Only A Northern Song ~ Game of Thrones / Willas Tyrell ~

Chapter One Hundred and Four: Wolf's Wood

At some point a fair distance away from Winterfell, the hoof-marks in the mud and faint snow had faded away, and the only way Willas could track where Eddmina had ridden was the ocassional arrows burrowed deep in tree trunks.

He was trying to ignore how tight his chest felt, how desperately his heart was thundering, how much he absolutely hated himself and wanted to throw himself under his horse all over again. All he could think about was Eddmina, how much he needed to find her. He needed to get to her, to find where she had gone, to make it all right. He was a fool, a stupid, thick-skulled, selfish fool, a fool who had made mistakes over and over, and all he cared about was making it right.

The further he rode, the more arrows he spotted in trees, the deeper it sank in that perhaps he had made one mistake too many that he would never be able to fix.

Jon had been in the stables when Eddmina had fled, so while Willas' chase of her was delayed as he found someone to look after the children, Eddmina's brother had been hot on her tail. That was at least a small reassurance, that even if it was not him who found her first, she wouldn't be alone. He recalled what she had looked liked as he'd told her the truth, how her eyes had shone as she stubbornly refused to cry, how cold her voice was as she kept a tight leash on her emotions, how she fell onto courtesy like always whenever she couldn't bare how she really felt. All the signs had been there, all the tell-tale factors that pointed to her nerves getting the best of her until the spiral of an attack was inevitable. He had seen her like that more times than he cared to, but what was different about that one was that he had caused it. He had caused her that attack, just like he had caused her so much pain.

Gods he hated himself.

He must have been riding for at least an hour before he heard faint voices. For once he hadn't been listening to the birds tweeting in the trees above, so he heard the northern accents clearly, his head snapping in their direction. It sounded like they were coming from the floor, so he searched the shrubbery, only to see two hunched figures at at the foot of a great oak tree, surrounded by bushes hiding them from view. He could see Jon knelt in front of Eddmina, holding her shoulders, while she...

Gods, he had caused that.

Honour was there, but for once the wolf wasn't doing anything to calm her, not even as she stood vigil, her snout pushed close to her, her head against Eddmina's. She was sat, her forehead pressed to her knees, her arms wrapped around herself but with her hands interlinked at the top of her head. Her cloak was thrown aside, as if she had felt like she was suffocating and needed to be free, as if she needed to feel the cold. She had removed her gloves too, torn them off and thrown them aside, and even at his distance, he could see the mess she had made with her fingernails on her skin. Her fingertips looked swollen around her nails, and bright red calluses marked her whole hands and wrists, as if she had scratched at herself endlessly, and the way she had her arms postioned meant that her dress sleeves had rolled up slightly, exposing how she had treated her arms the same way. He'd noticed her do that before whenever she was overwhelmed by her thoughts, it was one of the reasons why he had so often reached to hold her hand, but he had never seen it as bad, as sore, as...

Seven above, was one of her fingers missing?

He felt sick. His heart practically stopped as his eyes zoned in on her little finger, or what was left of it underneath the linen bandage wrapped around it previously hidden under her glove. What had happened? Who had done that to her? The Freys, the Lannisters, or the Boltons? It didn' matter, he wanted to kill them all.

He supposed it was a little late for that desire, considering she had already seen to it. She had been hurt and tortured, injured and tormented, and all that had happened was because he had left her. He had let her go to that wedding, he had let her leave him, and he hadn't ridden north. It was all his fault.