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Chapter Text

Sansa startled, spilling her tea. It wasn’t that the cough had been loud, precisely; it was more that Jon had been so quiet and his presence so unobtrusive throughout breakfast that she had nearly forgotten she wasn’t alone. Jolted from this solitary feeling, she saw now that Jon was rubbing at his throat with one hand.

“Are you quite well?” Now she’d heard how ungentle her voice sounded, she wished she could say it differently— she sounded cross, a nagging wife, and though to all the land she had every right to play that role, she knew herself to be something rather less. At least she had managed to prevent the my lord that threatened to slip out; Jon cringed every time she called him by the honorific, but it was proving a difficult habit to break.

“Fine,” Jon said hastily, hand dropping from his throat as though burned. “Swallowed wrong, is all.”

Sansa ducked her head in a nod of acknowledgement, but peered through her lashes at him as she blotted the spilled tea with her napkin. He looked pale and morose, but he had a Northern complexion and a Northern disposition, so she couldn’t draw any sure conclusions.

Jon downed the last of his coffee in one gulp as he stood from the table. “I’ve a meeting with Sam,” he said, by way of excusing himself. “Tollett is readying the car.”

“Will Maester Tarly be joining us for luncheon? I’ll ask Cook to lay an extra place.”

The corner of Jon’s mouth pulled downward. “Our meeting is at the Citadel. It is improbable I will be back before supper, if then.”

Sansa gazed up at him, fighting a frown of her own. “All right. I’ll see you this evening, then.”

“If I’m back before you go up,” he allowed grudgingly, looking awkward and desperate to flee the dining room.

Sansa forced a smile as he left, thinking sadly of the way her father had always kissed her mother’s cheek in farewell. She supposed she’d never have her mother’s marriage and never know that kind of love.

Another day to herself. She sighed. Perhaps she would call on Jeyne. It was better than rattling around an empty house, making the servants uncomfortable.

The wind was bitterly cold as she made her way across to the Pooles’ portion of the estate, and she shivered under her heavy woolen coat. She thought of Jon on the long drive to the drafty Citadel, and hoped he’d thought to wear a scarf.

“Come, come, sit by the fire or you’ll catch your death!” Jeyne pulled her inside, squealing. Sansa’s spirits lifted immediately.

“Please forgive the intrusion,” Sansa said, pulling her gloves off finger by finger. “Lord Snow is away on business for the day, and I couldn't stomach another cold luncheon on my own.” She kissed Jeyne’s face first on one side, then the other. Cold cheek pressed to Jeyne’s warm one, she felt like a girl again, the presence of an old friend allowing her a rare opportunity to be the carefree person she had once been. Perhaps this was an odd thought to have when she lived alongside someone else she had known since childhood, but Jon was something different to her than Jeyne, and there had been no easy intimacy between them to reprise upon their reunion. He had been kind but distant in the nursery, and he was kind but distant in their marriage, too.

Jeyne was not distant. “It's no intrusion at all. It's a pleasure. You've an announcement to make, I expect.” Taking Sansa’s chilled fingers in her own, she led her to a cozy green armchair in the parlor. “I’ll have tea brought up,” she promised, ringing a bell. She settled herself on the chair opposite Sansa, a bright smile on her face. “You look so radiant with that glow on your cheeks.”

There had been a time when such compliments had been a regular occurrence for Sansa, but since the war, with a taciturn half-stranger as her husband, she lived practically in isolation like an old maid.

“When you married, I feared you’d not have time for me now you’ve a house and husband,” Jeyne babbled. “I am so grateful to be a part of your new family.”

Sansa felt unwanted tears collecting in her eyes. She didn’t feel like she had much of a family these days. The war had taken that from her, probably permanently. “I’ll always have time for you,” she promised, or maybe begged.

Jeyne smiled sweetly, leaning forward to lay her hand atop Sansa’s. “You’ll have less time soon, but I’ll understand. We’ve had longer than I’d thought— I was starting to worry. How long will it be, then? Half a year at least, you’re as slim as ever. All those luncheons you can’t stomach, I suppose.”

Sansa felt a crease forming between her eyebrows. “Jeyne, I’m afraid—”

You’ve misunderstood , she intended to say, but was cut off when a maid entered with a tea tray. Her habit had never been to be over-familiar before servants, and truth to tell she was embarrassed.

“Every woman is afraid with her first,” Jeyne said reassuringly. “At least, that’s what Mama says. But you’ll find your courage soon enough.” She raised her teacup. “To the next heir of Winterfell.”

Sansa put her face in her hands and began to sob.

Alarmed, Jeyne dismissed the maid and came around to wrap her arms around Sansa’s shoulders. “Don’t cry, sweetling. You’ll be a wonderful mother.”

She shook her head. “Not any time soon.”

“Oh, of course you will. Don’t you want a sweet babe of your own?”

She would have loved to have children, who would love her and keep her company. But… “It’s not possible.” For there to be children, more had to pass between the lord and lady than polite nods, and this aspect of their marital relationship had yet to materialise.

Jeyne looked stricken. “My dear, I had no idea. Have you and Lord Snow gotten a doctor involved?”

Sansa felt a hot flush come over her cheeks. “We haven’t… that is, we haven’t been trying.”

“Not at all?” Jeyne asked, aghast. “You mean, you’re…”

“A maiden yet, yes,” Sansa laughed thickly through her tears. “It is a marriage in name only. At first, I thought… but I don’t believe there will be another Stark in Winterfell, not now.”

“Why the blazes not? You’re both young yet. And he’s ever so handsome.”

Jon was attractive enough, she supposed. That wasn’t what kept them stuck at parting ways in the hall outside their respective bedchambers. “He’s so often away.” They’ve barely had a chance to speak to one another, let alone... other things.

“Do you think he has taken a mistress?” Jeyne asked, looking scandalised.

The thought hadn’t occurred to Sansa. “He wouldn’t dishonour me in that way,” she said slowly. She believed it. Jon Targaryen was an honourable man; it was part of why she had agreed to the new queen’s request.

Of course, part of the bargain had been that her children would retain control of her ancestral lands, which could never come true if her husband never touched her.

“There simply hasn’t been time for us to…” Sansa looked down at her still-steaming cup of tea.

“You’ve been married more than a year!” Jeyne scowled. “He must do his duty by you. You’re his lady wife. It isn’t right.”

Sansa turned to look out the parlor window. The cold grey skies matched her husband’s eyes and her soul. “I don’t want to force him. He didn’t have much choice in wife.” She shook her head, hard, to force the bad thoughts from her head. “I’m sorry. I oughtn’t break down like this. I really don’t mind. It’s a bit lonely, is all.”

“Too right you’re lonely,” said Jeyne hotly. “It’s not a true marriage if he’s denying you marital obligations. You could have an annulment, you know.”

“I don’t want one,” Sansa replied softly, surprising herself with the truth of it. If they separated, she could lose her home and security, and Jon’s wardship of the North would be in jeopardy. She might be forced to marry someone much worse. It was too great a cost for no guarantee of increased happiness. She only wished things could be different.

The rest of their tea was subdued; although they did their best to talk of other things, the dark revelation about Sansa’s unhappy marriage cast a pall over their usual cheer with one another. When the time came for her to head home, Jeyne hugged her extra fiercely.

“I’m always here,” Jeyne said, and Sansa nodded, though she knew it wasn’t true. Jeyne would marry herself one day, probably within two years, and move to her husband’s house and start her own family. Maybe, like Arya had done, she would start a new life far away with someone she loved. Sansa would not and could not begrudge anyone those things simply because she herself had not been so lucky.

She trudged back to the main house, finding it calm and quiet in the absence of her husband. What a relief it would be to find someone there who loved her, as in the days before the war.

As she had suspected, Jon did not return home before she retired to bed.

Chapter Text

The next morning, she couldn't bear the thought of another tense, silent breakfast, and asked her maid for a tray to be sent up. Her mother had hardly ever made use of this privilege, preferring to take her breakfast in the dining room with the children, and Sansa had grown accustomed to the idea of the lady of the house taking breakfast in the dining room— she hadn't known that this behaviour was not universal until she had become acquainted with Cersei Lannister. Sansa wished to avoid any connexion with that particular lady, but today she hadn't the will to comport herself as her mother would have. Perhaps tomorrow.

“Thank you, Mya. I do hope it wasn't too much trouble.” Sansa felt ashamed, propped up in bed with food brought up to her.

“None at all, Your Ladyship,” Mya curtsied. “In fact, I passed Jory on the stairs. His Lordship had a tray sent up as well, so there wasn't any need to lay the table at all.”

Sansa frowned. It wasn't like Jon to take breakfast in his room. He was a habitual early riser and seemed to find the decadence of lying about somewhat repulsive.

“I believe he's a bit under the weather, my lady.” Mya volunteered, eyes kind and canny.

Sansa averted her gaze. She couldn't have expected the lack of rapport between husband and wife to go unnoticed below stairs, but it was still humiliating to have it alluded to in this way. “He did mention that yesterday,” she lied.

“Indeed, my lady.” Mya’s face was blank, but Sansa was certain the girl knew the truth of it.

“That will be all, Mya. I'll ring when I'm ready to get dressed.”

Left alone, she picked at her porridge. She hoped Jon wasn’t terribly ill. But, no, he must not be; someone would have fetched her. She was his lady wife, after all. A slight chill only, in all likelihood. She would make sure the fires were kept extra well the next few days to ward off anything worse, and have the servants keep him supplied with licorice tea.

Once her hair had been arranged  and her creamy yellow day-dress buttoned over her stays, she headed down the stairs, feeling more cheerful than she had in months. It wasn’t altogether proper in a woman with a sick husband, but she couldn’t help it. She finally had an opportunity to be useful, and she was seizing it. She would give the staff her instructions on the care and keeping of Lord Snow, be a good and dutiful wife to him, and best of all she could do so without forcing him to spend any time in her company.

Her plan was dashed as soon as she rounded the landing and spied Jon in the foyer, dressed to go out.

“My lord!” she exclaimed, frozen in shock.

He turned to face her, looking up the staircase at her in a way that left her feeling exposed. “My lady,” he responded with a curt nod of his head, casting his eyes downward. There was no mistaking it now; where the day before she’d characterised him as pale and morose, today he looked wan and miserable.

She descended a few more steps. “I heard you were unwell.”

Jon suppressed a chuckle and the cough that followed. “Rumours of my ill health have been greatly exaggerated.”

Sansa pursed her lips. His complexion was scarcely darker than the shade of the title he carried. Had her father thought to leave the house looking like that, and on an icy day like this one, Catelyn Stark would have given him something else to think of. But, of course, she wasn’t to Jon Targaryen what her lady mother had been to Ned Stark.

“You’re going out.” She said instead.

He averted his gaze, his eyes lingering on her hand as it trailed over the dark wood of the banister. “I’ve had an urgent telegram from Mance Rayder. There’s some kind of problem with the fence on the north boundary of the property, and I’m to come at once.”

She felt a surge of warmth in her belly. While many liege-lords might have delegated such a task, going himself was precisely what her father would have done. There was a sweetness to having his successor behave in so similarly dedicated a manner. She drew nearer, stopping only two stairs above the floor, so close to Jon she could have touched him. “Be careful,” she breathed, looking down on his dark curls with an unaccustomed fondness. “Keep yourself warm.”

Jon must have heard something in her voice, for he glanced up to her face at last, dark eyes unreadable. His lips twitched into an almost-smile. “I promise, my lady.” He laid his hand atop the one of hers he had been watching. “Sansa.”

The warmth of his hand on hers stunned the breath out of her. She laughed nervously. “Wouldn’t want you catching a chill, would we, my lord?”

Too late, she remembered he didn’t like that; within the next instant, he had withdrawn his hand and was frowning again. “No, I suppose not,” he muttered darkly, turning away.

Sansa hurried down the last two steps into the foyer, catching the sleeve of his coat before he disappeared out the door. “I’m sorry, Jon. I—”

He put up a hand to stop her. “Please. It’s all right.” He lifted her hand from his arm, paused a moment before letting it go. “I’ll be home soon,” he said softly.

She nodded. “I'll be waiting.”

Jon stifled one last cough as he walked out the door.

Sansa clung to the banister as she watched him go.

The early morning greyness became an afternoon haze. It was one of those days where the temperature never rose but instead dropped steadily over the hours. Winterfell was well-built and well-insulated, but each time Sansa passed a window she felt the escalating chill.

“Lay tea out in Lord Snow’s study,” she told Lew the footman. “I want it ready when he comes in. Bring a pot of honey and slices of lemon on the tray, please.”

“Yes, my lady,” Lew bowed.

Sansa turned back to the window, watching the approaching car. Jon had been gone hours longer than she'd thought; the fence situation must have been more dire than she'd realised. She would shepherd him straight to his study for a nice cup of hot tea. She hadn't liked his colour this morning, and she doubted he'd done himself any favours spending so much time out of doors in this weather. So like a man, she thought, to neglect one’s health in such a way.

The Jon she met at the door was a rumpled and visibly exhausted one with dirt under his nails. “You shouldn’t be standing out here,” he said, voice notably raspier than it had been hours before. “It’s much too cold.”

Sansa favoured him with a harshly appraising look, but he was so weary as to be indifferent to the irony of his warning. “Yes,” she agreed. “You must escort me inside at once.” She seized him by the elbow and guided him toward the door. Perhaps most concerning of all was the way he allowed himself to be led by her, a weakness in his body that she didn’t imagine he would display if he had any choice.

As they entered the foyer, he was overcome by a paroxysm of harsh and seemingly interminable coughing, sounding a great deal worse than the discreet coughs of that morning. Sansa found her hold on his arm shifting from accompaniment to support as he struggled for breath.

“There’s tea in your study, but I think perhaps I ought to have it brought to you in bed,” she said, brow creasing.

Coughs finally abating, Jon straightened somewhat, reddened and out of breath. “That— that might be wise.” This was worrisome. Jon Targaryen was not a man who took to his bed lightly. Still, after the exertion and exposure of this morning, the warmth and rest could only do him good.

“I’ll send Jory to you,” Sansa assured him, ushering him up the stairs. He waved her off, looking embarrassed, but still she hovered at the foot of the staircase as he pulled himself toward his bedroom, leaning heavily on the banister. She really ought to have protested his departure this morning; she’d already known he was poorly. But it wouldn’t have done any good. She hadn’t the leverage necessary to affect his behaviour, and he was damnably stubborn.

Now that he was taking his tea in bed, Sansa went down to her solar and picked up her embroidery. She’d planned to supervise, but she’d never been invited to his bedroom, and it hardly seemed fair to impose when he felt so dreadful. He always seemed so uncomfortable in her presence, and he needed his rest. So she occupied herself with making tiny, even stitches in the handkerchief she was embellishing.

She dined alone that evening, an asparagus and mushroom quenelle with a blancmange for pudding. Jon had likely been taken the same blancmange on his tray, although instead of the quenelle it was probable he’d received some kind of broth, suitable for invalids. It shouldn’t have been any different from the many suppers she’d eaten by herself since her marriage, but the household felt unusually subdued with the knowledge of Lord Snow ill upstairs.

Sansa waited as long as seemed reasonable, then retired to her bedroom, one wall over from the mysterious chamber inhabited by her mysterious husband.

Chapter Text

She awoke suddenly some time later, disoriented with the remnants of slumber. It had been a rare dreamless sleep, so now, blinking in the darkness, she wasn’t immediately certain what had woken her or why her heart was pounding terribly. Then her senses returned and she became aware of the sound of hacking coughs filtering through the wall behind her head.

Not a thought had passed through her head before she’d thrown her dressing gown over her nightdress, turned the flame in her lamp as high as it would go, and run from her room.

Jon’s chambers were already lit. Jory had arrived sooner than Sansa, and was helping His Lordship to a seated position. There was an open jar of camphor liniment on the table beside the bed. And still the horrible coughing wore on, bubbling forth from Jon’s mouth in an unwelcome addition to the quiet night.

Sansa stood self-consciously in the door, watching her husband gasp and choke while his manservant tended him. What could she truly do to help the situation? She pushed that thought aside. She was his lawful wife. A wife in name only, but that name counted for something still. She approached his bedside.

His eyes snapped to her. “Go back to bed,” he wheezed, “I’m alright.” The coughing was tapering off now, but his breathing still sounded heavy and unwholesome.

“You are not,” she retorted.

Jory glanced up at her, worry in his eyes even as his hands steadied his employer. “He’s burning, my lady.”

“I can hear you,” Jon grumbled, but he looked frightfully dazed and his eyes were half-closed.

Sansa ignored him and pressed the back of her hand to his cheek, as her mother had done whenever one of the children were ill. Though he shivered under the bedclothes, no trace of the outdoor chill remained on his skin, which blazed as intensely as Gendry’s forge.

“Send for the doctor,” she told Jory.

Jon groaned under her touch, and she pulled back.

“At once,” she added.

Jory left the room, and Sansa hovered uncertainly by Jon’s bedside. He seemed to have faded into sleep now. Sleep did not seem to have brought him comfort, however; as she watched, he shifted and coughed without waking.

“Shh,” she tried, straightening his coverlet.

He showed no sign of hearing her.

After a few tense minutes, Jory returned. “I tried telephoning Dr. Tybald, my lady, but the line wasn't answered. Lew and Tollett have driven into town to fetch him now.”

“Thank you, Jory,” Sansa said distantly, gazing down at the flushed face of her husband. She missed the local doctor of her youth. She missed her mother. Catelyn Stark had always known what to do. Before the war, she'd always known her family would be taken care of. Even when Bran had had his accident, Luwin and Mother had cared for him competently.

“My lady?”

She startled, brought back to the moment by Jory’s gentle voice. He was nearer to her than she'd remembered, carrying a chair from the dressing room.

“I thought you might be more comfortable with a seat,” Jory offered, setting the chair easily at the side of his lord’s bed.

Sansa sat. It gave her a sense of belonging. She gave Jory a tentative smile. “How very thoughtful.”

Jory looked at the floor, fresh color in his cheeks. “No trouble at all, my lady.”

She blinked away, suddenly embarrassed. Her eyes fixed on her husband, shivering in his bed. She hoped Tollett and Lew would be back soon with the doctor. She was useless at a sickbed, useless as a wife. Her long fingers tangled in her lap.

Jon groaned, in pain or from some nightmare, she could not tell.

If the doctor wasn’t on his way, she would have to make do until he arrived. “Jory, will you fetch some cloths and cool water, please?”  Her mother had always laid cool compresses on fevered foreheads, and if it wasn’t a substitute for real medical attention, well, at least it was something.

“Right away, my lady,” Jory bowed.

The bowl of water he brought her was clear and cold, soothing to her hands as she wrung out a cloth to press to her husband’s brow.

At the touch of the cloth, Jon’s eyes flew open.

“My… Jon?” Sansa said, refraining at the last moment from calling him my lord , but still unfamiliar with the intimacy of his given name in her mouth.

He didn’t seem to notice, his eyes glassy and focused on something far beyond her sight. “Sansa,” he gasped, and dissolved at once into frantic coughing.

He seemed so distressed. Did he want her gone? She didn’t know him well enough to say. She licked her lips.

“Sansa,” he panted again, and this time his hand moved to clutch at her hair, silky red strands filtered between large, strong fingers.

Tentatively, she put her hand over his, disentangling his fingers. “Easy,” she said. “Rest.”

Whether he’d heard her, she could not discern. Yet rest he did, lapsing into an uneasy, fevered sleep with his hand still in hers. Her hair hung between them, ends dangling over the bed. This was the first her hair had ever been loose in the presence of a man. Suddenly self-conscious, should the doctor arrive to find her in such dishabille, she eased her husband’s hand onto the coverlet.

He shifted against the pillow, lips parting with a moan. Eager that he should not wake, she shushed him once more. He quieted at the sound of her voice, but stirred again as soon as she stopped speaking.

During the Battle of the Blackwater, she had sung to keep her fellow refugees calm. It was all she had known to do. So that was what she did now. The only song to come to mind was a hymn that had been her favourite, in those times. She was almost surprised to find she remembered the words; it was such a distant memory, now, having been that shining young girl with the songbird voice, encouraging others to take heart. But remember them she did, and her voice rang clear and true, despite the shakiness she felt after so much disuse.

Jon seemed calmed by it, at any rate, and she took the time it took her to get through the verses to tame her hair into a loose braid which trailed over her shoulder. She looked somewhat less wanton now, which would be a comfort when the doctor arrived and she was called on to be Lady Snow instead of a tired, scared girl.

She removed the cloth from his head and dipped it into the basin of water. The cloth had warmed considerably in only a few minutes, but the water remained cool. As she wrung the cloth out, she looked at the man in the bed. Her husband. So many months later, it was still strange to think of. She had entered the marriage almost in a fever dream herself. All she’d truly heard in Queen Daenerys’s proposal was the offer to send her home to Winterfell to stay. The condition that, before she departed, she’d marry her cousin, the queen’s nephew— that was something she had not given as much thought as it had, perhaps, deserved.

She’d been one-and-twenty, but she’d felt ancient. All she had wanted, after the six long years that had destroyed her family and left her the heiress of Winterfell, was to go home. She had considered a loveless marriage to an honourable man a small price to pay into the bargain.

And, of course, she’d known him. Enough to know he was trustworthy. As the orphaned son of a relation of whom her father had been particularly fond, he had visited Winterfell for some periods of his youth. Sansa had known him as a moody cousin of no remarkable social stature, who hadn’t the temperament for the pastimes that interested her. She hadn’t paid him much mind. He’d been of an age with her brother Robb, which made him five-and-twenty now, or six-and-twenty, young yet— he’d been only a boy when the war had begun. Yet he had emerged from it this sad, quiet stranger, a severe man with a scar over one eye and a reputation as a hero, a man who happened to be the heir presumptive to the throne of Westeros.

Jeyne was right; he was handsome, Lord Snow. Other than the scar, he had fine skin still, and even features, and his dark hair was full and thick. He tended to the austere side of things, smiling little, which before the war Sansa would have considered a sign of poor character in a man. She’d learned from the Lannisters that even a smile could be a lie, and his serious nature didn’t bother her as much as it might once have done. As it once had.

Sansa settled the cloth upon his forehead, brushing a curl from his temple. Winterfell had been a fortress. It was built for security, too. That didn’t mean there wasn’t beauty in it. She knew that better than anyone, these days.

The hours wore on, her hands always busy with cool cloths and blankets and, when he stirred, her husband’s own. She hummed songs to keep him quiet when he was beset by dreams, and held water to his lips when he was troubled by coughing. The work was the only thing that kept her from succumbing entirely to despair; why had the doctor not come?

Daylight was tinging the horizon a warm pink when a gentle knock sounded at the door. “I’ve brought the doctor, my lady,” Mya announced meekly. Sansa was startled to see her maid already dressed for the day.

“Of course,” she said, straightening in her chair. “Thank you, Mya. Please send him in.”

“I do apologise for the delay, Lady Snow,” Doctor Tybald said as he entered. “I was called away on an urgent matter. It was hours before I was even made aware of His Lordship’s indisposition.”

Sansa pressed her lips together. “I do hope your other patient is all right.”

“It was a difficult birth, my lady. Mother and child are both well now, but I was needed through the night.”

“May they be blessed.” She looked away, afraid he would see the shame and envy on her face. A birth was a happy tiding, something there had been too few of in recent years. It was indecent to feel anything other than celebratory at the creation of new life.

The sound of the doctor’s bag on the table disturbed Jon, who lurched awake with a rather terrible bout of coughing. Alarmed, Sansa laid a hand on his arm and made calming noises.

Tybald cleared his throat. “If I may, my lady,” he said, sounding apologetic, “I’d like a moment to examine His Lordship.”

Jon looked over at the doctor for the first time, turning his reddened face to peer through grey eyes turned watery from the exertion of his cough. “Sansa—” But whatever he was going to say was cut off by still more coughing.

Sansa stood and smoothed her dressing gown. “I’ll step out and give you some privacy.” She walked briskly out of the room, not daring to look back. Jory closed the door behind her.

She arranged herself on the hall bench, hands clenched tightly around each other. She crossed and uncrossed her ankles, restraining herself from pacing only through the application of great effort. She heard a murmur of voices— the doctor’s, then Jon’s, then the doctor’s again, then Jory’s— and coughing, always the coughing, same as had awoken her so many hours past.

At long last, the door opened again and Tybald exited, bag in hand.

Sansa leapt to her feet. “Is he—” She stopped herself, trying to gather her wits. How would a lady of maturity, a lord’s wife, speak to the doctor attending her husband?

Tybald did not seem perturbed by her flustered state. “A touch of bronchial inflammation, Lady Snow, but I have every faith he will recover. The fevers always rise in the night and make the illness seem more serious than it is.”

She closed her eyes, ashamed to feel tears accumulating there. Such a relief, to know he would be well. “I am sorry to have summoned you needlessly, Doctor.”

“No, no, you did quite right to have me in. Best not to take risks with His Lordship’s health. It is quite an honour to be asked to see to him.” His smile was evident in his voice. “Please allow me to set your mind at ease. You tended him admirably while I was delayed. I’m certain any young wife would want her husband returned to strength quickly.”

A hot flush spread over her cheeks. “Of course. Thank you.” Her voice sounded faint, even to her own ears.

Doctor Tybald frowned. “Lady Snow, you look unwell. I do hope you aren’t coming down ill as well.”

Sansa shook her head. “It has been a long and exhausting night for us all, I think.”

“Indeed, my lady.” He nodded sympathetically. “I’ve left some syrups with His Lordship’s man, to help him rest more comfortably. That’s what he needs most.”

She nodded along. “Thank you again, Doctor. Would you like some tea, before you go?”

“That won’t be necessary, my lady. I’ve kept you long enough.” Tybald gave her an examining look. “Might I suggest you get some rest yourself, my lady? It wouldn’t do for you to compromise your own health at such a time.”

Sansa bit her tongue to keep from volunteering that she was not with child. “I assure you I will be well looked after,” she said instead, with what she hoped passed for good humour.

“Do not hesitate to call, if his condition worsens. I’ll return tomorrow to check in, but I’m not concerned. His Lordship is young and strong, and we’ve every reason to believe he will recover his health in due course.”

The doctor left, and Sansa floated deliriously back into her own room, where she fell almost instantly into a heavy slumber.

Chapter Text

Sansa woke scandalously late in the day, the sunlight filtering richly through the gap in her curtains. Ordinarily, Mya would have been in hours ago to dress her, but the disruption in the night seemed to have thrown the household entirely out of its routine. Sansa rang the bell to request tea and a bath— she felt puffy and grimy after the long night.

Clean and feeling more ladylike, she donned a purple dress and pinned her hair up. She took herself down to the kitchens, where she discussed plans for feeding the sick with the cook. Cook had the situation firmly in hand, and Sansa couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being humored, like a child playing pretend.

As such, it was nearly a relief when Lew poked his head in and cleared his throat apologetically. “Many pardons, my lady, but you ought to know Dr. Tybald has returned. He’s been shown to His Lordship’s rooms.”

Sansa stood. “Thank you, Lew. I’ll go up to speak with him right away.” She spared the cook an apologetic glance, which the older woman tolerated with indifference.

“...at all until your lungs clear,” the doctor was saying as his voice came into focus down the hall.

The door to Jon’s room stood open, and he was propped upright by pillows, against which he reclined exhaustedly. He looked done in, sweaty and flushed with fever, but alert to the doctor’s words.

Sansa hesitated at the threshold, uncertain if she should enter. She’d gone into his rooms last night, of course, but that was different. He’d been delirious, and the situation had called for her steady hand. Tybald was here to assume control, and her husband was lucid if the doctor’s tone of voice was anything to go by. It was possible neither of them would welcome the intrusion. She contemplated turning back the way she’d come and pretending she’d never gotten the message.

“I must—” Jon’s voice sounded horrid, and it must have pained him, for he broke almost instantly into a fit of coughing that had the same deep and crackling quality as those of the night previous. He lifted a handkerchief in one clenched fist and clasped it over his face.

She must have made some unconscious exclamation, for both sets of eyes turned to her.

“Lady Snow,” Tybald greeted her with a smile, as her husband continued that horrible coughing, muffled now into his handkerchief. “Perhaps you can talk some sense into His Lordship.”

Feeling like she had been caught lurking, Sansa stepped forward, licking her lips. “Well, I don’t know about that, Doctor.” She smiled nervously.

Above his handkerchief, Jon’s grey eyes glowered.

Tybald laughed. He did so more out of politeness than genuine amusement; his face quickly made itself very grave. “I’ve just told Lord Snow he’s to be confined to bed until the fever breaks and the cough abates, and he’s insisting he must continue with his work. If he continues to push himself, he could develop a pneumonia, which is a very serious illness.”

That sounded quite a bit worse than what he’d told her last night. Sansa frowned. “When might he— that is, how long do you think it will take for— for his condition to, ah… improve?”

The doctor didn’t seem concerned with her nervousness. Perhaps it was the usual way, for a wife to worry. “It depends upon his progress, but it could be a fortnight, easily. He’s quite ill, and needs complete rest.”

To think that last night he’d promised every faith His Lordship would recover! It occurred to her that Tybald must have been handling her gently, out of respect for her womanly frailties. Dr. Luwin would never have treated Catelyn Stark with such kid gloves, nor would she have permitted him to.

She squared her shoulders. “Jon, you simply must do as Doctor says. There can be no question of your running yourself into an early grave.”

“You see, my lord, your wife understands. You cannot run the estate if you do not first care for yourself. There must be someone who can handle business while you are indisposed.”

Jon lowered his handkerchief at last and drew an unsteady breath. “But surely,” he croaked, “an ill lord is better than one who neglects his people.”

“If you contract a lung fever and die, there will be no lord at all!” Sansa exclaimed. Surprised at herself, she cast her gaze at the carpet to avoid the astonished glances of the men. When she spoke again, it was in a more moderate tone. “Until you are well again, you must have rest. I shall see to things in the meantime.”

A long moment of silence dared anyone to quarrel. No one did.

“So you see, it is all in hand,” Dr. Tybald said, though his eyebrows furrowed in evident concern. “You are to stay abed and not trouble yourself overmuch with worries about the estate. Use those syrups I brought to ease your sleep and you shall be on the mend in no time.” He closed his bag with a definitive snap. “I’ll be on my way.”

“Let me walk you out, please, Doctor.” Sansa extended one arm toward the door. Jon needed his rest.

Once in the hall, Tybald spoke in a lowered voice. “I’ll come by every day to see to His Lordship’s care. By all means telephone me if you see any cause for concern and I’ll come right over. His Lordship’s health is paramount.”

Sansa pressed her lips together to prevent herself from reminding him that last time she’d seen cause for concern he had not arrived for several hours. Had the crisis been emergent, it might have resulted in Lord Snow’s death. She offered him her hand. “Thank you, Doctor.”

He turned to the door, then stopped and turned back. “Lady Snow?”

“Yes, Dr. Tybald?”

“I hope you will not… overtax yourself… with estate business.” He cleared his throat. “I trust there are many associates of Lord Snow’s who will be only too happy to step up and assist in your time of need.”

She folded her hands. “Thank you for your concern, Doctor. I assure you I will do whatever is necessary.”

Apparently satisfied, he nodded encouragingly and took his leave.

Sansa stood rigidly as she watched him leave. Surely tending to estate matters would not be so difficult as all that. Not to someone who had managed a household and survived a war. She’d be glad of something to do other than fret.

There was plenty to fret about. In the whole of their marriage, her husband had not once passed a fortnight without making a trip that took him away from Winterfell overnight— whether to the Citadel or King’s Landing or elsewhere. For Lord Snow to be a constant presence in the house during his illness would present a considerable alteration to the usual course of life.

Of course, as he was too sick to leave his bed at present, she needn’t get too far ahead of herself. There would be ample time to worry about getting underfoot and on one another’s nerves.

“My lady?” Mya’s voice was soft. “May I help you with anything?”

Sansa blinked, surprised to find herself standing still outside her husband’s rooms. “No, Mya, thank you.”

Mya gave her an uncertain smile and curtsy before going on her way.

“Wait,” Sansa called. “Mya. Would you request lemon cakes, please? I have a sudden craving.”

“Of course, my lady.” Mya’s smile now seemed more genuine, as she took off down the hall with renewed purpose.

If ever an occasion called for lemon cakes, this was it.

Chapter Text

“My lady?”

Sansa looked up from her plate to see Jory hovering in the doorway of the dining room. She felt a stab of panic. It wasn’t usual for anyone to disturb her at supper time. “Yes, what is it?” If Jon had worsened…

Jory’s face was pinched, anxious. “It’s, erm… it concerns His Lordship. He isn’t… that is, he won’t… he’s refused his dinner. I didn’t know if I ought to telephone for the doctor again, or…”

Sansa stood quickly, her chair scraping the stone floor with a harsh noise as her napkin fell to the ground. “Thank you for alerting me, Jory. I’ll look in and see how Lord Snow is doing.”

As she ascended the stairs, she heard him. Any time she had passed the hall that day, she’d heard it, the dreadful, wrenching coughing within His Lordship’s room. If he was getting any rest at all, it was a miracle to thank the Mother for.

The room, when she entered it, smelled thickly of the camphor liniment that had been smeared on Jon’s chest in hopes of aiding his respiration. The man himself sat shivering in his bedclothes, his thin nightshirt emerging above a heavy woolen blanket.

“I t-told them not to interrupt your s-supper,” Jon stammered between his chattering teeth. His voice was threatening to take its leave from him at any moment, vacillating between high-pitched squeaks and tones huskier than his usual deep voice.

“Nonsense, Jory did right to fetch me.” Sansa strode to his side and lifted a hand to feel his warmth, but stopped short of actually touching his skin. It was pointless, at any rate; she could tell from across the room that he was feverish. “You do not seem improved.”

He let out a weak laugh which turned immediately into more coughing. “No, I suspect not,” he choked between coughs.

Her hands wanted something to do; she occupied them with pouring water from the pitcher on the table into a glass, which she pressed into his hand. “Do you think we ought to have the doctor in?”

Jon sipped the water, grimacing as he swallowed. “I am not any worse.”

She considered this. It was far from a straightforward denial that medical care was necessary, but it seemed nonetheless true. Though the shivering heralded a rising temperature, Tybald had said that was to be expected in the evenings, and he seemed possessed enough of his mental faculties.

Sansa sat in the chair Jory had brought to the bedside during the long dark night. “Well, then, what are we to do?” She smiled ruefully.

Jon shrugged. “Wait, I suppose.” He gave a feeble half-cough in an attempt to clear his throat. “You c-can go back to your supper. It is only this, here.” He gestured with one hand to everything: the medicines, the bedcovers, his own pallid, shivering form.

Then he had to pull his hand back, for he began coughing again, and could not cover his mouth and hold his blankets with only one.

“I had quite finished my supper,” Sansa assured him. “Which I hear is not something that is also true of you.”

Still coughing, Jon shook his head dismissively.

“Excuse me, my lady,” Mya said timidly from the hall. “I beg your pardon, but Cook wants to know whether you want your cakes. I’d not interrupt, but…”

The lemon cakes. She’d had them made specially, and Cook could be awfully formidable about waste. “I’ll take them in here, Mya,” Sansa said, “and some mint tea for His Lordship.”

“Right away, my lady.”

Sansa twitched the rumpled sheet that lay across Jon’s legs. There. Now it was perfect.

Spent from his coughing spell, he lay panting against the pillows, one hand rubbing at his chest. It must have been dreadfully sore. His throat, too, she supposed. Probably why he wasn’t eating. The tea would help with that, gods willing.

The tea came on a tray with a dainty plate of cakes, topped with honey. In her mother’s day, lemon cakes had been elaborate things, made with lavender and almonds and dusted with fine sugar, but after the privation of war, a more rustic recipe was in style.

“You really ought to eat something, you’re frightening Jory,” Sansa remarked, as she poured him a cup of tea. The fragrant steam rose between them. “At the very least you must drink, or you’ll weaken terribly.”

The corner of his mouth lifted as he accepted the cup from her hands. After an experimental sip, he evidently deemed it soothing enough to continue.

Satisfied that he would not perish if she diverted her attention for one moment, Sansa lifted a lemon cake to her mouth and bit into it. It was light and fluffy and bright in her mouth, and she closed her eyes to savour it. It was like being transported to another time, a happier time.

“Lemon cakes,” Jon rasped.

“Yes,” she sighed. “Lemon cakes. Would you like one?”

No one had ever liked lemon cakes as much as she did, and he’d declined easier foods than this, so it was a surprise when he nodded, almost hesitantly.

Sansa handed him a cake. The honey might do his throat some good, anyhow.

He ate it slowly, the chewing and swallowing hard work in his state. He cupped a hand with a fresh handkerchief beneath, so as not to spare a crumb.

“A delicate flavour,” he murmured when he had finished. “It suits you.”

Sansa startled. “What?”

“Your favourite. Lemon cakes.” He coughed into his fist, but quieted it with a sip of tea. “Always were.”

“You remember that?” Sansa felt colour rushing to her cheeks, and hoped he was too tired to notice.

Jon nodded. “They used to make fun. Arya especially. Saying—“ he had to pause for another couple of coughs— “why ship lemons north when there are fruits that grow locally. I understand now.” His voice was weakening even further, but he pushed through after a swallow of tea. “Lemons are tart, but you can turn them sweet if you try. It’s… lovely.” His eyelids were lingering longer over his eyes with each blink.

“I don’t think you ought to be talking,” Sansa said. “You’ll tire yourself.” She stood, straightening her skirts. “I’ll leave you to your rest, now. Goodnight.”

He sighed something that might have been goodnight, but he was too far gone to enunciate clearly. Anyway it hardly mattered. He had eaten, and he was resting. That was the important thing.

Chapter Text

Sansa jolted awake, heart pounding in her chest. It’s all right , she thought, squeezing her eyes shut. It’s over. You are safe. You are home.

She opened her eyes to survey her familiar bedroom, a welcome and comforting sight as it always was after she’d dreamt of King’s Landing or the Eyrie or any of the places she’d seen destroyed during the war. She was in Winterfell. In Winterfell, where she belonged.

She took a deep breath and looked to the window to calm herself. The morning sun was just cresting over the horizon, that beloved landscape of snowy mountains in the distance beyond the wood. After the eventful first evening of Jon’s illness, she’d slept late, too exhausted for even the plague of nightmares to rouse her. Now it was back to her usual routine.

Once she was dressed, she thought to take Jon another lemon cake, in case he still found eating difficult, only to be told Lord Snow was still sleeping.

“It was a hard night, my lady.” Jory said apologetically.

Sansa felt herself beginning to blush. She ought to have realised it would take more than a single night for his waking hours to return to normal, given how ill he was and the bouts of coughing that continued to trouble his sleep. “Yes, I suppose it was,” she said. “Will you take some lemon cakes on his tea tray, when he wakes?” It seemed so silly now, the sort of gift a child might make. But it was all she had.

Jory bowed his head. “I’m sure he will appreciate that, my lady.”

An idea occurred for a way Jory might still be useful to her, although his master was yet asleep. “You manage Lord Snow’s papers, do you not? I wonder whether you might have all correspondence related to the estate redirected to me, for the time being.”

He looked puzzled, but, bless him, he wasn’t given to questioning his superiors. “If you’d like.”

“I would.” She smiled at him. “You can have them brought to my solar, when you’ve got them collected.”

Sansa’s solar was a room that had remained mostly unchanged since the days of Lady Catelyn, who had had it done up in a feminine, Southron style upon her marriage. Sansa had moved a few of Winterfell’s more traditionally Northern decorations in— the Southron style had lost much of its glamour for her in recent years— but it pleased her to keep the room more or less as it was. In so many ways, even Winterfell was not the home to her it had been, but in her solar she could remember what it had felt like when she was not a lone wolf but part of a pack.

Her basket of embroidery thread sat on the edge of the writing desk, and she removed it to a chaise. She adored embroidery— taking something useful and making it beautiful, one stitch at a time. Managing the estate could be like that, she thought. A collection of minute details that added up to functional beauty.

The letters Lew brought her took up more space on her small writing desk than she had anticipated. Maybe that was why mens’ studies had such large and imposing furniture.

The first document off the pile was a request from a farmer to delay payment on their rent until after the calving; his wife had birthed their child early and had been unable to finish dyeing her woolen yarn in time to sell it at the last market. Sansa wrote a quick note of permission and congratulations, and set the request to the left. The next was an offer to lead tour groups into the main rooms of Winterfell. At this, she wrinkled her nose and pushed the paper to the far right corner of the desk, to begin a pile of rejected pleas. She’d had enough of being a spectacle. Winterfell was private.

The rest of the morning went like this, her yes and no stacks growing steadily larger as she dispatched with small, non-urgent tasks. There was something profoundly satisfying in making decisions and carrying them out, a feeling she’d scarcely experienced since she became Lady Snow. Her marriage had plunged her into such a well of uncertainty that she had more than once dithered for hours about a dinner menu, moved to tears by anxiety that her husband would find her choices inappropriate. He never had a harsh word for her, which somehow had never lessened her worry she might displease him. But he was not to be concerned with Wardship of the North for a fortnight at least. Knowing that, for the time being, she was the sole authority on all matters North gave her some measure of confidence.

Eventually, she came across a few more complex queries. Ought she to authorise the construction of a new granary in the southeast reaches of the property? How might she arbitrate a dispute between neighbors regarding flax they had grown together? Should stores be redistributed to augment the meager resources of a few of the southernmost farmers, who had gotten more rain and lost a few crops to rot? These she set at the back of her desk, to think about further.

A soft rap at the door called her attention.

“Goodness, is it time for luncheon already?” Sansa set her pen down and pushed back from the desk.

Lew bowed his head. “Not quite, my lady.”

“Oh.” Sansa faltered. “Well, never mind. Will you take these letters to post?” She gathered the envelopes containing her completed business and handed them to the footman.

He accepted them obediently. “Dr. Tybald came and went, my lady. He didn’t wish you to be disturbed, when he heard you were about business.”

Sansa felt a flash of anger that he should presume to know what was best for her, physician or no. She was the lady of the house. But it burned out quickly. She had known many men like him, before the war and since; they were to be endured. And anyway, there were more important concerns. “How fares His Lordship?”

“Much the same,” Lew said. “He is asking for you.”

There was only one place for a wife whose husband was asking for her. She went to his side.

He’d been bathed and groomed since she’d been in last night, his hair combed and hanging in loose curls like a boy’s. It lent him a lively air unsupported by his state of health. His fresh nightshirt was open at the neck, not laced all the way up.

Sansa averted her eyes. “You asked to see me?”

Jon’s face tightened. “Yes.” His voice remained a hoarse whisper, but still he did not submit to being without it. “I thought—” he smothered a cough behind his hand. It failed to satisfy his body’s needs, and the ripping coughs went on, growing in intensity until, finally, they began to taper off.

Sansa folded her hands and waited, unsure of what to do.

He took a moment after the coughing subsided, eyes closed, breathing heavily. Then he looked to her once more and started again. “I thought I ought to… to tell you. You needn’t trouble yourself, with business matters.”

She shifted uncomfortably and said nothing.

His breath still coming in labored gasps, Jon looked away, one finger tracing a line of stitching in his coverlet. “It was kind of you to step in. But I can manage, with help from Jory and Sam.”

Hot shame filled her stomach. Her mouth opened, but no words came to it, so she closed it again.

Jon, focused on the embroidery of his coverlet, did not notice. “Of course you must be busy already with keeping the house. You can’t be expected to—” He broke off into another bout of coughing, mercifully stopping his speech.

“I can and must,” Sansa said firmly, fixing her eyes on the spot where the wall met the ceiling. “The Starks have managed these holdings for generations. I am the last Stark. I am the Lady of Winterfell. It’s my duty to serve them.” With effort, she lowered her gaze to his, and said, voice soft: “I want to. Please.”

She’d learned from Joffrey the humiliation of begging; she’d also learned the cost of refusing to. Speaking to Jon, now, didn’t carry the weight of begging. It felt instead like a chance to come home at last.

Her husband was a habitual frowner, and he was frowning now. She tried not to read much into it.

“If you’re certain,” he said at last.

Sansa felt a smile rise, unbidden, to her face. “I am very certain.” Relief, or perhaps the hours of uninterrupted work, had left her lightheaded, and she took a seat, from necessity rather than a desire to prolong the encounter. “Besides, you can barely sit upright. I don’t think Dr. Tybald would thank me for jeopardising your health by abdicating my duty.” She kept her tone light and breezy, but his face tightened at the mention of the doctor’s name.

Whatever response he might have made, though, was lost to a sudden seizure of coughing. His shoulders heaved with it, shaking his frame in time with the grinding sound it made low in his chest.

It was Sansa’s turn to frown. That didn’t sound good at all. He didn’t look as much improved as she’d first taken him for, either. There was sweat beading on his brow and the skin around his eyes was bruised with weariness. She leaned forward in the chair to lay one of her pale, cool hands over his chafed, over-warm one on the coverlet. “You need your rest. Do not take it as a failing.” She traced the line of his eyes down to their hands, touching, and pulled back hastily with both her touch and her gaze. Instead, she looked to the night-table with the glass-stoppered bottles Tybald had left behind him. “Do you need more of your syrups?”

He shook his head, a touch violently. “I don’t—” But he wasn’t finished with his coughing, or it wasn’t finished with him. It was a long, uncomfortable moment before he managed to croak “don’t want it.”

She felt her lips folding into a sceptical expression. “They’ll help you to sleep.”

“Badly, for an hour or two,” Jon said. “Not worth it.” The set of his face was grim.

She wondered what it cost him, an hour of sleep. “Would it help if you weren’t alone?”

He moved to look at her, so quickly a strand of hair fell over the eye with the scar. “Why would it?”

Sansa’s face heated. “Well,” she said, keeping her eyes on the neat crease in his fresh bed linens. She couldn’t very well mention how he’d quieted when she’d sung to him, that first long night. It wouldn’t do at all to use against him things he’d done when he was out of his head. “I used to have trouble, too. When I was ill, or… or, other times.”

She felt dreadfully exposed under the weight of his eyes on her. “Sometimes, when my mother was alive, she would sit with me. It was the only thing that… made things easier.” Too late, she wondered if she ought to have mentioned Cat; after all, Jon might think it boastful of her to remind him she’d known her mother, and he hadn’t known his. When he’d stayed at Winterfell, he’d kept his distance from Lady Catelyn as much as from Sansa. They hadn’t got on. It might not be a welcome reminder, for him, that she’d been a good mother to her children.

Despite her lack of forethought, he looked thoughtful, not wounded. But the gleam went from his eyes almost as soon as it had arrived there. “I couldn’t ask more of Jory’s time. He’s worked to the bone tending me as is.”

Jory would do all that and more for his lord. But that wasn’t what she’d had in mind.

“I could stop in,” Sansa said. “It would be no trouble, in the afternoons, to spend a while here instead of my solar. I could bring my embroidery or correspondences and sit quietly, or read a book.”

“I wouldn’t want to impose on your time,” he said.

She forced her brightest smile. “Nonsense. I’d be glad of it.” If she was lying, there was no reason to burden him with that fact. Her stomach twisted with the possibility that he was only being polite and would prefer her far from his side, but… but he hadn’t minded, before. Her job as a wife was to support him. It was only for a few days, until he was resting easier.

He was still contemplating her offer when Mya came to announce that Sansa’s luncheon had been laid.

“I’ll be down shortly,” Sansa told the maid, before turning back to her husband. “Shall I return after luncheon?”

With a slow and uneasy acquiescence, Jon nodded. “Well… if it won’t put you out. Lord knows I’ve no other occupation at present.”

Sansa wore a smaller smile now, but to her surprise it felt less false. “I’d like that.”

Jon cleared his throat. “This afternoon, then.”

Sansa left his rooms feeling lighter than she had entered. That, in itself, was worth being thankful for.

Chapter Text

Sansa returned that afternoon with her favourite book clutched in her hand. She would need all the comfort she could take from it, in order to exude a comforting presence. This had not been so difficult for her, once; she had been a sweet girl, with an eagerness to please that expressed itself in charming manners and an easy smile. She’d been so often disappointed during the war, so often a disappointment, that the same eagerness had soured into anxiousness and irritability. Gone were the carefree days of gowns and parties, swept away with the winds of winter. In their place had been left a life of duty and toil.

She took a deep breath before entering her husband’s chamber.

Jon didn’t look up when she crossed the threshold, giving her a chance to survey him first. He lay in that familiarly miserable state of half-repose, neither truly waking nor truly asleep. His eyelashes fluttered in time with the shallow, raspy breaths he drew through parted lips.

Someone had done up his shirt, at least. The soft hollow of his throat and the strong expanse of his chest were tucked away decorously, where they might not prove such a distraction.

Remembering the night her hair had been loose in this room, Sansa had to resist the urge to raise a hand to check her coiffure. She would only muss it.  

The room had been tidied as well, much of the chaos of the past days cleared and set to rights. This had exposed Lord Snow’s rooms to be sparsely decorated and not half as well-appointed as her own. Everything was of a quality befitting his station, but of comfort and beauty there was very little to be found. The inhospitableness of his rooms saddened her. He was away often, perhaps often enough that Winterfell had become no more a true home to him than she a true wife. It couldn’t be pleasant to be confined to such a stark and impersonal chamber.

Even the chair she sat in had been a recent addition, brought in for her comfort alone. She thought of this as she settled her skirts, the sound of which finally roused her husband to turn his head to her.

Sansa summoned a smile. “Good afternoon,” she greeted.

“Good afternoon,” he answered, his voice a low growl. He attempted to return her smile, but his eyes were too weary; she wondered if her own was more convincing.

“You don’t have to talk,” she said. “Only close your eyes and try to rest. I am here for you, not the other way round.” She nodded encouragingly.

He stopped short of frowning, but a wrinkle formed between his dark brows. He didn’t argue, though, only settled against his pillow as she opened her book.

The first hour was fraught with difficulties. Although he never complained, Jon couldn’t seem to get comfortable, shifting frequently and beset by coughing at unpredictable intervals. Sansa found it all but impossible to focus on her reading under these conditions, but was at an utter loss for ways to be of help. She could hardly rest on his behalf.

“It is no use,” he said at last. “I am keeping you from—” More harsh coughs prevented him from naming what he thought he was keeping her from. Another afternoon of solitary uselessness, perhaps.

Sansa licked her lips. “You are keeping me from nothing,” she assured him. “I only wish there were more I could do.” She shook her head, looking to the bare mantle and then her own lap. The pale cover of her book shone back at her.

The book.

Her fingers traced the length of a gilded A on the cover. “Would you like— that is, sometimes it’s beneficial to— I could… read aloud. To pass the time.”

It was a stupid idea, straight from the idealistic girl she had once been. Yet when she dared to look to him, he did not reject her gaze or her offer.

“I would be awfully glad of it,” he croaked. “If you are sincere, and wouldn’t mind.” A ghost of a smile graced his face. It made him look soft, inviting. “It gets frightful dull, being left to myself.”

Sansa could sympathise. “It’s silly stuff, I’m afraid. You might not care much for it.” After all, she hadn’t been planning on sharing.

“I’m certain it’s fine.”

She bit her lip. It was a girlhood treasure, not something she would have chosen for a man’s reading. Not that she knew what men liked.

Jon regarded her seriously. “You can’t think I’m such a boor I’d complain when a lady’s doing me a kindness. Sansa, please.”

Sansa nodded shakily. She opened the book and turned pages until she found the beginning of a tale.

“There once lived a knight foolish enough to fall in love with the woman affianced to his patron. His name was Florian, which means fair of hair, but it did not suit him; rather, his head was dark. One day, as he walked in the woods, he came across a pool where there were young ladies bathing. Six sisters, each lovelier than the last. Loveliest of all was a maid called Jonquil, and for all his name failed to match him hers suited tenfold, for she was slender and fair as the first flower beneath the spring sun. When Florian spied her…”

Sansa read on, her self-consciousness falling away and her voice gaining strength as the tale continued. Jon listened quietly, eyes closed. She’d made it halfway through when she realised he hadn’t interrupted with coughing in several pages.

She lowered the book cautiously, peering over it for the first time in quite a long while. Jon lay relaxed against the pillows, his breathing even and heavy with sleep. He looked so young, asleep, not so many years removed from a child who required a bedtime story. The veins in his eyelids formed an intricate web under the delicate skin. This was rest he needed, badly.

She couldn’t credit herself for it. His exhaustion was so complete he hadn’t needed much more than the opportunity to relax. Still, there was a warm peace in her heart, thinking she might have contributed, with her voice and her favorite tale, to his rest.

Her throat was dry, unusued to thirty unbroken minutes of speaking. She’d love a cup of tea.

Sansa closed the book. If she could leave the chamber without waking him, she’d have no further need of it. Unlike her sister, she’d had no training in the movements of swordcraft, but her education as a lady had included a lesson or two in appropriate silences. She slipped from the chair and walked with careful steps to the door. She could be very quiet, when she wished to be. She’d had years of practise.

“All is well, my lady?” Jory greeted her in hushed tones when she’d eased Jon’s door closed behind her.

“Quite well,” she said, speaking truthfully for the first time in what felt like years.

Chapter Text

Sansa hadn’t realised Jon’s eyes had a light in them until it went back out again at the sight of her.

Her mouth, which had been open to wish him a good afternoon, closed. She’d thought her visit yesterday had gone well. How foolish and overeager of her to assume he’d felt the same, that he would be glad to see her.

Jon cast his eyes downward. “Good afternoon, my lady.”

Sansa pursed her lips into what she hoped was a smile-adjacent expression. “Good afternoon. How do you fare?”

He grimaced. It was a private expression, intended for himself rather than her, but she didn’t lift her eyes from his face. It was charming, in some ways, to see a piece of him that was not a performance. “Much the same, but I thank you for your interest.”

She nodded in acknowledgement. “I wondered if you might like company this afternoon, but I can go if you’d—”

“No,” he said, so swiftly he set himself off into a round of jagged coughing. “No,” he panted again. “I’d like that. Only—” He caught himself back from whatever he was about to say, and busied himself instead with forestalling more coughs with a tentative sip of water.

“It won’t trouble me if you’d rather rest,” Sansa promised. “I assure you I’d find some other way to pass the time.”

Jon’s eyebrows pulled in over his nose. “If you’ve things to do, you needn’t stay.”

Sansa swallowed a sigh of frustration. “That wasn’t at all what I meant. I can answer letters as easily at your table as my own. I only sought to know your preference.”

“My preference is for your company,” he said, his voice soft. Maybe he was losing it again. “I only regret that you didn’t bring your book of tales with you.”

A peal of laughter escaped her before she could stop herself. “It that all? I can fetch it easily.”

“You don’t need to—”

“Please.” She held up a hand to silence him. “You’ve spoken plainly about your wishes, and I thank you for it. I’d be delighted to get the book. It’s right in my room.” Only a few steps away, in another domain entirely.

It was with mixed emotions that Sansa stepped out to retrieve her book.

“Where shall we begin?” she asked upon her return. “There’s a lovely one about the Grey King, if you like the sound of that.”

Jon cleared his throat. It didn’t seem to do much good; he still sounded rather hoarse when he spoke. “We didn’t finish the last one.”

“Florian and Jonquil?” Sansa blinked. “I thought you might— that is, it’s a bit, erm—” romantic, she couldn’t bring herself to say. “It’s for children,” she finished lamely.

He waved a hand, possibly insinuating the whole book was for children. “I want to know how it ends.”

“How it ends,” Sansa repeated, feeling lost. “It’s Florian and Jonquil.”

His face remained neutral.

“Do you— not know how it ends?” she asked gently. Every child in every nursery in Westeros knew of the fair maiden Jonquil and Florian the Fool.

But her husband didn’t seem to. “They weren’t much for fairy-stories, at Wall.” Wall Academy, far in the north, where he’d spent much of his youth, between prolonged visits to various guardians. It was an elite school, perhaps not the most prestigious but not far off, especially for someone seeking a military career. Her uncle Benjen had gone.

It only occurred to her now how harsh and lonely a life it might have made for a boy such as the one her husband had been. Introspective orphans did not always fare as well at boarding schools as he had with her brothers and sister. He was so different from the men she had known in King’s Landing, and no one had known when he was young that he would soon be the closest living relative of the queen regnant.

She registered that she had been looking intently into his face for what must have been several long seconds. Her head snapped down to scrutinise the book in her lap instead. “All right. What’s the last you remember?”

There was a rustling sound as Jon shifted on the bed. “Jonquil had gifted Florian her pony, to replace his horse after the giant ate it.”

It was farther in the story than she’d thought he’d remember. He must have been listening closely, long after she’d thought him asleep.

“All right,” she said shakily, flipping to the appropriate page. “‘Fool, where is your helmet?’ King Perius cried, for Florian had failed to replace his visor after…”

She read the story through. It took the better part of an hour, by which time her throat was aching, but she was sorry, as she always was, to reach its end. She had to pause a handful of times for Jon to cough, but otherwise he was a good audience, rapt with attention despite the weariness evident in the slump of his broad shoulders. 

“...and thus Jonquil and her foolish Florian were ended.” Sansa concluded. She felt tears hanging in her lashes; she always cried at Jonquil’s final speech to Florian. She only hoped Jon hadn’t noticed this weakness in her.

After a silent moment, he said: “It’s a sad tale.” 

“Yes,” she said, “but there’s beauty in it, too. You can’t have one without the other.”

He'd pulled his knees up to his chest, and sat cradling them as if craving comfort.  “You can’t?”

“No.” On this she was firm. “I used to think you could, but it was nothing more than childish nonsense. If two people love one another, the story is always sad, in the end.” Ned and Cat had loved each other. She had idolised the pair of them, their happily ever after, not realising she was seeing the middle of a tale with a tragic climax. “It can be beautiful, and worthwhile, but it won’t stay happy. That isn’t how life works.”

Jon’s expression was contemplative and grim, his grey eyes heavy with thoughts she could not fathom.

Sansa cleared her throat and reached for the pitcher of water on the nightstand.

Jon covered her hand with one of his own, shockingly warm from the fever he still burned. “I do hope you aren’t feeling unwell.”

She startled, nearly but not quite retreating from this unexpected touch. “Not at all, do not concern yourself.”

He frowned. “Your throat—”

“—is unused to such lengthy spells of talking.”

He pulled his hand back, looking glum. “I’ve tired you.”

Sansa shook her head, her frustration bordering on fond. “I quite enjoyed myself. It’s my favourite tale, and I’ve not read it through in ever so long.” She smoothed a loose tendril of hair away from her mouth. “There’s always something else to focus on, now I’m grown. It’s nice to have an excuse to revisit it.” She poured water into a glass, leaning forward in her chair, close enough he could have reached out and touched her again, had he wanted.

He did not.

She sipped her water, thinking over her next move. The story was finished, and he knew how it ended now. It would be a simple thing, to return to her own rooms.

Instead, she favored him with a smile. “Why don’t we ring for tea? I think if I have a cup, my voice could last part of the way into the tale of Bran the Builder.”

Chapter Text

The letters that arrived Monday morning kept her busy through to luncheon. Mr. Poole, the land agent, had sent confirmation of rent collection. She forwarded all invoices to the solicitor, including one from Dr. Tybald. He certainly wasted no time.

She’d also received several invitations addressed to Lord and Lady Snow, all of which she declined. Jon’s illness made for a convenient excuse, but she’d likely have sent regrets to most in any case. Although she’d once loved parties, that had been when she’d enjoyed them among friends. Those friends were long gone now, most of them. Those who sought her company now did so mostly out of interest in her connexion to the Queen. Accompanied by a husband who did not love her, she endured comparisons to her mother’s beauty. Too large a gathering reminded her of the King’s Landing balls, and the constant reminders of what she’d lost were too much to bear.

Anyway, no amount of craving for companionship or diversion could induce her to leave Winterfell, not anymore.

After luncheon, she took her book of tales and repaired to her husband’s room. A leather marker with a wolf sigil tooled into it held their place from yesterday. It was very near the end— Bran the Builder was the second from last of the stories in the tome. After Symeon Star-Eyes, she’d have to turn back to the beginning and read him the tales she’d skipped.

That would be for tomorrow, she knew as soon as she’d laid eyes on Jon. Four days abed had not yet left clear signs of improvement on his face. He’d like as not be asleep within ten pages, if he could keep from coughing that long. He looked gaunt and weary, the dark grey of his eyes matched by shadows under them, shadows doubled again along his jaw where he had not been shaven.

Sansa drew the chair close by his bedside. “Hello,” she murmured.

“Hello.” He licked his lips. Despite a full cup of tea on the table beside him, they looked dry and cracked.

She pressed her own lips together in sympathy. “Shall we return to our story? As I recall, Bran had just come from the mountains where he recruited the aid of giants.”

Jon shook his head. “I still think he shouldn’t trust the giants.” His words came slowly, at the mercy of his laboured breathing.

“They’ve a vested interest in protecting the boundary,” Sansa reminded him, a smile curving her face. “They respect him as King in the North.”

“A giant ate Florian’s horse!” Jon’s breath caught and he doubled over with coughing, shoulders heaving as he tried and failed, tried and failed to catch his breath.

Alarmed, Sansa leaned forward and laid a hand flat against his back. She cast about for something helpful and soothing to say, but found nothing. His heart pounded against her palm.

“I’m— fine —” he wheezed between barking coughs smothered in his handkerchief.

“Shh,” Sansa counseled. “Only breathe.”

After a long while, the coughing tapered off into a stuttering, crackling breath.

Conscious of her hand on his back, Sansa pulled back, lowering her gaze as well as her hand. “You ought to take a syrup,” she said. “The doctor—”

“ No ,” he panted, his mouth tight.

It was the second time she’d known him to refuse his medicine. Combined with his worn appearance, it turned her mind in a curious direction.

He had strength of character, anyone could see that, but it was unusual for him to deploy it in quite this manner. In questions of dinner menus, clothing purchases, and social engagements his way was to defer to her judgment. He was a gentleman in every sense of the word, and before his illness he had never raised his voice to her.

His adamance, only a few days before, might have intimidated her into silence. But they had spent a handful of hours talking amicably, and she had seen him grow mournful over Florian the Fool. A grown man who could care so deeply about a tale from the Age of Heroes was not someone who frightened her. Something had shifted between them, perhaps was shifting still.

He had needed her, these past days. Not only that: he had wanted her. It had been such a long time since she had felt anything other than a burden, even in her own home. It emboldened her.

“What prevents you from accepting medicine that would help you?”

Jon squeezed his eyes shut. “Troubled dreams.”

She knew from his tone she would learn nothing further on this subject. Not, at least, without telling him things she preferred not to confide. He was a reserved man, her husband. Like as not, if she pressed, she’d be asked to leave his chambers, and the tenuous connexion between them would be severed.

Theirs wasn’t a love match. The romances she’d dreamt of, traded glances and hands held beneath tables, would never be theirs. But if the last few afternoons were any indication, they could have a friendship. She hadn’t realised she’d wanted that, but now it was in reach she did not wish to endanger it.

She’d tread carefully.

“All right,” she said. “Bran had left the giants and gone on his way to the children of the forest.” She pulled the book open to the page on which she’d stopped yesterday. “After a day and a night and another day of travelling, Bran at last came to the Green Village in the heart of the forest. It was not a village in the way our people live in villages, for the children of the forest are most at home among trees and rocks and have no use for houses with walls and rooves…”

This was a story she knew nearly as well as Florian and Jonquil. Her brother Bran had loved this tale of a wise and clever Stark king who had shared his name. She had read it to him herself, dozens of times, in the nursery. She’d been so relieved on the day he’d declared himself too old for fairy-stories, glad she’d have more time to brush her hair at night instead of resentfully boring him to sleep, not knowing that one day soon she would miss him in her bones.

It surprised Sansa to find she had it more or less memorised. Her eyes often lifted to surreptitiously survey Jon’s face for signs of increased weariness, and she found she did not need to pause the tale in order to do so. Her pauses, though frequent, were reserved for when his coughing could not be contained.

Once or twice she thought he may have caught her looking, but she returned her gaze to the page too quickly to be certain. He never indicated that he’d seen what she was about, so perhaps she’d imagined it.

She coasted to the end of the tale, her listener’s eyes closed against his own pain. From the cadence of his breathing, he was awake still, but likely not for many minutes more. Sansa placed her bookmark in its new place.

“That was a nice one,” he murmured.

A small laugh bubbled out of her lips. “Boys always like that one. A man defending his kingdom through his wits.”

His brow crinkled, though he did not open his eyes. “It’s a good Northern story. He was a Stark, was he not? It’s good to hear about one of our own.”

“But you aren’t a Stark!” The words were out before she had the chance to quash them.

Now Jon did open his eyes, grey and uneasy as he looked at her. “No, of course. I forget myself.”

Sansa felt the urge to apologise, but she had no idea what for. For alluding to the surname he shared with the queen of Westeros? There wasn’t any need for him to cling to his maternal line. He was far better-connected than any of the Starks had been for many years.

And yet he did not seem pleased to set aside his Stark heritage. She was sorry to have brought it up.

“I like your hair like that,” he said, bringing her back to the moment.

Absently, she lifted a hand to her coiffure. It was a simple Northern style, one her mother had favoured. As a child, she’d thought it boring, had spent hours braiding and coiling her hair into the elaborate fashions popular at court.

As with breakfast abed, hairstyles were not something she copied from Cersei Lannister any longer.

“Thank you,” she said at last, cheeks flaming.

“Welcome,” he slurred, eyes closing once more.

Sansa fought the smile that threatened to engulf her face. “Good night, Jon, she said.

He made no reply.

Chapter Text

Mya brought Sansa a dress of Tully blue, but she asked for one in dove grey instead. Then, when Mya began to dress her hair, she said “No need for anything intricate today. A twisted half-crown will do.”

The maid did not frown, precisely— her training was too good for that— but she did look perplexed. “Like yesterday?” she asked.

“Yes,” Sansa said, pleased. She admired her reflection as she was readied for the day, her hair swept back from her face and dressed loosely.

The plain dress set off her smooth complexion and brought out the coppery tones in her hair. She looked very like her mother like this, simply done in a traditional Northern style with little ornamentation. It didn’t hurt as much as it once had, to look in the mirror and be reminded she was Cat’s daughter.

She went about her day as usual, with a morning in her solar and a solitary luncheon of fish and asparagus. When she stood from the table, book of tales in hand, to go to His Lordship’s rooms, she met with unexpected resistance.

Tollett, the chauffeur, stood at attention in the hall, waiting for her.

“My Lady,” he said, bowing.

“Yes, Tollett, what is it?” Sansa had only spoken to the chauffeur a handful of times. Lord Snow was the one with business off the estate, and she hardly ever left the main house. Tollett was much more Jon’s servant than hers, a distinction he shared with Jory alone.

“It’s Tuesday, my lady.”

This was an unusual method of conversational niceties. Sansa inclined her head slightly. “So it is.”

Tollett shifted, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Apologies, my lady, only His Lordship directed all business to you for the duration of his illness—”

She stiffened. “Yes, he did.”

The chauffeur winced. “If Your Ladyship wishes to cancel the audiences, I will send word, but if you’d like to attend, we must depart at haste.”

She’d utterly forgotten. An invention of Rickard Stark, her father’s father, the Lord’s audiences were an opportunity for the smallfolk to petition directly to the lord of the manor. Or to appeal to the lady of the manor, as the case may be.

“Of course, we mustn’t cancel the audiences.” Sansa laid her book on a nearby hall table. Her hand lingered over the cover as she stepped away, but at last they were parted. Her fingers went briefly to the neck of her dress, where a spare border of lace formed her only ornament, wondering— but, no, there wasn’t time to change. She would have to do, as she was.

The audiences had been so important to her father, as a connexion betwixt nobility and those they governed. Her responsibility, as the last Stark of Winterfell, was to this above all else.

They didn’t have to go far, at least. The hall where audiences were held was just in town, only a few minutes away by car, barely further than the Poole home. In finer weather, Sansa and her siblings had walked that distance, more than once. Lady Catelyn had considered it proper for children to have moderate bouts of brisk exercise, even girls.

It had been some time, of course, since Sansa had gone into town in search of ribbons and sweets. Today she was in a hurry, to a formal engagement, beneath a sky that threatened a winter rain— all of which added up to the car. Yet as she watched the countryside beyond the car window, she thought she might like to walk there again someday. When the weather was warmer, and there was no need to stay so cooped up in the house, she and Jeyne could have an outing.

Smallfolk were already waiting in the hall when she arrived. She divested herself of her coat, leaving it to an attendant who carried it wordlessly away. Her hat and gloves she left on.

If those assembled were shocked to find Lady Snow there to receive them rather than His Lordship, they did their best not to show it. Perhaps their eyes were a little wider and their tones more breathless than usual, but perhaps not. She’d never been along on audiences before. It had always been assumed that Robb would be the one to take them over from Father, but that plan had been disrupted… And then, of course, when she’d married it had become Jon’s task, one of many aspects of his life as Warden of the North with which Sansa had not concerned herself.

It wasn’t a packed room by any means— a dozen men and women or thereabouts milled about— but still a nervousness fluttered in her chest. Rarely had she been so confronted with the human weight of her duty as a highborn lady. Sansa took her place in the chair at the far end of the room, and the audiences began.

“Your Ladyship,” the first petitioner said, bowing respectfully before her. “My name is Daryn Skagos, and I hope you’ll permit me to speak.”

She smiled and waved her hand. “Please, Mr. Skagos. Tell me your wish.”

He was a man in early middle age, younger than her father would have been, but he was missing a few teeth. Still, the smile he returned her was kind and beseeching. “Begging Your Ladyship’s pardon, but we— my neighbors and myself— we’ve been wond’ring if we might introduce some new crops to our fields this year, with Your Ladyship’s blessing.”

Sansa inclined her head. “Alfalfa and rye are tried and true. What makes you want to abandon these reliable staples?”

Skagos blinked. “We’ve been conservative since the war, my lady, but the region is doing better now. We thought we might— that is, with Your Ladyship’s permission— diversify. Winter wheat is doing well, and some of the farmers in the Vale have been experimenting with loganberries, which seem to be hearty enough for our climate.”

Behind him, someone cleared their throat loudly.

“I have reports!” Skagos said, suddenly and at slightly too high a volume.

She accepted the folio he proffered and thumbed through its contents. It was thorough, with growth reports from bordering territories and estimates of cost and profit. “It is a risk,” she said.

His brow wrinkled. From the looks of it, it had been wrinkled many times before.

Sansa unfurled her hands from the folio and pressed her damp palms against her skirt. She tried again. “Without some risk, we would never make advances, Mr. Skagos. You appear to have done your due diligence in evaluating that risk, as well as the potential benefit. I ask only for you to be cautious in exploring these options, and mitigate the danger by saving some portion of each farm plot to grow something trustworthy, so you are not left with nothing should the new venture fail.” She took a steadying breath. “I look forward to hearing of your progress.”

Skagos bowed, a grin stretching his face. “Thank you, my lady.”

Sansa’s smile was warmer and more genuine for the next postulant. “Welcome.”

A wide-eyed young woman curtsied awkwardly. “G— good afternoon, my— my lady,” she stammered.

“What is your name?” Sansa asked, leaning forward.

“Annys Black,” the woman said. “My lady!” she added hastily.

“What have you come to say, Miss Black?”

“It’s— it’s Mrs. Black,” she said, looking horrified to find herself correcting Lady Snow.

“My apologies, Mrs. Black.” Sansa said. “What is your business?”

Mrs. Black’s hands hid themselves in her apron. “Ain’t got no business, Your Ladyship. That’s the trouble. I had work at the haberdashery, ‘til I had my boy. Since then I’ve been at home, but my man fell off a ladder and broke his back, so he can’t work neither.”

Sansa’s brow creased. “The haberdashery won’t have you, now you’ve a child?”

Mrs. Black blushed. “Oh, no, Your Ladyship, Mrs. V’s got a place for me, but there’s no one to watch my Fryddie. Jerome’s too sick and we’ve neither one any family that can do it.” Her head was shaking almost mechanically, which did not distract Sansa entirely from the tears in her eyes. “I don’t mind for myself, but I can’t let my baby—” She bit back the end of her sentence. “Please, Your Ladyship.”

“I’m very sorry for your family’s troubles, Mrs. Black.” Sansa said. “I’ll see to it you have money to last until your husband is back on his feet. Any further difficulties, keep me informed. We must look after one another.” Whether she meant Northerners or women with incapacitated husbands, she didn’t know.

“Thank you, my lady,” Mrs. Black sighed, breathless. “Oh, thank you.”

The rest of those waiting for their turn put all the shock from her entry to use in their faces, following her gift to Mrs. Black.

When at last the final petition had been heard, Sansa wilted against the chair. Her mother had taught her that a lady’s back was never to touch the furniture she sat on, but she was too tired for proper posture. That was the most people she’d seen in a day since… since well before her marriage. Probably the last had been the queen’s coronation, which had doubled as a victory party for the war Daenerys Targaryen had ended with her fleet. Sansa’s attendance, as the last of her once-great house, had been required— but she had not felt much like celebrating. She’d been tired then, too, she recalled, and frightened among the carousing men; she’d slipped away as soon as she could.

A fortnight later, she’d been betrothed, and six weeks after that she was married and on her way to Winterfell.

Winterfell was as welcome a home to come back to tonight as it had been then.

Tollett drove her in silence, which for once she was glad of. Her head was too full of business to make any more polite conversation. That poor Mrs. Black, all out of work and with a baby to feed. There must be something to be done to help her, and all the women like her…

It wasn’t until Sansa entered the hall and saw the book where she’d left it on the table that she remembered she’d been on her way to see Jon, before the audiences had interrupted her plans. Had he wondered why she hadn’t come? Had he worried?

Darkness had fallen over the course of the drive, evening fading slowly into night. Jon was ill; with any mercy, he’d be getting some much-needed rest. Yet Sansa was unable to stop herself from pushing open his door on her way to her own room.

He might have been awake, but only barely. His eyes were mostly closed, but he acknowledged her entry with a noise that was not quite a greeting.

“Sorry to disturb you,” she murmured.

“I’m glad,” he whispered, although what he was glad of he did not specify. He might have been more asleep than she’d taken him for.

“I wanted to— check in, I suppose, and say good night.” Sansa paused. Ought she to say good night and take her leave? Then why had she come?

“We missed our afternoon,” Jon said.

She smiled sadly. “Yes. We’ll make it up tomorrow.”

“Mmm.” He nodded against his pillow. “Did the audiences…?”

“Everything went well,” she reassured him. “Nothing at all to worry about.”

Jon sighed raggedly. “Good. Good.”

“Good night, Jon. Rest well.” Sansa pulled the door toward her, letting a sliver of light in from the hall.

“Sansa,” he said, a low pull to his voice that reminded her how he’d said her name in his delirium, that first night of his illness. “Sansa, you look…” He shook his head, closed his eyes at last. “Good night.”

A long moment passed. Jon neither spoke, nor looked in her direction. Feeling both alone yet curiously surveilled, Sansa slipped into the hall and eased the door closed behind her.

Chapter Text

The morning after the audiences was a slow one for correspondence; all urgent estate business had been brought to the hall. In fact, there was only one letter. A letter of great significance, as it transpired.

Sansa’s stomach turned over, and the page slipped from between her fingers and fluttered to the desk. She willed her heart to stop pounding. It was surprising, she’d allow, but it oughtn’t have been. That it hadn’t happened sooner was more of a surprise, really, given her husband’s position.

That didn’t mean she knew what to do about it.

With trembling hands, Sansa picked up the letter, refolded it, and slid it back into its envelope. This was a matter for discussion, and there was only one person she could discuss it with. He wasn’t meant to be burdened, just now, but there was nothing for it. Jon would need to be consulted.

Queen Daenerys was his aunt, after all.

She waved politely to the servants she passed, but did not greet them further, not trusting herself to speak. Pushing open his door, she was dismayed to find Jon asleep. Should she— no, she was being silly. He was looking better, but still could ill afford to be shaken from his rest to attend her. Her anxiety did not make this an emergency worth jeopardising his recovery. The matter could wait until he woke.

Sansa folded herself into the now-familiar chair in his chamber, the one that had been put there for her sake, and waited.

Once, it would have been unimaginable that she might feel so tense and fall asleep. But years had passed since she’d had the luxury of comfort. The exhaustion of living in King’s Landing had utterly eroded the division between terror and rest, and she could now drop into sleep at any time.

This had been fortunate, during the war, when she couldn’t count on a safe place to rest. But it was unfortunate now, for it meant she was vulnerable once again to the nightmares that often plagued her.

In this one, Ramsay Bolton’s hounds chased her while Cersei Lannister watched and Joffrey laughed. It wasn’t possible, Joff was dead before she ever met Ramsay, but there wasn’t a chance to interrogate it, not while she had to run from the hounds.

“ Sansa ,” a distant voice called.

Sansa tripped over a root, or maybe it was a hand that had grasped her ankle. “No, no,” she begged, pulling her leg back, her dress tearing.

“ Sansa ,” the voice came again, more sharply.

“Please,” she said, scrambling back to her feet as the hounds growled menacingly. “Please let me go.”

“ Sansa. Sansa! ”

She woke, heart pounding, to urgent tones she only then recognised as her husband’s.

“Oh,” she said, feeling small in voice and person. “Did I disturb you? I’m sorry for it.” She put a hand to her head. She felt even more out of sorts than she usually did after one of her dreams. “I had not meant to fall asleep.”

Jon was frowning at her. “Never mind that,” he said impatiently. “Are you all right?”

Well, no. She was not. But it was nothing he was likely to be able to fix, as she had not managed it so far. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to lie to him, with his gaze so intent on her. “As I ever was,” she said instead.

“You don’t need to do that,” he said, his voice low. “You don’t need to smile and pretend.”

Sansa looked down at her feet, feeling her cheeks color. “I don’t know how else to go forward,” she confessed.

Jon reached over and laid a hand atop hers on the arm of the chair. “I get them, too,” he said. “Since… since everything.”

When she looked up, his jaw was tense, but his eyes still looked kind.

She turned her hand over to take his fingers in hers.

He gave them a gentle squeeze before disentangling. “My scar. I’m sure you’ve noticed.” He indicated his face, where the scar cut through his right eyebrow. “It was a bad wound. I was lucky to keep the eye. And my life, the doctors said.” His mouth thinned. “It didn’t feel very lucky, to be alive by a hair’s breadth when all my men were dead.”

Sansa’s chest ached. “I’m sure they’d not begrudge you,” she started, but hesitated.

“No,” he agreed sadly. “They wouldn’t.” He shook his head. “I dream of them. Some of it’s things I saw, some of it’s things I couldn’t have seen. Horrible things.” Jon looked back to her face, his grey eyes canny. “But you know about that, don’t you?”

She nodded, her mouth dry.

“It was a bad time,” he continued. “Everyone left living has known loss and horrors. But we’ve endured. I hope you know you’re safe now. I’ll keep you safe.”

“I do,” she said. “Or I want to.” No one can keep anyone safe, she wanted to say, but she didn’t know how to share what she’d learned of protection without making him feel she was rejecting his offer.

Sansa didn’t want to reject anything he was willing to give her. She did feel safe with him, mostly.

“What’s that in your lap?” he asked.

She looked down at her skirts where, still clutched in one hand, was the letter.

Jon’s mouth tightened at the sight of the royal seal on the envelope when she held it up.

“We’ve been summoned to court,” she said.

Jon took the letter from her and read it, with quick, grim eyes. He stifled a cough or two, which she realised were the first of their kind since her arrival. “I’ll have to write and tell her I’m not able,” he said finally. “I don’t think there’s any question of it.”

Sansa’s lips parted. “I could… go in your stead,” she suggested.

His eyes on her were severe. “I’d not ask that of you,” he said, in a voice that told her he’d noticed her reluctance to leave Winterfell. “It oughtn’t be necessary. My serious illness should get us both a pass, this time.”

Relief consumed her. She was glad to be sitting down.

“No one would expect a man’s wife to travel from his side at such a time,” he continued. “Especially not one so newly wed.”

Sansa felt her cheeks pinkening once more. They did not have a habit of discussing their marriage, or lack thereof. But here he was, mentioning it like a private joke she could only hope was not at her expense.

Her mind raced to find something else to think of. It caught on an earlier remark, and she found herself asking “This time?”

Jon nodded glumly, smothering another cough. “Supposing I survive, which seems likely, another summons will come. You need not attend it, but I’ll have to go.”

Sansa wanted to offer to accompany him, but she didn’t want to be forward. The reason he was so often away might be that he had no desire for her company. It wouldn’t do to spoil that, simply because he’d been kind to her this week.

“Your aunt will find other occupations soon enough,” she tried instead. “Young queens receive many interested suitors, I’m told. With a family of her own, she’ll leave you more to your devices.”

A darkness came over his face. “I very much doubt it.”

She nearly laughed, but something about his expression held her back. “What do you mean?”

Jon fixed her with his gaze. “My aunt is barren.”

Sansa felt dizzy.

“It’s a matter of the strictest confidence, but I… honestly, Sansa, I thought you knew.” He looked stricken by more than a cough.

“You— we—” Sansa took a steadying breath. “You’re the heir presumptive. But… no one will come along to supplant you.”

Jon nodded seriously. “I am my aunt’s only living relative, and likely to remain so.”

Her heart sped up in her chest. “So, one day, you will… or your heirs will… not just Winterfell, but all of it.”

“I’m so sorry, Sansa,” he said. “If I’d known she hadn’t told you, I would have. Before that blasted ceremony, when you could have called it off.”

She felt numb. “I’m going to be Queen of Westeros.” What a cruel joke, to make true her deepest childhood wishes, in a way she’d never have wanted.

“I thought that was why you’d accepted the proposal,” he muttered, closing his eyes miserably. “I thought she’d promised you—”

“Winterfell,” Sansa said. “The Queen promised Winterfell, to me and my heirs. She never mentioned anything about— about all that.”

“I’d never have forced you into such an unequal bargain,” Jon said unhappily.

“I know,” she said.

“We could have it annulled—”

Sansa shook her head. “Let’s not talk about that, just now.” She didn’t want to go back to being vulnerable and unmarried. She didn’t want to leave Jon. But… “Let’s focus our efforts on your recovery, and we can discuss the— the rest of it— later. Please.”

He still looked unhappy, but he acquiesced, much to her relief. “All right,” he said, with a heavy weariness in his eyes.

Sansa smiled shakily. A truce, then, like so much of married life had turned out to be. “I ought to go write the Queen. I think it will sound better coming from me, if the doctor has forbidden you to work.” Which was true, she reminded herself. One of so few things that was not, in part or in all, a lie.

“All right,” he said again.

He watched, his face an unreadable mask, as she pulled her legs beneath her and stood in as graceful and dignified a way as was possible when her limbs felt like jelly from shock. But just as she turned to go, he called out her name one last time.

“Sansa?”

She twisted toward him, almost without thinking of it. “Yes?”

“I’ve forgotten to thank you,” he said.

She found her mouth pursing with concern. “Whatever for?” She’d thought his temperature had come down; she hoped the fever hadn’t addled his brain.

But he didn’t look confused, only serious and purposeful. “The flowers.”

Atop the mantel, in a china vase that had belonged to her mother, a bouquet of yellow jonquils glowed cheerily down at them. One small bright spot of beauty in his otherwise bleak room.

“They were my apology,” she said, “for yesterday. You like them?”

“Very much,” he smiled. It was warm like the coming of spring.

He didn’t smile much, her husband. Perhaps he saved them back, to keep them pure.

“Like the story,” he said. “I liked that very much.”

Sansa smiled back. “I did, too.” She reached out, hesitantly, but not as hesitantly as she might have, to touch his hand. “I have correspondence to write, and you ought to rest. But… tomorrow?”

Jon nodded. “Tomorrow.”

Chapter Text

Her husband’s eyes looked troubled as she entered, but he smiled at her from beneath them. “My lady,” he greeted her. His voice still had a rough edge to it, but he no longer seemed in danger of having it leave him entirely.

“Good afternoon.” It wasn’t difficult, this time, to keep from responding in kind. After yesterday’s revelation, it was all too easy to consider why he might have a distaste for reminders of his rank. As he was not a man easy with his affections, he also did not crave power and privilege. One had only to look at his room, minimalist and spare, to see that.

The jonquils did provide a certain sunny beauty, though. One that may have been lacking in his life, these long winter days he’d been confined to his room.

Jon had been bathed this morning, too. His face was clean-shaven again, in that incongruous way he insisted upon. In her father’s generation, all respectable men had worn beards. It seemed likely that Jon Targaryen would singlehandedly reverse the fashion. If not now, then when he was king.

Everyone always wanted to copy a king.

And they would be only copies. Though his was an understated handsomeness, it would not be outshone by imitators. She wondered if the skin of his face was smooth, like hers, or if some manly roughness was retained although the beard was gone. She wondered what oils Jory combed through his hair after it was washed. If she leaned over his bedside, would he smell of lavender, like she did after a bath, or of something else, something smoky and mysterious?

Sansa’s eyes locked onto the book in her hands. Such shameful thoughts belonged to a part of her she’d thought long-dead, a fanciful girl who dreamed of true love’s kisses exchanged before a heart tree. A maiden she might be yet, but no more a blushing dreamer to muse shyly on a comely man who had done no more to show an interest in her than spare her a kind word.

He’d had ample opportunity, the year and more since their wedding, if he’d wanted to court her. Better she stop this thought in its tracks, before it ruined all chance of even a mild happiness. There was a growing respect between them. Could that not be enough for her foolish heart? Had it not learned the price of wanting?

“You appear perturbed,” Jon said. “I hope the news of yesterday did not unsettle you overmuch.”

In truth, it had. She’d been preoccupied all evening with thoughts of the Red Keep, which she tried not to think of, when she could. The news that it would one day be her home…

“I fear there’s no such thing as overmuch worry when it comes to talk of crowns and thrones,” she murmured, feeling her lashes brush her cheek.

There. Let the leaden weight in her stomach settle her flight of fancy.

“Too right,” Jon agreed darkly.

“Let us not dwell on unpleasant things we cannot alter,” Sansa announced, dropping into the seat. “This is no time for fretting. I’ve brought a surprise for you.”

A hint of amusement lightened his eyes. It wasn’t a look she’d noticed in him before. She wondered if it was new, or if she’d missed it somehow, like she’d missed so much about him.

“Another surprise?” He gestured toward the mantel, where the jonquils smiled down at them. “What can I have done to earn such a boon?”

“You listened quite admirably to tales chosen for my taste,” she said, fighting a blush with all her might. “I thought to bring a replacement more suitable.”

A wrinkle appeared between his dark brows. “I greatly enjoyed your book of tales, Sansa.”

“I know that,” she said encouragingly. “But I thought this one might be even fitter.” She laid the book down so he could examine the title: Knights of the Targaryen Line. She’d spent all morning in Winterfell’s library looking for it. Military history wasn’t to her usual tastes, though she expected she’d find something to like in it.

She’d been finding things to like in Targaryen knights a lot, lately.

Jon did not appear as delighted as she’d hoped. “I assure you, I was perfectly content with your first offer.”

Sansa fought back disappointment, sought to keep her face cheerful. He was still fragile, at this stage of recovery, Dr. Tybald had informed her, and oughtn’t be distressed by wifely tears. Sansa had felt a frisson of irritation at his supposition of her to be that sort of wife, followed by the melancholy uncertainty of remembering she was no true wife. And yet there they were, awaiting their opportunity: tears.

“All right.” His voice was quiet now, even more than before. “Tell me of the knights.”

She took a deep breath, the sort her husband could not currently manage. She let it out again. “All right,” she echoed, and opened the book.

Aemon the Dragonknight cut a nice compromise between his interests and hers, she thought. It wasn’t quite as romantic a story as Florian and Jonquil, which meant it was possible for her to read it aloud without blushing fiercely. Now that Jon was more alert, the thought of reading a love story to him was mortifying. It wasn’t that she was any less comfortable with him than she had been— truthfully, it was difficult to contemplate that such a thing was possible, when last week they’d been strangers and they were now nearly friends— but that comfort had been hard-won and tenuous.

She had no desire to jeopardise it by making her infatuation plain. A man who would be kind to her was all she’d dared hope for from the match. She’d not ruin their peaceable arrangement because he did not love her.

Many of Prince Aemon’s deeds, though, stemmed from his love for Queen Naerys. This was a historical tome, not a romantical one, but even so, she was conscious of the high colour in her cheeks as the narrative hinted at the deep vein of feeling the Targaryen prince had felt for his sister. There was no avoiding the fact that he’d been fixated on the notion of her honour.

Sansa had always liked that about Prince Aemon.

But Jon had an air of consternation, when she dared look at him, through those parts of the story. In truth, the tension with which he had greeted her arrival did not abate, as it had done with every previous reading session, for such a time that she feared she had made a truly grave error in straying from the childish stories of the last week.

When she finished and peeked timidly above the book cover, Jon offered her a gentle smile.

“I liked the part about Cregan Stark,” he said.

Of course he had. The Dragonknight’s recounting of his duel with Cregan Stark, whom he declared the finest swordsman he’d ever faced, featured a lot of praise for the honourable fighting and tactical skill of both men, which was very much the sort of thing a military gentleman like Lord Snow would enjoy.

Only there might be more to that, mightn’t there?

“Cregan was one of many heroic figures in the Stark line,” Sansa ventured. “Like Bran the Builder before him.”

“And Eddard after.”

Sansa felt a rush of emotion that had her turn once more away from her husband’s eyes. “It is kind of you to say so, sir.”

She felt his hand brush against the back of hers.

His voice was soft, still rubbed hoarse from his week of coughing. “He was always kind to me. I greatly admire him.”

It did not escape her attention that he spoke of his admiration for her father in the present tense. The gratitude and affection she felt at this ought to have alarmed her. She was finding it difficult to feel the same amount of alarm she once had, in Jon’s presence.

“That was part of why I wanted— why I always thought of myself—” Jon exhaled shakily before continuing. “Lord Eddard was willing to look past my father’s lineage and treat me as a welcome part of the family.”

“He was fond of your mother,” Sansa said.

Hadn’t that been the core of it, the one disagreement in her parents’ marriage? Ned’s affection for his cousin Lyanna and his attachment to her orphaned child, the shameful product of a hasty marriage between two families who both considered the match beneath them, had been sticking points for Cat. She’d never said it aloud, at least not in front of the children, but Sansa had known. She’d seen it in her mother’s stiff courtesy when Jon came to stay, and in her father’s eyes when he instructed her siblings to be kind.

The wolf pack survives , he’d said. We must look after our own. To Ned Stark, Jon Targaryen had been a part of the pack.

“He was fond of you ,” she added. “He looked on you with pride and honour, as a Stark.”

“I am not a Stark.” The set of Jon’s jaw was tense. Sansa wished she could smooth it, ease him, but she knew her limitations. “You said so yourself.”

The shock was an icy jolt more severe than the weather outside the window. “I did,” she agreed, “but I was wrong to.”

“Forgive me, Sansa,” Jon said, shaking his head. “I did not intend to force such a painful topic upon you. Lord Eddard was a good man. We need say nothing further of it. You were simply stating the facts of the matter. In the eyes of society and the law, I belong to the Targaryens.”

“Not to me,” she said. “You’ve every bit the decency and bearing of a true Stark.” Her father would have liked for them to have one another. However much less than she might have wished for herself, this marriage kept near to her some of the last kin she had on earth. “Jon,” she said, reaching for his hand. “I am honoured to share my name and house with you.”

A sharp breath escaped his lips. Sansa momentarily feared a fresh coughing fit, but the she realised: it was laughter.

“It’s the husband, not the wife, who usually does the sharing of names and houses,” he said. “I thank you greatly for your graciousness, my lady, for your own of both greatly outshone mine.” His thumb stroked the back of her hand, just once. “Any man would be honoured to share with you.”

Sansa let her face betray her good humour. “Few are the men who would say so.”

“No,” Jon said. He wasn’t laughing anymore. “Any man.”

Her breath caught in her own chest at that. Her lips parted, but nothing more substantial than an “o h ” escaped them. Her heart beat once, twice, eyes meeting Jon’s steady gaze, her hand still clasped in his.

“My lady?”

Sansa drew back. “Yes, Mya, what is it?” She fought to keep all annoyance from her tone. This was what it was to be a great lady. One’s own desires must always come second to one’s duty.

“Cook is asking to see you, ma’am.”

“Of course, right away.” She turned back to Jon, whose face had reassembled itself into something more careful, less clear. “There is no rest, as they say, for the wicked.”

“You’re anything but wicked, my lady,” he replied, but his voice had taken an airy, charming note rather than the low, true one he’d been using only moments before.

“Be that as it may.” Sansa stood. “I’ll leave you to your own rest.”

“Such as it is,” Jon answered. Then: “Sansa?”

She paused, one hand already on the door. “Yes?”

“I do hope… I mean, shall I see you tomorrow?”

She smiled. “If you wish it. I’ll come again.”

Chapter Text

Sansa felt a flutter of her old nervousness outside Jon’s door, and she paused to take a steadying breath and check that her hair was perfectly arranged. Mya washed it for her this morning, and although she’d left it loose most of the day, it weighed heavy with damp upon her neck. When evening came and she could let it down again, she’d be relieved.

“I cannot help but notice, Jory,” Jon remarked upon her entrance, smiling at his man, “that my lovely wife arrives without any books. Could she be up to something, I wonder?”

Sansa watched as Jory’s cheeks flooded with a redness she knew was matched on her own. It was unlike her severe husband to tease. She thought so, anyway. It could simply be that he was returning to his old self, now he was beginning to regain his health at last.

“I’m sure I couldn’t say, my lord,” Jory mumbled.

Sansa could hardly help returning Jon’s winning smile. “Send me away if you must, but I had a thought we might try something different today.”

“By all means,” Jon said, spreading his hands indulgently. “Whatever my lady wishes. That will be all, Jory.”

It struck Sansa that she’d never known Jon to dismiss his man. Although Jory had often been absent his lordship’s rooms during their idylls, he came and went seemingly as he pleased, other than when he’d been summoned— most often by Sansa or one of the other servants, she realised now. The change in protocol left her feeling oddly vulnerable. All her broken engagements had relied upon her status as a lady of untarnished virtue, which she had retained, despite the grasping hands of Lannisters and Boltons and Cleganes and Sweetrobin and Lord Baelish; until recently, she’d never been in a room alone with a gentleman. These last strange days of her marriage had changed that, but even then it had not felt so purposeful as it did now. With that sense of purpose came a new level of possibility, one which thrilled and frightened her in equal measure: her husband desired her company alone.

“What have you brought in those clever hands?”

Septa Mordane had said that her hands were clever, praising her tiny, neat stitches. But Jon wouldn’t remember that. He hadn’t paid any more attention to her in those days than she’d paid him. He spent his time at Winterfell hunting with Ned and Robb and Theon, not in the solar where she and Arya had taken their lessons. They’d occupied separate worlds in those days.

Not unlike the separate worlds they’d occupied the year and more they’d been married.

“Letters,” she said. “I thought you might appreciate word from beyond the keep.” Though she’d continue handling the business of governance a few days more yet, he was strong enough to receive personal correspondence. Letters always brightened the spirit.

He didn’t receive many. Since his correspondence had been rerouted to her solar, she’d noticed how little of it was personal in nature. Lord Snow’s letters, like the man himself, were mostly made of work and duty.

“You’ve had one from Arya,” she said. “If you’ve no objection, I thought I might read it aloud.” The others, scant as they were, might be too personal for her eyes, but Arya was her sister. Surely nothing in that missive would be unfit for her consumption.

Jon seemed to agree. “No objection. Read away.”

“Dear Jon,” Sansa read. “You were right about Needle. Gendry came to me and apologised for its disappearance. It seems last week he had it sent away to have a new scabbard made for it. He hadn’t thought I’d miss it now there are so many blades in the armory. The scabbard is nice enough I suppose— rather too fine a thing for me, and the jewels must be a devil of a thing for the footmen to polish, but it makes him happy to see our heraldry blended together, and I can deny him nothing, as you know.”

Arya’s letter to Jon was suffused with a warmth and familiarity Sansa hadn’t realised existed between them. She received occasional letters from Arya herself, most often brief and cursory. Sansa had thought her sister simply a poor correspondent by nature; she saw now that this wasn’t so. The problem lay elsewhere; despite the respect and fondness they’d found for one another as they grew, they simply didn’t share interests or a natural affinity.

Of course, Sansa's letters had often lacked much to tell. Her joy and relief at returning to Winterfell had fallen off quickly, replaced by a crushing loneliness and dissatisfaction she hadn’t wanted to confess to anyone. Least of all Arya, who had come so near to refusing to leave Winterfell when Gendry had asked her. Sansa knew why, even if she loved the man, even if the Queen approved the match.

“The lone wolf dies,” Arya had said, just as their father used to. There hadn’t been any question which of them Arya had been worried for. “I can’t leave you here alone.”

Sansa didn’t know what had changed her mind, but after all Arya had left. Sansa had been glad for her. Born a Rivers or not, Gendry was all she could have hoped from a goodbrother.

Sometimes Gendry sent Sansa letters and gifts from the Stormlands. But this, Arya’s letter to her own goodbrother? It was another thing altogether, nothing like that respectful affection. This was love, and seeing it filled her throat with an ache like thirst. How had she missed this?

It was a familial love, not a romantic one. She knew that just from the words on the page. But love had grown, in her own home, and she’d had no part of it.

Some of the things Arya had committed to paper were rather intimate and forthright. After a crossed-out line near the bottom of the second page, Sansa found herself reading about family planning.

“There have been questions, of late,” Sansa read, “as to when I will produce an heir, as if that is something women do on a whim. I’m not so naive as to be surprised by this, but I did think I had more time before people started saying it plain. I think Gendry’s keen, but I’m not altogether sure I’m interested. Motherhood is a vocation to which I’ve never felt called.”

They’d always been of different inclinations and temperaments, the Stark sisters.

“I don’t suppose you could—” Sansa stuttered a moment before pushing through. “—convince Sansa to give us one of yours? The first will get the Iron Throne and the second Winterfell, so I imagine your third might feel rather humble without Storm’s End to inherit.”

Sansa kept her eyes firmly on the paper before her. A third child? Even one was an impossibility. There might be nothing Arya wouldn’t discuss with Jon, but there seemed to be some gaps in what Jon would say to Arya. “I’m only joking if Sansa gets upset. Do give her my love, as always. Arya.”

As always? If Arya had been sending love her way, Jon had not been passing it to her. Not that that was any true surprise. It was only an embarrassment. Even her sister thought the marriage real and likely to bear fruit.

She refolded the pages and tucked them back into their discreet envelope. “I’ll leave you the rest on your table,” she said, avoiding her husband’s grey gaze. “You can read them at your leisure.”

As she went to lay the letters on the table, she found her wrist encircled by a large, warm hand.

Not long ago, she would have startled and pulled away. She knew he’d let her go if she made any resistance. Perhaps that was the reason she didn’t.

“I’m a little too tired for reading just now,” Jon said. “If there’s one from Sam and Gilly, I’d like if you stayed and read it. I do like to hear of them.” His eyes were filled with an intensity of purpose that sent a ripple through her belly, reminding her of his voice when he’d bade Jory leave them.

She found herself nodding her head. “I believe I saw one in Maester Tarly’s hand.” She lowered herself back to the chair. “If it won’t keep you from your rest.”

Jon nodded and released her wrist. “I’ll rest my eyes while I listen.”

Sansa pulled the letter from the envelope. Although Sam did all the writing for the pair, it seemed the letter was authored jointly with his wife. In fact, the first thought was hers: “Give instructions to your housekeepers to tend the fires extra well, and put some eucalyptus in them. Gilly says that’s what her mother and aunts do for a beginning cough, and she didn’t like your colour at all when you were last here. With the weather so cold, it bears listening. She gives the same care to our sons.”

What followed was a page and a half of loving description of the exploits of Little Sam and Jonnie. The Tarlys had a good eye for storytelling. They kept the letter light and amusing, with a parent’s pride of detail and a friend’s sense for which sentences would provide a laugh. There was love here, too, but she’d expected that; Samwell Tarly had named a child for Jon before he was a prince.

“We really must have Lady Snow to supper sometime. Gilly wonders why you always come alone.” Sansa stretched her neck, rubbing at the back of it with one hand while holding the letter in the other. “She needn’t be locked away in the Maidenvault, and we should dearly like to know her better.”

“Are you all right?”

She looked up sharply. At what point he’d opened his eyes again, she couldn’t say, but they were open now and upon her with that same focus as before. “Yes, of course.”

Jon frowned. “You keep putting your hand to your head.”

Indeed, her right hand was pressed against her hair. She settled it in her lap. “Oh, it’s nothing. My hair is damp, that’s all. It gets a little heavy, pinned up.”

“Would it help to… you could let it down, if you’d be more comfortable.” He offered her a smile. “There’s nothing improper in it. We are married, after all.”

That night last week, rushing in alarmed— her hair had been loose then. But he probably didn’t recall that. Still… “I think I will.” She put both hands to her hair and pulled it loose from its pins until it cascaded over her shoulders in loose waves. “Do pardon me, I know it looks a fright.”

“No.” Jon scowled. “Don’t say that. It’s lovely.”

He certainly wasn’t the first to say so. Her lady mother, every evening after the nurse had gone, brushing Sansa’s hair until it was gleaming: “your hair is beautiful.” She’d glowed under such praise, when she was a girl. But hearing it from him carried a new weight.

“The wildlings would say it’s devilish good luck,” he continued. “They’d call you kissed by fire . They’d line up to pay court to you.”

“Unlucky for them, then, that I am spoken for,” Sansa said brightly, before turning back to the page. “Jonnie talks of nothing but Winterfell. I know not where he’s learning it all. He must have his mother’s facility for research, even at so tender an age...”

When she finished the letter, she slid it neatly away like the one before.

“Dear Sam,” Jon mused. “I have no brothers of the blood, but he’s my sworn brother. I am grateful to have him still beside me.”

Unlike her brother Robb, who had once sworn to Jon Targaryen too. “We ought to have them out,” Sansa said. “The little ones and all.”

Jon looked startled. “I couldn’t ask that.”

“You didn’t,” she said. “I offered it. Jon Tarly should get to see Winterfell, if he loves it so.”

“It’s your home, Sansa.”

“It’s your home, too. Your friends are welcome.”

He was quiet a long moment, looking at her. “All right. I’ll invite them, once the weather’s turned.”

Sansa smiled. “It will be good.” Having children at Winterfell, she meant, though a shyness still pervaded her mind on that topic and she found she could not speak it aloud. “But for now, you must return to your rest. I’ve overtired you dreadfully.”

He didn’t argue, though he hardly could have. He was livelier today than he’d been of late, but not yet so restored he could go hours on end in conversation.

Besides, her head was filled enough from the time she’d passed with him so far. “Send for me if you need anything,” she said. “Otherwise, goodnight.”

She swept away, hair and dress trailing behind her like a maiden cloak.

Chapter Text

It would have been unseemly to rub her eyes like a caricature at the sight before her, but Sansa found herself very tempted indeed.

“Lord Snow sent for them,” Lew explained. “He said they’re in return for the jonquils.”

It was the largest bouquet Sansa had ever seen, short of ones at the royal weddings she’d attended, in what she recognised as a tall vase of real crystal. Sansa reached out to trace one finger very delicately along the length of a petal. Winter roses had the most delightful texture. Some said it was soft as a lover’s touch. Not that Sansa would know, of course.

When she drew her hand back, the rich scent of the roses came with it. “How lovely,” she breathed. “Will you place them in my solar, please?”

Lew bowed awkwardly around the flowers. “Of course, my lady.”

She could scarcely keep herself from prancing as she made her way to Jon’s room. She took a moment to compose herself before entering. It wouldn’t do to present herself at a sickbed giddy as a girl. She had to be staid and responsible, that he might trust her to continue handling things during his convalescence.

It was not usually this difficult to remember to put duty before pleasure.

“Thank you for the roses,” Sansa said as primly as she was able.

Jon raised his gaze to hers. Though the same cool grey as ever, she thought she detected something warm in it. “Do you like them?”

“Very much. I had them taken to my solar where I might enjoy them most.” She settled into her seat. “I can’t imagine where you had them sent from; they’re entirely out of season. It must’ve cost a fortune.” Even this far north, it was getting on too near spring for good winter roses.

“I have my ways,” Jon said, raising his hand to stifle a cough. He was able to do that in moderation now. “I’m glad to please you.”

Sansa spread her fingers on her skirt. It wasn’t the first time a man had spoken of pleasing her, but there was something in his tone that set her heart in her throat. “I seem to recall that winter roses were a particular favourite of Lady Lyanna’s.”

At his mother’s name, he got a sad, distant look. “She carried them at her wedding to my father. It had some significance for them, as I understand.” 

He didn’t elaborate. It was possible he didn’t know anything more about it. With both parents gone by his first name day, the distant relations who’d raised him might not have been able to tell him much about what his mother was like. Ned Stark had shared what he could of his favourite cousin, but even so there must have been some unbearable gaps in Jon’s knowledge of the people who had birthed him.

Sansa knew much more about her mother than that her favourite blooms were orange blossoms, and even so she mourned all the answers she’d never have from Catelyn. How many times harder if one’s mother was as legendary a figure as Florian or Jonquil. 

“I’d have liked to have given you some to carry,” Jon said softly, “had there been time.”

Sansa’s lips parted to allow her to breathe more deeply. “For the wedding?”

He nodded. “I regret that.”

“I don’t blame you for it.”

Their wedding in King’s Landing had been a rushed affair. From the time she gave her consent to the Queen to the day they’d said their vows, less than a fortnight had passed. They’d laid eyes on each other only once in that time. Sansa had been occupied cobbling together a maiden cloak, since there wasn’t time to have her trousseau brought from Winterfell. She’d never intended to marry in haste, without her mother or the beautiful things they’d prepared. When the time had come, she had hardly cared about that anymore. 

The dress she’d worn was borrowed from Margaery Tyrell, who was several inches shorter than Sansa. It had been unfashionably high around her ankles. That was what Sansa had been thinking about, as she walked toward her new husband and new life, carrying a few stems of snowdrops someone had shoved into her hand moments before.

Her slapdash maiden cloak had been taken from her shoulders; she’d never seen it again. When the septon bade them, it was replaced by a bridal cloak in Targaryen colours by her husband’s cold, fumbling fingers. It was a moment when more romantic couples whispered secret vows to one another, but Jon didn’t speak to her, and she followed his lead.

It had not been the sort of occasion that afforded much celebration. Technically, the war had been over, but there had been an air of casualty to it, almost funerary. Neither bride nor groom had smiled. 

Winter roses wouldn’t have improved the day by much. 

“I regret it anyway,” Jon said. “I regret a lot of it. It ought to have been nicer for you.”

Sansa’s tongue darted across her lips. “I don’t blame you for any of it,” she assured him. “We were hostages to your aunt’s plan, the both of us. It can’t have been nice for you either.”

“It was—" He stopped. “No, I suppose not.”

It seemed foolish now, but she’d expected her bridegroom to undress her, when they were shoved alone into a room after the ceremony. She hadn’t been looking forward to that part, after the harsh words and rough hands of the men she’d known in wartime. All had stopped short of taking the liberties of the marriage bed, but Sansa had no reason not to dread the bedding.

At first, it had seemed as though he might follow through. He’d stood before her, laid his hand on the clasp of her Targaryen bridal cloak, near the pulse point in her throat, and said you don’t have to wear that anymore.

But after he said it, he’d dropped his hand and backed away. She’d removed the cloak and no more, confused but in some ways relieved not to have to go through with the thing  right then, after such a long and sad day. She’d never imagined the marriage would remain unconsummated an entire year, that she would grow to feel so hurt and disappointed by his rejection.

The Targaryen cloak remained folded in the bottom of a trunk, where she ran no risk of coming across it by accident and being reminded of its frustrated promise.

“Sansa?”

She jolted back to him with an uncertain smile. “Oh, sorry, I was lost in the perfume of the roses. It’s lovely, you know, although you needn’t have given me anything.”

Jon’s brow creased. “Of course not, but I’d like to return your gesture. The jonquils you sent me have brightened my confinement considerably.”

“I am glad of it,” Sansa said, voice thin. She’d brought a book with her today, to amuse him with, but suddenly she could not face opening it. With her mind so disordered by memories of their wedding day, she knew she had not the focus to tell of the accomplishments of brave knights.

Brave knights, like the ones she had once dreamed of; brave knights like her husband.

“Forgive me,” she said. “I have just remembered an urgent correspondence I must attend to. I will check on you again later.”

Abruptly, she pulled herself up and fled the chamber. She dared not look back at the bed where he lay, maybe looking after her in confusion, maybe even in hurt.

“Lady Snow!” Mya exclaimed as she breezed past her.

Sansa ignored her, unable to tell her maid that she was no Lady Snow, nor ever would be.

Had Eddard Stark not promised his daughter a husband who was brave, and gentle, and strong? And did she not have such a husband, a prince of the realm to boot, everything her childish dreams could have imagined?

She’d realised long ago that no man would marry her out of love. She’d thought that fine enough, truly, as long as it was an honourable man she pledged to. Only, she hadn’t accounted the lack of loving might turn out only one-sided.

On the low table by the window of her solar sat the crystal vase of winter roses, their rich blue blooms illuminated by the afternoon sunlight. It was hard to imagine that merely a half-hour past she had been filled with jubilation at receiving them, like a gift from a suitor.

Her days of suitors were past. She was a woman married, alone at the top of the world. She'd not gotten what she'd expected, what she wanted, but she knew well there were worse things to have.

It would not do to dwell on her own unhappiness. She was Lady of Winterfell, Lord Eddard Stark’s daughter. She knew her duty.

Sansa sat at her writing desk and set to work.

Chapter Text

“Lady Snow?” Dr. Tybald called from the door to her solar. “May I have a word?”

Sansa steeled herself for another tedious update. Why couldn’t he have let a servant fetch her, to give her more time to prepare herself? Or, better yet, left his message with Jory and left her alone entirely?

But, after all, it was her responsibility. She hadn’t been raised to shirk it simply because she found him an unpleasant man.

If the worst of her troubles were conversations with unpleasant men, she’d have had quite a nice life. “Would you like a cup of tea, Doctor?”

“That would be quite nice, my lady, thank you.” 

So it was not to be a brief visit, then. Sansa nodded to Lew, who had trailed behind Tybald and was lingering in the doorway.

Lew returned her nod and disappeared.

“I do hope you won’t mind the disturbance, my lady, but there are some matters I must discuss with you.”

An unwelcome jolt of panic lanced through her heart. “Is Jon… that is, Lord Snow isn’t…”

Tybald’s grave face rearranged itself into a patronising smile. “Lord Snow’s condition is progressing most satisfactorily, Lady Snow, and I don’t see any reason to fear on that score so long as he continues to heed my advice. In fact, that was one of the subjects I wished to speak about with you.”

Sansa’s relief tempered itself with foreboding. “Do have a seat, Dr. Tybald,” she said, with a collected coolness she had learned from her mother.

Tybald lowered himself to the settee across from her, looking extremely out of place against its floral fabric. “His Lordship has improved to the point that he may be permitted to leave his bed, provided he does not overtax himself. It is still imperative that he dedicate his time to rest and recovery, keep warm, and return to bed at the first sign of fatigue.” 

Lew presented himself at their side with a tea tray. 

“It is essential, my lady— one sugar will do me, boy— that His Lordship remain unbothered with matters of business.” Tybald raised his eyes to her, apparently confident that her footman would not ruin his cup of tea. “You understand, of course, with how precarious his health has been, the necessity of insulating him a bit longer.”

 “As I have been,” Sansa murmured. She accepted her own teacup. “Thank you, Lew.”

“My lady,” Lew replied. He bowed and left.

“Which brings me to another matter,” Tybald continued. He sipped his tea, then grimaced as though it displeased him in some way. “If you’ll permit me to say so, I have a number of contacts who might be of some assistance with business matters. I could pass along your urgent requests and I am certain we could have someone on hand by mid-week at the latest.”

Sansa inclined her head. “Pardon my confusion, Doctor, but I fail to understand why I should require outside assistance.”

“I thought you might welcome the chance to return to your normal state, freed from the burdens of Wardship.”

Her normal state of indolence, boredom, and loneliness? “Do not misunderstand me, Doctor, I am grateful for your generosity and wisdom. But I confess myself vain enough in my accomplishments to consider myself perfectly able to continue on as I have done, aided by the usual Northern agents. If you have some particular reason for your concern, I of course encourage you to bring it to my attention. Otherwise, I assure you I have the best of support and every capability of enduring the interim. Unless there are troubles of which I was not aware?” 

Tybald shifted in his seat. “Nothing of the sort. Do not distress yourself, my lady. Only you must see it’s rather improper.”

She felt her eyebrows lift in response. “Improper? It is through my inheritance and title that my husband rules in the North, and I have as much right as he to oversee it.”

“I mean no offense, my lady,” Tybald said. “Yours is a great house and a great name, one which we Northmen are very glad to see restored. It’s only that as a woman you’ve other things to think of. There’s your own health, of course, and that of your future children. You would be most grieved, I think, to find your family line imperiled by overwork.”

“Let me be frank.” Sansa set down her teacup. “I do desire there to be no further miscommunication between us. My lady mother raised five strong children. I am not with child or otherwise infirm. The instant I should find my family line imperiled— as you say— I should be all too glad to surrender outside responsibilities, but in the meantime it is no one’s place but mine to decide what duties I am and am not able to perform.”

“For a woman— that is, a fine lady— to be so involved in matters of governance disrupts her domestic life. At a time when your husband needs you home above all—”

“Should you disbelieve that women are capable of rule, you may feel free to write to our Queen— herself a woman, lest you forget— in challenge,” Sansa interrupted. “Until you do, kindly consider yourself welcome to refrain from addressing me on this subject.” She rang the bell and rose from her chair. “Terribly sorry, of course, but I have recalled an urgent engagement. Please do allow my maid to see you out.”

Tybald stood as well. “Of course, my lady. I do hope I have not caused offense. I meant only to safeguard your own well-being and that of the realm.”

“Quite.” Sansa pressed her lips together.

When she heard his footsteps retreat, led by Mya to the front door, Sansa burst from her solar and tore down the hall in the opposite direction.

“My lady!” Lew exclaimed in surprise, stepping out of her path as she stormed toward the back stairs and exit toward the rear of the house.

“Do not allow that man in my presence until further notice,” Sansa snarled as she passed.

In times of strain, her normally reserved father had retreated to the godswood. Perhaps that was why Sansa felt herself drawn there. The sight of the weirwood heart tree, tall and beautiful, did not bring her an instant calm. For a long while, she paced before it, treading paths into the snow.

“Sansa? Whatever is the matter?”

She looked up to find Jon, dark against the snowbanks, looking at her in concern.

“That— that hideous man,” she fumed, “dared to offer to take over management of the North. For my well-being , because clearly a woman has no business thinking or deciding matters outside her home.” 

“Sansa.”

She continued winding her circles in the snow. “As if I were some fainting maiden! Me, Lord Eddard Stark’s daughter, blood of Winterfell! As if I have not been managing the estate this past week and more, quite ably in fact!”

“Sansa, I know.”

She halted in her steps and turned to face him.

Jon looked gloomy and troubled, but not unkind. He took a step toward her. “I’ve had nothing but good reports. Winterfell is yours. He never should have spoken to you that way, and I’ll make sure he knows it.”

“I already handled that bit, I’m afraid,” Sansa said. “He’ll think I’m deranged, now. I reminded myself of my sister.”

The corner of his mouth twitched upward in a half-smile. “Remember when Gendry used to tease her?”

“ I’m not a lady,” Sansa imitated, then laughed.

Jon stepped up to her and cupped her face in one large hand. “Sansa, you’re shivering.” He shrugged out of his coat and whipped it over her shoulders.

She’d run from the house without a thought for comfort. “So are you,” she said, brow creasing in a frown. Under the coat, he was wearing only a nightshirt. She slid his coat back into his arms. “You shouldn’t be without a coat. You shouldn’t be out here at all.”

He started to make a reply to her, but was cut off by a strong fit of coughing.

Sansa laid her hands on his chest. “If we have to send for Dr. Tybald now, I’ll never hear the end of it.” 

He choked out a laugh between coughs.

The wool of his shirt was warmed by his skin underneath, but not so warm she forgot the biting chill in the air. What foolishness, to follow her into the snow when he’d been so near to pneumonia not one week ago. He’d been cleared from bed rest only this morning and had no business being out of doors to begin with. She had to get him warm, soon and properly, or the cold could undo days of healing.

“I have an idea,” she whispered. “Come with me.” She took Jon’s hand— dry, rough— in her own and pulled him back toward the house.

She didn’t lead him into the house, though, instead heading to a small outbuilding. It was nearly as old as the house itself, though it looked older because the level of maintenance given to the house had not been afforded to it. Inside the building was a set of thick stone stairs leading into the earth.

It was dark down the way, but the lanterns at the top of the stairs were lit, so Sansa released Jon’s hand to grab one to light their way. 

“Step with care,” she said. “The stairs are somewhat eccentric.”

Jon leaned away from her to cough into his shoulder. When the coughs ended, he did not resume progress, instead resting against the moist wall.

Sansa slowed, then halted when she realised he needed a break. “Are you all right?” He oughtn’t press against the wall, she thought. This high up the stone would remain rather cool, and the object of the exercise was to warm him.

He nodded roughly. “Why are we going to the cellar?” He panted, then took another step. 

“We aren’t,” she said. “Haven’t you been down here?”

He shook his head in much the same ragged fashion, still too short of breath to both walk and answer her questions. “Not crypts?”

Sansa turned to face the rest of the stairs, holding her lantern high. “We’re on the wrong side of the castle for crypts.” But he knew that, of course. His mother was interred in the crypts. “You’ve heard, I suppose, that Winterfell was built atop a hot spring? Bran the Builder was quite ingenious; the convection keeps the house quite warm, even in the depths of winter. Other keeps in the North are not half so comfortable.”

She felt her way down another stair. “What most don’t know is that Bran left us access to the springs. Private baths were quite in fashion then, as I understand. The family has kept this one for our own use.”

“Do you?” Jon croaked. “Use it?”

“Not much,” she said. “Not in years, anyway. But it seems rather the ticket today, don’t you think?”

The final step was steeper than she expected, and she felt the jolt of lightness in her belly that precedes a fall.

But the fall did not come, stopped by a firm hand grasping her arm and steadying her.

“Tread carefully,” Jon said. “I’d hate to think of your twisting an ankle down here. I don’t think I’m quite fit to carry you back home.”

Sansa was grateful for the low light to hide her blush. 

“Did I hurt you?”

“No,” she said. “Stay there, I’m going to start some lights.”

Down here, the air was hot and humid, a welcome change from the harsh cold outside. Sansa lit the torches mounted on the walls of the cavern. It was a small cove, compared to the rest of the hot springs where they extended under the house, but still large enough for a thriving family to take the waters together. With only two, it had a sacred, hollow feel.

Jon coughed again, the sound already changed by the change in air. Yet still he shivered, as she could see by the torchlight. 

“If you’d like, you ought to get in the water,” Sansa told him. “You’ll warm much faster that way. It’s rumoured to have quite powerful health benefits as well, although I do not pretend to a medical education.”

He frowned. “Won’t it burn?”

She laughed. It echoed off the walls. “No, no, up under the castle the temperatures are much higher, but at this level it’s quite safe.”

Jon fingered the ties of his nightshirt. “I suppose I ought…”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Sansa busied herself in the corner, keeping her back turned to hide from his undressing, until she heard him enter the water. 

She hadn’t realised he was in pain until she saw the tension melt from his features with the heat of the water. The thought gave her a pang— illness or an old wound had been troubling him in the cold and he hadn’t complained of his own discomfort, only considered hers. 

“Aren’t you going to come too?”

Sansa shook her head. The thought hadn’t occurred to her, but it was altogether ridiculous. Herself, sharing a bath with Jon Targaryen… “It’s much more trouble for ladies to get undressed,” she said playfully.

But Jon was not so easily dismissed. “You were in the cold longer than I was.”

“I am not ill.” But she found herself thinking of it, all the same. 

“Think of yourself this once, Sansa,” Jon said, stirring the water as he moved closer to the bank where she stood.

“Oh, all right,” she said. “If you’re going to be stubborn about it, I suppose I’ve no choice.” Her dress came off easily enough, and she folded it neatly in the corner before stripping her shoes and stockings. The stays, however…

A corset was an inconvenient item to have to replace. She could not get it wet. But she did not usually take it off herself, especially not with fingers still fumbling from cold.

“Here, let me.” His voice was closer than she expected, and she was surprised to find he had not genteelly turned his back. Instead, he advanced, his deft fingers tugging on the lacing until she was able to wiggle free. 

Sansa resisted the urge to contemplate where he might have learned that trick, and who from. “Thank you.”

And so she was in only her chemise. With a man. 

She immersed herself in the water more quickly than was her usual wont, only to cover her nakedness. She could feel her hair, already windswept from her jaunt to the godswood, curling at the temples; although it tended more to slight waves than true curls, in steam it always formed tight ringlets in a halo around her face. 

Jon coughed harshly, the effort reddening his face. It sounded less tight than it had in the godswood, but she didn’t know enough to tell if that was good or bad. 

“Is the damp irritating your cough?” she asked. 

He shook his head, still coughing. When at last he stopped long enough to clear his throat, he said “Steam is beneficial. At the worst of it, Jory always had a kettle on to help me breathe. It’s the sudden change of temperature that’s done it, but it won’t hold.”

Sure enough, after a few minutes he was coughing less; though he was visibly exhausted by the effort, his breathing was better.

“Sometimes it’s like I forget you grew up here.” Jon said, interrupting the silence. “I’d wanted it to be my home for so long, but you’ve got it all memorised. It would take me a lifetime to catch up.”

“You’ll learn its secrets. Lords of Winterfell always do.” Sansa attempted to smooth an errant hair, but it resisted her attentions. “You are a Stark, after all.”

“Not as much of one as you,” he said, but there was half a smile on his face. “That’s the first I’ve seen you in the godswood.” 

“It hasn’t been my habit,” Sansa admitted. “Mother raised us to the faith of the Seven, but Father never gave up the old ways. There’s a value in that.”

“You’re not the only Stark as thinks so,” Jon said.

It wasn’t, in itself, highly unusual for a highborn second son to go into religious life, although the old faith had not been fashionable in quite some time. But everyone had expected Bran to marry Howland Reed’s daughter, especially once Robb had been killed, so his decision to abdicate Winterfell and enter a monastery had been rather unexpected. Still, it seemed to suit him. Sansa’s letters from Bran these days were often more mystical than fraternal. 

“You keep the old ways,” Sansa observed.

Jon nodded. “I kept to the faith of my mother, as you did to yours.” 

“I’ve found myself less inclined of late to septs.” She’d seen evidence of neither miracles nor divine grace, in the years of the war. 

He shifted, but the water obscured his movements. “The godswood is the Stark way. I’m glad you’ve found your way to it.”

Sansa looked down at the surface of the water, the reflection of the torchlight and the steam rising off it. “I don’t know if I really believe in it, either, but… it’s peaceful there.”

“Beautiful,” Jon agreed. 

Sansa darted her eyes to his face and found him looking directly at her.

“I used to think you were like a sept,” Jon said. “A tame and constructed beauty. But you’re not, are you? You're like a godswood. White and red, tall and wild.”

“You’re not making sense.” Sansa saw a flush spreading across cheeks dotted here and there with sweat. Following this observation to its logical conclusion, she closed the gap between them and laid her hand against his forehead. She felt the tough ridge of his scar, and around that— the heat. “Time to get you back into bed, I think. I’m afraid we may have raised your temperature too thoroughly.”

She pulled herself from the water first, conscious of the way her wet chemise clung to her every curve. She’d never been so naked before a man, not even when Joffrey had had her whipped.

Jon followed, and she momentarily forgot her own state of undress on seeing his. No one could fault her husband for his physical construction. Scars or no scars, his broad shoulders and toned hips gave her altogether too much skin from which to avert her gaze. He’d worn his smallclothes into the spring, thank goodness, but even so very little was left to her imagination, which was all too eager to fill it in.

It was both a disappointment and a relief when he pulled his woolen nightshirt back over himself. 

“Take my coat this time,” he rasped. “You can’t go out like that.”

“We’re not going back out,” Sansa said, but she took the coat to cover herself. It would be far more trouble to do up all her laces and buttons, and Jon needed to be returned to his rooms as soon as possible. “There’s a staircase back into the house from beneath.”

She led him through the winding tunnels she’d known since infancy, up the basement stairs and into the house. His eyes drooping half-closed with weariness and his cough returning the further they retreated from the steam, Jon let himself be pulled along. 

Poor Jory nearly perished of shock upon seeing them, dripping and half-dressed, in the hall. 

“Get His Lordship some fresh clothes, please,” Sansa instructed, handing Jon off to his valet. “Some tea wouldn’t go amiss, either, I should think. I’ve got to get myself tidied and I’ll have his coat returned promptly.”

She whirled off, holding her head high despite her circumstances. It was a skill she’d had many opportunities to practice. 

She did not allow herself to turn around to see if Jon was watching her go. 

Chapter Text

Sansa rose late and did not attend to her business correspondence until after luncheon. After two days, the air of her solar was thoroughly perfumed with the fragrance of blue winter roses. The blooms themselves remained proud and beautiful on her sitting table, and she admired them a long moment before she sat down to her writing desk.

Most of the letters that had arrived that morning were addressed to Sansa directly, rather than being rerouted from her husband’s correspondence, but hardly differed in tone from the ones she’d originally taken over. She worked diligently, answering them in kind— yes to construction of a new granary, no to decreased crop acreage to accommodate livestock husbandry, yes to an employment programme for free folk on the farms, no to harvesting the old-growth forest for lumber, perhaps next year to a summer victory festival. By the time she was interrupted by a knock at her door, her fingers were stained with ink and she’d achieved a spirit of confidence and achievement.

“Is it time for tea already?” she asked, but knew that was not the purpose of the knock when she looked up to see Jory standing there.

“No— well, yes, as it happens, the hour has gotten rather late, but—” Jory took a moment to compose himself before continuing. “His Lordship is asking to see you, ma’am.”

Sansa stood from her desk almost without realising it. “Is he well?” She’d passed by his rooms that morning, only to be told by the valet that Jon was resting; he’d been unwell in the night following his overexertion in the godswood and was not yet returned to his former state of moderate ill health. Jory had assured her it was not as bad as before, exhaustion and mild discomfort only, but the pinched look to his face had given her reason for worry.

His pause before answering gave her more. “Yes,” he said, sounding uncertain. “He’s still fevered, but he’s lucid and he took some tea this afternoon. I don’t think there’s any cause to telephone Dr. Tybald.”

Her lips pressed together. That was a call she’d prefer to avoid, if at all possible.

“Thank you, Jory,” she said at last. “I’ll go down at once. Would you let a footman know these letters are ready to go in the post?”

Jory nodded and she passed him out of her solar.

She found Jon in an armchair by the fireplace in his room, blankets tucked firmly about him. There was a second armchair nearby, presumably for her— they had not been there when she had last been in this room, Saturday afternoon. She recognised the set from the drawing room, where they had not seen much use of late. Since her marriage and return to Winterfell, more rooms had been kept closed up than had been used. It was only the two of them, and it wasn’t as though there was much call for entertaining these days.

“Sansa,” he said. His voice was hoarse and his eyes tired but he smiled at her approaching figure. “Do forgive me, I’d stand to greet you like a gentleman but I rather think Jory would tackle me to the ground.”

“He’s taking his duty quite seriously,” Sansa agreed amiably, sweeping her skirts aside to take her seat across from him. “How are you?”

“Better than some.” The firelight caressed his features, highlighting his strange masculine beauty. He was lovely, her husband. The only thing anyone could call a flaw to his face was the scar over one eye. Sansa didn’t mind it. She might have, once, but now it only reminded her of his strength of character, of the things he’d survived. She liked those things about him. Perhaps even loved them, in her quiet way.

She licked her lips. “You asked to see me?”

Jon hummed in agreement. “I only wanted to give you the opportunity to come. I heard you asked after me earlier.”

“Yes,” she breathed. The low light made the scene seem more intimate than usual, although she’d been in his room a dozen times with him in bed. Then yesterday, when they’d been all but naked and she’d felt the brush of his strong arm against her… “I wanted to see that you had recovered.” She felt her cheeks heating with the memory, and she glanced to the fire for an excuse to break from his examining grey stare.

“And how do you find me, Lady?”

She was saved from answering by Mya arriving with a tea tray. “My lord, my lady,” Mya curtseyed, setting it on the end table between them.

“Thank you,” Sansa said. Hadn’t Jory said Jon had had tea already this afternoon? Another cup certainly wouldn’t go amiss, whilst he sat convalescing by the fire, but the tray held cakes and sandwiches, as though it were set for teatime. She didn’t want the girl to feel badly, so she waited until Mya had left before she said to Jon “I believe there’s been a mistake. I haven’t asked for tea.”

“I asked for it,” Jon answered easily. “When I asked for you.”

A hot rush of pleasure washed over her. “That was very thoughtful.”

“They said you hadn’t eaten,” he said, picking up his cup of tea. “You’ve done so much for me, these past weeks. It seemed a way to give something to you.”

Sansa’s throat felt suddenly dry. She picked up her own cup of tea. It was her mother’s signature blend, lavender and vanilla with rose petals. The brew was gently fragrant and had a slight purple tinge from the blue winter roses. You gave me roses already, she thought, looking down into the cup. You can never give me what I want most . She inhaled the steam and took a small sip. The flavour of spiced orange peel rose first, hot and satisfying as summer; after she swallowed, the faintest hint of peppermint remained, cool and clean like winter.

“I had Cook make lemon cakes,” Jon added. 

Your favourite, he’d remembered, a decade and more after he would have heard it said. “Were you always so kind, and I simply didn’t realise it?” Sansa tried to joke, to make it a tease, but she feared she’d shown her heart too plainly with her words.

Thankfully, he chuckled. “No, no, fear not. If you thought me sullen and selfish and wild, you judged me right. I was a boy then, like other boys. I’ve learned to think of other things since.”

Thinking of other things was precisely Sansa’s trouble. “I’m afraid I couldn’t name your favourite cake,” she confessed.

“I don’t know if I have one,” he said. “Every aunt and cousin had their own menu, so I never got used to any one thing. Then, when I was at school, we only had sweets on festival days.”

And after that… During the war there wouldn’t have been cakes at all. Not where Jon Targaryen would have been. Sansa had lived through some horrible times in those years, but the royal court was a different thing to a battlefield, and she knew it.

“Lemon cakes are growing on me,” Jon said, and lifted one from the tray.

She followed suit.

They’d shared very few meals, over the course of their young marriage. There had been the wedding feast, of course, when Sansa had been too nervous to do more than pick at her plate. A handful of breakfasts and dinners when he’d been unable to think of a reason to be away from the house. Almost no luncheons at all.

So it was not so unusual that Sansa felt self-conscious about eating with him. She was grateful for the relative darkness, which disguised much of the awkwardness.

Still, she surprised herself with hunger. She’d been deep in her work for longer than she’d realised. With nothing to interrupt her, she found herself able to focus for significant periods.

“Thank you for arranging this,” Sansa said. “I wouldn’t have thought of it, but it’s been nice.”

“I did almost nothing,” Jon argued lightly, “which is all you’d let me do in any case. Besides, I can’t help but feel as though I owe you an apology.”

Sansa leaned forward, intent on his face. “Whatever for?”

“Yesterday,” he said, “in the spring. I’m afraid I might have behaved abominably toward you. If you felt at all pressured—”

“Nothing of the sort,” she interrupted.

“—all the same, I may have insisted overmuch. I wasn’t thinking clearly, else I’d have let you go fetch Jory and no need for you to stay, let alone take the waters. I’d hate to think of anyone else coercing you—”

“I wasn’t coerced,” Sansa said. “Far from it. If I hadn’t wanted to get in, I’d not have.” She stretched across the space between their chairs and laid a hand over his rough one. How would that hand feel, touching the skin of her body? It had been only a hair’s breadth from that, yesterday, separated by only a chemise. How unfathomably close they had come. How unfathomably far still to go. “Trust me.”

Jon gave her an uneasy smile. Then he put his other hand atop hers. “I trust you.”

Something about the air, still and quiet in the evening dim, or the weight of his hand on hers, encouraged whispering rather than full volume. “Then you must accept that there’s nothing to forgive about the spring. If you’re to apologise for anything, it ought to be going out in the first place, but I think you’ve suffered more than enough for that.”

Jon took her hand off his and lifted it to his lips. Then, he pressed the gentlest of kisses to the back of her hand.

His lips were dry and soft. Sansa tried both to memorise the feeling of them and to keep from imagining how they might feel elsewhere. She knew she must be failing at both.

“You smell sweet,” he murmured, “like honey.” He released her hand.

“In a cream,” she replied faintly. “To keep my skin soft. Our nanny insisted I cultivate the habit, and I’ve been glad of it this winter.” Like everything else, the winds were colder and harsher than they’d seemed in her youth.

“It’s working,” Jon said. “The cream, your hands, it’s— don’t give it up.”

“What would Nanny say?” Sansa laughed breathily, looking down at her hands in her lap. Keep soft and fair, Nanny had counseled, to please a husband someday . She'd kept soft, and fair. Was her husband pleased?

“My lord,” called Jory’s soft voice from the doorway. “Pardon me, but it’s nearly time for the staff to eat dinner, and I wondered if you’d like help preparing for bed before I went in?”

Was it so late? Had she been here so long? 

Jon was saying “I’m fine, Jory, you—” but stopped himself short when he saw Sansa get to her feet.

“Don’t be foolish,” she chided. “I’ve kept you late enough already. I’ll let you get to your rest.”

On the other side of the wall, in her own room, her pounding heart kept her from rest for several long, thoughtful hours yet.

Chapter Text

Sansa’s pulse beat in her throat. She often found herself occupied with strange thoughts that kept her from her sleep.

This was like, and unlike, those times. The way her body felt altogether too awake and overstimulated was familiar to her cycles of worry and overthinking. The precise nature of her thoughts, however, was… peculiar.

Or, not so peculiar as all that. There had been a time, hadn’t there, when it had been rather common for a girl’s head to turn over a well-made man, and Sansa’s no less than most? It was long ago, to be sure, and she’d been young, but not too young to know the taste of desire, the warm weight of it in her belly.

The very weight she was feeling now.

Her mind’s eye lingered on the sight of her husband’s broad shoulders in his smallclothes. The intensity of his gaze upon her as he’d taken her hand. The dark, inviting gap between his full lips…

Sansa closed her eyes to see more clearly.

Her skin, oversensitive in its heightened state, tingled with the ghost of the kisses she imagined coming from those lips. They’d be soft, she knew, gentle rather than demanding. First on her mouth, which had waited so long, and then down her long neck. His hands would be warm and grounding on her hips, or wound in her hair…

She turned over onto her back and ran a hand down her side, around her leg and under, to the most private part of herself, the one which was only hers.

Septa Mordane had told her that ladies never touched, not in this way. It was the one instruction Sansa had disobeyed. It was only natural, if she was to save herself for marriage, to take pleasure from herself in the meantime. Wouldn’t her lord husband love her better, she’d reasoned, if she had practised at enjoying the act?

Practise she had done, all the while protecting her virtue such that only she had access to this domain. But she wouldn’t will it only to herself. Not anymore.

Her other hand rose to stroke her breast, which gave her gratification only as she imagined another hand doing it for her.

She could imagine it all too well.

Sansa bit her lower lip as the hand between her legs caressed forth a satisfying wave that rippled through her. Though there was sweat at the back of her neck under her thick hair, her exposed skin prickled with goosebumps.

Like her skin would prickle against his stubble, were he not freshly shaven.

Sansa, he would breathe, into the close and sacred space between them. I love you.

Her breath escaped her in a throaty gasp. “I love you,” she breathed back, as she crested into the height of her pleasure.

Only afterward, with her coppery hair spread across the pillow, did she move from panting with exertion to a gentle rest, tiny beads of sweat still glistening on her face.

Chapter Text

Sansa dressed for the audiences in a grey dress with pink lace trim. It flattered her complexion and honoured her Stark heritage, two factors which deserved every consideration she could give them on the rare occasion she left the castle.

She found herself with a combination of excitement and nervousness that turned her stomach away from all but the lightest of meals. When the time came to take the car into town, though, Sansa was able to give Tollett a warmer smile than she ever had.

The hall was filled with more smallfolk than there had been last week, though she wasn’t any later in arriving.

“Lady Snow,” a tall golden-haired man greeted her with a warm smile. “It is an honour to serve you. I have taken the liberty of organising the names of the attendees in order of arrival.”

Sansa eyed him. He was good-looking, as these things go. In times past, she might have become fond of the sight of him. She was beyond the allure of golden hair these days. “And you are?”

“Alyn Blackwood, my lady,” he said with a bow.

“Thank you, Mr. Blackwood.” She gave an answering nod. “You can give your list to my man at the door.”

He gave her a canny look but rather than saying anything only nodded his head tightly.

The first to appear before her was a young woman within a handful of years of her own age. “Amber Stane, my lady,” she said, curtsying clumsily. “I am most pleased to have the opportunity to make your acquaintance.”

“Speak your case, Miss Stane.”

Miss Stane clasped her hands before her. “I had hope that Your Ladyship might assist me in finding work.” The toe of her boot rubbed along the floor in a self-conscious attempt to obscure a scuff. Had she a mother like Sansa’s, she might have been cautioned against such fidgeting, which only drew attention to a scuff Sansa wasn’t likely to have noticed otherwise.

“What kind of work would that be?”

“Oh, I’d be grateful for any, Your Ladyship,” Miss Stane said, but her eyebrows pinched together in the center of her brow in a way that told this to be a lie. “I was trained in the medical arts, but it appears that folk in these parts mistrust a lady doctor.”

Dr. Stane, then. Sansa lifted her own brows. “Have you spoken with the local doctor?” There ought to be more than enough cases to support a second doctor, but this was the first Sansa was hearing of Amber Stane.

“Yes, my lady.” The expression on Dr. Stane’s face told Sansa what she needed to know about how that conversation had gone. No wonder, with small-minded Tybald the only doctor in the parish since the end of the war.

“Tell me, Dr. Stane,” Sansa said, “what treatment you would recommend for a child with a broken leg?”

“It depends whether the break is in the lower leg or up in the thigh, my lady,” Amber answered readily. “Bonesetting is more the area of a surgeon than a doctor, I’m afraid, but on the Skagosi islands we had less cause to specialise. The chief thing would be to ensure the leg is stabilised and rested fully. Children mend quickly, so it’s usually only a few weeks before they’re back on their feet.”

“A cough?” Sansa asked.

“Belladonna,” she answered immediately. “I’d give a mustard plaster if the family insists, but they’re getting to be rather old-fashioned and, I think, rather more mess than help, truth to tell.”

Sansa considered her for a long moment.

“Leave your information with my man,” she said. “I’d like to send for you one day soon. If I’m pleased with what I find, you can expect word to spread.”

Amber Stane gave a smile filled with surprise and empty of guile. “Thank you, Your Ladyship.”

The next petitioner wished for permission to fish in a local creek that cut through his property, the one after that to rebuild a neglected bridge that was on a neighboring vacant plot. Sansa said yes to nearly everyone, offering aid where appropriate. She denied only one request she deemed foolhardy, a proposal to pave a new road across a swath of farmland, and asked for more time to consider the pleas of two others.

At last, a farmer of middling height and a broad, friendly face approached. “Eddy Peat, my lady.”

“Welcome, Mr. Peat. What have you come to say?”

“Well,” Mr. Peat said, shuffling awkwardly. “I haven’t a favour to ask so much as something to show you. If you’d permit me—” his eyes darted to her face, then away again— “I’d like to lead you out of the hall.”

It was most unusual, but Tollett would be there, and Mr. Blackwood too. She did not think Mr. Peat wished her any harm. “Of course.” She stood. “Lead the way, Mr. Peat.”

Tollett trailed her like an uneasy bodyguard. She’d had a guard, once, as the fiance of Prince Joffrey, but that seemed to have been as much about politics as her own safety. Even as Lady Snow, one heartbeat away from the throne of Westeros, there didn’t seem to be much need. Not at Winterfell.

Her instincts proved correct when Mr. Peat led her not to an attempt at assassination or kidnapping but to a cart, beside which stood a young boy.

“My son, Robie,” Mr. Peat introduced. “He stayed here to guard them. We wanted to offer Your Ladyship your pick of the litter, if you’d be inclined.” He looked up at her with shining eyes. “Your father got pups from my father, when you were only a small thing— beg your pardon, my lady. Yours is a name I’d not thought to hear in these parts again, so it would be the greatest honour of my life to gift you any dog you’d like.”

Sansa reached a hand toward the puppies in the cart. They rolled over one another, squealing and licking. Their fur was soft and curly, ranging in colour from pale grey to nearly black. “Wolfhounds?”

“Pure bloodline, my lady,” Mr. Peat confirmed. “Pride of the county, our dogs are. People send from as far away as the Stormlands for one of my pups.”

She rubbed the ear of one of the puppies, a small dark grey one who’d gotten stuck near the back of the cart. “It’s very generous of you to offer, Mr. Peat, but I don’t want to endanger your livelihood. I’d be happy to pay.”

But Peat was already shaking his head. “No, Your Ladyship, please. Lord Stark was good to my father. Knowing you and the dog were happy together would be its own reward for me. If you’d like to pay me, you need only mention my name to any visitors who admire your dog.”

Sansa blinked back tears. “This one,” she said softly.

“She’s a small’un,” Robie Peat said sceptically.

“You heard Her Ladyship,” Mr. Peat admonished his son. “Take her man the one she’s asked for.”

“I’ll take her myself,” Sansa said, extending her arms. The puppy settled into her embrace, nuzzling her cheek. It had been so long since she’d held another living creature this close. “Thank you, Mr. Peat.”

She carried the puppy back to the car. Before getting in, she turned to Mr. Blackwood. “Nothing for you to ask today, then?”

Blackwood looked down bashfully, then up at her from under his mop of gold hair. “No, my lady. I only came to see if I could be any help. And to see if you were as beautiful as they say.”

Sansa’s mouth opened, then she closed it and climbed into the car.

Ned Stark had brought his children five puppies one autumn, one to be a special pet to each. He had been insistent they name their own pets, feed them, play with them, sleep with them, take the training of the dogs in their own hands. It had had predictable result; Rickon’s and Arya’s dogs had been half-wild by the time they were full-grown, Robb’s an energetic and aggressive hunting dog, Bran’s quiet and strange. Sansa’s pup had grown up best-behaved of all. Lady. A polite and dainty creature, content to sit at her feet as she sewed. Another casualty of war.

She took her new puppy straight to Lord Snow’s chambers.

“Sansa,” Jon exclaimed. “I didn’t expect you.”

It was late, and he was dressed for bed.

“You like dogs,” Sansa blurted. “You had a dog, when we were young.”

“Ghost,” Jon said. “I had an uncle on the Targaryen side who was fond of Samoyeds. He always claimed Ghost was sired by a wolf who got into the pens. Why? What have you got?”

Sansa loosened her arms and let the puppy peek toward her husband. “One of the farmers has a pedigreed line of wolfhounds and he offered me— offered us— one of the litter. I ought to have spoken with you before accepting but I’m afraid I got a bit overwhelmed in the moment and—”

Jon stepped closer to her. “Aw, aren’t you a beauty?” he cooed to the squirming dog in her arms. “May I?”

Not trusting herself to speak without babbling more, she nodded and surrendered the puppy.

Jon lifted the dog from her arms and sank into a chair by his fire. He looked her over, trading pets and encouraging words for yelps and licks. “Yes, you’re an excellent girl, aren’t you?” Then, to Sansa’s surprise, he released the puppy onto the floor of his room. “Have you thought of a name for her?”

“You’re not— you’re not upset with me for bringing her home?”

His eyes— nearly the same colour as the puppy’s fur— grew soft as he looked up at his wife. “Of course not, Sansa. The Starks have always kept wolfhounds at Winterfell and she’ll be a wonderful companion for you. Honestly, I wish I’d thought of it sooner.”

Her relief that he wanted to keep the dog mingled with a sense of dread at his wording. A wonderful companion for you, he’d said. She’d be needing a companion soon, when he was well enough to travel and went back to leaving her alone at home for weeks at a time. “I haven’t come up with a name,” she said. “I wanted to see if you’d agree to keep her first.”

One corner of his mouth twitched into a crooked half-smile. “We’ll have to come up with some names, then.”

Sansa’s misgivings vanished as her stomach turned over in butterflies. We’ll have to come up with some names was something a husband might say to a wife, a real husband to a real wife. Sansa could not ignore that she wished herself a wife in truth, with more cause to talk over names than a new puppy.

But a puppy would do for a start.

“Hello, sweetling,” she called, tapping her hand on her leg to draw the pup’s attention. “We’ve got to leave His Lordship for the night, but I promise we can come back tomorrow.” She raised her gaze to his. “Can I promise her that?”

The half-smile grew. “You can.” Jon leaned over the side of his chair and scooped the puppy up in one capable hand. “Here you go, back to Sansa,” he soothed. “It’s time for little puppies to be abed.”

“And great lords and ladies too, not far behind,” Sansa agreed. Her teeth pulled along her lower lip to slow the smile that threatened. But still she left the lord’s room, returning to her own and ringing for Mya.

She needed to find a place for the puppy to sleep.

Chapter Text

“Come on, sweetling,” Sansa cooed to the puppy trailing after her down the hall. “Let us pay a visit.”

It had been exceptionally difficult to focus on her work today, with a new puppy. But between giving puppy nuzzles and taking her outside to play, Sansa had managed to reply to most of the urgent letters in her pile. Governance, after all, was a duty that came before pleasure.

Her husband was tucked, blankets around him, in one of the new armchairs by his fire. The pale light from the window behind him mingled with the warm firelight to illuminate him from all angles. Her view of the table before him was obscured by the second chair, but whatever was on it had him so entranced that he did not notice her standing there. That gave her an opportunity to let her eyes linger on his neatly-combed dark curls, his full lips, his downcast grey eyes. How easily she could imagine him in thirty years, in his study, intent enough on his work that he could be distracted only by the sound of the—

The puppy ran past Sansa and waddled up to the base of Jon’s chair. 

“Hello, my beauty,” he cooed, reaching down to scratch under the dog’s chin. “And hello to you, too.” Those lips she has been admiring spread in a broad smile. 

Her own lips stretched to match it. “How are you?”

“Well enough,” Jon answered, “and yourself?”

“Well enough,” Sansa echoed. She stepped into the room. “What are you up to?”

Jon spread a hand to indicate the table before him, upon which was laid a cyvasse board. “I was re-enacting a famous match from the masters’ tournament of 290 AC, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten what came next. Do you play?”

She perched on the seat on the other side of the board. “I picked it up in the capital, but I’m unable to confess any great skill at it. Whose turn is it?”

“Mopatis was up.” After a moment, Jon added: “His were the white pieces.”

Sansa had not made any great study of past tournaments, but it seemed old Mopatis had been in a spot of trouble in 290. She examined the board in silence, applying her mind first to this piece, then that. Each move resulted in a check to the white side, usually within two moves from the black.

At long last, she spotted it. She drew a breath to speak, then paused to reconsider. Don’t be ridiculous , she told herself, and pushed the words from between her lips. “I think what I would do is move the last catapult two spaces left.”

Jon’s eyes flicked across the board, lingering on the piece she mentioned. Then he favoured her with a playful look. “Well?” he asked, gesturing toward the board. “Go on.”

She found her hand trembling a little as she reached to effect the move she’d envisioned. 

“Yes,” Jon sighed, gazing at the board. “Martell will have to sacrifice his dragon now, no way around it. Well done.”

Sansa felt her cheeks warm. “One move only.”

“A move that shows good strategy.” Jon removed the black dragon from the board. “What next?”

She pondered it, then made her move.

He returned with one of his own, taking one of her trebuchets. 

That put his elephant within reach of her dragon, and before long she had him in checkmate.

“I doubt this is how the tournament went,” Sansa said apologetically.

“Not exactly,” Jon answered, “but, then, I’m no Martell.”

His father had been meant to marry a Martell girl, before he’d taken Lyanna Stark instead. Sansa gave a gentle laugh. “Quite.”

“At Wall, the boys were always losing pieces. It was one of so few things to do on the long winter nights, we repurposed buttons and crumbs of bread to fill in.”

She found she could picture it: school boys in uniform, crowded around gaming tables between their extensive lessons and exhausting military drills. Though the circumstances of her own cyvasse instruction had been rather different, of course, they’d both come to the game as a means of survival.

“Princess Myrcella had a set of ivory and jade,” Sansa shared. “But Prince Tommen swallowed the ivory king, so we had to use a thimble when we played. The princess made me swear not to tell. Her mother could be terribly particular.”

“One way of putting it, I suppose.” Jon said, with an airy tone that belied the subject. “Did the Queen have a set of her own?”

She nodded. “Carnelian and lapis.”

Jon’s nose wrinkled. “A bit much.”

“Rather,” Sansa agreed.

The puppy had been chasing her shadow whilst they played, but, perhaps sensing a change in the energy of the room now that the spectre of Cersei Lannister had been conjured, she now sat at Jon’s feet and whined piteously. He bent and scooped her up.

“There, there, sweetling,” he murmured, scratching her silky ear. “Whatever’s the matter? Do you need some attention?”

Evidently, this was what she’d been asking for. She rolled over happily in his arms and licked his finger before closing her eyes in comfort.

Sansa found herself frowning. “We really shouldn’t get her into habits. Before long she’ll be too big for laps, not to mention the furniture.”

“All the more reason to spoil her while we can. It isn’t good to treat younglings too sternly.” Jon kept his face turned toward the dog while he spoke, rather than Sansa, and she could only guess what emotions drove his speech.

Yet she could see him very clearly in her memory: a shy, stiff-backed boy with impeccable table manners, a boy raised by a series of governesses rather than a mother, and sent to a notoriously rigorous boarding school at a young and tender age. For all she’d lost since, she’d had things much easier then, with the loving attention of Ned and Cat and an education that took place close to home.

Until it didn’t. But she hadn’t been sent away to King’s Landing. She’d wanted to go. The same, she suspected, could not be said of the boy her husband had been when he’d gone to school. Robb had said as much, at the end of the summer Jon had spent with their family. He’d all but begged their parents not to make Jon go. But it hadn’t been up to the Starks whether Jon Targaryen went back to Wall or not, and so he’d had to go.

“So long as you don’t blame me when she breaks your legs in six months,” Sansa chided gently. “I’ll have the training of her, but I can’t promise results if you’re going to undo my work.”

She did look rather sweet, curled in Jon’s lap like a slumbering potato.

Jon quirked one eyebrow at her. “If you’re half as clever with dogs as you are at cyvasse, I shouldn’t worry about your results.”

“Dr. Tybald has that well in hand,” Sansa quipped. “Which reminds me to ask— you wouldn’t mind transferring to another physician, would you?”

“Sansa, I would be ecstatic at the opportunity to drop that pompous blowhard. Yesterday he ordered me not to converse with you overmuch, because he thinks it taxing to us both.”

There was a time Sansa might have agreed with that assessment. But now she felt obliged to joke it away. “Well, you do tire easily these days.”

He fixed her with a pointed glare. “Your visits are the only keeping me sane in my confinement. If I had to abstain from your company as well, I fear I should go mad entirely.”

She bit her lip. Later , she promised herself. She could fixate on that later. “Then perhaps we can get a second opinion.”

“Did you have someone in mind?”

“I met a doctor at the audiences yesterday, in fact. New in town and looking for work.” Sansa swallowed, desperate not to appear anxious as she dropped the next detail. “A Dr. Stane. Dr. Amber Stane, actually, from the Skagosi Islands.”

His eyes lit up. “Yes, they train women in professions up there. I knew a woman, during the war— but that’s no matter. I’d be happy to meet with this Dr. Stane at her convenience.”

“For now, it might be best if you kept to your current doctor’s orders,” Sansa joked warmly. “You and the pup might share an afternoon nap. You’re looking quite tired.”

In truth, he looked good; his colour was returning to normal and he was barely coughing anymore. But he smiled back at her without challenge. “You don’t mind if I steal her for a bit?”

“How could I take her away now? I believe that’s a hanging offense. Have a good rest, sweetling” she said, bending to stroke the puppy’s head. "And you too.”

It was no great surprise to her that Jon Targaryen was progressive enough to support the concept of a woman doctor. Had he not played well with Arya as a child? Had he not written to the Citadel to petition for Gilly Tarly’s admission as a full student alongside her husband? But still, it was gratifying to have it laid out so plain. If only…

Who was the woman he’d known? Why had he stopped himself from telling her?

And was she really keeping him sane during his convalescence?

Chapter Text

“Excuse me, my lady,” Mya said, curtsying in the entry to the solar. “There’s someone to see you.”

Sansa set down her pen. “Did they present a card?”

Mya frowned. “No, my lady. She didn’t want me to say. She said— pardon me, your Ladyship— that she wanted to be a surprise.”

“Ah,” she sighed. “I suppose I’d best go down to be surprised, then.”

There were very few people with the audacity to turn up unannounced at a great residence like Winterfell, and fewer still whose wishes Lady Snow’s own maid might defer to over giving her a comprehensive report of her company. 

Sansa heard her visitor before she saw her, but once she rounded the bend in the staircase, she had an unobstructed view. Still in the main hall, in dusty travelling clothes, talking to the grey pup who had run ahead to investigate the disruption, there was her sister, now Lady Baratheon of Storm’s End. 

“You always did have a flair for the dramatic,” Sansa intoned from above. 

Arya looked up, shameless as ever. “I could say the same of you.”

Sansa spared one thought for the state of her dress— thankful to be in such a plain one today, if she was to ruin it— before rushing the rest of the way down the stairs to take her sister in a hug. 

Once she would have worried not only about cleanliness but about the absolute scandal of a highborn lady in breeches, but she’d seen enough at this point to be thankful for the simple pleasure of being reunited with her sister. Technically, she outranked Arya now, but they were both married to the scions of royal houses, and more importantly they were both born Starks. That counted for something in these parts. 

“Why didn’t you send word you were coming?” Sansa murmured into Arya’s hair. 

“It was a bit last-minute,” Arya confessed. “We were on our way west when I decided we should pop up and spend a night. Won’t be long, I should be out of your hair in the morning.”

We were on our way west. “Is Gendry with you?”

Arya rolled her eyes. “No, you’ll have to carry on your love affair with my husband over long distance. He had business to attend to, more’s the pity. But I do travel with a companion.”

The vagueness of that word companion was troubling. Sansa was wondering if it meant a wolf or a feral child, neither of which would be out of character for Arya, when footsteps from behind alerted her to the approach of someone large. She turned to find a face as familiar and welcome as her sister’s.

“Lady Snow, it is an honour and a joy to see you again,” greeted the bowed head of Brienne of Tarth.

Sansa barely waited for Brienne to straighten from her bow before embracing her as well. Brienne was not entirely the hugging type, and at first she remained somewhat stiff by instinct, but theirs was an acquaintance of too long and intimate an impact for the physical contact to be troublesome, and within an instant she had returned Sansa’s squeeze.

“You must be tired, and hungry.” Sansa straightened herself decorously. “I can have Cook put together a plate. I haven’t had time to have rooms prepared—”

“It’s all right, Sans,” Arya interrupted. “The worst luncheon and bed at Winterfell is bound to top the best of what we’ve seen on the road. You’re not entertaining the queen.” She paused. “Do you entertain the queen?”

“Merciful Mother, what a thought. Not as yet, although I suppose we might one day have the honour.”

“You are family now,” Arya grinned. “Speaking of which, is Jon at home or away?”

Of course, Arya couldn’t know. She’d likely passed their letters to her on the road, with no opportunity to hear the news from Winterfell.

“He’s upstairs,” Sansa said. “I’m afraid he’s been ill this last fortnight, and all travel plans had to be cancelled for the time being.”

Arya’s brow creased in concern for her friend, but it was Brienne who spoke. “Terribly sorry to hear of that, my lady. I do hope there’s no danger.”

“Thank you, Ser Brienne. He seems past the worst of it now, but is still confined to his rooms for the duration.” She hadn’t had to speak of it to anyone this whole time, and telling of it now dredged up the anxiety within her. She saw the same emotion on their faces, now, and hoped to put them at ease. “I’m sure he’d love to see you,” she told Arya. “There hasn’t been opportunity for visitors other than me up to now.”

If he’d been looking forward to the entertainment of Sansa, surely he’d be thrilled to receive Arya instead. He must be half-sick of Sansa by now, and Arya was the one who’d been his friend in childhood. She was, after all, the first person Sansa had seen in months who called her husband Jon .

A more polite and circumspect guest might have expressed worry over troubling an ill host— it was what Sansa would have done if their positions were reversed— but Arya had always been a more straightforward person. Hers was a worry best assuaged and expressed through contact.

Sansa had food put out (a cold luncheon, there being no time for a hot one of sufficient size to be prepared) and instructed the maids to have beds turned over in Arya’s old room and in the blue bedroom, as well as baths to be drawn. She changed her own dress to something clean, and endeavoured not to fixate upon the smudge of dirt on Arya’s cheek as they sat down to their repast. It had been the work of a lifetime learning not to needle one another, and Sansa wanted them to get on, even if Arya would only be here for one day.

She hadn’t done much entertaining of even so modest a stripe. As a child, she’d imagined her life as hostess of a great castle much more full of hospitality and merriment than it had turned out to be. As the upheaval of the war and the new queen’s coronation had settled, Sansa had found herself without much of a stomach for parties.

Yet perhaps she’d been wrong to shutter her social life entirely. Her marriage, lonely as it had been in its first year, had not needed to be a prison. Arya and Brienne, even quiet and subdued from their journey, were more society than Sansa had sought out in quite a while, and she found herself not merely tolerating but legitimately glad of their presence.

She’d last seen them both on the occasion of Arya’s marriage, which had taken place here at Winterfell, shortly after Jon and Sansa had taken residence. Still bewildered both by the end of the war and her continued maidenhood, Sansa had distracted herself from the husband that barely spoke to her with preparations for her sister’s wedding. It had been nearly as small an affair as Sansa’s own, for neither Arya nor Gendry were much for spectacle. Like Sansa’s, Arya’s gown and maiden cloak had been slapdash and hastily thrown-together, but otherwise the two events could not have been more dissimilar, for there had been a beauty to Arya’s wedding that had been absent the day Jon and Sansa took their vows. Standing before the heart tree, the bride and her groom had whispered and laughed amongst themselves, plain affection in their faces. Their hands had remained clasped for the whole of the ceremony.

Sansa had managed to smile at the wedding feast, but she had wept all night, filled with an aching craving for a love she’d never know.

Tho following day, as the newlywed Baratheons prepared to journey to their new home in the Stormlands, Sansa had asked her last favour of Brienne.

Brienne had been with her for over a year, having pledged in Lady Catelyn’s final moments to protect the Stark children. Bran and Arya had in the wind by then, Robb dead already, and Rickon— well, best not to dwell on what had happened to Rickon. So Sansa had become the focus of Brienne’s promise. She’d been guardian and confidante at a time when Sansa had had no one— even her maid had been murdered by the Lannisters— and Sansa would always feel grateful.

She can only guess what Cat had envisioned when she’d sent a knight of the realm on a quest to look for and after the remaining Starks. Likely, it was something like Sansa herself had imagined, when she had dared to hope: for them to be reunited once more, safe at home in Winterfell.

They’d had less than a week like that, in the end. Before long, Bran had headed off to the monastery, a path which pleased Queen Daenerys as well as himself, for it removed the Stark name from any future potential question of succession. He’d have no need of a guard there. With Arya on her way to be the Lady of Storm’s End and Sansa settled as the Lady of Winterfell, they were scattered across the map again.

Sansa did not delude herself that there had been any question as to which of Catelyn Stark’s daughters Brienne would have chosen to live with. She had spent months in pursuit of Sansa, even longer alongside her. A loyalty all their own had sprung up between them, irrespective of the connexion forged between them by Lady Catelyn. But of the Stark sisters, Arya had always chosen the thornier path. She’d be in more danger, in Southron lands, married to an heir who until recently had been a baseborn blacksmith. Though she knew Arya was capable of looking after herself, Sansa couldn’t rest easy without knowing there was someone loyal to the Stark line close to her sister.

So she had done what she’d had to do, and sent Brienne along with Arya and Gendry. Nothing bad could happen to Sansa at Winterfell, surrounded by loyal Stark bannermen. Still, it had been difficult to say goodbye to her champion at the same time as her sister, to watch as the last two people who had loved her mother rode away from her.

When the luncheon was cleared away, Brienne excused herself to to get settled in the blue room. Sansa expected Arya to do the same, but instead her sister turned her wide grey eyes to her in expectation.

“Well,” Arya demanded. “Will you take me to see Jon now?”

For a moment, Sansa forgot why she should have to escort Arya anywhere. After a childhood spent barrelling down halls and sneaking into chambers, Arya knew Winterfell at least as well as Sansa did. Then she remembered that she was the Lady of Winterfell now, and Jon’s wife. If there had been anything in the world Arya had respected (Sansa confessed she found this debatable) it had been the position of their parents as Lord and Lady, husband and wife. All the children had held their parents as sacred. It was just and natural for some of that authority to fall to Sansa now, however inaccurately the term wife might be when applied to her position.

“All right,” she said, swallowing the you don’t want to clean up first? which would only set Arya on edge. If Arya had wanted to clean up, she would have. 

It wouldn’t be detrimental to his health to bring Arya to him, would it? It was supposed to be dangerous to shock invalids. But he was hardly an invalid, a man of six-and-twenty well on his way to recovery and a return to his previously hale status? And Arya wasn’t a bad shock, surely?

“You’re fretting,” Arya observed as they climbed the stairs.

“No, I’m not.”

“You are, and don’t be cross. Is Jon so unwell as that?”

Sansa was unused to being so easily interpreted. Arya and she had been impenetrable to one another when they were young. But there was no one yet living who had known either of them so long as they’d known each other.

“Not anymore,” she said. “The first week was difficult, but I told you true that he’s on the mend now. Gaining in strength every day.”

Arya scowled. “You should have telephoned.”

“You were travelling.”

“You didn’t know that until this morning. Anyway, I was at home a fortnight past. I’d have come straight away. You didn’t need to deal with this alone.”

Didn’t she? 

“What would you have done if, gods forbid, he had died?”

“Don’t say such things!” Sansa found her voice pitched too high. “I’d have sent word if there had been true danger, but the doctor assured me time was all that was necessary.” Unlike so much of what Tybald had had to say, that prediction had thus far proven correct.

They proceeded in silence the rest of the way to the door outside the Lord’s chambers.

“Jon,” Sansa called from the door. Her hesitance to enter without permission had faded somewhat over the past two weeks, but she found herself reluctant to bring someone unexpected into his bedroom. “There’s someone to see you, if you’re up to receiving visitors.”

He looked up from the book in his lap and froze, transfixed by the sight of Lady Baratheon in her travelling outfit. “Arya,” he gasped. He rose to greet her, but began coughing as soon as he did so and halted, pressing a hand to his ribs.

Arya rushed to his side and pressed herself against him, part embrace and part pushing him back into his seat. “Absolutely do not get up on my account. You know I don’t give a fig about manners, and you sound terrible.”

The cough was sounding better than it had been, and coming on less and less, but Sansa once again remembered her resolve not to quarrel with her sister and did not say so.

“It isn’t so bad. I’m only sore from doing it days and days in a row,” Jon said. “What brings you up North?”

“Just stopping in on the way to Flint’s Finger,” she said, dropping into the chair opposite.

Jon’s brow furrowed. “It’s not really on the way, is it?”

“Well, it’s not far,” Arya answered, waving a hand. “I’d have come sooner if I’d known you were ill.”

“There was no need,” Jon told her. “Sansa had everything in hand.”

That wasn’t how it had felt at the time, but it gave her some satisfaction to hear it. “I’ll leave you to your visit,” Sansa said. “You must have so much to catch up on.” It wouldn’t do to have her in the way, the fussy elder sister and clingy wife who ruined all the fun.

Both husband and sister frowned at her, then started speaking.

“Sansa, don’t be ridiculous,” Arya argued.

“I’m sure that’s not necessary,” Jon said at the same time.

“I came here to see both of you,” Arya continued. “You’re family .”

“There are only two chairs,” Sansa observed. At their continued scrutiny, she added “...but I suppose I can fetch another.”

Arya nodded, looking smug and satisfied. Jon smiled a little.

It struck her, then, how alike they looked. She’d heard it said that Jon favoured his mother’s line, but it was only now that she saw how close the resemblance between her sister and husband. It could have been he who was siblings with Arya. Her eyes, though rounder, were the same grey. His hair was a shade or two darker but both could be called chocolate brown. Sansa and her brothers had taken after the Tully side of the family, leaving only Arya with their father’s features. Lyanna had had the Stark look, and it was this she had passed on to her son.

It was one thing to hear of it and another to see it for herself, how similar her two unlikeliest favourite people were. The fact of her family had been preordained by the gods. She had been primed to love him.  

She found Lew on the back stairs. “Forgive me for intruding,” she apologised. “I’ll need another chair brought to His Lordship’s rooms. It appears we are one short of what’s needed.”

Lew bowed. “At once, my lady. I’ll have one sent up from the study, to match the others.”

Sansa smiled. “Thank you, it’s most appreciated.”

She lingered in the hall while waiting for the chair to make its appearance. She knew she ought to go back in, but the thought of interrupting a private conversation between Jon and Arya gave her flutterings in her stomach. After all, their friendship with each other predated her friendships with either. She couldn’t begrudge them a moment, before forcing them to perform again before her. 

Two footmen appeared on the stair, hoisting a grand chair between them. It gave her some gratification that the furniture would match. Jon’s receiving room might be cobbled together, but at least it needn’t look it.

The chair preceded Sansa into the room, but even so she could hardly fail to notice the abrupt shift in mood at her approach. Where her husband and sister had been leaning toward one another, heads close, whispering, they pulled apart. 

“There you are! I’d begun to wonder if you’d run off.” Arya’s smile was wide and obviously false. She’d left the capital too soon to become adept at artifice. 

“Father taught us to keep our word.” Sansa took the new seat, placed between them facing the fire. “Thank you,” she told the servants as they bowed their exit. 

Jon looked tense and nervy. Sansa tried not to let her eyes stray to him. 

“I was just telling Jon he should be grateful it was you he married. Gendry is always saying I’ll never be domesticated. You’ve always been more interested in keeping house.”

As she sometimes did, Sansa felt a mild pang of criticism in what might be meant to be a compliment. Compared to her wild, free-wheeling sister, domestic Sansa was undoubtedly boring. Certainly she bored her husband. If not, he wouldn’t have been so assiduous in avoiding their home and her company. “I do try.”

Thankfully, Arya seemed oblivious to her insecurities. “I never realised it before I had my own, but Winterfell is an awful lot of house. So much to manage! It’s good you’ve got each other, you’ve the same kind of mind. I’m sure I’d go mad trying to do it.”

“Storm’s End isn’t a minor house,” Sansa said, “and you manage that.”

Arya laughed. “Gendry has the running of Storm’s End. I haven’t got the knack for detail like you have. I’ve got plans farther from home to see to, expeditions to the west and so forth. I just like knowing he’s there to come home to.” She turned to face Jon once more. “As you must, here.”

Sansa looked down at her lap, hoping her cheeks weren’t too pink to play off.

“Aye, Sansa’s made a nice home.” Jon’s voice was rough, and when she snuck a glance at him his eyes were on the fire instead of either woman.

She pressed her lips together to keep from smiling too widely. “I did have an advantage, living at Winterfell.”

Arya folded her hands behind her head and leaned back in her chair in a most unladylike manner. “I think Winterfell will always be home to me, no matter how many years I live as Lady of Storm’s End.”

“As it should be,” Jon said. “You’re a Stark of Winterfell. It will always belong to you.”

The click-click of paws on floor preceded a little yip as the dog waddled in.

“Here comes another lady of House Stark,” Jon said, and gestured with one hand to invite the puppy to come to him.

Sansa’s treacherous heart swelled with love for him, and she could not stop herself looking directly at him for the first time since her entrance behind the chair. 

That’s when she noticed the book he’d been reading before they came in. As he moved it to the table to accommodate his canine seatmate, she saw that it was the book of children’s tales, the ones she’d read to him last week. 

She looked away again quickly, but not so quickly she could be sure he had not seen her noticing. 

He’d been reading the stories. 

“Has she a name?” Arya asked, leaning forward to skritch the puppy’s ears.

“We only got her Tuesday.” It was embarrassing, truly, to be so behind.

“You’ll never train her without a name.”

“Sansa hasn’t decided yet,” Jon said. “I think it’s wise to wait until something feels right.”

Arya raised her eyebrows, but changed the subject.

Arya was a good companion, spinning stories of her travels and her misadventures with high society with equal frankness, utterly unconcerned with seeming silly or outrageous. She had also become— and this surprised Sansa, as only Arya had the ability to surprise her— a skilled impression artist, doing voices and faces of people they knew with such uncanny accuracy that Jon and Sansa both laughed with mirth. In return, they updated her on all the business of the estate, on which Arya was undisguisedly keen. She’d asked Jon a question or two, but the subject quickly turned to Sansa’s projects, and she thought Arya was soon looking at her with a spark of respect in her eye. 

“That’s the ticket,” Arya said when Sansa had finished explaining about the construction for the new granary. “The thaw is taking root, it’s an excellent time for building. And that way you can set more aside for lean times.”

“We’ve all seen too much not to prepare for lean times,” Sansa said. 

Arya took her hand. “Your wife,” she said to Jon, “is the smartest person I’ve ever met.”

“A real strategist of a cyvasse player, too,” he replied, taking Sansa’s other hand in his own. “If we’d had her around when we were making our battle plans, I expect we’d have won the war two years sooner.”

“At least,” Arya crowed. “Westeros is very lucky to have her in line for queen.”

“Careful,” Sansa chided. “Please don’t commit treason.”

“It’s not treason! It’s the truth.”

“That isn’t what treason means.”

“I don’t think it’s treason to praise the heir to throne,” Arya said. “I’m not conspiring to assassinate anyone.”

Sansa closed her eyes. “Please do not say the word assassinate in my presence.”

“There’s no guarantee we’ll inherit the throne,” Jon cautioned. “My aunt could easily outlive us all. But should it come down to it, I’m sure Sansa would do admirably.”

The thought of leaving Winterfell still turned Sansa’s stomach. “Let us call it a distant second choice to living out our lives in quiet obscurity.”

Both her hands were squeezed at that. 

The clock chimed. This on its own was not unusual, but by its continued chimes Sansa learned it had gone nine. “Goodness, is it so late?” 

“I suppose I got a bit carried away.” Arya’s mouth twisted as she let go of her sister’s hand. “I was so caught up in seeing you both.”

“There was no harm in it,” Jon said. “I daresay it did me good to spend the day in such pleasant company.”

“Dr. Tybald would not agree,” Sansa said.

Jon evidently appreciated her dark humour, for he laughed at that. Unfortunately, his lungs did not, and the laugh caught in his chest and became a cough. Though not so deep and troublesome as it had been, it still offered a reminder that he needed rest.

“My spirit, in any case,” he amended.

It was not without regret that she said “We should go.” She slid her hand from his and raised it to nudge his hair back from his face.

He caught at it and kissed her palm. “Good night, then, ladies. I’ll come down to see you off in the morning.”

“Wouldn’t have it another way, old chap,” Arya told him, clapping his shoulder with her hand. 

The puppy, wide awake after her nap, jumped down and toddled after them as they left.

“Oh, my lady,” Mya exclaimed as they exited. “Cook sent me to ask if you wanted her to continue holding dinner service.”

Sansa looked to Arya. Arya looked back.

“We’ll head down now,” Sansa told Mya.

“Ser Brienne said to tell you that she went up to bed early,” Mya said, trailing behind the ladies as they headed toward the dining room. “She didn’t want to interrupt your visit, so she left the message with me.”

“We did leave her frightfully on her own,” Sansa observed. “I ought to have checked on her while you sat with Jon.”

“You worry too much,” Arya said. “Brienne doesn’t mind being left alone. She’s writing a history of the war and I barely leave her any time to work on it.”

“I should put her in touch with Maester Tarly,” Sansa said. They rounded the corner into the dining room. “He has an interest in that topic, I believe. I’ll write them a letter of introduction.”

“Aces, Sans.” It wasn’t clear if Arya meant the letter or the spread on the dinner table. It was far from impressive by the standards of the capital or Lady Catelyn, but those who dined after nine were often easily pleased.

“I’m glad it gives you satisfaction.” Sansa squeezed her sister once more before moving to the far side of the table.

Arya’s face turned wistful in her wake. “What is that your hair smells of?” She sat at the table.

Sansa took an experimental sniff. She hadn’t applied any scent today. What strong-smelling thing might have rubbed off on her? They’d been together all evening, and before Arya’s arrival she’d spent the morning in her solar. “The roses,” she said. “Winter roses. Perfumiers have tried for centuries to capture it, but it only comes from the flowers themselves. I have some in my solar. Jon gave them to me.”

“Did he now,” Arya commented, slathering butter on a roll. “You know, I had some doubts when you were first married.”

“You never said!” Sansa spluttered in outraged surprise. It wasn’t like Arya to hold her tongue.

“Well, you were already married.” Arya shrugged. “It didn’t seem helpful to say anything when you’d already gone through with it. What purpose would that have served?” She bit off a large section of roll and chewed it quickly so she could swallow and get back to talking. “Anyway, I only brought it up so I could say I was wrong and you were right. Normally you love that.”

Sansa, making an effort to eat more daintily to avoid her mother’s imagined disapproval, could not respond. Likely this was for the best.

“I’d have taken it to my grave if I hadn’t been,” Arya continued. “But I can see there’s a true connexion between you.”

How curious. “What makes you think that?”

Arya tilted her head. “Nothing in particular. The way you are together. There’s a way about it. I don’t know how to describe it. Something like the fragrance of those roses maybe. Rich and sweet.”

“Perhaps we’re simply very convincing at our act,” Sansa said coolly, picking up her knife to tease chicken from the bone.

“No, I don’t think Jon’s any head for subterfuge,” Arya laughed, “though you may be.”

Sansa laughed. “I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or a criticism.”

“That’s for me to know,” Arya sing-songed, and popped an olive into her mouth.

Chapter Text

Early the next morning, after a quick breakfast consumed as the sun crested over the Northern hills, a small party gathered on the front lawn to see Arya and Brienne off. As the bags were loaded in the car, the ladies stood apart.

“You’re sure you don’t want me to stay?” Arya asked for what had to be at least the fifth time since last night. “I could postpone my appointment and help you run the estate.”

“I’ll always want you to stay,” Sansa assured her, “but it’s not required.”

Even with the puppy running in circles around their feet, the moment felt solemn, and Sansa was reminded of the last time she’d said goodbye to them, standing on this same drive as newlywed Arya and her freshly-acquired retainer departed for a new life.

“It’s been so wonderful to see you both again,” Sansa said, clasping one of each woman’s hands in her own as she had not dared to do on that previous occasion. “I do hope it won’t be the last visit of its kind.”

“Of course not, Sans,” Arya said, breaking their hand-hold to wrap her body around Sansa’s in a hug instead. “We are Starks of Winterfell, and it’s the pack that survives. I’ll always come when you need me. Always.”

Sansa had needed her; she simply had not known it. She hoped to recognise the feeling next time.

“It is a relief to see you so settled, my lady,” Ser Brienne said with a bow, “and a pleasure to have you as hostess. Should my duties bring me back by Winterfell, it would bring me great happiness.”

“Oh!” Sansa exclaimed, beckoning for Mya to come over to her. “That does remind me. I’ve composed a letter of introduction for you to Maester Samwell Tarly, a royal historian at the Citadel. He’s a school friend of Jo— of Lord Snow’s. Arya told me you’re working on a history of the war, and he might make a useful contact for you.”

The recent war of succession had an official name, as they always do, but it was scarcely used outside of books. Though there had been many wars in Westerosi history, in conversation there was only one which mattered enough to be the war .

“Thank you, my lady,” Brienne smiled her usual stiff smile. “I’d be much obliged.”

Jon was escorted by Jory from his rooms, well-bundled in a coat and scarf to guard against the chill that lingered despite the approach of spring. 

Arya barrelled into him with less gentleness than Sansa would have preferred, and Jon bent to kiss each of his goodsister’s cheeks. On a single aspect of appearance they held no resemblance to one another: he stood a head and a half taller than she, of a height with Sansa.

Arya’s hands clung for a moment to the lapels of Jon’s coat. “Now be a good boy, and remember what we talked of,” she said in a low tone before releasing him.

Jon’s cheeks may have pinkened at that, or perhaps it was just the wind. He wasn’t running a temperature anymore, at least not enough of one to flush.

Sansa pressed her lips together. In King’s Landing, under the tutelage of Cersei, she’d learned to watch for signs of intimacy to uncover secret lovers, signs of who might be relied upon and whose loyalties lay with whom. In those days, if she’d seen this—

But she knew her sister, and she trusted her husband. Arya loved Gendry with a characteristic ferocity and singlemindedness. She allowed the man to call her Arry, for goodness’ sake; she’d never cuckold him. And had Sansa not told Jeyne a fortnight past, when asked if her husband kept a mistress, that he would never dishonour her in that way? As she had come to know him better, that conviction had not wavered.

No, what she saw between her husband and sister was evidence of how deep and true the loyalty of love burned in them both, but it was not a romantic love. What she felt now was not the jealousy of a wife with an unfaithful husband, but that of a thwarted friend. How deep the ties were that bound him to his fellows— just not to her.

“Don’t look so melancholic,” Arya chastised her. “I’ll come and see you again before the year is out, and you’re always welcome at Storm’s End. Both of you are.” She craned up to kiss Sansa’s cheek. “Cheerio, darling.” Then she, too, had cause to bend over, to waggle her fingers before the pup. “Good-bye, little one.”

“All the best to you, Ser Brienne,” Jon said, nodding stiffly. “It’s an honour to host such a distinguished knight, and one to whom our family owes such a debt.”

They hadn’t fought together, Jon Targaryen and Brienne Tarth, but there was an air of brothers-in-arms to it. They had fought the same war, and both come out of it heroes.

“And to you, Lord Snow. I hope for a swift return of health and continued prosperity.” She could be old-fashioned, Brienne. It sounded more like a prayer to the old gods than a farewell to an acquaintance.

Of course, there was no one with the authority to say that a parting benediction could not be both.

At last, the car was pronounced ready for departure. First Arya, then Brienne, stepped in. Sansa scooped the puppy into her arms to keep her out of harm’s way. A started engine, some waving out the window, and they were gone, with little more fanfare than their arrival.

Sansa stood on the drive, staring after the retreating car, until even the dust it kicked up had disappeared from view.

A warm hand on her elbow drew her back to herself. “Come, let’s go inside,” Jon said.

Inside. Of course. They ought to have done that already. Jon wasn’t really supposed to be out, even if the weather was mild.

The puppy put her paws on Sansa’s chest and lifted her face to lick a tear off Sansa’s cheek. That was how she realised she was crying. “All right, sweetling,” Sansa murmured. “We’ll go in.” 

Jon’s hand moved from her elbow to her back, guiding her toward the door with a warm solidity that reminded her his strength was returning. “Have tea sent to Her Ladyship’s solar,” Jon told Mya as they passed.

Footmen took their coats in the main hall. The warm air inside the house prickled on Sansa’s cool flesh. Jon stifled a cough or two, but it stopped at that.

“It’s odd to be downstairs,” Jon remarked. “It seems it’s been a lifetime.”

Sansa forced a laugh. It came out sounding a bit strangled. “I’ve no doubt.”

He ushered her into her solar. Sansa expected him to leave at that point, but he continued past the doorway. The dog ran ahead of them to curl upon the cushion beneath Sansa’s writing desk, where she had already learned to spend her morning naps.

She didn’t remember Jon ever visiting her solar before. On the rare occasion he had a message to pass to her, he sent a servant to deliver it. The solar was to the lady of the house what the study was to the lord, and he’d found even fewer reasons to breach that boundary than she had.

Still, it wasn’t as strange as it might have been to see him there. He didn’t look at all unnatural, even against the decidedly feminine colours and patterns her mother had chosen for the decor. Had she considered it at all, she might have expected him to perch with a tight and wooden posture on the edge of a seat, desperate to make his escape as soon as propriety allowed. Yet when he sat upon the sofa, he seemed as relaxed and comfortable as he did in his own room.

“Come, sit,” he said, gesturing to the cushion beside him.

Sansa’s heart felt as if it were beating in her throat. How many times had she daydreamed this scenario, a handsome man inviting her closer, the prelude to an embrace?

Jon didn’t think of her that way, she reminded herself. He’d had ample opportunity to demonstrate it if he had. But on their wedding night he’d recoiled from her, and never taken a step closer since.

Now, she had the opportunity to step closer, and her desire urged her to take it. She sat on the other cushion, less than an arm’s reach from him. She’d never been so close as this to Harry Hardyng, or Dontos Hollard, or any of the Tyrell boys. This physical proximity existed solely within her marriage, as the septas had said it should.

“The roses look well here; I’m glad they suit.”

The tall crystal vase overflowed with still-beautiful winter roses, in full bloom now. “They’d suit any room as well,” Sansa demurred. “They’d bring beauty wheresoever they were put.”

“Not a feature unique to roses,” Jon commented. “There are other presences that improve all environments.”

Sansa could not think what he might mean by that. “If you say so, I suppose there must. I do not know you to be a liar.”

Jon cleared his throat. “It was nice, having Arya here.”

“It was.”

“It’s been some time since you were in so much company.”

“Yes.” Her voice was faint.

His eyebrows knit together briefly before his face smoothed back to its calm affect. “It must be quite lonely,” he prompted. “You needn’t be in such isolation. If you’d like to have friends come to stay, I want you to know they’d not be made unwelcome by me.”

“I haven’t been pining for it.”

“The offer stands, all the same.” Jon ducked his head, smiling. “You seem the type who’d like entertaining.”

The woman Sansa might have become, under different circumstances, was one who swanned about rooms filled with admirers, taking pride in organising elaborate dinners. Hadn’t that been her aspiration once? What use was that without the other part of that dream, after the guests left, the part with the loving husband and children? But perhaps part of it could stil be in her reach.

“I might like that, on occasion,” she said. “Beginning with the Tarlys, like I mentioned the other day.”

His lips twisted. “I meant your friends, Sansa.”

Who were her friends, at this point? How many of them yet lived? “Jeyne lives right over the lane. She doesn’t need to stay.”

Mya brought a tea tray and set it on the table before them, then poured the steaming, fragrant brew into two cups.

“Thank you,” Jon said. He picked up a cup and saucer and handed them to Sansa, before taking the second for himself. “All right, we’ll have the Tarlys. As rarely or as often as you’d like to.”

“We’ll have to work around the demands for your presence at court,” Sansa teased, bringing her teacup to her face. Her tea was too hot to drink but she inhaled the steam rising from the cup.

“Yes, I don’t think those are a temporary fixture, I’m afraid. But it needn’t be a barrier to your socialising. You could have guests while I’m away.”

Sansa wrinkled her nose. “Oh, no, I don’t think that would do at all.”

“If you’re happy here by yourself I won’t push it, but I hate to think of you bored or starved for society.” His forehead crinkled. “There’s plenty of society in the capital, though not always the right kind. You’d be welcome to join me, but I wouldn’t want to force you to accompany me for my benefit.”

She drew a breath. “Would it be to your benefit, to have me tagging along to your engagements?”

His face took on an odd look. “You’re my wife. They’re as much your engagements as mine. You’ve got every right to go where I go, should you choose. You’re listed on every invitation.”

Sansa licked her lips. “You didn’t mention it.”

“I thought you didn’t want to attend,” Jon said. “I made your excuses.”

“Have I been missed?” she asked in alarm.

“Oh, enormously,” he said. “Mostly by me. I could really use someone with your strategic sense at those things. I’m afraid school didn’t prepare me for them, and I’m terribly out of my depth.”

“Well, I do know a thing or two about royal functions,” Sansa said, hiding her coy smile behind her teacup.

Jon’s eyes turned contemplative. “Yes, I suppose you do.”

This wasn’t Sansa’s first go-round as a royal consort, after all. Long ago though it was that she’d been betrothed to Joffrey Baratheon, she doubted anyone had forgotten she’d accepted proposals from more than one prince of the realm. It would haunt mentions of her in the society pages as long as she lived, and would likely be remembered after her death: ‘Sansa Stark, Twice a Princess,’ the headline would read, though of course she hadn’t been a princess then and wasn’t one now, the defunct royal house of Stark notwithstanding. Jon Targaryen wasn’t styled His Royal Highness, and so his wife wasn’t, either.

For now, anyway.

“I wouldn’t take you back there by coercion,” Jon said softly. “If you don’t want to go, I don’t give a damn what anyone else has to say about it.”

But what did the rest of the country have to say about their heir’s wife hiding away up North? She set her teacup down. “Is there talk?”

“None that matters. None except yours.”

She considered it. The years she’d lived in the Red Keep had been without a doubt the worst of her life. Beset on all sides by treachery and torment, she’d sworn if she could only get back to Winterfell she’d never leave it again.

A lot had changed since then. No more was she a little girl, vulnerable and dependent as a bird in a cage, but a woman grown, in a powerful position. Most importantly of all: she wasn’t alone in the world anymore. Whatever else she might have hoped for from Jon, she felt safe with him. To the extent that anyone could protect anyone, he would protect her.

“I’d like to try,” she said. “Not— not to live there. I still want to spend most of my time here. But— if you really mean that you’d like me along—”

“I do. I would.”

“Then I’d love—” you , her mind supplied, “—to accompany you on a future trip south.”

“It’s all right if you change your mind, after what you’ve been through,” Jon said. “No one would blame you, least of all me.”

She turned her face to glance out the window, imagining the vast expanse of land separating her from King’s Landing. “I don’t think we need to pretend that living in a castle is the same as fighting on a battlefield.”

“Wasn’t it?” he asked lightly.

She made no response.

“You were a hostage,” Jon said. “You must have had to fight for survival. I’ve heard— things. About Joffrey Baratheon. It can’t have been easy.”

“It wasn’t,” Sansa agreed. In some ways, she remained a hostage still. “I loved him, you know. I thought I did. It was a dreadful shock when I came to know him and there was nothing lovable inside.” A monster, she’d told Margaery Tyrell. “I felt quite foolish, to be honest. I hadn’t seen past his face.”

Jon shifted on the sofa beside her. “A lot of people were fooled.”

“My father wasn’t,” she said. “He tried to talk me out of it. I’ve always wondered what would’ve happened if I’d listened.”

“You were a child.” There was a clink as Jon set his teacup on the table and then his hand settled on top of the one of hers that was lying between them. “Everyone’s made misjudgments, Sansa. Especially in love.”

She turned to face him. “Have you?”

He pulled his hand back.

The quiet moment that followed gave her a chance to rethink her boldness. Perhaps Arya was a poor influence on her character, the inverse of what their governess had hoped would happen if they spent sufficient time together. Just as Sansa was about to open her mouth and apologise, he spoke.

“Once,” he said. “Or maybe it was she who misjudged. Either way, people ended up hurt.”

“What happened to her?” 

“She died,” Jon said. “In the war. She was a soldier. A wildling. They let their women fight, you know.”

How dull Sansa must seem, and childish, alongside a woman who fought and perished in war. A woman who’d taught Jon to unlace corsetry, if his hands in the hot spring were as practiced as they’d seemed. “You loved her.”

He didn’t argue. “It was a long time ago.”

Only her?, Sansa wanted to ask. Only ever her? Instead she surprised herself by saying “You’re lucky. I don’t think I ever knew the true thing. Infatuations only.” Until you. Until now, chastely sharing tea and dog ownership with a man she admired, body and soul. 

“Had my share of those as well.” Jon cracked a smile. “They don’t matter now. Sansa, none of it does.” 

Sansa feared it might matter someday, that he had not even an infatuation for his bride. He wasn’t raised on tales, but he’d felt love. He knew what he was missing.

He took her hand again. “We survived all that. We’ve survived everything. We’re here, and we decide what happens to us from now on.”

His hand felt right on hers, and she left it there even when she picked her cup back up for another sip of tea. It was hard to care so deeply about the ghosts of their pasts with such a living weight in her hand. He may not love her, not the way she loved him, but he was willing to make a life with her. That commitment was one she intended to honour.

“We’ve decided on a visit from the Tarlys and a trip to King’s Landing,” Sansa said, giving Jon’s hand a squeeze. “That can be a start, can’t it?”

“A wonderful start,” he said.

They passed the rest of the morning in Sansa’s solar until the tea was drunk and the puppy stirred from her cushion. Then, and only then, did their hands part, so they could get on with the separate notions of their day. 

Chapter Text

Due to her sister’s departure, Sansa’s weekly hair-washing had had to be delayed. She hadn’t missed a Friday morning wash since settling at Winterfell, and it felt strangely decadent to have it done on Saturday instead. 

She left her hair loose to dry as she settled in her solar with tea to handle her correspondence. Although her work necessitated communication with many people in and around the estate, it wasn’t unusual to receive letters from outside the region. As Lady of Winterfell and Warden of the North, she was of national interest whether she wished it or not. There were niceties to be observed.

But the two letters that had arrived from afar with this morning’s post were more importance than that.

In her own solar, Sansa had the freedom awarded by privacy to observe propriety as much or as little as she may choose, and so she opened the letter from Bran first. She’d been raised loyal to her family first and the realm second, no matter what she’d had to say during the war.

My dear sister,

We were grieved to hear of Lord Snow’s illness, which we trust will be short-lived. I have done much praying to the gods about it, and response has been auspicious.

As to your work on the estate, the gods look favourably upon your projects and rule. We have always liked women who live on their own terms. Remember Daena the Defiant? You liked that tale. As you’ve since become a Targaryen yourself, I’m sure it’s taken on a more personal meaning.

Our mother should be proud to call you daughter, as she was ever disposed to be, to see the reins of Winterfell in your hands. As I recall, you’re more than equal to any task requiring attention to detail. None of us could best you at games.

As to the matter you mentioned in your letter, I like the idea. I don’t think my counsel is necessary; I’m sure I couldn’t redirect either of my sisters if your minds were quite made up. But I prayed on your question and we have determined it’s altogether right that you should do as you said. To serve the smallfolk is the highest honour and privilege of rank.

For the specifics you shall have to look to yourself. We have every faith that your course of action will be the right one.

Love always,

Bran.

Despite his unsettling tendency to switch between I and we when writing, Bran’s letters could lend her a serenity she found few other places. Although their father had practiced the old religion, Lady Catelyn had insisted on raising her children to the faith of the Seven, to which Ned had capitulated. None of them had had much interest in the old gods. To varying degrees they’d been dutiful, if not faithful, young acolytes after their mother’s fashion, and left their father to his meditations in the godswood.

Robb had died that way, and Rickon had been too young to know his own mind. Neither Sansa nor Arya had much religion one way or the other anymore; one married in a sept and one in the godswood, but neither seemed certain of benevolent attention from gods of any sort. Bran was different. Wherever he’d been during those years when all had thought him dead, he’d been changed. He spoke now like a mystic who communed with the old gods like a prophet in a story. 

It had frightened Sansa at first. When they’d met again at the end of the war, he’d beheld her coolly from his wheeled chair, almost as though he didn’t know her. The things he said revealed knowledge he couldn’t have had from anyone but her, things she’d lived through and seen that she’d told no one. Maybe he did get visions from the gods. Or perhaps he was able to see on her face the traumas of war. Either way, it had been unsettling.

Bran had been so young when the war began. By its end, he’d been delivered back to his sister a man grown, and a stranger. She’d been sad to see him go to the monastery, but it had been a relief, too, to be out of his gaze.

His letters had the same eerie quality that hinted at too much knowledge, but Sansa had grown used to it. She could see brotherly affection in it, and esteem. He remembered her and offered her his memory of their mother’s praise. That was more than she’d had cause to expect, when she’d thought herself the only Stark remaining.

She wasn’t. They may have been far-flung, but they were still a pack, and they’d survived.

“The little lady has had her bath, Your Ladyship,” Lew’s voice came from the hall.

Sansa looked up to see him cradling the grey puppy in his arms. His hold was more gentle than businesslike, and she was gratified to see that even the staff had grown fond of the dog already.

“Come in, sweetling,” she called to the dog, who squirmed in Lew’s arms as he lowered her to the ground.

The puppy’s nails clicked along the floor as she ran across the room. She put her small clean paws on Sansa’s lavender skirt, and Sansa obliged her by lifting her to her lap.

“Can’t let your papa have all the fun, can we?” she murmured, chirping the pup’s nose.

The puppy nuzzled Sansa’s hand and then nosed at the desk, pausing to sniff very intently at her letter.

“Do you like that, sweetling?” Sansa asked. “That’s from your Uncle Bran.”

There were still those in the North who might have considered Bran their rightful king, but while Sansa ruled from Winterfell they’d not rise against the Dragon Queen. That regal person was the source of her second letter. It had probably been a minor treason to leave it unread even a minute past receipt, but no matter. Sansa used her silver letter opener to slit the envelope.

Lady Sansa,

Rather vexing of my nephew to fall ill. You’ve known him longer than I; is that in character for him, to disappear when one needs him? I suppose I’m being unfair. He’s a faithful lad. One can make allowances for an occasional absence, particularly from a retainer with a steadfast record, most particularly when it’s beyond his control that he’s unable to travel.

Do tell him I hope he takes well soon.

Is there any aid you require? I expect you have everything well in hand. Perhaps better than in hand. You’re the native, I’m sure Jon relies on you heavily in his management. Still, I hope you won’t hesitate to call upon me if you should need to. We may not know each other well, but we are family, and I know better than most the difficulties a young woman in power may face. 

I should like very much for us to be friends. I’ll not order you as a monarch, but invite you as an aunt-in-law, to come south once Jon has recovered. We have much to discuss, you and I.

Yours most sincerely,

Daenerys Targaryen the First of Her Name

Sansa waited for the feeling of being under threat to come, but it didn’t. She no longer feared Daenerys Targaryen. The Queen needed her. The security of the North’s allegiance with the southern provinces had been sealed by the alliance between Targaryen and Stark. On Sansa’s precarius marriage rested the fate of the Iron Throne. It would only take a word to annul the match and destroy the last hope of restoring the Targaryen dynasty.

With no heirs forthcoming from any other route, the Queen relied on Sansa’s loyalty and affection. She had every reason to make Sansa comfortable and happy. It would be poor strategy to alienate her, and the Queen was not known for poor strategy.

One had only to look at the first paragraph of her letter to see that. The appeal to Sansa’s supposedly intimate knowledge of her husband’s character served to affirm Sansa’s position in the family, her supremacy over her marital matters. Ironic, given the circumstances. Sansa had barely known Jon when they were children, and even less in the last year. Queen Daenerys had probably passed as many hours in his company as his wife had.

Only. She did know him a little now, didn’t she? She knew enough, anyway, to know that Daenerys had gotten her nephew right the second time: steadfast, loyal, and true, as honourable in peacetime as his war-won reputation had suggested.

The puppy jumped down from Sansa’s lap with a thud.

“Easy, sweetling,” Sansa chided, as she turned to the local letters.

The envelope on top of the stack had come from Alyn Blackwood. Sansa contemplated it for a long moment before placing it in the bin unopened.

Not all letters needed reading, and not all thresholds needed to be crossed.

She had her eyes on a different threshold.

Sansa stood. “Want to go see your papa, sweetling?”

The dog yipped, more likely at her movement than the words. Still, she seemed to know their path by heart already as they headed to Jon’s room.

“Would you fancy another cyvasse match?” Sansa asked when she arrived. “I truly think you can best me this time.”

“I shouldn’t count on it,” Jon answered, “but it would be my pleasure to lose to you.”

Sansa grinned cheekily. “Lose what?”

“Anything you wish,” he said. “All, if you so desire.”

She busied herself setting up the board. “I shall have to contemplate the terms of the wager.”

“Not like my lady wife to arrive unprepared,” Jon quipped. “Could it be you’ve grown relaxed at last?”

“I shouldn’t count on it,” she said, echoing his words from moments before. She lined the final trebuchet up precisely.

“I have a proposal.”

Sansa looked up. “We’re a bit past the proposal, I’m afraid. Your aunt took care of that.”

He huffed, a noise that might have been amusement or frustration. There were still so many of his tells she did not know. “For the wager.”

She spread her hands. “By all means.”

“A secret,” Jon said, “given by the loser to the winner, to do with as they wish.”

“What kind of secret?”

“My lady’s discretion,” he teased. “Since you’re so sure you’re to lose, you can decide what to say.”

There was still so much, after a year of marriage marked by absences and lacks, that he didn’t know about her. She could tell him all manner of secrets. She could tell him what she dreamed about, when she woke screaming. It would be payment in kind, after all, for his kindness in telling her about his own. She could tell him how her only ambition, after survival, had been to see her family again. She wouldn’t need to tell him he was family to her now. Or she could risk it all, trade their wager for one even greater.

She could tell him she loved him.

“I accept your terms,” Sansa said.

The game proceeded quietly. Save a thoughtful hum or sigh and the click of the pieces, they didn’t speak. All Jon’s thoughts seemed to be on cyvasse movements; all Sansa’s were on her catalog of secrets.

Dragon took elephant, trebuchet took dragon. Jon leaned back in his chair, frowning. Then he reached forward and turned his own king over to lay it down on the board.

“That’s not right,” Sansa said.

“You’ve beaten me. I can’t win now, see? You’ll have me in nine moves, or thirteen, depending on how good a fight I put up, but have me you will.”

Sansa bit her lip and took in the pieces on the board. He was right. She could even have killed his king within four movements if she sacrificed her catapult to do it. She hadn’t been paying full attention to the board, but evidently she hadn’t needed to. “Well, that’s quite a spot of trouble.”

“I owe you a secret,” Jon said.

She felt without looking the weight of his eyes on her face. “You don’t need to. It was only a silly game.”

“No, fair is fair. I agreed to the wager.”

She forced her eyes to meet his. “All right, let’s have it then.”

He swallowed hard. “All the women I’ve loved have had red hair.”

Her breath stopped in her chest. Her own hair hung in drying red waves around her shoulders, giving them the intimacy of lovers in a cruel mockery of his confession. To be close, so close, to being what he wanted, to being who he loved, was unbearable.

“If I’ve overstepped-”

“No.” She shook her head, disturbing that rippling sheet of hair. “Thank you, for the diverting game and the secret freely given. I swear to treat it with undying respect.” She stood up, knocking one of the pieces to the floor in her haste.

“Sansa,” Jon said, his voice almost pleading. But why would he plead her for anything? It must have been pity she was hearing.

“I have to go,” she said.

The puppy nudged the dropped piece, sending it rolling.

“You don’t have to go,” he said. “We can have another round, you can beat me again and I can tell you another, or none if it’s upset you, but you don’t have to go to spare my feelings.”

It was her own feelings that needed sparing. “I’ve left some letters unanswered. I really should get back to them.”

His mouth had returned to its practiced severe line. “If you must, you must.”

Sansa forced herself to smile at him. It wasn’t his fault if the reminder that he’d loved others hurt her. “I’ll see you again soon, my lord.”

She didn’t return to her solar. It was to her own bedroom she hastened, puppy trailing after her. Once there, she again scooped the little dog into her arms and buried her face in the soft fur, seeking comfort where it was to be had.

Chapter Text

“Sansa,” Jon said, “may I come in?”

He was standing just across the threshold of her solar. The tea tray balanced on one hand was steady as could be, no shaking of any kind. He must have brought it from downstairs, but he hadn’t grown winded on the climb. The sight of him, broad and strong in her doorway, made Sansa feel breathless herself.

“Please,” she said. She found herself rising from her desk as she watched him approach. “Here, let me-”

“No, I have it,” Jon said softly, setting the tea tray on her table.

In the silence that followed, Sansa heard her heart beating wildly in her ears.

“Please, have a seat,” he said, gesturing toward the sofa.

She did, feeling faint. “I think I’m supposed to make that offer. It’s my solar.”

“Apologies, my lady.” He gave her a small smile. “By all means, offer it if you wish.”

Sansa swallowed. “Would you like a seat, Jon?”

“Yes, thank you.” This time he took not the sofa beside her but a chair across. His face rearranged itself into his habitual serious viasge, one she once would have mistaken for dour. “Sansa, I’ve come to apologise. I spoke clumsily yesterday, and out of turn. I must beg your pardon very deeply.”

“Don’t be absurd,” she said, tearing her eyes from his face and occupying them instead with the teacups. “It was nothing.” She reached for the teapot, desperate for any suitable distraction.

“It upset you.” His hand settled atop hers on the handle of the teapot. “I’d not upset you for the world. Here, let me.”

Sansa pulled back and watched as he poured warm, fragrant tea into her cup.

“I won’t repeat my mistake,” Jon said. “I forgot myself, in the house so long. I started think of things that— that can’t ever be.”

Not alone in that, she thought to herself.

“If you find you’re too discomforted for my presence now, I’ll absent myself from your company, but I’ll offer any reassurance you need if there’s the slightest chance you’d be willing to join me for tea.”

“Let us both forget it instead, and I’d be quite glad of your company for tea,” Sansa said, smiling timidly. She leaned forward to pick up the teapot where he’d left it after pouring her tea and reciprocated by filling his cup in return.

Jon still looked stricken. “I’ll not be overfamiliar, I promise. I’m afraid I’m still learning to be a gentleman.”

“Surely you’ve heard that gentlemen aren’t all their reputations promise,” Sansa said. “You needn’t worry. I should like you to feel free to be honest with me. It took me by surprise, that was all.” She picked up his cup and saucer and held it out to him.

He took it. “Thank you.”

They sat in silence for a moment, less tense than the one previous, as each sipped their tea. 

“I do have a lot to learn from you,” Jon said, voice soft. “Your manners are beautiful.”

She looked up at him. “Years at court, I suppose.”

“No, you always were quite the refined lady. I was rather intimidated by you, when we were children.”

“Really?” There was delight in Sansa’s voice. She hadn’t thought of herself as the type of woman men feared. Daenerys Targaryen, Arya Baratheon, the wildling warrior women. Sansa Stark? Perhaps. “Well, you get by.”

Jon shooke his head, laughing a little. “I don’t feel I’m getting by. I feel like I did the first day at school, when all the boys lined up to play a game I didn’t the rules of.”

“It always feels like that, a bit,” she said. “It doesn’t show.”

He favoured her with a sceptical look. “Of course it shows. Everyone knows I’m not a real prince. They only have to treat me like one because they’re afraid of my aunt.”

“You’re descended from two royal houses,” Sansa pointed out. “What are you, if not a real prince?”

“The issue of a secret marriage between a disowned Targaryen and a minor Stark,” Jon said, “orphaned heir to a negligible title on my mother’s side and a modest fortune on my father’s. I was considered well below the notice of high society my first twenty years of life, and I daresay I’d have stayed that way if House Baratheon had prevailed. It’s on everyone’s face when they look at me.”

Sansa’s lips parted.

“Except yours,” he added.

“It sounds like that troubles you.”

He shrugged. “I don’t suppose it’s worth complaining about, in the face of the great hardships I’ve escaped. I’ve been very fortunate and I don’t want to sound ungrateful.”

Sansa shook her head. “You don’t have to worry about that, not with me.”

“I worry a great deal when I’m with you,” he confessed, “but I am beginning to see I may not need to.” He set his teacup down with a gentle clink. “I’ve never been entirely comfortable in society. I find it a good deal easier to be on my own with Sam or a dog or a horse. Or you.”

Entirely comfortable seemed to her an overstatement of how at ease he was in her company. Or, truth to tell, her in his. It wasn’t easy between them, and never had been. It seemed that she was always half-afraid of saying the wrong thing, distracted by the pounding of her stupid heart. And yet she would have been lying to say that she hadn’t come to enjoy his company, even to crave it.

“That’s why I’d like you to come with me on a visit south, if you’re still amenable,” Jon continued. “You’ve a way about you that sets others to rights.”

I’ll make them love me , she’d said once, tears streaking her face. If only she had known then just whom she’d want to love her most. “Thank you. That’s lovely to hear.” At least she could make his home more comfortable, and his visits to court less unpleasant. 

She had thought to keep to Winterfell, both to soothe her own scarred nerves and to excuse herself from hanging on to him dreadfully, when it had seemed so clear he hadn’t wanted her. Now she saw that perhaps she had shirked her more pressing duty. What was a wife, after all, if not a valuable asset in social settings?

Jon avoided her eyes. “I know you don’t feel as I do. I’m no one’s ideal companion. But it would do me a great honour if you would accompany me anyhow.”

Sansa frowned. “I’m certain a great many young ladies would disagree.”

“I’m not a fool, Sansa, and you’re even less of one. I’m sure you’ve seen the society pages.”

There were a great many nicknames for Lord Snow in the papers, some of them uncomplimentary in nature. She hadn’t realised he was aware of them.

“I don’t care what the rags say,” she declared. “You’re brave, and gentle, and strong. Anyone with an ounce of sense would be overjoyed to have you as an escort.”

He worried his lip between his teeth. “You’ll still come, then? Even though you’ll have to spend half the evening with me?”

“I do hope I can negotiate more than half,” Sansa said. “It doesn’t do to be without a firm ally at such things. Dancing and talking with strangers and acquaintances can be very diverting, but it can get overwhelming without a… a friend, to come home to.”

“A friend to come home to,” Jon murmured. “I can be that for you, at the least.”

It was a nice thought. Even if he never looked at her with love in his eyes, even if he never touched her, she’d be glad of his friendship and loyalty. He could be an anchor for her, a safe place to rest.

Increasingly, the time they spent together did feel like home.

It was therefore with great reluctance that Sansa tore her eyes from him when Mya came to the door to say “Lady Snow? There’s someone at the door for you.”

More than a year had passed with Sansa alone in the hall. Now, twice in the span of a week, she’d received visitors unannounced, just when she had begun to desire privacy withher husband.

Sansa had been raised by her mother to be a gracious hostess, but etiquette did not demand an unnamed, unexpected guest be received. She’d opened her mouth to say as much when she registered that Mya’s expression was troubled. Mya was not frequently disturbed. Perhaps she ought to go down and check on things.

“If you’ll excuse me, Jon,” she said, letting the regret shine through her voice. “It seems I have duties I must attend.”

She descended the stairs with as regal a posture as she could muster. She found it sometimes helped her nerves to stand tall and straight, even when she was far from fearless. Her mother and sister had both shown her that.

Her feet failed her, however, when she saw who had come.

“Lady Snow,” Alyn Blackwood said, bowing deeply. “Thank you for seeing me.”

Sansa remained frozen in place, one hand locked on the banister. “Mr. Blackwood. What brings you to WInterfell?”

“Hope of seeing you, my lady.” His tone skirted the line between playful and earnest. “I found I couldn’t wait for your answer.”

She pursed her lips. “I’m afraid I haven’t any idea what you mean. If you think I owe you any answer, you’re mistaken.”

“I know you read my letter,” Blackwood said, his voice a low purr. “You must want it too. I saw how you looked at me.”

He took a step forward, and she jerked back to remain out of reach.

“As I said, you must be mistaken.” Sansa kept her voice as even as she could. 

Blackwood shook his head. “A beautiful girl like you has no place beside that snooze Snow. You should have the world, not a small reception hall in Wintertown.”

“That’s quite enough.” She held her head high and regarded him coolly. “If I may be blunt— and since you evidently feel free to speak intimately with me, I see no reason not to be— you are a stranger to me, Mr. Blackwood. Given the impudence with which you presume to speak on my relations with my husband and my place in the world, I find myself with no desire to change that circumstance.”

His mouth hung slightly open as he stared at her.

“Sansa.”

She turned over her shoulder to see Jon standing at the top of the stairs.

“Is everything all right?” He asked.

The puppy ran down the stairs, yipping in a somewhat aggressive manner.

“Apologies,” Blackwood mumbled. “I hadn’t realised I was... interrupting.”

Sansa had grown accustomed to the sight of Lord Snow in shirtsleeves, but she saw how it might look to an outsider like Blackwood. How private. How marital.

“It’s all right, Jon,” she called up to him, scooping the pup off the floor. “I have it handled.” She turned back to Blackwood. “I think it’s best you leave.” Hastily and permanently.

He nodded. “Yes, yes, quite right.” The hat that had been in his left hand throughout the embarrassing confrontation went back atop that golden mane. “Terribly sorry about the confusion.” He wasn’t still bowing and scraping as he backed out the door, but that was the way it felt as his tense shoulders retreated.

“Who was that?” Jon asked.

Sansa opened her mouth, then closed it. 

Jon’s frown deepened. “What did he want?”

“I think,” Sansa said, “he wanted to be my mistress.”

When she started laughing, her husband joined her.

Chapter Text

The Monday post contained the latest magazine from Highgarden, showing the styles the most prestigious dressmakers had debuted. It was Sansa’s favourite event of the season. She and Jeyne read it together curled up with small cups of chocolate to sip as they perused the fashion plates and discussed their preferences for the coming year’s patterns.

Sansa hadn’t ordered anything last year. What she’d had already suited her fine for sitting at home. But if she was to make good on her position as a fine lady, she would likely need a new travelling suit at least, as well as an evening gown or two.

What could be better than having her dearest friend’s company as she chose them?

“What do you think, sweetling? Should we go see your Auntie Jeyne?”

The puppy wagged her tail.

“Yes, I agree,” Sansa said. She rang for Mya to bring her coat and hat, and before long she was off on a walk to the Poole house, her puppy trotting at her heels.

The weather was calm and mild compared to the day she’d last made this walk. Soon spring would be in full bloom and she wouldn’t need a coat at all.

The maid who answered the door took her coat and escorted her to the sitting room. Jeyne came down with wide eyes.

“Sansa, darling, is everything all right?”

“The Highgarden magazine has come in,” Sansa said. “I thought I might pay you a call to look at it together, as we used to.”

Jeyne’s smile was timid at first, then widened as she noticed the puppy toddling toward her. “Oh, goodness! Who is this little angel?”

“She hasn’t got a name yet. I hope you don’t mind that I brought her.” The Pooles used to allow Lady in their home, but that was many years ago and Lady had had exemplary manners. 

“Of course not,” Jeyne exclaimed, scooping the little dog in her arms. “Hello, beautiful! Oh, what a sweet girl you are!”

Soon they were settled on the sofa with a tray of chocolate and biscuits, the fashion magazine open across their adjoining laps and the puppy settled by their feet.

“I rather like that shade of green, but the shoulders are rather wide, aren’t they? I can’t think who that would flatter,” Sansa laughed.

“You’d look lovely in it,” Jeyne said, her tone fondly exasperated. “You look lovely in everything.”

“Perhaps, but I think the lines of the gold brocade are more suitable.” Sansa turned the page. “Oh, this purple silk would look tremendous with your colouring.”

“I don’t have many opportunities for evening gowns.”

Sansa nibbled a cinnamon biscuit. “There may be events at Winterfell again before long.” She turned another page. The next plate was a fur-collared coat of a very elegant cut. She made a mental note to consider purchasing it. “What do you think of this travelling costume? The stripes are very modern I think. I do like the rosettes on the brim of the hat. None of those ghastly feathers that are so popular.”

Jeyne peered at it. “Quite stylish, and rather practical. Are you planning to travel much in the coming year?”

“I might do,” she admitted. “Jon and I have been talking of going south. He’s needed at court functions sometimes.”

“I’m surprised you’re interested in returning to the capital.” Jeyne lifted her cup.

“I am too,” Sansa said. “It might be nice, though. To go with someone I trust.”

She looked up from the magazine to see Jeyne’s brown eyes focused intently on her.

“What?” she asked. “Is there chocolate on my face?”

Jeyne shook her head. “No, no, you’re perfect.”

“Then what is it?”

“There’s been a change in you,” Jeyne said. “When I last saw you— every time I’ve seen you since your return North— you seemed so heavy, so sad. There’s a lightness in your face today, like you know a happy secret no one else can share.”

Sansa opened her mouth, then closed it. She couldn’t account for it, but Jeyne was right. Something had shifted, in recent days, and left her feeling more hopeful about the future than she had since she was a child.

“Whatever it is, I’m glad of it.” Jeyne squeezed her hand. “You deserve every scrap of happiness there is.”

Jeyne and Sansa went through the rest of the magazine, appreciating the beauty of the daring styles the new queen had brought with her from across the narrow sea. Afterward, Sansa allowed Jeyne to talk her into staying for a luncheon of lamb with mint sauce and wine jelly. It was a relief to be in the society of her dear friend again, without so many secrets between them.

Still, when the time came to don her coat and return home, she was glad to go. She’d grown accustomed to spending her afternoons with her husband, and she was loath to miss one.

She and the puppy swept into Winterfell and went directly up the stairs to Jon’s room. So anxious was Sansa to arrive that she didn’t pause to remove her coat or tidy her hair, which was coming loose around her face from the wind. 

But when she opened the door, she drew up short when she found the room empty.

“Jon?” she called, her smile faltering on her face. Even as she did so, she knew he wasn’t near enough to hear her. The bed was done up and the room had the conspicuous stillness of one long vacant. If he’d just gone for a moment, there would be a fire in the hearth. The teacups and water glasses had been cleared away. This absence was meaningful, and she knew it at once.

Drawn by the sound of her approach, Mya came down the hall to attend her. “I think His Lordship is in the godswood, my lady.”

“Thank you,” Sansa said, and rushed at once in that direction.

He was, indeed, in the godswood; she spied his fine form and dark head as soon as she came into the edge of the thicket. He was kneeling before the heart tree. Nothing was amiss in his appearance to indicate anything serious had befallen him, or any noticeable reason he was not where he was supposed to be. 

The puppy spotted him too, and rushed ahead to greet him, snapping twigs in her joyful wake.

Jon heard and turned his head. “Sansa.” He rose, lengthening his strong limbs as he came to standing. 

She took a shuddering breath, and a step toward him. “I came to see you,” she said. “You weren’t there.”

“I was looking for you,” he said, taking a step closer. “They said you’d gone out.”

“To Jeyne’s.” Sansa drew another few inches closer as if drawn by magnets. “What are you doing out of your rooms?”

Jon continued his approach. “Your Dr. Stane came to see me this morning. She pronounced me well and able enough to resume normal activities.”

“What?” Sansa halted her progress. 

He closed the distance between them and laid his hand on her arm. “I’m well, Sansa. It’s all right.” His other hand came up to cup her face. “Oh, sweetheart, why are you crying?”

“You weren’t there,” she repeated. She’d known this was coming, known he was growing in strength each day. Still it felt far too soon. “I went to your room and— and now I fear that whenever I look for you, you’ll be gone. I’ve got so accustomed to seeing you, but I—”

Then she couldn’t say anything more, because his mouth was on hers. 

It was everything she’d hoped for, and more than she’d dared to hope. It was warmth and safety and being wanted. It was a flood of desire and sensation.

Sansa’s mind couldn’t keep up, but her body knew what to do. Her eyes closed. Her lips parted. Her hands grasped him, one on his upper arm, the other at the back of his neck. Her tongue flitted forward to caress his upper lip. She touched him, tasted him, breathed him.

His arms encircled her. She leaned forward into his embrace, feeling her heartbeat speed up until it matched time with his. One of his hands was on her lower back, the other cradling her head.

“Sansa,” he murmured.

He gave kisses, feather-light, around her lips and down her jaw, to the sensitive spot where her ear met her neck.

“Jon,” she panted. “I want—” She broke off with a sigh.

“Want what, my love?” Jon asked. His next kiss was lower on her neck, nearer her collarbone. “I want you to say it.”

Sansa swallowed. “You. I want you.”

“I know,” he breathed. “Not here.” He kissed her again on the corner of her mouth and lifted her, as easily as he did the puppy.

It was straight out of a melodrama, out of a Gothic novel, for a man to carry a woman toward the bed where he would ravish her. Sansa would have laughed, if she hadn’t been too breathless. Nothing about it seemed comical now, as her pulse beat in her throat and she inhaled the crisp, calming scent of the man she loved.

Instead she pressed her lips to his neck, to return the favour just once before they crossed the threshold.

Chapter Text

There was one moment of hesitation, and only one, in the hall where the doors to both the lord and lady’s rooms were. Sansa felt him pause, for less than a second, where she lay nestled against his neck, before he surged forward to push open the door to her room.

He laid her on the lush bed and stood, looking down at her. “Gods, you’re beautiful.”

Jon doubled back to close the door, leaving them alone at last.

“Come here,” she said, and reached for him.

He climbed on the bed beside her. “Let’s get this coat off you, hmm?”

Numbly, her fingers went to her buttons, and she undid them one by one before shrugging out of the coat entirely.

“Good,” he said. “Would you be more comfortable out of your dress, too?”

Sansa nodded, her lips raw with wanting another kiss. She unbuttoned her bodice and bared herself to corset, chemise, and stockings. She’d never been this naked before a man except in the hot spring. She felt just as warm now as she had then.

Jon leaned forward and brushed his lips against hers. “May I?”

She nodded again, not able to find words.

His gentle, able fingers reached for the fastenings of her corset. As he worked her free, he kissed the back of her neck. “That’s better,” he said, smoothing his hands over the skin where her shoulders were bare above her chemise.

A strand of her hair caught against his touch, and she felt him grasp it and rub it between his forefinger and thumb. “I’d love to let your hair down.”

“Please,” she said. “Just be careful of the pins.”

Jon’s careful hands removed the pins, one by one, until her hair was loosed and hung in a silken red curtain between them. 

The feeling of his fingers in her hair was so sensual she was overcome. Sansa could bear it no longer. She twisted and captured his mouth for another kiss, desperate to taste him, desperate to touch him back.

Her hands went to his chest, where she met his own coat. “You have entirely too many clothes on,” she complained between kisses. Her hands were less graceful than usual as she fumbled with the buttons down his front.

He laughed. “I suppose I ought to make it fair.” He slid out of the coat she’d unbuttoned and pulled his shirt over his head.

She set her palm delicately against his chest, bare now. Even with the nicks and scars, he was beautiful.

“Am I to your liking, my lady?” There was humour in his voice, but there was something real there, too.

“Yes,” she said, without hesitation. “Oh, Jon, yes.”

He had a smile on his face when he kissed her again. “I love looking at you,” he said. “I’ll love touching you more.” He slipped his hands under the hem of her chemise. “Can I see the rest of you?” 

She’d expected the touch of his callused fingers on the sensitive skin of her thigh, but he kept the bottom of her chemise in his hands, waiting for her answer. “Yes, please,” she panted.

His touch was as soft as the silk of the chemise as he slipped it up her body and over her head, dropping it on the floor beside her bed. True to his word, he did nothing more than look, greedily, with a hungry look on his face.

Sansa twisted her body forward to press her skin against his and to take for herself the kisses she wanted. “Touch me,” she breathed, her lips against his jawline.

And then, oh, he did.

His muscular arms encircled her, hands cradling her bare back as they maneuvered themselves horizontal until her back was against the pillows. He ran his hands down her sides, over her ribs and waist and hips. 

When he came to her legs, Jon hooked his fingers under the edge of one of her stockings and peeled it off, then did the same with the other. “I want to taste you,” he murmured. “Can I?”

She wondered, just for an instant, what he could still want to taste after the kissing they had already done. But then his hand came to rest between her thighs, just above the knee, and she understood. “Yes.”

He bent to kiss her kneecap, reverent and almost worshipful, before he eased her legs apart and ducked between them.

The sensation was so unlike when she touched herself that it was utterly new. She all but forgot the pillows under her head and the draft on her bare toes; the feeling of his lips and tongue against her most sensitive organ was so intense she was swept away with it. One of her hands stretched over her head to grasp the post of the bedframe, the fingers of her other hand twining in his hair.

The sound that came from her throat was halfway between a whine and a growl. When he heard it, Jon pulled back to look up ather face. “All right?” he asked.

Sansa’s bottom lip was clenched between her teeth and she could make no answer, but he understood. He understood her body as well as she ever had. 

“You’re so sweet, Sansa.” His lips moved against her body.

The pleasure was all but blinding. She’d never imagined it like this, all the focus on her. But there were more acts she was curious about.

“Jon,” she said. “Jon, I want you. I want all of you.”

He levered himself onto his hands and knees over her, and slid upward to drop a kiss just below her belly button, above the thicket of dark auburn hair he had just become intimately acquainted with. “More, my lady?”

“Yes.” She squirmed, impatient now she’d known the joys of his touch. “Come here.”

He grinned and rose up. 

“I want-” she said again, but she couldn’t say what it was she wanted, only that she did, very badly. Instead she grabbed for his cock. It was firmer than she’d have guessed, and his eyes closed at her touch. What would it feel like inside her?

Jon leaned forward to kiss her mouth, warm and wet, her arm still between their bodies with him in her hand. Afterward, he hovered over her face, grey eyes wide and earnest. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she panted, all shyness gone.

“All right. Are you ready?”

Sansa sighed in relief, eyes closed. “I’ve never-”

“I know,” he said. “But I only want to do what you want, what you’ll like.”

She swallowed. “I think I’ll like you inside me now.”

When he entered her, it was like dancing. There was a rhythm no dance instructor could impart, one her body learned from his. At last, they were partners. At last, they were husband and wife.

Chapter Text

When Sansa dreamed of this day, she’d imagined herself warm and secure in the continued embrace of her husband. Instead, she blinked awake the next morning in an empty bed.

She sat up, her tangled hair hanging loose over her shoulders. She ran her hand over the cool mattress, and for a moment wondered if she had imagined the night before. But no matter how vivid her fantasies, she’d never before woken with this swollen, tender feeling in her body. She felt almost bruised from having been kissed so fiercely, but even the pain was pleasure in its way. 

It was a pleasure she would rather have enjoyed in company. 

Sansa rose and rang for Mya. 

“Mya, have you seen His Lordship this morning?”

The maid shook her head. “Lord Snow went out early, my lady. I have not heard of his return.”

She asked for a cool bath, to soothe and invigorate her, as well as a breakfast tray. If ever an occasion called for such private decadence, she supposed this was it.

Once her hair had been combed smooth, Sansa traded her dressing gown for a day dress in cream silk and ice blue lace. By the end of her grooming routine, her husband had not reappeared, so she spent the rest of the morning drifting aimlessly about the castle, peering out windows with no attempt to appear casual.

Where had he gone? When would he return? Why should he have left her side at all?

Finally, Sansa retreated to her solar, where she found a greatly diminished stack of letters. Of course, most of the business had been redirected to Lord Snow’s study now that he was well. In the running of the estate, as in his heart, she was entirely superfluous.

She was occupied by this line of thought when she heard the unmistakeable footstep patterns of man and dog in the hall.

Sansa jumped to her feet, then thought the better of rushing into the hall and stilled, compulsively smoothing the wrinkles in her dress with palms that felt suddenly damp. Then she remembered how far they’d come, and forced herself forward at what she hoped was a respectable pace.

As soon as she opened the door of her solar, she drew back to avoid colliding with the smiling figure of her husband.

“There you are,” he said. “I took the little one out for a walk. I hoped you might join us in the godswood, but I’d be happy to settle for a late luncheon with you instead.”

“You’ve not much time, I’m afraid, before you’ve got to head to town for the audiences. If you wanted a sit-down luncheon, you should have come back sooner.” Sansa bent down to rub the puppy’s ears. “Hello, sweetling, yes, I missed you.”

When she looked back up, Jon’s smile had faded. “Hm, I regret to say I’d lost track.” He stepped forward, with more hesitance now than a moment ago, and dropped a soft kiss on her cheekbone. “You’ll come along, won’t you?”

Sansa suppressed the shiver that ran down her spine as his breath ghosted along her cheek. “Whatever for? Won’t I be in the way?”

“Never,” he promised. “I rather need you, I think. To catch me up. You know what’s been going on these last weeks.”

She felt one corner of her mouth curling into a smile. If he was to leave her on her own, as he had this last year, as he had this morning, she had at least the option to delay the separation. She’d not deny herself that. “I’ll have Cook make up sandwiches. We can picnic on the way.”

In the car, though there was room for distance, they sat near enough for their thighs to touch. Jon drank first from a thermos of tea, and when he offered it to Sansa she closed her eyes, imagining her lips where his had just been, remembering where those lips had been last night. When she nestled the thermos back into the basket, her hand brushed against Jon’s. He shifted slightly and then their hands were clasped together between them on the seat.

Sansa’s heart swelled with love for him. Her mind raced between thoughts of pulling him to kiss her and of speaking aloud her feelings. She realised she might never have a better chance to do either, but—

The car lurched to a stop.

“We’ve arrived, Your Lordship, Your Ladyship.”

Jon cleared his throat. “Thank you, Tollett.” Just like that, his hand evaporated from hers.

It was Tollett who helped her down from the car.

There were only a few smallfolk in the hall today. It would, perhaps, be a brief afternoon. Then they could go home to Winterfell again, and Sansa could talk to Jon alone, could kiss him again, could sleep tonight curled in his arms.

The first petitioner bent in a stiff curtsy. “Lord Snow, Lady Snow,” she said.

“Addana Deatton,” Sansa greeted her. “How fares your mother?”

“Better, my lady,” Miss Deatton said. “Thank you. I’ve come today hoping we might take in a lodger, someone who could help in the fields. I fear it’s too much for Mama and me to manage ourselves anymore, and we take in little enough income as it is.”

“Fear not, Miss Deatton,” Jon said from the chair beside Sansa. “You have a sensible plan and our permission to see it out. If you should have trouble making the rents next season, we will renegotiate based on your changed circumstances.”

Sansa looked away from himto hide her smile and nodded as Miss Deaton gave her thanks.

The next was also a woman. In fact, the crowd was mostly women today. This, a middle-aged seamstress named Mrs. Tycke, had brought samples of her work, “for Your Ladyship to look over,” with an eye toward forging a future business relationship.

Sansa ran her fingers over a black lace handkerchief. “This is very fine work, Mrs. Tycke. Have you a shop?”

“Ay, no, my lady,” Mrs. Tycke said. “I’ve had my daughter’s boys to look after, and no time to work. I’ve the time again now, but no room to operate in.”

Jon cleared his throat. “If you should like to expand, and my lady wife approves of your work, write us with a proposal for a business loan. Lady Snow and I should love to see a local worker in a good set up.”

In every interaction, Jon looked first to Sansa to see her reaction, only then lending his voice to support and expand on her stated knowledge or opinion. They were a better team than she’d imagined, and Sansa found herself warm with pride and cheer.

When the last  of the petitioners had cleared, Sansa again took her husband’s hand. “Before we go, might I show you something?”

“Of course,” he said.

This was what she was proudest of, her greatest achievement from her time as sole Warden of the North, and she felt both happy and nervous at sharing it with him. She led Jon by the hand from the receiving hall and around a corner, to the steps into the basement.

“This room used to be a storage cellar,” she explained, feeling the need to fill the silence. “During the war, it was cleared for use as an emergency shelter. It’s laid empty since.”

They reached the bottom of the staircase and Sansa pushed open the door to the basement chamber. “I thought we could use it as a centre for childcare, so the women in town can take on work outside the home without worry.”

She didn’t dare glance to him for an answer.

“I ran the figures,” she said in a rush. “The cost of having furniture brought in and carers hired will be more than made up with the mothers’ earnings. It’ll pay for itself in three years at the outside, to say nothing of how good it will be for the families. I wrote to septas who’ve run similar programmes that were highly successful.” 

The walls had been painted a cheerful green, but most of her plan was still left to the imagination. “There will be shelves here, for books, and a chest of toys.” Sansa strode across to the other side of the room. “They’ll have tables and chairs here, for feeding. There’s plumbing in the walls, so it won’t be difficult to install a privy. Through here there will be beds, so there’s privacy and quiet for naps.” At last, she ran out of features to highlight and had to risk checking for his response. “Do you like it?”

“Like it?” he repeated. “Sansa, it’s wonderful.” He turned in a circle to take in again the room they were standing in, now overlaid with her vision, before facing her. “We’re so lucky to have you. I am.”

Jon reached up and gently nudged a loose strand of her hair back from her face. His lips were parted in a manner that suggested to her many ideas, very like the ones they had practised yesterday. It would be a matter of millimetres for Sansa to kiss him, and she was just beginning to lean in when—

“Jon? They told me you might be down here,” a voice called, and the door pushed open to reveal a slim woman in a cream fur coat.

Sansa let out an involuntary yelp and stumbled back a step. “Your Majesty!” she gasped.

There, in the basement of the common hall of Wintertown, stood the Dragon Queen.

Chapter Text

Remembering herself, Sansa dipped into one of the perfect curtsies she had been priased for as a girl. “Welcome to Wintertown, Your Majesty.”

“Lady Sansa,” Daenerys greeted with a friendly nod. “How lovely to see you again.”

“What do you want, Aunt Daenerys?” Jon’s tone was brusque, and Sansa felt her eyes widen at the insubordination of it. She’d not have expected it of him. He’d always been dutiful, and a military man at that.

Queen Daenerys clearly noted his bluntness as well, but responded good-naturedly. “Now, is that any way to address your queen?”

“I think it a fine way to address a relation who’s dropped in without warning.” Jon didn’t return her smile, but submitted when the queen reached for him, returning her embrace with a chilly kiss to her cheek.

When she was offered the queen’s gloved hand for a touch of her own, Sansa said “Do forgive us, Your Majesty. It’s an unexpected honour.”

Daenerys wore a coat too warm for the weather, but after her desert upbringing perhaps she had a low tolerance for cold. She cut quite a striking figure in it, with her pale hair waved and gathered above the thick collar.

“I came to see how our Jon was faring,” she said, directing herself now to Sansa. “I received your letter with alarming news, and no updates after. I was sitting down to write you to request an answer, when I realised I could pop up to see for myself.” She angled her body back toward Jon and made a show of examining him. “You don’t seem any the worse for wear to me.”

“Thanks entirely to my wife’s expert care and attention, I’m not.” He took Sansa’s hand without looking away from the queen’s eyes. 

“Well, that is a relief,” Daenerys said. Her voice had the same unaffected tone as before. “Many thanks to you, Lady Sansa, for your service to the Crown.”

Of course, Daenerys needed Jon… and, as Sansa noticed the queen glance down her silhouette and back, she realised she was needed too. If Daenerys was to succeed as queen, she didn’t simply need Jon on hand as her heir, and she didn’t just need him in a strategic marriage to keep the North invested in a pan-Westerosi union. She needed that marriage fruitful so the dynasty couldbe stable.

Sansa’s flush deepened. “It was service willingly given, Your Majesty.”

The slightest of wrinkles appeared between Daenerys’s brows. “Yes, I’m certain it was.”

Sansa broke eye contact first. Conscious, suddenly, of their surroundings— imagine receiving a queen in a basement room without even a stick of furniture, Lady Catelyn would have had a fit— she murmured “Shall we repair to Winterfell, Your Majesty, that we might visit more comfortably?”

“That’s a lovely idea, Lady Sansa, thank you.” Daenerys turned back the way she came. “Jon, your wife is both thoughtful and clever. I don’t understand why you hide her away up here.”

Jon held fast to Sansa’s hand as they followed the queen up the stairs. Yet, when she dared to peek at his face, he did not offer up an encouraging smile. Instead, he looked resolutely forward with a serious expression.

Not long ago, she would have taken the look upon his face for displasure with her. That was how he had seemed to her then, joyless and severe without a thought to spare for her. Now she knew differently. He’d had many expressions for her, the last few weeks, at times even sweet ones. No, if he were displeased with her, he would not still be holding her hand. He was not a man of artifice, like some. He’d never made a promise he hadn’t kept, or professed things he didn’t feel. If he were to hold a woman’s hand, it was because he wanted to, the way he had wanted to do other things with her last night. There was no hesitance now, as there had been none then. He did not desire a greater distance from her.

This guarded expression, then, signalled something else. The queen’s arrival had worried him. Sansa could not comprehend why this might be so, but it was the only explanation that fit.

They came to the landing and halted. All three stood for a moment in silence.

Then: “Would you like a ride in our car, Your Majesty?” Sansa asked. “There’s room enough, but I’m afraid we’d only be able to accommodate one of the guards.” 

Daenerys’s royal guard lined the hall: tall, strong knights in pale uniforms. At least three of them travelled with her everywhere she went. They must have taken it in shifts, but Sansa had not stayed in the capital long enough to learn their names, so she could only presume.

“Gracious, no, we’ve our own,” Daenerys said. “I went to Winterfell first, you see, only to find you were here instead, so we’ve already made arrangements.”

“We’ll see you there, then,” Jon said with a stiff nod.

Sansa squeezed his hand before letting it go.

They got into their separate cars— Lord and Lady Snow in their personal automobile, the queen and her guard in the one they’d borrowed for the occasion.

Sansa’s daydreams of kissing frantically in the back of the car felt even unlikelier now than they had been on the way to the hall. Then, at least, Jon had been looking at her. Now he was in his own world.

“What is it?” she asked, when the short drive had begun to seem interminable. “What’s got you troubled so?”

Those grey eyes turned to her at last. “Nothing.”

“It doesn’t seem like nothing.” Sansa leaned forward, putting herself in his space. “You can tell me.”

Jon turned to look out the window, his jaw flexing. “I’m angry with her, I suppose.”

Her brow furrowed. “Why?”

“Because of what she did to you.”

“To me?”

“Yes, Sansa. You.” He sighed and looked back at her. At her perplexed face, he gave a rueful smile and took her hand in his own. “When we married, Dany should have told you what you were agreeing to. She trapped you in her web like a venomous spider.”

It was a shock, to hear him speak so of his royal aunt. He spoke of her only rarely, but when he did he was unerringly polite. 

“I doubt it was done with malice,” Sansa soothed. “When I had my audience with the queen, she said— she spoke of our childhood acquaintance and said how glad we must be to see one another again. I didn’t mark it then, but could it be— might she have believed us better intimates, that we might have discussed such matters in private?”

Jon frowned. “I can’t countenance where she’d have acquired such a notion.”

“Even so, you must allow it is possible.” She gave his hand a squeeze. “I do not wish for you to bear a grudge against this for my sake. What’s done is done.”

“What’s done is done,” he repeated.

When the car pulled up outside Winterfell, Jon helped his wife to the ground. 

“We should receive her in the parlor,” Sansa murmured, her breath stirring his hair as he lifted her out of the car. “I’ll arrange for tea to be brought in. The staff will have a conniption.”

“Thank you,” he said. “For everything.”

Within a quarter of an hour, the queen of Westeros had been installed in an armchair in the parlor. Ideally there would have been time to have the room thoroughly dusted, but there was no helping it now. If Daenerys noticed, she had the grace not to say anything. Tea was served in the finest china, a gilt-edged set that had been brought north by Lady Catelyn.

“They speak of this house all over the realm,” Daenerys said, stirring a spoonful of sugar into her tea. The dress under her coat had been revealed to be a fashionable acid green. “They’re right to. It’s lovely.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty.” Sansa and Jon were settled side by side on a sofa facing her. They were not touching, not now, but Sansa could imagine very plainly how she might close the distance and press herself against him.

But she didn’t. 

Screwing up her courage, Sansa cleared her throat. “Will you be needing to stay the night, Your Majesty?”

“Oh, Sansa, please, we’re well past Your Majesty , aren’t we?” Daenerys asked, not unkindly. “No, it won’t be necessary for me to put you out overnight. The joy of having an aeroplane is that I may come and go quickly as I like.”

The Khalasar was the first privately-owned aeroplane in Westeros. The thought of flight was both exciting and frightening to Sansa, who’d never had cause to try it. Though she might, she realised, if it came to pass that she was to be the mother of kings.

“I don’t like to be away for too long,” the queen confessed. “I don’t delude myself the horses need me, but I need them.” Daenerys had brought with her from the east three large horses, to which she was as devoted as a mother to her children.

“Animals can be rewarding companions,” Sansa answered. She sipped politely at her tea.

“My wife is the same with her dog,” Jon said.

“Excuse me,” Sansa said, affronted. “Which of us is it sits her in their lap at the table? I assure you it isn’t me.”

“You have a new dog, Sansa?”

“Very new,” she said. “She’s been with us only a week but I can scarce imagine being without her. It will be difficult, I’m sure, when we have to leave her behind to visit King’s Landing.”

Daenerys tapped her spoon against the rim of her cup and laid it in the saucer. “Oh, will be coming south, Sansa? That would be a great joy to me, and I’m sure to Jon as well. I ought to have come north sooner myself, but there are so many demands on a queen’s attention. It seems we’ve only just begun to recover from the strains of wartime. Perhaps I’ll have a proper tour when the weather is finer.”

Jon huffed. “Who’ll run the country while you do?” 

Daenerys smiled. “That’s what the Hand is for. You needn’t trouble yourself.”

“But someday I’ll have to do it,” he countered.

She set her cup down. “Is that what’s got you so wound up?” Her violet eyes darted from Jon to Sansa. “Is it?”

Sansa opened her mouth to deny it when the queen held up a hand to stop her.

“I can see already you’re going to lie. It’s my fault, I’ve put you in a terrible position.” Daenerys reached across to put her hand on Sansa’s knee. “There is no need to play politics with me. I am not Aerys the second, nor Cersei Lannister either. Your safety does not depend on my goodwill.” She retracted her hand. “We may as well say it plain. I’ll find it a relief, I think, to have it out.”

Sansa was already shaking her head. “There’s nothing to have out, Your— Daenerys.”

The queen wasn’t looking at her, though. The queen was looking to her nephew, Lord Snow, Warden of the North. And he was not not shaking his head.

“Dany, I mean no disrespect,” Jon began.

She appeared unruffled. “They day you mean disrespect, Jon, I’m certain the sun will rise in west and set in the east.”

He licked his lips. “There’s been a— a lack of clarity, you must admit, to the succession plan. The rest of the world may not need to know yet, but I recently discovered that I was in possession of some information not even my wife knew.” He paused. “Information that, I’m sorry to say, might have affected her willingness to agree to be a part of the plan.”

“I see.” Daenerys leaned back in her chair. “Jon, if you would, remind me how old you are.”

“Six-and-twenty,” he grumbled.

“I’m five-and-twenty,” Daenerys announced. “Gods willing, my death is a long way off. I’m not altogether certain you ought to count on outliving me at all, let alone succeeding me to the throne.” She picked up her teacup. “I rather thought that when the time came for me to name an heir I would designate your firstborn and we’d all get on with things.”

Sansa looked down at her lap to hide the heat rising in her cheeks.

“Well, you don’t want the throne, do you, Jon?” the queen continued conversationaly. “I had it in my head I was doing you a favour, but if I’ve put my life in danger by saying I’d planned to skip you in the line of succession, do speak up.”

Neither of them said a word.

“There,” Daenerys said. “I was right; it’s much better to have it all in the open. It was my mistake for thinking the two of you would have come to the same conclusions. I’ll have to learn to communicate better with you. I beg your pardon entirely; I’m a bit of a newcomer both to queenship and family, I’m afraid.”

Family. Like the perhaps-one-day child who would have to take his father’s place on the sacrificial pyre.

“I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that,” Sansa said. “As the future mother of said heir, I’d like to— begging your pardon, of course, Daenerys— only, it seems a heavy weight to put on a baby, who has no say in the matter.”

“Kings have ruled for thousands of years who were born into it without their consent,” the queen replied, raising one fair eyebrow. “But I take your point, Sansa, I do. If this is to be a more enlightened age, perhaps the next king or queen should be given the opportunity to choose it, as I did.” Daenerys flicked her wrist. “Without the civil wars, of course.”

“How can they choose?” Jon asked. “What if there’s more than one, and they all want it, or none of them does?”

The queen laid a hand on his wrist. “We’ll sort that out. There’s plenty of time for it. It’s a long way off, and we can use the intervening years to prepare for what’s ahead. The crown isn’t meant to be a punishment, and I don’t aim to harm anyone in naming them my successor. We three have each other to guide and discuss with, and we’ll take it on to come to a desirable outcome. Together.”

Jon closed his mouth and nodded.

A long moment of silence followed.

Daenerys smiled brightly. “If that’s settled for now, I’d like to meet your pup before I go.”

Numbly, Sansa stood. “I’ll fetch her.”

The dog, used as she was to spending her mornings in Sansa’s solar and her afternoons in Jon’s room, was curled on the rug before her master’s empty fireplace.

“Come, sweetling,” Sansa cooed. “You’ve a royal audience to attend.”

When they returned to the parlor, Jon was in the midst of saying “—last week in the receiving hall—”  but he broke off to greet them. “As you see, Dany, I’m blessed with lovely girls.”

The puppy, incautious as she was, toddled over to the stranger to investigate.

The queen offered her hand for a sniff. “What’s her name?”

“She doesn’t have one,” Sansa admitted. “Things have been a bit hectic of late,and I haven’t had much time to devote to the question.”

Daenerys patted the soft grey head. “What a strong little thing. She suits you.” She sat back and eyed them. “When I came today and found you were both out, I was concerned I might have been misled about the extent of Jon’s illness.”

“I am only lately up and about again,” Jon assured her. “There are corroborating accounts, if you should like them. Sansa’s had multiple doctors in.”

“No need. I believe you.” She stood. “Now, I really ought to be off, so I can be back on land before it’s too dark for the pilot to see.”

The guards had been deposited in the foyer, and they flanked their queen on the way out the door back.

“It was wonderful to see you, Daenerys,” Sansa said. The queen’s given name felt strange in her mouth, but she was willing to learn to use it. She had a lifetime.

“It was… elucidating,” Jon allowed, but he hugged his aunt with a greater enthusiasm than he had shown upon her arrival. 

“I’ll try to warn you before I drop by again,” Daenerys said with a warm smile. “And, Sansa, I do hope you meant it about coming south. Bring your nameless dog with you if you must. It would be lovely to have you.” The women clasped hands, and then Daenerys stepped into her borrowed automobile.

“Well, that was interesting,” Jon said. “We’ve had quite a week for visiting relatives.”

Sansa said nothing, cradling the dog to her chest and thinking of everything else that had happened in the last week.

“Sansa?” His voice was cautious and sweet. 

“Do you think she meant it?” Sansa asked. “About the throne? Letting us and the children have a say?”

Jon tilted his head. “I don’t think she says much she doesn’t mean. Does it please you?”

“I don’t know,” she confessed. “It’s a lot to take in.”

Your firstborn. There would have to be one. Or, as Jon had suggested, more than one. After last night, that no longer seemed as far-fetched a dream as it once had.

“Sansa,” Jon repeated softly. “Come with me.”

She put the dog down and let him take her hand, let him lead her around the back of the house and into the godswood.

“Why—”

“In a moment, love,” Jon said. “Let’s just be alone for one moment.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

Sansa studied him. In truth, she had studied him often enough to memorise him. If he left her tomorrow, never to return, she’d spend the rest of her days composing poetry about the texture of his skin, the set of his shoulders, the slight unevenness of his mouth. 

“I wanted to thank you, really thank you, for everything you’ve done for me,” Jon said. “I wanted to do it this morning, but things kept—
happening—”

She put her free hand on his chest. “You don’t have to thank me. I wanted to do it. I’m your wife.”

He opened his eyes again, looking serious. “Yes, you are. And there’s none I’d rather have over you. I’m so grateful to have you with me. I’m sorry if that’s selfish. I know it’s not the life you’d have chosen.”

Her heart beat wildly. “I’d have chosen it a thousand times over, to choose you.”

His lips parted. “What?”

Sansa shook her head, and kept shaking it. “Your heart lies elsewhere, and I know that, but mine is yours. There’s no place I’d rather be than at your side, for the rest of my days.” She pushed forward and hid her face against his shirt. “Please don’t go away again.”

Jon’s arm slid around her back, but his other hand cupped her chin and tilted her face up until he was looking her in the eye. “I’ve no thoughts of elsewhere. I promise.”

She blinked, her lashes damp and heavy with the tears that were prickling her eyes. “What you said before, about—” she forced herself to say the words “—other women, and I know I can’t compare with a wildling warrior, but I’m your wife and I love you and I’d like to bear your children. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”

“It counts for everything,” he breathed. “As for my heart, Sansa, it’s yours. It’s always been yours.”

“Not always.” Her voice wavered.

“Months, at least,” Jon said. “You’re so beautiful and kind and clever, how could I stop myself loving you?”

Sansa tried to stop herself sniveling. “You left me alone.”

He frowned. “I only stayed away because— well, I thought you didn’t want me. I thought you’d be happier to have Winterfell to yourself, and I couldn’t bear— but I had it wrong. I know now I got you wrong, and I’m sorry for it.” Jon swallowed. “That’s what Arya wanted to talk to me about, when she was here. She guessed, I don’t know how, that… well… that I hadn’t told you.”

His hands came to her face and his rough thumbs brushed away the tears that had gathered along her cheekbones. He inhaled deeply. “I love you, Sansa, and I hope you’ll forgive me for speaking so plain, but I desire you. Only you, since the day of our marriage. I’ll never leave you. As long as you want me, I’m here.”

“Oh, Jon.” Sansa laughed wetly and closed the distance between their lips for the warmest, most passionate kiss of her life. 

It was the kind of kiss she could live in for the rest of her days without ever coming up for air. Every nerve in her body was awake to his touch, bringing her a joy and contentment more complete than she could have dreamed.

Chapter Text

“Come with me,” Sansa whispered, her forehead resting against his.

“Anywhere,” he said.

Focused on her mission, she managed not to swoon. She took his hand and tugged him along. Her heart beat a thousand times a minute, and she took in the world around her only in flashes: the rich colours of the setting sun, the fresh-sprouted grass beneath their feet, the cool breeze on her hot skin. 

Again, as she had done over a week ago, she led her husband toward the small outbuilding that housed the stairs down to the hot spring.

“Whatever are you thinking of?” Jon asked, his breath warm and humid on the back of her neck.

“You’ll see.” Sansa turned her head to nip a kiss along the firm line of his jaw.

The walk to the underground hot spring went more quickly this time, good health and eagerness replacing infirmity and hesitation.

“I had dressing gowns brought.” Sansa indicated the garments in question, hung upon hooked racks that had been installed in the rock. “So that we might not be caught unawares, like last time.”

“That’s my clever darling.” Jon’s hands came to her waist and held her. “Considering every possibility.”

She slid her hands to his hands and guided them to the fastenings of her bodice. “Shall we bathe, husband?”

His fingers twisted to begin undoing her dress. “I think that’s a capital idea.”

Sansa’s wrists rested on his shoulders and she kissed him. His able tongue, which had so pleased her the night before, teased her lips until they opened to let it caress her own. His hand, having dispatched with the buttons, came to rest on her breast above her corset. Warmth spread through her body, and she pulsed with want between her legs. She moaned into his mouth.

“Like that, do you?” Jon murmured. “What else do you like?”

She shrugged out of her bodice and let it drop to the ground. The hand that was not at her breast she guided under the hem of her chemise.

He took her lead, his touch trailing up the inside of her thigh until he came to her sex. “Ready,” he observed. “You’re going to feel so wonderful.”

A gasp escaped her at the jolt of his touch. Her most private parts had been awake all day, but still the intensity surprised her.

“Are you sore?” he asked with gentle concern.

Sansa shook her head. “Sensitive, perhaps.”

“It will feel better in the water.” Jon pulled his shirt over his head.

She followed suit by stepping out of her skirts, but she was still undoing her corset when he had undressed to glorious complete nakedness. She paused, her eyes drinking in the perfect proportions of his form. All for her, as long as she wanted.

“Here, let me,” he said, reaching to take over for her. 

She allowed him, and he quickly divested her of it.

“Ready for a soak?” he asked.

Sansa bit her lip in a half-smile and removed her chemise. Standing before him in only her skin was new, but she was not embarrassed. She liked the way he looked at her. She wanted him to look, and more than look.

With thirsty eyes, Jon took her hand and led her to the water’s edge.

She stepped in and lowered herself to the neck. He was right; the heat of the water relaxed the tenderness from her body. But that wasn’t her primary concern at the moment. She needed to be as close to him as she could, to have him inside her, to have him fill her with his seed and his love.

“Join me.”

He came toward her, warm water rippling across the distance between them as it narrowed, then closed.

Sansa lifted her hands out of the water and laid them on his chest to feel the wiry hair there, and his skin, and the beat of his heart. “I still can’t believe you’re mine.”

“Funny, I was going to say the same.” He smiled his lopsided smile, the truest of all his smiles, the one she had fallen in love with, and she could not help but kiss it. “What would you like me to do?”

“Make love to me, please.” She blushed as she said it but her voice did not waver.

“As you wish, my lady.” Jon clasped his hands around her body and pulled her in until she was pressed against the length of his body. She wrapped her legs around his hips and clung.

“Oh, clever girl,” he sighed as she brushed the tip of his penis. He levered them backwards, carefully, until he found a rock and lowered to a seated position with her on his lap. “You’re going to have the lead this time. I’ll guide you, but you’ll be in control, all right?”

Sansa nodded.

He slid his hands under the water to her hips and tilted her forward a little. She reached down to take him in her hand and feel for the right angle. When he slid inside her, she gasped again.

He paused. “Are you all right? You can slow down or stop at any time.”

“I’m all right,” she said a little breathlessly. She bore down, slowly, feeling him enter her more fully as she opened herself to him.

One of his hands remained on her hip to steady her, and the other slipped to her waist. “Gods, Sansa.”

“I love you,” she breathed. She rocked her hips to propel him more deeply inside her.

He tipped his head back and sighed. She bent forward to press her lips to his throat. He eased her up and she lifted herself most of the way off his body. The intensity of sensation sent jolts up her spine and she could not bear to move so slowly, so she lowered herself more quickly, and again, and again.

“I love you,” Jon said, burying his face in the curve of her neck. “I love you, I love you, I love you—” 

When he came, his words of love cut off with a soft “ ooh .” He lay, panting, against her chest, still inside her under the water, until he had collected himself.

“Your turn, my love.” He reached below the waterline.

Sansa felt his deft fingers probing for her most sensitive area. She grasped his wrist and moved his hand a little to the right, just so. “There,” she said.

He began to rub. “Like this?”

She caught her lower lip between her teeth and groaned. “Like that,” she confirmed.

The circles his hand moved in were gentle at first, but with her encouragement he added pressure until he was touching her in the way she liked. Soon, she was riding a wave of pleasure with only his hand on her hip to ground her.

After, when her senses returned, she nestled beside him on the rock ledge. “Can we stay always this way?” she asked, tracing the path of a water droplet down his shoulder.

“No, darling,” he said, resting his cheek atop her head. “We’ll be better.”

Chapter Text

Jon lingered in the doorway, watching for a quiet moment before he entered the nursery. He liked to watch his son playing when he didn’t know his parents were there; he always took on such a thoughtful expression, one that reminded Jon of Sansa at cyvasse.

“Hey Teddy, do you want to go see Mama?”

The little boy toddled over to his daddy with a wide grin. Young Eddaerys had reddish hair, darker than his mother’s, and his eyes were the Stark grey of his namesake, but his smile was all his own.

Jon reached to pick him up, but Teddy didn’t lift his arms up as he did when he wanted to be held. The independent streak of toddlerhood had replaced some of his baby sweetness.

They’d be getting baby sweetness elsewhere, now.

He took his son’s hand instead. “Come along, Sweetling,” he called. The large grey wolfhound in the corner perked up at the sound of her name and rose to follow her masters out the door. Since Teddy had begun to walk, Sweetling had only rarely let him from her sight, as though she had taken up nannying as her official duty.

The nursery was only a few doors down from Sansa’s chamber. Neither of them had wanted to be far from Teddy. A family was a precious thing, and theirs was not to be missed out on.

Sansa was lying propped against pillows. Mya had been in to see to her after her labours of the night before; though she still looked tired, she was neat and tidy, with her hair braided away from her face. She looked up from the babe in her arms to smile at Teddy. “Hello, my sweet boy! I missed you at breakfast!”

“Mama,” Teddy said, loosing his hand from his father’s and running to his mother’s bedside. Jon made to stop him, but Sansa caught his eye and shook her head; she could bear it.

“Gentle, gentle,” she warned, as he barrelled into the side of her bed. She reached down to help him climb up, and held him nested against her side with one arm. “Would you like to meet your sister?”

Teddy nodded.

Sansa smiled encouragingly and lifted the baby for him to see. She was a tiny thing, but Dr. Stane had pronounced her strong and hale. Like her Aunt Arya, perhaps. The labour had been faster and easier than Teddy’s, just under two years ago. Jon hadn’t left her side either time. It wasn’t usual for a husband to be present for a birth, but Sansa had wanted him there and he had wanted to be there. Dr. Stane had given him orders, with a spark in her eye that suggested she enjoyed bossing about a prince of the realm. In these matters she was the expert. He respected that.

“Baby,” Teddy said very seriously.

“Yes, she’s a baby,” Jon agreed. It was usually easier to agree with Teddy whenever possible. 

Sansa smoothed her son’s curly hair off his face with a fond expression. The little one didn’t have much hair yet, but it didn’t look red like her brother’s, and her eyes were a rich violet. 

Jon rested his hand on the back of Sweetling’s neck. She’d grown to her full height, nearly at his waist, by the time Teddy was born, and she’d been immediately gentle and pleasant with him, still obeying all commands, but he preferred an abundance of caution to too much comfort. 

Sweetling leaned into his touch, nuzzling for more pats. 

“You like me now, but once my daughter is old enough to drop food on the floor, I’ll be bumped lower down your list, and we all know it,” he grumbled, rustling her ears.

At that moment, the baby woke from her slumber and began to cry. Teddy covered his ears and screamed along with her until Mya shooed him back to the nursery. Sweetling, of course, went along with them.

Sansa unfastened the buttons of her nightgown and settled her nipple in the baby’s mouth. She quieted at once, suckling contentedly.

“Who do you think she’s going to be?” Sansa asked, gazing down at their infant daughter.

“Oh, she’ll be brilliant, I can tell you that,” Jon answered, reaching to cup the baby’s head. “Look at how intently she’s looking at you.”

Sansa looked at him with some humour. “Babies can’t see much at her age. I don’t expect she knows what she’s looking at.”

“Nonsense. She’s a smart girl. Gets it from her Mama.” He reached down to one little hand and let her grip his finger in her tiny fist. “She’ll be beating me at cyvasse just like you before we know it.”

“I don’t always beat you,” Sansa said.

Jon raised his eyebrows. “Yes, you do.” Once or twice, he had gotten the best of her. Once or twice out of hundreds of games. He remained partially convinced she had let him win on purpose.

He heard Sansa take a breath. At first he thought she was going to argue, but then she said, her voice soft: “I had thought we might name her Lyaena, for your mother.”

A great tenderness lanced through his heart, and he bent to kiss her head. “That’s beautiful, my love. We can call her Lya.”

It was necessary Lord and Lady Snow’s children have proper Targaryen names, as they were potential heirs to the throne. But at home, with their parents, simple Northern diminutives were best.

“Teddy and Lya,” his wife murmured. “They go nicely together, don’t they? I don’t know what we’ll name the next one that will be half so fitting.”

“Thinking about the next one already?”

“Of course,” Sansa said. “We’ve one for the crown, and one for Winterfell, but someone shall have to inherit Storm’s End.” She frowned. “We’ll have to figure out what to give the rest, so no one feels left out.”

He laughed. “All in good time, love. For now, you and little Lya need rest.” He laid his hand on the back of her neck and gave her a squeeze.

She closed her eyes and melted into the touch. “Mmm, that’s nice.”

“Plenty more where that came from, next you’re awake.” Jon reached for the baby, who had finished suckling and lay dozing in her mother’s arms. “I’ll take her for now. After all, you’ve carried her nearly a year.”

“That I have.” Sansa stretched and huddled down in bed. “I’m exhausted and I’m sure I look a fright.”

“No, you’re beautiful.”

Sansa smiled, her delicate eyelids still covering her eyes. “You always say that.”

“I always mean it.” He carried his new daughter to the cradle at the far side of the bed and laid her in it. “Sweet dreams, my girls.”

Before closing the door, he stopped. He looked at his wife and newborn daughter sleeping and saved the moment in his mind, to thank the gods for when he next slipped out to the godswood for prayers.

Jon had a lot to be thankful for, and more all the time.

He smiled all the way back to the nursery. This time, he went right in and played with Teddy’s trains.