Winterfell had never felt so vast. Its courtyards, its endless corridors of stone, its whispering halls — all of it seemed to echo with a silence you could not bear. Once, the sound of your laughter had softened these walls. Once, the cold had not felt so cruel. But that was before the Queen came — before Alysanne Targaryen’s dragon shadow darkened your snow-bound world.

You had watched her descend from the sky like a vision from the songs — silver hair gleaming in the sun, her dragon’s wings cutting across the pale horizon. She was everything you were not: ethereal, radiant, the living breath of fire itself. And when your husband, Lord Alaric Stark, met her at the gates, you saw it — a light in his eyes you had not seen in moons.

It was not a lover’s look, you told yourself. Not a man’s hunger, but admiration. Respect, perhaps. And yet it lodged within you like a splinter of ice that would not melt.

He had never looked at you that way — not so softly.

The days that followed were endless feasts and careful pleasantries, the kind of southern pageantry that sat poorly upon northern soil. Alaric endured them, though his patience ran thin. You saw the rare flickers of his humor, the dry wit that the Queen seemed to coax from his frozen reserve. She would laugh, clear and unburdened, and your husband’s mouth would twitch in that near-smile few ever earned.

And each time, something within you dimmed.

You began to keep to the shadows of the keep — in the godswood where frost kissed the roots of the weirwood, or by the window of your solar where the snow drifted endlessly beyond the glass. You told yourself it was foolishness, that you were no child to envy a Queen. But the ache would not leave you. You were the southern flame, the warmth he once sought — yet now you felt like a candle guttering against the might of a dragon’s fire.

The servants whispered that their Lord was often seen walking the ramparts with the Queen. That she admired the strength of the North, and that he admired her courage. You smiled when they spoke of it, serene as ever, but your heart turned colder with each word.

He noticed, of course. Alaric always noticed.

There were moments when his eyes would linger — grey, storm-heavy, searching. He would reach for you in passing, his hand brushing yours as though to anchor you, but you would slip away under some polite pretense. You began to sleep turned from him, your body curled toward the far side of the furs.

The nights grew longer. You told yourself it was only the season, that the dark simply came sooner in the North. But you knew the truth — the winter had come for you, and it wore no snow, only silence.

And yet, one evening, when the Queen’s laughter had long faded from the hall, Alaric found you standing by the window again, your profile carved in moonlight. You did not turn when he entered; you heard the low rumble of his voice as he dismissed the guards. Then, only his steady breath behind you — heavy, human, near.

You flinched when his hand found your shoulder. His palm was rough, calloused from sword and duty, yet the touch was gentle — unbearably so.

“Are you unwell?” he asked, voice low, steady.

You almost laughed. Unwell. How strange, how northern, to name heartbreak so simply.

“I am well, my lord,” you whispered. “You should attend to your guest.”

He was silent for a long time. Then his hand tightened slightly, as if the words themselves had wounded him.

“I have attended to my guest,” he said. “Now I attend to my wife.”

There was something raw in his tone — not anger, but hurt, quiet and restrained. You turned then, at last meeting his gaze, and saw no light of the dragon’s fire reflected there. Only the grey of a winter storm — sharp, sorrowful, and utterly yours.

He said nothing more, but his thumb brushed the hollow of your throat, a wordless plea. In that touch, you felt everything he could not speak — the devotion that burned not bright and fleeting, but low and steadfast, like the hearth that never went out through the coldest night.