said, tucking his crutches under his arms and heaving himself upright. It hurt, but it was easier to stand mostly straight than it was to sit crook-backed as he had been under Father's arm. "I had your man leave out the velvet, the one Margie embroidered for your last nameday - Mother mentioned that she would have food, whenever you were ready."
"Someday your mother will realise that she could have done better than me, and we will all be sorry for it," Father said gravely, but with a twinkle in his eye - Mother was a woman with many friends, but it was no secret that she esteemed her husband above all others. She likely could have done better than Father, but only in a world where Prince Rhaegar had had older brothers, and even then, only if she had met her prince before the heir to Highgarden came a-calling at the High Tower.
Father kept his pace slow as they made their way to the small hall, where the ladies were waiting for them, but he abandoned Willas the moment they were through the doors to go to Mother, who rose from her seat with both hands outstretched in greeting. Willas was glad that Leo looked every bit as conflicted as he felt, pleased to see them reunited but twisted with jealousy, too.
It had been two days since any word had come from Garlan. It had been two months since any word had come from Sansa. If something did not come from White Harbour soon, Willas was sure that he would lose his mind. If something did not come from Oldtown by tomorrow, Leo would surely lose hers. The only comfort anyone had at the moment was how easily Leo's pregnancy seemed to be progressing, which even Grandmother grudgingly admitted was a blessing.
"Sit with us while they're carrying on, brother," Margaery said, gesturing to Willas' seat, to the right of the head of the table, with a smile. "I've asked that we be served, so you may as well sit even if they won't."
Mother and Father still were standing, true enough, heads bowed close together and hands clasped tight between them. Willas had to look away, and was thankful beyond measure for the way Margaery squeezed his wrist in comfort as soon as she noticed.
"Are you feeling better, Leo?" he asked - anything to distract himself, but anything as well to keep Leonette safe and well until Garlan's return. Childbearing was a risky business even for healthy women like Leo, but the strain of knowing the terrible danger Garlan was in could only be dangerous for her. They all felt quite deranged with the need to keep her from any further stress, and the sick stomach she'd had all this past week had driven all of them mad, save for Mother.
Damn Lannister, for mentioning the fucking dragon in Leo's hearing! Willas had felt guilty enough for talking about the Crow's Eye and his reavers in her company without that! It was almost as though Lannister wanted to see them suffer as he had, loss after misery after nightmare.
"I'm ravenous," Leonette said, with a confiding air that suggested she felt embarrassed by such a thing - nonsense, of course. After all the absurd behaviour they'd all overlooked for Willas' sake in the past few years, Leo eating the table bare while carrying Gargoyle's child would hardly signify. "And wild for peaches. Isn't that ridiculous?"
"A true Tyrell, then," Willas teased, just for the way he knew Leo would scowl. "Oh, don't be like that, you, you know we have barrels full of apples for you when your fancy changes - speaking of apples, didn't you mention that your mother is coming soon?"
Leonette's mother was an absolute nightmare, a sharp-tongued witch of a woman younger than Lady Alerie, but who walked with a cane like Grandmother's after a nasty fall off the back of an apple wagon. No one had been able to understand what exactly the lady of Cider Hall had been doing in the back of an apple wagon, especially accompanied only by a single knight from among her husband's household guard, who had come with her from her home at Bandallon upon her marriage.
An extremely handsome knight who had come with her from Bandallon, but the less said about that the better.
She doted on Leo and her brothers and sisters though, and had bestowed her blessing upon Garlan in the very first days of his and Leo's courtship, so Willas thought it a small thing to overlook such an embarrassing indiscretion on Lady Estra's part.
"Don't breathe a word," Leonette cautioned him. "I know you and she dislike one another, but if she can make nice with Lady Olenna then you can make nice with her."
"Your mother makes nice with me because she's afraid of me," Grandmother said, appearing with her usual terrifying quiet, so strange in a woman who relied so heavily on a cane. Even Margaery jumped this time, which made Willas feel a little less foolish. "Whyever should the heir to Highgarden be afraid of her? She should make nice with him, if anything."
"As you say, my lady," Leo said, rolling her eyes. Grandmother was no more immune to the prospect of a babe than the rest of them were, and had softened so much toward Leo that she was allowing her similar leniency to that which Margaery so enjoyed. Willas, who had always cleaved to his mother's family and was too much a Hightower for his grandmother's preference regardless, had grown up more used to the clap of her cane across the backs of his knees than that fond little smile, but he was pleased to see her and Leo getting along - one more small, good thing to include in the letters he sent to Garlan, and also in the letters he was keeping ready to send to Sansa, whenever he had somewhere to send them.
"You seem lost in thought, my lord," Lady Nym said, slipping into her seat at Leo's side with a small smile. Nym was always smiling, sharp as a razor's edge, but she alone had offered Leo any useful aid during her recent sickness, and she had brewed the pungent, sweet-smelling tea every morning without complaint. "In Oldtown?"
"The North," Willas admitted, and there was Margie's hand, warm once again on his wrist. "Wondering what progress my lady has made."
"They must surely have reached White Harbour by now?" Margaery said, waving forward the waiting servants. "It's been-"
"Long, but perhaps not long enough if winter truly is coming," he pointed out, smiling a little at the echo of Sansa's words - she was always so fierce and proud when she talked of being a Stark, a wolf right down to her bones. He hoped it would be enough to bear her through the dark days ahead. "We'll have word as soon as possible after their arrival, and hopefully confirmation that the boy the Manderlys have is her brother soon after that."
"I don't like her being so isolated," Leonette said, covering her nose and mouth as a servant passed with a bowl of pease pudding in hand, a little green. "I wish we could have sent more men with her."
"Humfrey will never allow any harm to come to her," Mother said, finally taking her seat. "He won't survive me if he does, I warned him of that. And besides, she's going back to her own people - if the Northerners leave her and her sister without care beyond what we gave them, well, it only proves over again that we were right to claim her for ourselves, don't you think?"
The dragon had burnished the Shields smooth and cracked. Garlan stood a very long time without moving, because he was sure that if he moved an inch he would fall to his knees and weep.
"Why?" he managed, steady only for the weight of Baelor's hand on his shoulder. " Why?"
"To prove a point," Baelor said quietly, clutching again at his seven-pointed star. It was rarely out of his hand these days, save when he drew his sword. "There's naught to be done, lad. We had nothing at our disposal that might have stopped this."
Prince Aegon was standing just beyond Baelor, clinging to the ship's railing like it was the only thing tethering him to the world. Garlan had not heard a word pass the prince's lips in hours, since they had come to dock at Southshield and found the dock reduced to so much cinder and slag. They had sent scouts ashore, some of Prince Aegon's mercenaries alongside Garlan's men, and all had returned grim-faced, with nothing but more sorrow to report.
"We had me," Prince Aegon said, his voice rough. Standing there, hard-shouldered with grief, the prince looked more a man than he had since Garlan had first beheld him at Storm's End, which could only be for the good. "Am I not a Targaryen? Have I not the right to a dragon, as much and more as the aunt who hatched them?"
Garlan, only in the extreme privacy of his own thoughts, considered distant Queen Daenerys' claim to the dragons to be far superior to Prince Aegon's, but it would never do to say such a thing aloud in present company. Prince Aegon was as uncertain now as he had been during that godsawful stay at Storm's End, chasing glory and majesty now as he had chased Sansa then, and Garlan found him harder to predict without Leonette's insight to help.
We must find a way to stop the dragon and its master, he thought, or I will never be home in time to see the babe born.
Many men missed the birth of their children, but Garlan had never known a fear like the calm, candid way Maester Lomas had said a small woman such as yourself, my lady, with a husband so large as Ser Garlan, may face some trouble - but we will be as prepared for that as we can. He would be at Highgarden when his child was born, if only to be sure that his most recent parting from Leo was not his last.
"This dragon is ensorcelled," Garlan said, crossing the deck to stand beside the prince. That fool knight of his edged a little closer, as though trying to prove that he felt no fear in the face of any threat Garlan might present, and Garlan ignored him. Duckfield. What a useless name. "It may be that even its mother might not stir it from its… confusion."
The only person who seemed to think the destruction the beast left in its wake to be unnatural was, of course, the prince, and Garlan might have laughed at such naivety in simpler times. No stories spoke of the dragons building anything other than empires, and those on foundations of ash and ruin. Only a Targaryen could love a dragon as another man might a saint, and only a Targaryen raised without being told of his family's sins could think a dragon noble.
Prince Aegon looked to the shadow in the seaward sky and saw Symeon Star-Eyes. Such childishness could not be permitted in a King. What, Garlan wondered, did the Mother of Dragons think when she looked upon her children? Did she love them as Willas loved his dogs, or did she see them for the great and terrible things they were?
Well, that did not matter now. They had Prince Aegon with them, and the Queen was yet far away, and so Garlan would make use of what resources he had to hand. He had no other choice, really.
"Tell us what you would do," he said, "to tame the dragon away from the Crow's Eye, so we might decide best how to help you."
There was something dreamy on the prince's face, his eyes livid but his gaze distant. Garlan had considered Prince Aegon of no real concern from the moment they met, worrying more about Lord Connington, but he worried now that that had been a mistake. Madness ran in the Targaryens like brown hair ran in the Tyrells, and the strange twist of the prince's smile seemed more harbinger than comfort.
Somewhere away to the south, there was a monster wielding a dragon as his sword. Safe in the shadow of the High Tower, one of his many slaves was recovering under Mad Malora's careful watch, telling his tale of woe in uneven handwriting blotted all over with tears. The stories the poor boy had shared so far, of atrocity committed with laughter on Euron Greyjoy's lips, had been more than enough to chill them all. He was mad, the boy insisted, mad to his bones.
Madness - yes, there was madness in the Targaryens. Perhaps that was to be their salvation in the face of the Crow's Eye's unflinching malice.
Something had disturbed Lady Mormont and Master Glover, and Sansa chose to ignore their discomfort the same way they ignored her heartbreak every time the creature came to dinner.
"Your men are very loyal, my lady," Lord Reed said quietly, adding a sprinkle of sweet-smelling tea to Sansa's cup of plain boiled water. They were taking a break, within sight of White Harbour but worn too close to the bone to press on without pausing to eat a little. Lord Reed's cloak seemed to contain an infinite array of pockets, offering salves for blistered feet and balms for frost-burned fingers, tinctures for rattling coughs and, Sansa's favourite, floral teas for sore throats. "Did they seek it out on your orders?"
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, my lord," Sansa said, aware of the small weight of Robb's will tucked into the innermost pocket of her jerkin - Humfrey's jerkin, in truth, but long enough to cover her kidneys and warm enough to break the wind. They had not looked at it even once since they had come to the honeycomb of caves along the cliffs above the Bite on this final leg of their journey, passing it from Sansa's clothes to Marian's to Humfrey's and back as they all dressed and put together their layers. Frankly, if it had taken this long for Maege Mormont and Galbart Glover to even notice that their most precious possession was missing, they were not fit to be executors of Robb's will.
"I do not say this to criticise, Lady Sansa," he said. "I am glad of it, for your sake. I remember a time when I walked as closely by your father as your husband's uncle walks alongside you. Your father would be glad to see you so well minded, even if he was always too honest to see the use in a little sleight of hand."
Lord Reed's smile was sharp and thin, like a low-hanging winter sun cutting through a grey day, and Sansa remembered very suddenly how vague the stories of Ser Arthur Dayne's death had always been. Her lord father had only ever said that Lord Reed had aided him in the crucial moment, and her lady mother had once said…
She had once said, while brushing Sansa's hair, your father is not a man to take pride in a killing, no matter how valiant . Sansa had thought it poor fun at the time, greedy for stories where her father had felled the finest knight of his generation in single combat, but perhaps the thread of Lord Reed's sleight of hand had sewn closed her lord father's lips.
"Your father and I had lost touch some years before the end," he said quietly. "I will regret it as long as I live, for never had I such true friends as your father and his sister. It was for their sake that I sent Meera and Jojen to your brothers at Winterfell - and it was for my children's sake that I thought it was the elder of your younger brothers who'd found his way to White Harbour."
"You- Bran is dead, my lord."
"And so was Rickon, until he appeared in White Harbour. The children displayed at Winterfell were not your brothers, my lady. You know it to be true - Rickon's survival is proof of that."
"The last time I saw Bran," Sansa said, remembering Bran's pale little face and the grim shadows beneath her mother's eyes, in the gloom of Bran's bedchamber the morning she and Arya and Father left for King's Landing, "we thought he would die before we saw him again. Hearing of his death felt like a confirmation of his fate."
"Oh, poor child," Lord Howland said, his face so sad that Sansa had to look away. "Poor, dear child - you've supped so long on despair that hope must be sour for you. Poor, poor child."
"I am hardly a child," Sansa snapped, stung. "I am a woman wed, my lord, and will serve as regent to my brother until he comes of age, by the gods' grace."
"And I am sure that your husband holds you dear above all else, and that you will serve your brother well in these dark days of ours. But you have still suffered more than any girl your age should have, you and your sister both, and it grieves me to see it. It should grieve all of us."
Master Glover had drifted closer while they spoke, and Sansa saw him flinch at that last. Good, she thought, feeling brittle, a little sharp - the way Willas turned when someone was cruel about his leg. But Lord Reed had not been cruel, had he? The opposite, if anything, kind and heartfelt, sharing in Sansa's grief in a way no one else had cared to.
So it was not the cruelty that set Willas twanging like a bowstring, tense and snapping at the first chance to loose his temper, but the attention drawn to sorrows left too long untended. Sansa felt that she understood him better now, and was thankful for that much, at least.
"Your treasures, my lady," Lord Reed said. "You are not wrong to guard them so closely, but think on who you are guarding them from. And, a word of advice, if I may?"
"You have not yet asked permission, Lord Reed, so I suspect you will advise me whether I wish it or not."
"Ha! Perhaps, my lady, but only if I feel it will stand you in good stead."
"Advise away, then, my lord," she said, "as you might have advised my father in his youth."
"Trust a little in your sister's judgement," he said, more seriously than she had expected. "You are unwilling to trust without proof, and that is not unfair, given your journey so far. Your sister trusts more easily than she should, but she is also more forgiving than you are. Be mindful of one another. Your father trusted your aunt, and she him, but he was gone away back into the clouds when she needed him most."
"And I will be gone back to Highgarden at the crucial moment, is that it?" Sansa hissed, not wanting anyone to know just how guilty she felt for wanting to return to Highgarden. She wanted her solar, and her afternoons with her goodmother and goodsisters, and she wanted her husband. She hated that in order to have those things, she would have to give up her brother - brothers, if she gave into Lord Reed's fragile, foolish hope - and her sister.
"No, my lady," he said. "Your eventual return to your husband is no less a duty to be done than your remaining here with your brothers and sister. No, I mean only that it is best to… To keep those you love close to your heart. You never know when they will be gone beyond your reach."
The glance he threw over his shoulder sliced right back as far as the creature, wheezing and slumped, and Sansa thought that she could forgive him presuming to advise her on how best to manage her grief for as long as he stood by her in hating that remnant of her lady mother.