We ride west, past the market road and the frozen fork that connects to the White Knife further south, where the river splits like a trident. On the far fork, nestled between two ridges, the Blackworks hums with heat and noise. Smoke rises in steady plumes, but it's no chaotic forge—it's a system now. A rhythm.
Steel is the future of the North, even if food is what is needed, we will need steel to survive the inevitable war that is coming.
Arren talks as we ride. He's excited, and I let him ramble. I like hearing it through his eyes—what we're building here. What he thinks we're building.
"We've got three new molds ready," he says. "Ingots, spadeheads, and those bars you drew for the… the pressure supports."
"Struts," I correct softly.
"Aye. The blast holds longer now. Nearly double what we had last month. Still warping the tuyere ends too fast, though."
"We'll fix that. Clay's too fine. We need coarse sand and ash mix, like in the hearth bricks. Tell Garrick."
He nods eagerly. "Right away." As he scribbles on his note book.
From a distance, the Blackworks don't look like a forge at all.
Not in the way a traveler would expect, anyway—not with the clatter of horseshoes and open fires, not with smoke rising in choking black coils from a soot-caked roof. No, from the hill above, it looks more like a little fortress grew out of the bones of the river side. Angular. Stone-bound. Heavy with purpose.
The outer yard is rimmed with stacked cordwood and iron carts groaning under the weight of raw ore, pig iron bars, and broken castings waiting to be smelted again. Heavy pulley arms swing from reinforced beams overhead, lifting buckets of coal and limestone to catwalks built into the walls. Waterwheels line the stream like giant teeth sunk into the river's edge, turning steadily, endlessly, each one feeding motion through hidden shafts beneath the stone. They rise and fall with perfect timing, pounding ingots with a deafening tempo. A second set of wheels drives the bellows—massive leather lungs—feeding a constant breath into the furnaces. No more waiting for winds or men to stoke the flames. This place breathes on its own.
And at the center of it all, behind a row of iron grates and pulleys, stands the egg.
A furnace unlike any in Westeros. Round-bellied, smooth-lined, fireproofed with layers of lime and hard clay. A dozen clay tuyeres—narrow nozzles—jut from the lower rim, channeling bursts of air directly into the heart of molten pig iron. The heat is staggering, the roar like a caged dragon.
Inside, impurity dies and steel is born.
The others still call it a miracle. They don't understand the method, only that it works.
The Bessemer Process. The Jon Snow Process now. Or the bones of it, anyway.
My proposition to decorate the egg with scales was turned down, wonder why…
Around it, men move carefully, faces hidden behind leather masks, lifting crucibles and pouring slag off the top. The heat is immense, even from the catwalk above. The roar fills your bones.
This is no forge. It's a refinery. A prototype Bessemer converter made by candlelight and stubbornness. I remember reading about Henry Bessemer and the revolution he sparked for my material science test. Now I stand above a miracle that shouldn't exist for another thousand years, or ten thousand seeing how slow Planetos advances.
We step onto the catwalk that rings the egg. Beneath us, molten pig iron glows bright orange, swirling slowly, impurities rising to the top in dancing patterns of darker slag. One of the foremen uses an iron rod to stir, guiding the bubbling surface toward the pour spouts.
"How long's it been cooking?" I ask.
"Thirty minutes," Arren answers without missing a beat. "The air pressure held steady. We've got nearly a ton ready."
I exhale slowly. "Faster than last week."
"Cleaner, too. Garrick says it cuts easier on the mill."
That makes me smile.
Faster. Cleaner. Stronger. This is more than weapons. This is rail, chain, rebar. This is gates that hold, bridges that don't collapse, watchtowers that rise overnight. This is steel for cities...or armies.
"Did the insulation hold during the test pour?" I ask.
"Better than expected. The lining only cracked once near the south tuyere. No breach."
"Good. Patch it with wet clay and volcanic ash. Then cure it slower this time. Two days."
Arren nods and scribbles the note down in his slate.
Below, the slag begins to cool on the trenchline, glowing in a pale arc of wasted impurity. What's left in the furnace will be stronger than any blade forged in King's Landing, Lannisport, or Oldtown.
But the Blackworks was never just about swords.
That's what people assume, of course. Lords think of forges and picture knights in gleaming plate, hammering steel into blood. But I didn't drag an engineer's soul into this world just to make better blades. War is only one kind of power. Wealth builds another.
Inside these walls, we make hinges and locks, nails and rivets by the bucketful. Lanterns to be fitted with glass panes from a partner I have near White Harbor. Still can't figure how to make clear glass, at least that project has been kept a secret, I don't want a Myrish assassin to cut my throat while I sleep. Ploughshares stronger and lighter than anything the world has ever seen. Hoes, shovels, scythes—all cut from our steel, polished to a mirror's edge. We press iron bands for barrels, fittings for carts, braces for timber frames, even fine needles and fishhooks sharp enough to shame a Myrish craftsman.
And people buy them. Gods, do they buy them.
Our shipments ride west to Barrowton and the Rills, south to Torrhen's Square and east to the port at White Harbor, where merchants are already whispering of a new standard in northern steel and its unheard-of quantity.
I step through the heavy doors into the overseer's chamber—more of an office carved into stone than a room, with parchment-littered tables and a wall-mounted chalkboard scratched with columns of figures and symbols only a handful of people in the North could decipher. And most of them work here.
Seren stands at the center, grease on his sleeves, eyes bright behind round lenses we ground ourselves from Myrish glass. A lowborn genius from a fishing village near the Last River, he had a mind made for numbers and the stubborn patience of a man who knew what starvation looked like, while Arren helped me keep my schedule and keeps tract of half a hundred projects all over the place, Seren helped me administer them, he was a —Gods— send.
"You're late," he says, not looking up from the ledger.
"I'm the lord of this operation," I say. "I can be late."
"You say that, but last week you chewed out Garrick for misplacing half an hour's pig iron schedule."
"Garrick doesn't know the difference between a crucible and a piss pot." I mutter, looking at the papers in the desk.
He laughs at that, poking fun at Garrick — the chief blacksmith — a fan favorite around the blackworks. He finally looks up. "We're behind."
My jaw tightens. "By how much?"
"Seven hundred weight of raw billets. We had a clay tuyere crack in Furnace Three, and the bellows team on Wheel Two snapped a gear shaft. I've got a blacksmith and two apprentices reworking it, but the delays ripple."
I nod, already shifting gears.
"What's current daily throughput?" I ask.
"On the newer furnace line? With full airflow and continuous feed, we're running near five and a half tons a day. But only when the river holds steady." More than two thousand tons of steel a year if it held steady 365 days of the year.
"And the water?"
"Snowmelt is still strong. Might push six tons with wheel four if we upgrade the cam track."
I tap the edge of the ledger with my knuckle. "That's still not enough."
He blinks. "It's not?"
"No. Not if we're going to keep filling the orders from Barrow Hall, Saltpans, the grain lords of the Green Fork, and White Harbor's new contracts in Essos."
His brows rise. "You signed those already?"
"I sent a raven yesterday, the orders from Braavos are massive." I say, folding my arms as I study the draft. "We might have to keep the bloomery furnaces running at night. Hire more men and start double shifts. The strain will crack the crucibles. The bellows will give out. And then we'll rebuild them stronger."
Seren grimaces. "They'll keep breaking."
"And we'll keep repairing them," I reply, my voice firm, trying to keep frustration from my voice, everything just kept breaking. "Until they don't break anymore… or until some Ironborn fuck burns it all to the ground." I pause. "Speaking of that."
I tap the map— south of barrowtown on the river on its journey toward the sea, cutting between pine-clad hills, the three long rivers on he western shore of the north citing deep into the north in the map, the Stonemelt, the Rills River, and the Barrowflow.
"The chain is almost set up on the mouth of the Barrowflow," I say. "Lady Dustin will be happy."
Seren snorts. "As if she ever would be happy with us."
I don't smile. "She's not in this for happiness. She's in this for leverage. The Barrowlands depend on the new fortifications for coastal defence. The river runs right past her lands—if the Ironborn ever sailed up again, it would be her cattle they'd steal, her villages they'd torch. She knows what this chain and towers mean." It's the main reason the Dustin and Ryswells had accepted the funding of the fortification on the mouth of the rivers, fortified towers and steel chains.
"Still odd, her warming up to House Stark after all these years," Seren says carefully.
I shrug. "Gold talks louder than old feuds. We're paying her levies to help man the tower foundations. Her coffers swell with every shipment of steel parts sent through the ferry point. She gets roads. Her people get jobs. And she gets to feel like a queen of something again." Its not going to bring her husband back but its something, hopefully enough so that she sends more than a token force when war comes.
His gaze lingers on the map. "And the coin for all this? Steel doesn't smelt itself."
I grin. "The gold's coming. More than I dreamed."
And it was. The trade in refined steel alone had tripled House Stark's income in the past three years. Cast ploughshares were selling as fast as we could ship them to White Harbor. Tools, hinges, saw blades, even steel reinforcements for carts and pulleys—every holdfast wanted them. And not just in the North.
"Moat Cailin's western ramparts have been stabilized," I continue. "We're rebuilding the south tower from the foundation. Soon it won't be a ruin guarding the Neck—it'll be a fortress again, we've expanded the docks at White Harbor. Built a grain granary outside Deepwood. And we've three engineers drawing plans for a high bridge across the Last River near Last Hearth—one that won't collapse every spring thaw. New sluiceworks near the Long Lake. A proper timberyard in Wolfswood with pulley cranes. The rice fields near the Moat have been doubling in size for five years straight."
Once, the North was quiet. Not peaceful—just quiet. Cold and proud and sleeping under its own weight. But no longer. Roads are being laid where there were none. Old keeps breathe again. It wasn't easy, convincing Lord Stark. And I was worried he would take the project from me after that fight. But he is a pragmatic man, and he sees how all this is helping his people, the tide is too strong to stop now.
I gave him numbers. Charts. Letters from distant traders willing to pay silver and gold for Northern steel. Diagrams of the bellows and the turbines. Proof, not dreams. I made him see the North not as it was, but as it could be—rich, strong, proud, and self-sufficient.
He listened. He gave me coin. Gave me men. Gave me a chance.
And I didn't waste it.
They see only the iron and the gold. I see what comes after. I see ships built from our own lumber sailing three times faster than any other, bound with our own nails, taking steel, glass and a dozen other products all over the world. I see the day the North feeds itself, arms itself, trades on its own terms. Prepared for the storm…
The wind is colder today.
Twilight bleeds into the sky, casting long shadows over the pines. Winterfell rises, timeless and grim against the darkening sky. Familiar. Impenetrable. Home, though never wholly mine. Winterfell was a fortress in name, but that word didn't do it justice. It wasn't a castle like those of Earth — not even close. Not like the clean-cut stone keeps of Europe, the symmetrical châteaux of France, or even the towering strongholds of Japan or the crusader castles scattered across the Middle East.
Winterfell was gigantic, absurd even. Probably the second largest castle of Westeros. There were two curtain walls — the inner, high and black with age, and the outer, nearly a hundred feet tall and wide enough for five men to walk abreast on the ramparts. It would be very hard to build siege towers that high, and even then, you would have another wall to take after it, you would need fifty thousand men and three years to take a fully manned and stocked Winterfell with a competent commander.
I'd read somewhere once upon a time that the largest castle on Earth by land area was Malbork Castle, in Poland. It was impressive. Huge, even. It could swallow a city block. But Winterfell? Winterfell would swallow Malbork whole and still have room for dessert.
And yet, the show version I remembered — the one from HBO — had always struck me as… smaller. Cinematic. Neat. Built for camera angles, not snowstorms. That version had one gate, a handful of towers, and yards that felt like a school courtyard. It looked like a high-budget Earth castle. Something you could walk across in ten minutes.
This Winterfell? It took half an hour just to walk from the East Gate to the stables near the godswood, and longer if snow had drifted over the southern walk. From above, the whole thing must look more like a stone city than a castle — a city fortified by generations who knew that the cold wasn't just a season, it lasted years and it was the enemy.
This keep, these stones—they've seen kings come and go, banners rise and fall. But now, for the first time, I wonder if it's ready for what's coming.
A Nights Watch deserter has been caught. I know what it means.
The lion stirs. The hawk is dead. And the stag will come north.
Robert Baratheon, King of the Seven Kingdoms, Usurper, is on the road to Winterfell.
And he's not just coming for old friendship's sake. He's coming for Ned. For his loyalty. For his blood.
For his daughter.
At least I will get to see Cersei Lannister, George kept raving about how beautiful she was in the books...
-END-
Author's Note: Someone in another forum asked for my Patreon, so if you're interested, it should be listed in my signature. If you'd like to read ahead and support my writing, you're welcome to check it out. Like Quote
Chapter Two — Embers and Echoes
Flames roared like oceans in the sky.
I stood atop a broken ziggurat, surrounded by marble giants crumbling beneath fire. Dragons screamed above me, hundreds of them—winged titans whose shadows eclipsed entire city blocks. Their scales shimmered with unnatural color: molten gold, deep obsidian, pale emerald, and the sickly pink of raw flesh. They bathed a city in fire—wide boulevards and riverside temples, market squares and towers of glass-like stone—all melting beneath the storm.
People ran. They screamed in a language I couldn't understand, their skin blistering before my eyes. Some tried to fight back with spears and bolts, but what is iron to dragons?
I looked down. My hands were covered in blood—not mine. I was wearing black armor, smooth and shining, lined with red glyphs that pulsed like coals. Something ancient, and not quite steel. I tried to speak, but no sound left my throat.
Then I woke up.
Sweat clung to my skin. The sheets were tangled. Dawn crept pale through the narrow double windows of my chamber. I sat up slowly, still half in that burning dream.
That made it the third dragon dream in two months.
This one... if the imagery meant anything, it must have been Valyria during the Spice Wars. I remembered reading about it from a Maester's treatise on Freehold expansionism. One of the few times the dragonlords clashed directly with the Rhoynar before Nymeria's exodus. A forgotten war, for most. But not for me. The imagery burned too clear.
They feel so real.
The dreams were different from memories. They weren't Earth, and they weren't Westeros as I knew it. They felt layered, thick with metaphor and meaning. I didn't know if they were prophetic or just echoes of Blood of the Dragon trickling down into my consciousness. Maybe both.
A soft sound startled me—a shuffle against the cold stone floor. I turned my head.
There, sitting near the hearth, was a white shape. Small. Still. Watching me.
"Ghost," I whispered.
The pup blinked slowly. His eyes were red as coals, burning with the quiet intelligence that had unnerved more than one stablehand. He was bigger now, growing fast. Silent as snow.
There was something uncanny in the way he looked at me—no, not just uncanny. Familiar. Like recognition. Ghost didn't just see me; he understood me, mirrored something buried deep beneath skin and bone.
I knelt before him, and as he pressed his cold nose into my palm, a shiver went through me. Not of fear, but of connection. I could feel something more than warmth—there was presence. Awareness. It was like standing before a mirror that reflected not your face, but your soul.
Warging, such a strange feeling… but gods I love magic.
I thought of the old stories, the ones Luwin dismissed, and the First Men whispered in the long nights. Wargs. Skinchangers. The blood of the wolf in the blood of the man. In the tales, they had been feared and revered. And here I was, looking into eyes that knew me, and wondering how far the line blurred.
If I could master that bond… if I could see through Ghost's eyes, feel what he felt, hunt when he hunted… the implications were enormous. Scouting. Communication. Even battle. The battlefield advantage alone—eyes that never blinked, that didn't need light or language. And in the far North, beyond the Wall, it might be the difference between life and death. here
But it was more than utility. I thought of the old tales of Bloodraven—the old sorcerer-knight who had once sat the Iron Throne has the hand of the king, who had vanished beyond the Wall and whispered into the minds of men through ravens and trees. But not me, years of trying and no contact. They said he had a thousand eyes and one, that he saw through the weirwoods and dreamed in roots and snow. If even half the tales were true, then perhaps the path was not closed to me either.
If he had done it—if he had bound mind and beast, root and blood, to the pulse of the living world—then why not me? I wanted to do magic dammit! Not just the passive dragon dreams I received ever more frequently.
I didn't need a thousand eyes. A few might be enough. Ghost's and few ravens. The eyes of the wolf, the hunter, the survivor. Eyes in the sky that watched where mine could not, saw over hills and across rivers.
The North was deep and dark and vast. If I could master what stirred between us…
I had tried before.
When I was younger, I read the old stories in secret. I whispered to the godswood trees, stared into the eyes of crows until my vision blurred. I closed my eyes and tried to feel something beyond myself—some great current of thought or presence. Nothing happened.
Not until now.
Maybe I had needed Ghost. Maybe that was the missing key. It wasn't just any animal. A direwolf was different—older, closer to the old gods than any hound or hawk. The bond between a Stark and their direwolf was sacred. And every Stark with one… eventually felt it.
Robb talked in his sleep sometimes, voice low and strange, and Grey Wind would whine as if hearing something only they shared. Even little Bran sometimes spoke of dreams where he ran on four legs. We were all changing, slowly.
And now, so was I.
That thought stayed with me as I dressed. That—and the burn of fire in my veins.
But it was more than utility. It felt like a truth I had always known, long before Jon Snow was reborn into this world. A whisper in the blood. A tether between souls. I didn't just want to explore that path—I needed to.
"You're not just a pup, are you?" I murmured. Ghost only blinked, then pressed closer. We stayed like that a long moment. Quiet. Connected. As if two hearts beat in rhythm.
I stood at last, slowly. The fire in my dream might have been ancient, but the fire in my blood was very much alive. slowly. I scratched behind his ears, murmuring soft nonsense to him. Ghost was a comfort I hadn't known I needed.
I thought about the past two months as I dressed. The South had moved slowly. Robb, Bran and I had ridden to the execution of the Night's Watch deserter ourselves, and I'd recognized the man immediately. Will, one of the three rangers Waymar Royce had taken into the forest.
When Lord Stark pressed him, cold steel at his throat and Ser Rodrik scowling nearby, he spilled everything.
I had interrupted. I couldn't help it. When he started describing the cold, the silence, the way the Walker's eyes glowed like blue suns—I stepped forward and asked questions myself. Lord Stark frowned at that, but didn't stop me. Will described Waymar Royce standing proud, sword drawn, as the Walker approached—how the blade had shattered like glass with a single touch. He spoke of the others in the trees, watching with pale, inhuman faces, and the way they moved—like smoke, or shadows on ice.
Ned had listened, grave and unmoved, but I saw it—something flickered behind his eyes. Doubt. Not in the story, but in what to do with it. No one said the word 'truth,' but the possibility hung in the air like breath on a cold morning.
No one did.
But I watched how Luwin's hands tightened. How Ser Rodrik frowned deeper than usual.
They dismissed it out loud, but I had planted something. A seed. It would grow.
Eventually.
She stood in the corridor like a statue carved from bitterness.
Catelyn Stark's gaze was cold and pale as hoarfrost. Her hands were folded neatly at her waist, fingers tight against the fabric of her gown. Behind her, the sunlight bled through a tall window, casting a long shadow over the stone floor. It might have been poetic, if it didn't feel like a blade across my throat.
She was beautiful—undeniably so— hers was a beauty that carried weight. A woman shaped by five children and northern winters. Her hips were wide, her waist full beneath the folds of her heavy gown, her figure matronly but stately. Her heavy breasts, though modestly bound, pressed tight beneath the embroidered fabric. She moved with the calm authority of someone used to being listened to, and obeyed.
Her hair was a deep crimson red. It framed her face in a cascade of braids and coils, pinned precisely in the Tully southern fashion. In the right light, it gleamed like flame—and this morning, it seemed to smolder.
Ned is a lucky man…
Her eyes, though, held no warmth for me. They were like polished river stones: blue-gray, hard with judgment. They flicked over me now, from the clasp at my collar—wolf's head steel, cast in my own forge—to my hands, calloused and ink-stained from accounts and diagrams. I wasn't just a boy anymore. Not just a bastard. And that disturbed her more than I could guess.
"Snow," she said, and the title tasted sour in her mouth. I didn't miss it.
"Lady Stark," I replied evenly.
We stood there for a breath too long.
Her voice was smooth but tight. "Your secretary is looking for you. He said it was urgent."
"Thank you," I said.
"Do not make him wait."
With that, she turned on her heel, skirts whispering against the stone, and disappeared down the hall.
I didn't hate her. But I could no longer afford to care what she thought of me.
Wintertown was alive.
Where once it had been a scatter of timber huts and old stones nestled in the shadow of Winterfell's walls, now it was swarming with people. Wide avenues of packed earth, slowly being replaced by stone, wove between sturdy longhouses, smoke curling from hundreds of chimneys. Children ran, dogs barked, and smiths sang over the clamor of hammer and anvil.
Banners fluttered above storehouses and guild halls—House Stark's grey direwolf flew above more than just guild halls and storehouses now. The town was pushing at the walls of Winterfell like a wave at a breakwater. Whole streets had been widened and lined with flat river stones from the White Knife's many fords. The once-scattered huts had given way to rows of longhouses, workshops, and alehouses, each competing for space and sound. Soot-blackened chimneys rose into the cold air like the masts of ships in a crowded harbor, and the scent of fresh bread mingled with smoke, pitch, and manure.
Fisherwives called out their morning catch from shaded stalls, their baskets lined with river trout and knuckled crabs. Potboys darted between booths with pails of stew for the workers, and dogs nosed at the refuse in gutters still lined with frost. The grocers had started using waxed parchment instead of cloth wraps, and foreign spices—cinnamon, pepper, even saffron—could be found if one knew where to look. There was money here now. Not just coin, but ambition. Young men from Deepwood, Barrowton, even White Harbor had come to apprentice with smiths and brewers. Traders came with them, and gossip too: of dragons across the sea, of war in Myr, and of a king finally making his slow way north.
Arren met me near the new distillery site. He was a short man, bald as an egg, with thick arms and clever eyes. His boots were caked in clay and ash.
"You missed the first pour," he said, grinning. "Still smells like boiling piss."
"Only before it's aged. Give it a year in oak, and you'll weep with joy."
The distillery was a broad timber and stone structure. Inside, copper stills glinted in the sunlight, and coils of tubing hung like intestines from wooden rafters.
"The mash tun's already been filled twice," Arren said, patting the wooden barrel like a child. "In a few days, we'll have enough to bottle."
"And how much do you think a bottle will fetch in King's Landing?"
He grinned. "A golden dragon for a good cask. More, if the southrons develop a taste for northern fire. And ships can carry dozens of barrels. Hundreds."
"So it becomes the new fur trade of the north."
"Better. Less fleas."
We laughed, and I leaned against the doorframe, watching as the first workers filtered in with sacks of malt and firewood. The wind carried the scent of yeast and smoke.
Whiskey. That word alone had stirred both skepticism and excitement in the older lords. The drink itself was not new—there had always been crude barley liquor and harsh northern grain brews—but this was something else. This was craft, refinement, science.
We were pioneering a new process. I had spent long hours poring over texts from the Citadel, scribbled fragments from old Rhoynish traders and Volantene alchemists, and even one dubious Pentoshi journal on spirit purification, seeing what was possible and trying to figure out how it was done on earth with half remembered memories of diagrams and Wikipedia. What we had now was a copper pot still with a coiled condenser, cooled through flowing springwater in a stone trench we'd dug ourselves. The setup gleamed like polished bronze, the still bellied like a cauldron, capturing and refining each drop of the clear spirit. Firewood fed the furnace beneath, and the mash fermented in great oaken tubs—yeast-fed, warm and pungent.
The first run was always rough, too high in impurities, but the second and third distillations? Clean. Fiery. Pure. I didn't like it, but the lords loved it.
Once drawn, the liquid would be aged in oak casks—seasoned from the old logging groves west of Barrowton, the wood burnt slightly to open its pores. The barrels would sit in underground vaults—cool, consistent, shielded from the wild swings of northern weather. There, over seasons, the sharp edge of the spirit would soften, take on hints of wood, smoke, and time.
"Eventually," I had told Arren, "we'll distill to nearly pure spirit. It won't just be for drinking. Imagine medicine—true antiseptics, tinctures, balms. A battlefield salve cleaner than anything maesters can boil."
He had blinked at me like I'd spoken in Yitish, "antiseptic?" I heard him mumbling, then just nodded, grinning his sly brewer's grin. "And maybe even light a fire with a single drop."
Yes. That too. Northern fire. For healing. For war. For gold. I liked gold, a little too much maybe. This venture—the whiskey trade—was mine. Not the Starks', not Winterfell's. While the Blackworks and the foundries belonged to the house, tied by name and legacy, the distillery had been chartered in my own name, with land granted and cleared beyond the jurisdiction of the castle proper. A personal holding. My own risk, my own gold, and, soon, my own profit. That meant something in the North, where names were carved not just in stone, but in what you built and kept. With whiskey, I could fund projects without asking leave. I could hire men, make trade contacts, and wield a kind of quiet independence most bastards only dreamed of.
The wind carried the scent of yeast and smoke.
From the street below, a burst of raucous laughter echoed.
I turned.
There he was.
Theon Greyjoy swaggered out of a brothel with a girl on each arm, tunic half-buttoned and eyes full of wine and pride. His belt hung crooked, and he looked pleased with himself, like a rooster after the storm.
"Jon!" he called, waving. "Don't tell your father, aye? I was only inspecting the foundation."
"Of her virtue?"
He roared with laughter, one of the girls rolling her eyes and slipping inside.
He eyed the distillery behind me and whistled a hundred copper pots inside. "You planning to drown the whole Southron nobility?"
"Just warm their bellies. Fill our coffers."
He clapped me on the back. "Well, here's to that. Gods help us if you ever take a wife—she'll wake to the scent of grain and boiled barley for the rest of her days."
I smiled faintly, but my mind was already elsewhere. The construction, the shipment schedules, the next trial batch of barley from Deepwood Motte…
Theon's laughter faded behind me as I glanced south, toward the rolling hills beyond Winterfell's walls. "The king's party is close—last I heard, they're near Castle Cerwyn. Not far at all."
Theon's face tightened for a moment. "About time. The North's been waiting for months. Rumors say the king's entourage is bigger than anyone expected—knights, lords, even some southern sell-swords. Could bring trouble."
"Trouble's always near," I said with a shrug.
He shook his head, stepping closer. "You should have a woman, Jon. It might steady you—give you something more than ledgers and laws to think about."
I laughed dryly. "The kind of women you talk about come with many gifts, Theon. Disease is the most common."
He chuckled. "You're impossible."
We fell silent, watching the distant smoke curl from the chimneys of Wintertown, the heartbeat of the North growing louder with every step the king's party took toward us.
Theon Greyjoy. A friend, if you could call him that. We've known each other long enough—grown up in the same halls, crossed paths in battles and feasts. But there's always been a distance between us, a line drawn in shadows and silence.
Robb trusts him. Closer than I ever was. Theon's quick with a joke, a smile, easy in the company of others. But I see what lies beneath—that restless edge, the flicker of something unsteady in his eyes. A hunger for belonging, or maybe just escape.
I don't trust him. Not fully. Not like I trust Ghost at my side or Seren with my coin. Theon wants to belong. I see it in the way he carries himself—half a boy trying to stand like a man, half a man still searching for a home. It's the hunger behind his bravado, the way he laughs too loud in crowded halls, like he's trying to convince himself as much as anyone else.
He's caught between two worlds. Born a Greyjoy, raised a Stark ward, torn between the cold iron of the sea and the solid stone of Winterfell. His father, Balon, has never truly accepted him—not as a son. Theon craves something more, some shred of approval that might fill the emptiness left by his father's cold gaze.
That longing… it's a dangerous thing. It made him vulnerable, made the path to betrayal seem like the only way to grasp the belonging he so desperately seeks. But it wasn't inevitable. Betrayal isn't a shadow that looms over a man's fate—it's a choice.
Theon chose to betray us, yes. But maybe he did so because no one ever gave him a real chance to be loyal. Maybe if he'd felt truly welcomed... I don't excuse what he did and it's always hard to have him close knowing what might happen, but maybe, just maybe, Theon could be useful for my plans.
Robb was waiting in the courtyard, dressed for training.
Steel glinted on his shoulders, not quite lordly plate but something more than the simple brigandine he wore last year. His new sword belt was dyed Stark grey, and the hilt of his longsword bore the mark of the direwolf in silver, small luxuries that were ever more common for us. A small fluffy ball stood beside him, tail twitching, muzzle wet with fresh snow. He had grown even larger.
Robb has always been my truest brother. He never called me Snow unless we were joking. Never reminded me of my place. If anything, he forgot it more often than I did.
When we were boys, he used to share everything. His food, his dreams, his bruises. We bled together in the yard and stole cakes from the kitchens and dared each other to climb the highest spires in the dark. When he cried the night Mother scolded him for calling me his brother in front of her kin, I knew he meant it.
We learned to fight side by side. Laughed the first time we saw girls in the village bathing and ran until our lungs burned. He was always the bold one. I was the quiet watcher. But it worked. Like two blades crossing, neither dulling the other.
"You're late," Robb said, grinning.
"You're early," I countered.
We met with a clasp of forearms, firm and warm. The cold never quite touched us in that way—not when we stood together.
"I thought you might have vanished into the Blackworks again," Robb said, stepping back. "Or buried yourself in your barrels of Northern fire!"
"It's whiskey," I corrected. Wonder if they are ever going to call it that… "And I don't drink the product! The barrels of it may just keep Winterfell solvent this winter."
"And drunk."
"That too."
He laughed, motioning me toward the covered archway where the squires usually gathered. A fire crackled nearby, fed with dry spruce and oak. It scented the air with something almost sweet.
For a moment, we stood in silence, watching the yard. Bran was taking bow lessons again, his stance too narrow. Arya, gods help her, was mimicking a stablehand's sword swings with a stick, fiercely ignoring the sewing mistress's calls. I felt a strange pang in my chest—not quite nostalgia, not quite dread.
"They'll all be here tomorrow," Robb said, softly.
"Aye. King Robert. The queen. Half the court."
He didn't need to say more. The idea was enormous. And dangerous.
Robb shifted his weight. "Do you remember when we used to race down the west wall, barefoot, even in winter?"
"You always beat me."
"You let me win."
I smiled. He remembered.
"But it's not a game now," he said. "Father's asked me to stand beside him when the king arrives. Speak with the southern knights. Host the prince."
I glanced at him. "You'll do well, Robb, there is no need to feel nervous."
He shrugged, the movement oddly tight across his shoulders. "I'm not sure I want to. At least not like this. The queen—Lannister. Everyone says she'll be watching for signs of weakness. That the boy, Joffrey… there are rumors from the merchants. Proud and cruel."
"Just be polite and show a bit of deference, keep their pride inflated and nothing will happen."
He turned to me then. "You speak like you're not one of us. Like you're already watching from the shadows."
"Aren't I?"
Robb's brow furrowed. He was trying to say something—carefully, maybe even kindly—but there was steel beneath it.
"You've built something," he said. "This... trade, your workers, your accounts. The Blackworks, the whiskey, even the damn new ravencotes. You're not just Jon Snow anymore. You're someone important, father wants you to be there tomorrow, after Bran, or Rickon if mother can get him to stay still for a bit"
"For fucks sake, do I really have to? You may call me brother, but the southerners are more uptight when it comes to bastards."
He didn't deny it. "Mother will be furious too, but it is what father wants."
"You're the one they'll look to when the time comes, Robb. I'm not trying to take anything. I just want to build something that's mine."
"I know that," he said quickly. "Truly, I do. I just…"
He looked away. Grey Wind huffed and pressed his head against his thigh.
"I don't want us to drift apart. We're brothers."
"As much as we can be."
"No." His voice was hard now. "Exactly that. No less."
I looked at him, truly looked. At the young man he was becoming. At the echo of our father's face shaping itself in his even through his Tully colors, the weight of leadership beginning to settle on his shoulders.
"Robb," I said. "No matter what happens, I'm with you. Always. But we both know the world won't treat us the same."
He nodded, slowly. "It should."
"But it won't, not unless I make it." Just wait cousin, just you wait, and we will change the world together.
He exhaled through his nose. "When I'm Lord of Winterfell—"
"If." It was a little joke between us, me usurping him. Catelyn didn't like it very much.
"When," he said, more firmly now, eyes full of mirth. "When I am, I'll find a place for you. A real one. Not just steward of spirits or master of ink. Moat Cailin or maybe Lord of the Blackworks, if you like the sound of it."
I shook my head, smiling. "'Lord of Steel.' Has a ring to it."
We stood in silence again, brothers born in different fates.
A raven cawed flying from the rookery tower. I saw it in his face, he had an idea, probably a dumb one…
"You have that face again, what are you planning?" I asked.
"Oh, nothing you wouldn't aprove of."
"You are an idiot you know that." What did I do to deserve such a loyal brother I will never know, but Robb kept surprising me every day.
"And the queen?" I asked, half-joking.
He paused. "I'll try not to look at her too much."
We laughed.
Beneath it, I felt the truth. The game was already drawing us in.
He's my brother.
And I'll hold the line with him.
Until the game swallows us both.
-END-
Author's Note: Support me on Patreon. If you'd like to read ahead 10 chapters and support my writing, you're welcome to check it out. I have some family obligations the rest of this week, so the next chapter should come on the weekend.