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Winter's size had long surpassed all understanding. In flight, it was like a gale tearing across the snowfields, or a modern jumbo jet blotting out the sky.
Lynn turned it over in his mind.
If the Dragonpit hadn't stunted Winter's growth, it could probably have added another meter.
Ned Stark sat on Winter's broad back.
Icy wind poured into his mouth and nose. It should have been brutal. Instead, it felt like relief, the kind he hadn't felt in a long time.
King's Landing, that city of conspiracies and rot, was finally falling away behind them.
He glanced back.
Lynn and Myrcella sat close together just behind him. Jaime was further back, wearing an expression that couldn't quite decide between fascination and suspicion.
Jaime Lannister, who feared nothing, was quietly trying not to vomit.
In under two days, they'd covered ground that would take an ordinary traveler more than half a month on foot.
When the gray outline of Winterfell rose on the horizon, Ned's eyes went a little wet.
He was home.
The gates were already open.
Robb Stark stood at the entrance in heavy furs, pacing. He was still waiting for word on Theon.
Then he saw Winter descending, his father riding its back, and every trace of anxiety vanished from his face in an instant, replaced by something wide and stunned and joyful.
"Father!"
"How are you here?"
Winter landed. Ned swung down and hit the snow in a clean, steady drop.
He looked at his eldest son. The boy had grown taller than him. That face, seven or eight parts his own, but younger, harder, more certain. Something shifted in Ned's chest, too many things at once to name.
He'd been gone too long. This little wolf had grown up.
Robb stepped forward quickly, arms already opening for a hug.
Then he caught his father's eyes, and stopped.
Ned's gaze was perfectly calm.
But beneath that calm, something waited. Like the stillness before a blizzard breaks.
"I heard," Ned said quietly.
"You locked up your mother."
Cold sweat prickled across Robb's forehead. He stepped back half a pace without thinking, feeling less like he was facing his father and more like he was standing before the old king's statue outside the walls.
"I... Father, I had to..."
His tongue wouldn't cooperate.
"The letter was wrong, something about it was wrong, and Mother was going to ride straight into it, so I—"
"So you locked her in her room."
Ned's tone didn't change. The pressure did.
Robb's heart dropped.
He knew he'd done the right thing. He knew it. But standing here, under that gaze, guilt crept in anyway.
That's it. I'm getting a beating today.
He braced himself.
Ned reached out and clapped him on the shoulder. Hard. Hard enough to rock him.
"Well done."
"...What?"
Robb's head came up. His face was a picture of pure bafflement.
A smile had appeared on Ned's face. Small, but unmistakable, and carrying a shade of something that looked almost like private amusement.
"You're already a capable lord. You knew how to make a hard call."
"That said..."
He leaned in close, voice dropping.
"Your mother's anger is yours to deal with. Don't look to me for help." A beat. "Right now I just want a hot bath."
He turned and walked into the castle at a brisk stride, leaving Robb standing in the wind, thoroughly confused.
Ned had endured Catelyn's lectures for years. Seeing her finally on the receiving end, even for once, had done wonders for his mood. But he couldn't let that show. Absolutely could not.
Lynn walked over and clapped Robb on the shoulder too.
"You'll get used to it," he said, grinning. "Your father was cooped up in King's Landing too long."
Jaime followed at a slight distance, watching the exchange. The corner of his mouth twitched.
Northern men and their version of fatherly affection. Truly... something.
Winter, for its part, watched Robb try to approach with an expression of pure contempt and turned its head away. Didn't even give him a proper look.
Robb felt thoroughly abandoned.
Lynn watched it all and felt something warm settle in his chest.
In the original story, the Stark family's tragedy had played out to its brutal end. Not this time. This time it would be different. A better ending, for all of them. It was the least he could do for the regret he'd carried since the day he arrived in this world.
...
The great hall of Winterfell's keep.
The fire in the hearth was burning high.
Catelyn Tully paced the room like a she-wolf in a cage, back and forth, back and forth.
When the door swung open and Ned's familiar silhouette filled the frame, every shred of her anxiety and fury dissolved at once. What replaced it came out as tears.
"Ned!"
She crossed the room and threw herself into his arms, weeping without restraint.
Ned held her tightly. He felt her shaking. Guilt settled heavy in his chest.
"I'm back, Cat. I'm back."
She cried for a long time before she finally came down from it.
She wiped her face. Then she remembered the locked door, the humiliation of it, and her grief curdled into something sharper. She pushed Ned aside and turned on Robb, who had followed them in.
"You ungrateful boy! You dared lock me up!"
Robb hunched his shoulders and looked desperately at his father.
Ned had already moved to the fireplace and was warming his hands, eyes fixed on the flames, seeing nothing at all.
Not a chance. Whoever steps into this one loses. Playing blind is the only sensible move.
"Mother, I—"
"Alright, my lady. Don't be too hard on Robb."
Lynn's voice came in at exactly the right moment.
"He did it for your sake."
"Riverrun right now is a wolf's den. If you'd gone, you wouldn't have come back."
Robb shot Lynn a look of pure, heartfelt gratitude.
Now that is a real friend.
Catelyn's attention shifted.
Only now did she take in the full picture: Lynn, Myrcella, and even Jaime Lannister, all standing in her hall.
She looked at Lynn, something urgent pulling at her voice.
"Lynn, what happened at Riverrun? My father, is he—"
"Wait. We'll get to that."
Catelyn stopped, glancing around the room. Her brow creased.
"Where's Sansa? Why didn't Sansa come back with you?"
The name landed strangely. The hall went quiet in a way that felt deliberate.
Ned's hands stilled over the fire. The expression that crossed his face was worse than a grimace.
"She... refused to leave."
"Refused to leave?"
Catelyn's voice climbed sharply.
"What do you mean, refused to leave? Did Joffrey keep her there? Did that little—"
"No. It has nothing to do with Joffrey."
Ned let out a slow breath and gave Lynn a complicated look.
"She chose to stay. Of her own will."
Catelyn went still.
Her daughter. Her Sansa, who had treated knightly tales like holy scripture and dreamed her whole life of marrying a prince. That Sansa had willingly turned down the chance to come home, and chosen to remain in the very place where every one of those dreams had broken?
"Why?"
She couldn't make sense of it.
"What is she even doing there?"
Ned's expression moved into territory that defied description. He turned it over for a long moment before he could bring himself to say it.
"She said... she wants to earn money."
"She wants to... earn money?"
Catelyn felt her mind stall.
The eldest daughter of House Stark. In King's Landing. Earning money.
What kind of bard's tale was this?
"Yes. Earn money." Ned said it with the look of a man who had made peace with the absurd. "She used the jewelry you gave her as her starting capital. Rented a shop on Silk Street, the busiest stretch in King's Landing. Designs clothes and jewelry for noble ladies."
"She calls it haute couture. There's also some kind of smooth soap involved. I don't fully understand it."
"Apparently the business is doing well. She's made quite a few gold dragons."
Catelyn stood with her mouth open and said nothing.
She looked at Lynn. She looked at Ned. She felt like she was listening to a traveling singer spin a story too strange to be real.
It wasn't the gold dragons that stunned her.
Arya had already given her enough grief, running after Lynn with a sword in her hand and a head full of dreams about becoming a knight.
But Sansa. Her most proper daughter. Her most sensible, most ladylike girl, the one who had never caused her a moment's worry.
Also for Lynn's sake. Also staying behind in that den of wolves and tigers.
Seven help me.
She felt like her two daughters were two fresh heads of cabbage, and Lynn had gone and eaten both of them.
And right in front of her, he'd dragged her son down the same road.
Her Robb had never once dared to defy her like this before.
Catelyn's gaze settled on Lynn.
It was the look of a mother at her absolute wit's end.
Lynn felt it like a physical weight and forced out a dry laugh.
"Well... Lady Catelyn, children grow up. They develop their own ideas..."
"Their own ideas? They're bewitched, is what they are!"
She said it sharply. But even as she said it, she knew this wasn't the moment. There were bigger things pressing.
She drew a slow breath, set her daughters aside for now, and let her expression go serious.
"Enough. Tell me what matters."
"My father's death. Edmure's wedding. What actually happened?"
"Robb said that letter was wrong in every way."
"There was a hidden layer inside the envelope. He suspects even what was written in the hidden layer can't be trusted."
Ned's face darkened at the mention of it. He'd already heard pieces of what had happened at Riverrun.
He looked at Lynn. A silent signal: you tell it.
Lynn always seemed to see things others couldn't. His "prophecies" had a way of being right.
Lynn nodded and laid it out, all of it, from the beginning.
Lysa Arryn poisoning Jon Arryn. Her manipulation of the Vale lords. Her secret arrangement with Walder Frey, the whole design: marriage and conspiracy working together to swallow both the Riverlands and the Vale in a single move.
When Catelyn heard that her father, Lord Hoster, likely hadn't died of illness, that he had probably been driven to his death by her long-broken sister, or worse, that Lysa might have killed him herself, her body swayed. The room dimmed at the edges. She nearly went down.
"No... that's not possible..."
The color had left her lips entirely.
"Lysa... how could she become this? That was our father."
"For Petyr Baelish, she..."
Grief. Rage. Disbelief. They hit all at once and pulled in opposite directions, as if they meant to tear her apart.
Every bit of love she had ever carried for her sister had curdled into its exact opposite.
"Edmure."
She seized on the name like a lifeline, her voice barely holding.
"My brother. How is he? Is he... is he alright?"
Lynn was quiet for a moment. Then he told her.
"Edmure has most likely become a puppet. Your sister's and Walder Frey's."
"That wedding is a trap. Built for him, and for the entire Tully family."
"They'll force him to stand up as Lord of Riverrun and ratify the alliance with the Vale. Ratify the marriage with House Frey. Hand over the entire Riverlands army to their cause."
"If he refuses..."
Something cold moved through Lynn's eyes.
"That wedding becomes his funeral. And the Tully family's along with it."
"And it isn't only Edmure they're targeting. It's you as well, my lady."
"The moment you set foot in the Riverlands, cavalry already in position would have seized you."
"You would have become Lord Ned's greatest vulnerability."
"Robb was right to stop you. Completely right."
Catelyn broke.
She sank into a chair and covered her face with both hands. The sound that came out of her was low and raw and barely contained.
Her home.
Riverrun. The place that had always meant Family, Duty, Honor.
Now it was gone. Hollowed out by treachery and betrayal, beyond recognition.
Robb moved to her side and set his hand on her trembling shoulder.
His face was young. The look on it was not.
"Mother." His voice was steady. "We will avenge Grandfather."
"And I will get Uncle Edmure out."
He looked at Lynn. Those gray Stark eyes were burning.
"Lynn. What do we do now?"
➤ Next: Jaime Sees Bran Again
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