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“Do you want to know a secret?” Daena whispered as they looked up at what remained of the castle. “They say it’s haunted.”
Baelor did his best to keep his face from showing any trace of emotion, though a cold shiver crawled its way down his spine. At eight, he ought to be wise enough now not to let Daena get under his skin. But if his sister had any gift to her credit, it was a certain knack for finding any loose thread and slowly but surely tugging until at last he came unraveled.
Mother said she only behaved this way because she was jealous. He never would have believed it—not of Daena, who everyone said would be as pretty as their mother was, and whose quick mind had been honed under the tutelage of the King’s Hand himself—if he hadn’t overheard her speaking to Father one day.
“…isn’t fair,” Daena was saying. “Targaryen siblings married all the time in Old Westeros.”
“Brothers and sisters oughtn’t to marry,” came Father’s response. He sounded grave, as always, though Baelor knew well enough how quick his eyes could warm to a smile, even if it didn’t show on his lips or in his voice. “Therein lies madness. That’s why your mother and I did away with the practice.”
A moment passed, and something creaked on the bed as if he had moved to sit beside her. “But you don’t actually want to marry your brother. Do you, Daena?”
Baelor blanched at the thought. He would rather marry a white walker, and would have gladly said so if he’d been asked, though Mother had told him never to speak of those creatures in front of Father, even in jest.
To his relief, Daena snorted. “No. But if I don’t marry Baelor, I will only be sister to the king, instead of a queen like Mother.”
“Sisters make wonderful advisors. You could be a great friend to Baelor, if you so chose.”
“It isn’t fair,” Daena said again, and this time Baelor was surprised to hear the tears in her voice. “I’m older. I should be queen, and Baelor my advisor.”
Father was silent for a long moment. Baelor knew it was because he was thinking of the right thing to say. That was one of his favorite things about Father; that he never said only what they might want to hear just because they were children. “It’s true, not all the customs from the Westeros that was have been done away with. Your mother would have liked to be queen of her own right, as well, and many thought she should be. But if that had been so, she would have had no need to marry me, and we would not have you. Sometimes we must make the best of what life gives to us, and sometimes we learn only later that it is what’s best for us, in the end…”
Baelor tried to remind himself of that conversation now as he stared up at the place called Winterfell. Daena was only trying to scare him, because she could never be queen and thought he ought to be punished for that. Still, as he looked at the half-burnt ruins—the carcass of what had once been a great beast of a castle—he thought if there was any place in the world that could be haunted, it would be this.
“There’s no such thing as spirits,” he said at last, and was proud that his voice did not tremor, even a little.
Daena shrugged her shoulders, venturing forward a few steps. Baelor had to check the impulse to call out to her not to go too close, his nails digging deep into the palms of his hands. “Believe that if you wish, but it’s true. Everyone knows it.”
He watched her as she danced a weaving line in front of him, dipping closer and closer with every step. “Father grew up here,” he reminded her, “and he never said anything about spirits.”
“That’s because it wasn’t haunted then. But all sorts of horrible things happened after he left. A little boy was pushed from a tower. Two more were burned up. Father’s uncle had his head chopped off, and his cousin and aunt were murdered at a wedding so awful they gave it its own name.”
She spoke so matter-of-factly that it was becoming increasingly difficult not to believe her. Still, Baelor kept his face a stone as she pressed on, “But it isn’t any of those wretched souls who haunts the castle. It’s a woman. The Lady of Winterfell, they call her.”
Baelor swallowed, throat crackling like parchment. “What happened to her?”
Daena turned to face him, eyes gleaming with the juicy horror of the tale. “It isn’t what was done to her, it’s what she did. She was another of Father’s cousins, though she must have been very wicked because he never speaks of her.”
“Then how did you hear of her?”
She sniffed at this. “I have my sources.”
Varys, no doubt. The eunuch made Baelor shiver to think of, but Daena had him wrapped around her little finger.
“They say her name was Sansa,” she continued, “and that she had red hair and was very beautiful. The most beautiful woman anyone had ever seen—except for Mother, of course. And she was a true daughter of winter, because everything she touched died.
“She was betrothed to marry a king, but when he passed her over for another, he choked on his own stew at his wedding feast. She escaped and fled to a kingdom up in the clouds and married a handsome knight, but he fell and broke his neck.
“At last, she returned to Winterfell with her new husband. Some people called her Queen of the North, but that was only because her parents and all of her siblings were already dead. And anyway, she couldn’t have really been queen because Mother was the true queen, but she wanted this frozen wasteland to be her own.”
For a moment, Baelor could almost see her, looking out of the turret window, long red hair blowing in the breeze. “Was she happy here?” he asked, trying to imagine away the tears he could not help but envision in her eyes.
Daena scoffed. “What do you think? Her other husband died, too, and this time everyone knew it was no accident, because she’d slit his throat. She didn’t even try to deny it—lost her mind, they say. Some people wanted to have her executed, but Father stepped in. She was his cousin, you know. He arranged so that she could never leave here, and that she would be left in peace.”
Yes, that seemed right. Father would extend such a kindness, even to a murderess, if he thought she deserved it. Especially if she was family.
“Not that it mattered.” Daena squinted up at the ash-riddled ruins. “She died not long after, but not before taking one last thing. A direwolf that used to follow Father wherever he went, whose name was Ghost. They say when she died, Ghost wouldn’t stop howling all night, and in the morning he was gone. Sometimes people ‘round these parts say they see him in the woods—with another wolf, but not one of flesh and blood. It’s the Lady’s spirit in wolf form, they say, doomed to wander the woods for eternity for the crimes she committed in this life. And sometimes in the castle, you can still hear her singing—songs of love, but only the ones that end happily.”
The woods hung in the air a long moment, a puff of mist in the cool, brisk afternoon. At last, Baelor shook his head. “I don’t believe you. Why would Father bring us here if there was a murderer’s ghost wandering about?”
Daena shrugged. “Believe it or not.” She glanced up at Winterfell, squinting against the dipping sun. “But I’ll tell you this…”
Abruptly, she scooped down, gathering a handful of pebbles and throwing them as hard as she could toward the castle. “I’m not afraid of you, Lady Sansa!” she cried. “You leave us alone!”
“Daena!”
Both of them started as Father approached, boots crunching across the snow and gravel. He had been down in the tombs paying his respects to his ancestors, and Baelor could see from the look on Daena’s face that she hadn’t expected him back so soon.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Father demanded. It was unusual to see him so angry. Even when people in the Great Hall shouted things at him, even when Tyrion made one of his cutting jokes, even when Daena was at her most trying, Baelor had never known Father to raise his voice.
He expected Daena to cow back, but she covered her surprise with a defiant raise of her chin. “Well, I’m not afraid. She’s only a stupid ghost, and she’s dead now, and I’m glad.”
Father stopped in his tracks at that, and beneath his anger, Baelor could see he looked winded, as though he’d had hilt of a sword driven into his gut.
“Come,” he said at last. “It’s late. Maester Tarly will be wondering where we are.”
***
They rode in silence back to the inn. Baelor wanted to stay awake to watch the strange icy landscape pass by his window, but it had been a long day of travel, and soon he felt his eyes begin to droop.
When he woke, his face was pressed into Father’s arm, and he could hear the low rumblings of the king’s voice as he spoke. Instinct told Baelor to keep still for fear of interrupting the conversation, which he hoped would be Daena getting a good scolding for her rudeness that afternoon. Unable to resist, he cracked one eye open, just a little.
“…did you hear such a tale?”
Daena’s look was sullen as she glared back at her father. “Some people at the palace. I tried asking Mother about it, but she wouldn’t say. She looked like she might cry.”
Father sighed, rubbing at his face with his free hand. “Your mother doesn’t like to speak of such things, it’s true.”
“They say Mother is jealous.”
“Who says such things, Daena?”
“They say she’s jealous because you loved her. The dead lady.”
Baelor held his breath, waiting for his father to deny it. He loved Mother and only Mother.
But Father didn’t say anything.
“They say she was the one you truly loved, that you were forced to marry Mother to bring peace to the kingdom. And that was why she went mad and killed her husband. And that’s why Mother won’t have her name spoken in King’s Landing.”
Baelor felt Father stir a little—carefully, so as not to disturb him. “There is some truth to it; I won’t lie and say otherwise. But you’re wrong on two counts. Sansa did not kill her husband because she went mad. She did so because he was a cruel man who manipulated her into marrying him with the promise he would return her siblings to her, then arranged to have them killed to keep her as his own.
“And though it is true it may have been a marriage borne of duty, I do love your mother. Someday when you have seen something of love for yourself, you will understand that it comes in more than one shape alone.”
Baelor saw the tremble of Daena’s chin as she struggled not to cry. “I hate her.”
Father sighed. “I won’t tell you to feel otherwise. But I wish you wouldn’t. Your mother doesn’t, despite what you might have been told. There is no room for anything in Dany’s heart but compassion for someone who was so cruelly mistreated by the world, time and time again.”
And after that, they were both of them silent.
Baelor put on a good show of pretending to be woken as they reached the inn. Father picked him up easily, for all of Baelor’s protesting that he was too old for that now, and it felt nice to be engulfed in his arms. Safe. There were no such things as monsters when Father was around.
“It isn’t true, is it?” Baelor couldn’t help but ask as Father tucked him into bed. “That Winterfell is haunted?”
Father waited so long to respond that Baelor was nearly asleep again when he reached out to stroke back the blonde curls from his forehead. “No, little dragon,” he said at last. “The only thing the Lady of Winterfell haunts is me.”
The End