Swift as a deer. Quiet as a shadow. Swift as a deer. Quiet as a shadow.
There was a knot tied tightly around her belly and it felt like a noose as she crept through the castle as quietly as she could. It was late into the night and most of the castle was fast asleep, but there were still guards posted around every corner and there were doubtless several in front of his door. It wouldn't deter her - it couldn't.
Renly Baratheon had been all but forced from the castle, back to Storm's End where he and his 20,000 men would likely face a horrific fate at the hands of either his elder brother or the Lannisters. She was no fool - they were next. The Tyrells had grown weary of war after one battle. They had no quarrel with the Lannisters; it was Renly who wanted to be king, it was her father who had declared Joffrey an abomination. They were distancing themselves from their former allies and as Anguy had said, it would not be long before her betrothal to Willas was pushed aside for something more beneficial to the Reach. Perhaps Myrcella, she thought.
But she couldn't let that happen. Her family was already at war. Her father would not bend to something he knew was wrong, and her brother had already called the banners. They would be marching south soon, with the expectations of the northmen joining 100,000 soldiers from the Reach. That had to be the way it went, and she was the only one who could make it so.
The two guards that stood in front of his door did not seem to agree. "Back to your chambers, girl," one commanded.
"I'm meant to be here," she replied. "You'd do well not to displease your future lady."
The guard smiled down at her, but it was not a kind one. "The future is never certain, Lady Stark." He spat out the word Stark as if it had left a bad taste upon his tongue.
A strong urge to kick him in the shin overtook her, but she doubted it would do much damage to his platemail. Instead, she threw her arm past him and into the door, knocking twice before he managed to snatch her by the wrist and yank her away. He had carried her nearly halfway down the hallway before a voice called out. "Leave her be," the tired voice called. "Let her come to me."
Arya resisted a second urge to kick the guard as she yanked her arm out of his grasp in favor of approaching Willas, who looked more wary than surprised to find her there. "I need to talk to you," she explained.
"Here?" he asked. "Now?" It was hardly appropriate and she knew it, but she nodded her head firmly. Willas glanced over the top of her head towards the guards, before looking back down at her. "I expect you'd better come in, then." It was silent as a crypt in his chambers, and nearly as dark. She stood awkwardly beside the door as he lit a candle, her hands wringing together. She'd never stepped foot into his chambers before and her eyes were busy scanning her surroundings, distracted from the man in front of her. His room was littered with books, letters, sketches of different trees and flowers and insects. "Why are you here, Arya?"
Her eyes snapped back to his and she summoned up all of her courage, forcing herself to ask. "Did you mean it?"
"Did I mean what?" He sounded tired and she knew it was from more than the late hour. He knew why she was there and he was not looking forward to the conversation she was trying to have.
Her eyes found the floor. "You said that you chose me," she reminded his feet, "that you wanted this, that you wanted me. Did you mean it, or was it just something to say?"
Warm and gentle fingers found her chin, tilting her gaze back up to eyes that were equally warm. "I meant it," he assured her. "Although I'm beginning to think you may be too clever."
Willas moved to sit on the edge of his bed. When she hesitated, he gestured her over to sit beside him. She fidgeted in her spot, uncomfortable with his proximity, with their location, with the topic at hand. "Your father doesn't want to go to war," said Arya, unable to keep it inside her any longer. "Marrying me means you have to."
"My grandmother doesn't want to go to war," he corrected. "My father does as he's told."
"And what about you?"
Willas gave her a look, knowing exactly what she was trying to goad him into. "I'm not the lord of Highgarden yet." There was little she could do to stop the disappointment from pouring out of her. It was palpable in the room and it hung between them like an anchor. "There's nothing I can do."
"You're the heir to Highgarden, you ought to have some say in it," she reminded him. Tyrion, she was certain, would not roll over quite so easily for his father, and Lord Tywin was a much more formidable man than Mace Tyrell. She considered telling him so, but she didn't imagine being compared to the Imp of Casterly Rock would make him any more malleable, and as she pondered she decided Robb would never have stood against their father. But her father would never act as such a fool. "One little battle and you're all worn out."
Even in the dimly lit room, she could see his jaw clench. "One little battle that cost me one little brother," he reminded her.
Arya tried to imagine what she would've done if fleeing King's Landing had cost her a brother. Would she have rolled over, too? No, she thought. I would avenge him. "He was right," she muttered, watching Willas' brow as it knit together. "Jaime, he was-"
"Don't," said Willas, his voice little more than a whisper but it held more authority than she knew how to muster.
"He said you wouldn't fight for me," she continued anyway. It wasn't something Jaime had ever said, but it was something he probably would've said and Willas seemed to believe her.
"Is that what you want?" he asked. "Him?"
Was it what she wanted? She couldn't be certain. She didn't want Jaime - no, not the man himself, but she wanted a lion. She wanted a wolf. Someone who would fight tooth and nail for her, with her, beside her. Not some pretty flower sitting safely in a castle while the rest of Westeros burned. "I want someone brave," she finally said.
"Bravery and stupidity are two sides of the same coin, Arya," said Willas. "You may learn that one day."
"You think I'm stupid?" she demanded. Maybe she was. All she knew was she'd rather be stupid than a coward.
He hesitated for so long she nearly turned to leave. "No," he finally said. "I don't think you're stupid. I think going to war for a dead man is stupid. I think sacrificing my brother or my sister or you for a dead man is stupid. What difference does it make who sits the Iron Throne - if it's Renly or Stannis or Joffrey? Is it worth your father's life? Your mother's and your sister's?"
"Doing what's right is worth sacrifice," said Arya, though she couldn't help but think about how those were her father's words, not her own.
"What if what's right isn't what's best?" he pushed her. "What if Stannis makes a horrible king, worse than Joffrey?"
"No one is worse than Joffrey-"
"Joffrey's no more than a boy, it'll be the Hand who rules," said Willas. "It'll be Tywin, or Tyrion. Both are very competent and some might even say Tyrion is a good man. A good man who wants war no more than I do, who may rule Westeros better than Robert ever did, better than Stannis ever could. We should sacrifice our lives and the lives of our people to uphold a line of succession that puts the wrong man on the throne?"
It wasn't at all how she'd been raised. These were not the values her father had instilled in her. And yet … she was struggling to tell him he was wrong. Tyrion was a good man, and if not good, Tywin Lannister was certainly very competent. He had been the one to make House Lannister as formidable as it was - he could certainly keep the kingdoms in line, and maybe even help them prosper.
Perhaps Stannis could do the same, perhaps he couldn't. Arya would throw her life away for a just cause, but what if this war cost her mother's life? Or Bran's? Or little Rickon's? Would it have been worth it?
Willas seemed to sense her hesitation and rose from the bed, kneeling on the floor before her, his hands finding either side of her face as he forced her to look at him. "I won't go to war for you, but I will protect you," he promised. "I'll keep you safe if you let me. Is that what you want?"
Nymeria let out a lazy yawn before rolling over onto her side to continue with her afternoon nap. They had been out beneath the willow tree for hours and the direwolf had grown bored long ago. Arya, however, had a much keener focus. She had been staring intently at the wolf for hours, and would likely continue for many more.
It frustrated her that there was nothing she could do to learn more about what had happened back in King's Landing. There were no books written on skinchangers. There was no one so far south that she could ask. All she knew was what Old Nan had mentioned in her stories, or from the legends of famous skinchangers like Varamyr Sixskins. Only descendants of the First Men could change skins, and no one's bloodline ran purer than the Starks.
If her father knew more, he wouldn't tell her. Maybe Jon had learned something at the Wall, but she had not been permitted to send him any letters to find out. All Arya Stark possessed was an iron will, and way too much free time.
"You're spending too much time in the sun."
Her father's voice pulled her out of her trance. She glanced up at him, startled, and he smiled, brushing his thumb across her rapidly reddening cheeks and nose. The sun wasn't something to worry about in Winterfell, but her skin had grown hot and painful more than a few times since coming south. "It's quieter out here," she said.
"That it is," agreed Ned, sitting down next to her and leaning his head back into the willow tree behind them. "I don't expect we'll be here much longer." She hadn't thought they would be. The death of her betrothal to Willas Tyrell had been announced days ago, and they were now overstaying their welcome. "You and Sansa will return to Winterfell within the week."
"But I-"
"Your brother needs you, Arya," he interrupted. A thousand different protests had bubbled up in her throat, threatening to spill onto her tongue, but they dried in her mouth. "Bran will be the Lord of Winterfell while we're away. He'll need your help." She pictured Bran sitting in Father's seat, looking so small and broken, facing down the other lords, and felt sick to her stomach. "I'll be leaving to join the Northern forces in the morning. The Tyrells will be taking you and your sister along the Mander. It's safer to sail to Moat Cailin than pass through the Westerlands. Willas will keep you safe." Ned had seen the way Willas Tyrell looked at his daughter; family politics may have gotten in the way of a marriage, but he knew how the boy felt.
Arya swallowed the arguments that kept sprouting into her head. "And Nymeria will keep you safe," she told him, scratching the wolf in question under the chin when she glanced up upon hearing her name. "A wolf doesn't belong at sea," she added when her father gave her a curious look. "And she's kept you safe before."
"I would feel better knowing she was with you," argued Ned.
"I'm going home," she reminded him. "There's not much I need to be protected from in Winterfell."
Truthfully, Ned felt lucky that this was where Arya had decided to put her foot down. He had expected a much larger fight, one that demanded she be able to travel with them. If this was all he need do to keep his most stubborn child appeased, he would do it. "Perhaps you had the right of it," he said. "Not wanting to travel South."
" Perhaps ?" she demanded.
Her father laughed, the first she'd heard in a long time, slipping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her in close. "We'll join you back home as soon as we can," he promised.
It had been a difficult thing, watching Winterfell grow smaller and smaller until it disappeared as they marched South. It had been much harder to watch her father's body do the same as he marched North.
That was what she had told him when he'd asked her why she was so quiet. That had been a day and a half ago and she hadn't spoken since. Not to him, not to her sister, not to anyone. He had done well at continuing on as if nothing had changed, as if she hadn't told him he was the last man in Westeros she'd ever marry, but he had been raised on pretending, and Arya Stark had never learned how.
Sansa flitted about the ship, arm in arm with his sister, thrilled to have her undivided attention as they made their long journey home. He'd not even seen Arya sleep yet, choosing instead to remain in the bow of the ship, watching the sun as it rose and set and began to rise again. Hoping not to startle her with his sudden presence, he placed a gentle hand against her back, but she had heard him coming. "Are you thinking of your father?" he wondered.
"No," came her short reply.
"What is it then?" There had been a time where she would've told him.
"It's not too late," said Arya, her eyes never leaving the water below them.
She had told him with no uncertainty exactly how she'd felt about him. There had been little room for interpretation. "I thought your mind quite made up," said Willas.
"Not for us, for you." She looked at him now. "It's not too late to turn the ship around. We've not even reached Cider Hall yet." His hand slipped from her back and down to his side as she turned her attention back to the water. "After all those weeks we spent staring at maps of the Reach you thought I wouldn't notice we were sailing East instead of West?"
Willas sat beside her on the crate, leaning back into the railing, his eyes finding his sister, who watched them carefully while continuing her conversation with Sansa. "I'd half expected you'd jump overboard and swim yourself back to Winterfell if you ever realized," he admitted.
"And leave my sister with you?"
You . As if he were the most disgusting creature she could fathom. "It was your sister who brought us here. It seems only fair she be the one to suffer for it." He watched out of the corner of his eye as Arya glanced over her shoulder to where Sansa stood, giggling and oblivious, before looking back to him. "We'd always suspected her, and then she confessed it to Margaery. She told her you said not to tell anyone. Not quite as clever as her sister, is she?" Arya sent him a nasty look. Loyal to the end, he thought, regardless of what her sister had done to them. "Fortunately for Sansa, her stupidity didn't kill my brother."
Realization dawned across her features. She'd always been quick to follow, and now she understood why they were headed for King's Landing, what the Tyrells hoped to gain for their betrayal. "What would you have done," she asked, "had I wanted to marry you?"
"I meant what I said, Arya," Willas assured her. "I'd have married you. I would've kept you safe." He stood and gray eyes followed. "We'd have given them your father's head instead."