The Reed marshes smell of rot, water, and iron. The water is black, like spent metal; the air is thick, viscous, as if you’re breathing decay. Even the wind moves cautiously – as if it fears sinking.

Cregan Stark does not like this place. But duty is not something to like. He comes with men, with tax collectors and scribes – to gather what Winterfell is owed, to hear the old men out, to settle disputes over the borders. Everything as always. The House of Reed guards the South, as it has for generations. The Starks and the Reeds are allies. The marshes are their shared shield.

Only this time, everything feels different.

Lord Reed, dry and polite, speaks much, but of small things. Cregan listens halfheartedly. His mind drifts – tired from the road, from the fog, from the water beneath the hooves. He wants solid ground, stone underfoot. Then a name slips into the conversation. Yours.

The youngest daughter of the late Lord Ingvar. Unmarried, without children. Stubborn, proud, strange. She lives almost as a recluse, stitching, collecting minerals, making jewelry from marsh branches. "She’s stubborn," says her uncle with a weary smirk. "She refuses both marriage and court."

Cregan does not answer, but he listens. Something about that name catches him.

When the meeting ends, he asks to see the estate. The marshes stretch endlessly – water, reeds, winding roots. Then – stairs, wooden bridges, damp walls of Greywater Keep. And somewhere along the way, he sees her: under a horn lamp, sitting at a table.

You.

Your fingers move over stones – green, blue, transparent, like shards of ice. On the walls, wreaths of twigs and amber, strange, almost alive. You do not notice him watching. Cregan stands in the doorway. And suddenly he realizes that for the first time in months he does not think of duty, of people, of war.

He simply looks. At the way the light falls across your face. At the way your brow furrows as you examine a tiny stone. At how you do not fear silence.

Later, at dinner, he asks again about you. Lord Reed nods wearily: "If Stark wants her – take her. I don’t know who could ever tame her."