AN: To the guest who said they rarely review fanfics, thank you very much! I'm happy you're enjoying the ride so far. This chapter's short, but packed with a bit of drama. Hopefully the next one'll be lighter.

Every Loyalty

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Chapter V:

First it Snows

Larisa didn't let herself hesitate.

She knocked on the door. A voice bade her to enter the room, and Lady Sansa was there, writing a letter. She sat at a small round table with two chairs.

Larisa could tell from her expression that she wasn't expecting company, let alone hers.

"What is it?" Sansa said boredly.

Charming, as usual. Larisa nearly rolled her eyes, but managed to keep herself from it.

"My clothes haven't withstood the north very well."

"Not only your clothes," Sansa remarked, without looking up again from the parchment.

She continued to write, while Larisa bit her tongue against a hot retort. By the Gods, she had long ago forced herself to develop a stronghold on her unfortunate temper. But something about Lady Sansa's indifference, arrogance, whatever it was—it grated at Larisa's restraint.

She pulled out the other chair, allowing its legs to scrape loud and annoying against the floor. She sat beside Sansa at the table and ignored her raised brow.

"I'm not accustomed to working with thick furs," Larisa said. She set down the fabrics and sewing materials she had brought with her onto the table. "If it please you, my lady, would you lend some pointers?"

After a moment, Sansa finally looked up at her and smirked the slightest bit. She set aside her stationary and they began.

Over the course of an hour, Sansa gave clear instructions and observed Larisa's stitching. They even sat in silence a while, for once not snarking at each other.

Sansa eventually broke that silence.

"Before you were given to Lord Bolton, you were already married once?"

As were you, Larisa wanted to fling back. Instead, she told the truth.

"He was not a good man."

Sansa glanced up from their work.

"He was not like Ramsay," Larisa said, "…but he was cruel in other ways."

That fell between them, until Sansa corrected one of her loose stitches and the lesson continued.

"He's dead?" Sansa asked eventually.

"Yes."

"What killed him?"

Larisa considered all the possible answers she could give. There was the obvious truth, the one she'd always used as a protective, and perfectly acceptable screen.

But Larisa was no longer in King's Landing, or Golden Tooth, or Casterly Rock. If she was to survive here, with the Starks, she would have to give something that wasn't resentment, or an obvious default story.

A secret, Ramsay had said.

He was dead already, she was sure. Jon Snow had likely executed him when she and Will sat in a cell.

"I did," she said. Sansa sat up straight in her chair. Larisa saw the surprise fly across her features, then dim under suspicion.

"Did you?"

"He was with his father, otherwise occupied with the war against your brother when I left Golden Tooth, and returned to King's Landing."

"Why?"

"For Lady Elinor Crakehall…a friend," Larisa said. "She was getting married."

Elinor had always been a small, kind thing, and out of place at King's Landing serving as one of Cersei's many handmaidens.

"She was beautiful. Her new husband ate almond macarons from her hand, it was all very disgusting and lovely," Larisa said. "And then Stannis laid siege to Blackwater, and my lord husband was slain reclaiming the capital with Tywin Lannister."

Sansa didn't hide her sarcasm, "And yet you killed him?"

"I knew he would never last a real battle," Larisa admitted. "All it would take was one moment where his father lost sight of him."

"He would have been at that battle, regardless if you were there or not," Sansa pointed out.

"Don't mistake me," Larisa said. Her voice was steady, but hardly above a whisper. "Even if he had survived that battle…or if it had been Stannis's forces that broke through the doors of the Red Keep and gutted us all, I knew that day I would be free of my husband."

Sansa was quiet. She seemed to be weighing just how much to believe, but Larisa thought she finally decided to just that.

"You like a bit of theater, don't you?" Sansa remarked.

"I never go to the theater," Larisa smiled slyly. "Too many painted whores."

Sansa hummed in response. "And you would have freed yourself of Ramsay as well?"

"One way or another," she promised. Then it was Sansa's turn to give a secret smile.

"What's left of his bones are scattered at the bottom of the Broken Tower." She hesitated then, before she went back to the sewing. "I made sure of it."

Larisa had time to hide her shock. She stared at the girl—the woman next to her. The Lady of Winterfell.

As much as Larisa hated to admit it, Sansa was the reason she hadn't been harmed, in any way, the night before. And any night since the Boltons were defeated.

For once, Larisa swallowed her pride.

"Thank you."

"That's mine!"

Larisa choked on her laugh, and also the custard tart.

Willem chased her from the kitchens, all the way to the courtyard outside the keep.

"Shouldn't you be practicing your penmanship, Ser," she teased, and held what remained of her brother's snack out of reach. "You won't become a Ser if you can't write Davos's notes for him."

Will grabbed hold of her arm, but she was just tall enough to keep him at bay.

"Knights don't need to penmanship to fight!" Will argued.

"Reading and writing are just as important as riding and fighting," she told him. "And you won't be doing the latter anytime soon."

She relented and gave him what was left of the tart. He slapped it out of her hand and stomped off in a huff.

"Best check that attitude, little boy," she called after him.

"I'm not little!" he yelled back at her. Larisa laughed as she walked away from the keep.

Sansa had given her no other duties for the afternoon, so she found herself wandering, past the library tower, and the armory. After a moment's hesitation, she entered the tall gates that led her into a small Godswood still encased within Winterfell's walls.

She came to a large pond in the center, and a tall weirwood tree. Its face wept red.

Larisa dusted off the snow before she sat on one of its raised roots. Was it the Old Gods that had heard her prayers? She doubted it was the Seven.

They'd never heard her before. Or maybe they chose not to listen.

"Don't know that I've ever seen a Southerner in these woods."

Larisa jumped at the sound of Jon Snow's voice.

"Sorry," the corner of his mouth raised a little. "Mind if I sit?"

She shook her head. "I should go, your grace."

"You can stay," he said. "Didn't mean to disturb you."

His boots crunched so loudly in the snow that she wondered how she hadn't heard him coming. He sat across from her on the left side of the tree.

He made a distinct-looking figure, with his dark cloak, and the direwolf sigil etched into the fabric across his broad chest. His black hair was tied back, and this close, she could see the faint scar that started above his brow and ended just under his eye. All these things, along with his strangely honorable actions, were only starting to fill in the gaps.

Dark, enigmatic, brutal, honest, merciful, handsome…

She forced that last thought away with a small shake of her head.

Who was this Jon Snow?

"I'm sorry," he said eventually, "about my men's behavior. They've been at war a long time. Most northmen are hard, stubborn as hell. But loyal to a fault."

"Yes, I've noticed." Larisa said tersely. Immediately she regretted it.

It didn't matter how justified she felt, or that those men would have done unspeakable things. If she could hold her tongue in Sansa's presence, she should be able to mind herself in front of the one man who had real power over her.

At least for the moment.

"All the same," he said, after shooting her a somewhat amused look. "These walls will be a safe place for you, from now on."

She had heard stories about this man. That since leaving his childhood home to take on the Black, he became the first Lord Commander to ally with Wildlings, and led them over the Wall. She wondered if that other rumor had any merit to it—that he had loved a Wildling girl. And so fell to sympathize with those savages beyond the Wall.

But then again. What was it that Rickon Stark said to her before? About his Wildling friend, Osha, who was probably dead as well. "She's not so wild."

And then there was the greater enemy beyond the Wall. The Night King, who supposedly led an army of White Walkers.

While Larisa didn't believe in folktales and myth, there had to be a reason Wildlings were willing to trust a former man of the Night's Watch, let alone fight for him.

"May I ask something?" Larisa said. He nodded.

"You were Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. Why break those oaths?"

"My sister…and my brother," he said, "needed me more."

"I'm genuinely sorry about your brother," she told him. And her words were sincere. It had broken her heart to hear of Rickon's death. She could still see him in her memory, how she wiped the dirt from his grimy face in that terribly dark cell.

"I tried to help him," she admitted. "But I failed."

Jon looked down at his hands resting on his knees. "As did I."

There was such regret there, in his eyes. Will had told her what Ramsay did, how Jon had raced to save the boy. The rage with which he met the Boltons on the battlefield. And she herself saw Jon's fury when he finally got his hands on the man who enslaved his sister, killed his brother.

Larisa had the urge to give him some small comfort; her hand perhaps itched to rest over his. But she didn't dare.

"This was my father's place," he said. "Sitting here…he could just be a man, not a lord. Not a husband or father."

Is that why he's here? she thought. To just be a man for a while, and not a lord, or a brother.

Jon was obviously looking for solitude, like she was. And then she realized.

Perhaps he hadn't wanted to be king. But this was his home, and he was honor bound to fight for it. For his father's memory.

"Was he a kind man?" she asked.

"The best I've ever known."

"I didn't know him," she admitted. "Not really. I always imagined he was somewhat like my father."

Jon looked up at her. "I didn't know yours either."

She didn't want to talk about him. But Jon had given her an honest truth, not to mention an honest apology, which she hadn't expected.

"He was stern, and fair," Larisa said at last. "But he idolized Uncle Tywin, and he valued family legacy above anything else."

Jon listened, watched her with his dark eyes. They were brown, she noticed.

"When we left Casterly Rock, I north and he south…I told him he had no daughter." Her hands were shaking. She hid them in her skirts and took in a breath, let it out slowly. "That was the last I ever said to him."

"Maybe he needed to hear it," Jon said. It was the last thing she expected, and she blatantly stared at him.

"Gods know there are things I should've said," he shrugged. "Maybe we would've fought. Maybe I would've learned who my mother was."

Shock stilled her. He didn't know his mother? Had never known her?

Before she could ask about it further, he stood, and propriety made Larisa stand with him. Jon raised a hand to stop her.

"You should get back inside soon," he said. "The winds'll be picking up."

She nodded, but kept her gaze firmly on the ground.

It was starting to snow again, small flurries floating down. But it wasn't yet cold enough that she didn't feel the tears stinging her eyes, sliding down her cheeks. She held a gloved hand over her mouth to swallow the sounds of her idiotic crying.

She was relieved for it though. Finally, she could mourn her father as she should have.

Then she gasped at the hand that fell on her shoulder.

Jon Snow's hesitant, conflicted face was all she could see when she craned her head up. Out of embarrassment, she looked away again.

His hand squeezed her shoulder once, and was gone. She couldn't stop herself from glancing up at his back as he walked away, likely leaving for sure this time.

"Your grace," she called after him.

Jon stopped, and she felt a nervous flutter tying her insides in knots as he turned around.

"Would you send my mother a message?" she asked. "That my brother and I are safe in the north."

Jon seemed thoughtful, until he looked at her again. "How about we go see the maester, and you write her yourself."

Once again they walked together, this time to the Maester's Tower. The maester that received them looked pleasantly surprised to see Jon.

"I was just about to go to you, your grace. A raven arrived from King's Landing."

Jon unfurled the note. Larisa watched as his expression became more dour the longer he read.

"Your grace?" she asked. His eyes flicked up to hers.

"Come with me to find my sister," he said. Larisa nodded, and she followed him out of the tower back to the main keep, where they soon found Sansa.

Once she and Larisa had both read the message, it became clearer to her why he'd asked her to come along.

Queen Cersei was demanding the North, specifically Jon Snow, to bend the knee. Or else, they were in open rebellion and traitors to the crown.

"You've been so consumed with the enemy to the north, you've forgotten about the south," Sansa said.

"I'm consumed with the Night King because I've seen him," Jon said. "And believe me, you'd think of nothing else if you'd seen him too."

"We still have a wall between us and the Night King, there's nothing between us and Cersei."

"There's a thousand miles between us and Cersei," he said. "Winter is here, the Lannisters are a southern army. They've never ranged this far north."

Jon glanced over at Larisa and she nodded her agreement. The Lannister army was still her uncle's army in most respects, but many of them, like her, had not experienced a true winter. And for those who had, she would guess that it had probably been much too long since to be of any real help to them.

Sansa only spared her short look.

"You're the military man, but I know her," Sansa said. "If you're her enemy, she'll never stop until she's destroyed you. Everyone she's ever crossed, she's found a way to murder."

Larisa lowered her gaze, biting her tongue again. She would have welts by the end of the day, she was sure.

She didn't know that Jon noticed, and then considered his sister.

"You almost sound as if you admire her," he said.

Sansa looked away. "I learned a great deal from her."

Jon shook his head and turned to Larisa.

"You claimed to know Cersei best. What would you tell me?"

She hesitated to answer.

What Jon said before was true. The Lannister army was not suited to fighting in the north. But still…

"If my father hadn't gone to King's Landing to undermine her, perhaps he would still be alive. Distance serves us well for now," she said eventually. "But everything Cersei knows, she's learned from Tywin Lannister."

"Meaning?" Jon asked grimly.

Larisa matched his frown.

"She makes allies, as sure as she makes enemies."

In King's Landing, Cersei sat upon the Iron Throne.

Jaime Lannister still served as Lord Commander of the Queensgard. He stood to her left. Meanwhile, her slender fingers closed over the arms of her seat.

All these nobles and knights, they were merely an extension of her will.

Now her will was the only one that mattered.

"Send him in," she ordered.

And those golden doors to the throne room slid open to Euron Greyjoy.

The newly crowned King of the Iron Islands, and master of the Iron Fleet.