Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

- Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley 

After the fire, there are ashes.

After the clouds, there is snow.

After everyone, there is a girl, her hair a smear of red across the barren moors, a likeness for the clay that seeps up from the earth, the blood that sinks into the ground.

But this is not a ghost story.

This is a story about ghosts.

Sansa Stark lives in a house that is haunted by those who are no longer here. There is the bannister Bran used to slide down, shrieking as she yelled for him to stop, the study Father used to take his tobacco in, in secret, away from the gently chiding admonishments of Mother. The nursery she’d once shared with Robb and then, later, the adjoining bedrooms where he’d slip her pastries from the dances she hadn’t yet been allowed to attend. And Rickon, sweet Rickon, whose wispy curls had been coming in as red as her own. 

She sighs, and sorts through the last of the death duties. 

It’s been the better part of a year since the accident, and she still hasn’t gotten through all the paperwork. Their barrister says she ought to get it sorted as soon as she is able, but she hasn’t been able to, no matter how often she’s told herself that it must get done, because sometimes, it feels like once she finishes, there will never be anything left to tether her to the life Before, or the girl she’d been. If she finishes, her family will truly be gone. 

This house, she thinks, is full of ghosts. They are in the dust motes, in the stale air, in the white linen that has been draped over the furniture in her parents’ room. In the silence she and Arya cannot quite fill on their own. 

A steady knock at the front door startles her from her thoughts. She nods to the footman and follows him downstairs to attend to the door, which swings open to reveal Jeyne Poole. 

Compared to the grim, deathlike pallor of the brownstone, her best friend is a vibrant, living thing. Jeyne’s soft brown hair has been swept back into a neat chignon and a soft blush colours her cheek. There’s a sparkle in her eye as she sweeps into the front hall and folds Sansa’s hands in her own. 

“Sansa, you must not have heard,” she gushes, and Sansa fights an indulgent smile as she leads Jeyne into the drawing room. “Everyone’s been talking about it, everyone.”

“What have I not heard?” Sansa asks. She nods to Old Nan, who bustles off to fetch a tray. Closing the door behind her, Sansa walks over to a chair and sinks into it, looking expectantly over to Jeyne, who has settled herself by the fireplace. 

“There’s a baronet in town,” Jeyne says, looking very like the cat that got the fish. “And I saw him when he came. He was riding in a beautiful black barouche drawn by two white horses, and Sansa, I swear to you now he was the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. He favours Waymar Royce a little, but Waymar doesn’t have that air of melancholy.” Here she sighs wistfully and leans her cheek upon a hand. 

“Jeyne!” Sansa laughs. This is precisely the kind of gossip that would have delighted her a year ago, and though it makes her feel a fool to admit it, it is nice to be that girl again. “Tell me more,” she says. “Has he come for a holiday?” 

“He’s come—” Jeyne pauses dramatically, “—for a wife.”

No wonder everyone’s heads are turned. Ever since Margaery Tyrell managed to marry herself (and, if rumours are to be believed, her brother) off to the third son of a duke, it’s become the thing to try for noblemen, particularly if you were young, pretty, and monied. A baronet is not quite preferred, but they’re still titled enough to appeal. No American heiress is snobbish enough to turn her nose up at the promise of lineage and holdings, and no Brit silly enough to divest himself from American fortune, even if his mama and sisters sneer about pedigree. 

“If he’s as handsome as you say,” Sansa starts, but Jeyne has already crossed the room to sweep her into a giddy twirl. 

“You weren’t there, Sansa. There’s something so haunting and tortured about him, and he’s aristocracy to boot! You of all people cannot possibly be inured to the romance of it all.”

“He is not aristocracy, he is a baronet,” Sansa says practically, extracting herself from Jeyne to open the door at Old Nan’s knock. She takes the tray and thanks the housekeeper before turning back around. “I think you’ll find that rather less romantic than your dukes and your dashing princes, my dear.”

“Yes, but his eyes. They were such a fine shade of blue, I’m sure of it.”

Sansa looks up from arranging the tea and pastries to fix her oldest friend with a wry look.

“Well, I didn’t get a good peek,” Jeyne admits, rather sheepish. “He was already halfway through the hotel door by the time I got Myranda to stop blocking my view, but he came with his aunt and she has the most brilliantly blue eyes—almost purple. She’s the most luminous creature I’ve ever seen in my life, and I heard that they’ve already accepted an invitation to the Tyrell ball next week. You’ll meet them there, I’m sure?” There’s a note of expectation in her voice.

The Stark sisters haven’t attended a ball since the accident. At first it had been because they’d been in mourning, but once the requisite year had passed, the mourning had become more of an excuse than a justification. Arya has never had much patience for society—and in truth, society has very little patience for Arya in turn—but Sansa had always been good at navigating it, had enjoyed the teasing and the flirtation and the stolen touches. And it’s hard to go back into those brightly-lit ballrooms and be surrounded by the reminder of all she had lost. 

Yet…yet.

She can’t deny the lure of dancing away her troubles. Of stepping into the arms of a handsome partner and not needing to remember anything more than a single minute, a single glance, surrounded by people who would pretend not to see how much heavier light-footed Sansa’s steps had gotten, because they would rather not be inconvenienced by it. 

Seeing her waver, Jeyne presses.

“You cannot shut yourself away in this dreary old house forever,” she says, accepting a fine porcelain cup and amber tea inside. “I don’t think it’s what your parents would want.”

No, it’s not. Sansa knows this very well, yet the past is so hard to outrun when you are mired in it. Briefly, she entertains the thought of being fallen in love with by a kind young baronet and whisked away from here, where memory is so thick she could steep in it. 

“Okay,” she says. “Alright. I’ll go.”

Jeyne beams. “You are going to love him Sansa. I know you will.” 

Something Sansa has started to understand about quiet houses is how loud they can be. The Starks are an old New York family and rather than following the rest of their social set uptown, have elected to remain in their relatively modest Stuyvesant Street home. Father had always said it’s the place where they made their fortune, and so long as a Stark remained within it would be a place of joy, and prosperity, and blessings, but when she’d been younger all Sansa had wanted was to get away, to move into an airier, more fashionable mansion the way that some of her schoolmates had. She had begged Father, had pleaded and even cried, but now she’s glad he’d held firm against her childish fancies. The Stark home is large, but not so much that the dark could swallow her entirely. 

She lies still, covers drawn over her shoulders and face buried int the damasked fabric of her pillow, listening to the brownstone's joints creak and groan. Somewhere downstairs someone is moving—perhaps cook and a scullery preparing for tomorrow’s meals, and down the hall Arya’s snores are carrying.

In this moving hush she only feels more alone. Through a crack in the curtains moonlight seeps in, stately and still. It casts an artificial affect on everything—it makes Sansa feel like she is not quite real, more like a character in a pantomime going through the motions than like a human girl, awake when she should be sleeping.. 

Night folds time in on itself, as though it’s a thing that happens all at once instead of a linear path between then, when she’d been happy, and now, when she is not. If she closes her eyes, Bran and Rickon are only two doors down, never able to suppress their giggles enough to hide them. If she cannot see his absence, then Robb is not gone. He is lying in bed, tossing and turning in the dark. 

Night folds time in on itself in other ways too—sometimes, Sansa swears she can see her mother.

The first time it had happened had been two days after the funeral. She’d woken from a fitful slumber, eyes puffy and face crusted with salt, and had been about to call a maid to fetch a cup of water when she caught the sweep of a dark blue dress disappearing into shadow. Her heart had lodged in her throat. She’d felt nauseous, had clutched her stomach and tried to keep her breathing calm as she turned slowly, slowly, around.

Her mother had stood in the doorway, a creature half of shadow and half in light. She had no real features—only a hungry maw where a face should have been—but Sansa knew her own mother. The chestnut locks, once so tenderly taken care of, draped in gnarls to the ground. The burial dress had hung in tatters upon an emaciated frame. And the long, skeletal fingers reached slowly, but steadily, towards Sansa.

She’d turned, swallowing back a scream, and flung her hands over her eyes. It’s just a phantom, she told herself. She’d gotten far too little sleep, had cried herself to bed most days, and was not in her right mind. It was only a temporary mirage, nothing more. 

Yet even so she’d felt the air stirring. Felt the insistent forward push of that hand, as though it were pressing against the fabric of reality itself, trying to tear through the veil between what was still living and what had already gone. 

The hand had hovered over her hair the way her mother’s used to, and hot, wet heat, as if an animal’s, panted by her ear. The smell had filled her mouth, thick and cloying, sweet rot and loam. 

It said nothing, but she could hear its voice in her head. 

My child, when the time comes, beware of Crimson Peak.

“This is not happening,” Sansa had chanted. “You are not real.” 

And when she turned, the thing that had once been Caitlyn Stark was gone.

Sleep has not come easier since then. Evenings are still a time of nightmares, phantoms without faces who wail and pace the corridors of her memory. Sometimes she thinks she can see the flutter of a dark veil, sometimes fathomless eyes stare at her from the recesses of her family home. Never permanent enough to see, never solid enough to touch, but always lingering, always there. 

Sansa Stark is heartsick from shadows.

She wakes with a headache and very little inclination to do anything at all, but there are errands to run and seamstresses to see and friends whose visits must be returned. 

Arya is late for breakfast. Sansa is halfway through her second scone when her sister stumbles down the stairs, red-eyed and yawning. She tries not to look too disapproving—gambling is illegal but Arya likes to do it—and she likes to do it with certain young men of their acquaintance, at all hours of night, sometimes not coming home until late in the evening, stinking of cigarettes and whisky. Sansa thinks she does it to be shocking, but she also thinks she can understand—when the person who tells you no is gone, doing everything they would have stopped you from doing is a way of conjuring them. Of daring them to prove they really are not coming back.

That is how Sansa knows her sister doesn’t see the ghosts too.

Arya grabs a hunk of toast and begins to spread a generous amount of butter over it. 

“I’ve accepted the invitation to the Tyrell ball,” Sansa says over her coffee. 

“No you haven’t,” is Arya’s rejoinder, followed by, “and even if you have I shan’t go.”

Sansa pinches the bridge of her nose. It’s times like these that she wishes desperately Mother were still here. Even Robb, who would crinkle his nose and make a joke and wheedle Arya into doing what he wanted. Now it’s only Sansa, who does not joke, and Arya, who will not listen. 

“You must,” she finally says. “I cannot go alone; what will people say?”

“They’re damned gossips,” Arya hisses around a mouthful of bread. “Have the Tyrells visited us even once since Mother and Father died? Margaery was supposed to be your bosom friend, and has she sent so much as a letter to you since last year?”

“They sent flowers,” Sansa protests, though she knows it is a weak defence. 

“Sent flowers, and dropped us the second Robb was too dead to marry.” Arya takes a second bite, this time with vehemence. “I’ll go to any ball you want me to, Sansy, but I won’t go to theirs.”

Sansa sighs, and adds this to her mental tally of things to deal with later. “You have to re-enter society sometime, Arya. Better sooner than later if we’re to find you a husband.”

“I don’t want a husband; you go find a husband,” Arya grumbles. She’s slouching back in her seat, legs splayed and brows fierce. “I’m going to be a detective.”

“No, you’re not,” Sansa says as patiently as she can manage with a headache pounding behind one eye. She motions to the maid to clear everything away and tucks her diary into her handbag. “I’m going out. Try not to burn the house down while I’m gone, will you?”

Arya looks insouciant, which she chooses to interpret as tacit agreement. 

Sansa has decided that she will wear her pale green beaded silk, which sets off the peaches in her cream complexion and will make the red of her hair bright beneath the electric. And Arya will wear her purple organza. It’s a little severe for such a young girl, but Arya has always had strong features, and whatever Sansa may hope, it’s unlikely her sister will not sneak off to play cards with her friends. And if she can’t be curtailed, the least Sansa can do is make sure that she doesn’t go home with obvious claret stains at the end of the evening. Both dresses are a touch out of style, but it’s nothing a modiste could not handle. She has a maid wrap them up and bring them out to the carriage, where they are waiting for her by the time she is ready to go.

Mother had retained a companion to chaperone her around town, but Sansa had dispensed with the expense. She likes the quiet, and the alone. She likes watching the city fly by as they make their way uptown. Likes her few moments of peace. 

Once the dresses have been dropped off, Sansa embarks on her visits—tea with the Tyrells, who are lovely but not kind, luncheon with the Arryns, where she is fretted upon by her mother’s sister Lysa, then coffee with her grandfather and uncle Tully, who try their best not to remark on how much she looks like her mother and how much they miss her, though they are all thinking it. Sansa’s headache worsens with every visit she makes, and by the time she leaves her uncle and grandfather it throbs physically, a tumorous thing. She wants desperately to go home and crawl beneath the covers and sleep until she’s had her fill, but there’s still one more thing that needs to be done before she can.

Her carriage makes a quick stop at the florist’s, where she purchases a bouquet of palest white lilies. It’s still too early in the season for winter roses, but she does manage to find a few sprigs, shrivelled and exorbitantly priced, but still beautiful. Mother had loved winter roses, had said they reminded her of Sansa. 

The Stark family is interred beneath St. Mark’s. The church is not terribly large, but it has a soaring steeple and a main building that lazes in the shade of nearby trees, and it is one of the oldest in the city.

Sansa sends the carriage home; it is just down the street from the Stark residence, and the October afternoon is not yet so bracing that she would avoid the walk. She pushes open the wrought-iron gate and enters alone.

The arched interior is not entirely empty—there are scant worshippers kneeling at the long rows of pews, so Sansa walks quietly to one of the side doors and slips through it. 

A blast of cold air ruffles her hair, and she shivers. The recently-installed electric lighting does very little to push back the pitch of subterranean gloom—just enough to illuminate the bannisters while leaving the stairs that lead down to the burial vaults in darkness. Sansa’s made this trip countless times, but even so she must grab the railing tightly and take slow steps, lest she risk her ankles. 

It is quieter down in the crypts, a little disquieting, but the only place where her grief is undisturbed. There are no rowdy sisters, no moving shadows or apparitions. They are dead here, and stay dead.

She threads her way through the vault. This far below the earth she thinks she can feel the tread of people above, and has to suppress a shudder like it is her own grave being walked over. 

Her parents stare down in effigy from their tombs—Father stern, Mother serene. Robb, Bran, and Rickon lie in a shared coffin. They had died too young, too suddenly, and there had not been adequate preparation made for the eventuality of their imurements, but Sansa likes the thought of them keeping each other company. She lays the flowers at their feet. 

“Winter roses.”

Sansa jumps, heart leaping to her throat. Someone is watching her in the darkness, and for a terrible moment she wonders if the blight that's settled on the brownstone has followed her here. 

Slowly, she turns. 

A man steps out into the dim light. His skin is ghost-white and his dark hair curls to his shoulders. The colour of his eyes is lost to shadow but they are bright, and he bows courteously. 

“My apologies,” he says. “I’ve startled you.”

“No,” Sansa gasps, though she had been. “No, not at all. I just hadn’t thought anyone else would be here.” 

The man smiles self-effacingly and gestures at himself—he is dressed all in black, from his well-tailored suit to his worn leather boots. “I imagine I’d be easy to miss. It’s darker down here than I imagined.” He speaks in a rich English brogue, a low and rumbling thing that conjures images of rolling hills and untempered fields of verdant green more than it does refined London sitting parlours.

“The parish is always talking about electrifying the crypts,” Sansa says apologetically, feeling like she ought to make some excuse on behalf of her city. It is not always so dark and dirty, after all. “But we’re all used to it by now, so I suppose it never seems quite urgent enough to tackle.”

“Ah,” he says, looking not quite at ease. “I see.”

Sansa has never been comfortable with other people’s discomfort. It’s the one thing she envies Arya for—her sister has never felt any particular compunction to make life easy for other people—but Sansa’s inclination has always been to please. So she draws herself up and dusts off her social graces. “Have you had the pleasure of visiting St. Marks before, Mr.—?”

“Snow,” he offers.

His face is handsome, but wild. Untamed, somehow. There’s something dreadfully sad about him, something she softens to.  “Regretfully, no. My mother was American—” he gestures towards a small tomb that’s been tucked away into a corner, “—but I never had the opportunity to visit her before now.”

How tragic, Sansa thinks, which is practical, and then how romantic, which is not. 

“I’m sorry,” she ventures. 

He gives a sad half-smile. “Don’t be. I never knew her. There’s nothing much to mourn. I wish I’d had your luck, though,” he says, gesturing down at her bouquet. “I thought I scoured every florist in the city, but I must have missed the only one that actually carried them. My father always said they were her favourites.” 

She looks down at the blossoms at the foot of Caitlyn Stark’s statue. “My mother too,” she says, and despite the selfish instinct to keep them all to herself, splits the roses in two, offering him the larger portion. “She said that she loved how hardy they were, and how particular. They wouldn’t grow unless they were entirely satisfied with their environment, but once they took root they would flourish. It’s rare to find any this early in the season.”

She sees the way his fingers twitch towards the stems, as though desiring to take them, but he restrains himself. 

“I couldn’t,” Mr. Snow says.

“You must.” Sansa presses them into his palm. His hand closes hesitantly around the winter roses, and he stares down at them with an inscrutable expression. “My mother would have lectured me forever if she knew I didn’t offer. She’d be more than pleased to share her flowers with someone who is so loved.”

There is a long silence. When he speaks again, his voice is thick. “Thank you." The fervency of his words startles her.

“It was no trouble.” It had been, a little, but she feels better for having done it. She smiles a little and bids him farewell.

She does not feel the pair of eyes that follow her up the narrow stairs, does not see how they take her measure. And she does not know what kinds of conclusions they have reached. 

The week passes quickly. The dresses are delivered, the shoes retrimmed, and the jewellery is dug out from the trunks they’d been languishing in and polished to a high gleam. And then it is Thursday, and Sansa sits in the warm glow of her bedroom, assessing herself in the mirror as sheets of rain patter against the window panes. 

She’s calculated perfectly—her auburn hair looks copper against the pale green silk, and the necklace of blushing pink diamonds brings out the flush of her cheek. A pure, pretty thing stares back from the silvered frame, herself yet not herself, Sansa but not quite Sansa. She will be fawned over and petted tonight, and there will be no shortage of partners to dance with—a fact she looks forward to and is repulsed by in equal measure. With a sigh, Sansa fixes her mother’s diadem to her coiffure and leaves the dressing table to see how Arya's getting on.

Arya has been dressed, however sullenly, and is sitting in the wreckage of a room that has been overtaken by petticoats and corsetry. Her jewellery box is overturned, a scatter of garnets and emeralds that her lady’s maid is in clear despair over—she looks at Sansa with wordless beseechment in her eyes.

“Why don’t you straighten the room, Stuart,” Sansa says, “and I can dress my sister’s hair.”

“Yes’m,” stout-hearted Stuart says, and begins with commendable alacrity.

“You’re not wearing the purple gown,” Sansa remarks. Arya is wearing a pale pink. It washes out her complexion and looks unnatural against her severe features—if she’d wanted to rebel she would have done better to go with the marengo—but Sansa keeps her thoughts to herself. It took enough of an effort to coax her into attending without starting another row on top of it, and what Arya lacks in fashion sense she makes up for in verve, which is enough. 

“The purple looks awful on me,” Arya says, despite the fact that it does not. “It makes me look like one of those wretched matrons who stand around gossiping about other people’s lives. As though there is no other amusement in all of New York.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a touch dramatic?” Sansa asks. “I’m sure the matrons have other diversions, too. And anyway, they wouldn’t have anything to gossip about if you only stopped being scandalous.” She picks up a brush and runs it through a mane of dark hair. Arya favours their father the way Sansa does their mother, and her features are long and humourless, but she is quick to smile. She’d been well-loved and well-protected—they all had been—and she wears that surety on her face. Sansa would give anything to shelter her still, but often feels so much like a child herself that the mantle of guardianship weighs heavier than an anchor about the neck.

Sansa braids her sister’s hair into a neat crown. Arya whines and winces, but it doesn’t stop Sansa from noticing the satisfied look on her face, the way she turns her head this way and that in the reflection, as though desiring to see herself from every possible angle. Sweet vanity, Sansa’s ally for the night. 

“There now,” she says, pinning silk flowers into Arya’s hair. “Was that so very difficult?”

“Only if you do not consider damage to my dignity difficult,” Arya snipes, but she does look mollified. 

Sansa smiles fondly, resting a hand atop her sister’s head. She’s about to say something more when the lights flicker. Then the door handle rattles. She stiffens.

“What’s wrong?” Arya asks. 

For a moment the words do not come; Sansa’s mouth is too dry to form them. She swallows, forces saliva down her throat to lubricate it enough for lies.

“Nothing,” she says. “Just worried about what the storm will do to your hair. Go and fetch your shoes; I’m going to go find our cloaks so we don’t catch our death of colds.” 

She manages most of this with a steady enough voice—the tremble is all in her fingers. Before she can wrap them around the handle, the door slams open with a force that startles her back a half-step and sends her heart careening into her throat. 

“Sorry,” she manages. “I must be jumpy today; it’s been so long since we’ve attended a dance. Stuart, will you ask Old Nan to send up a glass of sherry for my nerves?”

“Certainly, ma’am,” says Stuart. 

“Thank you,” Sansa says. And then again, softer, “Thank you.” 

She hopes they do not see how her knees tremble when she rushes from the room. 

The hallway between her room and Arya’s has never seemed longer. Sansa has the horrible feeling of eyes fixed upon her back and the terror of pursuit speeds her steps until she is all but running, her footsteps as loud a drum as the pounding of blood in her ears. She cannot hear. She can barely see—the lightbulbs that had won the battle against the storm inside Arya’s room had not been quite so valiant outside, and the mahogany panelling seems to capture all the glow from the streetlamps outside and not let them go. 

Crashing into her own chambers, Sansa hurls the door shut and slumps against it, holding it closed with the weight of her body. Lightning flares. Behind her, the door rattles in concert with a peal of thunder so close and so loud that it fills all the empty air inside the townhouse, shaking it from roof to foundation.

Icy wind shudders through the hallway. The door crashes open a second time and Sansa is flung back by the force of it. A great mass of shadow looms over her. Despite the gale still gusting through the house, its clothes are unnaturally still. 

She crawls backwards, scrambling away from it.

No one who was loved is ever truly gone, Mother had said when her uncle, Jon Arryn, died. The words had been a comfort, once.

They face, the two of them, Sansa and the thing that used to be her mother. The world falls quiet. No wind, no rain, no thunder or lightning or even soft stirring of the air. Just Sansa, staring into the deep black empty where eyes might have been—if they had not already rotted away—swearing that it was staring back.

“Why?” she whispers. “Why do you do this? Why must you torment me so?”

Why can I not be free?

For this, it has no answer. 

With a shriek so sharp it cuts her to the marrow, the revenant swoops forward and grabs her by the shoulders. Warm breath fans across her face, and Sansa screams. 

Beware of Crimson Peak. 

It retreats. Between one blink and the next, it has gone.

The electricity returns. Sansa’s room flickers to light. Footsteps pound down the hallway, and then Arya is stumbling to a stop, bracing herself against the doorframe to slow her momentum.

“What is it? What happened? Are you okay?” 

Sansa draws herself up. She presses a quelling hand against her fluttering heart and smooths down her hair. “Yes,” she says. “I thought I saw something out the window. Must have been a cat.”

Arya gives her an odd look, and seems about to say something when she’s interrupted by a knock at the door. It’s Old Nan, with sherry on a tray. Sansa takes it gratefully and tips it back in one long draught. It burns pleasantly going down, bringing warmth back to her fingertips. 

“Maybe we should stay home,” Arya says hesitantly. “You’re as pale as a ghost. Maybe we’re rushing this, maybe we’re not ready yet. No one would blame us for it, how could they?”

But all Sansa can see are the things that fill the dark. The dark that won’t stay silent. The silence that won’t stay still. All she can hear is the echo of that inhuman shriek, Catelyn Stark’s voice as Catelyn Stark had never used it in life. All she can feel are those hands, desiccated and cold, the staleness that had clung to the air around it. 

And all she wants to do is get out of this house. 

“We’re going,” she says. “We have to go.” It comes out sharper than she means it to. 

“Sansa—”

“We’re going, and that’s the end of the discussion. Nan, please tell Samson to bring the carriage around. We shouldn’t want to be late.” 

Arya waits for Nan to leave before trying again. “Sansa, listen to me—”

“Please!” Sansa snaps. 

She sees the moment Arya shuts down. Her shoulders tense and her face goes still with the exception of her jaw, which is working furiously. The bashful excitement at playing dress-up and looking pretty is gone, replaced by the baleful glare more customarily reserved for her tutors. Sansa could scream. She’s gone and wrecked everything again. 

Perhaps she should apologise. Perhaps she should stay home. 

Mother would know how to deal with this. Mother, who is dead, who is buried, who is haunting her. 

Mother, who is not Mother, but a thing that screams at Sansa. 

All of a sudden she wants to cry. 

She reaches a hand out for Arya, but Arya backs away, her eyes bright and angry. “I’m going to go get my cloak,” she says stiffly. “I’ll be waiting in the carriage.” And then she is gone. Down the hall, a door slams. 

Sansa crumples against the wall, burying her face in her hands. She allows herself a moment to wallow.

But by the time she has composed herself enough to drape a cloak over her shoulders and join the rest of their party in the front hall, Sansa has made up her mind.

If she cannot leave her grief behind, she can at least leave this house. 

It doesn't matter where, doesn't matter how far. What matters is escaping these ghosts she lives among. 

And there is only one way to accomplish that.

Chapter Text

The Tyrell manor is a beastly thing, resplendent with climbing roses and just off of Central Park, a towering Beaux-Arts monstrosity of columns and arabesques and fleurs des lis, lacking in nothing but taste, inspiring awe more for the sheer money spent than it does any architectural merit. Peering out from inside the windowed carriage, Jon misses England with a violence. Dragonstone had often been a home of horrors, but at least he had belonged to it. This is a place of things green and growing, and in it he feels ill at ease. 

Dany brushes cool lips against his cheek. “Just one more, nephew,” she murmurs. “And no one will be able to make us leave our home again.”

This is the third one more he’s heard. But Dragonstone is a living thing, and it leeches money from their coffers and blood from their veins. Sometimes, Jon thinks it will never end. There will never be an after. It will be like this, go like this, on and on until they are dust in the earth. 

Seeing perhaps the trepidation on his face, Daenerys reaches a hand out to cup it. Soft, he thinks, and pliant like clay, though she is anything but. In many ways, his saviour. And now it's his turn to save her. 

“Always together?” she prompts him, leaning close. He does not know if it is desire or dread coiling in his gut.

“Never apart.”

It is their promise, the thing that has kept them alive.

The thing that chains them to each other. 

If they sink, they sink as one.

The Targaryens were born on the wrong side of the blanket. That is the thing that Father, prior to his early death, had always said. The Targaryens were born on the wrong side of the blanket, so a baronetcy is the least they are owed. This is the romantic way of thinking about it—the bastard branch of the royal house, not borne of a prince noble enough in character to enfeoff his wild oats, lost amongst the commoners for centuries before a lucky ancestor had gotten wealthy enough to raise the funds to become a baronet.

The crass way to put it is that the Targaryens had purchased their way into a title. 

To Jon, this does not signify. He’d been born on the wrong side of the blanket too, only spared the fate of his distant royal ancestor by a father who had sought him out, who had taken him in. The title, the lands, the empty coffers, they never would have come to him if Father hadn’t died, then Uncle after him. 

Here, in America, this does not matter. 

They fawn over him. From the moment he enters Highgarden the girls flock, preening and prancing and fluttering their lashes. Dany’s hand is possessively tight around his arm. It is on the tip of his tongue to joke about being a dog on a leash, but she probably won’t find it funny. 

“Remember,” she whispers, “Allana.”

“I will,” he murmurs.

Allana Tyrell is the daughter of the younger Tyrell son. Her dowry—and her inheritance—are not quite as impressive as those bequeathed upon the daughter of Mace and Alerie Tyrell, but she has one advantage over the new duchess—no living male relatives. The same customs that had favoured Jon as his Uncle’s heir favours him on the subject of his wife’s fortune. The wife itself is immaterial.

They step into the ballroom, having missed the dinner beforehand.

It is a massive room, intended to impress. Velvet banners festoon the columns that line either end of the hall, adorned with bouquets of pink and yellow roses. Electric lightning—which must have cost a fortune to install—casts a bright, warm glow over the audience. They fall silent as the Targaryens enter. 

He’s sure how they must look—Daenerys, absurdly young to be thrice-widowed and a grown man’s aunt, pure radiance and light, and Jon, dark, the shadow beside her. He’s conscious, too, of how their clothes look next to everyone else’s—his wool suit at least a decade out of fashion, and Dany’s dress almost matronly next to the bared backs and shoulders of the Four Hundred. 

One woman cuts through the crowd—or perhaps it is more accurate to say that the crowd parts for her. 

America may not have a queen, but they do have an aristocracy. And at its helm sits Mrs. Luthor Tyrell. 

At eight-and-sixty, she cuts an impressive figure. She sweeps more than she walks, and, having done her duty to her husband by giving him an heir and daughters enough to solidify their business interests, promptly outdid him in both life expectancy and renown. There are those who would cut off their own limbs for the chance to attend one of their soirees, and Jon, by the grace of having a title, has managed to get himself invited to one during his first week in the city.

It is laughable, perhaps, but they are counting on just such guilelessness. 

“Be charming,” Dany reminds him. 

He can be. It is a task like any other, after all. If he retreats deeply enough, he can forget the part of him who is a person named Jon, and who would rather be anywhere but here. 

“Mrs. Tyrell.” Jon smiles, and bows over her proffered hand, kissing the air above it.

“Sir Jon,” the lady of the hour says, “how honoured I am that you’ve chosen to attend my humble gathering.” 

“I assure you, ma’am, the honour is entirely mine,” Jon says. “You must allow my aunt and I to thank you for welcoming us to your lovely city. We are a long way from home, and you cannot know how much we appreciate a friendly face.” 

“Nonsense, my dear, you are flattering me.” But Mrs. Tyrell does look pleased, and she winds an arm through Dany’s to peel her from Jon’s side. “If you truly wish to thank me, you’ll give me the pleasure of being the one to introduce you.” 

“So kind,” Dany says demurely, but Jon does not miss the condescension in her voice. He’s sure Mrs. Tyrell does not miss it either—she did not marry her eldest granddaughter to a duke by being imperceptive—but she does not let it get in her way. What is a little bit of English snobbery when there is a title to be had?

She leads them around the room, stopping intermittently to point out this luminary or that one, occasionally stopping to greet them—the Boltons are to be avoided, nouveau riche without the manners to be pleasant company but who buy their way into society with sheer stupid money, the Manderleys are a good sort but rough, and made their fortune off the harbour. The Lannisters are spoken of in unfailingly polite terms, which can only mean that they are absolutely loathed, the Arryns have not come because the young Mr. Arryn is sickly.

“And here is the treasure of my heart,” Mrs. Tyrell says, putting Dany to a stop before the girl who had likely been her intended target all along. “This is dear Allana, my youngest granddaughter. Just seventeen, you know, but already so accomplished.”

Jon murmurs his compliments. Allana is young—a child still, though he knows better than anyone what a child is capable of. She is all round cheeks and sweet innocence, and he almost feels a pang at the thought of leeching it from her. They are vampires, the two of them, but surely, surely if they do it to keep each other safe, it is not the most terrible thing a person has done. Surely other people have committed more heinous sins. You can kill a person while they’re still alive. That is worse—surely.

Allana Tyrell shifts, and it’s in following this sudden movement that he catches on something else in the crowd—a flash of red hair, the curious tilt of a cheek—and he finds himself staring at a face that is startlingly familiar. 

“Who is that?” he asks. He’s seen her before, had not expected to again, because the entire encounter had been so surreal he’d been half-convinced he’d dreamed it. Chance encounters with strange women who haunt crypts are the sorts of things that happen in mediaeval romances between knights and witches, not to modern men, electric and fire and blood beneath the nail. 

“You know her?” Dany says. He snaps his head to meet Dany’s questioning eyes. For a moment, he’s at a loss for how to answer. He hadn’t told her about his visit to his mother’s grave—his aunt has had far too much taken from her to be gracious with what affection she does command, and she certainly does not like to share. 

“We met at the florist,” he says. He’s not sure why he lies, only that he should like to have this one thing for himself alone. “Father had always spoken of winter roses, so…”

“I do not recall seeing any roses at the hotel, my dear.”

“Perhaps because I couldn’t find any,” Jon says, amused despite himself. “The young lady bought the last bouquet. She was kind enough to offer me half of hers, but I couldn’t take it.”

Dany nods, but she misses little. She assesses the girl, her burnished locks, her lovely face.

Mrs. Tyrell gives an affected little sigh. “That sounds like our Sansa. Poor girl. She lost both of her parents in the most tragic way, you know. It was quite awful, a robbery gone wrong while the two girls were visiting their aunt. It won’t have been news in England, I’m sure, but it was quite sensational here. The Starks were one of New York’s best families, and now it’s just the sisters, all alone. The younger one’s gone quite wild, but I suppose it can’t be helped.” She drops this information with the cheerful salaciousness of  society gossip, but Jon can see Dany’s mind turning. 

“Shall I introduce you?” asks Mrs. Tyrell. 

Before Jon can answer, Dany makes the choice for them both. “Yes,” she says. “We would love to make her acquaintance. I’m sure my nephew has not had the courtesy to thank her for her kindness at the florist.” 

As they follow Olenna Tyrell dutifully across the dance floor, Dany winds her arm through Jon’s again to draw him back.

“Forget Allana,” she says. “We will take this one.” 

He hesitates. “Must we?”

“She’s perfect, don’t you see?”

Sickeningly, he does. This is one way to return a favour, he thinks to himself. But she is an orphan, clearly wealthy, someone people care about in public but who could just as easily be forgotten. No one would question it at all if she disappears. 

Childbirth, carriage accidents, consumption—there are reasons enough for women to die, and no one to go looking too deeply into it. 

He had not wanted to rob young Allana Tyrell of the life she had ahead of her, and he has no desire to repay Sansa Stark’s kindness with ingratitude either, but between the two of them she is the objectively better choice. It’s simply what must be done, and Jon is in no position to question. 

So when they lead him before her, when they introduce him to her as Sir Jon Snow, baronet, he lifts her gloved hand to his lips and presses a lingering kiss to it. Through the thin fabric he can feel the slight tensing of her arm, but she does not pull away. 

“Miss Stark,” he says, drawing the words out to savour them. They are not quite so formal in the Americas, so she has neither fan nor curtsy to hide the flush that creeps up her neck. “May I have the next dance?”

“I—” she says, glancing to Olenna Tyrell, “I don’t think so, thank you. But I am sure Allana will be delighted—”

“I daresay,” he cuts in. The three sets of eyes behind him would pierce him through had they the strength to, but he focuses on the ocean-blue ones before him. “But I have asked you.”

Miss Stark hesitates a moment longer before allowing herself to be led onto the dance floor. The orchestra begins a spirited polka.

“Do you enjoy dancing, Miss Stark?” he asks, noting how she lights up at the sound of the tune.

“I do,” she says. “Though you must forgive me if I am clumsy; it has been many months since I danced last.”

“You are in good company,” Jon confesses. “I am not much of a dancer.”

Miss Stark smiles, more genuine this time. 

“Well, you need not fear.” She sinks into a curtsy and takes the hand he offers, turning into his arms as they wait for the beat. “Just follow my lead.” 

So he does. 

The polka is a lively one, and there isn’t much opportunity to talk, but he does observe. She glances at him sometimes, but more often she is looking elsewhere, steering him away from close collisions as her skirt sweeps against his legs. A sheer, incidental kind of touch, but he is aware of it nonetheless. He catches the smell of her perfume, soft bluebells and a waft of sharp lemon.

Afterwards, he leaves her with his aunt in order to fetch some refreshment. He returns just in time for Dany to say, “Ah, Jon, I was just saying to Mrs. Tyrell what a shame it is that Americans don’t like a proper waltz. We do so prefer it in Europe, do we not?”

“It’s true, I’m afraid,” says Jon, holding one glass of lemonade out to Miss Stark and the other out to Dany. “You’d consider us quite scandalous, Mrs. Tyrell.”

The older woman laughs warmly. “I hope you do not find us so provincial that we would be so easily scandalised.” She nudges her granddaughter forward, none too subtly. Then, raising her voice so she can be heard by the entire room, she says, “The baronet would like to demonstrate for us—the waltz.”

This is the dance he’s well-rehearsed in, the spider-and-fly game they’ve played a million times before. More than any waltz, any jig or polka, the steps of their deception are his second nature. It is only a question of dangling Jon like meat on a hook and waiting for someone to bite. 

He turns again to Miss Stark, despite the clear and growing annoyance of their host, and despite the rumble of gossip that rises around them. 

What a shame, he thinks as he watches her take the bait. He likes her; she does not deserve what is coming.

Miss Stark steps into him as they await the lilt of the triple metre to begin. Polite, and careful, every bit the lady. She would have made someone a lovely wife.

Jon is not mannerly. He winds his arm around her waist and tugs until there is no air between them, pressing her into his chest and skimming his hand from her waist to her back so that his fingers hang just over the long buttons until they brush the elegant curve of her spine. He has not worn gloves; they are flesh to flesh. 

“Why are we doing this?” she mutters faintly. 

He smiles, the tip of his nose nuzzling her soft curls. “Close your eyes, if it helps. I’ve always closed my eyes to things that made me uncomfortable. It makes everything easier.” 

But hers stay open the entire time. 

In the end, Jon manages to dance three times with Miss Stark before she flees from the ballroom with the excuse of needing to freshen up. Over the buzzing crowd he sees his aunt. She wears an expression he does not know how to read—if he doesn’t know any better he might call it unease. But she tips her head. 

Follow her, the movement says. 

Seduce her, and she's ours.

So he does.

The Tyrell gardens are beautiful. Lush with roses and wafting a gentle perfume well after summer’s end, they have all the good taste the manor itself is lacking. He finds Miss Stark leaning against a low hedge, shivering in the frigid evening air. She looks up when he slips his greatcoat over her shoulders. 

“Why?” she asks. “Why me?”

It’s on his mind to play dumb, but he’s deceived her enough already. “Why not you? Is it so shocking?” And then, softer, “Why did you agree?”

She pauses for a moment, fingering the end of one of his sleeves. It is soft and well-worn. “It was impolite to refuse.”

“I can not believe that,” he tells her. “I will not. Why did you give me your flowers that day, down in the crypts?” 

“I thought you looked sad.” She finally meets his eyes, and does not object when he ghosts the outline of her chin with his hand. He does not touch her, but they both feel it. “You needed cheering.”

“You are kind, Miss Stark,” he murmurs. “Why does it surprise you so that a man would want to spend time in your company?” 

To this, she has no response, just the limpid gaze that makes him feel nearly transparent. Transfixed, perhaps. He is seized by the most violent urge to brush her hair back from her face. 

“Perhaps you were familiar. Perhaps I liked that.” He steps closer. She does not step away. “Does that provide you with the satisfaction you seek? Or do you hope to hear another answer?”

Her eyes are already fluttering closed, her breath heavy. Jon traces his way up her hand, from the tip of her finger over the swell of a knuckle to a fine-boned wrist, which he encircles. He is tugging her closer to him and on the verge of leaning down and taking his pleasure from her rosebud lips when he hears Dany calling for him. 

They fly apart. Jon swears. 

“There you are,” Dany says, glancing between him and Miss Stark. He notes her satisfaction when she marks how flustered the younger girl looks. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but it is getting quite late and my nephew and I must bid our farewells to Mrs. Tyrell. It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Stark.”

“Likewise,” says Miss Stark, though her voice wavers. “Thank you, Sir Jon, for lending me your jacket against the cold; I was silly to have left my cloak inside.” 

“Not at all,” he says, and when Dany has retreated far enough to give them the pretence of privacy, he pitches his voice low and asks, “Will you give me permission to call on you sometime?” 

Mutely, Miss Stark nods. 

He smiles a sad little smile, bows, and leaves her in the garden with her thoughts. 

There is a part of Jon hoping that, whatever conclusion Miss Stark has reached about him tonight, it will have been a bad one. That he had been indecorous, that he’d come on far too strong, that it was not charm but avarice guiding his steps on the dance floor. 

But just as well he knows how slim this possibility is. He has the advantage of a good figure, a fine title, a fair face, and all the stories of the world on his side. Well-bred, wealthy girls are born to marry handsome young baronets—it is simply a law of nature. It has worked twice before—why should it not work on Sansa Stark? What makes her any different from the rest of them?

Yet still, he hopes.

“Well?” Dany asks. 

They are in the carriage now, watching Highgarden disappear in the window. She lets the curtains down and sinks into the seat, crossing her arms and looking expectantly at him. 

“It went fine,” Jon says. “It went well. How else could it have gone?”

“She’s allowed you to call on her, then?” 

He nods. 

“Good.” Then, “I saw the way she was looking at you, my dear. I don’t think we will have to work very hard on this one.” 

The edge in her voice gives Jon pause. He glances up at her, brow raised. “Jealous?” 

Dany scoffs. “Of her? Should I be? Silly little chit doesn’t even know when she’s being played like a fiddle.” 

He cannot help a smile at the impudent jut of her chin. They’d been ruined so young, the both of them, and it is a marvel to think that they are here at all. To say that Uncle Viserys had not been a kind man would be a laughable understatement, but he’d only be the first in a series of cruelties. If at any point they’d given up—

But Targaryen blood is nothing if not stubborn, and they had survived. 

Whatever other horrors they endured, whatever kinds of monsters they’ve become, there’s that at least. And sometimes, he can even see the people they might have been, if things had been better.  

“You seemed jealous,” he says lightly.

Dany leans across the narrow divide and places a hand between his knees. He spreads his legs obligingly.  “She may well be another person who will have your name, but I am the only one who has your heart.” She brings her other hand to caress his cheek, brushing a finger over his lips before covering it with her own. 

Their original sin is this—before the lying, the stealing, the killing—it was always this. If Jon had ever been repulsed it’s long since passed now, sublimated into a normalcy that serves them both—that has served them both, for years and years.

She takes what she wants and he lets her. Jon leans into her kiss, fisting a hand through her silvery hair. A whimper catches in her throat as he rips his mouth away to suckle on the pale column of her neck—marking her, stamping her, signing his work. It is as if he means to devour her. Fire roils in his gut—the acknowledgement of something unfulfilled in the garden—but he presses it down, shoves it away. It doesn’t matter. It didn’t matter. The only thing that matters is this, this is the only substance, the only constant, the only thing that has ever kept him safe. He owes it to her.

Perhaps it is brutal ravaging, of a sort, but he endures it—for her. 

Dany is panting into his ear—more, more—and she’s ripping at his trousers with an almost desperate want, palming him in her cold hands. Jon grows hard beneath her ministrations. He tries to return the favour, but, frustrated by the layers she is cosseted beneath, can only manage to paw at a breast over the thick fabric of her dress, crushing it with little finesse or artistry, but she does not seem to mind for all she writhes against him.

Thankfully the carriage is loud enough to drown her out.

In moments, she is straddling him, skirts lifted. The metres of fabric do little to cushion them from the bumps and shudders of the cobble beneath the wheels—shantung is coarse, and scratches his skin, leaving behind thin red scratches. But she is canting her hips against his thigh as he reaches beneath to undo her smallclothes, so he bites his lip and breathes through the discomfort. 

His aunt’s hands—and he tries not to think of the other pair he’d held—are tight around his shoulders. Her carefully styled ringlets are loose around her shoulders, and for a brief moment he wonders how they will look in the hotel lobby with their hair out of order and their rumpled clothes, but she is fitting herself onto him, and there is little thought that can be spared for anything else. 

She’s like this, his aunt, always has been. She likes to remind him that he belongs to her. As many of Jon’s marriages as she’s masterminded, his body, his soul—they are hers. And as much as they need other women’s money, she doesn’t like them looking at him, thinking that he can be shared. 

In that way, at least, she is insatiable. Where she can, she likes to demand all. 

But as he sinks into her warmth with a strangled cry he cannot help saying, “Do you ever think that we are very wretched? For what we do? For who we are?” 

She is riding him now in the full agony of her ecstasy, and thankfully gives very little thought to why he asks. “If we are cruel,” she gasps, “it is only because the world has made us so. This is the least it owes us.”

Yet it had not been the world that had harmed them—it had been Uncle, and the men he had peddled them to. Is it the world who ought to pay for what one man has broken? Can they not heal each other? 

Or perhaps he is not enough, and that is why Daenerys is always looking elsewhere for more.

When he spills inside her, he presses his face into the crook of her neck, squeezing his eyes tightly shut.

Chapter Text

Jeyne had been wrong. His eyes hadn’t been blue. They’d been grey, the colour of the thick, solid clouds that arrive before a snowstorm, a sea of twinkling twilit stars, and—and—

“You’re drooling.”

Sansa snaps back to reality. Arya is curled up with a detective novel, staring at her over a teacup, long face brimming with judgement. 

“I wasn’t,” Sansa snaps peevishly, though she does wipe the corner of her mouth just to be sure.

Arya rolls her eyes and returns to her book. She’s been in a right mood since the ball, even after Sansa had apologised, and they’ve barely been able to get through two words with each other without sniping. The atmosphere in the brownstone is thick to the point of rigidity,  and sometimes Sansa feels a little like a phantom herself, struggling to walk upright through the tension. 

She’d go out, but she’s worried about missing a house call. A fact Arya is well aware of, and she wastes no time in taking advantage by making her presence felt everywhere. She does it just to be spiteful, Sansa’s convinced.

But at least mother hasn’t come back.

Sometime around midafternoon, Sansa is reclined on the loveseat in her room, trying to lose herself in a mediaeval romance, though it takes her at least three attempts to realise that the book she is reading is Blanchardyn and Eglantine—in French, which no doubt is why she’s unable to discern any meaning from it. For all its fripperies, French requires focus.

 A rumble of carriage wheels sends her flying to the window, but it is only passing by. She slinks back, feeling a little sulky. 

He’d asked for permission to call, she reasons with herself. Of course it means he will do just that. Why should he ask if he never meant to follow through?

Maybe she is being very silly. Sir Jon is a baronet, and surely has his pick of homes to visit. But he had danced thrice with her, had almost kissed her, and the world had fallen away when she’d been in his arms.

Certainly he’d been a bit of a dreary, awkward creature down in the crypts, but he had been visiting his mother’s tomb. At Mrs. Tyrell’s home he’d been nothing but charming, gracious, kind—and there had been no ghosts hiding in his eyes. Only the candlelight. Only her. If she closes her lids, she could almost go back to the garden, will herself to lean further forward, to touch her lips to his—

Here are a few things Sansa Stark knows:

Love is worth waiting for.

Love is strong enough to overcome. 

There is such a thing as love.

How could she doubt it? She had been surrounded by it all her life. Father had loved Mother, Robb had loved Margaery, and so, of course, it follows that Sansa should be loved. There is nothing more natural in the universe. And how fortuitous that she might be able to find it in someone who could whisk her away from this house of sorrow, this place of afterthoughts. She wants to go. She wants to love him. And, she is sure, he wants to love her too. 

His touch had sparked against her back. Sometimes she still feels it. Sometimes she takes off her nightgown and stands before the mirror, trying to wrap her arms tightly enough around her torso so that they can reach the spot where his fingers glided over the ridges of her spine, where she can almost replicate that touch. 

And the daydreaming, the scenarios that repeat endlessly in her mind, they are enough to drive away the darkness. Is she indulgent for wanting more? For hoping he might always chase away her demons?

A faint knock at the front door brings her back onto her feet. She dashes to the window in time to see dark hair slipping in through the entrance, and then she’s seated before her vanity table in a flash, running a soft-bristled brush through her thick red curls, pinching roses into the apples of her cheeks. 

She’s not being silly, or frivolous, or romantic, she tells herself, and she almost believes it, too. She just wants to look well for guests. Surely there’s no harm in that. 

The door to her bedroom clicks open, and Old Nan pokes her head in. “A Sir Jon for you, Miss Sansa.” 

“Oh,” Sansa says, breathy. “Very well then. Please tell him I shall be there shortly.”

Old Nan nods, but before she retreats fully from the room Sansa calls her back. “We still have some of that nice Assam tea, don’t we?”

“Yes ma’am,” is the answer. 

“Let’s draw some up,” Sansa says, “and if Cook could prepare some refreshments…”

“Yes ma’am,” again.

And then Sansa is left alone to take a deep breath and try to quell her nerves. This is nothing, she reminds herself. But if it had been nothing, why had he tried to kiss her? 

Sir Jon is sitting in the parlour when Sansa comes down the stairs, the same room where Jeyne had told her of his arrival only a week ago. A fire has been lit, crackling merrily in the hearth, and Arya is nowhere to be seen. 

Small mercies. 

“I’m sorry,” says Sir Jon once the tea is served and they have been chattering for uncomfortably long about the weather (lovely) and the roads (nice). “I should have come to visit you much sooner, but my aunt, of course, wished to see the new opera house, and insisted on going to the botanical gardens, and I have been dragged from one end of the island to the other attending to her.” A shy half smile lifts one corner of his lips, and for a moment  he looks more like the rakishly tousled stranger in the crypts than the charming baronet at Highgarden. “You must forgive me.”

“Manhattan is a wonderful island for amusement,” Sansa says, rather breathlessly. “How are you enjoying your stay so far? That is to say—both of you. I hope we can compare with the best London has to offer.”

He laughs. “As for that I cannot say,” he tells her frankly. “We do not often go to town, you see. My aunt and I prefer the family home, out in the country. A man can feel free there—and I suppose a woman might too.”

Free . There is that word again. Sansa imagines herself as a bird, stretching her wings and flying straight into the perfect blue of the heavens. 

“That sounds lovely,” she tells him. “I have always wanted to live in the country. I suppose I’ve had enough of city living for a lifetime—it is too lonely here.”

“You don’t enjoy the company?” Sir Jon sounds rather surprised at this.

Sansa takes a moment to chew on her lip. “It isn’t that,” she says. “I adore the company—or at least, I used to. Parties and balls and luncheons are all swell, but since my parents died it has all become so—so strange. Or perhaps like I am estranged from it. I hardly recognise the person whose only care would have been whether she looks better in the pink poplin or the yellow silk. I look at all my friends and I don’t know that they can truly understand me. I used to want such trivial things.” 

“And now?”

“Now…now I think I should like to get away. To have the chance to get to know this new person, and see who she might be.”

Sir Jon sucks in a breath. “Perceptive words, from one so young.”

“Not so young,” says Sansa, feeling a little affronted. “I am two-and-twenty. That can hardly be called little.” 

“Perhaps not. But you will grant that to a man closer to thirty than he is to twenty, it rather is. I am your senior in both age and experience, and am surprised therefore to find you so much the wiser. It seems I have some learning to do, Miss Stark, and I hope you’ll allow me the pleasure of doing so from your example.” He reaches a hand out for her own as a sort of conciliatory gesture, squeezing gently when she grants it. 

The aforementioned Miss Stark’s ears are burning pleasantly, and her dress—the poplin—suddenly feels tight around her chest in a way that is not entirely uncomfortable. He has not yet let go, twining his fingers through hers in an almost absentminded gesture. Perhaps she ought to rebuke his impertinence, but Sansa is lady of her own house now—at least until she’s married—and has no chaperone to tsk a tongue at permissiveness.

“On the subject of which—my aunt would like me to ask you to join us on a picnic later in the week.”

“Your aunt? Asked for me?”

“In particular,” says Sir Jon. “She was delighted by you at Highgarden, and insisted that I ask you to come. She’d like to spend more time with you and—I must admit quite selfishly, so do I.”

“You do?” Sansa gets rather stupid around Sir Jon. Dreadfully provincial.  If this is courtship, she thinks she likes it, the soft press of his hand, the way his thumb is tracing circles around hers, the featherlight touch warm and teasing. His dark hair, his slate grey eyes, and dear heavens, she hopes she’s not drooling. 

“Should a man not want to spend time with you, Miss Stark?”

“Perhaps,” says Sansa faintly, “but I suppose I should only allow him to if he was the right man.”

“And what would this ‘right man’ be like?” He’s leaned forward in his seat so that they are just a breath apart. They are both looking down at their loosely twined hands, scandalously ungloved. It is a dangerous game they are playing, when at any moment Cook or Old Nan might walk in, but that, perhaps, is what makes it more thrilling. His curls have fallen into his eyes; his gaze, downcast, is indecipherable. 

“Well,” says Sansa, “he must be kind.” 

“ Kind .” His voice has dipped into a low rumble. 

“And gentle.”

“Gentle.” 

“He must love me and honour me and—and he must rescue me.”

“Do you need rescuing, Miss Stark?” 

“I do.” The words come without hesitation. She waits, breath held, for his response. Sir Jon seems lost, taking roads down which she has never travelled. 

When he finally looks up, it is to turn the full intensity of his gaze on her.  “And what if that man should also need rescuing, Miss Stark?”

“Well then—then I suppose I will have to rescue him in turn.”

He considers this for a long, long moment. 

And then he whispers:

“Will you rescue me, Sansa?” 

The words are so low that she has to lean forward to catch them. His voice around her name is nothing short of a caress, and in that moment she begins to understand why it is such a dangerous thing, to leave a young woman unchaperoned around in a room with a handsome, magnetic man. He looks at her through his lashes, his full lips slightly parted, sending Sansa’s heart crashing against the wall of her ribcage.

Sansa is frozen. Rejoinders rise to her lips, but she cannot bring them to life. It is the open desperation in his eyes that moves her to speak. “If you wish it,” she manages hoarsely. She’s so frightfully out of her depth. Not for the first time she wishes she had her mother to talk to—her father to consult—her brothers to take his measure. But she doesn’t. She is alone, cast into sea in a flimsy boat amidst a storm of emotions she doesn’t know how to navigate. She is only a girl, and girls are meant to be under the protection of their parents, their siblings. They are not meant to be alone—or at least, the world has not prepared them to be.

Sir Jon offers her a smile. There is something fragile about it, almost broken, something in it that she can recognise in herself. Who is this boy? it has her wondering. What has hurt him, that he should look so?

It is the smile of a man who does not truly believe he can be saved. 

“Sir Jon—” she begins, but he cuts her off with a tiny shake of the head, so small she cannot tell if he’s even aware he’s done it. She yearns to smooth away the furrows from that brow, just as she yearns for him to smooth away her own. They could save each other—she knows this achingly—but can you rescue a man who is bent on drowning?

“I shall see you Friday, Miss Stark,” he says, getting to his feet and drawing her up to hers. Then he leans in and presses a delicate kiss to the tip of her ear. 

Sansa’s eyes flutter to his, surprised. With a squeeze of the hand and a soft smile, he turns and strides from the room, leaving Sansa staring after him, her arms a map of gooseflesh and her face unseasonably warm. She presses her palms to her cheeks in the hopes of cooling them down, but her fingers still bear the traces of Sir Jon’s cologne, green and woodsy. Her stomach flips inside her body. The whole front of her is flushing red, she’s sure of it, and she can’t help the clench of her thighs when she closes her eyes and imagines the press of his lips—

“Is the fop gone?”

“He’s not a fop,” Sansa says without turning around, or even indeed opening her eyes. “He is perfectly well-behaved, not that I would expect you to know anything about that.”

“That aunt of his is creepy,” says Arya. She sulks into the room to pick up what is remaining of Sir Jon’s tea and squint at it. Arya has been keen on spiritualism lately, and Sansa resolves right then and there that if her sister makes any mention of seeing sigils in a lump of wet leaves, she will scream. 

“She is perfectly lovely,” Sansa says with firmness, though in truth she cannot say that she’s spent enough time with the Lady Mormont to know. “And anyway what would you know about it? You never even talked to her.”

Arya shrugs. “Call it instinct. I’m never wrong.”

“You were wrong about Uncle Petyr.” Arya had had some harebrained idea that Uncle Petyr had set his sights on Sansa, but then, hadn’t he gone and married Aunt Lysa anyway?

Her sister fixes her with a stare that is a little disbelieving, and more than a little judgmental. She gives a frustrated little huff of air and rolls her eyes. “Sure,” she says. “If you say so. But don’t come crying to me when she proves you wrong.” 

And then she is sweeping out in her muddied boots—as much as Arya has capacity to sweep; it’s closer to a stomp—too quick for Sansa to demand she take them off or, indeed, before she can even deliver the rejoinder that she is the elder sister. It is galling to have your judgement called into question by someone not yet old enough to put their hair up.

Yet anger cannot hold her fast, for even as it crosses her mind it is fading into the shadow of anticipation. Friday, it whispers to her. Friday.