The Moon Door closed, and Sansa no longer felt the call of the blue, or the beautiful roughness of the wind that had stung her face like freedom. She stared at the stone where the valley floor had been; the stone beneath which both Petyr and Lady Lysa had fallen to their deaths; and she wanted it to open up again. She wanted to feel that strength once more; to see the outside of this place, and to feel the cold of it creeping into her bones like home.

She felt Arya take her arm and lead her to one of the stone benches that lined the hall. Her sister's hands were cold and trembling, but comforting, and Sansa wanted to reach out and embrace her and cry and murmur 'you came for me; you came,' until her tears ran dry. But she had her armour on, and it hid both her face and her tears; both of them faint imaginings on the edge of the comforting void inside herself that draped silver veils and golden wine over everything that she had done that day.

Lord Jaime had closed the Moon Door; and as he approached them, clad in black from top to toe, he looked in worry towards the Hall doors; as though expecting an army to burst through them at any moment. Sansa smiled bitterly, knowing that nothing of the kind would happen. Alayne Stone had made herself amenable; the poor, sweet bastard girl with the virtuous blue eyes who was loved and trusted by all; even though her very existence was a lie.

The direwolf was sniffing at her hands, and beginning to lick them, and though she knew in her heart that somehow, somewhere, Arya had found Nymeria again – Nymeria – she closed her eyes tightly and pretended, for just a moment, that she had also found Lady; and that Lady had grown to be a wolf rather than a shade. As she took comfort in the thought, she began to speak; and her voice was dead, armoured, protected: a voice that was not her own.

'There was snow on the ground this morning,' Sansa said, 'more than I have ever seen here. I went out to play in it and built a snow castle; and then Father – Lord Baelish – came out and kissed me.'

Arya and Lord Jaime were both looking intently at her with an anxiety that she was not accustomed to seeing in relation to herself – except with Lord Tyrion, of course, Tyrion – and as she watched them, she saw that their fingers were clutched fiercely together and that neither of them seemed to know it; and how beautiful, she thought, how right; before Petyr smiled at her again; smiled at her right through her memory and her freedom; and she forced herself to keep talking: flatly, emotionlessly.

'I pushed him away,' Sansa continued, 'I almost hit him. I shouted at him that he ought to be kissing Lady Lysa instead of me, because she was his wife – '

'Does Lady Lysa know your true identity, my lady?' Lord Jaime enquired.

'Yes,' Sansa mumbled, fingering her black hair, 'this was her idea.'

Nymeria began to sniff at the dyed hair with disdainful disapproval, and Sansa thought of how she had hated it the first time she applied the stuff to her copper red hair; how it had made her neither Stark nor Tully, but no one.

'Later, Lady Lysa called me here to the High Hall. She'd seen everything. She was so angry she was almost mad. Sometimes she called me by our mother's name, sometimes not. She called me a number of charming things, of which temptress and seductress were the least interesting. The more I denied that I was anything of the sort, the worse she became. Then she – she put her hand around the back of my neck, her fingers clutching deep in my hair, like this –' she demonstrated, taking a fistful of raven hair, 'and…and tried to throw me out of the Moon Door.'

Arya looked at her in horror, and Sansa wondered once again why she was speaking this way; with such coldness and bitterness and indifference; why she was speaking like Petyr and nothing like herself; nothing like what she had felt as she had stood half-dangling on the edge of that void; death (and Lady Lysa) screaming at her with a kind of cheerfulness as her feet scrabbled on the edge of the stone; and she had tried not to look down, she had tried to, but she hadn't been able to stop herself, she had to see how far she would fall; and wonder how long it would take her to hit the ground, oh gods –

'Petyr arrived,' Sansa growled, pushing the fear away and trying to forget that it existed, embracing and loving the cold and the bitterness of her own voice, 'Petyr arrived and managed to talk her out of it. Of course Petyr talked her out of it. He's such a good talker. He spoke to her as any husband trying to give the appearance of affection would. The insincerity of it made me sick, even though I should have been thinking about…not dying, I suppose, but his insincerity served its purpose well enough. She listened to him and let me go…and when she let me go, I almost fell anyway. The wind was like a magnet trying to pull me out of the Door. I held onto a pillar and closed my eyes. The world was swirling around me like a maelstrom. I think I was crying, I can't remember, but whatever happened, she let me go – and she collapsed into his arms like some ridiculous princess in a song and began to mumble about their marriage and how long she had waited for him. But while she was blathering about how much she loved him, she also found the time to mention that Jon Arryn dropped dead because she added an over-zealous quantity of the Tears of Lys to his soup. On Petyr's suggestion, of course. I opened my eyes, then, and I could see that his were angry. He did a good job of quieting her down – even though I had already heard everything – and managed to get her talking about when they were young; pretending that he agreed with her when she talked about how they were meant to be, even then. That almost made her weep from happiness. It was pitiful to watch. Then…then he smiled at her, and said that he'd never loved any woman but our mother…and pushed her. It was a tiny push. Gentle, even, and she didn't even scream. Nothing. I watched her disappearing down to the valley floor, until she had faded to nothing…then I looked up again, and saw Petyr smiling at me…and I knew that he would never let me go.'

Sansa almost gasped as she felt her true voice returning; the void inside her sealing up and dying. She took Arya's hand and held it hard, and she could feel moisture beading up in her eyes.

'I didn't want to come with him,' Sansa almost growled, 'after Bran and Rickon, when he had left to come here, I wrote to him. I told him that I didn't want to go now that you were here; that I wouldn't go under any circumstances. I received no reply from him, and I thought no more of it. Then on Joffrey's wedding day, his messenger arrived anyway, saying that he was waiting for me in the godswood.'

'Is that why you were so ill?' Arya asked, squeezing her hand.

'I was pretending to be ill,' Sansa replied, warmth and sadness beginning to colour her voice, 'or half-pretending. I was flustered that he had still sent a messenger; I needed an excuse to get away, and though I was not entirely worried, I nevertheless…I…I told myself that the letter might have been lost. Such things happen when people travel, but I could not quite shake the feeling –'

She remembered how quiet the halls of the Red Keep had been; the sound of her shoes like sledgehammers against the red sandstone; as though she were walking on blood.

'I went to the godswood,' she blurted, beginning to speak faster and faster, 'I met him there, and I told him that I would not come with him. He took me by force. He had one of his men hit me with the hilt of his sword so that I passed out, and when I woke up, I was on a ship and Joffrey was dead. I realised then…I realised that I'd been stupid…so stupid…and that by taking me on the day of Joffrey's death he was forcing me to stay with him, because everyone would think it was me if I disappeared, and everyone would think I killed him. I felt like such a stupid little girl –'

'Sansa, don't talk that way!' Arya interrupted.

'– but that was no reason for me to continue being stupid,' Sansa plunged on, 'I'd gotten myself into this mess, and now I had to survive, I had to, and I suppose I still thought, then, that somebody might come after us. So I went up on deck and…and apologised to him for getting cold feet, and I…I thanked him for taking me anyway, when I would have regretted staying behind. I didn't think that he'd believe me…but he did.'

'You did well,' Lord Jaime said, 'you did well.'

Sansa felt a rush of gratitude to him for saying that.

'He spoke to me a great deal as we travelled,' she continued, her words tumbling over each other, 'about finding me a husband that would retake Winterfell in my name and free it from the Boltons; I just had to pretend to be a bastard for a little while until everything was settled, and a part of me believed him, I believed him, because I wanted to go home, and I wanted us to go home, for the North to be ours again, even though I knew he was…he was…'

Sansa almost growled at herself, and at the looks of pity of Arya and Lord Jaime's faces, and she felt iron plunge deep into her very soul; just as it had when Aunt Lysa had fallen, and when she had stood staring at Petyr; knowing, just as she had known all along, that with him, she would never be free.

'But when I saw him standing there by the Moon Door smiling at me,' she muttered grimly, 'as though I were something beautiful to be sampled at a pleasure house in Lys, I knew. I knew that he had planned the whole thing. With Lady Lysa dead, he would marry me. He would take Winterfell in my name, and use me, and our home, for himself; to control both the East and the North; and I remembered how he betrayed Father, and how he stood at Cersei's elbow when Joffrey promised me he would be merciful and I believed him; when I was still young and so stupid, and I… I realised, as I looked at him, that I would never be free as long as he lived, and that nobody would ever come to save me.'

In that moment, the wind had still torn at her like a magnet; the blue calling to her with such sweetness that it might have been a song. She had looked down into the abyss, and the blue had called and called and howled and howled a song of her loneliness and hope and isolation…but the song had held no comfort for her, and no attraction, and as she had stood looking into it and feeling it on her face; she had realised that there was no reason to fear it, and no need to be saved from it; because all she had to do was step back from the edge, walk a few feet, and save herself.

'I walked to him and embraced him, and thanked him for teaching me this lesson. 'Don't mention it, sweetling,' he said. Then I pushed him out and watched him fall. He didn't scream. I so wanted him to scream. I wanted him to.'

And she had stood on the edge of the blue till the Hall doors had opened; her strength its own seduction; her realisation its own form of beauty. She had contemplated freedom, and escape, and then help had come, at the very instant that she had forgotten it.

Arya took both her hands, and her sister's fingers felt familiar between hers; long like their mother's, but calloused from years and years of holding a sword. Arya's eyes were bright and grey with understanding – with some of it. Sansa could see them seeking out the call of the blue as they gazed into hers. She saw her own fear in them; the fear that she had felt as Petyr smiled at her; and she saw her own strength there too, and her will, and she loved Arya for it. She loved her.

We are all that's left, she thought, our pack have gone to the darkness. Both of us have seen it, but neither of us will go there yet. She has protected me from it this time. And someday, I will repay her. I swear it by the old gods and the new.

Lord Jaime was pacing; his mind already on escape.

'The captain who brought us here,' he said, 'why did he leave the Hall when he clearly saw that you were alone on the edge of the Moon Door?'

'It's a favourite pastime of Lord Robert's,' Sansa replied, the mere thought making her smile in exasperation, 'even when there's nobody to throw out of it; the accursed thing is opened twenty times a day. As to my being alone, well – the man is a servant. It's not his place to ask why a room is empty.'

Sansa watched Lord Jaime look intently at Arya.

'We need to leave,' he declared, 'right now.'

Arya was shaking her head as she put an arm around Sansa.

'If we rush off and take Sansa with us,' she protested, 'we'll be implicated in this mess too. We can't run from the whole of Westeros.'

'No, you cannot,' Sansa agreed, 'but you can tell the whole of Westeros that Petyr tried to save me from Lady Lysa and was pulled out of the Moon Door in the process. I thought it over quite carefully before you arrived.'

Arya was looking at her with disturbed admiration.

'Tyrion was right about you.'

Sansa blushed and stared intently at her lap.

'Why, what did he say?'

'He said that you would have a gift for intrigue when you learned not to be afraid.'

Sansa smiled broadly to disguise the tears she felt forming in her eyes. Nymeria licked her hand, and laid her head in her lap, and Sansa scratched behind the direwolf's ears; the fur soft and beautiful.

'You know you shouldn't always tell people what Tyrion thinks of them,' she sniffled, 'he's far too fond of irony for both their good and his.'

'I cannot argue with that,' Lord Jaime concurred, smiling weakly at her before turning to Arya, 'I take it this little anecdote means you think your lady sister's plan a good one, Stark?'

'Yes,' Arya said simply.

Lord Jaime audibly sighed with relief, making Arya glare at him.

'We should tell the guards what's happened,' he said, 'and send a raven down to the Gates of the Moon –'

'Do we say who Sansa really is?' Arya interrupted.

'I don't see why not,' Lord Jaime shrugged, 'I doubt they'll want to keep her. If they do, I'll simply remind them that she's a ward of the Crown. Cersei is unlikely to declare war for her, but the Lords of the Vale don't know that, and we can't exclude the possibility that Cersei's spies will wake up eventually – '

Sansa almost laughed aloud at that.

'Of course the Lords of the Vale know, Lord Jaime,' she interrupted, as politely as she could, 'the whole of Westeros knows it. News of such import does eventually reach the Vale despite Lady Lysa's fondness for isolation.'

The silence that followed her words descended so swiftly and so abruptly that Sansa was rendered rather uncomfortable by it. She looked from Lord Jaime, to her sister, and back again, and saw that both were regarding her with perfectly sincere amazement; as though they had no idea what she was talking about.

No. I cannot believe it.

'Do you mean to say… you've not heard?' Sansa asked.

'Not heard what, Sansa?' Arya said, her grey eyes wary and apprehensive.

Of course they don't know. They've probably been avoiding the road. In all likelihood they haven't spoken to another human being since they left King's Landing.

Sansa looked at Lord Jaime, and tried to speak as gently as she could.

'Cersei is being held in the Great Sept of Baelor as a prisoner of the Faith,' Sansa told them, 'she has no spies and no power left.'