Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 1: Ashes and Echoes
Rosie’s POV

Seven months.
It’s been seven months since the war ended. Since I stood in the Forbidden Forest, heart pounding in my chest, and accepted death. Since I faced Voldemort—Tom Riddle—and ended it. Seven months since the Wizarding World exhaled after years of suffocating under fear.

Seven months of peace.

And seven months of silence. Seven months of aching. Seven months of ghosts.

Fred. Remus. Dora. Colin. Lavender. Snape.

So many names. Too many names.

I should be healing. That’s what they say.
“Healing takes time,” Hermione told me gently when she last visited, her voice soft but insistent. “You need to let yourself live again.”
But how can I live when so many others can’t?

I lie awake at night, wondering if there’s a timeline out there—one twist of fate—where I was faster. Smarter. Stronger. One where I shouted a warning just a second earlier. One where I dueled better. Moved left instead of right.

One where Fred never stood next to that wall.

One where Tonks stayed behind.
One where Remus refused to leave her side.

They shouldn’t have died. Not them.
It should’ve been me.

Sometimes I think it still might be.

Since the war ended, I’ve been hiding inside Grimmauld Place. It’s fitting, I suppose. A house full of shadows for a girl full of ghosts.

I don’t go outside. The world feels too loud. Too expectant. Too full of people who want me to smile and nod and be a shining beacon of victory. They don’t want the real me—the broken, bloodstained girl who lived but doesn’t know how to live.

If I thought being the Girl Who Lived was overwhelming, being the Woman Who Conquered is unbearable.

The Ministry sent letters.
The Prophet sent owls.
A few brave souls even knocked on the door.

But I don’t answer.

Kreacher does, now.
He’s... changed. There’s still bitterness in him, but something softened between us in the aftermath of war. He’s more companion than servant now. He fusses over my meals. Glares at the empty rooms. Mutters stories about the Black family as if they were ancient myths passed down through firelight.

He doesn’t talk much about Sirius, except to say he was “reckless and loud, but not entirely without heart.”

I cling to those stories like lifelines.

And the library… oh, the library is my sanctuary. Dark oak shelves that seem to stretch forever. Dusty volumes that haven’t been opened in decades. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve read. Everything from advanced healing charms to wandlore to obscure magical histories that contradict each other entirely.

If Hermione saw me now, curled up under a blanket with a quill tucked behind my ear and notes scribbled in every margin, she’d probably faint.

But here’s the truth—books don’t judge.
Books don’t flinch at the name Voldemort.
Books don’t look at me like I’m a weapon they forgot how to use.

I even started experimenting with cooking. The kitchen still smells like ash sometimes, like memories that cling to stone, but I try anyway. Spices. Stews. The occasional batch of scones Kreacher begrudgingly admits are edible.

And potions. Oh, I’ve fallen into potion-making like it’s a language I was always meant to learn but never had the time for.

Funny, isn’t it? I used to dread Snape’s class.
Back then, it wasn’t about potions—it was about survival. Impressing a man who hated my face. Trying to stay alive while the world closed in. But now, there’s no war. No pressure. Just me and the ingredients and the quiet hum of magic.

Each potion is like a little spell. A promise. A moment of control in a world that once offered me none.

Still, the nights remain the hardest.

The silence thickens. The shadows stretch. And the nightmares...

They’re vivid. Too vivid.

I see Fred, mouth open in a joke that never finishes.
Remus, lying still with blood on his shirt.
Sirius falling through the veil, over and over, his hand just out of reach.

Sometimes I scream myself awake. Sometimes I don’t sleep at all. Just lie there, staring at the ceiling, wishing it were all a dream I could wake up from.

This morning, I rolled out of bed with aching limbs and a heart heavy from dreams I couldn’t quite remember. The sky outside the dusty windows was grey, the kind of grey that sits in your bones.

I wrapped myself in a worn cardigan and padded barefoot to the kitchen. Kreacher had left tea and toast. I barely tasted either. My appetite comes and goes.

Eventually, I made my way to the basement where I’d converted one of the storage rooms into a potions lab.

The Draught of Living Death. That was today’s goal.
Delicate. Demanding.
A test of patience and precision.

I remembered Snape’s voice echoing across the dungeon in first year.
"A potion for those who fancy entrancing the senses…"

I’d been so eager that first day. So naïve. He’d looked at me once and decided who I was—James’s clone, Lily’s shadow, a Potter brat.

They all did. Everyone had their version of me.
But none of them saw me. Not really.

I took a deep breath and focused.

The potion shimmered as it neared completion. A swirling violet sheen. Almost there. All I needed was the juice from the Sopophorous bean. I rolled it between my fingers, feeling the texture, grounding myself.

And then I felt it.

A breeze.

Cold. Delicate. Like breath on the back of my neck.

My skin prickled. I turned quickly, but the room was empty.
No open windows. No door ajar.

Another gust swept through me. Stronger this time.

The hairs on my arms rose. My magic stirred, uneasy.

Then the wind howled.

Bottles rattled. Parchment flew. The cauldron hissed and boiled violently.

“No—wait—” I started, heart in my throat.

But it was too late.

The ingredients flew off the shelves like they had minds of their own—feathers, roots, shavings, liquids—all spiraling through the air like a storm.

Several crashed into the cauldron. I didn’t even see which. A sickly green hue overtook the potion. Steam erupted. A blinding white light bloomed outward.

And in that instant—one small, suspended second—

I smiled.

Maybe this was it.
Maybe I could finally stop running.
Maybe I could finally rest.

Death’s POV

I watched her.

As I always have.

My Mistress.

She walks the edge of oblivion with a quiet grace. She who met me once in the Forest and did not flinch. She who accepted death not with fear, but with peace.

But it is not her time.

The world thinks she lived. They were wrong.
She survived. There’s a difference.

The soul was never meant to carry such weight.
To hold so much sorrow.

And yet she does.

She gave me something few ever do—balance.
When she returned the fragments of that cursed soul, she didn’t just destroy evil. She brought equilibrium. She chose justice.

So now, I offer her something in return.

A new beginning.
A second chance.
In another world.

Let this world teach her to live again.
To laugh again.
To feel the sun on her face without guilt.

Let her find love where none existed.
Let her become who she was always meant to be.

------------- - -------------

Here is what Rosie looks like in my story:

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: A Storm in the Weirwood

Robb Stark’s POV

The Whispering Wood lived up to its name.
Every breath of wind between the trees felt like a warning. Every rustle of leaves a whisper from gods long forgotten. The ground was damp with fog and blood. Somewhere nearby, a man screamed his last breath into the cold night air.

Robb Stark’s sword was already slick with it.

“Hold your line!” he shouted, his voice cutting through the chaos. His horse twisted under him as he brought the blade down across a Lannister soldier’s helm. The man crumpled into the brush.

Steel met steel, and steel met flesh. Shadows surged between the trees—Northern men cloaked in grey and brown, darting like wolves through the mist. The battle had broken apart into a hundred private duels. It was the perfect trap. And Jaime Lannister had ridden straight into it.

But the Kingslayer was no fool.

Robb spotted him through the trees—sword gleaming in the torchlight, golden hair unbound and wild. Jaime cut down a Northman with brutal grace, pivoted, then blocked a second attacker in a move so fast it looked rehearsed.

The Karstark brothers closed in, their rage in every strike. Torrhen roared and charged with raw fury, and Eddard moved in behind him like a shadow. Jaime parried both effortlessly, spinning, sidestepping, laughing.

“Is this all the North has?” he sneered. “Children and ghosts?”

Robb spurred his mount forward, anger igniting in his blood.

He had heard enough.

Jaime turned at the sound, grinning. “Ah, the pup arrives. Come then, Young Wolf—let’s see if you bite.”

Their swords clashed with a jarring crack that rattled Robb’s bones. Jaime was fast—faster than anyone he’d ever faced. He didn’t fight like a man defending his life. He fought like he was dancing, like every slash was art.

But Robb wasn’t a boy anymore.

He pressed hard, raining blows, forcing Jaime back. Their blades locked. Jaime’s teeth were bared in a savage smile.

“You’ve got Stark blood,” he said. “I can feel it in the weight of your strikes.”

Robb didn’t answer. He broke the lock, ducked low, and sliced across Jaime’s ribs. The Kingslayer growled and spun away, parrying a strike from Eddard Karstark, then elbowing Torrhen in the face with brutal precision.

Then—it happened.

A shimmer.

Faint, just behind the trees. Pale blue and silver, like a veil had lifted for the briefest second.

Jaime flinched.

Only for a breath. But it was enough.

Torrhen rammed his shoulder into Jaime’s side. Robb followed with a savage blow, knocking the golden sword from his hand. Eddard slammed him to the ground, knee on his chest, blade to his throat.

Jaime was pinned, bloodied and breathless—but still smirking.

“Well done,” he rasped. “You’ll make a fine corpse one day.”

Robb stared down at him, chest heaving. “Not today.”

By dawn, Jaime Lannister sat in chains outside a Northern command tent, guarded on all sides. The lords had gathered around the fire—grim-faced, many of them wounded.

Robb stood before them, soaked in sweat, blood, and cold rage.

“This isn’t over,” he said. “Tywin will strike back.”

“We should send the Kingslayer’s head to Casterly Rock,” barked the Greatjon. “Let them know what happens when lions walk into wolf dens!”

“We send his head, we lose our leverage,” Catelyn’s voice cut through the conversation like a blade. She was seated beside the fire, cloaked in furs, hands clasped tight in her lap. “He’s worth more alive.”

“He’s worth more bleeding,” Rickard Karstark growled, eyes burning. “He almost murdered my sons—”

“And did kill others,” Lady Maege Mormont added. “But we cannot act from vengeance. Not yet.”

“We hold him,” Robb said firmly. “We send ravens. If my father still lives, we trade him. If not…”

He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t need to. The threat hung heavy in the air.

Theon lounged nearby, arms crossed, smirking like he was watching a play. “You’re getting good at this, Robb. The whole moody-leader thing suits you.”

Robb shot him a look sharp enough to kill. “And what exactly are you doing? Besides running your mouth?”

Theon raised his brows but didn’t reply. He didn’t need to. His posture said everything: he still saw himself as equal, as brother.

But Robb didn’t feel like anyone’s brother tonight.

He turned back to the council. “What of the rest? What news of King’s Landing?”

“Still silence,” said Galbart Glover. “Ravens don’t fly from traitors.”

Robb’s fists clenched. “Then we keep waiting?”

“For now,” Catelyn said. “Until we know who wears the crown. Until we know if your father still draws breath.”

“And what of Stannis and Renly?” Umber asked. “Will we bend the knee to one of them?”

“We bend to no one yet,” Catelyn answered. “Not until we know who is worthy. Or who is left.”

Robb said nothing.

But his blood boiled. He hated the waiting. Hated the plotting. Hated the silence around his father’s name.

And most of all, he hated the Freys.

He found himself pacing after the council dispersed, the fire casting shadows across the snow-packed ground.

He stopped only when his mother approached, silent and stern.

“You’re angry,” she said.

“Is that a problem?” he snapped.

“No. It’s expected.” She stepped closer. “But don’t let it blind you.”

He looked away. “You bartered me like a sword. Promised me to some Frey girl I’ve never met.”

“I secured the Twins. You wanted to cross—you wanted victory. This is the cost.”

Robb’s voice dropped to a growl. “Then maybe it wasn’t worth it.”

Catelyn’s eyes narrowed. “You’ll find her kind and obedient, if not beautiful.”

“I don’t want obedience. I want choice.”

“You’re a Stark,” she said. “You don’t get to want. You get to lead.”

“I don’t even know her name,” Robb said bitterly.

“Neither did I when I married your father.”

He said nothing after that.

Later the camp had quieted. 

Robb stood near the weirwood tree once more, a small cluster of lords with him—Maege Mormont, the Greatjon, Karstark, and Glover. They had been walking the perimeter when Grey Wind suddenly stopped.

The air shifted.

The leaves on the weirwood twisted in unnatural patterns. A sound like breath over water echoed softly in the dark.

Then—light.

It was unlike anything they had seen. Not fire. Not lightning. A shimmer, silver and blue, like moonlight caught in glass. Same one from before.

Then wind—sharp, howling, alive.

And then—

She fell.

A girl.

Right at Robb’s feet.

She crashed into the ground with a grunt, a scuffed trunk landing beside her with a dull thud. Her robes were tattered, lined with ash and strange embroidery. Her hair—long, reddish-blonde—clung to her cheeks.

She groaned, not yet looking up. “Bloody hell…” she muttered under her breath, wincing. “Not again. That’s the last time I let something explode near wolfsbane.”

The Northern lords stared, stunned.

“Is she a witch?” Mormont whispered.

“Is this a trick of the Lannisters?” Karstark snapped.

“Quiet,” Robb said, stepping forward.

She stirred, dragging herself upright slowly. Her fingers pressed to her forehead, eyes squeezed shut. She muttered more to herself—something about cauldrons and Merlin’s bloody beard.

Then—she looked up.

Bright and beautiful emerald green eyes met his. Her mouth parted in silent shock.

Robb froze.

So did everyone else.

She blinked, looked around, taking in the armored men, the wolves, the Northern sigils—and the boy standing above her with a sword strapped to his hip and winter in his eyes.

“…Where the hell am I?” she breathed.

He only stared at her, at the smoking air where she’d come from, at the impossible magic that shimmered still in the air like starlight around her.

And for the first time that day… he felt something beyond anger.

He felt the beginning of something.

------------- - -------------

Robb after his battle:

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: Stranger from Another Sky

Rosie’s POV 

The wind was still. The shimmer of light had long since faded, and yet the forest clearing felt suspended in time.

Rosie didn’t move at first. Her body ached, her head spun, and the dirt stung against her palms. The voices murmuring around her—deep, gruff, wary—weren’t British. They weren’t even close.

And the cold? Far too biting for Scotland in spring.

Slowly, she lifted her head.

And came face to face with him .

He was young—her age, maybe a bit older—but carried himself like a man who’d lived twice as long. He wore furs, wolf pelt around his shoulders, a sword strapped to his hip. His face was grim, shadowed by both war and weariness.

But it was his eyes that struck her most. Ice-blue/gray, fierce, and focused. And behind the frost— pain . Old pain. Familiar pain. She knew those eyes.

The tall one beside him with the wild beard shifted forward. “She’s no spy, not dressed like that,” he muttered.

“I’ve seen mummers wear stranger,” another snapped.

“Quiet,” the young man said, never taking his eyes off her. His tone was low, firm—commanding without needing to shout. “Let her speak.”

Rosie blinked. Her lips parted.

“…Where the hell am I?”

Robb Stark’s POV

She didn’t move like a soldier. Didn’t dress like a noblewoman. And yet there was something commanding about the way she kneeled on the ground—back straight, chin lifted, assessing all of them with sharp, calculating eyes.

She was strange. Unfamiliar. And yet… she was beautiful.

Not in the way of courtly ladies or noble daughters. She was wild around the edges—hair windswept and ash-streaked, eyes vibrant green, alive with a fire he hadn’t seen in weeks.

Robb kept his tone even. “You’re in the Riverlands. Near the Trident.”

He hadn’t lowered his gaze since she fell out of the air like a curse wrapped in smoke.

“Who are you?” he asked again, voice low and calm, but edged with command.

The lady answered, “Most call me Rosie.”

“What house do you belong to?” asked Karstark.

Rosie straightened. “Lady Rosalie Potter,” she clarified. “Of House Potter. And House Black.”

That gave them pause. Not because they recognized the names—but because of the title. 

“I’ve never heard of your houses,” Robb replied.

“You wouldn’t have,” she murmured, more to herself than anyone else. “Because I’m not from this world.”

The words shouldn’t have meant anything. They were nonsense. Not from this world?

But something in her tone, in the way she held herself, made it hard to dismiss.

Robb glanced briefly at Torrhen and Eddard Karstark, both of whom were watching the girl intently. They’d seen it too—back in the Whispering Wood. That flicker. That strange shimmer that cracked reality just long enough to distract Jaime Lannister.

It had helped them win.

And now this girl—Lady Rosalie—had dropped from the same kind of impossible light.

“Not from this world?” Greatjon asked warily. “What does that even mean?”

“I’m not mad,” she added quickly. “And I’m not here to hurt anyone.”

“You fell from the godsdamned sky,” Eddard muttered behind him.

“I fell through a rift,” Rosie corrected, though her voice softened. “An accident. A magical one. I didn’t mean to come here. I didn’t know your world even existed.”

The lords behind Robb stirred uneasily. Maege Mormont stepped closer. The Greatjon muttered something about sorcery.

“She’s not a prisoner,” Robb said, quiet but firm. “Yet.”

Rosie’s green eyes snapped to him. Sharp. Measuring.

“I didn’t come here to threaten anyone,” she said. “But I won’t be manhandled like some common criminal.”

Mothers voice sliced through the tension like a cold blade. “Then you should be willing to speak.”

Rosie turned her attention toward the red-haired woman who had stepped forward from the group of lords. The resemblance to Robb was clear. The matronly sternness even more so.

“You’re his mother,” Rosie said.

Catelyn nodded. “And you are a stranger surrounded by armed men. This is a generous welcome, not a hostile one. Don’t test the difference.”

There was a flicker of something in Rosie’s eyes—approval, perhaps.

“Fair enough,” Rosie murmured.

Rosie’s POV

They moved her to a nearby war tent. The trunk that had fallen with her was hauled behind them, still steaming faintly.

Inside the tent, torches glowed dimly against the dark canvas walls. A table held maps. Furs lined the ground. Rosie was led to the center, surrounded by lords and captains whose names she didn’t yet know—but whose judgment she could already feel pressing in from all sides.

Robb Stark stood at the head. He didn’t sit. Neither did she.

His voice broke the silence first.

“You said magic brought you here. Explain.”

Rosie nodded. “I come from a world where magic is hidden, but very real. We live in secret among those who don’t have it. The non-magical, or Muggles, as we call them.”

“Muggles?” Theon Greyjoy snorted nearby. “Sounds like something you’d cough up.”

Rosie ignored him.

“I’m what we call a witch. I studied at a magical school—Hogwarts—for seven years. A war broke out. I fought in it. We won. And after, I... went quiet for a time. Needed to heal.”

Robb’s brow furrowed. “You said this accident—what was it?”

“I was working with magical ingredients,” Rosie said. “Some experimental. There was a rupture. A rift. It pulled me through. I’m not fully sure how or why it happened.”

“You expect us to believe this?” Lord Karstark growled.

Rosie met his eyes without blinking. “You saw me just arrive here from thin air, yes?”

Torrhen and Eddard exchanged a glance.

Eddard said reluctantly. “We saw something. Strange magic. Right before we took down the Kingslayer.”

“And now she’s here,” Torrhen added.

Catelyn crossed her arms. “This is dangerous. We know nothing about her, her powers, or her intentions.”

“I told you my intentions,” Rosie said.

“And what are you offering?” Lady Maege Mormont asked. “To wander our camp casting spells?”

“I offer help,” Rosie said simply. “I know healing magic. Protection charms. Defensive spells. I can reinforce your weapons. Detect poison. Mend wounds you thought fatal.”

That earned a moment of silence.

Then Robb stepped forward, voice calm but weighted.

“If you can do what you say, that would be useful. We’re at war.”

“With who?” Rosie asked.

“The Lannisters,” Robb replied. “They hold the capital. They’ve taken my father prisoner. My sisters too.”

Rosie’s eyes softened. “I’m sorry.”

He gave a stiff nod, as if brushing the words off before they could sink too deep.

“There are others who claim the throne,” he added. “Renly Baratheon. His brother Stannis. Neither have declared war on the North. Yet.”

“And you’re... all fighting for a crown?”

“No,” Robb said. “I fight for my father. And for the North.”

Rosie tilted her head, studying him again. The pain in his voice. The weight he carried like a second cloak. She knew what that felt like.

“I understand what it’s like to be forced to grow up too fast,” she said. “To lose people. To lead before you’re ready.”

His eyes met hers again. And something passed between them.

Not sympathy. Not yet.
But recognition.

The conversation continued for another hour.

They told her of King Robert’s death. Of Ned Stark’s arrest. Of Catelyn’s capture of Tyrion Lannister. Of the ambush at the Whispering Wood.

Rosie shared only the barest details in return—how the war in her world had torn everything apart. How she had inherited titles she never asked for. How magic, while powerful, came at a steep price.

By the end, Robb rubbed a hand over his jaw.

“You need a place to stay,” he said.

She nodded. “That would be appreciated.”

“We’ll assign you a tent,” Maege began.

When she started to thank them for the consideration, she remembered the trunk that arrived with her.

She turned and walked quickly to her trunk. The group followed, more than a few exchanging wary looks. Robb kept pace beside her, Grey Wind padding at his side.

She knelt, opened the lid, and began rifling through the carefully packed items—most of them magically shrunk and labeled it seems.

“Well, it seems my belongings came with me,” she said, pulling out what looked like a silk handkerchief. 

She stood, flicked her wand.

The handkerchief expanded instantly—unfolding into a tall, black canvas tent.

The lords gaped.

Torrhen nearly dropped his sword.

Even Catelyn looked momentarily stunned.

Rosie turned to them with a cheeky grin.

“I appreciate the hospitality, truly. But I’ve got my own accommodations.”

------------- - -------------

Another picture to go along with the Chapter:

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: Whispers in the Wind

Rosie's POV

She exhaled the second the tent flap closed behind her, hands still trembling as she let the weight of the night settle into her bones. The soft hum of the wards vibrated gently against her magic, wrapping around the seams of the tent like a protective blanket.

Rosie slowly sank down onto the plush carpeted floor. Her strength leaving her.

What the hell just happened?

She squeezed her eyes shut. The world outside the tent—forests, swords, wolves, northern suspicion—was too much. Too fast. Too unfamiliar. And yet it had all happened. She’d fallen, or rather been pulled , through a rift in magic into… whatever this world was. A world of noble houses, war, and the coldest godsdamned weather she’d ever felt.

Rosie rubbed her palms over her eyes, breathing in and out slowly.

Not dead. Not dreaming.

Her heartbeat was steady now. Too steady for a dream. Her shoulder ached from where she hit the ground. Her hands were numb from the cold.

This was real.

The question wasn’t if she had traveled to another world. The question was why … and how .

Something immense had opened that rift. It hadn’t been the potion alone. No, something more ancient… more powerful. A force of balance. A gatekeeper.

Her thoughts caught.

Death.

She hadn’t seen it—not directly—but she felt it. The way the veil had split. The way magic had yielded , not resisted. Her fingers curled around the edge of the carpet.

He had watched her before. She’d felt it, even in her world.

Had He sent her here?

As a punishment? A gift? A cosmic nudge?

“Bloody ambiguous bastard,” she muttered under her breath.

With a tired groan, she pushed herself up and turned to assess the tent.

Her wand flicked softly. The fireplace in the main room flared to life, casting golden warmth across the dark wooden floors. The space opened in every direction like a small, noble cottage—cozy, magical, and painfully familiar.

The sitting area had a comfortable couch, two velvet armchairs, a low table, and a wall of enchanted bookshelves. A small kitchen sat tucked behind, complete with floating pots and a pantry of preserved ingredients. Off the hallway were three bedrooms—two for guests, one large master—and a full, enchanted bath with hot water charms and warming stones along the tub.

Home.

It was home , in every way that mattered.

Rosie crossed to her trunk, knelt, and opened it again.

She froze.

It wasn’t just her travel kit. It was everything .

Her entire library—shrunken and slotted into a protective row of shelves. Her heirloom pieces—Lady Black’s antique mirror, enchanted jewelry boxes, photo albums tucked into velvet cases. And her vault bag from Gringotts, still secured and heavy with gold galleons, silver sickles, and old family seals.

All of it.

Everything that tethered her to her world—packed neatly into the trunk like it had been preparing to travel long before she had.

Her breath caught in her throat.

A deep, invisible weight settled on her chest, and for the first time since falling through the rift, she felt it .

The loss. The strangeness. The complete, gaping chasm between her and the life she knew.

She stood in the center of her cozy, glowing tent with a crackling fire, surrounded by her family’s legacy—and realized she was utterly, cosmically alone.

A sob tried to push its way up her throat.

She clenched her jaw.

Not now. Not yet.

Robb Stark's POV

The fire cracked loudly in the center of the command tent, the heat doing little to thaw the growing tension in the room.

“She should not be trusted,” Catelyn said sharply, eyes fixed on the flames.

Robb stood beside the table, arms crossed, eyes shadowed. The Karstark brothers lingered near the flap, silent but listening. Theon lounged on a bench, his posture casual but eyes alert.

“She hasn’t given us a reason not to trust her,” Robb said.

“She hasn’t given us a reason to ,” his mother replied.

Theon laughed under his breath. “She dropped from the godsdamned sky , Cat. That’s more than enough reason to keep her close.”

“Don’t call her Cat,” Robb snapped, sharper than intended.

Theon raised a brow. “Touchy already?”

“She’s not a joke.”

“She’s a sorceress , Robb,” Catelyn said. “One we know nothing about. She claims to be from another world. Her magic is untested, unfamiliar, and she’s not bound by any loyalty to the North.”

“She could be lying about all of it,” Theon added with a shrug. “But she’s nice to look at. If she’s going to be here a while, might as well—”

Robb’s fist slammed into the table. “Enough.”

The room fell silent.

He glared at Theon, who looked mildly surprised.

“You’ll speak of her with respect,” Robb said coldly. “She’s not yours to taunt. Or use.”

Catelyn’s lips pressed into a thin line.

“You’re already too soft on her,” she said quietly.

“I’ve spoken with her once,” Robb retorted. “I’m not an idiot, Mother.”

“Don’t let your eyes speak louder than your judgment.”

That stung.

He turned from them both.

“I’ll decide what to do with her,” he said, voice low. “Not you. Not Theon.”

Without waiting for a reply, he left the tent.

Outside, the cold hit like a slap.

Robb walked without direction, letting his boots crunch through snow. Grey Wind appeared at his side, silent and stalking. The camp was quiet now—just torches flickering, men dozing by fires, a few sentries on the edges of the tree line.

He stopped near the weirwood. His weirwood.

The red leaves stirred gently in the wind.

What are you, Rosie Potter?

She was strange. Too strange.

But not threatening. Not to him.

And gods help him—she was beautiful. But it wasn’t her face or hair or figure that haunted him. It was the way she carried herself. The way she’d stood in that forest, surrounded by men with swords, and met his gaze with fire behind her eyes.

She’d reminded him of war.

Of loss.

Of what it meant to survive.

He wanted to know her story. He wanted to understand her.

And that want terrified him more than anything else.

Because he couldn’t want her.

Not with the Freys expecting a union. Not with lords watching every breath he took. Not with the weight of Winterfell and the North and the war hanging from his shoulders like iron chains.

He sank onto a frozen log and stared into the night sky.

What was she to him? A sign? A curse? A warning?

Or a storm that had yet to break?

------------- - -------------

Rosie breaking a bit with her realization:

Chapter Text

Chapter 5: Beneath Wolf Eyes

Rosie’s POV

It hadn’t been a dream.

Rosie knew that the moment her eyes blinked open and she heard the low, faint rustle of canvas and winds.

The tent was warm around her—blankets heavy with enchantments, a fire crackling gently in the hearth in the main room. She lay in the master bed, staring up at the enchanted ceiling above her: a soft charm that mimicked a morning sky, glowing pale gold with gentle drifting clouds.

Her breath caught as it always did the moment memory caught up with waking.

She wasn’t home.

This wasn’t Grimmauld Place. Or Hogwarts. Or even the Scottish highlands. It was… somewhere else entirely.

A world of swords. Banners. Wolves. A war she didn’t understand.

She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. No panic. Not anymore. The shock had worn down to a low, throbbing ache in her chest—a quiet fear wrapped in velvet.

She sat up, legs over the edge of the bed, fingers brushing against the soft sheepskin rug below. The day outside was quiet. Tense.

And she had no idea what it would bring.

But she wouldn’t cower in bed. Not today.

Rosie dressed slowly, choosing comfort and warmth over formality.

A long black bohemian-style skirt that flowed as she walked. A cozy, slightly oversized white sweater, thick and soft with magical heating charms woven into the cuffs. Over that, she pulled on a mid-length black wool coat, detailed in subtle gold embroidery along the hems and collar. She added a few rings, one simple chain around her neck, and a set of silver earrings shaped like crescent moons.

The final result was somewhere between witch, wanderer, and noblewoman—perfectly her.

She checked the kitchen pantry. The charms had preserved everything wonderfully. Bread. Dried fruits. Salted meats. A few magical preserves and her stash of good tea.

She made a small pot, warmed slices of fruit bread on a charm-heated pan, and took her breakfast near the fireplace.

Halfway through her second cup of tea, she paused.

A single thought. Gentle but cold.

What if I never make it back?

She set the teacup down slowly. Her fingers curled in her lap.

No answers yet. Only possibilities. And so much depended on how long she remained in this world—and what it would ask of her.

She rose.

And stepped outside.

Wind greeted her. Cold and clean. The sky was grey overhead, and the camp bustled with quiet discipline—soldiers hauling water, sharpening weapons, tending wounds. The air smelled like smoke, steel, and pine.

And eyes turned toward her.

Dozens of them.

Some curious. Some cautious. Others flat-out wary.

She walked slowly, chin lifted, posture calm, making sure to meet no one’s gaze for too long. Her wand stayed in her sleeve. She didn’t need to show it.

Let them wonder , she thought. Let them question. That gives me time to observe them, too.

She catalogued everything—the position of the supply wagons, the spacing of the tents, the watch rotations and frequency. It wasn’t Hogwarts, but it was a battlefield. And that meant survival depended on awareness.

She was passing near the edge of the training yard when a sound caught her attention—a low growl.

The wolf.

She froze.

The direwolf stood several feet ahead, massive and still. His silver-gray coat rippled slightly in the breeze, and his yellow eyes fixed on her with the same intensity Robb’s had the night before.

Several men nearby stepped back, murmuring under their breath.

Rosie took a slow breath and moved forward. Calm. Measured.

“Hello,” she said softly, crouching down just a little. “You’re Robb’s, aren’t you?”

Grey Wind tilted his head.

Then—to the shock of every nearby guard—he padded forward and pressed his cold nose gently into her palm.

Rosie let out a surprised breath.

“You’re beautiful,” she whispered, her hand brushing behind his ear.

The direwolf huffed once and sat beside her.

It was such an absurd, impossible moment that she laughed.

Not a sarcastic laugh. Not a bitter one.

A real one.

A soft, surprised, and warm laugh she hadn’t felt in… months.

Maybe since before the war had ended.

The sound of it startled even her.

She looked up—and saw the men nearby staring, now more unnerved than before.

That only made her laugh again, quieter this time. “Relax,” she said toward no one in particular. “He approached me.”

“Don’t mind them.”

The voice came from behind her.

She turned.

Robb stood a few feet away, wrapped in his usual dark furs and wolf-cloak, a hand resting casually on the hilt of his sword. The cold wind tugged at his curls.

“Grey Wind doesn’t warm to strangers,” he added.

Rosie straightened slowly, brushing a bit of dirt from her skirt.

“Seems I’m not entirely a stranger then,” she said, glancing down at the wolf.

“No,” Robb said, watching her. “Maybe not.”

A long pause stretched between them—quiet but not uncomfortable.

“How did you sleep?” he asked.

She smiled faintly. “Better than I expected. Worse than I hoped.”

He nodded, something flickering behind his expression. “Understandable.”

Another pause.

“You?”

“I don’t sleep much these days,” he said. “Too much to worry about.”

She studied him more closely. His shoulders held tension like armor. His voice was calm, but his eyes were darker today.

“You’re young,” she said softly. “But not new to grief.”

He looked at her sharply. She didn’t flinch.

“No,” he admitted. “I’m not.”

Rosie stepped closer, her voice still low.

“You lead men. Command armies. But you haven’t had time to be just... Robb.”

“That’s not an option anymore.”

“Maybe not.” She looked out at the camp. “But you should know—you’re not the only one who’s had to carry too much too young.”

Their eyes met.

And for a moment, neither needed to speak.

He broke the silence first.

“There’s a war council this afternoon. We’ll be discussing Riverrun and my uncle Edmure. You should join us.”

Rosie arched a brow. “Your lords will love that.”

“Let them bristle,” Robb said. “You have a mind for strategy. And I want you there.”

Rosie hesitated, then nodded. “Then I’ll come.”

He nodded once and turned to leave—but paused mid-step, glancing back.

“Thank you. For earlier. I… needed it.”

“You’re welcome.”

And then he was gone, Grey Wind following silently at his side.

Robb Stark's POV

He stepped into his tent with the fire of her still flickering behind his ribs.

She’d understood him. Not pitied. Not lectured. Just understood .

It left him off balance.

He poured water from a pitcher into the basin and splashed his face, trying to focus. The war. The siege on Riverrun. The Lannisters. His men.

Not the woman with emerald eyes and soft laughter.

The tent flap opened. His mother.

Catelyn stood still for a moment, her expression unreadable.

“You invited her to the council,” she said.

“I did.”

“She’s a stranger.”

“She’s proven more observant than half the men I command.”

“She’s a danger.”

He looked at her. “So was I, once.”

They stared at each other. A long beat.

“She’s changing things, Robb.”

“I know.”

Catelyn said nothing more. And then, quietly, she turned and left.

Minutes later, Theon entered without knocking.

“She’s out there now, smiling with your wolf like she belongs here,” he said casually. “Makes the men nervous.”

“She’s done nothing wrong.”

“She’s not one of us.”

Robb looked up. “Neither are you.”

Theon’s face hardened. “Careful.”

“I am.”

Silence stretched. Tense.

Finally, Theon smirked again. “You’ll regret trusting her.”

Robb didn’t reply.

He didn’t need to.

Because even if he would regret it someday… something in him whispered he couldn’t help but trust her anyway.

------------- - -------------

Rosie and Gray Wind:

Chapter Text

Chapter 6: Talks and Frontlines

Rosie’s POV

The war council was colder than she expected—both in temperature and tone.

The canvas walls of the meeting tent kept out most of the wind, but not the chill of stone-faced men gathered around a table made of reinforced planks and stained battle maps. Candles flickered. Ink froze in its pots. And tension sat heavy in the air like fog.

Rosie sat quietly at the far end of the long table, hood of her gold-accented coat resting on her shoulders, hands folded on her lap. Her wand was hidden in her sleeve, just in case. Her eyes, however, missed nothing.

Ten men sat around the table—lords, bannermen, and Robb himself at the head. Catelyn stood behind him like a shadow. Eddard and Torrhen Karstark flanked the space near the tent entrance. Even Theon was here, sprawled in his chair with studied arrogance.

Rosie remained still, posture straight, observing.

She wasn't here to talk. Not yet. First, she needed to understand the rules of this particular game.

“Riverrun won’t hold forever,” Rickard Karstark was saying, voice low and taut. “My men report that Tywin’s supply lines are stretching thin. If we break the siege within the fortnight, we can pin his western forces.”

“And if we wait?” Maege Mormont asked, arms folded. “We risk losing the Tullys and the river.”

“The south is unguarded,” Lord Glover said. “Stannis marches on Dragonstone. Renly builds armies in Highgarden. The realm splits by the hour.”

“Then let it split,” growled the Greatjon. “The more they fight, the easier it is to carve a Northern border they’ll never cross again.”

Rosie listened, lips slightly pursed, filing away names and faces with quiet calculation.

Karstark: cold, rigid, bleeding anger behind every word.
Maege Mormont: sharp-eyed, practical, not easily rattled.
Greatjon Umber: bluster masking a canny mind.
Catelyn Stark: shrewd and strategic, though clearly disapproving of Rosie’s presence.
And Robb…

Her eyes flicked to him.

Robb Stark was listening, not just waiting to speak. He tracked each voice, weighed each word. And when he did speak, his tone cut through the rest—measured, direct, but never unsure.

He had presence. Even when he said nothing.

He wears command like it was stitched into his skin, Rosie thought, surprised. Too young for all of this, but carrying it anyway.

He turned slightly, eyes catching hers for a moment.

It wasn’t the first time he’d looked her way during the meeting. But it felt different each time. Warmer. Curious.

She blinked, then returned her gaze to the map, clearing her throat quietly.

“So, what do we do?” Glover asked. “Riverrun is cornered.”

“We move,” said Robb. “But not blindly. We can’t break the siege with brute force alone.”

There was a pause.

Then a voice broke the quiet.

“Maybe the girl has ideas.”

The words came from one of the other bannermen—Lord Bolton, gaunt and pale, eyes like hollow snow.

Rosie looked up slowly.

The tension around the table snapped taut.

“I am not a girl,” she said calmly. “But I do know how to help.”

“Help how?” Karstark asked. “You said you don’t fight.”

“I don’t need to fight to be useful,” Rosie said. “Magic isn't only for war.”

She stood.

“I can brew potions. Salves that seal wounds faster. Draughts that soothe pain, calm minds, and keep soldiers alert when sleep isn’t an option. I can charm armor for resistance, mark territory to detect movement, reinforce tents to keep out cold and damp. And I can create a communication network with enchanted parchments—linked between camps.”

A beat of silence.

“And you can do this now ?” Maege asked, leaning forward.

“I can begin immediately,” Rosie said. “With your permission.”

Theon laughed under his breath. “Useful and decorative.”

Robb shot him a look.

Rosie ignored the jibe.

“Would you like proof?” she asked.

No one answered.

So she reached into her sleeve, pulled her wand, and turned toward a dented helm resting on a stool near the fire.

She murmured an incantation under her breath and flicked her wrist. A soft golden glow wrapped around the metal. The dents vanished. The sheen returned.

It looked newly forged.

The room went still.

“Enchantments of reinforcement,” Rosie said quietly. “This one will withstand most minor blade strikes and redirect arrows at just the right angle.”

The helmet was passed around. The whispers began.

Karstark still looked skeptical. But Maege Mormont—Rosie noted—was staring at her with something akin to curiosity. And Umber?

He chuckled.

“Well, I’ll be damned. The witch is useful.”

Rosie raised a brow. “I can do sarcasm too, Lord Umber. But mine comes with fire.”

He barked a laugh. “Aye. I like her.”

The meeting shifted.

With Rosie now considered, her suggestions flowed more freely.

They would send a scouting unit with enchanted parchment back to Riverrun. Rosie would begin brewing healing potions immediately and place warding glyphs around the command tents.

More importantly, she would be kept close to Robb’s war planning—not as a weapon, but as a tool of support and unpredictability.

An edge.

She could feel the change in the room.

Not acceptance.

But possibility .

By the time the council adjourned, Rosie remained seated, letting the lords trickle out around her.

Umber gave her a nod. Mormont a short, amused smile. Even Glover said nothing as he passed, but didn’t scowl.

Catelyn, however, lingered only long enough to look at Robb—then left without a word to Rosie.

She didn’t mind.

Robb remained.

They were the last two.

“Thank you,” he said simply.

She shook her head. “I didn’t do much.”

“You did,” he said. “You made them listen .”

Rosie smiled faintly. “Didn’t think Umber was going to.”

Robb smirked. “He only listens to three things: me, victory, and people who challenge him without flinching.”

“Two out of three, then.”

Their eyes met.

And for a moment—just one quiet second—there was no war, no council, no siege.

Only the fire between them, and the growing certainty that something was shifting.

Soft. Subtle. But real.

------------- - -------------

Chapter Text

Chapter 7: A Kindling of Power

Rosie’s POV

The smell of boiling nettle root, yarrow blossoms, and dried willow bark filled the back half of the Northern supply tent.

Rosie stood at the center of it all—sleeves rolled to her elbows, hair twisted up in a haphazard bun, wand in one hand and a long-stemmed copper stirring rod in the other. She looked like a woman somewhere between a battlefield apothecary and a sleep-deprived herbologist.

In truth, she felt like both.

The maester assigned to Robb's camp—a sharp-nosed man named Edwyn—watched her with a mixture of interest and distrust, his gray robes fluttering around him as he circled one of the worktables.

“I’ve never seen anyone prepare willowbark salve like that,” he said at last.

“That’s because you’ve never enchanted the reduction stage,” Rosie replied, not unkindly. “This version accelerates pain relief by half and encourages natural clotting. Works better than milk of the poppy, and doesn’t knock the patient out.”

Edwyn made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a scoff. “And the soldiers will take this willingly?”

“They’ll take it when they realize they can walk three hours after a gut wound.”

That shut him up—for now.

Rosie turned back to the cauldron and stirred. Her brewing station had been established the day before with Robb’s full support, and already her potions were circulating quietly through the ranks.

The soldiers called her the “Battle Witch,” most with awe, some with caution.

She preferred that to “Lady Potter,” which still felt too heavy in her mouth.

A soft gust of wind swept through the tent flap. Outside, the camp buzzed. Steel clanged. Horses whinnied. 

She paused in her work and stepped outside for a moment.

She needed air. And space.

A small group of soldiers lingered nearby, sipping warmed tea and talking in low voices. One of them—a lanky redhead—glanced at her, then quickly looked away.

She walked along the outer edge of the camp, taking in her surroundings.

Ward stones, charmed with detection runes, hummed softly beneath the dirt at the corners of command tents. Her protection glyphs had been engraved into tent flaps with a self-replicating sigil spell. And she'd enchanted six linked parchments that now allowed instant written communication between Robb’s commanders.

Small things.

But they added up.

She passed Grey Wind lounging near Robb’s tent. The direwolf glanced up, blinked, then lowered his head back to his paws.

Rosie smiled faintly.

She didn’t belong here. Not truly.

But she was starting to feel like she mattered.

Two days into her magical work, the failure came.

She had been testing a heat ward inside the medical tent—a controlled charm designed to keep wounded soldiers warm even during freezing nights. She'd crafted it dozens of times before. But the weave in this world was different. Slippery.

Something slipped.

The ward cracked with a loud snap , and a blast of heat exploded from the sigil, sending three water buckets flying across the tent.

No one was hurt.

But the tent flap flung open seconds later—half the camp’s guards converging, weapons drawn.

Rosie stood frozen in the middle, hair frizzed, soot on her cheek, wand still raised.

“I’m fine,” she called out, voice steady. “Just—mild miscalculation.”

A soldier muttered, “Bloody witches.”

Robb arrived shortly after.

He didn’t say much—just scanned the damage, looked at her, and nodded once. “You alright?”

“Yes,” she said, brushing her hands off. “More embarrassed than anything.”

“Better embarrassment than casualties.”

She met his gaze. “I’ll recalibrate the wards. No more explosions, I promise.”

His mouth twitched. “See that you don’t blind my men.”

She smirked. “That wasn’t on today’s to-do list, but I can shuffle it in.”

Behind him, a few soldiers blinked.

Robb walked off a moment later, but Rosie noticed the smallest smile tug at his mouth as he turned away.

That evening, she returned to her tent, exhausted but not defeated.

She stripped out of her soot-streaked robes, washed her face, and sat before the fire with a journal open on her lap. She listed the potions she’d successfully brewed, the charms that worked, the wards that needed adjustment.

And then she added a final line:

Find a way home.

She stared at it for a long time.

Then closed the book.

Tywin Lannister’s POV

The candlelight cast shifting shadows across the war map sprawled over the long oaken table, its flickering glow making the carved ridges of mountains and rivers seem to rise and fall like breath beneath his gaze. Blood-red markers surrounded Riverrun like a noose, yet the noose had not tightened. Not fully. Not fast enough.

Tywin stood motionless at the head of the table, hands clasped behind his back in a posture that, for all its stillness, radiated barely contained calculation. Behind him, the low murmur of armored men and couriers echoed through the tent like the ticking of a clock—measured, cold, inevitable.

“They’ve fortified the eastern pass,” one of the messengers reported. “Scorched farmland to delay movement. Reinforced the outer walls with fresh troops from the river clans. Lord Blackwood and Lord Mallister have joined the defense.”

Tywin’s jaw tensed.

“And yet Riverrun still stands,” he said, his voice clipped and hard as hammered steel.

The room shifted uncomfortably.

“Yes, my lord,” came the answer.

He already knew. He had known before the words were spoken. But he demanded them anyway. Precision. Acknowledgment. The ritual of it soothed the irritation clawing at the edge of his composure.

Robb Stark had moved faster than expected.

Too fast. Too coordinated. For a boy who had never commanded anything larger than a hunting party before his father’s death, the Young Wolf fought like a seasoned tactician. Like a man guided not just by instinct—but by foresight.

Tywin leaned forward slightly, his sharp gaze traveling over the scattered markers on the board. He could almost see it—the pattern forming. The calculated shifts in position, the decoy movements, the feints that turned into victories.

There were whispers. Foolish things, born in the mouths of frightened men. But still—persistent.

Of strange firelight dancing through the Northern camps. Of arrows deflected mid-flight. Of men wounded one day and healed the next. Of unnatural fortitude, weather turning in their favor, and one name repeated again and again in half-hushed tones:

The witch.

A woman, they said, who fell from the sky wrapped in lightning, who walked beside wolves and lords alike. A sorceress with eyes like emeralds and power older than the old gods themselves. Some claimed she was shadowspawn. Others, a gift from the gods of the North.

Tywin Lannister believed in strategy, not superstition. Yet even he understood the weight of symbols—and he knew too well how easily fear could galvanize men to do what swords could not.

He didn’t believe in magic.

But he did believe in perception. In optics. In the way a single story, well-placed, could swing a battle before a sword was ever drawn.

And if the North had found itself a myth to fight beside their boy king—a symbol to wrap their bloodshed in righteousness—then it was no longer just a war of blades and banners.

It was becoming a war of legends.

That made her dangerous.

“She’s only one woman,” one of the captains had muttered days ago.

Yes, but so was Rhaenyra. So was Nymeria. So was the Mother of Dragons across the sea, if the reports could be trusted. Tywin had lived long enough to know the world turned easily on the actions of a single woman—provided enough men believed she could not be stopped.

His voice cut through the tent, low and cold.

“We press harder. No delays. No leniency. No mercy.”

“And the witch?” one of the younger lords asked hesitantly.

Tywin turned to the hearth, eyes catching the flame’s reflection in the polished edge of his goblet. The fire crackled, casting shadows like broken wings along the tent wall.

“Find out who she is,” he said, each word measured and sharp. “Where she came from. Who she answers to. And if she is truly unnatural…”

A pause.

Not for drama, but for certainty.

“…burn her.”

------------- - -------------

Chapter Text

Chapter 8: Soft Places, Sharp Edges

Rosie’s POV

The scent of cinnamon, apples, and brown sugar curled through the enchanted air of her tent like a warm blanket.

Rosie stood barefoot in her small kitchen, sleeves rolled to her elbows, wand tucked behind her ear, and flour smudged across her cheek. The windows were frosted from the cold beyond, though inside her tent it remained pleasantly warm thanks to the low hum of magical insulation woven through the walls.

She had made five batches of muffins.

And she was halfway through a sixth.

Distraction was a magical thing—and sometimes, even more powerful than a spell.

Outside, the camp buzzed with purposeful movement. Scouts returned. Horses stomped through half-frozen mud. Fires were stoked. The army had marched before dawn, leaving only a skeleton guard and the wounded behind. Rosie had watched Robb ride out beside Grey Wind, his sword strapped across his back, his shoulders squared.

He hadn't looked back.

She hadn’t expected him to.

But she’d wanted him to.

She shook the thought away and poured another scoop of spiced batter into a tray lined with parchment. She enchanted the iron oven with a flick and slipped the tray inside.

He’ll be fine, she told herself. He has to be.

Her tent was quiet now. Too quiet.

She sat near the fire, skirts spilling around her. Today she wore a white milkmaid-style dress—flowy, soft, with embroidered sleeves to her elbows and a black sash cinched at the waist. The loose cotton flowed with each movement, giving her a kind of gentle presence that clashed with the wartime atmosphere beyond the tent flap.

But she needed softness today.

The past week had changed everything.

She had arrived through flame and wind and had landed in a world not her own. She’d been stared at, whispered about, distrusted. Yet somehow, she’d made herself useful. Helpful.

Important.

She'd worked spells no one here had seen before. She’d brewed medicine, mended wounds, turned steel into something stronger. She’d charmed letters, protected tents, and stitched sigils into armor. The men still muttered when they passed her, but they no longer turned their backs.

And Robb…

Her breath caught. She looked down at the thread she was absentmindedly spinning between her fingers.

Robb Stark.

He was all winter and silence and storm, and yet—he’d shown her something else beneath it. Softness. Thoughtfulness. The haunted eyes of someone too young to be carrying the world but doing it anyway.

He listened when she spoke.

He saw her.

That frightened her more than anything else.

She closed her eyes, leaned her head back against the cushion behind her, and let the fire crackle into the quiet.

Later that evening

Rosie stepped out into the cold with a basket in her hands, filled with warm muffins and wrapped in soft linen.

The snow had fallen slightly overnight, layering the camp in a soft white dust. Soldiers huddled in pairs, checking gear, whispering about the siege.

As she passed, heads turned.

They always did.

Some gave nods now. Some even smiled. She returned them politely, not stopping, not lingering. She’d learned quickly that her presence made people uneasy—until it didn’t.

She was walking toward the medical tent when she saw her.

Catelyn Stark.

The older woman stood near a stack of fresh bandages, speaking quietly with the camp’s maester. When she turned and saw Rosie, the conversation halted.

The two women stared at each other for a long moment.

Rosie stepped closer.

“Lady Stark,” she said with a respectful nod.

“Lady Potter,” Catelyn replied.

Not a greeting. Not a dismissal.

A challenge wrapped in civility.

“Would you like a muffin?” Rosie asked, lifting the basket. “There’s cinnamon apple, and something I think is close to blueberry, though your fruit is—different.”

Catelyn hesitated. Then, surprisingly, took one.

They stood together in silence for a beat.

“You bake,” Catelyn said, as if it were unusual.

“I survive,” Rosie said. “Baking helps.”

Another pause.

“You’re alone in your tent most days when the fighting starts,” Catelyn said. “Why?”

Rosie met her gaze. “Because if I step in too quickly, it’ll cause panic. The men barely trust me as it is.”

Catelyn’s eyes narrowed. “But Robb does.”

“I think he wants to.”

“And do you want him to?”

Rosie didn’t flinch. “I want him to win this war. I want him to keep his people alive. And if I can help do that, I will.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

Rosie sighed.

“I don’t know what I want from Robb. Or what he wants from me. But we understand each other.” She paused. “I haven’t had that in a long time.”

Catelyn's expression shifted—just slightly.

“My parents died when I was a baby,” Rosie said, surprising even herself by speaking the words aloud. “I was raised in a cupboard. My godfather died when I was fifteen. My mentor was murdered. And I’ve buried more friends than I care to count.”

She didn’t cry. She just stated it like fact. Her truth.

“I’m not here to take your son away from his duties,” she said softly. “I’m just trying to find meaning while I’m stuck in this world.”

For the first time, Catelyn’s face softened.

“I didn’t know,” she said.

“Now you do.”

They stood in silence for another long moment—two women on different paths, from different worlds, momentarily aligned.

When Rosie turned to leave, Catelyn said, quietly, “He’s always carried too much.”

Rosie nodded without looking back. “So have I.”

The sound of hooves reached the camp first. Then the banners.

Rosie rushed forward, her skirts flying.

Robb and the Stark host returned in full—mud-streaked, blood-covered, victorious.

At the center of it all rode Edmure Tully and Ser Brynden “Blackfish,” both looking worn but proud. Cheers broke out from the lines of men left behind.

Robb dismounted quickly, Grey Wind bounding beside him. He turned toward Rosie almost immediately, and his face—gods, his face —lit up.

“Riverrun is safe,” he said, voice breathless. “Your parchments worked. Your wards helped the wounded through the night. The maesters are asking for your recipes.”

She smiled, heart thudding. “I told you.”

He laughed, then—real, open. And gods, he was handsome when he laughed.

The Blackfish gave her a curious look. Edmure stared outright. Catelyn watched from across the field, unreadable.

Robb’s hand brushed her elbow as he passed. Not long. Just enough to be noticed.

Just enough to linger.

Robb’s POV

The tent was cold.
Wind whispered through the seams of the canvas, rattling the lantern chains and tugging at the edges of the maps spread across the war table. The brazier in the corner had long since burned to embers, but Robb Stark felt none of it.

Not the cold. Not the wind. Not even the ache in his knees from standing so still for so long.

His hands trembled around the parchment clutched in his grasp—crushed and crumpled now, the Lannister seal smeared into a red, mocking blur. Wax had broken under the force of his grip, the lion distorted into something shapeless and cruel. Blood roared in his ears, drowning out the sound of his mother’s voice until even her silence felt deafening.

He had read it once. Then again. And again. Each word dug deeper than the last, like blades sliding between ribs.

Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell, has been executed for treason.

Executed.

Not imprisoned. Not bartered. Not spared for honor or name or kingdom.

Executed.

His father. The man whose footsteps he had tried so hard to fill. The man whose voice echoed in every command he gave, whose principles shaped every decision he made. The man he had led this war to save.

Gone.

Something in him buckled.

His legs gave out beneath him with a choked sound he would never admit to being a sob. The parchment fluttered from his grip like falling snow as he collapsed to his knees on the cold ground, shoulders rigid with fury, jaw clenched tight enough to splinter bone.

He didn’t cry.

He couldn’t.

Tears were for later. For solitude. For somewhere beyond war tents and battlefields and bloodied honor.

But his body shook.

With grief. With rage. With the impossibility of it all.

He had failed.

He had failed to save the man who had always saved him.

Catelyn moved slowly beside him, her own grief carved deep into her face, older now than it had been hours before. She didn’t speak. She didn’t try to tell him it would be all right. Because it wouldn’t be.

Not now.

Not ever.

She knelt beside him on the hard ground and wrapped her arms around her son—her last living connection to the man they both loved and lost. Her cheek pressed against his hair, her voice a whisper caught in her throat.

They stayed like that, huddled on the frozen earth in the quiet before the storm, as the last Stark of Winterfell broke in the only way a Stark could—silently.

------------- - -------------

Chapter Text

Chapter 9: The Crown That Bled

Robb Stark’s POV

The fire crackled steadily in the corner of the tent, each pop and hiss a quiet, rhythmic companion to the silence that had fallen like a shroud over the room. The flames danced in place, offering their warmth to a space that felt too cold to accept it. Cold not of air or winter, but of grief. Of betrayal. Of something vital being torn out and replaced with nothing but smoke and rage.

He sat at the edge of the war table, the worn parchment crumpled in his hand—creased, soft, damp in places where his fingers had clenched too tightly. The Lannister seal was smeared beyond recognition, red wax dragging like blood across the broken fold. He had read the words again and again, though he no longer needed to. They were carved into his memory now. Branded.

Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell, has been executed for treason.

He hadn’t believed it at first. Not fully. Not in the marrow-deep way one believes a sunrise will come or that the snows will fall again. But now… now the denial had burned out. And all that was left behind was the truth—cold, final, and merciless.

Executed.
Publicly.
Like a criminal.
Like a traitor.

His father.
His anchor.
His compass.

Gone.

The parchment slipped from his fingers and drifted to the ground, curling as it fell like a dying leaf. Robb didn’t move to retrieve it. His hands remained open, trembling slightly, as if the weight of those few words had physically unmoored him.

He hadn’t cried. Not again. That part of him had frozen—fractured somewhere inside the second he heard the news. Whatever softness remained had been sealed behind a wall he didn’t remember building, but one he would not soon tear down. The boy who once looked up to the stars and dreamed of riding beside his father, of honor, of glory, of knighthood—was gone.

There was no knighthood. No glory. Only a blade and a block and the roar of a Southern crowd.

He hadn’t even been there to bury him.

His fists clenched slowly.

What of Sansa? What of Arya?

He didn’t know. No one knew. Ravens carried no word, and silence from the Red Keep felt heavier than any threat. Were they alive? Had they been forced to watch? Were they next?

The questions burned more than the fire ever could.

When the council was called, Robb moved like a man underwater—every motion deliberate, heavy, as if gravity itself had thickened in the wake of his father’s death. His armor was donned in silence. The direwolf cloak thrown over his shoulders felt heavier than before, more than mere fur and leather. It felt like expectation. Like weight. Like a mantle too large for his shoulders, and too soon.

Grey Wind followed at his heels, silent as death, eyes scanning the camp with an awareness that felt almost human.

The war tent was already full by the time he arrived. Northern lords filled one side—stalwart, grim-faced, armored not just in steel but in grief. The Riverland banners occupied the other—newly arrived, weary from skirmishes, their faces unreadable. Edmure Tully stood stiff-backed, his expression composed but uncertain. Beside him, the Blackfish watched everything with a predator’s stillness.

Catelyn sat at the edge of the tent, not at the table, not at the center—just outside of it all, pale and composed, her hands folded in her lap like the only thing keeping her from shaking apart was the effort of stillness.

The letter was read aloud.

No one spoke when it ended. There were no cries for vengeance. No raucous fury. Just silence—thick, suffocating, complete.

And then, it broke.

Lord Rickard Karstark stepped forward, voice low but clear, cutting through the stillness like a drawn blade. “They murdered your father.”

The statement did not need to be dramatized. It was truth. Sharp, brutal, and undeniable.

No one argued.

“They’ll answer for it,” Robb said, his voice stripped of all warmth. What was left behind was steel and ice. “But not with words. With war.”

From the far side of the tent, Greatjon Umber let out a bark of bitter laughter as he stepped forward. “They think their crown makes them gods,” he growled. “Let them keep their iron chair, their incest-born king, and their southern laws. I’ll not kneel to Lannisters who murder better men in cold blood.”

At the edge of the crowd, just beyond the halo of firelight, Robb saw her.

Rosie.

She stood half in shadow, her arms crossed, her posture guarded. But her eyes—those green, storm-colored eyes—met his. There was no pity in her expression. No sympathy to soften the blow. What he saw instead was something sharper. Something older.

Recognition.

She knew. She knew what it was to lose a parent, to have your world split open by grief and find yourself expected to lead through the wreckage. She didn’t look away. And neither did he.

The moment shattered when Lady Maege Mormont’s voice rose with steel conviction.

“I don’t know the Lannisters. I don’t trust Stannis. And I won’t follow Renly, who wasn’t even in line to begin with,” she said, stepping forward. Her voice carried the full weight of her name. “But I trust the blood of the North. I trust House Stark.”

There was a murmur. Then a hush. Every face turned to Robb.

“I’m tired of kneeling to kings who’ve never seen our land, who send us to die for causes they don’t understand,” she continued. “I want to follow a Stark.”

Next came the Blackfish. “I knelt to Aerys Targaryen once. Then to Robert Baratheon. We gave them our swords, our sons, our loyalty. And what did they return? Ruin. Betrayal. The head of the most honorable man I’ve ever known.” He looked at Robb. “I will not kneel again.”

Then, one by one, the lords stepped forward.

Karstark. Glover. Umber. Mormont. Even Edmure, confused but moved by the tide around him.

They dropped to one knee.

As if guided by something older than tradition—older even than war.

“The King in the North!” the Greatjon roared, his voice shaking the canvas of the tent. “The King in the North!”

It spread like wildfire. The cry repeated, louder, stronger.

“The King in the North!”

“The King in the North!”

Robb stood at the center, still as stone. Their voices surged around him like a tide. And still, all he could think of was the way his father used to rest a hand on his shoulder. The sound of his voice in the godswood. The feeling of safety he hadn’t realized was safety until it was gone.

He didn’t want a crown.

He wanted his father.

But they were giving him fire instead.

So he took it.

Rosie’s POV

She stood outside his tent for longer than she should have, her hand hovering near the flap, her knuckles brushing the canvas.

Inside, the fire was low, but it still cast a dull gold light across the seams. His shadow moved occasionally—shifting, pacing maybe—but mostly, it was still.

He hadn’t left since the council ended.

She doubted he’d spoken to anyone since.

Rosie exhaled slowly, feeling the weight of her breath against the cold.

She didn’t want to intrude. But she also knew what it meant to sit alone in a room with grief and rage for too long. Eventually, the silence stopped being quiet and started being dangerous.

She slipped inside without a word.

The warmth hit her first—not from the fire, but from Grey Wind, who looked up as she entered and then, sensing no threat, lowered his head again with a slow exhale.

Robb didn’t look up.

He sat near the hearth, armor loosened, back hunched slightly. One hand dangled at his knee, the other curled around a cup he hadn’t touched.

She studied him for a moment. Not the king the men outside had just roared for. Not the boy Catelyn looked at like he was the last light in her world. But something in between. Something in pieces.

She stepped closer.

“Have you eaten?” she asked gently.

A beat passed. Then he muttered, “No.”

“Would you?”

“No.”

Rosie nodded once, accepting the answer for what it was. She moved around the edge of the fire and sat down across from him. Not too close. Not too far.

Just enough to be there.

“I know you probably don’t want to talk,” she said. “But I thought I’d ask how you’re doing anyway.”

He laughed. Or something like it. A brittle sound with no humor in it.

“How am I doing?” His voice was hoarse, scraped thin. “Let’s see. My father was executed in front of a mob, my sisters are lost or hostage in a snake pit, and a room full of men just decided I should wear a crown I never asked for. So yes, Rosalie. I’m doing absolutely fine.”

His gaze flicked to her, sharp with anger—but it wasn't aimed at her. She could see that. It was splintering out from him in every direction, looking for somewhere to land.

She didn’t flinch.

“I know that feeling,” she said quietly.

He tilted his head, almost challenging. “Do you?”

Her eyes drifted toward the flame, and for a moment, she wasn’t in the tent anymore. She was fifteen again, in the ruins of the Ministry. The walls had been shaking with curses. And one scream—her scream—had echoed louder than all the others.

“I had someone,” she said softly. “He wasn’t my father. But he was the closest thing I had. He was reckless and brilliant and infuriating. And he loved me more than anyone had since my parents died. His name was Sirius Black.”

The name settled between them like a ghost.

Robb didn’t speak.

She didn’t stop.

“He was taken from me. In the middle of a battle. He was laughing one second. Gone the next. Just—gone. Like the world had blinked and swallowed him whole.”

She swallowed against the dryness in her throat.

“I ran after the woman who did it. Bellatrix. I chased her through the Ministry. Through fire. Through spells. I don’t even remember half of it. All I could think was kill her. End it. Make the pain stop. Make her pay.”

She looked down at her hands. They were steady now. But she remembered how they’d trembled afterward.

“I didn’t kill her that day,” she said. “But something in me did die. My hope. My softness. I felt it freeze. Like ice was filling the space Sirius used to live in.”

Robb’s brow furrowed slightly, listening.

“I know what it’s like to want to destroy something,” she whispered. “To want your pain to have teeth.”

Silence settled again, heavier now, but not colder.

She looked up at him. “And I also know it doesn’t help. Not in the long run. Hatred burns hot, but it leaves you hollow. You carry it until it owns you.”

Robb didn’t look at her. Not right away. But his grip around the untouched cup shifted, just slightly.

“I’m not telling you not to fight,” she said. “You should fight. For him. For your sisters. For what’s right. But do it with purpose. With clarity. Not because you want to burn the world, but because you want to rebuild something better from the ashes.”

He stared into the fire for a long time.

Then, finally, he spoke. “I don’t know how to do that.”

“You learn,” Rosie said. “Slowly. One breath at a time. One choice at a time. You let it forge you. But you don’t let it bury you.”

She leaned forward then, across the space between them, and touched her fingertips to his knee.

Not to comfort.

To anchor.

“You’re still Robb,” she said. “Still his son. That’s enough.”

Their eyes met.

No titles. No oaths. No war councils or royal declarations.

Just grief. Just fury. Just understanding.

And in that, something steadier began to take root.

Chapter Text

Chapter 10: The Witch and the Lion

Rosie’s POV

Riverrun loomed quiet and grey under the slate-colored sky. The Tully banners flapped half-heartedly in the wind, and the castle's river-facing walls still bore the marks of siege — smoke-scorched stone and crumbling parapets that had only recently seen the last of Lannister steel retreat beyond the horizon.

It had been days since the victory. Days since Robb had returned with his uncle and the Blackfish. Days since he was named King in the North.

And in those days, the air in the camp had shifted.

Rosie felt it like a pressure behind her eyes — unspoken, thick with mourning, resolve, and political friction. She saw it in the way men walked now — heads high, shoulders squared — yet every conversation still carried the weight of loss.

They had won Riverrun.

But they had lost Ned Stark.

And that meant the camp was more than just a collection of soldiers now. It was the staging ground of a kingdom.

Rosie had been offered a room inside the castle walls, a modest one off the second floor near the solar — a gesture from Edmure Tully. But she declined.

Her tent — her enchanted little slice of another world — remained in the field just inside the inner courtyard. The guards had grumbled at first, but now no one questioned it. The swirling wards around the canvas shimmered faintly at night, marking its boundary like a warning and a comfort.

Inside, it smelled like cinnamon and lavender.

And, most importantly, it smelled like home .

Not Grimmauld Place. Not Hogwarts.

But a quiet, safe space that was hers.

She needed that now more than ever.

Rosie wore a long, high-waisted black skirt made of layered gauze and lace—its hem uneven and frayed like ash at the edges. A deep wine-colored corset top hugged her frame, embroidered with protective runes that shimmered faintly in candlelight. Over it, she wore a loose black blouse with sheer, flared sleeves that draped like smoke around her hands, the cuffs fastened with silver crescent moon buttons.

Around her neck hung a tangled mix of charms and chains—amulets of onyx and citrine, a tiny vial of moonwater, and a thimble-sized hourglass that whispered softly when she moved. Her black velvet cloak was lined with deep indigo silk, fastened at the throat with a gold serpent clasp, and trailing just enough to catch the cold Northern wind.

Her boots were worn leather, scuffed from years of travel but lovingly enchanted, and her wild red-blonde curls were pulled back in a twisted braid crown, bits of dried lavender and raven feathers woven in like secret spells.

She looked like a ghost out of a fairytale

She had no idea what today would bring.

But she was going to meet it on her terms.

She moved to the center work table in the main room, where cauldrons simmered quietly. Draughts of Peace. Blood-replenishing tonics. A new batch of pain relievers. All set to deliver to the maesters by mid-morning.

The soldiers had begun calling her the Witch of the Camp.

Not that she minded.

She moved efficiently, labeling each vial with a neat hand, sorting them into wooden crates bound by magic.

But as she worked, her thoughts tugged elsewhere.

Back to the night she had watched Robb fall to his knees with the news of his father’s death. The way Catelyn had pulled him close. The way Rosie herself had stood just outside the tent, not moving, not intruding.

I know that kind of pain , she had thought. And it never leaves. It only teaches you how to carry it. And sometimes fail at it.

Robb hadn’t spoken of it again.

But something in him had changed.

He moved more like a commander now — less hesitation, more fury.

And though they hadn’t had another long talk since that night, she felt it in the way he looked at her sometimes. Like he wanted to reach for that conversation again. Like she had given him something solid to stand on.

By late morning, she’d completed deliveries to the healers, fixed a broken rune sequence outside the eastern tower, and politely turned down an offer from one of the younger Riverland lords who wanted to "walk the battlements and discuss magic.”

She’d rather walk into a manticore’s den.

Instead, she found herself on the parapet, eyes scanning the camp — and the men in it.

So much death for so little peace, she thought. And more to come.

She tried not to think of Arya and Sansa. But their names haunted her lately. Especially now, knowing what had happened to their father. If there was a way to reach them — to help — she would find it.

Even if Robb hadn't asked.

Especially because he hadn’t.

At midday, she returned to her tent with an armful of texts borrowed from the Tully library — ancient volumes on metaphysics, planar anomalies, and sorcerous lore she barely trusted not to crumble in her hands.

She was searching for something impossible. A bridge between worlds. A stitch in the veil. A crack in Death’s web.

She didn’t know what she’d find.

But every time she flipped a page, she imagined Death watching with amusement.

Why did you send me here?

The pages never answered.

By late afternoon, the sky darkened again with snow-heavy clouds.

And that’s when curiosity finally got the better of her.

She tucked her wand into her sleeve, wrapped herself in her dark wool cloak, and headed for the dungeons.

The guards at the stairwell tensed as she approached.

“I’d like to see the Kingslayer,” she said smoothly.

They exchanged glances.

“Orders are to keep him locked—”

She raised her brow.

“Not even a visit from the woman who reinforced your eastern wall after a lightning strike last night?”

They stepped aside.

She descended the stone stairs slowly, adjusting to the damp. The smell hit first — mildew, iron, rot. The hall was lit with torches, flickering against cold stone.

And at the end of it — the cell.

He sat on the bench, arms resting on his knees, manacles still heavy around his wrists.

Golden hair disheveled. Stubble now shadowed his once-pristine jaw. His tunic was worn, but his smirk hadn’t dulled.

“Well,” Jaime Lannister drawled, “I didn’t think the witch would visit me personally. Should I be flattered?”

Rosie stopped just outside the bars. “Depends. Do you usually enjoy being studied like a wild animal?”

He chuckled. “Only by attractive ones.”

She didn’t smile. “I wanted to see the man who brought half the realm to war and still sits here grinning like it’s a tavern game.”

“It’s not a game?” he asked. “Shame. I was winning.”

“You’re in chains.”

“Better men have worn worse,” he said, stretching lazily. “And worse men sit on thrones.”

Rosie tilted her head. “So which are you?”

Jaime’s eyes gleamed. “You tell me. You’re the sorceress.”

“I’m not a sorceress.”

“Oh? What do you call blowing up a battlefield and falling out of the sky, then?”

She smiled, finally. “Tuesday.”

He blinked. Then barked a short laugh.

“Well. They didn’t say you were funny.”

“They also didn’t say you were tolerable,” she shot back.

Another chuckle. “You’re not what I expected.”

“Good. Neither are you. I thought you’d be taller.”

“Ah, now you wound me.”

They paused.

His gaze sharpened. “You’re dangerous.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“It’s a warning.”

She leaned closer to the bars. “Then listen closely. I’m not here for you. I’m not here for your house, your war, or your throne. But if you hurt anyone else I care about, I will make you wish for a quick death.”

Jaime’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. Not quite a smirk.

“You’re something else,” he murmured.

She turned to go.

He called after her. “I’ve known magic before. It always comes with a cost.”

She didn’t look back. “So does everything worth surviving.”

She stepped out into the cold with her heart racing just a little faster than before.

She didn’t know what kind of game Jaime Lannister played — or if he was still playing one at all.

But she knew this…He hadn’t dismissed her.

And that was the beginning of something dangerous.

Chapter Text

Chapter 11: A Touch Too Close

Robb Stark’s POV

He had barely crossed the lower hall when he heard it.

“…she went to see the Kingslayer. Alone.”

The words slipped past the two guards at the stairwell. They hadn’t meant for him to hear. Their backs stiffened as soon as he passed.

Robb’s steps didn’t falter—but the cold that slid down his spine was not from the Riverlands wind.

She went to see Jaime Lannister.

Alone.

Without asking.

Without telling him.

And why? What reason could she possibly have to speak to the man who had attacked his father , who had murdered Stark men without remorse?

He didn’t realize how tightly he was gripping the hilt of his sword until his knuckles cracked.

The walk across the courtyard felt longer than it should’ve. Riverrun’s towers loomed above, casting long afternoon shadows, and soldiers murmured as he passed. He barely saw them. His thoughts spun in quiet, angry spirals.

Why would she seek him out? Of all people.

She hadn’t mentioned it. Hadn’t warned him. Just decided — on her own — that it was worth doing.

She tells me stories. She looks at me like I’m more than a warlord. And then she chooses him for conversation?

The jealousy burned hotter than he wanted to admit.

By the time he reached her tent, his breath was short and sharp, boots scuffing against the gravel path. He reached for the flap and pushed it open, mouth already forming the beginning of his rebuke.

“Rosie, what the hell were you—”

And then he stopped.

Stopped dead.

He had never seen the inside of her tent.

Not once.

He had known, intellectually, that it was magical. He had seen it from the outside: the black canvas, the shimmering sigils, the strange way it repelled the cold.

But this… this was something else.

The moment he stepped inside, it felt as though he had left the castle grounds entirely.

It was warm — not just in temperature, but in color. The room glowed with soft golden light. A fireplace crackled in a hearth of smooth stone. Shelves lined the walls, filled with books that whispered softly to each other when the flames flickered too brightly. A faint scent of cinnamon and cloves hung in the air.

And at the center of it all — Rosie.

She stood in the kitchen, wooden spoon in one hand, stirring something in a copper-bottomed pot that released a mouthwatering aroma he couldn’t even begin to place.

She turned when she heard him — and for a second, the annoyance that had filled his chest melted into confusion. And something else. Something warmer.

“Robb,” she said, surprised. “You’re… here.”

He blinked, still caught in the vision of this world she lived in — where warmth and wildness coexisted, and she seemed utterly at home in it.

“What is this place?” he asked quietly.

She blinked. “My tent.”

“This isn’t a tent. This is… a house .”

She gave a small smile, setting the spoon aside. “It’s bigger on the inside. Charms woven into the base spell. Spatial expansion, heating enchantments, self-organizing pantry... want the full tour?”

He didn’t answer immediately. His eyes were still on her — the way she moved, completely at ease in the space, as though this wasn’t a battlefield camp in a crumbling castle, but some quiet cottage far from the war.

She wore a soft black skirt, her usual. But her blouse was pale, embroidered, and her hair was tied up in a way that made her look… younger. More open.

More beautiful.

He shook his head, heat crawling behind his collar.

“That can wait,” he said, voice tightening again. “I came here because I heard something. About you visiting the prisoner.”

She raised a brow.

“Jaime Lannister,” he added.

“Yes. I did.”

The answer was too casual. Too calm. His voice rose. “Why?”

“I was curious.”

“Curious?”

She crossed her arms. “Is that not allowed now?”

“You didn’t ask.”

“I didn’t think I needed to.”

“You’re in my camp,” he snapped. “You’re part of my council. You answer to me.”

Her jaw tensed. “I’m not your subject, Robb. I’m your ally. And I don’t need your permission to have a conversation.”

He stepped forward, hands clenched. “You do when that conversation is with the man who tried to kill my father . The man who tried to slaughter my men.”

“I know what he did.”

“Then why would you talk to him?”

She took a breath. “Because people like him don’t break under swords or chains. They break under questions . And I wanted to see who he is under the armor. Maybe there’s something useful buried under all that arrogance.”

Robb stared at her, chest heaving.

And slowly, the heat in his chest began to cool. The edge in her voice softened as well.

She stepped closer, voice lower. “I didn’t do it to betray you.”

He met her eyes. And saw it then — the sincerity. The stubbornness. The clarity.

The anger that had driven him here ebbed, replaced with… understanding.

“I just wanted to see him for myself,” she said. “I’ve fought monsters before. Sometimes the worst ones wear grins instead of fangs.”

A long silence passed.

Then, unexpectedly, she said, “Would you like to stay for dinner?”

He blinked.

“…what?”

“I made enough. It’s a meal from my world. Nothing too strange, I promise.”

He hesitated.

Then nodded.

“Fine. But only because I’m not walking out of this tent with just an argument behind me.”

Dinner was… unlike anything he had ever tasted.

She called it “spaghetti bolognese.” The noodles were long and perfectly textured. The sauce — red and rich, filled with herbs and slow-cooked meat — coated everything in deep, warm flavor. She served it with something she called “garlic bread,” toasted with butter and herbs. And to drink: a red wine so sweet it made every vintage he’d ever tasted seem like watered vinegar.

He ate slowly. Then hungrily.

And when he looked up, she was smiling softly.

“I take it you approve.”

“This might be the best meal I’ve had in years.”

She laughed.

And something loosened between them.

They sat by the fire, plates in their laps, wine in hand. The conversation drifted gently.

She told him about her school — the strange floating candles, the misbehaving staircases, the enchanted feasts. About a time she and her two best friends had ended up fighting a troll in a girl’s lavatory.

Robb nearly choked on his wine.

She laughed again, and he leaned in, questions spilling easily now. What was this “Quidditch”? Why did her letters deliver themselves? What were the common enchantments in her world?

She answered them all, animated and fond — eyes alight.

Then the conversation turned.

He spoke of Bran’s climbing, of Rickon’s fierce grip on his mother’s skirts, of Arya’s wolfish grin and wildness. Of Sansa’s songs. Of Jon.

At the mention of his half-brother, he slowed, watching her.

“A bastard,” he said.

Rosie frowned.

“Don’t like that word,” she said. “Where I come from, it doesn’t matter. Family is family.”

He watched her closely.

“My mother never accepted him,” he admitted. “And I… I didn’t do enough.”

“You should’ve,” Rosie said. “He needed that from you. From all of you.”

Her words weren’t cruel. Just honest.

And they cut deeper because of it.

He nodded.

“I think I know that now.”

The conversation stretched past the fire’s first dimming.

She asked about the Wall. The old legends. The magic in the North.

And he told her.

Of white trees with red leaves. Of the old gods. Of tales passed from father to son about frozen terrors and long winters.

She listened with reverence.

And he listened to her silence.

Until finally, he looked up and saw the time — the depth of night pressing at the canvas.

“I should go.”

She nodded slowly. “They’re probably wondering where you are.”

He stood. But didn’t move.

Then, after a beat: “Thank you.”

“For the food?”

“For… all of it.”

She smiled.

He turned to leave.

And paused at the tent flap, hand resting on the fabric.

The night air outside was colder than before.

But something else pressed in — realization.

He was in dangerous territory.

He wasn’t just grateful for her anymore.

He needed her.

He could feel it in his bones.

And for the first time, he didn’t know if he could stop it.

Or if he even wanted to.

Chapter Text

Robb Stark’s POV – Morning After

Sleep had not come easily.

Not because of nightmares—no, those had quieted in the nights since Riverrun was taken. It wasn’t the restless shouts of the wounded or the weight of his crown that kept him from rest. It was memory. Soft, insistent, undeniable.

Her.

The way Rosie had laughed the night before, not delicately, but with abandon—eyes alight with mischief and stories of living staircases and ghosts in portraits and enchanted sweets that made people float. The way she’d talked about magic like it was a language as natural as breath, like wonder had never been something to hide.

And then she'd spoken of his siblings—his family—with a gentleness that unraveled something in him. She hadn't even met them. Not yet. But she cared. Not for what they could offer her, not for their names or titles, but for who they were. It was in her voice. In her eyes. In the pause she gave before saying Jon’s name, as if it were sacred.

She had looked at him like he wasn’t just Robb Stark, King in the North, bearer of a sword and a weight he hadn’t asked for. She looked at him like he was a person. A man. Someone worth knowing—not commanding.

He’d told himself the warmth in his chest was nothing more than gratitude. Relief. The comfort of finding laughter again in a world that had forgotten how to offer it.

But that lie no longer held.

It cracked every time he remembered the way her fingers had brushed against his when she passed the bread. Every time he heard the echo of her voice describing treacle tart with more reverence than most lords gave to their banners. Every time he caught himself wondering how she might look if she ever wore the Northern furs—truly wore them, not just for the cold, but as if they belonged to her.

Now, dawn light crept in from the windows, sharp and pale against the shadows, and the world felt colder than it had the night before. He sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, scrubbing a hand through his hair in frustration.

He had poured water from the ceramic basin, splashing it over his face, hoping the chill would clear his head. It didn’t. All it did was remind him that beyond this room waited the crushing familiarity of duty—and duty had no place for fire-haired witches from foreign worlds, no matter how fiercely they made him want to believe otherwise.

He had already made his choice. The Freys.

And the price of that bridge was heavier now than it had been when they crossed it.

By midmorning, he found his mother standing in the solar chamber of Riverrun. The light fell across the riverbend beyond the stained glass, painting her in blue and gold. She didn’t turn when he entered. Her arms were folded tight across her chest, her back rigid, the braid at her shoulder woven like armor.

“Walder Frey expects a reply,” she said flatly, before he could speak.

Robb exhaled, slow and deep. “We’ve just won Riverrun. Let the old goat wait another day.”

Catelyn turned then, sharply. “We don’t have the luxury of arrogance.”

Her voice struck like a slap. No rise in tone, no dramatics—just precision. Cold. Worn.

“He gave us the bridge,” she continued. “Without it, you wouldn’t have reached your uncle. You wouldn’t have taken this castle. His men held the Twins and turned the tide. That came with a cost.”

“I never agreed to—”

“I did.” The words cut clean. “As your mother. As the one who still understands how this realm works. You may wear a crown, Robb. But you do not rule in a vacuum.”

He stiffened. “And what if I don’t want to marry a stranger for a castle crossing?”

Her eyes narrowed, tired but unyielding. “You don’t have that choice anymore.”

His voice rose despite himself. “I didn’t ask for any of this! I didn’t ask to lead. To carry the North. To wear a crown soaked in my father’s blood.”

Catelyn’s gaze didn’t falter. But when she answered, her voice was quieter. Sharper.

“You think I wanted it for you?”

The words landed hard.
He went still.

“I did what I had to,” she said, stepping toward him. “To keep you alive. To give you a chance. You think I don’t see the weight this war is putting on your shoulders? You think I wanted to trade your future to a man like Walder Frey? I did it because it was the only hand we had to play.”

He looked away. Shame flickered low in his gut, sour and bitter.

Silence stretched between them, the air in the chamber thick with everything neither wanted to say.

Then, her voice shifted again.

“And what of Jaime Lannister?”

Robb’s jaw locked. “He stays in chains.”

“We could trade him,” she said. “For Sansa. For Arya.”

“We can’t trust them to honor that. Not Cersei. Not Tywin.”

“It might be our only chance.”

“No,” Robb said, steel threading into his voice now. “We hold him. We make them fear what we can do with him.”

“Even if it costs you your sisters?” she asked, not accusing—but hollow. Tired.

He didn’t answer.

And she knew.

Her lips pressed into a thin line. She turned back toward the window.

Then, without venom—but without gentleness either—she said, “You’re not your father.”

The words landed like a sword between the ribs. No wound, just cold steel and the knowledge that it was true.

“You think you are,” she said, her voice barely above a breath. “But you’re not.”

And then she left him.

No parting words. No lingering glance. Just the sound of her footsteps echoing down the stone hall like a drumbeat of everything he hadn’t said.

Sansa Stark’s POV

The stones of the Red Keep were colder than they used to be.

Or maybe she had changed.

Sansa walked the corridors in silence now. Eyes lowered. Hands folded. Her voice was soft, her steps obedient.

But her thoughts?

Her thoughts were no longer soft.

She heard them.

Every whisper.

Every snide remark behind her back, never loud enough to punish — always just enough to wound.

“Daughter of a traitor.”

“Poor girl. Soon the North will fall, and then what will she be?”

“I heard her brother’s crowned himself. As if a Stark could rule anything.”

They said the North was full of wolves and wildlings and snow-skin savages.

They said her father had conspired to steal the crown.

They said she smiled too much for a girl whose family was dying.

She stopped smiling.

Joffrey was worse.

He paraded her like a pet, then ignored her for days.

And when he did look at her, it was with cold eyes and mocking words. He threatened her one day, complimented her the next. Always testing. Always cruel.

The only thing colder than his cruelty was the court’s silence.

No one helped.

Not the knights. Not the handmaidens.

Only Ser Meryn, always watching. Always waiting for a reason.

But that day — the day everything shifted — was ordinary.

Until it wasn’t.

She had just passed a marble arch near the council chamber when she heard voices. Faint, familiar.

She paused, careful to stay behind the stone.

It was Varys.

And Littlefinger.

“…the reports say she fell from the sky.”

“Ridiculous. A Stark-bred sorceress? Please. These northern tales are getting dumber by the raven.”

“Say what you like,” Varys murmured. “But men speak of fire that doesn’t burn, of wounds that heal in seconds. They say the Witch walks with the Stark boy now.”

“A convenient story. He needs magic to hold together that crumbling alliance.”

“And if it’s not a story?”

A pause.

Then: “Well. If she exists, she won’t for long.”

Sansa’s heart pounded.

A witch?

Helping Robb?

It couldn’t be true.

But…

What if it was?

What if someone powerful had joined her brother?

What if someone who wasn’t afraid of Joffrey, or the court, or the Lannisters — was coming?

She slipped away from the arch.

And for the first time in weeks, she dared to hope.

That night, she stared out at the city lights below her chamber window.

And she whispered a prayer.

Not just for rescue.

But for the strength to rise when the day came.

She wouldn’t be a little bird anymore.

Not if the witch was real.

Not if Robb was still fighting.

She would be ready.

Chapter Text

Rosie’s POV

The war room at Riverrun felt heavier than usual.

The sun had barely broken the eastern sky, and yet the tent was already filled with voices — sharp, low, layered in old allegiances and new grief. Maps littered the war table, anchored with daggers, tankards, and one impressive carved stone bear Maege Mormont had slammed down in irritation days ago and refused to move since.

Rosie stood near the corner, behind the lords, out of the way but listening to every word.

She didn’t need a seat to command attention anymore. Her presence did that on its own.

Still, this wasn’t her meeting.

Not officially.

“Lord Bolton has taken camp near Harrenhal with a good contingent of Northmen,” Edmure was saying, his fingers drumming against the edge of the map. “A firm position between the capital and the river roads, keeping and idea on their movments.”

The moment the name “Bolton” left his mouth, Rosie stiffened.

She didn’t know why.

She hadn’t spoken to Roose Bolton more than twice. He was calm. Measured. Polite. But there was something in the way he watched . Like he was cataloging weaknesses. Waiting.

Cold.

She'd seen a lot of war-born eyes since she fell into this world.

But Roose Bolton’s?

They were empty .

She swallowed and said nothing, letting the unease curl beneath her ribs like a quiet warning.

“I’d rather not rely on the Bolton too heavily,” Lord Mallister grumbled. “His men make my soldiers nervous.”

“They make me nervous,” Blackwood muttered.

“They make the trees nervous,” Maege added, to a few reluctant chuckles.

“I trust Lord Bolton’s efficiency,” Robb said carefully. “But we’ll keep a measured distance.”

Rosie’s eyes flicked to him — his tone was neutral, but she knew better.

He didn’t trust Bolton either.

The conversation turned to the western front.

“We can’t hold the Riverlands and defend the north and sit here waiting,” Mallister insisted. “The Westerlands are exposed. If we move soon, we can strike Golden Tooth.”

“If we move too soon, we risk overextending,” Blackwood replied.

Brecken chimed in, as acidic as always. “Then we wait while the Lannisters regroup? Clever.”

“Enough,” Robb cut in.

Silence.

He leaned over the map, hands braced against the wood. “We move in a sennight. Golden Tooth first. Then we push deeper if the ground holds.”

There were murmurs of agreement.

And then—

“I assume the Lady Witch will remain behind to tend the wounded?” a dry voice asked.

Rosie didn’t need to look to know it was Black Walder Frey.

She felt his smugness like a stain.

He was leaned casually on a barrel, picking at his fingernails with a dagger, eyes flicking to her with that same self-satisfied leer he always wore when mentioning her in mixed company.

“The men may be less distracted with her... talents tucked away.”

Several lords shifted uncomfortably. Robb didn’t look at her.

Rosie’s jaw tightened.

Black Walder kept going. “Though I imagine my cousins will be thrilled to hear how warm the North has become toward witchy bedmates. Perhaps we can find her a Frey husband. Might civilize her.”

That did it.

Rosie stepped forward.

The air shifted.

“Lord Frey,” she said, voice sweet as poisoned honey, “I’d be more inclined to take your advice if it came from a man with even half the spine of the rats nesting in your beard.”

Murmurs. A sharp exhale from Maege. Mallister choked on his drink.

Rosie didn’t stop.

“Perhaps you think lobbing innuendo makes you clever. But from where I stand, it makes you look like a lonely little man, desperate to remind everyone of an alliance you’re only part of because your grandfather built a bridge.”

Black Walder went still.

Robb looked up — sharply — eyes locked on her like she’d just conjured lightning.

Rosie took another step. “And if I’m a distraction? Better a distraction that heals your soldiers, protects your supply lines, and feeds your wounded. Remind me, what is it you contribute, beyond your name?”

No one spoke.

Even the fire seemed to hold its breath.

Black Walder’s lips curled into a snarl, but he said nothing. Not in front of so many.

Robb cleared his throat. “That’s enough.”

Not angry. Not amused. Just... different.

Rosie glanced at him.

His eyes hadn’t left her.

And something in them looked too hot. Too focused.

She couldn’t place it.

The meeting moved on, with only minimal bickering.

The lords agreed to Robb’s plan: march west in a sennight. Strike fast. Hard. Take Golden Tooth, then reassess. Rosie offered a list of supplies she’d prepare before they departed.

And that’s when Robb said it.

“You won’t be joining us.”

The room fell quiet again.

Rosie blinked. “I’m sorry?”

Robb didn’t meet her eyes. “You’ll remain at Riverrun. Assist the maesters. Reinforce the wards.”

“I can do that on the march. ”

“You won’t.”

The dismissal hit harder than it should have.

She bit down on the flare of pain. “Why?”

“Because I said so.”

There was nothing unkind in his tone.

But it landed like a slap anyway.

She said nothing else for the rest of the meeting.

Several days later

The courtyard was unusually quiet for midday. Soldiers drilled on the lower field. Maids swept the hallways. The frost had begun to soften with the first hints of spring.

Rosie had been walking aimlessly, trying to burn off the frustration that had refused to leave since the council meeting.

She still hadn’t spoken to Robb.

Not properly.

And now she wasn’t sure if she wanted to.

Then she heard voices.

Familiar ones.

She slowed — hidden behind a stone arch, just out of view.

“…she’s a distraction,” Theon was saying. “And a dangerous one. You don’t even see it.”

“I see more than you think,” Robb replied.

“Do you? Because every time you look at her, you forget what this is.”

“I haven’t forgotten anything.”

“I can go to the Iron Islands,” Theon continued, voice lower now. “Bring us ships. An alliance. My father wants a crown? Fine. Let him wear one with Stark gold in the seams.”

Robb didn’t answer.

And then—

“I can’t lose them, Theon,” he whispered. “Not my sisters. Not after—”

Rosie’s heart clenched.

She turned to go, not wanting to hear more.

But something stopped her.

Not a sound. Not a movement.

Just a feeling.

A flare of something cold and wrong at the base of her spine.

She didn’t know what it was.

But something about Theon’s offer — the timing, the pride — made her stomach twist.

Still, she walked away, quietly.

Back in her tent, she sat at her desk, hands folded.

She thought about Sansa—the girl Robb spoke of with quiet sadness. Graceful, clever, too soft for the wolves around her.
She thought about Arya—wild, vanished, far too young to be lost in a war like this.

And then she thought about Robb.

He doesn’t want me with him.
But he hadn’t said she couldn’t go elsewhere.

She stared at the candle in front of her, watching the flame flicker and twist.

Mione used to call it my “saving people thing.”

A faint smile tugged at her lips, “Guess that part of me never left.”

And just like that, the decision settled.

She’d wait.

She’d plan.

And when Robb rode west...

She would leave a nd find the girls. No matter the cost.

Chapter Text

Rosie’s POV

She lit a single candle.

No spells. No charms. Just wax and wick and fire.

Tonight, she didn’t want enchantment. She wanted focus.

The maps were spread across her floor like a puzzle only desperation could solve. Routes. Passes. River crossings. Roads to avoid. Roads most traveled.

Rosie knelt in the middle of it all, hands braced against parchment, eyes flicking from castle to castle, from the fork of the Blackwater to the looming name stamped near the coast.

King’s Landing.

The Red Keep.

Where the girls were.

Where monsters sat on thrones and drank blood from goblets.

She exhaled, slow and shallow.

It was time.

The nights since the council meeting had been spent in quiet urgency. Rosie had buried herself in the Tully libraries, deciphering dusty texts and half-burned scrolls. She’d stolen hours in her tent, studying magic that should’ve stayed locked in Hogwarts' forbidden section — the kind Hermione would have scolded her for touching, and she herself had once sworn never to use.

But this world wasn’t hers.

And the rules didn’t fit anymore.

If she was going to get to King’s Landing, alone, unnoticed, and prepared to fight whatever she found there, she needed every tool available — even the dark ones.

Even if they left marks.

By the fourth night, she’d built her short list:

• A shadow-walking charm — dangerous, brittle, taxing — but it might let her bypass patrols or escape when cornered
  
  
• A portkey warding rune — one she’d have to carve into her wand handle and tether to a fallback location
  
  
• Healing potions, more powerful than what she gave the maesters
  
  
• Smoke-pulse charms to create magical diversions
  
  
• And a pocket-sized enchanted book, tied to another one left in Riverrun, in case she needed to send a message from afar
  
  

Each came with risks.

She’d take them all.

But even Rosie Potter knew she couldn’t do this alone.

Not completely .

Which is why, just after midnight, cloak drawn over her shoulders, she knocked gently at the door of Lady Catelyn Stark.

Catelyn answered wearing only her night robe, but her eyes were sharp and awake. “Lady Rosalie.”

“I need to speak with you,” she said.

Catelyn stepped aside.

No questions. Not yet.

They sat by the small hearth. Catelyn poured them both tea with a steady hand, but Rosie didn’t touch hers.

Instead, she said, simply, “I’m going to find your daughters.”

Catelyn didn’t flinch.

But something broke behind her eyes.

“You know where they are?” she asked.

“I know they’re in King’s Landing. I know one is under Lannister watch. And I know if I don’t go now, they might not make it.”

Silence stretched long between them.

And then Catelyn whispered, “I have wanted to go myself. Every day since we lost Ned. Every day since Robb took the crown and I realized... no one else could leave.”

“You still can’t,” Rosie said gently. “But I can.”

They talked for hours.

Of Sansa. Of Arya. Of Ned. Of the Frey deal and how much it gnawed at Catelyn, even if she couldn’t say so aloud.

“You think I don’t feel the guilt?” she said, voice low. “But what choice did I have?”

“I’m not judging you,” Rosie said. “I’m just saying — Robb listens to you. He watches you. He needs you. But he’ll never become who he’s meant to be if he only hears disappointment.”

Catelyn’s fingers curled around her cup.

“That boy worshipped his father,” she murmured. “Now he wears his ghost like armor.”

“And maybe it’s time someone reminded him that he’s allowed to live. Even if he leads.”

The morning the army rode out, Riverrun was awash in pale, unforgiving light—the kind of light that made no promises, only cast long shadows across stone walls and sharpened edges.

The snow had begun to recede in patches, leaving behind muddy streaks and slick cobblestones. Winter's retreat felt premature, false, like the land was holding its breath rather than exhaling. And above it all, the banners of House Stark cracked sharply in the wind, their direwolf sigils snapping beside the leaping trout of Tully. Black and grey against red and silver.

Rosie stood near the main courtyard wall, her cloak drawn close, the fur-lined hood pulled low. She remained slightly behind Catelyn and Edmure, not out of deference but necessity. She had no desire to be seen just yet. Her presence wasn’t meant to be central this morning.

Today belonged to him.

The soldiers were lined in precise formation, their armor catching the morning sun in dull glints, their expressions grim and focused. Supply carts had been packed at dawn, war horses bridled and stamped impatiently, thick clouds of steam rising from their flared nostrils.

Robb stood at the center of it all.

Steel-clad, cloaked in wolf-fur and Northern frost, Grey Wind at his flank like a silent second shadow. He looked every inch the King in the North—stern, commanding, untouchable.

And yet when he turned toward his uncle, speaking in sharp, measured tones—about garrison schedules, scouting paths, and contingencies—Rosie saw the faintest tremble in his jaw. The kind that came not from fear, but from restraint. From something unspoken.

He moved next to his mother. Their exchange was longer. Closer. No words reached Rosie’s ears, but she saw the way Catelyn touched her son’s face with quiet strength, the way he leaned into it, just slightly, like a boy remembering home.

And then—he turned to her.

Robb’s eyes found Rosie in the crowd, and for a breath, everything slowed.

He hesitated.

One step, then another, across the frost-bitten stones. He came without his wolf, without his armor of command. Only the tension in his shoulders remained.

They hadn’t spoken—not truly—since the council meeting. Not since her voice had risen, and his had cooled, and a wall had gone up between them neither knew how to scale.

“Lady Rosie,” he said at last, his voice stiff, formal, like armor hastily buckled on.

“Your Grace,” she returned, equally distant. Cold. Controlled.

His gaze flicked to the soldiers nearby, then to the walls beyond. “I… wanted to say goodbye.”

“You’re saying it,” she replied, tone flat, eyes unreadable.

A flicker of pain crossed his face—real, raw—but it passed quickly. Too quickly.

“I would like to talk,” he said finally, voice softer now. “When I return.”

Rosie held his gaze for a long moment. Her heart thudded once, hard, beneath her ribs. And then she nodded—slow, but distant.

“If I’m still here.”

The words left her lips before she could stop them.

And they landed like a stone in the middle of a frozen lake.

His brow furrowed, confusion flashing sharp behind his eyes. “What do you mean—?”

But the horn blew.

A long, piercing sound that echoed across the valley and silenced the courtyard.

The time for questions had passed.

Robb lingered—just a heartbeat longer, like he might defy the call. Like he might reach for her. Say something. Ask her not to go.

But he didn’t.

He turned.

Mounted.

And rode.

He didn’t look back.

Rosie watched until the last banner disappeared behind the trees, until the sound of hoofbeats faded beneath the wind.

Catelyn didn’t move. She stood beside her, composed but pale, her eyes fixed on the horizon where her son had vanished.

Only when the courtyard fell into stillness once more did she finally speak.

“Are you ready?”

Rosie turned toward her. Met her gaze evenly.

“I am.”

They began walking back together, their footsteps the only sound between stone and wind.

Just before they reached the doors of the keep, Rosie stopped.

Turned.

Looked once more toward the hills, her eyes burning—not with tears, but with purpose.

“I’ll bring them home.” Her voice was low, steady. “Both of them. I swear it.”

Catelyn turned to her fully, eyes softening. “I believe you.”

Rosie hesitated, then added, “But you must keep this secret. From everyone. Even him.”

A pause. Then Catelyn gave a slow nod. “I’ll say nothing.”

And with that—

Rosie Potter, witch, wanderer, and now oath-bearer—turned back toward her tent.

Her face was unreadable.

Her purpose was not.

The mission had begun.

Chapter Text

Rosie’s POV

The night was a cold breath caught in the throat of winter, still and waiting.

The stars were distant pinpricks above Riverrun’s ramparts, dull behind drifting cloud. The world felt like it was holding something back—like the wind itself had paused to listen, to watch. Rosie stood at the edge of the outer wall, one hand resting on the mare’s reins, the other curled around her wand, hidden beneath her cloak.

The horse was borrowed—or stolen, depending on the outcome of the days ahead. A shaggy-chested, dapple-grey Riverlands mare, not meant for speed but endurance. Her hooves scuffed the ground anxiously, breath puffing in sharp bursts.

Rosie whispered a cloaking charm under her breath, each syllable biting cold, each flick of her wand exacting. The spell washed over her in a ripple, bending the light, veiling her presence in illusion and silence. Even the air around her seemed to still, retreating from her shape like a shadow recoiling from dawn.

The guards would not see her.

The wards at the gates would bend for her magic, just long enough.

And in the clearing where her tent had once stood, she left behind a spell—subtle, seamless, and treacherously convincing. It shimmered faintly beneath the surface of the air, weaving illusion over absence.

To any passing guard or curious soul, it would seem that Lady Rosalie Potter was exactly where she'd always been—studying late, quiet and unbothered, lost in some ancient text. The kind of scene no one would question. The kind of silence no one would disturb.

By the time the illusion faded—by the time someone noticed that the tent did not move, that no smoke curled from the chimney, that the shadows within had never shifted at all—she would be days away. A ghost of canvas and candlelight.
Gone without a trace.

Everything she owned was packed within her enchanted trunk. She had made it smaller with old travel magic, weightless and bound with a single lock. Inside was everything: her books, her potions, her notes, the garments of two worlds. Her wand holster. A second cloak. And the tent—the magical space that had kept her sane in a world ruled by war.

It wasn’t just luggage.

It was her past. Her preparation. Her shield.

She swung it onto the back of the mare with practiced grace, fastened the leather straps, and mounted in silence. Her cloak settled around her like smoke. For a heartbeat, she hesitated—just long enough to glance back once, toward the flickering lights of Riverrun’s tallest tower.

She didn’t allow herself to look longer. Not toward the window she knew belonged to him.

Not toward what might have been, had he asked her to stay.

Her breath shook as she pressed her heels gently into the mare’s sides and slipped into the trees beyond.

The forest path to the east was narrow and half-frozen, the ground brittle under hoof, black branches clawing overhead like skeletal hands. She kept off the roads, winding through frost-dusted ravines and groves of old birch, always listening for the crunch of pursuit, for voices calling her name.

None came.

She traveled by moonlight when she could. When the sky grew dark, she cast her own light low and narrow—just enough to see the earth ahead, but not enough to be seen.

The journey would be long—longer than she’d like, longer than she could afford—but she had planned it to the inch. Memorized every hidden route. Marked every town and trail she would avoid. She had studied maps by candlelight, cross-referenced with Catelyn, traced whispered tales of gold cloaks on the road south.

Somewhere ahead of her lay King’s Landing.

Somewhere behind those black walls were two Stark girls.

And Rosie would not return without them.

She made her first camp three days out.

Deep in a forest hollow surrounded by moss-covered boulders and frozen ferns, she laid her hand to her trunk and whispered the command. The tent unfolded from nothing, growing upward with quiet grace. Inside, warmth met her like a memory. Familiar spellwork flared to life—fireplace, kettle, silencing wards.

She didn’t sleep much.

Not for lack of exhaustion—her body ached with every dismount, every hour in the saddle—but because every time she closed her eyes, she saw his face.

Robb .

Not in armor. Not as king.

Just him —his brow furrowed with frustration, the way he’d scratched the back of his neck when he said goodbye, as though unsure whether to reach for her or let her go.

She hadn’t told him she was leaving.

She couldn’t .

He carried too much already—expectation, duty, grief. If she’d told him, he might have tried to stop her. He might have asked her to stay. And the worst part—the part she couldn’t shake—was that she wasn’t sure she would’ve said no.

Not to him.

She stared into the embers long after they’d dimmed, her knees pulled to her chest beneath a conjured quilt.

And for the first time, she let herself admit the truth.

She didn’t know if she wanted to go home.

Her world was gone. Not physically. Not entirely. But the war had carved out all the parts that made it hers. Her friends had scattered. Her losses had never stopped coming. And here, in this bloody, backward, brutal land—she had found something again.

A reason.

To move. To fight. To care.

So she kept riding.

Each sunrise bringing her closer to the heart of the lion’s den.

And if she failed, if she didn’t make it out— at least she would fall doing something that mattered .

Robb's POV

Golden Tooth had fallen.

The banners of House Lannister were torn from the ramparts and cast into the dirt, trampled underfoot by Northern steel and mud-caked boots. The air still reeked of blood and charred wood, the cries of the wounded echoing faintly between stone and snow.

Robb Stark stood at the gate, sword still sheathed but knuckles white where they clenched the hilt. His breath came shallow. The morning frost clung to his cloak, sweat mingling with the grime of battle, and still—still—he felt no triumph.

Victory should have brought relief.

But it didn’t.

Because the raven was waiting when he returned to camp.

Its black feathers gleamed like oil in the dim tent, perched on the war table beside the map she used to trace with her fingertip. The scroll tied to its leg was unremarkable—no seal, no sigil—but Robb knew. The moment he saw it, he knew .

He unrolled it with shaking hands.

“She left the night you rode out,” Edmure had written. “Her tent was illusion. The guards noticed nothing until morning. Her belongings are gone. No trace. No note.”

He read it again.

And again.

The words didn’t change. No matter how hard he stared at them.

Not even a note.

“Gone,” he whispered.

The tent buzzed with hushed voices—his bannermen muttering among themselves.

“She abandoned us,” said Glover, his jaw clenched, voice thick with contempt. “Slipped away like a snake. Just like the sorcerers of old.”

“She was never one of us,” Black Walder added with a sneer. “Too quiet. Too clever. Knew she'd turn.”

“She saved your damned leg , you crow-feeding bastard,” snarled Maege Mormont. “You’d be pissing in a bucket if not for her.”

“Enough,” Robb growled—but the words came too late. His voice didn’t carry the weight it should have.

“She left,” said Karstark. His voice was low. Unapologetic. “And that’s all that matters. We can’t waste time mourning ghosts. She made her choice.”

But Robb wasn’t listening anymore.

She had left.

She had left him.

Without a word. Without a glance.

And yet he couldn’t stop thinking—what had he done?

What hadn't he done?

What had he left unsaid, unsignaled, too bound by duty and fear and the Frey sword hanging above his future to tell her what he had wanted?

What he still wanted.

His chest ached. His fists curled at his sides, shaking.

He dismissed the council without ceremony. Their voices faded behind canvas as he sank into his chair, staring at her empty place at the war table. Her teacup was gone. Her books. Even the scarf she used to twist around her fingers when she was thinking.

Only the ache remained.

He ordered scouts to go south—quietly, unofficially. No report. No banner. Just look for signs of her.

They wouldn’t find anything. He knew it.

She could vanish like smoke when she wanted. Gods help him, she had .

But he had to try.

Because she had taken something with her when she left—something he didn’t have a name for, but felt like a missing limb. An emptiness that made the world colder, harder.

And he deserved it.

Because he'd let her walk away thinking he didn’t care.

Three days later, a second raven arrived.

The seal was smudged, the parchment creased from haste.

Robb read the first line.

And the world stopped .

“Winterfell has fallen.”

He didn’t read the rest at first. He couldn’t.

The words blurred as his throat closed.

The second time, he forced his eyes to move.

“The Ironborn struck without warning. Theon Greyjoy leads them. Your brothers are presumed dead. The castle is aflame.”

Presumed dead.

Bran. Rickon. Gone.

He stared at the page in silence for nearly a full minute.

Then something in him cracked.

He let out a sound—not a roar, not a battle cry. A scream.

A raw , shattering thing that tore from his chest and left him bent over the table, knuckles bloodless on the edge of the map, which now seemed nothing more than ashes .

Grey Wind lunged up behind him, howling with him, the two of them echoing pain across the camp.

Theon had betrayed him.

Burned their home.

Killed his family.

And Rosie—Rosie was gone , unreachable, out of his reach when he needed her most.

He was losing everything.

And now he couldn’t shake the thought that maybe this was the price of every choice he'd made. Every time he pushed someone away. Every time he put the crown above the heart.

Now Winterfell burned.

Now the girl he couldn't name aloud was gone .

And he had no one to blame but himself.

Varys' POV

The chamber stank of wine, candle smoke, and poorly disguised ambition.

The Small Council had convened, though it bore more resemblance to a squabbling nest of vipers than anything approaching rule. The Iron Throne loomed behind them, empty for now, but the shadow of its presence was always felt. Joffrey was not in attendance—having stormed out earlier in a tantrum over someone refusing him a fourth stag-horn goblet of spiced wine.

Cersei sat in his place, legs crossed, gaze sharp as a drawn blade.

Littlefinger lounged near the window, polishing a silver ring with a cloth he had borrowed—without asking—from Pycelle’s sleeve. Pycelle dozed. Again. And Tyrion’s chair, conspicuously empty, bore quiet testament to his more pressing duties elsewhere.

Varys sat still, hands folded in his lap, expression unreadable.

He didn’t interrupt.

He didn’t need to.

He was always listening.

“The Ironborn have taken Winterfell,” announced a red-faced courier who looked three heartbeats from collapsing. “Under the command of… Theon Greyjoy.”

There was a beat of silence.

Then—laughter.

Sharp and ugly.

Cersei’s voice rang from the hall where she still lounged with wine. “The North eats its own. Pathetic.”

Littlefinger smiled. “They were allies.”

“Were,” Varys murmured, his voice barely more than breath. But Cersei heard it.

“And the boy king?” asked Pycelle groggily, roused by the sudden sharpness of the room. “Still calling himself king?”

“For now,” Littlefinger said with a shrug, twirling the ring once more between his fingers. “But this war is a wheel. One more turn, and he’ll be under it.”

Cersei leaned forward with a smirk, folding her hands beneath her chin. “And the girl? The witch? There are whispers that she’s vanished from the Stark camp.”

At this, Varys did glance up.

Just once.

“Gone,” he confirmed.

“She was never real,” Littlefinger snapped. “Just a stupid Northern ghost story.”

“Perhaps,” Varys said mildly. “And yet... ghosts have a curious habit of becoming real when ignored.”

Cersei’s brow furrowed. “You believe in her.”

“I believe,” Varys replied carefully, “that power does not enjoy being mocked. And I believe that where magic begins to stir again— true magic, not parlor tricks—those who scoff at it tend to die poorly.”

Littlefinger rolled his eyes. “All very poetic. But the war is here. We don’t need to worry about sorceresses playing nursemaid to wolves and fish.”

Varys gave a faint smile.

“She was not playing,” he said. “She was learning . Listening. Watching. And now... she has disappeared. As if by design. While the North burns.”

Cersei’s gaze sharpened. “You think she’s gone somewhere?”

“I think,” Varys said slowly, “that wherever she goes now, it will not be by accident. I think she moves with purpose. And I think—if she walks with vengeance in one hand and magic in the other—then the game has changed.”

“Changed how?” Littlefinger asked, voice almost bored.

Varys turned to him.

And for a breath, his smile vanished.

“She does not play it like we do,” he said. “She does not court power. She does not crave control. She seeks justice . And that, my friends, is far more dangerous than ambition.”

Cersei’s fingers tapped against the table. “Then tell me, Spider. If she’s real, if she’s out there—who does she strike first?”

Varys tilted his head. His eyes flicked—just briefly—toward the Iron Throne.

Then back to her.

“That,” he said, “depends on who gives her reason to burn.”

Chapter Text

Sansa's POV

The throne room had always been cold. But this time, it felt like it had swallowed winter whole.

The marble beneath Sansa’s feet was chilled and unforgiving as she walked, one hesitant step at a time, toward the Iron Throne. Her slippers barely made a sound, the soft shuffle of fabric the only sign of her presence in the vast, echoing space. It was as if the hall itself held its breath, waiting to see how far the cruelty would stretch today.

She kept her eyes forward, though every part of her screamed to run — to flee from the gathering of sneering lords and ladies, from the gold-cloaked guards lining the path, from the dark shape that lounged on the throne as though he were a boy perched atop a dragon’s skull rather than a king seated in judgment.

Joffrey Baratheon — no, not a Baratheon, not truly — sat with one boot resting arrogantly against the armrest of the throne, a goblet of wine dangling from his careless fingers, a smile like poison stretching across his face.

He had summoned her.

And she knew what that meant.

Beside him, Queen Cersei stood like a statue carved from ice — beautiful, untouchable, and radiating a silent, simmering fury that never seemed to melt. The Hound loomed nearby in his usual shadowed stance, and further off, Pycelle looked as though he might nod off at any moment, though his beady eyes flicked open with eager anticipation as Sansa came to a halt below the dais.

The court watched.

They always did.

Traitor’s daughter. Northern whore. Wolf bitch.

The whispers never ceased. They clung to her like cobwebs, sticky and impossible to pull away. Sometimes they were loud, sometimes subtle, sometimes so softly spoken that she wondered if they had even been said aloud at all — or if her mind had simply begun to echo the insults back to her.

Joffrey’s voice cut through the quiet like the edge of a knife dipped in honey.

“You forgot to curtsy.”

Her knees dipped automatically, shallow and stiff. It never mattered how she bent or bowed. It would never be deep enough.

The smile on his face stretched.

“You’re still so proud. But you’re nothing now. Your father was a traitor, and you’re lucky I don’t let Ser Ilyn teach you what happens to traitors.”

She didn’t answer.

Answering only made it worse.

“She needs discipline,” he said to the crowd, to no one, to everyone. “She’s still not learned her lesson.”

Her heart dropped.

Two gold cloaks stepped forward.

No — not again, not again, please — not here, not in front of them all.

One of them grabbed her arms, yanking her forward. The other circled behind, a long leather whip coiled in his fist.

Joffrey gestured lazily, like one swatting at a fly.

The whip cracked through the air, the sound loud enough to drown out the gasp she bit down in her throat. It lashed across her back, and fire bloomed in her skin.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

She clenched her jaw so tightly it hurt. She would not scream. She would not give them the sound they wanted.

Four.

Five.

The world tilted.

Pain became light, then shadow, then silence.

Then—

“That’s enough.”

The voice was not loud. It didn’t need to be.

Tyrion Lannister strode into the hall, not with bluster but with purpose. Every eye turned toward him.

Even Joffrey paused.

“Uncle,” the boy-king said with irritation. “You’re interrupting—”

“I’m stopping an embarrassment,” Tyrion snapped, his voice sharper than a blade. “This girl is to marry you. Unless you’d like your bride limping up the aisle covered in scars, I suggest you save your punishments for the privacy of your dreams.”

Gasps rippled through the room.

Cersei’s eyes narrowed.

But Joffrey, for once, seemed uncertain. Petulant. Childish.

He waved his hand again, though less sure this time. “Fine. She bores me anyway.”

The guards dropped her.

Sansa barely registered the floor rising to meet her. Her knees hit the marble hard, but she didn’t cry out.

Tyrion was beside her a moment later, crouching low. His voice was quiet, only for her.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m doing what I can.”

She nodded once, not because she believed him, but because it was the only thing she had left to give.

That night, she sat in her chambers with the curtains drawn and her hands folded in her lap, staring at the dark space between the fire and the door.

Her shift clung to her back, sticky with half-dried blood. Every breath pulled against torn skin. But worse than the pain was the silence. The absence of anything.

No ravens came.

No news arrived.

No messages. No magic. No sign.

The stories of the witch — the red-haired one who walked with the Northern army, the sorceress with eyes like death and fire — had begun to fade like dreams she was too tired to hold.

She wasn’t coming.

No one was.

Rosie's POV

The stars above King’s Landing glinted like cold teeth, distant and unbothered, while the city below sprawled like a beast long at rest, waiting only for blood to rouse it.

From her vantage point at the edge of the Blackwater, Rosie crouched behind a slope of stone and dust, her wand held loosely in one hand, her breath shallow but steady. The Red Keep sat like a scar at the top of the hill, all jagged walls and glinting watchposts, wrapped in flame and shadow and memory.

She had reached the city two days ago, after a grueling ride that twisted through the woods, over uneven terrain and half-abandoned backroads. She had slept in her tent once, and barely, and spent the rest of her time studying the city like a puzzle that bled.

And now it was time to break in.

Her tent, magically anchored and carefully cloaked behind a cluster of boulders, pulsed with its own protection charm. Inside, she checked her gear once more: her invisibility cloak — nearly worn from use but still humming with Death’s blessing — was folded in her satchel; her wand tucked away in her sleeve; and three small bottles of enchanted sleeping dust were nestled beside her healing potions.

She had mapped five different entry points into the Keep.

One had patrols too tight.

One was sealed.

One was too well-lit.

One was being watched.

The fifth — a narrow servant’s tunnel used for unloading wine from the cellars — was promising.

She took it.

Once inside the city walls, cloaked and invisible, she became a shadow among rats, a whisper moving silently across polished floors and behind the backs of men who would gut her if they knew she was there.

She heard voices.

She listened .

Cersei’s command. Pycelle’s groaning warnings about Stannis. Littlefinger’s slippery suggestions. Varys, quietly reminding them all to think of the people.

Rosie kept moving.

Upward.

Inward.

Toward the girls.

She found Sansa by rumor, by instinct, by pure luck — a pair of maids whispering about the “stupid northern girl” who cried but never screamed, who bled but never broke.

South wing. Upper floor. Two guards, rotated at every bell.

She waited until the moon crested.

Then she whispered the sleeping charm.

They dropped.

Silent.

Effortless.

Inside, the room was dim. A single candle flickered in the far corner. The girl on the bed was thin, curled in on herself like a paper flower caught in frost.

Rosie crossed the room slowly, her footsteps making no sound. She reached out. Touched Sansa’s shoulder.

The girl gasped awake, wide-eyed.

And before she could scream, Rosie covered her mouth and whispered, “I’m here to take you home.”

Sansa's POV

She had imagined her a thousand ways.

Sometimes as a specter wrapped in shadow, sometimes as a flame-haired warrior wreathed in lightning and smoke. A creature from Northern lore—wild and ancient, forged in winter magic and grief. The stories that reached even the darkest corners of the Red Keep had painted her in shades of myth. The witch with emerald eyes. The one who stood beside the Wolf King. The one who healed the broken. Burned the wicked. Vanished from fire like smoke on the wind.

But the woman crouched beside her now was not a myth.
She was real.

And nothing like Sansa had imagined.

Her face was windburned, pale in the candlelight. Her eyes—not just green, but impossibly so, vivid like spring come early. Her hair was a softer red than Sansa’s own, undone and tangled from wind or flight. Her cloak shimmered faintly around her, not with magic—though it must have been magic—but with something more subtle. Presence. Like she was half-here, half-elsewhere.

She had not stormed the door with fire or shattered chains. She had arrived with silence and stillness.

And kindness.

“Are you real?” Sansa whispered, not even realizing she’d spoken until the words brushed the air between them.

The woman smiled—just a small thing. Gentle. Worn.
“Close enough.”

Sansa stared.

Her limbs ached. Her wrists were bruised. She hadn’t eaten in—she couldn’t remember. Her gown was torn at the hem. Her hair had long since come loose from the pins Cersei had insisted she wear. She should have felt humiliated—being found like this, weak and small and shaking—but the woman didn’t look at her with pity.

She looked at her like she mattered.

Sansa dressed slowly, her hands trembling as she pulled a cloak over her bruised shoulders. It was Rosie’s—thick and warm and too big—and it smelled like pine and old parchment and something soft underneath, something like lavender.

Rosie asked questions quietly, and Sansa answered them all.

The guard rotations. Who was stationed near her door. Who came in and out of the queen’s wing. Whether she’d heard anything of Arya—no, nothing, not a whisper, not since Father died, and gods, I don’t even know if she’s alive.

Rosie listened to every word.

No interruption. No judgment. No disbelief.

Only stillness.

And then, finally, Rosie reached out her hand.

“Ready?”

Sansa hesitated—just for a second—because part of her still believed this was a dream. That she would reach out and her fingers would close on air, and she would wake to Cersei’s voice or Joffrey’s sneer or the sharp sting of Ser Meryn’s backhand.

But the hand remained.

Warm. Real.

She nodded.

And the world cracked.

It wasn’t like falling.

It wasn’t like flying.

It was like being torn through the skin of the world and shoved out the other side.

They landed hard.

The breath left her lungs in a gasp as she collapsed to her knees, the grass cold and real beneath her palms. She inhaled and tasted earth. Soil. Dew. Salt air and sky.

And stars—stars, real stars above her, no longer hidden behind the soot-stained towers of King’s Landing. The sky stretched open like it hadn’t in years, vast and endless and safe.

She clutched at the ground like it might vanish.

Then came the nausea.

She retched into the grass, her stomach revolting from the magical pull of whatever they had just done. Her body heaved and shuddered, but nothing came. She hadn't eaten enough to lose anything.

Then came the disbelief.

And then—the tears.

Not the silent ones she had learned to shed behind closed doors.

Not the tight, choking sobs that came in the dark when she remembered father, or Septa Mordane, or her little brothers’ faces.

This was something else entirely.

This was sobbing. Wild, broken, ugly.

She wept like someone whose heart had finally been allowed to beat again.

Sansa buried her face in her hands and cried.

Cried for hope, for the sliver of light that had come for her in the night when she had given up believing it ever would.

Cried for her father, for Lady, for Arya.

For the girl she used to be.

And Rosie—Rosie knelt beside her without hesitation.

She didn’t speak at first. She didn’t hush her or urge her to be strong.

She just wrapped her arms around her—steady and sure—and held her close, hand stroking gently through her hair, as if this was something she had done before.

Like she knew what it was to carry grief until your bones bent under the weight of it.

“You’re safe now,” Rosie whispered against her hair. “You’re safe, Sansa. I swear it.”

And for the first time since she had ridden south in her father’s shadow, Sansa Stark believed it.

The ground beneath her no longer felt like a cage.
The sky no longer felt like a ceiling.
And in the arms of a witch no one believed in, Sansa Stark wept not as a prisoner—

But as a girl finally free.

Chapter Text

Rosie’s POV

The sky above the hills beyond King’s Landing was barely beginning to pale, the faintest whisper of morning stitched in threads of silver across the horizon, but the magic in Rosie’s bones buzzed like lightning still sparking in her fingertips, each beat of her pulse echoing the impossible truth: she had done it. She had walked through the jaws of the lion’s den, pulled the wolf’s daughter out of the mouth of death itself, and emerged breathing.

Alive.

Unbroken.

For now.

The forest around them murmured softly as wind wove through the dark branches, carrying with it the distant stink of the capital's smoke and blood, though here it was muted by dew and pine and something quieter — the silence of survival. Behind her, Sansa leaned lightly in the saddle, her breath warm against Rosie’s shoulder, her hands tight at her waist as if letting go would send her tumbling back into the nightmare she had just escaped.

Rosie understood the grip.

She remembered what it was like to hold on to anything after a long fall — even if that something was only barely strong enough to carry you.

The enchanted tent welcomed them like a pocket of safety carved into a brutal world. With one whispered unlocking charm and a flick of her wand, Rosie opened the wards and stepped inside, leading Sansa gently behind her. And the moment they passed through the canvas door, she felt the younger girl freeze beside her — not with fear, not this time, but with astonishment.

Sansa stared.

And Rosie let her.

Because it was a strange sight, wasn’t it?

The warmth, the impossible space, the polished wooden floors and softly glowing lanterns; the fireplace that crackled to life with no fuel and no sound; the two guest rooms lined in velvet blankets and soft green rugs; the table set for a home that didn’t exist in this world, not really — all of it born of her magic, stitched together from grief and hope and the desperate need to build something she could live in after so many had died.

“It’s…” Sansa’s voice cracked. “It’s beautiful.”

Rosie smiled, soft and tired. “It’s strange. It's mine. But safe.”

That seemed to be enough for now.

She led her to one of the guest rooms — the one Rosie had charmed to always smell faintly of lavender and vanilla, with a window enchanted to show the sky as it truly was beyond the tent, even as it stayed warm as spring. Sansa hovered in the doorway, her shoulders trembling faintly.

“You can rest here,” Rosie said gently, gesturing inside. “The bed’s real. The food will be soon. And no one will find you.”

“Thank you,” Sansa whispered.

But before she could step inside, she turned — and hesitated — then reached out and gently touched Rosie’s hand.

“Are you real?” she asked. “Or will I wake and be back in the Keep?”

Rosie met her eyes and squeezed her fingers.

“I’m real. And you’re free. Sleep now, little one.”

Sansa blinked, and something wet shimmered in her eyes, but she nodded and disappeared into the room without another word.

Rosie stood there for a moment after the door shut, staring at the wood grain, letting the silence settle back around her like a blanket that didn’t quite warm her all the way through. The stillness of the tent pressed in as if waiting for her to fall apart — but she didn’t. She couldn’t. Not yet.

Instead, she walked slowly to her own room — to the bed that had barely been touched since she left Riverrun — and sat on the edge of it, her fingers curled in the soft folds of the blanket, her boots still on, her cloak still damp with dew.

Sansa was safe.

That thought repeated in her head like a mantra, a rhythm, a spell.

Sansa was safe.

But Arya…

Rosie closed her eyes.

There was no trace of the younger wolf.

Not in the Keep. Not in the city.

No sign. No whisper. Not even a rumor she could chase.

It felt like chasing shadows in a storm, like reaching through fog and grabbing nothing but cold air.

I promised.

She laid back against the pillows and stared at the tent’s enchanted ceiling, watching the stars she had set there spin slowly in a quiet, false sky.

I promised Catelyn I would bring them both back.

And for a moment — a short, silent, dangerous moment — she let her thoughts drift to Robb.

To the memory of his voice, the way he looked at her the night before he left, the anger buried beneath his control, the way he had tried not to look wounded when she told him she might not be there when he returned.

She hadn’t lied.

But it still hurt.

I wonder if you’ve forgotten me already, Wolf King, she thought. Or if you dream of me when you sleep.

Sleep pulled at her like a tide.

And she let it.

General POV

At first, there was silence.

The kind of silence that hung not in peace, but in the moments just before a blade is drawn — sharp and inevitable.

Then came the shouting.

By midmorning, the entire Red Keep pulsed with chaos, like a hornet’s nest split in two. Servants rushed through corridors with terrified expressions, gold cloaks doubled their patrols, and the Queen’s voice could be heard echoing off stone walls as far as the tower stairs. The halls reverberated with the demand for answers no one could give.

Because Sansa Stark was gone.

Vanished.

Disappeared from her locked chamber sometime during the night, without a sound, without a guard stirred, without a door opened or a window broken. It was as if she had been swallowed whole by the stone itself.

Joffrey’s scream tore through the throne room when he was told.

“What do you mean she’s gone?” he shrieked, red-faced and trembling, spittle flying as he turned on the trembling knight who dared to deliver the news. “She was under guard! She was mine !”

“She… she must have had help,” the knight stammered, backing away.

Cersei didn’t say anything. She stood beside the throne, lips curled in a smirk as Joffrey gloated, her eyes gleaming with that same gleeful malice. There was no horror in her face, no restraint—only twisted pride.

Where others might have gasped or looked away, Cersei watched with satisfaction, her fingers resting lazily on the arm of the chair as if her son’s cruelty was a performance staged for her amusement.

The queen and her monster. A matching set.

Elsewhere, the council convened in private.

Tyrion was already pouring wine when the rest arrived, face drawn and thoughtful. “You’ll forgive me if I find this development fascinating.”

“She couldn’t have escaped on her own,” said Littlefinger, eyes narrowed. “Not without help. This was planned.”

“Agreed,” said Varys softly. “But the question is: by whom? ”

Pycelle muttered something about northern witches and blasphemous magic, but no one listened.

“She was a political prisoner,” Tyrion said. “And now she’s gone. The wolves will howl for this.”

“Let them,” said Cersei as she entered. “They howl anyway.”

Varys was quiet.

But inside, he was already running calculations — shadows in the tunnels, whispers from the docks, the impossible magic that had been rumored since whispers of the red-haired witch had begun to circulate among the camps in the Riverlands.

It wasn’t possible.

And yet—

Sansa Stark had vanished.

Without a trace.

And the realm had just become very interesting.

Sansa's POV

For a long time, she lay still.

The warmth in the room was unfamiliar — not from a fire, not from wool or furs piled on her aching limbs, but from something more constant, more gentle. The air itself seemed warmer, as though it carried no memory of stone or pain. For a moment, Sansa thought she was still dreaming.

And yet her back throbbed with its usual dull, crawling ache, and her wrists were still raw beneath the sleeves of the nightdress someone — the witch — had left for her. She blinked her eyes open slowly, afraid to move too fast, lest the illusion dissolve around her.

She was in a bed. A soft bed.

The ceiling above her looked like carved wood, polished and unfamiliar. The walls were lined with cloth and tapestry — not stone — and the scent in the air wasn’t dust or rot, but something sweet, like honey and herbs. A window above the bed let in soft, filtered morning light, and beyond it she saw the blur of a blue sky untouched by the stink of the city.

She sat up slowly, one hand pressed to her ribs — and winced.

But she was here.

She had escaped.

And it hadn’t been a dream.

The witch was real.

Rosie — the emerald-eyed woman from nowhere who had appeared like a ghost in the night and pulled her out of the Red Keep without making a sound.

Sansa rose carefully and followed the scent of something warm and spiced down the narrow hallway beyond her room.

The main chamber of the tent glowed with soft lamplight, the kind that flickered without ever seeming to burn out. The floors were smooth, the windows impossibly clear, and the little kitchen in the corner looked like something out of a story — copper pans, floating herbs, a teapot humming softly to itself over an invisible flame.

And standing at the stove, stirring something in a pan, her sleeves rolled up and her hair twisted into a messy bun, was the witch herself.

Rosie.

Sansa watched for a moment before speaking.

“I didn’t think it was real,” she said softly.

Rosie turned, then smiled — not wide, but genuine.

“Morning, little one.”

“You really are a witch.”

Rosie laughed gently. “So they say.”

They ate breakfast together at the small round table near the fire.

Rosie called them pancakes , and they were nothing like the dry oatcakes or cold sweetmeats Sansa remembered from court. They were soft, golden, and slightly sweet, served with warm syrup and stewed berries. Sansa took a bite and nearly cried.

“I haven’t tasted anything like this in moons,” she murmured.

“You’ve earned it,” Rosie replied, pouring her more tea. “Though you flinched earlier — when you reached for the fork. Pain?”

Sansa froze, mid-sip.

“I’m fine,” she lied quickly.

Rosie set down her cup. “Let me see.”

“You don’t—”

“Please.”

There was something in her voice — not command, not pity. Just quiet, focused care.

Sansa hesitated. Then turned slightly, pulling up the back of her shift.

Rosie inhaled sharply.

The silence was awful.

Then she rose and crossed the room in two strides.

“This will take a moment. But I promise — it’ll be better soon.”

She brought over a soft blue vial and a glass jar of something that smelled of mint and lavender. Her hands were gentle but steady, her touch cool as she worked salve into the lashes along Sansa’s back, whispering a spell beneath her breath.

And for the first time in weeks — months — the pain began to fade.

When it was done, Sansa sat still, her breath caught in her chest.

“I’ve never… I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“I imagine not,” Rosie said gently. “Magic like mine doesn’t exist here. Or if it did… it’s been forgotten.”

“You could burn the Red Keep to the ground.”

“I could,” Rosie agreed. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

“Then why?”

Rosie looked up.

“Because your mother asked me to bring you home. And I made a promise.”

Rosie's POV

The tent packed itself with practiced ease — the magic woven into its seams responding to her wand like a breath inhaled and held. Sansa stood quietly nearby, dressed in a traveling cloak Rosie had charmed to repel wind and soak in warmth. She held the small satchel Rosie had given her, filled with food, salves, and a change of clothes, and watched the structure around her vanish into the size of a small suitcase.

It still made her blink.

Rosie smiled as she stowed it away in the enchanted trunk and then slung it across the saddle.

“We’ll be sharing the horse,” she said softly. “But don’t worry. No one will see us.”

Sansa looked up, startled. “How?”

Rosie tapped her wand against the space between them. A shimmer rippled across the air like heat on stone.

“Cloaking charm,” she said. “It bends light and dampens sound. Even if someone passes close, they’ll look right through us.”

Sansa hesitated, then nodded.

Rosie mounted first and reached down.

The younger girl climbed up behind her, clinging not too tightly but enough to hold balance.

They rode in silence at first, the morning sun barely cresting the trees as they descended from the ridge and began cutting south by a path Rosie had charted two nights before.

Sansa eventually spoke, her voice tentative.

“You… said you made a promise. To my mother.”

Rosie nodded without turning. “I did.”

“Was it… Robb who sent you?”

The question hit harder than Rosie expected.

She felt her shoulders stiffen. “No,” she said after a moment. “He doesn’t know. I left right after the army marched West. Your mother and I made a plan… and I couldn’t stand the thought of you both still locked in that place while he fought a war.”

Sansa was quiet for a moment, and Rosie let the silence settle.

Then came the next question — cautious, but curious.

“What is he like now?”

Rosie’s lips curved, but the ache in her chest soured the smile.

“Robb?” she said. “He’s… everything they say he is. And more. Brave. Clever. Reckless when he thinks too much. Heart full of wolves and weight he doesn’t know how to carry.”

Sansa pressed her cheek briefly to Rosie’s shoulder, a gesture so small and instinctive it nearly broke her heart.

“He used to make Arya laugh,” she whispered. “Even when she was furious.”

Rosie closed her eyes for a breath.

“Arya,” she echoed. “Do you know where she might have gone?”

Sansa shook her head. “We were separated after Father… after the execution. I was brought to the Queen. Arya vanished. There were whispers — a dancing master, someone helping her escape. But nothing certain.”

Rosie hummed. Her mind began to tick through every angle — the wild streets of King’s Landing, the nearby brothels, ports, alley dens, and orphan shelters. Too big , she thought. Too many places.

She would need a way to see through the noise.

A way to find what was missing.

“Scrying,” she murmured aloud.

Sansa looked up, curiosity in her tired eyes. “What’s that?”

“A kind of magical seeing,” Rosie said. “I’ve never used it to find a person before. But if I had a link—something of hers, something important—I might be able to trace her.”

Sansa’s expression faltered. She reached instinctively for her satchel, then hesitated.

“I... I don’t have anything,” she said softly. “Arya didn’t take much with her when she left. And I—I didn’t keep anything of hers.”

Rosie gave her a reassuring nod, her voice calm.

“That’s all right. I’ll find another way.”

That night, they made camp in a hollow beneath a rocky overhang. Rosie unfolded the tent with practiced magic, and Sansa retired early to the guest room — her room, now, as she called it — with a small book and a mug of warm cider.

Once the flap shut, Rosie retreated into her private room, opened the magical trunk at the foot of her bed, and withdrew the thick, leather-bound tome she hadn’t touched since Grimmauld Place.

The Book of Lost and Forbidden Sight.

She whispered the unlocking spell, let the pages turn themselves, and stared at the ancient ink scratched in curling script.

If Arya was alive, if she was within reach of this realm… Rosie would find her.

She had to.

She had not come this far to save only half a promise.

Robb's POV

The ground beneath the Golden Tooth was still dark with blood, but the banners of the direwolf now flew where once the lion had roared.

Robb Stark stood atop the broken gatehouse, cloak torn, sword stained, his armor dented along the shoulder from where a mace had nearly broken the bone. The wind up here carried the scent of iron and ash, the screams of men long silenced, and the low growl of Grey Wind pacing behind him — ever near, ever watching.

They had taken the fortress. That much was true.

They had stormed it under the cover of darkness, moving with the precision of men who had fought, bled, and buried their kin for too long to fear one more siege. The assault had lasted less than a day. Ser Stafford Lannister’s forces had faltered under the press of Northern rage, and by nightfall, the gates were theirs.

But if this was victory, Robb could no longer taste it.

Not when every step forward felt like it left a piece of himself behind.

Not when the nights grew longer and quieter and colder.

He hadn’t heard from Winterfell.

Not in weeks.

No ravens.

No messengers.

Not even rumors.

It was a silence that weighed like a stone on his chest.

And then there was her .

Rosie.

He still thought of her more often than he dared admit — not just in quiet moments or dreams, but in flashes, like arrows through fog. The way she had smiled that first time in the war tent. The fire in her voice when she’d shut Black Walder down. The look in her eyes when she had told him she might not be there when he returned.

He hadn’t believed her.

And she hadn’t lied.

She was gone.

Just like that.

No message.

No explanation.

No goodbye.

And every time a new Western lord introduced his daughter at supper with eyes like honey and voices like songs, he found himself comparing them to someone who would never wear silks like these, never simper, never wait for him to speak first.

He hated them for it.

He hated himself more for missing her.

After Oxcross, when they destroyed the last of Stafford’s men and scattered the remaining Lannister levies west of Lannisport, the Northmen began to speak of turning back east — of pushing deeper, of burning the lion’s gold to ash.

But Robb had stopped them.

“Tywin Lannister will not rise from his hole,” he said flatly, standing before the gathered lords in a makeshift tent near the ruins. “He has fled to Harrenhal. Let him rot in his ruin.”

They had nodded.

Some with pride.

Others with unease.

But all followed.

Because he was their king.

And they did not yet know how hollow that crown had begun to feel.

Now, as the army turned their march toward Riverrun once more, Robb rode at the front — silent, eyes fixed on the horizon, each hoofbeat carrying him closer to the place he had left behind, to the mother who waited, to the truths he had tried to bury beneath victories.

And maybe…

Just maybe…

To answers.

To her.

Chapter Text

Robb's POV

Riverrun greeted him with the dull, exhausted manner of a castle that had long forgotten how to celebrate victories.

There were no cheering soldiers on the battlements, no songs in the courtyard, no warm embraces in the halls. Just the sounds of hooves clapping over worn stone, banners snapping in the wind, and the low murmur of men too tired, too wounded, or too proud to show what they felt. Robb Stark entered his uncle’s keep as a victor of battles — Golden Tooth, Oxcross, and the scattered raids along the Lannister western border — but he did not feel victorious. His shoulders were stiff beneath the fur-trimmed cloak he no longer noticed, and Grey Wind trotted beside his horse with the silent vigilance of a shadow that had forgotten how to be tamed.

The lords assembled offered greetings, nods, the occasional stiff-handed clasp on the shoulder. But the warmth was gone — if it had ever truly been there. Edmure stood at the foot of the stairs with that same half-smile he wore whenever he wasn’t sure if he was being congratulated or reprimanded. Behind him, Catelyn stood with her hands folded, her mouth drawn in a line that was neither welcome nor reproach. Just tired.

“Riverrun stands,” Edmure offered as Robb dismounted, voice louder than necessary. “And the siege is broken. A fine thing.”

Robb’s eyes flicked toward his uncle, already bracing for what he didn’t want to hear.

“How,” he asked, “was the mill lost?”

Edmure bristled. “It wasn’t a loss, exactly — a repositioning. They were crossing the fords. I acted.”

“You lost men who didn’t need to die.”

“They would have overrun the banks.”

“I had a plan,” Robb said, voice like frost. “One that didn’t involve sacrificing good men for a patch of mud and a crumbling millhouse.”

Edmure’s shoulders squared. “I acted as Lord of Riverrun.”

“Then act better.”

The words hung sharp in the air, and for a moment, even the breeze seemed to stop.

Robb turned, dismissed the council gathering for now, and walked toward the hall, Grey Wind padding at his side like a ghost of winter.

Behind him, the mutters began again.

Later, after the brief debriefings and tactical summaries were done — after the last lord gave his redundant opinion on Tywin’s continued evasion and the scouts were dispatched to watch the kingsroad — he found himself standing alone in the hall outside his mother’s chamber. His fists were clenched.

He knocked once.

Catelyn’s voice answered, calm and unreadable. “Enter.”

She stood near the hearth, arms wrapped in a shawl though the fire was strong. She did not smile. But her eyes softened slightly.

“You’ve returned.”

“I have.”

“You’re unharmed?”

“Mostly.”

They stood in silence, the logs cracking between them.

Robb took a step closer. “Have you… heard anything?”

Her brow arched faintly. “About?”

He exhaled. “Lady Rosie.”

A beat.

Then another.

“No,” Catelyn said. And it was the softest lie he had ever heard.

His jaw tightened. “I don’t believe you.”

“She is not your concern, Robb.”

“She disappeared without a word.”

“She does not answer to you.”

“She was part of this—”

“She is not a soldier,” Catelyn snapped, and the sudden rise in her voice startled even herself. She took a breath. “She is not yours to command.”

Robb stared at his mother.

And turned away.

“I should’ve known you’d protect her.”

“And I should have known you’d blame her for a wound you gave yourself.”

He left.

That night, anger still burning in his chest like acid, Robb descended to the dungeons.

Jaime Lannister looked worse than he remembered — his hair tangled, his face bruised, and the smirk still painted across his lips like war paint.

“Well, well,” Jaime drawled as Robb approached the bars. “If it isn’t the Young Wolf. Back from playing at conqueror.”

“I came to remind you what defeat smells like.”

Jaime smiled. “Oh, I can smell it. It smells like horse sweat and Northern mud.”

Robb folded his arms. “Your father hides in Harrenhal. Your borders are broken. Your bannermen are scattered. You’ve losing.”

“I’m in a cell, boy. I’ve already lost. That doesn’t mean you’ve won.”

Robb said nothing.

“Still,” Jaime continued, stretching lazily, “you must’ve gained something in the west. Land? Glory? The affections of that fiery little witch I’ve heard so much about?”

Robb’s fists clenched.

Jaime noticed.

“Ah. Touched a nerve, did I?”

“She’s none of your concern.”

“She was a fine piece of magic,” Jaime mused. “Vanishing acts. Ghost stories. Tell me, did she vanish on command? Or only when you finally realized you couldn’t hold her?”

The door slammed behind Robb on his way out.

Rosie's POV

Night again. Quiet. Cold, but not unkind.

They had made camp in a small grove near a ruined watchtower, the crumbling stones barely keeping the wind at bay but enough to give them cover. Rosie had drawn the enchantments tightly — stronger than ever, the wards humming like tension across her skin.

Sansa sat across from her, wrapped in a blanket, her eyes red but calm.

“I need your blood,” Rosie said gently, laying out the worn parchment map of Westeros on the makeshift table between them.

Sansa didn’t flinch. “For the spell.”

“If it works… the blood will show us every living member of your immediate family. It has to be blood. And it has to be now.”

Sansa nodded.

Then hesitated.

“I didn’t want to say this earlier,” she said. “But… before we left… I heard something. From the guards.”

Rosie looked up.

“They said Winterfell had fallen. Theon took it. And my brothers… were dead.”

Rosie froze.

Her breath left her in a single, sharp sound.

“No,” she whispered. “No—”

She stood abruptly, stepping back, pacing.

“I should’ve said something. I should’ve told Robb not to trust him. I knew . I knew something was wrong. I felt it—”

“You couldn’t have known,” Sansa said, voice shaking.

Rosie stopped.

Her eyes closed.

“No more.”

She returned to the table.

“Let’s find Arya.”

Sansa held out her hand.

Five drops of blood hit the parchment.

At first, nothing.

Then, slowly, the map absorbed the blood, lines glowing faint red, and the droplets spread — five of them — one anchoring to their location, another stretching west toward Riverrun, one drifting toward the North, and the final two…

One shimmered at the edge of Harrenhal.

The last one hovered near the Dreadfort… then pulsed, repositioned, then hovered again.

“They’re alive,” Rosie breathed. “The boys. They’re alive .”

Sansa’s hand covered her mouth, tears falling soundlessly.

Hope.

Real hope.

“I have to get Arya,” Rosie said later, once Sansa had calmed. “She’s in Harrenhal. That place is crawling with Lord Tywin’s men.”

“Worse than the Red Keep?” Sansa asked.

“More disciplined. Less indulgent. And Tywin is smarter than Cersei.”

“She won’t trust you,” Sansa said softly.

Rosie was quiet for a moment. Then she stepped over to her trunk and opened a small, velvet-lined box. From within, she pulled out a polished, round mirror framed in aged bronze—worn, but intact.

Sansa leaned forward. “What is that?”

“A mirror,” Rosie said. “Magical. It’s one of a pair. My godfather and I used them to talk… when he was in hiding.”

She held it gently, the weight of memory in her hands.

“If I enchant it again… when I find Arya, I’ll show her this. You’ll talk to her. She’ll believe you.”

Sansa blinked, surprised. “That could work.”

Rosie smiled, slow and wistful. “Sirius always said they’d come in handy again.”

“You’re clever,” Sansa murmured. “More than they ever gave you credit for.”

Rosie glanced up with a soft huff. “So are you.”

When it was time to leave, Rosie checked the wards twice.

Sansa hugged her, fierce and sudden.

“Be safe,” she said. “Don’t die.”

Rosie blinked.

Then hugged her back.

“I won’t.”

Arya's POV

The stink of Harrenhal clung to everything.

It crawled up from the stone foundations, thick with the old ghosts of fire and death, and it clung to the skin no matter how hard you scrubbed. Not even the wind could chase it away. Not even the heavy rains that sometimes rolled across the Riverlands, washing blood and ash into the ground, could lift it.

It was in the bones of the place.
In the bones of the people who served here.

Arya Stark crouched in the muck behind the broken wall near the stables, the toes of her boots sunk deep into the cold mud. Her hair had been hacked short moons ago with a dull knife, the ragged edges curling against the dirt-smudged skin of her neck. Her face was streaked with grime, her hands calloused and quick. Her small frame hidden beneath a tunic too large for her shoulders.

Here, she was no one.
No lord’s daughter. No wolf's blood.
Just Arry—a boy with quick hands and quicker ears.

She learned fast that small, quiet boys lived longer than loud girls in a place like this.

She had scrubbed the floors where men bled out screaming.
She had lugged heavy trays of spoiled food to soldiers with iron eyes and blood under their fingernails.
She had poured wine for the monster himself—Tywin Lannister, the Butcher of the Riverlands.

Every day, she had looked at him, thinking of her brother, her mother, her father—dead, lost, out there somewhere—and swallowed the rage like broken glass.

Tywin terrified her.

The way he moved without hurry. The way he never raised his voice. How he could order a man’s death between sips of watered wine as casually as he might order his dinner.

But fear didn’t stop her.

It didn’t silence the part of her that watched. That learned. That waited.

Fear made her sharper. Colder.
More careful.

The names she whispered into her thin straw pillow each night remained the same, but her understanding of the world changed.
Joffrey. Cersei. Ilyn Payne. The Hound. Ser Meryn.
And now, Tywin Lannister too.

Every day was a game she couldn’t afford to lose.

Every day she survived was another day closer to something—even if she didn’t know what yet.

She thought of Robb sometimes when the campfires burned low and she heard men muttering about the King in the North.
Of Sansa, locked away in the Red Keep, bowing and smiling, pretending to be someone else to stay alive.

She thought of her mother, wherever she was now. Maybe gathering banners. Maybe lost too.

She thought—always—of her father.

The snap of the sword through his neck still lived behind her eyes.
The roar of the crowd.
The way the world hadn't even paused for him.

And lately... lately, she thought of something else.

Whispers moved through Harrenhal like rats through the walls—quick, dirty, half-believed.

A witch, they said.
A woman with hair like sunset fire and hands that could turn arrows in flight.
A sorceress at the side of the King in the North.

The Lannister men laughed about it—drunken, sneering—when they thought no one was listening.
But some of the servants whispered differently. Quietly. Like they wanted to believe.
Magic has returned to the North, they said.
The old powers stir again.

Arya didn’t know what to believe anymore.

Half of her wanted to scoff. Wanted to shove the hope down into her chest where it couldn’t be touched—where it couldn’t betray her again.

But another part—the part that still remembered the way her father smiled when he watched her spar with Needle, the part that still counted every name at night—held onto the whisper with white-knuckled fingers.

Maybe it was just a story.

Maybe there was no witch, no magic, no shield strong enough to stop the Lannisters.

But...

What if there was?

What if Robb wasn’t just winning battles—what if he was changing the game?

What if somewhere beyond the ash fields and shattered rivers, her brother was gathering strength the lions couldn’t understand?

What if someone out there was still fighting for them?

Arya stared up at the stars breaking open above Harrenhal’s broken towers, feeling the cold seep through her boots and into her bones.

Maybe it was foolish.

Maybe it would get her killed.

But for the first time in what felt like a thousand years, Arya Stark allowed herself to hope.

Just a little.
Just enough.

She tightened her fists in the mud.
Sharpened her gaze toward the ruined gate.

And smiled.

A small, dangerous thing.

Because wolves that survived long enough learned how to bite.

Chapter Text

Rosie’s POV

The first time she saw Harrenhal, she thought it might be asleep — not dead, not abandoned, not ruined in the way stories often said, but sleeping in some terrible, ancient dream, where every breath of wind through shattered stone was a memory groaning in protest and every flake of ash was a whisper of something unsaid. From the crest of the ridge east of the lake, where black water licked the edges of scorched land like oil creeping back into flame, Rosalie crouched in a mess of brambles and dead root and studied the great beast of a keep that loomed ahead — not simply as a fortress, but as a wound in the land, the kind that didn’t scar over, didn’t fade with time, but festered.

She had watched it for hours, maybe longer. Time lost its hold when you had to memorize the movement of men like wind over water — subtle shifts, patternless until you knew how to read them. The guards moved like rats forced into armor, arrogant but erratic. The patrols changed on a rhythm she’d nearly cracked. The gates — southern, western, a smaller side door she suspected was for servants — opened on rigid, well-oiled hinges but were never unguarded. And those who entered did so under the scrutiny of Lannister red and steel.

She had kept her presence folded beneath magic — spells upon spells: a cloaking charm that bent light until even birds passed overhead without pause, a listening charm woven into the grass at her belly, a cooling charm to suppress her body heat from any hound too well-trained. This wasn’t King’s Landing, with its oily pomp and rotted velvet. This was war’s kitchen. This was where men were ground to pulp and rebuilt as monsters. This was Tywin Lannister’s idea of efficiency.

Rosie let her fingers trace the hilt of her wand, slow, focused. She couldn’t afford mistakes. Not here. Not with Arya inside. Every step forward had to be a whisper on stone, a heartbeat between footfalls. This required finesse. Precision. Discipline.

And luck.

The sun was beginning to fall sideways in the sky, throwing Harrenhal into jagged halves of light and shadow, when she spotted it: a servant — small, wiry — exiting the side gate with a bucket of waste. The guards were mid-conversation. A bottle of something strong was passed between them.

The latch clicked.

The door hung for a moment.

And Rosie moved.

Cloak pulled tight, feet careful in boots enchanted for silence, she was across the path and inside the gate before breath could fog in her lungs. The door shut behind her with the gentlest of nudges. And then she was inside Harrenhal — inside the dream, inside the rot, inside the mouth of a place that had devoured queens and burned kings.

The first thing she noticed was the cold.

It wasn’t the natural cold of stone, but a deeper, older chill — the kind that sank into marrow and whispered of death long settled. The second was the smell. Not rot exactly, but old blood and fire long past. The third was the silence. Not true silence, but controlled — sounds dulled beneath discipline, beneath power, beneath the threat of sudden reprisal. No laughter here. No shouting. Not like the Red Keep.

She slipped past hallways carved wide enough for giants and kept to the edges, under balconies and behind pillars. The deeper she went, the more the cruelty revealed itself. Servants moved like ghosts, bruises peeking from sleeves. A boy of no more than twelve scrubbed at the same stain on the floor for minutes while a man with a flail leaned in the doorway, watching, not speaking — waiting .

Then she heard him.

Not words. Not a name. Just the sound of metal striking ground and the way people around it froze.

Rosie ducked into a broken alcove and peered through the shattered curve of a long-abandoned arch.

The Mountain.

She had never seen him before. Had heard whispers. Rumors. The kind that haunted stories and made children cry if they got too close to the truth. But no tale prepared her for the sheer scale of him. He towered, plated in blackened steel, helm shaped like something from a nightmare. His gauntlets were stained. His boots left smears. The people he passed went still, breath held like animals sensing an earthquake.

He didn’t look angry.

He didn’t need to.

This was a man who had killed with such frequency, such detachment, that the weight of a life lost had become no more than the lifting of a spoon. This was the man who had crushed the skull of a child against a wall — a baby — and walked away.

Rosie felt something snap in her fingers, and only then did she realize her hand had clenched around her wand. Her thumb had left a shallow crescent in her palm.

One spell. One curse. One whisper.

Her mind conjured images she hadn’t seen but had read — Elia Martell screaming, Rhaenys hiding under her father’s bed, the silence of a house with no justice. She could end it. She could do what no one else had.

But Arya was here.

And she had promised.

And promises mattered.

Even in places like this.

Especially in places like this.

The forge was at the far end of the lower yard — hot, loud, and dark despite the flames. She almost missed Arya. The girl moved like a shadow, fast and hunched, hair hacked off, clothes indistinguishable from the others. But then she turned just enough for Rosie to catch the angle of her face.

There you are, she thought.

And followed.

Arya's POV

The forge was the one place she could breathe.

Not because it was comfortable—gods, no—the air was thick with smoke and the relentless hammer of heat, wrapping around her body in a suffocating embrace no cloth could block out. Sweat clung to every inch of her skin within minutes of stepping inside, stinging her eyes, matting the dirt in her hair even tighter to her scalp. The stink of burning metal and singed cloth soaked into her tunic, into her boots, into her very blood.

But here, buried in the roar of flames and the steady rhythm of iron meeting iron, Arya Stark could pretend.

Pretend she was no one.
Pretend she was just another boy among the orphans.
Pretend she didn’t carry a list of names carved into the hollow of her ribs, whispered into the dark every night when sleep wouldn’t come.

Here, she could imagine she was hammering her grief, her rage, her helplessness into something solid and sharp. Something she could use. Something that could cut her way back to herself.

Gendry was at the anvil when she slipped inside, sleeves rolled to the elbows, arms already gleaming with sweat and soot. His hammer fell in a steady rhythm, each strike ringing through the thick air like a heartbeat she could count on.

He glanced up when he heard her boots scrape the stones.

“You’re late.”

“I’m not,” she shot back automatically, even as she stepped over a tangle of discarded horseshoes and cracked tools.

He smirked, one of those lazy, half-smiles he tried to hide when he thought he was being clever. “Started counting without you.”

“Then you’re just bad at math.”

“Maybe.” He swung the hammer again, sparks dancing between them. “But you’re worse at sneaking.”

Arya scowled. “I wasn’t sneaking. I was spying.”

Gendry snorted without looking up. “Oh good. Expanding your talents.”

“Next I’ll learn to juggle.”

The laugh he let out was quick, almost startled—like it had escaped before he could smother it. Arya grinned despite herself, feeling lighter for the first time in what felt like days. She liked making him laugh. She liked him, if she was being honest, though she’d rather bite off her own tongue than admit it.

She clambered up onto an overturned barrel near the forge, tucking her knees up to her chest, arms wrapped loosely around them, and watched him work. The hammering soothed something in her, the rhythm and strength of it, the simple certainty. Gendry never looked afraid. Never looked like he was going to break, no matter how much weight he carried.

She envied him for that.

“What’s the lord got for you today?” he asked after a few beats, striking a glowing bar of iron into shape without looking away.

“Cupbearer duty,” she muttered, wrinkling her nose. “I pour wine. I fetch scrolls. I pretend not to understand half of what he says.”

“You don’t understand half of what he says.”

“I’m still pretending.”

“Just don’t piss him off.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Arya said with a flash of teeth. “Unless I get the chance.”

“You won’t.”

“I might.”

“You won’t.”

“I’ll stab you.”

“You say that every day.”

“One day I’ll mean it.”

“I’ll start wearing armor to bed.”

Arya opened her mouth to snap something back when a voice, cool and unfamiliar, cut clean through the forge’s heavy heat.

“Sounds like you could use some help.”

Both of them jerked around—Gendry with his hammer half-raised, Arya already half off the barrel, dagger in hand before she even fully saw who was speaking.

The woman standing in front of them had come out of nothing.

One second, there had been only smoke and shadow; the next, her.

She wore plain clothes—simple leather boots, a worn tunic—but there was nothing plain about the way she stood, calm and utterly steady, as if the choking forge air didn’t touch her at all. Her hair gleamed red-gold in the flickering light, loose and wild around her shoulders. And her eyes—gods, her eyes—they were the most unnatural shade of green Arya had ever seen, brighter even than the new leaves that came in Spring.

She didn’t move. Didn’t flinch.

She just waited.

Ready.

Like a cat in fresh snow, poised and sure, muscles coiled beneath stillness.

Arya's fingers tightened on the hilt of her dagger.

“You’re the witch,” Arya said bluntly.

The woman’s lips quirked. “I’ve been called worse.”

“You don’t look like a witch.”

“You don’t look like a lady.”

Arya blinked, then snorted. “Fair.”

There was no fear between them.

Only calculation.

“What do you want?” Arya demanded, low and suspicious, eyes darting around the forge, checking for guards, for traps, for the shape of betrayal.

Rosie didn’t blink.

“I want to take you home.”

Arya laughed—a short, bitter sound. “You and every other liar in the Riverlands.”

“Your sister sent me,” Rosie said evenly.

“Sansa?” Arya’s heart slammed painfully against her ribs.

“She’s safe,” Rosie said. “I got her out.”

“Prove it.”

Without hesitation, Rosie reached into her coat and drew out something small and round—a mirror, but not like any mirror Arya had ever seen. Its surface shimmered, as if the glass itself were alive.

Rosie whispered Sansa’s name.

And suddenly—the world stilled.

"Arya?"

The voice was thin, strained with distance and magic, but it was Sansa’s voice. Arya would have known it anywhere.

She spun around, searching wildly—through the forge, the smoke, the anvil—but there was no one.

“Here,” Rosie said quietly, turning the mirror toward her.

Arya’s breath caught hard in her throat.

There.
In the glass.
Sansa’s face—tear-streaked, smiling, alive.

“Sansa,” Arya whispered, her whole body trembling now.

"I thought you were dead," Sansa’s voice cracked through the mirror.

"I thought you were," Arya gasped back.

“I’m not.”

“I’m coming,” Arya said fiercely.

The mirror’s glow dimmed, the connection fading like mist under sun.

Rosie tucked the mirror away as gently as if it were a living thing.

Arya stood there, shaking, breathless, hollow and full all at once.

Then she moved.

She launched herself forward, arms locking tight around Rosie’s waist, burying her face against the stranger who wasn’t a stranger at all.

“You came,” she choked. “You came.”

Rosie wrapped her arms around her just as fiercely, hand stroking soothingly through Arya’s filthy, matted hair.

"Of course I did," Rosie murmured against her crown.

Arya pulled back slightly, blinking fiercely against the tears she didn’t know she still had left.

“I’m not leaving without him,” she said, jabbing her thumb toward Gendry, who stood slack-jawed and wide-eyed, hammer hanging forgotten in his hand.

Rosie’s smile widened—sharp and sure. “I didn’t plan on leaving either of you.”

“You’re serious?” Arya demanded, half-daring her to lie.

“Yes.”

Arya whipped around. “Gendry! Say something!”

Gendry blinked, jaw working helplessly. “I—uh—witch—mirror—what—”

“The North has forges,” Rosie offered lightly. “And a brother who’ll pay better than any lord.”

That seemed to snap Gendry out of his daze.

He straightened, still blinking but beginning to grin.

"Alright," he said faintly. "Sure. Okay."

Rosie drew her wand.

"Hold onto each other—and me. Don’t let go. No matter what happens."

Arya grabbed Gendry’s wrist in a death grip. He grabbed Rosie’s cloak.

The world twisted.

Folded.

Vanished.

And the forge was empty once more.

When a confused guard stumbled through the doors moments later, he found only silence and smoke.

And not a single soul left to answer for it.

The world spun when they landed.

It spun in a way Arya wasn’t ready for — not like falling, not like being thrown, but like her whole body had been ripped sideways through a hole in the air and sewn back together with the wrong thread. The moment her boots hit the grass just outside a circle of stones humming faintly with something she couldn’t name, she dropped to her knees and vomited everything she hadn’t eaten since dawn.

She hated it immediately.

Not the magic — not really — but the way it made her feel weak. Vulnerable. Like a little girl who’d never held a blade or watched a man die or run from red-cloaked guards with her name already carved into their knives. She spat twice and wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve, swaying for half a second before forcing herself upright.

Behind her, Gendry groaned.

“Oh gods,” he moaned. “I think my brain’s still back there.”

“You didn’t bring one with you,” she muttered, not yet ready to let him see her dizziness. “So you won’t miss it.”

Gendry collapsed onto the grass and groaned again.

“Did we—did we just— what did we just do?”

“We traveled magically,” Rosie said from behind them, her tone infuriatingly calm, like she hadn’t just ripped space and time open and walked through it.

“Magic,” Gendry mumbled into the ground. “Hate it.”

Arya rolled her eyes, staggered upright, and gave him a light kick in the ribs.

“Get up. You sound like a dying pig.”

“I feel like one.”

“You look like one.”

“Says the girl who puked first.”

“I recovered faster.”

Rosie let out a soft laugh — not mocking, just amused — and gestured toward what looked like a simple stretch of grass and trees. But as Arya stepped closer, she felt it: a pulse in the ground, a shimmer in the air, the way her skin prickled like lightning was nearby.

And then she saw it — the outline of a tent, soft-edged, strange in how it appeared only when she didn’t look at it directly.

Rosie whispered a few words under her breath, and the illusion peeled away like cloth from sunlight.

The tent stood tall, elegant, stitched in deep greens and black, runes glowing faintly along the flaps. Arya blinked. Gendry straightened, finally standing, still looking like he was reassembling himself.

“Come on,” Rosie said gently.

Arya hesitated for just a second — not from fear, but from the growing, unspoken storm in her chest. If Sansa was here—if this was real—then that meant she wasn’t alone anymore.

She wasn’t ready.

But she walked forward anyway.

The moment she stepped through the flap, the air changed — warmer, richer, faintly scented with something sweet and woodsy, like cinnamon left to dance in a hearth. The inside was impossibly big, the ceiling far above her head, the space wide like a full cottage with rooms branching out into hallways she hadn’t expected. She barely had time to notice the furniture, the bookshelves, the fireplace flickering with no wood to feed it, or the polished floor that gave back a clean echo to each bootstep.

Because then she saw her .

Sansa.

Sitting on a velvet green sofa, a cup of tea held in both hands, her eyes wide and shining before she even stood.

Arya didn’t think.

She moved — fast and clumsy and breathless — and Sansa did too, and for one fractured second it was like being small again, running barefoot through Winterfell’s halls, colliding in a tangle of laughter and complaints.

They crashed into each other with arms that shook and breath that stuttered.

And the tears came faster than Arya thought they would.

“You’re real ,” she whispered against Sansa’s neck.

“I am ,” Sansa choked, holding her tighter. “You are.”

Arya pulled back, her hands gripping Sansa’s shoulders. “I thought—after Father—after everything—I thought you were gone.”

“I thought you were gone. I thought they’d taken you—”

“They tried.”

Sansa’s face crumpled.

“I was horrible to you,” she whispered. “Before. I called you names, I made fun of your clothes, I—”

“I said you were stupid,” Arya interrupted, tears now freely falling. “I made fun of your songs. I—”

“I wanted you to be like me,” Sansa said, her voice breaking. “I didn’t try to understand you. I didn’t protect you when I should have.”

“I didn’t protect you either.”

“It’s not your fault—Father—what happened to him—it’s not your fault.”

“I should’ve done something—anything—”

“We were children .”

The silence that followed was thick, but not empty.

They clung to each other like it might be the last time. Arya didn’t realize how much she’d missed the smell of Sansa — lavender and firewood and the North. She didn’t realize how desperately she’d needed to hear her laugh, even broken and wet with grief.

Behind them, Rosie had stepped back.

And so had Gendry, awkward and quiet, scratching the back of his neck like he didn’t know where to look.

Rosie's POV

It had been a long time since Rosie had watched something beautiful unfold and felt like she didn’t need to do anything but let it be .

She stood near the hallway, arms loose at her sides, wand tucked away, mouth soft with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes because it was being carried by something heavier — something she couldn’t name but knew by weight alone. Watching Arya collapse into Sansa’s arms had torn something open in her chest that hadn’t quite healed, hadn’t quite stopped aching, not since the war ended and her world stopped making sense.

But this — this mattered.

She had done this .

She had kept her promise to Catelyn.

She had kept her silent promise to Robb.

And more than that… she had given these girls something they’d almost lost forever.

Each other.

Her hands trembled when she finally let herself breathe.

She turned away, blinked fast, and told herself it was just fatigue.

But her thoughts betrayed her. They always did.

Because somewhere inside the warmth of the tent and the laughter that had returned — hesitantly, yes, but returned — was the sharp, thorned truth that no matter how much good she did here, it would never erase what had happened there . No matter how many Stark children she saved, she could not unbury Fred’s body, could not bring back Dora’s laugh or Remus’s tired smile or the way George had once held his twin’s arm like an anchor.

But maybe , she thought, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater, maybe here, I don’t have to lose everyone.

When the girls had calmed and laughter had faded to sniffles and sighs, she stepped forward gently.

“Sansa, do you think you could show Arya your room?” she asked softly. “She’ll be staying with you.”

Sansa nodded immediately, already reaching for her sister’s hand.

“I’d like that.”

Rosie turned to Gendry, who had still not moved.

“I’ll show you yours. Come on.”

He followed, slower, like he wasn’t sure if it was allowed.

“I’m not used to… well, anything this clean,” he mumbled. “Or quiet.”

“You’re allowed to like it,” she said. “You’re allowed to be safe.”

He nodded, still not looking at her directly.

She showed him the small room — simple, but warm. A soft bed. A wardrobe. A desk. A chair that didn’t wobble.

He touched the corner of the desk like it might bite him.

“This is for me ?”

“Yes.”

“I’m just—Flea Bottom,” he said awkwardly. “Bastard. No name. No—”

Rosie smiled. “Names don’t make the person. Choices do.”

He flushed so deeply she thought steam might rise from his ears.

She showed him the bath next — enchanted, with perfect water temperature, warm steam curling around the copper tub and soft towels folded at the edge. Gendry gawked.

“I’ll leave you to it,” she said gently.

When she returned to the kitchen, the girls were already exploring, Sansa showing Arya everything like she had been there for years instead of weeks.

Arya scoffed and stared at the faucet like it had insulted her. “This runs hot water?”

“Yes.”

“From nowhere ?”

“Technically, it comes from—never mind. Yes.”

“I hate it,” Arya said.

“She loves it,” Sansa said fondly.

Rosie laughed and retreated to the kitchen.

She needed to move .

She needed to cook.

Dinner, then. Something filling. Something warm. Something home .

Mashed potatoes. Meatloaf with rosemary and sage. Gravy thick and dark, bubbling gently in a floating pot she stirred with her wand while chopping carrots by hand because magic wasn’t always the point.

She moved through the kitchen like a spell herself, breathing in steam and memory. The scent of roasting beef, the richness of salt and butter, the way the potatoes mashed perfectly beneath the weight of her old wooden spoon — all of it rooted her.

And as she stirred, she made a promise in her heart.

She would get the girls to Riverrun.

Then she would head North.

Bran and Rickon were alive.

And they deserved to be found .

The scent of dinner had begun to saturate the air — not just a whiff of food, but the kind of richness that made one’s shoulders soften without realizing it. It wasn’t magic that did that, not entirely. It was something older, more instinctual. The alchemy of comfort. Of home. The way herbs steeped in gravy could quiet the sharpest ache. The way mashed potatoes could hold warmth the way hands once did.

Rosie moved slowly around the enchanted kitchen, letting her wand flick toward the bubbling pot every few seconds just to keep it from boiling over while she stirred the meatloaf glaze with her left hand. She preferred to do this part manually, no matter how easy the charm would’ve made it. There was something grounding in the repetition — a rhythm to the mixing, the scraping, the way she could pretend she was still in Grimmauld Place, barefoot, humming something she half-remembered from a radio show, cooking for no one but herself and the ghosts who didn’t answer back.

And yet… there was no ache this time. Not the deep, hollow grief she usually carried. It was still there, of course — her shadows never truly left her side — but they were quieter now. Like they, too, were waiting to see what came next.

She caught herself glancing down the hallway more than once.

Not for danger.

But for them.

The Stark girls. The boy from Flea Bottom.

She could hear the distant sounds of their voices now — laughter tangled with mock complaints, Arya’s sharp edge softened by something gentler, Sansa’s voice light with the kind of amusement Rosie imagined she hadn’t been allowed to show in years. It filled the tent like warmth spilling over the lip of a too-full cup.

It was then that she allowed herself to admit something she hadn’t dared to say aloud.

She missed this.

Not just companionship — this . The sense of family, chosen or otherwise. The sound of mismatched footfalls. The accidental clatter of a comb dropped in a washroom. The muffled argument over a borrowed tunic. The sense that someone else existed in your space — belonged in your space — and it wasn’t a burden, but a balm.

She thought, unbidden, of the Burrow. Of warm butterbeer and chaos and too many voices and too much food and not enough chairs. Of Molly bustling about. Of George throwing peas at Ron across the table and Ginny rolling her eyes while slipping Rosie extra biscuits under the napkin.

And now, she would never sit at that table again.

But maybe…

Just maybe…

This table could grow its own roots.

She was ladling gravy into a ceramic dish — one she’d transfigured herself from a lump of old clay found in the bottom of her trunk — when she heard the patter of footsteps in the hallway and the low murmur of Sansa’s voice followed by Arya’s much more direct protest.

“They don’t fit,” Arya was saying.

“They don’t need to fit perfectly,” Sansa replied, with the kind of patience Rosie suspected came from many years of practice. “You’ve got something clean on, and you don’t smell like a forge.”

“I like the forge smell.”

“Well, Rosie might not.”

“I bet she likes it better than vomit.”

Sansa sighed, and Rosie bit her lip to keep from laughing as she turned.

The sight that greeted her was enough to still her completely.

Arya stood barefoot in the doorway, wearing a soft, oversized forest-green jumper Rosie had left folded on the guest bed — the sleeves falling nearly to her fingertips — and a pair of black trousers tied awkwardly at the waist with a bit of ribbon. Her hair was slightly damp, combed back away from her face in a way that revealed just how much she looked like Catelyn — except for the fire behind her eyes, which was all Robb.

And Sansa — tall, graceful, composed even in her soft cream blouse and simple skirt — hovered just behind her sister with a protective, slightly sheepish expression that said: We tried.

“You both look lovely,” Rosie said, smiling. “Arya, the jumper suits you.”

“I look ridiculous.”

“You look clean ,” Sansa interjected. “And Rosie’s going to feed us. At least try not to insult her outfit in front of her.”

“I wasn’t insulting her outfit. Just mine.”

Rosie raised a brow. “Do you insult all your rescuers this way, or am I just special?”

Arya blinked. Then gave a small, almost-grin.

“You’re weird.”

“Thank you.”

They settled around the dining table slowly — Sansa gracefully, Arya with a thud — and Rosie was halfway through pouring warm cider into small goblets when the final figure appeared.

Gendry.

Hair still damp. A clean tunic on and an expression that hovered somewhere between confusion and awe, as if the entire house might vanish if he moved too fast.

He paused near the threshold, eyes darting between the candles on the mantle, the twinkling fairy lights drifting along the ceiling beams, the impossibly perfect golden crust of the meatloaf on the serving platter.

And Rosie saw it then — in the curve of his shoulders, in the way his hands stayed close to his sides like he was afraid to touch anything — he didn’t know how to belong here .

Flea Bottom had given him grime and fire and soot and sweat. But this?

This was care .

She softened her voice, gesturing to the empty seat.

“You hungry?”

Gendry hesitated. Then nodded.

“Good. Sit.”

He did — stiffly, awkwardly — and when Rosie caught Arya glancing at him sideways with the unmistakable look of don’t be stupid , she knew she was right.

He didn’t know how to do this.

He didn’t know how to be welcomed.

Rosie watched him across the table for a moment — took in the sun-darkened skin, the calluses on his knuckles, the broad shoulders of a boy who had done more than his share of growing up — and felt something sharp twist in her chest.

He looked so young in clean clothes.

So lost .

She wanted to wrap him in a blanket, stuff his face with stew, and make sure he never had to sleep on a stone floor again.

The thought made her grin.

She didn’t say it, of course.

But when she passed him the gravy, her fingers brushed his just slightly longer than necessary — just long enough to say you’re allowed to be here .

And he blinked, surprised.

Then nodded.

Dinner was soft laughter and grateful mouths.

Arya devoured the mashed potatoes like someone might steal them. Sansa tried to be polite, then went back for seconds when Rosie encouraged her. Gendry tried to eat slowly, failed, then stopped pretending to be anything but starving.

“This is magic,” he said around a mouthful, then froze. “I mean— not magic, I mean—”

“It is,” Rosie said. “Just the kind you can taste.”

And they smiled — all of them.

The fire cracked. The cider steamed. The table, once empty, breathed with life again.

And for the first time in months, Rosie thought—

Maybe this is where I begin again too.

Chapter Text

Robb’s POV

The stone walls of the Riverrun war room breathed with damp silence, and Robb Stark sat alone within them — half-drained of his fury, half-adrift in it still. His fingers pressed against the edge of the carved map table, not with force but with something more telling: exhaustion. The room was unlit save for the two hearths crackling in opposite corners. Outside, the afternoon waned, though he hadn’t bothered to track the light. Time slipped through his hands like the water of the Tumble Stone, and today — like many days since returning from the Westerlands — felt too long and too hollow for any man to hold.

They would be here soon. The lords. The bannermen. The talkers. The ones who spoke of flames but feared fire. Another council. Another strategy session that would unravel into five arguments before a single conclusion. He already felt the headache forming behind his eyes, dull and insistent.

He had spent too many weeks now shouldering the weight of their expectations — not just as a king, or a general, but as something else. A symbol, perhaps. Or a mistake they were still deciding whether to regret.

The wind moaned faintly down the hallway outside. It sounded like a voice trying to remember its own name.

Robb sighed and closed his eyes.

His thoughts, traitorous as ever, drifted where they often did when he allowed them even a moment’s slack.

To his mother.

She barely left her room anymore. Since the day he returned and told her — quietly, flatly, with no ceremony — that Theon Greyjoy had taken Winterfell, and the youngest of her sons were gone… she had withdrawn in a way that even grief didn’t usually allow. She wasn’t cold, not precisely. She wasn’t angry either. She simply wasn’t present . She had grown quieter, thinner, a shadow in a shawl. She ate what was given. She spoke when spoken to. But the Catelyn Stark he remembered — fierce, sharp, impossibly strong — had vanished like fog under sunlight, leaving behind someone who looked like her, and yet not.

And he wasn’t doing much better.

The lords tiptoed around him more than they did his mother. He heard it in their tones, saw it in the flinches when he barked at a late report or a misplaced rider. He didn’t mean to snap — not always — but it was like his nerves had been stripped to the root, raw and exposed and smoking. One word too many and he flared.

Sometimes he dreamed of wolves.

Sometimes of fire.

Most often, of his brothers’ faces — Bran, laughing as he raced his pony beside Robb’s horse; Rickon, barefoot in the godswood, clutching a handful of pinecones. Sometimes he imagined them lying still in the snow. Sometimes he didn’t have to imagine.

He clenched his jaw and sat straighter, dragging his mind out of the dark with force.

And yet the silence in the room pressed against his back like gravity.

Rosie.

The name drifted through his thoughts like it always did — unbidden, impossible to dismiss. It wasn’t as sharp as it had been at first. The anger had faded, eroded by time and uncertainty. But the ache remained.

She’d left.

He’d told himself he was right to be furious. That she’d vanished without word, without trust. That she owed them more — owed him more.

But even now, after all this time… the part of him that had flared to life around her — the spark, the pull — it hadn’t gone out. It had only grown quieter. Deeper. More dangerous.

He missed her.

Not just the power she brought. Not just the strength.

Her.

He missed her voice. Her bluntness. Her wit. Her silence when it mattered.

He missed what they might’ve had, if he hadn’t been such a coward. If he hadn’t let duty slam the door on anything he might’ve felt.

He stared at the map table again, trying to will his mind to war.

And then the door opened.

The lords trickled in — first Lord Mallister and his lean-eyed son, then Lord Blackwood, his grey cloak damp with mist. Then Lord Bracken, muttering as always. Ser Wendel Manderly arrived with a stack of notes he never read from. Lord Umber’s boots clomped across the stone like thunder. Mage Mormont, silent and watchful, nodded only once before taking her seat. Behind them came the Karstarks — Torrhen quiet, eyes sharp; Eddard missing, likely running late again.

The room filled with steel and suspicion and old grievances.

They began.

They talked of Tywin. Of smoke rising from the south. Of whispers out of Harrenhal — that the Mountain had begun raiding again. That the Riverlands were burning at the edges.

“We must draw him out,” Lord Blackwood said. “Make him choose where to send his strength.”

“He won’t abandon King’s Landing,” said Lord Bracken, “not with the Baratheons still circling.”

“He will ,” Mage said, “if he thinks the North means to cut deeper into the heart of the Crownlands.”

“That’s suicide,” someone muttered.

Robb let them speak. Let them tangle their arguments like vines choking each other. He gave his thoughts when needed — sharp, efficient, more command than suggestion.

And then it came.

“The question still stands,” said Black Walder, his voice oily and practiced. “When will the King marry? The Freys have been most patient. It has been… some time.”

The room cooled.

Robb’s jaw flexed.

He didn’t look at Black Walder. He looked at the map. At the forks of the rivers. At the road that had led them here.

“Not yet,” he said. “The time is not right.”

“You made a vow,” Walder pressed. “Your lady mother—”

“My father is dead,” Robb snapped, louder than he intended. “And I am not in the mood to be lectured about bridges.”

Silence.

He looked to his mother then.

To Catelyn.

She sat beside the Blackfish, her hands clasped. She did not flinch at the mention of vows. She did not interrupt. She simply looked… tired.

And for the first time, Robb realized: she wasn’t going to push it.

Why? his mind whispered. Why now? What’s changed?

Or who?

The doors slammed open.

And Eddard Karstark strode in like a storm had shoved him.

Robb stood at once, hand on the pommel of his sword, startled by the look in the man’s eyes.

“My King,” Eddard said, breathless. “ She’s back. ”

The room stilled.

No one asked who .

They knew.

And then—

“She brought the princesses with her,” Eddard said, his voice ragged with disbelief. “Both of them. Arya. Sansa. They’re alive. They’re here.”

No one breathed.

Robb’s ears rang.

He couldn’t think. Couldn’t blink.

His sisters. His sisters.

He barely registered his mother rising — leaping — from her chair and rushing for the door, faster than he’d seen her move in years.

He followed.

He ran .

The hallway blurred. The courtyard exploded in light.

And then he saw them.

He didn’t move.

He couldn’t.

His boots halted on the flagstones just past the threshold of the castle gate, and for all that his blood surged with the force of a battlefield charge, Robb Stark stood utterly still, rooted to the spot as if the gods themselves had driven a stake through his spine and said watch .

And he did.

He watched his mother fall to her knees like the years she had borne cracked open all at once, her arms trembling, her voice breaking into sobs that tore from her chest without shame or restraint. She clutched Sansa first, then Arya, one hand on each of their faces, pulling them close, whispering their names like a prayer she’d never believed would be answered. Her fingers ran through their hair, over their cheeks, over their shoulders, like she couldn’t convince herself they were real until every inch had been touched.

And the girls—gods, the girls—how they’d grown. Sansa, taller, paler, more refined in her posture but not untouched by grief—he could see it in the way she shook, in the desperate way she clung to their mother as if this were a dream she feared to wake from. And Arya, so changed he might not have known her at a glance if not for those eyes—those fierce, winterborn Stark eyes that now brimmed with tears as she let herself collapse into their mother’s arms without fight or flinch, like the child she should’ve been allowed to stay.

And still he couldn’t move.

Because this— this —was everything he had lost. Everything he thought he’d never see again. And it was happening not in a dream, not in some cruel conjuring of memory, but right here, beneath the sunlit sky of Riverrun, on the very stones he had walked in rage and doubt for months now.

His throat tightened.

His vision blurred.

And then, just past them—beyond his mother’s sobs, beyond the silent crowd of stunned soldiers and lords and servants—he saw her.

Rosalie.

She stood with a boy, a quiet pillar in the storm, her hands clasped before her, her eyes shining with tears that hadn’t yet fallen, her mouth curled in a smile so soft, so full of something aching , that it hollowed out his ribs in one breath.

She wasn’t running.

She wasn’t vanishing like a dream.

She was here .

She had brought them back.

Sansa. Arya. His mother’s heart. His own.

And the realization hit him like a blow to the chest—that she hadn’t abandoned them, hadn’t abandoned him . She had left only to return everything that mattered most. She had stepped into fire, into darkness, into the lion’s den itself, and pulled his sisters back into the light.

For him.

No banner, no sword, no speech could give him what she just had.

And there were no words—no titles, no honors—that could ever repay it.

The disbelief that clung to him cracked.

And in its place came something else.

Something deeper.

Something unspoken and unshakable and terrifying in its truth.

She hadn’t just saved his family.

She had saved him .

Rosie's POV

They tumbled into each other with such force that for a breathless moment Rosie feared Robb might fall apart entirely.

Arya hit him first — small but powerful, her momentum slamming into him like a wave, her arms thrown tight around his neck with all the energy and abandon of someone who had waited a lifetime to feel safe again. Sansa was only a second behind, more graceful but no less desperate, and the three of them collapsed in a tangle of limbs and laughter and choked-back sobs on the hard, damp ground of Riverrun’s outer courtyard. The Northern guards flinched, unsure whether to look or turn away. Servants stood frozen. A few lords who had followed the commotion trailed in, wide-eyed and silent.

Rosie watched from just beyond the line of onlookers, her feet rooted to the packed earth as if it might pull her downward and plant her there forever. Gendry stood beside her, hands in his pockets, shoulders tense but not unkind. His eyes flicked toward the reunion and then toward Rosie, like he was reading the tremble she refused to show.

Catelyn Stark reached her children next — slower only because her legs trembled with every step. When she fell to her knees beside them, her hands shaking as they cupped Sansa’s face and then Arya’s, her cries were not the sound of grief but of something more complicated — of return , of forgiveness, of a mother breaking open and trying to hold the world together with her bare hands.

Rosie couldn’t breathe.

Not because she was holding it in — she realized, with a strange flicker of shock, that she hadn’t been breathing, not properly, not since she last saw Robb. And now, standing here, watching him on his knees with his sisters, his mother clinging to all three of them with tears on her cheeks and joy in her voice, Rosie inhaled fully for the first time in what felt like months.

It was dangerous.

Breathing like that.

Because it meant she wasn’t numb anymore. It meant she felt everything — the ache in her chest, the weight in her bones, the way her heart thudded too fast when Robb finally looked up and saw her .

He was still crouched on the ground, Arya tangled around him like a vine, Sansa crying softly into his shoulder, Catelyn holding their hands as if letting go would be death itself. But his eyes found Rosie through all of it — past the noise, past the blur of motion — and locked onto hers.

He didn’t blink.

He didn’t speak.

And she felt it — like the moment between lightning and thunder — that he saw her, really saw her, and the world shifted in some small, irreversible way.

It made her want to run.

It made her want to stay .

Her smile was slow, and tearful, and so full of quiet pride it hurt her face to hold it.

She had done this.

She had brought them home.

A voice whispered in her mind — not cruel, not mocking, just soft: You did what you could not do before.

A promise kept.

A family returned.

She didn’t realize Robb had stood until he was moving — slowly, as if afraid she might vanish like smoke if he came too fast. He touched Sansa’s hand, brushed Arya’s shoulder, whispered something to Catelyn that made the older woman nod and step back, just slightly. The girls turned, confused, but didn’t follow. Their eyes were red, but no longer broken.

Rosie didn’t move.

She couldn’t.

And then he was in front of her — tall and wind-ruffled and hollowed out in ways she hadn’t noticed from afar. His eyes were rimmed with red. His jaw set with something fierce and ancient. And he looked at her as if he didn’t know whether to curse her or kneel.

“Rosalie,” he breathed.

She opened her mouth, but no sound came.

He stepped forward once more.

And then he pulled her into his arms.

Not a courtly embrace. Not a soldier’s clasp of the shoulder. But a hug — the kind she hadn’t felt in years, the kind that wrapped around her ribs and stole the air from her lungs, the kind that said thank you in every crushed bone and shaking breath.

She froze.

For one terrifying second, she froze.

Because he was warm , and he smelled of leather and pine and blood and wind. Because she could feel the beat of his heart through his tunic and the tremble in his arms and the stubble on his jaw brushing her temple. Because this was not a thank you of words.

It was a prayer.

She swallowed hard, closed her eyes, and raised her arms — slowly, carefully, reverently — and wrapped them around him in return.

“I thought you left,” he whispered, voice cracked. “I thought you were gone for good.”

She didn’t say I almost did.

She didn’t say I had to.

She only said, quietly, “I promised your mother I’d bring them home.”

He pulled back only enough to see her face. His hands cupped her shoulders, his thumbs brushing the fabric of her cloak.

“And you did,” he said, voice low and ragged. “You did what no army could. What no lord dared. You brought them home .”

Her throat burned.

Her smile wobbled.

“I...” she hesitated.

“I know,” he said.

And then, more softly: “Thank you.”

She couldn’t answer.

So she nodded.

And held on just a little longer.

Because she knew — as sure as the wind blew from the North — that this was a moment that would never come again.

Rosie’s POV

The council chamber was quieter than she expected. Not silent — no room holding northern and river lords could ever be truly quiet — but subdued. Watchful. The kind of quiet that belonged in the hour before a storm.

Rosie had walked into many rooms like this before. Briefing tents with wizards who doubted her. Ministry halls filled with greedy men hoping to use her. Even Hogwarts, once, the morning after Dumbledore’s death — that same heavy silence threaded through with unsaid fears. But this felt different. This wasn’t a war of politics or prophecy. This was family . Blood. Kingdoms breaking under the weight of grief.

And Rosie had walked straight into the center of it.

She stood just behind the long stone table, facing the half-circle of seated lords and ladies, flanked only by a pair of guards and her own shadow. The air smelled of oil, ink, and old stone — and beneath that, faintly of rain-soaked armor and something like pine sap clinging to the Karstarks’ cloaks.

Lord Umber sat closest to the hearth, one hand resting absently on the pommel of his axe. Beside him, Mage Mormont watched Rosie with narrowed eyes, not hostile, but weighing. The Blackfish sat stone-still near Catelyn Stark, whose hands were folded in her lap, pale knuckles tight. Edmure leaned forward, as if unsure whether he was meant to speak or listen. Eddard and Torrhen Karstark stood near the back, quiet, but present.

And at the head of the table, arms folded across his chest like a soldier more than a king, stood Robb.

He looked steady.

But she saw the storm behind his eyes.

“You asked to speak with me,” she said calmly, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. Her voice didn’t tremble. “Here I am.”

It was Lord Mallister who spoke first, voice measured but not unkind.

“Lady Rosalie,” he said, “We’re not here to question your actions. Let that be clear. You’ve returned to us two daughters of the North. Our gratitude is not in doubt.”

A murmur of assent followed. Nods. The ripple of agreement. But Rosie waited, because that wasn’t the question.

“But,” Blackfish said next, eyes sharp beneath his greying brows, “we’d like to understand why .”

That word hung in the air like a blade.

And Rosie took a breath.

Not shallow. Not hesitant.

A breath like one takes before battle.

“I didn’t do it because I was asked,” she said slowly. “I wasn’t ordered. I wasn’t coerced. And yes — I had no duty, by name or blood, to your House or your banners. But I did it all the same.”

She stepped forward, letting her fingers rest lightly on the edge of the stone table. Her voice stayed soft. Steady. But each word landed like the edge of a sword on the floor.

“I did it because I know what it feels like to lose family. To bury them and carry on. To fail them. I’ve seen entire halls turned to graves. Held the hands of children who didn’t make it. Lost a godfather I loved like a father. Dug through the rubble of a school filled with names I knew by heart and bodies I couldn’t save.”

She didn’t blink.

“I did it because there are too many names on the list I carry. Because there are still nights I wake up gasping from dreams of fire and bone. And because when I learned that two girls — children — were trapped in that city and forgotten by those who claimed to rule it... I couldn’t let it stand.”

Her voice wavered then — not from weakness, but from truth.

“I have no House left to serve,” she said. “So I serve the living.”

Silence answered her.

The kind of silence that doesn’t demand an explanation — only reflects the weight of what’s been heard.

Even the fire crackled softer.

Catelyn’s eyes were on her. Soft. Wet.

Robb… Robb looked carved from something more ancient than oak. His throat bobbed, but he didn’t speak.

It was Torrhen Karstark who finally asked, voice quiet:

“And… how did you do it?”

Rosie lifted her head.

And began.

She told them everything.

How she watched. Planned. Snuck through the cracks of the Red Keep with nothing but a cloak of invisibility and a heart beating far too loud. How she waited for hours, hidden in shadows. How she stilled the guards outside Sansa’s door with spells older than the stones of Riverrun. How she whispered her name — Sansa, wake up, I’m here to help — and saw a girl barely breathing, too afraid to believe in rescue.

She described the portkey. The tent outside the city. The way Sansa cried for half an hour after they landed — not from fear, but from release.

Then she told them of Harrenhal.

Of the smoke. The screams. The Mountain.

Of how she nearly hexed him then and there, watched from behind cloaked magic as he tore men apart like cloth.

She spoke of Arya — how she’d watched her enter the forge pretending to be a boy, of how she recognized her from Sansa’s words and her own instinct. Of Gendry, suspicious and protective. Of the enchanted mirror and the sisters’ voices across the impossible distance.

When she paused, Arya muttered — almost to herself, almost to the floor — “I’m not a princess.”

Everyone turned to look at her.

Rosie smiled softly. “You are many things, Arya. And ‘Stark’ is the one that matters most.”

And then, as if only just remembering, Rosie gasped and reached for her bag.

She pulled the map free with a kind of reverence, unfurling it before them all.

“I wasn’t sure it would work,” she said. “But I used Sansa’s blood. Blood magic — old, dangerous, not to be used lightly. But I needed to know . And the spell showed five points.”

She laid the map flat on the table, letting her hand hover above the glowing dots.

“Here,” she said, pointing to the dot near Riverrun, “that was Sansa. And this—” her finger moved “—is Arya.”

The other three shimmered faintly.

“One to the west — that’s Catelyn. One here—” she looked to Robb “— you .”

And then the last.

Far North. Past the Neck. Deep in the wild white.

“And this,” she whispered, “this is where the final two lie. Bran and Rickon. Alive.”

Sansa gasped, hand covering her mouth. “I remember ,” she whispered. “The spell — the light — I saw the marks. I didn’t want to hope—”

“But it’s real,” Rosie said, her eyes locked on Robb. “They’re alive.”

Silence shattered into uproar.

It was chaos — the lords talking over each other, disbelief, hope, doubt, joy.

Catelyn said nothing.

Until she moved.

Suddenly. Without warning.

She crossed the space between them in a flash of skirts and breath, and wrapped Rosie in her arms with a sob that sounded like both mourning and resurrection.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “You brought them back to me. All of them.”

Rosie’s eyes stung. But she said nothing.

When Catelyn finally stepped back, Rosie cleared her throat and looked at Robb once more.

“I’ll be leaving in a few hours,” she said.

Silence returned.

“ What? ” Robb said, voice sharp with disbelief.

“I’m going to find them,” she said. “Your brothers. I’m bringing them home to you.”

Robb’s POV

For a moment, it didn’t register.

He heard the words — I’ll be leaving in a few hours — but they echoed strangely, like someone had struck a bell in the back of his skull. It was only when she followed with I’m going to find them that the meaning cut through his stupor like an arrow.

She was going.

Now.

Robb surged to his feet, the chair scraping back against the stone. His palms slammed down on the table before he realized he’d moved.

“No.”

The word rang harder than he intended, and heads turned, but he didn’t care. His heart was pounding too loud.

“No,” he repeated, more controlled this time, but no less firm. “You’re not riding out today. Not alone.”

Rosie didn’t flinch.

“I have to, Robb. The longer I wait, the colder the trail gets. The map gives a location, not a path. The boys are moving. ”

“Then we move with you.”

“There’s no time—”

“There’s a war,” he snapped, “and every move you make echoes across the kingdoms. You’re not vanishing again, not into the snow with no one to guard your back.”

She raised a brow. “I did fine last time.”

“You got lucky.”

“I got your sisters.”

“And the gods help me, I won’t bury you for the price of my brothers.”

It slipped out before he could catch it. Too raw. Too exposed.

She blinked, and he saw her breath catch. She hadn’t expected that.

He scrubbed a hand down his face, turning briefly from the table, then rounded on her again, eyes burning.

“You’ll leave in the morning ,” he said, voice clipped. “And you’ll take guards.”

“Robb—”

“Not negotiable.”

“I work better alone—”

“You won’t be alone.” His tone lowered, softened, but didn’t lose its edge. “I’m not letting you ride into the wilderness with a war on all sides, and lions prowling the woods, and gods know what else, just because you don’t want help.”

Rosie crossed her arms, mouth tight. The fire behind her eyes didn’t waver.

Good. He needed her fire.

But he wasn’t backing down.

“I’ll send two,” he said. “No more. Your tent won’t hold an army. But they’ll know the land. They’ll keep you tethered if your magic can’t. And if something happens —”

“It won’t.”

“If something happens,” he repeated, “I’ll know. ”

Their eyes locked. Neither blinked.

It was Torrhen who broke the silence.

“I’ll go,” he said. His voice was quiet, but sure. “I know the North like the back of my hand. I’ve hunted ice stags through the Wolfswood since I was twelve.”

“And I will too,” said Smalljon Umber, stepping forward with a half-grin. “You’ll need someone who doesn’t flinch easy.”

Rosie turned to both of them, expression unreadable.

She nodded.

Robb exhaled, only realizing then how tightly he’d been holding his shoulders.

“It’s settled, then,” he said.

The council began to shift, murmuring and moving to adjourn, but Robb barely heard them.

His mind was a storm.

Bran and Rickon. Alive.

Rosie, riding North.

He hadn’t even finished processing the first miracle when the second was handed to him like a blade pressed to his ribs. Her going again… it rattled him more than it should. More than was safe.

But he knew this much:

She wouldn’t stay still.

She would do this.

So he’d make sure she didn’t go alone.

Even if part of him begged her not to go at all.

He watched her as she stepped back, thanking Torrhen and Smalljon with a nod, her hair catching the firelight, her expression already somewhere far away — north of the Neck, deep in the snows.

She belongs to the storm, he thought.

But part of her had brought warmth, too.

Part of her… belongs here.

And gods help him — he hoped that part wouldn’t leave again.

Rosie’s POV

The tent was quiet.

For the first time in what felt like years — though she knew it was barely a few months — Rosie sat alone beside her own fire, a goblet of deep red wine in hand, and the silence didn’t weigh like a blade pressed to her ribs. It simply was — steady, warm, almost companionable. Like the tent itself exhaled with her, grateful for the stillness.

The map lay rolled on the desk behind her, its magic dimmed but not gone. Her traveling cloak hung nearby, freshly dried from last night’s storm. Two spare packs rested at the door, already half-filled — one for supplies, one for everything else.

She’d leave at first light.

Her fingers tightened around the goblet. She hadn’t realized how exhausted she was until the firelight danced against the glass and her reflection stared back, worn and shadowed. Not broken — not anymore — but weathered by something deeper than fatigue.

Everything had changed.

Everything.

She had thought saving the Stark girls would feel like the end of something — the last note in a song too long sung — but instead, it had only cracked open the next verse. She was still moving. Still needed. Still choosing to stay.

The wine tasted of blackberries and spice, faintly enchanted to never sour. It burned softly down her throat, warming places that had grown cold with grief she didn’t speak aloud.

She wasn’t ready to sleep.

And maybe that’s why the soft rustle of the tent flap didn’t startle her.

She knew who it was before he stepped inside.

Robb Stark’s silhouette was unmistakable, even haloed by firelight.

She looked up, slowly blinking, as if pulling herself from another world. “Are you real?” she asked, the words half-teasing, half-truth.

He offered the barest of smiles — tight, unsure. “I hope so.”

She gestured to the chair across from hers, curling one leg beneath her. “Come in before the cold swallows you.”

He did. Closed the flap behind him, loosened his sword belt but didn’t remove it. A habit, she thought — or maybe something else. The chair creaked slightly under his weight as he sat, leaning forward, elbows on knees, hands folded.

She poured him a glass before he could ask. Held it out.

He took it. Their fingers brushed.

The silence was thick, but not heavy. Just full.

“I don’t know where to start,” he said finally.

“Start anywhere.”

He looked into the fire.

Then, softly: “We crushed them in the West.”

She waited.

“We took Golden Tooth first. Then Stafford Lannister’s camp at Oxcross. I led the charge. My men call it a victory.”

His tone said otherwise.

“But every mile we gained… I lost more of myself. Every time I dismounted, I had to read names. Write letters. Listen to mothers cry.”

He took a drink. Didn’t wince.

“I thought you’d abandoned us.”

She closed her eyes. Just briefly.

“I know.”

“I thought—” he hesitated. “I told myself you were a liar. That you’d fled when things became too hard. That your talk of promises and help was just another story to ease your way.”

She said nothing.

“But then… I couldn’t believe it.”

He looked at her now — really looked.

“Because part of me knew. You weren’t done. You wouldn’t walk away.”

Her throat tightened.

He set the goblet down on the table at his side, his hands suddenly restless. They curled into fists, then opened again.

“I should have come to you. Before.”

“You told me not to come with you.”

“I did.”

“And you didn’t ask why I wanted to.”

He winced. “I was… afraid. Not of you. Of me. ”

Rosie tilted her head, watching him closely.

“I was already promised to a bridge,” he said, bitter. “A nameless daughter of a house I can barely stomach. It’s a chain I clasped around my own throat. And when you—when you came into our camp, with power and purpose and no one to tell you who to be—” He broke off. “You made me forget the chains.”

Her heart was too loud.

“I can’t forget them,” he added. “But I can’t pretend either.”

His eyes burned into hers.

“I want you.”

The air split.

The words hung between them — not shouted, not desperate, just true.

Rosie looked down.

Her voice, when it came, was a whisper. “You can’t.”

“I know. ”

“And I—” she swallowed “—I won’t be the reason you fall.”

Their gazes met.

And there, in the quiet between ruin and longing, was something else. Something unspoken. Something real.

She set her glass aside, not trusting her hands.

“To be clear,” she said softly, “I didn’t do this for you. ”

He smiled — not hurt. Just understanding. “I know.”

She looked away. “But if I had…”

“I’d never forget it.”

They sat like that for a while.

Then, quietly, she spoke again. “I want to stay.”

His brow furrowed. “What?”

“In the North. After the war. If you’d allow it… I want land. Something to build. A house of my own.”

He sat back.

And then, he smiled.

Not the careful, crafted one. A real smile. Wide. Boyish. Hopeful.

Rosie blinked, surprised.

“I thought you’d be uncertain.”

“I’m not.”

“You’d allow it?”

“I’d fight the gods to make it happen.”

She laughed — startled by it.

They talked after that — softly, steadily. Of what land she might claim. Of what name she’d use. Of the kind of people she’d protect. He listened. She dreamed aloud. And the space between them warmed not with heat, but with possibility.

When the hour grew late, and the fire curled low into embers, Robb stood.

She followed, hand brushing the edge of his sleeve.

He turned to her, as if unsure whether to speak.

Instead, he leaned in.

And pressed a kiss — soft, sure, impossibly tender — to her forehead.

Rosie froze.

Her breath caught.

Her eyes closed.

When she opened them, he was already at the flap.

“Rest,” he said.

Then he was gone.

And Rosie… stood trembling in the quiet he left behind.

Chapter Text

Robb’s POV

The sky was only beginning to turn, a soft bleed of blue pushing at the edges of darkness, when Robb stepped into the courtyard. The cobblestones were slick with morning dew, and the air smelled of horses, leather, and something faintly metallic — like the promise of battle, even in peace.

He hated this hour.

It wasn’t the time itself — he was a Stark, born of cold mornings and long shadows — but what this one represented. Another departure. Another choice made in a world where too many good people never returned.

The camp was quiet. Most of the castle still slept. But near the gates of Riverrun, beneath the banner that bore the direwolf and trout side by side, the three were nearly ready to depart.

Rosie stood beside her mare, adjusting the saddle straps with practiced ease, her wand tucked into a sheath at her hip as naturally as any sword. Her dark cloak hung off one shoulder, catching the breeze just enough to make her seem like she’d stepped from a painting half-finished by firelight and story. Torrhen Karstark, already mounted, wore a loose grin as he listened to Smalljon Umber ramble — the latter tossing another saddlebag onto his horse with a casual thump and a half-muttered complaint about “southern knots and southern packing and how witches clearly never learned how to travel light.”

Robb’s mouth twitched before he could help it.

They looked like a mismatched trio in the best way — tensionless, easy, light. And that lightness… it eased something in him.

Because he’d worried. Gods, he had worried .

All through the night, he’d stared into the fire of his tent and thought of her — of Rosie, sitting across from him just hours before, her legs tucked beneath her, her eyes reflecting flame and sorrow and stubbornness. Her voice — that quiet steel — still echoed in his chest. The things they’d said, and the things they hadn’t needed to say.

The way she looked at him.

The way it almost undid him.

He had wanted to kiss her. Not with passion. Not to claim. Just to know. To confirm that what lived between them wasn’t just war-born madness or impossible timing.

He’d settled instead for a kiss to her brow, his lips barely brushing her skin, but even now… even now it haunted him.

He would carry that one second like a secret brand on his soul.

His mother stood just a few paces ahead, speaking softly with Rosie now. Her hair braided back tightly, her face calmer than he’d seen it in moons. Arya and Sansa hovered close behind — the former holding tight to the saddle of Rosie’s mare like she might still demand a place atop it.

And then Sansa launched forward.

Robb watched as his sweet-tempered sister wrapped Rosie in a hug that nearly lifted the witch from her feet, her face buried in Rosie’s shoulder. Rosie smiled softly, her arms returning the embrace without hesitation.

“Promise me,” Sansa whispered loud enough for him to hear, “promise you’ll come back.”

“I always do,” Rosie murmured back, “even when I shouldn’t.”

He saw how Sansa clung tighter, how her fingers shook.

She trusts her. His chest warmed. Gods, they all do.

Arya’s turn came next. She didn’t rush. She didn’t flinch. She stepped forward and wrapped Rosie in a hug that was fiercer, briefer — like a warrior’s handshake of the soul.

“You should take me,” Arya muttered into Rosie’s cloak. “I’m small. I won’t take up space.”

“You’re stubborn,” Rosie replied dryly. “And if I bring you, who’ll make sure Gendry eats something other than forge soot?”

Arya pulled back and scowled. “I do not care if that boy eats.”

Rosie arched a brow. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Arya groaned but didn’t argue further.

Catelyn came last.

She didn’t say much. She didn’t need to. Her hands took Rosie’s in both of hers and held them tightly, the lines of age and war between her eyes softening just slightly. “Bring them home,” she said.

“I will,” Rosie replied. “Or die trying.”

“Don’t you dare.”

Rosie only smiled.

Robb’s gaze shifted to the men now. Torrhen dismounted to embrace his older brother, Eddard, in a strong, wordless grip. Smalljon thumped his father on the back hard enough to nearly knock Lord Umber off balance, then grinned through whatever crude joke was shared between them.

Then came the part Robb dreaded most.

Rosie turned.

And walked toward him.

Every step she took kicked up the ache in his spine, made his jaw clench harder.

He wanted — gods, he wanted — to pull her to him, bury his face in her hair, breathe in that mix of ink and mint and faint wild spice that seemed to follow her everywhere. He wanted to grip her hips and whisper stay .

But there were eyes everywhere.

And she was not his.

So he smiled.

A wry, half-hearted curl of his lips.

“Try not to hex anyone too important.”

She smirked. “Try not to let your lords murder each other without me.”

“You’re the only thing that keeps this lot civil.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You should.”

She paused. Tilted her head.

“You too,” she said softly.

He blinked. “What?”

“Come back. All of you. Your family’s almost whole. Don’t ruin it while I’m away.”

Their eyes held.

And he nodded. “Be safe.”

Her smile faltered for just a second. Then she gave a cheeky little bow.

“You too… my king.”

She turned and walked toward her horse, mounting with the ease of someone who lived in motion. Smalljon mounted beside her with a whistle. Torrhen adjusted his sword belt and gave a mock salute toward the gates.

Then the three of them were riding.

The hooves clattered against stone.

The gates creaked open.

And Rosie, without looking back, disappeared beyond the walls of Riverrun — carrying half his heart with her.

Rosie’s POV

The Neck was every bit as grim as the stories had promised — and somehow, it still managed to be beautiful.

Rosie had never seen anything like it. The road they traveled wound through marsh and mist, each bend lined with hunched willows and bog-laden brambles, thick with moss and the hum of hidden insects. Water lapped at their boots more often than not, and twice they’d had to lead their horses across half-submerged causeways that looked like they might vanish with the next strong breeze.

But it was alive in a way the South wasn’t. Wilder . Untamed and unbothered by the wars of men. Here, every tree looked ancient enough to remember giants. Every pool of still water hid eyes that blinked from the deep. It was eerie and endless and full of secrets.

And Rosie didn’t mind it one bit.

She rode at the center of their small trio — Torrhen up front, cautious but relaxed, and Smalljon flanking her side with the energy of a wolfhound itching to wrestle anything that moved. They were opposites in all the ways that mattered, and somehow that made them perfect travel companions. Torrhen navigated like a seasoned hunter — pointing out safe paths, signs of movement, even the tracks of a marsh elk once — while Smalljon filled the air with noise. Stories. Quips. Constant chatter meant, perhaps, to cover the discomfort of too much silence. Or maybe he just liked the sound of his own voice.

Rosie found she liked it, too.

“So you’re saying,” Smalljon was saying now, gesturing with his reins as he swerved around a knot of roots in the trail, “that none of the men in your world know how to duel with swords? Not even a single dramatic fencing master with silver streaks in his hair and tragic eyebrows?”

“I didn’t say none ,” Rosie replied, raising a brow. “I said we don’t duel the same way. Not with swords. Not often. And definitely not over tragic eyebrows. ”

“Seems a waste of good drama.”

“Seems a waste of good blood.”

Torrhen chuckled ahead of them. “She has you there.”

“I’m still holding out hope she’s hiding a secret rapier somewhere,” Smalljon muttered. “Witch like her, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s disguised as a comb.”

Rosie smiled despite herself.

It had been like this for days — small jokes, old memories, stories traded like coin. She found herself loosening. Laughing. Opening little parts of herself she hadn’t shared since—

Well. Since them .

Since Ron’s ridiculous schemes and Hermione’s exasperated eye-rolls and the three of them huddled together under a blanket charm eating stolen cauldron cakes while the world tried to kill them.

Her smile faded briefly at the memory. But it returned when Torrhen spoke.

“Your people,” he said, turning slightly in the saddle, “they fought a war too, didn’t they?”

Rosie hesitated. Then nodded. “A long one.”

“And you were on the front lines?”

“I was the front line, most days.”

Smalljon whistled. “And here I thought being raised near the Weeping Water was dramatic.”

“Was it?” she asked.

Torrhen groaned. “Don’t encourage him—”

But it was too late.

Smalljon launched into a winding tale of a cursed creek, an upside-down canoe, and a goat that somehow survived three lightning strikes. Rosie laughed so hard she nearly dropped her reins.

For the first time in a long time, she felt… part of something. Not just needed. Wanted. Not because of her power, not because of prophecy or war or legacy, but because she was Rosie , and she made decent company.

It was that warmth — that comfort — that nearly got her killed.

She turned, mid-laugh, to toss a comment over her shoulder.

And the arrow flew straight past her face.

It missed by less than a hand’s breadth — close enough that she felt the wind of its passage graze her cheek.

She froze.

Torrhen cursed. Smalljon had his sword out before she even blinked.

The woods erupted.

The trees exploded around them.

Figures in red and gold surged from the undergrowth like vipers from a den, blades gleaming, mouths curled in snarls. The soft hush of the Neck’s morning peace shattered under the sudden cacophony of boots and steel and war cries.

“Lannisters!” Torrhen barked, already off his horse and dragging Rosie with him behind the nearest thicket. “Ambush!”

Smalljon let out a string of curses that would’ve made a pirate blush. “That arrow almost took your pretty witch face! ”

“ Thanks , Smalljon,” Rosie growled, yanking her wand free. “Very helpful—MOVE!”

She shoved him just in time to avoid a second arrow — this one burying itself in the tree trunk behind where his skull had been.

They hit the ground hard. Her knees barked against wet earth, but she didn’t care. The world snapped into motion — faster than thought, faster than fear.

Rosie didn’t hesitate.

She raised her wand, slashed it forward, and yelled, “ Diffindo. ”

The spell sliced through the air like a blade, severing the bowstring of a charging Lannister archer. He reeled, scrambling to draw a dagger — and caught Torrhen’s sword in the chest instead.

Smalljon bellowed beside her, swinging his axe in a wide arc that sent one soldier sprawling with a cry.

They were outnumbered. At least two dozen men — maybe more — flanking them on both sides, using the trees as cover. Their assailants were fast, brutal, clearly trained for guerrilla strikes. But they hadn’t planned on her .

Rosie surged to her feet, wand whipping in a smooth arc. “ Confringo! ”

The spell struck the ground at the feet of three men rushing from the east. The explosion tossed them backward like rag dolls, limbs flailing, screams swallowed by fire.

“Seven hells,” Smalljon muttered, watching the flames bloom. “She’s a walking trebuchet.”

“Better than a horse,” Torrhen called, dispatching another soldier with a swift slash. “I don’t have to feed her hay.”

“Careful,” Rosie shot back, firing a Petrificus Totalus that froze two men mid-strike. “Keep talking like that, and I’ll hex you both into pigs and make you pull the cart.”

“I’d be magnificent as a pig,” Smalljon huffed, deflecting a blow with the butt of his axe. “All tusk and temper.”

“Isn’t that just how you are already?”

Torrhen actually laughed .

The three of them moved in sync, their banter a strange harmony to the chaos around them. Rosie wove magic like a song — fire, air, force, binding. Bombarda leveled a tree that had offered cover to three bowmen. A silent slicing charm took a fourth off his feet.

The Lannisters weren’t prepared.

But they were many.

And they kept coming.

Rosie began to feel the strain. Her wrist ached from the speed of her casting. Her heart thundered. Her boots slid in the wet earth, and somewhere in the back of her mind, a warning whispered — You can’t hold this pace forever.

Then—

The battlefield shifted .

The men faltered. Not from retreat.

From expectation.

The noise ebbed.

And through the clearing fog of spell-smoke and breathless curses, he stepped forward.

Massive. Inhuman. A shadow draped in steel and malice.

The Mountain.

Gregor Clegane.

He stood head and shoulders above his men, sword dragging through the muck behind him, helmeted gaze fixed not on the swordsmen who still stood — but on her .

Rosie’s magic prickled against her skin. Cold. Like lightning down her spine.

“That one’s mine,” she said quietly.

Torrhen stiffened. “You sure?”

“I’m sure .”

Smalljon’s grin slipped. “He looks like he eats spells for breakfast.”

“Then he’s due for indigestion.”

Rosie stepped forward, wand raised, eyes locked on the monster across from her.

The men fell away.

There was no order.

There was no signal.

Just two forces — flesh and magic — barreling toward each other like gods at war.

He charged without warning.

No fanfare. No speech. No slow intimidation. Just a thunderous sprint, the ground trembling beneath his feet as the Mountain came at her with the force of an avalanche. Sword raised, massive frame armored like a walking fortress, helmeted face fixed with murderous intent.

Rosie didn’t flinch.

She didn’t run.

She moved — wand flicking in a sharp, upward arc.

“ Protego Maxima! ”

The barrier burst to life just in time — a curved dome of pure light that shattered beneath his blade like a glass wall meeting a battering ram. But it gave her a heartbeat. One breath. One pivot.

She rolled left, mud splashing up her boots, and came up with a slash of her wand.

“ Confringo! ”

The blast hit his chest and did nothing.

No — not nothing. It scorched. Smoked. But the monster didn’t stagger.

Didn’t stop.

His sword came down in a brutal arc.

She dove sideways again, hit the ground hard, and rolled to her feet, wand raised.

“ Expulso! ”

A jet of force knocked him back half a step. Enough to show he could be moved.

She snarled. “Alright, you overgrown arsehole. Let’s dance. ”

He came again — less a man and more a beast in steel. His blade swung too wide, too heavy — perfect for close kills, but terrible against someone who wouldn’t stand still.

And Rosie was done standing still.

She circled him — fast, light, graceful in the mud. Spells flew like arrows: Diffindo to slice at joints in his armor, Reducto to blast the dirt near his feet and throw him off balance, Ventus to shove wind in his face and stagger his footing.

He adjusted.

He learned .

She hated that.

He lunged — sword thrust low, aiming for her legs.

She leapt, twisted in midair, and landed on a root behind him, skidding on the moss but keeping her balance.

“ Accio rock! ”

A head-sized stone zipped from the treeline and smashed into his helmet with a sharp clang . He staggered.

She grinned.

“ Confringo! ”

The stone exploded, smoke and flame pouring around him — and still, he stood .

Burned.

Smoldering.

But standing.

She snarled. “What the hells are you made of?”

His answer was another charge.

She barely dodged it, his gauntlet grazing her shoulder as he passed. The force of it made her stumble. Her wand flicked wildly.

“ Serpensortia! ”

A serpent launched from her wand — massive, hissing — and coiled around his legs. He kicked it off like a child stomping through rope.

“Right,” she muttered. “That was theatrical.”

She ducked his next swing. Too close. She felt the air of it brush her cheek.

She needed more.

More control.

More force.

She closed her eyes, just for a breath.

Death, she thought. Lend me focus, just this once.

And the air shifted.

She felt it — the pull of raw magic. Untamed. Hungry.

She opened her eyes and lifted her wand.

“ Sectumsempra. ”

The curse snapped from her lips with a sound like tearing silk — black lightning, fast and thin, too precise for most to see.

It found the slit in his armor just beneath the helmet’s edge.

And cut.

His momentum slowed.

Then stopped.

Then — slowly, horribly — blood began to pour from his throat.

Not in a spurt. Not a scream.

Just a gurgle , thick and wet, as the monster who had murdered Elia Martell dropped to his knees.

Rosie stared, breath heaving, heart racing, every muscle vibrating with exhaustion and fury.

He fell.

Face-first.

Silent.

Dead.

And for the first time in years, Rosie felt something like peace.

Behind her, the clearing was still.

Smalljon whistled.

“Remind me never to cheat at dice around you.”

Torrhen just blinked. “That was… bloody terrifying. ”

Rosie wiped mud from her cheek with the back of her hand. “I’m buying the next round.”

The clearing stank of blood and smoke and burning moss.

Rosie stood over the corpse of the Mountain, chest still rising and falling with shallow, stunned breaths, her wand slack in her hand. It wasn’t relief she felt. Not victory, not pride, not even the righteous satisfaction of justice dealt. It was something quieter. Deeper.

A weight… lifted.

This man — this beast — would never again crush a child’s skull like fruit beneath his thumb.

That alone was enough.

“Alright,” Smalljon said, still catching his breath and wiping blood from his cheek with the corner of his sleeve. “On a scale of one to ‘sweet mercy of the Old Gods’, how illegal was that spell you used at the end?”

Rosie blinked slowly. “Let’s say… strongly discouraged.”

Torrhen approached from the side, scanning her up and down like he expected to find missing limbs. “You alright?”

She nodded. “Nothing a hot bath and a stiff drink wouldn’t fix.”

“I like this one,” Smalljon muttered, leaning on his axe. “Should’ve brought a bard to witness this.”

“Please don’t.”

The Lannister men who remained were either dead or fled. One tried crawling off through the muck before Torrhen planted a boot on his back and knocked him out cold with the hilt of his blade.

The clearing was still now — birds long since scattered, morning sun barely filtering through the thick trees. Blood steamed on the wet grass.

Rosie looked back at the Mountain’s body.

She tilted her head.

“Help me with something,” she said.

Torrhen raised a brow. “You want to… bury him?”

“Not here.”

She lifted her wand.

And the trees began to bend.

Smalljon jumped back. “Oi — they’re moving. The trees are moving— !”

Roots groaned. Branches cracked. And before their eyes, two nearby trees twisted inward toward each other, bark creaking and peeling back as wood reshaped itself, groaning and reforming — until a long, dark coffin stood where the trees once were, carved from living wood, lined in shadowed bark.

Torrhen blinked. “That’s… honestly impressive.”

Smalljon crossed his arms. “That’s honestly haunting. ”

Rosie ignored them both and levitated the Mountain’s massive corpse into the coffin.

“Where’s Dorne?” she asked, pulling the blood map from her satchel and laying it on a clean patch of rock.

Torrhen and Smalljon exchanged a look.

“South,” Torrhen said. “Desert lands. Hot. Bitter. Filled with sun and scorpions.”

“And lords who hate the Lannisters more than we do,” Smalljon added, scratching his jaw. “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking…”

“I am.”

Rosie pulled a parchment from her bag, conjured a quill, and began to write. Her handwriting was sharp. Precise. In blood-red ink.

The North sends its regards.
— The Witch of the Wolfswood

She sealed it with wax, affixed it to the coffin lid with a soft press of her fingers, then stepped back.

Closing her eyes, she concentrated.

The magic she called wasn’t light. It was old — old as the forest, old as the bones buried beneath it. It wasn’t the kind of magic she liked to touch often, but for this… she’d make an exception.

The wind rose.

The air buzzed with static.

And with a final push of raw power, the coffin vanished.

Gone — vanished from the Neck and flung across the continent like a spear to the edge of sun-drenched stone, where the Martells would surely find it waiting.

Smalljon stood dumbfounded.

“You just—just sent a corpse across the continent. ”

Rosie turned, dusting her hands. “Yes.”

“To the Martells. ”

“Correct.”

“With a note. ”

She smiled.

Smalljon whistled low. “Seven bloody hells. Remind me never to complain about your cooking again.”

“I make excellent meatloaf,” she said.

Torrhen coughed to cover his laugh.

They mounted up slowly, the adrenaline finally fading, leaving behind muscle aches, exhaustion, and a strange thread of… awe . The boys rode in stunned silence for a while, glancing at her every so often like they weren’t quite sure what she was made of — witch, warrior, storm in a skirt.

Rosie just rode on ahead, wind in her cloak, mud on her boots, and vengeance in her wake.

Behind her, the wilds whispered.

And far to the South, in a desert palace drenched in sun and silence, the brothers of Elia Martell would soon unwrap a gift they’d never expected.

The North had spoken.

And Rosie — Lady Black, Lady Potter, Witch of the Wolfswood — had signed her name with blood.

General POV - Sunspear, Dorne

The desert winds had not shifted for days.

They rolled in slow, sultry waves across the pale dunes, slipping beneath the courtyards and colonnades of Sunspear like a serpent winding through sun-bleached stone. The water gardens glittered, untouched by the war that consumed the rest of the realm, their tranquil surface belying the storm that brewed behind the walls of the Old Palace.

It was here — high above the city, in a cool-walled chamber thick with the scent of lemon oil and parchment — that Prince Doran Martell sat ensconced in his high-backed chair, flanked by latticed windows and the steady wheeze of his own lungs. The man moved rarely, and when he did, it was with the deliberation of someone long accustomed to watching the world turn without his consent.

Across from him lounged his younger brother, Prince Oberyn — coiled muscle and restless intent wrapped in silks of gold and orange. A goblet dangled from one calloused hand, his dark eyes sharp and gleaming with the light of a man who’d tasted grief and decided to chase it with pleasure instead of surrender.

“Have you heard the latest word from King’s Landing?” Oberyn asked, swirling his wine lazily. “More blood. More cries for gold cloaks. And yet, no one’s been flayed this week — so I suppose the Lannisters are evolving. ”

Doran exhaled slowly, the sound more sigh than laugh. “Mockery is not strategy.”

“Nor is endless patience,” Oberyn snapped back, though the bite in his voice held no true malice. “I tire of watching lions tear apart stags and wolves while we sit in our tower, licking the wounds they left us.”

“You forget,” Doran said quietly, “that wounds poorly healed may fester. And festered wounds turn to rot. What the realm suffers now is rot, brother. We must outlast it, not be consumed by it.”

Oberyn drained his cup and set it down without ceremony. “Elia’s bones have long since turned to dust. And the men who butchered her children still wear golden crowns and call themselves lions. Tell me — when does outlasting become excusing? ”

Doran’s face did not change. Not even the twitch of a brow. But something behind his gaze flickered — ancient, weighty, unreadable.

Before he could respond, the room shifted.

It began as a hum. A tremor in the air, subtle as breath drawn beneath a sheet.

Then the wind changed — not from the desert beyond, but within the very bones of the room. Candles flickered. The scent of orange blossom turned sharp and unfamiliar.

And in the center of the room, space itself twisted.

It was not a sound that accompanied it, but a pressure — as if the world held its breath. Then, with a shimmer like heat on stone, a long wooden box materialized atop the floor, etchings carved deep into its surface and a thick seal affixed to its lid.

Silence descended.

The guards surged forward.

Areo Hotah, Doran’s silent shadow, stepped to the front, long axe gleaming even in the half-light. His knuckles were white on the shaft.

“Your Grace,” he said, voice low, “it was not there a moment ago.”

“I am not blind, Areo,” Doran said, eyes narrowed. “Inspect it.”

The big man moved forward, slow and measured. He circled the box once, then bent, fingers brushing the parchment sealed atop the wood.

He read aloud.

“The North sends its regards.”
— The Witch of the Wolfswood

Oberyn straightened. “The what?”

Doran’s gaze sharpened. “So it’s true.”

“You’ve heard of her?”

“Whispers. Rumors. Ravens flying too fast from Riverrun. Tales of a witch wrapped in shadow and storm who rides beside the Wolf King and weaves vengeance into the bones of men.”

Oberyn crossed his arms. “I assumed they were just stories to terrify the children of Lannisport.”

“They still might be.” Doran tilted his head. “But they sent us a box.”

“Shall we guess what’s in it? A snake? A warning? A severed hand?”

Doran’s voice turned dry. “Whatever it is, do not touch it.”

Oberyn grinned. “Which is precisely why I must.”

“ Oberyn— ”

But the younger prince had already stepped forward and, with a flourish almost theatrical, cracked the seal and lifted the lid.

And then the world held its breath again.

Because inside, wrapped in fine desert-scented linen and blood-stiff armor, lay the corpse of Gregor Clegane.

The Mountain.

The butcher of Elia Martell.

His face, once hidden by a monstrous helm, now stared blankly at the ceiling — slack-jawed, ruined, unmistakably dead.

Oberyn did not move for a long time.

Neither did Doran.

Even the guards, hardened men of years and war, stared like men witnessing a myth made flesh.

“I dreamed of this,” Oberyn whispered. “I dreamed of him on his knees. Of blood pouring from his eyes, his mouth. I dreamed of crushing his throat with my own hands.”

He knelt, slowly, beside the box.

Tears did not fall.

But they shimmered.

“Elia,” he whispered. “Your vengeance comes, even if not by my blade.”

Doran finally exhaled, the sound ragged, old. “And not from our house.”

“No,” Oberyn said. “From the North. ”

Doran’s eyes moved to the letter again. “This Witch of the Wolfswood… she has done what half the realm feared to try.”

“She deserves more than thanks,” Oberyn muttered. “She deserves alliance. Respect.”

Doran’s fingers tapped the arm of his chair. “Prepare yourself. You will go to Riverrun.”

Oberyn looked up, startled.

“You will speak with the boy king and his witch. Learn their aims. See if this Northern rebellion is one we should… encourage.”

A beat passed.

“Do not provoke the witch,” Doran added, lips thinning. “You are charming, but your tongue may be your doom.”

Oberyn laughed, bitter and warm. “Oh brother. I would never dream of angering a woman who sends corpses by magic.”

Rosie’s POV

It had been a sennight since they crossed into the North, a week of bog and rain and chill and laughter, each day folding into the next with a rhythm that reminded Rosie vaguely of summers spent hiding in tents and forests during a very different kind of war.

Only this time, she wasn’t alone. And the quiet wasn’t heavy.

The trio moved in easy companionship through the mist-choked wilds of the Neck, bypassing main roads and well-watched crossings. Rosie, with a flick of her wand and a muttered incantation, built bridges where the Twins would have demanded tolls, conjured fire in swamp-rot hollows, and summoned protective wards that flickered like gold threads in the half-light to keep biting flies and worse things at bay.

Smalljon was the loudest. He sang marching songs and told exaggerated stories of his father's drinking contests. He had a running joke about her magic being some form of Southern courtship ritual — "Admit it, you’re just trying to impress me. You like my beard."

Torrhen, by contrast, was the calm shadow beside her. Quick to smile, quicker to observe. He’d point out moss trails, roots worn down by foot traffic, the subtle bend in branches that spoke of someone — or something — having passed recently.

Rosie liked them both.

She hadn’t meant to.

Hadn’t wanted to.

But after days of firelight and shared meals, mud-caked boots and whispered watch rotations, it was hard not to.

Tonight, she made pizza.

They didn’t know what it was — not really — but when the smell hit their noses, Smalljon nearly fell off the log he’d been using as a stool.

“Gods above, Witch,” he said with reverence, “if you marry me, I’ll build you a keep made of cheese.”

“Cheese goes bad,” Torrhen said, dry as old parchment.

“Then I’ll salt it,” Smalljon shot back. “Witch, I am ready to compromise. ”

Rosie laughed — truly laughed — and slid the pan of bubbling dough and cheese and herbs onto a conjured stone slab.

She watched them eat like wolves, smiling faintly at the sight. There was something so pure in it — this quiet joy. It reminded her of stolen moments at Grimmauld Place, Ron and Hermione bickering over toast, Kreacher tutting in the background.

And it reminded her of Fred.

Of Tonks.

Of what she'd lost.

Her smile dimmed.

But the warmth stayed.

She took a bite of her own slice and let herself just… be.

Later, after bellies were full and the fire burned low, Rosie sat between the men, tracing the map with a finger. The glow from her wand hovered just above, casting everything in soft blue light.

“They’re heading north,” Torrhen said, his voice thoughtful. “If it were me, I’d head for the Wall.”

“Jon,” she murmured.

“Only kin left on this side of the realm,” Smalljon said. “And the Wall’s hard to track from above. Safer than Winterfell.”

“So that’s where we go,” Rosie said.

They folded the map. The plan was set.

But fate, as always, had its own way of twisting paths.

They met him two mornings later, at the edge of a bog that smelled of iron and wet moss.

He stepped out of the mist like he’d been part of it all along.

A man slight in frame but straight-backed, clothed in layered green and brown with a spear that looked more like a walking stick than a weapon. His eyes were old. Not aged. Old.

“Rosalie Potter,” he said.

Torrhen and Smalljon reached for weapons, but Rosie raised a hand.

She recognized him from stories she heard.

The man before her was a legend.

“Howland Reed.”

He inclined his head.

“You’re far from Greywater Watch,” she said carefully.

“I could say the same.”

The boys watched, wary. The mist thickened behind him.

“I know where you’re going,” Howland said. “I’ve come to ask a favor.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You knew the boys were alive?”

“I knew when the wind shifted and the godswood burned brighter.”

Cryptic. Of course he was.

“Then why not go after them?”

He smiled. “Because it isn’t my journey. It’s yours.”

She stared. “What favor?”

“My children — Meera and Jojen — are with them. My son saw a vision. My daughter followed. They left before I could stop them.”

Rosie’s mouth opened to ask how he knew that.

But he said something else instead.

“The story of the Three Brothers… it’s more than myth.”

Everything in her froze .

Howland tilted his head. “The wand. The cloak. The stone. You carry them. Not visibly. Not always. But they’re with you. I saw them once — many years ago. In a dream. Or a memory. It’s hard to tell.”

Rosie stared at him, cold creeping up her spine.

“You’re not supposed to know that.”

“Few are. Fewer still survive the knowing.”

He stepped forward. “Bring my children home. And I will hold the Neck until the war ends, and the wolf king calls me north again.”

She nodded, stunned silent.

As quickly as he’d come, he was gone — vanished into the fog, leaving only a soft ripple of reeds and the taste of magic in the air.

Chapter Text

Robb’s POV

It was early — the kind of still, gray hour when even the crows hadn’t yet begun their song — and Robb Stark was already at his table, fingers ink-stained and jaw set tight as a bowstring.

Outside, Riverrun’s stone courtyards still held the ghost of night’s frost, clinging stubbornly to the iron fixtures and windowsills as if reluctant to melt. The Riverlands didn’t freeze the way Winterfell did, but there was still a bite to the air come morning. It tasted of old rain and tension. Of war still lingering in every breath.

He’d been at the maps for hours now — the one of the Westerlands marked in red-slashed routes and a fresh one of Harrenhal, its black towers curling up from the parchment like claws. They had scouts in the field. The Blackfish had sent word last night: movement, perhaps a weak flank, maybe a chance to finally strike through the Vale of Arryn’s inaction and seize the burning carcass of that cursed keep.

But the ink bled.

Not just on the parchment. In his thoughts.

Because no matter how sharp he tried to be, no matter how many letters he signed with the weary, too-heavy hand of a king too young to know what peace even looked like… his mind kept circling back to her.

Two moons.

It had been nearly two full moons since Rosalie Potter had ridden north from Riverrun with Torrhen and Smalljon at her side, cloaked in gray and wrapped in mist and purpose. She’d vanished down that long road with a wave and a promise, and left him with silence.

No raven.

No message.

No whisper of her whereabouts.

And it wasn’t like her.

He told himself she was fine. Told himself she was too powerful to fall to bandits, too clever to walk into a trap, too stubborn to die before she’d finished what she set out to do.

But his heart didn’t always listen to reason.

Gods, he missed her.

He missed the way her tent always smelled faintly of cinnamon and pine. Missed her sharp tongue, her clever eyes, her soft hands and the way she’d touch his elbow when making a point like she didn’t even realize she was doing it. Missed her laughter, the quiet kind that hummed in her throat like a secret she wasn’t ready to share yet.

He missed Rosie .

At one point, slumped in his chair, parchment crinkling beneath his hand, he let out a soft, humorless chuckle.

“If Jon were here,” he murmured to the empty room, “he’d never let me live this down.”

Jon would’ve teased him mercilessly. Would’ve called him moon-eyed and soft and muttered something about witches and love potions. They’d laugh, then, and Robb would punch him in the shoulder and tell him to piss off.

He missed that, too.

Missed Jon .

And it hit him, suddenly — the weight of everything he hadn’t done.

He hadn’t spoken up more often when Theon teased him. Hadn’t defended Jon when mother’s cold looks pierced deeper than words ever could. Hadn’t told him — even once — how much he mattered.

Rosie had.

Rosie, who came from another world, who didn’t know what it meant to grow up in Ned Stark’s shadow, had understood Jon in a way that shamed Robb. She saw him as a brother. As an equal. No bastard, no shame.

Just Jon.

Robb’s hands curled into fists on the edge of the table. His knuckles went white.

“I’ll never call him that word again,” he muttered aloud. “Never.”

He’d make it right. When the war was over — gods willing — he’d ride to the Wall himself, crown be damned, and throw his arms around his brother and tell him what he should’ve said years ago.

Just as his thoughts began to spiral into guilt again, the door burst open without ceremony.

And in walked Arya.

She didn’t knock. She never knocked. She flopped into the chair opposite his desk with a loud, aggrieved sigh and crossed her arms like she was preparing for a duel.

Robb blinked at her.

She was dressed in boy’s breeches again — her tunic half-tucked, boots unlaced, hair a wild tangle of curls and smudges. There were faint bruises on her forearms and an ink blot on her cheek. A dagger hung at her hip. She looked feral.

“Good morning,” he said, amused. “To what do I owe this royal intrusion?”

“ Bored, ” she said immediately, with a dramatic tilt of her head. “Mother wants me to do more lessons.”

Robb raised a brow. “Is that so terrible?”

“She’s trying to make me read histories. And sew. And sing. It’s torture. Gendry says it’s because I’m a princess now.”

“I saw you kick Gendry in the shin last time he called you that.”

“He deserved it.”

Robb couldn’t help but grin.

But he looked closer — beyond the bluster, the defiance — and saw the tension beneath. A tightness in her jaw. A weariness in her shoulders.

She felt caged.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he said.

Arya’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of deal?”

“You keep up with the Maester’s lessons. Reading, history, at least a little sewing. No singing.”

“ No dancing either, ” she shot back quickly.

“No dancing,” he agreed, trying not to laugh. “In exchange, I’ll have Eddard Karstark give you proper sword lessons. Sparring. Strategy. Maybe even bow work.”

From the corner of the room, Eddard Karstark made a noise like a dying bird.

Arya’s eyes lit up.

“You mean it?”

He nodded. “I’ll tell Mother myself.”

She whooped, stood up, and tackled him.

He laughed — full and bright — as she hugged him fiercely and then bolted for the door, shouting for Eddard to meet her in the training yard before she forgot how to be merciful.

Robb leaned back in his chair, breathless with laughter.

His smile faded only when his uncle entered minutes later, face grave.

And with him came the news that would change everything.

The halls of Riverrun were not quiet long.

Robb barely had time to recompose himself before Edmure burst into his solar with flushed cheeks and the distinct gait of a man who’d been running and regretting it for the last fifty paces.

“They come bearing banners we didn't expect,” Edmure said between breaths, “but it’s not Lannisters.”

Robb straightened at once. “Then whose?”

Edmure handed over a small, rolled banner taken from one of the riders at the gate — orange and gold, with a sun pierced by a spear.

Robb’s heart stalled.

“ Dorne. ”

The word dropped like a stone in the chamber.

He stared at the fabric, mind suddenly racing through a thousand questions and none of them with answers. Why would the Martells come here , to Riverrun? Why now? What did they want?

“Send no reply,” Robb ordered, standing quickly. “Gather the guards, but don’t form a line of spears — let’s not startle them.”

“And yourself?” Edmure asked.

“I’ll meet them in the yard.”

By the time he reached the outer courtyard, the Dornish party had already crossed through the main gate, sun shining fiercely against their golden saddle trappings and long flowing robes.

They looked like they had walked out of a legend.

At their head, astride a sleek black courser, rode a man Robb had heard of only in whispers and wine-soaked tales: Prince Oberyn Martell — the Red Viper of Dorne.

He was dressed in gold-threaded robes, the sun-spear of his house pinned to one shoulder. His skin was sun-burnished, his dark eyes sharp and deeply amused, as if the world were a chessboard and he already knew where every piece would fall.

Surrounding Prince Oberyn were three women, each striking in her own way. One had dark, unflinching eyes and twin daggers resting easily on her hips, exuding danger with every step. The other two moved like dancers, their beauty effortless, their poise reminiscent of blooming summer roses with thorns just beneath the surface. They didn’t wear crowns, but they carried themselves like royalty born of fire and rebellion. Behind them, a small guard marched in silence, spears raised, expressions unreadable.

Robb stood at the top of the stone stairs, flanked by his lords, eyes unreadable.

The Viper dismounted fluidly, bowed — though not too deeply — and looked up at the young king with the air of a man thoroughly enjoying himself.

“King Robb,” Oberyn said, voice like honeyed wine. “It is a pleasure to finally see the Wolf who’s made the lions tremble.”

Robb did not smile. “Prince Oberyn. We don’t often receive guests from the South. Especially unannounced.”

“Forgive the intrusion,” Oberyn said smoothly. “But my brother, Prince Doran of Sunspear, sends word of potential alliance. We thought it best delivered… in person.”

Robb’s eyes narrowed. “And what, pray, has inspired this change in Dorne’s silence?”

“We may discuss that,” Oberyn said, “if you’d grant me the courtesy of council.”

Robb nodded once. “Follow me.”

They led the Martells through Riverrun’s halls, a dozen Northern and Riverland lords falling into step behind them like a pack of wolves shadowing a snake.

Oberyn, of course, seemed unbothered.

He walked as if the castle belonged to him already.

When they entered the war room, Robb gestured for his guest to sit. Oberyn took the seat with a smirk; Robb sat opposite, back straight, hands folded.

The rest of the room stood — Mormont, Karstark, Umber, Blackfish, Edmure, Mage Mormont, and more — all watching with thinly veiled mistrust.

Oberyn looked around, eyes twinkling.

“No wine?” he asked, with mock disappointment. “This diplomacy grows ever colder the farther north one goes.”

“We prefer clarity,” Robb said flatly. “Speak your purpose.”

Oberyn leaned in, elbows on the table. “I heard rumor of a witch, Wolf King. A woman with power in her blood and vengeance on her breath. I ask only if she’ll be joining us for this meeting?”

Robb froze.

His voice remained calm — but there was ice under the surface.

“And what business would the Prince of Dorne have with a woman sworn to my cause?”

The Viper smiled. “Only that she has made herself known to us. Quite literally , in fact.”

He reached into his cloak and pulled out a folded parchment.

Then he told the story.

Of how a wooden coffin had appeared in Sunspear — sealed, enchanted, and cold. How his brother had ordered it opened. How they found the Mountain’s body inside.

Gasps and mutters rippled through the room.

Oberyn unfolded the parchment and read aloud.

“The North sends its regards.”
— The Witch of the Wolfswood

Robb’s stomach dropped.

Rosie.

Gods above, what have you done?

The Riverland lords murmured in awe — Blackfish muttering something about divine justice, Edmure closing his eyes in relief.

Oberyn reclined like a man who had just tossed a match into a dry field.

“So,” he said lightly, “you can see why we were… intrigued.”

Robb masked his thoughts. “I was not informed of this.”

Oberyn’s brows lifted. “Then your witch works in secrecy.”

“She works in purpose ,” Robb said coldly. “And her mission remains hers alone.”

Oberyn hummed. “That alone makes her formidable.”

Robb clenched his teeth. “Why are you here?”

And finally, the Dornishman’s smile faded.

He leaned forward.

“Because my sister, Elia Martell, was raped and murdered by the Mountain. Her children bashed against walls. Because her blood cried for vengeance, and the realm answered with silence. Because your witch has delivered the vengeance I have sought for half a lifetime.”

Robb said nothing.

Oberyn’s voice softened. “Dorne has stayed quiet. But no longer. My brother has decided that the North fights the battle we should have joined long ago. We wish to offer alliance. Spears. Ships. Coin. And myself — if you will have me — to fight beside your banners.”

Robb blinked.

Allies.

Real ones. From the South. Dornish spears were sharp, and they hated the Lannisters perhaps more than he did.

It was a gift. It was also a nightmare .

Rosie, he realized, had done this. Had set it all in motion.

Without his permission.

Without a word.

His heart ached. His mind raced.

But his voice was calm.

“You’ll have your meeting. Your audience. Your answer. But understand this — the North does not bend. Not to lions. Not to dragons. And not to snakes, no matter how finely they smile.”

Oberyn’s grin returned. “Then it is a good thing I intend to stand , not bend.”

They clasped hands.

The pact was made.

And Robb, as he looked toward the far horizon and thought of a girl wrapped in flame and shadow, whispered a silent prayer:

Come home soon, Rosie.

I don’t know how much more I can do without you.

Rosie's POV

The wind howled with a voice sharp as broken glass, curling around Rosalie like a living thing, sinking claws into her exposed cheeks and biting deep. Even with every inch of herself bundled beneath layers of charmed wool and magically enhanced thermal fabric from her own world, the chill of the North clung to her bones like grief. It was different than the winters she'd known back home. This cold didn't just touch the skin—it seeped . It lingered . It waited .

She walked carefully, her boots crunching through snow that had long since turned to icy powder beneath the endless sky. They were only a few days out from the Wall now—Smalljon had said as much just that morning with his usual cheer, even as frost rimmed his beard and his laughter turned to mist.

Rosie was no Northern girl. Not in the way Arya was, with her ice and teeth and sharp little grin. But she'd survived worse than this. She’d lived through a war that ate the light from the sky. She could live through snow.

Even if the novelty of travel had long since worn off.

She had abandoned the rough, patchwork cloaks the locals used in favor of clothing conjured from memory: a soft, oversized fur coat in the palest gray that fell nearly to her calves, tied snug around her waist to keep warmth sealed in. Beneath it, she wore thick, insulated black pants lined with warming runes, charmed to keep the heat close and the cold out. Her boots were knee-high leather, treated to withstand the snow, the kind that would’ve made even Hermione proud. Around her neck, a fluffy black scarf wrapped high, shielding her mouth and nose when needed. And atop her head, tucked snug over her curls, was a white beanie knit by hand, crowned with a ridiculously fluffy pompom.

Smalljon had nearly choked the first time he saw her wear it.

“By the gods, Witch,” he had wheezed between laughs, “that thing looks like a bloody snowball tried to eat your head and gave up halfway through.”

She’d stuck her tongue out at him.

Now, trudging through knee-deep snow with him and Torrhen flanking her, she was quietly grateful for the ridiculous hat and the heat it offered.

The sky overhead was the color of steel and bruises, heavy with unshed snow. Everything was so quiet. No birds. No rustling of trees. Just wind, and breath, and the ever-present crunch of boots through frost.

Her thoughts drifted back to the journey—weeks of travel, of rain-soaked trails and sleepless nights, of laughter shared over conjured meals and frostbitten fingers. Of the two men who had become her unlikely companions. Torrhen with his dry wit and thoughtful silences, Smalljon with his booming laughter and endless teasing. They were good men. Solid. Loyal.

And hers, in a strange way, at least for now.

She'd grown used to them. Maybe even fond.

But she was so very tired.

They were moving slowly now. The snow had grown deeper, and even with magical assistance to ease their horses' paths, progress was hard. The Wall loomed ahead in her thoughts like a half-remembered dream—a promise of answers, of family, of the final names to check off her list before she could rest.

They made camp that evening in the shelter of a windblown rise, where the terrain dipped just enough to offer protection from the worst of the gale. Rosie conjured the bones of her tent in a matter of seconds, watching with practiced ease as the enchanted canvas expanded and secured itself into the snow. The boys were already building the fire nearby, stripping kindling and prepping the chicken they’d bought days earlier from a frozen little village tucked into the base of the Northern mountains.

She was halfway through floating the cooking spices toward them when it happened.

A ripple.

A tug .

Something deep inside her magic twitched , like a string pulled too tight.

She froze.

The jar of thyme dropped from midair into the snow with a soft thunk .

Behind her, Torrhen looked up. “Rosie?”

She didn’t answer.

Her eyes were fixed to the east, her wand slipping into her hand like a reflex.

Something was there.

Her heart began to race. Not with fear.

With recognition.

“Shit,” she breathed. And then she was running.

“ Witchy! ” Smalljon shouted after her, startled. “Where in the bleeding hells are you— Oi! ”

They followed.

Through the snow, over the ridge, feet slipping and hearts thudding, the three of them ran, the breath steaming before them in the dying light of dusk.

It was pure instinct.

She didn’t know what she was chasing.

Only that she had found them.

They crested the next rise and came to a stop as if they’d hit a wall.

There—down below them, half-shadowed in the dim light—stood six figures.

And two wolves.

She couldn’t move.

The cold had nothing to do with it now.

There they were—six figures huddled in the snow, wrapped in furs and silence, their outlines etched in the low light like something out of an oil painting. Shadows and pale breath. A boy hooked to the back of a towering man, slumped forward but watching. A smaller child nestled behind a woman with a blade on her hip, peeking over her shoulder with wide, uncertain eyes. A girl and a boy, slightly older, standing just off to the side—both wary, both frozen. And then… the wolves.

Ghosts of old songs.

Huge, silent, regal.

They flanked the group like sentries carved from ice, their yellow eyes catching the fading light, their hackles raised.

The larger of the two—black and lean and mean-looking—stepped forward just enough to bare his teeth in warning.

“Bloody hell,” Smalljon whispered from behind her.

Torrhen didn’t speak, but his hand went to his sword out of instinct. Rosie didn’t blame him.

The moment hung between them all like a held breath.

Two groups staring at each other across snow.

One armed with purpose.

The other with caution and fear and a deep, bone-shaking exhaustion that clung to their clothes and their posture.

They’re just children, she realized. Children who've seen too much, gone too far, and lost more than they ever should’ve.

And somehow, by sheer dumb luck or magic's mercy, she'd found them.

Still, she couldn’t just approach them—not with wolves tensed and eyes narrowed. Not when trust was a paper-thin thing on the best of days.

So she did what she knew would speak louder than any word.

Slowly, carefully, she stepped forward.

Her arms rose, palms up and open, wand still tucked away. Her beanie was halfway down her forehead, scarf pulled low enough to show her face, to show her eyes .

“Hello,” she said softly, her voice the barest whisper. “My name is Rosalie Potter. I’m here… for you.”

No one moved.

The big man— Hodor , it had to be—shifted slightly, adjusting the weight of the boy on his back. That boy's eyes, though… they were sharp. Watchful. They didn’t match the frailty of his limbs or the hollowness of his cheeks.

Bran, she thought. That’s Bran Stark.

The other boy, smaller and more wild-eyed, clung tighter to the woman in front of him.

Rickon.

Rosie took another step, her breath fogging around her.

“The men with me are Torrhen Karstark and Smalljon Umber,” she continued, nodding behind her. “Your brother sent us. Your brother , Robb. He knows you're alive. Your sisters—Sansa and Arya—they’re safe. With him. Your mother is… she’s desperate to see you again.”

That cracked something.

The boy on the giant’s back blinked. Once. Twice. His lips parted.

“Robb sent you?”

It came out quiet. Raw.

Rosie’s heart clenched.

“He did,” she said. “He doesn’t know where you are exactly, but he knows you’re out here. He’s been praying we’d find you.”

The girl beside Bran looked skeptical. The boy— Jojen, it had to be —looked more suspicious than anything else.

“How do we know you're not lying?” he asked, his tone edged with frost.

Rosie didn’t bristle.

Instead, she reached into her coat, past the scarf and the fur, and pulled out the mirror.

It hummed softly in her hand.

Her fingers curled around it with practiced ease.

“Because I wouldn’t come this far to lie,” she said.

And with that, she tapped the glass and whispered, “Sansa.”

The reflection blinked once—just Rosie’s own anxious expression for a beat—before it shifted.

Sansa’s face filled the mirror, windblown and flushed.

“Oh, thank the gods, Rosie—”

But before she could finish, the mirror was yanked out of her hands.

“ Rosie? ”

Robb’s voice.

Sharp. Urgent.

Rosie blinked in surprise as the mirror jostled, the image shaking wildly.

“Where have you been ?” Robb snapped. “Seven hells, we’ve been—Sansa! Stop pulling—Arya! Let go of the godsdamn—”

It was chaos.

“ Robb! ” Sansa shouted from somewhere.

“ Is it her? Is it really her? ” Arya’s voice chimed in.

Rosie snorted.

But then—then he appeared.

Clear. Steady.

Robb Stark.

Looking like he hadn’t slept in days, eyes rimmed in shadows, jaw tight with worry—and relief so bright it nearly made her flinch.

“Rosie,” he said.

Just her name.

One word. Everything.

She didn’t trust herself to speak.

So she turned the mirror, slowly, and held it up toward Bran.

The boy blinked. Stared.

And then the voice from the mirror said, “ Bran? ”

Bran’s breath hitched.

His lips trembled.

“… Robb?”

She saw it then—the way the tears welled and fell before he could stop them. His fingers clutched at Hodor’s collar. His whole body trembled.

“ Robb, ” he said again, louder. “Sansa? Arya?”

“Bran!” Sansa's voice was unmistakable. “You’re alive— you’re alive! ”

Arya shouted his name next.

And then, quietly, Catelyn's voice broke through:

“ My sweet boy… ”

Rosie turned her head, giving him privacy, even as her own throat tightened.

She couldn’t look at the mirror again. Not yet.

Let them have this moment.

She stepped forward and gently turned the glass back toward herself, saw Robb’s tear-filled eyes, saw the wonder and love and ache pouring out of them like sunlight breaking through clouds.

She gave him a small smile.

“I’ll see you soon.”

Then the mirror dimmed.

Rosie exhaled slowly, the mirror still warm in her hand. The echo of Robb’s voice — tender, awed, choked with emotion — still clung to the cold air like embers that refused to die. She tucked it away into her coat, the fabric brushing her wrist like a quiet exhale, and turned slowly, eyes sharp, drawn now to the two figures who hadn’t spoken a word during the entire reunion.

The Reed children.

Jojen stood like stone, arms crossed over his thin chest, that same somber frown drawn deep into the corners of his mouth. Meera beside him shifted uncomfortably, as if sensing what was coming, and when Rosie took a single step forward, both their backs straightened like arrows pulled taut against a bow.

She studied them for a long moment in silence, her expression unreadable, though there was something in the tightness around her mouth — something between curiosity and tired disdain.

Then she sighed. A soft sound. A weariness born of war and prophecy and too many children told they had to sacrifice everything for a greater cause.

“Your father wants you back in the Neck,” she said quietly, voice smooth but edged with steel. “Sends word you snuck off in the night chasing visions.”

Meera’s head snapped toward her, eyes wide, like a girl caught stealing from a feast table. Jojen’s jaw clenched tight enough she could see the muscle ticking in his cheek.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said flatly. “You don’t belong in this story.”

Rosie raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Do you have a script hidden somewhere I haven’t read?”

Jojen narrowed his eyes. “You’ve changed things. Interfered. Bran has a destiny —”

“Bran has a family, ” she snapped, sudden and cold as ice cracking beneath thin boots. The chill in her voice silenced everyone. Even the direwolves shifted uneasily. “He has a mother who’s lost too much already. A brother who carries the weight of the North on his shoulders. Sisters who need him. And a childhood that was stolen.”

She took another step forward, eyes locked on Jojen like a storm cloud preparing to strike.

“And you want to send him beyond the Wall,” she said, slow and deliberate, “to chase riddles?”

Jojen opened his mouth — perhaps to protest, perhaps to defend his strange visions — but the look on her face stopped him cold.

“I’ve read enough prophecies,” Rosie continued, voice softer now but no less dangerous. “They’re never kind. Never clear. And they demand more blood than they’re worth.”

Bran shifted uncomfortably on Hodor’s back, his eyes flicking between them, uncertain.

“Is it true?” he asked quietly, his voice smaller than Rosie had ever heard it. “Can you fix me?”

She looked at him then, really looked — at the boy who'd been flung from a tower, who had ridden for moons on the back of gentle Hodor, who had seen too much and dreamed too far.

She smiled.

Gentle. Fierce. Certain.

“Yes,” she said simply. “By tomorrow morning, you’ll stand on your own feet.”

Bran inhaled sharply. Rickon let out a quiet, awed little gasp. And Meera… Meera looked at her brother, and something in her face — the hard set of her jaw, the tension in her shoulders — cracked . Just a little.

Jojen said nothing more.

The air shifted again. The tension eased. The wolves sat.

Rosie turned her gaze toward the younger Stark then — Rickon, all sharp elbows and wild curls, peering up at her with those eyes so much like Robb’s it nearly winded her.

“I want to see Jon,” he said, straight-backed and stubborn. “Bran said we’re close. We’re this close. ”

Bran nodded beside him, his voice steadier now. “He’s our brother. He should know.”

Rosie hesitated. She knew what this meant. Every delay was a risk. Robb would lose his mind if she added even a day to their journey back. But…

Her eyes slid shut for a moment.

Robb. The way he had said her name through the mirror. The ache that lived in his voice like a buried thunder. The hope in Bran’s eyes now. The softness in Rickon’s.

She sighed. Loudly.

“You two are lucky I’m a sucker for Stark boys,” she muttered, rolling her eyes skyward.

Torrhen groaned behind her. “Gods help us.”

“You realize,” Smalljon added, deadpan, “the King will have our heads on pikes if we don’t return on time. I just got used to mine.”

“He can wait a few days,” Rosie said breezily. “What’s a minor diplomatic crisis between friends?”

“You’re impossible,” Torrhen said.

“And yet you follow me anyway,” she shot back, grinning now as she turned toward the path that would lead them east — to the Wall, to Castle Black, to the brother left behind.

But beneath the teasing and warmth, a current of something else tugged at her.

Curiosity. A pull.

Jon Snow.

The last piece of the Stark puzzle.

She was ready to meet him.

She just didn’t know yet what it would mean.

The journey back to their camp felt like walking in a dream stitched from shadow and starlight, their path traced by torchlight and the slow, rhythmic crunch of boots and paws in the snow.

The two direwolves trotted ahead of the group now, their huge forms leading the way as though they knew where they were going. Rosie followed in their wake, a step behind Bran and Hodor, her wand discreetly held at her side. She had laid every protective ward she could muster on their trail, her magic shimmering invisibly across the white-coated trees and boulders. With the boys and their companions in tow now—Rickon wide-eyed and bouncing at her side like a puppy himself—she couldn’t afford even the whisper of a threat reaching them before sunrise.

Not tonight.

Not before she kept her promise.

Bran had said nothing since the mirror call, but his eyes never stopped moving. Taking in everything. Watching the way she moved. Studying the magic in her hands, the color of her spells. Measuring her, maybe. Trying to see the space between legend and reality.

She didn’t blame him.

Once they returned to camp, Rosie got to work without needing to be asked. The tent expanded easily, opening like a blooming flower under her whispered command. She let the others marvel if they wanted. Let them stare at the fireplace that sparked to life with a flick of her finger, the strange lanterns that floated gently to the ceiling beams, the smell of something warm and herby in the air—what Smalljon had dubbed “Witch Scent” and had begged her to bottle it for him.

Hodor helped Bran down from his makeshift harness while Rosie spread a thick blanket near the fire and patted it gently.

“Here,” she said, kneeling beside it. “You’re not going to feel much during the first stage, but it helps to be warm.”

Bran nodded, quiet but intent.

Robb’s voice had done something to him. Unlocked a piece of him that had been locked in ice since the fall.

Rickon sprawled beside them, still demanding answers every two seconds—“Where’s Arya now ?” “What kind of witch are you?” “Can I fly?” “Can my wolf fly?”—and Smalljon had taken it upon himself to answer every question with the most outrageous lies Rosie had ever heard.

“Yes, but only on Tuesdays.”

“No, witches melt if you say their name backwards. That’s why she goes by Rosie. ”

“She has seven husbands, lad. They’re invisible.”

She let it all happen. Let it hum in the background like a song she hadn’t heard in years.

The sound of family.

Of safety.

She focused her energy on Bran.

Magic whispered beneath her skin as she pressed her wand lightly to his spine and began the process.

It was delicate, this kind of healing. Ancient. Forbidden, even, in parts of her world. Manipulating nerves, regrowing bone, reshaping muscle memory—it was as much art as science, and no small risk. But Rosie knew her craft. And she was not going to let a child live his life in chains if she could help it.

The spell thrummed in her blood. Her wand glowed softly, warm light pulsing beneath Bran’s tunic.

He closed his eyes.

She kept going.

Minutes passed. Then an hour. The others quieted. Even Rickon fell asleep curled up against his direwolf, his fingers tangled in thick fur. Meera watched silently, her expression unreadable. Jojen sat with his arms crossed, his mouth a flat line.

And Rosie worked.

Until finally, Bran stirred.

Not much. Just a twitch.

But then another.

Then his legs shifted.

“ Bran, ” Meera whispered.

His eyes opened.

Rosie smiled, even as sweat beaded at her brow.

“I told you,” she murmured.

He blinked at her. Then at his legs.

Then… he tried.

Slowly.

Painfully.

Unsteadily.

But surely.

He stood.

A sob choked out of him before he could stop it.

And Rosie just sat back on her heels, wand trembling in her hand, and whispered:

“There you are.”

Jon’s POV

The wind atop the Wall sang with a song older than gods.

It howled like wolves and whispered like the dead, threading through Jon’s cloak, sinking into his skin. His gloved hands gripped the icy railing as he stared out over the darkness, his eyes locked on some imagined point between the stars and the edge of the world.

He was tired.

Not the kind of tired that sleep could fix. No, this was the kind of weariness that came from knowing you were forgotten. From watching the war unfold from the sidelines while your family bled and the realm tore itself apart.

From being left behind.

He thought of Winterfell every night. In dreams, the halls still smelled of baked bread and burning pine. His father stood tall and quiet, teaching him honor like it was a language passed down through bone. Robb’s laughter echoed through the corridors. Arya’s boots thudded in the snow as she chased cats and brothers and names.

And now… they were all ghosts.

Or so he thought.

He had almost left once.

Packed a horse. Readied his blade. Told no one.

Sam had stopped him at the gate with wide, terrified eyes and tear-choked pleas.

“You can’t go,” he’d said. “If you leave now… you’re no better than the deserters.”

So Jon had stayed.

Mourned.

Waited.

Until the horn blew.

He heard it echo down the stone.

One long note. Steady. Not alarm.

“Visitors,” someone called.

Who the hell visits the Wall?

He descended in a blur, cloak flapping behind him, boots echoing against frozen steps.

The courtyard was dusted in white when he arrived.

And they were there.

A woman stood before Lord Commander Mormont, small and cloaked in grey, her face half-hidden behind a cloth and white hat, her voice quiet but firm. Beside her stood two men Jon knew —Smalljon Umber and Torrhen Karstark.

And behind them—

His heart stopped.

Bran.

Rickon.

And not carried.

Bran was standing.

The moment shattered his lungs.

He didn’t remember speaking.

Only that they turned at the sound of his voice—“ Bran? Rickon? ”—and the boys screamed his name in return and ran.

Bran limped, but fast. Faster than he had any right to. Rickon moved like lightning.

He barely had time to brace before they were in his arms, crying, clinging, saying his name again and again like it could fix the world.

He held them both.

Felt their warmth.

Felt the ground steady.

And finally—finally— breathed.

When they pulled back, he stared. Touched their cheeks. Kissed their brows. Whispered their names like a prayer.

“How?” he asked, dazed.

Bran pointed at the woman.

And for the first time, Jon saw her clearly.

She stepped forward, scarf tugged down, lips smiling gently.

Her eyes… were kind.

Kind in a way he hadn’t seen in a long, long time.

“My name is Rosie,” she said. “Robb’s told me so much about you.”

Jon blinked.

Stared.

And for the first time in years, felt like someone saw him.

Not as a bastard.

Not as a servant.

Not as nothing.

Just as Jon.

And he smiled back.

Chapter Text

Jon’s POV

He still couldn’t believe it.