The yard was still dark when Cassie found Hydi.
The girl was already at her post in the training yard when Cassie arrived, her sword in hand and her breath making small clouds in the cold air. She had been at it for a while, judging by the flush on her cheeks and the way her hair had come loose from its braid.
Cassie watched her for a moment before she said anything.
"Your side," she said.
Hydi stopped mid-swing. "What?"
"Your left side. You're leaving it open." Cassie crossed to her, adjusting the angle of her elbow with two fingers. "Every time you bring your arm back for the swing, here." She tapped the exposed rib. "A wildling would have put a blade there before you'd finished the motion."
Hydi looked down at herself, then back up at Cassie with the particular expression of someone who had just been told something obvious and was deciding whether to be embarrassed about it. She chose not to be. "I'll work on it," she said.
"You will," Cassie agreed, stepping back.
They trained for some time in the grey pre-dawn quiet, the yard mostly empty around them. The stewards had been up since before first light — she could hear the horses in the stable block, and the sound of steel being checked and restacked in the armory. By tomorrow morning the party would be beyond the Wall. Tonight was for preparation. This morning was for whatever else there was.
"I want two daggers," Hydi said, between bouts. "Like yours."
Cassie looked at her. "You have time."
"I know." Hydi was not discouraged by this. She never was. "But I've been thinking about it. Two would be better than one. You can do twice as much."
"You can also drop twice as much," Cassie said. "And a blade you haven't chosen properly is worse than no blade at all. You'll know when it's right."
Hydi considered this with the gravity she brought to most things Cassie told her, which was to say entirely too much gravity for a girl of ten. "I wish I could come with you," she said. "Beyond the Wall."
Cassie glanced down at her — at the black lines of the tattoo on Hydi's right hand, still sharp and new against her skin. By the order's reckoning, she was ready. The mark said so. She had control enough, and skill enough, and by the Matriarch's measure that was sufficient.
She was ten years old.
Cassie had been seven when she first went beyond the Wall. She had known that, of course — she had always known it. But looking at Hydi now, at the particular smallness of her, at the loose braid and the flushed cheeks and the way she held her sword with both hands to compensate for arms that had not yet finished growing — she felt something she could not quite name settle uncomfortably in her chest.
This was their duty. She had never questioned it. She still did not question it. And yet.
She was glad Hydi would be staying at the Wall.
"It is not a matter of wish," Cassie said.
Hydi opened her mouth, then closed it. She did not argue, which meant she had already known the answer and had asked anyway, in the way that children asked things they already knew the answer to because asking was its own kind of comfort.
They fell into companionable silence for a while after that. Cassie had noticed, in recent weeks, how much time she was spending in this particular company. Hydi asked questions the way other people breathed — constantly, without apparent effort, with no particular concern for whether the moment was well chosen. She asked about technique, and about the Wall, and about wildlings and wights and whether the old stories were true, and about King's Landing, and about everything else she could think of. Most people Cassie would have sent away by the third question. She had not sent Hydi away.
She had not examined this too closely. She did not intend to.
"Do you think you will find Benjen?" Hydi asked.
Cassie took a breath.
The question landed, as it always did, in the part of her chest where she kept things she had not yet decided what to do with. She had thought of little else for weeks. The mission had a purpose and the purpose was Benjen and Benjen was — she did not let herself finish that thought. She had not let herself finish it in a long time. But it sat there anyway, half-formed and cold, and she knew its shape even without looking at it directly.
"I do not know, Hydi," she said. "But do not pay mind to this now. You are to stay here and keep with your training."
Hydi nodded. Then, after a moment she spoke again. "I was to go back to my homeland in a few days."
Cassie looked at her.
"Lady Eloise had given me the pardon," Hydi said, her voice different now — quieter, without its usual brightness. "But the war won't allow it."
The Riverlands. Cassie had known that was where Hydi came from, in the distant way she knew things about people she had not particularly tried to know. The Riverlands, where her brother was fighting his war against her family's. Where Robb Stark was marching against the Lannisters, against her mother's bannermen, against men who flew the golden lion on their shields.
She did not like to think about it. But once the door was open, it was very difficult to close.
The guilt was not a new feeling. It had been sitting in her since Ned Stark's execution — before that, if she was honest, since the first ravens had brought word of war and she had understood whose hands were at the center of it. It was not precisely guilt. It was something adjacent to it — the particular weight of belonging to a thing you had not chosen and could not set down, of being bound to people whose choices were not yours and whose consequences followed you regardless.
She was a Baratheon. She was also a Keeper of Light who had spent most of her life at the Wall. She had no authority over her family. She had no say, no influence, no way to have altered what had happened. She knew this. It did not make the weight any lighter.
"Do you miss your family?" she asked.
Hydi looked at her, slightly surprised to be asked — she was usually the one asking. "Every day," she said. "My mother used to comb my hair every morning. She told me I was pretty." A pause. "Last year she was expecting a child. I hope to see them soon."
Cassie said nothing for a moment. She had trained beside this girl for weeks, and she had not known any of this.
"Do you have siblings?" she asked.
Hydi smiled. "Three. Four with the new baby. I'm the oldest."
Cassie looked at her. She could not have said why, but she was surprised by this — Hydi, who she had always thought of as small and young and perpetually underfoot, was someone's eldest. Was someone else's Cassie.
"Do you like it?" she asked. "Being a big sister?"
Hydi thought about it with genuine seriousness. "I don't know," she said. "I don't know them very well." She looked up at Cassie. "Do you like it? Being a big sister?"
Cassie thought of Joffrey first — she always did, and the anger came with the thought as it always did, reliable and familiar. Then Myrcella, who had grown into something that seemed, from a distance, nothing like their mother, which was perhaps the kindest thing that could be said about her prospects. And then Tommen.
Bye, Cassie.
The little hand waving. The green eyes. The smile that had surprised her because she had not expected it, had not expected to be the kind of person someone waved goodbye to with a smile like that.
She turned back to Hydi.
"I don't know," she said. "I don't know them very well either."
Hydi looked at her for a moment with an expression that was too understanding for a ten-year-old. Then she smiled. "I think you are a very good big sister."
"You are not my sister," Cassie said.
"I know," said Hydi. "But I would like to be." She said it simply, without particular drama, the way she said most things — as a statement of fact that she saw no reason to dress up. Then she turned back to her sword and adjusted her elbow, deliberately, covering her side. "I promise I will learn how to cover my side."
Cassie looked at her for a moment.
Then she said nothing, which was its own kind of answer, and they went back to training.
By the time they walked to the great hall together, the castle had been awake for some time. The morning before a mission beyond the Wall had a particular quality to it — a sharpness in the air, a purposefulness in how people moved. The stewards were loading provisions, the rangers checking their gear with the particular thoroughness of men who understood what insufficient checking cost. The ten Keepers who were going had been training since before dawn. Cassie had been among them for two hours before she found Hydi.
She was hungry.
The warmth of the hall hit her as she pushed through the door — that and the smell of bacon, which was specific and immediate and made her realize quite suddenly how hungry she was. Tomorrow there would be salt meat and dried provisions and whatever could be managed in the cold. Tonight, the hall. She took that for what it was.
She collected her portion from Donar and turned toward the tables.
That was when she saw Jon.
He was sitting at the end of one of the benches, slightly apart from the others, bent over something in his lap. She could not see it clearly from where she stood. She crossed the room, stepped over the bench, and sat beside him.
He had a length of clean bandage in his hands and was trying to wrap it around his fingers. The burnt skin on his palm and the last two fingers was still vivid — red at the edges, tight and wrong-looking. He was winding the bandage with his good hand and his teeth, and it was not going well. The wrap was too loose and he knew it.
"You seem in need of aid, Jon Snow," she said.
He looked up. His jaw was still clenched around the end of the bandage. "Is it so evident?"
Her lips turned up. "Let me," she said, reaching for the bandage. He did not resist, opening his hand to give it to her. She took it, and then took his hand in hers to begin the wrap, and felt him flinch very slightly at the contact.
She said nothing about it. She looked at his hand instead.
The burns were not as bad as they might have been — the Maester had done his work well enough in those first hours — but the last two fingers had taken the worst of it, and she could feel the stiffness in them as she moved the bandage carefully over the knuckles. He would have full use of them again. The Maester had said so. But not yet, and not quickly, and she could feel in the tension of his hand how much that cost him.
He had taken an oil lamp bare-handed to drive back Othor. She had been on the floor screaming, unable to help him.
"Does it hurt still?" she asked, keeping her voice and her hands both steady.
"The Maester says I need to be patient," he said, with a small chuckle that was more nervous than amused. "But I'd like to be able to move them like I used to."
She nodded and said nothing, continuing the wrap. She could feel him watching her.
"I never asked you," Jon said, and she hummed to tell him to go on. "What happened to you. With the wight."
Her hands did not stop moving, but something in her chest did.
"I have no answer yet," she said.
"It never happened before?"
"When I—" she began, then took a breath. "That night it was like nothing that happens when I subjugate a man." He was quiet. She knew he wanted to understand. "I feel my powers shift throughout the day. It does not keep quiet." She kept her eyes on his hand, on the work. "Whenever I'm angry, or tense, or scared — it moves in my stomach, my legs, my chest, my head. It wants to be released. It desperately wants to get out. That is why we learn to manage these emotions — so that the power can only be released through our touch, when we choose it."
She had explained this to very few people. She was not entirely certain why she was explaining it now.
"But when it knows it can be released," she continued, "when I am in battle, the single touch on a man's neck makes my hand tingle. Almost liberating."
She would never forget the first time she had subjogated a wildling during battle. It felt like a weight had been lift from her shoulders. And she felt the same way ever since.
"But that night, when I let go—" she paused, feeling the chill move through her again. "It didn't feed on anything. Because there was nothing there to take. Only void. And cold."
And death.
She did not say the last part.
"Whatever it was," Jon said quietly, "it tried to hurt you." She looked up at him. He was watching her with his grey eyes, not with pity, which would have made her close down immediately, but with something quieter. "You screamed, and trembled on the ground. As if you had been set on fire from the inside."
She remembered it. The way her body had stopped answering her. The way she had been able to do nothing but scream.
She remembered, afterward, his warmth. His arms around her. The look on his face when she had been able to open her eyes.
"That sight scared you?" she asked.
"You scared me," he said. Simply. Directly. Their eyes held for a moment across the short distance between them, and she felt something she did not try to name move through her chest, brief and warm and careful. "I thought you were going to die."
The silence lasted a beat longer than it might have.
Then Jon looked down at his hand, now neatly wrapped, and flexed his fingers once, carefully, testing the give of the bandage.
"I—" he said. He cleared his throat. "I need to find Sam. The Old Bear asked him for some maps."
"Of course," Cassie said.
He got up, swinging his leg over the bench. Then he paused and turned back.
"Thank you, Cassie," he said.
She did not answer. She watched him go, and then she looked down at her breakfast and picked up her fork, and outside the hall the stewards were loading the horses, and tomorrow they would go beyond the Wall, and the morning was already half done.
She had been restless since breakfast.
It was not unusual for her, the day before a mission beyond the Wall — the particular alertness that came with knowing what tomorrow held, the way her mind refused to settle on any one thing for long. She had checked her daggers twice already. She had spoken with Rose about the formation they would keep once they crossed, and with Vyva about the pairing with Dywen. She had done everything that needed doing, and the afternoon was still long in front of her.
She found Rose in the small corridor outside their cell, refolding her pack for what was probably the third time.
"You've done that already," Cassie said.
"I know," Rose said, without looking up. "I'm doing it again."
Cassie leaned against the doorframe and watched her for a moment. Rose's hands were very precise — she always packed with that particular care, the care of someone who had learned early that things put away properly were things you could find in the dark when you needed them.
"Are you afraid?" Cassie asked.
Rose looked up at that. Her expression was not offended, just thoughtful. "Yes," she said. "Aren't you?"
Cassie said nothing.
"That's not an answer," Rose said.
"It's the only one I have," Cassie said.
Rose held her gaze for a moment, then looked back down at her pack. "I don't know what we'll find out there," she said quietly. "And I don't know if I want to."
Neither did Cassie. She knew the shape of what she was afraid of — had known it for months, since Benjen had ridden out and not come back. The not-knowing had been easier to carry than certainty would be. Beyond the Wall, certainty was very close now.
She was about to say something — she was not sure what — when she heard her name.
"Cassandra."
Lady Eloyse was in the corridor, her hands folded in front of her, her expression as composed as it always was. She had a way of appearing without sound that Cassie had stopped finding unsettling only after several years.
"My lady," Cassie said.
"I need you to bring this to the Lord Commander," Lady Eloyse said, holding out a folded piece of parchment sealed with the order's mark. "The names of the ten Keepers riding tomorrow, and their pairings with the rangers. He asked for it before evenfall."
Cassie took the parchment. "The King's Tower?"
"Where else." Lady Eloyse's eyes rested on her for a moment with that particular quality of attention — assessing, not unkind.
"Of course," Cassie said.
Rose was watching from the doorway as Cassie turned to go. She did not say anything. She did not have to.
The King's Tower was quiet at this hour. She climbed at an even pace, the parchment in her hand, and she was nearly at the top when she became aware of voices from the solar above — low and distinct enough to carry through the door, which was not quite closed.
She did not slow her steps deliberately. But she did not rush, either.
Mormont's voice came through clearly.
"They will garb your brother Robb in silks, satins, and velvets of a hundred different colors, while you live and die in black ringmail. He will wed some beautiful princess and father sons on her. You'll have no wife, nor will you ever hold a child of your own blood in your arms."
She stopped.
"Robb will rule, you will serve. Men will call you a crow. Him they'll call Your Grace. Singers will praise every little thing he does, while your greatest deeds all go unsung. Tell me that none of this troubles you, Jon — and I'll name you a liar, and know I have the truth of it."
The stairwell was cold and very still. She could hear her own breathing.
Then she heard Jon's voice, "And if it did trouble me, what might I do, bastard as I am?"
Cassie's gaze dropped for a moment as she listened closer.
"What will you do? Bastard as you are?" Jon did not answer immediately at the man's question, but after some moment he finally did.
"Be troubled," Jon said. "And keep my vows."
Cassie stood with the parchment in her hand and the cold stone at her back and said nothing at all.
She thought of him at breakfast, bent over the bandage, trying to manage it with hands that did not yet work the way they should. She thought of his face when he had said you scared me and had not looked away. She thought of the night Othor had come back from the dead and she had been on the floor screaming and Jon had been the warmth she had felt when her body had finally stopped answering her.
Be troubled. And keep my vows.
She had done the same once. She had not been four-and-ten. She had been nine, and alone, and she had not put it in those words, but the shape had been the same — the decision to keep walking, to keep carrying, to not stop. Because stopping was the only thing that was not allowed.
She waited until the sound of movement from the solar told her the conversation had reached its end. Then she knocked twice on the door and pushed it open.
The raven was on Mormont's shoulder. Jon was standing a few feet away. When she entered, he looked at her, and she could see on his face the particular expression of someone who has just said something true and is still sitting with the weight of it. She did not let on that she had heard.
"My lord Commander," she said, inclining her head. She crossed to the table and set the parchment down in front of him. "From Lady Eloyse. The names of the ten Keepers and their pairings for tomorrow."
Mormont picked it up without ceremony and unfolded it, his eyes moving down the list. The raven shifted on his shoulder, eyeing the paper with interest.
He was quiet for a moment, reading. Then his finger stopped on something near the bottom of the page.
"Cassadra," he said, without looking up.
"My lord."
He looked at her then — a long, brief look, the kind that took stock without making a production of it. "Lady Eloyse has assigned you to ride with me."
"So it seems, my lord."
The raven made a sound. Mormont set the parchment down and leaned back in his chair, still watching her.
"Good." He looked back down at the list. "That will be all."
"Does it ever trouble you?" he asked, causing Cassie to halt her descent and glance back at him.
"What?"
"What your life could have been like, were you not a Keeper," Jon said, a sad curiosity in his eyes as he waited for her answer.
It was a question Cassie had never thought to ask herself. She didn't know why. Perhaps because she had been taught about her duties since she could remember, and because being a Keeper of Light had defined her more than anything else.
She never questioned whether she liked her life or if she wished for a different one. Cassandra had simply gone along with it. But now that Jon had asked, she found herself drawn into the thought. What would her life have been like, had she not been a Keeper of Light?
"I hardly have an imagination for that," she answered honestly, her voice quiet. What would she have done? She'd have had a Septa to teach her how to be a proper princess. She would have gone to pray to the Seven every day. She would have learned to dance and sing. Her hair would always have been kept neat and pretty.
"When I saw you, at the feast in Winterfell," Jon continued, his voice quieter, as if recalling the memory, "You were wearing one of Sansa's dresses. And where I was seated, no man could take his eyes off you."
Cassie felt her heart beat strangely faster as Jon spoke of that day. His words hung in the air, and for a moment, she couldn't understand why they felt so different now. There was something in his voice, a subtle shift, that made her feel exposed. She wasn't used to hearing Jon speak of her like that, and she couldn't help but wonder what he was really thinking. The way he said it made her feel like he, too, was seeing her for the first time.
"I thought that if you were just a princess," Jon went on, his eyes drifting to the snow outside, "You'd probably have been wed to Robb."
Cassie nervously scoffed, shaking her head. "Robb would have been unlucky then. I'd make a terrible wife," she said, crossing her arms tightly over her chest, her hands gripping the fabric of her black vest. "And if I wasn't a Keeper, I would have never came to Winterfell. I wouldn't have met you." Jon's eyes flickered, looking at her silent for a long moment.
"Jon," she said, stepping closer to him, their eyes locking, "Dreaming of a life different from the one we've been given is a waste of time." There was no harshness in her voice, just a quiet sadness that Jon would envy Robb's life. "And believe me, being a king is not all it's cracked up to be. My father was one."
Jon smiled weakly, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. He took a deep breath before speaking again. "It's just… I would have liked to have been born a Stark."
Cassie studied him in silence. He had secrets with her too, just as she had with him before he learned about her life at the Wall and Aesteria. And part of her wanted to be angry at him for hating himself because of a name, but she couldn't. She had never seen him as the bastard of Winterfell.
He was Jon Snow, her most dear friend, with a quiet strength she had come to admire. Quiet, gentle, yet daring. He would smile, and he would listen. And at the Wall, she had begun to notice other sides of him, sides she hadn't known were there. He was… different. He was Jon Snow.
"We should go and get ready," she said nudging his arm almost playfully. Trying to change the heaviness of that confersation. "We are to leave soon."
Hai ragione, scusa. Ecco la correzione da dopo "That will be all":
"You've ridden with Benjen Stark," Mormont said.
"Yes, my lord."
"Good." He looked back down at the list, then up again — this time at both of them, his gaze moving from Cassie to Jon with the particular economy of a man who had made his decision before either of them had walked in. "The both of you. Get some rest. We ride at first light and I'll not have my best people half asleep before we've cleared the gate." He waved a hand. "Out."
Jon inclined his head. "My lord."
Cassie did the same. "My lord."
They went out together and pulled the door closed behind them. Ghost was waiting at the top of the stairs, and fell into step beside Jon without being asked.
She started down, touching the direwolf white fur. Her eyes glanced up at Jon briefly.
"Are you alright?" she asked forcing a calm tone. She knew she probably should not ask anything, but she did not like the troubled expression on his face.
Jon only nodded, and Cassie decided to leave him be. She had made few steps down the stairs, when he spoke again.
"Does it ever trouble you?"
His voice made her halt. She glanced back at him.
"What?"
"What your life could have been like," Jon said, "were you not a Keeper." There was a sad curiosity in his eyes as he waited for her answer, and she understood suddenly, from the particular quality of it, that he was not only asking about her.
It was a question she had never thought to ask herself. She didn't know why. Perhaps because she had been taught about her duties since she could remember, and because being a Keeper of Light had defined her more than anything else. She had never questioned whether she liked her life or wished for a different one. She had simply gone along with it. But now that Jon had asked, she found herself drawn into the thought.
What would her life have been like, had she not been a Keeper of Light?
"I hardly have an imagination for that," she answered honestly, her voice quiet. What would she have done? She'd have had a Septa to teach her how to be a proper princess. She would have gone to pray to the Seven every day. She would have learned to dance and sing. Her hair would always have been kept neat and pretty.
"I thought about it, when I saw you, at the feast in Winterfell," Jon said, his voice quieter, as if recalling the memory from somewhere he had kept it carefully, "you were wearing one of Sansa's dresses. And where I was seated, no man could take his eyes off you."
Cassie felt her heart beat strangely faster. His words hung in the air, and for a moment she couldn't understand why they felt so different from the way he usually spoke to her. There was something in his voice — a subtle shift — that made her feel exposed in a way she was not accustomed to and did not entirely know what to do with.
"I thought that if you were just a princess," Jon went on, his eyes drifting to the snow beyond the narrow window, "you'd probably have been wed to Robb."
Cassie scoffed, shaking her head. "Robb would have been unlucky then. I'd make a terrible wife," she said, crossing her arms tightly over her chest, her hands gripping the fabric of her black vest. "And if I wasn't a Keeper, I would have never come to Winterfell." She paused. "I wouldn't have met you."
Jon's eyes flickered to hers. He was silent for a long moment.
"Jon," she said, stepping closer, their eyes locking. "Dreaming of a life different from the one we've been given is a waste of time." There was no harshness in her voice, just a quiet sadness — not for herself, but for him. For the way he said Robb's name with something in it that was not quite envy and not quite grief but sat between the two, the way certain things did when you had carried them long enough. "And believe me, being a king is not all it's cracked up to be. My father was one."
Jon smiled, weakly, and it did not quite reach his eyes. He took a slow breath. "It's just — I would have liked to have been born a Stark."
Cassie studied him in silence.
She had heard what Mormont said to him not half an hour past, on the other side of a door she had not gone through. She knew the shape of what Jon was carrying — the crown his brother wore, the name he didn't have, the life that had gone one way instead of another. She had stood on those stairs and heard him say be troubled, and keep my vows, and she had thought she understood it then.
She understood it better now.
Part of her wanted to be angry at him for it — for measuring himself against a name, for not seeing what she had always seen when she looked at him. But she couldn't. She had never seen him as the bastard of Winterfell. She had seen Jon Snow, with a quiet strength she had come to admire. Quiet and gentle and daring all at once. He would smile, and he would listen. And at the Wall she had begun to notice other sides of him — sides she hadn't known were there, sides she was still learning the edges of.
She nudged his arm, almost playfully, the way she almost never did with anyone.
"We should go and get ready," she said. "We are to leave soon."
Jon looked at her. Something in his expression shifted — not resolved, exactly, but set aside, the way things got set aside when someone who knew you reminded you that there was something immediate to be done.
"Aye," he said.
They went down the stairs together, and Ghost followed them both, and outside the Wall stood against the last light of the evening as it always had, vast and cold and entirely without opinion about any of it, and tomorrow they would ride north into whatever was waiting for them there.