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The air in the secret passage was cold and stagnant, thick with the smell of old lime and dust.
Lysa Arryn's heart pounded wildly in her chest.
Every beat like a war drum.
She followed Petyr, each step careful, each breath measured.
Through the cracks in the stone slab above, warm candlelight filtered down , along with her son's muffled, frightened sobs.
Every sound burned into her like a brand.
She wanted to grab him and run. To flee this place, flee everything.
Now.
Right now.
"It's time."
Petyr's voice, low in her ear.
"Wait for me."
Two words, and then he was gone , his figure slipping soundlessly through the gap above. Lysa didn't even catch the movement.
She heard only a faint sound. Soft. Like cloth tearing.
Then the dull thud of something heavy hitting the floor.
Then silence.
Lysa clamped her hand over her mouth.
A moment later, the stone slab shifted open without a sound. Petyr's face appeared in the darkness above her, hand outstretched.
"Come up, my little Lysa."
"It's time to take our son home."
She was trembling as he pulled her into the room.
The tall Northman soldier was gone. No sign of him anywhere.
Robert Arryn was curled in the corner of the bed, shaking.
"Robert! My sweet baby!"
She couldn't hold it anymore. A choked cry tore out of her and she lunged forward, pulling that small, thin body against her chest and holding on.
"Mommy! Mommy!"
The moment he felt her arms around him, Robert Arryn finally broke. He wailed, a full, open, desperate cry, and his tiny hands locked around her neck and wouldn't let go.
"Mommy! I was so scared! He was a bad man! He was going to make me take bitter medicine!"
"You're safe. You're safe now, my sweet baby." Lysa kissed his forehead, tears running freely down her face. "Mommy's here. Mommy came for you."
"We're leaving. We're leaving right now."
She held him close and felt the whole world settle back into place. All the fear, the humiliation, the despair of these past days , it dissolved. Just like that.
As long as she had her Petyr and her Robert, she would die happy. She would die right now and not regret a single thing.
"Mommy..."
Robert shifted against her. His crying softened. He tilted his tear-streaked face up and looked at her with those wide, uncertain eyes.
"Mommy... I miss Daddy."
Lysa went rigid.
The smile on her face froze solid.
"What did you say, Robert?"
"I miss Daddy..."
His voice was thick with tears, heavy with longing.
"I miss Daddy Jon Arryn."
"He used to... he always told me stories. He'd let me ride on his shoulders..."
"He's gone now. Nobody tells me stories anymore..."
BOOM!
The world collapsed inside her skull.
Jon Arryn.
Jon Arryn.
Her son. Her and Petyr's son. He was sitting in her arms, missing — longing for , the old man she had poisoned with her own hands.
A cold so absolute it felt like ice shot from the base of her spine straight to the crown of her head.
She stared down at her boy.
That small, innocent face. Open and unguarded, full of a child's pure love for his father.
It wasn't performance. It wasn't confusion.
It was the truest thing she had ever seen.
In Robert's heart, the man she had despised , that burden, that cage, that thorn , was his only father. His real father.
A thought crept in, and it was terrible.
What have I done?
With her own hands, she had pressed a vial of Tears of Lys into the hands of a husband who, old as he was, had never been anything but gentle with her. She had watched him writhe on that bed. Watched him go still. Watched him become a cold, silent thing beneath the sheets.
For what?
For Petyr.
And then, with those same hands, she had smothered the man who had given her life. Who had raised her. Lord Hoster Tully.
His eyes in those final moments , disbelieving, searching, broken , stared at her now from somewhere she couldn't look away from.
For what?
For Petyr.
And then she had given herself to that old bastard Walder Frey, bartered her body for an alliance, all to arrange a slaughter at her own brother's wedding. She had wanted to spill Tully blood on Tully floors. She had wanted her uncle dead, her brother dead, every last member of her family cut down. She had wanted Riverrun to drown in it.
She had wanted House Tully erased from the world.
For what?
To avenge a man who wasn't even dead. To drag the Riverlands into a war that served no one but him.
She had betrayed the Arryns. Betrayed the Tullys. Betrayed everyone who had ever loved her.
She had betrayed herself.
She had started as a lord's daughter. The Lady of the Vale. And she had made herself into something else , a husband-killer, a father-killer, a woman who had tried to destroy her own bloodline. A madwoman.
All of it for the man she loved.
And in the end, the only thing her son wanted , the one pure, uncomplicated thing in his heart , was the man she had murdered.
What kind of cruelty was this?
What kind of joke?
Was I wrong?
The thought surfaced slowly, like something long submerged. If she had simply married Jon Arryn. If she had cut Petyr out of her life entirely, cleanly, years ago , would she be here? Would she be this?
She should have accepted it. She should have accepted it long ago.
"Ah..."
The sound that came from her throat was barely a sound at all. Hollow. Scraped out of somewhere deep.
The arms holding Robert had begun to shake.
She looked down at her hands.
These hands.
Soaked in the blood of people who had loved her. Crimes that had no end to their counting.
What have I done?
"Lysa! Get hold of yourself!"
Something shifted in Petyr's eyes, dark and unreadable, gone in an instant.
His voice cut through the fog. His hands found her shoulders and shook her, hard.
"We have to go. Now."
"Go?"
She raised her head. Her eyes were empty. Whatever had lived in them before was simply gone.
She looked at him. This man. The man she had loved for her entire life.
"Go where?"
"Where is there left for us to go?"
Her voice came out like smoke from a dying fire, thin and already fading.
"Away from here! Away from Westeros!" Petyr's tone sharpened with urgency. "We go to Essos. We start over. Just the three of us!"
Just the three of us.
Lysa looked at Robert, still hiccupping softly in her arms. Then she looked at the man in front of her, his face tight with impatience.
Something moved across her face. Not quite a smile. Worse than crying.
"Petyr..."
"The gods you spoke of." Her voice was barely there. "Are they real?"
"Do they truly bless us? Do they bless our love?"
His expression shifted. Just slightly.
"Lysa, this is not the time —"
"Answer me."
Her voice cracked like a whip. She fixed her eyes on his and did not look away.
"Petyr. Tell me the truth."
"Would the gods bless a woman who killed her husband? Who killed her own father?"
"Would the gods bless us — hiding in the dark, rutting like animals, calling it love?!"
BANG!
The heavy oak door exploded inward.
Knights in full plate poured through the gap, swords drawn, filling the room in seconds.
At their head stood an old man. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Hair and beard gone white, but the body beneath still iron-hard, and the eyes , those hawk's eyes , swept the room and snapped shut like a trap the instant they landed on the scene inside.
Bronze Yohn Royce.
Behind him, the lords of the Vale. Every sworn house. Ser Lyn Corbray. The son of House Waynwood. Knights of House Templeton.
They saw the woman on the floor, clutching the child.
And then their eyes found her face , that face, twisted beyond recognition by madness and despair and something that had no name left for it.
Every man in the room went pale.
"Lysa Arryn?!"
➤ Next: Lysa's Finale — What Was Lost