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In the Vale, trapped in the silver, snow-filled tower and surrounded by jagged peaks, the black-grey malevolent rock that the old weir-gods pulled up from the earth softened and concealed by the snow that never stops falling to let the sun peek from the grey clouds, Sansa fades away and Alayne waxes.
She makes friends with Myranda Royce, following the lines of what Petyr her father told her to do. And if she deviates a little from his guidance, then she keeps it to herself: the journey does not matter, only the part where Petyr wins the game for her and she returns to Winterfell—returns home.
Alayne doesn’t expect Mya Stone to become her friend. It is certainly not what Petyr would have told her to do, make friends with a bastard girl, and compared to Winterfell and King’s Landing and her lady friends there, Mya is laughably base and crude.
And yet this bastard girl, in her leathers and boots covered in mud and mule dung from work and and hair cut shorter than Arya’s had been and carrying everything that Sansa has never been in the proud tilt of her chin, is more honest and, if truth be told, beautiful, than the great majority of the noble ladies that Sansa has met.
There is a dilemma in there, that Mya is baseborn, the lowest of the low, and yet she is better than many of the nobleborns that she had met when she was still Sansa. But when she is with Mya, there is no dilemma left to feel at all.
*
Sansa Stark might have been a lady, but Alayne Stone is a bastard. And bastards may be dirt on a fine silken slipper, but bastards are free of gilded cages and scarred, burned knights and their unwanted kisses and able to love whoever they want.
Alayne is still getting used to being free.
*
It gets lonely, with only the mountains and her few friends for company, for Petyr is never there. Alayne’s heart is even lonelier.
Loneliness is like a hollow emptiness inside her, and Alayne searches desperately for something to fill her heart up with. She ends up with Mya, rather than a blank memory of a man, because Mya is good and real and warm, and for no other reason than that. Alayne is in love with Mya because she lacks others to love, or so she tells herself.
She is lying. There are plenty of men whom she could love, but Alayne’s foolish, utterly human heart has chosen Mya. The bastard girl, who she cannot wed, and who is of no help when she plays the game as Petyr wants her to do.
Humans are not pieces to be moved on a cyvasse board, but heartstrings can be tugged and manipulated. Feelings make her vulnerable, and cannot be changed, no matter whether her name changes.
At least she has fallen in love with someone who is kind and gentle, touching the mules softly and speaking to Alayne without any hatred, merely simple bastard kinship. At least Mya is true when she speaks, unlike Alayne. The entirety of Alayne herself is built on a web of lies.
Mya tells her nothing but the truth, but Alayne is full of dirty lies put into her mouth by Petyr.
*
The wind over the mountains is cold, and snowflakes sting Alayne’s cheeks, but she still remains outside. It gives her a sense of freedom, reminds her that she can still see the sky. As long as the sky is washed in grey and there are clouds above her, Alayne is free.
“What are you doing, spending so long out here?” Mya half-yells, hurrying and taking Alayne’s clammy, purpling hands in her own. Her hands are gloved with black, and she rubs her clad fingers over Alayne’s bare and cold ones, warming her up.
Alayne shrugs, and her dyed-brown hair twists in the winter winds. “I like it.”
“Well,” Mya replies in her businesslike, easily commanding way as she clasps Alayne’s hands in hers, “you’ll freeze half to death out here. You should come inside.”
“Not yet,” Alayne answers, lifting her gaze to Mya’s with flushed pink cheeks and feeling her heart pound heavily against her chest, begging for all the love that is contained inside of it to be let out. “I have… something I want to tell you.”
Mya leans against the dark stonework of the tower, one arm digging into the snow that heaps up on the tower’s sharp edges and the lines where one could fall from, into the empty unloving air and ground waiting below. “What is it?”
Her breath leaves her lips in pale clouds, disappearing into the endlessness of the mountains and the snow. “Mya, I—I like you. In the way that a lady wife likes her lord. And I don’t know if I’m meant to like someone else, a man, but I like you. And I don’t know what to do about it, so—”
One of Mya’s hands comes up to cup her cheek, ungloved. Alayne feels her heart thumping as Mya traces the curl of her lips.
“Is that all you want to tell me?” She asks.
There is another secret (there is always another), locked inside Alayne: the secret of Sansa Stark. But Alayne will never tell that one, not to Mya, and she shakes her head.
“Oh, Alayne, you foolish, beautiful girl,” Mya smiles softly against the harsh wind and sharp snowflakes, running her thumb over Alayne’s cold-chapped lips. “You don’t have to be so nervous, not around me. We’re bastards, remember?”
When the wind skims her cheek, turned to the mountains outside and unprotected by Mya’s hand, Alayne shivers. “I know. But, Mya, do you like me as well?”
Mya laughs, and the sound rings out over the mountains brighter than the silvered strings of the high harp. “I thought you knew, Alayne.” She slides one fingertip to press against the centre of Alayne’s lips. “I do.”
“Oh,” Alayne murmurs, melting into Mya’s warmth and reassuring hand. “Truly?”
“Yes, Alayne,” Mya says, and leans towards her, warm breath falling on Alayne’s lips. “Do you wish to kiss me?”
Alayne nods, and her lips meet Mya’s with nothing but softness and kindness.
She is a daughter of winter, frozen within walls of ice and stone, but with Mya’s lips on hers she is as light and hazy-warm as the last drops of summer days.