Wilting ♞ Sandor Clegane

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EMBERS GLOWING RED keep Anya in a trance. The camp has grown quiet for the night —even Sandor has gone to their tent. Oddly, she's not tired, only restless. Home, she thinks. Going north meant going home in a sense. A chance to see Jon again.

Beric Dondarrion appears from the shadows and sits next to her by the fire. The Lightning Lord passes a filled wineskin, and she drinks. It's been so long since Anya Whent had good wine that she nigh forgot how sweet it tastes on her tongue and the warmth when it pools in her belly.

"My lady," he greets. "There is something you should know." Her cold gaze shifts from the fire to him. The Lord of Blackhaven quietly thinks of how best to say it. It's a matter she will hold close to her heart. "After the Red Wedding, we found Lady Catelyn's body in the river, or rather a direwolf did."

Nymeria.

Anya's certain it would have been her. Arya's direwolf followed her through the Riverlands while she trekked north on the King's Road to the Wall. "A mockery of the Tully tradition, no doubt, but we performed the rites and gave her a final resting place."

Anya bites back her tears and reaches over, laying her hand atop his. "Thank you, Beric." And she fears even those words cannot show him the depth of her gratitude. Despite their differences and disagreements, Catelyn grew to be her sister through the years, just as the Starks became her family when she was only a child. "I pray she and Ned are reunited." She desperately wishes they could be together again in the next life —a love like theirs did not deserve to be cut short by death. But she does not know if the Old Gods or the New are so kind. Beric nods, understanding.

Silence lingers for a long moment before the Lightning Lord looks away from the flames and to Anya again. It was a surprise to see her with the Hound those years ago, a surprise still to find she has remained at his side. "You've stayed with him all this time?" Beric asks. He recalls the trial by combat in the hollow hill of the Riverlands and the fearful rage that burned in the Hound's eyes when his men threatened her. Beric should have known then there was something between Anya Stark and Sandor Clegane —more than just exchanged tourney favors.

"I'm very fond of him," Anya admits, a flush and a smile creeping up on her features —it makes her look whole again, like she had been once in King's Landing before everything went to shit. "He's saved my life more than once, and I do not wish to be parted from him." Beric seems surprised by the confession, but he knows she has no reason to lie. Sandor Clegane is taken with her as well.

It makes Beric think of his betrothed and what might have been. "There have been many times I wished for things to be different," he pauses, and Anya glances over at him, "that I may see Allyria again." A wistful smile appears on his hollow face as he looks toward the stars through the thin veil of clouds. "You know," he muses, "I've quite forgotten the color of her hair."

HARRENHAL LOOMS ABOVE her, a menacing plot of charred brick overtaken by vines and thorny brambles. It's as she's always remembered the castle —crumbling and derelict. It changes in a heartbeat. The melted towers stand taller, whole, and the bricks aren't singed with the traces of dragonfire. Above the ramparts, Anya recognizes the banners of House Hoare, but around her on the fields of the Riverlands, men and women are streaming from the great castle —swords and shields forsaken, bows and quivers, too. A shadow engulfs the castle, descending from high above the clouds, and stones begin to fall at the strength of the sudden hot wind. The Black Dread has come.