Chapter Text
No one had spared her a thought.
They rarely did, those of noble blood and upbringing. Seated on magnificent Sand Steeds, feasting on the fruits of seasonal toil that the common folk brought to their holdfasts, castles of white stone with towers looming high, they never did learn to see anyone below their station.
Wylla had never presumed to be seen. She had entered the service of House Dayne as a slip of a girl, a child with strong, sinewy arms that hauled baskets of laundry and calloused hands darkened by the stinging sun of high noon. Her father owned but a meagre plant of olives in an alcove within the Red Mountains and she had been the eldest daughter.
Her cot was next to the laundry rooms, squeezed among five other girls, whispering and snoring at night. Wylla had never once cried with homesickness in their presence. Yet when her moon blood had failed to come and dread had pooled low in her stomach, the women, rough and plain-of-face, had sought out the herbs and potions in a joint effort.
Standing in a corner of the roughly furnished chamber, letting the agonized wails wash over her, Wylla remembered the birth of her own son. The bastard of a drunken knight, be it an Yronwood or a Dayne of High Hermitage, it mattered to her so little. She hadn’t dared to refuse him when he had fumbled a hand beneath her skirts, so many years past.
The Lady Lyanna cried, her voice raw and drenched with agony. The women surrounding her urged her to push harder, battle cries in their own right. Wylla knew that she ought to be on her way, fetching fresh water, joining their efforts, but she remained as if rooted.
“Brandon! Brandon! Father, Father!”
The girl would not live, this she knew. Her hips were narrow, her collarbones sharp while the hollows of her cheeks were more pronounced than ever. The linen of her bed was soaked in a flood of crimson and her thighs, thin, stickly little things, were smudged in a brilliant riot of red.
She had despaired, lying in bed among the feathered cushions, her Silver Prince shattered at the Trident, her Lord Father, her beloved brother, all dead, all gone. The swell of her middle had been the only thing for her to hold close in the chill of the countless Dornish nights.
Wylla had never been allowed despair. She had birthed her son and taken up service as a nursemaid mere hours after she had stood from the straw covered dirt ground, her companions folding the babe into a cloth of rough wool.
The squalling of the babe woke her from her reverie, and for a moment she thought of her own boy, black of hair with eyes a deep, dark, indigo that spoke of his bastardy. Lady Lyanna had ceased her screams. Perhaps she had finally succumbed to sleep, or perhaps to death.
A bundle was pressed into her arms, and Wylla blinked in surprise. How small a babe, frail as its mother, with a shock of dark locks on top of its squashed, red face. She freed her breast, lifting the little one with a practiced motion.
The crying stopped immediately, giving way to the reflex of a suckling motion.
Wylla’s were the first pair of arms laid around Prince Jon Targaryen, her’s were the teats that nourished him. She sang to him the old tunes of the Red Mountains, she hummed to him in his sleep.
No one spared her a thought.
Lady Lyanna spoke in her sleep, crazed tales of days gone by, of summer snows and ponds of clear spring water that never cooled. As Wylla sat by her side, holding her son, she would cry for her brothers, her Prince, but none came.
She woke twice, eyes unfocussed. The first time she named her quiet babe, the second she had gripped Wylla by her forearm, her fingers weak and brittle, and begged.
“Promise me. Promise me.”
The glorious Knights of the King’s Guard stood below the tower, day and night. They stood, holding close their honour and their loyalty, while Wylla held Jon and a promise she made without words.
She saw them from afar, through the small, slitted window. A party of many, riding towards them with haste. Jon was asleep, little fists bundled into his wrappings as Wylla took the sack of rough leather and shook a light cape over her own shoulders. The Tower of Joy concealed her while she flitted down the stairs, eyes downcast, a scullery maid, a nursemaid, a holder of promises
The valiant Knights of the King’s Guard charged forwards while she slipped out the towers and was gone.
None lived to tell the tale, but then again, they had never learned to see her.
Eddard Stark went North with the bones of his sister.
Wylla rode for Oldtown.