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She’d forgotten how badly it stung to be rejected by Cregan Stark.
Her bluecloaks, however, had not. As soon as the news broke that she had been moved out of the Lord’s Quarters, they had been quick to organize…a wake? A mourning period? For her loss in bed-status.
“He’s a strange man, letting you be in his bed for that long and not doing a thing about it,” Quinn said, eventually, when her mind was finally fuzzy with ale and good company, “Very strange.”
“Stubborn,” Baela corrected, mouth pursed. Strange was too close to an insult and in her opinion, she was the only one at the table allowed to insult the Lord of Winterfell. Stubborn was simply fact, bitterly annoying fact.
“You don’t think he’ll send us away?”
“He’s a man of his word,” She wrinkled her nose, “Even when he’s being a stubborn mule about it. We’re not going anywhere.”
Quinn nodded. The war and difficult journey north had aged him even more than his fifty years, the crows feet at the corners of his eyes far more pronounced than in the sunlight of High Tide, “The others will be sailing soon. I was able to write to Corde a few weeks ago, once it was safe.”
A smile bloomed on his face, “I’m a father, my Lady. A little girl.”
It was a kick in the chest, one of guilt and also of a sort of dulled grief. The kind that came with watching someone live the life you couldn’t quite claim for yourself.
“I’m sorry to have kept you from them.” She reached over, squeezing his hand once before withdrawing as she refocused herself and pushed a smile onto her features, “She’s quite fortunate to have you for a father.”
“As if Corde would have ever forgiven me for leaving your side and abandoning you to the council’s whims. You couldn’t have rid yourself of me if you tried.”
The ale must have loosened her tongue, because she found herself saying something she would have much rather stayed in her aching head, “Well, you’ll be the first to choose to remain with me.”
Quinn frowned, a fatherly look in his eye that made her chest hurt, “Lord Stark may be a stubborn man, but he is just that, a man, and as my dear Corde would say, all men are fools when it comes to their women. Perhaps speaking to him-”
“He’s already made his feelings quite clear.”
“Yes,” He smirked and she felt a bit mocked, “He has. I seem to recall a day in this very tavern where he dragged you out by the arm and had you pressed against the wall outside.”
She prayed he couldn’t see her flush as it raced from the tips of her ears down past her collar, but the twinkle in his eye told her he definitely could, “It may have happened like that, yes. Though if you’re suggesting I recreate the moment to inspire some action, someone has seemed to have paid my favorite boy to leave town and I’m not sure any other man would wish to put himself in harm’s way when he might lose his life or his parts to a very angry Northerner.”
Quinn tipped his mug in the direction of the dancers, where some of her men sat and enjoyed the sights, “Fortune favors you, my Lady, as we have a rather brave, reckless, and conveniently cockless man for the job.”
Across the room, one of her men, Bellen, threw his head back in a laugh.
. . .
“Where did you hide your nightgown?”
A sharp grin, the warmth of wine in her belly, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
A little laugh escaped her, bubbling, foreign after all this time, as he rolled his eyes at her. As he found a nightshirt in his dresser and coaxed her arms up so he could thread limb and head through it till she was drowning in wool.
“The maids will talk,” She said with a raised brow.
“It’s winter,” he returned, lying down next to her, just far away enough that they wouldn’t touch accidentally, “They’ll be bored by a fortnight’s end, searching for something new to gossip about.”
She lay there, in a bed anointed with their blood, Jace’s blood, anointed with mercy, with loving-kindness, with the touch of his hand on the crown of her head, and was warmed.
. . .
“A bit higher, I think.”
Bellen rolled his eyes, reattaching his mouth to her neck but this time at her pulse.
“How’s that?”
She lifted the hand mirror to look at the mark and grinned.
“Perfect.”
. . .
He rarely drank. At least, rarely with her, but one night he brought the bottle himself.
It was good wine, well-made from the Arbor, finer fare than she’d expect this far North. Old too, from before the reign of King Jaehaerys. He told her his great-grandfather bought it for one of Queen Alysanne’s visits, a very special treat indeed from what she knew about Alaric Stark.
They drank and laughed and spoke of kinder things. The histories that did not wound them, battles that happened long before their time, gossip and rumors that made him shake his head and laugh at her. She blinked and she was in his lap, his hair messy from her hands as his mouth drifted lower on her neck, down to the dip of her chest. His scarred hand came up, catching in her hair, short enough that she could turn her face to kiss his palm.
The scar itself set her honey-slow, drunken mind adrift, and she ruined it all with Jacaerys’ name on her tongue.
. . .
“Does she have anything lower?”
Jaeda rolled her eyes at Bellen, “If we go any lower, the whole front of the dress will fall apart. There’s only so many stitches I can take out of a neckline, Len.”
Baela sank farther into the foamy bathwater behind the folding screen, rubbing at her closed eyes in an attempt to dispel the drumming pain in her skull. She hadn’t slept well. From the look on Cregan’s face, he hadn’t either, not that he’d ever admit it.
“A different dress, maybe,” Jaeda said, “A spring one maybe, she can wear a fur cloak with it. Though, she’ll freeze her tits off in this weather if she’s not careful”
. . .
It was always worth a try, in her opinion, to try to return to how things were before she accidentally said Jace’s name.
There was also the possibility that Cregan might appreciate the execution of a well-planned ambush, even if he’ was the victim of it. That he’d give in to her whims and the heat they both knew was between them with a bit of tactical seduction.
Unfortunately, she forgot that Starks were known for their stubborn nature and well-orchestrated counterattacks. The moment she’d thrown her leg over his waist, it had been over, his arm catching her by the waist and rolling her back to the mattress next to him. Down onto her belly with the heat of his arm across the small of her back.
“Pest,” he called her, “Brat.”
Rude.
“I’m going back to my whore.”
She lifted up onto her elbows, smug in her taunts.
“Good, maybe then I’ll get some peace and quiet.”
Suddenly less smug, Baela lashed out, tried to kick him, to draw out a reaction to match her own, to ignite the fire that burned best when they fight, the fire that felt like living. His forearm slipped down her bottom, freezing her in place for a hopeful victory, only for the weight to settle on her thighs instead, preventing her from kicking him again. There was a strip of skin where they meet, where her nightgown has ridden up her thighs beneath his arm, it burned like fire.
“Cregan,” She whined, because he was far too mean to her.
She couldn’t believe Jace would leave their daughter’s care to someone so mean. The cruelest man in the North.
“Sleep,” he hushed her, “Gods, you’re such a brat.”
. . .
“A long time ago, a man swindled me out of a good bit of coin, enough to buy my own ship. So I seduced his wife and brought her more pleasure without a cock than he ever could have with his and made sure he found out about it! Naturally, he wished to have me gelded for the crime against him and cornered me with a friend of his late one night at the docks. I wish you could have seen his face when I lost my drawers and there was nothing more to lose-“
Her laugh echoed in the hallway outside of the Lord’s quarters, just a few doors down from her own.
“Thank the gods for Corde, she showed up before they could figure out a new plan and they died swiftly, my trousers still around my ankles. I got my gold, my ship, and we sailed to Driftmark to make our fortunes away from the trials of our youth.”
. . .
He’d left her for days, which she didn’t consider to be very good behavior for a host to be showing to one’s guests.
She was going to let him bathe in peace, she really had planned to, mainly so she could get an eyeful for her own entertainment after so many days all lonely and abandoned. But he just took so long and the water was steaming and lovely and how could she resist? And what man wouldn’t appreciate the sight of a lady in his tub after a long journey surrounded by snow and sweating, foul-tempered convicts at the Wall?
If she reasoned it out that way, then her stealing his bath was a good thing for him. It was a gift. He should thank her, really.
Instead, he taunted her with his skin and then sat there, out of reach, and bathed out of a bucket. Horrible man. Absolutely awful. She wanted to lick him.
. . .
It was nice to have a warm bed again, but it wasn’t enough.
Bellen’s chest was broad, but not broad enough, legs short enough that their feet could accidentally tangle beneath the furs. It wasn’t the first time they’d slept like this, far from that, most of the trip north had found the company huddled for warmth as the brutal winter set in. Though, she was sure Cregan would have called it a light fall snow. He was smug like that, it made her want to take him to Pentos and Lys and watch him melt for an hour or too before calling it a balmy spring day.
Though, she supposed the only way she’d ever be able to go that far south again was as Cregan Stark’s wife. There was no other man she could trust with that duty and to step foot south of the Neck alone would be a death sentence for her, in truth. If she had been caught by the council on her way out of King’s Landing…
Well, she’d had a plan. She was thankful it wasn’t one she’d had to enact. It didn’t end well for anyone, especially not her, but in her mind it was preferable to marrying to raise a man’s status and then dying his wife. Locked away forever to play hostess and broodmare and bride in a castle of the council's choosing.
If she would die anyone’s wife, die with any name but the Targaryen one, it would be here in the North. There was no other option. She would die as herself, one way or another.
As if summoned by her thoughts, the door to her room swung open, cracking loudly against the wall. It startled her, startled Bellen too, his hand flying to the side of the bed where he’d left his sword and belt. The fear bled out of her immediately, even in the dark she knew Cregan’s frame, the broad lines of him against the lantern in the hall. Finally. And to think she had bet it would take him two more days, till the night before the arrival of the council representatives. She owed Quinn coin now, whether she was his wife or not in the morning, as he had shown up.
She couldn’t even be bothered to keep the smirk off her face.
“Liar,” she’d called him before, and now she stared the truth in the face as he shifted and the firelight finally caught on his features.
Liar, liar, liar, if there was ever an occasion to be smug, it was right then, with Cregan Stark standing in the doorway saying, “I need to speak with your lady.”
“Go,” Baela said, not even glancing over at Bellen, “I won’t be needing you, tonight.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bellen’s lip twitch, but he left without a word. The door shut heavy behind him.
She had never been accused of witchcraft before, it was amusing in how it fell from his mouth. In how he seemed to believe it, believe that she was capable of driving men to madness in that way. His madness was his own, caused by him, fed by him, cured by a choice that only he could make for himself.
“I won’t raise another man’s child in my house.”
“Then don’t,” She said.
His fingers caught her by the chin, sword callus against the line of her jaw, “I won’t raise a dead man’s either. They’ll never be his, they’ll be mine or they won’t be at all.”
Ah, she realized then, that’s what it is.
“If I just wanted a babe for him, they’d be born by now, my Lord Stark. There are many less stubborn men to be found for the task.”
And yet I stayed, the unsaid hung between them, ringing loud, deafening, I wanted them with you.
He let go of her chin then, hesitated for a moment after his hand fell to his side, and then his voice rang true and certain.
“Get your boots on.” He no longer hesitated, “There's still snow in the godswood, my Lady Stark.”
. . .
Her arms ached as she took up the sword, strained from disuse and the taut skin of where her burns had scarred.
“Be warned,” She called out across the yard to where Cregan Stark stood, broad and tall as the mountain ranges, “I will cut off the hand of any man who seeks to harm what is mine, lord or soldier. They saved me, I will die with them if I must.”
The silence fell tense over the yard, and then Cregan Stark smiled.
“If her ladyship is so fond of these dogs, fond enough to kill and die at their side, then I will permit her to keep them.”
. . .
Beneath the weirwood, his eyes slipped down to the black cloak around her shoulders.
She’d known he would recognize it, she’d wanted him to, needed him to understand her meaning in choosing it for this. The cloak she had worn as she arrived, broken and tired and praying to be saved or to die free. The cloak Jace had worn as he swore a blood oath beneath these same branches years ago.
“Before the old gods, do you take this man?”
They had not called for witnesses. Cregan spoke for himself, the only sound in the godswood other than the rustle of the leaves in the wind.
“I take this man.”
Her eyes did not leave him as he unclasped the three-headed dragon at her neck, the cloak falling away to the snow beneath them. It felt like a trance, watching his hands rise to the clasp of his own cloak, the slide of the fur from his shoulders, the way it flared and swept the snow beneath them as it encircled her. His hands were warm despite his missing gloves where they brushed against her throat at the clasp, warmer still as they dropped to hold hers, turning them both to face the tree and kneel.
Protect him, she found herself saying to the old gods, though she had never asked anything of them, and thank you. For this, for him. For everything.
Her closed eyes burned with tears but they were not of grief. She would die his wife, thank the gods. She would die his wife, she would die as herself. She would make a home of her own here, his bed would be hers once more, his arms hers, his very being hers. She would be safe, here, with him. She would be safe anywhere, with him.
Let them come, she thought, let them see that we are not pieces to be moved for their own gain. I am his and he is mine and they have no power over that.
Cregan’s hand squeezed hers and at last, they rose, the knees of their clothing damp and chilled from the ground. She blinked the last of her tears away as his hands came up to cup her cheeks, wiping the ones she couldn’t hide from her skin.
“May the gods bless and bind,” He murmured, “and may all winters be short in our lifetime.”
He swept down and kissed her, his hands still warm on her face.
It was like a dream, in a way, after all this time waiting. They swayed, her fingers pulling at his collar, dragging him down to her as if he would pull away if she didn’t. The laces of his collar gave way to her, loosening, and he finally broke the kiss. He looked almost smug.
“What?” She asked, laughing, breathless.
“Hmmm.” He pressed a kiss to her cheek, “For a moment I forgot that you called me, what was it? A craven cunt? Doesn’t seem like a behavior I should reward with more kisses.”
His hands dropped to her waist, squeezing.
“Oh but my Lord Stark,” Lord Husband, her mind promptly greedily, leaving her without any thought for a moment before she regained the ability to speak, “It’s not dutiful or just to condemn your wife for things done before you married her. Or for speaking the truth.”
He rolled his eyes, but they were fond, his hands pulling her closer.
“Shall I tell another truth?”
He shrugged, “Honesty is a welcome thing before a heart tree.”
“The man you thought about killing tonight in my chambers? A eunuch.”
His eyes glittered with mirth even as he rolled them again at her dramatics, “My Lady Stark, I do think you’d burn the world to get your way.”
Of course I would, she wanted to say, as any dragon would for its hoard, for its clutch, for its mate.
“I do tend to be warmest when I get my way.”
His hands slipped up, pulling his cloak more tightly around her for a moment as he dropped another kiss on her mouth, as intoxicating as the first. It was over as quickly as it begun, but then her feet were off the ground, his familiar arms carrying her, and she sank into his warmth as he took her inside.
“Yes you do, my lady.”
“Your wife,” she corrected him.
A huff of laughter filled the empty halls.
“Of course, my wife."