Other ❯ The Little Wren ❯ A Cage for a Wren ( One-Shot )

The cabin breathed with the sea, a slow wheeze in the boards and a damp salt that clung to her sleeves. It stunk of pitch and rope, stale bread, and a thin sweetness of soured wine. Sansa sat with her back to the hull and watched the cup slide a finger’s breadth with each swell, stop, and drift back. The ship moved like a creature in deep sleep.

She had eaten two olives and a bite of cheese. But the cheese tasted of old smoke and damp cloth. The flavor lingered on her tongue and made her stomach roll. So she let the rest go hard on the plate. The knife lay beside it, a dull, rusted thing that would not cut a ripe plum, let alone a throat. Yet her eyes kept circling back to it, as if that useless blade might be worth folding into her skirts.

A knock, then the latch. He never surprised her with it. Petyr entered as if the cabin were a court and the walls an audience, soft step, softer voice. He always seemed to remember there were people watching, even when there weren’t.

“You should try the broth while it’s warm,” he said. “Your stomach will find its sea legs if you teach it kindly.”

She wondered if he had practiced that line. He often sounded as though he rehearsed in the hall before coming in. She tried to imagine him standing on the other side of the door, smoothing his beard, deciding what tone would suit her best.

“I’m not hungry,” Her voice sounded clean and small. A girl’s voice. She swallowed and wished it were steel.

“Eat,” he said, but it was nothing like a command. It rested on the table between them like a folded cloth, optional, polite. “You have a long road, little—” He paused, revised. “Sansa.”

The pause unsettled her. Little. He had been about to call her something else. People always wanted to name her something smaller, weaker. Little bird, little dove. Cersei’s pet word came back sharp as a pin, all cooing cruelty. She had been the queen’s little dove once, soft-feathered and blind. Never again. She straightened in her chair, hands tight in her lap, and let him smooth over the mistake.

He was careful with her name. He had been careful since they left the city, careful with everything. Hands, distance, tone. She recognized carefulness. It's sharp courtesy. It reminded her of the Red Keep, of smiling through clenched teeth, of bowing so low her back hurt. Careful meant danger.

She picked up the cup instead and wet her mouth. It tasted of metal. When she set it down the ship carried it to the lip of the plate, then back. She watched his eyes follow the cup, then to her mouth, then the line of her hair, and settled on her face. She tried to not overthink the moment, but she felt the old prickle along her spine when his eyes lingered. Not the way the men of King’s Landing looked at her, their gazes hot and heavy, but something quieter, cooler. As if he were measuring her. That made it worse somehow. At least with the others she had known what they wanted. So for now, she pressed the unease down. Besides, she was on this ship and there was nowhere else to go.

“I have been thinking about appearances,” he said, as if offering an explanation for his lingering stare. “What we let the world see. What we do not. It matters more than truth.”

“It shouldn’t,” The reply came fast, quicker than she meant, and she hated the sound of it.

Brave in the wrong place.

“It shouldn’t,”He smiled, as if she had agreed instead of argued. “But it does. People don’t judge with clear eyes, Sansa. They judge with the story they’ve already chosen for you. If they’ve decided you’re cruel, even your kindness looks like deceit. If they’ve decided you’re gentle, you can strike a man and they’ll call it mercy. Reputation bends the truth.”

Reputation .

The word curdled in her stomach. In King’s Landing her reputation had been a toy, batted back and forth in every whisper. The traitor’s daughter. The maiden in love with her king. The Northern demon who bewitched her imp husband to murder him. She had never held her own story in her hands. Even now, she was certain Petyr would shape it for her.

“My lady mother used to say that honor shows,” she said, and wished she had not spoken. The words came too easily, too unguarded. His head turned a fraction.

“Your mother’s honor showed very well,” he said. “On her children’s faces most of all.”

She stilled but her heart squeezed. It was always Catelyn. Always her. She wondered if he looked at her and saw nothing else.

He set his hand on the back of the chair opposite and did not sit. “You are very recognizable,” he said. “That is both your danger and your shield. Danger, because there are a hundred men from White Harbor to Sunspear who know your brother's head is on a pike and would do the same to earn a smile in the capital.  Shield, because the face of the North still commands a reverence in places. But here, in a little boat on a little sea, we cannot afford either.”

So I am a face before I am a girl , she thought. That was all she had ever been to them. Her father’s chin, her mother’s eyes, a Stark’s blood, a Tully's hair.

“Then what?” she asked, though she knew. The question bought her a breath.

“Then we become someone else.” His tone made it a practical thing, like mending a hem.

“I am not good at lying."

“You are excellent at it,” he said mildly. “You lied every day you survived in the Red Keep. You smiled and thanked your tormentors and told them you were happy. You curtsied and said you were blessed. You lied to live. You only called it courtesy.”

She flushed. She thought of all the times she had stood with her hands folded and her back aching, pretending she did not hear the snickers, pretending her cheeks were not hot with tears she would not shed. Courtesy had been her shield, but was it lying? Perhaps. She did not know anymore.

“Courtesy is a sort of armor,” she said. She had told herself that once, in the Godswood, and believed it then. Now she heard the tin in it.

He tilted his head, pleased. “And armor must be fitted. We will fit yours properly.”

He reached into his coat and placed a small oiled parcel on the table. It made a soft, wet thud.

“What is it?”

“A change,” he said. He unwrapped the oiled cloth. Inside lay a comb with half its teeth broke and dark paste bound with thread and linen stained a sullen brown.

“It will turn your hair the color of old chestnuts. With the salt air and a week’s sun, you will not be Sansa Stark to any but the Gods.”

Her hand twitched. She lifted a strand of hair without meaning to. It had been brushed, not well, but enough to smooth the worst of the knots. The color was a comfort she had never named aloud. It was Winterfell. It was Arya’s messy plaits, her mother’s cool hand, her father’s head bent to kiss her crown. To strip it felt like stripping all of them away.

“I will be someone else,” she said. Her voice kept steady by will. “Who?.”

“Alayne Stone,” he said. “My bastard daughter. Common enough. Born in Gulltown but raised in secret in the Fingers. A quiet girl who kept her father’s ledgers and knew how to stretch a sack of oats through the winter. She does not curtsy like a court lady. She plays no harp, writes no poems, and quotes no ballads. She knows the market price of mackerel in Gulltown. And she is, most important of all, invisible to highborn.” His tone, as if it had ever been hard, softened more. “She is not hunted, Sansa. She is not precious. She is safe because no one who matters will look at her twice.”

No one who matters will look at her twice .

The words made her ribs hurt and her nose burn. Safety, yes. But if no one looked at her, who would remember her? Who would believe Sansa Stark had ever been?

“You will dye it?”

“I can,” he said, and then, with the same care he used at the latch, “or we can find a woman in the next cove. It will hold better if done by hands that do this work. And if anyone sees, they’ll only think a fussy father wanted his bastard tidy. Her hair would be no one’s concern.”

“I would rather a woman,” she said. It came out quickly again.

He nodded, as if he had expected her response all along.

He sat then, at last, and eased the cup to a rest. The ship moved, the cup slid, and he caged it with two fingers. His hands were not a lord’s hands. They were neat, nails clean, but there was a fierceness in the knuckles, small old scars across the back. She remembered her father’s palm on her shoulder, Sandor Clegane’s rough grip on her arm, Joffrey’s pale fingers stinging across her cheek. Every man’s hand had left its weight behind. She did not yet know what weight Petyr’s would leave.

“Alayne must be more than hair,” he said. “She must bow differently. Not the practiced grace of a lady, but the quick dip of a girl who knows her place. She shows respect without drawing notice.”

And me, she thought, where do I go? Do I hide in the hair beneath the dye, or in the plain wool I'm sure to wear?

“My father’s house,” he said, “is small. The walls have heard worse lies than ours. We will use it as practice. When we climb to the Eyrie, your Aunt Lysa will meet my Alayne.”

“Your father’s house,” Sansa said carefully. She'd not put much thought into the origins of Littlefinger. He grew up beside her mother and kin, not so different from Theon in Winterfell.

“Yes. Practice first,” he continued. “For once we reach the Vale, there will be no room for slips. Lady Lysa must be pleased. She does not want surprises. And you will not be one."

“So I must be small."

“For a time,” the smile did not reach his eyes, but it reached his voice. “You will be a girl from the Fingers with a neat curtsey and a shy voice. She will like that. It will calm her.”

She said no more after that. The days blurred in the dark of the cabin, marked only by Petyr’s visits and the muffled clamor of men above her head. Her world shrank to the steady slap of waves against the hull. When shouts drifted through the boards, she pictured a crowded hall with cups slamming on wood. When the ropes groaned, she saw rough hands hauling them, faces burned by wind and salt.

When they anchored at a fishing village, Petyr brought her out. A woman led her into a back room and worked the paste into her hair with quick, rough fingers. The smell of it turned her stomach, bitter and sharp. Her brows were stained dark to match, but the pale lashes against the new color made her look hollow and strange. When the woman placed a mirror before her, she barely recognized the face staring back.

She must have frowned, because the woman clicked her tongue and said she had her father’s look now, and that such a thing would make him glad.

Yes. My father would have loved this.

She could almost see him, broad-shouldered and solemn, shaking his head the way he did when Arya came in with mud on her boots. Her mother’s red hair had been his favorite color in all the world. He had once said he hoped Sansa’s would darken to match it. Never in a thousand years would he have guessed she would be dying it to this dull, ugly shade of river silt.

I’m sorry, she thought, but you would want me safe, even with hair the color of mud.

As Petyr said, her hair was not the only thing she must change. He began lessons that very evening. Alayne was meant to be a girl of the Fingers, and her northern tongue would betray her the moment she opened her mouth.

Hour after hour he made her repeat words after him, plain things that turned strange in her mouth.

“Bread.”

“Water.”

“Market.”

She could barely hear the difference, but Petyr was never satisfied. He caught invisible sounds that gave her away.

The lessons wore on her. She spoke until the words lost all meaning, and still he shook his head, soft-voiced, patient. But sometimes she caught the flicker in his eyes, the faint tightening at the corner of his mouth, and knew he was swallowing his annoyance. He would never show it outright, but she could feel it pressing against his careful mask, just as she felt the ache of failure in her own chest.

She knew the importance of getting this right. If her aunt or anyone in the Eyrie heard Sansa Stark in her voice, it would mean questions. Questions would mean discovery. Discovery would mean King’s Landing.

The thought alone set her stomach turning. She would rather throw herself into the sea than go back there. Not to Cersei’s smiles and pinching fingers. And assuredly never again to the echo of her scream the day Joffrey died, a sound that had chased Sansa onto the boat and would follow her forever.

So she forced herself to continue. She flattened her tongue and spoke with the back of her teeth. She shaped her lips around the words over and over until her head swam. Better to stumble now, than in the Vale.

The days blurred in this way. Her hair still stank of the dye, and her voice felt clumsy in her mouth.

When the voyage ended in a harsh scrape that shivered through the hull and rattled in her teeth, she climbed onto the deck. Bright light struck her eyes, and the mist-wind chilled her skin. She blinked hard, eyes aching, as gulls wheeled overhead, dark smudges against the overcast sky.

Men shouted to one another, casting lines across the narrow gap to the dock. She gripped the rail, squinting at the land rising from the spray. She had half-expected banners, or a tower cut sharp against the cliffs. Winterfell had its towers, Riverrun its banners. This shore had nothing. Only rock. Black and jagged, thrust out from the surf like claws. Foam clung white at the tips, as if the sea itself had gnawed them down to bone.

Closer in, she saw the cottages. Small, thin, crooked things clinging to the slope above the water. Nets sagged between poles, fish hung stiff on lines, and gulls shrieked at the sight of the catch left to dry. The people on the shore hardly looked up as the ship moored, only bent to their work.

Beyond them, high on the cliff, stood the hall. A squat holdfast of weather-worn stone, green seeping from the seams. The roof sagged under its own age, the walls leaning with the wind like a tired old man. Winterfell’s stables had been stronger.

Petyr came to stand beside her as the plank dropped. His eyes moved over the crooked cottages, the squat hall on the cliff, and his mouth curved in the faintest smile.

“My father’s house,” he said mildly. “It has stood against the sea for a hundred years. Few places in the realm can claim as much.”

The words sounded practiced, almost like boasting, yet the smile was too thin, the tone too even. He did not look like a man admiring his home, but like one recalling a debt. She wondered if he had rehearsed that line as he had rehearsed hers, shaping it until it fit neat on the tongue.

Sansa lowered her eyes to the path curling up the cliff. Stones shifted underfoot, slick with moss. The place before her seemed too small to fit the weight of the man beside her.

The Baelishes had been given this parcel of land by the Tullys, a prize on the edge of the realm. Did he remember that each time he looked at them?

The climb was steeper than it looked. Her legs burned, unsteady after so many days shut in the cabin. The wind pressed cold into her chest and left her breathing sharp and quick. Salt stung her lips and dried her tongue. Strands tore loose from her braid and clung damp to her cheek. She pulled her cloak tighter, eyes down on the track where shale shifted underfoot. Every turn dragged them higher, but the hall ahead did not grow more imposing. If anything, it seemed to shrink against the wide mouth of the sea behind them.

At the threshold, Petyr pushed the door wide without hesitation. The air inside was heavier than the wind outside, thick with old smoke and dust. The low beams bent the shadows close as a single rushlight guttered on the wall.

“This is where Alayne must learn her manners,” Petyr said, leading her in. “She was not raised among singers and ladies. She learned to keep her eyes down, to nod when spoken to, to pass unnoticed. That is what will keep her safe.”

Safe. The word rubbed her raw in a way she couldn’t name.

Her head ached with the stale air, legs sore from the climb. The ground still seemed to sway beneath her feet, as if the sea had followed her ashore. She had no patience left to spend. Why did he speak of Alayne as if she were someone else? She was Alayne, whether she wished it or not. He need not speak her like a ghost in the room.

She did not answer.

He watched her, as he always did, eyes missing nothing. For a breath she thought she saw the twitch at the corner of his mouth, before it smoothed away. His mask slipped only long enough to remind her he was wearing one.

He went on as though nothing had passed between them, his voice smooth again. “Come. You must see your rooms.”

The stair twisted narrow, walls damp and close. When he opened the door at the landing she saw at once that someone had hurried to make it ready. The curtains had been shaken free of dust, though they still smelled faintly of it, and the table bore the streak of a rag recently wiped across its surface. The bed was made up with new linens, stiff and smelling of lye. It was plain, but clean.

“You will be comfortable here,” Petyr said, as if it were a chamber in a keep. His tone gave no hint he saw how small it was.

He led her on, showing her the hall where he would stay, the hearth dark but swept, a few other rooms that echoed with emptiness. She thought the whole place smelled of fresh ash and soap, as if the walls themselves had been scoured for their coming.

A pair of servants met them in the corridor, a woman with her sleeves rolled and a man with water still damp on his boots. Petyr gave them names she forgot at once and said they would assist in her lessons.

They bent their heads when they looked at her, though their eyes darted quick and curious. Sansa kept her own lowered. They were too neat for ordinary housefolk. The woman’s hair had been combed and pinned, her hands washed to pink. The man’s boots bore fresh mud but no smell of fish or dung. Petyr had set them forward for her, that much was plain, and they knew something of who she was meant to be.

But how much?

If he trusted them, she was meant to trust them. But that was the trick. She did't even know how much she could trust him.

The lessons began at once. Petyr was not cruel, but he was merciless. He caught every slip, every tilt of her chin that was too proud, every word that slid back into the North.

Her hands betrayed her. She smoothed her skirts without thinking, clasped them at her waist the way Septa Mordane had taught her.

“Alayne does not stand so still. She works. Her hands would move as such.”

Her feet betrayed her. They pointed neat when she curtsied, knees bending with a lady’s grace.

“Alayne dips quickly,” Petyr corrected. “As if she fears being seen.”

Her voice betrayed her worst of all. He made her repeat words until they turned to mush in her mouth, but the Riverland sounds never came right. She could hear no difference, though his ear caught every one.

Each failure burned at her. She hated the sound of his soft corrections more than she would have hated a slap. He wanted nothing less than perfection. And she wanted, desperately, to do it so, but every movement felt like a game she could never win.

And there was no rest. Even alone in her chamber she practiced, whispering words until her tongue ached, bending her knees in hurried dips that made her legs tremble. She told herself it was because she needed the practice. That was true. But more than that, she did not trust solitude. Once she had thought herself alone, only to hear his voice from the doorway, smooth and mild as ever.

“That is not Alayne."

Though his words were light, they struck her harder than anger.

After that, she never believed she was unwatched.

The strain wore her thin. Paranoia hollowed her, but anger flared in its cracks. He wanted perfection, yet she was not perfect, could never be perfect, and each correction pulled her tighter until she felt she might split apart.

She despised her own body, her thick northern tongue, the stupid, itchy dresses she wore, and, most of all, she despised his endless patience.

Then one evening, bent over the ledger, she copied the sums he set before her, lips moving as she checked them twice. When she finished, Petyr glanced at the page, then at her.

“You keep these sums straighter than lords twice your age ever could.” he said, the corners of his mouth twitching as if he were holding back amusement.

Her mouth curved before she thought to stop it. The smile felt strange, almost foreign, as if it belonged to someone else. She had lived these past months choosing every word, every glance, every gesture, that the ease of it unsettled her. But he was watching, and there was something in his eyes that looked like approval. So she kept smiling, and the warmth that came with it pressed deep into her chest, sharp with pride and almost sweet.

Pride.

Small, ridiculous pride over nothing but a jape, and it left her aching for more.

The glow of it lingered. It dulled the sting of the next mistake, softened the edge of his corrections, made it easier to shape herself the way he wanted. She hated herself for it, hated how quick her chest lifted at every single kind word. But it made all the scrutiny and cajoling bearable. It felt almost pleasant, to bend her voice and body the way he wished. Easier, until she remembered the promise.

He had promised her armor, but this wasn’t that. This was a cage.

Each false curtsy, each flattened word, each ugly wool dress came easier with practice. And the easier it became, the easier she felt herself fit inside that cage Petyr built for her.

In King’s Landing she had been a songbird, bright feathers plucked for the court’s delight, every glance a command to sing sweeter. Here the cage was plainer, smaller, yet no less binding. Her colors dulled, her song muted. She was a wren now, the kind no one looked at twice.

This wren learned her place. Praise was still rare, but his corrections grew gentler, less frequent. The servants’ lessons soon felt less like punishments and more like routine. She dressed herself without fumbling, scrubbed linens and pegged them to the line, chopped roots without nicking her fingers, and poured her dear lord father’s tea without spilling a drop. Plain work, humble work, the sort Alayne Stone would know as easily as breath.

Sometimes his hand found her shoulder as he leaned close to point out a misplaced decimal or a misspelled word. At first it steadied her, almost guiding. Then it slipped lower, resting at the small of her back, and stayed. The weight of it made her shift in her seat, uneasy, though she could not say why. It wasn’t lewd, nor was it the careless touch of a father, or rough affection her brothers might have given. It was something else entirely, strange in a way she could not name, the same unsettled feeling she’d carried since the ship.

He had been careful with her, kinder than she’d expected. That alone disarmed her, made her doubt her instincts, as if mistrust were some childish habit she ought to have outgrown by now.

So she told herself she was overreacting. It was nothing.

And she wanted to believe it in spite of that unease that flickered in her gut. He had not been the monster she expected. So she let herself accept his touches, his quiet corrections, even the weight of his hand pressing low at her spine.

It was easier this way. He was all she had.

By the time Petyr said they would leave for the Eyrie, her voice bent to the Riverland sounds, her hands roughened by lye and steady on a cleaver. She looked in the mirror and almost believed she was the girl he had made.

They said goodbye to the servants, the woman pressing a bundle of food into her hands, the man ducking his head with a stiffness that almost passed for fondness. Then the hall was behind them, shrinking against the sea, the stones settling back into their silence as if they had never been disturbed. The Fingers would go on as they always had, wind-beaten and narrow, forgetting her as easily as they had forgotten the lords before.

The boat carried them across the grey chop, then there was land again, softer country that gave way to hills. They rode from there, Petyr arranging the horses and cart as if he had done it all his life. The road curled through the Vale, sharp cliffs on one side, deep green valleys on the other. Sansa kept her hood drawn and her eyes down, though her heart stayed high in her throat. Every turn felt as if it must end in a sheer drop. Every passerby seemed to look too long.

Petyr talked as they rode, light words that touched on nothing, stories of market prices, old quarrels, names she half-knew from her mother’s telling. His wry smile made it seem as if he spoke only for her, as if the stories belonged to them alone. She knew better, yet when he spoke of her mother at her own age she still smiled back, shy and uncertain. Harmless talk, meant to comfort her.

But the warmth it stirred carried a weight in her chest, and the flutter low in her stomach felt too much like the same restless knot she had tried to ignore before.

She pushed it aside, smiling through his next tale. It was nothing, she told herself. Only nerves. Only the strain of travel and the road.

The higher they climbed, the tighter her chest drew. The air thinned, sharp in her lungs, and each turn in the road showed her another peak rising pale and cold against the sky. She thought of her aunt waiting in those heights, of the blood they shared, of her mother’s face reflected in her own. No dye could hide that if Lysa saw that. What if she saw her mother in her? What if all this work, all the aching hours, fell apart with a single look? What then?

Her hands curled in her lap, fingers stiff.

She startled when his hand closed over hers. Petyr’s palm was warm, his fingers steady, and when he gave them a squeeze it was almost gentle. Almost fatherly. She turned her face but he was already watching her, as if he had been waiting for her to falter.

“You have done well,” he said softly. “So well that no one in the Vale will see aught but Alayne Stone. My daughter. From this day forward, that is all you are."

He lifted her hand and pressed his lips to her open palm, his green-grey eyes holding hers as the warmth lingered.

“You are mine," he said against her palm. A shiver climbed her arm and settled low in her stomach.

"And all the world will know, my sweetling.” His voice was soft, steady.

“My one true daughter.” He gave her fingers one last squeeze before letting go, and she curled them back around the reins.

The words should have made her feel safe. She longed for that claim, for the shelter of belonging to someone. Once it had been her father, his love protecting her like walls. After his execution, she had learned what it was to be unclaimed, to be prey. If Petyr meant it, if she was truly his now, perhaps she could be safe again.

For a heartbeat she believed it. But the heat of his mouth lingered too long, and mine rang sharper than it should. The hollow twist in her belly scattered like wings, quick and breathless, the way songs and stories always said love should feel.

Fool. The shame rose hot in her throat. Silly little girl. Are you truly so stupid as to mistake nerves for love again, as you did with Joffrey? To feel that here, with Petyr, was worse than foolish.

It was dangerous.

You’ll lose the one thing keeping you away from King's Landing if you let yourself believe that. You'll lose his protection. And then what will you have? Nothing.

She would not. She could not. Not with him.

She told herself it was nothing. It had to be nothing. He was all she had, and she needed to believe him when he said she would be his daughter.

Still, her palm tingled where his lips had touched, and she wrapped her fingers hard around the reins, as if gripping tighter could smother the feelings of shame.

But it did not leave her. It rode with her, hot and constant, every clop of the hooves hammering it deeper. Stupid girl. Weak, childish, tittering like a maid over a smile. She held herself straighter in the saddle, as if a stiff back might scour the feelings from her.

Petyr’s voice carried on beside her, smooth as ever, as if nothing had passed between them. He pointed out a spur of rock shaped like a cat, an old ruin clinging to its side, a tale of his time spent in Braavos. His tone was light, steady, the words easy to follow. He did not so much as glance at the color in her cheeks.

That made it worse.

He saw her, she knew he did. He always saw. And yet he left her to flounder in her own foolishness, speaking of exotic markets and silly tales from when he worked as a customs officer. All the while she burned with shame. She told herself she deserved it. She had no right to such thoughts, no right to feel anything but grateful for him. Keep your head down, Sansa. Smile, nod, listen. Do not let him see how stupid you are.

Her throat ached from holding it down. Her eyes burned as she listened. So she nodded, smiled when she could, and let his stories wash over her, filling the space where her own voice had curdled into silence.

The road climbed higher, if that was possible. The world seemed to drop away beneath them, valley after valley falling off into shadow. And then, at last, she saw it.

The Eyrie.

It rose from the mountainside as though carved from the clouds themselves, white towers catching the sun, the sheer drop beneath them swallowed in mist. From a distance it looked weightless, a dream of stone and sky.

For a moment she forgot her shame. The sight stole it, replacing it with wonder instead. Her breath caught. She had never seen anything so strange and beautiful. Even her mother’s stories had not prepared her for the castle in the sky.

The road bent, bringing them closer to the pale walls. From here she could see the narrow causeway climbing toward the gates, sheer cliffs yawning on either side. The height made her stomach turn, but she could not look away.

Petyr’s horse drew even with hers. She felt him staring, she could hear his smile. “It steals the breath, doesn’t it?”

"So high above the world, no one in the Seven Kingdoms could ever reach us.”

Her chest tightened as she stared at the towers rising out of the mist. “We’ll be safe here?"

Petyr’s eyes lingered on the pale heights before turning to her. “Why else would I bring you?”

Heat pricked her cheeks. His gaze lingered, sweeping over her face until the weight of it made her shift in the saddle.

Ahead, the gates loomed nearer, narrow and sheer, guards waiting with spears bright in the sun. Petyr slowed his horse a fraction, turning his head toward her.

“Are you ready?”

Her throat tightened. She gave the only answer she could, a quiet, “Yes, father.”

He studied her a moment before his mouth curved, slow and satisfied, as if she’d given the answer he wanted. The look lingered a heartbeat longer than it should have, and then he turned back to the gate, leaving her to follow.