I want to start this out by saying thank you to all the people who reviewed last chapter. I know things are crazy and I just wanted to send out my wholehearted love for all of you. I hope that you and your family are keeping safe and that this chapter might offer a bit of distraction.

Chapter Twenty-Two: A Visit of Starlight and Flame

Grey Winds fur was warm and comforting at my back when I awoke the next morning, my mind restless and unhappy. My old Septa had told me that sleep would cure all things from the fiercest fever to the restless mind.

"She was wrong," I grumbled, tired and thoroughly unamused by the blatant lie.

"Pardon, my Lady?" a maid buzzed, her face round and less haggard than the other serving woman who was currently pouring pitchers of steaming water into a claw-footed tub.

I blinked, mind working sluggishly as I tried to process what she was trying to ask me. "Only a matter of the heart."

"Oh." The sly glance between the two was enough to translate the fact that Robb and my night time activities hadn't been missed. I hid a grimace, turning into Grey Winds side as he kept a watchful eye on the pair, his face tugging into an expression that I could only assume would have been human dislike. As if he were judging them for pouring too much rose oil into the water.

Headstrong. Frightened. And hard - The words had echoed in my mind all night, his face a shadow behind them. In my mind, I made up a hundred different battles with him. I called him a fool, a brute who could only think with the edge of his blade. I pushed him. I slapped him when he cut through me with his own words in return. Sometimes I cut deeper in my own imagination, telling him that I could see why the Lannisters tried to decimate his family. I made him turn away from me. I made him tell me that he was going to Talisa for the night.

In some of my frantic imaginings, we didn't fight at all. He didn't leave and we didn't speak a word. Instead, he worshipped my body, kissing along the column of my throat, whispering to me all the things that he loved and hated about me. He told me I was headstrong in a different way, with reverence and anger and lust. He made love to me - not like our first time. No. There was no comparison.

"Your bath is prepared, my lady." I blinked, catching sight of the steaming tub with mountain flowers drifting along the surface. Soap and scrub were placed on a table beside an empty chair. The two maids had amiable smiles on their faces, standing a bit away. "We will wait until you get out to help with-"

"No need," I sighed, slipping from the warmth of the covers and into the chill of the mountain room. Even with the fire roaring in the hearth, the stone walls still held the foul winds outside. "You're dismissed for the morning. I don't require any further assistance."

It would have been near unbearable to have them hovering just by the door, their eyes gleaming like watchful little children. There was the barest flinch of their lips as they left, the smallest tell that revealed what I needed to know. I would need to perform some type of magic today to dispell all of the things that those maids would bring to Lord Baelish. The Wolf of the North was not in the room… Looked angry… Snapped at us as if…

"Don't you need to go back to your master?" I murmured to Grey Wind, sinking into the steaming water with a sigh. For a moment, amid the steam and water, my mind drifted. I thought of the days where I had been dying in that tent, of Chaos and Order and my life pact with them. And I thought of Robb. I thought of the scars that I had seen running along his forearms and back, even a small one along his throat.

How many times had he been in that realm between life and death? And how many deals with the devil did he have to make to get out?

Grey Wind gave a sigh, his face showing one of great agony as if his continued vigil on me was coming at great cost to his own sanity.

I frowned. "You could at least pretend that Robb didn't send you."

The look he gave me was enough to underline his overall dislike for spending time with me outside of Robb's company.

"Your time is coming, little witch," a voice whispered, skating along my bare skin like a knife with the gentleness of a mother. I gulped, water splashing out and making Grey Wind snarl as I jerked upright. Suddenly the water ran tepid and then ice cold. Fear beat through me like a living thing. Shivering, I curled in on myself, slinking down into a ball as the sides of the tub began to frost. "You didn't think that I had forgotten about you, did you?"

Did she expect me to respond? Beside me, Grey Wind's hackles raised, his lips pulling back as he let out a jagged growl, his eyes dilating.

"How sad," her voice drawled innocently. "I only meant to scare you a bit into getting your pretty, little head back to the matter of business. But look at yourself. Shivering in the tub like a little - what does your little human male call you? Kitten?"

The tips of my fingers were turning an alarming shade of red that I knew would swiftly give way to frostbite. Move, I urged myself, still curled in the water. But my muscles wouldn't obey. I gritted down, gasping and shivering.

"Instead of trying to master all these wonderful new talents that I've graced your weak, pathetically mortal body with it seems you've had your mind of something more frivolous. More human." The last word was spat, rolling through the air like fruit left to rot. A wavering image of gossamer and light blurred in front of my eyes, forming the haunting silhouette of a woman. I squeezed my eyes shut, my brain pounding as she swayed and smeared in front of my eyes.

"Wh-what-" The words halted in my throat as my whole body convulsed beneath the mind-numbing cold. I could barely think. The bitter pain of the chill was sharp and clean, sinking through me with the swiftness of a blade.

"Don't speak." The words were sharp, cutting and grating like the fall of rock of the clash of blades. I didn't open my eyes, squeezing my lids more tightly shut as bile rose in the back of my throat, my teeth clacking together. I could feel her drifting closer, feel the fire and cold in her like beasts that fighting for supremacy. "Now you listen. While you and that wolf boy have been dancing around each other, my sister and I have been chained, waiting for you to start your work. Picture my ire to realize that you're stuck atop a slab of rock, entertaining your relatives with some preposterous act. Not even a wiggle of your powers except for that pathetic display the other day. Ridiculous."

Beside me, I heard a scramble of paws, a low, vicious growl as Chaos drifted closer, her nails scraping along the side of the tub. I forced my eyes open, the water becoming chunky with ice as my limbs turned a startling blue. The shimmering ebony of the deepest night mixed with the first fires of sunrise, battered my human eyes. She was something that wasn't supposed to be in the mortal realm and yet here she was, her teeth like diamonds glinting as she hissed down at Grey Wind.

"I always hated your kind," she sneered and I jolted, baring my teeth as she raised a hand and Grey Wind gave a brave snarl in return, his ears flattening.

Teeth chattering, I forced as much anger and resentment into my voice as I could. "Don't you dare hurt him."

Beneath me, I could feel the weak ripple of vines, clawing along stone embarkments, diving through cracks as they tried to reach me. Tried to defend me. I could have cried then, shivering in that tub, facing this goddess as my powers tried desperately to reach me. Powers that I feared. Powers that I had so callously tried to hide.

I flinched back into the tub as the trill of water cries and women playing broke through the room, Chaos' shimmering form curving back as she gave her form over to the cruel crow.

Her eyes were burning embers when she snapped back to me. "Calm yourself, little witch. I won't hurt your lover's pet… though that display of power was rather… enticing." A sharp flash of teeth, too leering to be anything but malicious.

And then her head was tilting, her head whipping to the side as if she had heard someone calling her name. My eyes flicked to where Grey Wind hunched, his eyes wide with fear even as he stood crouched beside me, reading to leap if she drifted closer. Silently, I met his gaze, pleading with him to slip away.

"Well…" Chaos turned back to us, smoothing an invisible line in the glistening, burning mass of her dress. "It seems I must be going. Humans can be quite insistent when they want to conquer another." A charred, weather-beaten envelop appeared in her hands, the folds tanned from wear. "But before I go, I'll leave you with a bit of incentive. Since you have dawdled, it appears that the world has moved on without you. Now you have no time."

With that she released the envelope, revealing that there wasn't a seal at the closure. Slowly, it drifted down, swirling until it reached the frozen top of the tub water. The pain had faded, giving way to a surreal numbness.

"A word of advice," came the silky, smoky tune of Chaos voice as the shimmering glow of her faded bit by bit. "Take care of your business here quickly. Your brother is in quite a bit of danger. Oh. And pain." Her giggle burst through the room, bouncing off the walls as my heart burst, my breath punched from my lunges.

"What?!" I exclaimed, fear making me frantically lunge toward where she had been. "What's happening to my brother? Where's my brother?!"

But she was already gone and I gave a shriek of pain as the water suddenly warmed, burning across my frozen limbs. Shaking, half-blind with agony as I grabbed for the now-soaked envelope, tossing it from the water. For a moment, I couldn't do anything more than pant, shaking as my skin tried to readjust.

Futilely, my mind spun around those words. My brother. My brother was in danger. More than danger, he was in pain. An accident? An accident at home? No. Impossible. No one could breach the Twins. My breath seized, my brain running at a million miles a minute as an impossible thought burst through me. Torture. Captured and tortured.

Shaking, I reached over the tub, forcing myself to pull the envelope delicately apart so that the drenched parchment wouldn't rip. Ink smeared across the pages, barely legible.

Encamped with Boltons. My dreads are that rest of party has been killed. Have not seen another in weeks. Baelish in on attempt to kill you.

And then in smaller, shakier text, smeared across the bottom of the page: I love you, bird brain.

My insides knotted, dread making me light-headed. A goodbye. Why did that sound like a goodbye? Denial coursed through me. No. Corlin would never- I shivered, scrambling from the tub. If there was one thing that I could depend on it was the grim honesty of Chaos.

There was no time.