When Ashara had made her rounds of the guest rooms above the Great Hall, making sure all in the king's party were settled in for the night, she descended the stone staircase once more, careful with her steps, for the wine still blurred the corners of her mind and vision.
She slipped into the hall to survey the tidying after the feast one last time. Her feet were sore and her back faintly ached, but the entire evening had flowed one entertainment into another, one course after the next without any hiccups, and Ashara was pleased with herself.
In the dimming light of the wall sconces, servant girls cleaned bones off floors and mopped up spilled wine. Kitchen maids were clearing away the uneaten food into platters, and one of them was gathering the bread trenchers soaked in meat juices in a bucket to give out to townsfolk and villagers who worked the surrounding lands.
It was a tradition of benevolence and charity on the part of the lord, but the summer had been long and Ned was a good lord besides. Ashara was fairly certain that no family relied on this stale bread to fill their bellies, but instead took it as extra feed for their pigs.
Servants had cleared the tables to the sides of the hall and now lowered the vast iron chandeliers to the floor, flicking off the melted wax stubs and replacing them.
Ashara tried not to think of how many candles they had used up tonight alone, and how many more they would be needing for the next weeks as they fed the king's retinue every evening. And that was just the beginning—she could not let her mind wander now to how much food and drink and fresh linens would need to be added to the castle accounts.
Ashara sighed as she paced around the Great Hall one last time before making her way back to the Great Keep proper. She had never wanted for coin in her life, but frugality with money seemed etched into her from birth. Growing up, her brothers and friends had often teased when she had hoarded silver coins in her chests. 'Whatever do you keep coin for, Ash? No one is asking you to pay for food and clothes, and you never buy frivolities as it is."
Still, she had meant her earlier words to Ned. The coin for this royal visit was, in the end, money relatively well spent, no matter that the sums on the page had made Ashara grit her teeth and grimace more than once in the past month.
Perhaps the wine had played with her mind more than she'd known, for she decided now that she was being ridiculous. They had plenty of coin to spare, what with the timber, furs, and marble trade, and even more so since she had sent off that letter to Hoster Tully the year the Greyjoy Rebellion had broken out. Why did she fret so about money? She was wasting her time.
Years ago, in an effort to convince Ned to write Robert and legitimise Jon, Ashara had spent days rummaging through old Stark records, determined to find precedence for legitimising a bastard even when the lord had a true-born heir. To her frustrated dismay, she had found no such document, but what she did come across made her blood boil. Hoster Tully had promised a great many things in the marriage contract between Lady Catelyn and Brandon Stark—none of which he had fulfilled when Catelyn married Ned.
When she had ceased composing vehemently curse-ridden missives in her head, she had sat in her solar and penned the slippery trout a letter in her primmest hand.
My Lord Tully,
It is my hope that this winter has been easy on you and yours. We in the North struggle as we do every winter, though with your generous discounts for foodstuffs imported from the Riverlands, the lives of the smallfolk and lords alike have been greatly eased. However, it has recently come to my attention that the discounted prices we pay are three quarters the asking price of Riverlands farmers and not the two fifths as dictated by the marriage contract between yourself and the late Lord Rickard.
Surely this is a miscommunication between our steward and yours, and I am certain discrepancies will be remedied by your next shipment.
Further, it appears that Winterfell was never sent any of Lady Catelyn's dowry—including coin and furniture. Again, I am certain this was an oversight on the part of your servants, for surely they have been kept busy in the past years. Nonetheless, if you could remedy this oversight as soon as is convenient, it would be greatly appreciated.
Finally, I understand that, over the years, you have expressed your concerns to my lord husband that your grandson is being raised alongside a bastard-born child. I can understand that you might perceive this as a slight, and you have my sincerest apologies for any offence, but I assure you that my lord husband means no insult.
In truth, he has long thought of legitimising his bastard son. He loves the child dearly, and it would no doubt ease your mind if the child also bore the Stark name, and no longer the stain of bastardy. However, I am afraid he has been hesitant to offend me and my Dornish relations, and so has not written to the king.
However, if legitimising his bastard son would put your mind at ease, Lord Tully, I would be willing to oblige. In Dorne, we do not despise children born outside the bounds of marriage. If you wish it, I would write to the king directly. King Robert would agree at once to such a trifle, and my husband would not feel he was causing offence to me and mine.
Please do write back and inform me as to the date we can expect the coin and shipment of foodstuffs from Riverrun, and if I can dispel your worries about the moral influences on your grandson by asking King Robert to legitimise Jon Snow.
May the Seven keep you.
Yours Sincerely,
Ashara Dayne, Lady of Winterfell
Hoster Tully never did write a return letter—gods only knew why, for she had been most courteous—but he did dispatch coin and furniture North most promptly. News had arrived by then that Balon Greyjoy had risen against the crown, and Ned had called his banners and was preparing for war.
Mere days before they were set to march, the coin, furniture and foodstuffs had arrived from Riverrun, and half the Northern lords had stared at the shipment slack-jawed as Ashara briskly set about making her inventory.
Of course, she never would have followed through on her threat, no matter how devoid of logic were Ned's reasons. Yet Hoster Tully did not know that, and why should she not use his ignorance and misplaced prejudice to their benefit? He was the party at fault to begin with. She was only righting a wrong.
And this had been, besides, the one sliver of good that had come from the rumour ordeal her poor Jon had endured. Nothing could make up for how her heart had shattered when she'd needed to snuff out the desperate hope in Jon's eyes that evening, but she would take any good the gods offered. When she had explained all this to a half-affronted Ned, he had been silent for many moments before pinching the bridge of his nose.
"You win, Ash," he'd sighed, sitting back to look at her, both amused and defeated. "I am only glad you have no reason to work against me."
In the following months, when winter loomed grey and hopeless outside her window and her empty bed suddenly stretched out like an endless wasteland, she would sometimes remember his face then—and their laughter-laced ardour that followed—and it would get her through one more night alone.
Ashara had been letting her mind wander so freely that the blonde figure suddenly in her path nearly shocked a scream from her lips. She tripped on her step and pressed her palm into the wall for support. The stone was rough. Good. Warm. Steady.
"Lady Lynesse," she said when she had recovered, holding up her lantern and squinting. "My apologies, I was not watching where I was going."
Lynesse Hightower stood in the twisting corridor connecting the back of the Great Hall to the Great Keep, a great white mantle wrapped around her small frame, her golden head reflecting the moonlight through the thin windows. She seemed to glow.
She smiled, her delicate features precise and exquisite.
"Not at all, Lady Stark. I fear I have startled you."
Ashara returned her smile.
"Are you lost? I fear these halls are old and full of false turns."
"It would seem I am. How feather-brained of me," she said, her eyes still on Ashara's, not looking the least bit embarrassed.
"Well, if you'll follow me then." Ashara gestured to the way she had come, and Lady Lynesse followed.
What a pair Lynesse Hightower made with Jaime Lannister, Ashara could not help thinking as they wound their way back to the Great Hall and the guest chambers above, exchanging trifling pleasantries. Both were golden and radiantly beautiful. A match made by the gods. Surely there were Westerland bards singing of the couple already.
As soon as Tywin Lannister had assured Ser Jaime's release from the King's Guard, he had set about finding him a wife, but whether by his own reputation or Ser Jaime's reluctance, it had been six years before a bride was finally secured.
The lords of the realm may have collectively turned a deaf ear to the rumours that Tywin Lannister had ordered Princess Elia and her babes butchered during the Sack of King's landing. They may even have sighed and shaken their heads in defeat when the new king had wed Cersei, for though many knew the truth, they could not put aside that Tywin Lannister was powerful and rich, and the crown needed his alliance. However, most lords also loved their daughters, and so when it came to the thought of their own girls marrying into such a blood-stained family, most were hesitant.
Leyton Hightower, it appeared, was not among those hesitant lords. The Hightowers had long been ambitious—their role in the Dance notwithstanding, they were always a quiet, shadowed influence at court and in the Reach—and Leyton Hightower must have been over the moon at the opportunity to have both the Reach and the Westerlands ruled by his future grandsons.
During the tourney at Lannisport to celebrate King Robert's triumph over the Ironborn, Ashara and Ned had been two of at least five hundred crowded into the sept as Jaime Lannister, his face lacking all signs of a happy bridegroom, draped his cloak around an eighteen-year-old Lady Lynesse.
However, though Alerie Hightower had given birth to three sons and a daughter in the years since she had married Mace Tyrell, it appeared that ten years of marriage had not produced a single Hightower heir to Casterly Rock. By all accounts, relations between husband and wife were cordial—even warm. Lynesse was often at court with her husband and his siblings, and Ashara's informants never heard of Jaime frequenting whorehouses or entertaining other bedfellows.
Yet it had been no love match—anyone in the sept that day could see that. And if they had grown amorous over the years, Ashara had certainly noticed no sign of it in the bailey yard this afternoon.
Still, even had they only done their marital duty, the couple should surely have children by now. She studied the fine-boned woman walking beside her. There was a carefree buoyancy about her, as if she really were but a pretty bird, and Ashara decided that this was not a woman strained by an inability to produce an heir or weighed down by the grief of multiple miscarriages.
Ashara narrowed her eyes. What were the Lannisters playing at? What was this strange marriage?
Or perhaps she was wrong by leagues. Perhaps it had simply been too many years since she was at court among those with many masks over their faces and layers of silks to hide their lives. Perhaps she could no longer read others as clearly as she once did.
"Tell me, Lady Stark, how have you lived up here these many years?" They were on the stairs, and Lady Lynesse stopped to lean back against the railing, watching her with rapt blue eyes.
"I have been cold in my thickest furs ever since we crossed the Neck, and yet it is still summer. You must be used to warmer climes still. How have you survived?"
"It is not so cold inside this castle," she said. "Surely you have found the walls are warm? It is warmer still in my rooms."
"So. You do not leave your rooms during the winter, then?"
Ashara laughed.
"It is a struggle, but I do try to stay in the castle when it is too cold."
"It must have been hard for you. Not just the weather. All these Northmen seem so…different. Most boisterously forthright, yet you don't seem fazed by them at all."
Ashara felt her eyebrow twitch, and she motioned that they should keep climbing the steps.
"It has been seventeen years, Lady Lynesse. I am rather used to the ways of the men up here. There is rather a charm to their...forthright manners, as you say."
"And the women? Already I have heard tales of warrior women from a House…Mormont? Tell me, did you raise your daughters to ride into battle alongside their brothers?"
It was Ashara who stopped short in the empty corridor now, glancing curiously sideways at Lynesse Hightower. What had she and her goodsister the queen been discussing? Surely Cersei had yet to inform her of Arya's shocking pastimes. What had this woman been tasked with weaselling out of her before the king had even arrived at Winterfell?
"Most Northern houses do not train their daughters to be warriors," she replied carefully. "I have seen more Dornishwomen wield weapons. And if the gods are good, no one will be riding into battle again in our lifetime, wouldn't you say, Lady Lynesse?"
Lady Lynesse smiled again, slow and full, and inclined her head.
"Of course. As you say, Lady Stark. If the gods are good."
Gods, this woman might look like the Maiden herself, but there was nothing innocent about that smile. Again, her mind drifted back to the cursory reports she'd had on the Lannister manse in King's Landing. Not once was Lady Lynesse seen entertaining improper guests, and not once was she observed or rumoured to carry on with other men. Truly, she was faithful to her husband with whom she shared no passion? With a smile like that?
They had come to the door to her chambers, and Ashara pushed it open for her. She stepped just inside, but turned to face Ashara before she could bid her goodnight.
"Lady Stark, you have been so gracious a hostess thus far." Languidly, she reached up a slender hand to tuck a loose lock of hair behind her ear, her fingers lingering in the gold strands beside her throat. "I think I shall greatly enjoy my visit, despite the cold."
"I hope you will. You and the king and queen."
"I do hope you will consider me a friend. You seem accustomed to the North, as you say, but surely it must be lonely for you, a southern woman up here all by yourself."
Something was strange about her words and the lithe way her voice sounded—too familiar?—but Ashara could not quite place her finger on the pulse of it.
"You are very kind, Lady Lynesse."
"Oh, but please, you must call me Nessa. All my friends do." Ashara would stake her life to wager that Jaime Lannister did not call this woman 'Nessa', but before she could think more on the strange turn this interaction had taken, Lynesse had put her hand on her arm.
"And your name is Ashara, is it not? How very beautiful. I've truly never met any woman so beautiful as you."
Her jaw fell slack.
Understanding crashed over her, and suddenly hysterical mirth rose like steam in her throat. Gods help her, it had truly been twenty years since she'd had a woman approach her thus, and her eyes had been so clouded by time and disuse that she had missed the signs right before her.
Pieces settled into place then—Lynesse Hightower's supposed lack of liaisons, the bland amicability between husband and wife, the look the woman had levelled on her when she'd found her in the corridor…Had she truly been lost? Doubtful. She must have known Ashara would walk back that way.
It might have been two decades since she had shared a woman's bed, but it would seem Ashara had yet to lose the look about her that invited such attentions. Or mayhaps Lynesse was only influenced by knowledge of where Ashara had been born. She pulled her hand away.
"I am sorry," said Ashara, a conciliatory smile on her lips. "I do believe I have misled you."
Sure enough, Lynesse Hightower frowned, her knotted brows like wisps of feathers in the candlelight.
"I don't understand. You are Dornish, are you not? Surely your marriage is no hindrance to you."
The laughter bubbled past her lips before she could stop herself.
"Oh, there is much about the Dornish you misunderstand. We are a whole kingdom, not one person." She paused, considering if she spoke too much, but it was late, and she felt light with wine and humour. "You are an enchanting woman, Lynesse Hightower. There was a time I would have accepted your invitation without a second thought. But not now." She smiled her proper hostess smile.
"Good night."
As she ambled back through the winding corridors and up the steps to her rooms, Ashara threw her head back and laughed and laughed, letting her mirth bounce about the dancing grey walls.
Oh, she had spoken true. Perhaps Lynesse Hightower did not have the look of the kind of women Ashara once found herself drawn to, but she was alluring and exquisitely beautiful, and at eight and ten Ashara would have happily spent the night and more with her.
Yet now...now it felt strange to be so patently desired by someone who was not her husband. Not objectionable, perhaps, but the interlude had made her dizzy with recollections of her libertine youth. Her body was a gift to her, she had once thought, and she used it as such—a weapon sometimes, a tool in others; a gift to be bestowed on a lover, or a way to barter pleasures for herself.
Sex was wild, or lewd, or beautiful, or comforting. Or simply an hour or two of diversion. Yes, had she never known the feel of Ned Stark's hands and mouth on her skin, Lynesse Hightower would have been a welcome diversion.
But she had. She did. When they had danced that first night at Harrenhal, Ashara had been loath to let go of his hand when the line broke with the music, so intoxicating was the texture of his skin on her palm. And when she kissed him the next day, his grey eyes glinting with surprise, the touch of his warmth was not on her body, but somewhere deep in her being.
She had been happy with her lot before she ever met Ned Stark, for she had not known, before, that lying with a person could mean she gave her glowing, lonesome heart into their hands. And after, there could be no returning to the way she had used her body before, for now she knew it was a gift she wished to share with Ned alone, as he shared his with her, and through them her entire being became his.
For nineteen years she had lived as a frog in the bottom of a well, looking up at the patch of sky, believing the world was only as big as the rim. Ned Stark had pulled her out of the well and into the sea, and she saw the endless blue expanse around her. When he stood beside her with his strong hand around hers, she could reach it all.
Ashara laughed again as she climbed the steps to her chambers, the flickering candlelight making her head spin. How different her life could have been, all alone, and how she would have lived, not ever knowing what it felt like to soar through the endless sky.
She stopped before her chamber and slipped inside.
000
"Husband?"
Ashara shut the oaken door with a click, the mirth still clinging to her face. Her entire body was humming, and when Ned turned to face her in only trousers and shirt, her heart jumped, just a bit.
He smiled at her, half bewildered, though his eyes locked on hers and would not let go.
"Back at last. What is so amusing?"
He walked slowly to where she leaned against the door, and Ashara reached for the open collar of his shirt, playing with the fabric between her fingers.
"Oh, just…this life, really. People, and happenstance, and the choices we made."
He looked down at her, eyebrows raised, but she just laughed and pulled his mouth to hers. He tasted faintly of wine still, and she was drunk again, or perhaps she was never sober. The very smell of him was as hot as his touch, and his lips were soft, though they were demanding this night.
A low growl rumbled in the back of his throat, and suddenly he had pressed her into the door, his whole body against the length of hers. She heard herself gasp. It was like he had lit her skin on fire, and she could feel him burning through the fabric of his shirt, though even that last barrier she desperately wanted gone.
"Why are you still dressed," she breathed when he'd pulled away for air. Laughing, she divested him of his shirt and then his trousers, and he unlaced her gown and pulled it and her shift over her head in one motion. For just a moment she shivered in her smallclothes, but then his hard body was against hers again, and behind her, the wood of the door was smooth on her back.
His hand slid to her hips, undoing the ties there, and she let him lift her as she wrapped her legs around his waist, their lips still joined. She felt the raw hunger stir in her, and she made a needy sound, then flushed when she felt his satisfied smile. He was hard already—she could feel him pressed against her, silky and unyielding—and it sent a lick of flame rising in her centre.
He wanted her. He had wanted her all evening. He had wanted her all these years, and still the knowledge never failed to make her weak-limbed and giddy. With fumbling fingers, she gripped the length of him and heard his breath catch. She smiled to herself and guided him into her, the feel of his erection hot and slick and so sweet against her folds.
She moaned into his mouth as she sank onto him, feeling the rumble of his growl deep in her own chest. For some heartbeats they stayed thus, their bodies tangled together, kissing as if desperate to drink the other in, until Ashara rolled her hips, and Ned groaned almost in pain and slammed her back into the door.
He took her there, claimed her, pressed against the wood, his unyielding fingers digging into her as he drove himself inside. Her desire pooled, aching in her belly. He was seldom so rough with her, but a dark corner of her craved the heady mix of pain and pleasure so sharp it flared white in the dark of the room. Yes, she thought. Yes.My body, my heart, my very being. You claimed them all decades ago, and I'm yours, all of me, always.
She bit his shoulder. He hissed through his teeth, and she let her body take in his storm as it was meant to. She had been thrumming for his touch all evening, ever since she had teased him and he had turned those feral eyes on her. Gods, but this man was the very essence of her life. How had she lived half of it without him, she wondered, and told him so between her gasps.
"Don't you know, Ned Stark? You make me mad for you."
He made a hungry sound in his throat, but suddenly braced against the door, ceasing his movements. Ashara felt herself squirm against him, her nails sinking into his back at the pressure he had trapped in her.
"Shh," he whispered in her ear. She stilled, heat creeping under her skin, and then she heard herself whimper as he carried her away from the door, the movement pressing him deeper into her body.
Yet when he had laid her on the bed, he did not rise over her but instead kissed down her stomach to the damp curls between her legs. She felt his tongue on the sensitive skin.
"Oh, you are going to kill me."
He hummed, a smile in his voice, and the vibrations of that were delicious too.
He teased her with his tongue and fingers, sucking on the bud there until Ashara thought she might scream. Everything in her begged for more of his fingers pressing inside her, more of the glorious friction of his tongue, more of his stubble rubbing wicked fire against her thighs, more, just…
He stopped. She cried out at the sudden loss of his touch.
"What…why'd you…don't stop."
He looked up at her, catching her eye. Very deliberately, he moved a finger back in, deep, and she gasped, the pleasure of it sharp. His eyes were keen and wild, like those of a wolf sighting it's prey.
"I think, wife, that I still need to repay you for teasing me at the feast."
She gasped again, half laughing, but then his mouth was on her once more, and the sound melted into a moan in her throat. Oh, but she should not have teased him so, she thought distantly as she writhed against his mouth. Yet she would do it again in a heartbeat, for the torment was ecstasy rolled into one and she wanted it all.
She had not known Ned Stark to be this rogue in their youth, but the years had made him wicked, or perhaps it had been Ashara herself who had pulled this from behind his solemn mask. Over and over he brought her to the very edge, tossing her about in a sea of flames, yet he knew her body well and denied her release until she was a trembling, begging mess tangled in their sheets.
"Ned, oh Ned, please…"
And finally, he coaxed her over the precipice, and she did not know if she fell or soared, only that his hands gripped her to this world. She saw sparks behind her eyes, felt only Ned's mouth against her, and it was glorious, glorious...she shattered and heard her own cries echo back from the grey walls.
Her body was limp for some heartbeats, but Ned did not give her time to recover. He sank into her then, both of them burning, the heat of him bright and hard. His movements were erratic—almost desperate as she had been—but nothing mattered save that he was inside her. Nothing mattered save that he desired her so.
She wrapped her legs around him and thrust her hips up to meet him, grinding into him until he, too, broke apart above her, groaning her name as he spilled himself like liquid fire against her womb.
In the flickering light of a single candle, Ashara lay across Ned's chest, her fingers brushing through the wiry hair there, listening to the slowing beat of his heart. He seemed to have dozed for some time—or perhaps it was she who slept—the upheaval of the long day catching up to them.
They were not so young anymore. The years had etched lines onto their faces, though deeper around their eyes than between their brows. Childbirth had left silvery marks on her skin and softened her breasts so they no longer sat so high. His muscles had toughened with time, lined with sinew, the skin not so taut as before and rougher beneath her hand.
Oh, they are not old, perhaps, but she was not truly keeping an anxious count over the years. He had been carved into her very bones for more than half her life now, and she felt they had grown into each other like the weirwood tree in the godswood had entwined itself into the castle beneath their feet. Beyond time. Beyond age. He was in every breath she took, and every smile that came to her lips.
Ashara shifted her weight as Ned seemed to stir, and she felt his seed between her legs, still slick and warm. He opened his eyes then, the firelight making his pupils glow soft grey. The corner of his mouth lifted. He reached up to curl a lock of her hair around his finger.
"Gods, but you are perfect, Ash. Especially when I look at you like this."
"Oh? After you've thoroughly debauched me, you mean?"
His laugh rumbled pleasantly against her breasts, She pressed a kiss to the spot between his collarbones and smiled, but it broke into a yawn. He laughed again.
"Go to sleep," he said, his hand stroking through her hair. "You've been working all month for this visit."
"Hmm, but you have not yet told me what the king said to you this afternoon," she murmured, finding his chest the perfect pillow for her head.
"I will," he said, and his voice was like a brush of fur against her ear. "There is much to discuss, but it can wait. Sleep first."
So she slept.
000
In the old stables, Ashara's direwolf let out a soft howl, the sound drifting into their open window like the sweet middle notes of a flute. Ned leaned against the sill, listening for the squeaking reply of the pups, but Winterfell's stone and water walls were solid against sound. If the pups were sleeping in the children's rooms with the tapestries pulled over latched windows, they likely did not hear their mother, but even if they did, Ned would not hear their replies.
The wolf mother had shown no displeasure at seeing her pups follow his children away from her. Throughout the day they would find her in the old stables, still healing from her antler wound, and feed from her, and let her lick them, and burrow into her fur. But when one of the children came calling, they would jump up and run at the sound of their new names, and the mother would simply nudge the pups along with her nose.
The mother herself seemed in no rush to leave. Ashara came down to sit by her each day, despite her busy preparations, and sometimes Ned came into the old stables to see his wife stroking the beast between the ears while singing under her breath.
She was strong enough to take short walks around her courtyard now, frightening both soldiers and horses half out of their wits, but Ned had issued orders that she be given a wide berth and left alone, and not once did she even bare her teeth. Soon, Ash told him, she would be well enough to go hunting in the woods around the castle. How she knew such things were beyond him.
Ned had to admit that perhaps Ashara was right about the wolves. Some reason was compelling the mother to stay at Winterfell as she had ten years ago, and for all his efforts, he had not been able to keep the children away from the pups, who followed them around as if they really were little dogs. So be it then. Ned had long ago learned that when it came to his children, it was best not to try reining in their nature.
The wind picked up outside, winding around him, crisp and fresh against the heat of Ashara's rooms.
In the past month, he had also heard whispers among the older guards and servants who had been at Winterfell for decades. A good omen was the wolf's reappearance, they all agreed, as her first stay had been an omen of victory over the Ironborn and the coming of this long summer. Ned did not believe such things, but did nothing to discourage the whisperings, especially as all were convinced the good tidings were the gods approving of his wife.
A great number of "good omens" had indeed fallen on the North in the years after his marriage—the direwolf, the meteor, the great increase in their populations and coffers. Some were Ashara's doing, naturally—without her not nearly so many would have survived the winters with fingers, toes and lives intact, and it was her relations who helped build trade with Essos and better fleets through the North—but some, such as the meteor and their Ironborn victory, were mere happenstance.
Yet, if his lords and smallfolk wished to credit Ashara with the North's good fortunes these seventeen years gone, Ned saw no reason to discourage them. He had once worried that the North would not take to his southern-born wife, and the present outcome was one he had received with near-elated amazement.
Dispelled, too, were his fears that Ashara would not take to his home. She had told him more than once that he had no reason to worry, and yet he had not truly believed her and harboured the secret fear for a whole year into their marriage. But she was tougher than her looks would suggest—as he should have known as soon as he'd seen her put her knives in those men in King's Landing—and though the children teased their mother for being perpetually cold when out riding, his wife had adapted to the North as if she had been born to it.
"I have you with me," she had said of the matter airly, but Ned had heard the truth in her voice. "I can brave anything and carry on so long as I have you with me. The cold is nothing."
The wolf howled again, a lone melody in the chill night, and behind him, Ned heard his wife shift amid the quilts. He turned to see her sitting up amid the pillows, the furs pulled up to cover half her chin, her eyes like amethysts glittering in the soft candlelight.
"If you must open the windows, you could at least have the decency to come back and keep me warm."
He chuckled but complied, gathering her into him, and she sighed, sinking into his arms.
It was several long moments before Ned spoke.
"I did not refuse him directly. He did not give me the chance." She peered up at him. "But I will. I told him I had to discuss matters with you, but in a few days, I will tell him no."
"Good," she said, though she worried her lip.
"What is it?"
"'Tis only…can you just say no? I have given it thought this past moonturn, and now I fear your refusal may plant seeds of doubt in his mind."
"Doubt? About what?"
"Your loyalty. Your motives." She levelled him a long look until she was sure he understood that she referred to Jon, and he felt himself wince. "If you refuse, he will no doubt wonder why and wish to dig for answers. Have you not said you cannot have Robert notice any oddities?"
Ned shook his head. No, surely not.
"Robert would not doubt me, not for this. We were closer than brothers. He loves me. If I refuse him, he will roar and curse and bluster, and in a week we will laugh about it together. I know the man!"
Her mouth twisted.
"You knew the man. Can you truly say you know the king who rode into our bailey this day? There was a moment you did not even recognise him. I saw it in your eyes. Seventeen years in which one is denied nothing will change any man, and Robert has always seemed the kind to be exceedingly susceptible."
He stared at her, bewildered.
"So you believe I should take the offer?"
"Of course not."
"Then…"
She groaned in frustration and turned into his chest.
"I do not know, Ned. Of course you must not go, but you cannot tell him outright. Perhaps there is a way to put it in his head that one of his brothers is a better choice, but for the life of me I have not yet thought of it."
Ned sighed, weariness washing over him like the tide. The idea of playing these games once more around Robert dropped a leaden ball of dread in his gut, yet Ashara's next words sent a deeper pain through him.
"And what did the king say of Jon Arryn?" she asked, voice soft.
Ned closed his eyes against the empty, cold space that had opened up in him since he had heard the news.
"He did say it was all very sudden," Ned answered slowly. "Robert held a tourney for Prince Joffrey's name day, and Jon seemed at the pinnacle of health then. Yet two weeks later, he was dead, burned away by fever. A disease of the guts and stomach, the maesters say. Perhaps an infection of some sort. "
Ashara's had gone very still, eyes fixed on a spot on the quilts, and Ned looked down at her.
"What's wrong?"
For some moments she was silent, but finally she shook her head and the tension left her body.
"Nothing," she murmured, though her brow was still knit.
"Ashara?"
She met his eyes then and gave him a sad smile.
"I am so, so sorry. It must still hurt, his loss. You had not seen him so many years besides, and I know you miss him dearly."
Her warmth was like a balm, and he covered the hand she had laid on his arm.
He wished not to talk of misfortune, not to talk of the perplexing hardships set in their path, yet there was more news still.
"That is not all," he said. "Robert said…he wishes to join our houses. He wants to betroth Arya to Prince Joff—."
"Absolutely not!" she gasped, cutting him off.
She pushed himself up on her elbow then to gape down at him, eyes huge.
"Gods, I had thought the queen was behaving strangely, showing such interest in Arya. Absolutely not, Ned."
For a moment her vehemence surprised him, and he raised his eyebrows in question. Then her fingers were a vice on his forearm, and he realised he was being simple-minded, for of course, the very notion would upset her.
"I watched a girl I loved with all my heart marry a prince and die for it," she said, her voice a hoarse whisper, her gaze frozen to his.
"You did too, did you not?"
Her eyes were endless pools of violet, like the black pools in the godswood, deep enough to fall into. Ned felt a chill accompany the familiar bite of grief, already so close to the surface from his trip down to the crypts.
Lyanna. And Elia.
"Ned, no daughter of mine is going to marry a prince. I forbid it."
He cupped her cheek in his hand, a show of understanding, and nodded his agreement, closing his eyes to shut away the old ache. She was not done, however.
"If nothing else," she said, "Prince Joffrey himself is beyond objectionable."
He opened his mouth to protest, for perhaps he was arrogant and took too closely after his Lannister relations, but he was still Robert's son.
She held up her hand. "You did not see how he was looking at Sansa all evening. I wished to gouge his eyes out, and so did Arya and Robb, by the looks of it."
Ned felt his protective anger flare, and he stiffened. How had he missed that? Still, that certainly sounded like Robert in his youth, and he told her so. She narrowed her eyes at him.
"'Tis not the same. I will not argue with you, because our daughter is not a simpering fool, but you will see it for yourself soon. The boy's presence chills me. Robert will betroth my daughter to Joffrey over my dead body."
"Oh, Ash, it will not come to that. It was only a suggestion," said Ned, and he hoped he was right—that his best friend had not changed from the man he once knew.
"Good," she nodded, tucking herself into the crook of his shoulder again. "Good." She tilted her head, considering, her face softening out of her agitation.
"Besides, the queen has met Arya this evening. And asked our daughter about her pastimes.
"Oh."
She gave him a sideways look.
"Precisely. You needn't worry about refusing him this, I think. No doubt Cersei Lannister would rather burn down the Red Keep before she lets Arya marry her precious son."
They both sighed, and for a long while they lay with their thoughts. Ashara was no doubt plotting how they would convince Robert to withdraw his offer of Handship, but Ned simply could not believe it would come to this. Surely, if he just explained that his duties were up here in the North, that his own kingdom needed him here, that he was not suited—
A knock came at their chamber door, loud and unexpected, startling them both. Ned turned, frowning.
"What is it?"
It was the guard Desmond who answered.
"Ser Brynden's returned, milord. He has just ridden through the gates, and begs an urgent audience."
Brynden Tully. Back from seeing to Jon Arryn's widow in the Eyrie.
Ashara sat bolt upright in the bed, brows knotted, and shivered in her nakedness. Ned pulled the furs around her as they exchanged a look, and she tilted her head towards her library turret.
"Send him up here then," called Ned, and Desmond was off in a patter of footsteps.
He got up from the bed then to retrieve both their dressing gowns, and they dressed in a tense silence.
"It is past midnight," Ashara finally said, her voice low. "I think Ser Bryden did not ride back through the cold dark for the pleasure of our company."
"No," answered Ned, walking again to the window. Outside, the direwolf howled once more, but this time there was a desolate taint to the sound that sent a foreboding chill down his back.
"No, he did not."
A/N: My betas (Captain Fuckew McHugerage and CMedina) are actually amazing and I legit would not have half the ideas I do in this fic if it weren't for them. So. Thanks guys.
I've changed the dates of summer and winter a bit to suit my narrative better. Here winter lasted (after the False Spring) until 285, a short summer from 285 to 287, a short winter from 287 to 290, and then summer from 290 until now (300).
I do hope the smutty scene makes up for all the backstory and political dialogue I've filled this chapter with. Sorry if you were bored. Things will start actively happening soon.
Also, PSA: Just because Ashara has these feelings on sex and love and her body does not mean everyone should have the same feelings, you know? Not everyone is into soul-melding, highly codependent love, and that's totally fine. At this point, I could write a whole essay on why Ash is this way. Not everyone is.