CATELYN
Ten days, and still Bran had not woken — not for Maester Luwin, not for the Yi Tish healers. She thought he was already losing weight or that his hair was getting longer. She hasn't left Bran's side, and couldn't remember when she last slept. She refused the Yi Tish food now. They might drug her again. And what if something happened to Bran while she slept?
She feels dizzy at times. Maester Luwin made sure she ate at least. He reported to her that Ruyan was managing things well, already acting as Lady of Winterfell. She didn't care that she has that authority at the moment. She wanted Bran to wake, to heal and to be the lively boy that he was. She prayed to the Seven, to the mother.
She was mad to bargain. She'd let him climb again — trees, not towers. She must be mad because of her desperation. Her sweet Bran. She caressed his cheek, sleeping so peacefully. She hasn't heard Robb entered but she felt his gaze. It took some time before he spoke.
"Mother what are you doing? Maester Luwin told me you still haven't slept properly." Robb asked.
Catelyn looked at his son, his first born who inherited all of her Tully features and for the first time, she saw something of Eddard Stark in his face. Something stern and hard as the north.
"What am I doing?" she echoed, dazed. "I'm taking care of Bran."
"Is that what you call it, you haven't left his bed, didn't even said good bye to father and the girls at the gate."
"I said my farewells to them here." She had begged Ned not to go, even if she asked him to before. Because not now, not after everything. He said he had no choice but in the end he chose to leave. She took Bran's hand and pressed it on her cheek.
"He won't die." Robb softened. "The healers said the danger has passed."
"If they're wrong? What if Bran needs me and I'm not here."
"Rickon needs you. He is four. He doesn't understand what's happening. He clutches to me thinking everyone has abandoned him."
He sighed. "I need you, Mother. I'm trying."
His voice cracked with emotion — and suddenly she remembered she had lost him for two years. Stolen, vanished, returned to her older, quieter, carrying weight he should never have had to bear.
He was trying. And he needed her.
Catelyn swallowed. "Your wife is helping you enough."
She was helping. She was there for the castle, for the people. But not for Robb — not in the way he needed. Not where it mattered now.
Outside the tower, the wolves began barking — howling. The sound clawed at her nerves. She just wanted quiet. For Bran. For herself. "Close the window! Make them stop!"
"You need be not afraid mother of them, the wolves are singing. I'll close it. Just promise to sleep." Robb went to the window for the shutters, another sound was added to the howls. All the dogs were barking.
"Fire." He whispered then he left in haste not even answering when she called for him.
The fire had drawn them all away.
Robb had run toward it, shouting orders. She'd told him not to go — pleaded — but her voice had felt too thin to matter. She stayed. She always stayed. With Bran.
The chamber was quiet again. Too quiet. Even Summer's breathing was low and steady beneath the bed. The wolf had not stirred.
She leaned forward, brushing Bran's brow—
The door opened. No knock. No warning.
Two men entered, dirty and stank of horses. One moved for the bed. The other for her.
"You weren't supposed to be here," the one closest to her said, voice low and flat. "It's a mercy. He's dead already."
"No!" Catelyn exclaimed as she realized their intent. She grabbed the nearest thing she could — a heavy candleholder — and threw it. It struck one man's shoulder, barely slowing him.
Summer lunged. He crashed into the second assassin, jaws clamped around the man's wrist. The dagger clattered under the bed. The man screamed, yanking at the wolf, beating at him, pulling his ear — doing everything to break free.
The other man was closer. He drew a blade, steel flashing in the dark — aimed for Bran.
Catelyn threw herself between. She grabbed his wrist, grappling with him, her hands slipping on the hilt. The blade bit her palm. She cried out as blood ran hot and fast, but she held on.
He kicked her down.
"Stay down," he growled.
Catelyn tried to rise—and then he screamed.
He jerked violently, staggering. Something gleamed — silver, embedded deep in his shoulder. His wrist froze. The dagger fell from his hand.
Ruyan stood behind him, one hand still extended.
She didn't hesitate.
She stabbed again — quick, brutal. Once in the neck. Then again. And again. Under the jaw. Catelyn couldn't count how many times. The man gurgled, flailed — and dropped, twitching at her feet.
No pause.
Ruyan turned.
Summer still had the second man's wrist, blood pouring steadily. But the assassin's free hand was reaching — a blade hidden in his boot.
Ruyan was there.
She caught the arm before he reached it. Twisted it behind his back. Drove her knee into his spine — slammed him face-first to the floor.
He writhed once. Tried to rise. Failed.
She placed her fingers lightly on the side of his neck — and pressed.
He stopped moving.
Summer snarled — low and thunderous.
Ruyan looked at him. Met the wolf's eyes, just once. Not command. Not threat. Just… understanding.
A moment passed between them like breath in cold air.
Then Summer released the arm and backed away, slow and reluctant, and padded silently to Bran's bedside.
Ruyan tore her sleeve without looking down. She wrapped it tight around the man's bleeding wrist, her hands steady.
She looked at Catelyn.
"We need him alive."
Catelyn could not speak. Her palms were slick with blood, her heartbeat louder than Summer's growl.
Bran was alive. That was all she could think. Her son still breathed. Still lived.
And Ruyan —
Ruyan knelt in blood, calm as snowfall, already binding the wrist of the man who had come to murder a child.
Catelyn watched, stunned. The girl had moved like no one she had ever seen — not a noblewoman, not a knight, not a soldier. She had killed with precision, without pause, as easily as one might cut thread.
And now she worked in silence, hands sure, face unreadable.
Catelyn said nothing. She could only watch — and feel the tremble rising in her limbs now that the danger had passed.
RUYAN
The water turned red, then pink, then finally clear.
Ruyan let the final rinse fall over her skin in silence, the stone basin steaming around her as the last trace of blood spiraled down the drain. The streak on her collarbone was gone. The tacky smear at her elbow, too. Her hands were clean now, though they'd stopped shaking only minutes ago.
She hadn't expected them to shake at all.
The chamber was empty. She'd dismissed the servants long before. Only steam kept her company, curling like ghosts across the water's surface.
It had been her first kill.
Not in training. Not on a practice floor with padded strikes and formal bows. Not with watchers measuring technique. This had been real—bone giving way, skin parting, muscle resisting. The wet sound a throat made when it stopped working. The warmth of blood across her knuckles.
She had been told what it would feel like. But no one had described the stillness that followed. Not triumph. Not horror. Just a clarity so sharp it left no room for anything else.
She remembered the room after.
Luwin barking orders. Guards rushing in, steel ringing against stone. The assassin still alive, limp under her weight. The other one—not. Lihua silent, binding the living one's wounds before dragging him out like refuse. Maester Leng arriving barefoot, wordless, checking Bran's breathing with practiced hands, touching Catelyn's face as if taking her pulse through her eyes.
Ruyan hadn't spoken.
She had turned and walked out—blood-soaked, and cold. The corridor had filled with noise behind her. She hadn't heard a word of it.
Now, dry and dressed in fresh silks, she returned.
The chamber had been scrubbed. Wet patches darkened the floor. Summer lay curled beneath the bed again, eyes half-lidded but vigilant. Bran hadn't moved.
But Catelyn Stark had.
She sat up right now, a fresh bandage wrapped across one palm. Her hair was pinned again, severe and proper. Her spine was rigid. And her eyes, when they met Ruyan's, were not merely those of a grieving mother. They belonged to someone who had witnessed something she didn't yet have words for.
Robb stood near the hearth, arms crossed. Watching her too.
"How is Bran?" she asked.
"Still unconscious. Stable. Summer hasn't left him." Robb answered.
"And the assassin?"
"Alive. The healers patched him. He'll be ready for questioning tomorrow." His jaw tensed. "Under heavy guard."
She nodded.
"This confirms what I already suspected," Ruyan said, voice low but steady. "Bran's fall was not an accident."
The room didn't react. But it felt the words settle.
Behind her, Robb shifted—the faintest scrape of his boot on stone. Summer's ears twitched. Catelyn's mouth opened, then closed.
Ruyan didn't push. She didn't need to. What mattered had already been said.
She stepped aside, allowing the moment to settle like blood in water.
There would be more tomorrow. Questions. Answers, perhaps. But not tonight.
Tonight, the truth had arrived.
She looked at the people before her—Robb stepping back from the hearth, Catelyn with hands clasped tight in her lap, Maester Luwin behind her, silent and attentive. She could feel the weight of their eyes—not just watching, but measuring.
"I've been investigating Bran's fall," Ruyan said evenly. "Since the day it happened."
Neither Catelyn nor Robb interrupted.
"I found enough for suspicion and not enough for conclusion. Traces. Evidence that someone had been in the tower—but not when." She paused, choosing each word carefully. "Dust disturbed in deliberate patterns. A blonde hair caught in splintered wood. Thread beneath his nails. Sweep marks on the floor consistent with heavy skirts. But no witness. No proof."
She let the silence hang before continuing. "All I have are theories. But the one that makes the most sense..."
Her gaze moved to Bran's still form.
"...is that he saw something. Something worth killing for."
Robb exhaled slowly, deliberately, as if he'd expected that conclusion long before she voiced it. He didn't ask how she knew. He had seen her dissect things—ideas, systems, people—with surgical precision.
Instead, he walked to the table and lifted something carefully.
A dagger.
He presented it to her, blade resting across his palms like an offering. Ser Rodrik stood beside him, watchful.
"Ser Rodrik says it's Valyrian steel. The hilt's dragonbone." Robb said.
She took it. Cold. Light. Impossibly sharp.
But in an assassin's hand?
Her eyes narrowed.
"Odd," she murmured. "This is no common blade. It's rare. Ancient. Not easily acquired."
She turned it once, testing balance, examining the hilt's size, the edge's curve.
"Yet it was wielded by men who reeked of desperation and cheap ale."
Silence stretched. Then, softly—
"Who do you suspect?" Catelyn asked.
Ruyan didn't answer immediately. She studied the floor. Then the bed. Then met Catelyn's gaze directly.
"A woman," she said at last. "Blonde. Adult. Presumably wearing formal court dress—heavy skirts with enough weight to leave those particular patterns in dust. Not a servant or chambermaid."
The silence deepened.
Catelyn exhaled—a name forming in her mind like smoke before flame. Her hands curled tighter in her lap.
"The queen," she said.
Ruyan turned to her slowly.
"Why her specifically?" she asked, tone still measured. "She wasn't the only blonde woman in Winterfell then. Nor the only one wearing court dress."
Catelyn's eyes found Luwin.
The maester gave a subtle nod, then spoke for the first time.
"There were three who fit that description," he said quietly. "But only one had reason to be near that tower."
Catelyn swallowed. "Because of the letter," she said. Her voice had regained its strength, but the words carried weight. "From my sister. Lysa."
She looked between them—Ruyan, Robb. Ruyan remained still, her gaze fixed on Catelyn.
"What did the letter say?"
Catelyn's fingers tightened against her skirts. "She said Jon Arryn did not die of illness. He was poisoned." Her voice dropped. "And she named the queen...and her family."
Robb's jaw clenched. Luwin maintained his silence.
Ruyan gave a single, deliberate nod. Not of surprise. Of confirmation.
"Then we have two attempts to silence witnesses," she said quietly. "One succeeded. One failed."
Her eyes returned to the dagger, then back to Catelyn.
"We'll know more tomorrow."
She straightened, smoothing her robes with unconscious precision. The blood was long gone, but the memory of violence still lived in her bones.
"For now," she said, cutting gently through the stillness, "we rest."
Robb looked ready to object. Ruyan stopped him without raising her voice.
"You'll be no use to anyone exhausted. Neither will I." She turned to Catelyn, her tone softening. "Lady Stark—you've earned your rest. Let your son wake to find you whole."
No one argued.
She stepped back, the shadows gathering around her like a cloak.
"In the morning," she said, "we ask the right questions."
And then she was gone.