❝SHE'S GOT A SICKNESS, THAT ONE. IT'S IN HER BLOOD. SCARY TO THINK WHAT SHE'LL BE LIKE WHEN SHE'S FULL GROWN. IF THE GODS ARE GOOD, SHE'LL DIE BEFORE THAT.❞
In the North, there are whispers of a cruel and sickly girl lurking in the Dreadfort. Her sk...
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DRUCILLA SAT IN SILENCE, staring into the red eyes of the weirwood, its face stern and unsympathetic, its long white branches twisting out like a hundred tortured limbs.
All weirwoods were unique, Hilda had once said, back when Drucilla still cared to listen to her. Each weirwood had its face and each face had its expression. In the Rills, the weirwood of House Ryswell was said to have the warmth and tenderness of a mother, while the weirwood of Barrow Hall held a mocking smile and would often laugh during times of solemn prayer. Lady Dustin claimed the weirwood had laughed while she prayed for her lord husband's safety after he'd gone off to fight in Robert's Rebellion. It laughed again as she prayed for his bones to be returned to Barrow Hall.
But this weirwood never laughed and it never smiled. It watched and it listened, judging all who stood before it. It was judging Drucilla now as she knelt upon the godswood floor, her black coat fanned out around her. She whispered a quiet prayer to the gods for her brother's safe return. "Bring him home," she said, waiting for a sign that they'd heard her: a sigh from the wind, a rustle of the leaves. "Please, bring him home." She sat back and looked around. After a time, she received their answer. The cold wind blew her hair across her face and sent the leaves swirling off the ground. She saw them and smiled. "Thank you."
Behind her knelt her cousins Tansy and Tally, wearing black cloaks over grey gowns, their blonde hair tied back in loose knots. Drucilla glanced over her shoulder to look at them. Tally's eyes were closed and her lips were murmuring a prayer of her own. When Drucilla listened closely, she swore she heard her cousin utter a boy's name.
"What are you praying for?" Drucilla asked her, whispering so as not to wake their governess, who was resting in the shade of an old oak tree.
Tally gave a startled look, then blushed a deep shade of red. "To wed Benfred Tallhart," she shyly confessed, twirling her finger around a thin blade of grass. She glanced at her younger sister and they both started giggling like a pair of giddy maids. Hilda snorted in her sleep, then shifted her position.
Drucilla rolled her eyes. Of course they were praying for romance. They thought of nothing else. "The gods don't care who you marry."
Tally stopped laughing and her expression soured. "Of course they care. They care about me, don't they? And I certainly care who I marry, so the gods should too. Now be quiet, will you? I'm not finished yet."
But Drucilla would not be so easily silenced. "Tally, stop troubling the gods with your selfish problems. You should be praying for your cousin."
"I've already prayed for my cousin. Now I'm praying for me. Perhaps you should do the same, Drucilla, and pray that the gods save you from the Lannister imp." Tally preferred that name over his real name, probably because of the way Drucilla fumed whenever she heard it. "If they listen half as much as you say they do, perhaps they'll stop the marriage. Maybe they'll even see that you marry Robb Stark, like we all know you so desperately want." She liked to bring up Robb Stark too, proudly, as if she had something to do with her cousin's failed proposal.
