The warmth had fled the bed long before the dawn. Catelyn lay still, listening to the sounds of her husband dressing in the pre-dawn gloom. The scrape of leather, the soft clink of a belt buckle, the rustle of wool. He had always been an early riser, a man who met the day head-on, but these past two weeks, since the raven had come, there had been a new urgency to his movements, a tension that coiled in the quiet air of their chambers.
"The Karstarks and the Manderlys will be here by midday," he said, his voice a low rumble from across the room. "The Umbers and the Glovers by tomorrow. I ride to meet them at Moat Cailin within the week."
He did not need to say more. We will leave. He meant the men. He meant the lords of the North, going to war once more, this time against the squids of the Iron Islands. She was to remain here, the Lady of Winterfell, a silent warden of a cold and unwelcoming castle.
"Be safe, my lord," she said, her voice soft in the darkness. It was a wife's duty to say such things.
He came to the bedside then, a tall, grey shadow in the gloom. He leaned down and placed a chaste, dutiful kiss on her brow. His beard was rough, his lips cool. It was the kiss of a lord to his lady, not a husband to his wife. It had been that way for a long time. Then he was gone, the heavy oak door closing behind him with a soft thud, leaving her alone in the vast, cold bed.
She lay there for a long time, listening to the castle slowly coming to life. The first shouts from the courtyard, the distant crow of a rooster. Every sound was a reminder of her isolation, a note in the song of her gilded cage. And in the silence of her heart, the old fear, the one that had been her constant companion for five long years, began to stir. It was a fear that had a name. Jon.
She remembered the pure, untainted joy of Robb's birth. He had been so small, so perfect, a shock of Tully red hair on his head, her own blue eyes blinking up at her. He was hers. He was a Tully in the heart of the North, her blood, the future of this cold, grey land. She had held him to her breast, her heart swelling with a fierce, possessive love that was its own kind of fire. For a few, blissful months, she had been happy.
That happiness had turned to ash the day her husband returned from his war. He had ridden into the courtyard of Winterfell, not with a triumphant smile, but with a face like a stone mask and a babe in his arms. A babe with dark hair and eyes so grey they were almost black. The Stark look.
The sight of him, of that child, had been a physical blow. It was not just the dishonor, the public shame of a husband returning with his bastard. It was the fear. She had looked at the babe in her husband's arms, and then at her own red-haired son, and she had seen a threat. Jon Snow looked more like a Stark than the trueborn heir of Winterfell.
She had tried, in the beginning. She had prayed for the wisdom to accept the boy, this living symbol of her husband's shame. She told herself that her fears were unworthy, a poison born of a southron lady's pride. For a time, she had even found a fragile peace, watching him play with Robb, two small boys lost in a world of wooden swords and make-believe. He was quiet, and he kept to himself. But peace could not last. The truth was always there, a constant, silent reproach in the corner of every room. It was there in the way the old household guards would look at him, a flicker of recognition in their eyes. It was there in his solemn, grey-eyed gaze that was a perfect mirror of his father's. Every glance was a reminder that while her own son carried her Tully fire, this boy was made of the ice and stone of the North itself.
And in the North, she had quickly learned, such things mattered. These were a strange, hard people who did not hold to the Faith, who whispered to trees and honored their old ways. They were a people who did not despise bastards as they ought to to. They saw strength, and they saw blood. And in Jon Snow, they would see the blood of their beloved Starks, clear as day. The fear had taken root in her heart then, a cold, thorny vine that squeezed the life out of everything else: would they love her son, her southern-looking Tully boy, when a Stark-looking bastard stood right beside him? She had noticed it in the years since, the way some of the older lords looked at the boy. Not with contempt, but with a quiet, measuring respect that chilled her to the bone. They saw a Stark, and their loyalty, she feared, might follow the blood, not the name.
She remembered their first great argument, a storm of tears and fury in this very room. "He cannot stay here, Ned! It is an insult to me, to our son!" she had cried.
"He is my blood," her husband had answered, his voice devoid of all warmth. "He stays."
The finality in his tone had terrified her. It was a wall she could not scale. Defeated, she had written to her sister, her quill scratching a desperate plea onto the parchment. A man like Ned is bound by his honor, sweet sister, the letter had read. He will not break his word. But his honor can be a cage. If you must suffer the presence of the boy, then demand a price. Demand your gods. Demand a sept. He will see it as a fair trade.
It was a brilliant suggestion, and so she had made her demand, and to her shock, her grim, honorable husband had agreed. A sept in Winterfell. The thought had been a small, cold victory.
She remembered Robb's first nameday celebration. The great hall had been filled with the lords of the North, a rough, loud, bearded assembly. They had toasted Robb, yes, but she had seen the way their eyes had strayed to the other boy, to Jon, who sat quietly at the far end of the hall. She had heard their whispers. "The boy has the look of a Stark, right enough." "A quiet wolf, that one." And she had seen their cold, disapproving glances towards the new, half-finished stone structure of the sept, an alien thing of the south rising in their ancient castle. In that moment, she had never felt more alone, an outsider in her own home, the mother of an heir who was not quite enough for his people.
Her fear had grown sharper in the years that followed. She had watched the disgraced Kingsguard, the southron traitors her husband had inexplicably saved, take the boy under their wing. A bastard, being trained by the finest warriors in the realm. The irony was a bitter poison. She had watched them in the training yard, a boy of three, then four, swinging a wooden sword with a grace that was unnatural. She saw him getting faster, smarter, better.
For a time, she kept the new fear at bay with a different prayer, a desperate justification. Perhaps this was a gift from the gods. A bastard, yes, but a wolf of Winterfell all the same. One who could serve as his brother's sworn shield, a peerless protector for the heir. Under the guise of this fragile hope, she even found it in herself to be less harsh. In the quiet moments, away from the prying eyes of the court, she would call him 'boy,' or even 'you,' the word 'bastard' left unspoken.
The breaking point had come last year. She had been watching from the battlements as Jon and Robb sparred. They were of an age, but it was not a match of equals. Robb was strong, but Jon was a blur of motion. She had seen the moment, the feint, the spin, the blunted sword at Robb's throat before her own son could even react. And then she saw the boy's face. He was not laughing or boasting. It was a look of quiet, confident pride. A small, genuine smile that held no malice, but held a world of effortless superiority. In that instant, she saw the future. A future where her son was not the best. A future where he was second.
That day, her fear had turned to action. She had swept down to the yard. "Robb," she had said, her voice a sweet, cold command. "From now on, you will take your lessons with Ser Arthur as well. The heir to Winterfell should learn from the best."
And later, she had found Jon alone, cleaning his gear. She had looked down at the boy, at his dark hair and his too-serious grey eyes, and the venom had spilled out of her, cold and deliberate. She had put him in his place.
She remembered the look on her husband's face when he had found her later that evening. She had never seen such a rage in him, not even when he spoke of the Mad King.
"Did you speak to Jon today?" he had asked, his voice a low, dangerous rumble.
"I spoke to the bastard, yes," she had replied, her chin high. "He needed to be reminded of his station."
"Never," Ned had said, his voice dropping to a whisper that was more terrifying than any shout. "You will never speak to him of his mother again. You will not speak to him at all, unless it is with kindness. Do you understand me, Catelyn? If you ever cause him such pain again, I will set you aside. I will send you back to Riverrun and I will raise my sons myself. I swear this before the old gods and the new."
The threat had been real. She had seen it in his eyes. In that moment, she had understood that her war of open contempt was over. She had lost.
After that terrible argument, a fragile peace had settled. They had reconciled, as lords and ladies do. The birth of Sansa had been a balm on their wounded marriage, a shared joy that had for a time, pushed the shadows back. She remembered a night, not long after Sansa was born, when Ned had held her close, a warmth in his eyes she had not seen since before the war. It was then, emboldened by the peace, that she had decided to ask again, this time not as an angry shrew, but as a broken wife seeking to understand. "Who was she, Ned?" she had begged, tears streaming down her face. "I have a right to know. I am your wife. Who was this woman that you would throw me away for her memory?"
He had looked at her then, his grey eyes filled with a sorrow so deep it had frightened her. "Her name does not matter," he had said, his voice raw with a pain she did not understand. "She was a northern woman. And she is dead. That is all I can tell you. That is all I will ever tell you."
The fragile peace had shattered. A northern woman. The words had been a death knell to her hopes. Not some southron camp follower, not a fleeting moment of madness, but a northern woman. The boy was pure North. His blood was of the ice and the stone, just like his father's. In that moment, her fear for Robb's birthright had crystallized into a cold, hard certainty. The boy was a danger that had to be contained.
She had written to Lysa, and Lysa had told her to write to Petyr. Littlefinger's reply had been full of sympathy and clever advice. He had evenfound the perfect septa for her, a woman named Maris, who was pious, discreet, and understood the "delicate nature of a mother's duty."
Under Septa Maris's guidance, her strategy had changed. The open venom was gone, replaced by a subtle, relentless campaign of isolation. The boy was served his food, yes, but it was another quite as hot as the main table's. He was assigned duties that kept him away from the family, mucking out the stables or cleaning armor in the forge. And he was made to attend lessons with the septa, to learn of the Seven, to learn of the sin of his birth, a constant, pious reminder of his own shame.
A soft knock at the door broke her from her reverie. "My lady?" It was one of her handmaidens. "The lords will be arriving soon. It is time to prepare."
Catelyn sat up, the cold of the room seeping into her bones. She looked out the window towards the courtyard. The boys were gone, but the men were gathering, their Stark banners snapping in the wind. The lords of the North. The men whose loyalty her son needed. The men whose eyes might be turned by the shadow wolf with the Stark face.
She rose from the bed, her mind clear, her purpose set. The war was taking her husband away. It was a danger, yes, but it was also an opportunity. An opportunity to ensure that when the great lords of the North arrived, they would see only one son of Eddard Stark. The true one. Her Robb.
Author's Note:
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