Lutes, trumpets, and horns thundered the cold air around, leaving the soil between my toes to tremble. For every beat on the barrel, for every whisper of laughter, for every verse of the song, my heart tripled to beat fast—for reasons that I didn't know or bothered to be aware of. I focused on the task at hand. I tried to focus on the best of my ability. My fingers began to cut through the ironwood branch, eyes stinging and throat gnawing when the feeling slowly seeped into me that I was the one left behind from the feast.

It wasn't something new for me to whine about. It had been this way for more than a decade where I was the one thrown out of the threshold, while my mother's family celebrated a feast. Not that I complained about it. Being a ward of my uncle, I was under his protection, and so, I had all the rights to barge in those doors and make my way to the high table, to sup with my cousins, and gossip about the gallant knights.

I was a Princess by rights and honors. Would anyone deny my presence or disallow me to participate?

Even the trout woman could only boil and simmer in rage, but not open her mouth to throw me out. I had some power, poor-piss as it might be, it was something that came with my birth.

My birth!

Oh, for the destruction I brought to these lands and people, with my birth, it became both my curse and boon.

They hated me. The fat Lord Wyman Manderly, the pale-eyed Lord Roose Bolton, the giant lord Jon Umber—everyone hated my birth. Or more precisely, what they had to sacrifice for my birth. Often times, I wondered about the curse I carried. Could my father have known all this? Could my father have understood the mistake he made by bringing forth to this world? Was that why he threw me away to the people he fought with blood and vengeance?

I could only wonder what he'd planned when he left with my mother. Or what he'd thought when only I remained alive amongst us both. He should be hating me! He definitely loathes me for killing my mother!

King Rhaegar Targaryen, first of his name, ruled the Seven Kingdoms, sitting on the iron throne that had killed the Mad King. To what extent it was true, I couldn't be certain. Because there was a weird song that Sansa sang about a tainted knight who could have killed the Mad King. What the Old Maester Luwin taught me, and Robb and Sansa was the truth. The Mad King died by pierced on all sides by the barbed throne, just like Maegor the Cruel. I, Lyarra Targaryen, was sent out to thaw and freeze my heart in this cold lands, just so my father didn't need to see the murderer of his beloved mistress Lyanna Stark.

I wondered what my cousins would be doing inside, as I chiseled the pointed edge of the arrow, with the sharp blade that I owned. Robb, my cousin, who was almost like a brother to me, would probably be recollecting the sigils, houses, and their words, while every lord and lady of the North would be vying to take advantage of his gullibility to put their daughter beside him.

Lady Catelyn would be encouraging him to have a dance with those pretty ladies, just to charm those lords' eyes, even when she would not be deeming them right for her son's stature and power. She would crave for a bigger house with greater wealth and a magnificent army.

I get her, truly. I never understood why she despised me or often chided me, finding fault in everything I did in the beginning. Now, though, as I grew up from being a child that craved for honey cakes to a girl who craved for recognition, I learned the laws of the land where fighting to survive was important than being loved.

Lord Stark would differ, though. He taught me about honor; he taught me about justice; he taught me about family and being in the pack; he taught me about rules and laws that every man was bound to follow, although at times I wondered if he was just bidding time to put that long sword, Ice, across my neck and take my life for once and all when my King Father would do something to displease him.

I knew that Lord Stark hated the crown. He loathed King Rhaegar, and every time he went for bringing justice in the crown's name, he would whiff out my father's name like tasting poison on his tongue. Neither Ned Stark nor the folks of the North had any love for the crown. The only thread that bound them to the crown was me. And I bore that burden like cattle would bear its whippings from a master, or a horse that would pull a loaded cart.

I wanted to remove the burden of bringing the ill-favor, but I had no idea of how to do it. I think I would die carrying my mother's sin. Lady Lyanna wasn't spared. The whole realm lashed at her dead bones for running away with a married man and giving a bastard to him.

Yes, I am a bastard!

My given name was Visenya Waters, until King Rhaegar legitimized me upon claiming the throne in front of the courts and courtiers, the rebels and loyalists, the friends and enemies, and proclaimed me as Visenya Targaryen.

Lord Stark refused to call me Visenya, nor would he allow anyone in the household to call me Visenya. He named me Lyarra, for the love that he carried for both his mother and sister. That was a sweet gesture, I was sure, but the folks of the North hated the name 'Lya', for my mother had brought blood and death to their doors.

I loved her though. However wrong she might be, she was my mother, who died giving birth to me. And I wished she lived to shower love or sing a lullaby to put me to sleep or brush my dark brown hair like Lady Catelyn brushed Sansa's auburn hair or tell what it was to love or being loved.

"What is worse, Visenya?" The barbed tongue of my nightmare knight plunged in the air along with the wine and ale stench that was going to make me spill my guts out. "To be a bastard or to be a Princess?"

I refused to meet his emerald eyes and give him the satisfaction of victory by showing how much I was hurt by those simple words. I still hadn't gotten around how my King Father had put trust in this man who was everything a knight shouldn't be. "Is there something worse than being exiled from your own home and rot in cold lands just to protect a child?" I asked, and the knight simmered. I loved jabbing him with both words and swords. He resented being sent off to protect me, being far away from the sunlit south to this cold North. He resented having to be far away from the lands he knew and learned. Basically, he resented me. "Oh, you must forgive me! How could I be so wrong? Wasn't it the child who saved you from being stabbed in the woods? Could you even set one thing right, Ser Jaime?"

Although he was calm and quiet, I knew he would be brewing an insult in his head, with another of his barbed comment. He taught me to fight. If one could call abandoning a seven-year-old child in the mountains, to become fearless, and beating her with wooden clubs till she surrendered to become resilient as a proper way to teach. Lord Stark had condemned him, repulsed, and regretted his existence, and I was sure the golden knight had also been waiting for my uncle to pick the sword and fight, but I doubted if anyone would do anything without risking another war.

"You are lucky that I have drunk myself to death, today. Else… I will cut through you like chopping meat." Ser Jaime warned and sat beside me, leaning on my shoulder for support. I glared at him. There were proprieties that had to be followed, even if I was a tainted Princess or a Royal bastard. If anyone saw him lingering on me with such ease, they would give birth to an imaginary child of mine just with their slanders. Jaime gave a lopsided grin, knowing how this was annoying me. "Oh, don't be a prude! That quality is reserved for the true-born children. If you are willing, I could even show you a world filled with nothing but pleasures. Every woman has praised my skill in bed."

"You mean the whores." I said, with a proud smirk, knowing well about his affinities to the pleasure houses he visited frequently. "Toss them a coin, Ser Jaime, they would even call you a King. The last thing you should trust is a word that comes out of a whore."

"There was a woman, once, in my life." He admitted with a distant voice, eyes staring at the starry sky. He was drunk. He thought, expressing feelings to be vulnerabilities. And if he was telling me about a woman, he was truly drunk to recover. "She said I was her sun and moon, thief and knight, and she wanted nothing other than my cock in her cunt." He smiled to himself. "I wonder if she remembers me now."

Although his words were crude and disgusting, his eyes were glossing with pain. I never knew he had loved someone or if he was even capable of love. He was a prick here in the North, dueling and sparring with anyone who came to the courtyard and laughing at their misery when they would fail and fall. I had not got an inkling of like for him. He was rude, arrogant, stupid, and selfish. Never did I think even he could love or that someone could love him back. "Is that why you hate me?" I asked, and his perfect golden brows lifted in a curve with wonder. "Did you hate me because you have to leave your lover and come here to protect me?"

"Hate you?" He shook his head. "You are the rock that keeps me grounded on earth. Why will I hate you?"

He should be blubbering with alcohol in his head. He definitely hated me. It wasn't exactly lovely, with affection oozing when he would laugh out of my miseries, or dragged me anywhere he went, or called me with ridiculous names, or beat the shit out of me in the fighting pit.

"You hated me, bastard" He whispered and leaned his head against the trunk of the tree behind. "Had I not roused you, you would have hated the world. So, I allowed you to hate me before you ended up hating yourself."

The music began dulling from my ears, and I stopped scratching the wood to perfection. I focused on my breathing, on the surrounding wind, and the sound of blood pumping to my heart.

I thought about the days he had chased me in the horse rides. Mostly he would take me out when there was a harvest feast happening in the Hall. I had often thought he had been meaning to ridicule me in front of the small folks. It had never occurred to me that he was saving my face from the gossips of the town folks.

No! That can't be true!

None of it explained why he would beat me up in the courtyard. I began swimming into the memories of when he would throw the sword at me and call me for a fight. And in all those memories I appeared with a sour face and trembling lips, eyes red with unshed tears. I swung the wooden blade to beat him to a pulp. As much as I blame him now, for often throwing me on mud, and laughing at my failure, I clearly remember how much I craved to stab him. And I had tried. With all my heart and soul, anger and rage, burning from every muscle in the body to throw him down and stab his heart to see if it was rotting with worms.

But what if, what if he is telling the truth?

"You are lying!" I convinced myself. "You are lying now that I dared to question you."

Ser Jaime chuckled, his hands folded against his chest, eyelids closed as he kept dwindling down into a slumber. "Perhaps!" He admitted, and I tried to relieve my worry. I couldn't fathom to think I was wrong with my feelings about him, after all these years. It was hard to envision myself, to not hate him. It wasn't news that I hated him. The whole of Winterfell knew my feelings for him, and I even wondered if my King Father had been aware of it.

I allowed you to hate me before you ended up hating yourself!

I swallowed that punching pain in my guts and tried hard to not let the tears roll down. I couldn't cry. Especially not in front of him. He would… He would… take me to the courtyard and throw a sword at me, and mock me.

Oh God!

Could it be? Could it be that he was taking me to the courtyard and allowing me to fight him? Could it be that he was giving me a chance to vent out the anger that bubbled inside of me? No… Definitely not! I should be exaggerating his drunken stupor to be anything more than what it was. I was more than sure that he was going to drag me to the mountain top tomorrow. It was what he did after a common feast. I had hated him for troubling me. I had hated him for giving the terrible blisters and swelling ache to my legs. I had hated him for…

I hated him! Not the lords, not my King Father, nor my dead mother, not the Lord Stark or the Lady Stark or my cousins.

"I was so scared!" I whispered, looking down.

"I never left you alone." He mumbled like a faint whisper. "I was right behind you!"

I stared at him, but he said nothing more, already passing out from the heavy alcohol. I didn't have any words to thank him or I couldn't decide if I should be thanking him.

It wasn't easy to live here, even though I had kept telling myself that it would be better, the next day. Lady Catelyn's maiden house had lost a lot in the war and so she hated me rigorously with passion. Most of the household guards and the servants weren't especially kind to me, for the same reason that their fathers and husbands and brothers went to grave due to my mother's and father's love.

I still remembered when one of the guards swung a blade at me, to cut my little finger because he had lost all the ten fingers of his foot in the war. He had roughly cut the tip of my little finger when I was four years old and he would have cut my whole finger, if not for Ser Jaime's sword. I vividly remember how the ladies of the smaller houses would call me a "Cursed Princess" behind my back. I stopped attending feasts because of them. The old dressmaker, Chylla, had applied Poison Ivy on my silk dress that made my body turn purple. The Maester even said I would die miserably within two days. The dressmaker had been widowed because of the war and had lost one of her sons in the war. She had said, "An eye for an eye!" when she was brought to court. I had pitied her even when she had tried to kill me.

It took someone to venture into the wild woods to bring the herbs to counter the poison. I wondered if it was Ser Jaime who had gone into the woods at night for me. Now that I see him dozing beside me, even when the whole castle was rejoicing in merriment, here on this abandoned side where the Old Gods resided, I realized the truth. He came for me. He had been always there for me at all times, and I had been annoyed by his persistence to hurt me that I never looked beyond his mask.

I felt numb from the pains.

I felt robbed of the truth.

I felt cheated by the reality.

I had only known to hate Ser Jaime, and now with this reality, I wasn't sure what I would do without that hatred.

I rose, dragging his rattling golden armored hand, and he possessively wound his hand around my waist, instantly scanning the Godswoods, his other hand going to the hilt of his golden sword.

He was searching for an intruder, possibly threatened by my approach to wake him up. I had never woken him up. If I would find him drunk and wasted, I had made sure to bury him in the snow rather to offer a blanket. Sometimes, I had even thrown snowballs at his head when he would not be seeing me. What would that make of me?

"Are you fine?" He howled, dragging my body close to his own warmth, still searching all-around for enemies.

"You had no rights!" I screamed, pushing his scaled armor, that my palm was sliced by the sharp edges, and began bleeding. He was rattled with my anger and his forehead scrunched together in layers, looking down at me. "It was mine!" I howled. "You had no rights to take my burden. The burden and pain and anger were all mine. And you definitely had no right to make me hate you."

He must have blubbered the truth in the drunken stupor, and now that he was awakened like a fresh dew, his cheeks began heating up red. Would he have hidden the truth until one of us died?

"Why should you have to be the martyr? We could have been friends. We could have been much and more if you had not let me think…"

He leaned down and tipped my chin up with his forefinger to stare at my gray eyes. He had allowed his golden hair to grow longer, and for a moment I wondered if this was how her King Father looked like. No one could doubt Ser Jaime was handsome. Sansa often would become a puddle when he crossed her. He looked just like how Kings would be said in songs and because I hadn't seen how my Father looked like; I wanted to believe this was close to how he might be.

"Don't cry!" He whispered, leaning down, and his breath was filled with cloved wine and spiced ale. His soft lips pressed against my cheeks and I shivered when he wiped the saltwater with just his lips. "I have regretted doing many things, Lyarra. But I never regretted being a martyr for you. And I would do it again, even if it has to be done a thousand times."

He wasn't fine. Something was wrong with him, and his voice was almost close to sorrow when he walked back staggering like a fool, with crisscrossed legs. I wanted to brew my hatred for him, just for tricking me, but I ran to him and pulled his hand over my shoulder to help him to his chambers, hoping that no one would find it compromising.

I forgave him for lying but I couldn't forgive the one person at whom my wrath was aimed at.

King Rhaegar Targaryen!