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I have a rule, I cannot post a chapter until I have finished whatever chapter is five chapters ahead of it. (Example, I could not have posted chapter nine until at least chapter fourteen was finished.)
It's a self-imposed rule that I do not like to break. But sometimes I do.
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That is all, now, on to the story:
Lenora
"And that one?" she asked, pointing to the one in question. "What does that one look like?"
"It's a giant, of course," Robb told her. He chuckled when she turned her head to look at him, her eyebrows knit together in confusion. "Don't you see it?" he asked her.
She shook her head, "Show me," she commanded. They were laying in the middle of field that separated Winterfell from the town, looking for shapes in the clouds. Anything to distract them from their worry over Bran and her sadness at saying goodbye to her family when they left her to travel back to Kings Landing. She had expected the young man to point out the features of the cloud that made it look like a giant. What she hadn't expected was for him to grab her hand in his so that he could point the cloud out to her with her own finger.
He smiled at the gasp that escaped her lips when he touched her hand. "Are you ever going to get used to me touching you?" he asked her as he interlaced their fingers together. Slowly, carefully.
"Probably not," Lenora told him honestly, but she turned her had to smile at him. "Though that is no reason for you to stop trying."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Robb told her honestly. He was quiet for a moment, unsure if he should open up this topic or not, but finally deciding that it was worth it. "Tell me about your childhood?" he asked her. She bit her lip, but didn't immediately open up to him. He tried again. "You know so much now about what it was like to grow up in Winterfell. You know me. I want to know just as much about you. Please tell me?"
She was silent for a full minute and Robb was about to tell her to forget about it, sure that she wasn't going to answer him when she opened her mouth and began to speak. "As you know, for the first five years of my life I was raised by my uncle Jaime at Casterly Rock. It wasn't until after Joffrey was born that I was able to live with my parents at Kings Landing."
"Why was that?" Robb asked, it was something he had always been curious about. His parents had never given him good enough answers to that question.
"My mother never told me," Lenora told him truthfully. "To this day she thinks that I don't know why. But I do. Tyrion told me when I was ten. He had never believed in keeping things from me. When I was a baby, and I do mean baby, I wasn't more than a few days old Targaryen spies tried to poison me. My father and grandfather decided that I would be safest away from Kings Landing until such a time as the kingdom was more secure, that time being once my mother had produced a legitimate male heir for my father."
Robb nodded, taking it all in. He squeezed her hand for a moment before asking, "And were you happy at the Rock?"
Lenora's answering smile was the widest and brightest smile he had ever seen on her face. "Those were my happiest years," she told him, mischief glinting in her eyes. "Uncle Jaime was a fantastic guardian, no harm could have ever come to me while I was in his care, but he had neither experience or business raising a child. I was a little monster who had been given free reign of an entire castle and had my keeper wrapped around my little finger. I stayed up too late, was allowed to eat whatever I wanted, ripped every one of my dresses, terrorized the stable boys. But in Uncle Jaime's eyes I could do no wrong. It really is a wonder that I did not grow up spoiled."
"More spoiled, you mean," Robb teased her.
"Just because I am used to getting my way does not make me spoiled," Lenora argued with him, a smile teasing at her lips. "It's not my fault that my way is usually right."
Robb chuckled and shook his head. This girl had definitely spent her life being told that she deserved everything that she wanted. She probably did deserve it too. "What else?" he asked her, wanting to hear more about her childhood.
"Let's see," Lenora smiled, thinking for a moment. "In my letters did I ever tell you about the day my Uncle Jaime taught me to fly?"
"He taught you how to fly?" Robb asked, his eyebrows raised. He shook his head, "No, you never told me about that."
Lenora smiled, her eyes sparkling. "I wasn't lying when I told you that I was a little monster at the Rock. Always running around and destroying things. One day Jaime caught me at the top of a staircase, preparing to throw myself over the railing. I had taken a blanket from my bed and tied it around my wrists and ankles, convinced that it would slow my fall enough that I would simply float down to the floor below."
Robb chuckled, "You had made a parachute."
"Yes," Lenora agreed. "I was so proud of myself. So sure that I was the smartest little girl in the world. So naturally it was a bit of a shock when Uncle Jaime started to yell at me. I started to cry." She shook her head, "Now, I wasn't a cry baby and Uncle Jaime had punished me before. But it is a bit hard to handle when you think that your uncle is going to praise you and instead he screams at you. I didn't realize at the time that he was yelling at me because he had been worried about me, scared for my life. I assumed that it was because he thought that I was a fool."
"So when did he teach you to fly?" Robb asked.
"Through tears and sobs I explained to him that I had only wanted to surprise him by showing him what a smart little girl I was. I just wanted to surprise him by showing him that I had learned to fly." Lenora paused, smiling at the memory. "He laughed at me," she told Robb, rolling her eyes. "He laughed at me and then sent me upstairs to my bedroom to change into the pants and shirt I wore when we practiced my sword play. He took me out to the cliffs that overlook the ocean and made me promise that I would never do this without his help. And then," she paused and shrugged, "he taught me to fly."
"The two of you jumped," Robb translated.
Lenora sighed and rolled her eyes. "Yes, if you want to take all the magic out of the experience then yes, we jumped. He took my hand and jumped off the cliff, keeping me with him the whole time. But it was so much more than that. The way my hair flew out around me, and the way my squeals were carried away on the wind before I could even hear them. The fall seemed to take forever and was over too quickly all at the same time. The surprising warmth of the water when we landed and Uncle Jaime wrapped his arms around me to make sure that I didn't drown. It wasn't falling. It wasn't a jump. It was flying."
Robb smiled, "I suppose that's the way climbing felt to Bran," he told her.
Lenora nodded, "I know that's how climbing felt to him. There's a freedom in it that you don't find anywhere else. The other day your mother told me that she and your father had forbade Bran on several occasions to climb the towers. But they couldn't have stopped him, once you get a taste of that kind of freedom you won't give it up easily. No one could have stopped this from happening."
Robb nodded slowly, taking in her words. Then he cleared his throat, "Tell me more about your childhood," he commanded. "I'm still at a disadvantage here."
Lenora smiled softly, recognizing his request for what it was, a change of subject. But she was merciful and did not call him out on it. "Let's see here," she said instead, thinking for a moment of what she should tell him next. A smile spread across her lips at all the memories, any of them would have made great stories for Robb. But before she could tell him a single one the young man had leaned closer to her and dropped his lips onto hers, catching her in a surprise kiss.
She froze for a moment, unsure of how she should respond. His lips stilled and he started to pull away, but she reached up, placing her right hand on his cheek to hold him into place before she began to kiss him back. She felt Robb smile against her lips before he began to kiss her again.
His lips moved faster against hers, more frenzied. She tried to keep up, but when his tongue brushed against her lips, silently begging her to open her mouth and to let him in she forgot where they were. She reached her left hand up to his shoulder, to pull him closer or to push him away - she was not sure of which. Since the kiss began she had been leaning on her left elbow, but now that she had lifted it to place her hand on his shoulder she had nothing to support her and a moment later she had fallen onto the ground on her back, Robb following her down, landing on top of her.
He laughed as he looked down at her, his blue eyes sparkling. "I'm sorry, My Lady," he told her as he moved his hands to either side of her, boxing her in for a moment and making her wish that he would lean down and kiss her again, but instead he pushed himself away from her and found a seat on the ground before he reached down and pulled her up with him.
She was breathing heavily, taking fast, shallow breaths as her corset would not allow her anything deeper. She bit back the smile though when she caught Robb staring at her chest, watching it rise and fall with each breath. "I thought that you wanted to learn more about my childhood," she pointed out, her tone teasing as she worked to steady her breath. She tried to hide just how much of an affect the young man had on her.
"Aye," Robb agreed with a nod. "I did, but that smile of yours, it was distracting."
"And your kiss wasn't?" Lenora asked as she stood up off the ground, brushing off the dirt and grass that stuck to her dress before she looked down at Robb, raising her eyebrows as she silently waited for an answer.
He grinned up at her, cocky. "Not distracting enough, apparently," he told her before he stood up as well. He reached out for her hand and gently tugged her along, leading the way back toward the castle. He chuckled and shook his head, "You'll need to be careful," he told her, the laughter still in his voice.
"Careful?" Lenora asked, allowing the young man to pull her, she enjoyed his energy. "Careful of what?"
"The way you kiss," Robb told her, turning to grin down at her. Lenora's eyes widened, she was suddenly worried that she had done it wrong. She had never kissed anyone, at least not like that, but it was becoming pretty clear that Robb had kissed his fair share of women before she had come to Winterfell. What if she didn't do it right? What if they kissed better than she did? She bit her lip, worrying it between her teeth. Robb didn't let her be self-conscious for long. He reached out and gently pulled her bottom lip from between her teeth. "A kiss like that could ruin a man," he told her.
Lenora gasped, she hadn't been expecting that. "Oh?" she asked, her tone embarrassingly breathless. "Is that so?"
Robb stopped pulling her toward the castle and turned toward her, moving closer to her so that their chests were practically touching. "Yes," he told her softly. "And I'm begging you not to use it to ruin me."
Lenora shook her head, "Never," she whispered her promise to him.
...
A kiss like that could ruin a man. Lenora shook her head, trying to get Robb's voice out of her head and focus on the sewing she was doing by the fire in Bran's room. But it was impossible. It had been a week since the day in the field and every time she looked at Robb all she could think about was the way his lips had felt on hers. All she could hear was him asking her not to ruin him.
A kiss like that could ruin a man. "Seven Hells," she muttered, she had pricked her finger again while she was thinking about Robb. She glanced up toward Bran's bed, worried that he had heard her. But she shook her head, he still hadn't woken up, of course he hadn't heard her.
The two of them were alone. Caitlyn rarely left her son's side, but Lenora had been able to at least convince the older woman to let her sit with Bran for at least a half hour each day so that the lady could bathe, eat, change her clothes.
It wasn't much, but it was all that Lenora could do for her.
She put her sewing down to look at her finger, there was a small spot of blood, forming a bubble at the end of her fingertip. She had half a thought of wiping it on her sewing, but she could just imagine what her Septa from Kings Landing would have said if she had seen it. So instead she put her finger in her mouth, licking at the blood for a moment before she took her finger out of her mouth. She was about to go back to her sewing when she heard a noise and looked up to see Rickon standing in the doorway, staring at his older brother. In the weeks since Bran's fall, Rickon had come to see him once.
"Rickon?" she asked, gesturing to the small boy, inviting him further into the room. Rickon came, but he did not walk any closer to Bran's bed, instead he hugged the walls, moving closer to Lenora until he was standing right beside her, staring wide eyed at his brother. "Are you all right?" Lenora asked.
"Is he going to die?" Rickon asked, nodding toward the bed. "Bran? Is Bran going to die?"
"Of course not, Sweet," Lenora told him. She put her sewing down and wrapped her arm around the young boy's shoulders, pulling him closer to her. "Your brother is going to be just fine."
"Then why hasn't he woken up yet?" Rickon argued.
Lenora reached up and brushed some of his blonde hair out of his eyes, "Because he's healing. You'll see, he'll wake up soon." It was risky to promise the boy that his brother was going to wake up, especially since there was no indication that he was getting any better. But Rickon was hurting. And though Caitlyn was doing everything she could for Bran it was hard to miss that she was ignoring her other sons, both of whom needed her just as much as their injured brother. If Lady Stark would not comfort Rickon then Lenora would do it for her. "You could pray to the Seven that they heal him faster," she suggested. "Or to the Old Gods."
Rickon shook his head, "Father always says that the Old Gods are hard. Their ears won't bend and their hearts won't soften."
"What about the Seven?" Lenora prompted.
Rickon bit his lip, "I don't know," he shook his head. "There are so many of them, I don't know which one to pray to."
Lenora smiled at him for a moment before she placed a hand under each of his armpits and pulled him into her lap. This was a problem that she could solve. "Well, would you like me to teach you?" she asked.
Rickon shrugged, "You can try. Though Maester Luwin has tried."
"I'm sure he has," Lenora agreed with a nod. "But I doubt he knows the song."
"The song?" Rickon asked.
Lenora nodded, "Listen closely," she whispered before she started humming the tune to herself, softly.
"The Father's face is stern and strong,
He sits and judges right from wrong.
He weighs our lives, the short and long,
and loves the little children.
The Mother gives the gift of life,
and watches over every wife.
Her gentle smile ends all strife,
and She loves her little children.
The Warrior stands before the foe,
protecting us wherever we go.
With sword and shield and spear and bow,
He guards the little children.
The Crone is very wise and old,
and sees our fates as they unfold.
She lifts her lamp of shining gold,
to lead the little children.
The Smith, He labors day and night,
to put the world of men to right.
With hammer, plow, and fire bright,
He builds for little children.
The Maiden dances through the sky,
She lives in every lover's sigh.
Her smiles teach the birds to fly,
and gives dreams to little children.
The Seven Gods who made us all,
are listening if we should call.
So close your eyes, you shall not fall,
they see you little children."
She looked down, Rickon's eyes were closed and his breathing had evened out. He had fallen asleep. She smiled, that was the point of the song. It taught about the Seven, but its main purpose was to soothe a worried child, to convince them that everything would be all right. It had worked on Rickon. She smoothed his hair, "So close your eyes, you shall not fall, they see you little children," she sang softly to Rickon before she attempted to struggle her way out of her seat with Rickon in her arms, intending to carry him to his own bed.
She heard a noise by the door and for the second time that afternoon she caught a Stark boy watching her. "Here," Robb murmured before he moved further into the room and took Rickon from her arms. "Let me help you."
Lenora nodded and once Robb had lifted his younger brother out of her arms she stood up from her chair. "I was going to bring him to his room," she told him.
Robb nodded and quietly called for a servant to come sit with Bran until his mother got back. Once that was arranged he led the way out of Bran's chamber. "Where did you learn that song?" he asked as they walked through the corridor.
Lenora shrugged, "I've always known it," she told him. "Since I was a young child." She sighed and shook her head. "I have this ... I think it's a memory, though knowing my mother it is more likely a mix between a wish and a dream, of my mother singing it to me once. A long time ago. When I was sick."
Robb nodded, "It would be a good memory."
Lenora looked up at him and caught the doubtful look on his face, "But you don't see my mother ever being that motherly, do you?" she asked. Robb didn't say anything, but she could see his jaw clench. She nodded, "You can say it, you know? I'm not under any illusion that my mother was a good one."
"But look at everything she taught you," Robb argued, his blue eyes bright and intense.
Lenora could not stop the laugh that bubbled up inside of her. "Oh yes," she agreed sarcastically with a nod. "She taught me so much, like how to anger your husband and to abandon your children."
Robb stopped walking in the middle of the corridor, he turned to look at her, his eyes bluer, more intense than they had been a moment before. "Is that how you feel?" he asked, shifting Rickon in his arms so that he had one free hand to reach out for Lenora's arm. "Abandoned?"
Lenora shrugged her shoulders and reached up to squeeze Robb's hand. "Not anymore," she told him softly before she gestured down the hall toward Rickon's room.
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Robb
She felt abandoned. She had told him that she didn't feel it, she had denied it and attempted to play it off as a joke. But deep down he knew that at least a small part of her felt that her family had abandoned her. As much as she enjoyed his company, as much as she attempted to make the best out of this situation. She felt alone. And Winterfell felt more like a prison to her than her home.
She was going to spend the rest of her life in Winterfell and the last thing he wanted her to do was to resent it and him for it.
Which was why he was thrilled when two days later the young woman came running into his bedroom, giggling. She ran to the window and threw open the shutters, "It's snowing!" she announced to him, leaning out the window to see the large snowflakes more closely.
She turned to look at him, a large, bright smile spreading across her face. "Did you hear me, Robb?" she asked, jumping slightly on her tiptoes. When he didn't react with the same amount of excitement as she was feeling she rushed toward him, she grabbed his hand and pulled him closer to the window. "Look!" she gestured out the window. "It's snowing."
Robb chuckled, "You would think that you had never seen snow before," he told her before he caught sight of her face. Her eyes were a light, shiny silver and the smile that spread across her face was the largest, happiest smile he had ever seen. So instead of teasing her he leaned out the window with her, "It's snowing," he agreed with her.
"Has winter started?" Lenora asked him, her voice filled with quiet awe as she watched the snow fall in front of them.
Robb shook his head, "No," he told her, his voice gentle, "this is simply a fall snow. You won't need to ask me if Winter has started once it really does start. You'll know. You'll feel it deep in your bones and there will be feet of it outside this castle. It will be bone chilling and cold and no matter what you do or where you go you will never be warm."
Lenora turned away from the window to look up at him, "You speak as if you've known winter," she told him, shaking her head. "But you're just as much a summer child as I am."
Robb nodded, "But my father wasn't," he told her. "And I have his stories." He nodded to the window. "Trust me, this snow won't seem so magical once it's here to stay."
There were things that needed to be done. With his mother refusing to leave Bran's side but for a few minutes a day, Robb had taken over the running of Winterfell. He should have been looking over the expenses of the King's visit. But there was something about the sparkle in Lenora's silver eyes when she looked at the snow. He couldn't waste the day with running the castle. He couldn't waste one moment away from her. Not on a day like that.
The two had eaten breakfast and then they dressed Rickon up in his warmest clothes and they brought him outside. Robb watched as Lenora giggled and tried to catch snowflakes on her tongue. Rickon was delighted in the fact that he knew how to do something that Lenora didn't and the young boy spent an hour teaching her how to make a snowman. They threw snowballs at each other, laughing and cheering when they hit their marks. And as it finally started to get dark and the torches in the courtyard were lit Robb had wrapped one of his arms around Lenora's waist, pulling her closer to him as he reached up with his free hand to pull a snowflake out of her dark hair.
Lenora's laughter died, though her smile was still pasted on her lips, she looked up at him as if she was studying him. No, he realized, she wasn't studying him she was daring herself to do something. What - he wasn't sure, though she didn't leave him in the dark for long. After one short moment she stood up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips against his. For the first time she initiated a kiss.
Robb smirked against her lips for just a moment before he began to kiss her back. His left arm tightened around her waist, pulling her closer to him as his right hand cupped her cheek, his thumb brushing against her warm skin. Her hands gripped his upper arms tightly, he was sure that if his jacket had not been so thick her fingernails would have dug into his skin. Despite her moment of bravery she was still unsure of herself.
His eyes were still open and he could see her cheeks, already pink from the cold air, darken as she blushed. He closed his eyes just as she started to pull away from embarrassment. He kept his eyes closed and shook his head, refusing to let her get more than an inch away from her. She giggled, but complied, and a moment later her lips touched his again in a second kiss, more hesitant than the first one.
Robb didn't waste any time though, his tongue slipped out of his mouth and ran along her lips, tasting them and begging her to open her mouth, to open up to him. Without a moment's hesitation she did and his tongue slipped between her lips to tangle with her own. One of her hands lifted from his shoulder and slipped into his hair, pulling his face closer to his as her breath quickened. They were so close, he could feel every desperate breath she took, he swore he could hear her heartbeat. He could feel her shiver in his arms.
He wanted to write it off as nerves, but they had been out all day in the snow, her dress was wet despite the cloak she wore. She was cold, freezing even. He chuckled as he slowly pulled away from her, not far, but enough to let her breathe. "You must be freezing," he told her, his hands slipping underneath her cloak and landing on her shoulders.
"No," she told him, her voice breathless, even as she shivered underneath his hands.
"Don't lie to me," he told her with another chuckle as his hands rubbed from her shoulders to her elbows and back up again, repeatedly, trying to warm her up as quickly as he could.
She shrugged her shoulders and bit her lip, "I'm sure I am," she told him after a moment. "But to be honest, I don't feel it."
"That's a sign of frostbite," Robb told her, though he understood what she meant. He had never felt warmer than he did now as the Princess watched him, a sparkle in her silver eyes and a smile on her lips. He was about to suggest that they go inside for dinner when a wolf began to howl. He still had his hands on her shoulders, she was still close enough to him that he could feel her start to tremble at the sound. He made a comforting noise at the back of his throat and squeezed her shoulders, smiling when he felt her relax under his hands, "Bran's" he told her looking out toward the tower where Bran slept, sure that the wolf would be somewhere nearby. "I keep telling Mother to leave the window's open, that it will do him good to hear them sing. But she hates those wolves."
A second wolf joined the song, and then the third. "Shaggydog and Grey Wind," Lenora announced looking toward the tower. She wasn't trembling anymore, but her silver eyes were tight as she looked around the dark courtyard, she couldn't place her finger on it, but she was sure that something was wrong.
Robb nodded, "You can tell them apart if you listen close enough," he told her. He felt her tense underneath his hands as she turned to look at him She opened her mouth to say something but was interrupted by barking. "Dogs," Robb muttered looking around, picking up on the same feeling that Lenora could feel in the pit of her stomach. Something was wrong. "All the dogs are barking." He pulled her closer to him in an attempt to comfort her, to let her know that he would keep her safe. She was so close that she was practically part of him. He felt her breath catch in her throat more than he heard it when she caught sight of something over his shoulder.
She pushed him away urgently, "Fire," she whispered.
And he saw it, the orange flames reflected in her silver eyes. It was bright and red in the dark. He turned to look over his shoulder, instinctively pushing Lenora behind him to shield her from the flames, but he needn't have worried. They were far from the fire, it was the library tower that was on fire.
He turned back to her, his hands landing on her shoulders again. "Go find my mother," he told her. The girl's eyebrows knitted together and she opened her mouth to argue. She wanted to help him fight the flames, he could tell. He smiled to soften the blow, "Go," he commanded her, "my little warrior. Tell her what's happening, she won't want to leave Bran, but she must know. Stay with her. I'll come to you once the fire is out. Send any guards you find on the way there out to help."
She nodded and Robb wasted another second to press a kiss against her forehead before he gently pushed her toward the door to the Great keep. "Go," he told her again before he ran off toward the library tower.
Author's Note:
Well, you know that the next chapter is going to be super exciting, don't you?
I hope that you enjoyed this chapter and I want to take a moment to say thank you for reading!
An even larger thank you for the people who reviewed the last chapter:
DannyBlack70: I knew people would get angry about that. But the way I see it is that Cersei was protecting herself. She blamed herself for Bran's fall and in order to align herself with Catelyn, to make the woman think that she understood how she was feeling Cersei twisted the facts a bit to come out in her favor.
Evaline101: Well they definitely got closer in this chapter, didn't they? It's funny because the chapter I just finished is well ahead of this one and they're not so close at that moment so it was strange to jump back to this one where they're kissing and playing in the snow. It's like a little vacation.
And that's all I've got for now. Until next time!
Hugs and Kisses,
Chloe Jane.