Edaline woke up feeling too hot.
It was too hot and too stuffy, she reached out looking for the cold hard flesh she adored so much but found only more blankets, furs, pillow and a warm familiar hand resting on hers.
It was attached to a very tired looking young man with curly black hair who was sitting in a chair next to her bed snoring gently.
It looked and smelled like he has been through something very unpleasant and had not had time to wash up.
She knew that face…
"Jon?"
His eyes snapped open and the next moment the disgustingly dirty creature was tightly hugging her smearing her nightshirt with lord knows what, blood, soot?
"Edaline, you are finally awake, I tried to be at your side every moment my duty allowed me."
"I can see that… but.." and things were really coming back to her now.
"Why am I HERE…"
"We rescued you after we found you barely alive, don't be frightened littler sister, he is long dead"
"Of cause he is dead!" she snapped losing her temper with how dense her brother could be.
He is the Night King!"
"But why am I here with you, you must let me go back to Hardhome so I can get back."
Jon looked at her - face full of sorrow.
His poor little sister, he was surprised and saddened she remembered or saw the horror that the necromancer and his dead army brought along with the storm, she suffered so much in the hands of that wildring cannibal already.
He saw the marks on her body when Samwell treated her.
Jon looked like he was going to vomit and kill someone, but he couldn't decide in which order just thinking about it.
Was the experience was so terrible for poor Edaline she went mad?
He gently and in his usual clumsy manner, suggested that he did see her in the … nude and saw all the bites and cuts… so he understood why she may need to make something up to deal with everything for now.
Edaline felt like the bed was spinning, and she was becoming red, for how could she ever explain to her brother (whom she was pretty sure has never laid with a woman) that pain shared by lovers with consent and pleasure could look terrifying to the outside eye.
Than she was changing to green, because the bed was still tilting without actually moving and she was anxious had that feeling one gets before they expel their dinner all over the floor.
She was just about to say all those things, opened her mouth actually…. but the magical tilting bed gave its last jerk, and she vomited over the Lord Commander.
She heard more people come running in, Sam and Gilly?
The girl had to be Gilly - Why was she looking at her so strangely?
Samwell Tarly tending to her as well as a Maester would have.
He truly had a skill and a kind heart, he didn't bring up what might or might have not happened or call her mad.
Just gave her milk of the poppy for her head, treated her cuts and filled her in on the account of how Jon found her.
But with the uproar in the castle and wildring tribes across the wall for the first time in recorded history.
Jon and Samwell had to be elsewhere and it was Gilly who stayed with Eda later that evening.
Eda was going crazy, not understanding why she still couldn't feel her love. Did the wall get stronger?
But she suspected she was just a lot weaker at the moment and that probably didn't help things.
Eda knew the awful things that happened to Gilly for a large part of her life.
Knew even more nasty details about that horrible old man from some of the more… unusual visitors that stopped by his keep for a tribute, but also did keep a closer eye than anyone would expect, on their sisters and mothers.
The younger boys - unlike the silent ancient generals, would talk sometimes.
Edaline hated the idea that Gilly, who truly has been raped and abused most of her life, was feeling sorry for HER.
Gilly was the strongest girl Eda ever met and she didn't want undeserved sympathy from her.
Gilly would have also probably died of shock to learn someone actually thought of her that way.
"Gilly" Eda decided to try something else.
"You lived beyond the wall most of your life and your… father, he worshiped the Others yes?"
"He was a godly man in his own way" Gilly shrugged.
"Gilly, did he ever do anything or say anything to… attract their attention or call on them without using a weirwood I mean?"
Gilly peered at her, pulling baby Sam closer to her breast.
"Why are you asking me Edaline?..."
"Gilly please? Can you just tell me?"
"The Others can hear the blood of a sacrifice if one truly summons them…" Gilly whispered.
"Father would always slice his hand and drip the blood in the snow to get THEM to come for the boys" she continued in hushed horror, eyes wide.
"He said he would bleed our useless cunts, but it wouldn't work, it had to be someone who really WANTED them, worshiped the King" so it could only be him - the last man of true faith"
Now Gilly was clutching her son and looking completely terrified.
Eda hugged Gilly and baby Sam, she would make sure nothing would ever happen to them or else!
"Thank you! And Gilly, your father - he was horrid, the Watch didn't need to burn his body, none of your brothers would have ever raised him even as a wight.
Also, you or your sisters, you are the only ones always safe in the forests you know, your brothers and know who they are, they won't hurt their kin"
She instantly regretted saying this.
Firstly, wasn't sure her king would approve sharing this bit of humanity and thus weakness his generals had retained, but she didn't care at the moment.
It was mostly because Gilly was looking at her like she grew an extra head.
"You were telling them the truth… " she whispered.
"You really were out there with THEM…"
And it actually broke Eda's heart to see Gilly run out of the room without another word, and to know that she would never get to hold baby Sam again as long as Gilly breathed.
Icy winds were tearing trees out by their roots
He tried to tell himself that a life of one single human could not possibly affect someone like him to the extent that he could not summon the willpower to calm the raging storms around him.
But he missed her with a need he hasn't felt since the last time he had a beating heart and needed things like food and warmth.
If he could get her he would tear down the wall, kill every human animal and dragon and turn the world into an icy desert with no inhabitant - alive or dead, to rule.
If it only be him and his Edaline until the end of time.
At one point - he rounded up well preserved wights with soft black curls and youthful curves.
Beautiful mindless female bodies to command and explore every depraved pleasure he could think of.
Something that got boring very quickly in the first 50 years of his almost eternal existence.
It hasn't changed now, if anything, seeing even superficial resemblance to his little Edaline on mindless faces of those things just made him more furious.
It has been a full day and a full night since he felt her presence in his mind at all, and the feeling was - it was like being pierced by dragonglass all over again.
The not Edalines fell dead, really dead this time, in the snow. He couldn't stomach looking at them