Catelyn kissed Ned deeply, running her fingers through his hair. He couldn't deny the pleasure of her touch. Her mouth tasted of honeyed wine and winter apples, warm and familiar in a way that made his chest loosen. For a moment he forgot blood on river stones, the weight of mail, and the way men screamed when they drowned.
Their lips parted for fresh air, and the new Lady Stark took a step back.
They were not in a bedchamber. They stood in a place that was half Riverrun and half Winterfell, like a painter who had never seen either keep and had only heard them described. Stone arches rose into shadow. Banners hung nearby, but the sigils were blurry and hard to make out. Beyond them, trees with bare branches reached up like black fingers, as if the godswood had pushed its way inside.
Catelyn's hair shone copper in a light that did not come from any hearth. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright, and she looked even more beautiful than she had at the sept. Too beautiful, her features stirred in Ned the memory of Queen Rhaella.
"I can feel him kicking," Catelyn shared, rubbing her bulging stomach. Her hands moved with reverence, but also with certainty, as though the child already belonged to a story written long ago. "He will be a strong boy with the blood of the First Men, I know it."
Ned's gaze dropped to her belly. It rose and fell with her breath, round beneath her gown. He waited to feel the kick with his own hand, to put palm to life and make it real.
"Son or daughter, I will love them regardless," Ned smiled at his wife, the words coming out on instinct, as though the promise had already been demanded of him once.
Catelyn smiled back. "Of course you will. That is why you must come home." She stepped nearer, and he felt the pull of her like a tide. "I can't wait for you to meet him."
A faint sound carried through the dream, almost lost beneath the hush of breath and cloth. Wings. A soft, steady rustle, like something perched above the rafters.
Ned's eyes flicked up.
He saw only shadow, and in the shadow a pale shape that might have been a patch of moonlight, or might have been an eye.
When he looked back down, Catelyn was watching him too closely, as though she had noticed his glance. Her smile did not change. Her hands did not stop circling her belly.
"Come home, Ned," she said again, and there was tenderness in it. Then urgency. Then something that did not feel like her at all, the words repeating as if the dream itself had decided it would not accept refusal. "Ned. Ned. Ned."
Her voice layered over itself. The syllables multiplied until they filled the stone hall, climbing the walls, pressing at his skull. The air grew thick. His lungs felt heavy, as though he were breathing river water.
He tried to speak her name. He tried to say I am here. But his tongue stuck to his teeth, and when he opened his mouth, nothing came out.
Catelyn reached for him. Her fingers brushed his jaw, then slid up to his temples as if she meant to soothe him. Her touch was gentle.
It was also guiding.
"Come home," Catelyn said, and the words became a corridor. A command dressed up in a lover's plea. "Come home and make your duty whole."
Lord Eddard Stark's vision blurred as he opened his eyes, revealing Howland Reed's blurry figure. Everything had been a blur since the battle of the Ruby Ford, as the men had taken to calling it.
"Sorry to wake you, Ned, but we have a problem. Prince Rhaegar's body is missing," Howland reported. He kept his voice low, as if even the canvas walls might listen. "I thought one of the leaders needed to know."
"An unfortunate setback, but surely too many saw him fall to Robert for men to rally around his ghost." Lord Stark contemplated. "Perhaps his body washed downstream in the battle's aftermath."
Howland shook his head. "The current was slow at the crossing. And he wore armor. Someone may have taken him."
Ned's stomach tightened. "Then we best speak with Lord Arryn."
They walked through the camp together. The victory had not felt like victory. Ten thousand men had died for their cause, and as many again lay groaning under bloodied blankets. Smoke clung to everything. So did the stink of wet leather, wound-rot, and river mud.
Robert had been on the brink of death, and Jon Arryn held the rebellion together by force of will.
As they passed between lines of tents, Ned tried to summon Rhaegar's face. He could remember the rubies bursting like drops of blood. He could remember the scene. But the prince's features slipped away whenever Ned reached for them, as though his mind skated over smooth ice.
Faces had been difficult since the battle.
Every time he tried to picture someone, Catelyn came to him instead. Her hair. Her mouth. Her hand on her belly.
He tried to think of Ashara Dayne. Laughing violet eyes. The tilt of her smile.
Nothing held.
I must have struck my head, he told himself, and did not look at Howland, because he did not want the crannogman to see the fear in his eyes.
Falcon and stag banners flew over the largest of the tents when they arrived. Ned pushed through the flap first, and Howland followed close, quiet as a shadow at his back.
Jon Arryn was finishing his breakfast. He looked older in the morning light, the lines around his eyes cut deeper than they had been a year ago. "Sit, Ned. Boy, bring food for my guests."
"I've no need of your bread, Lord Arryn. My fast is broken." Howland answered.
Ned sat down across from his foster father. "Just for me then. Is Robert awake yet?" The servant in Arryn blue set a plate in front of Ned and he bit into a slice of bacon.
"Awake, but his mental state is rather poor." The lord of the Vale frowned. "His burns are rather severe, and the maester gave him a great deal of poppy milk."
"He will live, surely?" Ned asked, and Jon nodded in affirmation. "That's a relief."
Howland coughed a reminder and Eddard remembered why he was here in the first place.
"Lord Arryn," Ned began, "Rhaegar's body is missing. I saw him fall myself. Howland believes someone took the body."
Jon's expression tightened. "Yes. Most of the loyalists laid down arms when the prince went down, but some crownlanders made a fighting retreat downriver. The current may have carried the corpse to the sea, yet I fear it was stolen. A body would quiet a thousand tongues. Without it, rumors grow teeth."
He exhaled, frustration controlled by habit. "And we are battered. Getting into King's Landing won't be easy. The Reach still has strength. The Westerlands have strength. Tywin Lannister's silence troubles me the most. He has never been a man to sit on his hands."
Ned longed for peace the way a starving man longed for bread. In the last year he had lost a father, a brother, a sister, and most of the boys who had once laughed beside him. He begged the old gods there would be no more names to add to the tally.
Just as Lord Stark finished his plate, a messenger entered the tent.
"M'lords," he bowed. "There's a Lord Varys here to see you."
Arryn frowned. "The foreigner doesn't deserve the honor of his council position, but we've no other news from King's Landing. Send him in. I suppose we best hear him out."