Baptism | Cregan Stark

sixteen

(please do not ghostread)

In Winterfell the winds blew quiet whispers through the castle. With nothing but the light of the moon peaked through Aelyna's window she forced herself to become drunk on the serenity and comfort of Cregan Starks arms.

The corridors of the castle empty, near ghostly as her ears listened to his breathing and his alone. She remained quiet laying still in his arms. Her body curled up against him as over the bed she looked into the fire. Her dreams had subdued, but she often found her mind slip away from her. In the last days all she dreamt of was a wolf. 

A grey wolf that stepped into a dancing fire, trailing behind a lamb. In his eyes was not hunger but rather fear. The grey wolf and lamb in her dreams trotted through storms and wind, when snow stuck to their paws and to the end of their journey was a great ball of fire circling them. 

The wolfs fur brushed by embers kiss, in the blaze no hesitation to follow the lamb. A fire roared, its hunger great. In the heart of the fire, the grey wolf coddled the lamb. Holding it close to him as though it was a loved one he wanted to protect from the fire.

Aelyna remained quiet as she felt her palms itch. It had been too long since she practiced magic, she could tell. Her dreams had always been exceedingly vivid when she couldn't use her own blood to stop them.

That was the price of blood magic, it needed to be paid in blood. But Aelyna had promised herself, that unlike her mother the only blood she would ever spill for magic was that of her own.

Cregan had little understanding of it, he empathized for her ordeal with being a witches daughter. He also cared little for the gossip amongst his guard for the smells of herbs from her chambers.

He had to remind her Aelyna, that there was not a list of complaints long enough to convince him to not feel something for her.

It was not lust, she knew what lust was. She had never said it, but as Aelyna spent more time in Cregan Starks company, the more she wondered if it could be love?

Love, a word that haunted her nightmares and that only invited death and misery to her life. Love, the word she held onto when forced to stay in the Red Keep while her father waged war in the Stepstones when the king himself paid no mind to it.

Love? The aching word she carried with her through her whole life pondering if she was worthy of it when her own mother denied her?

But what she felt for Cregan, there was no pain and ache in it. With him it was bliss, as though all the horrors of her mind for once went silent every time she had caught him glancing at her.

Holding her hand underneath the dinner table of the great hall. The warm in her chest when he helped her off her horse when she visited Vermithor. It seemed as though the idea of being separated from Cregan hurt her more. 

How does one know when they have fallen in love?

It has been said that Targaryens were closer to gods than men but there was something in how Cregan Stark looked at her that made the theory be true. The gentleness of when he kissed her, his softened gaze when their eyes met in crowded courts, his slow and tender ease when she found herself in his bed in his arms.

The din light of the fire perfectly captured the Starks beauty. Aelyna slow sat up in the bed as her finger slowly traced his face. Eyes so grey as though they hid a mystery of storm clouds and the calm of twilight.

Aelyna could feel herself become hypnotized by Cregans presence alone and  what it did to her. Her finger gentle grazed his nose, his eyes slowly fluttered open.