he is tired, weary of this life and this miserable existence. but even he can see the battles still ahead. even he can feel the inner rumblings of his battle cry, breaking its way out of the frozen landscape of his heart of stone. he cannot hide for long, cannot remove himself from this fight forever. it is not within the blood of the wolf. she would know.
“ you have done so much for me. when i am ready – truly ready to rejoin this world and take up arms again – i will repay you tenfold. and I will avenge him. ”
She would haveresponded that there was no need to repay her, but the mention of revenge stilled her movements drew tension to her body language. It didn’t matter if she couldn’t be there for him before, when he was still a boy. She was here with him now. Even if he didn’t want to hear her, she would try to reach him.
“Sweetling, no. Reveng is not what wolves fight for. We have enough to worry about without revenge. A warrior does not do battle because he hates the enemy before him, but because he loves the people behind him. Let the Lannisters’ many enemies take them. They have no allies left. Right now, our concern must be for Winterfell, for your siblings.” It wasn’t worth it to chase lions. The North needed them.
More harrowing than anything the tossing seas could manage to throw at the boat’s hull was the solitude into which Cedric had forced himself since the day they had left. He hoped the darkness of his cabin would shut out the things he’d seen, to no avail. It was as if the image of his father’s death were super embossed upon the insides of his eyelids. He could not shake himself free of that last fleeting glance, the flesh torn, blood pouring forth, the way his lips trembled. The rest of the ship had not heard a word of his voice until the third day. He’d been told, back on the docks, there was someone who had a vested interest in his safety, someone arranging this whole voyage whom he would meet — he didn’t care. He didn’t have the fight left within him required to care.
And yet when he came down the plank of the ship, Cedric clung to the feeling of the cool metal strapped to his chest beneath his shirt. If he was to die, he would not go alone. When the woman spoke, Cedric at first forgot it was he who was meant to respond. He searched for the words, so unused to speaking after the last few days. “I am.” His voice shocked him when he spoke, so dead and monotonous. It was cold and harsh like the winds back home. He missed home.
Her nephew did not look well, and Lyanna could certainly fathom why. The things he must have seen in the capital had to have been harrowing for the young man. Losing Ned was awful enough, and she remembered clearly how it had felt to learn her own father was lost forever, cruelly murdered by another mad king in what felt like another world entirely. But it was this world, and it was happening again. If it was all she could do to save Cedric, then she would do it.
Lyanna stepped in front of the young man, forcing him to see her, to focus on her. “Not here it isn’t, alright?” He tone was stern but soft. “From now on your name is Westley Waters. You are a bastard from the crownlands and my nephew here to live under my care. Do you understand? Your safety depends on this. No one here must know who you are.” She waited for an affirmation, for eye contact, for anything to indicate that he knew this was imperative. She would not bring him so far only to lose him now.
“Now then, come with me. We’ll get you settled. Have you eaten?” She took a step away from the ship, pausing to be sure he would follow before continuing. Sunspear’s ports were busy, and it would be easy to lose him here. Would that he were still a boy and she could take his hand, but he was grown now, a man in his own right.
His ship arrived at dawn. She’d paid a bright Dornish girl five coins to watch for the name. Arranging safe passage under fake names was an art that she could say she was familiar with by now. From Dorne to Essos, she’d been building seaside contacts for years. An ambassador might always have a need for emergency travel, even if they weren’t living under an assumed identity. Luckily for her nephew, Lyanna was both. The girl left the message with a doorman, who gave it to her handmaiden, Kryssa, who woke her just as the sun was coming up over the horizon. Lyanna had been sleeping in dresses for a full week before his arrival, in case his ship came in the night.
She made it to the dock just as light was streaking across the sky. Although a place usually bustling with people and activity, the water seemed eerily quiet in the early morning light. It didn’t take her long to find the newly docked ship, or the young man who had arrived on it, although once she had, the long lost wolf found herself unsure of what to say exactly. She knew he’d been told precious little about who exactly had secreted him away from King’s Landing. Perhaps it was best that it stay that way. Safer for them both. “You are Cedric?” She waited for an affirmation to continue.
