Vanora
A scruffy brown-haired boy with a dagger riding his hip sprinted down the stony lane, yelling, "Cod! Fresh cod! Two pennies a pound, two pennies a pound, fresh cod for sale, two pennies a pound!"
Vanora tensed as he ran past, fingering the knives hidden up her quilled sleeves. She imagined the cobbles painted in wet crimson. She imagined hounds tearing at his flesh, fighting for scraps of gristle. The images exhilarated her. The images disgusted her.
Sweet Ramsay, what have you done to me?
Fisherman's Alley bustled beneath the noonday haze. Despite its name, the Alley was more than a mere alley; it was several of them, in fact, two long lanes that spanned the entire western wall, crisscrossed by a dozen streets, with stalls and storefronts in neat little rows. The entire district was devoted to the sea, and every stall, store, and warehouse took their wares from it. From the peak of the Street of Mead, which crossed through the center of the Alley, Vanora could see a thousand and more fishing sloops sailing the frigid waters beyond Harbortown.
The air was thick with shouting fishermen, ringing bells, singing gulls, the rumbling wash of waves against the shore, the steady murmur of thousands of voices. Everything smelled like fish. The air stank of it; when she breathed through her mouth, she could taste it in the back of her throat.
She was starting to hate fish. Hate the taste, hate the smell. Every once in a while, she wanted to eat suckling pig, or a nice cut of veal – even a rabbit would do. Something that walked on four legs and didn't swim through the fucking ocean. Something bloody. She didn't even like being in the district for the fishy smell, but she and Maeve had just come from visiting the Hagraven's mother, Lady Margret, who grew vital herbs in her glass gardens, and had made her home in the hill tower that sat atop the Street of Mead
From Hag's Tower, as it was called, Fisherman's Alley was the fastest way to the Dread Father's shrine, and the underground chambers of the Black Hand, which was in turn the fastest route back to the castle. There were hidden entrances to the chambers hidden all around the city, connected by a warren of dank, dripping tunnels: In the temples that surrounded Seventree Hill, in a choice few slope-roofed homes, in the castle cellars, down on the rocky beaches.
As the girls shouldered their way through the press of bodies, and Vanora wrestled with murderous urges, a fishmonger called out, "Hey there pretty lassies! I've got good whale meat here, horned, blue, grey, and some already smoked. Come have a taste, free…of…"
Vanora had turned towards him halfway through his pitch. A black hand stood proudly over her heart, embroidered on her white satin gown, palm up, fingers spread. The black leather choker about her neck was adorned with a tiny white skull.
"I… you…" His eyes flickered up to her face. At the sight of her near colorless eyes, he became, if anything, more wary. She might have laughed at his caution, if she had been the sort of person to be given to mirth. "Forgive me, Lady Vanora. I meant no offense." There was a false note to his tone; he hated her, she knew, but his fear was much greater.
She could almost hear his frantic thoughts.
Don't summon the Bloodflower upon me. Great Shor, father of all Nords, shield me from Sithis and his vile children.
Shor is a child of Sithis as well, she wanted to tell him, knowing his mind.
We were all born of the Dread Father. And it is to him that we will all return.
Maeve, sharp nosed, soft-tongued, and slim as a willow, with eyes the color of burnished brass, said, "Fret not, noble fisherman. I do not believe that my friend took offense. Why, you only offered us a bit of fish!" She snatched up one of the offered slivers of smoked fish, tossed it in her mouth, and moaned in delight at the taste.
The fisherman didn't look any more at ease by her declaration. Maeve's eyes were evidence of her Glenmoril blood, and the black gem hanging about her neck most likely contained the soul of some poor, helpless beast or a foolish Northman.
Or maybe it was only a sculpted hunk of obsidian.
Vanora curled her lips into a crooked smile, and the fishmonger paled further. "No offense was taken, good man." Her voice was soft as sighing wind, less than a whisper, but somehow loud enough to be heard over the Alley din. "Blessings be upon you."
"Blessings," he echoed hollowly.
Maeve thanked him, grabbed Vanora's hand, and pulled her along further down the alley. Maeve, like Vanora, was one of Hilda's many handmaidens, and the daughter of a powerful entity amongst their people. Born of the Hagraven and a son of House Darkbrother, Maeve was both Vanora's distant cousin and a fellow heiress, though not half as reviled. Nords, as a whole, where mistrustful of magic, but none could doubt the benefits of its use. Maeve was only a middling user of magic – most witches were, besides the Hagraven – but she was a highly skilled alchemist, with an expertise that belied her youth, and her potions could cure most any ailment, mend cuts, and heal bruises.
Her poisons were likewise coveted.
All the commonfolk feared Vanora's kind, though, for the Darkbrothers were the chosen of Sithis, sons and daughters of the abyss. The commoners might have banded together to burn them out if not for the patronage of House Ysmir. Since Vaskr the Valiant himself, who was the first to step upon the western shore those many years ago, and who had lain the first stone of their great city, a Darkbrother had remained close to the Dovahkiin, with sons and daughters growing up as brothers and sisters, as treasured companions and trusted servants.
Vanora and Hilda shared such a relationship. As babes, they had drunk milk from the same tit, slept in the same crib, and after being weaned, ate from the same plate. As girls, they shared everything: clothes, knives, beds. They had sat the same lessons, until Hilda's thu'um began to manifest, and Vanora discovered that she, like her mother before her, could enter the Void where the Dread Lord dwelled. That only brought them closer, for they had come to share a burden that few others could comprehend. Vanora loved Hilda as much as a person could possibly love another, more than her own kin; more than herself, even.
But lately, that love had begun to sour. Resentment had reared its filthy head, and every day, her resentment grew, and shame too, that she would think ill of her most beloved companion. The thoughts came as buffeting winds in an autumn storm, incessant and unceasing. Her mother used to tell her that love and hate were the same; just lights skewed through different prisms. Her feelings had begun to reflect that belief.
No one feared Hilda like they feared her, for all that Hilda could break them with mere words. From her golden hair to her ravishing smile, she was everything Vanora wasn't: Tall, statuesque – long-legged and narrow-waisted, with high, full breasts – and unmistakably beautiful, almost ethereal, with soulful, slate-blue eyes that were flecked with silver and sparkled like stars, sun-gold hair as soft as down, and a voice sweeter than heaven's nectar. People wept joyously to see Hilda smile, and wept ever the more to hear her sing.
Vanora was short, closer to plain than comely, and lithe, but flat-chested, with hair that was dark and coarse, like black-iron wire, and a cruel mouth given to twisted smirks. Her eyes were pale as mist; she had dead eyes, some said, the color of ghosts drifting about a lichyard, as empty as the graves of the wandering undead.
It wasn't for her looks that Vanora resented Hilda, she oft told herself. Hilda had always been beautiful, and Vanora had always been aware of it. It was good that Hilda was so beautiful; her people loved her all the more for it, and foreign folk were utterly smitten by her. When she and Hilda were together, people tended to forget about her, to overlook her, and that suited her perfectly.
People thought Hilda gentle, and only that, as if her beauty somehow put her above darker emotions and motivations. The notion was laughable, in Vanora's mind. Hilda was very loving, true, and she
could be gentle, but there was ruthlessness in her, hidden cruelty, for how else could she command such men and women as Nords? The blood of Ysmir did not suffer soft hearts. Vanora likened her to a blue steel sword sheathed in glittering gold and sparkling jewels; utterly gorgeous to behold, but hiding a sharp edge that could carve through bone like whale butter. Vanora, being what she was, couldn't help but love her, and yet…
In the weeks since the king's decree, time and time again, Hilda asked Vanora to venture into the Void to communicate with her mother and the Bloodflower, knowing how it affected her, how it deadened her. Delving into the Void was not a task to be taken lightly; the writhing darkness stole slivers of her soul every time she ventured into its depths, piece by piece, slice by slice, bite by bite, like a wolf gnawing at its dying prey. That was how her mother had become the vile woman that she was, she thought; the Void had stolen all from her that was good and true, leaving only darkness. It would happen to Vanora too, it was inevitable, but she wished it weren't her best friend, her sister, forcing her to it.
Perhaps it is best that it is Hilda, she would tell herself. She couldn't fathom damning her soul for anyone else, not Old Vjorn, and certainly not her black hearted mother. Her reasoning did nothing to assuage her feelings, did nothing to silence her thoughts, so she ignored them, buried them beneath her shame, her guilt, and there they festered, like an infected wound.
And then, there was the matter with her half-brother.
Sweet Ramsay. That, more than anything, weighed on her mind, for it meant that perhaps the Void had already stolen more than she realized. She shouldn't have ridden with Rorlund to the Dreadfort. She should've kept her distance from Ramsay. Hilda would hate her, for what she was becoming. It was Hilda's fault she was becoming what she was.
Blood flowed through her fingers, thick and red. Screams reverberated in her ears, wet and gurgling.
Sovngarde seemed to reflect her dark thoughts. Clouds had moved in from the north, thick and grey, blanketing the sun. The city sprawl was wrought of smooth dark granite, from the cobbled streets to the tallest towers. In the daylight, the sun would catch on the quartz in the stone and make the city glimmer like one great, black jewel. At night though, the stone seemed as if to absorb the pale glow of the moon, greedy for its light. Black stone walls, black stone buildings, black stone streets. When the sun fell beyond the sea, shadows ruled in Sovngarde.
Vanora and Maeve followed Fisherman's Alley down to the gatehouse, past wooden stalls of clams and lobsters and crabs, hanging seal skins and whale leather, shark-toothed combs and necklaces, assortments of pearls, and narwhal horn spears. The numerous guards, familiar with their faces, hardly paid them any attention as they passed through gatehouse and across the trestle bridge to Harbortown.
Harbortown was the only district of the city where the buildings were more timber than stone; open to the sea, it was the most vulnerable as well. A soggy tract of soft-soiled bog lay between Harbortown and the western wall, swarmed with shrubs and stippled with stunted alders. The shrubs grew thick and wild; there were blueberries, cranberries, white and pink and yellow orchids, and strange little green shrubs that were covered in pink-hued bristles. Beneath the stench of fish and the salty smell of the sea, Vanora scented spicy vanilla, sweet lemon, and something delicate and airy, like roses, almost. Maeve picked handfuls of the orchids that grew beneath the bridge, and stuffed the fragrant petals into the leather pouch hanging at her side before continuing on to the docks.
"For a potion?" Vanora asked, seeking reprieve from her miasmic ponderings.
Maeve shook her head. "No. For rushes and perfumes. Hilda asked me to make a batch for when we go to Winterfell."
Vanora almost scowled before she stopped herself. There it was, swimming in her chest, an inky mass of resentment and shame, toxic, sickening even, and utterly immovable. And beneath it, far more familiar, a yearning ache that had been with her as long as she could remember.
She needed to talk to someone, but she hadn't a clue who. Maeve wouldn't understand. Hilda would –
no she won't – she always did, but Vanora couldn't bear the thought of revealing her anger, her bitterness, her shame. She certainly couldn't tell her mother, nor Rorlund, for that matter; he was a Nord down to the pits of his soul, and the both of them hundreds of leagues away besides. He had never known any feelings for the Dovahkiin but love and respect. Helsif, maybe? Or Yanora? Of Aenora's four daughters, Yanora was the most sane, the most stable, but also decrepitly old, with a failing memory. Elnora was a mad as their mother, and Lenora was every bit as cruel as her father. She even had his smiling eyes. Just like Vanora had her father's eyes.
We're all damned, she thought.
All of the night mother's children, damned by birth.
"Is there something ailing you?" said Maeve. The wind coming up off the sea swept her reddish-blond locks across her face. "You seem really pensive lately, ever since you came back from the Dreadfort, but it's gotten worse in the past few weeks. You never really talk to us anymore. … Did something happen with Rorlund? Are you afraid for Wulfric?"
Vanora gave her a scathing look, but Maeve was utterly unbothered, having long since grown used to them. "I am afraid of nothing."
"I only ask because… I have never known you to keep your thoughts so guarded. You know the saying just as well as I:
Share your ails and see your heart unburdened. You
can talk to me, you know. I can keep a secret as well as Hilda, if for some reason you don't want to talk to her…"
Vanora shook her head, ignoring the tiny, frail voice that urged her to share her feelings lest they continue to rot, casting it off into the vast blackness of the Void. "It's nothing."
Maeve didn't seem convinced, but she kept her silence and didn't press.
The buildings here had sloped roofs of timber and slate, all crowned with dragon heads, like the bow of a longship. The shrine to Sithis had been carved into the sloping rock that evened out into the quay, wedged between a mossy tavern and a timber warehouse and closed in by a latticed iron gate. The shrine sank deep into the stone, the hollowed out space thick with moss, the air damp and moldy; if one knew where to look, the chamber cut even deeper into the rock, and to the tunnels they sought.
The effigy of Sithis, a white skull carved from whale bone, its forehead adorned with an obsidian hand, sat atop a short, stout column, staring out with empty eyes. The ground was littered with nightshade petals, like rushes strewn across a room. Vanora stepped up to the skull, and kissed its lipless mouth. There was a faint, grinding sound, and then the face of the column swung open, revealing a narrow set of stairs that spiraled down beneath the chamber. The smell of mold thickened.
Maeve called light to her hand and descended first. Vanora followed after her, and the column swung shut with a groaning rattle.
Everything creaked and croaked. Maeve's meager light was little more than a candle flame. There was no wind flowing through the tunnel, but Vanora could still hear it whispering, a gentle, whistling howl that came from nowhere and everywhere all at once. The sound of the waves was louder here, and the stone glistened with slimy wetness. Not a single stretch of rock was dry.
"Ooh!" Maeve exclaimed excitedly, pointing. "Look! The mushrooms are growing nicely. Especially Namira's Rot. They'll be ready for picking soon."
Vanora, like most of her kind, knew a little about alchemy; enough to craft a poison or two. "Have you figured out how to filter out the hallucinogens?"
"… No. Not quite. Gunther asked for a potion after a particularly tough bout against his brother. His bruises healed, but he nearly killed one of the serving girls thinking she was a 'tentacled hell-beast from the shadow planes beyond Sovngarde'."
Vanora managed a laugh. It echoed oddly against the walls, came back to her ears twisted and distorted, a mocking laugh, instead of one of mirth. She pressed her lips together, angry all of a sudden. Was this all that she would ever be? A poisoned blade, absent hope and happiness, left with only bitterness and rage?
They came across a few Initiates, fewer Priests, and even fewer Hands. Vanora's family, though large, could not see personally to any and every little problem that arose; for more mundane work, there were Initiates, who were baptized into Sithis' brotherhood, entrusted only with messages and other menial tasks. And then there were the Priests, a rank beyond Initiates, who lived the word of Sithis in their every waking moment, keeping to the dark out of respect for the Void. They were more wraiths than men, but able enough killers. Brothers were those Priests who had proven their devotion and skill, and been accepted into the blood.
They all nodded to Maeve with nary a word, one by one as the girls passed, but when their shadowed faces looked to Vanora, they took to their knees.
"Night Daughter," they all called as one, voices massing into a wet, slithering eel that coiled through the echoing caverns and clogged its tunnels. "Blessings," the priests murmured, bowing to kiss the ground. "For Sithis," said the Brothers, fists crossed over their hearts.
Vanora said nothing. The Void tickled at the edges of her vision. She heard screams. Sweet, sweet screams, and begging, and blood splattering. He had begged, hadn't he?
Begged like a bitch. She saw a face with beady eyes and wormy lips, and blood, so much blood, flooding the floor, drenching the walls, rouging her lips. And barking. She couldn't forget the barking.
"Vanora?"
Her vision cleared. Maeve's face was a picture of concern. They had exited the tunnels to a massive cavern, lit here and there with flickering torches. She heard waves crashing against the beach beyond the cave, and calling gulls. She saw four armored silhouettes near the mouth of the cave, and a hulking stairwell off to the side of them. "I'm fine," she said. "I just…" She shook her head, feeling for the knives hidden in her sleeves.
It wasn't me, she thought.
It was the Void.
It was you, something whispered back. It was always you.
"You just what?"
"
Nothing." Vanora pressed on, taking the perilous stairs two at a time. As girls, she and Hilda had sprinted up and down these stairs with no light at all. She clung to the memory of them as they were, if only to chase away the thrashing shadows in her mind. "Come on," she said. "Hilda is waiting."
The halls smelled like wildflowers. Sunlight slanted through the leaded windows set high in the walls, splashing purple and silver over the corridor. She heard laughter echoing from somewhere deep in the wide, labyrinthine corridors, and pattering feet. Child servants, she thought, enjoying Hilda's lax regard for propriety. Lady Brendalyn had already departed for the Rills; she would not have suffered servants playing in the corridors.
Tapestries lined the walls, spun from silk as soft as air. The past Dovahkiinne dominated every motif. The alcoves were decorated with furnishings from across the known world, gilded stools from Qarth, cushioned benches from Volantis, and strange, rocking seats from beyond the Saffron Straits. Each alcove was guarded by a suit of armor, some silver, some gold, some jade, some bronze. Glass candles in crystalline ensconces lighted the way.
"One might think that Vaskr's sons meant for all of our people to live in this castle," Maeve complained behind her. "They needn't have made it so bloody
big."
"You forget, cousin, that giants helped erect these walls. Real giants, not those hairy beasts from beyond the wall."
"Yes, yes, I know the story. When they died their bones were interred in the stone, and their souls forever bound to the crystal spires, so that they might defend in death what they crafted in life."
They climbed another set of stairs, passing servants and guards and courtiers, then walked the length of the castle to a third stair, down a long, narrow hall lined with arching oak wood doors and glass-enclosed casings of ancient weapons and jewels and armor. Vanora recognized some of them from the tales and myths that were told of their old home, before the gods led them here, to Westeros.
One jewel in particular caught her eye. It always did, for it seemed that she had caught the jewels eye as well. Black as blood, blacker even than obsidian, it gleamed with a sort of malicious intelligence that set her hair on end and prickled her skin. There was certainly no giant's soul trapped inside of it. Sometimes, she imagined she could hear it speak to her.
Finally, they came upon Hilda's chambers.
The rooms were large and airy, the high ceiling supported by great beams of ironwood. It was furnished as richly as any room in the castle. The floor was a sea of white and yellow rushes and Myrish rugs, and one of the five hearths spit tendrils of white smoke from smoldering ashes. A gallery overlooked them, supported by fluted columns, connected to a hanging bridge that stretched to the opposite wall, where it ended at an iron studded door of ashen weirwood.
The quartet of double-paned latticework doors in the western wall opened up to a vast balcony that looked down upon Harbortown, veiled by thin curtains that flowed this way in that in the gentle sea breeze sweeping through the cracked doors. Twenty people might've slept in Hilda's pillared black oak bed, had they been so inclined, and a mammoth could have swaddled himself in the cloth-of-silver curtains that fell from its tester. All of the room's furnishings seemed to have been crafted for giants; Hilda was a tall woman, but she looked like a doll as she lounged against the high-backed settle athwart the bed, its purple pillows stuffed heavily with down.
The coiling stair in the north wall led up to the gallery. Two giggling serving maids came running down it in a tangle of limbs, one green and hairless with big round eyes, the other with skin the color of beaten bark and thick, wooly hair. They were being chased by a slender, dark-haired girl with a long face and pale grey eyes who was waving a toy sword.
"Come back!" the girl shrilled, eyes alight. "Face me, you knaves!"
The three girls came to a sudden halt when they saw Vanora. Even children knew of her families fell reputation.
Especially children.
"What did you get us?" asked Sarrah Snow, uncaring of public opinion. Vanora was close to Hilda, and her mother and fathers thought well of her; in Sarrah's mind, their opinions were the only ones that mattered.
"New rushes to lay, and flowers for perfumes," Maeve said, stepping past Vanora, "and clams, and crabs, and a hunk of whale butter. Helsif had it all taken down to the kitchens, excepting the rushes. If you run quick, you can watch them boil and squeal!" She splayed her fingers like claws and spoke in a rasping voice.
"Crabs and clams don't squeal," mumbled the green girl, eyes downcast. Hilda had named her Jewel for her sparkling emerald eyes. She, and nearly all her sisters and brothers, were shy as maids.
"You shouldn't eat meat anyway," Nissa chimed in. "Killing is a terrible thing, even when it's only animals." The dark-skinned girl scowled at them, but with her round face and childish features, she only managed to look adorably petulant, even to a black heart like Vanora's.
Nissa had been taken from Naath as little more than a babe, claimed from a slave ship headed to Slaver's Bay, but she still adhered to the way of her homeland, never partaking of meat.
"Have you seen my brother?" asked Sarra, giggling.
Maeve shook her head. "No," Vanora said. "But knowing him, he's down in the yard with Wulfric."
"He's with his fathers," rang a melodious voice. "But I imagine Wulfric is with them as well."
As one, the girls scurried off to go see.
Hilda, who had been laying with her eyes closed, breasts near spilling from a sheer gown that a polite woman might have called indecent, stirred as they drew near. "Dearest sisters," she said in greeting as she sat up, though neither of them was anything of the sort. They weren't even cousins. Maeve did have cousins though, the daughters of her aunts, and they came stomping out of the room with the weirwood door, bickering about the properties of hanging moss and giant's toes.
"Has the council put forward a candidate for marriage yet?" Maeve asked, emptying her pickings over the table after pulling up a stool.
Vanora scowled, hiding her expression by dipping her head as if to examine a loose thread on her gown. She claimed a seat next to Hilda. Their knees brushed, and a jolt raced through her. Her anger peaked, only to be swallowed by shame.
"The list is somewhere around here," Hilda said with a wave of her hand. "Helsif recommends I should wed Jon Snow, if I mean to have a child soon."
Vanora bit her lip.
"Is that the plan?" Helgi and Evette said as one. They looked very much like their cousin, only Evette, the youngest of the three, was easily the tallest, of a height with Hilda. "To be wedded," said Helgi, "and bedded," said Evette, "and whelping a babe before the year is out?" Helgi finished.
"Possibly," Hilda admitted. "The line must continue." She turned her piercing gaze to Vanora. "What do you think I should do, V?"
Vanora didn't trust herself to speak. There it was again, that surge of roiling black, and a strange heat, and a deep, almost painful longing. "I… I think you should do whatever you think is best."
Hilda looked oddly disappointed by her words. "I've been doing that," she said. "Dealing with the messes left to me by Grandfather. Dealing with Thorunn's ambitions. Between your's and Thorfinn's efforts, I should have the freedom now, for this decision at least, to choose my heart over my duty."
Vanora shrugged. Hilda wrapped her arms about her shoulders, and leaned against her, sighing. Her golden hair tickled Vanora's nose; she smelled of vanilla and lavender. Like hope and happiness. Like love. Like hate.
Dark urges surged in her heart, but the heat of Hilda's skin banished them.
Her shame remained.
"You are my dearest friend, Vanora," Hilda whispered in her ear. Vanora withheld a shudder. "And I know that I have asked much of you; too much, I am beginning to think. I was too concerned with my people as a whole to see how my… requests affected you. For what it's worth, I am sorry." Her hair shifted; Vanora felt warm breath against her cheek. And then lips, pressed to her skin, branding her.
"I forgive you," she managed, stomach twisted in knots. "But… you still mean to make the request. Don't you."
Hilda sighed again, absently stroking her fingers through Vanora's hair.
I hate her, Vanora thought.
I love her. "Maeve, Evette, Helgi? Might Vanora and I have a bit of privacy?"
"You can have more than a bit," Maeve said, having separated and bundled her pickings into whatever strange system she had dreamed up, then swept them back into her pouch. "If you need us, my sisters and I will be down below the kitchens. These ingredients certainly won't brew themselves. Many blessings, oh beloved Dovahkiin!" She curtseyed with a flourish, and her sisters repeated the farewell.
Hilda laughed, a ringing chime like crystal bells and bird song, and shooed them on. Vanora's skin tingled; the knot in her stomach tightened until it heart. She thought not of blood, or darkness, or the Void, but Rorlund, and his strong arms and rumbling voice and tender kisses. She thought of how inadequate they seemed, in hindsight, sitting now with Hilda.
Her love had not soured, she thought. Despite the bitter resentment and biting jealousy, it had only grown. Perhaps… perhaps she needed the Void to take her feelings away. She couldn't keep going on like this.
Or maybe the Void wasn't splintering her soul – maybe it was only unleashing what was buried within?
The Glenmoril girls swept from the room in a swirl of fiery-blond hair and reedy voices. Vanora could hear them bickering as the door swung shut. Then it closed with a heavy thud, and she and Hilda were left alone.
"Something is troubling you," Hilda said. She leaned back against the pillows, releasing Vanora's shoulders. "Not the Void. Something else."
Vanora looked away, shivering at the loss. "No. It's nothing."
"I don't believe you. Ever since you returned from the Dreadfort, you've been… different. What is it, Vanora?" A beat, and then, "Look at me."
Vanora lurched to her feet, intent on escape. All her cruelty and coldness crumbled in the face of Hilda's light. She couldn't tell her, she wouldn't understand, she couldn't –
Slender, corded arms embraced her from behind, pulling her close. She felt Hilda pressed tightly to her back, felt Hilda's face against her hair, felt Hilda's hands caress her hips, slender fingers tracing wide, slow circles. "
Tell me," Hilda demanded. And softer, "
Please."
Vanora melted against her.
I hate you, she thought.
I love you. "I killed Ramsay," she murmured. "He'd poisoned Rorlund, alluded to poisoning Domeric… and Roose… Roose just sat and watched it all."
"You've killed men before."
She shook her head. "Not like this. This wasn't quick or clean. I made it last. His screams…" Her breath hitched, and she shuddered. "They were so
sweet."
Hilda stroked her hair. Vanora leaned into her touch, and gave no resistance when Hilda led her over to the vast featherbed. She lay against the mattress; her breath hitched again when Hilda curled next to her. It had been so long since they shared a bed – since before the Dreadfort.
"I'm a vile person, Hilda. You should send me away. To Windhelm, or Dawnfort. The Void… what if it takes too much? What if it's already taken too much? What if it turns me against you?" It was already trying, she thought. Trying to drive a wench between them, to taint her feelings, to prey on her insecurities, tearing her, ripping her.
"It hasn't, and it won't," Hilda said. "The Void is no different from Sovngarde; neither is truly meant for the living to visit. They feed on our doubts, on our fears. They test us. If you cannot trust in yourself to remain strong, then trust in me to keep you safe." Her voice softened to a breathy whisper. "Give me your heart, Vanora, and I will see that it comes to no harm."
Vanora turned to face her. Trust in Hilda? She could do that. She could do it easily. How had she ever doubted? She loved her.
She ignored the traitorous voice that whispered that Hilda was using her, like she always had, playing her, toying with her.
Hilda can be ruthless, the voice whispered.
She knows cruelty. She keeps it hidden. She doesn't love you. No one could love something like you. You hate her.
Tentatively, she reached out and cupped Hilda's face. Her thumb brushed against the corner of her mouth. The voice snarled, raved, thrashed. Hilda smiled, kissed her fingers. Vanora's heart near burst. "Call your mother to Winterfell," Hilda said. "And send word to the Blood Flower. Tell her it's time."
Vanora took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and fell into a churning sea of oily shadows.
Hear me, Night Mother. Hear me, Blood Flower. Hear me…
