A/N: Trigger warning for miscarriage references.

Two days later

Ashara sat on the hearth of the fireplace in the Great Hall with Dawn across her lap. She had not left her bed the day before, not even for the tower. She slept a leaden, dreamless sleep, interrupted by moments of waking in which she could not remember where she lay or who she was. Somehow, the sleep left her weak and bleary, but she could not neglect her duties any longer.

With a soft rag and a boar-hair brush, she cleaned the yellow sand and dirt from all the crevices near the hilt of the sword, then polished the golden stone that rose from the pommel like the rising sun. It was rather a miracle the sword still belonged to her family with Arthur slain in battle, but Ashara had never imagined there would come a day when she would be the one cleaning it.

"My lady?"

The sound of Ned Stark's voice made her jump, and she nicked her thumb on the side of the pale blade. The sting of it bloomed over her hand.

In an instant, he was before her, pressing down hard on her thumb with her polishing rag.

"Are you alright? I did not mean to startle you."

His hand was very warm, like evening sand, and Ashara found herself leaning into him before reality cleared her head and she forced herself away.

"Of course," she said briskly. "Only a scratch."

She rose, holding Dawn by the pommel, and gave him a most proper courtesy, staring at the floor.

"I thank you for bringing Dawn back to Starfall, my lord," she said stiffly, her voice like sand in her mouth. "And for...burying my brother as he wished. My family and my house are in your debt."

There was a stricken sort of silence.

"No, please, my lady that is not—please do not—I can't—" He sounded horrified. "It was the only thing to do. House Dayne certainly owes me nothing."

"A lesser man would not have done as you did, and I know you well enough to understand the world is full of lesser men."

Another silence.

Ashara did not know where to rest her eyes, but she was afraid to look upon his face. She knew herself, and she knew her heart. She feared she would not find the anger she ought to feel.

This man is the reason Arthur is dead, she tried to tell herself once more. He and his bannerman. You must loathe him.

But when she finally found the courage to meet his eyes, all that washed over her was longing for a life that would never be hers. She had no more anger left, only regret. Was she to resent the bannerman for protecting the life of his lord? Was she to blame Ned Stark for giving Arthur a quick end? She could not even hold on to her rage at Arthur for being so careless with his life.

He killed your kin. Do you not want to take revenge? Does your blood run so cold?

Perhaps it did. Her brother was dead, and here was his killer, a guest she'd accepted under her roof. Yet all she thought when she looked upon him was that he was not at fault.

She must be going mad. Or just frozen. Reason was always so cold, yet she could not help yielding her human heat to its unfeeling depths time and again. That was comforting in its way. When one was cold enough, one did not feel.

"Were you lost, my lord?" Ashara forced herself to ask.

He shook his head.

"No. I wished to speak with you—ask you some things—and your servant pointed me here."

Lyanna's son. He wanted to ask her about keeping his secret, she realized. She thought again of his plan to call the babe his own bastard, and her heart ached. He would have the world believe he broke his marriage vows to keep his promise to his sister.

Ashara nodded.

"If you'd wait a moment."

She turned back to the fireplace, built with ornate white-stone blocks. Stepping up on the high hearth, she lifted Dawn onto its glittering pegs, careful not to cut herself again. Arthur, naturally, had been most diligent in the upkeep of his blade. Her thumb still throbbed.

"This way, my lord," she said as she led the way behind the high table once more.

"Does the scabbard for Dawn not rest with the sword?" Ned asked. Ashara shook her head.

"When a new Sword of the Morning is chosen, he has his own scabbard made. When he—" the word caught in her throat. "When he dies, the scabbard is burned with the body."

With Arthur, there would only be the scabbard to burn. In his burial, too, his duty had come before family.

She led him to the Murmuring Yard directly this time. Her ancestors had built the courtyard behind the Council Hall to facilitate discreet conversation, and the sound of the waters masked any words from would-be eavesdroppers. She bade him sit near a fountain.

"I take it you wish me to list the people who know your secret," she started without preamble, eager to fill the discomfiting space between them. "You have met them all, save my lord brother. I trust all four with my life." She hoped that meant something to him.

He hesitated.

"Even Wylla?"

Especially Wylla.

"Did she not seem trustworthy?"

"No, only, she seemed rather…talkative."

"She is smarter than she appears. She only blathers on about trifling things." He looked unconvinced. Ashara pursed her lips.

"She was my handmaiden from the time I went to King's Landing until Lyanna arrived at the tower. She has seen me through rather many things, and never said a word."

Ashara remembered those lifeless evenings in her chambers on Dragonstone, staring at that ornate wooden box. There was a cold, damp pit where her heart once beat, and her only sensation was the warmth from the brazier Wylla burned at her feet.

For a moment Ned did not seem to understand, and then she watched the realisation hit him like a slap.

"At Harrenhal as well?"

"Yes. Like I said. Never a word."

"But…she did not recently have her own child, then? How can she be a wet-nurse?"

"Old Yli has herbs. It is not an uncommon thing. Any woman can nurse a babe."

But sometimes there is no babe to nurse, even when the woman has milk to give. Her own breasts had been full and aching for a sennight after the stillbirth, and many times a day Wylla had needed to change the fabric binding her chest, when they grew wet at baby Aegon's crying.

Her answer seemed to satisfy him, but Ashara spoke again.

"Regardless of trust, it might be best if I send them with you when you sail. Wylla, at the very least."

He opened his mouth to protest, but Ashara shook her head.

"You will not have anything prepared for the babe. And Jon will need a wet-nurse for the journey."

A curious crease appeared between his brows.

"I will have a nursery prepared before I return. I've already sent word back to Winterfell."

"You have? But how—"

"I have a son, my lady."

It was like someone had poured the fountain over her head.

"You…you need not speak in codes here, my lord."

"I speak truly, and not of Jon. My…wife…bore me a son."

All the air gushed from her lungs, and Ashara had never been so grateful for her years masking her heart at court. Somehow, she managed to stretch a smile over her face.

"My congratulations," she heard herself say as if from the far end of a tunnel. "You must be elated, to be blessed with an heir so soon."

Yet even as she spoke, something did not seem right with Ned's expression. Even with Lyanna's death, surely the birth of a son would bring some semblance of joy to his face. He looked sullen as stone.

"My wife bore me a son. And then she died."

"No." The word slipped from her mouth in a whisper, and again, without thinking, she reached for his hand. "Oh, Ned. Your wife and your sister, I…oh, I cannot tell you how sorry I am."

He nodded mutely, and Ashara saw his jaw tighten. How much loss could a person bear in so short a time?

Suddenly she saw her own hands, white as the Palestone Sword, clutching the wooden box with the tiny bones. Elia had tried to stop her seeing the babe, saying it would haunt her, but Ashara had pleaded.

Her head had been smaller than her own palm, her hands barely larger than her thumbnail, yet each finger had been perfectly formed, tinged with a beautiful, haunting blue. She had counted all her perfect fingers and toes over and over…her perfect, perfect girl, perfect in all ways save that she did not draw breath.

No one had been able to tell Ashara what she had done wrong, and no books at Starfall could provide her answers. Sometimes a woman is not suited to bear children, one tome had read, and Ashara had fled the library. Elia has stroked her hair and insisted it was not her fault, but if frail, delicate Elia could bring two healthy children into the world, what was wrong with her own body?

Ashara would have gladly died if it meant her babe could live. For a wild moment, she thought she might like to say this to Ned. Would it bring him comfort to know Lyanna and Lady Catelyn might have thought the same?

Comfort, she thought bitterly. Was it only days ago that she wished Ned here to give her comfort? Surely the gods were laughing at their clever little joke. And yet why did she want even now to lay her head against his tunic and feel his arms around her shoulders?

She became aware of his thumb stroking circles over the back of her hand. It felt right. Thawed her.

He killed your brother. He married another. He is not meant to be yours, Ashara Dayne.

She pulled her hand away, even as a little voice whispered that he was married no longer. The voice was ugly and selfish, but still she heard it.

"Do consider my offer about Wylla, my lord," she said stiffly. "Please believe I only want what is best for Lyanna's son. I...I held great affection for her."

He looked up at her, searching.

"Did you spend very long with her?"

"I arrived when Rhaegar left. Five moons, perhaps."

"I am grateful. You had every reason not to, given your friendship and your loyalties, and yet you did her a great kindness. I thank you."

She wanted to shake her head and tell him that she had gone because of him, because Lyanna had been his beloved sister. Instead, she shook her head and said,

"I did what was right. She was sixteen, with child and alone. She would have done the same for me. Or another woman."

That drew a little smile to his lips.

"Aye, she would have."

"Did she tell you how things happened? That she was not kidnapped?"

A shadow fell over his brow, and she could see his jaw tighten.

"She tried to. She was...weak, at the end."

Ashara tried not to imagine smiling, buoyant Lyanna lying in blood, pale as death and fading. Turning her eyes down to the coloured garden tiles, she recited all Lyanna had told her of the entire misfortune—how Aerys had thought her a traitor and sent his guards after her near Harrenhall; how Rhaegar had learned of the arrest and stolen her back to avoid war; how she had tried to send messengers to Lord Brandon and Lord Stark, but none had reached them; and finally how they hid in the ruins of Summerhall, not daring to emerge for fear of the king's soldiers, learning of news when things were too late. She had fallen in love with the prince then, and the prince with her, and they had married before a weirwood tree.

"You must see it was not her doing," said Ashara, when she saw how Ned's expression had grown hard. "I would not have told you all this if I thought you'd blame her."

"I do not. Not for my father and brother." He wiped a hand over his face. "But she should not have—he already had a wife! What was she thinking? And why did she not try harder to find me?"

Ashara shook her head. His eyes were rimmed with red from her words, and she wished she could take them back and tell him she knew nothing at all. But he deserved all the truth she could give him regarding this. He had nothing else of his sister left, nothing save Jon and this truth.

"What could she do in the midst of war? Cross enemy lines and pick through your camp herself? As for Elia—you will find a letter when my men bring back Lyanna's things." She had not thought of the scroll Lyanna had shown her for some moons now, but it had been just like Elia to send such a thing to her husband.

"She was weak from her pregnancies, and could give Rhaegar no more children. I do not understand it, but they both agreed adamantly he needed another. When they told her she could not be with child again—I have never seen her go so white. So it seems she wrote to them, and gave them her blessing." Elia had done her duty in her marriage, but passion…no, there had only been affection between them, lukewarm and placid.

Now Ned looked as if she had sprung three heads.

"But they were married," he said stubbornly. "How could the princess...?"

"She never loved the prince the way your sister did. If nothing else you can trust me in that. And I saw the letter. It was in her hand, and in her character." Arthur himself had ridden though the Kingswood in the dead of night to bring the letter back, and had refused to tell Ashara any more when she had pressed him.

Damn him, she thought again, her teeth grinding. Her brother, and Rhaegar, and their bloody secrets.

"It doesn't matter," said Ned. "No Septon would ever consider such a marriage valid."

"No, it does not. But they did not do it for that. You sister—she wished to be bound to him before your Old Gods." Lyanna's eyes had sparkled when she had said so to her. "He was the only bit of happiness she had left."

Ned had his forehead in his hands, and he looked at once like an old man burdened by the world and a boy lost in its tragedy. On instinct, Ashara extended her hand to draw him to her, for she desperately wished to cling to him and soothe both their hearts. At the last moment, she withdrew.

There was a bloody war tearing her conscience in two, the wound stinking of guilt and longing and the helpless irony of her life. She rose.

"Good day, my lord. You are welcome to the castle grounds and gardens. They might bring some solace."

O~O~O~O~O

The following day, Ashara shook Allyria awake before dawn and helped the drowsing child into white hemp mourning robes, tying a long, pointed hood over her head.

Allyria's eyelids drooped, but she gave Ashara a lazy grin.

"These hats are so silly."

"I know, love. We'll only have to wear them a little while."

"You look funny in yours, Ata. You should keep it on."

Under the fish-belly white of the sky, Ashara led her sister down to the docks, where Ryoon was waiting with one of the little catboats.

"Why are we going sailing in the dark?" asked Allyria.

"We aren't. We're going to the Ling."

"Are we going to visit father and my mother?"

"You can put a flower by their stones if you'd like," said Ashara, helping her into the boat as Ryoon untied the dock line.

Allyria nodded, and spent the short time on the water nodding off back to sleep on Ashara's shoulder.

The catboat needed little navigating as it flowed out with the tide. This far downstream, the estuary was dotted with stony outcrops rising from the foaming water, some overgrown with plantlife, others bare and pale—a landing for seabirds. The biggest outcrop her ancestors had named the Ait of Ling. Its formations were blanketed with a grove of junipers and pinsapo pines, and no one knew if the trees had grown naturally, or if some long ago Dayne had planted them amid the the rocks.

"Tacking, my lady," said Ser Ryoon as he turned into the island.

"Duck you head, love." Ashara gently pushed Allyria's head down with her own so the boom could pass over them. Ryoon eased the boat into the stone dock on the ait, and Ashara nudged her sister onto shore.

"Look Lyrie, the sea daffodils are up."

Her sister's eyes lit up.

"My mother loved them, didn't she?"

"Yes. Do you remember how to get to her stone?"

Allyria nodded.

"And would you place some flowers for our father and my mother as well? Do you remember where?"

"Alright."

"Be careful where you step, and come back here before the sky starts turning yellow."

Her sister disappeared in a blur of white. The girl had never known her mother, who had died after a fall from a horse not long after her birth. Ashara herself remembered little of woman who had been her stepmother for two years. She was spending most of her time at Sunspear then, coming home only for a turn of the moon each year, but the woman had been kind, always wore white daffodils in her hair, and was not unlike her own mother, whose memory was but a faded tapestry.

Near where they had docked was the funeral pyre, on which the family had burned their dead for ten millennia—or so the stories claimed. It was carved from the same stone that had built the foundations of Starfall, and could resist even dragon fire, as the Targaryens had learned when they could only melt the roofs off the castle.

Already Ryoon was setting twigs and moss upon the smooth white stone, and Ashara retrieved Arthur's scabbard from the boat. They had no real need for a true pyre of wood. There was no body to burn, though Ashara was glad for the scabbard, at least. What strange debts her family owed to Ned Stark now, but her ancestors would be placated. The dark wood of the scabbard was smooth and worn under her hands, and she ran her fingers over it absently as she laid it on the kindling.

When Allyria returned, she led her sister to the pyre.

"Do you remember our brother Arthur, Allyria?" Arthur had not come home to Starfall in years, and before that, he had made only short visits.

Allyria's brow crinkled.

"Is he tall?"

"Yes, very tall."

She nodded wisely. "I remember him. I sat on his shoulders in the town once and I could see the tops of everybody's head. And he likes pomegranate cream tart and orange cake."

Ashara almost laughed.

"How do you know that?"

"You always say. When we have pomegranate tarts and orange cake you always say, 'oh, Arthur would be sad to miss this' when we eat them."

"I do, don't I?" Arthur always did have a sweet tooth. "Do you know what Arthur was, Lyrie?"

She thought for a moment.

"Maada and Rena sometimes say Ser Arthur Dayne has Dawn and is the best knight in the Seven Kingdoms and brave and also v…valint and never loses a fight. And I'm lucky he is my brother."

Ashara found herself digging her nails into her palm so she would not shake.

"He was all these things, love. He was a knight of the Kingsguard. They wear white cloaks and swear to protect the king and his family with their lives. Did you learn about that with Maester Bors?"

"Yes."

"Well, Arthur always did his duty. It was the most important thing to him. And in doing that duty, he…he died."

Allyria frowned again.

"He went where my mother and father went?"

She swallowed past the burn in her throat.

"Yes, love. Yes, he did."

"Are we here to visit him too?"

"We are here to give him funeral rites. Now, come here." She led her to the pyre. "You see this? This was his scabbard, which he used to carry Dawn. We will burn this, and its ashes will carry his spirit out to sea, where it will join those of our ancestors. Do you understand?"

Her father had once said those words about her mother, and Dev had once said those words of her father. It was calming to explain such things to her little sister. Ashara was thankful the words came so easily.

"Yes."

For a few moments they waited, and when the first rays of the sun burst above the Red Mountains, setting the water alight, Ashara touched the torch to the little pyre.

A/N: Apologies if you're getting impatient for them to like, just speed things up. I am also impatient, but I want the story to progress naturally even more. Just know that if you're frustrated, I'm even more frustrated. You're not exactly getting a slow-burn, but uh...hopefully things pay off in future chapters? IDK guys. Also, I've realized I'm really awful at naming chapters. Like, why did I start doing that? Should I stop?

Lastly, I'm sort of realising I'm in a little over my head. If any of you would like to Beta for me (helping mostly with plot development and character arcs), please let me know. I will...idk, name a character after you? Let you name the future direwovles? Name a direwolf after you, if you're into that?