The Kingswood was a large swell of trees and brush, livened only by the Wendwater and the banks of the Blackwater Rush. A four-day journey by horse from one end to the next, three if one was lucky. And it was home to all manner of creatures: from boar to stag and stoat to jay. Things that flew, things that grew, things that roared, and things that whored.
The latter stokes the most fear within her heart, causing her hand to clench tighter 'round her reins every time there is so much as a creak or a shriek or a chuff or a scuff.
She would do well to forget those fears, to leave them behind, to put on a brave face for herself and her children. She would.
But it all means little and less to say what one ought to do if it were something they could not. The sun cannot rise in the west and it cannot set in the east, just as she could not banish the terror that made her heart its home.
So, she would flinch at every sound and flee from every shadow, but pretend she had not. And, when her companion would lay a staying hand upon her shoulder, she'd play the mummer and act as if it did not frighten her so.
They had left the company of bannermen and foot soldiers behind half a day ago, but she could still smell smoke in the air.
(And in a quiet moment, when left with naught but her thoughts, she thinks she could still hear the echoes of their raucous laughter as Kingslanding burns.)
To her right, a horse nickers as a heel digs into its belly. Unconsciously, she draws her arm tighter around the child seated before her, glancing quickly to the side before averting her eyes.
Her companion sighs, and she catches sight of him watching them in her periphery before he shakes his head. "You know," he says, after several long moments, "this might be easier if you did not appear to be marching to the gallows."
She does not respond, knowing he was right but with nothing to do for it. Such things were easier to say.
He seems to take a deep breath, a subtle act betrayed by the rising of his gorget and jostling of the mail beneath his gambeson—one adorned with the falcon of Arryn, which he pilfered from the body of a knight. Another sigh. "Those men back there were suspicious of us. No lady fears their own guard as much as you." He waits for her to respond, a long time punctuated by beats of hooves in muck and gusts of wind through leaves, but none will come.
Between her thighs, her daughter glances over, giving the man a look. After which, she shudders and turns to hide her face in her mother's belly—only to be reminded of the final presence in their little group. Her son slept soundly, swaddled to her chest between them, the picture of innocence and ignorance. She prays she could join him in it soon.
The guard continues speaking. "The word has likely yet to go out, but as soon as news spreads that the princess escaped, that the king escaped, who do you think will be the first to report something suspicious?"
"The king is dead." Her voice is soft, weak, but her words true, even if she never saw the proof of it for herself.
The man confirms them only a moment later. "Aye. Aerys is. Slain by his own kingsguard." His horse speeds up, spurred on by another nudge, and he twists around in the saddle, looking around the edge of her cowl. She abandons her reins to pull it lower, not seeing so much as hearing the huff of annoyance he let out. "And your husband, as well. Do you understand?"
She did, yet she didn't. She glanced down at her son, her lips lifting into a smile that was not quite there. Sardonic. "He's yet to celebrate his second name day."
"Nor his third, nor his fourth." He spares her an impassive glance before continuing, unhindered by the pain his words might bring her. "Yet the truth remains the truth and little either of us say will change it."
Her arm abandons her daughter's waist, moving up to gently brush the dusting of fair hair upon her son's head, before checking the knot on the sling once more. She glances up at her companion, finding him occupied with much the same, fiddling with the cloth tied around his arm. Though the tightness upon her own face was born of worry and fear, his spoke of something else entirely.
"Is it painful?"
He turns, seemingly surprised at the question. The silence had lapsed for long enough for a clearing to open, then close, mayhaps he had not expected her to speak any longer. Though he seemed shocked, it did not take long for him to reply. "Tis not the worst I've suffered, your grace," he huffs, before adding, "I may yet live."
Her shift in posture must have been telling enough, for he quickly apologizes. "Only a jest." A crow crows in the distance with nary a sound to accompany it. His face turns almost sheepish behind his helm, the sun shining through the foliage just right to gaze upon it. "My sister's claim t'was never my strength."
She feels herself swallow. Some of the color that had drained now returning to her cheeks, and she quickly sniffs her nose, rubbing it. "Mayhaps you should listen to them more oft." Her voice shakes as she speaks, each quiver in time with the laboring of her heart. She knew not how one could fear a man's absence just as much as they feared his presence, nor how to make it cease.
The man said nothing in response, so she prepared to let sleeping dragons roost. It would not be the first time a man took offense to the suggestion a woman knew better, and it would not be the last. But a mumble eventually made its way past his lips, bearing a passing similarity to an affirmation, so she looked over, allowing her hood to fall back.
A fool, she decided her savior was once she caught sight of him. A boarish, vicious fool with more swordsmanship than sense. And the least amusing man she'd ever met.
He sits—nearly teetering out of his saddle—with a cloth blotted red gripped betwixt his teeth. Tightening it one-handed, most likely, but who is to say.
Spurring her horse on, she moves to the side of his palfrey. She knocks his hand away, dropping the reins to work at the knot he was attempting to tie. One end was slick, and she grimaces, recognizing the source and glaring at his teeth when he quirks an apologetic half-smile. He winces when she wrenches each stray end with trembling fingers, ensuring it was taut.
The improvised bandage about his arm colors quickly, the weeping wound beneath it requiring little motivation to begin anew. Only then does she glance up, meeting and holding his eyes for several halting moments before retreating. She pulls her hand back, attempting to snag the lip of her hood and pull it back down, but is stopped by another. Had she near enough strength to, she would have wrenched her arm from his grasp, but as it were, her heart is sapping too much of her for her arms to follow her will, racing as it is. She could hear it, beating in her ears and thrumming in her neck as panic usurps control of her body.
She expects many things from the man, more than a few starting and ending with a blade. And she was right, to a degree.
"You know how to use it, yes?" He gestures to the weapon he'd set in her palm.
Some of his blood wells up at the edge of the bandage on his bicep, dripping down upon her cloak.
She couldn't breathe, couldn't think.
His grip is too tight, his face too close.
He retreats a breath, and her lungs surge to soak up the air he displaces. His eyes flicker between hers, back then forth, back then forth, before settling on what she believes to be her nose. There is a slight furrow between his brows and a thinness to his lips as he looks at her.
"In essence," she says as she exhales, and he nods. Her fingers close around the gift, a dagger in truth, one with a smooth, black hilt and a leather sheath. Well made even to her untrained eye, likely castle forged.
"First lesson," he straightens back in his saddle and nudges his horse forward, smirking lightly, "Stick 'em with the pointy end."
A fool. And the least amusing of the bunch.
The kingsroad is quiet for the most part. Silence is commonplace. She does not know her companion, nor he her; so conversation was sparse, fleeting, and proportionately uncomfortable. He denied her any introduction, not that she'd ever asked for one, and she returned the favor, not deigning to allow her daughter to ride with him when he offered, no matter how much easier it might make the journey.
The path they were on led directly from the capitol to the Stormlands. The last she heard, Mace Tyrell was laying siege to its capital, Storm's End. She knew nothing of war or of the strategies that won them, but found herself agreeing when members of court had called the lord paramount of the Reach a craven and a dunce. The war came and went while he sat at the foot of Stannis Baratheon's gates, starving smallfolk, and to what end?
She glances over at the knight, wondering if it was the reachman he intends for. They were a leal people, and a wealthy one at that. Fertile lands lead to vast harvests; and vast harvests, full coffers. Half of Westeros owed their full bellies to the bounty of the Reach, and the Tyrells prospered for it. T'was not of bad design, in truth, nor one she could fault him for, as degrading as it was to be sold for gold like chattel.
The question burns at her tongue, vying to be voiced, but remains within. For all the men was their protector, for all he kept them safe, for all he got them out and away from certain death; he was also terrifying. He and his deeds haunted her. The bandage upon his arm was quenched with blood, this is true, but she knew it to be but a drop in comparison to that which his blade savaged from the bellies of knights in their flight from the capitol.
"Ser?" She calls, once her voice had harried her lips enough. She needed to know where he intended to take them, even if it angered him. If not for her own ease of mind, then for the sake of her children.
No response comes.
She frowns. Nudging her mount into a trot and gaining the lead. She twists in her seat and pulls up on the reins before dropping them to cradle both her children to her.
The knight's eyes are shut, his face scrunched up. Had he fallen asleep astride? She allows his palfrey to approach, allows it to drift to the side; her own horse's head bucks up as it gets close. She nudges his shoulder, attempting to rouse him, with no luck. She tries again, calling out another "Ser?" to naught but the wind.
A thought occurs to her, that this might be her only chance to escape the man, but before she could truly put words to action, his eyes snap open.
She startles, jumping. Only the man's quick reaction saves her daughter from toppling from the saddle. Her eyes, however, stay locked on his own, ignoring her child's whimper of fear. Not a breath escapes her lungs as she freezes before him.
The look on his face was slightly feral, like a rat caught against a wall, yet to her he was still all wolf.
"You must get off the road." He moves to the edge of the beaten path, halfly distracted, wholly focused.
She watches him go, not urging her horse to follow in the slightest, already fearing what she might see if she looked over her shoulder. Yet, no noise reached past the ringing in her ears. Not the beating of hooves, nor the shouting of men, nor the barking of hounds. All is quiet in the Kingswood, she's certain of it. "But– "
"Get off the road!"
His hand snaps out as he leans precariously off the back of his saddle, stealing her reins and tugging them toward him. Before she could even format a response, he kicks both their horses, sending them into a panic no deeper than her own. All she could do—all she could ever do it felt—is hold her children tight and pray nothing horrible befell them. She is a stone beneath a raging tide, feeling the water wear her down, with nothing she can do except suffer it silently. But, if the price for her children's safety was her life, she'd pay it in golden dragons.
A squirrel shoots from the underbrush and through their horses' legs as they dive deeper into the forest. Her eyes follow its course past them, watching as it flees up a tree behind them before stopping part way up the trunk. Its breathing is labored, the tiny body nearly quaking with fright beneath its fur.
They retreat by horse twenty paces further before a large boulder appears from behind the brush, without hesitation the man leads them all toward it. He jumps from his mount, handing both reins to her before throwing a bow stowed near the saddlebags 'round his shoulder. There is a quiver there, too, and he pauses for only a moment to close his eyes before gathering a handful of arrows. Seven in total, she counts. He does too.
Every noise sends a new spike of fear through her chest, like half a hundred knives stabbing into her from every direction. She felt the tips of her fingers go numb as a raven lands upon a tree branch and woodland creatures flee back the way they came. Her attention went every which way, never staying still for long.
"Stay here," she whirls around in her spot, startled by the voice, only to see the guard walking backward and out from their cover.
"You're leaving us?"
He didn't respond with anything more than a grunt and then he was gone.
She, no less a fool than her companion, makes to follow. Fearing what might occur in his absence. Her horse makes it a few paces toward the wall of the rock before his palfrey bucks its head, pulling its reins taut and back. She turns to it, seeing it already looking her way. It snorts and tugs again, as if attempting to flee the other direction, away from their pursuers. Or from its rider, though she knew not which was true.
An intelligent beast, and one she prays she is right in heeding.
With her savior distracted, she quietly spurs her horse in the opposite direction, ducking her head out of cover when they reach the edge of the boulder. Spying no aggressors, she digs a heel into her horse's rib and takes off.
The air is cutting, stinging at her face as they run through the woods. It howls in her ears like wolves in the night, as if the Kings of Winter themselves were bearing down upon her for the actions of a husband she could temper not. Punishment for a sin she did not commit.
Her hood flips back as they go, black hair tailing behind her. She keeps one hand firmly gripping the reins while the other keeps both children secure to her chest.
Eventually, they make their way onto a deer trail—a thin path free of bramble and brush for them to race down. A few critters of varying origin dash around the forest floor as they go, but never anything bigger than a shrew.
Trees pass them by in a blur, though she knows they weren't traveling fast enough for that to be the case. Her vision turns hazy at its edges and her breathing both picks up and shallows. It is difficult to say who took the reins in those moments, who steered their horse, for she knew it was not herself. Her panic is a material thing, it wraps around her neck and chokes her; it makes her do silly and stupid things. The shape it takes is as familiar as the sun, two hands: old and wiry and cold, with unkempt nails and knotted knuckles. The hands of a king; the hands of a good father who'd never known how to be good, nor fatherly.
She feels Aerys in the saddle behind her, with his fish-rotten breath and his oppressive presence. He slowed them down, she knew it, he burdened them so even still. A horse which struggled to carry three, now suffering more under four.
It tires, not that she can blame it, and slows to a trot then a walk. There's a puddle on the path that it stops beside, panting as it noses the muddy water. She kicks its side, digs her heels in with all the strength she possesses, but the amount it requires slips through her grasp, and the horse ignores her.
A small voice calls out. "Muna—?"
She shushes the child gently and looks around. "Not now, Rhaenys." The forest has grown denser, the trees blotting out more and more of the sky's light. Through some beneficence of the gods, their horse starts moving again—wandering forward slowly, but surely. She does what she can to keep their course true, even if she knows not where it led. She casts a frequent, cautious gaze back to check the trail behind, but nothing rises from the brush.
The panicked beating of her heart had not ebbed since they fled. Then again it never seemed to, not with days like these. The king's spectre still claws at her neck, but she breathes and his weight lifts from the saddle. It is all she can ask for; all she cares to.
Their wandering is not short, but it comes to a sudden and unfortunate end when a bird calls and her horse straightens its neck and halts. After which it does not need her call, not even a little. She thinks to take to foot, considers it deeply, but by then the beatings of another's hooves made itself known—too near to flee.
"I do recall asking you to stay where you were."
And the relief she felt. It's immediate and confusing, but she'd not trade it for gold. "Ser," she twists around and looks back to where he approaches from. He appears no worse for wear: arrows depleted but armor unmarred. "We were simply furthering ourselves from the conflict. Have you dispatched with the brigands?"
"Brigands?" He wonders aloud and shakes his head. "They were simple men-at-arms. The sons of some poor farmer's wife who will now have to till the fields on her own. They were no bandits, and you should not call them that. They desired this war no greater than you."
Her horse, previously stone, nickers and sniffs when the knight thrusts his gloved hand before its snout. A traitor unlike any other. When her savior turns back the way he came, it follows dutifully. She promises to herself that she would try to sway its loyalty with a bundle of apples when next they stumble upon a tree.
"Why are we headed back? Are the roads safe?"
"Hardly." A comforting thought. She's not sure if she's grateful for the honesty or vexed by his lack of tact. The knight looks at her and does her the service of explaining. "I had not the time to move their bodies from the road. My charges fled from me, you see, so I was forced to chase them down."
"Ah." Yes, well. "Perhaps your charges would be less flightly if they know more of what their fates hold. The rat with the crown is least likely to fear the cat, after all."
The man groans and readjusts in his saddle. "You southrons and your bloody proverbs. Why in the seven hells would a rat have a crown, anyway?"
"Tis a metaphor."
"Aye. And a well useless one at that. A king of rats would have more reason to fear the cat than any." He goes silent then rigid as they approach a fork in the path. She watches and waits for him to come to a decision, and when he does they bank to the left. "Dorne," he says at last, once they're suitably far down the way.
She did not follow. "What of Dorne?"
"That is where we are bound."
Her heart thrums in such a way that causes her throat to tighten. She swallows past the lump there and asks onto him, "Why?"
He turns and eyes her through his helmet. "I hardly think so little of Your Grace that I would believe that you need me to answer that for you, Queen Elia."
Home. He intends to take her home; for perhaps no other reason than that is where they'd be safest—not that she would ever again be naïve enough to believe it so. "You would betray your kingdom and your kinsmen?"
"I know neither kingdom nor kinsmen who would be complicit in the murder of children, nor have I received any orders suggesting I should. We men of the north serve Lord Stark, and Lord Stark only seeks justice for the murder of his father and his brother, as well as the safe return of his sister. You and your children are innocent of those crimes. It would be senseless to seek retribution from those who cannot provide it."
"Not even after what my husband did to your fair lady?" A dangerous question, but one she needs answered. It is one thing to extend virtue when it is easy, it is far harder after one has been wronged. It would be better to know what his hands hold now, then learn it later as he slips the dagger between the gap in her ribs that her companionship teaches him to find.
His silence is long. She's coming to learn that they often are. Never has a man she's met been as introspective as he. It gives her cause to wonder what it is he thinks so deeply upon. "Not even then," he eventually declares, and that is, supposedly, that.
They do not happen upon the scene until her thighs are aching and raw. The knight signals to stop and slips from his saddle with enviable ease. "Cover the princess's eyes, these are things she needs not see," he says, and Elia does as asked.
Rhaenys protests, weakly shoving at the hand that falls before her eyes, but Elia would not be moved in this. She shushes her gently and often, doing what she could to spare her of what horrors she could.
Their bodies were numerous and wore more blood than armor. An arrow embeds itself in the weeping eye of one while it finds the throat of another. Out on the road, she spies several horses milling about. One's back is red, though its coat is a dappled black. Another she sees still has a rider, her heart leaps to her throat and she makes to call for her knight until the horse shivers and he tumbles from the saddle. The fall breaks his neck, but he's too dead to know it.
The horse drags his corpse around as it wanders from one patch of grass to the next. Elia bites her tongue, but that is all she can do to quiet the disquiet within her. Her stomach roils and toils, but she's seen more gruesome deaths while at court. Heard tales of fates worser still. She's prepared for it, but displeased all the same.
Her decision to join the knight on the ground is made for her when her legs finally have enough. Riding through the night and early morn is never comfortable, less so for one such as her who's never been a practiced equestrian. Her legs are trembling and pained and she really must let them rest.
Elia falls from her horse with insignificant grace, but her feet remain beneath her so the gods may yet be merciful. Rhaenys descends next, bracketed in her mother's arms. She keeps her hand over the girl's eyes as best she can. The movement jostles her sling and wakes her son, who promptly begins weeping and crying and screaming. She shushes and sways, but he would not be reasoned with.
"Close your eyes, Rhaenys," she instructs. Against her palm, eyelashes flutter but do not shut. "Listen to your mother well; now is not the time for disobedience. Do you understand me?"
There's a pause in which the knight crosses from the woods and cuts the corpse from the horse's back, dragging it behind the trees. Elia peers into the shadows behind the bushes and sees five other bodies already laid out side-by-side. She tears her attention from the youth held captive in their faces and back to her daughter, whom she presses more urgently. "Do you understand me, Rhaenys?"
"I do, muna. I do."
Perhaps she's telling the truth, perhaps there's nothing to worry about. That doesn't stop Elia from turning the girl and tucking her face into her hip. Rhaenys's arms go around her thigh as she seeks to obtain what little comfort they're afforded. She strokes the girl's hair for a spell, but turns her attention to her son soon after.
"Sweet Aegon," she coos through his cries, "What ails you so?" There's no foul scent to speak of, nor any reason for him to be too tired to be sensible, so with a single glance spared to the knight, she tugs the top of her gown down and allows him to latch onto her teat. "Ah," she groans. "Gentle, child. Gentle. Your mother is not yet used to this." She curses the day her husband convinced her to use a wet nurse, it would only serve to complicate matters now.
The knight emerges from the treeline after stowing the last of the bodies—seven in total, by her count, though not all cut down by arrow—and begins kicking up dirt over the blood stains on the road. It would still be easy to spot by anything more than a passing eye, but it should hide the worst of it. At the very least, it buys them time, a priceless resource.
He loots their saddlebags for the essentials. Wineskins and breads and cheeses, even a few sacks of oats for the horses. After he takes what he will from each, he sends the horses on their way, down the trail in the direction they will soon be headed. He doesn't bother undoing the saddles, there is no reason to. From the last one he withdraws a tunic and breeches before slowly approaching her.
"Here." He holds them out for her to grab, but keeps his eyes deliberately on the horizon. "These should be a bit more comfortable to wear while riding. It would be best to get a few more leagues down the road before we rest. The more distance we put between us and the capital, the better."
Elia nods though she knows he isn't looking. "I don't suppose any of those men had spare boots, did they?" They'd flown from Kingslanding with such haste that she'd had no chance to dress for travel. She'd split her skirt in order to ride, but shoes were hardly something within her power to change.
"No." He turns to look at her shoes, seemingly forgetting her current state of undress, only to stutter and cough when his eyes cross her chest. Seeing as she's preoccupied, he unfurls the tunic and gently drapes it over her shoulders, shading her son and all else, then hands the breeches to her uncooperative daughter. She chuckles lightly as he wanders back into the woods to check upon nothing. Despite herself, it's hard not to imagine him a little pink in the cheeks, though she wished she knew the curves of his face to complete the image.
He returns minutes later, when she is changed—and only after informing him so—with boots in hand. Brown leather colored red, though she'd not ask what dye was used. The answer is one she wishes not to know. Her husband would ignore the blood on his hands, but she and he were deeply different people. It is not a talent she could possess, nor one she wishes to.
Their cue to leave is his mounting of the saddle. A silent sentinel, now and forever, though he does have his moments of chattiness. "It would be easier if the princess sat with me," he reminds her.
"Just so," she agrees, "But as you can certainly see," for he did have eyes; she'd seen them, even if he hid the rest of his face behind that damnable helm, "the princess hardly seems to be at ease in your presence."
He hums. "Well, we cannot have that. Any suggestions?"
Elia turns from the slowing blinks of her son to the knight. "You are asking me?"
"Well, you are her mother if I recall."
That and regent, as well, but you would not know it from how he spoke to her. Even when he addresses her properly there is always this undercurrent of gibe. "Perhaps if you removed your helm, ser. It is hard for a woman to trust a man gowned in metal." He seems dubious, so she makes one last attempt. "It would be a … comfort." A small one, if one at all, but likely more for herself than the daughter who clung to her breeches, wishing they were skirts to hide within.
"A comfort," he returns, "You tremble every time I near as if I am some monster, yet expect me to believe your daughter would find comfort in my smile? In my jowls and my slobbery fangs?"
"I do not believe in monsters," Elia tells him.
A scoff. "Then you have not been paying very much attention." And yet, despite his stiff rebuke, his fingers claw their way beneath the helm's rim and lift it from his head. His face is revealed slowly, from bearded chin to long and sweat-soaked brown hair. It's a long face with starkly juxtaposed features. His face, though as young as her own, is severe. Pronounced cheekbones form a long march south—the result of a long march south; a set of jagged scars cuts down across one eye, she spies three, but cannot fathom what blade would make them; even his ears bore scars, frostbitten and dark at their tips. Life in the north must be hard.
"Huh." Her throat makes a noise that she did not wish to escape as she works her lips. He's not uncomely.
He places his helmet down in his lap. "What is it?"
"Nothing," she tells him, but in her mind she frustrates. "You have kinder eyes than most." It is impossible to not learn to read them when at court; the crinkles at their corners, their glossiness during tragedy, those and more.
A silence stretches and her cheeks warm as a result of it. Curse the man for not responding, then curse him more for not living up to the hideous depiction she'd made of him in her head. They're not apathetic when he looks to her, but they remind her more of how one looks upon a stranger. It's how he looks at her children that sets her heart at ease—they're soft, then and only then, and it is what begins to convince her that he might be honest in his intentions. He stares at her for several moments longer before suddenly sweeping the hair from his brow and shaking his head with a chuckle.
"Kind eyes," he tells his horse. "I haven't a clue what that means." To make matters worse, the palfrey whinnies as if amused by her—or him, or both; causing the man's laughter to grow louder still.
What was the point, she wonders, of escaping the capital aflame only to die from mortification just down its road. Elia scowls at both ser and steed alike. "If you are quite done, I believe we should be moving on."
"Yes, yes, yes." He places his feet in the stirrups and waits expectantly for her to follow-suit. It's easier to climb into the saddle with her new attire, but he still steadies the saddle for her. Kind eyes and kind actions. Truly, it is a strange knight she has found for herself. "Princess Rhaenys, if you ever wish for a smoother ride, my saddle is open to you."
A smoother—Elia glares at him. "Har har," she pronounces. A man who had just killed seven others and here he is making jests. Was he not the one who scolded her for calling those same soldiers 'brigands' just earlier? He was too comfortable in killing and too comfortable with her, she decides, too comfortable by half.
He only moves forward once her seat is settled and her son and daughter situated, patting her horse's neck soothingly as he passes. He clucks at it, contorting his sullen lips in ways she could not mimic, and it sets forward in a trot.
The helmet, previously abandoned in his lap, suddenly disappears into the woods—thrown by hand and hidden amongst the dead. Elia watches it go worryingly. "Do you not need that?"
"If they are skilled enough to kill me, that helmet will not be enough to change my fate," he explains, "They'll ring my head and take two strokes rather than one, but a dead man is a dead man and a killing blow is a killing blow. I might keep it if I were to worry about missiles, but if they are close enough to fire upon us with arrows then it will not be me they are aiming for."
Elia swallows and twists to look back through the trees. "Should I be wearing it?"
He bobs his head. "It is rather warm inside," he explains, but that is not a 'no.'
"You are a stranger to comfort, ser."
"I am of the shivering north. We are fewer comforts than most," the man reminds her, "And I am no ser."
By the Seven, did he infuriate her. "What should I call you then, if not ser? Swordsman? Northman? I do not know your name."
A shrug. "Either is fine. Although most choose to call me Jon."
"Jon," she hears herself repeat. "And which lord is your father, Jon of the North?"
Gray eyes locate hers through his lashes. "My father is no lord."
"Your mother, then."
"My mother is not a lord, neither." Sweet mercy. If she could smite him she would. He takes pity upon her and shakes his head. "If it is a family name you are after, I am afraid you will find yourself quite disappointed. Not everyone is so fortunate as to be worn with one, Elia Martell."
A commoner, she muses, deliberately ignoring the way her name sounds in his brogue. He expects her to believe he is a commoner. A man with his talents could only be one trained in the mortal arts from a young age—and one who had put it into practice ruthlessly ever since. He is comfortable in killing, she knows this, comfortable and familiar.
"Jon, then." She does not believe him, not for a moment, but still she nods. "I will call you Jon."