Iron and Blood: a Theon & Sansa Story

Chapter 23

Sansa
Sansa did not remember falling back asleep after Theon left with Robb, but when she woke again, the world outside was no longer black. The rain continued without regard, painting Winterfell in sadness and grief. Sansa got up to pull the curtains shut.

She still felt warm inside her bones from the night before. Whatever sorcery Theon had contrived with his tongue was enough to drive any woman mad, Sansa decided.

As she clambered back into Theon's bed, the tunic he had lent her slipped off one shoulder. It smelled like him—like fire and sage—which was comforting in his absence. Closing her eyes again, Sansa reached out to touch the place that Theon had been, where his body had worn a divot into the mattress. However long he had been gone, Sansa missed him dearly.

When she felt herself slipping into slumber again, Arya's voice rang out. "Theon!" she exclaimed. "Theon, time to wake up!" She banged twice on the door, loud enough to leave Sansa with a headache.

At least it was not Robb again—or her Lady Mother or Jeyne Poole. If Sansa could trust anyone, it was her sister: the only one in the world who knew Joffrey's wrath the way Sansa soon would.

She climbed out of the bed and adjusted the tunic she wore to cover herself. Arya came in immediately when the door opened, though it took her several seconds to notice Sansa hiding behind the door, her hand against the wooden frame.

"Gods, Sansa!" Arya shouted when Sansa barred the door.

Sansa hurried to shush her. "You have to keep your voice down," she insisted. "No one can know I was here."

"Did you lay with him?" Arya hissed. "Are you mad?"

"I didn't!" Sansa snapped back.

It made Arya roll her eyes. "You're wearing his clothes because you soiled yours, I imagine?" She gestured the bow in her hand towards the bed. "And you slept in his bed because you got lost on the way to your chamber?"

"Oh, shush up," Sansa grumbled at her, reaching for her true small clothes, which Theon had thrown onto the floor in his urgency to reach the skin beneath. "I know I can't bed him," she sighed to Arya. "I'm to be Joffrey's woman soon. I have to be a maiden."

Arya seemed not to care either way. She sat down on the trunk Theon kept at the end of his bed and thrummed the string of her bow. "Robb is gone," she remarked, almost to no one, "and I think Theon is gone, too."

"Gone?" Sansa echoed, lacing up the bodice of her corset. "What do you mean gone?"

Arya did not look at her when she replied, "I slept with Mother in her solar last night. Because of my dreams." She ran her fingers over the metal of the trunk beneath her, seemingly ashamed. "I was awake and saw Robb leaving on horseback through the front gates."

"You're certain?" Sansa prodded.

"Yes," said Arya quietly. Sansa asked her which way he had gone, and Arya answered, "North. I asked Mother why he would go alone, and she said she didn't know. She seemed afraid."

As much as she tried to control it, the thought of their brother alone outside the walls of Winterfell made Sansa's hands shake. How far could Robb have gotten since he came to fetch Theon from his chamber? And why hadn't Arya seen Theon riding North with him? "What of Theon?" Sansa inquired, hoping she did not sound as fearful as she felt.

"I've been looking everywhere for him." Arya shook her head. "We were supposed to practice together."

Sansa slipped on her gown. "But it's raining," she observed.

"Theon said a good archer who can't shoot in the rain isn't a good archer." Arya got up off the trunk and went to the window, where Sansa stood. "Do you think they're all right?" Arya asked her.

Sansa eyes were frozen on the yard below her window, where the rain had puddled a tiny moat around the castle. Robb would only ride in such weather on urgent business. Even then, Sansa could not imagine why he wouldn't wait for the rain to let up.

"I think we should go pray," Sansa breathed. She rested her hand on the windowsill. "Come."

Arya nodded, and Sansa led her to the door. When it swung open, the girls' mother was passing with a basket of linens. She stopped in her tracks to look at them.

"What were you two doing in there?" she demanded.

The girls exchanged a look before Arya hurried, "We were looking for Theon. Have you seen him?"

Lady Catelyn narrowed her eyes on them. "No," she murmured. "Though I hope he has ridden North with your brother." She handed Sansa the basket resting on her hip. "Both of you will help finish preparations in the prince's room. It does us no good to worry about Robb now. We have to trust him."

The girls nodded in unison and trudged up the stairs after their mother. Sansa tried to remember if Theon had returned to his room after Robb pulled him outside; she had hardly found the consciousness to roll off the bed when Robb opened the door—she would have slept through Theon's return, surely.

Robb's chamber door was cracked open, so Catelyn went in without a word. Sansa's head was down, so she tumbled into her mother when the woman stopped abruptly inside. Arya ran past them, barefooted through a pile of shattered glass on the floor. Rain was coming in through the window, soaking the floorboards in silence.

Arya crouched down in the mess, lifted a jagged stone from the ground, and held it up so that Sansa and her mother could see.

The rock was speckled with blood.