𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕯𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖔𝖓 [𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗯.𝗦]

26

THE LETTERS

ROBB hissed, wrapping the bandage tightly around his hand. Clenching his fist at the pain that immediately spread throughout him. It was nothing he wasn't used too, he had found that war was a truly cruel thing to live through. Something he could do without, of that he was sure.

He glanced up at his mother who had entered with a soft smile, kind as it usually were. But there was something else, a lingering nerve that remained beneath her pale flesh.

"Mother?"

"I," she hesitated. Revealing a pile of papers that were written in a hand he would've known anywhere. "I found Lord Bolton hiding them away. He was searching through your letters," she paused with a fierce frown. "On this, I don't know why. But he's kept Alysanne's letters from you..."

She knew, surely, that this would amount to nothing but a sense of righteous rage. Robb trembled clutching his sword tightly in his hands, fury of the likes that had never been seen before.

"He did what?!"

His mother put them gently down on the map, glancing at the markers around Casterly Rock. She swallowed her fear, but it only seemed to be growing by the day. Along with her rage and fury that the war was taking more from her family as the days went by.

Robb reached for the letters, holding them to his chest desperately. The only knowledge of one of his sibling's survival. For all he knew, there had only been Sansa. And as cruel as it was to admit, she was the last of them that he would wish to do so.

"They're old," he murmured. "No! This one was a few weeks ago. She must've escaped from Winterfell when Theon attacked!"

Catelyn blinked in surprise, her shock clear to see.

"She was at Winterfell?"

"One of my soldier's cousin informed him of her arrival, but that was..."

Robb said no more on the matter, his opinion clear on the death of his brothers. Little boys that knew nothing of the world beyond their stone walls, but he had waited in the end. For Alysanne's return to his camp. He had waited. But she hadn't returned to him, as any sister should, nor the dragons that were rumoured.

He doubted they existed, dragons were a fanciful thought. And incredibly hard to believe in, and something that he, himself, had never truly held any faith in.

After all, dragons didn't win wars.

They haven't in a very long time.

But perhaps, he thought with a wry smile as he held his sister's letters close to his chest. Mayhaps that will change...

"Are you sure about this?" Asked his mother, glancing once more at the board in concern.

The fear only seemed to be growing as the days went on. A factor in her life that she had steadily began to despise. It was hard not too.