Chapter Text
Ned,
I am coming to Dorne.
Do not scowl at the page. It will not help you, and Ashara will only laugh if she sees you doing it.
Cersei and Oberyn are returning south to Sunspear, and I am going with them. Cersei will need help settling into her new life there, whether she admits it or not.
I can hear you thinking that she has Oberyn and Ellaria, and Doran. But she also has me.
That is better.
Stannis has agreed... more or less. He said the journey is reasonable, the timing is defensible, and the Water Gardens are a suitable place for noble households to meet without creating unnecessary fuss. I told him that meant yes. He looked as though he wanted to correct me, then did not, which also means yes.
So now you must come.
Bring Ashara and Jasper. If you try to tell me Starfall is too far from Sunspear, I will know you have become ridiculous and will say so where people can hear.
I have not yet met my nephew, and that must be rectified.
Tell Ashara I will be glad to see her again. Tell her I expect her to come because if I write that I miss her, you will make some solemn face over it.
If there are arrangements to be made, make them. If you need permission from someone, get it. If someone says it is inconvenient, tell them I said babies are inconvenient and we all still make room for them.
You may answer with the date you will arrive.
Your sister,
Lyanna
---
Lyanna
Cersei read the letter twice.
That was not alarming by itself. She stood near the window of Lyanna’s chamber with the page held between two fingers, green sleeves falling back from her wrists, mouth curved in a way that meant trouble had presented itself and she intended to be grateful.
Storm lay across the hearth rug like she owned the room.
The pup had managed to wedge himself halfway beneath Lyanna’s chair and was chewing one of her discarded gloves with the solemn dedication of a sworn knight.
“You do not mention the wolves,” Cersei said.
Lyanna looked up from the second page she had been blotting. “No.”
“Not once.”
“No.”
Cersei’s smile sharpened. “You tell your brother to drag his wife and child across Dorne to meet us at the Water Gardens. You inform him that you are traveling with me and Oberyn, which is already enough to make any sensible man reach for wine.”
She gave her friend an arch look that hid a smile. “And we both know your brother is the most sensible of all of us save Stannis. And then… you order him to bring himself, his household, and his son. But somehow the two direwolves slipped your mind.”
Storm’s ear flicked.
The pup sneezed around a mouthful of leather.
Lyanna leaned over, caught the glove, and tugged. The pup tugged back, growling very softly.
“You are not frightening,” she told him.
He growled again.
“You are also not keeping the glove.”
He surrendered it with deep offense and immediately tried to bite her sleeve instead.
Cersei watched the whole exchange with amusement. “You are hiding a direwolf from your brother.”
“I am not hiding her. She is very large.”
“You are hiding the entire idea of her.”
“That sounds like something Rhaegar would say.”
Cersei laughed once, quick and pleased despite herself.
Good. Lyanna liked her better when she laughed without deciding first whether laughter was useful.
Lyanna wanted to see her brother. It had been far too long. That part was easy.
She wanted to put the pup in Ned’s arms. That part was not easy at all, and impossible to explain to Cersei. Or to anyone who was not of the north.
The pup abandoned her sleeve and pressed his head against her knee. He looked up at her with eyes that had already begin to droop with afternoon tiredness. Young pups needed naps, it seemed, almost as much as human babes. Those eyes made her think of cold dawn over stone.
Stone and sand and a lone wolf.
The thought came again, as it had on the dock. Llike standing in a place before she had arrived and knowing which door would open.
Cersei’s expression changed, just a little. “You did it again.”
“Did what?”
Cersei waved her hand vaguely at Lyanna. “That.”
Lyanna frowned. “That is not an answer either.”
“No, but I am not the one pretending I forgot to tell Eddard Stark that a piece of the old North is about to throw itself at his chest.”
Lyanna snorted. “It is a surprise.”
“A surprise.”
“Yes.”
“For your brother.”
“Yes.”
“Whom you have ordered to travel to the Water Gardens with his wife and infant son.”
“That is what surprises are for.”
Cersei crossed to the table and set the letter down. “You are a terrible liar.”
“I am not lying. I am… omitting.”
“That is lying with better posture.”
“Now you sound like your mother.”
Cersei’s amusement vanished into indignation so swiftly it was almost worth the risk. “I do not.”
“You do.”
“I absolutely do not.”
“You both say things as if the words have been measured on a scale before use.”
“That is because some of us were raised to understand that words matter.”
“They matter more when people say the plain ones.”
“And yet you have not plainly told your brother about the wolves.”
Storm raised her head from the hearth. Her pale gaze moved to the letter, then to Lyanna, then to the pup. She gave one low huff and laid her head down again.
“I just… don’t think I should tell him,” Lyanna said.
Cersei’s brows lifted. “Because of the surprise.”
“Yes.”
“Lyanna.”
“What?”
“You are doing it badly.”
“I know.”
That made Cersei pause.
Lyanna rubbed her thumb over the pup’s head. His fur was softer behind the ears than it had any right to be. “It feels wrong.”
“What does?”
“Writing it down. Telling him before he comes. Saying there is a wolf for him.” She looked toward the letter. “I know how that sounds.”
Cersei leaned back against the edge of the table. “You think he has to meet the pup without warning.”
“I don’t know.” The answer came too quickly, too sharply. Lyanna hated it. “I just know I should not put it in the letter. I tried and… it did not feel right.”
“Ah,” Cersei said.
Lyanna folded the spoiled draft in half, then again, and tossed it into the hearth. Storm opened one eye as the paper caught. The pup lifted his head, decided fire was less interesting than his nap, and put his chin back down.
Cersei watched the page blacken. “For what it is worth,” she said, “I think he will come faster if he does not know.”
Lyanna looked at her.
Cersei shrugged one shoulder. “A direwolf sounds like a complication. A sister demanding he bring her nephew sounds like a nuisance he loves. Men are easier to move when they think they understand the reason.”
“That is a very… you answer.”
“Yes. It is correct.”
“It was my idea first.”
“To manipulate your brother by omission?”
“To surprise him.”
Cersei smiled again. “Of course.”
Lyanna picked up the good letter and scanned it once more. She sanded the page, folded it, and pressed the seal before she could change her mind. The direwolf pup opened his eyes just as the wax cooled, as if something had been settled that concerned him.
“You are trouble,” Lyanna told him.
He blinked solemnly and went back to sleep.
Cersei laughed. “I think he takes after your brother already.”
Lyanna looked down at the solemn little beast sprawled over her feet, then toward Storm, vast and watchful by the fire.
“No,” she said. “Not yet.”
But soon.
---
Ned
The raven came at breakfast. The seal was Baratheon.
That was not unusual anymore, though it still struck something odd in him each time. His sister’s hand. Her husband’s house. A stag on wax where once there would have been the direwolf of Winterfell. Lyanna had taken to marriage wonderfully, and yet Ned still looked for northern marks where southern ones had replaced them.
Ashara saw his face and smiled. “You are scowling at the seal.”
“I am not.”
“You are.”
Jasper slapped one wet hand against the table.
By the third line, he had already heard Lyanna’s voice so clearly that the chamber around him seemed to sharpen for it. By the fifth, he could see her sitting somewhere in the Red Keep, chin lifted, daring the page to object. By the time she informed him that Cersei would need help settling into her new life, Ned felt his mouth shift despite himself.
Not quite a smile.
Ashara saw it anyway.
“What has she done?”
“Summoned us to the Water Gardens, apparently.” He lowered the page enough for Ashara to read beside him. Jasper made a determined grab for the corner, and Ned lifted it out of reach. “She says she has not yet met her nephew, and that must be rectified.”
“That is a grave omission.”
“So she believes.”
“She is right.” Ashara plucked a strip of pear from Jasper’s fist before he could smear it into his hair. “Do not look so put upon. You have wanted to see her.”
“I have.”
“And Cersei.”
Ned hesitated. “I will be glad to see Cersei well.”
Ashara laughed softly. “That is the most northern affection anyone has ever been cursed with.”
“She would not thank me for more.”
“No,” Ashara said, eyes bright. “She would not.”
Ned read the letter again, more slowly the second time. Lyanna had written quickly, but not carelessly – and she had left no room for refusal. It was very like her.
It was also very like her to know that he would come.
Starfall had become home by degrees, not all at once. At first there had been too much heat, too much light, too much ease in the way the household moved around him - as though there was no question he belonged there. He had expected to remain a guest in his own marriage, grateful and awkward and careful not to step wrong.
Then Jasper had been born, and the shape of everything had shifted. The rooms that once felt borrowed now held his son’s cradle, Ashara’s gowns, his sword, a scatter of linen cloths, a wooden horse one of the guards had carved badly and Jasper adored without taste.
He was still northern. That had not changed. Some mornings he woke missing the bite of cold air so sharply that it felt like hunger.
But Ashara and Jasper were here. He could not be where they were not.
“We will go,” Ashara said.
Ned looked at her.
She lifted one shoulder, amused by whatever she found in his face. “You had already decided. I thought I would save you the trouble of arranging your duty into permission.”
“I was considering the roads.”
“Of course.”
“And the heat. Jasper is still small.”
“He has excellent nurses.” Ashara smiled over at Inis, the day-nurse. Inis grinned back. It helped that Jasper was almost universally adored by the household.
Jasper, of course, chose that moment to fling pear onto the floor with great purpose.
Ned looked down at it, then back to Inis, who was shaking her head as she wiped the mess away. “He will need more cloths.”
“He will need half the household if you are allowed to plan long enough.”
“That may be excessive.”
“It will be excessive. You will do it anyway.”
He folded the letter, then unfolded it again. “We should take guards.”
“We are not crossing a battlefield.”
“No, but we are traveling with you and Jasper.”
“And therefore half of Starfall must come armed?”
“Not half.”
Ashara’s mouth curved. “A quarter, then.”
Ned accepted this with the dignity it deserved and failed to answer.
The door opened after the knock, and Beric Dondarrion entered with the stiff-backed care of a boy trying very hard not to look like a boy. He had been Ned’s squire for all of three days, and he carried the office as though it had been laid on him in full mail. Allyria came behind him with no such solemnity, pausing only to avoid the pear on the floor.
“My lord,” Beric said.
Ned had told him twice that morning not to stand so straight indoors. It had not yet taken.
“Beric.”
The boy’s gaze flicked to the letter, then back. Curious, but not asking. That was something.
“We will be going to the Water Gardens,” Ned said. “You will come with us.”
Beric’s face changed before he could stop it. Pride first, then alarm at having shown it, then a gravity that made him look younger rather than older. “Yes, my lord.”
“You have traveled that road?”
“Once. With my father’s men.”
“Then you may tell me where a party with a baby should not stop.”
Beric blinked. “I- yes. I can do that.”
“Good.”
Allyria had gone to Jasper, who greeted her by offering one damp hand. She accepted it with solemn courtesy.
“Ashara and the nurses will need help with him, on the road.” Ned said.
“I will help,” Allyria said at once.
Ashara tilted her head. “You have not asked what sort of help.”
“With Jasper.”
“That is not specific.”
Allyria looked at the boy, who had begun chewing his own fingers. “Keeping him from eating things.”
“A noble calling,” Ashara said.
Allyria smiled, pleased with herself. Beric had a slight blush, which was normal anytime Allyria was in the room, and especially so when she smiled.
The arrangements took the rest of the morning. Horses, guards, baggage, cloth enough for Jasper, shade for the worst stretches of road, gifts suitable for Martell hospitality, and a reply to Lyanna that did not reward her tone.
Ned sat with the page before him for some time.
Ashara came to stand behind his chair, Jasper settled on her hip. “Are you composing a lecture?”
“No.”
“You are.”
“She should not order people about so freely.”
“She is your sister.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the answer she is relying on.”
He looked up at her. Ashara’s eyes were warm with laughter, but there was kindness beneath it. She knew what this cost him and what it gave him. She usually did.
His sister would get a swift reply, and then they would attend to the business of readying for travel.
---
Cersei
Sunspear looked exactly as Cersei remembered it.
Storm stood at the foot of the gangplank and surveyed Dorne as if deciding whether the entire principality had been arranged to her satisfaction. The pup sat beside her, tongue lolling, already too large to be called little. In the last weeks he had acquired the lanky awkwardness of adolescence and was now tripping over too long legs instead of too large paws.
Oberyn looked delighted.
Cersei looked at him. “Do not.”
“I have said nothing.”
“You are preparing to.”
He huffed and smiled anyway.
Lyanna had both hands knotted in Storm’s ruff and was failing to look anything but pleased. “She likes it here.”
“She has been here four breaths,” Cersei said.
“She knows.”
“Of course she does.”
Storm yawned, showing enough teeth to make three dockhands reconsider their life’s ambitions.
Doran’s gaze moved from her to Oberyn, to Lyanna, to Storm, to the pup, and then back to Cersei.
“Well,” he said after a pause. “it is good to be home.”
Oberyn bowed with unnecessary flourish. “Brother. You sound as though home has acquired a new definition in our absence.”
“It has acquired wolves.”
“Direwolves,” Lyanna said. “And only one will be staying.”
The pup rose, trotted three steps forward, tripped over nothing visible, and recovered with the grave confidence of someone who had absolutely meant to do that. A small laugh sounded from the archway.
Tyene.
She darted from behind Ellaria’s skirts before anyone could stop her.
“Is he soft?” she asked.
“No,” Cersei said at the same time Lyanna said, “Yes.”
Tyene considered this. “May I touch him?”
The pup answered by bounding toward her.
Three guards moved. Storm’s head turned.
Every guard stopped.
Tyene squealed, with pure delight as the pup shoved his head into her middle and knocked her back against Ellaria’s legs.
Ellaria caught her with one hand and the pup with the other, laughing.
That was the first dangerous thing about Sunspear.
Not the heat. Not Doran’s patience. Not Oberyn’s easy cruelty when he thought someone needed cutting. Ellaria laughing in sunlight, with one of the girls clinging to her and a direwolf pup trying to climb into her lap.
Nymeria appeared next, trying to look as though she had not been lurking. Sarella and Arianne followed more slowly, eyes sharp and assessing. The children did not rush Storm. Sensible. They circled instead, full of questions and poorly hidden longing.
Storm tolerated them for exactly long enough to establish that she could.
Then she walked past them all, found the deepest shade beneath a stand of orange trees, turned twice, and lay down like a queen claiming a conquered pavilion.
The pup abandoned dignity and followed the children toward the Water Gardens.
---
It took barely two days for the wolves to make themselves the favorites of every child in the Water Gardens.
All of them. Oberyn’s daughters, the Water Gardens children bold enough to creep near, even the younger ones who shrieked if the pup turned too quickly. They loved Storm mostly from a safe distance and the pup with both hands, sticky fingers, stolen scraps, and a complete absence of judgment.
The pup loved them back with equal foolishness.
Storm spent most of her time in the shade.
She had found a place beneath a line of trees where water ran in narrow channels over pale stone, cool enough that children gathered nearby even when they pretended they were there for the wolves. Storm lay there every afternoon, huge and grey and impossible, while the pup sprawled upside down beside her with his paws in the air and his tongue hanging out.
“He looks dead,” Cersei said.
Lyanna, seated on the low wall beside her, glanced over. “He is comfortable.”
“He looks undignified.”
“He is a baby.”
“He is larger than most hounds.”
“He is still a baby.”
“That cannot be an excuse forever.”
Lyanna grinned. “Tell that to men.”
Cersei laughed before she could stop herself.
Oberyn, from his place at Ellaria’s side, looked over with immediate interest. “What have I done?”
“Nothing yet,” Cersei said.
“Cruel suspicion.”
“Earned suspicion.”
Doran arrived before Oberyn could make that worse.
He had chosen to walk today, slowly, with a cane and only two attendants trailing far enough back not to seem like a procession. His eyes went first to the children. Then to Storm. Then to the pup, who had rolled over and was now allowing Tyene to drape flowers across his chest.
“I had considered many difficulties,” Doran said at last.
Oberyn’s smile widened. “Only many?”
“The number has increased.”
Cersei folded her hands in her lap. “Surely not because of one wolf and a pup.”
Doran looked at Storm.
Storm opened one pale eye.
The pup sneezed flowers off his nose.
“No,” Doran said mildly. “Not surely.”
Lyanna bit her lip and failed to hide her amusement. Cersei saw the failure, and then saw Doran see it too.
Quiet bastard.
“You invited a Lannister marriage into Sunspear,” Oberyn said. “A little myth from the far North seems modest beside that.”
“I expected Lannisters,” Doran said. “I expected politics, and perhaps your enduring bad judgement.”
“How comforting to be known.”
“I did not expect creatures from children’s stories to take up residence in the Water Gardens.”
Storm closed her eye again, apparently done with him.
Cersei smiled. “The children seem pleased.”
“They do,” Doran said.
That was the problem, of course. The wolves were strange, but they had made themselves beloved before any sensible adult could decide what they meant. The children had claimed them in the way children claimed wonders, without asking whether wonder carried consequence.
Doran watched the pup lick Tyene’s cheek and knock a garland into the water.
His face remained mild, but Cersei knew better now. He was nonplussed. Somewhere behind that patient gaze, the Prince of Dorne was reviewing every expectation he had ever held about this alliance and discovering that none of them had included direwolves lounging under orange trees.
Cersei leaned back against the warm stone, watching Lyanna watch Storm, watching Ellaria smile at the children, watching Oberyn pretend he had not noticed how carefully his brother was not reacting.
For once, Cersei did not mind being watched in return.
After all, she had arrived with wolves.
---
Cersei
Ned arrived a week later, looking exactly like a man who had been summoned by his sister.
This was not to say he looked unwilling. Unwilling men dragged their feet, made poor excuses, and arrived late enough that everyone could see the insult. Ned arrived on the appointed day, with proper guards, proper baggage, proper courtesy, and a face solemn enough to suggest the journey itself had been a moral test.
Ashara rode beside him with the air of someone who knew this and found it gently funny. She wore pale violet and white, which should have been too soft against the hard afternoon light and instead made half the courtyard look poorly considered. The child was in her arms, wrapped in light cloth against the heat, dark head tucked beneath her chin.
Lyanna forgot the wolves entirely.
That was impressive. Lyanna had spent two days pretending she had a plan. Storm would remain in the shade until Ned had greeted them properly. The pup would be kept out of sight until Lyanna had prepared her brother.
Cersei had not believed a word of it.
Still, Lyanna had believed herself, which was often enough to make a thing temporarily true.
“Ned!”
There went dignity.
Lyanna crossed the courtyard before any proper greeting could be arranged. Storm lifted her head from the shade beneath the colonnade. The pup, sprawled half on his back with one paw in a fountain channel, did not yet notice. The Martell children did. They paused in their game, which meant half the Water Gardens turned toward the arrival at once.
Ned dismounted in time to catch his sister with one arm, which was good of him and also necessary, as Lyanna hit him with the full force of several years absence.
He held her tightly. For one breath, his solemn face broke. Cersei looked away before it became embarrassing. Not because she was moved. Obviously not. There were simply too many witnesses, and someone ought to have standards.
Ashara smiled over Lyanna’s shoulder. “Lady Lyanna.”
Lyanna pulled back just enough to turn, and then all the softness in her face sharpened into wonder.
“Oh,” she said.
The baby blinked at her. He had a round face, dark hair, grey eyes, and a solemnity that could only have come from his father.
Ashara shifted him outward. “This is Jasper.”
Lyanna took him carefully. “Hello,” she whispered.
Jasper stared back. Then he seized one of her loose curls in a fat fist.
Lyanna laughed. Not her usual laugh, sharp and quick and half a challenge. This was helpless. Horribly open. The kind of laugh that made people think they were allowed to see things.
Cersei shifted her weight and looked toward Oberyn, who stood beside her with altogether too much amusement in his face.
“Do not say it,” she murmured.
He grinned. “I would not dream of intruding upon such tenderness.”
Ellaria, standing at her other side, hid a smile poorly.
Lyanna had apparently forgotten every intention she had formed about wolves, introductions and timing. She rocked the baby, and Jasper accepted this with the grave patience of a prince being carried past lesser subjects.
Ned looked at her, then at Ashara.
Ashara’s smile softened. “He has been told a great deal about his aunt.”
Lyanna laughed again, and this time Ned did smile. Small. Private. There and gone before half the courtyard could make anything useful of it.
Cersei saw it anyway.
Jasper released Lyanna’s curl, considered her chin, then planted one damp hand against her mouth.
Lyanna froze.
Cersei did laugh then. Quietly. With restraint. Practically not laughter at all.
“Well,” she said, “he has Stark manners.”
Ned gave her a look. “Lady Cersei.”
“Lord Stark.”
“You seem well.”
“How alarming. I had hoped to appear mysterious.”
“You appear Dornish.”
Oberyn made a wounded sound. “Ned, my friend, have some care. She will take that as praise.”
Ned did smile then. “I know.”
Lyanna shifted Jasper carefully into one arm and reached for Ned with the other. He came without hesitation this time. Their embrace was awkward around the baby, and Jasper objected to being compressed between too many Starks by making a small indignant sound.
“Peace,” Lyanna murmured, pressing her cheek briefly to his dark hair. “No one is leaving you out.”
That was when the pup noticed.
His head lifted from the fountain channel. Water dripped from one ear. He stared across the courtyard at Ned Stark with sudden, absolute attention.
Storm stood.
Lyanna saw her move and went still.
“Oh,” she said again, but this oh was entirely different.
Ned followed her gaze, and then the pup came at him.
He hit Ned full in the chest, planting both forepaws on Ned’s shoulders and began licking his face with the wild devotion of a creature who had crossed half the world for this exact privilege.
For half a heartbeat, no one moved.
Then Oberyn started laughing.
That gave everyone else permission to breathe.
Lyanna clutched Jasper closer. “Oh no.”
Ashara pressed a hand over her mouth.
Cersei, too, was laughing. It was the only appropriate response.
Ned lay flat on the pale stone, staring up at the sky with a direwolf pup sprawled across him and washing his jaw as if the matter were both urgent and overdue. His hands rose, not to shove the creature off, but to grip its shoulders.
The pup wriggled, whined, licked his cheek again, and tried to burrow into him.
Ned’s face changed. Shock first. Then recognition without understanding. Then joy.
His fingers sank into the pup’s fur.
“Oh,” Ashara said softly.
Lyanna looked from Ned to the pup, and all her clever planning drained from her face.
“I was going to explain,” she said weakly.
Oberyn laughed harder.
Doran, who had been carried out to greet the guests with suitable dignity and was now watching a Stark lord be mauled by affection in his own courtyard, looked as though the gods had made a personal hobby of revising his expectations.
Ned pushed himself up on one elbow. The pup took this as encouragement and shoved its head under his chin.
“I see that,” Ned said.
Lyanna stepped toward him. Ashara reached for Jasper, and Lyanna surrendered him without looking, because her eyes were on her brother now.
Storm crossed the courtyard at a slower pace and stopped before Ned. The pup immediately tried to compose himself, failed, and sat on Ned’s leg.
Storm lowered her head.
Ned looked at her as if the North itself had walked into Dorne and found him wanting. Then Storm touched her nose to his brow. For just a moment, Ned closed his eyes. When he opened them, he put one hand on the pup’s head and the other against Storm’s neck.
“Hello,” he said.
The pup licked him again.
That ruined the solemnity, thank the gods.
Lyanna laughed, wetly. “He likes you.”
Ned looked down at the enormous pup pinning his leg. “So I gathered.”
“He was meant for you.”
Ned did not ask how she knew. He only looked at the pup again, then at Storm, then at Lyanna.
“Yes,” he said.
Ashara came to stand beside him, Jasper on her hip. The baby watched the pup with deep infant seriousness.
“Not near the baby’s face,” Ashara said.
Ned, still half on the ground, still covered in wolf affection, nodded as though this were a normal household instruction. “No.”
The pup sneezed.
Jasper laughed with delight.
Lyanna looked as if someone had handed her the sun.