Mara’s POV
Mara did not breathe properly until the heavy oak door had clicked shut, severing the connection between her and the boy inside.
Even then, she stayed where she was for a moment, one hand still near the latch, listening.
From within the room came the faint scratch of his quill moving over paper.
Scratch.
Pause.
Then scratch again.
It was such a small sound, yet it made the hairs along her arms rise.
Robb Stark was nine years old.
She reminded herself of that often, as if the number might protect her.
Nine.
He was just a boy.
A lord’s son.
A child who should have been thinking of wooden swords, scraped knees, snowballs, and whether his mother would catch him running through the halls.
Robb was none of those things, only pretending to be somewhat childish but never stupid or naive; he was a two-faced liar, a pretender, and Mara found herself trapped in the orbit of this said boy who seemed incapable of a single accidental gesture.
It was an unnatural inversion of the world, and it bred a peculiar, acidic resentment in her, one tangled so tightly with terror she couldn’t tell where the anger ended and the trembling began.
She had survived the cutthroat world of the north and her village, even Winterfell’s lower halls, through sharp eyes and quick hands.
She was a girl from nothing, someone who had been forced to learn early.
Yet all that hard-won wisdom had been dismantled by a child who didn’t even reach her shoulder, much less grew a strand of hair on his balls.
In her weaker moments, she tried to remind herself how absurd it was.
She was a grown woman; she should not have feared the whims of a child.
But it felt like she made a deal with a devil, and there was no turning back now.
The vigilance required to survive his service was draining the life out of her.
It had been barely a week and a half since he had caught her, yet the days felt like months, and the other part of him that no one else saw, a part that he only hid in the confines of his room, the change in personality and cold calm, the first time she saw it, she found herself “reading” the air the moment she stepped into his presence, her skin prickling as she observed him, the motion of his hands, head, and his carefully chosen words.
She watched the faint, haunting curve of that soft little smile.
With another lordling, a long silence might have meant boredom or a wandering mind.
With Robb Stark, silence was just a moment of peace; it was a moment of conciliation.
He often said that he preferred the silence of his company as it brought him…clarity.
Big words were his normal habit even with family, though he often spoke more casually around them.
Her value was not sentimental.
It was purely functional.
There wasn’t any necessarily warm bond to be found per se, no innocent fondness between a highborn child and a favored attendant that might shield her from consequence.
In his eyes, she was a tool, and to her, Robb was also a means to an end.
That knowledge planted a frantic, clawing need inside her to remain necessary.
She felt compelled to prove herself again and again, even as every task he set drew her deeper into the very web she feared.
She was building her own cage, bar by silver bar.
His secrets had become a noose around her throat, but she would rather hang in a palace than hang naked in the woods.
Private service had pulled back the curtain, showing her the shadow beneath the Stark household’s respectable face.
She knew things now—ugly, heavy things— that would harm her the moment she faltered.
Worse, she was utterly alone in the knowing.
Just as Robb wanted it to be.
At times, she found herself wishing he would fail.
Just once.
She wanted to see the boy make a mistake, trip over a rug, spill his ink, or burst into tears, anything to prove that flesh and age still mattered.
She wanted proof that he was not some cold creature old Nan spoke of, wearing Robb Stark’s face like borrowed clothes.
And yet, the thought terrified her.
Because if he fell, she would be the one crushed beneath the stones of his collapse.
That was the cruelest part of the snare.
Robb was not merely the source of her danger; he was the only barrier between her being sent back to the kitchens and her benefactor, her true employer.
Fear bound her to him, but so did a hollow, gnawing hunger of being more.
For a girl who had spent years trapped in the misery of Northern service, waking in the freezing dark to light fires, scrubbing stone until her hands cracked and bled, Robb Stark was her escape from the harsher life.
The coin he gave her was real.
The quiet elevation, the feeling of being seen, the promise of something more than a life of smoke and grease—all of it mattered.
She feared his schemes, yes.
She feared the dark work unfolding in Winter Town and the risks he took with her life, but life was all about risk; she wasn’t new to it, but stealing was far different from what she was doing now.
She was indeed well compensated, but money alone was just a means to the comfort she always sought.
And Robb had stripped that thought of comfort from her quickly enough.
He had told her there were others.
Others who served, not because they were trapped, but because they were loyal.
Whether that was a lie meant to keep her obedient or a terrifying truth, she didn’t know.
She didn’t dare test it.
The threat was enough.
Invisible eyes and unseen hands watching her without her notice were already scary.
Consequences wait in the dark should she ever mistake his youth for weakness or should she reveal what she knew to those she should not.
And then there was the name.
Sidious.
Nothing chilled her spine quite like the way Robb spoke it, calmly, clinically, as though the name belonged not to a man, but to a presence that could reach through her flesh itself.
Sidious was the mask behind the messages and the coin.
He was the bridge between the young lord and the design curling around the brothel.
Mara couldn’t decide which possibility was worse: that Sidious was the true power behind the boy’s conspiracies or that he was merely a partner or servant in them.
When Robb spoke of “new management,” she could only assume this shadow man was the one meant to claim the prize once Erena was dead.
She reached a turn in the passage and slowed near a narrow window.
Below, Winterfell carried on as it always had.
Smoke rose from the chimneys.
Men were hauling bundles of wood; guards moved back and forth.
A girl hurried over the stones with a basket pressed to her hip, and a guard stamped his feet against the cold, laughing at a joke.
Everything looked so ordinary, so peaceful and unaware of the things that were going on in this castle.
Mara quickened her steps toward the kitchens.
Bread and cheese.
That was all she had to fetch.
Something simple.
Something ordinary.
Something a normal boy might ask for.
The thought nearly made her laugh, but the sound died in her throat.
She only walked faster, her hands warm and her heart uneasy, already wondering what Lord Robb Stark would ask of her next.
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