Ж
The castle is quiet as Adela makes her way from the chamber she shares with Sansa and tiptoes down the tower's steps. She is careful to tread lightly, to breathe quietly, as she passes by first Arya's chamber and then the huge oaken door leading onto Ned's rooms. She reaches the bottom of the stairs and eases the main door of the Tower of the Hand silently open, and shuts it behind her with only the smallest of creaks. Outside finally, she gives a sigh of relief and begins her way through the various courtyards and galleys and passageways.
As she continues on her path, the pre-dawn chill seeps through her dress and she tries to fool herself into thinking she's back at Winterfell, barefoot on fresh-fallen frost, surrounded by snow-capped hills and the sound of direwolves. Instead she finds herself dreading the heat that will surely rise with the sun in this southern land that is hot as hell, and with it the noise and stench of a city bursting to the riverbanks. A week in King's Landing, she thinks, and it still feels like I've been here only a day. The court is extravagant, the food and wine and graces excellent, but she finds the tedium of courtiers' conversation, the droning of nobles, the petty complaints of the queen's ladies fit to make her scream. It is all so false, so, so false, this game of thrones and greed. She sees it everywhere, this mistrustful greed, in the snatching of coin from palm to palm, in the glittering, insincere looks of men of lesser houses, hears it in the whispered schemes hushed urgently as she passes by. The feeling of unease she felt on the first day has since never left her. Even now, she feels as if the prickle of half a hundred eyes are on her, watching every placing of her feet upon the flagstones, detailing every tilt of her head and turn of her palm. Every now and then as she turns her gaze sharply over her shoulder she thinks she sees the glimmer of a man's face. A beautiful ghost of gold and white.
She sees the tops of trees begin to appear, elm and alder and black cottonwood, and she knows she has found the place she seeks. The godswood of the Red Keep, a place she'd been surprised to hear of. As she steps into the quiet gloom of the sacred grove, she feels her heart at last begin to find a little peace. The leaves scattered across the dirt beneath her feet are damp from the early morning dew, untouched by the tiny bursts of sunlight managing to pierce through the canopy overhead. She finds the faintest impression of a path and follows it along the forest floor. Already, she feels the air around her beginning to warm even in the shelter of the godswood and curses the heat.
Abruptly the path ends and she looks up from her feet and thoughts to see the great heart tree of oak towering above her, encircled with smokeberry vines and drifting leaves. She sinks to her knees before it and then sits up against the huge trunk, tracing the lines of the bark and looking deeply at the unfamiliar face of the tree. Harsher lines than the weirwood at Winterfell, and with dark sap seeping from the eyes like blood.
"Even you know this place is forged with blood and fire," she whispers, half to herself, and half to the Old Gods. Only the soft sound of the Blackwater and the smallest murmur of breeze care to reply. "I wonder if it will meet its end the same way."
She leans her head back against the oak, and closes her eyes. Her mind dances with a thousand thoughts. She remembers distantly the angered words of Jon Snow, the black look of his eyes when they'd argued about their mothers, and suddenly it all rushes back. She remembers her old town near the Wall, thinks of the dainty figure of her mother with blackened eyes and a leering bodice, dirty fingers, black ringlets circling her waist, scrabbling hands of men and that heavy, unpleasant scent of coin. Adela's heart quickens as she hears the cry of her mother shatter throughout her mind, the ragged cheers of northmen, and the commotion of an inn and a time she'd like to forget. She feels the cry start in her throat, feels her shoulders begin to shake, and tears begin to snake down her cheeks. Oh, Mama, my poor, poor mother. She longs then for nothing more than the dark eyes she's craved since she left Winterfell, for the quiet look of understanding no one else can give.
A squawk from the branches above her makes her eyes shoot open and she looks up to see the dark silhouette of a bird. She squints against the shaft of sunlight painting the oak's leaves and watches as the bird makes its way along one branch before swooping down to walk about the ground by her feet and she notices the thin band of white about its left talon. Its dark eyes shine like beads in the gloom.
"Oh, raven of the north," she whispers as she and the bird watch each other quietly. "You're far from home."
Ж