#dw.starter

Oaths of fealty to the king were the highest oaths any knight—lord—might make, and Hugo had never thought he would be making them. He hadn't dreamt of the White Cloak, that illustrious symbol of ultimate honour and unrivalled skill, in years, not since his mother had first despaired so openly at the ambition that he had dropped it entirely, and so he had never thought that unless there was some sort of catastrophic war that needed every knight of the Seven Kingdoms to rally together, Hugo would have occasion to swear his oaths to the king. How wrong he had been!

Lord Arryn had asked that he offer his own oaths, as the heir to the Vale right after his own oaths. Hugo had not stumbled—more than once—but he did not think it mattered terribly as the king was about seven and trying his damnedest not to yawn. But just because the king was but a child hardly meant *his* oath was less true! It was near unimaginable—him! If his mother could see him now... Rather lucky, all told, he did not attempt a White Cloak after all.

He turned on the spot at the sound of footsteps approaching, exiting the great hall, and dipped into a bow for the newcomer. "Needed some fresh air?" he asked. "Me as well. I didn't think I would be nervous—but it's quite something, isn't it, standing in front of everybody and swearing your loyalty? Haven't felt so tense since the day I was knighted."

his shoulders sag like rotted wooden poles holding up the weight of his snowy white cloak. it is unbecoming of a kingsguard—no, the lord commander of the kingsguard—to be out and about with a bent spine. but it’s inevitable, what with all this gravity and reality and duty. he figures it’s fine. night is here and no one’s nearby, not in this corner of the sprawling garden, behind these bushes, far from any eyes. he takes a break. his first breath of the day. pinches his nose, rubs his eyes. he’s meant to rest, see his chambers for the first time since swinging down from his horse at the dun fort’s front steps, but his head is splitting beneath his intricate white enameled helm.

everyone packed like sardines for miles, it was stupid or arrogant or optimistic to think he’d found the one empty place in all of duskendale. he lifts the helm free—cool air to his temples like a lover’s kiss. jael exhales and leans back, letting the stone wall take all the ache. hunk of head-shaped metal resting on his knee. the heavy wind a soft whisper between silver-streaked strands of overgrown black hair brushing his shoulders… his eyes pry open. lips curling, thin as moonlight.

“not much for crowds?”

The vigil did not offer the princess the reprieve she had hoped for. The Sept, almost as crowded as the Dun Fort on the day of the coronation, had her nearly out of breath, inhaling the fumes of the incense and shrinking away from the tiny, little flames of all the candles lit along the altars. And the weeping, seven help her. The echoes of the cries along the walls of the Sept still ring in her ears minutes later, as she stands just outside the building, a guard by her side in the streets of Duskendale.

the heart tree was not a weirwood. it was to be expected. the further south of the neck, the fewer weirwoods there were. it was strange, being in a place your gods could not see you. he pressed his hand along the strength of the oak heart tree, and he sighed. there were days he yearned for his home in the dreadfort. cold though it had been, it was the only place he had known before traveling to king's landing to pledge himself to the king.

the heart tree, the weirwood, in the dreadfort matched its name. there was no comfort in the thing, but rhys had spent hours of his childhood speaking to the bone white tree. he would tell it of his father and of his step mother. he would talk to it about leah too, even after he was grown. that tree knew almost everything about him. he had not spoken to a true weirwood in ... years. and it felt wrong to speak to an oak tree. there was power in living wood; the crannogmen said that often when he would speak to them during the winters when he and his family would make the trek to winterfell.

the godswood in winterfell was not like his at the dreadfort. it knew little about him.

a snap of a twig brings him out of his reverie, and he turns to face the newest addition to the garden.

The Sept at Duskendale was little like the one on Dragonstone, which she had grown too familiar with over the past moon, but it smelled and sounded the same. The chanting Septon, the metallic swing of his thurible and the scent of his incense, which gathered thick enough in the air she might choke on it. It put her in mind of the fire. Everything put her in mind of the fire. Wildfire would not smell as sweet, she reminded herself, as she knelt before the Father's altar, tall black candle in hand. She had not had the head for prayers in days; all that ran through her mind was a wordless plea for something that she hoped the Gods understood, because she did not know how to give it words.

She went from one to the next, stopping before none but the Stranger, with whom she spent a few more minutes. There were songs enough about the Mother's mercy and the Father's judgement, but of the Stranger it was only said that the Smith had forged their scythe, sharp enough it would make no mark and never miss. That was a sort of mercy as well, perhaps. She did not know what it meant to pray for it when the deed was done.

When Cyrenna rose again to turn for the makeshift altar that had been erected at the heart of the Sept, she saw somebody standing there already, watching the few flowers that had already been offered. She offered a smile, somewhat flat; but she was rather poor at offering truer ones of late. "Do you think they can hear our prayers?" she asked softly. "Not the Gods. The ones we light these candles for."

The air is as heavy as the raindrops that fall, and yet Argella still stands with the door to the balcony open. Most were asleep, either in warm beds or makeshift pallets on the floor. And yet, she could not sleep, mind refusing to rest. So, she had stalked the halls, now at the most bare they had been since the feast had both begun and ended. She reached out a hand into the rain, allowing the falling water to pound against the delicate bone within. She sighed, then, an almost wistful thing. "Strange, the things that make you miss home." Argella speaks to the silence, staring in fascination at her now drenched hand, at the rivulets of water that snake down to her elbow. "My mother used to always speak of how she could barely keep me indoors when a storm came to Felwood. I loved nothing more than running and dancing in the rain, as if I were Jenny of Oldstones."