Two days after their return to Winterfell, the shock of the past month and a half had begun to lose its hold—not because anyone had accepted what happened at the Wall, but because Winterfell had never allowed grief the luxury of stopping everything else.
The wounded still needed their bandages changed. The granaries still had to be counted before winter deepened. Horses required feeding, patrols needed new routes, and letters continued arriving from northern houses frightened by rumors that grew more monstrous with every league they travelled south. Castle Black remained fallen. Hundreds of men remained dead. Jinx remained alive, silver threaded through his black hair and secrets still surfacing around him like bones rising through thawing mud.
Yet the Starks returned to their habits with a speed that unsettled their southern guests.
Rickard resumed meeting his stewards before sunrise, dividing his time between the defenses of the North and the consequences of what his son had done. Brandon returned to the training yard, striking posts hard enough to splinter them and answering concern with irritation. Eddard spent long hours among the survivors from the Wall, listening when they wished to speak and sitting beside them when they could not. Lyanna resumed arguing with anyone who mistook being younger for being obedient, while Benjen quietly watched everything and remembered far more than the adults around him realized.
Xuehara made certain Jinx ate.
That became a duty almost as important as governing Winterfell. A plate followed him into every room. Servants learned that if the prince claimed he had already eaten, they were to ask Lady Stark before believing him. Bowls of broth appeared beside his bed, roasted meat beside whatever worktable he occupied, and dried fruit inside pockets he did not remember filling.
Jinx responded by returning to the behavior everyone had once mistaken for laziness. He fell asleep beside windows, beneath tables, in old chairs near the hearth, and once on the floor of the library with three books open around him and a half-eaten meat pie resting on his chest.
Rhaegar, Arthur, and Barristan watched all of it with quiet disbelief.
They had expected the family to fracture beneath the accumulated weight of Castle Black, the dragon egg, the hidden sanctuaries, Daemon Blackfyre, and Jinx's impossible magic. Instead, the Starks absorbed every revelation, fought over it, threatened one another, shared meals, returned to their duties, and continued as though the world had not changed beneath their feet.
Only Elia understood that continuing was not the same as recovering.
She had grown up with Oberyn.
Her brother could mourn one moment, laugh the next, and draw steel before anyone realized the laughter had only been a door he slammed between himself and grief. He would speak of a dead companion while drinking, disappear with strangers before sunrise, then return days later carrying gifts and refusing to explain where the blood on his sleeve had come from.
Jinx carried pain differently, but the rhythm beneath it was familiar. He hid inside sleep rather than wine, silence rather than excess, yet the same free, untamable refusal lived inside him. He would not grieve according to the expectations of anyone around him. He would not make his guilt comfortable for others to witness. He continued moving because stillness left him alone with everything he remembered.
That resemblance made it easier for Elia to draw close.
The first afternoon she found him in the kitchens, he was arguing with the head cook over the proper amount of ginger required for a Yi Tish broth.
"You've already added enough to numb a horse's tongue," the cook complained as she guarded the spice jar against him with both arms, her face pinched in the expression of a woman who had served Starks for thirty years and had no intention of surrendering her kitchen to one merely because he possessed magic.
"That only proves northern horses are weak," Jinx replied as he leaned against the preparation table, his sleeves rolled to the elbows and his silver-streaked hair tied loosely behind his neck. He held a wooden spoon in one hand, tapping it against his palm with the absent patience of a duelist waiting for an opponent to commit himself. "My grandmother would have called this bathwater and sent the pot back."
Xuehara stood beside him cutting green onions into narrow strips, her knife moving with the precise, unhurried rhythm of someone taught by servants who had once prepared meals for emperors. "Your grandmother once added so much pepper to a stew that three ministers wept through the evening meal," she said without looking up, though the softness around her mouth showed that the memory pleased her. "She called their tears praise."
Elia entered before the cook could answer, bringing the faint scent of winter air with her. She paused beneath the kitchen archway as she watched mother and son occupy opposite sides of the table, surrounded by dough, sliced vegetables, bowls of seasoned meat, and enough spices to make the northern cooks deeply suspicious.
"I was told Prince Jinx was teaching something," Elia said as she crossed into the warmth, her gaze moving from the wooden spoon in his hand to the frightened expression of the cook guarding the ginger. "No one mentioned the lesson had already become a siege."
"The kitchen rebelled," Jinx explained as he gestured toward an empty place beside Xuehara. "I'm restoring order."
"You tried stealing the ginger," the cook said as she placed the jar beneath the table and kept one foot protectively in front of it.
Jinx watched where she hid it. "That accusation remains unproven."
Xuehara pointed her knife toward the folded cloth covering a stack of dough. "Wash your hands, Elia. If my son intends to insult Winterfell's food, he may at least replace it with something worth eating."
Elia joined them willingly.
The lesson began with dumplings Jinx claimed his grandmother had taught him to make after he insulted the work of an imperial cook within hearing of the woman herself. He showed Elia how to press the dough thin without tearing it, how to fold the edges so they resembled overlapping scales, and how much filling could be sealed inside before greed ruined the whole thing.
His patience surprised her.
The lazy prince who treated most questions as personal attacks became precise when teaching something he valued. He watched the placement of her fingers, corrected the angle of her thumb, and explained why the dough had to be turned rather than squeezed. He seemed to know where every mistake would happen before she made it.
"You're pressing too hard," Jinx said as he placed two fingers beneath Elia's wrist and lifted her hand slightly away from the table. "The dough isn't an enemy. You don't need to force it into obedience."
Elia looked toward the spoon still resting in his other hand. "That lesson would sound gentler if you weren't carrying a weapon."
"It is a spoon," Jinx replied as he tapped her knuckles when she pinched the next fold too sharply. "The fact that it also corrects poor technique proves the wisdom of its design."
Xuehara took the spoon from him and struck his hand with it before he could reach into the bowl of filling. "Your grandmother used bamboo," she said as she drew the meat beyond his reach. "She believed the knuckles remembered pain longer than the ears remembered instruction."
Jinx rubbed the back of his hand and looked at his mother with quiet betrayal. "She was a tyrant."
"She was an excellent teacher."
"She made me kneel on rice for dropping a teacup."
"You dropped it because you were trying to catch a fly with chopsticks during a diplomatic meal."
"I nearly had it."
Elia tried to hide her laughter by lowering her head over the dumpling in her hands, but Xuehara saw it and passed her the spoon.
"You may strike him whenever he begins defending that story," Xuehara said as she resumed slicing vegetables. "It will save time."
Jinx gave Elia a wounded look. "You've known me less than three days, and already my own mother is arming you."
"Oberyn taught me never to refuse a weapon freely offered," Elia replied as she turned the spoon once in her hand, testing its balance with exaggerated seriousness.
The mention of her brother shifted the afternoon into stories.
Jinx told them about the month he and Oberyn spent in Yi Ti, where the Dornish prince insulted three magistrates, charmed half a provincial court, and nearly won an imperial pleasure barge in a game whose rules he never fully understood. Xuehara had not travelled with them and listened more closely than she let either notice, her knife slowing whenever Jinx spoke of places belonging to her childhood.
"He told one of Grandmother's ministers that his hat looked like a frightened chicken," Jinx said as he demonstrated another fold, his mouth pulling into a reluctant smile at the memory. "No one spoke for long enough that I thought the guards were deciding which of us to kill first."
Elia placed her finished dumpling beside the others and brushed flour from her fingers. "He said the same thing to one of our uncle's bannermen when he was thirteen," she said as amusement warmed her voice. "The man challenged him to a duel before supper."
Jinx looked up with interest. "Did Oberyn win?"
"He stabbed the hat."
Jinx stopped folding.
The reverence that entered his face made Xuehara reach for the spoon before he could say anything encouraging.
"That is brilliant," he said as his eyes brightened with the dangerous joy of someone discovering a mistake he wished he had made first.
"It was expensive," Elia replied as she remembered the uproar in Sunspear. "The man had brought it from Lys and spoke about its embroidery for three days before Oberyn pinned it to a door."
Xuehara struck both of them across the knuckles before the story became instruction. "You will finish the food before either of you begins inventing reasons to assault clothing."
The afternoons that followed grew from there.
Jinx taught Elia a slow Yi Tish court dance performed with long sleeves and controlled turns, though Xuehara repeatedly corrected his posture with the same narrow bamboo rod she somehow produced from her chambers. Elia taught him a Dornish step meant for courtyards and summer heat, laughing when his northern boots made the movement look heavier than intended. They played tiles, traded childhood stories of Oberyn, and argued over whether a recipe improved when pepper was added or merely became harder to taste.
Xuehara joined every lesson, sometimes as a student when Jinx demonstrated something his grandmother had taught him after Xuehara left Yi Ti, and sometimes as the severe old master who struck ankles, wrists, and shoulders whenever either of them became careless.
"You're turning too soon," Xuehara said one afternoon as Elia began the third rotation of a court dance, the bamboo rod tapping lightly against the back of her calf to correct the angle. "The movement begins in the foot, not the shoulder. Let the silk follow you rather than trying to drag it behind."
Elia repeated the step, allowing the long practice sleeve to curl through the air before settling around her arm. "Like this?"
Xuehara watched in silence, then inclined her head once. "Better."
Jinx, leaning against a pillar with his arms folded, made the mistake of smiling.
The rod struck his ankle without Xuehara looking toward him.
"You're standing improperly," she said as he straightened with offended dignity. "If you have enough strength to mock, you have enough strength to practice."
The mornings belonged to Brandon.
He challenged Jinx on the third day after their return, though challenge was perhaps too dignified a word for the way he entered the yard carrying two blunted practice swords and threw one through the open window of the chamber where Jinx had been sleeping.
The blade landed point-first in the wooden floor beside the bed.
Jinx opened one eye.
Brandon stood outside in the snow with his arms spread and impatience plain across his face. "You've spent two days eating, sleeping, and teaching Elia how to dance," he called as servants stopped in the yard below to watch. "Come show me whether anything besides your appetite survived the Wall."
Jinx looked at the sword vibrating beside his bed, then toward the cold morning beyond the window. "You could have asked."
"I did yesterday."
"I was asleep."
"You're always asleep."
"Then you should have chosen a better time."
Brandon's answer was another sword, though this one struck the outer wall instead of entering the room.
Half an hour later, Jinx stepped into the training yard wearing black practice leathers and a loose winter coat left open at the throat. He carried the blunted sword Brandon had thrown into his chamber, though one hand remained tucked inside his coat pocket as he approached.
Snow had been cleared from the center of the yard, leaving hard-packed earth surrounded by pale drifts. Rickard and Xuehara watched from the covered gallery with Rhaegar, Elia, Arthur, and Barristan. Eddard stood near the fence beside Lyanna and Benjen, both of whom had been permitted to watch only after promising not to enter the yard.
Brandon noticed Jinx's hand in his pocket immediately.
"You'll need both," he said as he rolled his shoulders and brought his sword into a high guard, his voice carrying the easy confidence of an older brother who had spent years winning every physical contest between them.
Jinx tested the balance of his own blade with a small movement of his wrist. "I'll take it out when you give me a reason."
Brandon smiled.
The first attack came without warning.
He crossed the distance in three long steps and cut toward Jinx's shoulder with enough force to bruise through leather. Jinx turned only as much as necessary. His blade rose at a narrow angle, caught Brandon's near the tip, and guided it past his body while his feet shifted into a straight, elegant line.
Makashi.
The second form lived in economy. Jinx wasted nothing. His point remained between himself and Brandon, his wrist loose, his movements so small they seemed dismissive. He did not meet strength with strength; he changed the angle until strength struck empty space.
Brandon cut again.
Jinx stepped aside, tapped Brandon's blade away, and flicked the blunted point against the center of his brother's chest before retreating beyond reach.
The touch barely carried force.
That made it worse.
Brandon glanced down at the place Jinx had marked and came forward again, pressing with a faster sequence aimed at shoulder, thigh, ribs, then neck. Jinx remained in Makashi, one hand still resting in his pocket as his sword traced narrow circles through the morning air. Each parry stole just enough direction from Brandon's blade to make it miss. Each counter stopped a breath from flesh or landed with a light, insulting tap.
Arthur's attention sharpened.
"This is a duelist's form," he said as he leaned forward against the gallery rail, his eyes following Jinx's feet rather than the sword. "He keeps Brandon's strength outside the line and never gives him enough blade to bind against."
Barristan watched Jinx turn a heavy downward cut with a movement barely wider than his own shoulder. "It was built for single combat," he observed as the younger Stark's point touched Brandon's collarbone and vanished again. "But he's showing off."
Xuehara looked toward the hand still hidden in Jinx's pocket. "That part he inherited from me."
Rickard gave his wife a slow look.
She did not apologize.
Brandon changed his approach. Rather than continue chasing Jinx's point, he drove forward with his shoulder and forced the distance closed, trying to deny his brother the narrow space Makashi required.
Jinx smiled.
Makashi disappeared.
He planted one foot, vaulted sideways over Brandon's blade, and let Ataru take him.
The fourth form transformed every part of his body into movement. He twisted above the sword, coat flaring behind him while his free hand remained impossibly inside his pocket, landed against the low training wall with one boot, and launched himself back before Brandon could turn. His blade struck Brandon's shoulder in passing, then his ribs, then the back of his thigh as Jinx spun clear.
Brandon staggered and wheeled around.
Jinx was already moving again.
He crossed the yard in a rush of sweeping leaps and sudden changes in height, his sword cutting from angles that would have been impossible without the conditioning awakened inside him. He stepped onto Brandon's thigh, used him as a platform, and turned over his shoulder before landing behind him with enough grace that the snow barely shifted beneath his boots.
Lyanna gripped the fence with both hands. "He never moved like that before."
Eddard did not answer.
He was watching Jinx's body more closely than the others. The speed was new, but so was the ease beneath it. Jinx's balance corrected itself before his feet fully landed. His muscles responded without hesitation. Every rotation, jump, and recovery flowed as if his body knew the movement from a lifetime of practice rather than memories carried from somewhere none of them understood.
Brandon rushed him again.
Jinx met him in Makashi, turning the first blow with delicate precision, then slipped into Ataru between one heartbeat and the next, dropping beneath the second attack and springing upward with a turning strike that knocked Brandon's sword aside.
The constant change made him impossible to settle against.
Makashi drew Brandon into straight lines and punished every overreach. Ataru shattered those lines the moment Brandon adapted, carrying Jinx over, around, and behind him. One style was restraint sharpened into mockery. The other was motion freed from every ordinary limit of the body.
Through all of it, Jinx kept one hand in his pocket.
Brandon's amusement began to fade.
The first true anger appeared when Jinx parried a hard thrust, stepped inside his guard, and tapped the blunt edge against his cheek.
A thin red line appeared where the metal scraped skin.
Jinx withdrew before Brandon could catch him. "You're lifting your shoulder before every thrust," he said as he settled back into Makashi, his tone calm enough to make the correction feel like another strike. "Your sword tells me what you're doing before you do it."
Brandon wiped the blood from his cheek with his thumb. "Take your hand out of your pocket."
"You haven't earned it."
Something changed in Brandon's face.
He attacked with both hands locked around the hilt.
The next blow carried less discipline and far more force. Jinx turned it aside, but Brandon continued through the deflection, driving a knee toward his ribs and following with a sweeping cut meant to catch him as he retreated. Jinx leapt over the blade, landed lightly, and found Brandon already upon him.
Their swords struck hard enough to ring across the yard.
Brandon pressed forward with fury now, every cut heavier than the last. The older Stark had always fought with passion, but anger stripped away his restraint and fed his strength. The edge of his practice blade carved splinters from the fence when Jinx slipped aside. Another strike shattered the corner of a training post.
"Brandon," Rickard warned from the gallery as his eldest son drove Jinx toward the center of the yard, but Brandon either did not hear or had gone too deep into the contest to care.
Jinx's expression changed.
The lazy amusement disappeared first.
Then Makashi's narrow elegance vanished, and Ataru's bright movement folded inward. His feet spread slightly. His blade lowered at an angle that seemed loose, almost careless, while something darker entered the rhythm of his breathing.
Juyo.
Vaapad.
The seventh form did not avoid fury. It entered it.
Jinx stopped retreating.
When Brandon's sword descended, Jinx met it with a violent rising cut that threw both blades wide. He turned with the impact, struck from the opposite side before Brandon recovered, then reversed again without returning to guard. His movements lost the clean geometry of Makashi and the flowing arcs of Ataru. They became broken, sudden, and predatory—attacks growing from the end of other attacks, defense hidden inside aggression.
Brandon's anger fed the pace.
Jinx took that anger and returned it sharpened.
Every heavy blow Brandon offered became the beginning of Jinx's next strike. When Brandon pressed, Jinx pressed harder. When Brandon's blade accelerated, Jinx's answered with a speed that seemed to draw from the same fury rather than resist it. Their swords battered together in a storm of steel, but only one of them remained fully in control of where that storm moved.
Arthur straightened.
The form disturbed him more than the acrobatics had.
"He changed with Brandon's temper," he said as Jinx drove his brother across the yard through a succession of attacks too irregular to predict. "He isn't merely fighting more aggressively. He's using the anger itself to set the rhythm."
Barristan's hand tightened against the gallery rail. "That kind of style devours men who mistake rage for strength."
Xuehara watched Jinx's face rather than his blade. "He is not angry."
"No," Barristan replied as he saw the stillness behind the violence. "That is why it is worse."
Brandon swung for Jinx's head.
Jinx slipped beneath it, twisted around his brother's side, and struck the back of Brandon's knee. As Brandon faltered, Jinx's blade hammered his sword from his hands. The weapon spun through the air and buried itself point-first in the frozen ground several paces away.
Brandon turned anyway, fist already rising.
Jinx stepped inside the punch.
His shoulder struck Brandon's chest. His heel hooked behind his brother's ankle. One sharp turn sent Brandon to the ground, and before the older Stark could rise, Jinx's blunted point rested beneath his jaw.
The yard fell silent.
Jinx stood over him without breathing heavily, one hand still tucked inside his pocket. The ferocity of Form VII drained from his posture as quickly as it had appeared, leaving only the quiet precision with which he had begun.
Brandon stared up at him, anger fading beneath the realization that Jinx had never once lost control.
"You could've done that sooner," Brandon said as he remained on the frozen ground, his chest rising hard beneath his leathers while humiliation and reluctant admiration struggled across his face.
"I could have," Jinx replied as he lowered the sword and offered him the hand he had finally removed from his pocket. "But then you wouldn't have learned anything."
Brandon looked at the offered hand, then caught it and allowed Jinx to pull him upright.
"You kept that hand hidden just to annoy me," he said as he rubbed the back of his knee and glanced toward the spectators who had witnessed the entire defeat.
"Mostly."
Brandon shoved him.
Jinx slid half a step through the snow and smiled.
The fight should have exhausted someone his age. Instead, Jinx's breathing had already steadied, and the bruise forming beneath his collar from Brandon's first strike was fading while they watched.
Arthur descended from the gallery and picked up the discarded practice blade. "What were those forms?"
Jinx rested his own sword against his shoulder. "The first was Makashi, the second form. It was created for dueling—precision, economy, control of distance. The acrobatic one was Ataru, the fourth. It turns movement into pressure."
Arthur looked toward the shattered training post. "And the last?"
Jinx's gaze shifted briefly toward Brandon. "Juyo. Vaapad. Form Seven."
Barristan approached more slowly. "You changed to it when he became angry."
"Vaapad works best when there is something violent to answer," Jinx said as he took his sword from Arthur and examined the new dents along its edge. "It lets an opponent's fury enter the fight without letting it enter you. Done properly, their aggression becomes part of the current you send back."
"And done poorly?" Eddard asked as he came through the gate, concern tightening his voice despite Jinx standing uninjured before him.
"Then you become exactly as angry as the person trying to kill you," Jinx replied as he handed the sword back to Brandon. "Usually angrier."
Rickard descended from the gallery last. His gaze moved over the splintered post, the deep cuts in the frozen earth, and the bruise already disappearing from Jinx's body. "You could not move that way before the Wall."
"No," Jinx said as he flexed his fingers and felt strength answer instantly. "I couldn't."
Xuehara stepped close enough to take his face between her hands, turning it toward the light while she examined the fading mark Brandon had left near his collar. Jinx endured the inspection with the resignation of someone who knew resistance would only lengthen it.
"The hunger repaired you," she said as her thumb moved over skin that should still have been bruised. "Gehrman told us that much."
"It didn't only repair me." Jinx gently removed her hands from his face before she could begin checking his teeth. "It finished something most Starks carry unfinished."
Lyanna came through the gate despite Rickard's earlier instruction to remain outside the yard. "What does that mean?"
Jinx looked around at his family.
"The wolf blood is real," he said as he planted the practice sword point-down in the earth. "Not the way southern singers use the phrase whenever a Stark becomes angry or refuses to kneel. It's part of our magic. Something carried through the blood from the oldest First Men."
Lyanna's eyes brightened. "We're part wolf."
"No," Jinx said as he watched her excitement collapse into disappointment. "You bite people because you lack manners. That remains entirely your fault."
Benjen laughed before covering his mouth.
Jinx continued before Lyanna could argue. "The blood affects the body, instincts, senses, endurance, and the connection between all of them. Most Starks awaken only pieces. An instinct for danger. Dreams that later prove true. A body that handles winter better than it should. A temper that arrives too quickly when family is threatened."
Rickard studied his other children as he listened. "And yours fully awakened."
"The hunger broke every limit my body had while the life and magic I consumed rebuilt it." Jinx looked down at his own hand, turning it slowly as though it still belonged partly to someone else. "The Wall, the Watch, the animals, the forest, the egg—too much power moved through me at once. The wolf blood opened to survive it."
Rhaegar stepped closer, the fascination in his eyes familiar enough that Elia caught his sleeve before he entered the yard without noticing. "Has another Stark reached the same state?"
"Torrhen Stark, almost certainly," Jinx said as he looked toward the prince. "The King Who Knelt. Some of the oldest accounts describe strength, senses, and endurance that sound less ordinary than later maesters wanted to admit. Cregan Stark may have awakened most of it as well, though the records are less certain."
Brandon glanced at the splintered post and then toward his siblings. "Can you awaken ours?"
The eagerness beneath the question drew Rickard's attention immediately, though Jinx answered before their father could caution him.
"Yes," he said as he looked from Brandon to Eddard, Lyanna, and Benjen. "Now that I know what the complete state feels like, I know what is sleeping inside the rest of you. I can find the path."
Rickard's eyes narrowed. "And inside me?"
Jinx's hesitation answered before he did.
"Your magic has settled," he said as he faced his father, careful not to soften the truth into something dishonest. "The body becomes less willing to change with age, and yours has already built itself around the power you naturally carry. I could force the wolf blood open, but I would need ingredients that are rare, dangerous to gather, and harder to cultivate. The risk would be greater than the reward."
Rickard absorbed the answer without complaint. Whatever disappointment entered him remained beneath the composure of Winterfell's lord.
"Then mine remains as it is," he said as his gaze returned to the younger Starks. "How do they begin?"
"With control."
Brandon frowned. "Control of what?"
"Magic." Jinx drew the practice sword from the frozen ground and tapped its flat lightly against his brother's chest. "The wolf blood strengthens what is already inside you. Instinct becomes faster. Emotion becomes harder to ignore. Anger becomes strength before judgment catches up. If I awaken yours now, the next man who insults you may leave the room through a wall."
Brandon glanced toward the destroyed training post as though considering whether that sounded entirely undesirable.
Jinx saw the look and struck his knuckles with the flat of the sword. "That expression is why you learn control first."
Eddard stepped closer, his grey eyes resting on his twin. "You'll teach us."
Jinx opened his mouth to offer something evasive, then saw the quiet certainty in Eddard's face and abandoned it. "Yes," he said as the last of the humor left his voice. "I'll teach you."
Rhaegar took that as permission to enter the discussion.
"Would the same training work for someone without Stark blood?" he asked as he came down from the gallery, his interest obvious enough that even Arthur sighed before Jinx answered.
Jinx studied him for several moments. "You would ask questions through every lesson."
"I would ask necessary questions," Rhaegar said as he adjusted the fall of his cloak, his composure unable to hide how badly he wanted access to whatever Jinx intended to teach.
"You asked how the underwater windows were made four times."
"Your first three answers were incomplete."
"They were meant to discourage the fourth."
Elia entered the yard carrying a covered basket.
The smell of warm honey, cinnamon, and baked fruit reached Jinx before she lifted the cloth. His eyes moved toward it despite himself.
"There are twelve honey cakes," Elia said as she allowed the scent to escape into the cold, her expression composed except for the small knowing curve at one corner of her mouth. "Whether Rhaegar joins your lessons may determine how many remain by supper."
Jinx stared at her. "That's bribery."
"Yes," Elia replied as she covered the cakes again and drew the basket closer to herself.
Xuehara joined her with two ceramic jars held beneath one arm. "There are candied plums as well," she said as she watched her son's attention betray him. "Your grandmother's recipe."
Jinx looked from the jars to Rhaegar. "You involved my mother."
Rhaegar's dignity prevented him from looking pleased. "Princess Elia arranged this without my knowledge."
"He asked me six times whether I thought you would agree," Elia said as she shifted the basket before Rhaegar could object. "I decided food would be faster than listening to a seventh."
Jinx exhaled through his nose and looked toward the honey cakes again. "Fine. He may train."
Rhaegar's satisfaction brightened his face.
"But when I tell you to stop asking questions," Jinx continued as he pointed the practice sword toward him, "you stop."
"I will make an effort."
"You're already breaking the agreement."
Arthur looked away to hide his amusement.
Jinx caught it. "You may join too."
Arthur's attention returned to him. "I did not ask."
"I know."
"Then why include me?"
"Because someone needs to stop him from experimenting alone after I teach him enough to become dangerous." Jinx glanced toward Rhaegar before adding, "Consider it a favor."
Arthur studied the prince he had guarded for years, thought of the glowing circles beneath Winterfell and the way Rhaegar leaned toward anything unknown, then inclined his head. "That is a sensible precaution."
The testing began several hours later.
Jinx led them into a circular chamber beneath Winterfell, separate from the great laboratory and its black-and-white tree. Old mirrors lined the walls, their surfaces clouded dark with age, while a basin carved from a single piece of grey stone stood in the center. Its water remained perfectly still despite footsteps passing around it.
Rickard, Xuehara, Brandon, Eddard, Lyanna, Benjen, Rhaegar, Elia, and Arthur gathered around the basin. Barristan remained near the door with the expression of a man who had decided one member of the royal family learning strange magic was already more than enough for a single lifetime.
Jinx knelt and touched two fingers to the water.
The basin divided.
One half brightened into pale gold, clear and steady as sunlight through ice. The other darkened into black-red depth, violet light moving beneath the surface like embers buried beneath ash. Neither current crossed the line between them.
"This does not judge whether you are good or evil," Jinx said as he rose, drying his fingers against his tunic while everyone stared into the divided water. "The Light and Dark describe how power answers you. The Light responds to clarity, restraint, discipline, compassion, and duty. The Dark responds to emotion, desire, fear, anger, grief, love, and attachment. Both can protect. Both can destroy. Anyone who decides one side makes them virtuous has already misunderstood the lesson."
Rhaegar leaned closer to the basin, though Elia kept one hand closed around his sleeve. "The current reveals the motive beneath the action rather than the action itself."
Jinx looked at him with immediate suspicion. "Gehrman explained too much."
"He explained clearly."
"That was his mistake."
Rickard tested first.
When his hand passed over the basin, gold spread steadily across most of the water. A narrow darkness remained beneath it, deep and unmoving, shaped by pride, old loss, and the controlled anger of a man who had spent his life turning emotion into duty.
Xuehara came next.
The entire basin responded.
Gold curled through black-red water while the darker current wound through the light, neither able to drive the other away. The Dark remained stronger, but not by much.
"You're balanced," Jinx said as he watched the currents braid around one another. "More than most. But you lean toward the Dark."
Xuehara looked down at the shadowed light. "Because I am ruled by emotion?"
"Because you love possessively," Jinx explained as he moved just beyond her reach. "You protect what is yours. You heal because someone belongs to you, and you destroy for the same reason. Your magic begins with attachment."
Xuehara lifted her gaze from the basin. "Come closer and explain why loving my children is dark."
Jinx remained exactly where he was. "I believe everyone understood the first time."
Brandon's test filled the water with dark red light crossed by broad bands of gold. He possessed the discipline and loyalty of the Light, but anger, pride, passion, and competition answered him faster. His alignment had not settled fully, though the Dark held the stronger claim.
Lyanna's result was almost entirely golden, restless and bright, with red flashes that came and vanished like sparks. Her anger came quickly, but cruelty did not remain long enough to shape her magic. Benjen's Light was softer, steady beneath the surface, though a deep pool of shadow gathered around loneliness he rarely spoke aloud.
Elia's magic shone warm gold, strengthened by empathy and a desire to preserve rather than command. Arthur's Light emerged harder, almost silver, sharpened by discipline, protection, and chosen loyalty. Rickard watched both with approval, while Barristan remained close enough to hear without offering his own hand.
Rhaegar darkened nearly the entire basin.
The black-red power did not surge. It rose slowly, beautiful and deep, while thin threads of gold survived around its edges.
Rhaegar stared into it without fear. "Attachment."
"Obsession," Jinx corrected as he leaned against the basin and studied the prince instead of the water. "You feel something strongly enough, then build reasons around it until desire begins to resemble destiny. Your compassion is real. Your sense of duty is real. They simply aren't what moves you first."
Elia's hand tightened slightly around Rhaegar's sleeve.
"The Dark does not mean you are cruel," Jinx continued as Rhaegar remained silent. "It means the things you love, fear, and believe in can control you if you begin treating intensity as proof."
Eddard came after him.
The moment his hand passed above the basin, gold flooded everything.
It swallowed the darker half so completely that the water cast pale light across the stone walls and reflected in every watching face. Only one thin line of shadow remained at the bottom, almost hidden beneath the brilliance.
Jinx stared longer than he had at anyone else.
Brandon looked between him and Eddard. "Is that good?"
"It is powerful," Jinx said as he leaned closer, unease replacing the satisfaction everyone expected. "That is not the same thing."
Eddard withdrew his hand slowly. "What danger comes from the Light?"
"The belief that control means cutting away everything difficult." Jinx looked at his twin, his voice quieter now that the warning mattered to him personally. "Anger, grief, desire, attachment—if you begin treating them as weaknesses, the Light will help you become calm enough to lose yourself without noticing. You could become disciplined, honorable, and empty."
Eddard held his gaze. "Then you'll remind me."
"I will."
"And I'll remind you when the Dark begins deciding for you," Eddard said as he rested his hand briefly against Jinx's shoulder, making the promise sound less like correction than the continuation of something they had always done for one another.
Jinx looked away before the others could see too much in his face.
His own result came last.
The basin rose to meet him.
Black-red and pale gold curled together around his wrist without wetting his skin. The Dark remained stronger, but the Light ran through it so completely that neither could be separated without destroying the pattern. Xuehara watched in silence, recognizing the same balance she carried, though the currents inside her son were deeper and far less still.
Jinx withdrew his hand.
"Now you need wands," he said as the water settled back into perfect silence.
He led them into one of the upper chambers of his laboratory, where hundreds of long cases covered the walls from floor to ceiling.
Each held a wand.
No two looked alike.
Some were smooth and pale, wrapped with silver wire or dark leather. Others twisted like roots, bore carved runes, or seemed grown rather than shaped. There were wands of black wood, red wood, bone-white wood, and wood carrying colors no familiar tree produced. Handles had been fitted with antler, polished horn, stone, bronze, crystal, black metal, and stranger materials sealed beneath resin.
The air smelled of cedar, ash, old leather, sap, and the metallic sharpness of an approaching storm.
Rhaegar walked slowly between the cases with his hands clasped behind him, having learned at least enough caution not to touch before asking. "You made all of these?"
"Most," Jinx replied as he checked the small markings beneath each case. "The Hunters bring materials back from their work. Rare woods, feathers, hair, horn, bone, heartstrings, shed scales—anything from a creature or place carrying enough magic to leave an imprint behind."
Arthur studied a dark wand carved with overlapping scales. "You send hunters across the world to gather wand materials?"
"I send them to kill monsters, find people, recover books, collect bounties, map ruins, and bring back anything useful they pass along the way." Jinx glanced toward him. "There is no reason a journey should serve only one purpose."
Brandon had stopped listening.
A thick wand of dark red wood rested inside an open case near his shoulder. Black hide wrapped its handle, and a dull bronze cap weighted the end. It looked solid enough to survive being used as a club, which apparently made it perfect in Brandon's eyes.
He reached for it.
The wooden spoon cracked across his knuckles.
Brandon jerked back and rounded on Jinx, who stood beside him holding the spoon Xuehara had used in the kitchens.
"What was that for?" Brandon demanded as he rubbed the reddening skin across his hand, outrage deepening when Elia laughed behind him.
"You were grabbing it," Jinx said as he moved between his brother and the open case, holding the spoon with the solemn authority of a master-at-arms correcting an unruly child.
"That is why we came down here."
"We came to find you a wand," Jinx replied as he tapped the spoon against Brandon's chest. "We did not come so you could seize the first one that looks capable of breaking someone's teeth."
Brandon glanced past him toward the red wand. "It looks right."
"It looks like the version of yourself you imagine while staring into polished steel. That does not make it yours."
Rickard looked along the crowded walls. "Then how is the choice made?"
Jinx turned toward the cases.
As he raised one hand, the lights beneath the shelves brightened. A low vibration passed through the room. Wood trembled inside velvet-lined boxes. Metal fittings rang softly against glass. Several wand tips lifted by the width of a finger, while others remained still.
The chamber seemed to awaken around them.
"The wand chooses the user," Jinx said as he looked back toward Brandon, the wooden spoon resting across his shoulder. "You stand still, resist the urge to take whichever one flatters you most, and wait to discover which of them believes it can tolerate you."
Brandon looked around as the red wand he had wanted remained perfectly motionless.
Two shelves above him, something dark and crooked struck the inside of its case hard enough to open the lid.
Jinx's smile widened.
Brandon looked up at the wand that had chosen to answer him and frowned. "That thing looks half burned."
"It has good judgment," Jinx said as he reached for the case before Brandon could offend it.
The following morning arrived with the kind of quiet Winterfell rarely managed to keep for long.
Snow had fallen through the night in a fine, dry sheet, softening the roofs and battlements until the castle seemed older than stone, half-buried in the pale stillness of the North. Smoke rose from the kitchens in narrow grey columns. Stable hands moved between the sheds with their heads down against the cold, speaking only when work demanded it, while somewhere beyond the inner wall a smith's hammer struck at slow intervals and then fell silent again.
The smaller training yard behind the family wing remained empty except for Jinx and his brothers.
Seven wooden swords rested across a bench near the wall. They had been shaped differently on purpose—one broad through the blade, another long and narrow, two with altered grips, and one so light Brandon had already lifted it twice simply to scowl at the weight. Jinx stood before them in a dark wool coat left open over his training clothes, his black hair tied back loosely enough that the silver streaks caught whenever the weak morning light reached him.
One hand remained inside his pocket.
Brandon noticed, though after the last time they fought he understood the gesture had less to do with laziness than Jinx wanting everyone present to know exactly how seriously he was taking them.
Eddard noticed something else.
A scrap of dark wool shifted behind the upper gallery railing.
Benjen's boot showed beneath one of the stone pillars beside it.
Neither elder brother looked up. Lyanna and Benjen had made enough noise climbing into their hiding place that pretending not to know they were there was an act of kindness rather than deception. Jinx had heard them before they reached the gallery. He gave no sign beyond choosing a position where both could see.
"The forms aren't seven different ways to swing a sword," he said as he took the first weapon from the bench and rolled it once across his palm. The yard was quiet enough that his voice carried without effort. "They're seven different beliefs about what a fight is. Learn the movements without understanding that, and you'll only become very practiced at making mistakes."
Brandon tested the edge of his own wooden blade against his thumb. "And you understand all seven."
"I understand enough to know which one will get me killed in a given situation."
"That sounds less impressive."
"It is also more useful."
Jinx stepped into the center of the yard and began with Shii-Cho.
There was nothing beautiful in the first sequence. No sudden leap, no narrow thrust stopping against a throat, no violence folded into impossible speed. He reduced the sword to its foundations: the placement of the feet, the turn of the hips, the alignment of shoulder and wrist, the way a cut ended already prepared to become the next defense.
Brandon's impatience appeared before he completed the second sequence.
He had been raised beneath northern steel, drilled by Winterfell's master-at-arms until the basic cuts lived inside his arms. Repeating them beneath Jinx's eye felt insultingly close to being taught how to walk.
Jinx let him finish.
Then he tapped the back of Brandon's knee with the wooden point.
The joint bent before Brandon could stop it, shifting his weight badly enough that his next cut travelled crooked through the air.
"You're standing for the blow you want to give, not the blow you may have to receive," Jinx said as Brandon straightened, more offended by the correction than the strike. "That works until the man opposite you refuses to fight the version of him you imagined."
Brandon reset his feet. This time he did not widen his stance until Jinx approved.
Eddard moved more slowly. He accepted correction without arguing, but his habits were just as deeply set. Northern swordsmanship taught commitment. When a man cut, he meant the blow to carry through bone, mail, and whatever remained beneath them. Jinx made him shorten the motion, conserve the recovery, and stop trusting strength to finish what judgment should have begun.
"Form One survives when everything clever has failed," Jinx said after walking them through the sequence again. "Mud, darkness, exhaustion, a weapon you've never held before. It doesn't ask for brilliance. It asks you not to become useless when the fight stops resembling your training."
From the gallery came the faint scrape of Lyanna shifting her knees against stone.
Brandon glanced up once, then chose not to expose her.
Makashi changed the lesson.
Jinx turned his body sideways, narrowing everything about himself until only a thin line remained for an opponent to attack. His sword settled lightly in one hand. The other remained tucked inside his coat.
He invited Brandon forward with the smallest movement of the point.
Brandon struck.
Jinx barely seemed to move. His wrist turned, the wooden blades touched, and Brandon's cut passed harmlessly beside him. A heartbeat later Jinx's point rested against the center of his brother's chest.
"Again," Brandon said, already stepping back before the word had fully left him.
The second attempt ended with the sword at his throat.
The third struck harder and reached nothing.
Makashi suited Jinx too well. It was not merely precise; it was insulting in its economy. He refused to give Brandon the satisfaction of strength against strength, guiding every blow aside with just enough contact to prove he could have done more.
Brandon's mouth tightened.
Eddard lasted longer. He understood patience better, and his attacks carried less need to prove themselves. Even so, the form never quite settled into him. Makashi wanted the world reduced to one opponent, one line, one contest of judgment between two blades. Eddard kept seeing beyond the duel. His attention drifted toward Brandon's position, the open gate, the gallery above them. Some part of him remained aware of everyone who might need protection if the exchange became real.
Jinx noticed before Eddard did.
He said nothing until they reached Soresu.
The third form fit Eddard so naturally that the change showed before he understood it.
His stance closed around his center. The practice blade rose nearer his body, his shoulders loosening while his weight settled without becoming rooted. When Jinx attacked, Eddard did not chase the sword or answer pressure with greater pressure. He gave away only what he had to, allowing each blow to slide past the smallest defense capable of surviving it.
Jinx increased his speed.
The attacks came toward shoulder, ribs, thigh, then reversed toward the neck. Eddard's sword moved less than Brandon's ever had. He did not attempt to punish each failed strike. He simply denied them.
Jinx feinted high and changed direction halfway through.
Eddard did not follow the lie.
The true attack met his blade near the center and went nowhere.
For several breaths Jinx stood opposite him without speaking, studying the way his twin had settled into the form as though it had been waiting in his bones long before either of them knew its name.
"Soresu," he said at last, lowering his sword. "It was built for surviving what should eventually overwhelm you. Numbers, speed, exhaustion, fear. It refuses to give the enemy the mistake he needs."
Eddard looked at the weapon in his hand, then back toward Jinx. "It doesn't feel like winning."
"No," Jinx said, and the softness that entered his voice carried more weight than praise would have. "It feels like making sure everyone behind you lives long enough to call it that."
Eddard understood what Jinx had seen in him.
So did Brandon.
Neither tried to turn it into something easier by speaking.
Ataru broke the quiet.
Jinx stepped onto the low wall beside the yard, turned, and launched himself over Brandon before either brother expected the lesson to begin. His coat flared around him while the wooden sword swept down from above, stopped a finger's width from Brandon's shoulder, then vanished again as Jinx landed and carried the motion into a second spinning cut.
Form Four treated the ground as a suggestion.
Walls became footholds. Momentum became force. Height, rotation, and abrupt changes of direction allowed the body to attack from lines ordinary swordsmanship considered impossible. Jinx flowed through it with one hand still in his pocket, which made every leap seem less like effort and more like deliberate mockery.
Brandon tried to follow.
His first jump carried too much power and too little thought.
Jinx caught the back of his tunic before his shoulder struck the fence, holding him there for a moment while Brandon's boots searched angrily for the ground.
"Ataru doesn't make you lighter," Jinx said as he let go. "It only lets everyone see how badly you misjudged your weight."
Brandon turned on him, rubbing the place where the cloth had cut into his throat. "That might have been useful before I jumped."
"You would have done it anyway."
Brandon could not argue without lying, so he didn't.
Eddard learned the movements but did not trust them. Every leap surrendered the option to change direction. Every rotation broke sight of someone or something he preferred to keep within view. He could perform the form; he would never love it.
Jinx did not seem disappointed. The lesson was not meant to make them into copies of him.
Form Five revealed Brandon.
The change came the moment Jinx showed him how Shien and Djem So transformed defense into return. Brandon's stance settled. The restless energy that had made Makashi feel like restraint and Ataru feel like invitation suddenly found structure.
Jinx attacked first.
Brandon caught the blow with both hands, turned his hips through the impact, and drove the force back through a descending counter. Jinx stepped aside, but Brandon followed. His second strike did not begin after the defense. It grew from it.
The form understood him.
Brandon did not want merely to survive pressure. He wanted to answer it. Every block became a threat. Every parry demanded consequence. His strength stopped being something he imposed upon the sword and became something the sword carried intelligently.
Jinx changed angles, tested his weaker side, pressed him backward.
Brandon held.
A heavy return forced Jinx to give half a step.
The satisfaction that entered Brandon's face was immediate.
Jinx slipped inside the next strike and tapped him beneath the ribs.
"Careful," he said as Brandon reset. "Form Five makes strength feel like wisdom. That's how men begin mistaking confidence for proof."
Brandon's first instinct was to bristle. Then he looked at where Jinx's blade had touched him and accepted the warning because the form mattered enough to deserve honesty.
"This one is mine," he said, not asking this time.
Jinx watched him take the guard again. "Yes."
Nothing more was needed.
Niman came after, gathering pieces from the earlier forms without committing wholly to any of them. Jinx showed how its value lay in balance—how the sword could become one part of a larger discipline rather than the entire answer. Brandon found it too restrained. Eddard respected its adaptability but kept returning to Soresu whenever pressure increased.
Jinx had expected both.
The seventh form waited on the bench until the end.
He did not hand it to either brother.
Snow had begun falling again, lightly enough that the flakes remained distinct against the dark shoulders of his coat. Jinx stood between Eddard and Brandon with the final practice sword lowered at his side, and the ease he had carried through the morning gradually left him.
"Juyo isn't a prize for learning the others," he said. "It comes last because teaching it too early creates the sort of swordsman everyone remembers briefly."
Brandon's eyes moved toward the weapon.
"Form Seven uses what the others try to discipline away. Anger. Fear. Hunger. The pleasure of being stronger than the person in front of you." Jinx turned the sword once in his hand, not demonstrating yet. "Juyo gives those things motion. Vaapad takes what the enemy brings into the fight and lets it become part of the rhythm."
Eddard remembered the way Jinx had changed when Brandon lost his temper two days earlier.
"You used it against him," he said, his gaze shifting briefly toward their elder brother before returning to Jinx.
Jinx nodded. "Brandon gave the fight anger. I let it pass through without letting it decide what I wanted."
Brandon's jaw tightened, though not from offense this time. "And if you'd been angry too?"
Jinx looked down at the practice sword.
For an instant the yard seemed quieter than before, as though even the falling snow had paused to hear the answer.
"Then I wouldn't have known which part of the violence was his."
He demonstrated only once.
The form altered him more completely than the others had. Makashi made him precise. Ataru made him fluid. Juyo broke the familiar shape of his movements altogether. One strike twisted into another without returning to guard, the blade attacking from angles that looked careless until the sequence revealed every imbalance had been chosen.
There was fury in it.
None in his face.
That contrast made the form more unsettling than rage would have.
Jinx stopped and laid the sword back across the bench.
"We won't train it today," he said as he stepped away from the weapon. "Neither of you knows enough magic to hold emotion without allowing emotion to hold you. Juyo can wait until anger becomes something you can use without needing to obey it."
Above them, Benjen shifted his weight.
His boot struck the pillar with a dull knock.
Brandon looked toward the gallery. "You might as well come down. Lyanna's cloak has been hanging through the railing since before Jinx explained Form One."
Lyanna rose slowly from behind the stonework, dignity fighting a losing battle against the fact that she had been crouched in the cold for nearly an hour. Benjen appeared beside her, cheeks red from the weather and embarrassment.
"We weren't hiding," Lyanna said as she brushed snow from the knees of her breeches. "No one told us we couldn't listen from up here."
Jinx began collecting the swords. "A convincing argument. You should save it for when you steal a horse."
Benjen looked from the final blade to Jinx. "Would Form Three suit me too?"
The question made Jinx pause. He glanced toward his younger brother, noting the seriousness behind it, then toward Lyanna, who was already studying the practice weapons as though deciding which one she could steal before breakfast.
"We'll find out when you stop sneaking and ask to be taught," he said, leaving the invitation open enough that Benjen's face brightened before he could hide it.
Lyanna opened her mouth.
Jinx pointed one of the wooden swords toward her without looking up. "You too."
She closed it again, satisfied for the moment.
The first sound of hooves reached them before either child made it to the stairs.
Jinx's head lifted.
Eddard heard the horses a heartbeat later, several riders approaching at a pace too quick for an ordinary household visit but too controlled to belong to men fleeing danger. Brandon turned toward the gate as the guards above began calling to one another.
The quiet of the morning changed.
Men crossed the battlements. A chain groaned beyond the inner yard. Somewhere near the main gate, someone shouted for the portcullis to be raised.
Jinx did not appear concerned.
That worried Eddard more than alarm might have.
The gates opened.
Oberyn Martell rode beneath them dressed in dark red, sun-faded orange, and enough southern defiance to make the snow itself seem offended by his arrival. The long road showed in the dust worked into his cloak and the weariness beneath his eyes, but he sat his horse as though he had entered a courtyard in Sunspear rather than a northern fortress still raw from the loss of the Wall.
Several riders followed him.
Only one held the yard's attention.
The warrior behind Oberyn sat upon a black horse large enough to carry the weight of his armor without strain. Dark red plates covered him from throat to boot beneath layers of blackened mail and worn leather. The metal bore scratches too deep to be ornamental. A long, torn cloak hung from his shoulders, shifting heavily in the wind, while the closed helm hid every trace of the man inside.
His sword rested at his hip.
It was not ostentatious. That made it worse.
The weapon looked used.
The warrior did not move when the Stark guards reached for their own steel. He merely turned his helm toward the nearest spear, then toward the archers gathering above the gate. There was no challenge in the movement, only awareness—the calm accounting of a man who had already measured the yard and found nothing in it that required haste.
Half a dozen blades left their scabbards.
Arthur Dayne appeared beneath the covered gallery with one hand near Dawn. Barristan came behind him, his expression tightening when he saw the armored stranger. Guards began forming between the riders and the inner keep without anyone giving a clear order.
Jinx raised one hand.
The gesture was small.
The response was immediate.
"Leave him," he said as he walked past the bench, stepping between the lowered spears and the mounted warrior before suspicion could become bloodshed. "He belongs to me."
Eddard stared at the armored figure.
Then he looked at Jinx.
Hunters. Hidden halls. Living trees. Underwater sanctuaries. A dragon egg. An army no one in Winterfell had known existed.
Beside him, Brandon's expression emptied in exactly the same way.
"Of course he does," they said together, the shared resignation so complete that neither seemed surprised by the other.
Oberyn laughed from the saddle.
The sound carried easily across the tense yard, warm and tired and entirely too pleased by what he had arrived in time to witness. He swung down from his horse before any stable hand reached him, boots sinking into the fresh snow as he looked between Eddard, Brandon, the drawn guards, and Jinx standing before an armored nightmare as though introducing an old servant.
"I crossed half the realm wondering whether the stories were lies," Oberyn said as he pulled off one glove, his attention settling upon the silver now running through Jinx's hair. The humor remained in his mouth, but something else entered his eyes when he saw the change up close. "Then I reach Winterfell and find the gates guarded by men frightened of your friends while you teach your brothers how not to die before breakfast. I see the North has been gentle with you."
Jinx looked him over in return, taking in the road dust, the stiffness in his left shoulder, and the concern Oberyn had hidden badly beneath the joke.
"You took your time."
Oberyn crossed the remaining distance and caught Jinx by the back of the neck.
Their foreheads struck first.
The embrace followed, one arm closing hard around Jinx while Oberyn held him there with the kind of anger only fear left behind.
"You impossible little shit," he murmured against Jinx's hair, the words losing their mockery halfway through. "I heard six versions of what happened. In three you were dead. In two you had become some northern demon. The last merchant swore you ate the Wall."
"Only part of the Watch."
Oberyn pulled back enough to look at him.
Jinx's face remained perfectly still for nearly a breath.
Then Oberyn laughed once, without humor, and dragged him close again. "That is not better."
Jinx's hand closed in the back of his cloak.
"I know."
Behind them, the armored warrior dismounted.
His boots struck the snow with a weight that silenced the nearest guards. He made no move toward his sword and offered no greeting. He simply stood beside the black horse, broad shoulders beneath battered armor, waiting for Jinx to finish with Oberyn.
Lyanna had reached the bottom of the gallery stairs by then. She stopped beside Benjen and stared openly.
Brandon watched the warrior for another moment before leaning slightly toward Eddard. "How many more do you think he has hidden?"
Eddard kept his eyes on Jinx, who remained caught between Oberyn's relief and the silent figure waiting behind him.
"I've stopped guessing," he said quietly, because the last month had taught him that every sensible number would be wrong.
Oberyn finally released Jinx and turned toward the rest of the yard. Snow clung to his dark hair. His smile returned slowly, thinner than before but more familiar.
The armored warrior waited.
Jinx glanced toward him at last.
"Come inside," he said, and something in the way the warrior lowered his head made it clear that whatever stood beneath the armor had crossed a very long distance for no other command.