The Queen of the Ashes ◼️ Game Of Thrones

iii |Dancing with the Wolves

Yellow light creeps from the buzz emanating from the hall into the castle's shadowy corridors. The sound of drunken men coupled with the fast-paced music bounces off the stones and with every step my frustration intensifies. As if the King wasn't fat enough a feast would not do well for his poor horse.

As I stand beneath the edifice of the hall's arch I manage to enter without drawing attention to myself. The Northmen in an abandoned lack of manners are a pint away from pure drunken madness. Eddard Stark doesn't seem to happy about his men and I can't blame him. A bench near the back seems to be prime position if I am not looking for trouble, which right now would only start a frenzy, and I make my way there.

"Lady Mormont!" Crap there goes my plans for a quiet dinner.

Sansa, the eldest Stark girl, eyes bright and face flushed beckons me to sit next to her and a group of giggling girls, who stare at my dress in bewilderment. Seems like the black netted dress worked like a charm. Black the colour of mourning, well I planned to mourn the death of my mother but she would have liked to see me put these mainlanders to shame.

I bite my tongue and follow the auburn girl and sit beside her as she excitedly gushes over the Crown Prince, who is playing with a steak knife utterly bored by the surrounding festivities, him and me both. His dead blue eyes turn to me return my stare before he smirks and raises a goblet to me, I return the gesture but only he sips. The Hound behind him eyes the boy with a look ranging from annoyance to pure loathing.

Wine and princes are the least of the problems I face tonight, I scan the room but I can't find Jon Snow anywhere. Did I really hurt his feelings before? Does he also wish to sit out this feast?

Wait... who am I to him for him to go to the lengths to avoid me? Time to get off my high horse, ever since coming here all it seems is that my head has inflated a bit much. I can hear my Mother's voice in my head. In her harsh tenor that only I could ever discern the amount of love she had for her children hidden under the it's rough exterior, "A Lady thinks about what people give two shits about her, I raised you a warrior and that is you not giving two shits about them."

It then hits me like the thousand blades carved into the Iron Throne?Would I rather dust off my grief as if everything is okay in my world or becoming a sopping mess, grief that is what I should feel? But how? How am I supposed to realise that my mother is gone? How am I supposed to live stuck when I know that is not what the woman, who gave me a sword instead of a sewing needle, would have wanted? Does this lack of feeling make me a bad person, does it make me a terrible daughter?

All of this conflict breaks my head in, the music becomes too loud drowning me out, the walls seem to be closing in and the air doesn't seem inhalable. No - I knew this was too soon, I can't be here. I can't breathe... I get up almost breaking into a run but a hand catches me.

"Lady Aelane, it seems my mother wishes to have a word with you," says Sansa too caught up with the joy of her ogling over the Prince to even notice my discomfort. But at her words, I snap out of whatever episode transpired and I salvage my repose and walk to the High Table, where the Starks are seated along with the Royal family except the king who is enjoying destroying his liver with a hand on a wine goblet and the other around a serving woman. The Queen herself looks down on this with quiet humiliation and what can only be loathing as she sips her own wine glass, I can only sympathize with her being unloved but publicly embarrassed by her husband's behaviour.

"Lady Mormont, I can only hope your room is pleasing to your comfort," asks the lady Catelyn.

"It is much grander than my one back at home, my Lady," in truth it is, the only difference is on my bed the furs are that of a bear instead of a wolf and the air is much colder.