Winterfell seems empty without all the guests, and half the household away. Half the Starks have left, and Bran still has not woken up.
The first day, it takes two hours more to get Winterfell up and running than usual, since so many people left with Lord Stark. Cerelle appoints placeholders in the meantime, until Lady Stark can do it herself, and Rickon follows after Robb and her still, whimpering and sniffling and making them promise him that they will not leave him too.
Little things would bring him comfort, and Cerelle lets him sit with her while she traces a plan for the accounts and calculates how much they need to buy and restock and how to best redistribute the money. She presents it to Maester Luwin on the tenth day after her family has left, and he promises to bring it up with Lady Stark and whoever ends up being appointed as the new steward.
Life at Winterfell goes on, but it is completely different from before. Not only are Lord Stark, the girls and Jon absent, but so are a third of the house staff, and Bran still doesn't wake. After the celebrations when her father and his court were still in the North, Winterfell feels like a ghost castle.
Robb steps up to his role and plays it well. Lord, husband, brother, son, he is dutiful in his actions. He keeps the castle running, shares his meals with his people, keeping the tradition of placing one person from the staff on their table to discuss current matters. He sits by her side at supper, entertains Rickon, checks on her mother and Bran.
And at night, he slips into their bed and loves her. He doesn't say it, and neither does she, but it is there.
In the mornings, she can hear Eline giggle when Robb leaves with a kiss to her forehead. In the halls, people whisper about them, how besotted they are with each other. She didn't have to be Jenne to know that even the guards whispered—whether they had heard anything or it was all speculation on their part remained to be seen, but if she was honest she could do without all the giggling and the whispers as she walks to break her fast.
It's over half a month after the King has left, when Lady Stark still hasn't moved from Bran's side, that Robb and she decide to broach the subject with her. If she wasn't coming out, they would need to go in for something more than just to check up on them.
They hear Maester Luwin voice as they get closer, and it seem he has had a similar idea to them. It's Catelyn's answer, disconnected from the reality they're living as she shrugs the responsibility that has them trading look and deciding to take up the mantle of Lord and Lady of Winterfell completely, once and for all. At least on some aspects.
"We need to make several lasting appointments."
"We'll make the appointments. We'll talk about it first thing in the morning," Robb speaks up as they step into the room, and only Luwin turns to look at them.
"And anything else that needs to be done," she adds, giving a quick look to Lady Catelyn.
"Very well, my Lord. Your Grace." Luwin bows his head at them and takes his leave.
"When was the last time you left this room? Bran is not going to die, Mother." Robb says as he goes to open the window to let some fresh air in, and Cerelle stays near the door. There's a wolf howling, but she's not sure which one, or if it even is only one.
"Bran needs me." Lady Catelyn shakes her head, still working on her wheel, not letting them distract her from it.
"Rickon needs you. He's six." Robb frowns.
"He's scared, and lost. He doesn't know what's going on. He cries, follows us around, grabbing our legs," Cerelle says, walking closer to Robb, to stand by his side.
"MAKE THEM STOP, PLEASE. I can't hear them anymore!" Lady Catelyn says, covering her ears like a child.
Both Robb and Cerelle turn to the window to close it, and so they both see the flames as they glow. Robb is the one that speaks up.
"Fire. You both stay here, I'll come back!" He takes her hand, gives it a quick squeeze, and then he's gone.
Lady Catelyn stands at that, goes to watch as fire rises on a roof inside Winterfell's own walls.
"How could it have happened?" Cerelle asks, turning around to look at Lady Stark, and gasping when she sees the strange man in the room with them.
"You're not supposed to be here. No one's supposed to be here, much less the princess," the man says, and Cerelle takes a small step in front of Catelyn when his eyes move to Bran's lying figure. "It's a mercy, really. He's dead already."
He unsheats a dagger, and she can sense Catelyn springing to action at her back, but Cerelle is faster. Cerelle has to be faster.
She grabs the wrist that holds the dagger and twists it behind his back, but he uses the position to try and headbutt her, and as she tries to avoid it, steeping back, he gains back the upper hand. He tries to stab her, but barely misses when Catelyn throws herself against him. He manages to turn her and bring the dagger to her neck, but Lady Stark grabs the blade with her bare hands before he can slit her throat, and Cerelle uses that small opening to bring down her fist on the back of his head, hard enough to make him let go of Lady Stark and bring him to his knees.
The assassin turns towards Cerelle, slashes up with his dagger but she manages to jump back. He's bringing his arm back to attack her again when there are twin growls from the doorway.
Two direwolves jump onto the man, straight for his neck, and after only a few seconds he's dead, his neck a mess of blood and flesh.
Bran's direwolf jumps onto the bed with him, muzzle red with blood, while Grey Wind walks towards her, smearing blood on her hand when he bumps her, whining until she runs her trembling hand through the fur on his head.
"Good wolf," she whispers, feeling her legs give out under her weight. "Good wolf," she says again, staring at the corpse.
Cerelle raises her eyes and locks them with Lady Stark's, and she sees her hands dripping blood, her face white with shock.
"My lady," she says, crawling towards her. "Your hands." Cerelle takes her hands with her own trembling ones, looks at the cuts. "I'll... Go for the maester."
Cerelle tries to stand, but her legs fail her halfway up, and she crashes down. Grey Wind whines, padding to where she is and laying down on her legs, his nuzzle soiling her dress with blood.
"Are you alright, child?" Catelyn asks, reaching for her and pulling back at the last moment when she remembers the blood.
"Yes. Yes, of course," Cerelle says but stays where she is.
The man's neck is still oozing dark, dark blood, and the dagger is on the ground near her feet. Cerelle reaches for it, and is surprised at its weight.
"This is Valyrian steel. How did such a man come across such fine a weapon?" she asks, but Catelyn has no answers, just looking at Bran and his wolf.
Cerelle turns the blade around her hands, tries to find anything identifiable, but nothing jumps to sight. It's a fine blade, one of a kind, but it belongs to no one.
Robb arrives later, out of breath, the fire under control.
"Mother, Cerelle! What happened?!" he says the moment he sees them, hurrying into the room.
His mother is sitting on the chair beside Bran's bed, and Cerelle is sitting on the floor in front of her, Grey Wind on her lap as she presses strips of her dress' sleeve onto his mother's hands. There is blood everywhere, and a dead man in the middle of the room.
"An assassin, sent after Bran," Mother answers, looking up.
"I'll send for the Maester," Robb says, and sends a guard while others go inside to take the body out.
"Where were the Tower's guards?" Cerelle asks, letting go of his mother but not moving. There's blood on her cheek, but it doesn't seem to be hers.
"I took them with me. This man must have initiated the fire to distract everyone." Robb crouches next to Cerelle, touching her elbow. "Are you alright? Why are you on the floor?"
"My legs. I was shaking like a leaf," Cerelle says, accepting the arm he offers and pushing herself up slowly. He takes her weight, helps her to standing and doesn't let go until she's sitting on the bed.
"But you are not hurt?" He takes her cheek on his hand, uses his thumb to wipe away the dried blood, and there is no wound under there. "Mother, aside from your hands?"
"No. No, I'm fine, Robb. But Rickon. You need to check on Rickon."
But Rickon is asleep when he reaches his rooms, his hand buried deep in Shaggydog's black fur. He groans when Robb shakes him, mumbling and shushing his direwolf when Shaggydog starts to growl at Robb, groaning and whining when Robb tries to take him in his arms so he can take him somewhere safer.
So Robb leaves him there, doubles the guards and patrols and orders a castle wide search for anything suspicious, led by Theon himself.
Bran's attempted assassination seems to awake something in Lady Catelyn. She orders a bath, dresses herself and leaves Bran's side for the first time in almost a month. She walks around Winterfell like before, hands bandaged, and approves plans and appointments and gets the whole castle on order.
And then she for White Harbor to talk to the maesters there, three days later, for it has been too long without Bran improving, she says. It could make sense. White Harbor is a big city, though nowhere near the size of King's Landing or Lannisport, and there are plenty of people who could give Lady Stark their opinions.
But why now? Is it that the threat to Bran's life made Lady Stark restless? Had she not fallen into such despair, would she have left sooner?
Rickon goes into hysterics the moment Lady Stark says she's leaving, screaming and kicking and biting, refusing the kiss and hug she tries to offer and running off instead, followed close by Shaggydog. Ser Aedan found him on the farthest of the crypts, below the most recent ones, curled up on the knees of some stone King of Winter.
By nightfall, after she has sat by Bran's side and held Rickon as Old Nan told a tale of an old Winter King that she's sure is only a third truth, she goes to her rooms, where Robb has summoned her, and finds him sitting at the table, food already in front of him.
"Robb. Is everything alright?" she asks, coming closer to him and putting a hand on his shoulder. He covers her hand with his, nods after a second. Places a kiss on it, and stands up to get ready for bed.
He's thinking about something, she can tell.
And what he's thinking is that Cerelle has to be innocent. He defended her himself in the Godswood, when the Lannister accusations were first put forward by his mother. Cerelle was good, they knew that, had seen in the past year. She had been the one to find Bran, to fight off the assassin, it didn't add up to the gentle nature they had seen from her for her to be responsible.
And, most importantly and what convinced his mother: the direwolves had never, not once, tried to attack her. Not even Shaggydog, who was slowly becoming wild and dangerous as Rickon kept getting more and more distressed by the changes happening.
Theon had called him a fool for defending her. He'd said she was Lannister, even if she wasn't to blame, even if she wasn't the mastermind behind this, she would side with her family, and Robb would be a fool to expect her loyalty.
But Cerelle had condemned her family before, hadn't she? She had rejected the murders of Prince Aegon and Princess Rhaenys. She had said she struggled with the knowledge, especially as she lived in the rooms of the late Princess Elia herself.
No. Cerelle couldn't be to blame.