Blood Upon The Snow ||| Cregan Stark

twenty-eight

Jacaera couldn't take it. Another night of nothing and frustration, she got her husband alone. Ordered the knights out, rubbed her face, and looked at her husband.

"Is something the matter?" He asked, wondering why she wanted to talk alone. If something important had come up.

"Have I... slighted you in some way?" Jacaera asked, sitting across from Cregan. "Done something to make you regret our union?"

He was focused on her then. What Jacaera spoke of was serious. And he'd been so in his own head, he hadn't seen it. "What? Where has this idea come from?"

She couldn't help the small scoff that left her mouth. "It has been ten days. Since you've come to me, touched me. Not since the night we were married." That wasn't normal, not for newlywed couples. Cregan was beginning to realize it, what idea she had gotten in her head. "I cannot blame you if you've begun to regret this. It was the best political choice. But I must know before we continue this."

Cregan pushed out of his own seat to take one next to Jacaera, taking her hands. "I do not regret marrying you. None of this has been about you."

The woman closed her eyes and shook her head. "How else am I to feel? When my husband shows no interest in what is his to have, says nothing to me about it? I have waited for something. But I cannot continue to pretend." Jacaera looked at him, her mouth a thin line. "I do wish to love you. That cannot happen like this."

She didn't truly care that he wasn't fucking her every night. It was just the reason she wanted. Why he hadn't taken her once since they got married. To her, it was a sign that he wasn't committed to their marriage.

"It isn't you. It is fear."

He was opening himself up to her. Jacaera couldn't let her own feelings control that conversation. There was something deeper there, something more than just being uninterested in her.

"Fear of what?"

What was the Wolf of the North afraid of?

"Of caring so deeply about someone. To lose them, have little time to mourn. I care for you. But all of it..."

His first wife. Arra.

It was so much more than Jacaera realized.

Jacaera took his face. For him to admit it to her was something of itself. And she didn't wish for him to feel ashamed.

"Rickon was born and she was forgotten. It eats at me. You are in danger fighting your war. I do not wish to feel hurt of that depth again."

He'd been expected to only care for his son when his wife was dead. Because she'd given him an heir. The only thing she was good for.

Maybe other men could do it. Forget. But he could not. Especially not when he felt such an intense love for the woman sitting before him. The thought of feeling like that again terrified him.

"Tell me about her. Arra."

That was oft what happened to mothers who died. Erased from history, forgotten except for their offspring.

It was what happened to Jacaera's own grandmother. Aemma Arryn. Killed in the pursuit of a son. Replaced by Alicent, who bore a son that usurped Rhaenyra.