A Vow Without Honor

The Return

"Because your bloody dreams told you?" the man scoffed, gripping his hilt and picking up his pace as if he could leave her behind. "I dream of killing my brother every night, doesn't make him any less alive."

"It wasn't a dream! Nymeria saw it, and so did I!"

The Hound stopped so suddenly, Arya nearly ran into him. He turned and looked straight down at her.

"Are you telling me you're a bloody skinchanger? Is that it?" he asked, and Arya – so stunned by the suddenness of it – found herself unable to answer. "Life isn't a bloody story your septa told you, girl. Thought you'd learned that by now. Walder Frey cut your mother to ribbons. She's dead."

He turned away again, the finality in his tone warning that her next outburst would end with a fist to her face; he'd already warned once about having no issues carrying her unconscious.

Arya sighed, and turned to Gendry, who had been listening quietly all the while. He looked nervous when her gaze landed on him, like he wasn't ready to answer anything she was about to say.

"You believe me, don't you?"

Gendry sighed, scratching the back of his head. His hair was getting too long for him. "I believe that you think it's real, whatever you saw, but people don't come back from the dead."

"Beric Dondarrion did."

"And do you think that's right? Do you think he should have?" Gendry asked, looking paler as he thought back to the night they witnessed the impossible. "What did you mother look like in your dream...in...whatever it was you had?"

Arya thought on it long and hard. The idea was still new to her, being able to see through Nymeria's eyes. She had done it before, but had never thought much on it, only that it seemed like a wonderful coincidence, but late at night, when she was nearly asleep and fully relaxed, she felt as though she could simply shed her skin like an old set of clothes and put on a new ones, only in the form of her direwolf.

The images and other senses were so clear when she was in them, but her memory of the moments grew foggy over time, more so than her human memories. Still, what she saw last night was etched in her mind's eye forever.

"She was pale, cold, not like herself," she replied, closing her eyes to remember. "There was a deep gash in her throat."

Gendry nodded slowly. "Look, I'm not going to question you, I know better than that. We've seen strange things, and you of all people would be able to do something like...whatever that is. But do you really think your mother should live like that? That doesn't sound like a good life."

"What does it matter? She's alive."

"I wouldn't want to live that way. I'd rather die," Gendry countered, following the Hound. "And I'd hope that anyone who might care for me would realize that."

Arya sighed, turning in the direction she knew Nymeria to be. She'd never make it on her own; she knew that much.

"Not today," she mumbled, turning to follow her companions.

Myra

The day Myra Stark returned to King's Landing was much like the day she left it: bright and clear and filled with the promise of something that would never come to be. She had known then that things would go awry, but she could have never predicted how rapidly or violently. Who expects to lose everything in the blink of an eye?

She did now.

Watching that vile city in the foreground, its beautiful façade cracked and rotting in her eyes, Myra could feel a fear building inside of her that had been notably absent the first time she arrived. It nestled beneath her heart, a sensation prodding her now and again, warning her. One wrong move, one word out of place, and she would lose everything that was left. Her men, her sister...