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Something had upset her husband at the feast. Catelyn was certain she hadn’t imagined it. He never truly enjoyed these events. Everything about them -- the formality, the necessity of entertaining and impressing the guests whether they be visiting nobles from other regions or some of his own bannermen, the inevitable politicking or business dealing that lay just under the surface of every pleasantry – tended to cause him to scowl. She’d long ago learned to touch his thigh beneath the table or place a hand gently upon his arm or even murmur softly, “Smile, my lord” in order to get him to look at her and relax his facial features at least to the point that he didn’t appear angry. They’d laughed about it more than once in the privacy of her chambers over the years, and she’d teasingly threatened to take ever more inappropriate actions in the Great Hall if he persisted in fixing everyone in the room with glacial stares.

But tonight, something specific had upset him. He’d already been irritated by the arrival of the men from Braavos as they had appeared without notice, and he’d been even more annoyed at Lord Manderly who’d not sent a single raven warning of their coming. The Lord of White Harbor had at least sent some of his own men to accompany them—an unnecessarily large number of his own men, Catelyn had thought, as she’d hurriedly planned this evening’s welcoming feast. Ned had told her that was Manderly’s way of letting him know he considered this important while not wanting to give the Braavosi the impression it was important enough to load his own considerable mass into a wheelhouse and come himself.

The leader of the White Harbor men told Ned the Braavosi had arrived there with no prior communication either. The contingent was headed by three wealthy and rather ambitious traders and a representative from the Iron Bank. Apparently, they had a proposal for some sort of trade agreement which would dramatically increase the export of timber from the North to Braavos and allow for much less expensive importation of several items from the continent of Essos which were useful to people here—glass being the one which interested Ned most. They’d approached Lord Manderly with their proposal as White Harbor would be the port through which all trade under this deal would flow. He was in favor, of course. He stood to make a great deal of money. But while the old schemer could be ruthless in business, he was a loyal bannerman, and did not feel he should enter into such an agreement without the blessing of his liege lord.

The four Braavosi, three White Harbor men, Ned, and Maester Luwin had been closed up in his solar for nearly the entire day discussing it, and he’d come to find Catelyn in her chambers only an hour before they had to be in the Great Hall, still wary of the suddenness of it all, but generally inclined to believe the idea had merit. He tentatively planned to send them back to White Harbor without a definitive answer both because he wanted to think more on it and consult some others without the Braavosi here in Winterfell and because he was annoyed at the lack of any prior correspondence about this from anyone involved. Yet he didn’t want to offend the men and cause them to withdraw the offer entirely. She knew no more about Braavos than he did, but she did understand negotiations and offered him what advice she could about encouraging them without promising anything and then admonished him to at least pretend to enjoy their company at the feast. He’d actually laughed at that in spite of his irritation and concerns and promised he would do his best.

And he had. Until sometime after the main course had been served. She’d been proud of him. Of course, she was always proud of her lord husband, but she’d been specifically proud of the way he’d conversed with their guests and the care he’d taken to play the gracious Lord of Winterfell. And then he simply stopped speaking in mid-sentence. She’d been speaking to the banker, but turned around when she’d heard one of the merchants saying, “Lord Stark, are you well?”

She’d discovered him still as a statue, staring out over the Hall with a distressed, almost frightened expression on his face. “My lord?” she’d said softly, touching his arm. When he hadn’t replied, she’d followed his gaze but saw nothing unusual. She’d thought he might be looking at his bastard, who sat at one of the lower tables under the watchful eye of Jory Cassel, but the boy was doing nothing untoward that she could discern. He hadn’t even sulked overly much about not sitting with his trueborn siblings this evening as Ned had been the one to tell him that he couldn’t. A Braavosi woman had come to sit beside him, one she’d noticed earlier in the day as the poor thing walked somewhat hunched over and had a terrible scar over one side of her face that ran right through her eye and prevented it from opening properly. No one had introduced her upon arrival so Catelyn assumed she must be a serving woman. But she wasn’t doing anything besides talking to the boy, and Ned was always glad when people treated the bastard kindly so it was unlikely that either of them had caused his distress. She’d surveyed the others at that table and those nearby. White Harbor men, Winterfell men and women, and the few men and women who’d come with the Braavosi merchants sat intermingled with one another throughout the Hall, but she saw no evidence of discord. Then Ned had spoken.

“Forgive me, sers. One of my men seems to require my attention. I am certain it is nothing, but I should see what he needs.” He’d risen from his seat without sparing Catelyn a glance. “I shall return as quickly as possible. Please continue to enjoy your meal.”

She’d followed him with her eyes as he’d walked swiftly to the back of the Hall and watched him stop suddenly and then look around as if searching for someone. She had seen no one beckon him, but whatever man had done so must have left the Hall for after looking about for several moments, Ned had turned and left the Hall himself. Catelyn had scanned the Hall to see if she could figure out who had left, but was distracted in her search by the sight of her nine year old son laughing with the bastard boy about something. Apparently, Robb had decided to take advantage of his parents’ distraction to escape from his seat and join Jon Snow. Dessert had not yet been served, and Robb knew he wasn’t to leave his place until after it had been. Not wishing to create a scene, especially after Ned’s unexpected departure, Catelyn had smiled at the Braavosi men and made small talk, intermittently glaring in Robb’s direction until he’d finally seen her. Guiltily he’d hung his head and slunk back to his place just before Ned arrived back at his seat with no explanation for his absence.

Her husband had tried to be attentive to the guests for the remainder of the meal, but he’d remained distracted the rest of the evening, and while no one else could likely see it, he’d been distressed about something. Something he apparently couldn’t speak about in front of their guests.

“Are you all right, my love?” she’d leaned in to whisper when the arrival of the desserts took everyone’s attention.

“What? Oh . . . yes. Yes, Catelyn, I’m well.” He hadn’t even sounded like himself.

“Who called you away, Ned?”

“Oh . . . it was nothing. Nothing at all.”

She’d wanted to press him further, but one of the men had asked him a question, and she’d had no further opportunity to do so. She’d had to leave the Hall briefly then to see the children to bed, nodding at Jory to see that he took Jon Snow back to the Great Keep as well. Upon her return, the rest of the evening passed painfully slowly, and when at last the Braavosi merchants declared they were ready to retire, Ned took her arm and all but dragged her from the Hall.

When they’d reached her chambers, he’d kissed her and told her he had something to do before he could retire and she shouldn’t wait up for him.

“You’ll sleep here, though?” she’d asked him as he turned away from her.

“If you wish. But I fear I’ll be in my solar half the night.”

“What is it, Ned? What happened tonight?”

“What happened?” he echoed. He paused only briefly before shaking his head. “Braavosi merchants I’ve never met showed up at my gate unannounced with a deal that seems almost too good to be true. That’s what happened.” He sighed and looked at her apologetically. “I’m sorry, my love. I cannot sleep. I’ll likely walk in the godswood, and then I do have work I should not put off.”

The godswood. While she might have offered to accompany him to his solar to help him with whatever he needed to do, she had no love of the godswood and certainly no desire to visit it after dark. She’d nodded and watched him leave in spite of her worry for him. She knew he was keeping something from her, but she couldn’t imagine what it was. Something had happened during dinner, though. She hadn’t imagined that.

After pacing her room for several moments, she’d realized she wouldn’t sleep either. She’d been keeping something from him, too, and she’d planned to tell him tonight. While this was certainly not the way she’d planned to tell him, mayhap her secret would help ease whatever had distressed him. She knew he’d be thrilled. It had been so long since Bran that she’d scarcely dared to believe it herself, but it had been over two moons since she’d bled now, and she was certain she was with child even if she hadn’t been to see Maester Luwin about it. She knew well enough how it felt to carry a babe without a maester’s confirmation, and she wanted Ned to be the first to know. Had he not been away from Winterfell when her last moonblood should have come, he would likely suspect already.

She wouldn’t go to the godswood. If he needed time with his gods, it was not her place to intrude upon it. And she didn’t truly want to give him this news with those red eyes staring at her, making her feel a stranger in her own home. She’d wait for him in his solar and surprise him there. He’d said he intended to do some sort of work, so he’d certainly go there. Decision made, she’d hurried to the solar and let herself in.

And now she found herself yawning in the little space Robb had showed her between the large bookshelf and the window. Her firstborn son was excellent at hide and seek and so naturally had discovered the only space in this entire room where a person could stand (or sit on the floor as she did now) without being seen by anyone else in the room. She told herself she was being silly, but she wanted to surprise him. She’d wait for him to sit down at his desk and then she’d come up behind him and massage his shoulders and kiss the top of his head, and when he asked her what she was doing there, she’d tell him. She’d tell him he was going to be a father for the fifth time. Sixth. She couldn’t help making the mental correction as much as it pained her. But she was not going to dwell on that. Or on whatever had disturbed Ned so greatly this evening. She’d tell him of his child tonight, and he’d tell her what troubled him when he was ready. He always did. He’d only ever kept the one secret from her in all the years of their marriage. He trusted her. He loved her. It had taken her a long time to accept the truth of that, and sometimes she still had moments of doubt if she thought too long on the bastard and his unknown mother. She yawned again and then shook her head as if to physically dislodge any of those doubts now. They were only a product of the late hour and the stressful day. She placed a hand over her belly, over the tiny child resting within, and imagined the way her husband’s grey eyes would light with joy when she placed his hand there.

She was uncertain how much time passed and realized she must have been dozing when she heard the door to the solar slam shut forcefully. She jumped, but almost before she recalled where she was, a feminine voice demanded, “Let go of me, Eddard!”

“Why have you come here? My gods, what were you thinking?” Her husband sounded both furious and as if he were in some sort of terrible pain.

“What was I thinking? How dare you ask me that! All these years, I’ve wanted nothing but . . .”

“All these years, I’ve kept him safe!” Ned interrupted. “You cannot be here. You know that! You’ve put us all in danger.” He still sounded as if it pained him to even speak, and a part of Catelyn longed to go to him even as her brain tried desperately to make sense of what she heard. Mayhap she wasn’t truly awake. Slowly, she rose to her feet behind the shelf, wondering who the woman was, what she had done to upset her husband so terribly, and how best to make her own presence known.

There was a long moment of silence, but just as Catelyn was about to step out from behind the shelf and say something, the woman spoke again. Previously, she had sounded angry and defensive, but now her voice trembled as she asked quietly. “Aren’t you the least bit happy to see me, Ned? Did you not miss me at all?”

“Miss you?” Ned’s voice sounded oddly choked. “Gods, sweet girl! Only every day. Only every time I look at your son.”

His words stopped her heart from beating. The emotion so clearly evident in his voice as he spoke them ripped it open, and she put her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. She thought she might faint and reached out with her other hand to steady herself against the shelf, trying desperately to remember how to breathe.

The woman was crying now. The sound was muffled, and Catelyn wondered if Ned held this stranger in his arms to let her cry against his chest as he’d done for her when she needed his comfort. She wanted to look, but didn’t want see it, so she stayed as she was.

“Nine years,” the woman said finally, her voice hoarse. “I couldn’t stay away any longer. I couldn’t. I know I shouldn’t have come, but . . .”

“Lya, as much as I would have it otherwise, you cannot be here,” Ned said gently. “We both know that. If you are seen . . .”

“No one recognized me, Ned.”

“I did. From across the Great Hall.”

The woman who’d come with the Braavosi. The one with the scar. She’d been sitting with Jon Snow. Unable to stop herself now, Catelyn leaned forward very slightly so that she could just see around the case. The two of them stood facing each other, just barely inside the closed door. Neither was looking in her direction. They looked only at each other’s faces. It was the woman from the Great Hall, only she stood perfectly straight now as she looked up into Ned’s face. Her hair was wrapped up on her head in some sort of cloth which made her appear taller than she was, but even so, she was obviously shorter than Catelyn. The scarred side of her face was toward Catelyn now, and she found herself wondering what had happened to her—if she had been scarred when Ned had known her. When Ned had loved her.

“What happened, Lya?” Ned asked then, as if he had heard her thoughts. “Who hurt you?” He reached out to touch her scarred face, and Catelyn had to suppress a sob at the tenderness of the gesture. She moved back and leaned against the wall, closing her eyes, but still seeing him reach for the woman in her mind.

She heard the woman laugh. “No one. It isn’t real.”

“What?”

“It isn’t real. I spent almost two years traveling with a group of mummers. It’s been a long time, but I remembered how to do it.”

“You were a mummer? I can’t quite imagine that.” He sounded amused.

“That’s because you know bloody well I’d be terrible at it,” she laughed. “I fell in with them not long after I reached Braavos, which was . . . oh, six years ago, I suppose. They moved around a lot, and it seems that the folks who make a living pretending to be people they aren’t don’t care much who anyone really is, so I fit right in. I couldn’t act at all, although sometimes they’d have me try when they needed a laugh. But I was brilliant at making the mummers look their parts. The man who designed all the masks and face paint and such said I had a true talent. I worked as his assistant, and he was sorry to see me go.”

“Why did you leave them?”

“It was time to move on.”

“Have you been well?” He sounded so desperate to hear that she had. “Have you been . . .” His voice trailed off, and the woman laughed again, but it had a bitter sound to it.

“Happy?” she asked. “Is that what you want to ask me, Ned? If I’ve been happy?” She didn’t sound happy. She sounded bitter and even angry again.

“You know I never wanted you to be unhappy, but . . .”

“But I made my bed and I have to lie in it, right?”

“Don’t say that!”

“Why not? It’s true. You’re right to blame me. I blame me. But still . . . I had to see him, Ned. I had to know he was all right. And when Darion started talking about building ships . . .”

“Ships?”

“It’s why he wants your timber. Tall, straight, strong trees are not exactly plentiful in Braavos so I talked him into coming here.”

“You talked him into . . . Lya, what is this man to you?”

“Oh gods, Ned. He’s old enough to be my father. Maybe even my grandfather. I work for him. Nothing more. Not that it’s any of your concern.”

Ned made a sound as if he disagreed with that, and Catelyn found herself wanting very much to hit him. She’d been too stunned and too hurt to be angry, but to hear her husband seemingly desiring fidelity from his lover while he bedded Catelyn here in Winterfell made her feel dirty and it infuriated her.

“Work for him?”

She sighed. “I got a position in one of his trading houses because I could translate Westerosi. Common Speech, I mean. I’ve gotten used to calling it what they do in the Free Cities. Anyway, my being able to read well and write legibly got me noticed by Darion.”

“Nothing else got you noticed?”

“Perhaps he noticed . . . other things. But I don’t bed with the old man. And he values my work enough to keep me as his assistant anyway. I’m his expert on the Seven Kingdoms. How’s that for a laugh?”

“You risk exposure by telling him . . .”

“That I was born in the Crownlands but have lived in both the Stormlands and Dorne? That I’m a wanted criminal in three of the Seven Kingdoms? That’s how I explained the need for a disguise here. He insisted I come because he’d never been anywhere in Westeros and wanted a guide. I told him I’d never been anywhere in the North except White Harbor, but that Lord Manderly was the man to talk to. I knew fat old Lord Wyman would send him on here.”

“He could have recognized you!”

“He didn’t see me. I told Darion I’d embezzled a good bit of money from Lord Manderly. He kept me away from him in spite of my disguise.”

“Your employer doesn’t mind your having a criminal past?”

“Of course not! He’s a criminal himself. Don’t agree to his deal, by the way, unless you get it in writing that all transactions go through the Iron Bank and that you are granted access to the Braavosi side of the operation by having a number of your own people there.. The other two men aren’t as crooked as Darion, but honor among merchants in Braavos does not mean precisely what it does to you, my darling Ned.”

“I’ll simply turn them down then.”

“Don’t. You have more than enough timber to turn a nice profit, and you’ll never get another opportunity to get glass this cheaply. The Iron Bank is an unforgiving institution, but it is scrupulously honest. They’ll charge a fee for acting as your financial agent, but you can negotiate one that’s reasonable. You’ll still come out ahead, and you’ll be protected from Darion’s less scrupulous investments.”

“Why have you done this?”

“I told you. To see my son. I haven’t seen him in nine years, Ned. That’s a long time.”

“I know how long it’s been.”

“Do you? Do you really? Here in your castle with your lady wife and all your children where you can see them and touch them every day. Do have any idea how long nine years has been for me?”

“Lya, don’t.”

Leah. Jon Snow’s mother’s name is Leah. Who is she? How would Ned even know this woman? Why is she dangerous?

“Don’t what, Ned? Don’t hate you for doing what I asked of you? I don’t, you know. Not really. I love you too much to ever hate you, but sometimes I hate that you have everything I lost.”

“You think I didn’t lose anyone? What about Father and Brandon? What about so many of my friends? Are they insignificant losses to you?”

“Of course not! But I lost everyone, Ned! Everyone! My entire family! The man I loved! My son! Do you have any idea what that feels like? Do you?”

The woman’s anguish stabbed at Catelyn’s heart because in it she heard an echo of her own pain. This woman’s resentment of Catelyn must be as strong as Catelyn’s for her. He is my husband! she wanted to cry out. Take your son and leave here. Leave Ned. Leave us. And yet another part of her wanted to cry out for Ned to leave. To never speak to her or even look at her again. She didn’t want him in her bed or in her life at all if his heart still belonged to this woman. It hurt too much. But Ned was the Lord of Winterfell, and whether he wanted her or not, she was his wife. She belonged to him as much as the castle did, and neither of them could change it.

“I’m sorry, my sweet, wild girl,” Ned said, sounding as if his heart were breaking. “I would change it if I could. You know I would. But we chose our paths long ago. We can’t turn from them now.”

The woman sniffed. “I chose, you mean. You were never given any choices were you? Poor honorable, dutiful Ned. You always do what you should and never what you want.” She paused. “He’s so like you,” she said quietly. “And gods! He worships the ground you walk on. Did you know that?”

“I know Jon as well as I know any of my children, Lya,” Ned said softly.

“You don’t treat him like you do those children, though. He was sitting as far away from you as you could possibly put him tonight. My gods, Ned, he’s nine years old! Don’t you care how he feels?”

“Care how he feels? I have cared for that boy from the moment you put him in my arms. I have kept him safe, and I’ll continue to do so unless you do something to . . .”

“Safe, yes! But have you made him happy? He not only looks like you, Ned, he’s already got your trick of hiding how he feels. But I could see it. I could read his face as well as I read yours, and he was miserable tonight. You don’t even let him eat with you?”

“Of course, I do! He sits beside his brother Robb at every meal. Tonight was an exception because there were guests.”

“You’re ashamed of him.”

“I am not ashamed of him!” Ned nearly shouted those words but almost whispered the next as if he had suddenly realized he risked being heard outside this room. “I am not ashamed of him, Lya. But he is a bastard. My bringing him to Winterfell cannot change that. He cannot change that, and he must learn what it means.”

“He knows what it means,” the woman said bitterly. “That little red-haired boy came to sit beside him after you saw me and left your table.”

“You were gone when I came to find you.”

The woman laughed. “No I wasn’t. I just faded into a group where you wouldn’t see me. Nine years of hiding teaches you how to do that. I saw you see me, Ned, and I wasn’t ready to speak to you, particularly in the middle of the Great Hall. But I watched you, and I watched Jon, and I watched the red-haired boy—the one that looks like the Tully woman, and I saw . . .”

“Don’t call her that,” Ned interrupted sharply.

“What?”

“Catelyn is my wife. Do not call her the Tully woman.”

“That’s what she is. It’s obvious from that hair! And that boy looks just like her! Her son’s all Tully, isn’t he?”

“My son, Lya. Robb is my son, and Catelyn is my wife, and I will ask you to remember that when you speak of them.”

“I saw the way that woman looked at my son, Ned! Like he was dirt. Like her precious boy might be contaminated by proximity to him. She hates him. And you let her.”

“She doesn’t hate him, and whatever she does or doesn’t feel for him is my fault—not hers.”

“You’re defending her?”

“Of course, I am. She’s my wife, Lya. And you’ve never met her. You have no right to . . .”

“I have every right! The woman is raising my son! And he deserves better!”

“Yes!” Ned raised his voice to match the woman’s shouting. “He deserves a mother!”

Catelyn hadn’t thought she could feel any colder, any more broken than she had before. Is this how her husband truly felt? He resented her for not being a mother to his bastard? She began to shake, and the tears which had been building for some time—tears of anger, of pain, of grief—began falling silently as she sank back down to sit on the floor once more.

“He deserves a mother,” Ned said more quietly. “But he couldn’t be with his mother and live. And Catelyn is not his mother. I could not possibly ask her to be. She deserves a husband who did not greet her after a year away at war with a bastard in his arms. So before you tell me what Jon deserves, try to remember that he isn’t the only one suffering for someone else’s acts.”

Catelyn could barely register Ned’s words. She felt empty. Yet, when the woman, Leah, spoke again, she could tell his words had angered her.

“Don’t tell me about her suffering. Look at her! She has four children. Four, Ned! I only saw the one little boy and girl at the feast, but I know there are two younger ones as well. I asked. All red-haired, I bet. Just like her. Just like the two I saw. She has four children, Ned! And they’re all with her. I have one son. And he can’t be with me. He can’t even know I’m his mother. Don’t tell me about Catelyn Tully’s suffering.”

It occurred to Catelyn to wonder why this woman couldn’t claim her son and simply take him. Was she truly a criminal? Would Ned love a woman who was a threat to her own child? Nothing made sense. Her tears had stopped, but she felt cold and empty, and she put her face in her hands.

“Then don’t tell me about yours.”

Ned’s cold pronouncement caused Catelyn’s head to snap up. He didn’t sound angry or broken. He spoke the words in what she had often referred to as his lord’s voice—as a simple command.

“Ned, I . . .”

“No. I mean it. Your suffering is not entirely of your own making, and I will not say that it is. But it is your own decisions that brought you here. That brought Jon here. That brought Catelyn and even myself here. So if no one else’s suffering is to be considered, don’t ask for consideration of yours.”

“You’re still angry with me. After all these years. You can’t forgive me, can you, Ned?” The anger was still there in her voice, but mostly the woman just sounded sad.

“I thought I had. I think about you every day. I worry for you, wonder where you are, pray that you have some peace, some contentment in your life. I wish for some way to have you back here where you belong. I haven’t been angry with you for a long time, Lya, but now you come here and put everyone I love at risk for what? To see Jon? I can at least understand that. But to berate me for having a life I care about, to belittle my wife and even my children because you are unhappy when none of us is the cause for that? I love you. I always will. But yes, I’m angry now. What we’ve done has hurt everyone I love—not only you. And not only Jon. Is it so hard for you to acknowledge that?”

“You chose, Ned. You chose to bring him here. I asked, but you said yes.”

“I did.” Catelyn heard him sigh heavily. “I had no idea of the cost at the time. I barely knew Catelyn. Robb was just . . . words on parchment. And idea. A son. An heir. I couldn’t even wrap my mind around it. And you were very real. You were hurting and frightened and so defeated. I’d seen you be many things, but never defeated. And you put Jon in my arms and asked for my promise. And for the love I bear you, I gave you my promise and your freedom, and I brought Jon home. And only once Catelyn arrived with Robb, only when I held Robb in my arms and he became the most real thing in the world to me, only when I saw all the pride and hope go out of Catelyn’s eyes when I told her of Jon, did I begin to understand the cost of that promise. I would not take it back, Lya. I wouldn’t. But I do wish I could take back what it’s done to the people I love.”

“The people you love,” the woman said dully. “You mean your wife, don’t you? You love her. Gods, Ned, you do! You love that woman who hates my son! How can you love a woman who has no compassion for a child? You said yourself none of this is Jon’s fault.”

“So she should welcome her husband’s bastard into her home with open arms then? Even though you made it perfectly clear you would do no such thing! Or was it another girl who said she’d rather die than wed a man who already had a bastard and couldn’t possibly keep to her bed for all his pretty words of love?”

“That isn’t fair, Ned. Our situations were nothing alike.”

“Weren’t they? You were betrothed. And you fled from it rather than accept a man who loved you because you knew he had a bastard child. Catelyn was betrothed, and when Brandon died she was handed to to me, a stranger. But she didn’t run. And when I returned from war with a bastard conceived after I had wed her, a bastard whose mother I refused to name, a bastard I insisted be raised alongside the trueborn heir she had birthed for me, she still didn’t run. So don’t you judge my wife, Lyanna.”

Lyanna? Lyanna was a Northern name. His dead sister had been named Lyanna. He hadn’t been in the North after he left Riverrun. Not until he returned to Winterfell with Jon Snow. Did this woman go south with him when he called his banners? Had she waited for him with the other camp followers during the fortnight he’d spent at Riverrun for their wedding? That thought made her feel ill, as if nothing she’d felt or believed he felt had ever been real. And yet Ned stood there defending her to this woman. Why? Nothing made sense.

“But you’ve judged her. Obviously, you’ve never told her the truth about Jon, so you don’t trust her.”

“I barely knew her when I brought him home! Now, I’d trust her with my life.”

“But not with the truth.”

“It isn’t a matter of trust. It’s treason, Lya! Hiding him here. My life is forfeit if Robert ever learns the truth. As is Jon’s. You would have me put Catelyn’s head upon the block as well? And our children?”

Treason? Catelyn could make no sense of that. Fathering a bastard was hardly treasonous. Unless . . .

“He still would have wed you, Lya. You know that’s true. But you didn’t want that. You didn’t want him. So I gave you freedom. And I gave Jon safety because you asked it of me. But those things came with a price. You get exile. Jon gets bastardy. Catelyn gets shame and lies. And I get to live with the knowledge that everyone I love has a sword hanging over them should our deception be uncovered, and even if it never is, my wife and children—including Jon--will forever believe I dishonored them.”

Catelyn hadn’t realized she had risen from the floor until she found herself walking around the bookshelf and out into her husband’s solar. She stopped and stared at the other two people in the room. Her husband had stopped speaking and was simply looking at the woman standing close enough to touch him. She wasn’t touching him, however. She stood rigidly with her hands down at her side. Ned’s back was more or less to Catelyn, but she could see the woman’s entire face now, and the side without the false scar looked remarkably familiar—reminiscent of Ned’s and of Brandon’s and even little Arya’s. But most of all, she looked like Jon Snow. And the eye that wasn’t held shut by the mummer’s paste was the same grey shared by all those people. That grey eye opened more widely as the woman caught sight of her and turned to face her with a gasp.

“You’re Lyanna Stark, aren’t you?” Catelyn said softly, rather surprised to hear her voice come out with a calm clarity she certainly didn’t feel. “And Jon Snow is your son. Not Ned’s.”

“Cat.” Her husband’s voice somehow made her name sound like an exclamation of stunned horror, a confession, and a desperate plea all at once. She turned to look at him and saw an expression of wild desperation on his face unlike any expression she’d ever seen there before.

“He’s a Targaryen bastard, isn’t he? Rhaegar’s son,” she said in the same calm, quiet voice.

“Cat,” Ned said again as if he’d forgotten any other words.

“How did you get in here?” Lyanna Stark demanded, seeming to have found her words.

“I live here. I was waiting for my husband.”

“You were spying on us!”

“Not intentionally. I wanted to surprise Ned. I had something to tell him.” Catelyn wasn’t certain why she felt the need to explain this to the woman who stood there glaring at her with an expression of righteous anger and indignation on her face. It struck her that, at the moment, Lyanna’s expression rather closely resembled the one four and a half year old Arya wore when she didn’t get her way, and she had to suppress an absurd desire to laugh. “I was in Robb’s hiding place and I fell asleep, I think. When the two of you came in, Ned’s words made it clear you were Jon Snow’s mother, and I honestly didn’t know quite how to reveal myself to my husband and his lover.”

“Cat,” Ned repeated. This time it sounded like an apology, and maybe a bit like a prayer.

“Stop saying my name,” she snapped. His voice had broken through her false sense of calm, and she felt both tears and rage threaten. “Don’t say anything to me at all. I don’t want to hear your voice.”

He opened his mouth and closed it again without speaking.

“I’m going to my chambers. Do not follow me there.” She walked right between the two of them toward the door and had her hand on the handle when Lyanna’s voice rang out in panicked anger.

“Stop her, Ned! She heard everything! We can’t trust her not to say anything!”

At that, she turned around. “How dare you come into my home, and speak to me in such a manner?” she demanded of Lyanna.

“Your home?” Lyanna responded indignantly. “Winterfell is . . .”

“Catelyn’s home.” Ned seemed to have found his lord’s voice, and Lyanna stopped speaking and stared at him.

He moved to stand beside Catelyn. He made no move to touch her, realizing that she would not welcome his touch at the moment, but he stood with her—the Lord of Winterfell and his Lady. “You are speaking to Lady Catelyn Stark, Lyanna. She is my wife and the Lady of Winterfell. This is her home.”

“She isn’t truly one of us, Ned. We are Starks of Winterfell. She’s a Tully, for all you put a cloak on her and took her to bed. You have to find some way to be certain she won’t say anything about Jon. She doesn’t care about him. You know she doesn’t.”

Before Catelyn could respond, Ned turned to face her. “My lady,” he said formally. “I ask for your word that you will speak to no one of what you heard here this night.”

Catelyn’s eyes widened. “You honestly believe that I would . . .”

“I don’t believe anything,” he interrupted. “I know with certainty you would never repeat what has been said here. My sister has requested that I do something to ensure your silence. So I ask for your word only that she may have the same certainty I do.”

“You have my word, my lord,” she replied simply.

“Ned,” Lyanna protested. “That means nothing. There must be something you can hold over her so that . . .”

“Lyanna,” Ned said quietly. “I want you to listen very carefully to me. The Lady of Winterfell has given us her word. She will not violate it, however angry she is with me. You are correct that she was born a Tully. But surely you paid at least enough to attention to our lessons to learn the words of the other Great Houses. Family, Duty, Honor. She lives by those words, and don’t you doubt for one moment that the Starks of Winterfell are her family. You would claim you’ve more right to call this castle home than she does because you were born here. But the last time you were in Winterfell, you willingly rode away from it knowing full well your actions would likely prevent you from coming back. Catelyn was born at Riverrun and there she birthed my son and heir. But she was asked to ride north with our babe and make a home in a place she’d never seen, and she did it. And she has made it her home ever since. I would have you remember that. Now, it’s late. Go to whatever guest room you’ve been assigned, Lya, and get some sleep. I promise I will find a way for you to spend time with Jon tomorrow for your party will be departing soon.”

Even reeling as she was from the fact that Lyanna Stark was somehow alive, let alone that she and Rhaegar Targaryen were Jon Snow’s parents, Catelyn felt some sympathy for the woman as Ned said ‘departing soon.’

“And where shall you go, darling Ned?” Lyanna asked her brother.

“I shall escort the Lady of Winterfell to her chambers,” he said. Turning toward Catelyn, he added, “And I shall leave you there to your privacy if you wish, my lady, and will not return until you call for me. And if you call for me, I shall be at your side right away.”

Catelyn looked at him a moment and then nodded. She did not take his arm, but followed him out of the solar to walk toward her rooms. Once they were in the corridor, away from Lyanna Stark, her indignation at the woman she still scarcely believed was alive faded somewhat, but her anger at the man who walked before her grew.

“I’ll not walk behind you like a serving girl, Eddard Stark!” she exclaimed, quickening her pace to pass beside him. “I know the way to my own chambers.”

“Cat . . .”

“Don’t speak to me.”

As she walked by him, he reached out to touch her arm.

“And don’t touch me!”

She quickened her steps until she was almost running. He didn’t speak again, but she knew he still followed her. She wanted to turn around and shout at him. She wanted to plead with him to make her understand. She wanted to fall into his arms and have him hold her while she cried. She wanted to send him away and never look upon his face again. She wanted everything and nothing from him all at once, She feared what she might say or do if she allowed herself to look at him again, and so she fled from her husband as if he were the Stranger himself.

When she reached her room, she walked all the way across it and stood looking at the hearth. She knew he was there in the doorway. After a moment, he spoke. “Catelyn, I would like to . . .”

“You said you would leave me to my privacy, my lord.”

There was a brief silence, and in her mind’s eye, Catelyn could see him tighten his jaw and nod his head to himself before he said softly. “I will, my lady. I only thought . . . that you might have . . . questions.”

Laughter erupted from Catelyn at those words, harsh ugly cackles that threatened to become sobs and she put her hands upon the stones of the hearth to steady herself.

“Cat?” she heard Ned say hesitantly from behind her. I must sound like a madwoman. She wasn’t mad, though. And she wasn’t the terrified young woman who had once cowered before this man’s anger after she’d dared to give voice to questions. She whirled around to face her husband.

“I was forbidden to ask questions about Jon Snow and his mother years ago, my lord,” she said sharply.

Ned’s grey eyes widened and then looked down. “Forgive me,” he whispered to the floor. “I never meant to hurt you.” The words sounded choked.

“You lied to me.” She spoke the words clearly, surprised at how steady her own voice was now. “You’ve lied to me every day for years.”

He looked up at her. “I never . . . I . . .”

“I heard you tell her you thought of her every day, Ned. Every day you thought of your sister. Every day you looked at her son and wondered where and how she was. Every. Single. Day. For nine years. And not one time, on any of those days in all of those years did you tell me any of it.”

“I couldn’t. I . . .” He stopped and took a deep ragged breath, looking at her as if willing her to somehow understand something that was beyond understanding. She would not ask him any questions, though. Not after the way he’d treated her all those years before when she asked about Ashara Dayne. Not after years spent imagining him in the Dornish beauty’s arms and wondering if he ever imagined black hair and violet eyes when he moved inside her in their marital bed. Not after years of his calling her ‘my love’ but lying to her every moment. She would ask him no questions however desperately she needed the answers. She stood her ground there in front of her hearth, willing herself not to look away from those desperate, guilty, pleading grey eyes. Willing herself to hold on to her own anger and pain and not allow her heart to hurt for the pain she saw in him. Angry at herself for the desire still within her to comfort him when he had caused this pain for both of them. She bit her lip tightly to prevent herself from speaking, and after a moment, he spoke again, quietly. “I have wronged you, my lady. I have no right to ask your forgiveness, and yet I will. I am not a man to beg, Catelyn. You know that. And yet, if you should require it of me, I will beg your forgiveness for the hurt I’ve done you.”

He had not looked down that time. He’d met her eyes as he spoke every word—words that she had never thought to hear her lord husband speak to anyone. Before her heart softened toward him, however, she recalled words he’d spoken to his sister in the solar. “You told her you wouldn’t take it back. Lyanna, I mean. You told her that regardless of the cost you would not take back this lie. You cannot ask . . . or beg . . . forgiveness for an act you have no remorse for, my lord.” Her voice sounded cold even to her own ears, and Ned looked as if her words had physically struck him.

“I would bring Jon here,” he said without hesitation. “Knowing all it has cost, I would bring him here again, Catelyn. I would keep him safe.” He swallowed. “But that does not mean I do not feel remorse for every moment’s pain I’ve caused you. If I could have changed that, I . . .”

“You could have!” she exclaimed, her self-control slipping in her fury and her frustration. “You could have told me, Ned! If not in the beginning, then later . . . After the Greyjoy Rebellion. After Arya.” She shook her head and blinked in a fruitless attempt to clear the tears which gathered once more in her eyes. “Do you recall all that we spoke of in those days, my lord? We said so many things we’d feared to say before. You could have told me then. Or mayhap you did not mean all that you did tell me.” The last was almost a whisper, and she hated the doubt and fear that had crept into her voice.

“I love you, Catelyn.” He spoke the words without hesitation—words she’d come to believe as truth even though she rarely heard them from his lips. “I told you that as I held you and Arya the night after she was born. Here in this very chamber. I meant it then and I mean it now. Whatever else you believe of me, you must believe that.”

I want to. She wouldn’t allow herself to speak those words. Thinking them made her feel weak and vulnerable enough. “I don’t know how to believe you anymore,” she said instead. “For nine years I’ve accepted that you had a secret you couldn’t or wouldn’t share with me. That hurt, Ned. I won’t lie to you. It hurt a lot. But the one thing I believed we had between us, even before I loved you, was honesty. I’ve never lied to you, Ned. And until today, while I believed you forsook your marriage vow to me with a woman you must have loved deeply for you certainly loved her child, I never believed you had lied to me.” She shrugged slightly. “Now I don’t know what is truth and what is lie in anything between us.”

His face took on an expression she had never seen there at her words—entirely unguarded—pain, fear, and a guilty sort of desperation written plainly over all his features. He crossed the distance between them in fewer steps than she would have imagined possible, grasped her hands in his and brought his face within inches of hers as he said, “You are my truth. You. Our children. What we have made here, Catelyn.” She pulled her hands from his, and he didn’t reach for her again but didn’t move away. “I didn’t know who I was supposed to be. When I came home from Dorne . . . home. I didn’t know what home was anymore! Father and Brandon were dead. Lyanna was gone. Robert was . . . mad for vengeance against anyone with the Targaryen name . . . or blood. And people kept calling me Lord Stark. I didn’t have the first idea how to be Lord Stark! That was Father. Or Brandon. Not me. Never me. War is easy in some ways, you know. Being a lord in wartime is simply riding into battle at the head of your troops—killing your enemies and trying not to die. But ruling the North? I didn’t know how to do it, Cat! And I was terrified of failing.”

“You are a good lord, Ned,” she said softly. As angry and hurt as she was, it was simply the truth. She couldn’t let him believe otherwise.

He simply nodded. “I believe I am. Now. Most of the time anyway.” He reached for her again, but when she pulled her hands away this time, he simply raised his own hands to cup her face. “I would not have been the lord I am—the man I am—without you. That is my truth. And I love you.” He looked at her as if waiting for her to respond. She didn’t speak, but she didn’t move his hands either. She liked the feel of them against her cheeks, even if that did make her weak.

“I’ve lied to you,” he said when she remained silent. “And I don’t know if my reasons will matter to you or not. I do know those reasons don’t matter to me right now as much as the hurt I see in those blue eyes. I put that hurt there, Cat. I know it well. And for that, I am sorry. And I beg your forgiveness.”

She looked at her husband’s face, so close to her own—the long, too often solemn face that she had come to love so dearly over the years. “I . . . I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to feel. I truly don’t, Ned.”

He dropped his hands from her face, and she missed the touch of his fingers on her skin. He nodded slowly. “I suppose that is as fair an answer as I deserve, my lady.”

“Fair or not, it’s the only response I have right now,” she whispered, feeling the prick of tears once again.

He nodded slowly. “I will leave your chambers, my lady, but I will return whenever you wish. And I will tell you all of it you wish to hear. I will never lie to you again. You have my word.” He gave her a sad sort of smile. “I don’t know that my word is worth anything to you anymore, Cat. But it’s what I have to offer. My word. And my love.”

She nodded, uncertain of how to respond to that. He looked terribly sad and rather lost when he turned to leave her room, and when he reached the door, she found herself calling out to him although she hadn’t intended it. “Ned!” When he turned around, she looked directly into his eyes and said, “I do love you.” Then she turned back toward the hearth so he wouldn’t see her cry. When her tears were spent and she finally looked toward the door, she found it closed. He was gone.

She slept poorly if at all when she finally collapsed into her bed, but she rose from her bed early the following morning. As she dressed, she couldn’t help but consider that when she’d risen from bed the previous morning, Lyanna Stark had been a ghost that sometimes haunted her husband’s dreams and Jon Snow had been the bastard he’d gotten on some woman as he fought Robert’s war. Last night’s revelations had somehow created an entirely new world, and she still wasn’t certain how she fit into it. As she braided her hair, it struck her for the first time that Ned didn’t have a bastard. She had realized that Jon Snow was not his child last night, of course, but somehow, as she tried to wrap her mind around the magnitude of the lie her husband had been telling her throughout their marriage, she hadn’t stopped to consider that it appeared now that he had no bastard at all. It was entirely possible he had never forsaken the vows he’d made her. Ever. Men have needs. She repeated this bit of marital wisdom she’d learned long ago in her mind. Yet, she knew he had not sought the company of other bedmates when she’d been unable to lie with him after birthing their children. Or even during the last three months of her pregnancy with Bran when Maester Luwin had admonished them against lying together after she’d begun having occasional pains entirely too early to deliver the babe safely. Before that, when he’d returned from the Iron Islands, he had taken her to her chambers within an hour of his arrival and made love to her with an urgency that spoke of a powerful longing in spite of her being enormous with Arya at the time. Later, after Arya’s birth, when they began to speak openly of the feelings between them, she had teased him, and he had told her, with some embarrassment on his part, that he’d imagined her so often in his absence that he’d nearly died of need. And she’d realized that what he was truly telling her was that he lay with no one else when he was away from her. Of course, he hadn’t loved her when he rode away from Riverrun after their wedding and their few awkward nights together. She shouldn’t begrudge him if he sought some release while so long away from a woman to whom he’d pledged fidelity, but truthfully didn’t even know—for all he’d taken her maidenhead.

A series of loud, rapid knocks at her chamber door interrupted her musings. For a moment, she became irritated, thinking Ned had decided to come to her again whether she was ready to see him or not, but as the rather impatient knocking came again, she realized her husband would never bang on her door in such a manner. “Yes?” she called.

The door rattled as someone attempted to open it, but Catelyn had barred it before she went to bed. Before she could demand that whoever was out there identify themselves, an annoyed feminine voice said, “Let me in, for gods’ sake, before someone sees me here!”

Lyanna Stark. What in seven hells was she doing here? Hurriedly, Catelyn rose from the stool before her dressing table and moved to unbar the door. Lyanna nearly fell into the room when the door opened. Catelyn quickly closed it behind her and then said, “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for my brother. He isn’t in the Lord’s chamber so I thought he might be . . .”

“As you can see, he isn’t here. And you should hardly be seeking him out in his chamber, either! This castle must be full of people who know you, Lady Lyanna. You cannot be more reckless than you already have been!”

“I know my way around Winterfell better than you ever will. No one will see me unless I want them to.” The grey eye not obscured by the mummer’s artifice narrowed into a glare. “Or unless someone else refuses to open a door and forces me to keep shouting in the corridor.”

Catelyn chose not to respond to that. “As you can see, my lord husband is not here. I would ask you to stop searching for him and remain in your guestroom until he sends for you.”

“I’m not going to sit around all day and wait for . . .”

“That is precisely what you will do,” Catelyn hissed at her.

“I will not take orders from you, Catelyn Tully.”

“You will go back to your room, though,” Catelyn said firmly. “My name is Lady Catelyn Stark, by the way, but I don’t care if you ‘take orders from me or not.’ I do, however, care that you keep yourself hidden here in Winterfell. And you should care, too, unless all you said about loving your son was a lie.”

“How dare you say . . .”

“How dare you put the boy at risk like this?” Catelyn countered before the stunned Lyanna Stark could finish her sentence. “This isn’t a game, and you should know that better than anyone. I would die before I’d let my children come to harm and your being discovered here could put them in danger, and that’s why I want you hidden and then gone. But any danger would come first to Jon Snow, so you should wish to remain hidden even more than I wish you to!”

“I won’t allow harm to come to Jon!” Lyanna declared vehemently.

“Says the woman who gave him away.”

“I had no choice!” Lyanna closed her eyes and sighed after that outburst. “Not that I have to justify myself to you, but I truly had no choice,” she said more quietly. “I could have been discovered in Essos. I nearly was more than once. Even if no one ever recognized me, it isn’t an easy life when you have to change your identity. Or a safe one. Had anything happened to me, Jon would have been alone. I couldn’t bring him with me.”

Catelyn supposed there was some truth in that, but she would not let the first part of the woman’s statement stand. “Oh, I think you should justify yourself to me. Last night, you said you had lost the man you loved, and it was clear you didn’t mean Robert Baratheon. Did you love Rhaegar Targaryen? I’ve always been led to believe that he kidnapped you and almost certainly raped you. I’ve pitied you—mourned for how frightened you must have been, how terrible it all was for you, and then to die just as Ned found you. It all seemed so unfair. But did he kidnap you? Or did you run away with him, my lady?”

Lyanna stared at her, a stunned expression on her face, and Catelyn continued, “Because if you went with him by choice, let me tell you what you did to your brother Brandon.”

“I know what happened to Brandon!” Lyanna said angrily.

“I’m not talking about his death. He and Lord Rickard were killed by the Mad King, and the responsibility for it lies with him, whatever part you played.” She paused, and Lyanna simply looked at her in defiant silence. “I want to tell you what happened to Brandon when he learned you’d been taken. He’d just arrived to Riverrun, you know, for our wedding. When he heard you were gone, he instantly suspected Rhaegar. He raged and shouted that if that brute lay a single finger on you, he’d kill him. I was terrified. You can’t go shouting about killing the crown prince and expect to keep your head on your shoulders. Then riders brought word that men in Targaryen colors had been seen near where disappeared, and that’s all it took. The last bit of self-control he had snapped. He declared he was going to ride for King’s Landing and no one could stop him. He was a man possessed. Wild and furious. And in pain, Lyanna. He hurt for you. I’d seen Brandon in many moods, but I’d never seen him in pain until that day he rode away from our wedding determined to save the sister he loved more than anyone in the world.”

When Catelyn stopped speaking, Lyanna stood there a moment and then her face seemed to crumble. The tears surprised her, although she realized with guilt they shouldn’t have. She’d intended to hurt her, after all. Realizing that Lyanna Stark would likely not want comfort from her, Catelyn silently moved her stool over so that the younger woman could sit down. She did so and cried with her face in her hands for a few moments before looking up.

“I’d never heard that,” she said softly. “I . . . I didn’t even know he was dead for the longest time. No one told me. And when Ned came . . . Ned never said . . .”

“I never told Ned that story,” Catelyn said softly. “He was so lost in his own grief when I met him. When I married him. He didn’t rage like Brandon. His grief was quieter. Heavier, somehow. He was mourning Brandon and his father and terrified for you. Knowing precisely how badly Brandon hurt for you would have caused him more pain. I would not do that to him.” Lyanna looked up sharply at her then, and Catelyn acknowledged her with a small nod of her head. “Yes. I did want to hurt you just now. Your actions changed the course of my life and so many others. Thousands of people were killed. And it would seem my husband has committed treason for your sake, putting everyone I love in danger. And I wanted you to feel that.” Catelyn shook her head. “My being cruel cannot bring back the dead, however. It was ill done, Lady Lyanna, and I am sorry for it.”

Lyanna actually laughed then. “Don’t be. It was true, right? What you told me about Brandon?” Catelyn nodded. “Well consider it a fair trade for my giving you a truth you didn’t want to hear last night—although I certainly didn’t intend to do so.”

“And what’s a fair trade for the lie?” Catelyn heard herself ask.

“I never lied to you, Lady Stark.” Lyanna emphasized the word Stark in a manner obviously intended to be mocking. “That was all Ned.”

“It was your secret he kept. Your child he kept so you could go gallivanting about Essos!”

“I couldn’t take Jon with me! I explained that! And Ned could have told me no.”

“No, he couldn’t have. And you knew that, didn’t you?”

Lyanna looked up at her. “If we are going to have a conversation, you need to sit down. I’m tired of you standing over me like a disapproving parent.”

That comment almost made Catelyn smile, but she kept her face as expressionless as possible and simply pulled up a chair.

“I knew,” Lyanna said softly as Catelyn sat down. “Ned would never turn away his own blood. He doesn’t have it in him to do something like that.”

He is my blood. Ned’s words came back to Catelyn in a rush. My blood. That’s the way he spoke of Jon almost all the time. She could count on one hand the times she’d actually heard him refer to the boy as his son. He’s not meant for lies, she thought sadly. But that thought was immediately followed by the angrier, He managed to lie to me about this for a long damn time, though!

“No,” she said. “But it seems he does have it in him to put his own trueborn children in danger for the sake of your bastard,” Catelyn said, her anger at Ned finding a target in his sister.

“Don’t talk about Jon like that! He isn’t . . . He deserves better from you!”

“He deserves nothing from me! He is not my son and not my responsibility.”

“So Family, Duty, Honor doesn’t extend to nephews, does it?” Lyanna asked sarcastically.

“He was never my nephew!” Catelyn exclaimed, still battering Lyanna with the force of her anger at Ned. “He was my husband’s bastard! The child of woman he refused to name but obviously loved. A child he insisted upon treating like our trueborn children. A boy who looks entirely Stark—who is being raised to think of Winterfell as his home! That’s not family, that’s a threat to my son’s future!”

“Winterfell is his home!” Lyanna insisted. “He’s got as much Stark blood as your little brood of redheads! And how dare you call him a threat?”

Catelyn sighed. The two could not afford to get into a shouting match. “All of those things are precisely what made him a threat,” she said softly. “All children must leave their home someday, save for the heir to the castle. And every child who isn’t the heir resents that to some extent. I did. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere other than Riverrun.”

“But you did your duty,” Lyanna said, sarcasm dripping from her voice.

“I did,” Catelyn said simply without any sarcasm at all. “And you didn’t. And after nine years you come back here and talk repeatedly about how Winterfell is your home. So you know Jon Snow will feel the same. He’s of an age with Robb and knows he’s as beloved of his father as Robb is and looks just like his father, and has trained with Robb and had lessons with Robb and followed Ned around like Robb. Why shouldn’t he begin to think that Winterfell should be his just as much as it should be Robb’s? History’s full of bastards who’ve thought that way.”

“Jon isn’t a bastard!”

“He isn’t Ned’s bastard, no. But I never knew that, did I? My husband never saw fit to tell me. So don’t you dare judge me on my feelings about my nephew.”

“You are one cold-hearted bitch, aren’t you? I can’t imagine why Ned thinks he loves you! All he did was protect a child, and you’ll make him feel badly about this forever, won’t you? I”ll bet you love to make him feel small. To remind him he isn’t Brandon! And poor old Ned will just let you do it. He always let Brandon and Robert push him around, and now it’s you. He may not be as strong as Brandon, but you’re lucky that . . .”

“You will not speak of my husband like that in my presence ever again,” Catelyn interrupted her good-sister’s tirade with a voice like ice. “You know nothing of him. You . . .”

“I know Ned better than you ever will,” Lyanna interrupted with a laugh.

“No,” Catelyn said quietly. “You knew the boy he was. I know the man he is. And while I don’t pretend to have known Brandon as well as I know my husband, I do know that Ned is the stronger of the two by far. Strength needn’t be loud or boastful. Eddard Stark is the Lord of Winterfell, my lady, and he is pushed around by no one. And I will not allow anyone to slander him. Including you.”

Lyanna stared at her. “I’ll be damned,” she said after a moment. “You love him.”

I love him, Catelyn thought. To Lyanna, she said, “My feelings for my lord husband are none of your concern.”

Lyanna laughed at that. “They are, though.” She sighed. “I don’t like you very much, Lady Stark. That’s not entirely your fault. I wouldn’t like any woman who’s living in this castle with that title while I spend my days in the company of old men like Darion. I envy you. You have my home, my brother, and my son. And you don’t even want my son. That’s a kick in the teeth, you know. And once I leave here, I’m likely to think of all you have and hate you a bit for it. But I do want Ned happy. It’s obvious he loves you, and if you love him . . .” Lyanna shrugged.

Catelyn looked at her. “I’m furious with him,” she said severely before softening her expression somewhat. “And I love him.”

Lyanna nodded. “I want my son to be happy, too, Lady Stark.”

“I will not pressure Ned to send him away. He is safer here. But I cannot remove his bastardy from him. And I would fight any effort to legitimize him as Ned’s son. He is not Ned’s son. And I will not have him put in the line of succession to Winterfell.” Catelyn laid a hand on her belly. A legitimized bastard could be specifically forbidden from inheriting before any trueborn child, but those decrees had been flouted in the past, and Catelyn worried for her own children, particularly if, gods forbid, something happened to her sons. The North had never had a ruling Lady of Winterfell. The people would likely support Jon Snow over her daughters, and she would not have that. She allowed her hand to rest lightly on her belly and offered a silent prayer that this child was another son.

“He should have been a prince,” Lyanna said softly. Catelyn must have looked shocked because the younger woman laughed then. “He married me. Rhaegar. Oh, I know he was married already, but he said he was a Targaryen—descended from Aegon the Conqueror who had two wives—two queens.”

“You found a septon who’d perform such a marriage?” Catelyn asked incredulously.

Lyanna shook her head. “We said our vows before a heart tree. On the Isle of Faces. I was just a girl. I thought it was the beginning of a grand adventure. I don’t know that people would have recognized the marriage even had Rhaegar lived. Like as not, I’d have simply been the king’s whore in the eyes of many and Jon still would have been named bastard rather than prince—at least behind his back.” She sighed. “Rhaegar would have been disappointed in Jon anyway. He wanted a girl. A Visenya to go with his Aegon and Rhaenys.”

Catelyn didn’t know what to say to that so she remained silent.

“I did love him,” Lyanna said after a few moments. “As much as a girl of four and ten could love anyone, I suppose. I have no idea whether he loved me or not. I thought he did. He said he did. But once I was with child, he left me in that tower and went off to King’s Landing to see his wife and other children without even telling me Father and Brandon were dead. He came back and told me eventually. Told me that he had to go to war. That he’d be fighting against Ned. I begged him not to go, but he left anyway. I never saw him again.”

Catelyn looked at her husband’s sister and saw not the woman with the false scar who’d come into Winterfell angry and bitter and desperate to see a child she didn’t truly know, but a girl of fourteen alone and frightened in a tower in Dorne. “The Kingsguard,” she said suddenly. “They were there to protect Jon, weren’t they?”

Lyanna nodded. “To keep you and my Visenya safe, my princess. That’s what he told me when he left me there. They were kind enough jailers, but they were jailers nonetheless. I wanted to leave the tower and find Ned by then. Rhaegar knew that. He couldn’t leave me unguarded.”

“No wonder you wanted some sort of freedom when Ned found you.”

Lyanna nodded again. “I couldn’t stay in the Seven Kingdoms without either marrying Robert or going into hiding as the tale was spread far and wide that the man had gone to war for me. I couldn’t really refuse his hand if he knew I lived. Ned actually tried to convince me to wed the man. Said he’d claim Jon as his, and I could see him on occasion by making royal visits to Winterfell and at least know him as a nephew. I reminded him that Robert killed Jon’s father and rewarded Tywin Lannister for killing his siblings. He told me that Robert did have a good heart. That he’d been crazed with grief over my disappearance and that his anger at Rhaegar clouded his judgment. But if he had me beside him, he could do better because he loved me so much. Poor Ned. Robert never loved me. Not really. But Ned didn’t believe that. We argued a long time before I convinced him that I would be miserable as Robert’s queen, and he agreed to help me disappear and promised my son would be raised safely at Winterfell.”

“He believes it now.”

“What?”

“Ned knows Robert never loved you. He spoke to me about it. After he returned from the Greyjoy Rebellion.”

Lyanna looked at her expectantly.

“Our own . . . feelings . . . were quite new then. Well, that’s not precisely true. I’d loved him for a long while before he left for that Rebellion, and I think he’d loved me for at least a little while as well. But . . . we never spoke of such things until he came back. And Arya was born.” Catelyn wasn’t certain why she told Lyanna this. She’d never spoken of these things with anyone except Ned. And she and Ned, for all that she knew they loved each other, didn’t really speak of such things often or in great detail. And she wasn’t even certain she liked Lyanna Stark. She felt more pity for her than anger now, but she still doubted the two of them would ever have become close friends even if their lives hadn’t gone as they had. Yet she sat here and told this woman things she would never tell any other. Not even Lysa.

“Ned’s never been big on words,” Lyanna said, smiling. “We used to call him the Quiet Wolf.”

Catelyn returned the smile. “He and Robert had been somewhat estranged since Ned’s return from Dorne. Over the Targaryen children. Well, I suppose on Ned’s part, it was over you and Jon Snow as well. But there was a distance between them. And it bothered him. He does love Robert, you know.”

“I know,” Lyanna said.

“They reconciled while fighting the Greyjoys. At least to a point. But I don’t think Ned views Robert quite the way he did before their first Rebellion. I don’t think he ever will, regardless of the affection between them. He told me one evening that he didn’t believe Robert had truly loved you.” He’d told her this in her bed as she lay across his chest after they’d made love, but she wasn’t sharing quite that much with Lyanna. “I asked him why he thought that, and he told me that Robert didn’t know you. That he saw your beauty, but not the steel beneath. And that a man cannot truly love a woman unless he truly knows her.” He’d gone on to run his fingers through Catelyn’s hair and say, I didn’t know you when we wed, my lady. He’d then pulled her completely atop him, holding her face just above his and said, But I know you very well now, my love. Then he’d kissed her and they’d made love again.

Lost in her memory, Catelyn didn’t notice Lyanna’s silence at first. She looked at her, and was surprised to see tears in her eyes. “My brother is a good man, Catelyn Tully. Please forgive him the lie. If you need to be angry at someone, let it be me.”

Catelyn wasn’t certain she’d forgiven either of them. Her feelings were a rather complicated jumble of things she couldn’t quite name, so she only tried to smile a bit and remained silent.

“I should go now,” Lyanna said. “Please tell Ned that I do want to see my son. Whatever excuse he can devise, I’ll accept. And I won’t tell Jon anything. I need him safe.”

Catelyn nodded. “You should go to the kitchen. At this hour, only the younger girls will be there. None of them have worked in the kitchen long enough to remember you. Tell them I sent you to fetch some of the leftover lemon cake. They know I like it.”

“I won’t be coming back here,” Lyanna said, looking confused.

“I know. It’s for Jon. He’ll appreciate it, I assure you. He loves it, but he can’t eat it when he’s with any of us.”

Now Lyanna looked even more confused. “Why not?” she asked, sounding rather accusatory.

“My daughter Sansa, who’s nearly seven, loves lemon cakes beyond all reason. About three moons ago, hers fell upon the floor and one of the dogs got it. She was inconsolable. Jon hadn’t started to eat his yet, and he offered it to her. She smiled as if he’d offered her all the gold in Casterly Rock. But then she looked at me and frowned and told Jon, ‘No thank you.’”

“Why?” Lyanna asked.

Catelyn sighed. Lyanna wouldn’t like this. “Because Robb and Jon had both carved her little dolls out of some sticks not long before, and she’d gone around telling everyone the boys were brave and gallant knights who’d given her gifts because she was the beautiful princess. I told her it was fine for her to show off the gift from her brother, but that as Jon is a bastard, she shouldn’t make a habit of accepting gifts from him.”

Lyanna looked murderous, but she kept silent so Catelyn continued. “I also told Jon it was inappropriate for him to be presenting Sansa with gifts and I’d appreciate he stopped doing so. I’m certain he didn’t think of the lemon cake as a gift, and he looked nearly as disappointed as Sansa when she turned it down. Then he suddenly said if she didn’t want it, he’d go throw it out because he really didn’t like lemon cake at all.”

“I thought you said that he does like . . .”

“He does. The boy simply sought a way that Sansa could accept it without its being a gift. If it was merely food he didn’t want and was throwing out, she could take it. And she did.”

“So my son is a kind boy,” Lyanna said coldly. “Even though you’re not kind to him. But to deny him a dessert he likes over an act of kindness?”

“I haven’t. No one has. Jon Snow is generally a kind child, I think. But he is also proud. Having announced to all of us that he doesn’t like lemon cake, he has stood by that statement rather than admitting to anyone that he was only trying to be nice to Sansa.” Catelyn gave a small shrug. Truth be told, she’d felt oddly guilty every time lemon cake had been served since, watching Jon Snow’s eyes look down at the table in front of him as everyone else enjoyed the tart dessert. It had made her irrationally angry at the boy over his stubborn insistence on denying himself, but now she saw a way to offer Lyanna something to share with him. “He knows you’re a stranger and that you’ll be leaving Winterfell. I’m certain he’ll eat it with you.”

“Thank you,” Lyanna said simply. She then rose from the stool.

“I’ll make certain no one is in the corridor,” Catelyn said, rising herself and walking toward the door. The corridor was deserted and she nodded to Lyanna who came to her.

Just before leaving the room, Lyanna gripped Catelyn’s arms tightly. “Please don’t let him believe you hate him,” she said quickly. And then she was gone.

Catelyn spent the rest of the day with her children, feeling the need to hold them close, and wondering how Lyanna Stark would walk away from Jon Snow for the second time. Robb had been rather pouty when she first gathered the children up. He was hesitant to reply when she’d asked what was wrong, so she knew it had to do with his bastard brother. Robb knew well enough that she didn’t like to hear about him. When she asked specifically of his whereabouts, he’d replied that Father had asked Jon to help some Braavosi with their packing up, and Catelyn surmised that Ned had found a way to send the boy to Lyanna. Dinner that evening was not quite a feast, but it was still rather formal as the Braavosi traders were still with them, and Jon once again ate at one of the lower tables. Catelyn didn’t see Lyanna anywhere in the Great Hall. She sat beside Ned and the two of them exchanged the necessary courtesies, and she smiled for their guests, but the dinner was uncomfortable given the distance between her husband and herself so she excused herself early, claiming that little Bran was feeling poorly and she needed to check on him.

She did go to the nursery after going to her room to take down the braids from her hair and suffered a slight pang that Arya wasn’t there. In truth, her second daughter had been moved to her own room several moons ago once she turned four, but sometimes it simply made Catelyn sad to think of her babes growing up, and she imagined them all back in the nursery which Bran now had entirely to himself. At only sixteen moons younger than Arya, Bran would likely be out of the nursery in less than a year himself. It made her sad to realize the new babe would never share the nursery with a sibling unless she had another afterward as he would remain with her in her chambers until after Bran was old enough to move on. She walked to Bran’s cot and ran a hand through the sleeping tot’s auburn curls.

“He isn’t really ill, is he?”

The deep voice spoke quietly, and she turned to see her husband in the doorway. She shook her head.

“I didn’t think so. But I couldn’t go to sleep without checking to be certain.”

“Dinner is over?” she asked him.

“There are a few stragglers, but I was more than ready to leave as were most of our guests. Darion tells me they intend to leave for White Harbor as early as possible in the morning.” His expression didn’t change, but she could hear sorrow in his voice.

“I am sorry, Ned,” she said softly.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” he said.

I’m the reason Jon Snow won’t eat lemon cakes, she thought. “No,” she said. “I don’t. But I am sorry she has to leave. I know you miss her.”

He swallowed and she watched the muscle in jaw work. “It was strange . . . to suddenly see her again.” He walked to the window and looked out although she couldn’t imagine it was light enough to see anything. “She is no different at all in some ways. And yet in others . . .” He sighed heavily. “I do miss her,” he said almost too softly to be heard.

She looked at her husband. At the man who had shared her bed for a decade now save for when he was gone to war. The man who never thought to be a High Lord but ruled the North with such wisdom and honor that he was respected from the Wall to the Neck and from Bear Island to White Harbor. The man who could be both firm and loving to their children. The man who had dishonored himself and claimed a child who wasn’t his for the love of his sister and the life of his nephew. The man who lied to her. The man who loved her. The man she loved.

“He has to remain your bastard, Ned,” she said softly, walking to him and putting a hand on his arm. “Robert will have your head if he learns what you’ve done.”

“Robert is like my brother, Cat. He . . . he . . .” He kept his eyes on the window, but she knew he was seeing things long ago and far away rather than anything in Winterfell’s courtyard.

“He loves you,” she said softly. “As much as he’s ever loved anyone. But that won’t stop him from demanding the boy if he learns the truth. And you won’t give him up. And that will cost you your head.”

He turned to look at her then, and she could his knowledge of the truth of her words in his grey eyes. “I’m sorry to have brought this upon us, Cat,” he said. “I will never allow it to cause harm to you or our children. I swear it.”

She smiled sadly at him. “Not everything is within your power to control, my love. Lyanna, for one.”

“She would never put Jon at risk,” Ned insisted.

“Not intentionally, no. But she’ll be back, Ned. Having seen him now, it will be harder for her to stay away. And any time she comes here, she’ll risk discovery.”

“I cannot simply ban her, Cat.”

“I know. You are a good, brave, and honorable man, Eddard Stark, but you cannot promise no harm will come to anyone. You can only promise you will do all you can to protect us. And that’s the only promise I will ask of you.”

“I am sorry, my love.” He sounded broken. “For the danger. For the bastard. For the lie. For all of it except for Jon’s life. I am not sorry for that.”

“I know. And you have no bastard to apologize for.”

“No, my lady. I do not. Though you are right in saying that all the world must believe I do.”

“I know you do not.”

“Does that make a difference?”

“I honestly don’t know yet.” She bit her lip briefly, and then spoke words she feared would not please him. “Ned . . . I can’t be a mother to him. If I were to suddenly open my arms to him, it would be remarked upon.”

“I know.”

“And I know you don’t want to hear this but he needs to understand his place. And for all intents and purposes, he is a bastard—with all that means. Whether he was meant to be a prince or anything else. He cannot be anything other than a bastard and live.”

“I know.”

They were both silent for a moment. “Ned? Would you come to my chambers?”

“Of course, my lady.”

They walked in silence to her room. When they arrived, he stood rather stiffly just inside the closed door.

“Take your doublet off, Ned. You look miserable.”

“I don’t want to presume.”

She offered him a smile. “I am your wife, my lord, and I have invited you to my chambers. You may assume anything you like.”

“Catelyn . . . do you want me to tell you . . .”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” The words came out more quickly and forcefully than she intended.

“My lady?” He looked at her, and she knew he was asking her precisely what she wanted. She wished she could tell him. She wished she knew.

She sighed, and tried to make sense of her feelings for both of them. Not finding the words, she walked to him and began removing his doublet.

“Cat, I will do whatever you need me to. But I don’t know what you want from me now. I don’t know . . .”

“You,” she said, and she realized that was the heart of it. “I want you. I need you. You told me that I’m your truth. Well you’re my heart. Even when you break it.”

“Your heart is the last thing I ever want to break, my love. I wish . . .”

She had tossed his doublet aside and laid a finger on his lips to silence him. “I will forgive you, Ned. I’ll forgive you all of it. I’m just not certain what that forgiveness looks like yet. Or how it feels. And I will have you tell me all of it. Everything you’ve kept hidden. Every lie you’ve told me—in words or silence. I want to hear you answer them all. But not yet. I don’t think I’m strong enough yet.”

“Shall I go then?”

“No. Those things will take time, but you are my heart. I’m stronger with you here beside me than I am alone. That hasn’t changed.”

“I am far stronger here beside you than anywhere else, my love.”

She had no more words so she pressed her lips to his and he responded eagerly. No more apologies. No more recriminations. No more words. They reached out for each other, beginning a dance they both knew well. She blew out the candles, and they moved together, naked, in the dark with nothing between them and no one haunting them. As they joined their bodies, there were no kings, no bastards, no threats, no resentments. Only two hearts beating against each other, two pairs of arms, two pairs of legs—all tangled up together, holding on for dear life, brown and auburn hair falling together on the pillow—the same color in the dark. She didn’t know where she ended and he began, and she let go of herself completely, feeling him do the same.

Afterward, she lay in his arms. Her mind was working again, and she knew they couldn’t remain completely free from all words and everything else forever. “Ned?” It was the first word either had spoken since she’d first kissed him.

“Yes, my love?”

“You have no bastards at all?”

“I do not.”

“I think it does make a difference. To me, I mean. I think I’m glad of it.”

“I want no one but you.”

He’d told her that before, but she’d always heard it as a statement encompassing the present and future. Because he’d obviously wanted someone in the past—as evidenced by Jon Snow. Now that evidence had proven false.

“Have you? Since you wed me?” Her voice sounded thin and small, and she half hated herself for asking the question. Men have needs. Whatever he had done while he’d been away from her that year had nothing to do with her. He had no bastards. And he loved her.

“No. I am sorry I caused you to believe that I had. But no, my love. I have lain with no woman but you since before I came to Riverrun.”

That matters to me, she thought. I am glad of it. She turned her face into his chest and kissed along one of his scars causing him to laugh.

“Lyanna asked two things of me,” she told him.

“Lyanna hasn’t the right to ask anything of you,” he said, and she could hear the frown in his voice.

“She asked me to love you well.”

“Cat, I . . .”

“I intend to. But not for Lyanna’s sake. Because I want to. Because you deserve to be loved well.”

“I hurt you,” he protested.

“You hurt me,” she agreed. “But you still deserve to be loved well. She also asked me not to allow Jon Snow to believe I hate him.”

“Catelyn, you needn’t . . .”

“I don’t hate him. I . . . certainly haven’t loved him and I wanted him gone from Winterfell. But that’s not truly an option now. I cannot be his mother, but I do want him safe. And I will find a way to make it so that he does not feel hated.”

“For Lyanna’s sake?” he asked.

“Yes. And for Jon’s.” And for yours. And mine.

“I am glad of that, Cat. Even if I have no right to ask it of you.”

She sighed and snuggled even closer to him.

“Shall we sleep now, my lady?” he asked her.

“I have one more thing to tell you,” she said. “A secret of my own.”

“I’m listening.”

She reached for his hand and laid it on her belly, patting the back of it with her own. After a moment, he understood.

“Cat! Are you certain, my love? What did Maester Luwin say?”

“I’m certain, and Maester Luwin hasn’t said anything because he didn’t know. I wanted to tell you first.”

“You wanted to tell me . . . that’s why you were in my solar!”

“Yes.”

“Oh gods, my love! I am so sorry we ruined . . .”

“Are you happy about the babe, Ned?”

“Of course, I am!”

“Then nothing is ruined. He’s our secret now, instead of just mine. I think I’d like to keep him that way for awhile, if you don’t mind.”

“I like the idea of sharing such a wonderful secret with you.” He kissed the top of her head and rubbed her belly gently. “How long?”

“More than two moons. He should come not long before Bran’s fourth name day.”

Ned chuckled. “You keep saying ‘he’. What if this little one is a girl?”

She shrugged. “I would like another boy, but I suppose it could be a daughter.”

“I will be happy either way. I love you, Cat.”

“I love you.” She paused, hesitating before saying the next. “I’m glad I was in your solar last night, Ned. As much as it hurts that you lied, I’m glad I know the truth. And you never would have told me.”

“I . . . I don’t know that I ever would have,” he admitted, sounding both sad and regretful. She wondered if he regretted that she knew or regretted that he hadn’t simply told her.

“It doesn’t matter now,” she said softly. “I know the truth. I’ll find a way to understand it and I’ll try to understand why you felt you had to lie to me. You’ll help me understand it. And I’ll help you protect all of us.” She hesitated again, but only for a breath. “Including Jon Snow.”

“And including our new little wolf,” he said, tightening his arms around her as if to better protect her and the babe at that very moment.

She lay in the dark in her husband’s arms listening to his steady breaths and recalled how she’d considered this morning that the revelation of Jon Snow’s true parentage had created a new world in which she had to learn to navigate. That was still true, but she smiled as she thought that her own revelation to Ned tonight had created another new world—one in which they would welcome another child, one in which they shared a secret between them that gave neither of them anything but joy. It occurred to her as she drifted off to sleep that any revelation—any new bit of knowledge—changed the world in some way. But even if she hadn’t recovered her balance just yet, she was confident that she would as long as she and Ned could hold on to each other and navigate every world together—through pain and joy.