"My Princess was insincere in her apology to me."

That was what Ser Domeric said to her when the kiss was done. He wasted no time in turning away to retrieve their bag of food, but not before he had given her the most inscrutable of expressions. No, not inscrutable. The muscles in his jaw were tensing and relaxing.

His smile was gone. He had been smiling before. Sansa had been hoping for him to smile more brightly and profess his love for her with words. Then she would have told him that she loved him too, and they would have gone on to talk about how to best get the lords of the Vale to declare for Robb. Now she didn't know what to do. I've ruined it, she thought, and for a moment she heard Queen Cersei laughing at her. Would the Queen have ruined this?

"Does my princess have no care for propriety?" His words were very deliberate, his tone very even, and it did not sound like he was japing. One of his eyebrows inched upward, and suddenly Sansa was aware that the light of the southron sun had heated the steel of his breastplate to a near painful degree. She jerked her hand away and covered her mouth. Love is poison, Queen Cersei had said, and Sansa didn't want her to be right.

Sansa shook her head violently and started stammering. I thought… I thought… I didn't think… "N-no, I do, what I meant was, I thought... I wanted... to thank you... like in the songs..."

While Ser Domeric was rummaging in his saddlebags Sansa heard him exhale sharply, and then inhale, and then do it again nine more times. He's still nervous, she realized, but she was nervous too, and the knowledge did not kill the frenetic trembling in her blood. He handed her the bowl with the bread and the cheese and the salted meat and she saw it shaking. There was nothing to sit on here, so he spread his spare saddle blanket on the ground. Sansa kept standing. Her legs were lead.

"My princess has already thanked me. Perhaps she has forgotten?"

His blank face and deadpan tone only made the jittery feeling worse. The bats in her tummy would not stop flapping about. Ser Domeric thought her improper, and Mother and her septa had said that that was a perilous thing for a man to think of a maiden. Now it was all ruined. He might still take her to Robb, but now he wouldn't want to marry her, wouldn't want to help Robb win the war, and Robb would sell her off to someone who only wanted her claim to Winterfell, and then Robb would lose and die and she'd be all alone. It would be all ruined, and nobody would ever love her…

"I-I'm sorry, ser," Sansa stuttered. She wanted to cover her face with her hands. She could hear Lady Olenna telling her that she was a pomegranate as if the old woman were standing right next to her.

Then Ser Domeric's face fell, and he looked as though he were ashamed. "It is I who should be sorry, princess," he said. "I should not have teased you so. 'Twas unkind of me." He motioned towards the blanket. "Please, princess, sit and eat. We should not tarry long here, only enough for my horse to rest."

Oh. Robb and Jon and Arya had teased her, a hundred years ago in Winterfell, but she had always been able to tell with them, to understand. Jeyne Poole and Beth Cassel never teased her, they only teased Arya, but the Tyrell cousins did once or twice, and she had been able to tell with them too. Joffrey never teased her. He made his meanings clear.

Sansa sat down and did her best to hide her face in the bread while still eating as delicately as possible.

It was terribly awkward again. It wasn't awkward before, when they were talking about the war, but talking about the war made Ser Domeric unhappy, and it would make her unhappy too.

In the end, when she'd finished with the bread and the cheese and the meat, Sansa apologized profusely for a second time and warbled about how she didn't mean to be improper, how she thought it was proper and right and good because that's what the songs were like, and how everything in the capital had just been so awful that she wanted to believe things were going to get better because he came to save her and it must have meant that he was a true knight and they had all said that true knights didn't exist, and that she was silly and stupid for believing it all, and that she was sorry. The dream had been a better excuse.

"I'm sorry," she finished. Sansa wanted to fade into the dust and blow away with the wind.

"Do not apologize to me, my princess. There is no need." Now he was frowning again. Oh no oh no oh no...

Sansa dragged her gaze away from the ground. Ser Domeric was studying her with something that looked like concern. He did not seem nervous anymore.

"Things will get better for you, my princess. I promise. When we get to Runestone you will want for nothing. No one will hurt you there. Lady Ysilla and Ser Andar's wife will treat you kindly. I hope they will prove friends to you."

Sansa handed the bowl with the food back to him.

"I have a full wineskin if you would like wine, my princess."

"I would like wine, thank you, ser." If she was drinking wine, she would not be talking. While Ser Domeric put down the bowl of food and retrieved the wineskin, Sansa pulled the snood out of the pocket in her cloak and began to pin it in place.

Ser Domeric turned to give her the wineskin. "You covered your hair," he said wistfully. "Better that way, I suppose. Safer." Then he took off his gauntlets, picked up the bowl and began to eat himself.

Sansa took a sip if the wine. Only a few moments afterwards did she begin to feel more at ease. The wine was sweet. The wine was strong. She handed it back to him and he drank as well. Then he took another deep breath.

"I do not believe you are stupid, you know," he said as he broke off a crust of bread. "Not for believing in the songs, or wanting life to be like them. Songs are beautiful. No. Stupid is something else." He ate the bread. "I believe that life ought to be beautiful like the songs, and I have been told that I am passably intelligent. Do you think me stupid too, my lady?"

He did not sound like he had been insulted. Instead he sounded patient, and his eyes were kind. Sansa felt relieved. Perhaps things were not ruined after all.

"No, ser. I could never. You are very intelligent."

"You flatter me by saying so, and for calling me a true knight, my lady." Ser Domeric stared at her then, and his mouth twitched up in what might have been a smile. "That is the highest praise. A compliment I do not deserve. After what I did with my father's army nobody would name me a true knight." Then the might-be smile was gone, and Ser Domeric looked sad again and drank. "A true knight is all I ever wanted to be."

"You are a true knight, ser," said Sansa. "A true knight would have come for me, and you did."

"Aye, that is why I did it. To be knightly again."

He was so different than everyone in the capital. Ser Domeric was of the North, and yet he was a knight, not only in name like so many knights in King's Landing, but in his heart as well, she could tell. The Hound had told her that a knight's vows meant nothing, and yet Ser Domeric seemed to treasure his. He did not call her stupid, like Joffrey and Queen Cersei and the Hound even Lady Olenna. She wondered if he would think her stupid if he found out more about how she had trusted Joffrey and the Queen, had failed Father.

As he moved on to eat the cheese and salted beef, Sansa thought on what he'd said. Life ought to be beautiful like the songs. Not that life was like them. She wanted so much to have that good, safe life in the North with Ser Domeric at the Dreadfort with Mother and Robb close by. She could see Winterfell whenever she wanted, whenever she was not in her confinement. They'd play the harp and sing together and host Northern tourneys on the banks of the Weeping Water and he would always be her champion, wearing her favors over his heart and around his lance. He'd always win, and she would always be his Queen of Love and Beauty. They would make beautiful children, Northern children named Brandon and Rickon and Eddard, and they would love each other so, so much. Oh, why had she ever loved Joffrey? Why had she ever loved Ser Waymar and Ser Loras? Her life would be perfect with Ser Domeric. It had seemed so close, so possible only a few short minutes ago. She had been so ready for hope, so ready to be brave. She did not want to believe it impossible again.

"Ser?"

"Aye, my princess?"

"Is life like the songs?" Please say anything other than no.

Then he was staring at her once more, and it seemed as if the pale greyness of his eyes truly did come from ghosts.

"I knew you were not stupid, my princess. That is an intelligent question." He began moving the fingers on one hand, as if he were playing a harp that was not there. Then he took another drink. "Songs are just stories, or expressions of feeling. Hopes and wishes, or taunts. As to the former, some people's lives are so eventful, their deeds so great, that songs are written about them. Their lives are like songs in that the songs were made like their lives. These people become heroes and villains of memory. For the rest of us, if we imitate them, in our words and in our deeds, then our lives can become like their songs, should circumstance permit and the gods allow." He spoke slowly, as if he was thinking, and stared into the distance. He took another drink of wine.

"The Day they Hanged Black Robin, for example. That is a song about something that happened to someone that lived. There's a marker by the tree where they hanged Black Robin in Lord Harroway's Town. I don't remember the day it was, but it happened during the Dance. It's a beautiful song, but it's sad. A life can be painful, miserable, and still be like the songs. There are other songs like this, about things that really happened. The Rains of Castamere, about Tywin Lannister, and Wolf in the Night, about your brother. That one's new. You might not have heard it." She hadn't. "Six Maids in a Pool, about Florian and Jonquil too. They were real. Jonquil's pool is real, it's in Maidenpool. They lived, though the song might have exaggerated some things about their life.

"Then there are songs that are taunts, rallying cries. They remind you of what may come to pass should you threaten a certain people. Black Pines and Wolves and the Hills are like this. Steel Rain, too. A people need live up to these taunts, these threats, if they are to keep their reputation. These songs inspire men at war, help them remember to share in their fathers' valor. A soldier's life should be like these songs. It's his duty to be like them.

"Then there are love songs, which express feelings. It is easy for something in our lives to be like love songs, because many people fall in love. Many people share those feelings. We relate to the words." Then he looked at her. "No Featherbed for Me. That's about how a man wants to love his lady, and how the lady wants to be loved, and how those loves are different. My Lady Wife, about coming to find comfort and joy and passion in the duty to one woman alone." His stare had softened, and the ghostliness in it left. Then he smiled at her, and it wasn't so small. He loves me, she thought, and she smiled back. And I love him.

"Let Me Drink Your Beauty is an easy one to understand. As are Two Hearts that Beat as One, and Seasons of My Love. 'I loved a maid as white as winter, with moonglow in her hair.'

"Do you take my meaning, my princess?"

"Life can be like the songs, if you make it so, if you try. Many people's lives can be like love songs." Sansa hoped that she was correct. Then he nodded at her, and she felt the gladdest she had since Father died.

"Do you think your life is like the songs, ser?"

Ser Domeric paused to think again and took another drink. "I suppose it is. When I was a boy, my mother told me the story of Serwyn of the Mirror Shield. A knight from the Reach, aye, but a knight of the First Men, who kept the old gods, from before the Andals came. The Targaryens tried to say he was in Aegon the First's Kingsguard, but everyone knows he lived in the Age of Heroes. I used to pretend I was him when I was a boy, playing at swords. I thought of him when I was in the Red Keep. He saved a princess, too. So I suppose my life is like his song in a small way, but only because I wanted it that way, and chose to be like him."

"Then we can make our lives like the songs." And I can make the life I want.

"Aye, we can. If the gods will it."

Sansa could not remember smiling so much since she had left the walls of Winterfell, and perhaps she had not smiled as much back then either. Somehow the walk to Rosby on the dusty road in her dirty, smelly clothes with only Ser Domeric and his horse for company was so much more delightful, made her so much giddier than any day spent in a pretty gown with Jeyne or Beth or the Tyrells did. In the capital, before everything awful happened, she'd thought she was happy; after, she'd felt she'd only known happiness in Winterfell with her family. Now she knew that she had been wrong on both accounts. Here on the Rosby Road, dressed in rough brown wool, the bats in her tummy turned to bubbles in her heart. She was floating.

Ser Domeric was wonderful. After they'd finished their lunch and watered his horse, they'd continued walking north. He was so easy to talk to now that all of the awkwardness was gone. Almost everything he said made her giggle. It was very easy to trust him, to tell him things and ask him questions and then hang onto every word when he answered. He'd come for her. He'd fought for her brother. He was a Northman. She could trust a Northman.

Sansa refrained from asking about Lord Bolton, since his mention seemed to make Ser Domeric frown, but she asked about his mother's family, and he could talk for ages about them, the Ryswells and Lady Dustin. "The only thing my dear cousins of Ryswell like better than arguing," he'd said, "is settling their argument with a horserace. Or a fistfight. They're almost like Umbers, only shorter, quieter, and better looking. And with better horses. Of course." "My aunt keeps Barrowton as clean as White Harbor. I think Barrowton is better, you can get goods from all of Westeros there, and still it's small enough to know all the faces. And the wood is homier than the marble." His eyes had gone wide when Sansa had said that she'd never been to Barrowton or the Rills. "You will like it there, I know it," he'd said. "You must see them when we go back North." Sansa hoped that he would take her himself.

After they made camp for the evening, they started playing a game. Ser Domeric would whistle the first few notes of a song, and Sansa would have to tell him which one it was. If she got it correct, she would whistle first few notes of the next song, and he would need to name it, but if she got it wrong, he would keep whistling until she got it right, and if he got to the end without her naming the song, nothing happened. They would just laugh together, and then he'd sing the whole thing, so she'd know it the next time. It was good to be able to enjoy the things she liked again.

"Ser Domeric?" she said after the game was done. "Do you have a favorite song?" She'd told him her favorite song was Six Maids in a Pool when they were playing their game.

"Aye, I do. It's Off to Gulltown. Because when I go to Gulltown, I'm always happy. It either means I am going to the Vale, or going back North to visit my mother's family after seeing my father." Then he paused. "And I suppose we are going off to Gulltown now." He paused again and smiled at her, stretching his legs.

"I don't know Off to Gulltown."

"No? I'll sing it for you, then. Off to Gulltown to see the fair maid, heigh-ho, heigh-ho. I'll steal a sweet kiss with the point of my blade, heigh-ho, heigh-ho. I'll make her my love and we'll rest in the shade, heigh-ho, heigh-ho…"

Sansa furrowed her brow. "I don't think I like that song very much, ser."

"Oh? Why not, my princess?"

She looked into the fire and told him about the Battle of the Blackwater and how the Hound had come to her room that night. It was hard to talk about, but she got it all out. All of it. The Queen and Ser Ilyn Payne, sending for a maester for Lancel who she should have let die, the green fire, the smell of smoke and the sound of screams and suffering. He was a patient listener. He understood. He'd been in battles too.

Ser Domeric's gaze grew dark when she finished speaking about the Hound. "He will never hurt you again. I promise you." He poked the fire with a stick. "I will never sing that song again, if you like, but if you do not mind the tune, I can always change the words."

She liked it when he said that. I can always change the words. It made her feel hopeful.

"It would be good, ser, if you changed the words," she said. "The tune is pretty." She bit into her bread.

"How about this? Off to Gulltown with the sweetest of maids, heigh-ho, heigh-ho. She'll give me a kiss and I'll swear her my blade, heigh-ho, heigh-ho…"

Sansa clapped for him in approval. "Did you bring your harp with you, ser?" Ser Domeric was the best harpist she'd ever met, better than herself and Lady Leonette, and even better than Hamish the Harper and all the singers in King's Landing, whose music was their trade. It would be good to hear him play.

"No, my princess, I am sorry, but it had to be left at Harrenhal." Sansa had quickly learned not to mention Harrenhal or what Ser Domeric did afterward. Every time Ser Domeric spoke of it, his eyes would go flat and Sansa thought that he was going away inside like she had so often in King's Landing. So she tried her best to avoid mentioning it, and every time he had to bring it up, she would change the subject.

"That's all right." She watched him take a sip of wine. "Tell me, ser, does your horse have a name?" Ser Domeric loved his horses. At the Dreadfort was working on a project to introduce the hardy, winter-ready traits of the mountain clans' garrons into the fast Ryswell coursers, but it was probably too soon to know the outcome yet. Sansa wished now that she had spent more time learning about horses with Arya so she could ask him better questions. It hurt to think about Arya, likely dead. I miss you, sister. I hope that wherever you are, you are smiling too.

"His name is Rhaegar," he began, "for the Dragon Prince. My grandfather Rodrik gave him to me when I became a man grown and I returned from the Vale. A fine red stallion for the son of the Red Kings, he said." He seemed apprehensive about this, for his smile turned into a frown.

"Oh? Why Rhaegar Targaryen?" It was a strange name for a horse. Rhaegar Targaryen had started the Rebellion by kidnapping Aunt Lyanna. Then he raped her and left her to die in Dorne when he left to fight the Battle of the Trident. She didn't know any more about him. Father didn't like to talk about the Rebellion. All she knew about the last Targaryens came from lessons with Master Luwin. So she let Ser Domeric explain. She liked to hear him talk. She liked his voice.

"Please forgive me if that offends you, my princess. I know the pain he caused your family might still be fresh." It was too distant to be painful to her. "My lady mother and Aunt Barbrey were well acquainted with your Aunt Lyanna. Raced her at horses in the Rills when she came to visit your uncle Brandon in Barrowton. She shamed them both to my grandfather, she did, beating the Ryswell sisters every time. She – she would never have let herself been captured, abducted. Rhaegar would never have caught her; she would have outrun him on her horse, had he given chase." That sounded right. Father never spoke of her, but the older members of Winterfell's household had said that Arya was like Aunt Lyanna, and that sounded like something Arya would do if she ever discovered a man she liked. Oh, Arya…

"No one could ever force her into anything, so they say. I do not believe that King Robert's tale was true – that he stole her, raped her, locked her in a tower held her against her will. When your lord father found her, she was in the Tower of Joy. So said my Aunt Barbrey. We had kin with your father, so he had to tell my family. What kind of name is 'Tower of Joy' if not one for a den of love? By my lights, my Princess, Rhaegar was good and decent, who would have made a just king. Certainly better than Mad Aerys and even King Robert, who drank and whored and beat Queen Cersei into the Kingslayer's arms."

Sansa remembered King Robert's drunken shouting at the Queen during the feast at the Hand's tourney so long ago. It was easy to believe that someone like Arya would want to run away from marrying someone like him. And she knew what they said about Ser Jaime and the Queen and Joffrey and his siblings. The Queen cared for Ser Jaime so, and always resented King Robert. Were the rumors really true? Brotherfucker. Brotherfucker. Brotherfucker, the crowd had chanted, but it didn't matter to her. No matter who Joff's true father was, the Kingslayer or King Robert, they were both awful, not as awful as Joff, but awful in their own ways. And Sansa did not know what to think about Ser Domeric was saying about Prince Rhaegar. For all that she hadn't been born yet, he had only been a babe during the Rebellion too. And Ser Domeric liked love songs. Maybe he liked to think of the Rebellion as a sad love song, just not the one King Robert had the bards sing.

"Your Aunt Lyanna was his lady love and he her silver prince. She went with him because she wanted to and loved him in return. The whole affair was quite unfortunate. If not for the Faith of the Seven's business with Maegor the Cruel, we might have had a beloved Northern queen today. Aegon the Conqueror had two wives, after all. Something must have happened that she could not send word to Lord Rickard or Brandon or your father. Elsewise there may not have been a war. Aerys' death was necessary, aye, but not Rhaegar's. Rhaegar had the makings of a great man, a great man with a great love. A love that burned so hot that half the realm was put to fire. The whole Rebellion was a waste of life, just like this war has been." Then he sighed. "Would it were that we could all have loves so great."

Ser Domeric sounded very far away at this last part. Was it the thought of the war that haunted him so? That must be it. She didn't want him to think that she didn't love him. We will have a great love, Sansa thought. I know we will.

"I hope that does not offend you, my princess."

"It doesn't," she said, but she was not done thinking. "Thank you for the story." He still looked distant. Sansa did not feel like talking either.

If Aunt Lyanna had truly broken her betrothal to run off with Prince Rhaegar, her love had started a war and had gotten her, Uncle Brandon, and herself killed. Sansa hoped that it would be different with Robb. He broke a betrothal too, and broken betrothals begat rebellions and betrayals. We will help Robb win, and then betraying the Freys won't matter. We'll get the Vale to help and the rest of Robb's kingdom won't be put to fire. Just Winterfell. The Freys alone couldn't beat the North, the Riverlands, and the knights of the Vale.

Sansa wondered what Jeyne Westerling looked like. She was from the Westerlands, and when Sansa imagined the Westerlands, all she could think of was gold. Gold like the Gold Road and the Golden Tooth. Gold like the golden lions of Lannister. But there was silver in the Westerlands too. Silver like Silverhill, and the silver beneath Castamere. What does Jeyne Westerling look like? She thought. Is she gold or is she silver? There was only one woman that Sansa would ever see when she thought of a golden queen. She tried to imagine Robb and a silver queen, but all she saw in her mind's eye was a Targaryen, and the Westerlings were much lower than Targaryens. There was a Targaryen queen named Jeyne Westerling too. She was Maegor the Cruel's wife. She didn't like that thought. Robb could never be Maegor the Cruel. That Jeyne Westerling had brown hair. Robb's queen must be have had brown hair.

Margaery would be a queen with brown hair, too. But Jeyne Westerling was from the Westerlands and wouldn't look like Margaery, who was all Reacher, born and bred. She would look like a Westerwoman. It was in her name. Jeyne Westerling. She must have been so beautiful for Robb to have broken his oath to the Freys. So beautiful that his heart would have broken to leave her. When Sansa tried to picture a beautiful woman, all she could see was Mother, and Margaery, and the Queen. It was queer to think of Robb marrying a woman who looked like Mother, and she already knew Jeyne Westerling wouldn't look like Margaery. No, she must have looked something like the Queen, because the Queen was from the West, and all of the Queen's ladies had something of the West about them, something in the shape of their faces, the shape of their eyes. And no matter how evil she was, the Queen was undeniably the most beautiful woman Sansa had ever seen. That was something right about her, even though everything else about her was wrong. Queens ought to be beautiful. Robb's queen, Jeyne, must certainly be beautiful too. That was what her imagination settled on when she pictured Jeyne Westerling. She looked like Cersei Lannister, only with brown hair, and she was so, so beautiful.

"Ser?"

"Aye, my princess?"

"Is Jeyne Westerling Robb's lady love?"

Ser Domeric grew quiet and started thinking, then. "Might be," he said, "or it might be that he thought that marrying her was only the right thing to do after ruining her. For her honor, and for his. Or," and here he frowned, "it could have been a plot by the Lannisters. The Westerlings are sworn to them after all. Get Jeyne into bed with your brother, get his crown, turn the Freys, and then have him stabbed in the night or poisoned at a meal. Then the Lannisters win the war. Or she could be reporting everything she sees and hears back to Lord Tywin, and the Lannisters win the war then too. Whatever the reason, His Grace was a fool to marry her, pardon me, princess. And he was a fool not to come for you."

There was silence for a long moment. I hope Robb loves her, Sansa thought with acid in her mouth. I hope Jeyne Westerling loves him too. I hope she is worth it to him. She closed her eyes, and in her mind, she saw her brother Robb, arm in arm with a younger version of Cersei Lannister, with brown hair.