The Lone Wolf Returns(RECONTINUED)

Chapter 6:The Lord Commander

Jon scrubbed his face with his hands and approached the mirror. He could not even groan when he saw himself. Still drawn and thin, yes, but not so much as yesterday. He was getting better, healthier, albeit slowly. It will take time, Melisandre had said. A great, long time. But you will live, Jon Snow. You will live.

He touched the places where his wounds used to be, now only large scars beneath his tunic. Jon shuddered, remembering.

Edd brought him fried bread, pease, and greasy sausages to break his fast, and Jon thanked him mildly.

"And Edd," he said feebly, "fetch Melisandre to me."

He ate little as he waited; the places where Jon's wounds used to be were itching, and he thought he was starting to feel the cold again. He realised at once that that could not be true, though; I have not felt cold in over three years.

Melisandre entered his chambers, looking not a day older than when he had first met her. She dipped into a curtsy that perhaps was meant to be polite, but looked only sensual. Her coppery hair was loose today, shimmering and splendid as raining fire across her breasts and shoulders. Her red eyes flashed to him. "My Lord Snow," she said, reverent as a lover's sigh.

"My lady." Jon beckoned her to him, and she rose at once, gliding to him with her red skirts whispering. "I'm troubled by dreams again."

"It is natural," she assured him. "Yours has been a difficult road, Lord Commander."

Jon closed his eyes, remembering that night. I am a man, not a wolf, he had thought, even as he opened his eyes, snarled and lunged, filling his mouth with Bowen Marsh's warm, sweet blood. Even as he sniffed his own corpse. Man, not wolf...

And then Melisandre took his body, and worked her horrible sorcery. She needed just one life...a price generously supplied by one of the men who had buried a knife in Jon. Jon had awoken screaming in pain and thirty pounds lighter, but alive.

"When will I be whole again?" he asked her quietly.

She looked at him curiously. "But you are, Jon Snow. More whole than you ever were before." She touched his cheek; he had used to find her skin to be impossibly warm, but ever since the night when she gave him The Kiss, he found that his skin was just as warm as hers, and her touch felt absolutely normal. "You accepted who you are the night you entered your wolf, and now, you are filled with R'hllor's light."

Jon turned away from her, troubled. He shook his head. "Have you seen anything? In the fires?"

Melisandre's skirts whispered again as she moved closer to him. The red woman put her hands on his shoulders, and he shuddered.

"Much and more," she promised him. "I have seen your sister, Jon Snow."

He recoiled from her. "You've seen my sister twice now, and falsely. It was only ever Alys Karstark and Jeyne Poole." Jon was sick of her promises of Arya; he had hoped upon hoped for his little sister, prayed for her to the Old Gods and R'hllor, and all he ever received was impostors. "Arya is dead." The words tasted foul on his tongue, but true.

Melisandre rested her chin on his shoulder and whispered to him. "I saw a small queen with grey eyes and an Eastern tongue. Brown hair streamed behind her, and a host of rebels and Freedmen followed her. She rides north, Jon Snow. If you do not trust me, trust this. She'll come, and then you will have your answer."

X

As Jon stood at the top of the Wall, his cloak snapping about him, he stared out at the white wasteland that was the North. It had been so beautiful to me when I was young, but now...When will this winter end?