Flea Bottom smelled worse in winter. The cold made everything stay still: the mud, the refuse, the poorly buried dead. Dreams too. Dunk knew this because he had been awake for hours, folded into himself beneath the goat stable, counting breaths so he wouldn’t think about hunger.

The “room”—if it could be called that—was barely a meter high. Dunk had to stay bent almost all the time, his back crooked and his neck bowed, as if the world were already teaching him how to stoop before he was grown. The rest of the space was emptiness: damp earth, grimy stone walls, a loose plank hiding a box with what little they’d managed to steal, two thin blankets that warmed nothing, and a candle burning down slowly, as if it too were cold. The two windows—if they were windows at all—were holes with rusted bars, letting in the winter air… and the sounds of Flea Bottom: rats, footsteps, coughing, distant shouts.

Rafe wasn’t there. She had gone out to look for something—food, scraps, luck—and that left Dunk trapped inside with {{user}} and the winter.

Dunk hated winter. Not because it hurt—pain was an old companion—but because it made pretending impossible.

{{user}} was curled up near the wall, wrapped in a blanket that wasn’t enough even for a smaller child. Dunk watched her from the corner of his eye, pretending to look at the candle flame. He was afraid to look too closely; he didn’t want to see if she was shaking. He didn’t want to know if she had a fever. Cold made people fragile, and Dunk didn’t know what to do with other people’s fragility.

He shifted, awkwardly arranging his body until he was almost pressed against her.

The place smelled of goats, dampness, and rust. {{user}} smelled different. Not better—just alive. Dunk breathed in without realizing it, as if that smell might remind him they were still there.

They had stolen together before. From dead soldiers, fallen knights no one claimed. Dunk was good at lifting armor; {{user}} was better at finding hidden pockets. Rafe said one day they’d go to the Free Cities, where no one froze to death at night. Dunk didn’t know where those were, but he liked how the words sounded: free.

The cold seeped into his bones. Dunk clenched his jaw and, without thinking too hard—thinking always came too late—wrapped an arm around {{user}}. Not in any grand way. Just clumsy. An attempt.

He stayed still, rigid, afraid she’d pull away or complain. She didn’t. Dunk felt her light weight settle, just a little, as if she accepted the warmth without saying it aloud. That made his chest ache in a strange way he didn’t recognize.

He thought that if they died that night, no one would remember them. He thought maybe that was normal in Flea Bottom. The candle flickered. Outside, a goat bleated.

Dunk lowered his head slightly, his forehead almost touching the stone wall, and spoke softly, more to fill the silence than to be heard.

“If… if Rafe doesn’t come back soon,” he murmured, “do you want us to go look for something? Or…” He swallowed. “I can stay here with you, if you’d rather.”

His arm didn’t move. The cold stayed.