SANSA
The small pavilion in Winterfell's glass gardens had become Sansa's favorite retreat over the past few months. Nestled among exotic flowers and herbs that Princess Ruyan had introduced from Yi Ti, it offered a pocket of warmth and tranquility even as autumn winds howled beyond the glass walls. Steam rose from the delicate porcelain cups on the low table, carrying the fragrant scent of jasmine tea—another Eastern luxury that had once seemed strange but now felt comfortingly familiar.
Sansa smoothed her skirts as she waited, her fingers brushing over the embroidery she had completed just last week—direwolves interwoven with small phoenixes, a pattern that would have been unimaginable before Ruyan's arrival. She had added silver thread to catch the light, a technique she'd learned from watching her good-sister's handmaidens at work.
The princess moved like water when she entered, her steps so graceful they barely disturbed the air. At eighteen, Ruyan carried herself with a poise that made even the most refined Southern ladies Sansa had met seem awkward by comparison. Today she wore a gown of Stark gray with subtle Yi Tish elements—wide sleeves that narrowed at the wrists, an intricate belt clasp of silver shaped like intertwined wolves and phoenixes.
"Lady Sansa," Ruyan acknowledged with a slight nod. No curtsy, no elaborate greeting—just precise, economical movement as she took her seat opposite Sansa. "You've brought your notes on the histories."
It wasn't a question. Ruyan rarely asked questions when she already knew the answers. Instead, she made observations that invited confirmation or clarification.
"Yes, Princess," Sansa replied, placing the small leather-bound book on the table between them. "I've completed the reading on the Blackfyre Rebellion that you suggested."
Ruyan poured the tea with practiced movements, her hands steady and sure. No servants attended these private sessions—another break from the protocols Sansa had been taught to expect when in the presence of royalty.
"And what did you learn?" The princess's dark eyes fixed on Sansa with that penetrating gaze that always made her feel as though her thoughts were being read directly from her mind.
"It was... not as the songs describe it," Sansa admitted, a slight frown creasing her brow. "The bards speak of Daemon Blackfyre as the noble warrior king denied his birthright, and Bloodraven as the sorcerer who struck him down through treachery. But the history shows far more complexity."
"Complexity," Ruyan repeated, the word neither praise nor criticism but a neutral acknowledgment. "Elaborate."
Sansa straightened slightly, the way she always did when answering one of Ruyan's prompts. "The rebellion wasn't simply about a bastard claiming what was denied him. It was about factions at court using Daemon as a figurehead. About lords who felt slighted by King Daeron's Dornish peace. About religious tensions and trade disputes." She paused, gathering her thoughts. "The songs reduce it to heroes and villains, to personal valor and treachery. The history reveals competing interests, political calculations, and decisions made for survival rather than honor."
Something that might have been approval flickered across Ruyan's features. "And what does this tell you about the songs you've cherished?"
The question pricked at something tender within Sansa, but she had learned to expect such challenges during these lessons. "That they're... simplified," she answered carefully. "They preserve the emotional truth of events, perhaps, but not the factual complexity."
" They were never meant to tell the truth. Only to keep you obedient." She sipped her tea, giving Sansa a moment to absorb the blunt assessment. "Consider your favorite tale of Aemon the Dragonknight and Queen Naerys."
"The noblest knight who ever lived, defending his sister's honor against cruel rumors," Sansa recited, the familiar story flowing easily from memory.
"A pretty fiction," Ruyan replied without hesitation. "Examine instead what we know with certainty: Aemon's devotion to a queen whose only son's legitimacy was questioned. A succession crisis that nearly tore the realm apart. A convenient tale of perfect knightly virtue that served to strengthen Daeron II's claim to the throne."
Sansa felt a familiar discomfort twist in her stomach. Each of these sessions seemed designed to dismantle another cherished story, another foundation of the world as she had understood it. Yet she could not deny the logic of Ruyan's arguments, nor the historical evidence she had been directed to study.
"You find this distressing," Ruyan observed, not a question but a statement of fact.
"It's... difficult," Sansa admitted. "All my life, I've loved these songs. I've dreamed of knights and princes who embodied the virtues from these tales."
"And now?"
Sansa looked down at her tea, watching the subtle patterns formed by scattered leaves at the bottom of the cup. "Now I wonder if such knights and princes ever existed at all."
"They did not," Ruyan stated flatly. "Not as the songs portray them."
The certainty in her good-sister's voice made Sansa look up sharply. "None of them? Not even in the Age of Heroes?"
"Especially not then," Ruyan replied. "The further back a tale reaches, the more it transforms from history to useful myth. The Winged Knight of the Vale, Symeon Star-Eyes, Bran the Builder—these were not individuals of supernatural virtue or power, but leaders whose deeds have been magnified to serve present purposes."
Sansa looked past her, to where the morning sun bled through the curved glass walls of the pavilion. The exotic herbs and flowering trees shimmered behind warped panes, their outlines bent and broken, lovely but misshapen.
The songs were like that, she thought. Beautiful when viewed from inside. But step back, change your angle, and the images twisted.
Magnified virtues. Softened sins.
Sansa felt something crumble within her—not suddenly, but like a cliff face eroding after years of waves breaking against it. Each lesson with Ruyan had worn away another piece of her childish understanding of the world.
"Then what is the point?" she asked, her voice smaller than she intended. "If the songs are lies and the knights are just men, what is there to admire? To aspire to?"
For the first time in the conversation, Ruyan's expression softened fractionally. "Reality," she said simply. "Not the world as we wish it to be, but as it is. Not perfect heroes, but flawed individuals making difficult choices in constraining circumstances." She set down her teacup with characteristic precision. "Which requires more strength, Lady Sansa—to believe in a fiction that comforts, or to face a reality that challenges?"
The question hung between them, unanswered, as the door to the glass garden pavilion opened to admit Lady Catelyn. Sansa felt a familiar tension settle in the air as her mother and good-sister acknowledged each other with perfectly correct but distinctly cool courtesy.
"I hope I'm not interrupting," her mother said, though her tone suggested she would not have minded if she were. "I was told I might find you here, Sansa."
"We were discussing historical perspective," Ruyan replied before Sansa could speak. "Specifically, how the songs and tales of Westeros often misrepresent complex political events."
Lady Catelyn's smile tightened almost imperceptibly. "An interesting subject for a girl of thirteen."
"An essential subject for the daughter of a Great House," Ruyan countered, her voice remaining perfectly level. "Lady Sansa has shown remarkable aptitude for understanding political nuance."
Sansa glanced between the two women, acutely aware of the undercurrents flowing beneath their politeness. Her mother had never explicitly forbidden these lessons, but her disapproval was clear in a hundred small ways—the tightening around her eyes when Sansa quoted Ruyan at dinner, the careful redirections when conversations veered toward subjects deemed unsuitable for young ladies.
"I've been reading about the Blackfyre Rebellion," Sansa offered, hoping to ease the tension. "The historical accounts rather than the songs."
"I see," her mother replied, her smile not quite reaching her eyes. "And has Princess Ruyan shared her interpretation of more... recent events as well? The Rebellion, perhaps?"
Something cold flickered across Ruyan's features—so brief Sansa might have imagined it if she hadn't grown accustomed to watching for such minute shifts in the princess's expression.
"We were discussing Prince Rhaegar and Lady Lyanna," Ruyan stated, the directness of her answer surprising Sansa. "Not her choices—those are not recorded, only assumed. But his. The songs call him gallant, noble. Yet he crowned another woman, then disappeared with Lyanna—and a war followed. That is not gallantry. That is destruction dressed in silk."
"That seems an inappropriate topic," Lady Catelyn said, her voice sharpening despite her evident effort to maintain composure. "Sansa is still a child."
"A child betrothed to be married," Ruyan countered. "A child who will one day be expected to navigate political intrigues that may determine the survival of her house."
"There is time enough for such harsh realities when she is older," Lady Catelyn insisted. "She needn't lose her innocence so young."
"Innocence?" Ruyan repeated, the word carrying a weight of disdain that made Sansa flinch. "You mean ignorance. What happens to pieces on a board when they cannot see the game being played?"
"My daughter is not a piece on a board," Lady Catelyn replied, anger now evident beneath her controlled exterior. "How dare you suggest—"
"She is precisely that," Ruyan interrupted, her voice as cold and sharp as ice breaking. "We all are. The only question is whether we move ourselves or are moved by others."
Sansa felt herself shrinking in her seat, the familiar discomfort of witnessing conflict between adults washing over her. Yet something different stirred alongside it—a strange, unexpected clarity. The tension between her mother and good-sister was not merely personal. It represented two fundamentally different visions of her future.
"Your protection is admirable, Lady Stark," Ruyan continued, her composure absolute despite the charged atmosphere. "But protection without preparation creates vulnerability. The songs will not save her when winter comes. Knowledge might."
"You overstep," Lady Catelyn said, her voice low but fierce. "It is not for you to decide how my daughter is raised."
"No," Ruyan acknowledged, inclining her head slightly. "But it is for her to decide what knowledge she seeks." She turned her gaze to Sansa, those dark, unreadable eyes seeming to see straight through to her core. "Lady Sansa?"
The question hung in the air—not just about this moment, this conflict, but about the path she would choose. The comfortable illusions of songs and stories, or the harsh clarity of political reality. Her mother's protection, or Ruyan's preparation.
"I want to understand," Sansa said finally, her voice steadier than she expected. "The songs and the history both." A diplomatic answer, but one that felt true to the uncertainty churning within her.
Lady Catelyn's expression flickered with something between disappointment and resigned pride. Ruyan merely nodded, as if Sansa's response was exactly what she had anticipated.
"A wise approach," the princess said, rising from her seat with fluid grace. "We will continue tomorrow, if it pleases you."
With a final, precisely correct nod to Lady Catelyn, Ruyan departed, leaving Sansa alone with her mother and the cooling tea.
Sansa glanced at the curved glass once more. Without the princess seated opposite her, the pavilion felt colder, emptier. Outside, the morning light had shifted—the distorted shapes of herbs and blossoms now seemed harder, almost brittle.
The glass hadn't changed. She had.
And maybe that was the point.
"She is changing you," Lady Catelyn said after a moment, her voice softer now, tinged with concern rather than anger.
"Is that so terrible?" Sansa asked, genuinely curious rather than defiant.
Her mother sighed, reaching out to tuck a strand of auburn hair—so like her own—behind Sansa's ear. "Change itself is not terrible, sweetling. But some innocence, once lost, cannot be reclaimed."
"Like the truth about Aunt Lyanna?" Sansa ventured.
Lady Catelyn's expression tightened. "What has she told you?"
"That Prince Rhaegar crowned another woman Queen of Beauty while already married. That the same man who sang of prophecy kidnapped aunt Lyanna , and left a kingdom burning. Not for duty, nor strategy—just for want, masked as poetry." Sansa hesitated, then added, "And that the songs still call him noble for it."
Her mother was silent for a long moment, her blue eyes—the same Tully blue that Sansa had inherited—clouded with thoughts she couldn't read.
"She is not wrong," Lady Catelyn admitted finally. "But such truths are... heavy. I only wished to spare you their weight for a little longer."
"But I must carry them eventually," Sansa said, the realization settling over her with surprising certainty. "And isn't it better to grow strong beneath them gradually than to have them thrust upon me all at once?"
Something shifted in her mother's gaze—a recognition, perhaps, that the daughter before her was not quite the same child who had once listened wide-eyed to Old Nan's tales of gallant knights and fair maidens.
"When did you become so wise?" Lady Catelyn asked, a sad smile touching her lips.
Sansa considered the question seriously. "I don't feel wise," she admitted. "I feel... caught between worlds. Between who I was and who I might become." She glanced toward the door through which Ruyan had departed. "She isn't like the princesses in the songs either."
"No," her mother agreed, "she is not."
"The songs speak of gentle, beautiful ladies who weep and need rescuing," Sansa continued, the thoughts forming as she spoke them. "Princess Ruyan needs no rescue. She is beautiful, yes, but not gentle. Not weak." She looked down at her hands, noticing the small callus that had formed where she held her needle during embroidery practice. "I always thought I wanted to be like the princesses in the songs. Now I'm not so sure."
Lady Catelyn was quiet for a moment, studying her daughter with an expression Sansa couldn't quite interpret. "What do you want, then?" she asked finally.
The question caught Sansa by surprise. What did she want? Not simply to be a perfect lady, as she once had. Not to marry a Southern lord and live in a castle from the songs. Those dreams seemed distant now, childish in their simplicity.
"I want to understand," she said finally, echoing her earlier words. "I want to see the game being played. I want to be..." She hesitated, then finished with newfound conviction: "I want to be someone who moves herself, not someone who is moved by others."
Her mother's eyes widened slightly, recognition and something like resignation passing across her features. "Your good-sister's words," she observed.
"Yes," Sansa acknowledged. "But I think they're true."
Lady Catelyn sighed, reaching out to take Sansa's hand in her own. "The world is changing," she said softly. "The North is changing. Perhaps it's right that you should change with it." She squeezed Sansa's fingers gently. "But promise me one thing."
"What, Mother?"
"That no matter what truths you learn, no matter how the songs are unmade before you, you'll remember that there is still beauty in this world. Still goodness. Still things worth believing in."
Sansa thought of the complex embroidery on her new gown, direwolves and phoenixes intertwined in patterns both Northern and Eastern. Of the glass gardens where flowers from Yi Ti now bloomed alongside winter roses. Of Ruyan's precise movements and her brother's obvious respect for his foreign bride.
"I promise," she said, and meant it.
As they sat together in the warm pavilion, surrounded by the mingled scents of Northern pines and Eastern blossoms, Sansa felt something settle within her—not the comfortable certainty of her childhood beliefs, but something stronger, more resilient. A foundation being rebuilt, stone by stone, with materials chosen for strength rather than beauty alone.
The songs were beautiful lies. The histories were ugly truths. But perhaps there was a path that acknowledged both—that found beauty in truth and truth in beauty.
Perhaps that was what growing up truly meant.