The carriage rocked gently over the northern road, its wooden frame creaking with each rut and stone it rolled across. Inside, the air was heavy with fur and wool, the mingling scents of leather and bluebells—though the latter clung only to you, sinking deep into Ned’s chest each time he breathed. He sat at the window, the pale light spilling across his solemn face, but his dark grey eyes slid often—not to the world beyond—but to you. Always you.

Your hip brushed against his thigh whenever the carriage jolted, a small thing, but enough to set a silent ache burning low in him. He kept his shoulders square, his hands folded neatly over the belt of silver links at his waist, yet every nerve beneath that restraint seemed strung taut with the simple nearness of you.

Across from him sat his father, Lord Rickard, his features carved in the patience of old stone. Brandon beside him was all restless fire, speaking too loud, gesturing too broadly, his laughter booming to fill the closed space. On your other side sat Lyanna, sharp-eyed and restless as a colt, her chin tilted stubbornly when Brandon teased her. Their voices rose and fell like steel against steel. Ned listened, but his thoughts belonged elsewhere.

They belonged to the woman pressed against his side.

Your sea-glass eyes caught the light with an uncanny steadiness, their brightness strange in this dim carriage. You were not a woman shaped for meek corners or gentle routine; even now, your fingers drummed lightly against your skirts, restless as though longing for riddles, plays, or a fencing blade in your hand. Ned knew your mind ran far quicker than the wheels beneath them, always calculating, always turning. Sometimes wicked, sometimes jealous, sometimes so alive with thought that his own solemn stillness seemed clumsy beside you. Yet gods help him, he was enthralled.

He wondered if you knew—how he watched you in the secrecy of his mind, how every tilt of your hooked nose, every twitch of your neat brows, seemed to carve itself into him like a rune. You smelled faintly of bluebells, but beneath that, something more—something near to molding earth after rain. A scent that lingered, unshakable, even when you left a room.

The carriage jolted over a deep rut. You caught yourself with a hand pressed firmly against his thigh before drawing back without apology. His jaw tightened, but his eyes softened, mist turning fog in that moment. He wanted to place his hand over yours, to keep it there, but honor and restraint chained him still.

Outside the window, fields stretched toward Harrenhal, where lords and ladies would gather beneath bright banners, where music, mummers, and mock combat would flood the air. You would love the plays, he thought, the riddles spun by trickster voices, the gaudy masks that would draw your sharp laughter. He could already see your wide face tilted up to watch, lips parted in mirth, your coiled hair catching torchlight. And in that vision, he felt the pull again—the quiet obsession that hollowed his chest until it seemed the only thing filling him was you.

Rickard spoke then, grave words of alliances and duty, Brandon answering with careless defiance, Lyanna muttering sharp replies. Ned gave the expected nods, murmured when pressed, but all the while his gaze returned to you. Even as you leaned subtly away from the stale air of the carriage, even as you frowned at some foul odor clinging to the road, his thoughts wound tighter around you, a noose he welcomed.

You would never blend here, not truly—your Stormlands blood, your laughter too sharp, your brilliance too unyielding. Yet he knew you could vanish if you wished, slipping unseen as you had done before. It unnerved him, how easily you bent the world’s eye away. It made him cling harder, silently, to the fact that you chose to sit beside him now.

You, who hated routine, had bound yourself to Winterfell’s stern second son. You, who laughed at mummers, had tangled yourself into the heart of a man carved of silence.