BLEEDING LOVE ⚜️ ROBB STARK

Chapter One • The Kingsroad

"Are you afraid, Lyla?"

No, she thought. She was never afraid. She never cried in front of people since she was a little girl, she never let them see that she was upset. No one wanted to see it. She was already viewed as weaker as a woman, she didn't need to give them an evidence by letting her strong exterior break down for all to see. But fear was a clearly different subject. Fear was how society is held together. That and gold. She learnt that from her grandfather.

"No mother," she spoke quietly, her voice was soft and gentle. She was a musical girl. Her mother used to ask her to sing to her since she was just a child.

"Good. Lannisters are never afraid," her mother informed her, brushing through her daughter's black hair. But I am a stag, Lyla thought, but she kept that unsaid as well. "There is no reason to be."

Lyla remembered how she ended up with her mother brushing her hair. The two of them were seated together, in Lyla's room at the Inn. While Robert was spending the night at a brothel, the Queen decided to spend the time with her eldest daughter. She commented about how those handmaidens of hers knew nothing about how to take care of her daughter's hair. So she grabbed the golden comb and began to do it herself.

Lyla Baratheon. The trueborn daughter of King Robert Baratheon and Queen Cersei Lannister. She had her father's black hair, only hers was soft waves. She was graced with her mother's emerald green eyes though. When Cersei looked into those eyes, her eyes, she couldn't help but love her daughter. More like her than any of her other children. The eldest, who happened to be a daughter, constantly listening to the lessons they try to teach, and wanting what belongs to her. Ambitious from a young age. Cersei adored that.

Lyla was also beautiful. A true beauty. When the first princess born under the new dynasty, lords and ladies traveled from all over the realm to look at the babe. Even as a babe she was exceptionally beautiful. That beauty had only grown since then. As a grown woman, she had a shapely body, slender physique, plump lips, and a grace and regal nature. Though she was also compassionate and kind. Unlike her mother.

Lyla was everything Cersei was and better. It made Cersei envious of the young girl sometimes, and occasionally caused her to not care for the girl, but she was hers. The only hope she had that she could ever be more than horrible. Hope for her and Robert. As he loved he Lyla so intensely and unconditionally he didn't care that she was not a boy. She was all Cersei's happiness for the two years before she had Joffrey, born of her sin with her own brother. Lyla was pure however.

Cersei loved her children. All of them, unconditionally. It was her one redeeming quality.

"What if..." the princess began, she trailed off a bit, just thinking about it. "What if he does not like me?"

"Then he would have to be the biggest fool in all the seven kingdoms," Cersei replied, causing her daughter to giggle quietly. Cersei remembered having such wonders before she married Robert. Only she didn't have a mother. But Lyla did. "A young lord can only hope for a few thing. A young, pretty, and nobleborn wife. Who is more beautiful than my daughter? Who is more nobleborn than the princess? Sixteen is quite young."

She nodded, her mother spoke truthfully. Men would have fought and killed for her hand. She had offers from the Tyrells, Lannisters, Martells, and many other houses in Westeros, too many to count. But any suggestions were futile, as she was already betrothed to the eldest son of Eddard Stark the warden of the North.

Ever since her birth, her father knew that he wanted her to be married to his eldest friend's son. Ned meet the babe for the first time. With little black hairs, eyes bigger than her head, and covered in golden blankets. Though it only became official after the Greyjoy rebellion. The princess and queen were there to meet with the king. Eddard agreed to marriage when they both came of age. Cersei hated that they planned to take away her daughter, who was only eight years of age then, like her father forced her to be. To savages no less.