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The roaring warmth of daylight made sleep instantly impossible, and Lyanna Stark awoke drenched in sweat.
Even in spring, even in the mountains, the southern sun was insufferably hot for a northerner born and bred. She tried to imagine the taste of icicles on her tongue, or the numbing cold of a snowball in her bare hands, but those memories belonged to another lifetime, another Lyanna. The winter that had lasted for much of her childhood was over, and she was no longer a child.
As the fog of sleep burned away, Lyanna sensed that she was alone. Her eyes flew open and narrowed against the bright sunlight. She glanced at the other side of the bed and found it empty. She called out her lover’s name. Her voice pealed down the stone walls of the tower, but she received no answer from below.
My lover. Yes, and also my champion.
He had laid a crown of winter roses in her lap, naming her the tournament’s Queen of Love and Beauty. He was called the dragon prince. Was that why her body had burned beneath his stare?
My lover. My champion. And lately, my fellow runaway.
She remembered moonlight on the snow as they fled south together, breathless with love and adventure. He was married. She was promised. None of it mattered. He had led her over a thousand leagues to the abandoned tower where they lived now in stolen happiness.
Throwing off the bedcovers, Lyanna got up and walked to the eastern window. She shaded her eyes as she took in the view. The nearby Red Mountains of Dorne were there, as they always were, drenched in the colour of dried blood. The sun shone fiercely between their peaks, hurling long shadows from the trees clustered bravely here and there. The shadows pointed towards her like dark outstretched fingers, and she stared back defiantly, yet she saw no sign of her lover. She wondered when he would return from wherever he had gone, but she resolved to make the most of her solitude.
She turned from the window and mulled over getting dressed. What little clothing of her own she had brought from the north was too heavy and warm, so she searched through his until she found a shirt and breeches that fit her well enough. As she bent to roll up the pant legs her hair tumbled around her shoulders, wild with sleep and neglect. Her septa would be horrified by her appearance, but she was a world away in Winterfell. Lyanna took the spiraling stone stairs two at a time as she went down, pausing to snatch up a peach and a ruby-pommeled knife from the table before heading out the door.
Lyanna wandered up the mountain road to where it curved around a grove of trees. It was a place she often came to explore when she was homesick. It reminded her of the wolfswood, though the trees here were bright and strange, with broad green leaves and thin peeling bark. She found a shaded place to sit near the icy mountain creek that gave the trees life. When she finished the peach she pressed its stone into the soil, where perhaps someday it would grow.
She had stretched herself out in the grass when she thought she heard faint music coming from upstream. Lyanna held her breath and listened. Yes. Over the murmur of water and rustling leaves, she could hear silvery notes scaling the air. She sprang to her feet and followed the sound. Her heart rose in her chest as she ran.
She found him seated on the stream bank with his harp rested on his knee. Wrought of silver, its pillar was carved in the likeness of a three-headed dragon. The sun reaching through the leaves glinted in its six ruby eyes. But it was the eyes of the harpist that were much dearer to Lyanna, and they turned towards her as she approached. And as much as she worshiped his eyes she also loved to watch his hands, those long, slender fingers that played music as deftly as they wielded sword and lance. She listened as he played a phrase, paused a moment, then played it again, sometimes adding, sometimes subtracting, always shaping something new. She thought of a time she had watched the blacksmith at Winterfell forging a sword.
As the last notes faded away, he set his harp in the grass beside him. Lyanna closed the distance between and boldly sat herself in his lap. His hands rose in surprise, then settled on her hips.
“My prince has many talents,” Lyanna sighed, grinning.
Rhaegar of House Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone, heir to the throne of the Seven Kingdoms, and many other titles besides, blushed. “My lady is kind to say so,” he murmured.
Lyanna made a face. “I’m no lady, remember?” she replied archly. “Ladies save themselves for their arranged marriages.”
That prompted laughter, and an embrace. His kiss promised fire later. Blood of the dragon, Lyanna thought.
She rested a cheek on his shoulder. “I wondered where you had gone," she said.
He was silent a moment, and Lyanna sensed his mood darken. “A letter came last night.”
Lyanna froze. "From?"
“My father.”
Seven hells. It was the first they had heard from the king since they had run away together. She sat back and searched his face for a clue about what the letter might have said. She highly doubted His Grace wished them happiness together, but decided that if Rhaegar wanted to tell her, he would. Instead she asked, “He knows we’re here?”
"Lord Varys knows, at least," he replied. "He was the one who told me that this would be a good place for us to hide, and made all the arrangements. No one is better at keeping secrets than he is, but there is not much he could do if the king commanded him to send a message to me."
"Of course not," Lyanna said quickly. Well, what more could she say? A dozen angry retorts rose in her throat against the king meddling with their happiness, but she held her tongue.
They sat together in brooding silence for a few minutes.
“I would not have left without telling you,” Rhaegar told her suddenly, seeming to sense her agitation.
Lyanna felt an ache in her throat. “But one day you are going to have to leave, she said, “and you aren’t going to come back.” She tried to mask her chagrin by speaking matter-of-factly, but voicing her thoughts only served to bring their meaning home all the harder. Her eyes burned.
"Lyanna," Rhaegar protested, but she shook her head and kissed him silent. Let him keep his secrets. She had one of her own.
My lover. My champion. And the father of my child.