Chapter Text
As far back as astoria could remember, she had never been alone. She always had a pair of loud, screaming lungs tethered to her side, creating mischief and chaos. Dark grey eyes meeting pale grey, one jumping headfirst into trouble, the other trailing behind, patching holes and making apologies.
Astoria and Lyanna Stark.
Today was no different. Lyanna was screaming her throat raw, and Astoria felt this unimaginable urge to scream with her. All the howls, screams and tears of pain that wanted to slip out were stuck in her throat. For past moons, their mother was pale and ghostlike, weeks passed by, and she withered like a rose in full bloom, snow on its edges stealing its breath away.
Brandon Stark, the eldest, understood. Eddard ‘ned’, at six years, clung to his father’s foot, hoping the giant of a man who solved all their problems might solve these too. Poor Eddard didn't understand, merciful gods or not, take what is due, owed to them.
A life for a life.
Only four-year-old Astoria seemed to understand. She didn’t know how. She just knew. But she didn’t want it to be true. She didn't want to give up her mother, not to the gods, not to fate.
The tight grip their mother had on baby Ben — that was real.
The tears that slipped from her father’s steely eyes — real.
Lyanna’s sobs shaking the stone walls of their mother chambers— real.
Bran’s clenched fist shaking as silent tears cascaded down his face—real.
Ned’s pain-filled eyes looked anywhere, trying to beg the world that made sense to his eyes for help, real, far too real.
And so was the faint grin on Maester Wylis’s face. At four, she hadn’t understood that smile; at ten, she still didn’t. But she had always known—deep in the marrow of her small, sharp bones—that he was a bad man. That truth had taken root early. She never left baby Ben alone with him. Not even when he cried until his tiny lungs rasped and her arms ached with weariness. Not even when she longed to flee to her chambers and abandon the burden she had laid upon herself. She stayed, always, until Father came to carry Ben away—or until old Nan shooed her away.
She remembered her mother’s words, spoken long ago as she layed her to sleep: 'It is only the pack that stays together, bound by blood, love, and trust that endures. Alone, we falter—together, we thrive.
After mother’s death, father sent Bran to be fostered with lord dustin in Borrowtown and Ned to Vale with lord arryn. The only reason Maester Wylis’s quiet campaign to scatter all starks across Westeros was not successful was Aunt Nevara. Her honeylike almond eyes turned to stone whenever the maester advised father to foster them in the south. She alone in the family openly held distrust in her heart for the grasping maester whose hands seemed too close to the raven scrolls and murmured sweet poison in father’s ears.
Supper had become a solemn affair in the moons that followed their mother’s untimely death. Though six full moons had passed, the ghost of Lady Lyarra still seemed to drift through the stone halls of Winterfell—slow, quiet, and sad.
Astoria had never thought the high table so long before. But with Bran fostered at Barrowton and Ned gone to the Vale, the seats yawned emptily between them.
Lyanna sat hunched beside her, eyeing the berry tarts with a strange intensity. They had once been her favorite, though she’d refused to touch them in the days after the incident —a word she now used in her head to dull the edges of pain. It made it easier, somehow.
She was trying to make herself small, as if shrinking would let her disappear. But Astoria always noticed her. She noticed everything.
A familiar impulse stirred in her chest. She reached for the plate, fingers brushing the rim—not out of hunger, but to snatch it away, to goad Lyanna into reacting. It had been too long since mischief lit her sister’s face. Quiet didn’t suit Lyanna. Silence made her look wrong, like a frost-killed flower still standing upright.
Her fingers had just grazed the plate when Father cleared his throat.
The sound, quiet but commanding, stilled the room.
Both girls straightened at once.
Aunt Nevara, of course, hadn’t slouched to begin with. Her posture was always impeccable, her every movement measured. She laid down her cutlery with care, then turned to their father with a faint frown—not of disapproval, but curiosity. Quiet, searching.
The torches along the walls flickered. Stew cooled in thick wooden bowls. No one else spoke.
Rickard looked toward the girls—then to Nevara.
“There are arrangements to be made,” he said at last, voice heavy. “I’ve written to lord hoster of House Tully, Astoria and Lyanna are to foster there.”
Nevara’s knife halted mid-cut.
“I see,” she said quietly. “So the plan is to finish what the maester began—send them all away.”
“They need structure. Purpose. Lyarra would have wanted—”
“Lyarra would have wanted them home , all of them,” Nevara said, her voice low but firm. “Not scattered across Westeros like unwanted letters.”
“They need to grow beyond Winterfell,” Rickard pressed. “And you—”
“I will not leave them,” Nevara interrupted. “And I will not let you send them off. Not while they still wake crying in the night. Not while Lyanna stares at tarts she used to devour. Not while Astoria flinches at her own silence.”
Rickard’s jaw worked. He did not raise his voice. “You cannot protect them forever.”
“No,” Nevara said. “But I can protect them now. When it matters most.” He set down his cup, the silver rim catching the firelight. “This is not personal. It’s to create alliances.”
“It’s not merciful either,” she returned. “They're not pawns to move as you please on a cyvasse board, Rickard. They’re children. Your children.”
A silence fell again. Even the servants seemed to move more slowly.
Rickard’s eyes were weary as he met hers. “You’d deny them alliances that could make them stronger?”
“I'd give them a mother’s arms if I could,” she said. “But I can’t. So I will give them me. For as long as I can.”
Astoria’s hands had stilled in her lap. She didn’t understand every word—but she heard the storm beneath them. And for once, it was not her father who sounded like the North. It was Aunt Nevara.
Rickard let out a long breath.
“Very well,” he said. “They’ll stay. For now.”
“They will stay,” Nevara said calmly. “I can teach them. Let me be their governess—at least until my parents arrange a betrothal for me.”
Rickard stared down at his cup, the wine inside long gone cold. He knew he needed help— gods, he needed it —but some part of him bristled at her offer.
Here sat a woman who looked, thought, and spoke so much like Lyarra that it made his bones ache.
And he didn’t want her here.
If he could trade her for Lyarra— his Lyarra —he would do it without hesitation, without shame. Nevara moved through these halls with quiet purpose, stepping into roles that were not hers, speaking in that same calm voice, offering aid as if her presence did not open every wound he had tried to cauterize.
She was a walking echo of everything he'd lost. It felt as though the gods had left her here just to twist the knife.
Still, he nodded. Wordlessly. He would play her game, whatever it was. He was too tired to fight. Too tired to care.
Nevara didn’t thank him. She only gave a single nod, cool and measured, as if she had decided the matter herself.
The rest of supper passed in silence.
But nothing about the hall felt still.
***
Winterfell’s grey stone was slow to warm, even in summer. The sun had climbed high, but the wind still wound cold fingers through the open windows and stone corridors. Somewhere beyond the courtyard, steel clanged against steel.
Astoria sat near the hearth, not too close to the fire, cradling a book in her lap she hadn’t turned a page of in nearly half an hour. Beside her, Lyanna played with a handful of dried rosehips, lining them up like tiny soldiers across the rug. Neither spoke. They hadn’t needed to in days.
Nevara watched them from her chair across the room, hands busy with her mending, though her eyes flicked to them more often than to her stitching. The girls had stopped flinching at the sound of their mother’s name. That, at least, was something.
When Ben’s cry rose from the nursery down the corridor, Lyanna looked up first.
“Should I go?” she whispered, barely loud enough to be heard.
Nevara stood and set her sewing aside. “No, little wolf. Let your aunt see to him.”
She was back within minutes, the baby nestled in the crook of her arm. His cheeks were flushed with sleep, his fists balled in silent protest at being disturbed. Nevara carried him not with the detachment of a maid or wet nurse, but with the practiced steadiness of someone who had chosen this weight.
Astoria had been afraid the first time Nevara picked him up, afraid of what it would mean. As if accepting her aunt's care for Ben would be a betrayal of her mother. But Ben never cried in her arms. Not once.
He settled now too, soft and blinking.
“Do you remember when he bit Father’s finger?” Lyanna asked suddenly, looking up at Ben.
Astoria let out a breath that might have been a laugh.
“Father acted like he’d been mauled by a direwolf,” she said. “And Ben just gurgled.”
“He gurgled like a victor,” Lyanna grinned, finally, the corners of her mouth cracking like ice thawing in early spring.
Nevara smiled without showing her teeth. “He gurgles that way for me too,” she said.
The girls didn’t answer, but they both turned toward her then, watching the way she bounced Ben gently on her hip as she paced the solar.
Later that afternoon, Nevara brought out the box of ribbons and scrap fabrics from the old chest in Lyarra’s sewing room. It had gathered dust until now.
“We’ll make something for Ben,” she said. “He’ll need new winter wrappings before the snows return.”
Lyanna made a face. “I don’t know how to sew.”
“I’ll show you.”
Astoria didn’t speak, but she came to sit beside them as Nevara sorted through the colored scraps. She picked one deep blue piece that had once been the hem of her mother’s cloak. She said nothing of it, but Nevara noticed, and said nothing too.
By the time the candles were lit, they had made a clumsy but warm wrap stitched with uneven little stars. Ben had fallen asleep on a cushion, his breath shallow and steady. Lyanna rested her head against Astoria’s shoulder.
Nevara rose and fetched a scroll from the writing desk. “We’ll write to your brothers tonight. They’ll want to hear of this.”
Astoria blinked. “Bran hasn’t answered my last letter.”
“He will,” Nevara said. “Men are slow to write, but not slow to love.”
She offered Astoria the quill, and the girl took it with fingers still sore from her mending needle.
***
The fire whispered softly, casting orange glow across the stone walls and dancing shadows along the old wolf banners. Nevara sat still, legs tucked beneath her, wrapped in the quiet that only came once the children had finally surrendered to sleep.
Ben slept curled against a pillow on the settee, his tiny chest rising and falling, the wrap with uneven star-stitching tucked over him. Nevara watched the soft rise and fall, her eyes tracing each embroidered star. It was clumsy work. Unskilled. And it was perfect.
Her hand drifted toward her writing desk, and after a moment of stillness, she rose. She opened the top drawer and drew out the old stack of lyarra’s letters—the ones written before marriage, before motherhood, when they were just sisters. Some pages had yellowed; others were faintly stained with time. Nevara didn't read them tonight. She only touched them, once, before setting them aside to make room for her own ink and parchment.
She lit a second candle.
Then she began to write
To my sweet boys—Brandon and Eddard,
I do not know when this letter will find you, but I hope the ravens fly swift and sure over snow. I hope this letter finds you safe and warm, in good company and under skies that hold no storm.
Winterfell endures, though it has felt different with each day since your mother passed. The stones remember her, as we all do. With love.
Astoria and Lyanna are doing well. Better than before. Today, they made Ben a new wrap for the cold months ahead—stitched by their own hands. The stars they sewed into the fabric are uneven and sweet, and I told them it was the finest stitching I had seen in all my life. I was not lying.
Ben is strong. He bites now—Astoria claims it's Lyanna's doing, and Lyanna agrees with pride. He nearly walked today, three tiny steps before flopping like a puppy into my arms. He gurgles when Astoria reads, and giggles like a fool when Lyanna sticks her tongue out at him.
They both miss you fiercely, though neither says it too often aloud. Children try to be brave when no one asks it of them. Lyarra used to say Astoria carried more weight in her heart than a girl her age ought to know—and I see that in her still.
Brandon—keep your temper, but not your love. Lyanna speaks of you as if you were a knight in a tale, all steel and honour. She will not say it, but she misses your teasing.
Eddard—remember that laughter is not disloyalty. It's all right to smile, even when the world has changed. Especially then.
And when you think of your mother, do not only think of her sickness. Remember the way she hummed in the mornings when she thought no one was listening. Remember the way she would tuck your cloaks around your shoulders before the snow came, muttering that the wind had teeth.
She loved you. Every day, and beyond it.
I am doing what I can. I am not her. But I was hers. I hope that counts for something.
Write back when you can. Even just a line.
Love,
Aunt Nevara
She read over the letter twice, then folded it with steady hands and pressed the seal with the Stark direwolf. She would add the children’s short notes before sending it with the next raven. For now, she tucked it safely into the small wooden chest on her desk, beside her sister’s letters.