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“When I am old enough, I want to go to Starfall. I want to meet my mother’s family.”
The older he grew the more frequently he said it, and each time it was like a dagger in Ned’s heart.
“Maester Luwin says I’ve a cousin who is already Lord of Starfall. I’ve Dayne blood as well—perhaps I can serve him, and wield Dawn and be the Sword of the Morning like my uncle.”
That one came whenever Robb spoke of wielding Ice, and sitting in Ned’s seat in Winterfell one day.
It’s not unheard of for a boy to dream. How Ned had dreamt of family when he’d been a boy, but he had known the family he was missing. He knew that Ben and Lya were at Winterfell, knew that Brandon was in the North, while he was far away. But not so with Jon. All Jon knew was that Starfall was anything he wanted it to be, everything he wanted it to be, so long as it was the only truth he knew.
For the best, he thought. Ser Arthur would not have minded the lie. He wanted to protect the child. And Ashara…
“It makes no matter,” she had said, her eyes vacant as she’d turned away from him, clutching the sword to her breast. He remembered how her eyes sparkled, remembered them laughing. They were the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen, deep and violet, and how she’d seen him and not Brandon he’d never understood. Robert had mocked him, had called him a foolish boy who tripped over his tongue, but Robert had never known that his fool’s tongue had tripped him into Lady Ashara’s bed. She regrets me now, he remembered thinking. She regrets me.
Her brother kept Lya captive, he had tried to remind himself. The pair of them colluded with Rhaegar Targaryen, and now Lya’s dead, as well as father and Brandon. They owe me Jon’s safety. Owe me…
“It makes no matter,” she had said. “Thank you, Lord Stark.”
“What for?”
“Honor.”
“You have a lordly brother here!” Arya piped up over dinner, her grey eyes wide, scared at the idea of Jon leaving. She loved him so dearly—as dearly as any of her trueborn siblings. Ned loved her for that. He’s loved here. Just like you wanted, Lya.
“Aye, but am I never to know my mother’s family?” Jon asked, not unkindly. Arya chewed her lip.
“Arya,” intoned Catelyn, and Arya released her lip from between her teeth. Ned glanced at his wife.
A good woman, he thought. And one he had come to love so dearly. Her smile was not Ashara’s smile, nor was her laugh, but the love she gave him was warm and steady and had only burned hotter as the years had passed. It had not fizzled, and fallen like a falling star.
The coolness in Catelyn’s gaze undoubtedly came from Jon’s increased desire to be gone. She wants him gone as well. A familiar pang of guilt flooded through him. Both of them good women. And I dishonor them both. I belittle them both. Only for you, Lya. Only for you. Once he’d dreaded forgetting his sister’s face. But he sees her every day in Arya.
“It’s for the best,” he had hastened to tell Ashara. Her hair was not so glossy as it had been at Harrenhal, and her lips were chapped. Her breasts were larger now as well, swollen from undrunk milk, and there was no glitter to her eyes. Dead daughter, dead brother—and my fault to boot… “Robert will kill him—as he killed Elia Martell’s children.”
He had expected anger. She’d been quick and open with her emotions, had rolled her eyes at Brandon, had laughed with Lya, had danced with Ned, and kissed him, and drawn him into her while a flush crept up her chest. He had expected something, but there was nothing there at all. Her face was blank, not even despairing.
“Very well.”
“Thank you, my lady. I know it must pain you—”
“It makes no matter. Thank you, Lord Stark.”
“What for?”
“Honor.”
Honor. With one word she’d damned him, hadn’t she?
“I mustn’t my lady,” he’d protested under the stars as she’d led him to her tent that first night, his head full of dreams and dance and her laughter, his tongue still full of the taste of hers.
“Why ever not?”
“Your honor.”
She had laughed, and kissed the tip of his nose. “You’re the only man I’ve brought to my bed who’s given a fig about my honor.” Perhaps that had been the end of his own honor that very moment, but she’d been his love, his first love, and--he’d dreamed--his only love. Perhaps it had been because she had called him a man, perhaps it was because the very touch of her skin unmanned his good house, and she sat close to the queen. House Dayne was an old house, and an honorable one. Surely father would approve of a match between them.
But there’d been no match, and she’d returned to court, and then Lya had disappeared, and the war had begun and Ned had slain her brother.
And Jon—the only thing that mattered was Jon. More than Catelyn, his wife whose honor he’d promised to protect, more than Ashara, whose life had been so shattered by his mere proximity, more than himself. Jon, born with Lya’s long face and dark hair, but damned with Rhaegar Targaryen’s eyes.
Jon, who withstood Catelyn’s cold gaze, and Ned—Ned did not dare do anything, lest the tale all come unraveled. Bad enough that Catelyn thought him unfaithful with Lady Ashara—but to give a bastard preference over her own trueborn children… It would ruin everything, and Jon would not be safe, could not be safe. He must not care, must not seem to care.
“Don’t you care what happened to her?”
“To who?” His mind had been so intent on Lya that the wind had rushed out of him when Ashara had said dully, “Your daughter.”
She’d stood tall at Harrenhal, with shoulders squared. She hunched now, and looked ten years older. Her face bore no sign of paint, and there were dark circles under her violet eyes, and Ned could barely breathe.
The last time he’d looked at her so deeply into her eyes, he’d not been able to breathe, and he’d been unmanned. Now was entirely different, and yet somehow the same.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter. She didn’t matter. You’re to say he’s mine, then?” How relieved he’d been to have anything to say again.
“It’s for the best. Robert will kill him—as he killed Elia Martell’s children.”
“Very well.”
“Thank you, my lady. I know it must pain you—”
“It makes no matter. Thank you, Lord Stark.”
“What for?”
“Honor.”
“Did she love me?” Jon asked one evening. He’d been telling Bran a ghost story before bed, and Ned caught him on the landing on his way to the room he shared with Robb. “My mother?”
Ned swallowed. She didn’t know you, but she loved you, he wanted to say, longed to tell him, this boy with Lya’s face.
“Lady Ashara?” Jon prompted, looking at him. Ned closed his eyes and for a moment he remembered her as she’d been when first they’d met, before her face fell, and her heart.
“She did not have time to know you, but loved you deeply,” Ned lied. It was a lie--he could not imagine Ashara loving Jon. He could not imagine Ashara loving anyone with her eyes blank like that, leaping to her death after he’d left with the last trace of her honor.
I dishonored her, Ned thought.
I dishonored her, yet she acted honorably—and more so than I deserved. She was a woman of honor. Let no one say your mother was a woman without honor.