Chapter Text
Last Christmas I gave you my heart, but the very next day you gave it away . . .
The song blaring from behind the closed door of her brother’s bedroom was enough to stop Lyanna Stark dead in her tracks and send her back in the opposite direction. He wasn’t so much singing along to it anymore as he was shouting it accusingly. He must have tried texting the damn girl again.
“He’s got fucking Wham blaring again!” she exclaimed as she flopped down in one of the big armchairs in the great room, tossing a leg over one of the arms. “I know he was a dick last year, but couldn’t she just throw him a bone? I mean, would it kill her just to answer her damn phone? It’s Christmas, for Christ’s sake!”
Her brother Ned looked up from the impossibly large puzzle with a gazillion tiny pieces spread over the big wooden table. “She doesn’t owe him anything, Lyanna.” His voice was cool as usual, but Lyanna heard that edge of angry defensiveness which so often seemed present whenever Catelyn Tully was mentioned.
It pissed her off. She knew Brandon had done the girl wrong and that poor Ned had been the one who got stuck driving her all the way to wherever the hell it is she lives after the blow-up last year. He’d returned to Winterfell more furious than Lyanna had ever seen him—didn’t so much as speak to Brandon for weeks. But whatever Brandon had done, he was still their brother. And he really seemed to be hurting now. She could handle goofy Bran, arrogant Bran, wisecracking Bran, egotistical Bran, life-of-the-party Bran, and even angry Bran (who terrified a lot of people—with good cause); but she found herself completely unprepared to deal with a heartbroken, emo Bran. She’d not have believed such a thing existed if she hadn’t heard that stupid song seven million times from behind his closed door since his unexpected arrival at Winterfell. Ned should be as worried about Brandon as she was. Not concerned about the injustice done to Brandon’s ex-girlfriend a year ago.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked him, putting both her feet on the floor to sit up straight and stare at him. “Don’t you even care how upset he is? I’ve never seen him like this, Ned!”
Ned sighed. “Then you haven’t been looking closely.” He dropped his eyes back to the table and picked up one of the tiny pieces, attempting to fit it into a bunch of others.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, rising from the chair and walking right up next to him so that he couldn’t ignore her.
Ned didn’t look up, though. He found the right spot for the puzzle piece in his hand and calmly reached for another one as he said, “He’s got everyone’s attention, doesn’t he? Dad’s cooked up a plan to invite everyone he can think of for a ski weekend to cheer him up, Ben’s practically waiting on him hand and foot in an effort to make him smile, and you’re worried that he’s practically suicidal.” He did look up at her then. “Everyone in the house is entirely focused on him. You can’t say you’ve never seen that before, Lya.”
It took her a moment to process his words before the fury struck her. “Are you saying this is an act? Because if you are, Ned Stark, then you are the worst! The absolute worst! He’s really sad! It’s Christmas, and he’s miserable, and I can’t stand that! Brandon’s always loved Christmas! He’s always right in the middle of . . .”
“Everything,” Ned interrupted. “Always right in the middle of everything. Always wanting every eye on him.” He held up both hands in a conciliatory gesture as she started to protest once more. “He is upset,” he conceded. “And probably as unhappy as I’ve ever seen him. But Lyanna, whatever Brandon does, he does over the top—including being unhappy. Things didn’t work out the way he wanted this Christmas, so he shows up here—and suddenly whatever any of us may have had planned is forgotten. I do feel badly for him, Lya. But I’d like the holiday to be about all of us.”
Lyanna frowned. Arguing with Ned was never a satisfying experience. He was always so infuriatingly rational. She and Brandon could have much better arguments, even if Brandon did tend to baby her more than Ned did—a product of his being six years older than she was where Ned was just under four years older. And as much as she loved Brandon, she had to admit there was some truth in Ned’s words.
“I guess I understand what you’re saying. But it’s a little more than ‘things not working out the way you planned’ when you lose the love of your life,” she insisted.
He didn’t change expression, but she caught a glimpse of something flash through the grey eyes that looked exactly like hers. She and Ned looked more alike than any of the four Stark children, especially through the eyes. “I wasn’t talking about his breakup with Catelyn,” he said coolly. “I was referring to Ashara backing out of their planned beach holiday. This desperate desire to reach out to Cat didn’t start until after Ashara cancelled.”
Cat? Ned almost never used people's nicknames other than for family members. “That’s not true! I mean, yeah, it’s true he hadn’t called her in awhile until that happened, but you know he called her for months after it first happened. He only stopped because she told him to back in July! That she’d moved on and he should do the same.”
“And yet he’s called and texted her for the past two days. Ever since he got here,” Ned said, shaking his head. “In spite of her having asked him more than once not to do so.”
“Well maybe that’s because he’s here now. And it’s Christmas! And this was where he gave her the ring and they got engaged and everything was so perfect!” Lyanna’s words came out in a rush, compelled to defend her oldest brother.
“Yes,” Ned said darkly. “Everything was ‘so perfect’ for less than 24 hours, considering that Barbrey Ryswell showed up the very next day waving around that pregnancy test with the plus sign on it.”
Lyanna just looked down at that. It had been pretty awful. Brandon had shouted at Barbrey and she’d shouted back. Their father had gotten in on the shouting as well at some point, and none of them had even looked at Catelyn. Lyanna had, though. The pretty redhead who’d seemed over the moon at the prospect of marrying her brother just the night before had stood there silently watching the spectacle, her usually expressive face as unreadable as Ned could make his. Then she’d quietly taken the ring off her finger, laid it on the very table that held Benjen’s ridiculous puzzle now and walked out of the house without even getting her coat. Lyanna had started to yell for Brandon to go after her, but Ned had grabbed a thick blanket off one of the sofas and followed her. By the time he brought her back, wrapped up in that blanket, but still shivering, Barbrey had gone. Brandon had tried to talk to her, but she hadn’t wanted to listen. Finally, their father had insisted Brandon leave her alone, and Catelyn had packed up her things for Ned to put in the back of his SUV, and they’d driven away. Ned had returned nearly a full day later and went straight up to his bed, apparently having driven eight hours straight to Catelyn’s home and then the eight hours back with almost no rest stops.
“That was a really awful thing to do, Ned,” Lyanna whispered now. “But he’s said over and over that what he did with Barbrey at Halloween was a mistake. And Catelyn never even tried to forgive him.”
At that, Ned walked quickly away from her toward the big fireplace. He rested his hand on the mantel and laid his forehead against it for a moment before saying quietly, almost to himself, “She forgave him more times than he deserved.”
“What? What are you talking about, Ned?”
He raised his head and turned to look at her and the mixture of anger and sadness in her brother’s face seemed as foreign as the angry pop tune singing her other older brother had been doing for two days. “You were just a kid, Lya. Most of the time Brandon and Cat were dating, you were just a kid. Hell, you’re still pretty much a kid.” She started to protest that she was eighteen, but Ned kept speaking. “Barbrey wasn’t the first. She wasn’t even the second or third. And she wouldn’t have been the last. That’s what Cat realized that day. An engagement ring didn’t make a difference. A marriage wouldn’t make a difference.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t a matter of forgiveness, little sister. It was a matter of deciding what she did and didn’t want for her future.”
Lyanna felt kind of like she’d been punched. She’d never known Ned to lie—well, except to occasionally take the blame for something she, Brandon, or Benjen had done. And as much as she hated to admit it, believing that Brandon had cheated on Catelyn more than once over the years wasn’t really that hard to do. “But . . . they weren’t engaged when he . . . when he was with Barbrey,” she said weakly.
“No. But he had the ring almost paid for by then.” Ned shook his head sadly and walked back over to her. “I don’t want you to be angry at Brandon, Lyanna. I truly don’t. He’s . . . He is who he is. And I suppose that in his own way, he did love Catelyn. But it wasn’t the way she needed to be loved. I just want you to not blame Catelyn for Brandon’s unhappiness now. Okay?”
“Okay,” she muttered. Ned still looked somehow distressed for some reason. In a feeble attempt to get him to smile, she added, “But would it kill her to send him a text that just says ‘Merry Christmas’ or something?”
“No!” he said miserably. “She can’t. She hasn’t even gotten any of his messages!” Before Lyanna could even begin to make sense of that, Ned threw back his head and grabbed his hair with both hands exclaiming “Oh God!” with the demeanor of a man can see no reprieve from an impending calamity before going to sit in one of the big arm chairs with his head still in his hands.
“Ned?” she said in alarm. “What’s wrong with you?”
He looked at her and took a deep breath. “Catelyn doesn’t have her phone,” he said flatly. “Her sister threw it in the river three days ago in a snit.” At Lyanna’s stunned look, Ned rolled his eyes. “Lysa’s always been a little bit . . . oh, it doesn’t matter. But Cat’s far more protective of the girl than she deserves, and she told her father she dropped it. He says he’ll buy her a new one, but not until after the holidays when she’s back at school and work, and that she has to send him half her paycheck every two weeks until it’s paid off.”
“Harsh,” Lyanna said. “But how do you know about . . .”
“Hoster Tully believes in responsibility,” Ned interrupted. “Very big on never shirking your duties or obligations—especially to family.”
“No wonder Dad always said he liked Mr. Tully,” Lya laughed. “But I still don’t understand how you know . . .”
“He let her use his phone one time to let me know she’d convinced him to go along with our plans and to tell me what time her train would get in. That’s the last time I spoke with her.” He hit the arm of the chair with his fist. “And Brandon showed up here two fucking hours later! And the Tullys got rid of their land line and I never got Hoster’s number. I couldn’t think of any conceivable reason to disappear from here for a day as soon as Brandon arrived, and even if I had, I probably couldn’t have gotten to Riverrun before she left. She’s not taking the express because she wanted to ‘take her time and actually see some of the countryside’ so she left early yesterday. I thought she might call me from one of the stops, but there are hardly any pay phones anywhere anymore and I guess . . .” He shook his head again. He’d looked away from Lyanna at the very beginning of this inexplicable torrent of words, but he looked up at her again as he said in a voice of desperation, “I can’t even warn her!”
“Warn her?” Lyanna’s head swam as she tried to piece together all of Ned’s words, but they didn’t fit together in any pattern that made sense. The picture was harder to see than the one in Ben’s puzzle. Or maybe she just didn’t want to see it. “Wait . . . Catelyn Tully is coming HERE?”
Ned nodded.
“To Winterfell?”
He nodded again.
“To see . . . you. Not Brandon.”
“Lyanna, she doesn’t even know Brandon’s here!” he snapped. “She wouldn’t have even considered this trip if she did!”
“But why . . .” Lyanna saw the truth of it on her brother’s face. “Oh no. No, Ned. Just . . .”
“Lya, you don’t understand. I . . .”
“Don’t you dare tell me you love her! You aren’t allowed to do that, Ned. She’s your brother’s girl. You just don’t . . . . You just . . . It isn’t right!”
“She doesn’t belong to Brandon,” he said in voice that sounded rather liked steel. “She belongs to herself. And the two of us . . .” His expression softened just a bit. “We didn’t mean for this to happen, Lyanna. It wasn’t planned. And it certainly didn’t happen until well after she and Brandon split. You know she never even looked at another man while they were together.”
Unbidden, the memory of Ned chasing after Catelyn with that blanket when she ran out into the snow came again to Lyanna’s mind. “But you did, didn’t you?” she accused him.
He didn’t flinch. “I liked her, Lya. I’ve always liked her. She’s an amazing person. And I’d have to have been a blind man not to know she was beautiful. But I never looked at her as anything other than my brother’s girlfriend. Not once. Not until she wasn’t.”
“So that’s why you took her home then. Last Christmas.”
“What? Are you insane?” He looked at her as if she had three heads. “Cat was in shock, Lya. The man she loved asked her to marry him, and she’d put all her doubts away and believed in that promise, and she’d been walking on air. And then she finds out he not only cheated on her—again—but that someone else is carrying his child. And when Brandon finally got his head out of his ass enough to actually talk to her, he tried to reassure her that Barbrey would ‘get rid of it’ before he even said he was sorry.” He shook his head. “Cat didn’t even know I was in that car, Lya. I don’t know if she knew much of anything for days, if not weeks. She dropped all her classes that next semester because she couldn’t concentrate. Only stayed in her apartment because of her job. And because she didn’t tell her dad she’d dropped out until she’d already made certain she could re-enroll for summer term.”
Lyanna looked at him. “Sounds like you know a lot about it. Spent a lot of time together, did you?” It sounded more accusatory than she intended at this point. She knew Ned would never hurt Brandon intentionally, and her initial shock and anger were wearing off.
“Not a lot,” he said simply. “But we lived in the same town, went to the same school . . . well, I was still going to school anyway. And I was the only one who knew what happened. She didn’t tell anyone the whole story about their break-up, Lya. Not even her family. Her friends thought she was insane for letting him go. Especially when the flowers and gifts started arriving, and he started texting some of them asking if they’d help him get her to see him again. I became her escape. She could be honest with me. And I never told her what to do.” He laughed. “I think that’s the first thing about me that she fell in love with. She says I’m the first person in her entire life who absolutely refused to tell her what to do.”
Her brother’s face transformed completely when he spoke about Catelyn Tully falling in love with him. The stress of the impending disaster was gone—replaced by a deeply joyful expression that Lyanna hadn’t thought Ned’s features could make.
“You think she loves you then?” she asked. “Really loves YOU? You said you were her escape.” She didn’t want to hurt him, but she wasn’t as much of a kid as Ned thought she was. She’d seen the way Catelyn Tully had looked at Brandon. And Ned deserved better than being some kind of more benign Brandon stand-in.
“She does,” he said quietly. “I didn’t believe it myself for a long time. I mean . . . how could she? But Cat is almost terrifyingly straightforward, Lya. She tells the truth without softening it even if it’s painful—for her or for me. Or for anyone else. And as soon as we realized that something was happening between us . . . we promised each other not to lie to each other.”
Lyanna almost smiled. Ned was probably the most brutally honest person she knew. If his assessment of Catelyn was accurate, the two of them were probably far more compatible than she and Brandon had ever been. But the thought of what would undoubtedly happen upon Catelyn’s arrival at Winterfell kept her from truly feeling good about any of this. “Okay. I get it, Ned. I do. But what on earth possessed you to bring her here of all places?”
“This is my home, Lyanna! I can’t share a life with Cat and this place not be part of it. And you’re my family. I don’t want to hide from you.” Lyanna’s head was spinning from the phrase ‘share a life.’ Ned was moving way too fast here, as far as she was concerned. And if he had any bone-headed ideas about proposing to the girl here at Christmas, he had lost his damn mind. “We told her father together at Thanksgiving that we’re seeing each other. He was . . . concerned. But he’s gradually come around. We wanted to speak with you and Dad and Ben without Brandon present. Because he’ll be . . . because we wanted you to listen to us, to see just us, rather than it all be about Brandon from the outset.”
His words at the beginning of their conversation took on a whole new meaning now. “Well. Brandon showing up for Christmas after all kind of fucked that up, didn’t it?”
“Yep. Remind me to thank ‘Shara for that the next time I see her. She’s always done as she pleased, but damn I was counting on a few days here with you three and Cat and for Brandon to arrive much later all tanned and happy after a few days of warm surf and great sex before I had to talk to him.”
Lyanna grinned evilly. “Great sex, huh? You’d know all about that from what I remember about that weekend at . . .”
“That was a long time ago!” Ned said, narrowing his eyes at her. “And don’t believe everything you hear, little sister.” Then he actually laughed. “When the hell did you get old enough to tease me about my sex life, anyway?”
“When you weren’t looking.” The playful moment between them felt good, but it couldn’t last. “You have to tell him, Ned. When does her train get in?”
“Four o’clock.”
“Four o’clock?! That’s only . . . Ned! What the hell are you thinking just standing around in here with Ben’s stupid puzzle? You’re almost out of time here!”
He swallowed. “I don’t know, Lya. I honestly don’t know what I can do. So I’m just . . . not doing anything.”
“That’s the worst plan I’ve ever heard. I swear, Ned. For a smart guy, you can be awfully thick sometimes. You really need . . .”
“Great news, children!” Rickard Stark’s deep voice came booming from the hallway as he entered the room. On a normal day, Ned and Lyanna would have rolled their eyes at each other over their father’s insistence on addressing them as ‘children’ at the ages of eighteen and almost twenty-two, but this was not a normal day. Lyanna almost dreaded hearing what Father might consider ‘great news’ at the moment.
“People are very excited to hear that Brandon has come to Winterfell this Christmas after all!” Rickard continued as he walked toward them. “Almost everyone I called is thrilled about spending a couple days here. Rhaegar Targaryen and his fiancée are coming. Robert Baratheon’s coming, Lyanna!” He said Robert’s name with a smile in her direction that made Lyanna roll her eyes. “It’s fortunate that their families decided to spend the holidays in the North so they're already nearby. And of course, I invited your local friends—Jory Cassel, the Glover brothers, Jorah Mormont and his sister Maege, Willam Dustin . . .”
“Dad!” Lyanna exclaimed. “Willam Dustin is dating Barbrey Ryswell!”
“Oh,” Rickard said. “I suppose that’s why he declined the invitation. The only other refusals were the Mormonts. Apparently, Jorah is somewhere down south with a girl he’s wooing, and Maege is restricted to home for some reason or other. Jeor wasn’t very informative.”
“Oh god. This isn’t happening,” Ned muttered.
“Oh, but it is!” their father assured him with a big smile on his face. “The main roads have been cleared relatively well after the last snowfall, but it’s still bad coming up here. I’ve told everyone to simply park at the grocery down at the foot of the mountain at five this evening, and you and Brandon can take the two SUVs down and pick them up.
“Today? Five o’clock today?” Ned sputtered with a look of sheer panic.
Lyanna marveled at how oblivious her father was.
“Yes, today! You can have everyone up here by six. I’ve already put the staff on alert. They’ll have dinner at eight. You all can celebrate all you like this evening, and tomorrow you can all ski.” Rickard finally seemed to notice Ned’s expression. “Oh, don’t worry, Eddard. I know Brandon has been glum, but there’s nothing he loves better than a good party unless it’s skiing. This will be precisely the thing to bring him out of his funk. We all understand why this Christmas is difficult for him, so let’s make it as different from last Christmas as possible. He won’t have time to mope about the unfortunate end of his engagement to Miss Tully. He won’t even think of her!”
“Oh god,” Ned repeated. “Please tell me this isn’t happening.”
“Why the devil do you keep saying that, Eddard?” Rickard Stark asked, beginning to look annoyed with his second son.
Ned looked at Lyanna, looked at the ceiling, and then rose from his chair to face their father, pulling himself up to his full height which was still about an inch shorter than Rickard. Brandon was the only one who’d passed him up—he had him by a good two inches. Yet Lyanna thought Ned looked as tall as he ever had as he looked his father in the eye.
“I can’t pick anyone up at the parking lot at the foot of our road at five o’clock, Dad, because I’m picking Catelyn Tully up at the train station at four o’clock.”
Ned’s jaw was set precisely the way their father’s was when he would not be moved, and Lyanna watched the realization dawn on Rickard’s face. Before he could respond, however, their youngest brother’s voice called out excitedly from the doorway.
“Cat’s coming to Brandon’s party? He’ll be so excited! I’m going to go tell him!”
“Stay where you are!” their father barked, freezing Benjen in his tracks.
“Is . . . is it a surprise?” the fourteen year old boy asked hesitantly, sounding much younger than his age. No one liked being barked at by Rickard Stark, and Benjen had fewer years of practice than any of his siblings.
“It certainly is,” Rickard said, looking at Ned.
Ned hadn’t flinched or taken his eyes off their father, and Lyanna was rather impressed.
“Benjen,” Dad asked now, still looking at Ned. “Where is your brother Brandon at the moment?"
Ben rolled his eyes, not that Dad could see it as he never once looked away from poor Ned. “He’s in his room. Listening to that dumb song over and over again.” Ben sang the first line. “Last Christmas I gave you my heart . . .” and rolled his eyes again. “It’s so dumb. You’d think he’d be bored of it by now.”
“Yes. Why don’t you go tell him several of his friends are coming over for a dinner party this evening? That should get him to stop. Tell him I said to take a shower now. And say nothing at all about Catelyn Tully."
“Yes, Father,” Benjen said. He looked from their father to Ned and then looked questioningly at Lyanna. The kid wasn’t stupid. He knew something was up. She mouthed ‘go’ at him and then nodded slightly and winked to let him know she’d fill him in later. Might as well. It’s not like any of this would be a secret much longer.
Once he scampered off back down the hall, their father spoke again. “In my office, Eddard. Now.” Then he turned to Lyanna. “Did you know of this?”
For about the past fifteen minutes. But she thought of all the times Ned had stood beside her accepting part of the blame for crimes of which he was entirely innocent. She wouldn’t let him do this alone. “Yes,” she said simply.
“In my office,” he said, turning on his heel and leaving her to follow him.
Ned had walked away as soon as their father had directed him to go, and he looked at her in some surprise when he saw her enter the office behind Dad.
“Sit,” their father directed them as he himself sat in the big chair behind his desk. Both of them dropped into chairs facing him, and Lyanna wondered if she was the only one who felt ten years old.
This is ridiculous! We are both legal adults now. Ned’s only got one semester left of college! It was ridiculous for their father to treat them the same way he had when they truly were children. When she looked at her brother, though, he did not look remotely like a child.
Before Rickard could speak again, Ned said, “I apologize for not telling you that Catelyn was coming today, Father. We wished to tell all of you about the two of us without Brandon present, and when he announced he wouldn’t be home for Christmas, it seemed a good opportunity. I never intended to hurt Brandon or put Catelyn in an uncomfortable position.”
Rickard looked between the two of them. “All of us? Lyanna informs me she knew about this.”
Lyanna knew she didn’t imagine the slight smile that tugged at Ned’s lips. “Well, she found out a few moments before you did. But she wasn’t a part of it. This was entirely my idea.”
Rickard snorted and looked back to Lyanna. “You never said anything like that when he sat here taking your punishments.”
“I . . . I . . .”
Rickard snorted once more, and Lyanna realized to her great shock that he was trying to keep from laughing.
“So tell me, son. When did this become a thing? You and Catelyn Tully? I know you too well to think it started when she was engaged to your brother.”
Ned apparently hadn’t realized that their father wasn’t as angry as he wanted them to believe as he replied, “Well, she was only engaged to Brandon for about eighteen hours so there wasn’t really a large window of opportunity there, but if you mean were we involved at all while the two of them dated, the answer is of course not.”
Lyanna had to fight back a laugh then. Ned never sassed their father. Never. He must have it really bad for Catelyn Tully.
“So when?” Dad asked again.
“We’ve been dating since the first of September,” Ned answered without hesitation. “As to the exact moment when our feelings for each other changed . . . I couldn’t really say. It sort of happened over time. I don’t know how else to explain it.” He shrugged. “We were friends, Dad. And then we were more. I don’t know exactly what the in-between was or how long it lasted, but I do know what we are now. We love each other.”
Rickard nodded. “Well, she’s a lovely girl, Ned. I’m happy for you.”
The stunned expression on Ned’s face then caused Lyanna to collapse into laughter. “You’re not gonna die, Ned,” she grinned, bumping him with her shoulder. “At least not until Brandon finds out.”
That erased the smile which had just begun to appear on Ned’s face and earned her a frown from her father. “Yes,” Rickard said. “Brandon will not react well to this at all. Why the devil did you not call the girl and tell her not to come? And hasn’t Brandon been calling her since his arrival? How can she not know he’s here?”
As Ned explained the whole cell phone situation, Lyanna thought about her oldest brother. She honestly didn’t know how he would react. Before the past couple days, she’d have predicted he’d blow up, attempt to beat the crap out of Ned, call Catelyn names, and then go hit on the best looking girl he could find in a thirty mile radius. But whatever Ned thought about Bran’s behavior, it WAS different. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for marriage. Maybe he had been completely prepared to bang his blues away with Ashara Dayne on a beach somewhere, but he’d never been with any girl as long as he had Catelyn Tully. He’d never asked anybody else to marry him, and he’d never mooned over any ex-girlfriend a week after parting ways—much less for a year—except for Catelyn Tully. She honestly had no idea what he’d do when Ned told him.
“Absolutely not,” she heard her father say. She’d apparently missed a bit of the conversation.
“Dad! I’m not gonna just show up with her and say, ‘Surprise, Brandon! Look who I’m dating now!’ I won’t do that to Bran, and I sure as hell won’t do it to Cat.”
Rickard twisted his mouth. “Well, considering you’ve known about this for two days and haven’t told him yet, I’d say your resolve is somewhat lacking.”
Ned bristled, but their father held up his hands. “And I don’t blame you, son. Your brother is not going to take this well. I don’t know how he’ll be with either of you these next several days, but I do know that when he first hears of it, he’ll strike out. He’ll say things he’ll regret, things he doesn’t truly mean. But you won’t be able to forget them, Eddard.”
Nobody called her brother Eddard except their father. And even he usually called him Ned except when he was being very serious. He’d used Eddard several times since interrupting them in the great room. “I realize that, Father,” Ned replied. They only called him that when being reprimanded, commanded to do something, or when being very serious. Lyanna watched her brother carefully. “I think that’s why I’ve been dragging my feet. I don’t want to hurt Bran. I don’t! But even more, I don’t want to resent him. I don’t want to cross a line we can’t cross back. I . . . I’m afraid of that happening.”
“That’s why you won’t tell him.”
“He has to be told! Regardless of what happens. He deserves to hear it from me.”
“He does have to be told. But whatever he deserves, he’s going to hear it from me.”
“What?” Ned and Lyanna said at the same time.
“Lyanna, this doesn’t truly concern you,” Rickard said. “I’ll thank you to keep quiet.”
“Dad, this is my responsibility, and I’ll . . .” Ned started.
“Son, you and Brandon are both my responsibility. And I happen to care more about your relationship than any sense of responsibility you have right now. I’ll tell him, and I’ll stand there while he says whatever he needs to say. And with luck, he’ll have gotten the worst of it out by the time you arrive here with Miss Tully. I can make no promises he’ll be on his best behavior, but I am your father. I’ll not allow him to be on his worst.”
Lyanna could plainly see guilt and relief warring in Ned’s eyes.
“Get out of here, Ned,” his father said. I’ll call you when it’s safe to return.”
“And go where? It’s not even noon, and I don’t have to be at the train station until four.”
“Go eat some terrible fast food lunch. Go window shopping. I don’t care. Just get out of here. And once you do pick up your young lady, take your time coming home. All right?”
“Yes, Father,” Ned said, and he pushed back his chair and rose quickly to walk toward the door. Then he stopped, turning back to look at Rickard. “Thanks, Dad.” Lyanna was watching her father acknowledge that with a smile when her brother said, “You, too, Lya.” She turned back to face him, and he grinned at her. “Thanks, little sister.”
“You wouldn't even let me take any of the heat! But you’re welcome. Now go on.”
As soon as he was gone, she turned toward her father. “What about this party of yours, Dad? If I counted correctly, six people will be showing up for a ride at five o’clock tonight. Ned won’t be here and Brandon probably won’t be in any state to play chauffeur. You going to cancel?”
“Hell no! The Expedition seats eight and there will only be seven including you. It’ll be tight with bags, but it’s got the ski rack on top. You can fit everybody in that one.”
“Me?”
“Yes, Lyanna. You are now on guest pick-up duty. A house full of people may be the one thing that keeps your oldest brother from showing his ass about this situation.”
“Or make it a thousand times worse if he does.”
“That’s a risk we shall have to take, I’m afraid. Now, go collect Benjen and go snowmobiling or something. I’m going to have a chat with Brandon.”
Lyanna nodded. She hadn’t really planned on snowmobiling today, but they were fast and loud. With luck, she and Ben could get far enough away to keep from hearing the explosion that was about to go off. And hopefully, the rest of the holiday would be no worse than awkward. She exhaled as she rose from her seat to search for her younger brother. One thing she knew for certain. It sure as hell wouldn’t be boring.