As she stood in the warmest room of all Winterfell, the Queen traced her fingers over the interlaced steel all the way up where the two wolf heads met, forming the crown, the same room that once belonged to her parents. She remembered how her mother told her the secret behind the source of heat. Hot stream water ran only through these four walls, assisting the heating process of most of the castle. She smiled at the thought that even after seeing dragons and dead people with pale blue eyes walking, she still remembered such meaningless details. Would my parents be proud of me if they could see me now? she wondered.
After she lowered the crown over her head, Sansa Stark head over to the Great Hall of Winterfell where the wildling prisoners awaited her. The northman, acting on her command, had been successful in preventing further villages near the Deadfort from being sacked by the wildlings. She had hoped for more survivors but the four wildling prisoners will do. They could carry her message just as well. She approached them “Where are the rest of you?” Her men informed her that they faced only about thirty of them and Sansa knew there were more. Far more. She had seen them all during the Long Night after all.
Three men and a woman, or so she thought. It was hard to tell from all the mud and blood and torn clothes that covered them. She is a wildling, she told herself yet felt uneasy every time she imagined what her northman did to that poor woman. Woman? She looked no older than Sansa, so it was hard to blame her when she spat in the Queen’s face. The guards seized her and one of them shoved the dull edge of his spear into her stomach causing her to bend forward and drop to her knees. One of the three men charged towards the guard with the spear but another guard grabbed him, pushing him to his knees and pressing his sharp cold dagger against the wildling’s throat. “Enough!” yelled the Queen, having received the sign she was looking for all along. Whipping her cheek with the cloth her handmaid handed her, she spoke “I will ask only once more, where are the rest of the wildlings? Where will you attack next?” she asked having little hopes of getting her question answered.
The largest men of the three smiled at her wickedly “Or what? We wouldn’t tell you even if we knew, your Grace.” He said sarcastically and let out a loud laughter that echoed through the long hall as the other three wildings joined in. Sansa turned her back to them and pointed at the wildling with the dagger against his throat.
“Leave only him, take the others.” When his friends were taken away, the fear in the young man’s eyes grew and Sansa noticed. Good, she thought. Her guess about the weakest link appeared to have been right. “You care for her, don’t you? You jumped to defend her.” she implied, analyzing his face. He met her eyes with his big blue ones but did not answer. Even covered with blood and mud, Sansa could tell, he was a handsome young man. The way his locks of light-brown curly hair fell in front of his eyes reminded her of Ser Loras. She continued “You will go back to your people, you will tell them what happened here, you will tell Tormund his Queen invites…”
“You are not our Queen!” The young man hissed.
Young and green. Sansa continued, ignoring him “...his Queen invites him to join her for a supper, so we may settle this in a peaceful manner, avoiding unnecessary deaths on both sides. Tell him this, bring him to me and I will release your friends.”
“And if I don’t?”
The Queen raised her eyebrows “...you don’t and you never see her again.”
When have I become so cold? she thought, leaning over the large window, watching the young wildling march away. If he refused to listen, would I have been able to execute him? She thanked the Gods she didn’t have to find out the answer. She had always known, to some extent, that tough decisions came along with being the person in charge. At least she often heard her father say so. However, she never imagined that making those tough decisions also came at a prize of cruelty, of changing oneself. Is this what happened to the Dragon Queen? she wondered. Had Daenerys not been a southern ruler her brother bowed to, would she have liked her when they first met? She couldn’t answer that but one thing was certain, even though she would never admit it out loud, she envied the mother of dragons. Envied her for being able to just fly away any time she wanted to. I would fly away right now.
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