She might wake up tomorrow, or in a month, or in a year. Or never. It was up to the gods, said Old Yli, and there was nothing mortals could do. There seemed nothing wrong with Elia save that she did not open her eyes.

"There there, girl," Yli had whispered in Rhoynish, coming to cradle Ashara's head to her bosom like she used to do when Ashara was young. "Whatever happens, you will get through it. You always have. And now you have a good man who stands with you, and many children besides."

Ashara was not sure of her words. Yli always told her she was strong, but she knew that she was not. She was a block of brittle stone, and everyone she had lost had chipped away a bit of her to take with them. She could not bear another hit of the cruel chisel. She would crack all over and crumble to dust.

Ashara had wept herself dry into Ned's chest, and let him crush her to him as they sat by Elia's bed. but there had been no words to exchange. Neither were fools, and they had become pitiful indeed at lying to one other over the years. Neither could say with any certainty that Elia would wake soon and so they stayed silent, taking turns standing vigil over their little girl.

She had crept once up to the tower room that served as a sept, lighting candles before each of the statuettes Dev had sent for her when he'd sent Septa Dyna North. She did not wish to anger the gods further with neglect, but she had escaped the room soon after. Ashara did not think there had ever been comfort for her before the Seven. Only duty and fear.

Every time they left her bedside to attend to the duties Robb and Sansa could not, Ashara forced herself to swallow the rusty fear that, in her absence, her child would stop breathing. The fear churned, too, that every moment she spent not reading through old medical texts was a moment she wasted. What if she found a cure, only to realise it was too late?

She had a whole castle to care for and royal guests living above the Great Hall, she knew, but that did not stop her feeling that she was a puppet paralysed by dread, worked by strings attached to deadened limbs.

Elia was their youngest child, her babe and the last child she would ever have. Since she had been an infant, she had been like the morning star itself, an orb of light and spirit and pure glowing joy come to light up their lives with her constant laughter. Oh, the way she laughed! even before she could talk, her plump cheeks dimpling, the bridge of her nose scrunching like a bunny. Ashara had not thought she could bear to name a daughter after Elia, but she had seen her babe's laughing face and knew that a sliver of her friend lived on in her.

And now…she had not heard Elia's laughter in many days, and Winterfell seemed like a tomb, grave and still and lifeless, and at times she thought she caught the heavy stench of pine resin. If she lost another child…she could not…The last time had torn her ragged heart out of her chest and nearly cast her into the sea. She would not survive this time.

Arthur had slipped into his sister's room the day after her fall. He had disappeared when the men managed to get her down from that broken tower. Ashara had tried to go after him, but Ned had let him go, understanding that he needed space and silence to pull back his wits. He would blame himself, Ned had said, and no matter what they did, he would not forget this.

And Ashara could never forget that terrible coldness when Arthur had stumbled into her solar, his eyes red and wild.

"I did not mean to—it wasn't supposed to—" He had been trembling like a leaf, shaking his head, his movements jerky. "We just wanted to hear who was in the tower room—but then—and then—she told me to pull her up but I—I must have—it was an accident, Amma, just an accident—"

She did not know how she had tamped down her own panic to coax the story from Arthur. Oh, gods help her, she should have made them stop climbing years and years ago. It had always made her nervous, but it seemed to give them so much joy…

What had they been thinking? But they were only twelve. Like as not, they did not think.

Arthur had hung off the side of the tower, dangling his sister from the edge to eavesdrop on what was no doubt some tryst between a guard and a maid. When he struggled to pull her up, he must have hit her head on the side of the tower, for there had been bits of stone and dust in her head wound.

It had taken hours for the men to reconstruct one of the ladders connecting Winterfell's two walls and retrieve her down from the tower. Arthur, when he had seen his sister safely in her bed and heard Yli's words, had slipped off into the godswood with Dawn as if he meant never to return.

Yet he did return, and had climbed wordlessly into bed next to Elia and slept like the dead. The next day, he had disappeared into the library tower and returned to Lia's room with books stacked higher than his head. Hodor, the simple stable hand, followed behind with his arms full of books too and scattered them beside the hearth.

"There will be something in here that will wake her," Arthur had said simply, and Ashara felt her heart tear like parchment in her chest. But in the days that followed, she too had been lured by the promise of the fluttering pages and the truth of his words. She sat down next to her son to read the ancient tomes, searching for any mention of Elia's symptoms, or perhaps a miraculous cure.

They had yet to find any such thing, but the reading occupied her mind like a rope she could cling to at the edge of the abyss.

Ashara found it hard now to look upon their faces. They were so very young, her children, but both looked strained and weathered, with deep purple smudges beneath their eyes and a dullness to their cheeks.

Elia had to wake. She had to. In the depths of winter in 287, both Jon and Robb had come down with crimson fever. For days, as the boys tossed unconscious in their beds, burning pink and shivering despite the furs, Ashara had truly been sick with fear that they would die. Yet they had survived—her two little fighters—and Elia would live too. She had to.

Her children would not know what it was to lose a sister. Arthur could not lose his twin. She knew what they were to each other—a blind man could see it. They'd had a language only they spoke as children, and it was only with Elia that Arthur seemed to bloom to life, becoming spirited and lively when he was usually so reserved—his father's son through and through.

And what had he ever done, to be cursed to carry tragedy with him for the rest of his life? As it was, he would always be haunted by the sight of his sister's limp form against the broken tower walls, but surely even the gods were not so cruel as to subject that tearing agony on her little boy.

Even after all these years, there were nights when Ashara still awoke in the middle of the night, her imaginings of her brother's death still blinding before her eyes. Arthur lying against a rock, blood gushing from his neck. Ned taking Howland Reed's knife and shoving it into the base of his skull. Ned unwrapping Dawn in the Council Hall at Starfall, telling her he had killed her brother.

On those nights, she would slip out of their bed, unable to bear touching him even as her body's reaction broke her heart. In the early years, she would sneak into the nursery and hold her children or curl into the tufted chair, trying to find sleep once more. Sometimes, Elia would smile in her sleep, and when she did Ashara would always feel healed and hopeful and new.

As the children grew, her pain had dulled and faded like colours on a tapestry left in the sun. The dreams came less often, and without the force to knock her crumpling to the ground. Still, some mornings Ned would find her in her turret library, watching the sunrise through the narrow window. On days like these, he would know better than to lay even a hand on her shoulder.

Instead, he usually left her in her silence and sent up a servant with something hot in a mug. Her heart would overflow with love and gratitude, even as it hung jagged and raw in her chest.

She had promised to forgive him, but forgiveness for this was not a single task, not a single thing given in that little catboat at the mouth of the Torrentine. With each and every such dream she had, Ashara found herself gritting her teeth and working anew to forgive this man who had loved her and cherished her and given her joy and children these many years past. It defied logic.

It went against reason. And it often mired her in guilt. Yet Ned never said a word, and she always found her way back to their bed, though the dreams had never entirely left her.

Was this the gods punishing her family for her ingratitude, for her insistence on clinging to those distant pains? Did they seek to remind her that her life these past years had been the dream Ashara dared not let herself imagine at one and twenty? That they could take it all away in an instant? What did they want from her, then? What had she done wrong?

I've tried, I've tried, she pleaded into the black nothingness. I want to forgive him once and for all. I wish never to quarrel again. And I have tried and tried to be a good wife and mother, yet here my daughter lies.

Have you tried? came the reply, frosty with condemnation. Have you been a decent mother at all, or have you simply been a craven, afraid that truth will burn? You have let him lie to your child these last years. What pains have your husband's silence dealt?

Elia's chamber door opened, spilling warm light across the stone floors, and at the foot of the bed the two wolflings raised their heads, their silhouettes sniffing the air before resting once more.

Ned came to sit beside her. She could feel his warmth envelope her in the darkness, breathing feeling into her fingertips, and she snaked her hand around his arm, almost desperate to feel his solid form despite what she must do. It was late, and Arthur had fallen asleep, but she was not the least bit tired.

"Ned," she whispered and rested her cheek on his shoulder. He raised her hand to press his lips to her wrist.

He was so very dear to her. When she could, over the years she had not insisted that he tell the truth, had not wished to dig up the past and cut him with more pain, just as he had let her demons alone when she had asked it.

Yet the gods were fickle. She should know that better than most, but the years had made her careless. She would do well to remember that her child who skipped and laughed one day could lie cold and lifeless the next. There could be no more waiting—no more delay.

O~O~O~O~O

Another week, Robert had said. Another week and they truly must be leaving. Ned could not fault him. There was a kingdom to run.

Ned was lost as ever as he rose from the damp cold ground the godswood. He came here every day now when he was not attending to urgent business or sitting with his daughter, but his gods had no answers for him. The weirwood stared at him with its unseeing red eyes, taunting and accusing. He had made promises. He had not kept them. He did not dare think that his daughter lay as still as death in her chambers because he had been a coward.

He had forgotten the weight of grief and bone-crushing fear over the years, but those burdens had not forgotten him. Once again they settled on his shoulders and dug their roots into his flesh. These last days, when he found himself sleeping, his dreams were haunted by smoke and blood and the sounds of pleading, as if he were twenty once more. When he awoke, discomfited and bleary, for moments he would be unsure if the leaden ball of fear that dropped into his stomach was for his sister or his daughter.

Ned had always found shades of Lyanna in all his girls: Sansa with her love of songs and stories; Arya and her romance for swordplay and war; and Elia—oh it was Elia who was his sister incarnate—full of curiosity and mischief and a delight for her life.

He had come home from war against Balon Greyjoy to the calls of Lya, Lya echoing through the halls and nearly collapsed from the sickening shock of loss. For months afterwards, a horrified Ashara had tried to correct the children, but there had been nothing she could do.

A name given in childhood grew on you and could never be peeled away. Over the years, the pain had lost its edge, like a jagged edge sanded round and smooth. Sometimes, Ned found, to hear his sister's name in the walls of Winterfell once more surrounded him in a sweet, intoxicating sense of memory, and on those days he could even be glad for Elia's wayward nickname.

And Elia alone—when she rode beside him over the hills, hair wild and laughter dancing; when she sat on his lap and smiled that impish smile, speaking about each little discovery as if she had found the keys to the very sun—she could make him forget that he had ever felt the biting weight of sorrow.

Yet he could never bring himself to call her Lia as his children did—as Ashara sometimes slipped when her mind was occupied elsewhere. It was one matter to hear the ghosts of his childhood past. It was another entirely to feel Lyanna's name on his own tongue and smell the blood and smoke and roses.

He made his way up the stone steps, his legs heavy with the cold and damp of the forest ground. He wondered if Ashara would still be up reading, or if she would be sitting in the dark, staring at Elia as if her gaze could revive her. He did not know which he preferred—both scared him.

Ned opened Elia's chamber door and stepped into the night-black of the room. With the sliver of light, he found Ash sitting by the bed, her eyes catching a glint of the candle flame. She turned towards him, and he was glad it was dark, for he could not see the pallid cast of her skin and the strain about her eyes. Slipping down next to her, he felt her hand on him. It was ice cold.

"Ned," she said as he raised her hand to his lips.

"What is it, my love?"

For a moment she was silent, though the air around them had shifted as if taking in the night chill.

"You have to tell him," she finally said, her voice so soft it blended into the dark, but he heard her as clear as day. Cold washed through his insides, but there was no shock there. Somehow he had known when he walked in this night that she would demand this of him.

"You have to tell Jon. I could not bear to press you all these years, but now…it is past time you told him. And if you do not, I swear to your gods and mine that I will."

000

He waited for his son in Ashara's library, feeling as if he waited for an executioner to ascend the stone steps. No. Not his son. Jon. Not his son by rights, but his heart spoke otherwise.

If you love him as your son, you owe him this truth. For too long, you have lied for the sake of your selfish fear.

Maybe he really was a coward. Ned certainly felt like one as he heard the chamber door open, icy, fiery dread prickling his skin.

Jon stepped into the round room, tall and lean as Rhaegar had been, but his eyes were Lyanna's and so was that bemused little frown that appeared on his face when he looked around to find them alone.

"Father? You wished to speak to me...here?"

For a moment the words stuck in his throat. Ned wished to let the word "father" hang in the air for just a moment longer, wanted to hear Jon say it again and again, for he did not know if he ever would after this day.

Ned had promised Lyanna he would tell Jon the truth about his father when the boy came of age. Jon was seventeen now, yet he had not been able to bear telling Jon that he, Ned Stark, was not his father in truth.

He tilted his chin to the opposite chair, and Jon sat, looking at him expectantly. Ned took a deep breath. The air burned.

"Jon, there is something you must know."

He lunged forward to grip Ned's knee, his brows knitted, his voice panicked.

"Is it Lia? Has she—but I hadn't heard—and where's—"

"No," Ned choked out, squeezing his hand. "No, it is not your sister."

His relief was palpable, the tension leaving his body as he slumped back in his chair. The expectant, questioning gaze was back.

"Tell me," Ned said, his voice dry, almost pained. "What do you know of my sister Lyanna?"

Whatever Jon had been expecting, it had not been this. His eyebrows shot to his hairline and he blinked as if his question had come flying into his face. Ned swallowed down the pang of recognition. Lyanna used to make that very expression over the slightest surprise.

"I…um…Prince Rhaegar kidnapped her after he crowned her queen of love and beauty at the Tourney at Harrenhal. Uncle Brandon and Grandfather went to King's Landing to get her back, but the mad king killed them both. That's how Robert's Rebellion started." Jon peered up at him then, tentative concern in his eyes. He hesitated, his hands fiddling with his sleeve.

"Aunt Lyanna died before you could bring her home. Uncle Ben…Uncle Ben told me that's why he joined the Watch. For grief of her."

For a moment Ned shut his eyes against the guilt. He had not been able to stop the loss of the last of his siblings. Benjen was convinced that Lyanna's death had been his fault, but no matter how one played this game of assigning blame, Ned would always be the one who had caused it all.

"That is what the bards sing," he told Jon now. "That is what the histories will write. But today, I will tell you the truth, and you must swear on your honour as a man that you will not repeat my words to anyone save your family."

Jon's eyes had grown wide, soft grey and glistening in the daylight, but he nodded solemnly.

"I swear it on my honour."

"Very well. Know this then. Lyanna was not kidnapped by Rhaegar. In the end, I believe she loved him."

He told Jon all then, from Lyanna's exploits as the Knight of the Laughing Tree at Harrenhal to how he had been sent her whereabouts in Dorne, not shying from his own role in Lyanna's unhappy engagement. He told Jon the story Ashara had once told him, of their time hiding at Summerhall, of Elia Martell's letter, of their vows before the Old Gods—not truly a marriage by law, but the marriage Lyanna had wanted. Jon only stared wide-eyed and said not a word.

"I travelled to Dorne with six of my best men," he continued. "Only one made it back alive. At the base of this tower on the Prince's Pass, three members of Aerys' Kingsguard waited for us. We slew them to get to my sister."

Jon seemed gripped by the story, but now he left out a soft gasp.

"It's true then? The stories the soldiers tell? It was you who killed Ser Arthur Dayne?"

Ned closed his eyes once more. Never had he answered his children's questions on the matter, and even Arya had never been so thoughtless as to ask their mother. He nodded.

"Yes. It was. I brought his sword back to your mother at Starfall, but that is not the story I wish to tell today."

"No. I'm sorry. Please, go on."

"When I got up to that tower room, I found my sister there. Wylla was with her, and Old Yli. Attending her. She…she was dying."

Never had he formed those words. Never had he needed to recount this tale. Ned hoped never to do it again. The very telling made him ache.

Jon seemed to war with himself for a moment, but eventually he spoke.

"What…what did she die of?"

"Loss of blood. Childbed fever."

Jon was frowning again.

"Childbed fever…I don't understand, Father. If she…did the babe survive? What has become of my cousin?"

"Yes, Jon," said Ned, and the dead weight of finality settled in his chest. "That babe did survive. I brought him home and called him my bastard son."