I sit alone in the guest chamber the Targaryens call modest. Marble underfoot, velvet everywhere else, a window that pretends the stink of the city is salt and roses.

The door is barred. The candle is low. I can still hear the voices in the stone if I let the quiet stretch long enough. The echo of it. The heat of it. The laugh of a boy who should still be losing teeth, not winning battles no one can see.

My boy.

Rickard.

Six namedays old and walking through a room of kings like he owns the hour.

I have seen children charming when they want sweet cakes, clever when they want to dodge a switch, bold when they have not yet learned the price of a broken bone.

I have not seen a child look a crown in the eye and make it blink. Not until tonight.

He did it with a smile. With the soft weight of a small body in a strange lady's lap. With laughter that made a king pause and a prince remember their courtesy.

And I am afraid.

Not of him. Not of loving him. Of what the world will do when it understands what he is becoming.

Or what I would do to keep the world from trying.

Rickard was a miracle. That is the word I used when he finally cried in our hall. Marna's hand crushed mine and the midwife said words I do not remember because all I could hear was the boy drawing breath.

We had counted moons like misers count coins. We had buried hope and dug it up again with bloody fingers and foolish hearts.

I went to the godswood in the dark and I begged. I begged the old gods like a small man with nothing to trade. I promised the best of me. I promised to be better than I am. I promised to be a father worthy of a son.

The heart tree did not answer. The ravens did not speak. But the snow fell softer, and in time there he was. Small and perfect and loud.

What was the cost, I wonder now. Not because I would return him. Never. Let the gods take my name and all my namedays before I give him back.

But sometimes gifts arrive with teeth. He is too sharp. Too quick.

He listens like a hunter and talks like a maester and moves pieces I cannot see. I did not teach him that. Marna did not teach him that. The North did. The cold did.

Or something older, something we stopped naming when we built hearths and forgot the woods can hear.

I thank the gods he was born in Winterfell.

The South would have called him cursed. They make a habit of decorating fear with statues and setting it on altars. The Seven smile from their gilded niches and their priests count sins like tradesmen count bolts of cloth.

A boy like mine, with a spirit like a blade wrapped in wool, would have been measured, weighed, and found convenient for a pyre.

Here in the North we remember.

The North remembers the seven hundred feet of winter cut and stacked against the sky. Three hundred miles of ice and warning.

Giants built it, they say. Or men who learned to be giants when the dark pressed close. In the North we do not burn what we do not understand. We watch it. We feed it. We teach it to stand on our side.

Rickard was born to the right house. That is luck I do not deserve. If some perfumed lordling with lemon oil in his beard and soft hands decides my son should break to fit inside his idea of a world, he will learn what it costs to push a Stark.

He will weigh his banners against our snows, his gold against our resilience, his resolve against our memories. He will remember that Winter does not frighten easily and does not forgive at all.

Yet I am not only lord. I am father. And fathers are made of fear. Not the kind that ever sleeps. The kind that calculates. The kind that counts knives in the dark.

This last year has taught me how quickly the world can change under a boy who refuses to walk where there is already a path carved out for him.

He found carpenters and turned timber into voices. He found birds and turned sky into roads. He found words and turned them into wages. He found me and turned me into something I am still learning to be.

I would be lying if I said I have kept up.

Marna has. She sees him the way you see a storm cresting the pines. Beautiful. Terrible. Inevitable. She steadies me when I start to lean toward the past like an old tower.

She reminds me the North survives because we bend where we must and break where we choose. When I doubt the shape of the path, she draws it in my palm with a finger and I can feel the North under my feet again.

Tonight she will sleep. I will not. I will listen to the city breathe and try to decide whether it is sleeping or waiting to bite. The king looked tired. His son looked angry. The Tall Knight looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but there and Lady Jenny looked at Rickard like he was a normal child.

None of them saw me. That is fine. I have worn the shape of a quiet man my whole life. It keeps them from suspecting of what a quiet man can do.

If Rickard says this is the path, I will walk it at his side. If Marna says the snow can hold, I will trust the snow. If the cost of his future is the last comfort I have, I will pay it. If the cost is my name, I will sign.

If the cost is my blood, I will bleed it so slowly the realm will forget it ever belonged to me.

I am Edwyle Stark.

I am not the cleverest man in the keep. I am not the loudest. I do not need to be. I have a wife who sees in the dark and a son who can make kings listen by laughing at the right time. I have a godswood that remembers me and a people who will stand when I tell them to stand.

Tomorrow I will be lord again.

I will sit where they tell me to sit and speak when it is wise to speak. I will ask for what my son needs and pretend it is only what the North deserves.

I will keep the wolf pup between me and the iron until he is large enough to bare his own teeth.

Tonight I will pray, not for miracles, but for spine. The old gods have given me enough wonder. What they need from me now is a man of Winter.

Whatever this boy is, he is mine. Whatever the world thinks he should be, the world can learn to think again.

I begged the trees for a child. They gave me a winter. I will build a house that does not fall under it. And if the South knocks, I will answer with every cold truth I carry.

For the North. For Marna. For Rickard.

At any cost.

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AN: Shorter chapter as I was recently inspired by something and needed to spell things out.