Chapter 4: The Climb
The feast had been three days of careful performance.
Three days of watching Robert drink himself into stupors while Cersei's smile grew sharper. Three days of Ned and the king vanishing into crypts and hunting parties, speaking of old wars and dead women. Three days of Joffrey sneering at everything Northern while Sansa blushed and preened beside him.
Three days of waiting for the fall.
I stood at the edge of the training yard, sword arm aching from morning drills, watching Bran scale the guest tower's eastern wall. My brother climbed with the easy grace of a spider, fingers finding holds invisible to anyone watching from below. Fifty feet up. Sixty. Higher still.
Grey Wind pressed against my leg, a low growl building in his throat.
"I know," I murmured. "I know."
The broken tower loomed beyond the guest quarters—ancient, crumbling, forbidden. Bran had been warned a thousand times. He climbed anyway. That was Bran. Fearless in all the ways that would destroy him.
Today.
The certainty had been building since dawn. Not precognition—something deeper. A wrongness in the air, a tension that wouldn't release. Jaime Lannister had disappeared from the yard an hour ago, claiming exhaustion from the hunt. Cersei had excused herself from Catelyn's company shortly after.
I knew where they'd gone. What they were doing.
And I knew what Bran would see when he reached the wrong window.
My feet moved before conscious thought engaged. Across the yard. Past the armory. Toward the broken tower, where ancient stone met morning sky. Grey Wind padded beside me, silent as shadow.
What's the play? Stop him now? Call out?
If I prevented the climb entirely, Bran would try again tomorrow. Or the day after. The tower drew him like lodestone drew iron. And if I revealed what I knew—
"Father, the queen is fucking her brother in the broken tower. I know because I read about it in another life."
Madness. Execution. Everything unraveled.
But if Bran fell...
Paralysis. The catspaw assassin. Catelyn's journey to King's Landing. Her capture of Tyrion. War erupting across the Riverlands. A cascade of disasters traced back to this single moment, this single fall.
Middle path. Find a middle path.
I positioned myself near the tower's base, where collapsed stone created natural seating. Casual. A young lord resting after training. Nothing suspicious. Grey Wind settled beside me, ears pricked toward the heights.
Bran had transferred to the broken tower now. His small form moved across ancient masonry with terrifying confidence. Eighty feet up. Ninety. He paused at a window ledge, catching his breath.
Too high to hear me. Too focused to notice.
"Bran!" I called anyway, pitching my voice to carry. "Mother's looking for you!"
The wind swallowed my words. Bran didn't turn.
He reached the next window. Peered inside.
And stopped.
Even from this distance, I could see his body stiffen. His hands, always so certain, suddenly clutched the stone with desperate force. He'd seen them. Jaime and Cersei, golden twins locked in forbidden embrace.
Move. Now.
I was already running when the hands appeared.
Jaime's hands. Shoving outward. Bran's small form tilting backward, arms pinwheeling against empty air, mouth opening in a scream that hadn't reached my ears yet—
Time stretched like honey in winter.
I calculated angles. Distance. Velocity. Bran was falling at thirty-two feet per second squared, give or take. I was forty feet from the impact point. No human could cover that distance in time.
But something in me tried anyway.
Grey Wind howled—a sound torn from the depths of wolf memory, ancient and terrible. My legs churned against packed earth. Every muscle screamed with effort that felt somehow more than normal, as if my body was pushing past limits it shouldn't have known existed.
Bran fell.
I dove.
Impact.
We collided fifteen feet from where he would have struck stone directly. My arms wrapped around his small body, twisting to take the blow on my back and shoulder. The ground rose up to meet us like a fist.
Something in my shoulder snapped.
Pain exploded through my right side—white-hot, blinding. We rolled together across cobblestones, my body absorbing impacts meant for my brother. But I'd only caught him halfway down. The fall was broken, not stopped.
Bran's head struck stone.
Blood—bright, terrible—spread beneath his auburn hair. His eyes were closed. His chest rose and fell in shallow gasps.
Alive. He's alive.
Grey Wind was there, muzzle pressing against my face, whining with desperate concern. I tried to rise and couldn't. My shoulder was wrong—dislocated at minimum, shattered at worst. Breathing sent knives through my ribs.
"HELP!" The word tore from my throat. "HELP! SOMEONE!"
Guards came running. Shouts echoed off ancient walls. Faces appeared above me—Jory Cassel, pale with shock. Maester Luwin, already calling for a stretcher.
Then Catelyn.
Her scream split the morning air. She dropped beside Bran, hands hovering over his bleeding head, afraid to touch. "My baby. My baby, my baby—"
Ned pushed through the crowd. His face was bone-white, eyes moving from Bran's still form to my broken one.
"He fell," I gasped. Each word cost agony. "I tried—caught him—couldn't—"
"Don't speak." Ned's hand found my good shoulder. His grip was iron. "You saved him. Don't speak."
Did I?
Bran's chest still rose and fell. Blood still spread beneath his head. I'd changed the fall but hadn't prevented it.
Different. Not better. Just different.
Grey Wind pressed closer. His warmth was the last thing I felt before darkness swallowed everything.
[Grey Wind's Perception]
Four legs. Grass beneath paws. The scent of blood—pack blood—sharp in the night air.
The wolf ran.
Not toward prey. Toward something else. A pull in his chest that wasn't hunger, wasn't instinct, wasn't anything the wolf's ancient memory could name. His packmate—the one who walked on two legs, who smelled of winter and something other—was calling him.
Come.
The word wasn't sound. It was feeling. Pressure behind the wolf's eyes. A presence settling into his skull like a second heartbeat.
Show me.
The wolf didn't understand words. But he understood the presence. His packmate. His other half. The one whose dreams had tasted of blood and falling stone.
The wolf ran toward the keep.
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