Jaime did not like the cold. Especially when it was supposed to be the height of summer.
The trip was something he'd endured rather than enjoyed—at least he was going to see Tyrion after a long time. So he was quite happy to see the castle of Winterfell up close.
Cersei was still furious with him for some slight he couldn't remember. It left him with nothing much to do except ride in silence and occasionally entertain the king. The journey had been insufferably dull.
He watched without much interest as the King greeted the Warden of the North by calling him fat and then laughing before greeting the rest of his family.
He scanned the gathered crowd, searching for his little brother among the kneeling figures.
He would probably find him in the nearest whorehouse, Jaime thought with a wry smile. He was just about to ask a nearby guard when he heard a familiar voice.
"Looking for someone, brother?"
Jaime turned, expecting to see his dwarf brother's sardonic grin. Instead, he found himself staring at a stranger—a tall stranger with blond hair eerily similar to his own. But it was his eyes and smirk that were unmistakable.
The shock hit him harder than the cold. "Tyrion?" he managed, his voice cracking slightly.
The man—his brother, somehow—smiled that familiar crooked smile. "Surprised? The North is full of surprises nowadays. Though I admit, this particular one is my favorite so far."
Jaime's mouth opened and closed several times before he found his voice again. "How? What... what happened to you?"
"What can I say? The White Mage is quite good at his job," Tyrion said, clearly enjoying his surprise.
For perhaps the first time in his life, Jaime Lannister was completely speechless.
"What's up with our esteemed queen of a sister? Looks like it wasn't just me who got a makeover." Tyrion nodded in Cersei's direction, who was coming out of her wheelhouse along with Tommen and Myrcella.
Before Jaime could answer, Cersei herself appeared beside them, her face a mask of indifference that didn't quite hide the gleam in her eyes.
"So the rumors are true," she said, eyeing Tyrion up and down with barely concealed disbelief. "The healer has turned even a beast like you into a proper Lannister, at least in appearance."
Tyrion's smile didn't waver. "Sweet sister, how kind of you to notice. Though I must say, you look more beautiful than ever—though only on the outside. It seems even magic can only do so much."
Cersei ignored the comment, her eyes scanning the gathered crowd. "Where is he? Does he think himself above his king that he does not come to greet him?"
"Well, the King doesn't seem to mind, why do you? Surely you don't think you're above the King," Tyrion replied, hoping to get a rise.
Cersei's jaw tightened, but she kept her voice level. "I merely wish to express my gratitude for his service to the crown while he was in King's Landing."
"Well, he's not here at the moment. He often gets sucked up in some project or the other and disappears for a few days," Tyrion explained with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Quite typical of him, really."
"Isn't there a clinic here where he heals people?" Jaime asked, genuinely curious.
"Well, his apprentice runs his clinic most of the time, and she's good enough that most patients just get patched up and sent on their way home." Tyrion gestured vaguely toward the town. "Or she keeps them alive long enough for El to get there. There's an entire hospice filled with people just lying in wait, with caretakers ensuring they don't die before he can attend to them. Then he shows up and sends them home in minutes."
Before they could talk more, they were approached by Lady Stark, who offered to show them to their accommodations. It seemed that the King and Lord Stark had gone off somewhere.
Cersei left with Catelyn and the rest of the children, but Jaime stayed.
Jaime studied his brother carefully. "You seem to like it here."
"What's not to like?" Tyrion's grin widened. "I don't have to look up others' noses for once, earn my own gold, and best of all—" he savored the words, "—I no longer endure Father's daily reminders of my disappointment to House Lannister. Instead, I'm establishing a banking enterprise that will make even the Iron Bank take notice."
He clapped Jaime on the shoulder, an action that would have been impossible before.
"Come on. Let me show you the fun parts of Winterfell."
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The door slammed behind her with more force than she intended, sending a maid scurrying away in the corridor outside. Cersei hardly noticed. Her eyes swept critically over the chambers she had been provided—plain oak furnishings, woolen tapestries instead of silk, and a distinct lack of gold or marble. Barely fit for a minor lord, let alone the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Still, she hadn't expected better from these northern barbarians with their primitive sensibilities. At least now, alone behind closed doors, she could finally drop the mask of regal composure she'd worn since they arrived.
She wanted to scream. To throw something. To unleash the storm of rage that had been building since that day in King's Landing when the mage had cursed her.
Instead, she moved to the mirror with deliberate control, each step measured and precise. The face that stared back at her was flawless—more perfect than it had been even in her youth. Her skin glowed with an otherworldly radiance, her features sculpted to impossible perfection. She was more beautiful than any woman in the Seven Kingdoms.
And she felt nothing when she looked at herself.
No pride. No satisfaction. Not even vanity—the simple pleasure she had once taken in her own beauty.
"You took that from me," she whispered to her reflection, her voice a venomous hiss. "You took everything."
Wine sat untouched nearby. Why bother? It would warm her throat but bring no comfort, no dulling of the senses, no momentary escape. The mage had seen to that.
He'd made her the most beautiful woman in Westeros while simultaneously ensuring she could take no joy in it. No joy in anything.
Food had lost its taste. Wine offered no comfort.
And then there was Jaime.
Her twin. Her other half. Her one true solace in a world of enemies and fools.
His touch, once her greatest pleasure, now elicited nothing but cold awareness of flesh.
Cersei's fist clenched at her side, nails digging crescents into her palm. The mage had taken even that from her—her one refuge, her one source of true pleasure in a life where she had been bartered and used by men since girlhood.
She had spent the whole journey plotting her revenge, imagining a thousand ways to make him suffer as she suffered. Yet mingled with her rage was a desperate hope that perhaps he could undo what he had done.
The mage couldn't hide from her forever. She was Cersei Lannister, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. She would find him, corner him, make him face her.
And then he would pay for what he had done—or he would fix it.
"I will find you," she promised.
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Ned held a lantern as he led Robert down the narrow, winding stone steps.
"I thought we'd never get here. All the talk about my Seven Kingdoms... a man forgets your part is as big as the other six combined," Robert said with a shake of his head.
As they descended, their breath became more and more visible from the cold, and Robert's became more and more labored.
"How will you stand it, man, when winter finally comes? Your balls frozen right up into your guts for the next twenty, thirty years?" Robert asked, only half joking.
"The Starks will endure. We always have," Ned replied simply.
"You need to come south, get a real taste of summer before it's gone. Everyone is fat, drunk and rich. And the girls, Ned! Women lose all modesty in the heat. They swim naked in the river, right beneath the castle..."
The king laughed happily, but his laughter trailed off as the staircase ended.
Ned swept the lantern in a semicircle; shadows lurched along a procession of granite pillars that receded into the dark.
"She's down at the end, your Grace."
Side by side they proceeded, their footsteps ringing off the stones as they walked among the dead of House Stark.
Between the pillars on either side: granite sculptures of the deceased sitting on thrones, their backs against their own sepulchres. Great stone direwolves curled around their feet.
Ned stopped at the last tomb and lifted the lantern. The crypt continued on into the darkness ahead of them, but beyond this point the tombs were empty, waiting for him and his children.
In front of him, illuminated by the lantern, a beautiful young woman stared out at them with blind, granite eyes: Lyanna Stark, Ned's sister.
"She was more beautiful than that," Robert said softly.
Silently, Robert knelt and bowed his head. Ned joined him. Robert's voice was hoarse with remembered grief.
"Did you have to bury her in a place like this? She should be on a hill somewhere, with the sun and the clouds above her."
"She was a Stark. This is her place," Ned answered.
The king rose to touch her cheek, his fingers brushing the rough stone as gently as if it were living flesh.
"In my dreams, I kill him every night."
"It's done. The Targaryens are gone," Ned said.
The warrior Robert used to be surfaced in his face, pitiless. "Not all of them."
"We should return, your Grace. Your wife will be waiting."
"To hell with my wife," Robert said, but started back the way they came. Ned followed.
"If I hear 'your Grace' one more time, I'll have your fucking head on a spike. We're more to each other than that."
"I haven't forgotten," Ned answered, then paused. "Tell me about old Jon."
Robert shook his head. "One moment he was fine, and... It burned right through him, whatever it was." He stopped walking. "I loved that man."
"We both did."
"He never had to teach you much. But me? You remember me at sixteen? All I wanted to do was crack skulls and fuck girls. Old Jon showed me what was what."
Ned gave Robert a sidelong, skeptical look, barely suppressing a smile.
"Don't look at me like that. It's not his fault I didn't listen."
He put a massive arm around Ned's shoulder and walked on.
"You must wonder why I've finally come north, after all these years."
The cold air of Winterfell's crypts wrapped around them, but neither man seemed to notice. Robert's substantial frame cast a long shadow in the flickering torchlight as he stepped closer to his oldest friend.
"It has crossed my mind," Ned admitted.
"These are dangerous times..." Robert's voice echoed off the ancient stone walls. "I need good men around me, men like Jon Arryn. Men like you." He stopped walking, turning to face Ned directly. "I want you down in King's Landing, not up here where you're no damn use to anybody." His gaze intensified. "Lord Eddard Stark, I would name you Hand of the King."
Ned had anticipated this moment since the raven announcing Robert's journey north. Still, hearing the words spoken aloud brought a weight he'd been dreading. He met his king's gaze unflinchingly.
"I am afraid I cannot do that, Your Grace. I need to be here." Ned's voice was quiet but unyielding. "There is something coming, something my ancestors always knew was going to come."
"Winter is here, Your Grace."
Robert's brow furrowed in confusion.
"What are you talking about?"
"The White Walkers are coming."
Silence hung between them for a heartbeat before Robert's laughter bounced off the stone walls of the crypt, echoing oddly among the solemn statues of Stark ancestors.
"The White Walkers?" The king's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Have you gone completely mad, Ned?"
"I know you're having trouble believing me." Ned's face remained grave. "Hell, I myself would not have believed it if it weren't for El and my brother who have faced them and seen them with their own eyes."
Robert's laughter died away. He studied Ned's face in the dim light, his expression growing serious. "El? What was he doing beyond the Wall?"
"We have had a few deserters from the Night's Watch end up here who claim to have barely survived a run-in with the Walkers. El was curious and wanted to check it out. He and my brother traveled beyond the Wall. He came back claiming to have barely survived."
Robert's face darkened as he ran a hand through his beard. "Seven hells. That man doesn't strike me as the lying sort—too proud of whatever he is. But Ned, the Others? They're stories women use to put unruly children to sleep."
"I've summoned vassals, they will be arriving any day now" Ned continued, relieved that Robert was at least listening. "We'll discuss how to best respond without causing mass panic. The good thing is we have time to prepare. The Wall is the best place to mount a defense against an army of undead wraiths that will number in the hundreds of thousands—and growing with each battle."
"Gods, Ned," Robert muttered, leaning heavily against the stone wall. "You really believe this."
"Aye. I don't have any proof to give you, Your Grace—only the word of my brother who has seen this with his own eyes, and the mage. Neither of them has any reason to lie to me in this matter."
Robert was silent for a long moment, his expression troubled. "Seven above, Ned. When were you planning on telling me this?"
"I just found out a few days ago, Your Grace."
A heavy sigh escaped Robert's lips. There was a long silence as the king seemed to wrestle with the implications, then a strange smile slowly spread across his face.
"I suppose," he said with grim humor, "that's what I get for complaining about not having wars left to fight." He straightened, a spark of the old Robert—the warrior who'd crushed the Targaryen dynasty—flashing in his eyes. "Where is the mage now? I want the full story from him directly."
"He's..." Ned hesitated, choosing his words carefully. "He tends to disappear into his forest when he's working on something important. But he should be back any day now."
"Not good enough," Robert growled, the old battle-hardness returning to his eyes. "If he's not back by first light tomorrow, we will ride to meet him. I want to hear this tale from the mage's own mouth."
"Are you sure your vassals are going to believe you?" he added after a moment.
"I am going to try," Ned said grimly.
"Well," Robert let out a humorless laugh, "I can tell you now that none of my vassals are going to believe you—not unless there's a Walker standing right in front of them, and even then half the fools would probably ask how much gold they would be paid to betray us."
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A/N: Eight more patrons today I will post the next chapter in 24 hours.