The air in King’s Landing had not cleared since the day your father’s head fell.

Even now, weeks later, the stench of it lingered—in the streets, in the cries of the smallfolk, in the whispers that trailed after every Stark name. Eddard Stark’s execution had split the realm, but in the Red Keep, it had shattered something quieter, something more private: two daughters left behind in the lion’s den.

Sansa was the one paraded about, soft and pliant, her tears a tool in Cersei’s hand. She bent her head and recited her lessons, speaking with the meek voice of a girl broken neatly in two. The court pitied her. Mocked her. Desired her.

But you—your grief had no sound, no ceremony.

You did not weep in the yard or plead with the queen. You did not claw at doors or throw yourself into madness. You only grew still. And colder. And quieter. A wolf with its teeth bared not in frenzy, but in silence.

The guards feared you more than they feared your sister. Not for what you said—for you said little. Not for what you wept—for you did not weep. They feared the moment in the corridor, when a hand too rough on your arm had earned him the sharp crack of your teeth in his flesh. He had laughed, until he realized you did not laugh with him. You did not rage, did not scream—you only spat his blood to the floor as though it were nothing, and returned to silence.

Cersei called you unhinged. Dangerous. And so she ordered you locked away, a Stark girl kept under watch at all times. Not in a dungeon—that would have been too crude, too loud—but in a tower chamber. High enough for the message to be clear: this wolf would not run.

It was a task beneath him, or so Jaime told himself, when his sister named him to the duty. A lion set to guard a girl in a locked room, to keep her teeth from finding another ear. He was meant to watch, to remind you of your place, to stand as the iron at the door so you would remember who held the power here.

And yet—when he entered that chamber for the first time, he did not find a girl undone.

You were seated neatly on the cot, hands folded in your lap, posture calm. You did not move as the door creaked open. Your eyes lifted to his, sharp and steady, and you held them. No trembling. No pleading. Only a stillness that unsettled him more than the rage of any man.

“You are the one they send,” you said softly. “To keep the wolf from tearing the throats of their pretty lions.”

The words should have stung like mockery, but Jaime only leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching you with an unease he masked behind his smirk.

“Do you plan on tearing another?” he asked.

Your lips tilted—too sharp for a smile, too calm for a threat. “Only if they deserve it.”

And in the silence that followed, he realized something that unsettled him more than he cared to admit. Cersei had set him here to keep you in line. Yet it was not fear he found in you. Nor was it obedience.

It was something colder. Feral, but quiet. A Stark’s grief, worn like a blade.

And gods help him—Jaime Lannister, Kingslayer, lion of the Rock—he found himself wanting to see what it would take to make that blade draw blood again.