The King of Winters

Chapter-123

Ashara

The straw on the floor was damp and had a stale musty smell. There was no window, no bed, only the dark and rats to keep her company. Ashara still remembered everything that brought her here. The slap she had given Viserys in return for the kiss he'd taken at Starfall had earned her the punches and kicks of his friends. She had hardly felt them, until one backhanded her so hard she fainted.

The trip back to King's Landing was a blur, and Ashara lost consciousness more than once. She remembered walls of pale red stone festooned with mildew and patches of nitre, a grey door of splintered wood, four inches thick and studded with iron. She had seen them, briefly, a quick glimpse as they brought her inside half fainted.

Then Viserys was looming over her, caressing her, whispering, "It grieves me to see you like this, my sweet queen. Why do you do this to yourself? And why do you do this to me?" He kissed her then, a faint whisper of a kiss on her bruised cheek and that was the last she knew.

Once the door had slammed shut behind him, she had seen no more. The dark was absolute the next time she woke that she wasn't sure she was awake at all. She had as well been blind. . . Or dead. Killed with her King.

Ashara whimpered faintly as her soft hand touched the dry, hard surface, her heart throbbing with every motion. Bones, she knew. This is not Ned, this is not the man I loved, the father of my children. His hands were rough and hard now, but they were not Ned's hands, so strong and full of life. But nothing remained of that, that or the warm flesh that had pillowed her head so many nights, the arms that had held her and the face that she has kissed. She found no trace of his dark grey eyes that she had once rejoiced to see, eyes that could be soft as a fog or hard as stone. They gave his eyes to crows, she remembered then before they had given him back to her.

"Oh, Ned," Ashara sighed as she thought about her husband. She remembered the time they had shared in the woods of Starfall, with only the tall pines and cypress to look upon them as they raced through the woods and made love beside a stream amidst the tall trees and fallen leaves. They hadn't been King and Queen then, her crown long forgotten in the clear waters of the stream as Ned wrestled her down and kissed her neck. They were simply a man and his wife having a tumble in the woods. Ashara still remembered his laugh. How he had laughed like that after oh so long. Yet he had gotten it wrong. He died the moment he took off his crown, Ashara Dayne thought, and half of it had been her own doing.

She should thank Rhaegar for letting her have the bones at least and for the lamp so that she could see her Ned. Most likely he did it to torment her than out of a concern for her. One day I will thank them all for their concerns. Only then, only then I will wrench the life out of their throats with my bare hands.

When I am done I will bury Ned peacefully in the crypts of Winterfell, with a stone likeness that will sit in the dark with a direwolf at his feet and a sword across his knees. If only Ned had a direwolf of his own he would not have died, like the direwolf that had saved her and her son in Wolfswood against those cutthroats. Ashara wondered if Andrew still had his wolf pup with him, the one with the white coat and eyes as red as blood. She had convinced Ned to bring him home and helped Andrew raise him. It was the least she could do in return for the pup's mother who'd died for their sake. They must have had him killed as well when they took Winterfell, along with everyone else in the castle.

Her dungeon was under the Red Keep, deeper than she dared imagine and far away from Winterfell and her son. Ashara damned them all: Rhaegar and his dragon cloaks, Lyanna and Viserys, Jon Connington and Varys and even Ser Gerold Hightower and his Kingsguard.

Yet in the end she blamed herself for most of it had been her doing. There has been several days where Ashara has cried to the darkness, for her blindness and her foolishness. She had wished. . . with such a sweet innocence that perhaps she could build peace between their feuding families.