ᴍᴇᴇᴛ ᴍᴇ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴀʀᴋ, ᴋɪꜱꜱ ᴍᴇ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏᴏɴʟɪɢʜᴛ

xii. princess in the tower

cw // slightly graphic descriptions of pain

┌─── ∘°❉°∘ ───┐

The pain in Jon’s hand had become unbearable. He wanted to flex his fingers to try and deal with it, but every time he did so a new jolt of pain shot up his arm. His left hand had closed around his wrist to try and stop it from moving. His gaze flickered down sometimes, but the ugly red swelling was only getting more prominent. He had to swallow down his rising bile.

Jon shivered from the cold. He wished that the heat of the fire burning in the Lord Commander’s tower reached the place where he was standing. He was so tired.

He still had trouble properly comprehending what he had just seen. The blue eyes of that creature were haunting his mind. The way it screeched sent a shiver down his back just remembering it. Everything that had happened today - swearing his vows, learning of his father's imprisonment - paled in comparison.

Ghost sat next to him, rubbing his head against Jon's leg. The wolf wanted to comfort him, he supposed, but it showed little effect.

“Mormont!” One of the men, Ben, came running up to them. “We've found another one.”

They were led into the tunnels below Castle Black, further, further, until they stood in the hallway leading to the library.

There, the corpse lay. It looked so similar to the one Jon had burnt previously. The same rotten body, the same intense blue eyes. But it didn’t move.

“What happened to him?” Mormont asked.

“We don’t know,” Thorne answered. He had frowned when he had seen Jon, but hadn’t actually said anything to him. “We just found him lying here. No signs of a fight, no men, no reason for him to be here.”

Ghost tried to get closer to the body, but Jon held him back. He didn't want his wolf to touch that thing.

“Carry him to the yard and burn him. We cannot have a corpse running around the castle.” He turned to Jon. “Us two are going to look around, see if we can find out what happened, if anyone has been harmed.”

Jon nodded slowly. He wanted to go to sleep.

But he followed Mormont into the library, Ghost by his side, hoping this would be over soon.

“You look over there,” the Lord Commander said, pointing to the right. “That way we’ll be quicker.”

Jon watched Mormont walk to the left, disappearing behind the shelves. He took a breath, and immediately winced when he accidentally moved his hand. He wondered if he would ever be able to properly use it again.

He started walking along the shelves, not actually expecting to find anything, even less anyone.

Ghost trudged before him, his snout pressed to the ground, taking Mormont's command more seriously than Jon. At least one of them was good at listening.

His gaze wandered across the books, many of them old tomes whose titles have long since faded into illegibility. Maybe it was also the missing light or his tired eyes. He didn’t know and also didn’t particularly care.

Some of the words he was actually able to decipher. Many books were, as far as the title was concerned, about kings from times before the Targaryen Conquest. Northern names and places, some from the south, certain ones he recognised and certain ones he-