A Vow Without Honor

The Fear

Myra

A fog had crawled across the camp in the night, thick clouds of mist spun up by the Trident beside them. As the morning dawned, bleak and gray, there was little to be seen. A lone standard fluttered, a horse emerged nickering and guided by a small page, and Riverrun still loomed in the distance, towering in its sudden singularity, the direwolf of her house standing triumphant.

The imagery mocked her as she stood among the lions. Myra knew there was no hope for her brother's last holdout, and yet it looked untouchable in that moment, a behemoth hearkening back to Robb's glories.

Her uncle had disappeared into that fog an hour ago, perhaps more, perhaps less. It was hard to say when the world felt empty and quiet. Even the farm animals the Freys had in their possession were silent in the stillness.

She'd spied the bridge falling and rising from the distance, but nothing had happened since. Myra had no idea how long it would take. Perhaps Edmure was having second thoughts. Perhaps Brynden had felt the need to lock him up. Perhaps-

"Thinking about all the possibilities will kill you," Jaime whispered beside her. He'd been at her side ever since they had taken her uncle away, but had been so still she'd forgotten.

"What else am I to think of?"

"Anything. Nothing."

Jaime wasn't very helpful, but she could tell by the edge in his voice that he was not faring any better. The words may have been as much for himself as they were for her.

Go away inside. That was what he always said, but where to? A castle in the distant north she'd not seen in an age? A memory of laughter from brothers she'd never see again?

Her mind settled upon a cabin nestled in the woods.

"If it comes to a siege," he started again after a while. "I want you to travel ahead with Tyrion and Brienne."

"Now who is thinking of possibilities?"

"I'm serious, Myra," Jaime continued, blocking her view of Riverrun as he stood in front of her. He held her shoulder gently. "It will be long and it will be bloody. You shouldn't see your family treated this way. Not-"

Not again. That was what he wanted to say. She could see it in his eyes, along with a deep-seated terror. He did not want to lose her again. Their time in Dorne had been a blur to her, days and weeks rolled into one. For him, it must have been a century.

"If I leave, I will never forgive myself, for their sakes and yours. I helped put this in motion, so my hands are just as dirty as yours now. Whatever happens, I need to be here."

Even if she did not want to be; even if she wanted to flee down the flowing green slopes and throw herself into the river, wail as a child clinging to her mother's skirts, tear her hair out and rip her clothes. She could do none of those things. It was her obligation, both as a Stark and a Lannister.

However, those fears hardly mattered in the end. The drawbridge lowered once more and did not move again. Men shouted from the camp, and she could hear the rough din of armor shifting by the hundreds.

"They'll pick it clean," she whispered, watching leather capped heads bobbing in the dissipating fog.

"Ser Addam will have men at the gates," Jaime clarified as he put a hand on the small of her back and escorted her down the hill. "No Frey will enter without my leave."

"It's not your castle."

"It is until I say so," he continued as they trudged through the mist and the muck. Jaime wasn't wearing his armor, a sign of trust perhaps, but Brienne never took hers off, and the comforting sound of scraping metal could be heard behind her. Myra did not know why now a fear had chosen to grip her so tightly. "The Freys needed a Lannister to give them Riverrun. They can wait on my permission to occupy it."