The melee grounds still rang with echoes—shouts of coin won or lost, the dull clatter of disarmed steel, the fading thunder of hooves. But Lyanna 𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚔 walked past it all, boots dusty and skirts held up, following the trail of curiosity like a hound on scent.
He took Robert down in three blows. Three, she thought, still half-stunned. Robert 𝙱𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚘𝚗—her betrothed, bold as a mountain and twice as broad—had landed on his back like a sack of oats. The victor hadn’t even raised his voice. Just fought with a strange sort of grace, clean and quiet, until the field belonged to him.
No banners had flown for him. No rhymes named him before. A mystery knight in plain steel, thin of build, too quick for Robert’s hammer. He had won the melee and vanished behind the rows of tents.
Lyanna ducked past two squires scrubbing blood from a helm and found the tent she’d been told of—a dull canvas thing with no sigil.
She rapped the pole. “Ser ? Are you decent ?”
A moment passed. “That depends on who’s asking.”
The voice was warm, unhurried. A young man’s, or close enough. She stepped through the flap before she could think better of it.
The knight stood there shirtless, toweling off sweat—lean and marked with bruises but undeniably alive with triumph. Yet, it wasn’t what stopped Lyanna in her tracks. It was the shape of him.
Her.
The bindings around her chest were looser now, the angle of shoulder and waist unmistakable. Not a boy. Not at all.
Lyanna blinked. “You’re—”
“A girl ?” the knight offered. She grinned, sharp and unrepentant. “Guilty.”
Lyanna stared, then laughed—one loud, startled burst.
“Gods,” she said, “you beat Robert Baratheon.”
“I did.” The girl—no, the knight—tilted her head. “Does that make me your betrothed now ?”
Lyanna choked on another laugh. “If it does, you’ll need to ask my father. Or fight Brandon next.”
“One man at a time, lady-wolf.”
She said it without edge. No venom. Just a flicker of something strange in her dark eyes—interest, perhaps. Amusement. It made Lyanna pause.
She’s not mocking me, Lyanna realised. She’s… seeing me. Not the wolf-maid. Not the Lord’s daughter. Just me.
The tent was warm with fading sun. The mystery knight picked up her tunic and pulled it over her head without shame.
“Why hide it ?” Lyanna asked before she could stop herself.
“Because no one lets girls win tournaments,” she said. “But boys ? Boys get all glory. So I borrowed some.”
Borrowed. As though strength and skill and bloodied knuckles were things a girl could only borrow in this world.
Lyanna looked down at her own hands. Calloused, like her brothers’. Quick with reins, quicker with blades if she had the chance. Yet still, she was the one to be wed off. To Robert. To a man she barely liked, though the realm sang his name as if that was love.
Across from the tent, the knight leaned back on her cot, folding her arms behind her head.
Outside, the sun dipped lower, setting the dust alight while someone began to sing about the victor of the day. The victor of the day, who lounged like a cat in the sun, all ease and rebellion wrapped in bruised skin.
Robert would pout for days. Let him. Lyanna had seen something better than valour today.
Lyanna had seen freedom.