SpaceBattles
Remove this ad space
Creative Writing
Discover Stories
Golden (ASOIAF Joffrey SI)
Thread starterDDragonman Start dateJun 3, 2026 Tags asoiaf game of thrones drama medieval fantasy self insert joffrey baratheon jon snow sansa stark kingdom building major character death
Golden (ASOIAF Joffrey SI)
Created
Jun 3, 2026
Status
Ongoing
Watchers
1,311
Recent readers
1,856
Threadmarks
38
Blue Ribbon Award
1
Battle Award
1
"I wonder if this is how Rhaegar felt."
"Your grace?" Jon questioned, frowning.
"Leaving the Red Keep… To stamp out a rebellion."
"My love." The queen's voice was sweet and soft even in her chiding. "You are not Rhaegar."
And we are not facing Robert Baratheon, his sister's eyes seemed to say.
Joff smiled. "You're right, of course." He raised a hand and stroked the cheek of the babe their love had made. "I plan to come home."
He gave Sansa a married man's kiss, and they rode out shortly afterward.
The king, armoured in gold. His Kingsguard, all in enamelled white scale. The armies that had gathered beneath the golden stag banner.
They rode to war again.
Threadmarks Media Staff Post
Statistics (33 threadmarks, 160k words)
Threadmarks
Reader mode RSS
The Bastard
Words 5.6k
Jun 3, 2026
The Maiden Fair
Words 3.9k
Jun 4, 2026
New
The Demon's Daughter
Words 4.7k
Monday at 7:01 PM
New
The Peerless
Words 3.4k
Tuesday at 3:06 PM
New
The Last Dragon
Words 3.8k
Yesterday at 1:42 AM
1 of 4
Next
Last
Jump to new
Ignore
Watch
Thread tools
Threadmarks
Media
Staff Post
View content
Remove this ad space
Threadmarks The Bastard
View content
DDragonman
DDragonman
Award Recipient
Jun 3, 2026
Add bookmark
#1
JON
It began, as so much of Jon's life had, in Winterfell.
He had been nine years old the first time he left the north. Nine years old with a boy's pride and a boy's dread of showing it, riding in the king's column on a borrowed garron while the summer sun broke clean over the kingsroad and the last towers of Winterfell shrank behind him into the grey line of the horizon and then disappeared altogether. He had not looked back. He had told himself he would not and he had held to it.
He was sixteen now. Or near enough to it that the difference no longer seemed worth counting.
He looked back at Winterfell this time as they crested the ridge south of the Wolfswood and the castle came into view below them. The grey towers and the direwolf banners, the smoke from a hundred hearths unwinding slow against a sky the colour of old pewter, and the Wall of the world a pale smudge on the horizon beyond it, so distant it might have been imagined.
Seven years is long enough to miss a thing without being entirely sure of what you've missed. He had carried Winterfell in his memory all that time like a portrait that has been looked at too often, the colours worn smooth.
Seeing the castle again was strange. It was sharper, more itself than he had remembered it being.
Home, something in him said. Not quite, something else answered.
Loras rode up to his left, turning his head to follow his gaze. He had complained, cheerfully and without ceasing, from the moment they crossed the Neck. The north was grey and the north was cold and the north smelled of trees and mud and more trees and the road was a disgrace to roads everywhere, and had Jon truly spent his childhood in this place.
The complaints were not serious. Loras Tyrell found something to complain about in every kingdom except his own, and even then the roses were never quite right, or the wine was a touch too warm, or the sparring partners lacked imagination. It was his way of paying attention, Jon thought.
He looked at the castle for a long moment.
"Bigger than I expected," he said.
"You say that every time."
"It keeps being true." He scratched at his jaw—he had begun growing a beard that his sister regarded with respectful dismay, and the prince with a wry amusement. "Are all northern castles this colour? So bland and lifeless…"
"If they wish to be." Jon said without thinking and then frowned. "And don't insult my home."
"Mm." Loras was quiet for a moment, which was unusual. "Your father is down there."
"He is."
"And your brother."
"And two sisters, as well as two more brothers that I have not seen or known. And likely a lady who still thinks I ought not to exist." Jon kept his eyes on the castle. "Though to be fair, she's never said as much. She just looks at me."
"Lady Stark," Loras said. He had heard about Lady Stark. "Well. I'll charm her."
"You'll try," Jon told him. "She is no blushing maid though, so your flowers will not work."
He looked honestly offended. "Has anyone not been charmed by me?"
Jon thought about it. "Cersei."
A pause. "That one doesn't count."
"Sandor Clegane."
"He doesn't count either." Loras straightened in his saddle with the particular dignity of a man declining to be troubled by facts. "I'll charm Lady Stark."
Jon almost smiled. "Tell me how it goes."
They flooded through the castle gates, a flowing river of knights, Baratheon and Lannister bannermen, sworn swords, free riders and all, three hundred strong. The royal banners flapped overhead in the sharp northern wind, adding to the cacophony of sound and displaying the crowned stag, black and gold, for all to see.
At the head of the column, they were of the first to embrace the castle. Jon rode to the prince's right, Ser Loras to his left, with Clegane and Ser Jaime just in front.
He had not expected it to affect him, but it did.
The gates, and the courtyard beyond them. The stones he knew the particular pitch of underfoot, worn smooth near the well and rough at the edges, how they held their cold even in summer. The smell, woodsmoke and horse and the particular northern cold that had no southern equivalent. An old woman's voice he thought he recognised crossed the yard and was gone before he could find its source.
The king's column was still threading through the gate behind them, making the organised chaos that large processions such as this one always made whenever they went travelling. Banners tangling, horses throwing shoes at inopportune moments, wagons axle-deep in whatever stretch of courtyard had been unfortunate enough to lie in their path.
Jon let it wash past him and sat still ahorse for a moment in the middle of it all, and felt the strangeness of being neither one thing nor the other. Too southern now for the north and always too northern for the south, belonging to the place between.
He had forgotten how cold it was here. It was so hot in the south.
The king dismounted first, throwing himself off his warhorse with the enthusiasm of a man half his size and a quarter his weight. Jon had grown accustomed to the sight of Robert Baratheon these past years, yet somehow each time he looked again the man seemed larger than he remembered. Not in height. In girth.
"Ned!" The king's laughter rolled across the courtyard like thunder. He seized their host by the shoulders and shook him as a dog shakes a rat. "Gods, man, you haven't changed a bloody bit."
Father did not stumble. He had been expecting it, it seemed. When the king released him, Lord Stark knelt in the grey slush of the courtyard and said, simply, "Your grace. Winterfell is yours."
Jon drank it in, the castle and the man who had raised him for nine years. He had his father's colouring he knew, the dark Stark look, long face and grey eyes. The king always said that he was the spitting image of his father. He had his height now, nearly, having grown four inches in the last year to Ser Aron Santagar's visible frustration, Joff's amusement and the king's pleasure.
But there were things of Lord Stark's bearing that Jon knew he would never quite replicate, that quality he had of stillness, of weight, as if the ground was always very slightly more solid beneath him than beneath other men.
The king had that quality sometimes, when he wasn't in his cups and had come to watch Joffrey train with pride. Jon figured it was what happened to men who had been to war.
Jon dismounted with all the rest and gave his horse over to the groom who came forward. The man did not recognise him, but Jon had not expected him to and took no offence, for he did not recognise him either.
Seven years is a long time, he thought as he took in the Winterfell courtyard. Yet still…
It was just as he had remembered.
It had been his home, but in truth his life had only begun when he left this castle.
What is it you wish to do, Jon? Prince Joffrey had asked. He was younger and rounder of cheek then, but still just as golden.
The question had thrown him—he was a bastard, what was there for him to do?
He had said as much to Joffrey and to Robb as they sat playing in their rooms. Joffrey had an answer.
He always did.
The families were exchanging formalities now. Jon kept himself at a distance. He was a knight—true, a close friend to the prince and Lord Stark was his father besides, but his name was Snow, not Stark.
Still, he managed to catch a hint of the conversation by Loras' side.
"From your letters, I expected you to be taller." Joff said, laughing. The boy with thick red-brown locks and Tully-blue eyes, who could only be Robb, clasped arms with the crown prince and took the jest in stride.
"You may be taller now, your grace, but the result in the yard will still be the same."
"I was seven, lest you forget. The difference will be night and day." The prince declared it. And he was right at that. Jon knew from experience.
The formalities continued and ended swiftly once both sides had taken measure of the other. And not a moment too soon it seemed.
"I would pay my respects. Take me down to your crypts, Eddard. I wish to see her." The king said it low.
The her in question was obvious to all gathered. The woman he had fought his war and won his throne for, at least if one believed the singers. The queen was not pleased with that, though with the king, Cersei Lannister never was.
Oh, she dressed up her complaints nicely. They had been riding since dawn (she had been in that monstrosity of a wheelhouse). Everyone was tired and cold (she had been warm in the wheelhouse). Surely they should refresh themselves first (she had not lacked for food and drink in her wheelhouse). The dead would wait. All seemingly great and logical points, but she was easy to see through.
My mother believes herself smart, Joff had once said, but in truth she's only of middling intellect. She is still the queen however, so she can go around believing what she wishes… For a few more years at least.
It seemed the king saw through her as well. He gave her a look, she fell silent, and Ser Jaime came to lead her away with little Myrcella and Tommen waddling behind them.
Father called for a lantern and turned his eyes over the party before they found Jon in his plate and knightly raiments. He smiled then. It was slight but it was there and it meant something, because it lacked no amount of pride. He mouthed later and led his friend down to the dead kings of winter.
People were beginning to disperse. "You're not nervous, are you?" Loras asked.
Jon frowned at him. "Come off it."
He pushed Jon forward, chuckling. "Go on then."
Jon did as bid, heading to where Lady Stark and the children remained, in a calm measured stride.
Robb saw him at once.
Jon caught the moment he did it from across the space between and looked his brother over carefully.
He was broader than Jon had expected and taller, with his mother's colouring, the red-brown Tully hair, the blue eyes, the fair skin the cold had turned ruddy and weather-rough. He was sixteen and had the beginning of his father's bearing, just enough of it to show what it would become.
He crossed the yard at something that was not quite a run and clasped Jon's arm and Jon clasped his, and then they abandoned the dignity of the gesture and it became something messier and more honest.
"You look like a southron, Snow," Robb said. It was meant as an observation and sounded like an accusation.
"That's Ser Snow to you, Stark." For a moment they stared, then grinned, and soon they were laughing and hugging again.
When they separated, Lady Stark's gaze found Jon like a blade finding a joint in armour.
"My lady." He met her eyes. Held them, and did his best not to flinch.
"Ser." The title. She gave him that at least. She would never give more and Jon would not ask.
Catelyn Stark's eyes were the blue of deep water and just as cold, and whatever she thought when she looked at him she kept locked tight behind them. Jon did not let it touch him. He was a man grown. An anointed knight. He was not the bastard boy who had sat at the wrong end of her table anymore.
But you are still your mother's son. You are not a Stark. You are something else.
The voice sounded ancient, cold and laced with venom. One of the kings of winter. They hated him, he knew. Jon put the voice away.
Sansa recognised him next. She had grown into something remarkable, her mother's bone structure and colouring sharpened into something almost severe in its beauty. She hesitated only a moment before stepping forward and pulling him into a brief, proper embrace. When she drew back, she went pink about the ears and curtsied.
"Ser Jon," she said. "I'm sorry, I—"
"Jon is fine." He meant it. "I am still your half-brother." Sansa smiled, blinking little tears away, and it was as if the sun had pierced the clouds. "You have no idea how good it is to see you."
They had been drifting apart before he left, but him, Robb and Sansa had been close before. He was happy to see she still cared.
Jon remembered Sansa's words at their last conversation, a lifetime ago, about how to treat southern ladies. "You have grown more beautiful, my lady."
"That she has." Prince Joffrey's voice carried easy and certain across the yard, and Sansa's pink deepened to red.
His voice was light and confident and had a quality to it that made you wish the prince would keep speaking. And when he smiled at her, Sansa blushed further, as many a maid had done in King's Landing and on the way north.
The future lord of the seven kingdoms put his arm around Jon's shoulders. Then his golden eyes found Loras, waiting at the yard's edge with a look of studied innocence.
Loras stepped forward and went to a knee before Lady Stark just before Joffrey could introduce him. He produced a red rose from somewhere and spoke with relish. "My lady, the tales of your beauty do not do you justice."
Lady Stark took the rose with a raised brow, looking unsure whether to be pleased by the gesture or worried about the strange reach knight who had been let into her home.
Robb looked at Jon, startled. Jon bit his cheek to keep from laughing.
"You honour me, good ser," the lady said. She had settled on bemused.
"A thank you for blessing my eyes." Loras turned until he was facing Sansa and produced another rose with an exaggerated flourish. "For the lady Sansa, whispered to be the most beautiful in all the realm, barring mine own sister of course."
Sansa took the flower, this one gold instead of red, and stammered a thank you with her face steaming, so much so that Jon thought she might faint.
"Enough, my friend." The crown prince laughed and pulled Loras up to introduce him. "This is Ser Loras Tyrell, third son of Lord Mace Tyrell, perhaps more aptly known as the Knight of Flowers."
"Well met, ser," Robb said. One of the boys—Jon's brothers, the one not asleep on his mothers shoulder—was looking at Tyrell with stars in his eyes.
"My lady Stark," Joffrey continued. The words were for Catelyn, but his golden eyes flickered to Sansa. "It has been some time. I have likely forgotten the way to the rooms, and Ser Loras would no doubt get lost without a guide."
"Of course, my prince," the lady of Winterfell said. "We would be happy to. Just this way."
"Jon, we shall leave you to it." He clasped Jon's shoulder once before he went, firm and brief.
"Thank you, your grace," Jon said.
The prince winked. "Not too many embarrassing stories. I'll know if you tell."
Then they were gone, and the yard was quieter for it.
The young girl, Arya, spoke first.
"You're our brother." She bit her lip and looked him up and down with narrowed eyes, the grey eyes of a Stark, their father's eyes. "Jon Snow. I remember you." She said it confidently and glared up at him, daring him to contest her.
She had been two when he left. She likely remembered nothing.
Her gaze dropped to the pommel at his hip. The white wolf with its ruby eyes. Her own eyes went wide before she could stop them. "Is that a real sword?"
"It is, little sister." Jon felt something loosen in his chest. He reached out and ruffled her hair.
She smacked his hand away. "I'm not little!"
Jon huffed, catching Robb shaking his head in exasperation, and then drew the blade slowly and held it out for them. Castle-forged steel, the finest he had owned, Joffrey's gift after he had won his spurs.
"Whoa," said Bran.
"It's beautiful," Arya said. Her voice had gone quiet.
"Is it true that you squired for Ser Barristan?" The words seemed to tumble out of Bran.
"I did." Jon returned the sword to its home, to Arya's disappointment. "Ser Loras and I both, for a time."
The boy's eyes went wide. "Really? What did you have to do? What did he teach you? Will you teach me? How—" Robb cut in. The yard was mostly empty now.
"Enough of that, Bran. Run along. I need to show Jon something." Bran seemed about to protest but his older brother quelled him with a look. "You too, Arya." The girl frowned, punched Robb in the ribs, and ran off.
Robb winced. "Damn that girl." He caught Jon's smile. "Aren't knights meant to protect people?"
"Maids and helpless babes, aye." Jon looked him over. "I thought you a man, Stark, but if I'm mistaken…"
His brother laughed and shook his head. "Come on."
He led and Jon followed, as it had always been, so long ago. Light summer snow began to trickle down.
"Where exactly are you taking me, Stark?" Jon asked.
"Your welcome home gift." Robb's eyes flickered down to the sword. He had been stealing glances at it since Jon first showed it off. "Say… that design, a white wolf with red eyes. Who thought of it?"
"Joffrey did." That answer seemed to perplex Robb further. "Something the matter?"
"No. Not exactly." Robb shook his head. "You'll see when we get there."
They were heading in the direction of the godswood.
Strange place to keep a gift. Jon thought.
"I trust the journey was not too difficult for you all?" Robb asked.
"For some of it, perfectly fine. Others, not so much," Jon admitted. "We would have made better time, but certain needs must be accommodated."
Robb snorted. He knew what Jon meant. "Your letters tell it as if the south is a different world."
They stepped in and the godswood swallowed up the light from the day, different in every way from the meagre one in the Red Keep.
Winterfell's godswood was eerie and ancient in comparison. They were surrounded on every side by sentinels, thick oaks and ironwoods that had seen kings and lords come and go. The shadows at their feet were deep and dark, and the old gods who had been slain in the south still breathed here.
"Oh, it is. I wish you had come with me, Robb." Jon told him. "Everything is different. The north—the land and us—we're hard, sturdy. But down there? The days are so hot that even a few steps may make you want to pass out. In the Reach, all the fruits are ripe. Peaches and melons and all sorts, just a bite and you'll be drowning in juice. Everything is beautiful and flowery, none so much as Highgarden with their golden roses and fields that stretch on and on. The people lack for nothing, everyone is fat and soft and drunk. I'm inclined to think they're trying to mirror our king."
Robb snorted. "A hard task to accomplish." He brought his head close and lowered his voice to a whisper. "What happened to him? I don't remember him being so, on his last visit."
Jon glanced at him from the corner of his eye. "His grace has a large appetite. No doubt you'll see it at the feast tonight."
Robb grimaced. "I suppose I shall."
They walked a little more and then Robb stopped and gestured. "Well. Here we are."
The clearing opened up. Jon had half expected to find his father at his spot by the water, but he was not there. The heart tree was, though.
With its weirwood bark white as fresh-fallen snow, and dark red leaves that sprouted off the branches like bloody handprints. The face carved into the trunk was similar to Jon's own. Long and melancholy, the typical Stark look, it was said. The great tree looked at him and its eyes wept.
"What am I—" Jon started and then he saw it. Snow crunched under his boot as he moved closer. He could feel Robb smiling at his back.
The wolf pup was white as the Kingsguard cloak and his eyes were the red of the old gods. Sitting beneath the weirwood, it seemed an omen.
Silently, the white wolf rose and padded toward him. At some point Jon had fallen to a knee, and when the wolf nuzzled its face into his palm, he knew without a doubt that it was his.
"Where did you find him?" Jon asked softly.
"Some moons ago," Robb said, as he settled in beside him. "We found the mother dead in the snow, with strips of flesh hanging off of her. There were five pups. I begged and Bran cried, yet still father did not listen. Until this one came along. It was the only one with its eyes open. For some reason, that changed his mind. He's been taking care of this one ever since."
They sat in the silence of the godswood, Robb watching with a knowing smile on his lips as Jon tried get to know the wolf that had always been his.
Hours had passed before Father found them.
Jon stood up quickly, setting the wolf down. His father stopped two feet from Jon and looked him over, making note of the changes that time had made to the boy he had reluctantly let go away.
"Jon," he said.
"Father," Jon said.
There was a moment, and then Lord Stark pulled Jon in and held him there, a second and an eternity and not long enough. When he let go, his face was composed again, the lord's face, but there was something in his eyes that Jon had learned to read over years of trying.
You are well. I am glad of it. I have been gladder of it than you know.
"You've grown," Lord Stark said eventually.
"A bit."
"More than a bit." He glanced past Jon to Robb and then down to the white wolf at Jon's heels. "I see you're getting along. That's good. I feared your time away…"
"Never." Robb and Jon said at once. One word filled with untold feeling. The lord of Winterfell allowed himself the smallest of smiles. A slight thing. A proud thing.
"I have heard some things." He paused. "You've grown into a fine man, Jon." His voice was even, measured, the voice of a man who had did not say what he did not mean. "I will not pretend I wished you gone. You know I didn't. I wanted you here. With your brothers." He glanced at Robb. "With your sisters. But it was not what you wanted."
Jon met his eyes. His father's eyes. "No."
"And did you find it? What you went south for?" Lord Stark asked.
Even a bastard can be a knight. And if you still wish to swear off women, join my kingsguard when I am king. Joffrey's words from so long ago came to him. And even then, you may still serve at the wall if it is your wish. I am sure they'd happily take another knight.
"I did, father." Jon had found his own honour.
Lord Eddard Stark looked at him for a long moment. The heart tree watched them both, weeping its red tears, they fell like blood, dripping into the snow.
"Good," his father said. "Tell us everything."
Jon spoke some, about the journey from squire to knight. How court was, the trip they had just had.
Father asked about Jon Arryn, his namesake and how he died. And Jon told all the things that no doubt he already knew. That he was kind and smart. He treated Jon well, told him and prince Joffrey stories about their fathers in the vale. But Jon Arryn was old and he grew ill.
Robb asked about Loras and Jon told them what he could in the way of honest observation—that Loras Tyrell was vain and loyal and better than he looked in the yard and worse than he looked at the tourney and a friend he valued.
Father listened without interruption. All the while Jon was half present, building up confidence. The thing Jon needed to say had been with him for two years. Since the tourney at King's Landing, since the feast where Joff had arranged introductions so effortlessly that you only noticed afterward how effortlessly he'd done it—boy lords and knights' sons and young squires from half the realm, and among them a slight blond youth from Starfall, serious-eyed and quietly spoken, the squire to Lord Beric Dondarrion, who had introduced himself as Edric Dayne and then, in the same careful voice, told him that they were milk brothers.
Our mothers were close friends, he had said. When my mother had no milk, yours nursed us both.
Her name was Wylla. Did your father never tell you?
Jon had managed some answer. He did not remember what it was. What he remembered was the peculiar sensation of the floor sinking out from under him.
Wylla.
He was fourteen years old and he was Joffrey's companion and a knight's squire and he had, he thought, learned to carry the question of his mother like any old wound. It was not healed, it was no longer the first thing he noticed when he woke.
Edric Dayne had reopened it without meaning to, without knowing the wound was there.
He had spent two years since then preparing what he would say. Now Winterfell was around him, and his father was right there, and the words he had prepared all had the feel of something practiced too many times.
"And the prince," Father said at last.
"Is well," Jon said. "He will come into the yard tomorrow. He trains more than anyone."
Father nodded. There was something he was thinking about, turning over. Jon watched his face for it, for the particular tightening at the corners of his eyes that meant he was holding something in with effort. Sansa, he realised. He's still undecided.
After the first visit to Winterfell, it was not exactly a secret that Robert wanted to join his house with the Starks. Nothing had been expressly agreed, but there was always some whisper of it when a lord's daughter came to court in hopes of catching Joffrey's eye. Jon knew that Joffrey and Sansa exchanged letters now and again, to Loras' slight displeasure.
He shook his head. This was more important than Joffrey's future marriage.
"Father," Jon said. "I need to ask you something." He glanced at Robb. Robb must have seen something in his eyes, because he squeezed Jon's shoulder in understanding and left them to the long overdue conversation.
Lord Stark waited.
"At Prince Joffrey's name day tourney. Two years past." Jon kept his voice even. He had practiced keeping it even. "There was a boy from House Dayne. Edric Dayne, Ser Arthur Dayne's nephew. He found me at the feast and told me we were milk brothers." He paused. "That my mother nursed us both, when his had no milk."
His father said nothing. His face had not changed. A wall has a face too, if you look at it long enough.
"He told me her name," Jon said. "My mother's name. Wylla."
The silence stretched. Still nothing. Jon wanted to reach out and strike him.
"He told me," Jon continued, "that you came to Starfall. That you knew her. That she was a serving woman there." He looked at him. "Was he wrong?"
"No," his father said. The word was very quiet. "He was not wrong."
"Then why—" The evenness he had practiced frayed at the edges. He pulled it back. "Sixteen years, Father. Was she so shameful? I have been seven years in the south, carrying this question. I asked you back then to tell me about her and you said no. I did not understand it." He stopped. Started again. "I am not nine years old now. I am a man grown. I have been anointed before gods and men. I have served and bled and stood in the yard against grown knights when I was barely tall enough to reach their shoulders, and I—"
"Jon."
His father's voice stopped him. Not loud. Just certain.
"I know what you are," he said. "I have never doubted it."
Jon waited.
He was quiet for a long time. The pool caught the pale light and held it. Ghost breathed steadily against Jon's feet, warm as a banked fire.
Jon watched his father's face and saw in it something he had not seen there before. Not grief, exactly, though grief was in it. Like he had been carrying something heavy and had realised mayhaps it might be alright to set it down.
"You deserve the truth," he said at last.
"Yes," Jon said, heart in his mouth. "I do."
He stood. He moved to the heart tree and stood before it, looking up at the carved face with its red weeping eyes, and was still for long enough that Jon thought he was praying. He may have been.
"Swear to me," he said. "Before the old gods. Before this tree and this wood and all that watches here." He turned and looked at Jon. "Swear to me that what I tell you will not leave this place. Not to Prince Joffrey. Not to Robb. Not to Loras Tyrell, not to Ser Barristan, not to anyone. Swear it on your life and on your honour and on whatever you hold most precious in this world. Swear it now, and I will tell you everything."
Jon crossed to the tree. He stood before the carved face and felt the eyes of it on him, old eyes, older than the castle, older than the Starks. The bark was white as bone beneath his fingers.
"I swear it," he said. "By the old gods and the new. By my life and my honour."
He looked at his father and it came out as a command. "Tell me."
Lord Stark looked as if he was in deep pain, eyes squeezed shut as if to cut off a memory. A crow gave a cry and father spoke.
"Wylla was not your mother."
Everything was still.
"Your mother was Lyanna," Ned Stark said softly. "My sister. Lyanna Stark."
Jon heard him say it. He heard each word of it arrive and settle, one after the other, like stones dropped into water.
"She was in the Tower of Joy," he said, and his voice had gone somewhere very far away, or perhaps Jon had. "She was dying. She made me promise, Jon, and I have kept it, all these years, at whatever cost. She knew what would happen to you if the truth were known. She knew what Robert would do. What had already been done… She made me take you and call you mine and keep you safe." He stopped. "She was my sister. I would have done more for her than that, if she had asked it."
There were more words after. Jon believed there were more words. His father spoke of Rhaegar—Rhaegar Targaryen, The Last Dragon, the prince who had been and died and was remembered and loved and despised—and he spoke of Harrenhal and blue flowers and a war that had begun in part for the woman now revealed to have been Jon's mother, and he spoke of a tower in Dorne and blood and a promise extracted from him by a dying girl who had only wanted her son to live.
Jon did not hear all of it. It felt like he was underwater, drowning.
Lyanna.
Whose statue he had passed a hundred times in the dark below Winterfell, whose stone face in his memory looked—
Looks like mine, something said, inside him, in a voice that was very quiet and very clear and entirely certain.
The heart tree watched them both.
Its eyes wept red. Red like blood. Red like fire. Red like—
"I smashed him," The king would say and look at Joffrey and Jon with pride. "Drove my warhammer so deep it crushed his chest and all those rubies flew and fell like blood."
The Last Dragon—
Jon felt like laughing. He felt something in him shatter.
Jon sat in the godswood for a long time after his father stopped speaking, with his wolf warm against his legs and the old gods around him, and said nothing at all.
AN: Trying something different with this one, third person and no Joffrey POV scheduled.
Also ages, going with book ages for everyone apart from:
Jon and Robb- Now 16
Joffrey- Now 14
Sansa- Now 13
Everyone else remains the same, this just makes it easier for what I want to do. Just imagine Robert's rebellion was a year or 2 earlier and roll with it.
Last edited: Jun 23, 2026
338
View discussion
Threadmarks The Maiden Fair
View content
DDragonman
DDragonman
Award Recipient
Jun 4, 2026
Add bookmark
#2
SANSA
She had imagined this moment so many times that the reality of it felt like something borrowed from a dream.
The great hall of Winterfell had never looked so fine.
Every torch was lit, every banner hung straight and shining. White, gold and crimson: the direwolf of house Stark, the crowned stag of Baratheon and the lion of Lannister.
The long tables were laden with more food than Sansa had seen outside of a name day feast; roast boar and venison, fresh bread still steaming from the ovens, bowls of late summer berries, flagons of Arbor red that caught the torchlight like liquid rubies.
The musicians her father had brought out of storage for the occasion were playing something stately in the gallery above, and the noise of three hundred guests filled the hall to the rafters, that particular music of a great gathering in full warmth. The cold of the north sat outside the doors and was not invited.
Sansa sat at the high table.
She sat at the high table, which she had never done before, not truly, not like this — with the king to her right and the prince to her left and her mother's eyes on her from further down with an expression that said be gracious and be careful and I am watching all at once.
Sansa was being gracious. Sansa was being careful. She had been preparing for exactly this since she was old enough to understand what preparing meant.
She was also, against every effort of her will and her septa's considerable training, finding it difficult to look at anything other than the crown prince of the Seven Kingdoms.
She had seen him before, of course. Seven years ago, when she had been six and he had been seven. She remembered a golden boy on a pale horse, smaller than she had expected, quieter than she had expected, watching Winterfell with those golden eyes as though he were cataloguing it for later use.
He had been beautiful even then, with the suggestion of something more about him.
She had given him her favour at the yard the next morning, a strip of Tully blue silk, and he had accepted it with more gravity than a seven-year-old had any right to possess and tucked it inside his doublet with a simple thank you my lady, and something in that gesture had stayed with her all these years like a splinter she couldn't quite reach.
The boy was gone. What sat to her left was something the boy had become, and Sansa, who had read every tale of knightly beauty, found herself revising her catalogue of what being beautiful meant.
He was not pretty the way some of the singers were pretty, or the fierce way that Queen Cersei was. The gold of him was real. The hair, the eyes, the particular quality his skin had of seeming lit from within, but it was set in a face that had been sharpened by years and thought into something more interesting than mere prettiness.
He sat at table like he had sat his horse this morning, with the unhurried ease of a person who has never needed to prove anything about himself and therefore wouldn't. He talked to the king, her father, her mother, Jon, and Robb, with equal attention, his head tilting slightly when he listened with interest.
When he turned to her, she felt it like a change in the weather.
"I have been remiss, my lady." Prince Joffrey said. "I feel I have been neglecting you."
"Not at all, your grace," Sansa said at once. The musicians had begun to play A Bear and The Maiden Fair.
He looked at her a moment. Just as direct and assessing as she had remembered and the look was even more arresting now, at fourteen, than it had been at seven. Then he smiled, and Sansa decided that she did not have an adequate word for what his smile did to a room.
"What would you like to know, my lady?" he asked.
She had prepared questions, of course. Careful, appropriate questions that demonstrated intelligence without presumption. They all fled. "Everything," she said, and then flushed.
He laughed. It was a beautiful laugh, polished and courtly. Not the roar his father gave as he settled another serving girl in his lap.
"Then we had better start at the beginning." Joffrey reached for the summerwine and poured her cup before his own, which made Sansa straighten slightly and hope the colour in her cheeks was not as visible as it felt. "What would you like to know first?"
"Your days," she said after some thought. "What they look like. I have heard stories about court but stories are—" She stopped. "I want to know what is true."
He considered this as seriously as if she had asked him something of political consequence. "Early mornings. I train with Ser Jaime and Ser Barristan from first light. They disagree about almost every point of form and technique, so I spend a great deal of time as the territory in a philosophical dispute." She laughed at that. "In the end I just have to accept both teachings. After, I go to the Sept of Baelor."
"To pray?" Sansa wondered.
"Every morning."
She had not expected that. She had not known him to be particularly pious. Something in her face must have shown it, because he looked at her thoughtfully. "A king who does not speak to the gods has no business asking his people to. Or so I have always thought."
"What do you pray for?"
"Wisdom, mostly," he said softly. "Wisdom enough to know what I don't know. And patience. I have less patience than I would like." A pause, he looked around the table. "I pray for my family as well."
Sansa filed this away carefully, though she could not imagine him impatient in anyway. And when she prayed for her family, it was mostly begging that today Arya would not cause trouble. She prayed that everyday. "And after the sept?"
"That depends on the day. Sometimes I hunt with father. Sometimes I sit with the small council, as I have done since I was eleven," The girl felt an eyebrow raise in shock. The prince simply smiled as if he knew her thoughts and she had to take a sip to hide her blush.
Not too much, Sansa thought. She remembered Septa mordane's teachings and knew her father would only let her have one cup.
Joffrey continued, "My father allows it. I think it amuses him more than anything else." His tone was even. "Other days I go into the city."
"The city," Sansa repeated, as if tasting the words. Kinglanding. The greatest city in the world. Some said it was Oldtown or Lannisport but Sansa knew they were wrong. The king was in Kingslanding. Joffrey was in kingslanding.
"With Jon and Loras usually, sometimes my cousins Lancel and Tyrek, Hobber and Horas Redwyne when they're at court. We walk. Visit the market, sometimes the almshouses or the orphanages. There are more of those than there should be." Something shifted briefly in his eyes. "Other days we find a tavern somewhere and drink very bad wine and argue about whatever pleases us until the owner wishes we had found a different tavern."
Sansa giggled as she tried to imagine a prince of the realm sitting in a common tavern arguing about random petty things and almost could not. Then she looked at the table further down, where her brother Ser Jon Snow sat with Ser Loras, and she could see it exactly.
"And sometimes," he continued, "I bring my lute, dress up and play until someone asks me to stop."
"You play?" Sansa felt her heart flutter.
"I do." he said, with the directness she was learning to recognise. "Father doesn't like it much, it reminds him of another. But in truth the playing is not really the important thing. It is the only time I am simply a man in a room." He looked earnestly at her. "The people need to see their prince, they should know him a little I think, though my mother disagrees. That's the reason I go into the city so much. But sometimes I wish to go and not be recognised. Does that make sense to you, my lady?"
"Yes," she said, meaning it. She thought of the godswood, of the rare mornings she walked there alone before the castle woke, when she was not Lord Stark's daughter or the eldest girl or any particular thing. "It makes complete sense."
The king's son studied her again, in that way of his. Seeing that she did understand, he nodded.
They ate. The food was extraordinary and Sansa ate more than she intended, which she would not regret because the conversation made her forget to be careful about it.
Prince Joffrey asked about her. Real questions and not the just polite questions of the court she had been warned about, about what she read and what she thought and what Winterfell was like when there was no royalty around.
"Everything goes quiet," she told him. "The whole world goes white and quiet. You can stand at the window in the morning and there's nothing out there, just snow and grey sky, and it's almost frightening, how much silence there is compared to now." She paused. "I love it, though. It's what the north is."
"The south is the opposite," Joffrey replied. "In the south everything is always in motion and always making noise about it."
"I want to see it," Sansa admitted, before she could stop herself. "King's Landing. The Red Keep. All of it."
"You will." He said it simply, as a fact rather than a promise.
Sansa felt something settle in her chest that had been unsettled since the morning she had heard the horns and known the royal column was coming.
She fed him a piece of honeyed lemon cake from her own plate at some point. She could not afterward remember quite how this had happened, but he allowed it with a raised eyebrow that made her laugh again, and across the table her mother was looking at her with an expression that had shifted from be careful to something Sansa had never seen on her mother's face before and queen Cersei seemed to almost frown.
When the feast began to thin at its edges, the king getting louder and the candles burning lower and the musicians starting to repeat themselves, Joffrey leaned in close and the smell of him was pristine and something sweet.
"I have not forgotten," he said quietly.
"Your grace?" She felt herself flush from his closeness.
"My promise. From when I left." He watched her face. She kept it still, but she knew the colour was still rising. She remembered the morning before his column departed, six years old and certain of nothing so much as that she did not want him to go.
She had made him promise to write, and he had written, twice a year for seven years without fail, and each letter had been kept inside her prayer book where no one would look for them.
"I have something for you. I thought mayhaps the godswood tomorrow. Before the castle wakes."
"Yes," she said almost without thought, and was glad her voice came out steadier than she felt.
She did not sleep well.
This was not unusual when Sansa was especially happy. Happiness had always wound her too tight for easy sleep, and she lay listening to the sounds of the castle settling around her and thought about the feast and the way he listened and the promise and the morrow to come. Lady slept at the foot of her bed, warm and grey, her sides rising and falling in the steady rhythm of untroubled sleep. Sansa envied her.
She gave up on sleep before dawn and dressed carefully in the grey light, choosing the blue dress — her best, with the silver thread at the cuffs — and pinned her hair up with the carved bone combs her mother had given her for her last name day.
Lady padded after her into the corridor, and Lancel Lannister was waiting at the end of it, leaning against the wall with the expression that said he wished to still be abed.
"My lady," he yawned out, with the slightly pained courtesy of a squire doing his duty.
"Ser Lancel," Sansa said in greeting. Ser, because he would be a knight someday and she had learned that men liked to be addressed as the thing they were becoming. The slight straightening of his spine confirmed it.
The godswood was cold and still.
Even in summer, Winterfell's godswood had a quality of winter about it, with the old trees too tall and too close, the shadows too deep, the sounds of the castle too thoroughly absorbed by the canopy overhead. Sansa had played here as a child and feared it a little, and loved it as well. Lady moved close to her leg and she let her hand rest on the wolf's head.
He was already there. Standing at the edge of the clearing, opposite to where the heart tree stood, not looking at the tree but at the pale sky beginning to lighten above the canopy. He was in plain dark clothes without ornament, as unlike the prince of last night as a person could be, yet he still managed to exude that same presence.
This was what he had meant, she thought, simply a man in a room. Or in a wood, rather.
He heard her before she announced herself, turning at the sound of Lady's paws in the fallen leaves.
"She likes you," Sansa said with joy, because Lady had gone directly to him and was pressing her grey head against his knee, which had to mean something surely.
"I like her," her prince said in response, scratching between the wolf's ears with ease. His eyes flickered up to her. "You look wonderful as always my lady."
Lancel positioned himself at a diplomatic distance, studying something in the middle canopy with intense interest.
Joffrey fell into step beside her, and they walked the godswood path with Lady weaving between them, and the morning was cold and clean, very quiet and oh so romantic.
Sansa had been trying, since she had first seen him ride through the gate, to reconcile the boy she remembered with the young man who had arrived in his place, and it came to her now, walking beside him in the early grey light, what the difference was.
When she had met him, seven years old and freshly arrived from the south, he had been… not sad exactly, but contained. Like something that had been compressed into itself. Beautiful and watchful and slightly sorrowful in the way of a boy who had seen more than he should and not yet found a way to set it down.
He was not sorrowful now. He was calm. Like a river, something moving in it always, purposeful even at rest. Whatever he had been carrying back then, he had found somewhere to put it. And she was happy for him.
He is perfect, Sansa thought, and felt immediately foolish for thinking it because no one was perfect, she knew that, her septa had told her as much. But the thought sat there regardless, solid and uncomplicated, as she watched him hold aside a low branch so that she could pass beneath without ducking.
The heart tree stood at the clearing's centre, white bark and weeping red eyes, the carved face long and sorrowful. Sansa had grown up with that face and found it more comforting than frightening now. It knew things, she had always felt, and kept them, and did not judge. The pool below it was black and still.
He reached into his doublet and produced a necklace.
It lay across his palm — a thin silver chain, studded with diamonds and suspended from it a pendant, a teardrop-shaped stone that was at one moment red, then blue and if the light hit it just right, purple. They were the colours of Tully, she realised: Red and blue and silver, her mother's colours. The diamonds shone almost grey and white in the light. The colours of house Stark. He had had it made for her specifically, which meant he had planned it before the journey north, before even arriving.
He had been planning to give her this for some time.
Sansa felt like she might faint.
"Your grace," she said, and could not find anything else to say.
"Will you do me the honour?" He held it up, and looked at her. Her throat was dry, she swallowed and turned, lifted her hair, and she felt the cool silver settle against her collarbone and his hands at the back of her neck, careful and certain, she felt herself grow hot where his fingers grazed. She wanted to stay like that but then he stepped away and she turned back and he looked at her with the expression of a man whose work has come out as he intended.
"It's wonderful," she said. It was inadequate. She felt inadequate. She touched the stone with one finger and almost gasped out the question. "What is it?"
"Dragonglass, Obsedian, Valyrian stone. It goes by many names. It keeps bad things away," he said. "Or so the maesters say." Something in his tone suggested he had his own views on this. "It is quite eye catching. I thought it appropriate."
"Thank you, your grace." She meant it with more of herself than she usually put into the words. She looked at him standing there in the grey morning light with the heart tree at his back, and thought: I have been waiting for you. I did not know I was waiting for you, but I have been.
At some point he had moved to touch the heart tree, one hand laid flat against the white bark, the way her father sometimes laid his hand against it. And for just a moment, in the particular light of the early morning with the red sap weeping down the bark behind his hand, his eyes—
She blinked.
The light shifted. His eyes were gold again, as they always were. The red had been a trick of the tree, the reflection of the weeping sap, the dawn playing strangely through the canopy above.
"My father hasn't said yes," Sansa reminded him. "To the betrothal."
"He will." No arrogance in it. Just certainty, as he had been certain last night about King's Landing. You will.
"You can't know that." Mayhaps Sansa should not have contradicted him but she couldn't have his certainty. She wanted to however. She dearly wanted to.
"I don't know your father very well," Joffrey Baratheon admitted. "But I know my mine. Father will not let this go. And so Lord Stark will accept. He will do what is best for his family, and this is best for his family. He will come to see it." He looked at her. "Don't worry."
"I want it," she said, and hearing herself say it so plainly startled her a little. She was not usually plain. She had been trained to circle, to suggest, to imply. But something about last night and this morning and the godswood and the necklace warm against her collarbone made plainness feel right. "I have wanted it for years. I'm not—I know how it sounds, wanting to be a queen, like something from a story. Every girl wants that… But I want you… Not the crown." She looked at him steadily. "I want to be honest about that."
He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was different. Lower now, with something in it she didn't have a name for.
"You will be a good queen, Sansa." Joffrey said.
"You can't know that either."
"I know you," he said. "Less than I will. But enough to see it." He looked at her with that considering look, the one she had been trying to decipher for seven years and still couldn't quite get to the bottom of. "You see people. You pay attention even if others might not think so. That will matter."
"I will be a good wife to you." Sansa promised. The words came from the bottom of her heart. "I will listen and do as you say. I will give you many sons and daughters, as many as you wish. You will have nothing to complain about with me." He looked slightly amused and Sansa felt a trickle of embarrassment for her outpouring. He did not laugh however.
Joffrey stepped forward and took her hand with a gentleness that surprised her and brought it to his lips.
He was smiling. "It is as I said, my lady. You shall make a good queen."
She had been called beautiful her whole life, often and by people who meant it. He was the first person who had ever made her feel able, and she was not entirely certain what to do with that.
She became aware, gradually, that Lancel was no longer studying the canopy.
"We should go back," she said, mournfully.
He offered his arm and she took it, and they walked back toward the castle through the pale morning. Lady walked between them, and Sansa thought: this is the best morning I have ever had. She thought it as clearly and completely as she had ever thought anything.
She watched him train from the gallery above the yard later that day.
She had not intended to stay so long. She had meant to look in briefly, as she did sometimes when Robb and Theon were working, the courteous interest of a lord's daughter in the castles' men hacking away at each other. But Joffrey in the yard was not something you looked at briefly.
He moved with an economy that she did not yet have the language to properly describe. He wasn't showy, every movement had a purpose. He went blow for blow with the knight who handed her the gold rose upon his introduction. Ser Barristan called corrections from the side of the yard and Joffrey adjusted without argument or delay.
He wore her favour at his wrist. A strip of Tully blue silk, faded and somewhat worse for seven years of wear, tied above the glove.
She had asked about it in the godswood as they made their way back, not entirely believing what she was seeing when he pulled it out. I always kept it near, he had said, easily, as if it were a simple and obvious thing, and the heat she had felt in her face had been so acute that she had looked away to gather herself.
Jon was in the yard as well, working through forms on the far side with a concentration she might have noted in other circumstances. He looked distracted, she thought vaguely. Somewhere else in his head. She hoped he was well.
But then Joffrey came around and the morning sun caught the gold of him, and her blue favour at his wrist, and Sansa forgot to think about anything else.
She pressed her fingers to the dragonglass stone at her collarbone.
Don't worry, he had said.
She found, looking down at him in the yard, that she did not.
Last edited: Jun 9, 2026
291
View discussion
Threadmarks The Imp
View content
DDragonman
DDragonman
Award Recipient
Jun 4, 2026
Add bookmark
#3
TYRION
He had found, over the years, that the best libraries were the ones nobody else used. Winterfell's was not exceptional as libraries went. It smaller than the one at Casterly Rock, considerably smaller than the Citadel's, with none of the architectural grandeur that the Red Keep's maester liked to pretend justified the poor organisation of its shelves.
But it was quiet, and it was warm, and it smelled of old parchment and tallow in the particular combination that Tyrion had loved since he was a boy small enough to hide between the shelves and not be found for hours. Back when he had thought to be High Septon, before Tysha.
Tyrion shook the thought away in surprise. He had not thought of her in sometime.
Two days remained before the column rode south. One more night in the north. Tyrion intended to spend the last afternoon of it, after Robert's gods forsaken hunt, in the best possible company.
He was three-quarters through a dense, well aged book on the changing of the seasons when a knock came at the door. He did not look up. If it was a servant they would go away. If it was Cersei, he would desperately need wine. If it was—
"You're in a library, Nuncle." said Joffrey, a hint of surprise in his tone.
Tyrion turned a page. "Observant as ever."
His nephew came in and dropped into the chair across the reading table without the thought that his company may not have been wanted. He was in dark clothes without the gold, which meant he had come from the yard or was heading there, and he looked at the shelves around him with mild interest.
Tyrion's reading lamp was running low and beginning to flicker pathetically, it painted his nephew's face in red, gold and orange and for a moment Tyrion was looking at a young Jamie with golden eyes.
At fourteen, he was already larger than Tyrion, which was not a high bar to clear but which still provoked the particular small rueful feeling Tyrion had been made to learn to have quickly and set aside easily.
"We leave the day after tomorrow," Joffrey said. "I would have thought you'd be on your third or fourth—"
"Fifth," Tyrion cut in.
"—brothel visit by now. Seeing as northern whores are so soon to be behind you."
"And ahead of me is the Wall, which is not known for its whores." He turned the page. Though Tyrion wasn't truly reading anymore, the book was dreadfully dull."I am being economical."
"You're gambling with your balls, Nuncle."
A bark of laughter escaped Tyrion. "Nephew, not all whores have the pox."
"As you say, Nuncle." Joffrey didn't look convinced. He was quiet for a time. This was nothing new, the prince liked to listen more than he spoke, though he could speak as well as anyone.
"You should come to dinner this evening. Just the family. Mother has had the kitchens do something she's described as a Lannister meal, by which I assume she means expensive and slightly aggressive." He felt Joffrey's gaze on him.
"I wouldn't miss it." Tyrion set a finger in his page and looked up. "What are you reading?"
"Nothing at the moment."
"I meant in general."
Joffrey looked at the shelves. "Gyldayn's histories. The collected accounts of the Targaryen kings and their progeny." He paused. "I find it useful to know what not to do."
Tyrion snorted. "Most of it should be obvious nephew."
Joffrey looked at him with something that was almost amusement. "Don't worry Nuncle, you shan't catch me drinking wildfire or marrying my sister."
"Good, Myrcella's too sweet for you." Tyrion japed.
Joffrey leaned back in the chair and looked at the ceiling. He had Jaime's ease of posture and none of Jaime's vacancy. It was, Tyrion had always thought, one of the more interesting paradoxes of his nephew's existence — a boy made of his mother's beauty and his uncle's grace, who had somehow become neither. "What are you reading?"
Tyrion held up the spine.
"One Hundred Years and their Seasons," Joffrey read. He looked at Tyrion. "Not going to read up on the wall?."
"You think I should? There's nothing beyond it but unwashed wildlings." Tyrion chuckled and put the book down properly, resigning himself to a conversation, which was not an entirely unpleasant thing, conversation was with Joffrey never was. "Your grandsire thinks it's a relic and a drain. The Small Council thinks it's a relic and a drain. The king—"
"The king thinks it's a fine excuse for a drinking song about rangers." Joffrey's voice was even. "I know."
"And you?"
"I think men wouldn't man the largest structure in the known world for eight thousand years over nothing." He said it simply, the way he said most things. "I think whatever put it there has not necessarily gone away simply because we'd find it more convenient if it had."
Tyrion studied his nephew for a moment. There was, he had always felt, something slightly unnerving about Joffrey's clarity. Mayhaps it was his eyes, they reminded him of his father. He withheld a grimace.
Joffrey's eyes had not always been so. They had been the green of his mother and uncle and siblings when he was young. But at some point he had come down with a fever, or was it an injury? The particulars escaped Tyrion at the moment, but when Joffrey woke, his eyes had been gold, not just flecked like his grandsire's. The maesters thought it slightly odd but they said children eyes changed colours sometimes when young. The colour they deigned to show was up to the gods. Pycell even hypothesised that perhaps Tommen and Myrcella's eyes would one day deign to be blue like Robert's, but Tyrion doubted that.
It wasn't just the boy's eyes however. Most men of fourteen were a confusion of appetites and performances. Joffrey had appetites — he was not stone — but they did not appear to confuse him. He seemed to know what he thought about most things, including things boys of fourteen had no business thinking about at all, and this knowledge sat in him quietly, without show.
"I have some letters," Joffrey announced. He reached inside his doublet and produced them — three, sealed with plain wax rather than the royal seal, which was interesting. "For the Lord Commander. Would you carry them?"
Tyrion took them and turned them over in his hands, wondering of their purpose. "What's in them?"
"An acknowledgment that the crown has received his ravens. That his requests for men and supplies have been heard, and are being considered, and that he has not been forgotten." Joffrey paused. "Also that we intend to do something about it."
Tyrion knew by 'we', Joffrey mostly meant himself. "Do we?"
"I visited the dungeons before we left King's Landing." Joffrey said, easily. "There are men there — were men there, rather, being transferred to Eastwatch by ship — who I thought might be useful to the Watch in some capacity." He left the nature of this usefulness unelaborated, which was another of his habits. "When I am back in the city, I intend to take control of the city watch."
Tyrion blinked. "You do?"
"It's been left in a state for too long." Joffrey drummed his fingers against the arm of his chair.
Tyrion felt a smile hint on his lips. "And they'll just have you, will they? With what qualifications nephew?"
"I am their prince." And Joffrey could have left it at that, but apparently he was feeling talkative today. "But no, I don't expect them to just accept it. It is about time I earned my spurs. Father shall no doubt announce a tourney when we return—"
"He does love tourneys, your father."
"— either for his new hand or to announce my betrothal. I will win, either the melee, the joust or both, and father shall knight me there and then."
The melee, the joust or both. Sometimes Tyrion couldn't decipher whether it was simple confidence or arrogance that laced his nephews words. But Tyrion supposed, he was his father's son.
"Your mother will not let you." Tyrion thought to remind him.
"That's what mystery knights are for." Joffery replied. "Afterwards, I will assume command of the gold cloaks and raise the matter of the Watch's provisioning with the Small Council. With Lord Stark as Hand, it should be easier. He takes the north seriously."
Tyrion weighed the letters in his palm. Three letters, plain seals, delivered by way of a dwarf going to see the Wall. There was a jest in there somewhere. "You've been thinking about this for some time."
"The Night's Watch sends ravens every few months. Every raven says the same things — more men, more food, wildlings amassing beyond the Wall. Every raven gets the same answer, which is that the matter is being considered." Joffrey looked at his hands. "I have been reading those ravens since I was eleven. That is three years of the same letter arriving and the same answer going back. I thought someone ought to break the pattern."
Tyrion considered this. He thought about some of the watch men he had met on the road north and the recruiters he had seen in his life. Weathered black-cloaked men, all with dead eyes and cold faces, men who had given up names and lands and futures for an oath that the rest of the realm had largely stopped believing was necessary.
He thought about standing on top of the Wall and pissing off the edge of the world, which he had told Jaime he would do and which was what he was going to do, and he thought about the other thing, the thing he had not told Jaime, which was that he was also going to look over the edge and see what was there. Just for curiosity's sake.
"I'll give him your letters," Tyrion decided. The crown prince's eyes were still on him.
"And tell me what you find," Joffrey said.
It wasn't a question.
"And tell you what I find," Tyrion agreed. He tucked the letters inside his own doublet and picked up his book. "Now. Dinner."
"Is that a question or a statement?" Joff laughed and stood.
"With me, it's always a statement." Tyrion closed the book and left it. "Lead the way, your grace. I haven't eaten since midday and I do so enjoy your mother's company."
The family assembled in a private solar. It was small enough to feel intimate, warm in the strange way that Winterfell was, and large enough that Cersei could position herself at a remove from anyone she chose to be at a remove from. She had chosen to be at a remove from the window, which meant she was at a remove from the view of the yard, which meant she did not have to look at the Stark castle's grey stones any more than she already had.
Tyrion glanced at her and observed that she had dressed for the south, the crimson and gold of Lannister rather than the muted colours she had worn for the northern court. In Cersei's mind, he understood, they had already left.
Tommen launched himself at Joffrey's midsection the moment he came through the door, which Joffrey absorbed with the long-suffering patience of a large tree tolerating a climbing child. He picked him up and placed his brother on his shoulders like a sack of grain, ruffled the boy's hair and said something in his ear that made Tommen laugh. He always had a something ready, small and specific, for each of his siblings.
Myrcella was more contained than her brother — she was nine and had more of their mother's dignity, though mercifully less of her mother's talent for deploying it — but even she brightened when she laid eyes on her brother, in a way she did not always bother to around the rest of the family.
This is the thing, Tyrion thought, taking his seat and accepting wine from the servant who appeared at his elbow. This is the thing about him that no one outside this room quite understands.
He was good with them. It was not a performed goodness, or if so the boy was an exceptional mummer. No, it was the kind that knew Tommen was frightened of the dark and let Tommen sneak into his rooms, and knew Myrcella was cleverer than people allowed her to be and spoke to her accordingly.
Tyrion had no idea where this quality had come from. He was fairly certain it had not come from their parents.
Jaime was already seated, elegant and lazy, pouring his own wine without waiting for service because he was Jaime Lannister and he did as he pleased. He caught Tyrion's eye across the table and gave him the slight upward tilt of the chin and a cocksure smile that was his version of greeting.
Cersei surveyed them all from the head of the table with an expression that was approaching warmth though still many leagues away.
"Is Father joining us?" Myrcella asked, hopeful.
"Your father," Cersei spat the words with distain, "is probably ensuring that our hosts' hospitality extends to their wine cellar." A pause, very slight. "Or elsewhere."
No one at the table required the elsewhere to be further explained.
Joffrey said nothing, which was also something. He poured watered wine for Myrcella, juice for Tommen, and attended to his own plate with the focused appreciation he always had when he had spent the day in the yard and was genuinely hungry. Tyrion watched his sister watch Joffrey and thought: there it is again.
It had been there for as long as he could remember, that particular quality in Cersei's watching of her eldest son — something between pride and frustration and something else he had never quite named.
She had made him, or helped to make him, and the result had outgrown her understanding of what she had intended, and she did not entirely know how to be the mother of something she did not entirely understand.
He felt, occasionally, a very faint sympathy for her. Only very faint. Very, very faint. She was still Cersei.
"The Stark girl," the queen said eventually, when the children had been served and had been eating for sometime. Her tone was mild with only a hint of danger. "The betrothal."
"Yes," said Joffrey.
"I want you to know that I think—"
"Mother." Not sharp. Never sharp. Not with her, just final. "We've spoken about this."
"We've spoken," Cersei agreed, with a smile that did not reach anything above her mouth, and the words were mocking. "You've spoken. I have raised objections."
"Which have been noted and considered." He ate. "Sansa Stark is an excellent choice and you would not have been happy with any other choice either."
Cersei set down her knife. "That is not—"
"Margaery Tyrell," said Jaime in an amused drawl. They had been over this before. "Too grasping, you said."
"The Tyrells are grasping." Cersei near growled. "That boy, Loras, is a fool!"
"The Florent girl," Tyrion offered pleasantly. "If memory serves. Teeth."
"I said nothing about her teeth."
"You said something about her teeth," Jaime said.
"I said her chin," Cersei said.
"Her chin. Which was attached to—" Tyrion began.
"Enough." But her mouth had moved, slightly, in the direction of something that was not entirely displeasure, which was as close as Cersei generally got to admitting she had been amused despite herself. "The Tyrells are grasping. That is a fact and not a criticism, it is simply what they are, they should know their place. I say it because one should know what one is dealing with."
"I know what I'm dealing with," Joffrey said. "Which is why I can deal with it. Loras will be in the Kingsguard. Margaery will marry Tommen—"
"She will not!"
"—instead of me. The Tyrells will have their blood on the thrown eventually. Mace Tyrell will grumble and Lady Olenna will say something devastating about it at a dinner party, and then they will come around because they are practical people and the practical arrangement is available. Or perhaps they won't. Perhaps they will try to force our hand." Joffrey shrugged. "I have their son. A third son perhaps. But one who they love. One who is dedicated to me. They know what will happen."
Dedicated was one word for Loras Tyrell felt for Joffrey, Tyrion supposed. Can you carry out that threat nephew?
Joffrey considered his plate. "The grasping ones are always manageable."
Tommen's eyes had grown heavy with the particular determination of a child trying not to be sent to bed. Myrcella had already listed slightly sideways in her chair. Cersei looked at them both and made the small sound that meant the calculation had been done. "Come," she said, rising. "Both of you. The hour is late."
Tommen protested as Tommen always protested, which was to say briefly and without much conviction. Myrcella said goodnight with the grave courtesy of a child who has been well-taught, and leaned up to kiss Joffrey's cheek before she went. Joffrey said something in her ear. She went pink and smiled and followed her mother.
The door closed and the room felt different. Adult. Thrumming with tension. Jaime refilled his wine. Tyrion accepted a top-up without complaint. He had a feeling he was going to need more soon.
"Lysa Arryn," Cersei said, returning to her chair. The pleasantness she had maintained for the children's benefit had been put away with them. "Lord Stark's wife's sister. Who sits in the Eyrie, with some asinine belief, that we had something to do with her husband's death."
"Jon Arryn died of a fever," Tyrion said mildly.
The look Cersei gave him managed to be both withering and entirely noncommittal, which was a talent he had to admire about his sweet sister.
"She is untouchable," Cersei continued. "In the Eyrie. The Eyrie is impregnable."
"From the outside," said Joffrey, still eating.
Cersei looked at him. Jaime looked at him. Joffrey took his cup and drank.
"From the outside," he said again, once he noticed the silence. "From within it is a castle like any other, with lords who have opinions and interests and now a boy lord who requires managing, and the question of who manages him is the more interesting one." He set down his cup. "Robin Arryn is sickly. He has been sickly his whole life. The Eyrie's maesters will do what they can, but—" He did not finish the sentence. He didn't need to. "The Lords of the Vale will need a regent eventually. Or a new lord. Harry Hardying is the heir."
"Hardying," Tyrion said, tasting the name.
Joffrey had thought about this before, no doubt.
"Harry Hardying, and Bronze Yohn Royce to hold the regency until matters clarify. Royce is a good friend to Ned Stark, which makes him trustworthy to Ned Stark, which is useful. And he has a widowed niece. We have plenty of Lannisters to spare." Joffrey concluded.
Tyrion did not say the thought aloud. That a match between Myrcella and Hardying, or between Tommen and the Royce girl, would tie the Vale far more firmly than any regency arrangement. He could see from the slight set of Joffrey's mouth that the thought had occurred to him too. He was not saying it because their mother was in the room, and their mother had strong opinions about where her youngest children were to be sent.
Some battles needn't be fought.
"Place Nestor Royce at the Gate of the Moon, instead of the blackfish," Jaime said thoughtfully. He was not objecting. Jaime in full thoughtfulness was a different creature from Jaime at his most decorative — slower, more careful, the years of the Kingsguard having taught him things about tactics that he had not bothered to learn as a young man. "The Vale lords would accept him. Or not. Either way we'd have an in, thanks to your future lady wife."
Cersei sniffed.
"Lord Stark's recommendation for Bronze Yohn would help," Joffrey said. "If Father asks it of him."
"You would be giving Ned Stark allies throughout the realm," Cersei said and shook her head in disbelief. Her voice had the quality it got when she was marshalling herself. "The North is his. The Riverlands through his wife. The Vale through Royce and his wife's family. If he chose to resist—"
"He won't." Joffrey looked at his mother. "I am marrying his daughter, Mother. His bastard is one of my closest companions." Cersei scowled at the reminder.
"I am offering his family more than any Hand has been offered in living memory. I have no designs against him and he has no reason to have designs against me." He paused. "They say he is the most honourable man in the Seven Kingdoms. He will be loyal to the king who gives him no cause for disloyalty."
There it was again. The look. Quick as a sword-draw and gone, between Cersei and Jaime — there and away before the ordinary person would have caught it. Tyrion was not the ordinary person.
He had seen that look before. He had been seeing it, in various forms, for as long as he had been watching them closely, which was as long as he could remember. He had long since arrived at the only conclusion available to a man of his intelligence, and it sat in him quietly, heavily, painfully.
He reached for his cup. It was empty.
"Well," he said pleasantly, to no one in particular. "The north agrees with you, nephew. I haven't seen you in this much good temper since the first time you slipped through Jaime's guard."
"He got lucky," Jaime said, frowning at the memory.
"He gets lucky with remarkable frequency," Tyrion observed. "I would call that skill."
Joffrey's mouth curved. The look between his mother and his uncle had lasted a heartbeat and was gone. Whether he had seen it, his face gave nothing.
His face, Tyrion reflected, never gave anything. That too was a quality he had not inherited from either parent.
Tyrion got up to get more wine. He decided not to think about his strange nephew