Northern lights

09. Three stories

Robb

When I returned to the castle, the fire extinguished, I've heard screams echoing in the halls. My stomach turned and an unsettling feeling grew in my chest.

Something is wrong. I know it.

Rushing to Bran's room, legs becoming heavier and hard to command, my breath turns shallow and fast as my brain becomes ridden with horrific thoughts of my brother's death.

But once I stop at the door, my breath is caught in my throat and my train of thought is nowhere to be found.

I avert my gaze to the floor, too afraid to move closer and look at the person my mother and maester Luwin are working on and I almost gasp when I see I'm standing in a pool of blood. It wasn't a few careless drops from a bleeding nose or a cut finger; there must have been a couple of pints making the jagged red trail and the splashes on the walls.

I swallow thickly, the lump in my throat growing bigger and harder to ignore. After what happened to Bran I believed it was the most frightening thing ever to happen in my life.

I was wrong.

The blood itself doesn't make me queasy, but coming to the unfathomable realization does. I left the room with my mother and a girl I'm certain is my destiny and now only one is in my line of sight. The blood flowed like a lazy river. A river I never wanted to follow to it's source, but I had to. I had to come closer and find the truth despite the heaviness in my limbs.

In two strides, I'm faced with a limp body and my mother's hand over the wound, but no matter the pressure she applied the blood had still gushed between her fingers and oozed under her hand.  Time itself had become irrelevant; the seconds could have been hours, or hours mere seconds. In that suspended moment she became the eye of my storm and I could no longer keep the pain a bay.

It's my little flower on the floor, letting the rich colour of a rose flow from her body in the most violent of ways.

It's Rose. My lady and my love.

"Mother?" I croak and instead of a reply, mother calls for guards to lead me away. I didn't hear them enter, but I felt their hands holding onto my elbows and I felt their pull.

"NO!" I shout over and over, but I barely hear myself or anything at all. Sounds have been reduced to distant whispers and the only thing I could hear is the sound of my own heart beating fast. I feel myself struggling against their hold, fighting to be by her side, desperate. I am desperate for I know not if she'll be dead come morning light. I am horrified of that possibility. I just want to be beside her, hold her hand...Even if she doesn't know I'm there, it must be helpful in some way. And in this moment I hate mother. I hate her for not allowing me the mercy of seeing her face again and holding her hand in mine, being there to listen to every breath she takes.

The door closes and I know I'm being dragged away despite my fight and the men don't stop until I'm outside in the cold night and on the frosted dirt down on my knees.

The panic starts like a tightening of the chest, as if the muscles are trying not to let another breath in, but instead to die. Then the breath comes, shallow, lungs unable to move much against the suddenly heavy ribs. Then my mind becomes as hazy, thoughts making no sense. Nothing makes sense.

I sit with my back against the wall for who knows how long with my eyes closed shut, but when I open my eyes next there's light of day and people are passing me by.

"Robb?" Mother's hand clasps my shoulder firmly and I realize she's the reason why my eyes are now open.

I look up, afraid to even ask and I see she knows that. Mother always knew me well, which has always been a mother's job - to know her children.