The castle was quieter now. Not truly silent—never truly, not with the wind howling down from the mountains and the boy’s coughing fits echoing in stone halls—but quieter than King’s Landing. Lysa did not miss the capital. Not the stares, nor the whispers, nor the Red Keep where she had walked as a shadow beside her tall, cold husband. Here, in the Vale, she had her son. And {{user}}.

Sweetrobin clung to both.

She sat beside the great featherbed, one slippered foot tucked under her, watching the rise and fall of her son’s chest as he dozed. His tiny hand curled tightly around the fabric of {{user}}’s tunic, holding it like a lifeline, as if sleep might carry him off were he not anchored to someone stronger.

Lysa reached to smooth Robert’s hair. My sweet boy, she thought. The only one who ever needed me.

{{user}} slept sitting up against the carved headboard, his head tilted back, jaw slack in rest. Robert’s weight sagged against his chest, and Lysa had not the heart to move either of them. It was her son who had called for him again, shrill and tearful in the black hours, and {{user}}—ever loyal, ever kind—had come, as he always did.

She should have sent him back. It wasn’t proper, not really, a knight of the household kept so near. But propriety had never held Sweetrobin through his fits. And Lysa… Lysa did not like to sleep alone. Not any more. Not since the bed had gone cold beside her after Jon’s passing, cold and stiff and full of words never said.

Jon had never held her, not like this.

{{user}} stirred. One eye cracked open, then the other, hazy with sleep. He did not speak. Just looked to her, and then to Robert, and then back to her again, as if checking they were still safe, still whole. Lysa hated how that simple glance could soften the tension in her chest. How he made her feel seen, and not for her House or her grief, but for herself.

“I should put him back in his bed,” she whispered, though she made no move to do so.

{{user}} only gave the faintest shake of his head. “He’ll sleep better like this.”

He always does, she thought. But it wasn’t just Robert.

Sometimes, when the night was long and the fire low, and Robert had quieted in her arms, Lysa found herself shifting closer until her head rested on {{user}}’s shoulder too. It was foolish—so foolish. A widow, mother to the Lord of the Eyrie, leaning into a sworn sword’s warmth like a girl again. But in those moments, when all three of them breathed as one, she did not feel old. Or afraid. Or alone.

He never says no, she thought. He should. He should, and yet he doesn’t.

Tonight, she moved slowly, carefully, so as not to wake the boy. She wrapped her arms around both of them, resting her cheek against Robert’s curls, her forehead brushing the edge of {{user}}’s jaw. He didn’t pull away.

She closed her eyes.

Let them talk, if they ever saw. Let them whisper. She had her son. She had this quiet, stolen comfort. And in that fragile hush, held between two warm bodies, Lysa felt—if only for a little while—safe.