The Worth Of Love

The Price We Pay

We finally get Ned Stark's point of view, yay) and more Dany/Ned content. :)

(Eddard Stark)

It has been a week since they rode out from their camp in the Riverlands.

A week since he had spent any time alone with Daenerys. Since she visited him to "discuss last minute plans" in his tent.

He spent his days riding at the front with his eldest son, Barristan, and Grey Worm. While Daenerys was somewhere over them, riding Drogon.

The first few days went by peacefully. Even though Robb kept looking at him weirdly the entire time and started asking about his time in Essos. But then everything changed.

Robb began asking more personal questions about the Queen. They were no longer questions about her people, her conquests, her dragons, but rather questions about her guards, her preferences, and friends.

That is when he realised his son was sniffing something out. His son was trying to find as much information about Daenerys as possible, and it unnerved him. His son was watching the Queen carefully. Her guards. Her maids. Everything and everyone that surrounded the Queen. Even him. Robb would practically walk with him to his tent every night.

However whenever he asked Robb what the point of those questions was, he always found some excuse, interest, desire to befriend, and curiosity of what kind of Queen she would be.

So this morning, Ned asked Barristan to ask Robb what was troubling him.

So far there was nothing. Robb kept quiet. And only sometimes looked in his direction with suspicion in his eyes. The longer it went on, the more worried he was.

Did his son figure out something about him and Daenerys?

No that couldn't be. They were careful and took every precaution to ensure no one would know. At least no one from the Northern and Riverlands army.

Perhaps one of Daenerys' guards told Robb something...?

Could that be it?

Probably not.

He knew his son well enough to know that if he found out he had a relationship with Daenerys, he would tell his mother and try to get into a fight with him.

But Robb hasn't yet tried to punch him, or even scream at him for dishonouring Catelyn, which meant that Robb knew nothing. And for now they would be safe.

The tensions were growing. He felt it when he was around Robb. And he knew that Robb felt it too, judging by the look in his eyes.

The tension between him and his son bothered him. It worried him that he would never be able to fix his relationship with his son.

Yet who could he blame?

He was the one that fell in love with a foreign woman. Someone he should have never even met. Someone who he should have never laid eyes upon. He wanted to laugh at the irony. Robb also married an Essossi woman who he would have never met if not for this war.
Like father, like son... indeed.

It was too late for him...

The pull he felt towards Daenerys was impossible to resist.

And it wasn't just lust...

No... If it was lust, he would have ignored it. It was a feeling he has never felt for Catelyn. That same pure feeling of love he felt for Ashara Dayne. And now he was too far gone.

When he brought Jon to Winterfell he promised himself he would never lay with anyone who wasn't Catelyn.

And now he found himself bedding another woman on a regular basis.