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Perhaps it had been naive to think it would never happen to her.
She was a Princess now, after all.
If a powerful Lord offers his army and loyalty to the Queen in exchange for nothing but a Princess to wed, then a Princess to wed is exactly what the Lord would get.
She’d sworn blind that she wouldn’t do it, that she didn’t care what her duty was, she didn’t care what allegiance the Dragon Queen desire. She would never be forced into a marriage with a man who only wanted her for her family name. A husband who cared not for her heart or her brain, only the body that would carry his sons.
It sickened her.
“You could grow to love him,” Jon had told her, not at all convincingly. “As Father and your Mother did.”
But he was wrong.
Arya knew love; she knew what it was to love a man, to know that he loved her in return. She knew it with her stupid, bullheaded, bastard boy. She would never feel the same affection for some stuck up Lord who would expect her to do nothing but run his castle and raise his children, whilst he spent his days on the battlefields and his nights at the brothels.
Gendry would never ask that of her. He knew who she was and he loved her because of who she was, not in spite of it.
He would say how he loved watching her wield the weapons he’d made specially for her. He’d tell her she was the strongest person he’d ever met, the best fighter he’d ever seen, the most beautiful woman in the world.
“How can I be all those at once?” she’d laughed, tucked into his side as they lay beneath her furs.
“Because you’re Arya,” he’d replied in an instant, as if it should have been obvious.
She knew then, in that exact moment, that she knew what love was. True love, not love for politics or love you had to work for. True love.
How could she possibly give that up? Why should she?
She was expected to give up everything - not just her love, not just her home, but everything about herself. Everything that made Arya Stark, Arya Stark.
She had been No One before. She would not be No One again, and she would definitely not be reduced to a Lord’s wife.
“He’s not a cruel man, Arya,” Jon sighed, and all Arya could think was how he looked and sounded as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
She supposed that was what happened when you became a King.
Arya was seething, struggling to believe that her beloved brother would even consider marrying her against her will. After everything they had been through, he was willing to sell her like cattle, off to the highest bidder. But she knew, deep down, this wasn’t her brother talking; it was his Queen.
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care if he’s a cruel man or a kind man, I don’t want to marry him. I’ll kill him before I marry him.”
She hadn’t told Gendry of the suggestion of the alliance, mainly because she didn’t know how, but also because she wanted to believe Jon when he said he would get her out of it before an official betrothal was made.
Yet she couldn’t risk that. She lay beneath him on the tiny cot in the back of the forge, one of his hands in her hair and the other on her thigh, his lips against her neck. With every gentle kiss against her skin, she knew she could never risk losing him. She wouldn’t, not again.
“Run away with me.”
His kisses stopped, as he raised his head to look down at her curiously.
“What?” he’d asked, a low chuckle escaping lips as if he hadn’t quite processed what she had said.
“Run away with me,” she repeated, softly bringing her hands up to cup his face. She pulled him down slightly, pressing a kiss to his mouth. “I need to leave and I want you to come with me.”
“Why would you need to leave?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Will you come with me or not?”
“I’d go anywhere with you,” he breathed against her as he closed the space between their lips again. “I’d follow you to the ends of the world and back again.”