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“Were you in love, Lyanna?” you tearfully ask over a baby’s cries, holding my cold hand. “Were you in love, sister? Tell me the rivers ran red for love. Give me that much.”
I did not love Rhaegar.
I did not love him when his long fingers plucked out the notes of a sad song, his silver voice singing a bride’s tears on her wedding day. I wept, because the girl in the song — she was me.
I did not love him when he leaned over from the saddle with a wreath of winter roses. They were my favorite flower; at least, they used to be, before his metal gauntlet caught in my tangled curls as he queened me. He pulled out a lock of my hair when he drew away impatiently. I should have seen he wanted a piece of me, even then. In the silence, with every face turned toward me, I was the only one who could hear the princess screaming, hoarse screams. I dropped my eyes. I did not know when I would be able to raise them again.
I did not love Rhaegar, not even as he held out his hand in the hour of the wolf. “Come with me. I can take you away.” I hesitantly agreed. I was no stranger to horses, and the prince and his Kingsquard knights had plenty to spare, but he insisted I climb up in front of him — another warning I missed. I could barely breathe, he held me so tightly, but the wind was in my hair and at last I was outracing everyone.
I did not love him when the fingers that knew my song suddenly sought notes to play on my bare skin, with no care for harmony. Just because I looked a woman did not mean I knew what women know. I was not yet sixteen.
I screamed at him when word came of our brother and father. Burned. Strangled. I understood how Princess Elia must have felt, screaming for so long with no one listening. I screamed as he kissed my swelling belly and rode away without a word, like I was nothing more than eggshell. Made to be broken and discarded, no matter how beautiful.
I whispered to the baby moving in my belly, quietly, so Rhaegar’s knights wouldn’t hear. I told him to be headstrong like Brandon, to be true like Benjen, to be noble like you. He learned nothing of his father, not from me.
I screamed in my bed of blood. I hated him by the time I heard your sword singing to me, singing sweeter than Rhaegar ever sang. I screamed at the pain, screamed in triumph. I was alive and he dead.
I screamed too soon.
“Promise me. Promise me he will know nothing of his father. Keep him safe. Promise me, Ned.”
“Were you in love, Lyanna?” you tearfully ask over a baby’s cries, holding my cold hand. “Were you in love, sister? Tell me the rivers ran red for love. Give me that much.”
I was, dearest Ned. I was.
I was in love with having a choice. Rhaegar opened my cage, and said I could run free, if only I chose to. He said a direwolf was no pet, and I agreed.
It was not my fault I was deceived. I was not yet sixteen.