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Chapter Text

The godswood of King’s Landing was a poor substitute for the one in Winterfell, but Cregan would have cut off his own thumb before he married in some Southern sept and caused a hundred generations of Starks to roll in their graves, his father included. 

When he’d pressed a kiss to the top of his son’s head, leaving him behind as the Stark in Winterfell with Sara and the castellan to watch over things in his stead, there had been no thoughts of marriage on his mind. His wife had only been buried two years prior, in her family’s barrow, despite his wishes to bury her in the crypts with his father as a true Stark. Lady Norrey had begged though, pleaded in the depths of her grief that her only daughter be returned home so that her own bones could be laid beside her one day. He’d buried Arra in her wedding cloak, in the furs he had skinned and the gleaming polished beads that he’d carved from a fallen weirwood limb, winter roses in her dark hair. 

His first thought upon properly meeting the former Usurper Queen was that she looked nothing like Arra. Arra with her dark hair and freckled face and dark eyes, her round thighs and belly and cheeks. Her sharp wit and brash nature, berry juice staining lips and teeth just as blood stained the bedsheets as she slipped from the world of the living. He’d heard much of the Princess Helaena from her nephew when he’d come to Cregan to ask this of him. Gentle, Jacaerys had said, the only good to ever come from a Hightower. 

High praise from the man whose sword had taken off the Dowager Queen’s head. 

Cregan had tried to decline, truly, when the Prince had asked it of him. 

I would keep her here, safe and close, if I could. She’s always been dear to me and mine and her children are blameless in this. My mother’s council would have Jaehaerys sent to the Wall rather than the Citadel and sweet Jaehaera to become a Septa, unless Tyland somehow convinces my mother to marry her to one of my youngest brothers.

They did not choose to be born to him, Prince Jacaerys had said, looking down over the training yard where Joffrey shrieked with laughter as Baela chased him, wooden sword in hand, I would not have them punished for who their father is, if I can. 

The thought of a boy only a few years older than Rickon sent to the Wall, stranded in the icy cold for simply the crime of being born? How could he say no, after thinking of that? 

The relief had wiped the shadows from Prince Jacaerys’ face, clasping Cregan’s shoulder tightly with a thank you, brother. 

And then he’d paused, humor glittering in his eyes, Or should I say, uncle? You might be my favorite of those, these days. 

Cregan supposed it helped that all the others were dead, but then again he’d bore witness to the vitriol that would leave the Prince’s lips at the thought of his traitorous uncles. There’d been a fury that had reminded him of a mother bear protecting her cubs after the convincing of the cook to try her daughter’s attempt at honey mead had left them drunken before the fire in Cregan’s solar. My sister should have lived, he’d said, again and again, each time angrier than the last, my mother’s only daughter, she should have been born, I’ll kill them for what they’ve done-

And he had. The ravens had gone out to herald the news of the defeat of Aemond One-Eye at the Gullet, the death of the Usurper at the hands of Rhaenyra during the Battle of King’s Landing, and the death of Daeron at the hands of Baela Targaryen atop Moondancer during the Battle of Oldtown. They said the Dowager Queen had almost been sent to the Silent Sisters, a mercy from the hands of the true Queen for the woman who had once been a childhood companion, who had cared for the late King Viserys for so many years, but that it had been Jacaerys who had stood against it firm. 

Let us send her to her sons, to wherever in the Seven Hells they reside, did she not say you would be a good Queen and usurp you that next morning? Have you forgotten that she wished to take my brother’s eye for Aemond’s? Imagine what she will try to take for the price of her three sons and a throne. You may be content to show her a kindness, Mother, but I will not rest until Visenya is avenged just as Luke has been. 

It was the Prince who stood behind Cregan’s bride now, carefully removing the maidencloak from her slight shoulders, a glittering thing of rubies and dark dragonglass that flickered in the light. It’d been Princess Baela’s maidencloak at well, just a few weeks before Cregan’s arrival. They’d pinned the usurper’s Queen’s braided hair with dragonflies of silver and gold, their wings and eyes glittering with precious stones and mother-of-pearl, Her gown was a pale purple, slashed with cream and with golden dragons embroidered on the bodice, the open shoulders swiftly covered by the gentle sweep of his own cloak around them. There hadn’t been time to have a proper bridescloak made, Cregan wanted to be home with his son before the snows started in earnest, so he had given his own cloak over to the custody of the Princess Baela, who had whisked it away for the week prior to the wedding and had returned it the morning of, embroidered with running wolves along the hem and bearing similar shining weirwood beads to the ones that had been on his late lady-wife’s cloak. 

From the wedding gift you sent us, the Princess Baela had beamed as she said it, running her fingers over the beadwork, Jace had us matching daggers made and we had a bit leftover. Bad luck for it to go unused, I think. 

His bride’s eyes were unreadable as he did up the clasp of her bridescloak and took her hand in his own, a purple as pale as the dawn sky, as pale as the Queen’s own. They’d been just as unreadable when Prince Jacaerys had introduced them earlier that week, her sitting upon cushions of pale pink and gold as her children played with their toys, something like a portrait he thought a southern sept might hang of their blessed Mother. 

“I take this man,” the usurper’s Queen said, voice steady and quiet. The wind rustled the leaves of the godswood. 

“I take this woman,” Cregan replied.

Prince Jacaerys took a knife from his belt then, with a familiar weirwood hilt and a blade of dragonglass, and extended it to Helaena first. Cregan tensed as she held it, letting go of his hand to bring it to her palm as he glanced cautiously at Jacaerys. A dragon priest stood next to him, arms raised as he began speaking in High Valyrian to those in attendance, and Jacaerys nodded at Cregan, steady and sure as Helaena extended the knife to him, blood pooling in her other palm. He cut his own palm, following Jacaerys’ whispered instructions of which hand to cut, to take, to allow to be wrapped in ceremonial cloth by the priest as the chanting continued. He hadn’t been too surprised when Jacaerys had explained the Valyrian ceremony to him, but now he wished he had thought its dangers through a bit more as Helaena pressed the dragonglass to his bottom lip, blood welling up around it. A cut on her own lip, a pair of sigils drawn, and a copper-sharp sip from the goblet passed in a blur, the ground soaking up their blood once the cup had been set aside. 

When he kissed her it was gentle, chaste, a meeting of weeping wounds more than anything, and then it was over. Prince Jacaerys was grinning, clasping his arm and kissing his bride’s knuckles with a genuine expressing of congratulations on their union before the group was whisked away to dinner. It was an intimate feast, nothing like the elaborate reception that he’d attended a few weeks prior to celebrate the Sept ceremony that Jacaerys and Baela had done to avoid the fussing of the lords who would complain about their disinterest in the Faith and how they’d married with only a handful of witnesses the Valyrian way shortly after he had taken the head of the Dowager Queen. 

Cregan’s company from Winterfell was present for the feast tonight, alongside the royal family, the small council, and a handful of powerful Lords who had remained in the city following the coronation and the Prince’s wedding. Musicians sat in the corner with their instruments, playing a variety of arrangements for the dancing, which had mostly been the Prince, a bit tipsy off the wine and twirling his laughing wife. They’d taken to matching their clothing with only slight variations in shape, nearly pushing the limits of propriety with how close he pulled her after the spins, and the sight of them had set the Queen’s mother eyes alight with joy and warmth. He even took his wife’s sister to the floor, spinning her quicker and quicker until the laughter escaped her. As one of the less enthusiastic dances began, Cregan gathered up his strength and offered his hand to Helaena, taking to the floor together with the strange aching ghost of nostalgia following him there. It’d been more than two years since he’d danced like this, the last had been at a Northern bannerman’s wedding while Arra wasn’t too far along in her pregnancy with Rickon. She’d laughed like the Princess, bright and warm and unrestrained, his bloom of flame in a cold place. 

Her hand was soft in his, small against the span of his palm. A golden sun ring rested on her ring finger, plain in comparison to the Queen’s jewelry, but it shone in the light. There was a ring on her other hand too, on the pointer finger, a pair of sapphires set in silver with one lighter than the other, and a thin band of silver with a tiny ruby set in the band itself on her pinky. She clearly knew the dances, the steps coming naturally to her, and Cregan wished he could find something to say. Some way to bridge the gap between them. But it never came. 

Jacaerys appeared after the dance ended, stealing away the bride as his own wife took her place, dragging Cregan into the next dance, a slightly quicker number that he recognized easier than the last. 

“Thank you,” the Princess said, her eyes warm as he led her through the steps, “It’s brought him peace, knowing she’s with you.”

They glanced over at Jacaerys, finding him grinning as Helaena and he seemed to find their own dance for the song being played, abandoning the ones the others on the floor followed. His bride was smiling for the first time he’d seen since meeting her, bright as the sun and radiant as a summers day. 

“I am honored by his trust and your own, my Princess.”

“Baela,” she chided, grinning, “We are family now, are we not?”

. . .

He kept a separate tent for himself on the way home, not wishing to intrude on her and her children’s space. 

Jaehaera was a solemn child, content to sit with her dolls and watch the horses graze when they stopped each night. Jaehaerys was quiet too, clinging to his mother’s skirts, but he had moments of childish glee that gave Cregan hope that they would find a way to be happy at Winterfell. They would eat dinner together every night in their mother’s tent, one he’d commissioned in King’s Landing that gave them more than a single room to share between the three of them and the nursemaids that had accompanied them. 

He’d not visited her since that first night, after their wedding feast, and even then he’d been hesitant to. They were a matching wound, widowed and widower, left behind with children of the union, and the usurper was only freshly dead. He’d waited till Arra had been gone for over a year before even considering seeking the company of another and even that had been few and far between. There’d been a moment when he had visited Helaena where he’d thought to close his eyes and pretend she was Arra or one of the paid women he’d visited in the last year, but even the fleeting thought had put a sour taste in his mouth. 

So he’d stayed away, entering her tent only at the evening meal and to bid her and the children goodnight each night. He’d had more interactions with the twins’ nursemaid asking after their wellbeing than he’d had with his lawful wife of two weeks. 

“Is Uncle Aemond coming for us?”

Jaehaera’s question had caused an eerie quiet to fall over the dinner table, Helaena’s shoulders tensing in a way that Cregan hadn’t witnessed before. 

“Aemond is gone to be with father, sweetling, remember?” Her voice strained with the effort of remaining level, eyes hollow with grief. 

“In the stories, the knights always come back to rescue the princess.”

“The stories, not the histories,” Helaena’s voice took on a tinge of hysteria and Cregan’s hands tensed around his spoon, “we mustn’t speak of Aemond or Daeron or father now and we do not need to be rescued-“

Her fork clattered to the table as she pushed her seat away, leaping to her feet and fleeing the tent. Jaehaera stared at her mother’s retreating back, her eyes filling with tears, and Jaehaerys watched from his seat wide-eyed and startled. The nursemaids swept in then, soothing and offering sweets from the bowls at the center of the table. 

“I’m sorry,” Jaehaera said, voice wet with tears, “I hurt Mummy.”

“No,” Cregan said, voice feeling too loud in his throat as the room went quiet, “You didn’t hurt her. It isn’t your fault, little one.”

She sniffled loudly, burying her head in the her nursemaid’s shoulder, and Cregan grasped for any chance of salvaging the dinner, “I’ll go find your mother, perhaps you could draw her something to help her feel better? I believe you brought your pigments,” He glanced at the nursemaids and found them nodding, “and the steward can provide you with parchment.”

Jaehaera tearily nodded and Cregan left the table then, uncomfortable in his own skin. Rickon, even at his young age, was all too aware of the hole that his mother’s death had left in his life. He’d draw for her, scribbles of parchment and berry juice to dye the paper that he’d put in her jewelry box, filling it to where it could barely shut. 

His men seemed to know what he was seeking, nodding in the direction Helaena had fled until he finally caught sight of her sitting by the creek they’d camped near, her knees drawn up to her chest. Cregan let the branches and leaves snap loudly beneath his feet to give her warning and she glanced back briefly, turning back to the river once she knew it was him. He could see that the shake of her shoulders was more than just distress, but cold as well. Her dress, a dark blue one with silver embroidery, was far too thin for the oncoming winter chill and the thought had barely crossed his mind before he was unclasping his fur cloak from around his shoulders, settling it warm and heavy around her. She practically swam in it, one of her hands coming up to hold it closed around her, the other pressed against her mouth. 

He sat down on the rock next to her, staring out at the creek as it grew darker with the setting of the sun. 

“They say you are a just man.”

Cregan fought the urge to fiddle with his fingers, instead bringing them up to his mouth to blow hot air into them, rubbing his palms together to warm them, “I do what honor would ask of me, yes.”

She rubbed her knuckles, no, her rings, against her mouth again, scraping against the delicate skin with the prongs of the gemstone settings, “There are such absolute concepts in honor, they do not teach girls about the lines and shadows of it.”

He wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that. 

“If a king calls for thousands of innocents to die and a man in his kingsguard slays him to save them, is he still accursed? If a man kills his brother’s wife and vengeance is taken, is it kinslaying?”

Cregan had thought of the second more than once, truthfully it had been nearly nightly after Jacaerys had left Winterfell, swearing that he would kill Aemond One-Eye if it was the last thing he ever did. Would it have been kinslaying to avenge one’s little brother? To claim justice? Was the very Queen he had bent the knee to a kinslayer herself for what she’d done in the heat of battle? He’d spent many an hour in the dead of night in the Godswood, staring at the bleeding eyes of the weirwood as if it would provide him the answers he sought. 

“That is for the gods to decide,” the words felt horribly inadequate, “We must go by the laws of the people and the land.”

“The people and the land would have stolen my babes from me and would have sent me to the silent sisters, yet you married me.”

“The Queen’s word is law and I am her servant.”

“And if she were to have your child killed in his bed, would you kill her?”

Where was she going with this? Cregan did not know what to think of his strange, gentle wife, did not know what to do other than continue with her on this determined line of questioning that she seemed desperate to secure an answer to. 

“I would,” He whispered just loud enough for her to hear over the creek, “And I would be accursed, but it would be worth it to bring justice for my boy.”

Helaena burst into fresh tears with a loud sob, a sound so broken and raw that it scared him. Her shoulders trembled beneath his cloak, curled in on herself, the gems of her sapphire ring clicking and caught between her teeth. 

“I’m so sorry,” she wept, bent double, “Oh my brothers, I’m so sorry-“

Cregan couldn’t help but move then, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and tugging her against his chest. She went willingly, sprawled half across his lap to press her cheek into the crook of his other arm as he gently rocked her as if she was Rickon, the babe awake far too late and not quite willing to fall asleep. She wept bitterly, scratching her face with the sapphires again and again until he finally caught her by the wrist and stopped her, worried she’d draw blood.

“No one understands,” She said, voice breaking as she stared out at the water, “Triple knot, double knot, single knot. Rats or dragons, water or wool? Sons for sons, brothers for brothers-“

“Speak plainly, wife, so that I may understand.”

She shook her head frantically, fresh sobs escaping her as she sat up, her wrist still caught in his grip, “I killed them all, rats or dragons, water or wool, a god’s eye or a god’s mouth, never to return.”

Her free hand came up unexpectedly, clutching at the front of his doublet with a look of desperation, “A babe or a brother, a fall or a flight, I saw it. I saw it. I had to choose. They’d make me choose if I didn’t send him.”

Her eyes flickered to the sapphire ring, her wrist still caught in his hand, and he nodded, “If you didn’t send him something bad was going to happen?”

Helaena nodded furiously, “The rats were coming for the boy. I didn’t want to do it, I loved my brothers, I did. I promise. I didn’t want to send him but I saw it. I saw it all.”

There is something that still doesn’t quite make sense to me, Jacaerys had said on Cregan’s first night in King’s Landing, sitting in his solar with Baela and Rhaena, Aemond had to have known how many dragons we had at Dragonstone and there was no way he could have known that Rhaenys and Daemon would fly to King’s Landing when he did. If he was going to attack the blockade and risk being attacked by five dragons, why wouldn’t he bring Sunfyre or even ships with scorpions? Was he truly so overconfident that he thought he could take on all of us alone?

Cregan’s mother had known a wise woman of the crannogmen, traveling to the Neck to meet with her every year with baskets full of preserved foods and herbs. Cregan could remember the woman as clear as day, her eyes as dark and green as a raven’s wing and her gaze feeling as if she was looking into his very soul. 

I see it, boy, she had said once, eyes glittering in the low light, smoke curling up from her hearth and filling his lungs till they ached, I see it all. Though I see, I cannot speak, the tongue cannot untie the knots, cannot unwind the roots of the great oak. 

The air left him in a rush and his grip on Helaena’s wrist loosened, softening until her palm fell against his and he could see the twin sapphires. 

I didn’t want to send him.

“Did you send Aemond to the blockade?”

Sons for sons, brothers for brothers. 

Relief washed over Helaena’s face even as the tears still trailed down to her jaw.

“I didn’t want to,” She insisted.

He nodded, slowly and deliberately bringing his hand up to hold her cheek, giving her enough time to move away if she wished.

“I know. Something was going to happen?”

She nodded furiously, a sob leaving her, “The rats.”

“The rats,” he repeated, “They were coming for the boy? For Jaehaerys? You saved him from them?”

Helaena pressed her cheek into his hand, squeezing her eyes shut, “I sent him to save him.”

“You said you saw it. Was Aemond going to die anyways?”

A tear escaped her closed eyes, running down her cheek to his hand as she nodded. A shuddering breath left Cregan then, heart pounding in his chest as he leaned forward to press a kiss to her forehead. 

“You are no kinslayer, sweet wife.” She let out a sob, pressing even more into him as he let their foreheads rest together, “Does the mother wolf not kill any who would harm her pups and a dragon do what is necessary to protect her eggs? It’s no easy thing to bear, but the gods would not grant you such a thing to make a cursed woman of you.”

Helaena sagged against him, forehead sliding from its place against his own down to the shoulder of his doublet as her arms came up to wrap around his neck. 

“I’ll have to beg your patience, sweet wife, it may take me time to learn to hear all your words, but I will do my best.”

Her arms tightened around his neck in response and Cregan smiled. 

Chapter Text

The Twins were a welcome sight, a gleeful reminder that the journey was halfway done and soon they would be in their own halls, their own beds, in the arms of their own families. 

Their last stop where they’d slept within a castle’s walls instead of the canvas of their tents had been a full week earlier at Darry, which might as well had been a lifetime ago with all the change that had happened. Helaena had settled in the last few days, the grief still very present but the guilt no longer as crushing with another to help bear the load. She’d become less reserved in his presence, leaving behind her tense silence in favor of the occasional question about her new home. 

Sometimes, the strange words would slip from her again, agitation in her eyes at being unable to really explain what she’d seen, but he dutifully wrote them down in a leather-bound journal he’d sent a man to the town of Fairmarket to buy.

The feeling of being heard is a wonderful thing, he thought, and clearly she felt the same, her eyes lighting up with every appearance of the journal. 

Helaena took his hand without hesitation as he helped her down from the wheelhouse, palm sliding down to the crook of his arm once her feet had found their place on the ground. She didn’t like to be touched fleetingly, he’d found, whispers of contact made her flinch away. Steady pressure though, and giving her the option of declining the touch? That she did not mind, he even felt she welcomed it at times and despite his own nervousness he’d fallen into the habit of kissing her forehead when he met her for their meals. 

She was in a dark blue dress today, one he’d seen in passing over the last two weeks as she had embroidered it with paler blue roses and wolves of gold and silver. Her hair was caught up in a golden hairnet that was encrusted with pearls and tiny blue gems that sparkled in the fading sun. The children, clinging to their nursemaids as they left the wheelhouse, were in matching grey, but with a pair of golden dragons on their chests

“Welcome, welcome!” Lord Frey lifted his hands in greeting as one of his servants brought out to them a tray of bread and salt, clapping merrily once they’d partaken of the offering. 

As the group was ushered into the castle, Cregan placed his free hand over Helaena’s on his arm and gave it a reassuring squeeze, relishing the shy smile that pulled at the corners of her lips as she glanced back at him. 

. . .

Gods, he hated the south. 

It was miserable, the pomp and the circus of it all. They’d eaten, yes, and the fare had been pleasing, but they’d been forced to witness a minstrel entertaining them. Cregan could appreciate good singing, any reasonable Lord was expected to not be too much of a prude and a miser about such things as celebration, but after the sixth or seventh song detailing the war he’d grown quite tired of it. Helaena had as well, after the second telling of Aemond One-Eye’s death at the Gullet. At the first recital of Daeron the Daring’s fall at Oldtown, he’d worried she might flee from the table as she had in their camp, but instead she’d remained in her chair as tense and still as a statue. She pushed her food around her plate, picking at it only when Cregan glanced at it enough that she’d noticed his attention. By the time the songs were over, she’d turned the sapphire ring around on her hand and clenched it in her fist, the gems pressing into her palm enough that he knew he’d find marks there on the morrow, angry and red. 

She’d excused herself to put the children to bed and retire after that and he’d meant to go with her, only to be waylaid by the invitation of Lord Frey to remain for a time of drinking and discussing business. Cregan had thought to decline, to beg off on road weariness, but he’d not spoken to the man for most of the meal despite Frey’s many attempts at beginning the conversation.

So he’d accepted. He wished he hadn’t. 

The talk of business had barely lasted ten minutes, Frey whinging on about the new shipyard at White Harbor cutting into his profits, and then it’d turned to the war. Oldtown should have been burned to its foundations, Frey had scowled as he spoke, looking like he’d sucked on a lemon, make a proper Harrenhal of it, a scorched streak across the Reach should do the trick in preventing future rebellion-

“A pretty little war prize,” Frey said then, grinning into his wine goblet, “Her Grace must be very fond of you to give you another little dragon from her clutch, even as…soiled as this one may be. I’ve always thought the reason those Targaryens kept their women to themselves was less for the purity of the blood and more that there’s just something too special about royal cunt to share with us mere mortals.”

The leather of Cregan’s gloves creaked around the arm of his chair and it was only the reminder of how accursed a man could become by breaking guest right that kept Ice in its scabbard. 

“You will not speak of her in such a way again.”

Lord Frey scoffed, either ignorant or overconfident regarding the rage that was barely concealed in Cregan’s voice, “She’s the wife of Aegon the Usurper, my Lord. She would have gladly seen my castle burned for not bending the knee to her kin and she should have died with the rest of them. Her vermin too, end this madness once and for all.”

Her vermin? Cregan could have laughed. His wife’s babes were as innocent as they came, sleeping in her bed, curled up like puppies against her, always saying their pleasantries and worming their ways into the good graces of even the gruffest of his soldiers. He’d even caught Asmund, a man who’d never given him anything more than a frowning nod for approval in Cregan’s lifetime, lifting  Jaehaera into his arms so that she could pet the horses and feed them sugar cubes that the old man offered her from his pocket. Jaehaerys followed after the squires, constantly chased after by one nursemaid or another so that he did not get into the weapons being oiled or trampled under the hooves of an ill-tempered horse.

They still steered clear of Cregan, most days, but he didn’t think it was out of fear. He hadn’t spent much time with them either, the strangeness of the situation heavy on his mind. Cregan had been prepared to go home to his son, he’d never anticipated raising a dead traitor’s children with a dead traitor’s wife. He also hadn’t anticipated her being so lovely, but that was a problem he was not quite ready to give the attention it deserved. 

If anyone could be described as vermin, it was this southerner who knew no trouble but the consequences of his own folly, his own sins. He’d die with gold in his pocket but very few would attend his funeral, of this Cregan felt sure. 

He surely would not be in attendance, not now.

“She is the Lady of Winterfell,” Cregan said, voice low and steady, “and she is no man’s wife but mine.”

He rose from his chair, his shadow cast across the stone floor from the roaring fire next to them. A red flush rose up on Lord Frey’s neck, his fingers clutching at his goblet as Cregan continued to speak.

“To disrespect her is to disrespect me and I assure you, I have no reservations towards addressing slights towards my person.”

The goblet of wine was still in Cregan’s hand, sloshing and full, and without another thought he tipped it, letting the red spill out onto the stones between them, “I reject any further displays of your hospitality this night, my Lord, we will be taking our leave now.”

Lord Frey leapt to his feet, red and frantic, “It’s the middle of the night-“

“So it is.” Cregan let the goblet fall from his fingertips, “But I am not afraid of the moonlight and neither are my men. Good day, my Lord.”

He turned on his heel and strode from the room, boots echoing upon the floors. One of his men stood just outside the solar on guard with a few Freys, and Cregan seized him by the arm. 

“Go to Asmund, tell him we will be departing shortly. I’ll be in Lady Stark’s rooms if he wishes to speak with me.”

His man set off and Cregan went in the other direction, finding his way to Helaena’s rooms, which were next to his own in the guest wing. His men were stood around it alert and awake, and he nodded to them in approval as he approached. 

“We’ll be leaving shortly.”

“Is something amiss, my lord?” One of his men asked, hand falling to his sword hilt.

“Our host does not know when to hold his tongue,” Cregan said, “And I fear if I spend the night in this wretched place I will become accursed by removing it. Gather your things and your brothers, I’ll see to the Lady Stark and the children.”

One of his men chuckled, only to be elbowed by the one next to him, and with another look from Cregan the group dispersed, two staying behind to guard the door while the others set off to prepare for the journey. 

He knocked on Helaena’s bedroom door, waiting for her welcome call before he opened it and slipped inside. His wife was in her nightgown already, a red velvet robe atop it but untied at the waist, and her hair was down and wavy from the style it had held within her hairnet. He had to force himself not to stare, pushing himself towards the fireplace and moving around the burning logs within with the iron poker in an attempt to distract himself from the slope of her collarbone and the strain of the fabric over her chest.

“There is an inn on the other side of the bridge. I apologize for the late hour and the sudden change of plans, my lady, but I will not allow my family to sleep beneath the roof of a man as foul as Lord Frey.”

Her footsteps fell closer to the fire, not quite close enough for him to feel the warmth of her at his back, but close enough that she’d likely be wrapped in his shadow. 

“If the insult was at me-“

“Then we will not accept it.” He turned around then to face her, “A single insult we could bear, but they never end in this place, one after another until every other word out of his mouth is double edged.”

Helaena’s wrung her hands, twirling her rings around her fingers before she nodded, “I’ll wake the children.”

She started towards the door, still twisting her rings, and he found guilt settling heavy in his stomach, “I am sorry, sweet girl.”

He’d meant to say sweet wife, truly, but the fondness had crept up in his heart over these last few days and loosened his tongue. It wasn’t love yet, or at least he didn’t believe it was, but a fondness as sweet as the first day of spring. There was a devotion there to their children, a mutual dedication to their safety, and he could only hope that she could take Rickon into her heart as well. That she could be the last line of defense for him as she’d been for her own babes, not that he intended for any danger to reach her doorstep. They’d have to kill him first and he intended for it to be a worthy battle, one that his father would have approved of.

Helaena stopped, her back to him, “I don’t think you ought to be sorry, not really.”

“I should have stopped them at dinner. It does no good to taunt the dead.”

When the words finally came, her voice was so very quiet. 

“Words cannot hurt them any longer, they are beyond their reach.”

“That does not mean you are beyond their reach.”

He heard her sniffle and the guilt twisted in his stomach yet again. 

“If I do not remember them, who will? I will take any reminder of their lives that I can find, even those that hurt.”

She opened the door to the nursery and left his sight without another word. 

. . . 

By the time the party had gathered and a bag heavy with coin had been tossed to the watchman on duty for the bridge toll, Helaena’s face was clear of any past distress.

The children, in her own arms instead of those of their nursemaids, were still in their bedclothes, though wrapped in fur-lined cloaks against the night chill, but his wife had dressed in one of her traveling dresses and put her hair back in a simple braid. A bearskin cloak he’d given her as a wedding gift was around her shoulders, the children’s heads resting upon it. He loomed nearby until she was safely in the wheelhouse, laying the twins down onto the thick, layered bed of blankets on the floor and soothing them when they sleepily fussed. It was only once the doors to the wheelhouse had been shut that he felt he could relax, turning his horse towards the other end of the bridge and taking off. One of his men had already gone ahead to buy out the inn for the night, hoping that enough rooms would be available for all the men to have a bed to sleep upon now that they’d been torn from a promised bed in a castle. He’d already made a note to send a raven ahead to Winterfell about the situation, instructing the steward to set aside a hefty bag of coin to be distributed to any man without a bed and hearth to warm him this evening. 

Within an hour they’d arrived at the inn, Cregan growing more and more irritable by the moment, and it did not help when the man he’d sent ahead had let him know they would be short two rooms should they wish to continue the usual sleeping arrangements. 

“Bring the wheelhouse bed to whatever room is mine, Lady Stark and the children will sleep there. Get the men to their rooms,” Cregan passed him a handful of coin, “And get them ale and pie for their troubles.”

Once the man had left him again, Cregan went to the wheelhouse and opened the door. The nursemaids were dozing on the bench across from Helaena, who watched him with strange eyes, like she was looking into his very soul. It was unnerving, he did not enjoy it. 

“We’ll need to share with the children too, is that alright?”

She nodded, rising from the bench with a hiss of pain and he reached into the wheelhouse to steady her, catching her by the hand and rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. When he finally helped Helaena from the wheelhouse and her feet finally met the ground, the nursemaids had already begun the process of removing the twins from the wheelhouse, following her out. The man he’d given the order to earlier appeared to gather up the bedding and show them to their room, which had barely enough room for the twins blankets next to their bed. 

Better than a night’s sleep under the same roof as a Frey, he reminded himself before he set to the task of shifting the logs around in the hearth and adding another to keep it going once they were asleep.

The nursemaids went to their own shared room once the twins were tucked in, the door closing behind them and leaving them alone. Cregan had resolutely faced the wall as he undressed from his riding clothes and into the pair of fur-lined trousers he’d grown used to wearing at night on the road, taking up the wet cloth from the basin to wipe the sweat from his neck, chest, and arms. By the time he turned to face her, Helaena had returned to the state she’d been in when he’d come to her room in the castle, hair down in a sheet of waving moonlight, the light catching where her nightgown touched her skin and drawing his eye to those spots. 

It felt very strange to crawl beneath the blankets together, some strange battlefield in a foreign land they they’d left behind a bit wounded and worn. Three weeks now, was it not? Not even a month of being wed, though it felt like a year and a day all at once. Time stretched strangely in the wilderness, a foreign curve of sunlight around a tree trunk that didn’t quite seem right in one’s eyes. 

“Why did you do it?” She asked in the dark, in a whisper so soft he’d thought he might have imagined it if not for the piercing look in her eyes when he met them. 

His eyes caught on the fall of her neckline around her collarbones, the length of her pale neck, the shine of her hair against the scratchy sheets. There was a ribbon at the top of her nightgown, pale green, likely the only shred of green the Queen had allowed her, and his fingers itched to tug at it, to pull at the bow until it fell away to reveal more of her soft skin. 

“Because you are my wife.”  

He found himself closing his eyes as if it could hide himself from her, as if the darkness could banish his desires, desires he’d only truly wanted with Arra before now, “And my wife and children are mine to protect.”

The mattress dipped beneath her weight as she shifted closer, close enough that he could feel the heat of her skin through the thin cotton of her nightgown. Her lips pressed against the skin between his collarbones and he shuddered uncontrollably. 

“I’m glad it’s you,” She whispered, letting her forehead fall against where she had kissed him, his heartbeat racing beneath her touch, “You won’t let them be touched.”

“I won’t let any of you be touched.”

“Death touches us all,” She whispered, “But there aren’t rats in the crib anymore, nor needles in the windowsill. Only a green like spring, like new growth over a grave, a better shade of it. Like sage, like olive, like a dandelion stem.”

Chapter Text

She’d been here before. 

A curtain of pale through the wooden door with the shadow behind it. She’d seen it a thousand times over when Aegon or Aemond had come to see the children, when she’d seen herself in the reflection of her mirror across from the entry, and she had seen it in her dreams, forever unsure of who it would be behind the moonbeam curtain. 

The city had fallen, she could hear them chanting, the goldcloaks turning in the name of their former commander. Daemon Targaryen had inspired loyalty, of that there was no doubt, but he inspired division in equal measure. She had never thought it’d be him to emerge from the pale curtain of hair, to appear in the wooden doorway, to stand with blood-slick blade and look at her and her children. She gathered them behind her, hands trembling, shielding them. 

The rats, Helaena thought as he walked closer, a familiar trail of blood dripping from Dark Sister to the stone floors, smearing upon the rug, a paler rat than most, but a rat in the gutters of Flea Bottom, free to roam and full-bellied and rarely lonely-

Dark Sister lifted, the tip smearing blood up, up, up her dress, resting sharp between her breasts against the thin skin there. Close your eyes, she wanted to tell the children, their faces pressed against her back, their hands clutching in the fabric of her skirts, but even breathing broke her skin beneath the blade, fresh crimson dripping slow towards her belly. 

“Your brother was a fool to face us, the both of them. Tell me, niece, which one is the boy?”

Rats running across the crib sheets, rats in the walls, rats in the larder, rats in the halls-

“Daemon.”

The darkness behind the curtain of pale had never been a shadow, it’d been another curtain. Dark of hair, dark of eye, chasing the rats across the crib sheets and in the halls- 

Her nephew, Jacaerys, stood in the doorway, sword in hand, fingers pale from how tight he held it. His eyes were on Dark Sister, on the drip, drip, drip of blood down the inside of her dress, a line of crimson soaking through the layers. His mouth was set in a frown that would have been ugly on any other, teeth grinding and jaw clicking with the strain.

“The Queen wishes to speak with you.”

Daemon Targaryen had a sharp smile like a blade, a bloody gash in his pale face, blood on his teeth. Had he bitten someone or had he been struck? She wondered if she would ever truly know. The Prince of the City with his golden cloak and a crown of pale hair, a crown of the people’s adoration. Whores fluttering their silks and batting their eyelashes whenever he passed by for a chance at his coins and his company. Men training in the yard, lusting for his skill and his demeanor, for his steady hands and his graceful brutality. If they had seen Vaemond Velayron fall tongueless, she wondered, would they still lust? Would they cheer? Or would they know the face of death and terror?

The bloody gash opened, bloody teeth flashing, “Hear that, girl? The Queen.”

“Daemon.”  

Jacaerys was sharper that time, far less wary than the first, and Daemon’s lips twitched before he left the sword tip trail back down her body and back to his side before he turned on his heel and brushed past his stepson in the doorway without another word. 

Harwin Strong had always been kind to her as a girl, gentle and mannerly in a way that many of the guards simply did not know how to be. Aegon had been picking at her, angry about their betrothal only a couple weeks before Ser Strong had been sent back to Harrenhal, and Harwin had stepped in to let her know that her mother was looking for her. He’d even gone so far as to offer her his arm, like a giant’s, like a wall, like a burning door locked, against her hand, and walk her away from Aegon and in the direction of her mother’s apartments before he revealed his own trickery to her. Jacaerys had never looked more like him than he had right now, watching her with wide eyes, carefully putting his sword back into it’s scabbard and removing his gloves from his hands. He tucked them into his belt and walked slowly into the room, giving her ample chance to move away as he drew close to her, stopping within arm’s reach. 

“Where is your mother?”

Helaena shook her head, voice trembling, “Gone. Left.”

Come with me, her mother’s hands grabbing, grasping, voice pleading, you and the children-

Please, my darling, a ring of bruises around Jaehaera’s little wrist from a grandmother’s desperate grip, please let me take her with me if you will not go-

“You did not go with her?”

“Aemond had died,” Helaena said, “And with him, the rats.”

All except the pale rat, the king among the vermin, pale as bones, crawling around the swords on the throne yet never cut-

Jacaerys gave her a look she recognized. It was the one people wore often to her face, one that screamed a lack of understanding. They did not speak the language, she could not speak it any clearer. She had tried, had tried to undo the seams of the cloth of dreams and bring new descriptions forth from the rip in the fabric, only to find nothing there but the darkness. 

“Aegon is gone, aunt,” slash of pale slash of gold, spiral from a winter sky, a dragon and a falcon both have talons, she had seen it, she had grieved him before he had even found his way up to the sky, “You and your children will be under my protection as long as you bend the knee to my mother.”

Kinslayers, the lot of them, even me, it was a physical pain in her chest, thinking of Aegon, of Aemond, accursed beneath the eyes of every god. Thread of green, Thread of blue, threads of red and black and gold and a bleeding red comet-

Helaena nodded and the tension left her nephew’s shoulders as she curtsied low, taking his hand and kissing the ring there in acceptance of his protection, her children still clinging to her skirts. Their final shield.

Run, dear mother, Helaena prayed against the cool silver, run far and fast. Find wings and take to the Hightower, to the burning green sun, and then fly further until you cannot see it any longer. 

Chapter Text

They’d barely managed half a day’s travel before the rains came.

He sent scouts ahead of them, knowing that the most precarious portion of this trip lay ahead, and it was as he feared. The swamps of the Neck were swelling up with foul, stinking water, washing out the causeway and leaving its rotting planks even more waterlogged than normal. The North’s greatest defense was also one of its greatest problems and now it seemed to be protesting the oncoming winter in its own petty way. 

Cregan found himself thankful that they’d had the canvas tents waxed and oiled again during their stay at Darry as the storm raged against their camp. Faintly he could hear Jaehaerys and Jaehaera playing in the next tent over, and it made his heart ache. With this delay, it’d be closer to three weeks than two before he saw his son again. He hadn’t been parted from him as long as this in his entire life, closing in on the end of his fourth month away from Winterfell, and every day felt like an eternity away from his boy. From Arra’s boy. 

Gods, what if the boy didn’t even recognize him when he did arrive? If he was nothing but a stranger to his babe, it’d hurt more than the whipping post. 

A lot of things hurt these days.

Arra’s memory was heavy on his mind at all hours, the fading smell of her hair, the press of her lips against his, the curl of her body around his in their most intimate moments. He tried to cling to it, tried to hold the sensation of the memories close so they would not slip away. The possibility of waking up one day and not remembering the sound of her laugh was a sobering, haunting thought. 

She’d been more than just a wife to him. She was every night in the training yard beneath a summer snow moon, laughing as Asmund knocked him into the mud again and again. She was the feasts, whether she was sitting with the lords and ladies or at the high table next to him as his wife. She was every time they rode their horses through the wolfswood, taunting and jeering at each other until they dismounted and he’d crowd her against a tree, her hands already tugging at the laces of his riding clothes. 

He hadn’t just lost his wife when she died bringing their son into the world, he’d lost his most trusted counsel, his most loyal ally, his dearest friend. 

Was it wrong to let himself care for another after swearing before a heart tree to love Arra for the rest of his days? Did the vow before the old gods remain even after she was lost to him? He’d vowed to protect her too, but she’d never been fond of that part of it. She would have been furious at him for leaving the Twins like he had. Arra was stubborn as a mule and just as likely to bite back. His uncle hadn’t liked her and the feeling was quite mutual, but Cregan was forbidden to interfere in her affairs. I don’t need you to defend me, she’d snarled once in one of their fights, nor do I want you to.

He’d been prepared for Helaena to be angry too, to push away the protective nature that rested in his bones as Arra had, but she hadn’t. Sometimes it slipped his mind that Helaena had never experienced the independence that Arra had enjoyed, that she’d been a princess and a wife while still young enough to have a Septa. A mother shortly after, barely out of girlhood, bringing two babes into the world is the same horrifying process that Arra had bled to death during. 

Who had protected Helaena then, other than her gods?

He wouldn’t ask another babe of her, not unless she wanted one too. I’ll show her the glass gardens, he found himself thinking, and I’ll have the maester order her all the southern books she could desire. 

She’d been through enough in the south, in that vile place that smelled of sweat and rot and decay that corrupted men and women alike. Maybe in the clean air of the north she could find some resemblance of girlhood again. They were lacking the citrus and variety of fruits from Dorne but he thought her face might light up at the cakes Winterfell’s cook was fond of making. He’d have the cook boil maple syrup just to see the joy in her eyes of how it cooled into candy in the snowdrifts. 

My aunt is a gentle, kind woman, Jacaerys had said all those weeks ago, she deserves a safe marriage with an honorable man who will cherish her.

Maybe the Prince had seen something the others had not, surely there was some southern ally who would have been a far more popular choice than the solemn, dutiful Warden of the North. Or maybe he’d simply been thinking ahead to his own daughter who would someday marry Rickon and sleep within the walls of Winterfell. It would be good for the girl to have another dragon near, to have someone guide her through the intricacies of an arranged marriage.

She might want for a summer sun and those she’d lost, but he’d make sure she wouldn’t want for anything else as long as she lived.

When he went to the evening meal that night, he found her pale and quiet, clearly unwell in some way and his stomach twisted with uneasiness at the sight. She was sat upon her cushions, not yet at the table as the cook set out the dishes for the meal, and he gravitated towards her as she tried to rise and curtsy, motioning for her not too. She did not heed it, finally rising and doing the slightest of dips that would count as a curtsy before she moved to the table, wincing. He closed in at her side, pulling out her chair and settling it into place once she was seated. Cregan wished to ask after her wellbeing, but suddenly there were nursemaids and the cook and the children and he did not find it appropriate. 

Instead, he took his seat at the head of the table next to her and tried not to focus on his worry. 

The children were in ill spirits that night, restless from being stuck inside out of the chilly rain all day, and it was only cured by a break in the weather as the evening meal was coming to a close. They raced outside, boots barely laced in time to be chased after by their nursemaids, shrieking with laughter. Helaena remained at the table, face drawn, and he remained with her there, not touching her out of caution. He knew how sometimes the touch could aggravate her rather than soothe, and he did not wish to worsen her suffering. 

“I suppose I should apologize,” Helaena said, just loud enough for him to hear her, “Though, I also suppose that would be what my mother would expect of me. But you...I don’t think you’ll be quite as upset that there is no babe as she’d be considering you haven’t visited my bed since we married.”

He almost breathed a sigh of relief, both at her courses being the source of her ills and that they would not endure another significant change in their lives so soon after the barrage of them in these last few months. Not that a pregnancy would be something terrible or to be endured as a ill-omened event, for a babe of his and hers would be a lovely thing. Someday, maybe, if she wanted. Only if she wanted. After they’d been wed for longer, when they were no longer still strangers despite knowing such intimate details of the other. 

“You did not choose this marriage.” He found himself unable to look at her, staring instead at the fading light coming in through the tent opening, its canvas door tied to the side, the mud disturbed from the children’s exit, “I would not impose on you, nor would I ask a child of you in such strange times.”

Her chair creaked as she shifted, yet still he did not look. 

“Strange times and strange marriages are no stranger to me, my Lord. Fortunately, in this one my husband is far less likely to see me as a sister and have to drink himself into oblivion to lie with me. Though, that is always a possibility, but one I doubt. Ice and teeth, someday, winter snow and dragon’s bite before the long night’s end.”

The hairs on the back of Cregan’s neck stood up, goosebumps racing down his fur-clad back, “What did you say?”

He looked her way, eyes wide, but now she was the one looking through the opening of the tent, little crinkles at the corners of her eyes where she squinted to look at something he could not see,  “You do not impose as much as you think you do.”

She paused briefly, frowning.

“It gets colder past here?" She asked, "That’s dreadful. My hips hurt enough without the chill to make it worse.”

“Much colder, I’m afraid. Once the marsh is behind us, there will be very little but snow. There’s willow bark in our stores if you think it’d ease your pains, a bit of dreamwine as well.”

He longed for home, for the smoky smell of the castle as the hearths burned, for the crisp wind of the godswood, for the heavy air of the crypts as he stood surrounded by his honored dead. He longed to walk his son to the heart tree, to teach him to kneel before it as his father had taught him, to teach him to pray to something far older and wiser than themselves. Part of him wondered if Jaehaerys and Jaehaera would learn too, if he would guide them in that way or if he would call upon a stonemason to make emblems of Helaena’s gods. There was no Sept at Winterfell. If she wished for one he would build it in a little room connected to hers, would order incense and oils from southern merchants and crates of candles from White Harbor, though he’d grumble the whole time surely. The south could keep their gods and their septs and their stench, the North was still pure. It would remain pure aside from the little room if she asked for it, aside from the little seven pointed stairs embroidered into the pattern of the twins’ pillowcases. 

“Winterfell will be warmer, I swear it.” Cregan continued, contemplating calling for a hunt when they got home. Maybe the winter was still young enough for bears to be plentiful and if not them, then the wolves would be. He’d given her one of his bearskin cloaks as a wedding gift but it was far too big for her, too heavy. She’d need a new cloak as the lady of Winterfell, one made just for her, and pale furs to line some of her summer dresses with so that she could still wear them. It’d been too long since he’d been on a proper hunt, his trip to the Kingswood with Jacaerys simply could not compare to a proper northern hunt, “There’s pipes in the walls that run with boiling water from the springs and hearths in every room. You’ll be the warmest woman in the North.”

“Winterfell is still a lifetime away and I am cold now.”

There was a touch of aggravation in her voice that seemed to be about more than just the weather, though he wasn’t sure what on earth it could be.

“I’ll have one of the squires fetch more blankets for your tent-“

Helaena stood abruptly, her chair sliding backwards slightly, but her movements halted as she whimpered, doubling over. He was on his feet without a second thought, towering over her as his hands dropped to her sides, one taking her elbow and the other her hip. She sagged against him with a little groan that did truly terrible things to his sanity, and despite his lingering feelings about said groan he recovered, dropping her elbow to wrap an arm around her waist. His chest warmed as she let her cheek fall against where his heart threatened to beat out of it. 

“I’ve a selfish request for you.”

He’d found that in these moments with her so very close, he found it hard to find words that didn’t make him feel like a bumbling fool, so instead he grunted. As if that was any better. 

“At the inn,” She hesitated, but only for a moment, “My hips hurt less with you there, since I was warm. They never quite stopped hurting after the twins and they only get worse with the cold and well…” 

Helaena trailed off and he could practically feel the flush rising up her cheek where it was pressed against his doublet. 

“If that would help…”

“It would.”

He missed Arra so fiercely then. She’d not let him be so tongue-tied. She’d picked at him when he needed to be picked at and encouraged him when picking at him didn’t work. She’d seen every version of him, from boy, to a scrawny, spotty man fighting for leadership of his family, to a man a bit more grown and a bit less spotty growing out his hair and carrying the ancestral sword on his back without fear that he’d be seen as an imposter. Speaking with Helaena felt like nothing he’d ever felt before, restless and difficult but so very sweet when it went well. He enjoyed her company, even when she said things he didn’t know what to think of. 

If she wanted him to sleep next to her and keep her warm in a northern winter, who was he to deny her such a request?

It was selfish really, to jump at such a chance to be so close, or maybe it was duty, and therefore was the most unselfish thing he could selfishly do.

(Though it did not feel so selfless and dutiful when his arm was over her waist, hand splayed across the full span of her belly, her back pressed to his chest in their bed, his mind occupied with the efforts of not drifting into selfish, selfish thoughts.)