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Winterfell was cold and desolate, but it was at least not the miserable holdfast where Cersei had spent the last half year with her despised husband.
Cersei had been meant to be the bride of a prince or king, but that was before Rhaegar had gotten himself killed, her father had left it too late to declare for the rebels, and Jon Arryn had convinced Robert that he needed to reward a more long-standing ally by taking the younger daughter of Hoster Tully to wife.
Instead, Cersei was given to Eddard Stark, and if she could say anything for her husband it would be that he too did not consider their match to be just reward for his efforts during the rebellion.
The only cold comfort that her father had to offer was that Brandon Stark had suffered through the rebellion in the Red Keep’s dungeon in the care of the Mad King’s torturers, and in the not unlikely event that he did not live long enough to get an heir on his Tully wife then Cersei would indeed become the Lady of Winterfell.
Cersei had little care for that title, and if Tywin Lannister truly had then he would have not have entrusted his only daughter’s fate to an invalid’s cock.
Jaime offered the comfort of his hands and lips, but laughingly rebuffed her request that he challenge Eddard Stark to a duel. It seemed that all the Lannister men were fated to disappoint her.
Cersei Lannister was wed in the Great Sept, after King Robert had taken Lysa Tully to wife, and after Brandon Stark married her older sister Catelyn, his brother and a Stark retainer helping him to stand long enough to say his vows.
The Light of the West was married as an afterthought, in the leavings of others, and began her married life already simmering with fury.
*
Something was stirring beyond the Wall. Cersei did not care to learn more, and anyway she did not often listen when her husband spoke. The long and short of it was that he was to ride for Castle Black and he was sending his wife to Winterfell for her safety.
‘You will be comfortable at Winterfell,’ said Eddard.
‘I would be more comfortable at Casterly Rock,’ said Cersei, but the decision had been made and Cersei rode through Winterfell’s gates accompanied by two guardsmen.
The northern roads were too rough for carriages forcing Cersei to travel by horse; her thighs ached, her back had seized up, and the mount her husband had promised was docile kept shuffling sideways and tossing its head. She was already in a foul mood even before her ungainly dismount in Winterfell’s yard into freezing slush that immediately soaked through her shoes.
‘Lady Cersei, welcome to Winterfell.’ Catelyn Tully - Lady Stark, Cersei supposed - looked even more brittle than she had at her wedding, and a quick glance down confirmed that her belly remained as flat as Cersei’s own. ‘My husband regrets that he is too busy to welcome you himself.’
‘Mmm.’ Cersei knew - as did the lowest peasant in King’s Landing - that Brandon Stark, the Wild Wolf of Winterfell, who had ridden into the city full of vim and vigour, to demand the return of his stolen sister, was confined to his bed.
She lifted a foot and shook off the filthy ice, which narrowly missed Catelyn’s skirts.
Cersei was curtly introduced to the rest of the household: Benjen Stark was a sullen boy dressed all in black; a nursemaid held a squirming toddler who was introduced as Lord Stark’s natural son by the daughter of one of his bannermen, and whose presence in Winterfell struck Cersei as a tacit admission that Brandon Stark was not expected to father a legitimate heir, and, well, that explained much of Catelyn’s sourness. Finally, Lyanna Stark, who looked almost as much a ghost as she had in King’s Landing…
You might have thought that after the realms tore themselves apart in Lyanna Stark's name people would have been happier when the girl herself was found alive in some godsforsaken corner of Dorne, but of course the men who had killed and died for Lyanna had done so for some imagined, untouched, silent paragon, and the grief stricken, vengeful, very much touched girl who returned only served to make them angrier.
Lyanna Stark had flitted around the Red Keep as though she was haunting the walls, while the men who had ridden to war in her name avoided speaking her name, and quietly hoped that the problem that she had brought back from the desert would solve itself.
Cersei had first encountered Lyanna in a deserted part of the Red Keep that she was skulking through after her father had informed her that she was to wed some Northern spare.
The two girls had almost collided, and when Lyanna, pale and hollow-eyed, had tried to duck out of her way, Cersei stepped directly into her path, her lip curling cruelly; pleased to have found someone weaker to take her ill temper out on. She had gaped openly at the slight swell of Lyanna’s belly - she was not showing much, really, but enough that it was notable that every single other inhabitant of the Red Keep was averting their eyes and pretending not to have seen.
‘Does no one in that barren wasteland you call a home know how to make moon tea?’ Cersei had sneered, taking pleasure in Lyanna’s flinch, and purposely bumping into her as she strode away.
‘...I’ll show Lady Cersei to her room, sister,’ said Lyanna, and Cersei blinked, the past falling away.
Lady Stark nodded brusquely, leaving Cersei to follow Lyanna in the hope that the other girl was leading her to a fire, at least. Lyanna slowed enough for Cersei to draw level with her.
‘I am glad you are here,’ she said, with a cautious smile.
‘Are you,’ said Cersei, ‘why?’
Of course, Lyanna had reason to take Cersei for a friend. One night shortly after her disappointing wedding and even more disappointing wedding night she was awakened by a quiet but insistent knocking at her bedroom door in the dead of night. Lyanna Stark had been standing there, hair wet, clothes soaking and clinging to her as though she’d taken a bath fully dressed.
‘Do you,’ she’d asked desperately, ‘know how to make moon tea?’
Cersei had not, obviously, felt sorry for this pathetic, drowned rat of a girl, her answer was entirely down to the necessity of getting Lyanna away from her door before she discovered that the naked, satisfied man sprawled deeply asleep in Cersei’s bed was her twin brother and not her new husband.
‘I know where to get some,’ she’d said, pulling a robe on and the door closed behind her, ‘come with me.’
*
Cersei desolately stoked the fire and pulled the fur tighter around herself. It made little sense for the seat of the North to be even colder than the mean holdfast Cersei had been banished to - it was as if the very stones of Winterfell knew that its lord might die tomorrow, or might linger on indefinitely.
There came a knock at the door and Cersei rolled her eyes. ‘Come in, Lyanna.’
Despite Cersei being the most interesting thing to happen to Winterfell since Lyanna and Rhaegar, and with a significantly lower death toll, Lyanna was the only person to take an interest in Cersei. Worse, considering that the rest of the castle’s inhabitants were an assortment of ghosts, children, and widows-in-waiting, Cersei had found herself anticipating Lyanna’s visits.
‘Still cold?’ said Lyanna with an annoying half-smile that she clearly considered knowing. ‘Come with me.’
Cersei strongly considered abandoning Lyanna to her own devices when she realised that the other girl was leading her not just outside but into the copse of trees where the Starks prayed to their long dead gods.
‘I’m going back,’ Cersei said, as Lyanna led them to the side of a pool in the shade of an ominous looking tree, freezing water dripped off the leaves above and ran down the back of Cersei’s neck, and she cursed viciously.
Lyanna snorted at Cersei’s language and said, ‘We’re here.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Cersei began impatiently, and then noticed the steam coming off the water even in this biting cold, and vaguely remembered her husband saying something about there being hot springs at Winterfell.
‘Take your clothes off,’ said Lyanna, turning red and facing away, taken aback by Cersei’s shameless compliance. Cersei had a chance to finally be warm, and she was not about to spare Lyanna’s blushes.
Cersei sank into water that would have been too hot anywhere else, closed her eyes and groaned in pleasure. She sank down up to her collarbone, and blinked lazily. Lyanna had not taken her leave, nor had she made any move to join her.
‘Are you coming in or not?’ Cersei snapped.
She did not do Lyanna the courtesy of looking away as she stripped down to her underthings and then her skin; her arms and legs were too skinny, she had not been eating enough, but her belly was softer than Cersei’s own.
Cersei did not often think back to that night. The old woman who made moon tea had refused to sell any to Lyanna unless Cersei promised to stay with her; Lyanna had left it late, she had said, and it would be bad - and it had been, it had been worse. Ever since Cersei had made damn sure to drink her tea before anything could take root in her womb, although she’d had no need to since coming north. Her husband had not darkened her bed since their wedding night; Cersei’s lack of interest in repeating the whole sorry experience had been so unsubtle that even Eddard Stark had picked up on it.
Cersei supposed that would change soon enough if the Starks truly had given up on getting a legitimate heir out of Brandon. She tried to look on the bright side, perhaps her husband would perish beyond the Wall and the Starks would have to find someone desperate enough to take Lyanna, or promise Benjen as a child-groom.
She missed fucking. She missed Jaime. Her twin did not write for weeks, and when he did his letters were about swordfights and horseflesh, worse, the letter that contained details of courtly plotting and southern finery were in Tyrion’s hand.
Gods, it would serve him right if Cersei were to seduce someone else.
Lyanna let out an involuntary sigh as she sank into the spring next to Cersei, and Cersei let her hand come to rest on Lyanna’s thigh. Lyanna looked at her, eyes wide and lips parted, but did not pull away or tell her to stop.
Cersei wondered if Lyanna had known a gentle touch since Rhaegar, or at all if Rhaegar had truly not been the man of Cersei’s girlish imagingings.
She slid her hand up to the apex of Lyanna’s thighs. ‘You are kind,’ she said, ‘to share your warmth with me.’
Lyanna bit her lip, nodded, and let her thighs fall open; the angle was not unintuitive and Lyanna gasped as Cersei circled the nub of her pleasure.
Cersei grinned like the cat who got the cream.
*
Lyanna might have been the least boring of the Starks but she still sometimes insisted on pretending that theirs was some kind of secret romance. She kissed Cersei next to the first fragile white flowers that peeked through the snow, she offered to teach her to be more at ease on horseback and actually looked hurt at Cersei’s cold refusal, she courted Catelyn’s wrath by laughing at Cersei’s snide under-her-breath comments while Benjen was telling one of his interminable Night’s Watch stories.
Cersei could see the truth, though, that Lyanna only truly stopped looking like a living dead girl when Cersei’s fingers were curled inside her, gripping her wrist to hold her in place, or when Cersei had bitten her earlobe hard enough to draw blood, roughly pinning Lyanna’s wrists to sides to stop her from trying to touch Cersei in return.
‘You like that, huh?’ said Cersei, hitting the rhythm that she knew made Lyanna writhe like a common whore. ‘Gods, did you spread your legs for Rhaegar this easily?’
Lyanna’s eyes flashed with fury, she wrapped her fingers around Cersei’s throat, squeezed, and said, ‘Don’t you dare fucking stop.’
*
Lyanna fisted her hands in Cersei’s golden curls and tugged hard, Cersei groaned against Lyanna’s cunt, and Lyanna pulled again, she was obsessed with Cersei’s hair…and then she shoved Cersei back by her shoulders, hard.
‘What the fu–?’ Cersei began, and then she heard the sound of running feet, a sound that had been muffled by Lyanna’s heavy skirts and milky thighs.
‘It was Benjen,’ said Lyanna, her eyes wide. She scrambled to her feet, her skirts falling heavily down covering her bare cunt and legs. ‘He saw us. He saw us. I need to catch him. Go back to your room, I’ll find you there later.’
Lyanna left Cersei on her knees in this broken and abandoned tower. ‘Fuck,’ Cersei said with feeling, ‘fuck.’
*
Cersei paced back and forward in front of her dwindling fire. She should have been asleep long ago, but Lyanna had still not come back.
Cersei suddenly wished she had taken any interest in children - how old was Benjen? Twelve? Fourteen? Old enough to understand what he’d seen, or just to understand that he shouldn’t have seen it?
Lyanna slipped into Cersei’s bedchamber without knocking, her mouth a flat, determined line. ‘Benjen’s gone.’
‘Did you push him off the castle ramparts?’
‘He’s riding to the Wall, he’s going to take the black. I gave him my horse; she’s steady and faster than his pony, she’ll see him there safe. I didn’t force him,’ Lyanna added defensively, ‘you’ve heard him, he’s always wanted to join the Night’s Watch.’
That night in King’s Landing, after Cersei had disposed of the leavings in a midden, Lyanna, bloody and clutching her belly in pain, sobbing with relief, had sworn viciously, ‘Fuck you, Rhaegar. Fuck you, Robert,’ and Cersei had first been struck by the thought that no one would ever ride to war for this version of Lyanna Stark, but that the real girl was a great deal more interesting than the figment of men’s imaginations.
‘Anyway,’ said Lyanna, turning away, ‘you don’t have to worry that he’ll tell Ned.’
‘Wait,’ said Cersei, and by the time Lyanna had turned back Cersei had let her nightgown slip from her shoulders. ‘Stay.’
*
Lord Eddard Stark returned to Winterfell at dusk and never a man to make himself comfortable when discomfort was an option he sent a note for his wife to meet him in the godswood.
Lyanna had risen from her seat automatically to accompany Cersei and then froze in place, trapped between the sharp shake of Cersei’s head and Catelyn’s suspiciously narrowed eyes.
‘Stay,’ Cersei mouthed, and headed alone into the gloaming.
Cersei’s mouth twitched to see her husband sitting next to the pool where she’d first despoiled his sister, though she was less amused to see that his sword was by his side.. ‘Husband.’
‘Cersei.’
‘You’re back,’ said Cersei, though what she really meant was you’re alive, then.
‘I am,’ he sighed heavily. ‘I was surprised to meet my brother Benjen on the road.’
‘Is he here?’ Perhaps Eddard had told his brother to stop telling tall tales and sent him to bed without any supper.
‘Two of my men are seeing him safely to Castle Black. He was always for the Watch-’ Cersei noted with interest that her husband and his sister had the same guilty, defensive expression ‘-and it will not be the first time a secret has been sent to the Wall to die.’
‘I see,’ said Cersei, who did not.
‘I am not doing it for you. I would not see Lyanna publicly shamed any more than she already has been, nor will I send you back to Casterly Rock in disgrace if that is what you were hoping for.’
It had, in all honesty, not occurred to Cersei. Gods, outschemed by Eddard Stark - how embarrassing.
Her husband smiled mirthlessly. ‘I ought to have been more suspicious when one of Lady Stark’s letters mentioned that you and Lyanna had formed a queer sort of friendship.’
Cersei’s ears pricked up both at the one of and the Lady Stark, which was a peculiarly formal way to speak of your brother’s wife, especially when that brother was not expected to live long.
‘You have made no secret of the fact that you dislike me, and given what I now know I do not much like you either, but we are married in the eyes of Gods and men, so perhaps we could dislike each other in peace?’
Eddard rose and offered Cersei his arm, and, after a moment, Cersei accepted it. Peace would surely get boring after a time, but for the moment, and for the sake of a girl Cersei was surprised to realise that she had no wish to see hurt further, it would do.
They walked back up towards the castle united in their mutual dislike. A figure coming down the steps towards them through the gloom was revealed as Lyanna, without a cloak or hood, snow melting into her hair, but with her fists balled and a grim look on her face.
Cersei’s champion had gone from being Jaime in full golden plate armour to this wet rat of a girl.
She offered Lyanna what she imagined a brave smile might look like, squeezed Eddard’s arm as though she truly was his loving wife, and said, ‘Your sister will surely be pleased to learn that you are not banishing me.’