The Last Velaryon - Robb Stark

31 - The Stag King

Chezney's pov

The road in front of me seemed to be mirring together and I couldn't count how many moons it had been since we had left the camp heading onward to meet the youngest Baratheon brother Renly. Swinging my legs that hung on either side of the horse saddle I was seated on I eyed Lady Stark who was riding beside me. "You've been rather quiet, Lady Stark."

"I haven't had anything important to speak about, Lady Ally." She responded with a stern voice.

I turned my head slightly to meet her gaze. "I'm not a lady. My mother was a handmaiden to my best friend's mother until she died in her birthing bed. After that my mother took it upon herself to raise me and my best friend regardless of our different stature."

"You're mother sounds like a much better woman than I myself was." Lady Stark mumbled under her breath, still staring at the road ahead of us.

Biting my lip I could feel there was something she wasn't telling me and so I reluctantly pressed on to know more. "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean, my lady."

"Years ago one of the boys came down with the Pocks. Maester Lewin said if he made it through the night he'd live. But it would be a very long night. So I sat with him all through the darkness, listening to his ragged little breaths, his coughing, his whimpering." Lady Stark began speaking tugging the reins of her horse so he'd walk slowly allowing us to have a better conversation with one another.

I assumed she was thinking about her eldest Robb yet nonetheless the question came from my lips. "Which boy was this?"

"Jon Snow." She simply replied.

Thinking for a moment I didn't recall much of the man she had named. I didn't remember seeing him at the kings feast so long ago. I only can recall his features from when Haelesa was telling me about him the morning we were leaving on the Kingsroad. "He's the one who was going to serve in the Night's Watch right. The one with black curly hair."

She softly nodded her head yes finally sparing me a glance before continuing her story. "When my husband brought that baby home from the war I couldn't bare to look at him. I didn't want to see those brown strangers eyes staring off at me. So I prayed to the Gods to take him away, make him die. He got the Pocks. And I knew I was the worst woman who ever lived. A murder. I'd condemned this poor innocent child to a horrible death all because I was jealous of his mother - a woman he didn't even know."

"So what happened after that?" I asked her, feeling my eyes tearing up at the thought.

Lady Stark whipped away some fallen tears. "I prayed to all Seven Gods. Let the boy live, let him live and I'll love him. I'll be a mother to him. I'll beg my husband to give him a true name, to call him Stark and be done with it. To make him one of us."

"Then it must have worked since Haelesa told me that she had talked with Robb about him before we headed to Kings Landing."

"He did live but..." She trailed off looking at her hands for a brief moment of time. "I couldn't keep my promise. And everything that's happened since then, all this horror that has come to my family. It's all because I couldn't love a motherless child."

Biting my lip I ran my fingers through my hair just letting the sounds of nature surround us for a few long minutes. I always assumed that my mother was just like all mothers who would take in other children that weren't their own. Except I was wrong, not every mother was like her. "If that's how you feel about Jon, how exactly do you feel about my best friend being married to your son if you don't mind me asking?"