The Long Winter | Jaime Lannister X Stark OC | GOT/ASOIAF

Three Corpses

Ren awoke with a stranger in his bed and a pounding headache, made worse by the knocking at the door to his chambers.

Not just knocking... pounding, shouting, panic.

He sat bolt upright, ignoring the way his head spun - he really didn't think he'd drunk that much the previous night - hurriedly pulling on his clothes and resisting the urge to fall back into bed. This better be worth it...

"What in hells name is that?" Behind him, the unfamiliar serving maid stirred irritably, eyes opening blearily. "What - !"

She snatched the sheets up to cover her bare chest as Ren flung open the door. A pale-faced, wild-eyed guardsman stood before him.

"What?"

"Sorry, ser," The man said, barely even glancing at the naked girl in his bed, which only proved how grave a matter this was. "I didn't know who else to come to. Gods, I don't know how else to say this... It's Lord Robb, ser - he's dead,"

Those words started what was, without a doubt, the worst day of Ren's life.

His body acted on instinct, though his mind had yet to catch up at first. In half a daze, he rushed down hallways and staircases towards Robb's rooms, barely noticing anyone else he came across, never mind if they spoke to him. Harrenhal was eerily quiet after the revels of the previous night, a blanket of hush cast over its walls. Somewhere in the castle, the wolves were howling.

"They've been at it since before dawn, ser," The guard said hesitantly. "Perhaps they knew,"

Likely they had. His dreams that night had been full of howling and feral snarls. Maybe it had been a sign, one he'd ignored in a drunken stupor.

One look at the bloody mess on the ruined bed - a mess which had, only yesterday, been his cousin - was enough to want to lose his stomach. It was worse than any gory sight he'd seen on the battlefield, worse than anything he had ever seen before. Ren stared in silence, barely listening as the men spoke around him. Through the ringing in his ears, he distantly noted the sharp orders that came out of his mouth, to shut the door, to keep this quiet.

"It was her," One voice broke through, the accusing tones of the second guard. "The guards last night let no one in. She murdered Lord Robb in his sleep like the craven woman she is,"

For the first time, Ren registered the hysterical, sobbing woman - his cousin's wife - huddled in the corner of the room. Marianne Frey was in her nightdress, barefoot and covered in Robb's blood. There was a dagger discarded on the floor nearby.

He took a breath. He couldn't panic, couldn't grieve, couldn't even think about the fact that Robb, his cousin, his friend, their leader, Lord Eddard's son, was lying on that bed with his throat slit. Ren had to, for now, shut off any part of his mind that cared, or else he would break in front of everyone here.

It's just another corpse on the battlefield. He forced himself to step closer, examining the wound. Messy, jagged, certainly not a clean cut. Deep, too.

"He was not asleep when he died," Ren said, silencing the growing dissent between the guards, one of whom had stepped in front of the trembling Marianne. "It can't have been her,"

"It was me!" She spoke for the first time, her eyes wide and... terrified. "I - I was jealous that he was talking to the serving maid and I - I killed him,"

The guard raised a hand to strike her, enraged.

"Stop," Ren's tone cut like a knife, examining the body further. "She didn't kill him,"

"She confessed!"

"She's lying. There is no chance she would have been able to overpower him whilst he was awake, and that cut is not one you'd give a sleeping, still man. There's bruises, look, under his clothes. You're telling me that slip of a girl could do that?"