MASKS [Jon Snow]

TWELVE • HILL

CHAPTER TWELVE

•••

he was hypnotised
sleepwalking to the rhythm of her words
never wishing to wake.

•••

   "MAESTER Aemon! I need to talk to you abou-" Liliana burst through the library door, her eyes wide and frantic. She paused noticing the Maester wasn't alone.

   Jon turned to see who had interrupted his conversation. "Oh," Liliana met Jon's eyes. "I guess I'll come back later." She retreated back out of the door.

   "Jesse." Jon was up from his seat walking over to her, she smiled a bit as he used her 'name', pausing in the doorway.

   "Jon it's okay, you can call her by her real name around me, isn't that right Liliana?" Maester Aemon smiled.

   She narrowed her eyes. "Who told you?" She practically hissed. She turned to Jon, eyes alight with anger. "It was you?"

   "No, My Lady. It wasn't the Commander who told me, it was your own mother." She almost collapsed.

   "You what?" She gripped the door frame with every fibre of her being. "What do you know of my mother?"

"I know a great many things about Eveline." He leaned forward on his chair with a nod. "Come, sit."

Liliana didn't trust her legs not to collapse underneath her, so she stayed in the door frame, her fingers turning white from the pressure she was applying on the frame. She was sure it was the only thing holding her up. "I don't know how you know her name, old man, but this joke isn't funny anymore." Her tone was stern and warning.

"This is no joke, Liliana, I knew your mother incredibly well. She had the same love for books as you, from what I hear from Samwell." He clasped his hands together on the table. "Your mother came to us roughly twenty years ago now. She came in search of her father, your grandfather."

   Liliana shakily walked towards the empty chair, sliding into it and bringing her knees up to her chest, it was all to in depth to have been a made up story by the old man.

"She was a beautiful young woman, always telling jokes, making people smile." Aemon laid back in his chair, remembering the good old days. "She had such spirt. Anyway, she was running from a great powerful family and believed her father would let her seek refuge among the only place they wouldn't look for her, a men only zone."

"Who was she running from?" Liliana asked.

"Hold on, child, it will become apparent later on in the story." He shushed her. "So she came to us with a tiny baby swaddled in soft blankets. It was a girl, a little bouncy girl. Her name was Liliana. Eveline told us that she had fell in love and then fallen pregnant, only to be chased out by her lover's father. She had no where else to go since her lover was an incredibly wealthy man, still is today."

"Wait, my father is alive?" She stuttered. No way, had she been denied the chance to know her blood father all her life. No chance that her mother lied about his death. No chance that she had been living her life where somewhere her father was living his, unbeknownst to her existence. No chance that she possibly could had seen her father and not known it was him. "No." She shook her head. "Definitely not."