Alaric stood at the edge of the garden, dark against the green. Ivy climbed the stone behind him. Birds stirred in the hedges. He did not look around, yet he knew where the Tyrell guards waited among the trellises. Good men. Careful. Too slow to matter.
Sansa and Margaery drifted ahead, their voices thinning as they passed deeper between the flowers.
A dry cough broke the quiet.
"You can stop watching the borders, Thorne," a voice said. "If my guards wished you dead, you'd have fallen while admiring the roses."
The sound came from a small stone gazebo wrapped in ivy.
Lady Olenna Tyrell sat beneath it in a tall weirwood chair. Gold cloth pooled around her thin frame. She held a grape in one hand and a silver knife in the other, peeling the skin away in a slow spiral.
"Sit," she said, without looking up. "I won't shout at giants. It pulls something dreadful in the chest."
Alaric sat on the stone bench.
The knife kept moving. Peel. Turn. Slice. Her eyes lifted only when the fruit was bare.
"Such excitement today," she said. "It's been years since the court had anything worth gossiping over."
Alaric said nothing.
Olenna clicked her tongue. "The city smells worse every year. Rot has a way of rising when coin runs thin." She studied him over the rim of the grape. "And our dear king grows restless. Men often do when they feel trapped."
She waited.
Alaric gave a small sound that might have been agreement. Might not.
Her mouth twitched. The knife resumed its work.
They spoke like that for a long while. She circled. He did not move. Words slid past him and found no purchase. At last, the grapes were gone.
Later, when the moon sat high, footsteps returned along the path.
Margaery emerged first, bright and composed. Sansa followed, calmer than she had been in days, her shoulders no longer drawn tight.
The walk back through the keep passed in silence.
Sansa stayed close. Once or twice her arm brushed his, light and unplanned. He did not shift away.
At her door, she paused. Fatigue softened her eyes.
"Rest well," Alaric said.
She smiled—small, honest—and slipped inside.
The door closed.
Alaric turned at once and melted back into the stone and shadow, heading for his own chambers without a sound.
...
Petyr Baelish found Ned Stark alone beneath the covered gallery.
"A lively day," Baelish said, sliding into the space beside Ned with the noiseless grace. "The court hasn't had a scandal this delicious to chew on in years."
Ned did not look at him. "Men enjoy spectacle."
"They enjoy the smell of blood more." Petyr folded his hands, his rings glinting like serpent scales. "And your ward has provided a vintage crop. A boy of... flexible parentage, rising so high, so fast? It's the sort of story that makes men of better birth feel quite small. And quite hungry."
"He serves House Stark," Ned said, his voice a low rumble. "That is all he needs to do."
Petyr hummed, a thin, discordant sound. "Of course. But the capital is a city of merchants, Ned. We look at a young girl—a highborn treasure promised to a Prince—and we see an asset. When that asset spends too much time in the company of a charming nobody... well, the market price drops."
Ned's head snapped toward him, his eyes like flint.
Baelish didn't flinch; he smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes, which remained fixed on the yard below as if calculating the cost of Ned's soul. "Forgive me. I forget you Northmen think a girl's virtue is guarded by walls. Here, it is guarded by whispers. And right now? The whispers are painting a very vivid picture of your daughter and your ward."
Ned's hand moved instinctively toward his belt. "You would do well to mind your tongue, Lord Baelish."
"Oh, it isn't my tongue you should fear." Petyr leaned in closer, the faint scent of mint and dried blood—or perhaps it was just the city—clinging to him. "I've seen girls discarded for less than a shared look. A stain on a dress, a corridor crossed at the wrong hour... the truth is irrelevant. Once the mud is thrown, the girl is ruined. And a ruined girl is a useless daughter."
He tilted his head, watching a muscle jump in Ned's jaw with visible relish. "And stains spread, don't they? They crawl up from the ward, to the daughter, to the father who was too blind—or perhaps too kind—to see the rot under his own roof."
The silence that followed was heavy, suffocating.
"In this city," Baelish whispered, his voice dripping with a sickly, false sympathy, "a girl's honor is a coin. Once spent, it's gone. And your ward is currently tossing your daughter's coin into the gutter just to see it spin."
Ned turned fully, his stature towering over the smaller man. "Choose your next words carefully. My daughter and my ward are under my protection. If either name is dragged through the dirt, I will not look for the source of the rumor. I will look for you."
Baelish's smile tightened for a flicker of a second—a flash of pure, cold envy for the man who had the power to threaten him—before it smoothed back into a mask of polite concern.
"Of course," Petyr said softly. "I only wished to spare you the shock when the King hears the same story. This city feeds on fathers who believe honor is a shield. It isn't. It's a target."
He bowed, a mockery of respect, and withdrew. He left the air feeling oily, like the residue of a fever.
Ned remained long after, his heart hammering against his ribs. He told himself the man was a liar, a creature of spite and silk. But the poison had already entered the vein. As he looked down into the yard, he didn't see his ward or his daughter. He saw the ruin Baelish had described—and the man's lingering, hungry smile.
...
Alaric sat alone in his chambers. The room lay dark except for the pale blue glow hanging in the air before him.
5,932 MP.
The number did not thrill him the way it should have.
The rush from the day before still lingered in his body—the crowd, the shock, the way the Mountain had fallen without ever touching him. Power still hummed under his skin. But King's Landing had a way of sobering a man once the noise faded.
He stared at the stone wall. His shadow stretched long across it. Within that darkness, Nyx's amber eyes blinked once, watchful.
"Margaery Tyrell," he said quietly.
The name tasted dangerous.
She smiled sweetly, listened closely, and missed nothing. She wanted the throne as badly as Cersei ever had—only with cleaner hands. The Reach stood behind her like a loaded crossbow, and she knew it.
Getting close enough to bind her would not be simple. Not here. Not with Lannister eyes everywhere. One wrong step and the King would start asking questions no one survived.
Alaric let his head rest against the wall.
Robert Baratheon still lived.
Not well. Not wisely. But he breathed.
That made everything stall.
Alaric lay still, his eyes tracing the flickering shadows on the ceiling. The quiet of the North was a lie; beneath the snow, the roots were already screaming.
"A king dying too slowly is worse than a king already dead," he murmured, his voice a ghost in the dim room. "So what do I do while the sun refuses to set?"
The answer didn't come from the stone walls, but a memory surfaced—fresh news though the blood scout.
Tyrion Lannister arrested by Catelyn Stark.
The gears in Alaric's mind turned. If the Imp had been taken... But it raised a more pressing question: did the Lannisters still send an assassin for Bran in this timeline?
"Hummm... Well, well," he whispered.
His mouth curved, though it wasn't quite a smile. It was the expression of a man who had seen the trap and decided to let it snap just so he could watch the metal break. That news wouldn't stay quiet. In King's Landing, nothing ever did—and in Winterfell, it would be the spark that lit the fuse.
With Catelyn away and the Halfman in chains...