The Lion and the Wolf ~ Game of Thrones

4

Winterfell.

Joanna Lannister.

Nobody feasted like northerners!

Not that she'd been to many feasts outside the occasional one at Casterly Rock, but Joanna heavily doubted that the majority of the south could ever match the north vigour whilst celebrating. Feasts and balls at the Rock were excuses to meet with lords and ladies and assess who your allies were, and who your enemies were. Or, that's what her Aunt Genna had taught her. It was the perfect place to do so, from what Joanna had learned over years of sitting at Father and Genna's table, observing how they interacted with the lords and ladies around them.

Up in the north, feasts were just that.

The Great Hall of Winterfell was hazy with smoke and heavy with the smell of roasted meat and fresh-baked bread. It echoed with the soft, sweet sound of a harp, but Joanna could scarcely hear it over the drunken singing of a hundred or more northmen. Giggles escaped her lips as she clapped for a giant of a man with a surprisingly good voice, and the daughter of Tywin Lannister laughed loudly as the hall erupted in cheers when another large man dumped a massive keg of ale over the first giant's head. This was what a feast was supposed to be like. Good fun and good food.

Joanna had been having so much fun that she hadn't noticed until the fourth hour of the feast that something was not right. All merriment crashed and burned when she realised that she hadn't seen Jonelle Snow even once. So, picking her nails and chewing the inside of her cheek, the lioness scanned the Great Hall in search of the she-wolf. It took far longer than she thought was possible—how hard was it to find a silver-haired goddess among a sea of mortals?—but she finally found the White Wolf of Winterfell sitting down by the benches. 'There you are,' Joanna thought, smiling at the Valyrian woman as she knifed half a honeyed chicken and let it slide to the floor between her legs. 'Ghost.' A little giggle escaped the lioness' lips when she saw the white pup tearing into the chicken in savage silence.

"That's a pretty dog," Myrcella observed, sitting beside Joanna.

Joanna turned to her niece and grinned. "That's a direwolf, Marcy."

The girl's green eyes widened. "Is it really? Well, it's a pretty wolf."

"He is, isn't he?" Joanna giggled, remembering how proud the white pup was of his beauty. "Do you want to meet him? I'm sure Jonelle wouldn't mind." Myrcella turned her wide eyes away from Joanna to look at the direwolf scaring off a black mongrel bitch as he stood over his chicken and bared his fangs. "Don't look so nervous, sweetling. Jonelle doesn't bite." The young princess chewed her lip and fiddled with her fingers.

"I'm not nervous about Lady Jonelle," Myrcella said bravely. "She's very kind. I bumped into her earlier, and she gave me something to treat the scratch. A paste of sorts that stung a little, but it doesn't hurt half as bad anymore." Joanna wrapped an arm around her niece, and they watched as Jonelle drank with the Lannister and Baratheon men around her, flinging curses and jibes at them whenever they sent one her way and laughing.

"Then what is it? Don't tell me it's because she's a bastard," Joanna said jokingly, but Myrcella shook her head. "Your mother told you not to go near her, didn't she?" The lioness clicked her teeth when her niece didn't say anything, and she glanced at Cersei sitting behind a long ironwood table situated on the raised platform overlooking the hall.

Cersei wore a jewelled tiara amidst her golden hair, its emeralds a perfect match for the green of her eyes. Eyes that were watching Jonelle Snow strangely from over a golden goblet of what could only be her favourite wine. "Everyone keeps talking about Lady Jonelle, and I don't understand why no one seems to like her," Myrcella whispered. Tearing her eyes away from her sister's strange behaviour, Joanna looked down at her niece and smiled.