AN: I have one more scene to finish in the next chapter, and then it will be done. I hope to post it by tomorrow at most. It's around 15.000 words and I hope its worth it. In the mean time, this was just a small preview - next chapter is almost entirely from Robb's pov.. I knew this part was too important not to write but I felt it did not fit that well with the overall tone of the upcoming chapter so I put it here, aside. Personally, I had to write it to get inside Robb's head.

At the very end of this, there is a section where most of you will think, rightly so, that had I added a few well place lines of dialogue there, the last chapter about Sansa could have been entirely avoided. It true, but then the inner working of Sansa's mind and therefore her characterization would have been much sketchier than it is now.

o

Small side-note 2: A king

Every day after he had had that conversation with his sister, Robb could not help but look at the princess and think back on it. Everyone about him seemed to have a very clear idea on what to do with Myrcella Baratheon; everyone except himself. And though the princess left him confused and undecided, he was sure in his heart, if not in his head, that his own indecision was better than all the alternatives he had been presented with. It seemed to him sometimes that the more he thought of it, the more complicated this situation became.

'Complicated'. That was a good word for the princess. The fascination it caused him dulled somewhat his suspicion of her, but it still cause him disquiet in the same measure. As a king, he would have preferred someone a little more easily pigeon-holed. But 'wishing' was not 'having' and fools had died for less. The only thing Robb could appreciate out of it was that, at least, she did not pretend: to be simple, and uncomplicated and safe. When he had told her one morning that she looked beautiful, the princess had given him a small smile and, looking at him dead in the eye without blinking as she thanked him. He didn't know why her expression made him think she was surprised. It was nonsensical: she was beautiful, it was a fact, not even worthy of being called a compliment.

"Beauty is a mirror, your grace." She had said then, when he enquired about her thoughts (as bluntly as ever, because he admitted that he liked to discomfit her with his manner.) "To know that I am beautiful in your eyes makes me beautiful."

Robb had said nothing more of it, but he could not help but think back on how exposed she had seemed that night out in the gardens, how her eyes had widened in surprise, face slack with it for the moment it took for her hand to go to her cheek, to that glaring scar, before she could remind herself not to. In that unwitting gesture - and how fast she put her hand down afterwards, like a child caught making a mistake - Robb had seen the truth of it: there must have been many those that had reminded her of her ruined cheek once she got it, and how it shattered her beauty like a crack on an otherwise perfectly smooth mirror. That scar was now a line of smooth flesh, untouched by the honeyed hue of the rest of her skin and standing out starkly over it. It was so flagrant not because it was some grotesque wound, but because on a beauty so marked, it had no place at all. Her scar stood out the way spilled blood does on fresh snow. Sharp and precise (so much so that it could have been either masterfully sewed together, or very deliberately inflicted, Robb often found himself thinking) it ripped down the side of her face splitting her cheekbone all the way to the ear she was said not to have. Robb knew the japes everyone made of that, and how they called her 'the scarred Princess', the mutilated Lannister… and worse. 'Beautiful', was perhaps not what she expected to be called anymore

There were things that made her smile as well, things that brought the strangest looks on her face. He had never seen eyes such as hers, so vivid and bright. All her liveliness began in her eyes. He had never seen a smile such as hers either: hesitating at first, as if unsure or out of practice, and then full and bright all at once, startling. There was the most stunning sincerity to be found in her smiles. It was impossible not to smile back… not to want to put a stray curl away from her face and see if that hair of gold was as soft as it looked; to touch her skin, her smooth throat. There were moments when she spoke to someone who was not him and Robb found himself looking at her lips move. There were moments, uncommon but there, when he could almost feel something in him pull, something as vague as a memory he'd forgotten he had, brought back by a scent he never knew he remembered… it was there when he looked at her and she stared back in silence: the ghost of attraction… like the prickle of a bee, reminding him of things he'd rather not think of.

It was only in silence that he found Robb could best understand her, when there was nothing between them but his curiosity and her fascination (or was that het other way around…). In silence he could be honest with himself, because whenever he spoke, to her he was always 'your grace'. She never called him anything else. Another curious expression she used was 'I would not presume'. She did not say it often, but that was not the point: every time she spoke it, she did so with a sort of conscious deference, and yet it also seemed like a slap in the face: I am not allowed to presume. It was as if every time she acknowledged her boundaries, she disparaged them in the same breath. Robb knew that people so often said one thing and meant another, but could a person say something that could be read two ways and mean them both?

It all made Robb wonder if maybe be was thinking too hard on this. He certainly had never thought so much over one person before. But then again, he had never had as many other people so vehemently willing to do his thinking for him as he had in this case.

But how could he not doubt, with so much encumbering his brain? There was goodness in her, it was so easy to see it. Thoughts like those made Robb wonder if he would fare better if he just forgot her name and parentage and simply got to know this girl, the one he is stuck with, the one that he has no doubt he could easily learnt to like… and there's a lie, because despite himself he likes her already.

But the Lannister in her makes her impossible to trust. His mother was right when she mentioned Genna Frey. She was the reason he was almost killed at the Riverrun and some of his most loyal men, slaughtered. And that was where Sansa was wrong as well. Marriage does not change a woman – only foolish men believe that they can conquer these strange creatures. And the princess is no easy thing to dismantle. Her quiet demeanor and pensive nature make her seem simple, but she is not – one conversation with her had been enough to know it - and trying to pick her apart is like trying to cut slices out of live steel: you just don't do it. Robb has no doubts on that point, no illusions: you see only what she wants you to see and only very rarely does she slip. Personally, Robb had never seen her do that in company. It was with him alone that she seemed to allow herself to shed that armor and allow him glimpses of something underneath… he didn't yet know what to think about that.

Robb knew that he would end up hurting her; that part was as unavoidable as a next breath. He had not set out to do it, but now that she had been placed by his side… it complicated things. There were plans set in motion, there had been for years, things that could not be changed, nor would they even if he wished it and Robb most certainly did not wish it. But still, could he in all good faith, make the princess (his wife; it was such a strange concept, imagining all this about one who was to be his wife…) believe that he loved her, and then betray that trust as his had been betrayed so many times over? Was he capable of causing that kind of pain to someone else, knowing the taste of it so well himself?

Wouldn't it be better if he kept her distant and made the break a clean one, make it simpler on himself and the princess as well?

Would it though? Be better? Or just easier… safer.

At what point did playing for safety become cruel? Too cruel to bear? It seemed such a little thing: one heart to break. Only one. One's trust to shatter. In comparison to some other things Robb had done, this seemed almost… inconsequential. These plans that had been made and that the princess was now an unknowing part of, they had been set for a purpose so imperative that it went beyond any single life. In their midst, Myrcella Baratheon had been an unforeseen complication, that was true, but she was not an unmanageable one. Indeed, if one chose to ignore her feelings entirely, she would not even matter in the grand scheme of things… but Robb was not that man. He had learned to be a great many things through this war. He had learned to be sully his hands, if it meant the survival of his people… but he could not forget he was dealing with men and women, with their lives. He could not forget who he was raised to be, and start calling ruling a 'game', like they did in the south. There was a reason why Kings of Winter swung the blade themselves and the reason was a respect for life and death and its weight. It made you look the man you kill in the eye, it stained you in their blood. You must never forget what death looks like, his father used to tell him and Robb had never forgotten it. To this day he did not want to make it easier for himself to play with the lives of others, lest it should become too easy, and Robb less human.

It was because of all that and who he was, that Robb could not ignore the Princess' presence, her being and her feelings, in this careful trap that cut across realms and years. Those careful plans too had been a reason why he had not wanted her with him. He had known even before meeting her that he would not be able to simply see her as a piece in a board and not a person he was bound to betray in the end. That he must do so inevitably scratched at him from the inside. Even more so now that he was starting to know her.

It was laughable, thinking that it would have made things a fraction easier for his conscience, if the princess had been at least easier to dislike, to hate. But she was not.

She was not…

Tywin Lannister thought he was being cunning when he had chosen his queen for him but the truth was that the man could not possibly know all the ripples that one action would cause. Nor could he ever come to know it… and neither could the princess. Not until it was time. By then it would be too late, of course, but that could not be helped.

An inescapable betrayal. Not a question of if, but of when. And that wound would run deeper still if Robb made the princess believe she was loved and safe, only to stab her in the back.

Could he really fall so low? Was there no end to the pieces of himself he would have to feed this crown he bore, this war that seemed to never be at an end even once the clash of swords was over? Robb wondered if, once the end truly came, it would be worth it; all the sacrifices and blood and ugly things done in the name of this game of thrones they had all started and fueled. Robb sighed, rubbed his face hard trying to come up with an answer. None came, of course. Being a good king apparently meant that you would have to sacrifice being a good man every once in a while.

There had been a time when he would have said no to that kind of compromise. He had had to know the feel of steel through his chest and what it felt like to think his family decimated, before he knew he had the strength to be whatever he needed to be for victory, when only victory could mean safety for those he loved. He'd learned to choose his duty over everything, even his own honor… but still whenever he did, he felt his conscience snap at him and his maimed integrity howled like a living thing inside him. May it never stop hurting, Robb prayed. May I never stop remembering. He would fear the day he would stop agonizing over decisions like this. That would be the day he would look into the mirror and not know himself. He'd be a different man, and Robb did not want that. He could be himself, even as he sacrificed himself, as long as that pain reminded him who he was and who he came from. Which was perhaps what had made Robb ask Sansa if she was sure of her opinions on Myrcella Baratheon. He had made sure they were alone before he did so. Speaking of the princess in any measure of possibility beyond deep mistrust was impossible whenever their mother, or anyone else, was around.

His sister had looked him in the eye and Robb had known that she was remembering the conversation they had had that very day with their mother in their uncle's solar.

"Myrcella is no player, Robb." Sansa had said with enough confidence to make him think she truly believed it. "She is intelligent enough to know players though, and evade schemes. She's as slippery as an eel in water… but she is not obsessed with power."

A thoughtful expression came over his sister's face then, as if she was thinking about something, but though he'd wanted to, Robb did not interrupt her.

"Well, to say that she doesn't like it would be a stretch. She likes making people do things and enjoys control just fine, but she dreads power more than she covets its fruits and eases." Sansa had shrugged then, as if she was speaking of a small matter. "They are few, I think, the things that the princess fear: one of them is thought of ever becoming her mother however."

And that was a revelation that Robb was not likely to forget.

A smile comes over Sansa's face, one that Robb does both likes and dislikes. It's her cruel smile, the one she wears every time she thinks about the pain of those she hated and enjoys the thought of it. Her she-wolf smile.

"The queen knew it too. It drove her to these unbelievable rages sometimes - it was quite amusing, as long as you kept out of her sight. But I digress. Myrcella… there are things she cannot avoid being Robb, but all she does says to me that the princess doesn't care much for imitating her family too closely in what makes them so despised."

But Robb caught the difference, that subtle things that her sister was not saying, despite having said a lot.

"Doesn't want to, or can't?"

Sansa's smile was one of satisfaction.

"Doesn't want to. Make no mistake Robb, Myrcella's mind is capable of darkness; proof of it is that she managed to survive in Dorne all alone surrounded by enemies at every turn. She thinks like a Lannister." But then Sansa gave herself pause. "Well, that's perhaps unkind: she thinks like a survivor. That's no bad thing I suppose; after all, so do I." his sister had said, giving him an apologetic smile, the need for which he had brushed away with a shake of the head and one arm looping over Sansa's shoulders and bringing her closer. He could forgive her anything – if there had been anything to forgive at all, which Robb firmly believed there was not – for the sole restitution of having her back alive and well. Whatever she wanted to amend in herself she was free to do it, as long as she lived.

"But Lannister name and thoughts aside, Myrcella acts like a person who would rather be loved than be feared."

Her glance had been conspiratorial almost, and her smile teasing.

"She is contradictory that way, your princess. It makes for interesting conversations." She'd chuckled then, looking at him from the corner of her eyes. "At least you won't ever be bored of her."

o

TBC