Chapter Text
Before the dragons danced in the skies and blood soaked the realm, there was a prince...and a Stark.
ย
๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ of the Dance as if it began with crowns and dragons.
They say it began with thrones, with ambition, with a queen denied her crown.
But it began here.
With her.
ย
๐๐๐๐๐๐ Stark, the North's daughter was born of winter and frost. Her mother was from Old Volantis and her father, a Stark.
The snow was falling when they buried her mother. ๐๐๐๐๐. That was her name.
She didn't remember much about her mother's deathโjust the cold.
The few memories she had was the sound of her mother's voiceโsoft, foreign and singing lullabies no one else in Winterfell knew. She would sit on the furs by the hearth, her little legs crossed and saying it over and over like it meant something: Mummy. Mummy. As if naming her would make her come back.
But no one could hold back sickness.
Later, Alarra would learn they called it a plague. A plague that swept through the North and took dozens with it. But all she understood then was that her mother had gone to sleep one day and never woke up. She was five when it came. Her mother died in the east wing of the castle, skin fever-hot, hands trembling as she pressed one final kiss to Alarra's forehead. The next morning, no one would let her in the room.
She would never forget the way her father stopped smiling.ย
Rickon Stark was not a man who cried, but that day, he did.
They buried her mother in the Stark crypts, the first to lie there who wasn't born of the North. Alarra visited the tomb often, even as a girl. In the dark, she asked questions no one answered: Why her? Why not me?
She came to the crypts on her mother's nameday. Every year. She brought no offerings, no flowersโjust a lighted candle and her memory.
After her mother's death, Rickon StarkโLord of Winterfell and Warden of the North wed again a year later. Duty demanded it. And duty always came first.
He stood beside a confused, stiff-backed six year old and introduced her to a woman she had never seen before. "Allie, this is your new lady mother," he said. "Be kind."
Alarra looked up at her. She did not speak. She did not say mummy.
A year passed and ๐๐๐๐๐๐ was born. Solemn, even as a boy, but loved fiercely by his sister.
They were close in ageโonly seven years apartโbut that never meant equal.
The maester started calling him heir. The lords began sending him gifts. And Alarra, though, older, watched it all from the shadow of his cradle.
She loved him, there was no denying that. He was loud and always grabbing her hair. But by the time she was ten, she understood something she never said out loud: he mattered more than she did.
When Cregan was old enough to hold a practice sword, the master-at-arms called him "My lord." Alarra had beaten two boys twice her age in the sparring yard prior and they said she was wild.
She never forgot that day, watching him in the sparring yard, wooden sword in his small hand, the men cheering him on while she sat on the step stones, forgotten.
That's when she noticed a girl in the shadows. ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐.
Alysanne was the daughter of a Stark cousinโone of the younger sons of a younger son, long buried and barely remembered. Her mother had been a spear wife from the mountain clans and had died when Alysanne was only 2 years old.
After that, the girl had been passed from one hall to another like a ghost no one wanted to claim. Bastard of no real name. Blood of the wolf, but with no place at the hearth.
She came to Winterfell when she was ten, taken in more out of duty than kindness. Most barely noticed her.
But Alarra did.
She had a face like the North itselfโsharp, pale and quiet. A bastard girl with a black braid down her back and a look that said she knew exactly what it meant to be left behind.
She didn't speak at first. Just sat beside her without asking, knees drawn up, their shoulders barely touching.
"You're not gonna cry are you?" Alysanne said after a long while.
"I don't cry," she replied, though she had been close.
"Good. Crying's for southern girls."
That was the start of it.
She didn't speak of her mother and neither did she. Maybe that was why they understood each other so quicklyโtwo girls whose mothers were gone, whose fathers were distant or dead or just too busy to see them. They never said the words aloud, but the loss sat quiet between them, known and shared. They were each other's comfort long before they even realized it.
From that day on, they were rarely apart. Alysanne became her shadow, her sword when she needed one, her silence when she didn't know how to speak. She never cared that Alysanne was a Snowโa thread of Stark blood running quiet through her veins, too thin for power but thick enough to bind.
When she was old enough to choose her own handmaidens, she chose Alysanne and no one dared question it.ย
Not when Alysanne could outshoot most men on the training field and knew how to gut a hare with her eyes closed.
They didn't call each other sister, but they might as well have.
Later, Alarra had learned early: that her strength would never be trained, only tempered. Her place was never to lead, only to endure.
She watched as her father named Cregan his heir. No one looked her way.
Still she loved him. Cregan. The boy who once held her hand when storms made the windows shake. The man who now ruled with quiet pride. But Winterfell was his, not hers. That had been decided before either of them could speak.
Her father's voice rang through the keep, "This is my son, Cregan Stark of House Stark, blood of the First, future Lord of Winterfell."
Not a soul questioned it.
Not the bannermen who bowed.
Not the maester who smiled.
Not the girl who stood above it all, silent as snow.
She was older, yes. The firstborn. But that didn't matter. Not with a womb instead of a sword.
And in the North, titles did not follow love or order of birth. They followed the sword. In the eyes of Northern Lords, the blood of Winterfell passed through men, not mothers. No matter how fierce, how wise, or how willing she was to bear the weight.
Her blood was Stark, but her name would never be carved into the seat of power. That would be her brother's.
That was the way of things. In the North. In all of Westeros.
The next time she brought it up to her father, he told her gently, "That's just the way of things, little one." And then he left the room.
So when Rickon died, the seat passed to Cregan. Not because he deserved it more. But because he was a son and she was not.
She never envied Cregan. Nor resented him. He was her brother. Her blood. She soon realized that it wasn't in her want to command. But she missed being someone's first choice.
She learned that love wasn't always the same as legacy. And that names did not always belong to those who earned them.
Years passed.
She wore her pain quiet. Wore her dignity like armor.
Winter came and went and peace frayed at the edges.
Whispers came from the Southโof dying kings and of dragons stirring in the keeps.
One day, she stood by the window of her chambers, a raven scroll forgotten in her hand, watching the sky.
A dragon approached.
That was the first time she saw him.
๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐
Crown in fire. Raised for war. Betrothed to another.
Alarra had known many men. She had learned to guard her heart with the same silence she'd been raised in. But Jacaerys did not speak like Northern Lords.
She should have stayed away.
But she didn't.
Jacaerys would bring war.
But first, he brought temptation. And ruin. And a kind of hunger she had never allowed to nameโdesire.
The war had not yet begun, yet already they were falling.
Jacaerys. Alarra. Fire and frost.
She was the snow he never expected.
He was the danger she never feared.
Their story was written not with ink, but with choices. Terrible, aching choices.
And with each breath they chose each other.
She was not made for grand love stories. She knew better. But he looked at her like he saw past everythingโrank, restraint and rules.
And he met her eyes and never looked away again.
He should have.
But what is duty to desire? What is honor to a heartbeat?
ย
There is no ballad.
It is a reckoning.
ย
๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐. ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐, ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐.