Today, again, Lysa had not touched her breakfast.

She told herself it was the food. Too much vinegar in the eggs, the honey too thin. But that wasn't the truth, and she knew it.

Her looking glass showed her what it always showed: a maid of five-and-ten, with the woman in her beginning to flower.

The light shifted behind her, threading gold through the traceries carved with leaping trout. It caught her hair sometimes, turned it redder than Cat's just for a moment, until the clouds came again and made everything dull.

The serving girls would whisper that she was the prettier of Lord Hoster's daughters, though Lysa knew better. It was Cat who drew all eyes in the feast hall, Cat whose passing made men's heads turn, Cat whom Petyr watched with hungry eyes.

A groan echoed faintly somewhere below, low and straining, the sort that always came with morning and water and chains. It had woken her once, as a child, when she still thought the sound meant something new was coming.

In her reflection Lysa saw only the Tully beauty turned too soft, rendered too delicate. Though a woman's form moved beneath her gown, a girl's dreams lingered still within her eyes.

A wind touched her shoulder, cool through the glass, and brought with it the damp breath of the Tumblestone, stone and moss and something sweet from the inner garden. She'd left the window ajar without thinking. Again.

Her hair had always slipped through combs too fast, too fine to braid without stubborn hands. When it dried in the sun it went almost copper, brighter than Cat's, though no one ever said so aloud.

The glass caught her eyes wrong today, too pale in the light, too wide. She blinked once, then again. Still the same. Like the pools near the mill when the river ran slow, clear enough to show what lay beneath.

Behind her, the hearth still held the smell of ash and stone, and the faintest curl of smoke, but no warmth. She ought to have rung for the maids, but they would come soon enough. They always did.

Her mouth was small, made for pouting, as many a maiden's mouth might be. When she pressed her lips together before the glass, they curved like the painted bow upon a pleasure barge she had once seen at Lord Hoster's dock, a thing of Lys.

There was a noise she could not place, far off. Hammer, maybe, or the river shifting its weight against the stones. Sound travelled strangely in the Keep Tower. Some days it felt like the castle spoke in its sleep.

The linen still smelled of rosemary—sharp, green, the way it clung after the maids had pressed it warm. Lavender, too, somewhere beneath it, softer. She breathed in, slow. It used to help.

Lysa shifted. Silk stuck to the back of her knee, warm where the sun had gone.

It wasn't supposed to be him again.

But—

The corner of his mouth always turned first, like he already knew. Everything was already known with him.

She'd forgotten what they'd been talking about, that day by the water. She remembered his voice more than the words. Low. A little too pleased with itself. Like he was playing at something even when he wasn't.

The green in his eyes never stayed still. Sometimes grey. Once, almost gold. Only for a heartbeat. She blinked and it was gone.

She'd tried not to remember. That hadn't worked.

Some part of her always bent back toward him. Shoes pulled in damp grass, even when the road ran dry.

She should have looked away. That would've been easy. Easier.

But she hadn't. Not then. Not after.

They never did. Not really.

Not when he walked into a room and made space for himself, quiet as ink drying. Not when he sat too straight for his station, or folded his cloak twice before placing it down. Not even when he won. Especially not then.

They had laughed at his stature, turned their eyes from his name as if it stank of the salt air of the Fingers. But what did they see, truly? Birth? A surname? A slight boy in a lord's hall, shoes too clean and words too quick?

They never looked closely. If they had, they would have seen it. How he held the sum of a hundred scrolls behind his eyes. How his hand never trembled with a quill. How he could listen once and remember forever. At twelve, he knew things men twice his age had to look up in books.

No one asked how. No one dared. It was easier to scoff. Easier to say, "He is no one's son. He has no claim." But the gods gave their gifts like rain, falling where they pleased. Not always on noble roofs. Not always on golden cradles.

She'd whispered that thought once in the solar. Just once. It had hung in the air like incense, sweet, and dangerous. Since then, she kept it close, tucked behind her teeth. Some truths weren't meant to be spoken where septas could hear.

The lords strutted past in their heavy cloaks, brocade gleaming in candlelight. Their ladies clattered with gems, but their eyes were empty, dulled by flattery and feastwine. They saw only what they expected to see. Bloodlines. Blazons. Not the boy who could outmatch a maester at cyvasse, who moved pieces others didn't even know were in play.

What was a knight's sigil worth, if his hand faltered at the draw? What was a lord's name, when his tongue stumbled through a sentence? Petyr's blade was his mind, and none of them even saw it drawn.

They called him sly, small, sly again. The word echoed off walls like it meant nothing else. But she had watched him, truly watched him, and seen the angles of his thinking like light striking glass. He was never small. He was sharp.

But they never saw it. Or refused to. A highborn fool could trip over his own boots and still be called noble. Petyr—Petyr could make lords laugh, make the steward blush, quote histories none of them had read, and still they'd nod and turn away.

Let them turn. She hadn't.

What kind of men did the realm praise?

Brandon Stark rode like the wind, and the halls filled with whispers behind him. The serving girls trailed his scent through the corridors—wine and sweat and leather—and giggled over stories too crude to be true. Or maybe they were true. It made no difference. He was the Wild Wolf, and that name made every indiscretion a tale worth singing.

They said he'd bedded a dozen maidens, two dozen, more. That he never forgot a name, only a promise. They said a lot of things. Lysa heard them all.

Even Cat had flushed when he came riding through the gates. Cat, who always spoke so softly of duty and honor, whose voice never rose, whose back never slouched. Cat, whose cheeks turned pink when Brandon winked. The very same Cat who told Lysa not to laugh at coarse jokes. The very same.

Where Brandon rode, Robert followed—louder, broader, laughing like the feast was already won. The Storm Lord. The smallfolk sang of him too, though their songs weren't fit for the sept. Bastards already, and no wife yet. Yet he spoke of love. Love, while he tumbled girls in every keep from here to North.

That was love, then? That was courtship?

These were the men fathers gave their daughters to. These were the lords who filled the songs, who laughed the loudest and kissed the hardest and rode away with their cloaks flapping like banners behind them. They shouted honor from the saddle and spilled it in the straw.

Let the septas speak of virtue, let the singers gild their words in harpstrings and moonlight. Lysa saw it clearly. Beneath the cloaks, beneath the oaths, they were all the same.

The ones who shouted loudest, who drank deepest, who bedded quickest. The ones who laughed over broken vows and called it charm. Fathers gave them daughters like tokens at a feast. A good match, they said. A strong alliance.

But when the music stopped, and the wine ran dry, and no one was watching—what remained?

Brandon wore his lordship like a velvet cloak. Robert, like a warhammer slung over his shoulder. Petyr had no cloak. No house to wrap him warm. Only his mind, and his patience, and that quiet way he walked through rooms no one thought he belonged in.

She'd watched him once return a page to the maester's desk with its corners straightened, not a wrinkle in sight. That was his kind of deed. Small. Precise. Invisible. More honest than all the feasts the Wild Wolf had ever thrown.

If the realm were fair, Petyr would wear a crown of gold, not threadbare wool. If the realm were just, names would mean less, and deeds would mean more. It would be actions that mattered—the quiet kind, the clever kind, the kind you didn't sing about.

But the realm had never been fair. She knew that. It never would be.

And still.

The names echoed like prayers in the hall, Martell, Targaryen, Greyjoy, each one draped in gold and old songs. And yet. And yet.

Oberyn of Sunspear, they called him the Red Viper. Quick with his blade, quicker with his hands, quicker still with his tongue. They whispered of women, of men, of stranger things. And still they toasted him at feasts. Still they smiled.

Prince Rhaegar… for a time, she'd believed he was different. His songs spoke of prophecy, of stars and steel and sorrow. He played the harp like a god, they said. The blood of Valyria ran in his veins, pure, proud, unbroken. And yet he had run. He had taken his maiden and left a wife behind, noble Elia with her empty bed and silent halls.

Even the dragons forgot their vows in the end.

And Balon Greyjoy, what honor lived in him? The Ironborn never cloaked their cruelty. They beat it into their sons and sold it to their daughters. Their women bore children like coin paid for salt. And no one spoke against it. Not truly.

So these were the lords. These were the rulers of Westeros.

And they wondered why the world bled.

She knew the old stories. Everyone did. Alysanne the Great. Daeron the Good. Duncan the Prince of Dragonflies and Aemon the Grey Warden.

They lived in songs now. Safe there, sealed in verse and melody, but only stories, half-remembered verses hummed by nursemaids in the dark. The lords who walked the earth now could barely live up to their own shadows, let alone theirs.

The songs still promised honor. The halls did not.

Sometimes she wondered if the blood had thinned, or the hearts had hardened. If the nobility had simply worn itself out, generation by generation, until all that remained was gold and shadow.

But somewhere—somewhere—there must still be a true heart, a noble soul. A knight who did not speak honor but lived it. A lord who ruled as if the realm were more than banners and coin.

She told herself it must be so. She had to.

Some nights, it was all that let her sleep.

Among the lords, there were two, only two, who had not yet shamed their names.

In distant Sunspear, Doran Martell kept his wife, and only her, a lady from Norvos. They called it strange. Too quiet for a prince, some said. Too soft for Dorne. But he held her hand in public. Let her speak in court. They said he listened more than he spoke. They said he did not take no soft-voiced courtesans hidden in silk-draped chambers, though his own father had filled his bed with them, proud of it.

The world scoffed. Lysa listened.

And then there was Jaime. The Young Lion.

At Harrenhal, they said, women forgot themselves when he rode. Highborn ladies and crofters' daughters both, leaning over the rails to catch a glimpse of him, hair like sunlight, grace like poetry on horseback. He didn't smile for them. He didn't need to.

She had heard that he loved the old stories. That he'd read of Serwyn of the Mirror Shield, and dreamed of being like him.

That cloak he wore, white as bone, heavy as judgment, he had chosen it. No wife. No mistress. No children bearing his name. They said he begged for it, that he asked the king on bent knee. No Lannister heir had done so before.

A strange choice. A golden boy swearing himself to silence and sacrifice.

Strange. But maybe… maybe not untrue.

If men still looked to Jaime's white cloak… if they remembered Doran Martell's quiet vows… perhaps the realm could be mended. Perhaps not all was lost.

The old songs had spoken of them long before their names were ever known. Ser Galladon of Morne. Florian the Fool, who loved with nothing but a flower and a smile. Men who stood alone and still made the world gentler by their being. Just one true knight, the singers said, could light the way for others.

It was a thin hope. Threadbare. But she clung to it all the same, fingers tight around it like a drowning girl clutching driftwood, splintered, sodden, but better than the dark.. There was no shame in needing something to hold.

And yet.

What right did they have, these lords? These roaring, rutting men draped in sigils they did not deserve? No more than a swineherd had to wear a crown. Less, perhaps, for a swineherd at least earned his keep.

Robert Baratheon. Loud as a storm, blind as a boar, careless as a child with a blade. He spoke of love, but drank like a sellsword and chased flesh like it was sport. Had he been born with nothing, he might have died in a gutter, sword in hand, piss on his boots. But he bore a name, and so the Stormlands bent knee.

As if the gods had chosen him.

The thought soured her mouth.

These men wore their titles like iron circlets—unbending, unearned. And still the weight of their folly fell on others. Their mistakes spilled out like floodwaters, breaking through every wall, sweeping away the lives beneath them.

It was not the lord who drowned first. It was the washerwoman. The blacksmith. The boy too small for a sword but old enough to die beneath one.

You did not suffer for your own sins, under such men. You suffered for theirs.

Lysa never fancied herself a saint.

If the smallfolk rose with pitchforks in their fists and fire in their eyes, she would give the order. As quick as any lord's daughter, she would speak the words that spilled blood. She would not flinch.

She bore the blood of Tullys, not septons.

When she looked down from the towers and saw the fishermen casting nets, or the washerwomen stooped by the stones, sleeves soaked to the elbow—she did not see beasts. Not filth. Not fodder. She saw backs that ached, hands that blistered, feet that had never touched polished floors. She saw people. Common, yes—but human.

Their lives were not grand. But they were lives. And that was enough.

She had come to believe, quietly, stubbornly, that love was the line that mattered. Love for a wife, a child, a cause. Love for one's people. Even love unspoken, or lost, or turned to ash—it still meant something. It still separated men from the creatures they became when power rotted their hearts.

Robert Baratheon spoke of love with every cup raised and every girl kissed. Words flowed from him like wine: sweet, full, empty. He could swear devotion one day, and forget a name the next.

Men like that were worse than monsters. At least monsters did not lie about what they were.

But Petyr—

Petyr did not lie. He did not shout about love and spill it in the next bed. He did not roar, or swagger, or dress his wants in false vows. He watched. He waited. And when he spoke, it was with care, words chosen like blades from a velvet roll, sharp but never wasted.

True power did not come with a roar.

It came from the mind that knew where each piece belonged before the board was even set. In that, Petyr stood apart, more than lord, more than knight. A player the rest could not see, not until they were already losing.

She had seen it, how he played cyvasse beneath the willows, his hands steady as riverstone, never rushed. He moved like he already knew the ending. While other boys blundered toward victory, he let them win, sometimes, just to see what they'd do with it.

He would not need a sword to conquer. He would not need a crown.

When she looked at him now, she saw not what he was, but what he would become: a man who could reshape the realm with the same precision a jeweler uses to cut fire into stone.

And yet, not all lords need brilliance. There were some who would never change the world, never win a war, never be sung of in any hall. But they knew their people. They knew the weight of promises. They held fast in storms, even when the winds screamed louder than reason.

Such men never rose high. But their people slept easy.

And there was strength in that too, quiet, stubborn, simple strength. The kind that did not glitter. The kind that endured.

Even the greatest mind could not match that, not always.

A ruler might bear a sword. But if he were only a sword, he was no ruler at all.

And Robert Baratheon wasn't even that. Not even a beast.

Beasts have purpose. Beasts have instinct. He had only noise.

He called himself warrior. So did the brutes who followed him, men with laughter like broken glass, men who torched villages and sang about it. They called themselves warriors. They meant raiders.

Perhaps he felt at home among them. Perhaps that was the point.

Even the great ones, the true ones, they still made vows. She'd heard that much. Their fire didn't burn everything. Only what needed burning.

But the wolves and the stags, charged headlong, shouting of justice, as if noise were enough to make it true.

They called their rebellion righteous.

But recklessness was no banner to rally beneath.

It was a pyre, waiting for flame.

And the dragons would answer.

And Cat would be standing in the smoke.

She would lie in the center of the woodpile, smiling as the torch was lit.

Always, somehow, it circled back to Cat. The gods had given her a sister with hands soft as summer rain and eyes that men lost their thoughts in. A sister who smiled just right, who knew the right words, who never had to ask twice. A sister who braided Lysa's hair with gentle fingers and never raised her voice, not even when she should have.

They were bound in blood. That could not be broken. Not even by longing. Not even by Petyr's eyes following Cat instead of her. Not even when he said her name and made it sound like a secret.

She had thought it would end when Brandon Stark died. One wolf gone, done, buried, mourned. But no. Father had another match ready before the bones were cold. Eddard Stark, the quiet one. The honorable one. Quieter teeth still bite. The cloak may be different, but the wolf beneath is the same.

A Stark is a Stark.

And the Starks had made their choice, swords drawn, banners raised, howling northmen set loose. They were marching to the battlefield and their graves, if there's anything left of them to bury by then. And Father… Father had tied Cat's fate to theirs with a bow and a smile.

The river is deep, she wanted to say. And the tide is rising.

What were the Tully words again? She could still see them, carved above Father's chair: Family. Duty. Honor. She used to trace them with her fingers, before she knew what they meant.

He'd chosen honor, of course. That last word, always the heaviest. Duty came next, like a stone in the hand. And family… family was the one he set down first, like it mattered least.

She pressed her fingers to the windowsill, circling the same grooves she had known since childhood, as her mind circled the same fatal question: why now? Why not wait? A fortnight's pause might have spared them all — let the dragons finish their work, let the ash settle, let the world remember what ruled it.

But Father was moving pieces again. He always thought he was playing some careful game. Maps, names, lines, ravens. But Lysa had come to see the board more clearly.

Every piece had a face.

Cat's most of all.

And the dragons would not pause. They did not parley. They would come, swift and final, and burn what they found.

From her tower, the Riverlands stretched out green and blooming beneath a wide, false sky. But the colors felt wrong, too soft, too peaceful. As if the land itself didn't know what was coming. As if it, too, wore a mask.

Just like her sister.

She could still hear Cat's voice echoing softly in the sept, whispering prayers to the Maiden as if piety could change the course of dragons. As if closing her eyes would hide the fire.

But Lysa had lived in that shadow too long not to see it. The cloth was already tied around her sister's eyes — and it was Father's hands that had done it.

Her stomach tightened. She'd barely tasted a thing this morning, yet her mouth was sour all the same.

Below, near the weir of the Tumblestone, a servant moved through the rising mist, pale apron clinging to their legs in the damp. They walked with slow, uneven steps, one arm limp at their side, head bowed low.

For a moment, the light caught their face.

And just like that, it was him.

Gray skin, slack mouth, boots scraping stone as the wind rocked him gently on the rope. The deserter. The one they hanged last winter. His eyes had bulged, she remembered. Like something pressed too hard against glass.

Father hadn't used rope with Cat. He'd used silks. Used smiles.

But a noose was a noose.

And beyond the Neck, the storm clouds gathered. Thick and black. Ravens in the shape of war.

The sun crept across the floor, slow and pale, as if even it feared to shine. Time slid past her in pieces, thin, golden, useless.

Each heartbeat now brought Cat closer—to what, Lysa couldn't say.

Sometimes, in the quiet, she imagined her sister in Winterfell's hall, children with auburn hair curling at her feet. Other times she saw Cat sprawled on stone steps, mouth parted in prayer or pain, as a dragon's shadow passed overhead.

The visions came without asking, swift and sharp, like thunder waking her from sleep. They did not stop.

Lysa pressed her forehead against the cold glass until her skin hurt, but the tears came anyway. Silent, always silent—she'd learned that much from Cat.

Not to speak of them aloud. Not the dreams. Not the dread. The shaking in her hands each morning. The way her thoughts circled the same dark center.

Beyond the window, the river ran on, slow, heavy, heedless. It carried everything away eventually: leaves, petals, words unsaid.

It would carry Cat, too.

Lysa blinked hard and turned away, drawing her shawl tighter around her shoulders. The glass had gone damp where her breath touched it. She rubbed it clean with the heel of her hand.

Her breath caught. Not from grief, exactly. Not even fear. Just that feeling again. Old and sharp and too close. The same one that had gripped her long ago—when Father's eyes lit with something bright and cold and final. When the raven had come from Casterly Rock.

Jaime Lannister. His name still tasted golden.

She remembered him at tourney, riding past like a statue come to life, sunlight in his hair. The way the serving girls sighed. The way her own chest had fluttered, just a little. Then Father had spoken, and the flutter turned to ice.

But that wasn't what stayed with her. Not really.

When she closed her eyes, she didn't see the lion.

She saw Petyr.

Petyr, patient and quiet, showing her how the cyvasse pieces moved. Letting her win. Laughing softly when she didn't.

While ravens flew between Riverrun and the Rock, bearing her future in their beaks, she had knelt on cold stone in the sept. Praying the same word over and over, until her knees ached and her voice broke and she didn't care if the gods heard or not.

Please. Please. Please.

And then the news had come.

Ser Jaime had taken the white. No wedding. No heirs. No bride. Lysa had kept her face still at dinner, while Father fumed, but later, later she had danced. Alone, behind closed doors, spinning until her skirts flared like petals in bloom.

She was free.

Free to dream of Petyr, who remembered the stories Old Nan used to tell. Who knew which lemon cakes she liked best.

They said she'd lost something, a match, a title, a castle of gold, but Lysa knew better. There would be no poetry in the Rock. No boy who remembered her nameday.

She had held onto that truth. Fiercely. Stubbornly. Through every silence. Through every season.

Now the rain had returned, thin and cold, threading down the glass like silver needles.

Lysa's gaze drifted to the horizon, where the rivers split the land in two. The clouds there hung low and colorless as if the sky had faded.

Somewhere below, a riverman called out. A sharp, distant sound, half-lost in wind. The smell of rain crept in through the stone: moss, wet wood, the copper tang of turned soil. The fire had gone out again. She hadn't noticed.

Their boots sank deep where frost still held to the roots. The last of the harvest was being hauled in, wet and late. Mud slicked everything now, carts, sleeves, thoughts.

The rain had a different rhythm in these months, not summer's drumming, not spring's gentleness. It tapped like memory. Like something waiting.

Her fingers followed a droplet down the pane, slow.

Four storms, she counted, not for the first time. Four moments when the world had shifted beneath her feet…

The first storm had come with the ice.

Snow drifted down in thick, slow spirals, soft at first, then heavier, until the towers vanished behind a white hush. The Tumblestone moved beneath its crust like something asleep. Ice glazed the drawbridge chains; the men-at-arms had to strike it off with hammers to let the party pass.

She'd watched from the covered bridge. The iron groaned as it lowered, and across it came the boy, nearly swallowed by his father's cloak, its hem dragging through slush and straw.

His boots left no prints in the snow. It was falling too fast for that.

He didn't look up at first. Just stood there, wrapped in wool and shadow, until the gate closed behind him. Then he tilted his face to the towers above. His hair was already white at the crown.

Lysa remembered thinking he looked like he had no business standing there, like the storm might blow him away if it took a mind to.

Even the ravens were quiet that day. The only sound was the wind, catching the icicles one by one, drawing long notes from them like glass strings.

The second rain was quiet at first. A warm rain that sank slow into the ground, warm enough to melt the last ice from the flagstones, soft enough not to send the birds into silence. The clouds had moved in low and silver, and the earth had already begun to open, worms in the soil, moss dark on stone, the Riverlands breathing again.

Lysa and Cat had gone barefoot. Their skirts were hitched above their knees, hems dark with water, legs streaked with mud. The maids had called them wildlings, but no one chased them back indoors. Not that day. The rain was kind enough to let them stay children a little longer.

The soil clung in thick ropes between Lysa's fingers. They'd shaped the mud into cakes, rounded and smooth, crowned with twigs for candles and bits of polished stone. A feast fit for a king, they said.

Petyr was beneath the willow. A book in his lap, legs folded neatly beneath him. When they brought him their treasures, he looked up without surprise. He closed the book. Smiled. Took the first cake in both hands.

The way he chewed, slow, solemn, had Cat clutching her belly from laughter. The second cake disappeared after the first, then the third. His teeth were rimmed with grey by the end. Still he chewed. Still he smiled.

Lysa remembered the sound she made, a sharp, wheezing kind of laugh that made her sides ache. The grass was cool beneath her back, the rain cool on her face. Petyr sat regal and ridiculous, with soil on his lips and mud dripping down his chin.

He fell ill after, a fever that held him for days. Maester Vyman muttered about stomachs and stormwater.

Lysa never said what she knew: that he had eaten every bite knowing what it was. That he had never once looked at her.

Not once.

The third storm came sudden. One moment, the yard was all green light and birdsong; the next it was gone, swallowed by clouds, by wind, by water.

They had been playing at castles, Cat the queen, Petyr the fool knight, Lysa somewhere behind them both. The godswood held them close, all damp bark and thundering limbs, as the rain came down in sheets.

Beneath the oldest oak, they huddled. The roots knuckled up from the soil like old hands, and the canopy above gave only half-shelter. Raindrops slipped through, cold and sudden. Petyr danced through them like it was a game, darting left, right, chasing nothing but Cat's laughter.

Lysa stayed against the trunk.

The storm thickened, and the light bent strange, green and grey and glowing at once. Behind the veil of rain, the castle walls blurred.

Petyr took Catelyn's hand.

She didn't pull away.

A kiss is a quiet thing. The thunder had passed on. All that remained was the hush beneath the leaves, and the sound of rain threading through.

Lysa stood still. She felt the cold trace of a drop down her spine. Her fingers curled into the bark.

Her sister's hair had darkened in the wet, soaked now, dark as burnished coin, and lingered there like he meant to stay. Petyr's fingers slipped into it like he'd done it before.

She told herself the salt on her lips was from the rain. The oak's roots pressed hard against her boots. She did not move. Could not.

When his hand rose to her sister's cheek, Lysa bit down on her lip.

The rain kept falling.

She stood and watched. And did not make a sound.

The last rain fell without warning on a harvest day already half spent. The sky had turned to weeping long before the bells stopped. It came hard and cold, washing down the red walls of Riverrun in rivulets that gleamed like oil.

From Dorne to the Wall, they said the clouds had darkened. But Lysa remembered only the yard, slick, uneven, old, and the way the water struck the stone like it meant to stay.

In the lower courtyard, the ancient flagstones shone dark and treacherous. Brandon Stark stood tall above them, his shadow long in the wet light. Petyr was smaller by half, his borrowed armor dulled and dragging. The gloves didn't fit..

He looked like a boy who'd gotten lost in a soldier's tale. But he did not tremble. That mattered.

Brandon stripped his own plate slow, piece by piece, as if putting on a show. His shoulders gleamed with rain. The gathered lords laughed, called out bets, leaned close beneath their cloaks. Lysa stood behind a pillar. She had not meant to watch.

Before the fight, he turned. Not toward Lysa.

Toward Cat.

He said something, Lysa couldn't hear it through the curtain of rain, but she saw the way her sister's mouth flattened.

"Father has promised me to Brandon Stark," Cat said. Her voice was soft, her hands still. "My favor is his."

From her sleeve, she drew a handkerchief of pale blue silk, trout embroidered. She held it out.

Brandon took it without looking at Petyr.

Petyr's face didn't change. That was the worst part. He only nodded, barely. Then turned.

The rain thickened. And the fight began.

No song would be made of it.

Brandon came fast, a bull in a storm. Every blow landed heavy. Petyr parried once, twice, then staggered. Steel shrieked against steel. The rain made it hard to see.

Petyr's feet slipped once on the stones, and his blade came up too slow. Brandon struck again.

Blood splashed across the flagstones. Thin, bright.

"Yield," the Wolf shouted, the word cracking like thunder. Rain washing across the yard like a river that wouldn't stop.

Petyr said nothing.

Lysa couldn't look away. She tried. The septa's hand found her wrist but didn't pull.

Another blow, and another. Red bloomed on Petyr's shoulder, then his side. He stumbled backward, boots skidding in the red slick. Brandon followed, sword raised.

The next blow tore through the breastplate. Through leather. Through flesh.

For a moment, no one moved.

Then the blood came. Dark as wine. It spread across the stone, and the rain took it, pulled it away in rivulets.

Lysa stepped forward. A reflex. She didn't remember deciding to move.

A hand closed around her wrist, the septa's.

"Stay back, child."

She twisted, but the grip held.

Petyr's eyes opened, unfocused. His breath caught, wet.

"Cat," he said. His fingers opened against the stone, then closed again.

Lysa had nothing to give him.

They carried him off the field, pale as wax, the blood trailing behind like a torn banner.

She had not seen his face since.