The Wendwater is a dream both distant and lovely when Jon shakes her awake during the hour of the eel; then it is only distant. He holds a hand over her lips and a finger to his own, urging her to a silence that she abides by unfailingly.

"There are outriders approaching," he whispers, watching in the direction of the road. The sun had set hours before, but even in the dark she can see his eyes are heavy and bagged; he must have been keeping watch that entire time. "Grab whatever food and drink you can. We are abandoning the road and heading southwest by foot; take nothing but the necessities. We cannot afford to travel heavy."

Her heart stings and she fights back frightened tears as she nods into his palm, and when he releases her she immediately sets to work. She dives for where the horses sleep, snatching the gown she'd used to cushion the seat before overturning the contents of the saddle bags into it. Her children slumber on as they toil in the dark, ignorant to the danger that nears. She takes all the provisions she can fit and twists the dress around them, then pulls it taut around her shoulder, knotting it.

To the side, Jon is hastening to remove his armor, leaving him in nothing more protective than what she wears herself. It's a dangerous gamble, but not any more so than fleeing on foot while encumbered by chain and leather. He throws it all over his palfrey's saddle, securing each to its neck.

"How many?"

His tunic is sweat stained, and the sleeve dark and torn where his left arm had been cut. He tosses his bow and quiver round his own shoulder and waist, before grabbing the reins and tugging upon them. "Too many," he grunts, then forces the horses to stand up on their hooves.

He sets off in the direction of the road and Elia follows until the edge of their hollow. Whatever he whispers to the animals is for them and the night, and she is not in on the secret. He shoves them by their asses toward the road, and they wander off into the night as he watches—back turned.

She can barely make out their silhouettes from this distance, only knows their location by the jingle of Jon's mail and the cracking of the brush they shove through. What she is allowed to see is only by the grace of a breach in the canopy. How royal she doubtlessly feels, subordinate to the whims of a tree's branch. And a dead one at that.

Their campsite had been set a ways off the road. Unfortunately close to a thin patch in the woods, one no doubt used for royal hunts past, but with their horses tiring—and themselves trailing not far behind—they had distressingly few options left to them. She'd slept fitfully amongst the roots, bracketed by uncertainty, for far shorter than she considered reasonable.

As such, the night is still yet young. The bat precedes the eel; the eel precedes the ghost. And the ghost's; well, that is an ill-omened and ill-fortuned hour, thus she has no objections when the northman suggests they be long gone by the time it arrives.

And they will be. She gathers her son with quick and gentle hands, hugging him to her chest as she watches the knight collect her daughter. Her small finger twitches, begging her to intervene, to carry them both in his stead, but she knew she could not—just as she could not fault him his effort. He's careful with Rhaenys. Her daughter neither wakes nor stirs as he settles her weight against himself and tucks her face into his neck.

They make the nearest thing to eye contact in the darkness and he bobs his head in the direction of an owl's call. "Follow closely," he whispers, "The horses will lead them away."

She does not understand how that could be possible. They are horses, and only as intelligent as beasts can be. "For how long?"

"Until they cannot," he murmurs absently. She understands that even less, but follows behind without so much as a backward glance.

They walk for what feels like ages. The terrain would be treacherous even with the sun's guidance to help, and they were hours withdrawn from the sight, further from its light. Her thighs thank the ground she walks upon, thank the air that kisses them. They are raw and sore and tender and beyond happy to be spared the saddle. Her heels and her lungs are far less gracious in change; they beg of her to retrieve the horse.

Her heart does not stop racing, not even once. A fright that quickly becomes fatigue takes root within. Elia pants as she summits a boulder, taking a seat upon the soft peats that grow on its surface.

She seeks out Jon where he stands; he's swaying almost subconsciously, lulling her daughter back to sleep after their climbing had jostled her. It's Elia's fault; Jon had to stop and pull her up by the elbow when her boot slipped.

"Sorry," she eventually mutters, once her breath has caught up with them from where it fell behind. He grunts and looks around. Whatever details he finds amidst the trees are strangers to her; there are shadows amongst the roots and shadows amongst the branches, and she could scarcely tell one from the other.

Her respite ends when Jon slides down the curve of the boulder, jumping the last little bit to a patch of dirt a meter further along. She curses him within her mind then without. "Have I done something to offend you, perhaps? Is that why you wish for me to break mine neck?"

The answering chuckle is gravel and half-imagined. "Far be it," his silhouette says, or perhaps that is a bush. It's hard to say, Elia squints her eyes but finds no clarity past an ever creeping desire to let their lids flutter to a close so that they might finally rest. "It's smaller than it looks."

"Haah." A joke comes to mind, one her brother would no doubt enjoy, but her exhaustion takes precedence and she won't waste the energy to utter it. Her companion is hardly the type to appreciate her wit, anyway.

Jon returns to scanning the surroundings, and now is as good a time as any. Elia steals upon the chance to rest.

The world is silent as she slips backward with her son, reclining into the boulder and its moss. A finer bed than any she's slept on before, she recalls thinking, though come morning she would realize different. Her back would ache and her neck would most certainly petrify, but for the instance it is bliss. "A moment's rest," a voice beseeches, it's feminine and unknown to her. Sluggish and whiny in ways she knows not.

"Later," another answers; Jon's this time. A hand grabs her calf, dragging her toward the boulder's edge.

Elia barely has the sense of mind to yelp before she's sliding down, trailing dirt and peat behind her, and landing atop her trembling feet. "Ape," she names him in a gasp, "Lout!"

He ignores her and turns away, the whoreson. "It would be better to travel a few leagues more."

A furious series of pants leave her, and she hugs Aegon close, arranging herself in such a way that the dark hairs of her brow brush his crown. The fall is nothing severe, but the pains that build in her joints are made only worse by it. "I had not known it was illegal in the north to rest." Her eyes clench tight—too tight for sleep to find a foothold. She refuses temptation a second chance, even as she puts words to her desire for it.

"The further we are, the safer we are."

"So you have said." And so she has heard. For every mile they flee, their pursuers must scour three score more. It is better for them to take advantage before their trails are found. But. "Surely we are far enough from the highway. We seek to gain nothing by exhausting ourselves, let us begin upon fresh legs … tomorrow." Or tomorrow's tomorrow, or the day that follows that. Perhaps if they dither and darry for long enough then she will wake from this foul and festering dream before she is ever required to walk again. How preferable that would be!

From behind the silence of the darkness, she listens. Jon does not move for a long while, does not speak. She hopes it is because she's convinced him; that soon he will tell her to lay her weary head back down, tell her that he will keep watch and that all will certainly be well.

That is not what happens, for her knight was a northman, and her northman was a cunt. "No," he decides, so they continue walking.

By the time the first bird calls from its creaking branch they are far and removed from the high road that divides the forest into east and west. It's a little easier to see then, but not by much. Jon looks to the trees when it sings again and, through a yawn, identifies it as the nightingale.

Elia sends a scathing look to his back. "Then that means dawn will soon be upon us."

"It would certainly seem so," he agrees with a quick look to the sky. His cheeks draw back as he squints up and he completely misses her annoyance. "An hour or two longer and the sun will rise above the treeline."

There is much she could say to that, more she wished to, but none she is willing to utter. Not with her daughter still held in his arms. She lets out a tight breath and sets her mind to different matters; far from their missed sleep. A distraction was due, and she had just the one in mind. "What part of the north are you from?"

He places a hand on a tree for support as he takes a large step down. "Near the Wolfswood."

So very specific. That narrows it down to only a quarter of the largest of the seven kingdoms. She tries another angle. "Family?"

There's a sharp noise like a whistle and it takes her a moment to realize it is him sighing tightly through his nose. "Have we not already discussed this?"

"I know your mother is not a lord," she answers, though she could have reasoned that to begin with, "And that your father is not one neither."

His lips twitch, she sees it happen even in the dark. "Aye." His throat looses another chuckle that might send a blind man stumbling for shelter, bethinking it the roll of thunder. It's vexing, the humor he finds in her, but she thinks about it for a moment and chooses to let him have his fun. It is harmless.

"If not parents, then siblings. You must have those."

Another sigh leaves him, taking with it his smile, and he glances at each member of their party, from one to another then onto the last. "I was told I had a brother and a sister once, but I'd never met them. They died before I was born." His voice becomes quiet, but it is far from shaken. It bears a careful distance, one further than that which they have traveled or will.

"How tragic," Elia murmurs. She regretted even asking. Two of her own siblings had passed in a similar manner, and despite knowing them not, she never stopped mourning the idea of them. Mors and Olyvar both died as infants, an all too common fate, one that tied together noble and common. "I am sorry to hear that. It must have been difficult."

He shrugs and keeps his mind on wayfinding. "Hardly worse than dying."

A deliberate misunderstanding of her words if she has ever heard one. "That is not what I meant," she tells him, but something else occurs to her just then. "Did you not mention sisters only yesterday?" It seems so long ago now that she had nearly forgotten.

By way of apology and answer both, he eventually says, "I was raised by my uncle alongside my cousins. They were like siblings to me. It is not as though I were some starving orphan wandering Winter town."

And yet, is that not bitterness she hears in his voice? There's a tinge of it, that or something remarkably similar—enough to be mistaken for it.

They would eventually stop to drink; Jon juggles her daughter masterfully as he extracts the wineskins from her sling, uncorking the first for her before ever partaking himself. Only once her parched lips have had their fill does she ask her companion another of her unending questions.

"Was he the one who taught you to fight?" He wipes his lips with his wrist and furrows his brow, so she clarifies. "Your uncle."

"No."

Elia fights back a groan and returns the wineskin to him so he can stow it in her makeshift sling. It's behind her back and she holds her breath again as he moves to do it. Trust is a difficult thing; but he doesn't comment on her stiffness and she's grateful for that, at least.

When he retreats she fixes her hair, quiets her heart, and turns to him. "Might you tell me who did, then?"

"You ask a lot of questions, Your Highness." There's a characteristically long pause before he answers. "A few different men taught me. Rodrik and Alliser were the names of those who took part most often." He shakes out a tired hand before shifting Rhaenys's weight back atop it. "Do you perhaps know of them? Very esteemed, my teachers."

He's making light of her again. "I think not," she admits, though she'd rather lie and say 'yes.' It's only the boldness of the fabrication that stops her. A single question could be its undoing. It's his fault anyway, he could not truly expect her to recognize a first name without a last.

A bug zips through the space between three trees, only to be intercepted by a moonlit bird who returns it to a waking nest. Morning had truly come at last.

"Likely for the best. Alliser was a shite instructor with a worse temper. Better left unmet, I say."

"I will keep that in mind, ser."

His reply is foregone. "I am no ser."

"Hm." Perhaps that is where she should secure his loyalty, "I could change that for you," she offers. It would cost her nothing, and there existed no man—especially not one of common stock—who would turn down an offer to elevate their position. She could even offer him the name he seemed to covet so.

"A most kind offer, Your Highness." He yawns so she does, severely undercutting the expected majesty of the moment. Not that the filth of their bodies ever allowed much to begin with. "But I have no desire for knighthood. I do not hold to the Seven."

"Neither do half the knights in the Crownlands, not truly." Elia ducks beneath a branch and shoves another away from her son's face. "And even those that do follow their code of chivalry half as well as they should."

Jon snorts and tiredly shakes his head. "How honored I am that you would seek to count me in their company, then."

"Yes, well, I am feeling quite magnanimous on this oh-so lovely morn," she tries to lightly rebut. Her words die upon her tongue, however, falling apart with a crack when the northman holds a finger up and shushes her with a breath.

He lowers her daughter down to a bed of wildflowers.

The forest is as quiet as it ever is, with only the growing calls of birds and chirring of insects to keep them company. There is seemingly no movement amongst the trees not made by the winds, no threat to speak of.

Yet, her companion draws first his bow, then an arrow—only one. And he nocks it upon the string without a motion spared. Into a bush it is loosed, then through, and there's a sharp and short squeal from the other side as it makes contact with a creature she could not see. It happens so quickly she does not have a moment to fear, not until well after the deed is done.

He throws the bow back round his shoulder and spares a glance her way before stepping in the direction of his target. "What were you saying again?"

"Uhm," she replies, rather articulately.

A rabbit; it was only a rabbit. A brown and gray and white one, with beady eyes and long ears. It flails weakly when he reaches for it, the arrow having struck only its haunch, but his hands are far more accurate. Elia looks away as he wrings its neck, flinching at the sound it makes, and whatever she had thought to tell him flees from her mind—leaving her for lands far displaced from these. She nearly laughs, if only she could join it.

"To break our fast," he explains to her silence, wiping the blood from the arrow on his breeches. When he comes closer, it still coats the bed of his nails and the margins beneath their edges. By noon it would be dark and cracked and dry, indecipherable from the dirt he wears. But she would know the truth and flinch from his kind and outstretched hand in light of it. "I'll clean and cook it after we stop for a rest."

Elia closes her eyes and imagines their surroundings. "We could rest here?" It's a long shot, but when Jon opens his mouth to swat it down, she doesn't relent, "Rhaenys won't want to see you prepare the food—she'll mislike it. Meat is not something she knows the truth of, and she is rather fond of animals. It would be better to rest here and get it done before she wakes."

Were he any less of a humorless man, she might expect him to laugh. She tries to imagine it. Far from his short histoire of low and laconic chuckles, this would be as sudden as it is jarring. A sound from the belly, full and loud and mocking. He would deride her with the knowledge that she would let him, for it was a fool's wish to think Rhaenys would be his camel's straw.

That isn't what happens. Jon looks at the rabbit in his hand first, her daughter second. In that moment perhaps it's himself that he thinks of, a younger, bright-eyed version of the he who now is, one who'd cared for animals just as fiercely; perhaps it's one of his sisters—perhaps it's Rhaenys alone. Whoever it is (whatever it may be), Elia would not be privy to it. If Jon were to share his reasons with anyone, it would most certainly not be her.

That is fine. In the end, he still nods his head in assent. "Then I will—"

Whatever other words his lips seem to speak are lost to her; before he has the chance to finish agreeing, Elia is rocking backward to the ground. She sprawls out amongst the flowers beside her daughter, relaxing amidst dirt and grass and stick. Her entire being seems to sigh and sing its relief out to their world, and she slips blissfully into the darkness not soon thereafter.

Boots crunch the grass as her companion steps closer. The shadow he casts is invisible and intangible both, but it chills the air in its borders. And her skin slithers when he coughs. "The knife," he announces, "I need it."

Her fingers find the handle in the waist of her trousers; they trace its smooth edge, the slight curve at its end. And her thumb sneaks its way to the quillon while she strikes the surface with her nail. She had hardly wanted it, but she finds it hard to part with now that it has come time. She'd fallen asleep earlier that night with it clutched in her thin fingers. Its presence was the shield her heart races behind. "I quite like having it."

He huffs. "And you will have it right back if that is your desire, but I am not flaying a bloody bunny rabbit with a sword, Elia. It is well over a meter long. When it comes time to eat you would not be able to tell the meat on your plate from the fingers I have lost."

She mercifully allows him the knife, adding a silent prayer to the Mother Above to her concession. One that beggars safe passage for herself into the realm of dreams—and her children into that of Dorne.

Over half a sennight later, they finally rest their weary limbs upon the southern shore of the Wendwater. Aegon lays across her lap, grasping languidly at the muddied ribbon Elia dangles o'er his face.

Bubbles form and pop at the corners of his lips, and she watches them for a long while before suddenly spinning when a sharp crack comes from the woods behind. "Welcome back," she murmurs to the man that emerges.

"Any trouble?"

She shakes her head. "No." But he should already know that; she'd not be seated and quite so peaceful had there been any. A stranger would be standing above her, the Stranger behind, and the river's waters would bleed red like the sun of her house. "All has been quite well."

To further make her point, Rhaenys tips backward with a splash, falling into the low course with a yelp and a giggle. "Muna," she crows, "muna, muna! Look at me! All wet!" She claps her hands together merrily and sends even more water dripping down over her face and neck.

Elia presses her lips together and smiles with her cheeks. "That is lovely, sweetling," she tells her. Then, in the same breath, she turns to the northman and says, "You are carrying her." A babe on one side and the freezing chill of water soaking her tunic on the other, she likes the idea less than not at all. Whatever that equates to; willingly yielding her daughter to Jon, she supposes.

His brow raises, somewhat imperiously. "I am hardly the one who needs to be persuaded."

Together, their eyes go to Rhaenys as she says something incomprehensible to the shadow of a fish. Hardly one to be reasoned with, her wild daughter. She'd inherited none of the fairness of her brother; not in her hair, not in her complexion, not in her affect. A terrible tyrant of three years; they'd bartered for a calm in a recent tantrum of hers with a sip of their wine. She'd hated it nearly as much as the northman seemed to, though she'd done so with far more words than he.

Stones skitter and crunch as her companion walks up beside her. Jon drops to one knee at the water's edge, splashing it onto his face and sweeping away the dirt and sweat that mar it. It falls in dark droplets to the water below, but the color remains beneath his eyes. Not dirt, but darkness. Bruises of exhaustion. Bags.

Another droplet gathers at the end of his bangs, weighing the strands down until enough collects and it, too, falls back to the river below. A small ripple echoes out, but soon it is drowned out by the tides her daughter draws on the surface as she moves to Elia's ear.

"He's not doing what you said," Rhaenys tells her in a desperate and unquiet hush, dripping water onto her flinching brother.

Elia hums, guarding him with a hovering hand. "And what did I say?"

"No getting wet."

The answer startles a cough from Jon who quickly busies himself a little further up river. He'd not been present for the establishment of such a condition, but he could certainly tell the result. "Right," she drawls, frowning at the blades of his shoulders before turning to her daughter. "So you do recall the rule."

Rhaenys puffs out her chest a little. "I listen good!"

"You listen well," Elia corrects her. It hardly feels like the correct time, nor a correct assessment. She uses her finger to poke and tickle all of the areas where her daughter had soaked her dress through. "Do you mind explaining all of this?"

The child examines each spot more closely than necessary before scrunching her nose up and declaring, "I fell."

It's not exactly wrong, but it's not exactly right either. "You would not have fallen into the water had you not already been standing in it." The wetness collects above the flare of Aegon's nose. Elia wipes it with her thumb and flicks it out over the rocks. "Alas, I have not yet broken the rule, so I will not be able to carry you when we start walking."

"But … "

Rhaenys tears up, and Elia turns away. She'd not let her own weakness be the ruin of her now. "I am sorry, but that was the rule. You would not want your mother to knowingly break the rule, would you?" The answer is probably 'yes,' so she moves on before such could be said. "If you grow weary, I am certain Jon would be willing to carry you."

Judging by her expression, her daughter intended to not ever tire again if that was the alternative. "I will … walk," she concedes. Elia wishes her luck, but will not hold her breath.

The next length of their journey is done along the water's bank. The stones hide their tracks, the water their scents. She tries to encourage Jon to speak more about himself as they walk, to quiet her own nerves more than anything, but he's a man more taciturn than any who came before. Never does a word escape his lips not pragmatic in nature.

Still, the silence wears on her, so Elia forces courage to swell in her chest as she again turns to her companion. "And what comes next?"

He sees fit to spare her a glance and nothing more.

"Jon," she bites, "Is it truly so much trouble for you to answer me?"

"Dorne," he tells her, as if she did not already know it.

A scowl graces her face by his invitation. "There are over two-hundred leagues between us and Sunspear. As the crow flies. You cannot mean for us to trek the whole way there by foot."

"Hm." A brown bird glides down to the water's edge across the way, washing and preening its feathers as they pass it by from a distance. Jon watches it for a while and Elia is convinced it's only an excuse to make her wait. "Why can I not? We each have two of them."

"Because it will be snowing in Sunspear well before we ever set foot in the Prince's Pass!" He makes an irritating little noise; apparently what she said is disagreeable to the point of humor. It was becoming increasingly evident that his uncle never took the time to impress upon him the knowledge of how one ought to speak with a proper lady. Either that or he was an exceptionally poor study. "Did I say something that you find amusing?"

"No," he returns, and yet his lip quirks as he tugs on his tunic, pumping air to his chest like the bellows in a forge. "No, no, Your Highness. I simply think some snow would improve Dorne mightily. Barely south of the Mander and the air is already sweltering."

A breeze lifts up from the river and its rocks, ruffling cloth and clothe and hair alike. "It is a wonderfully temperate day. In what world is this sweltering?" If you ignore the distant plume of smoke still rising on the horizon it might even be described as beautiful. There would be more than a few noble ladies of the Crownlands willing to close their eyes and name it precisely that.

It takes her embarrassingly long for her to notice that, for Jon, the conversation is over. He does not reply, nor does it seem he has any future plans to. Once again, the burden of filling the void falls upon her shoulders.

"But a chariot."

He sighs tiredly and rubs his eyes. "And where shall I procure this chariot for you? Shall I ask the birds? The foxes? Perhaps the trees will treat us kindly enough and will warp themselves into the proper shape so that we might—"

"Alright," Elia cuts in, "Alright. You have made your point." More than made it, really. Her suggestion was made in light; there's no need for him to take it so seriously. Still, they could afford to return to horseback and she tells him exactly this after a stone reaches up and grabs for his toes. He catches himself before it could turn ugly, but hardly soon enough to spare Elia an embarrassing gasp. It is the fifth time in half as many hours.

"Afford?" He directs her attention to the space on his hip a coin purse might hang from, patting the emptiness. "The only thing we can afford is the air we breathe and the wine we drink, both of which we already possess. Unless, that is, you have a convenient trove of treasure hidden somewhere amidst the brush?"

Elia thinks for a moment. "Then we should steal some."

"No." He shoots the idea down in an instant. It didn't matter to him if she'd meant coins or horses.

"You could at least pretend to give it a moment's consideration."

His fingers flex around his sword's leather wrapped pommel. "I am no thief."

"Of course you are not," Elia commends while hiding the many creative ways in which her eyes roll, "You are my noble protector, you would never stoop so low as to burgle."

Still, he hardly needs to sound so offended by the suggestion—it was only that. Elia feels no great desire for it, neither, but she finds the quickness with which he dismisses it insulting. As if his stark refusal proves him somehow her better.

When she braves his face again, he's squinting at her. Unamused by flattery, she muses, or unused to it. Whichever it is, his bemusement does not hinder the firmness of his eventual nod. "So long as that is clear."

"Worry not your pretty head, Jon of the North, I will never ask a service of you that might bring you dishonor."

Elia thinks nothing of the comment; not the compliment it holds, nor its parallel with a certain oath of fealty. It slips from her tongue smoothly and the wind carries it to his ear before she can ever even hear the words for herself. Perhaps that is why she's so surprised by his reaction.

"I am not becoming your bloody sworn shield," he scoffs, "Do you take me for a fool?"

That had not been her intention. "It would hardly be a binding oath if I deceive you into it," she explains. "You know, you are surprisingly knowledgeable for a simple northern commoner. An oath of knights, the route the Mander cuts through the land … are all of your kinsmen as well informed as you?"

Silence. Fleeting and fleeing and swiftly-footed, but it is there for all to hear. A hesitation that belies some primitively crafted deception to come.

"Of course," he answers. She knows it to be a lie, and that knowledge ferries any lingering thoughts of conversation from her mind.

This river is fed by a narrow lake, flowing north-northeast to the black, and the stones that line its shores are suitably dark. She and Jon crouch upon them at its edge and drink its waters from cupped hands.

Rhaenys struggles to mirror them, though she tries—her hands are kept too flat and her arms too slow. Elia wants to help but hesitates; knows this is something the child should learn for herself. To cover all eventualities. There is no guarantee that this is a journey Elia will survive, nor does she intend to if it is at the cost of her children's safety. She would not be the burden that encumbered their party, she refused to.

"Princess," Jon rumbles. Elia looks over quickly, tucking an errant lock of hair behind her ear, but she is not the one to whom he addresses it. And so, with a finger, she nudges her daughter and gestures to transfer Rhaenys's attention to the man. He performs a quick demonstration on how to drink from the lake. "Cup your hands more, like—" Rhaenys hides from him in her mother's thigh and he sighs, "—this."

Instruction falls to her as Jon quietly departs for the forest.

Her daughter is a fast learner, but poorly coordinated. She understands the idea, but struggles to keep her hands together. Water flows through a gap between them to their backs, dribbling down onto her dirty gown—dampening it anew.

Soon there are shallow streaks of water snaking down her cheeks, the light catching their edges and letting them glisten over the ruddiness they hide. Elia pulls the ends of her sleeves over her thumbs and dabs, clearing the skin of the water. "Come," she says once done, "Let us see where that man has run off to."

The edges of the forest are dark. She cannot say what lays deeper within—not from where they stand at the shore. It unnerves her, but she forces her hands to remain steady as they move closer.

Her daughter makes a whining, keening noise in her throat, stomping her boots in an antsy way. It brings forth the image of a horse and, in order to appease the child's royal temper, Elia plucks Rhaenys up and settles the child against her hip.

The borrowed tunic she wears would be a good fit for a man, but a man Elia was not. The neck pulls wide with the addition of her daughter and sweat quickly gathers where Rhaenys's forehead rests on her bare collar.

"You are so bloody warm," she bemoans before cringing. It takes only a moment to realize why. "Seven Hells, I am even starting to sound like him." By journey's end, she would be the most sullen and surly woman in all of Dorne. What would her brothers think of her then? That she makes for truly miserable company, she reckons.

She enters through the space between two bushes—the same she had watched Jon split only earlier—and peers around the forest within. "Jon?" she calls to a symphony of birdsong. She wanders the perimeter, occasionally calling his name, saying 'Jon, Jon, Jon.'

No answer follows. Not once does a call ever return for her. Never does she hear her own name from his lips, in his brogue; neither that nor 'princess,' nor 'Martell,' nor anything else for that matter. Once more, all is quiet in the Kingswood.

And that silence—it is disquieting.

Any would feel it, but she does not let it stop her—and for that she is glad. She finds Jon not long thereafter; stumbles upon him really. He sits upon a fallen log, his back to a trunk devoid of any bark. At first, she believes him upset by Rhaenys's continued fear of him, but he was not that kind of man. She presses closer, calling his name once more, and huffs in belated amusement when he answers with a leaden breath.

"Fool," she murmurs with a shake of her head, sleeping at a time like this. Her hair becomes untucked from her ear with the motion, sliding across her temple and cheek, then curtaining her eye. She blows it in a huff, but it only sways, so she lowers herself to the ground. "Stand for a moment, sweetling."

Rhaenys notably doesn't. "Why?"

Her eyelids flutter. Patience, she reminds herself, but the muscles of her arm are burning fiercer than the fires which stole the capitol and it becomes a hard promise to keep. "Do as your mother tells you," she commands. Only once her arm is free can she captain her hair backward again and turn her attention to the northman for true.

From this low of an angle, she has an easier time observing him than ever before. His eyes are shut and his lips parted, notably lacking the tension they normally hold. He possesses the fullest lashes she believes she's ever had the pleasure of seeing on a man; and little puffs of air leave him as he slumbers.

With a deep breath and an unsteady thump of her heart, she places a hand upon his shoulder and gently shakes him. "Jon," she whispers once, then louder. "Jon."

A hum leaves him and his eye twitches, but the sound is too low in tone, too high in his throat for it to be entirely conscious. That tension is back, finding purchase at the corner of his brow, just above the faintest print of a crow's foot. From this distance, the scars that strike out across his face feel distinctly out of place.

"Jon," she tries again. "You may not sleep here as you are. It is unsafe." The tree at his back meant he is not likely to fall, but that is the least of their worries, the lowest of their dangers. It is a crime to wake him, she thinks, but the forest is wide and home to many fell things. He should not be sleeping so exposed, not with only herself and two children to guard him.

It takes some encouragement on her part, but eventually the northman rouses. "Elia?" he murmurs from his dreams, "What is it?"

"You fell asleep." Her grin is edging on wry, but it does not survive long enough to arrive at it in full. "We are asking too much of you."

"No." He shakes his head and uses the tree to stabilize himself as he stands. Elia's hand is hovering nearby, ready to support him, but he does not seem to need it. "No. I never sleep well anymore, that is all."

She frowns at him. "You are an exceptionally poor liar, has anyone ever told you this?"

"A few," he admits.

"Your sisters again?"

He shrugs. "Among others."

A huff leaves her as she turns, helping Rhaenys up to her feet and holding her hand as they move deeper into the forest. "They seem the sensible sort. I doubt they would want their dear brother to exhaust himself so fiercely for the sake of a stranger."

"You seem strangely desperate to be rid of me." He dodges a branch, pushing it up with the hand not occupied by his sword's handle. When a noise leaves her throat and he realizes she has no way to manage the same herself, he doubles back and holds it aloft for her.

She thanks him, quietly, before returning to present matters. "I should be rid of you irregardless if we continue as we are. How do you mean to fight our enemies when you can barely pick up your own feet?

The scrunch of his nose is highlighted by a stray beam of sunlight as he mutters, 'our?'

"Yes," she says, "Our. Or do you disagree that we are in this together now?"

The next branch she must duck for herself. He must not appreciate her words. "Your enemies are mine, that does not make them ours. Not until the inverse becomes true as well."

He sure was theatrical, wasn't he? "And who, exactly, are your enemies? Perhaps I will consider it."

"Lannisters, Boltons. The cold gods."

Oh, Elia lets out a sudden laugh with her voice cracking at the heart of it. He is only jesting, that must be the reason for the strange gravity he speaks with. "Grumkins and snarks, as well?"

He turns and places his back to a tree, reclining into it as he looks at her. His eyes rake and raze over her skin in equal measure, a process that only ends when he forces his expression into something akin to levity. It is warped, however, and unlikely to convince anyone. "If they wrong me so," he says. Elia cannot help but feel as if she's missing something.

"Who," a new voice says, tinny and tiny and full of many inherited anxieties, "Who are the cold gods?"

Jon softens his expression as he turns to the speaker, smoothing the grimace his lips seem convinced is a smile. He pushes off of the tree and crouches low to the ground, yawning. "They are beings from the Lands of Always Winter, a place as far north as north can go. And they exist only to turn the warmth of spring into a thing of stories. Their flesh is pale like milk, fragile and blue and icy. They make no marks in the snow as they move, leaving no trace of their presence save for a lingering chill. And they speak in voices like the shattering of ice."

He pauses, eyes flickering up to meet Elia's own. This is her chance to pause the story here, to spare her daughter any potential nightmares, but she doesn't. She has always loved stories, and today would not be the day she breaks faith with childhood fascination.

"Long ago, in a past now forgotten by the southern kingdoms, there occurred a great battle. The first men of the Night's Watch joined hands with the children of the forest—their once enemies—and together they pushed back against the gathering of inhuman winds. An age of darkness and cold had descended upon the land, long enough to last a generation. Children like you had gone their whole lives knowing nothing but snow and wind and hunger. They yearned for little more than they did summer. And they fought to have it again."

"Did they win?"

"Did they win?" He scoffs. "Of course, they won. We warriors of the north are made of sterner stuff. Or do you deny that today you know of the sun and her stars?"

An unruly smile breaks through her daughter's facade. It seems even this forest could not make a daughter of House Nymeros Martell forget her heritage, the guiding light of the red sun. "So they are gone? Forever?"

"Of course," he tells her, but he looks away as he says it, so Elia cannot know if he believes his own words or not. "Do you need to rest, Your Highness?"

"Me?" Whyever for was he asking her? "You are in far worse shape than I."

He pushes himself to stand, and even the simple act seems to tax him. Rhaenys is already lost in thought, head filled with fantasies born of his story, so he feels safe enough to whisper to Elia, "But you are breathing heavily again."

She makes an attempt to steady herself, but cannot. He was not wrong, this journey has been hard, thrice so since they were forced to abandon their mounts. Her body could scarcely bear it, not once has the ache in her heart ebbed nor the daggers in her lungs soothed. It would seem that despite her best efforts to conceal it, Jon had noticed.

"And you are barely staying atop your feet."

"Maybe so," he says, "But still I ask you."

"Fine, yes." Curse this man and his warrantless diligence, she does not understand what she has done to deserve it. As the days progress, her heart is forcing her to mistrust it less and less, despite her mind's urgings. "Let us find a place to rest, but you will be sleeping while I keep watch this night."

He makes to argue, she knows this in her heart of hearts, he does the same every night, but a yawn interrupts him and he relents instead. "Very well then."

Only once they find a thicker copse to hide within does she speak again, continuing a conversation from days now past. "If not knighthood, then is there something else you desire?"

"Nothing comes to mind, Your Highness."

Elia frowns and hands him the last of their hard bread and dried meat. "Nothing at all? There must be something you want, something you lack."

"Something I lack." For a long time he is silent, contemplative. Their hollow fills with the quiet sounds of his chewing as he considers it, sleepily, and eventually he seems to come to a decision. His exhaustion increases tenfold as he utters, at last, "Peace."

"Peace?" Elia echoes, but he is already fast asleep.

As he rests, she ponders that.

Peace. It is such a queer thing. It is the reality the maiden takes for granted, the one lost with the flowering of her body; it is the crone's unspoken wish and one they only expect to find in death.

Elia has made hers with war, for she did not expect to know anything else in her life. Peace is a concept she forsakes; the gift she desires only for her children. The mother's peace, it was, or the lack thereof.

She wonders, long and fruitlessly, what peace was to a man like Jon.