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“How many?”
The Lord Commander’s voice was silky, but Ben knew it hid venom. He wouldn’t like the answer he was to receive.
“We don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Lord Ranger, how is it that you don’t know? Are your rangers incapable of counting?”
Ben took a deep breath. “They can count, Lord Commander, but there’s no man so capable of masking his presence as a wildling. Even if Bill had a solid figure, I wouldn’t trust it.”
“And so what do you propose we do?”
Ben hesitated.
The part of him that had once been heir to Winterfell longed to respond ride out in force, face them, crush them. Protect the realm.
The part of him that had served under Lord Commander Snoke as First Ranger for the past seven years knew that the Watch was floundering—barely enough men to man the Wall, much less ride out in force, face them, crush them, protect the realm. Of the nineteen castles that once held the Watch, only three remained. “I’ll take my six best men and ride out,” he said.
“And count them?” asked Snoke, raising an eyebrow.
“If it comes to that,” Ben replied. “At the very least, I’ll see for myself what I’ll be facing when they do march south.”
“March south,” scoffed Snoke. “I don’t know what they’re thinking. Even if they do manage to make it close to the Wall, the thing’s a thousand feet high. They can’t bring it down.”
“They’ve sent men over before,” Ben said. He remembered wildling incursions, sometimes as far south as Winterfell during the winters of his childhood. He’d been afraid of them, though his father had told him there was nothing to fear from Wildlings. They have poorer weapons than us, he’d said, ruffling Ben’s hair. Cheap steel and iron and bronze.
Ben clenched his scarred hand.
“But they won’t send nearly so many men over. The Wall defends itself, especially in summer.”
Ben swallowed. It wasn’t summer anymore. In Winterfell, he was sure, the leaves on the trees would be changing color to match the great weirwood in the godswood. “Winter—” he began but Snoke gave him a look and said, “Don’t,” and the rest of the phrase died on his lips.
The Lord Commander sighed. “Take your men,” he said, and waved his hand, and Ben departed.
He found his knights in the hall below. “We ride out tomorrow.”
Fernando Sand looked up at him. “I don’t suppose you are referring to riding south, perhaps to break bread with your esteemed uncle in a warmer place than this.”
“No,” Ben grunted. “North.”
“I’m glad your counting was effective,” Fernando groaned at Bill. “‘A lot’—what sort of information is that for the Lord Commander?”
“He’s saying that because you mentioned his uncle,” Malthar groaned. “Now we’ve got to go freeze our balls off just because—”
“You were named a ranger,” Ben snarled at them all. “We range.” He threw himself into a seat. Ordinarily he did not mind the good-natured mockery of his men. It felt almost like having friends, not that Ben had ever really had friends. They knew him too well, though, and Malthar was right. Nothing got his blood up quite like the mention of his uncle.
Harry cleared his throat. “Just the seven of us? Or will we take more?”
“The seven of us,” Ben said. “I’d recommend a good night’s sleep for it’s the last warm one you’ll have for a long time.”
#
They went the next day, Ben and his six Knights of Ren. No matter how much Ben protested that not a man of them was a knight, if there was one thing he had learned from his ten years on the Wall, it was that the Black Brothers cared little and less for accuracy in the names they gave one another. “Never had a sibling, did you?” Sam had asked him when he’d dared to grouse about it. “It’ll make them all the more stubborn about calling you Lord Range.”
He’d been Lord Range long before he’d been First Ranger, and the nickname had even slipped into a mispronunciation of Lord Ren. Lord for his mighty Skywalker blood, and Range—why it was Range and not Ranger, Ben would never know. Now, he was Lord Ren, and some—Snoke among them—called him Lord Ranger. He did not know if he liked it or not.
Malthar was the first to complain.
“It is colder than any man should ever have to live,” the Summer Islander moaned. “Why would anyone even try to live so far north?”
“You try. You’re not dead yet,” Ben replied. He had thought he had grown weary of the Summer Islander’s complaints of the cold, but that was when they were at Castle Black. North of the Wall, everything was different. You’re a Skywalker of Winterfell, he told himself whenever he thought to complain. Your kind hates sand, not snow. Or so it was said of his grandfather. One look at the northern maid and he’d left the Dornish Marches forever, Dawn strapped across his back. Another sword that will never be mine.
He rested his hand on the hilt of the sword that he’d worked to forge himself when he had first arrived at Castle Black. It wasn’t a handsome blade. It was crude, in truth, but he was proud of it. No blade had ever fit his hand so well. At the Wall I can make my own destiny. No Dawn, no Ice. No Skywalkers or Solos or any of it all. Just him. Just Lord Ren.
“Aye, but I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the mad queen,” Malthar grumbled. They were used to his grumbling by now. He was no Westerosi, but when Qi’ra Maul had given the choice between his head on a spike and the Wall, he’d done what men for thousands of years had done and chosen ice, and snow, and life. Why did you choose it when you could have had a Lord’s seat and Winterfell? Malthar had asked him more than once. But Ben had never been able to explain it just right.
On and on they rode. The snows grew thicker, the woods grew wilder, and as he always did when he was north of the Wall, Ben felt calm. This was what he was meant to do, was born to do. The blood of Winterfell was to protect the north, that’s what his mother had always told him. And he was protecting the north when he rode out in Black. More than I would in Winterfell, he thought not for the first time. So much of what his mother thought was protecting her people…
But it didn’t matter.
Leia Skywalker was dead. Her oft-praised heart had failed her, according to the raven his uncle had sent to the Wall, bidding Ben to come down and see his mother laid to rest.
He had not gone. He would not face his uncle.
And whatever hope for reconciliation he knew his mother had hoped for between her son and brother had died with her. Her brother now sat her seat, and her son had sworn himself to the Black. His loyalty was to the realm, not to the petty squabbles of power hungry lords. And whatever his mother might have pretended, she was no different from all the rest of them.
We serve a higher purpose, Ben thought. There is no purpose, no title more noble than the protection of the realm. Maintaining order, maintaining life…
Life.
Loath though he was to admit it, life was hard north of the Wall. The long summer that had lingered ever since he had taken the black was fading, now, and he would never confess to Malthar that he dreaded what winter would mean when it finally came. It was bad enough in summer and autumn, so cold that his breath hung as hot mist in the air before him as he rode.
No wonder Holdo is gathering men. They’ll freeze and starve themselves to death in a long winter.
Winter means death for the unprepared, his mother had told him as a boy, back when he was the heir to Winterfell and winter was an enemy that none of the southern lords ever had to do battle with. And we are sworn to protect the north, and so we must always be prepared.
Are you prepared, Uncle Luke?
He didn’t want to think of Winterfell. He didn’t want to think of the maesters sitting in council with his uncle as he did his best to prepare for a longer winter than any he’d ever seen before. He would protect the north, and Ben would protect the realm.
“How much farther north is it?” whined Harry after a week.
“Not as far as it should be,” Bill replied shortly. “We’ll probably run into their scouts soon enough.”
“Best to avoid them,” said Fernando. “We’ll want to sneak, won’t we?” He glanced at Ben, even as Harry complained that they could have at least ridden out.
They were a large party—large because Holdo was gathering so many men and they didn’t want to be caught off guard. “We should split up,” Ben said, looking between his six. “You four,” to Fernando, Malthar, Bill, and Sam, “over the ridge to the west. You two,” to Benny and Bill, “with me.”
And so they split. Benny and Bill groused back and forth about the cold, about the dark, but Ben knew them well enough to trust that they were keeping their eyes and ears open for signs of wildlings.
“Ren,” Benny hissed and Ben’s head turned. He saw them ahead—three wildlings.
They were seated around a firepit that contained no fire. One of them held a bow, another an axe, and the third one a heavy dark spear with an iron point.
“Do we attack?” Bill asked, his eyes not once leaving the wildlings.
“Better to skirt around, I think,” Ben replied quietly. “We’re not here to throw them back. We want information.”
“We could try and get answers from them,” Bill said, glancing at Ben.
“If it comes to that,” he replied. “The Lord Commander would prefer—” but his assertion that Snoke would rather have first-hand knowledge of Holdo’s camps, rather than potential lies from captured wildlings died on his lips because the bowman had seen them and he was already on his feet, firing an arrow right at them.
“Seven hells,” Bill cursed as he threw himself aside.
“Forward!” Ben bellowed and all three brothers drew their steel and rushed them.
Bill went for the bowman, who turned tail and fled, the axe-wielder at his side. The spearman made to follow, but Ben lunged forward and blocked his path.
“Go—” Ben commanded Benny, but his second knight was already taking off in pursuit even as the spearman whirled his spear. Ben parried the blow, though. How many years had he trained in Winterfell under his uncle’s eye? He was born for battle and blood, no matter how fierce this wildling was.
And he was fierce. Quick too, his spear striking forth like a snake. He snarled with fury whenever Ben caught the blow with his blade.
“Surrender,” Ben called to him. “I will spare your life if you answer my questions.”
But the offer was met with another jab from the spear—one that hit him full in the face and knocked him back into the snow, blinking blood out of his eyes as the wildling prowled around him like a shadowcat.
And then there was a spear at his throat and just how he managed to grab it, he did not know, but it was in his hands and he was pushing as hard as he could to keep it away from him, and, as the wildling tried to pull the spear from his grip, he unintentionally pulled Ben to his feet.
Ben twisted the spear in his hands, and he and the wildling grappled for a moment. He was strong, but Ben was stronger and after perhaps thirty seconds, he wrested the spear from the wildling’s hands.
“Surrender,” Ben said again, but before he said the next part again, the wildling had lunged for his sword which lay in the snow. But what grace he had had with a spear did not carry over to the sword in his hand and he fumbled it and it was not long before Ben was able to disarm him and knock him back in the snow. He resisted—though he was sorely tempted—slashing the wildling across the face as he had done. His blood was dripping into his mouth now and he spat some of it into the snow. “I will spare your life if you answer my questions.”
With the spear, he nudged the wildling’s hood back and—
Almost dropped the spear.
She was a woman, not a man, with dark brown hair that was pulled back behind her head and cheeks that were flushed from cold and activity. And she was looking up at him with blazing rage.
“I’ll answer none of your questions, crow,” she snapped.
Ben placed the butt of the spear down in the snow and leaned on it as he sheathed his sword. He was breathing more heavily than he wanted to admit as he looked down at her.
You should kill her, then, he thought in a voice that sounded very much like the Lord Commander’s. If she’d rather die, then let her die.
Except there was something wrong in that. He didn’t know why, but it felt wrong.
“Pity for you,” he said and he broke the spear over his knee. “I’ll be taking you with me back to Castle Black.”
The moment the words were out of his lips, he regretted them. He was the First Ranger, he was in the middle of a ranging—he didn’t have time to keep a spearwife hostage.
But he had said the words and he reached for a length of rope and went to tie her arms behind her back.
“Walk,” he commanded, feeling a fool.
She didn’t.
So he pushed her.
“Big, strong, manly crow,” she taunted. “Trying to make me submit. I’m no kneeler.”
“I will gag and drag you, if I must,” he said. “If you value you freedom so much, I would imagine you’d prefer to walk and speak at will.”
“A fine choice—when you’ve no choice at all. Either way I’m your prisoner,” she retorted. “Though you should just kill me and be done with it. You’ll learn nothing from me.”
Ben took a step towards her. He’d been told through the years that doing this was something that made him more frightening. He was taller than any man had a right to be, or at least that was what Bill had always told him. Snoke was taller, though many forgot that since the Lord Commander was old and hunched and sat most of the time these days.
But the wildling refused to be intimidated as she looked up at him, her hazel eyes hard, her jaw jutting.
“What’s your name?” he asked her.
“Why do you care?” she demanded.
And the answer came to him most uncomfortably. Always treat people with dignity—even those you loathe. All men are men, even if they are also monsters, his mother had once told him.
“I am Ben Skywalker.” Easier to introduce himself than explain why.
“The First Ranger?” the girl asked sharply. Then her eyes narrowed. “Your hospitality leaves something to be desired, my lord.”
“Would you prefer I call you my guest?” he asked her, amused. “I suppose you would, if it meant you could chide me about how guests don’t have their wrists tied.” He jerked the rope he’d used to bind her wrists.
“Guests have freedom. Call me your prisoner. But your hospitality—”
“Be grateful it’s me and not the Lord Commander,” Ben cut her off. “He’d have gagged you already.”
“You said you’d gag me if I didn’t shut up,” she pointed out.
“And I still may,” he said.
“But you demand respect of me my lord of Winterfell? What is a Lord of Winterfell doing beyond the wall, wearing black anyway? Are you a criminal?”
Ben’s blood went cold and he glared at her. She was a wildling. What did she know of his uncle, of the legacy he’d borne until it had broken him, of any of it? Who was she to judge him?
“Walk,” he said, pushing her forward. He wondered if she noticed the way he was shaking with anger in his furs.
“We’re going the wrong direction,” she snapped at him. “Aren’t you taking me to your Lord Commander and whatever it is he’ll do to make me talk?”
“We go where I say we go,” Ben growled at her.
“We go where I say we go,”she said in a gruff imitation, pouting.
Ben did not look at her. She was too infuriating to look at right now, and he thought if he tried, he would end up trying to kill her, just as she wanted. She’s useful.
Though like as not she would drag her feet, and he would never catch up to Benny and Bill. Would they think she’d bested him? Like as not, they’d come back for him once they’d had their way with the two who had fled.
“Where are we even going?” she demanded. “What could the high and mighty First Ranger want of a mere spearwife like me?”
“I thought your kind thought mere spearwives were the same as kings,” Ben shot back.
“Better than kings—we don’t try to force others to do our dirty work for us,” she retorted proudly.
“And so what is Amilyn Holdo doing, then?” Ben asked. “I heard she was styling herself King Beyond the Wall.”
“Singers have been styling her that—not her. She’s no king. She’s a spearwife, just like me,” the wildling replied. How pleased with that she sounded. Ben wondered if any of his mother’s men, of his uncle’s, the men who might once have been his had ever once seemed so proud of serving House Skywalker.
“Don’t fool yourself—if singers are styling her a king, it’s for a reason. She’ll be one—especially if her horde is as large as my scouts claim. No spearwife can command thousands.”
“You think us incapable?” she demanded hotly. “Because we’re weak women? Or have you missed that slash upon your face, crow? Just because your band of brothers doesn’t let women in—”
“My mother served as Lady of Winterfell for nearly all my life. I do not think women incapable. I meant that a spearwife cannot command in battle and remain a spearwife. Command changes any man—any woman,” he added for good measure.
“She doesn’t command us,” the wildling said. “She leads—and we’re Free Folk. We choose to follow. Your lord commander doesn’t lead, does he? When was the last time he rode forth from Castle Black?”
Before my time, Ben said, though he did not say that aloud. She was the enemy—he was supposed to make her talk, not the other way around.
“And how does one lead without command?” Ben asked instead. He doubted very much that Amilyn Holdo had an answer to that. “How does she intend to make war south of the Wall if she doesn’t command? I promise you, my uncle’s men won’t break for they know their place in battle. Do you know yours?”
“I do,” the woman said fiercely. “We all do.”
“And yet your men fled at the sight of mine. They broke but left you to die.”
“Our orders—” the girl began but stopped immediately, flushing.
“So there are orders?” Ben laughed. “I see. So no mere spearwife, then.”
She did not respond, but she did not stop walking.
“The Lord Commander does not need to ride out if he has men he can trust.”
“Men like you?” she spat.
“Men like me,” he said, trying to keep his voice as mild as he could. He was proud of the Lord Commander’s trust. He had worked hard for it. Snoke trusted him in a way that his own blood never had.
“And do you like it—doing his bidding like a dog?”
“Better to have chosen my fate than to have it chosen for me,” he responded simply. “You speak of freedom. I used what little freedom I had to—”
“And a Lord of Winterfell isn’t free?” she sounded like she could laugh, and it was just like when he’d tried to explain it to his mother. She had stared at him, completely disbelievingly. Ben, you are free. You have more freedom than any man.
And yet I am not free to be my own man, mother.
“You were driven from your home, weren’t you? They say the Wall’s full of crows who’ve raped and murdered and been given new life on the Wall rather than have the kneeler lords take their lives. How many did you murder?”
“My house has served on the Wall for thousands of years,” Ben said. “I’ve done no rape and done no murder. I wish to protect the realm.”
“Well,” the wildling muttered. “Protect away. We’re not your enemy.”
Ben laughed. “Not my enemy? Wildling raids have killed how many northmen throughout the centuries? My mother rode out to protect those who dwell south of the wall more times than I can count but no—no you are not our enemy.”
“As if you’re not your own,” the wildling shot back. “I hear you’ve been warring amongst yourselves ever since the Wall came up, and before. How are we more your enemy than those to your south, my lord?”
“We serve the same queen,” Ben said mulishly. “We—”
“Kneel to the same ruler, and yet you still war. But men aren’t the only enemy men have.” She said it significantly, as though he was supposed to take great meaning in her words.
“The dragons are dead,” Ben said, rolling his eyes. “And grumkins and snarks aren’t real. The Others didn’t ride great ice spiders into battle either. They are just stories told to frighten children.”
The woman went very still and the rope tightened in Ben’s hands as he kept walking. When he had to turn to tug it, she was staring at his back. “You think you’re strong and smart and clever,” she said. “But that won’t save you when the dead come for you.”
And he got not another word out of her.
#
They did their best to follow the trail of his rangers, but by the time the sun set, they had lost it in the woods. Ben did his best not to let his frustration show. He did not want her to see it. She would crow victory, he was sure.
He still did not know her name, but would not ask for it again. When he spoke to her, he called her spearwife, but she was loathe to respond now. It made no matter. He appreciated the quiet.
But the quiet grew overwhelming in the darkness, and she glanced at him when they stopped in a clearing.
“Are we going to light a fire?” she asked him.
“So that your friends could find us in the night? Do you take me for a green boy?”
“Forgive me, my lord, how foolish of me to assume,” she taunted as she sat down in the snow, and Ben was faced with a sudden reality that truly had not occurred to him until that very moment.
He’d never been particularly interested in women. He’d not been interested in men either, no matter what teasing had come from him taking little interest in women. But suddenly—horribly—he realized that in order not to freeze that night he’d probably have to hold her in the snow. His cloak was thick and warm and lined with fur, and he’d lain plenty of nights alongside his rangers without giving it second thought.
They sat there in silence for a long while. He gave her some of his rations and his heart was hammering in his throat. She was wrapped in furs herself. He could make nothing of her form at all, and yet he had never felt himself more alarmed by the presence of a woman in his entire life.
“If we’re not to freeze in the night, we’d best lie together.” There. He had said it. And his voice hadn’t broken like the frightened boy he felt like as he tried not to take into account that she was a woman. She was a prisoner, and he was keeping her alive. Nothing more.
“Oh is that the way of it?” she asked. His face heated, and he wondered if she could see it in the darkness.
She could. “Well, my lord, if this is the only way you can get women to lie with you, I’d recommend a different trade than the one you’ve chosen.”
“It’s not to freeze,” he said quietly. But she was just shaking her head, her smile mocking.
“Not to freeze,” she laughed. “Honorable intentions, I’m sure. But foolish, like everything that comes down from that Wall.” She shakes her head. “But of course, I’ve forgotten—you crows think it’s unnatural to want a woman.”
“Not unnatural,” Ben said. “Just a distraction.”
“And do I distract you, my lord? From the great honor of whatever it is your Lord Commander would have you do?”
She didn’t seem to expect an answer, though. She lay down in the snow, her back to him and he took a deep, steadying breath before coming to lie down behind her. He did his best not to think about how many times, as a child, he’d seen his father holding his mother exactly this way when he’d come into their bedchamber after a nightmare.
“My name’s Rey,” she said and he felt relief flood him. “Never let a man hold me like this if he didn’t know my name. I suppose you did ask.”
“I did,” he agreed stiffly.
She was very warm. Surely his men had never been so warm. He supposed he’d never wrapped his arms around them, though, but he didn’t dare release her lest she try and run away. He realized he likely wouldn’t be able to sleep at all or else he’d wake up frozen and alone. Or with his throat slit. He doubted that he would be able to fall asleep, even if he wanted to—not least because—
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“That.”
She was grinding her hips right against his—
“Just trying to get comfortable,” she said and he could hear the glee in her voice.
“I don’t care for your comfort,” he said, his voice breaking as though he were a boy again.
“No. I suppose not. You’ve made it quite clear that you do not prioritize hospitality,” she replied easily. She shifted her hips again and—
“I mean it.”
“Or else what?” she demanded. “Or else you’ll grow stiff as all men do and take me in the night? You fear what your brotherhood has forbidden, don’t you?”
“I told you—I’m no raper,” he growled.
“Good. I’m so glad that I’m safe in your care,” she replied dryly. Then, under her breath, “A distraction.”
“Vows to keep us from betraying the realm for a girl, yes,” he snapped at her. She was shifting her hips again and his face was positively on fire because it felt so good, the way her arse felt at his front—even through all these furs. His heart was pounding in his chest, in his throat and he had never been so humiliated by his own body—not even when he was growing into his manhood—because his manhood—his manhood—
Was stiff as steel at her back.
He took several deep, steadying breaths, knowing that she knew, knowing that she would be able to feel it.
“Do you always take your sword to bed with you, my lord?” she asked.
He did not reply. She was insufferable, he decided. Insufferable and yet all he wanted to do was bury his face in her neck because he wouldn’t take her—whatever anger he felt at some of the lessons his mother had taught him, that was one he would never take issue with, that women were never to be forced, not ever, that to do so would make him less a man—he wouldn’t take her but gods he’d never felt like this ever before in his life, this need to just—
Just do what he was doing. Hold her. Or something.
He didn’t know.
He couldn’t know.
His heart was beating too fast. The only time it ever beat this quickly was when he was fighting, or when he was afraid. She shifted her hips again.
She’ll unman me if she keeps doing that.
He couldn’t decide if that would be a relief or not.
He wished he could think of something to say. Something charming, perhaps, or disarming. Something that would make her stop. Something that would make her keep going, turn in his arms to face him, perhaps.
But instead, the only thing he could think to say was, “And this is comfortable for you?”
“As comfortable as can be.” She was positively purring with her own victory at how successfully she was tormenting him. More successfully than she could possibly know, truth be told. His mind was running away with itself. In all his thirty years, not once had he wanted to make a woman purr like that, wanted to kiss her, hold her, bed her. He’d never had boyhood imaginings, even. He’d always thought it was one more way he couldn’t be free, for the heir to Winterfell would never be able to pick his own bride, no matter what his mother had done when she’d wed a sellsword. And he’d certainly never thought he would imagine it of a woman who had cut open his face with a spear. “I suppose you could make me more comfortable.”
“Forgive me, but your hands will remain tied,” he said. “And I should have tied your legs as well.”
“Thank you for the liberties you grant me,” she said and he could tell she was rolling her eyes. She was rolling her hips as well.
He had never been more grateful in his life for anyone to fall asleep as he was when Rey did. She snored lightly and continued to shift a little bit, but it wasn’t purposeful. I must take myself in hand, he thought and almost immediately flushed because with his manhood as hard as it was he couldn’t help but think of it that way when he meant merely to regain control of his mind—because he had to stop thinking about how good it felt to hold her, how—for all she had challenged him—he found it had made him respect her more, like her more. You are a man of the Watch. First Ranger. You have vows.
But he could let himself dream, he supposed, and when he—to his own surprise—began to drift off, he dreamed of Rey.
#
He was painfully hard when he woke next. Rey was still asleep in his arms and—gods be good—she had turned while he’d been asleep and was now snoring softly into his chest. His groin was pressed to hers and Ben wanted to die, though whether of humiliation or of victory he wasn’t sure.
It was more painful than he wanted it to be, pulling himself from her, but he did it all the same. She woke the moment he was sitting up, the cold hitting her where she’d been so warm a moment before and Ben could not look at her as he stood, the rope tight in his hand, willing the cold to take away the ache in his manhood.
They ate again and then Ben directed her north—north, he prayed, to Benny and Bill, and then again to Holdo’ horde.
She was silent for a good long while and Ben let her stew in her captivity. Or at least, he presumed she was stewing. He would be stewing, were he in her position. Seven Hells, he was stewing now, trying very hard to let go of that feeling of wholeness he’d felt while she’d been lying in his arms, while her face had been pressed to his heart.
You are a man of the Watch, he told himself. You are First Ranger of all bloody things. You’re not some weak, lovesick boy. What would Snoke think of this?
Oddly, though, it wasn’t Snoke who got him to stop thinking of it all: it was his mother.
How happy she would have been, to see him this bent up about a girl. How she’d longed for him to show any interest in girls when he’d been young, of marrying and having a son or daughter of his own.
He hardened his heart and continued on.
There were no good tracks to follow now. The wind had blown the snow over whatever direction Benny and Bill had run in when pursuing the other wildlings.
“They’ll have gotten away,” Rey said as Ben paused to examine what was probably nothing at all.
“Mayhaps,” he replied. “I imagine that my men would have returned had they succeeded in killing your friends.”
“Finn and Poe are fierce,” Rey said. “And crows are cowards.”
“Am I not fierce?” he asked her. “And would you call me a coward?”
He caught her flushing. “You are afraid of a girl’s ass against your bone,” she snapped at him. “I wouldn’t say that makes you brave—would you?”
Ben’s face burned, and the only consolation of it all was that hers seemed to be burning too. She couldn’t look at him.
And he saw it clear. “You liked being in my arms, didn’t you?” Oh how devastating a question it was. And how horrible to watch her face split with fear, with horror, with guilt right as his own heart lurched. He sighed.
“Come on, Rey.”
“You think I’m your wench now, is that it?” He hated how panicked she sounded now. “That I’ll do anything for you just because you held me and I didn’t feel alone?”
“No,” he said. “I think you’re a wildling, and I’m a man of the Night’s Watch, and Amilyn Holdo commands you, as Snoke commands me.” And I’ve sworn to take no wife and father no children. “And you are my prisoner, so on we march.” Could she hear the melancholy in his voice?
“There’s a difference,” she said after a while, “between wanting you and feeling warm in your arms.”
“Of course there is,” he said a little more sardonically than he had planned to.
“It’s not like I’m starry-eyed in love with you, crow,” she snapped.
“I can’t imagine you starry-eyed in love with anyone,” he replied, immediately wondering what it would be like to have her look at him the way he sometimes looked at the stars.
“I can,” she snapped. “Just because it’s not you doesn’t mean it’s not possible.”
He inclined his head and all the etiquette training his mother had drilled into him came back. “Forgive me, my lady.”
“Don’t mock,” she snapped.
“This from you?”
“I’m allowed to mock my captor. It’s encouraged. You cannot pretend to be a gracious lordling while keeping me tied at the wrists and threatening to bind my legs and gag me. You cannot be both a hero and a monster.”
“Oh, but some heroes are monsters,” he said darkly.
“Is that your aspiration, then? To be a hero and a monster?”
“I’ve always been a monster,” he told her quietly and it was a deeper confession than any he’d given to anyone. “Whether or not I can be a hero remains to be seen.”
Rey laughed bitterly.
“Monster,” she said. “And what do you know of monsters, crow?”
“I know plenty,” he snapped at her. She had this way of making him feel unfooted with her responses.
“No, you don’t,” she said, shaking her head. “If you did, I wouldn’t be bound like this. If you did—well—I suppose you are a crow. It’s not like you’d listen.”
“Not like I’d listen to what?”
And her lips curled into a catlike smile and he knew that he had fallen into a trap that she’d set for him.
“Poor little crow,” she said. “You all think you know so much, but you know nothing, Ben Skywalker. Nothing at all.”
#
They settled for a second night and this time, it was wordlessly that they came into one another’s arms. Neither it seemed dared to mock the other after the realization from earlier that day. Rey did not rub herself against his groin and he tried to find a place around her torso that would keep her firmly held in place while they slept but didn’t feel like the way his father held his mother when they’d slept.
When he woke the next morning, he was stiff again, and rolled away from Rey, hoping she would not feel it before she woke. The cold calmed him and made him limp again, thank the gods, and Rey sat up, rubbing sleep from her eyes and looking at him confusedly as she slowly got to her feet. He shared his rations with her once again and then—
Then she jerked the rope from his hands and started running as fast as she could through the woods.
Ben cursed and took off after her, drawing his sword. He did not want to use it on her, but he would. She was his enemy. How had he let himself forget that?
She was bloody fast, and he never was quite able to catch her, despite his legs being longer. She cast glances over her shoulders every few minutes to see if he was still on her trail… which was probably how she didn’t see—
“Rey!” he bellowed but it was too late and she had run right into the bear.
She yelled, and the bear swatted at her with a great paw, knocking her back and Ben lunged forward so that he stood between her and the bear.
“Behind me,” he called to her. If she had her wits about her, she’d likely run, but he heard the crunching of snow behind him and felt her hand on his back, and he knew she was there.
The bear roared and reared and Ben charged forward, dodging the swipe of the bear’s paws and striking as hard as he could with his sword.
His aim wasn’t good. The bear stumbled back, growling, but it still lived and it sent its paw out once again to try and knock his sword loose from his hand.
“Careful!” he heard Rey shout. Why wasn’t she running? She should be running. Perhaps she feared that the bear would follow her if she did, for surely she wasn’t worried for Ben’s life.
He lunged forward again hacking at the bear’s paw with his sword and it howled in agony and rage as he cut its paw loose from its body. Distracted by its own pain, flailing wildly, it did not keep a good measure on Ben, and Ben’s aim was true this time as he dove for the bear’s heart and drove his sword through its flesh.
It died quickly.
“Are you all right?” he asked Rey over his shoulder.
“Fine,” she said. She still wasn’t running. He wasn’t going to question it, though—not while she still could, not before he had her rope in hand again.
“We should cut it up for meat,” he said.
That was when Rey looked down at her bonds. “Are you going to cut me loose?”
He moved towards her, standing on the rope as he bent to pick it up. He shook his head.
“I have my orders,” he told her quietly.
“Your orders aren’t to keep me alive,” she said, but she sounded confused. He couldn’t blame her. It would have been extremely convenient, to let the bear kill her and have done with it. Instead, she was looking up at him and she really did have such lovely hazel eyes—lovelier when she wasn’t furious with him.
He tied the rope around a tree while he went to cut meat from the bear. It would be tough, but it would be something.
Which was how the wildlings found them when they came into the clearing—ten of them quickly taking into account Ben’s blacks and Rey tied to a tree.
“Got yourself captured, did you?” one of them asked. He was as black as Malthar, and Ben did his best not to stare. The man spoke with no accent of the Summer Isles and seemed as comfortable with the cold as Rey did.
“At least I lived,” she said as two of the wildlings cut the ropes from her wrists and took Ben’s sword from him.
“Well, let’s kill him and have done with—”
“No,” Rey cut him off, turning to the one who looked to be the leader. “No—Amilyn will want to speak with him.” The man raised his eyebrows. “That’s Ben Skywalker—the First Ranger. He’ll have information on the Watch.”
“Lord Ren!” the leader said, grinning a humorless grin. “If his little crows wouldn’t caw, why should he?”
“That’s for Amilyn to decide, not you, Poe Dameron,” Rey snapped.
Poe’s eyebrows twitched. “Fine, hellcat. We’ll leave it to Amilyn. Let’s go.”
“Hellcat?” he asked Rey as the ropes that had once bound her wrists now bound his, dragging him forward.
She glared at him in response.
#
The trek north to Amilyn’s horde took another week. Another week in which Ben’s hands were bound, in which he listened as the wildlings all around him mocked him. They taunted him over the deaths of Benny and Bill, who had been quickly out maneuvered in the woods.
“We burned their bodies, though. Fear not,” Poe Dameron told him. “So they won’t be coming back for us in the night. I’m sure that’s a relief for you.”
“Shut up,” hissed the one that Ben had learned was called Finn. “He might not know.”
“Why shouldn’t he know? Isn’t that what the Watch is for? To protect the realms of men from them?”
“From who?” Ben asked. But he got no response.
It was a miserable trudge, but Ben refused to let it get to him. He refused to be daunted by any of it. If he was going to march into the maw of the enemy, he would do so as a Skywalker, as a man of the Night’s Watch. But far more miserable than the prospect of what tortures might await him, what cold and horrible imprisonment, was the sight of Finn and Rey walking together, the way they sat together by the fire at night, the way they shared smiles and laughed with one another.
So that was what you meant, he thought bitterly, That there’s a difference, between wanting you and feeling warm in your arms.
Well—all the better for him, then. He could put his boylike fantasies away in that case. He should never have had them to begin with. Not with his vows and his orders.
And what would the Lord Commander make of this?
He was sure that he wouldn’t be happy. Two of his men were dead, if not more, and now he himself was captured. He was sure Snoke would be livid. Then I must do what I must to stay alive, he thought. Carry out my orders—find out what I can and bring what information back to Castle Black that I can.
And pray that the other four are still alive. If all six of his knights had died on his command…
He didn’t wish to think of that.
When they rounded a ridge to see the camp spread out below them, Ben’s breath caught in his throat. He didn’t have time to count, didn’t think it was worth the time to count. These were more wildlings than had been in Bill’s report. Far more. More than he could even begin to imagine. Thousands at least. Tens of thousands. Possibly even more than that.
“Come on, crow, stop your gaping,” Poe said, pushing him forward and he stumbled. He’d always been sure of foot, but for one wild moment he thought he’d be rolling his way down into the valley where Amilyn Holdo had gathered her horde.
A hand shot out and caught his arm, though and he saw Rey standing over him, steadying him as he did his best not to fall.
“Careful, crow,” she said to him brusquely as she let go.
He straightened and nodded a thanks to her before continuing.
They led him through the camp. He got plenty of curious gazes, though those were outnumbered by the jeers and glares that came his way. He did not care, though.
He cared far more about the tent that he was being brought to, large and in the center of the camp.
Rey and Poe brought him in where he found a wildling woman sitting by a fire, playing a lute. She had purple hair, as though she were a Tyroshi, and a cool blue gaze that, when leveled at Ben, felt oddly familiar.
She raised her eyebrows and looked between Rey and Poe.
“So you’ve brought me a gift?” she asked.
“This is Ben Skywalker,” Rey said at once.
And the woman looked at him and there was something new in her gaze. “Ben Skywalker…” Her lips pulled into a smile, but of all the smiles that Ben had seen since he’d been taken captive, there was no threat to it. It was almost wistful. “You’ve grown, Ben.”
Ben blinked in surprise, and the woman laughed. “Come, sit.”
“How do you know me?” he asked her, ignoring her invitation to sit.
“Sit,” she urged again. “Bread and salt,” she said, leaning sideways to take some. She extended it to him.
“Amilyn—” Poe began but the woman—Amilyn Holdo—gave him a sharp look and fell silent.
Why would she give me guest right?
He accepted it all the same. Only after he’d eaten did he sit.
“I saw you when you were a boy,” she said. “A long while ago. When your mother took her seat at Winterfell. She and I were friends as girls, when she was fostered in Last Hearth. I don’t think she knew what I was when she came down to the village for market—I don’t think anyone knew what I was—but we were friends all the same. And when I heard she was to be Lady of Winterfell, I was curious.” She plucked at her lute. “Easy enough for a singer to sneak past guards, don’t you think. And there you were, just a small boy, with your mother and father. I’m surprised to see you all in Black, though I knew of course you had to be, Lord Ren. But I’m curious—why did you forsake your claim to Winterfell to join Snoke’s band of villains?”
Ben’s throat went dry.
If there was one thing that Ben knew about himself, it was that he was a terrible liar. It had gotten him into worlds of trouble growing up, trying to be better at it. But he’d never managed. Snoke had said his face could be read like a book, and Snoke had been right. His mother had told him never to fear his own honesty. There is no damage that the truth can do that a lie won’t do thrice over, she’d told him when he’d been sniffling at a punishment he’d received, being caught in a lie.
“The Night’s Watch protects the realm,” he said, and he felt like he was saying the words to his mother again. “All of it. Our loyalty is to the realm. We take no part in the petty squabbles of—”
“Of lords and kings?” Holdo arched an eyebrow. “So you have no taste for politics.”
“None,” he said.
“And yet here you are, treating with the King Beyond the Wall.”
“Are we treating?” Ben asked sharply.
“I gave you bread, didn’t I?”
“And yet my hands are still bound.”
“Because I am no fool,” Holdo said.
“You think I have no honor?” Ben asked instead.
“I think you are a brother of the Night’s Watch, and thus my enemy. Though if things were right, you wouldn’t be.”
Ben frowned and Amilyn Holdo leaned forward, her blue eyes bright. “You wish to protect the realm. What from, Lord Ren? From the likes of me and mine? Your mother and I were friends, I think that means that yours and mine could be too.”
Ben flared. “And how many thousands have wildlings slain throughout the years?” It was like Rey all over again. “How many incursions? You may have been friend to my mother, but yours and mine? There’s blood there.”
“Men forget,” Amilyn shrugged. “Why was the Wall built?”
And Ben snorted. “You expect me to believe the fairy stories I was told as a boy? Dark tales of Others? I’m no boy. I have seen with my own eyes—”
“That we are men, like you. That we bleed and die, like you. That we can climb the Wall, perhaps even cross it, but there aren’t enough of us to merit such a defense of the realm, don’t you think? Nineteen castles, they once had. I can promise you, there was never so great a number of Free Folk north of the wall as there are here and now. Seems a little exaggerated, don’t you think?”
Ben clenched his jaw. She wasn’t wrong. It did seem more than was necessary.
Her eyes flashed and he knew she had seen his doubt on his face. Internally, he cursed himself. You must learn to control yourself, he berated himself, hating to admit that his uncle was right.
“I knew your mother,” Holdo said again. “And I know she didn’t raise her son to be a fool. The simple fact that you seek to protect the realm—why, that speaks of your character far more than your vows. We may disagree in what it means to protect the realm, but—”
“You called my brothers a band of villains,” Ben snapped.
“You are,” she said simply. “Or am I to take it that the mad queen no longer sends her villains north?”
“Their deeds are washed from the record when they take their vows,” he said.
“Generous,” Amilyn shrugged. She didn’t seem to care. “And I’d still name them villains for the murders they have committed north of the—”
“And what would you call those who murdered Benny Hill and Bill of the Bay? Do you name your own murderers? Or do you see yourself as a great hero who can do no wrong—all is justified in the name of your aims.”
“And how would that make me different from Snoke? From your Brothers?”
“It doesn’t, but I’m not the one pretending to be different. What do you want of me, Holdo? Why haven’t you killed me?” He was growing tired of all this. Impatient.
“Because I think you are not a foolish man. I think that you are also misguided in what you think it means to protect the realm, and who you are protecting the realm from. And I think with a little proof, you might be persuaded to—”
“Forsake my vows?”
“Uphold them,” Amilyn said and her eyes were very serious. “We are not your enemy. The realms of men—that’s what your vows say, isn’t it?”
A chill crossed his spine.
He wanted to look back at Rey, to see the look on her face, to try and understand what was happening. But Holdo’s gaze was bright and there was no way to avoid it at all.
“You’re no green boy,” she said. “And I’m no fool as to think that my horde would seek safety in a realm that would sooner see us dead without reason. I’ll give you the truth, but I’ll let you see it with your own eyes first. Then you’ll understand. And then it will be for you to decide if you are a coward or a son worthy of Leia Organa.”
Ben took a deep breath. She’s dead, he thought and it felt like a knife in the gut, to remind himself of that. And even if she weren’t…“I have no mother,” he said. “No father, no title. I am—”
“Ben Skywalker of Winterfell,” Amilyn Holdo said firmly. “Whose mother raised him to be Warden of the North, who chose to protect the realm. You can say what words you like, but you know who you are.”
She looked past him to Poe and Rey for the first time. “Tomorrow, take him north. I will leave him in your care.”
#
Ben slept in a tent that night, his arms tied behind his back and furs covering him—a strange combination of warmth and discomfort. He did not get much rest, though it was not for the discomfort. His mind was swirling.
Why was Holdo sending him north? To kill him where there wouldn’t be a chance of him making it back to the Wall? He didn’t think so. She had given him bread and salt, and seemed convinced that she could win him to her cause.
If my mother couldn’t convince me not to go to the Watch, why would Holdo think I would forsake my vows?
Uncomfortably, he thought of Rey.
But Holdo couldn’t possibly know what his traitor mind was telling him about the girl. He had barely looked at Rey in Holdo’s presence.
The next day came too soon and not soon enough. When Ben emerged from the tent—his hands mercifully unbound—his sword was not returned to him, but Rey approached him carrying a heavy fur cloak. “You’ll need something warmer than what you have,” she said, offering it to him.
He stared at her. She raised her eyebrows. He accepted the furs and shed his black cloak, donning the brown one instead. And now I shed my blacks for her, just as he had imagined himself doing those nights with her in his arms. Why was it making her flush to see him do that? Surely it was just the cold.
Four of them struck out together—him, Rey, Poe, and Finn. The latter two went ahead as though frustrated by his mere presence. Rey stayed at his side.
“They think that you’ll try and kill us,” she said after a while. “They don’t think crows are to be trusted.”
“And you?” he asked her. She shrugged as a response.
“If Amilyn says to trust you, why shouldn’t I?” She said it carefully—too carefully.
“So you trust me?” He almost couldn’t believe it. “After everything?”
She looked at him and he saw the guardedness of her eyes. “I don’t think you’ve been lying,” she said. “Which means yes, oddly, I do. Don’t betray my trust, crow, or you’ll have trouble with my husband.”
Ben’s eyes shot to Finn at once. So they were wed.
Except Rey was huffing a snort. “Not Finn,” she said. “Rose has been after him for months now and besides, he’s as good as a brother to me. My husband.” She thumped her spear a little harder against the snow than she had before and he understood. Spearwife.
“I’d sooner have trouble with you than your husband.”
Her breath caught in her throat in a half-snort and he flushed. It sounded like something his father would say—an attempt at something charming that came out quite differently than intended.
“And what of your vows, lord crow?” Rey asked teasingly. “Or is this all for naught? Have you already been convinced we’ve the right of it?”
“I don’t even know what it is,” Ben snapped. “Holdo wouldn’t tell me, and you won’t either.”
“You won’t believe it unless you see it,” Rey shrugged. “If I were to tell you, you wouldn’t.”
“You think I don’t trust you?” Ben asked.
“I think I didn’t believe it ‘til I saw with my own two eyes, so why should you? I don’t believe children’s tales are real anymore than you say.”
Ben stopped walking. “Are you trying to tell me that the Others are real, and you’re going to show them to me?”
Rey looked at him, her jaw set, her hand tight around her spear. “You’ll see what you’ll see,” she said. “We aren’t going so far north as the heart of winter.”
“Kill me quick,” he muttered. “This is madness.”
“It isn’t,” Rey said firmly. “And I’d sooner see you live. I’d sooner see us all live.” Her voice sounded so dire when she said it that Ben almost wanted to laugh. But there was something about Rey that he didn’t understand.
All his life, he was used to honor. Discussions of what it meant to be an honorable lord, an honorable brother of the Watch, an honorable man. But there was an honor to Rey’s honesty—like she wouldn’t dare lie to him, like she wouldn’t dream of lying to him.
Which is perhaps why he asked, “Do you so fear death?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” she asked. “I fear what comes after far more than I used to.” She shuddered. “Burn me if I die.”
We burned them, Finn had said of Benny and Bill. The riverlords burned their dead, as did the dragonlords, but no other group he knew of did. They’d burned dead north of the Wall before, but that was because the ground was too hard to bury them properly as the gods would will it.
Why was the way that Rey said it making him want to think back to the stories he’d heard as a boy, tucked into his bed, trying not to be frightened because lords of Winterfell weren’t frightened. The Others came from the north, riding great ice spiders and with them came death…
“Will you burn me if I die?” The words slipped out of his lips before he knew what was happening. And the look on Rey’s face—well he didn’t understand it. There was a softness there, and a sternness. A fear, and a bravery. It was the most beautiful expression he’d ever seen. Fool, he thought, Weak fool.
“I will,” she promised. “I wouldn’t wish that fate upon you.”
“What fate—I’ll be at peace if I’m dead.” And suddenly his mind was on his mother, buried by now in the crypts beneath Winterfell. He wondered what her statue looked like. Did it depict her as she had been in her youth? He would never see it. Just as he would never see her again.
“You won’t be,” she said softly, sadly.
They camped by fires at night, unafraid that the Night’s Watch would find them. And where are the others? Ben wondered. Malthar, Sam, Harry, and Fernando. He did not dare ask after them, though, lest he give them away and risk their lives. It was already bad enough that Benny and Bill had died.
Finn and Poe took the first watch and he and Rey—
He did not want to wrap his arms around her again—not while Finn and Poe were there. But it was not long before she’d burrowed herself against his chest and was snoring softly there. She did not rub herself against his groin, not that that prevented him from going half stiff at the sheer presence of her. He had never in his life been so unmanned, but that wasn’t what concerned him the most. What concerned him was the way that his heart seemed to settle in the warmth of her. More than just gratitude that her warmth would keep him alive in the snow—he was glad she was there. He liked her.
He didn’t fall asleep quickly, but Finn and Poe thought he had.
“She trusts him, then?” Poe asked quietly.
“Holdo? I think she wants to more than she does.”
“I meant Rey.”
There was a long, heavy pause. “She doesn’t trust easily,” Finn said.
“That’s not an answer,” Poe said.
“It is,” Finn replied a little more heatedly. “She doesn’t trust easily, so that she does trust him…”
“Oh don’t you start trusting him too,” Poe snapped quietly. “He’s a crow.”
“I’ll take my own measure of him, fear not,” Finn said. “But I trust Rey. And whatever you may think of Holdo, she’s not trying to lead us to darkness.”
Poe did not respond and the two fell into a silence, broken only by the wind over the snows, the crackling of the fires, and Rey’s snores against his chest.
She trusts me.
Why? Why would she?
But more importantly, why did he trust her?
#
They went for five more days, each night with Rey curling up in his arms while Finn and Poe took the first watch. Ben was never given a watch. He was a guest, or a prisoner, or whatever it was that they said he was—but only Rey seemed to trust him enough to hint that maybe he could share the responsibility.
He found it did not matter, though. He woke the moment that Rey stirred in his arms, the moment her warmth was replaced with the iciness of the night around them.
“You don’t have to,” Rey said.
“What good is a Night’s Watchman who doesn’t keep watch in the night?” Ben asked, sitting up and stoking the fire.
“What good’s a Night’s Watchman at all?” Rey grumbled.
The fire crackled, and Ben stared at it. It was not so warm as Rey, but it would suffice as a replacement.
“Was it the truth—what you told Amilyn?” she asked him. “Why you left Winterfell for the Watch?”
Ben glanced at her and his throat went dry.
“Part of it,” he said at last. It wouldn’t make a difference to Rey, the way it would to any of his brothers, the way it would have to his mother. “It’s—it was true enough, I suppose. The part that mattered.”
“What was the rest?” she asked him.
“What’s your family like?” he asked her instead of answering. She frowned.
“I don’t see how that matters,” she replied slowly.
“It does,” he said. “It matters.”
He found he needed to know, now that he had asked her. He wanted to know more about her. It was like an itch he could not stop scratching, the way he felt about her.
“I don’t have a family,” Rey said at last. “They left me out to die when I was a child in the middle of winter.” And suddenly she was blinking furiously and looking away. “Unkar Plutt found me. I think he’d have made me one of his wives if he could have, but I ran away before I had my first blood.” Ben felt hot rage fill him. That anyone would abandon Rey was one thing, but that she had lived in Plutt’s Keep just north of the wall, that that beast of a man had had her in his grasp. Ben clenched his hands. It was the only thing he could do. “I found Finn after that,” she said, glancing over to where Finn and Poe were snoring next to one another. “I suppose Finn’s my family, if you can choose your family.”
“I chose mine,” Ben said quietly. “I chose my vows and my brothers.”
“Why did you leave them behind?” Rey asked. “If you had a family that loved you—did you hate them?”
“I didn’t hate them,” he said and he swallowed the lump down in his throat. Never once—not even to Snoke—had he confessed this. But somehow he trusted Rey with it. “I loved my mother dearly—and my father as well, though he was…confusing. Difficult. My uncle—” he stopped short. “I even thought I loved him too—until he tried to kill me.” Rey’s eyes widened. Ben pressed on. “I thought it was a dream, waking up with him over me, holding Ice—the greatsword of my house. He sheathed it—said it was a mistake—tried to blame some vision of a dark future, of me turning against the realm. I had committed no crime, yet he condemned me.” He shook his head. “My uncle is a great hero of the war against the dragonlords. My mother’s twin, as well. I don’t think anyone would have believed me, but it did not matter. I wanted nothing more of it. The weight of what it means to be a Skywalker on my shoulders no matter how I tried to be my own man and then my uncle’s visions telling him that it did not matter. I want to protect the realm. Not destroy it.”
Rey looked at him and for a moment, he thought she was going to tell him he was a fool—a foolish kneeler lord, a spoiled boy who was too much a coward to face the great hero in whose shadow he would always dwell.
But instead, she reached out a gloved hand to him and rested it on the one that he realized was still clenched from her story. Immediately he relaxed it. “It’s no good thing, kinslaying,” she said quietly. “And we’re both would-be victims.” She bit her lip and looked at him almost shyly. “But we both survived.”
His throat went dry. Her hand was still on his.
“What is this madness,” he asked her at last. “You’ve survived and fought your whole life. What has you so afraid that you’re running south, that you would put yourself at the mercy of the realm?”
Rey just shook her head. “You won’t believe it until you see it.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because I didn’t,” she said. “And because you won’t want to believe what it means—no more than I did.”
#
On the sixth day, they did not stop to camp at night. Ben did not complain of it, but he watched as Poe and Finn and Rey all began looking very grim. He also did not complain when Rey insisted that they return his sword to him and Poe handed it over begrudgingly. They began to move more carefully through the dark. Finn had an arrow knocked the entire time, though Ben saw that the tip of it was not made of steel.
The wind blew through the trees, horribly cold, and the snow swirled about them so thickly it was almost as though it was mist.
“Finn,” he heard Poe call.
“I’m ready,” Finn replied.
Ben wasn’t though. He stared in horror as something came through the trees—something that made his blood run cold.
There were dead men walking—three of them, their faces a mess of rotting flesh, their eyes unseeing as they shambled forward. Poe cursed. “Flame! We need flame!” But none of them carried a torch. Ben lunged forward with his sword, trying to strike at the dead man’s heart, but even before his steel landed, he knew it would be no good. He couldn’t kill a man who was already dead.
Behind him, he heard Poe calling to Rey. “Come on!”
“I’m working on it!” She snarled back and Ben saw her crouched down in the snow, trying desperately to make fire from some pieces of dried wood.
Ben kept attacking with his sword, trying is best to keep them at bay. They moved slowly, but the trouble was that they seemed to feel no pain. So he tried hacking off their arms and legs.
But if he thought that would work, he was woefully mistaken, because the disconnected arms began inching their way towards him through the snow, their hands like horrible dark spiders for all their blood had congealed in the corpse’s fingers.
And then there was light and out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Rey get to her feet with a fiery branch in her hands, which she threw into the face of one of the dead men. He burst into flames, burning hot and bright and Rey wasted no time in picking up one of the dead hands and throwing it into the fire as well.
“Burn your dead,” she said, turning to him when all three corpses were on fire, and there were tears in her eyes. Ben gaped at her, thoroughly speechless. He was trembling, frightened—far more afraid than he had been as a boy in Winterfell, huddled under his blankets telling himself that it was just a scary story, that none of it was real, and that even if it were, the Others wouldn’t make it past his mother’s ramparts. Nothing would befall Winterfell.
How he wished he were safe in Winterfell. He’d take his uncle’s hypocrisies over the walking dead. He would take Rey with him, keep her safe. He took a step towards her now, wanting to pull her into his arms but he stopped when Poe said,
“We’re not done yet.” He sounded edgy and fear unlike anything Ben had ever felt in his life crept up his spine.
The snow was still swirling all around them and Ben prayed that his mind was playing tricks on him because he did not want to believe the movement he thought he saw.
The creature was unlike any man he’d ever seen. It was shaped like a man—arms, torso, head and legs. It even carried a sword made of a bright white substance. But the creature was crystalline, as though a man had been frozen through, carved of ice. Ben raised his sword.
“Don’t!” he heard Poe yell but it was too late, Ben was already charging, swinging his blade as strongly as he could. The creature raised its bright white sword and caught Ben’s steel against it and the steel froze and shattered.
Ben’s heart stopped. It had shattered his steel, had destroyed his sword. The sword he had made with his own two hands, the one that carried no legacy of love or glory. The one that was him.
“Ben!”
And he threw himself sideways as the creature swung his sword almost lazily and a moment later he heard the twang of a bowstring and then—
The creature shattered the way that Ben’s sword had done, its fragments looking no more or less than crumbled ice that began to blow away in the dying wind.
He heard footsteps through the snow and Rey was kneeling down next to him, her hands running over his side.
“I’m all right,” he told her. “It missed.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Finn bending down and plucking his arrow out of the snow.
“What was it tipped with?” he asked Finn. And how to man the Watch with it so that these monsters could never break through the realm’s defenses?
“Dragonglass,” Finn said. “We found a cache hidden in the snow three years ago. Not enough to actually raise an attack against them, but enough to keep us alive.”
“Dragonglass,” Ben repeated. Somewhere, far away, he remembered Maester Wedge telling him that the Children of the Forest had fought with dragonglass, and that they had been no match for the bronze weapons of the First of Men. He didn’t even know what dragonglass was. It had sounded like something out of a story because—well—it was.
A story that Ben now lived in.
“Let’s go,” Poe said. “If you’re unhurt, it’s best to get back south as quickly as possible.”
“They’re getting closer,” Finn said to him.
“And Holdo should know.”
Rey helped Ben to his feet and took his hand, squeezing it.
They made as quick a progress as they could through the remainder of the night and it was only as the sun was beginning to rise that Poe finally made them stop.
“I’ll take first watch,” Ben said and Poe glanced at him. “I don’t think I could sleep anyway.”
Not with his mind and heart still racing the way it was.
Poe did not protest. He simply nodded and soon he and Finn were asleep.
Rey sat down with him, though.
“You should rest,” he told her. She looked so tired in the firelight, with dark circles under her eyes.
“You wouldn’t have believed it,” Rey whispered to him, as though needing him to understand that. But there was no need for her to implore.
“I wouldn’t have,” he agreed. “I still don’t want to.”
And then, because he hadn’t been able to right after Finn had slain the creature, he pulled Rey into his arms and held her, let hi
“So you’ll help us?” she asked him. “You’ll help us get south? Beyond the Wall?” The way she said it made him smile. He’d never heard anyone say beyond the Wall to refer to the Seven Kingdoms, but it made an odd sense. It made more sense than anything else that had happened today.
He began to nod but stopped because the moment he started his mind began to rush. There was no way that Snoke would let thousands of wildlings through any of the gates along the Wall. And even if he did, somehow, Ben was sure that Luke would ride north to fight them, as lords of Winterfell had done since the Wall was built. My vows, he thought. Snoke would say he betrayed them. And so would his uncle.
I saw you marching on Winterfell with death at your back,
Ben understood now. He understood and it made him angry. I was trying to save lives, Uncle. Not destroy them. But that wouldn’t stop his uncle from taking his head as an oathbreaker. He could see Ice, could see the stump that his uncle had used to carry out northern justice, stained with how many men’s blood. And mine as well if I’m not careful.
He looked at Rey, whose face was anxious that he’d stopped nodding. I’ll risk it for her, he thought though. For all of them, yes, but for Rey—
And he kissed her, a hard fumbling kiss for he had never kissed anyone before. She squeaked in surprise but didn’t pull away from him, or bite his lip, or any of the things he was sure—he was sure—she would do if the kiss was unwelcome. Indeed—she raised a hand and caressed his cheek along the scar she’d given him. “I’m sorry for this,” she whispered into his lips.
“Don’t be,” he growled quietly. He didn’t want to wake Finn or Poe.
He wanted to kiss her for forever. He loved the warmth of her lips against his, the way she huffed and sighed happily. He had the sense that she had kissed before from the confidence she held while kissing him and he did his best to squash what jealousy began to bubble in his breast at the idea of her kissing unknown men. They were gone, and he was here, and she was kissing him and he—
He should be heeding his vows, but he wasn’t. Instead, he was paying careful attention to what she did and trying it in return. He traced her lips with his tongue, rubbed his nose against hers, sucked her lips between his teeth and nipped them lightly. Her hands tightened in the furs at his back and he pulled her closer to him and before he knew what was happening she had shifted so that she sat astride his hips, rubbing herself against him as she had that first night—only far worse and far better this time.
There was nothing to stop them, he realized. They could do as they pleased for as long as they wanted while the sun streaked brighter and brighter across the sky. Daylight, life, warmth—all of these wonderful things, with him and Rey. He was stiffening under her and his breath was shaking as his hands gripped her hips tightly, though whether to slow her pace or increase it he would never know.
There was nothing to stop them—except Finn and Poe. Poe let out a cough and they both froze and turned to look at him. Poe was asleep, as was Finn, but it was as though the spell was broken. Ben could not continue. He would not continue—not like this, not out in the open with her friends sleeping at their sides.
“Later,” he whispered to her, and she rolled her eyes.
“Or now,” she said, grinding her hips against him and he got the impression that, even if he refused to do this while her friends lay sleeping, it would not be the first time that Rey had done it. That made him more adamant.
“Later,” he said. “Later, I swear.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Getting all noble and lordly? Do you need a featherbed for it?”
“No feather bed for me,” he half-sung, wondering if she’d ever heard the song. She did not seem to have, so he kissed the tip of her nose. “I’d prefer some privacy, though.”
She rolled her eyes. “We won’t have more privacy when we get back to the horde, I promise you that.”
And he hated that she was right.
He spent every day on their trek back south pressing kisses to her forehead, her lips, her neck when there was a moment when Finn and Poe weren’t there. But the moment they were back in Holdo’s camp, he saw that she had the right of it. There would be no tent for just the two of them. There would be no privacy amongst the thousands of Free Folk who would soon be pressing south. And he felt almost panicked at the thought because now he wanted nothing more than just a few moments alone with her. Or a few hours. Or a few days.
And he wasn’t to get that.
Amilyn Holdo was waiting for them when they arrived at her tent, her clear blue eyes somber.
“You see now?” she asked him.
He nodded.
“And you know what I would ask you?”
“You wish me to help you cross the Wall,” he said.
“To help save thousands of lives, millions, even. For if they cross the Wall as well, how many more will die—die and then be brought back to march as slaves until they are burned to ash? It’s not just our lives you’ll be saving if every death expands their army. You more than any other person on this continent are better placed to help us. To help all of us.”
Ben swallowed.
And he’d thought the weight of the Skywalker legacy had broken him.
But if there was one thing that was true about him, it was that as much as he wished to prove himself right, he also wished to prove his uncle wrong.
I will march on Winterfell with life at my back, Uncle, he thought. I will save your life, and theirs, and everyone’s.
Odd to feel spiteful thinking those thoughts, but Ben had never claimed to be a perfect person.
“I will,” he said. “I will do what I can, as best I can.”
And Amilyn smiled and he saw genuine warmth in her eyes. “You do your mother proud,” she said and Ben felt a lump rise in his throat.
She looked at Poe. “We will begin to march south at dawn.”
#
The march was slow going. Thousands and thousands of wildlings could not travel quickly. Holdo kept him close, asking him questions about Snoke, about the Watch, about his uncle. “I met him, too,” she said. “Your mother loved and trusted him. I hope he will hear our case.”
“He may,” Ben said, “But he may not. He can be quick to pass the sentence.”
Amilyn grimaced at that.
When he was not walking with Amilyn, he walked with Rey. She would hold his hand and tell him about the Free Folk they walked alongside, stories she’d heard, places she’d seen, things she wanted to see but likely never would.
She delighted in telling him of her world, he saw, of bringing him in to all that she knew. And it wasn’t until he was coming back from a piss one day that he heard two men talking about it. “That’s the one that stole Rey.”
“Didn’t think anyone could steal Rey.”
“I didn’t steal her,” Ben snapped. “She’s not a goat.”
The men laughed, though, and one of them said, “Sounds like a man whose being denied. Poor fellow. She doesn’t like it when others are about then?”
“What does stealing mean?” Ben asked Finn. He didn’t want to ask Rey—not since the men said that he’d stolen her.
Finn gave him a look like he was stupid. “It’s when you take something that doesn’t belong to you.”
“I know that,” Ben growled angrily. “I meant. Stealing.” He tried saying it a little more significantly, hoping that Finn would understand.
He did. “Oh,” Finn said. “When you find a woman you want, you steal her, and she’s yours.”
Ben stared at him blankly. “And they just…accept that?”
“Some of them don’t,” Finn shrugged. “Rey’s had a few try and she nearly killed two of them. Rose refuses to let anyone steal her, though I’m not bothered with that since I know she wants me,” he grinned. “But it’s better than what you kneelers do, just selling them and not giving them a choice. At least they get to fight back this way.”
And Rey certainly had fought back.
Until she hadn’t anymore.
“Does that make us married?” he asked Finn, trying not to sound nervous.
“If you like,” Finn shrugged. He seemed thoroughly unconcerned with Ben’s concern about the matter—or he did at least until he narrowed his eyes. “She wants you,” he says. “And if you toy with her heart, I don’t care how useful Holdo finds you, you will regret it. I saved your life, remember?”
“I won’t dishonor her,” Ben said at once.
“And what does honor have to do with love?” Finn demanded. “I speak of love. I care not a whit for your southron honor. She’s worth more to me than that.”
Ben took the first opportunity he could find to flee from Finn’s side and he went to find Rey again, his head spinning.
It’s not as if I’m not already breaking my vows, he thought. At least according to Snoke.
And what’s done is done.
Wasn’t that the truth of it—between him, his vows, his uncle, and now Rey? There was no going back.
He took her hand when he found her. “I hear that I stole you,” he whispered in her ear, quiet enough that the others around them could not hear.
She looked up at him and it was not the cold that made the red creep across her cheeks.
“I let you steal me,” she said.
“Did you?”
“Do you think you’d still be alive if I hadn’t?”
He was smiling, and she looked annoyed which was positively endearing.
“Was it the bear that made you decide to let me, then?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said frankly. “You saved my life, though you should have let me die. That made me think of you differently than just some horrible crow like the sort that came by Plutt’s but never once tried to help us.”
He could not lie to her. “I did go to Plutt’s,” he said quietly and he felt her hand tighten in his and he could see in her eyes that—more than anything he had said or done in the first few days of knowing her—this hurt her down in her soul. “Our orders—” and she looked away from him, “the orders we give to every ranger that passes through there—are that we are not to even look at his wives and daughters.”
“And would you now?” she asked him, her voice thick and he could tell she was trying not to cry.
“I would,” he said. “I would burn his keep to the ground if I saw it again.” He didn’t know what else he could say.
She didn’t look at him for a long while, and part of him wondered if she was going to hold him to his words, drag him off to find Plutt’s keep and burn it to ash.
“I could hate you for it,” she whispered to him. “Part of me does. And always will.”
Ben swallowed. Her hand was still in his though. Would it still be, if she thought him only a monster and not also a man?
“But enough not to love me?” he chanced at last, unable to wait any longer.
She did not reply, but her hand stayed in his.
She did not speak much for the rest of the day, and but when they gathered to eat, she smiled and laughed with all the rest. Ben watched her closely, and when she caught him watching, she gave him a warm smile and he knew that it was done. Whatever she needed to think through—she had done it. And it was more than he deserved.
He sat at her side and listened to her laughter, watched as she made those around her talk and smile and laugh too. She is infectious, he thought, and he pulled her into his arms just long enough to kiss her temple before letting her go again. And I am lost.
Because he was.
He was long ago, and he knew it, but now more than ever. The truths of the world had been turned upside down and he could not care for his vows or his honor when there was someone like Rey who trusted him, whom he could make happy.
And that night when they curled up in their furs next to one another, he kissed her longer than he had done since that day when they had just fought the Others. He kissed her as deep as he could, his hands caressing her face. And he had no idea what he was doing, but he never had had any idea what he was doing with Rey and it had gotten him this far, so he found he wasn’t nervous.
She sighed when he slid a hand up her jerkin to cup her breast. Her nipple stiffened quickly under his palm and she slipped her tongue between his lips—to coax him onward, he thought. As if he needed coaxing.
From the moment his skin connected with hers, he knew that only death would stop them, and he felt fairly confident that death would not find them in the midst of Holdo’s horde. Her breast was so soft in the palm of his hand—positively delicate—and with his other hand he fumbled at the lacings up the front of her jerkin because he wanted to touch more of her, to kiss her. She helped him with it and his head sunk beneath the furs to lick along her skin, to pull her nipple between his teeth.
Her hands twined in his hair and he could feel her delight in the movements she made there—half-controlled caresses that turned to tugs in time with her sighs. Her hips were rocking against his chest just from the want of friction and he couldn’t help but smile. He loved Rey’s hips and how she just rocked them when she wanted like that. How she just rocked them against him because she wanted him, because he made her feel good, because he wanted her and could show her just how much he wanted her.
He kissed his way back up to her throat and fumbled between her legs for a moment, finding the ties to her trousers. He loosened them, and she helped him shove them down her legs, but before he could take himself out of his own trousers, she’d taken his hand and guided his fingers against her flesh.
She was wet, and warm, and he had to remember to breathe because he had never felt anything like this before. He’d never even imagined feeling anything like this before. And the thought of what she’d feel like when he pressed inside her was enough to make him twitch in his trousers.
“Rey,” he whispered to her. She kissed him, and rocked her hips slightly against his fingers. He began to stroke her because he couldn’t think what else to do, especially when that was what she seemed to want. She sighed and kissed his cheeks, his ears, his neck. She told him to press harder, to curl his fingers up, oh, yes, just like that, and suddenly she was trembling in his arms, her teeth biting lightly at his throat as she shuddered around his fingers.
And then she went still, seemed to relax in his arms in a way she never had before, and she reached a hand down between them and without an ounce of hesitation, pulled him from his trousers. Her hands were warm, and calloused, and the best thing he’d felt in his life as she pumped him briefly—the best thing he’d ever felt until she guided him into her.
That was the best thing he’d felt in his life, burying into her as deeply as he could, feeling warm and soft and safe inside her. There were no words for what she did to him, for what she was to him. He wanted to say something—anything—but try as he might, the only thing he could think to say was, “Rey.”
“I’m here,” she whispered, kissing him again. “I’m here.”
Breathing deeply, he began to move his hips. Gods, but she was so warm, and smooth around him. His heart was pounding in his ears, his throat, his groin. His breath was so very loud, and his voice was acting of its own accord as he tried to just keep going, to make it last as long as it could.
He wanted to kiss her, but her lips were so far from his and it felt like every second was going by too quickly and too slowly, all at once. “Rey,” his lips kept saying, and sometimes, “Please,” and sometimes no words at all just whimpers, moans as he lost himself in the warmth of her, in the presence of her, in the Reyness of her until he lost all sense of reality and the world spun until it all went still again.
He hadn’t realized he’d collapsed on top of her until she began brushing her fingers through his hair. When he did, he scrambled onto his elbows and knees. He was large, and heavy, and Rey wasn’t small, but she was smaller than him.
She laughed lovingly up at him, and pulled his lips down to hers and with a steady pressure on the middle of his back, brought him down to rest on top of her again. “The weight is comforting,” she told him.
She kissed his forehead and they lay there quietly for a long while. He was half asleep when she asked, “Was that your first time?”
He tensed in her arms, then relaxed again. “It was,” he said and he turned his head to look at her. “Some of my brothers would visit whores in Molestown, but I never saw the draw.”
“Would you now?” she teased.
“No,” he said seriously. “They’re not you.”
It was dark, but he thought he saw her eyes grow bright, and she kissed him again.
Slowly, he shifted them about in their furs so that he was curled around her, so that she was tucked under his chin. And then he let Rey’s gentle snores lull him into a sweet, sweet sleep.
#
Days passed quickly as they moved south. The sun was taking shorter trips across the sky with winter approaching. Darkness swallowed them earlier and earlier, even as they moved south. But they kept a quick pace. The Free Folk drummed as they walked. Many carried drums of their own creations—deerskin stretched over wooden frames. Some just used their spears to hit the ground particularly hard. Ben found it helped him move faster, which he appreciated.
He wanted to get to the Wall. He wanted the nervous anticipation that was pooling in his gut to end.
His nights were less pleasant than he wanted them to be. Having been with Rey once, he found that he never wanted to stop—something she seemed more than eager to join him in. Each time they bedded down in the furs, Ben felt alive, and unafraid of anything. Perhaps it was ill fitting a Skywalker of Winterfell—to rut under the stars, surrounded by anyone who would watch, but he was an oathbreaker and there was something…freeing about not caring who saw them. They certainly weren’t the only pair to be doing it.
But when he fell asleep at night, his dreams were plagued with fears. Either he saw the Other with its glimmering sword that had shattered his own, or he saw, vividly, his uncle standing above him with Ice. You’d have every reason to do it, Ben thought when his fear woke him one night, his heart hammering in his chest. By the laws of men, you’d have every right.
There are some things worth dying for. Oddly, it was not his mother’s voice that whispered that to him, it was Luke’s. When had he said that? Some boyhood memory of bringing Palpatine down, perhaps? Of Rebellion and standing up for what he believed to be right and hang the consequences?
Was that what Ben was doing now?
His arms tightened around Rey.
“Hm?” she asked him, waking at the motion.
“Death may await us in the south,” he whispered to her. Us, he said, for he was sure that the northmen would try to drive the wildlings back as they had done for thousands of years, even if only he had his uncle’s justice to fear.
She kissed his chest. “If we die, we die,” she said and it sounded like something she had said a thousand times, like something she was saying as much to herself as to him. “But first, we’ll live.”
They lived again that night—twice more, in fact. And by the time they were done, Ben couldn’t remember the dream that had awakened him, or the fears that gnawed at him.
But first we’ll live, he told himself, brushing her hair out of her face as she drifted off to sleep again with her head against his shoulder.
He felt more heartened the next day as he marched alongside Rey and Finn to the beat of the drums.
“They’ll never be prepared for us,” Finn said with sheer glee in his voice. “Never. Even if they make us fight, there are thousands more of us than them.”
“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Ben said.
“Do you think it will?” Finn asked.
Ben took a deep breath.
The honest answer was yes. Snoke was proud, and hardened by his many winters on the Wall. He was unlikely to acquiesce to any request to just let Wildlings cross, no matter what Ben said. Worse, he’d likely hang Ben for a traitor before his uncle had the chance to behead him.
“Yes,” Ben said. Unless he could think of something. And he wasn’t sure what he could think of.
Rey’s hand tightened in his, though, and he remembered what she’d said the night before.
It wasn’t until he and Rey were at the edge of the horde that he realized she’d been steering him through the packs of people. “Come on,” she hissed, jerking her head towards the craggy pass they were walking through. “I’ve always wanted to see it, and this may be my last chance.”
“See what?” Ben asked.
But he saw soon enough.
There was a cave ahead of them, cutting into the wall of stone that lined the great pass. Rey let go of his hand and stepped towards it, running her hands over the stone. To his surprise, the walls were shining—not with ice—but with moisture. He took off his glove and found that when he went to touch the stone, it was oddly warm.
He glanced at her, and she glanced back. Then she stepped into the cave.
“Rey!” he called after her. How many times had he told his rangers not to do exactly that. You don’t know what’s in the cave, waiting for you, and you don’t know if the rocks will fall, or snows, and block you in and leave you to suffocate. Shelter, yes. But a dangerous one.
And she’d just gone in.
“Rey!” he called again, but she did not respond.
It would not be the most dangerous thing he’d done, or would be doing before long, though. But first, we’ll live. And so with a deep breath, he went into the cave.
He noticed three things at once.
The first was that the cave was warm, and oddly steamy. The second was that he could hear the gentle lapping of water against stone. And the third was that Rey was standing in front of him, completely naked. It was hard to make out the exact shape of her in the shadows of the cave, but he stepped aside to let more light in and she took his breath away.
She was slim—too slim, how he wished to give her food so he wouldn’t have to count her ribs—and her breasts and hips swelled out away from her body—not intensely, but all Ben could think was that it was just enough. She was just enough. More than enough.
“I wanted you to see me,” she said. “And this was the only place warm enough.”
“Where are we?” he asked, proud of himself for sounding as though his member weren’t swelling quickly in his trousers.
“I’m not sure,” Rey said. “I just—I’d heard of it. This cave.” She looked around. “I’d heard that it’s haunted. That it will show you your true self.”
“But instead you’re showing me you,” he tried to tease.
“Yes,” she said seriously. “Ben—” but whatever she was going to say died in her throat as he began to shed his own furs. If she wanted him to see her, he wanted her to see him too.
He watched as her eyes grew wide as he tugged his blacks up over his head, as he bent down to remove his trousers. The cave was warm compared to the air outside it, but that didn’t mean it was exactly warm, and he shivered as he stepped towards her. He wished his cock bobbing in front of him felt a little less ridiculous. But he also knew that Rey wouldn’t care, judging from the way she was looking up at him.
When he was standing right in front of her, she stood on the tips of her toes and kissed him and her hand came to rest above his heart, gripping his muscles for balance. “You are my truest self,” he whispered to her. He wasn’t sure where it came from, but he did know it was the truth. Since meeting her, he hadn’t felt more centered in his life. He felt he could face his fears, he felt he could be a monster or a hero but that the choice was his to make. And there were no more words to be said. None that he’d break a kiss for, anyway.
And oh, how he kissed her. Her lips, the welling tears that fell from her eyes, her forehead, her ear, her jaw, neck. He kissed his way down her breasts, marveling in how soft they were—the softest part of her, when the hard world beyond the wall had made her so wiry and strong. He kissed the tips of them, the undersides of them, nudging at her flesh with his nose and relishing the way her breath was hitching now, the way her fingers were, once again, twining in his hair.
“Ben,” she groaned when he kissed her belly and nudged her legs apart. “Ben, I—Oh.”
Because he’d kissed at her slit and her legs were trembling as he did it again, and again. She tasted so rich on his tongue and the motion went from kissing to licking which made her whimper and widen her legs. The heady scent of her in his nose matched the flavor in his mouth and he could drown in it, was drowning in it, would drown forever in it until she made him stop.
But she didn’t seem to want him to stop. She made a noise of agitation, that made him pause but when he did she whimpered and he started up again. Her legs were trembling, and she kept shifting over him and he realized she was worried about losing balance. So he took her hips in his hands and guided her to her knees so that she was crouched over his face and yes—that was better. She could widen her legs more like that, he could circle her with his tongue and now he didn’t have to hold her up he could toy at her slit with his fingers while his tongue circled the bump near the top that made her shudder whenever he came near it. She was gasping now, and grinding against his tongue, and dripping down his chin and he could die like this, in making her feel good.
“Do all lords do that?” she asked him later when she was curled up next to him. They had climbed down into one of the hot springs and he felt like he was back in Winterfell—only never in Winterfell had he felt so joyful as he did in the darkness with Rey. She was flush against his side, and his heart was pounding lazily in his chest. Her hand was resting on his cock, having just brought him to life again.
“Do what?”
“That,” she asked and she reached out and pressed a finger to his lips.
He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “But you seemed to like it. I don’t care what lords do—I care what you like.”
She flushed and snuggled against him in the warmth of the water and he wrapped his arms around her.
“You make me feel like I’m worth something,” she whispered. She wasn’t looking at him and her words echoed through the darkness of the cave. “Like I’m—”
“You are worth something,” he told her. “I’ve known ladies of good birth, and you matter more to me than any of them.”
“I’m no one, though,” she said and her voice was so small.
“Not to me,” he said fiercely. “Rey—your parents might have thrown you away like garbage, but they were wrong. And look at what strength you have shown.” It was strange, to have to remind her of it as though she had forgotten. She was one of the fiercest people he’d ever met.
We all show what strength we have to the world, his mother had once told him, It’s far braver to show our fears to those we trust.
Did Rey really think she was no one?
He kissed her, and held her, and the warmth of the water did not fade around them, and her breathing steadied the longer she held him.
“It’s strange,” she said at last. “I wanted to come here because it is supposed to show you your true self. I thought that if I came here, it would show me my parents. But instead I came with you and that feels better somehow.”
“Good,” he said. “I hold no respect for your parents. No one gets to throw you away. If for some horrible reason they are wights, I’d happily burn them to ash for what they did to you.”
Rey stiffened in his arms. “How can you say that?” she demanded. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”
“Anyone who has hurt you deserves no place in this world,” he said fiercely. “Anyone who would hurt you, anyone who would make you think you were no one. Anyone who would wish you dead is my enemy, Rey.” She gaped at him.
“And if I want them back?” she demanded. “If I waited for them, if I wanted—”
“To forgive them for leaving you to die, and far worse at Plutt’s?”
“They’re my family.”
“Family isn’t always worth it,” he said dryly, thinking of Luke.
“I wouldn’t know, since I’ve never had one before. Not ever.”
“You’ve had yourself,” he said. “Rey—don’t you see how much better that is? How incredible you are without having been weighed down by them?”
“My heartbreak wasn’t worth it.”
“You’d have had your heart broken anyway,” he said. “Nothing hurts like family. Nothing. Whether you have it or not.”
He thought of his mother. She’d be wroth with him, for saying all of this. Which only made him more determined to say it. I wanted to make you proud and all I got from it was fear for my life.
Rey looked at him and there were tears in her eyes. He did not want them there. He did not want to make her cry, but he also refused to lie to her. Lies could be sweet, but they were always terrible. The truth might hurt, but at least it was the truth.
“And what of you, then?” she asked him quietly, biting her lip. “Are we not family?”
The stealing again. And, in that moment, he remembered that she’d given him a cloak to wear too. Perhaps not the words, but a cloak of protection in truth, meant to keep him safe and warm.
“Yes,” he said to her. “We are. But your parents are not my family. They’re not even your family. They gave up that right the moment they stopped protecting you. I won’t. I promise. And if my words hurt you, know that they are still out of love.” He thought of his uncle. Love of the boy you thought you deserved, or love of Winterfell, but not love of me. “They didn’t hurt you out of love. And I shall do all I can not to. And I hate that the truth is painful, but I will not lie to you. Not ever.”
And she looked at him finally and he thought he saw her eyes gleam a little bit in the darkness. “You’re a strange man, Ben Skywalker,” she told him at last. But it didn’t sound like an insult, coming from her. “Part of me thinks I should not love you, but I do.”
Ben’s heart swelled. Love.
“I love you,” he told her. “I do. You make me believe in myself.” And no sooner were the words out of his lips than the weight of them hit him in the chest as though he’d been punched. “I hadn’t realized how little I did.”
She kissed him gently, and he ran his fingers through her wet hair.
What weird magic does this cave possess, telling the truth in the darkness? he wondered as he pulled her onto his lap. He did not have an answer though.
But he had Rey, and that was enough.
#
The Wall loomed ahead and Ben felt his gut curl nervously in anticipation.
He had handed back the cloak that Rey had given him, donning instead his old black one. Amilyn nodded to him and he took a deep breath.
And marched forward, alone, and in black, unsure if the drumming in his ears came from the Free Folk at his back—an attempt to encourage—or from his own heart.
He stared up at the watch points on the wall, he heard a single blast—ranger returning. And then, a confused second blast. Ahead of him, he saw the gate opening.
“Sam!” he blurted out in surprise. “Fernando! You’re alive!”
But neither of his rangers looked pleased to see him. Both were looking at the tree line behind him.
“What happened to the others?” Ben pressed on.
“They live,” Sam said. “Harry’s fingers froze off, though, and Malthar’s sick in his lungs. Benny? Bill?”
“Dead,” Ben said past a lump in his throat. “Killed by—by wildlings.”
Both of his knights turned to look at one another. He knew they had heard how he’d stumbled over the word.
“What’s going on, Ben?” Fernando asked at last.
And suddenly, Ben felt—more intensely than he’d ever felt before—just why Rey had been hesitant to tell him what they faced, why she had made him see it with his own eyes. He had known it would be difficult—but now the task felt impossible.
“You will think me mad,” he began slowly.
“I already think you’re mad, Ben,” Fernando said and there was something hollow, angry in his words. “You’ve brought the wildlings to our door. You know we don’t have the men to fight them off.”
“They don’t come to fight,” Ben said. “They come in peace.”
“In peace? After they killed Benny and Bill?” Sam demanded.
“Who would have killed them. It was in defense—”
“And now you’re defending them. Our own First Ranger defends our enemy.” Sam sounded angrier than Ben had ever heard him. “You’ll hang for this.”
And he grabbed Ben’s arm. Ben did not resist. They will take me to Snoke, he knew. But that was why he was here, wasn’t it?
“Mayhaps,” he said as Sam jerked him forward.
“Why, Ben?” Fernando asked. “Why?” He sounded heartbroken.
“Can you hear the drums, Fernando?” Ben asked him. “They don’t drum for war. They drum to keep themselves going, to keep themselves alive in the face of the true enemy. They are full of life and none prepared to die.”
#
They threw him into a dark, dank room and barred the door until Snoke would decide what to do to him. And Ben sat, and waited.
This had been his life, once. The life he had chosen, a life he had been proud of. He thought of Rey and smiled to himself. He understood better now than he ever had before why it was that his mother had been adamant that oathbreakers die. You will never know what an oathbreaker will do.
It was the truth. What wouldn’t he do, now? For Rey? For the survival of all the realm? For he did not doubt that if they didn’t prepare to fight, it would not be long before the Others descended upon the Wall. And if the Night’s Watch was unprepared for thousands of wildlings, they certainly weren’t prepared for the true darkness that awaited them. I am the shield that defends the realms of men.
That part was still true. That part he would take to his grave.
So am I breaking my oath, then? If the important part of it I hold true?
He thought of Rey, and his promise to love her forever. That vow was as true as any words he’d spoken before a heart tree. Those words in that cave…
He wasn’t kept waiting as long as he could have been, all things considered—only a day and a night. It was not long before Sam and Fernando were back. They bound his hands and took him to Snoke.
“So,” Snoke said quietly from where he sat behind his desk. “How many are there?”
“Over a hundred thousand,” Ben said calmly.
“They won’t make it past the Wall,” Snoke said, shrugging. He took a sip of wine and looked at Ben. “Would you like some?”
“I can’t drink with my hands bound.”
Snoke nodded to Sam and he cut Ben loose. Ben accepted the wine and drank. It was bitter.
“So,” Snoke said. “What did they say to convince you to turn tail and betray your vows and kingdom?”
“I haven’t betrayed either,” Ben said firmly.
“Oh? You bring the enemy to our gate and yet you say you’re not a traitor?”
“They aren’t our enemy,” Ben said quietly. “They said nothing to convince me, but they did show me.” He took the hilt of his broken sword out of his belt and laid it on Snoke’s desk.
“They broke your blade,” Snoke said blankly.
“A White Walker broke my blade,” Ben said. “And the dead are marching south at their command.”
Snoke stared at him for a long while.
Then he laughed.
“Oh it is that you’ve gone mad,” he said. “I see now. The cold finally broke you. Well, regardless, I can’t forgive you for bringing a hundred thousand to—”
“I’m not mad,” Ben said. “We are the shield that defends the realms of men. They are men.”
“They aren’t men. They’re swine.”
Ben could not say he was surprised at the statement. But he was surprised at his own reaction. He thought of Poe, who was sharp and mistrusting and deadly with an axe. He thought of Finn who had saved his life. He thought of Rey. He thought of Rey most of all.
“Wild boars, perhaps,” he said. “We’re the swine, content in our little farms, behind our walls.”
Snoke shook his head. “The last Skywalker,” he said. “What a tragedy to see such a mighty house waste its way down to nothing.”
“My house has guarded the realm for thousands of years,” Ben said.
“And you fancy yourself still doing that? How many of you died in Wildling raids, I wonder? How many lords of Winterfell in your crypts would spit at you and say you weren’t their blood?”
“I’m more their blood than yours,” Ben said. “Defend the Wall, defend the realm—from what? If they come south, settle in the Gift, they can help defend the Wall when—”
“When the children’s tales come to life,” Snoke laughed.
“I’m not mad,” Ben said, knowing exactly how mad he sounded.
“No,” Snoke said and all humor was gone now. His voice was dripping with rage. “No, you are weak.”
How different it sounded, coming from Snoke’s voice than from his own mind. How different his reaction. I am not weak, Ben thought. “I am stronger than you will ever understand,” he said aloud. “Let them through, and I will take the matter to my uncle.” Gods be good, if only he’ll listen to me.
I come with death at my back.
“By all means, go to your uncle,” Snoke said genially. “Let him behead you for the oathbreaker that you are. I wash my hands of it.”
#
“Will you send someone to tell them where I’ve gone?” Ben asked Sam as he made his way towards the southern-facing gates of Castle Black.
“Why, so you can spring whatever trap you’ve got planned?” Sam demanded.
“Or so that they know to wait, rather than to attack,” Ben said dryly and, because Sam seemed thoroughly unwilling to help, he turned to Fernando. Fernando grimaced, but Ben saw the hesitation in his eyes. He sprang for it. “Please. It will save lives.” On both sides, he did not add.
“I hope you live, Ben,” Fernando said, and the two brothers turned their backs on him and returned to the castle. Ben sighed.
At least they had given him his horse—a great black courser called Silencer who had been a gift when he’d been made First Ranger. It felt almost strange to ride after so many weeks of walking, but it came to him naturally enough. It was not long before the Wall was fading from sight behind him, and with every step the horse took, he thought of Rey.
I’m not leaving you, he begged the phantom of her in his mind. I am leaving for you. Surely you’ll understand that. He prayed she would. He prayed she wouldn’t take him for a lying crow. He couldn’t blame her if she did though. Another thing to blame Snoke for.
He couldn’t say he was surprised by the old man’s refusal, but that didn’t mean it didn’t sting. Not least because he was riding down to Winterfell now, though without death at his back. What will you make of me, uncle? Will you do what you set out to do before I left?
But he found he wasn’t afraid. Not of death. If it were his own death he feared, he wouldn’t be doing any of this. But he’d seen the true enemy, seen that death was only the beginning to them, not the end that so many feared. And if it takes too long? It would take him at least a month to ride to Winterfell, and then—if he was able to convince his uncle, it would take time to call the banners, or send word to Snoke, or whatever it was that the Lord of Winterfell commanded. And what if he says we must wait and see what the Queen says?
They’d all be as good as dead if that happened. Rey would surely think he’d abandoned her for his lordly seat, that he did not love her, that he did not want her—
Perhaps it was because he was thinking of her that he thought he saw her on the crest of the hill ahead, crouched low but standing up straighter at the sign of a rider. But no, that was not his eyes playing a trick on him and he kicked Silencer to a faster pace to reach her sooner and before long he was dismounting and sweeping her into his arms and holding her.
“How did you get across?” he asked her.
“Climbed,” she said. “When they didn’t send you back that night, Finn and Poe and I went over.”
“You climbed?” Ben stared at her, dumbstruck.
She shrugged with an almost arrogant grin on her face. “I’m good at climbing. I’ve gone over the Wall twice now.” Ben gaped at her and she stood on the tips of her toes and kissed him. “What’s happening?”
“Where are Finn and Poe?” he asked and she turned and whistled and the two of them came into view through some trees.
“Snoke is sending me south to my Uncle,” Ben said quickly. “I don’t know if he means to attack while I’m gone. He may. He may not.” Poe grimaced, but Ben pressed on, “I know that he means my uncle to kill me for an oathbreaker.”
“Do you think he can be convinced of our side?” Poe asked.
“I wouldn’t be going if I did not.” Ben kept his gaze firmly on Poe. He could not look at Rey, not when she knew what all this meant to him. He worried it might break his resolve. She managed to make him question so much in his life, so much about himself.
“How long will it take?”
“Too long,” Ben said. “But you must try not to attack unless they attack you.” Poe gave him a sharp look. “No, listen to me—they will hate you, but if my uncle sends men north to aid them, then they will use it to fuel their hatred. If you hold peacefully and I can convince my uncle to help, then they might be convinced by your good faith.”
“But Snoke—”
“I’m not speaking of Snoke,” Ben said. “I’m speaking of the rest of them. He has a firm rule at the Wall, but that doesn’t mean that the men don’t think for themselves, don’t see with their own eyes.” He thought of Fernando, the hesitation in his eyes. “I will return as fast as I’m able,” Ben said and at last, he turned to look at Rey.
“I’m coming with you,” she said at once.
He loved her for that, and for so much more.
“I don’t want to—”
“I can keep myself alive,” she said, “I’m worried you can’t.”
He would have laughed except he saw her eyes. So instead he stooped to kiss her forehead and nodded. He turned back to Poe and Finn. “Will you tell Amilyn, then?”
“Yes,” Finn said. Poe hesitated.
“Stay alive,” he said. “We’re counting on you.”
Ben did his best not to think about that as he mounted Silencer and helped Rey climb up behind him.
#
Ben had forgotten how long a journey it was down the Kingsroad. He had not made it since taking the black, not even for his mother’s funeral. He had ridden north in high summer, little more than a frightened boy, but one full of determination, and anger. Now he was a man, and he was still angry, and determined, and afraid.
The road south was better because Rey was with him, though there were times—many of them—where he worried about what would happen to him should his uncle behead him. Will he kill her too? For what crime—being a wildling?
It only made him hold her more tightly at night when they slept.
“You know these lands,” Rey said quietly one day, watching Ben’s face. They were walking at Silencer’s side, rather than riding him. He could only carry both of their weights for so long, and they didn’t wish to break the beast.
“I do,” he said quietly. “We grow close.”
She took his hand and squeezed it.
“How far to Winterfell?” she asked.
“An hour? Perhaps two? We shall see it beyond that hill, soon,” he said, pointing.
And when they did, how Ben’s heart twisted in his chest. There it was—home. Home, no matter what vows he had spoken, no matter what he had given up. There were the tall grey walls that he had climbed as a boy, the towers that had been built throughout the centuries. He could even see the fluttering of the pale banner of his house—white that he had exchanged for black.
“Oh,” Rey said.
He hummed. It was all he could think to do.
“Amilyn said it was the greatest thing she’d ever seen,” Rey said and her voice was full of wonder.
“Even than the Wall?” Ben asked.
“The Wall is death. This is life,” she said, nodding to Winterfell. “It’s beautiful.”
“It is,” Ben said.
He saw riders leaving the gates, a good twenty on horseback.
So even this moment is not to last, he thought. He paused, letting Rey take a step ahead of him so that he could see her with Winterfell at her back. He wanted never to forget that—the way she looked in his home. It would be a comforting memory should his uncle seek to kill him.
It was not long before the riders were upon them, and Ben saw his uncle at the head of them, wearing a long fur cloak. Ice was strapped to his back.
“Snoke sent a bird,” Luke said. “That I was to expect an oathbreaker.” His voice was hard as he looked at Ben. “He didn’t say it would be you, but I knew it would be.”
“Uncle,” Ben said, inclining his head.
Luke sighed and dismounted. One of the riders shifted in his saddle, but Luke raised a hand. “Steady, Kyp. I don’t think he’ll kill me.”
“No,” Ben said calmly. “Of the two of us, I am not the kinslayer.” He looked about. “Where is my father?”
“He is in the free cities,” Luke said. “After your mother died, he thought to become a sellsword in his old age.”
“So it’s just you.”
“So it’s just me.” Luke looked at Ben and there was something to his gaze that Ben had never seen before. “What is the meaning of all this, Ben? You were so set on it.”
“I am still,” Ben said. “I have seen things, Uncle. And I would save lives, not destroy them.”
Luke’s eyebrows shot up and he opened his mouth to reply but didn’t manage to say a word because Rey spoke up, and Ben nearly jumped out of his skin with surprise.
“There’s death north of the Wall,” she said. “And worse. My kind don’t kneel, but there’s a fate worse than death that would make us ask for help.”
Luke stared at her for a moment.
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Rey.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Nowhere,” she said.
“No one’s from nowhere,” Luke said and his voice was so gentle as he spoke with her. It made Ben angrier. Why was his uncle so gentle with everyone but him? It had always been that way.
“I am,” she replied. “Nowhere that matters to the Lord of Winterfell.”
“And how would you know that?”
“Because if you cared, you’d listen, and kindly, and not take your nephew’s head for breaking some parts of his oath in the name of upholding the important parts.”
Ben stared at Rey.
Never in his life had anyone ever defended him from his uncle. It had always been a when you’re older you’ll understand or a he cares about you in his way or even a it wasn’t that bad, kid. But he did not doubt that if his uncle’s men tried to kill him, Rey would fight them all. And lose her life as well.
His uncle’s gaze was back on him, and there was curiosity there, now. “You’ve made interesting friends, nephew,” he said at last.
“I have,” Ben said.
“And what is it, then, that you would say?”
Ben glanced at the men his uncle had brought. Then he unbuckled his belt and handed his sheathed sword to the nearest one. “I’ll not harm him, but give us privacy,” he said, daring the man to refuse.
The guard glanced at his uncle, who inclined his head and the mounted men rode off a little ways away with Ben’s sword.
“When you tried to kill me,” Ben said and his uncle’s gaze clouded with shame at the memory, but Ben pressed on, “You said you saw me riding upon Winterfell with death at my back. Is that what you see now? Is that what you think I’m doing?”
It took Luke a long time to answer. “You came alone in that vision,” he said. “And you were death.” Ben shuddered, remembering the way that his blade had broken, the way that Finn had killed the creature before it could slay him. “And now you come accompanied.” He inclined his head to Rey. “So I am unsure. Perhaps I was wrong, in my vision.” Ben heard so much there in his uncle’s voice. Apology, regret, and something that sounded almost like hope.
“What did death look like?” Ben asked him.
“Pale. Bright. Eyes like ice.”
“Then I, too, have seen death. But not in a dream. I fought death, and would have been defeated. And death commands the dead, and will have an army of wildlings just as soon as they have been killed unless Snoke lets them through the Wall.”
Luke stared at him.
“I swore to defend the realms of men,” Ben said. “I will not let men become weapons of our enemies, just because they are on the wrong side of the Wall. You must help me convince Snoke to let them through, settle in the Gift. Amilyn Holdo—” Luke’s eyes widened in surprise and Ben cut himself off. “You met her. When she came to Winterfell.”
“I did,” Luke said, and his gaze and voice were distant. “That was years ago.”
“It was,” Ben said impatiently. “And now she needs your help, uncle. All the realm needs your help.” He took a deep breath. “You told me that before you went to Vader, there was a time to decide what was good for the realm and what was right, and that when the two aligned it wasn’t a choice. You always said if you had to do the same again, you would. Don’t you see that this is the same? In different guise, perhaps. But—”
His uncle held up a hand and looked between Ben and Rey.
“Come,” he said turning to his horse and mounting. “We’ll ride for Winterfell and you will tell me all.”
And for the first time in months, perhaps years, Ben felt relief.
#
Ben found Rey in the godswood after dinner, looking at the great old heart tree that he had prayed to as a child.
“He is not what I expected, your uncle,” Rey said quietly, and she glanced at Ben.
“He’s not what I expected, either,” Ben replied.
And suddenly Rey’s arms were around him. “Do you think he will? Behead you, I mean?”
Ben took a deep breath, and then another. “No,” he said at last. “I don’t think he will.”
His uncle had been watching him closely all through dinner, had listened to every explanation that Ben had given him when they had reached the castle, had even been gracious to Rey. But he had retired to his chambers after dinner without saying what he thought.
“He has to,” Rey whispered. “Doesn’t he?”
Ben took a deep breath. “By the laws of our queen, my life is forfeit,” he said. “But my uncle also rose in open rebellion when he was younger than me. He helped kill a king and destroy an empire. So perhaps he’ll—” His voice trailed away. He didn’t want it to, but it did. He tried to remember happy times with his uncle, when he’d been a boy. He had loved him once, hadn’t he?
Your uncle is the most righteous man I know, he remembered his mother saying.
They heard footsteps crunching through the snow as they stood there in one another’s arms and they stepped apart. Oathbreaker or not, Ben thought it best not to obviously flout his vow of chastity in his uncle’s godswood.
“I see you and I are of a mind,” Luke Skywalker said as he approached, glancing between the two of them and the tree. “I came to pray, and to think.”
“What is there to think on?” Rey demanded and Ben looked at her with pride. How fierce she was, how determined. “Either you will do what is right, or you will witness the death and destruction of those you would protect after sacrificing those you would not.”
Luke stared at her, then laughed. It was a warm laugh, a kind one, and Ben felt himself stand straighter.
“Leia would have liked you,” he said at last, looking at Rey. “A lot.”
He turned his gaze to Ben. “I’ll send a bird to Snoke, and shall ride north as well to discuss matters with him and with Amilyn Holdo. They may stay in the New Gift for the time being. Until we know what to do next.”
Ben did not know what to say. He listened? He is doing it?
“So you believe that—”
“Death will march on Winterfell? Absolutely. I’ve believed that for a long time.” There was a ghost of an apology in his tone. “But you’re not that death, Ben. I failed you. I’m sorry.” It did not soothe the ache, but at least it was there.
“I also plan,” Luke continued, “to write to my queen. Something tells me that Snoke will not be pleased that I haven’t beheaded you, and I have…never trusted him. I would have her permission to relieve you of your vows and reinstall you as lord of Winterfell, as was your right before you gave it up.”
“But what about you?” Ben blurted out.
Luke gave him a smile. “I was never cut out for this. Ruling and maintaining. I’m sure with the wars to come there will be some use for me.”
“But isn’t she the mad queen?” Rey asked quietly. “That’s all I’ve ever heard you knee—southerners call her. Mightn’t she say no?”
“She might,” Luke said. “Or she might not. It’s hard to know. I suspect she won’t have much of the luxury of choice, however, should the Others make it close to the Wall. I will need an heir, and I don’t have one, and she will not want chaos in the first line of defense.” He smiled at Rey and there was a dark humor to his gaze. “I’ve also found, over the years, that people are loath to reject my little requests. Can’t imagine why.”
Ben rolled his eyes and Luke winked at him. It was the most playful his uncle had ever been with him and it felt strange. Especially in the face of what awaited them between death and winter.
Luke left them and Rey glanced up at Ben. “This is going to sound stupid, but why can’t he imagine—”
“Because he brought down the Empire,” Ben said. “People want to suck up to him. Even the queen. Marry me.”
Rey blinked at him in surprise. “What?”
“Marry me. I know we swore ourselves to one another,” Rey’s eyes were getting ridiculously bright. “But if he means it, and if I am to be lord of Winterfell again, I will have to wed, and I’d wed no one but you. I want you to be safe and have a home, and—”
She didn’t let him finish because she had thrown her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply. “You don’t have to convince me to be yours, you know,” she whispered to him. “You did that already.”
“Yes, but it’s one thing to promise you only my heart and—” he took a deep breath. “And quite another to promise you all this. You deserve it all, and I want only a life I can share with you.”
Rey looked around, her eyes tracing the crenellation of the castle in the darkness, over the turrets and gargoyles and everything he knew perfectly without having to look at.
“I want you,” she said at last looking at him. “And if it means I have to be some kneeler lord, then I suppose that’s the price I’ll have to pay for my freedom.”
He didn't even have time to laugh, to protest when she dragged her lips down to his. He couldn’t quite think of anything—not the impending doom, not his uncle’s demeanor, not Winterfell and home—when her lips were soft and warm and his—his until his last breath.