296 AC.
Two years before Eddard Stark would ride south to King’s Landing and take up the hand of the King.
The outline of Winterfell emerged from the morning mist, and Aven straightened in his saddle.
He had seen this castle before.
On a screen.
In fragments of late-night episodes, one after another.
But the distance between a screen and reality was greater than the distance from Westeros to Essos.
Gray granite walls rose sheer from the frozen earth, growing out of the permafrost like extensions of the mountains themselves, like the bones of the land made visible.
Two curtain walls, inner and outer, with a moat between them so dark and deep the bottom was invisible.
Tower spires jabbed at the leaden sky above, and banners snapped in the wind, the direwolf, running, exactly as Aven remembered it.
He rode among the ten Karhold knights escorting him.
Hooves clattered over the wooden bridge, the sound hollow beneath them.
The gate passage ran deep; after passing through two portcullises, the view opened wide.
On the training yard, someone was sparring.
Iron rang crisp and fast, threaded through with soldiers’ shouts and the scrape of armor.
A boy with dark brown hair was fencing an opponent about his own age, swordwork sharp, footwork solid, every strike carrying that particular ferocity native to northmen.
Robb Stark.
Aven recognized him at a glance.
Fifteen, but already built like a half-grown wolf pup, his frame had broadened, his muscles still filling out, his movements carrying the brashness and easy confidence of a boy who had never doubted himself.
On the steps nearby sat a girl with the same dark hair, a book spread open on her lap.
Her eyes kept lifting from the pages to track Robb as he trained.
Sansa Stark, twelve years old.
Her posture was so perfectly upright it might have been measured with a ruler, her skirt laid across the stone steps without a single crease out of place.
Farther off, at the edge of the archery range, a smaller girl was drawing a longbow nearly as tall as she was.
The arrow left the string with a sharp, short hiss and struck just outside the bullseye.
She cursed, not loudly, but the defiance in her voice carried clear across the yard.
Arya Stark.
Nine years old.
Hair a mess.
Sleeves rolled to the elbows, her arms marked with a few shallow scrapes.
And an even younger boy was chasing a cat along the base of the wall.
Bran Stark, seven, his knees still scuffed from climbing trees.
Aven’s gaze moved over all of them, and something strange settled in his chest.
He knew these people.
Not from real life, from a story.
And in that story, most of them would die.
Robb would be shot through with crossbow bolts at the Red Wedding.
Arya would witness all of it and become a blade of vengeance.
Sansa would be passed from tyrant to tyrant with no end in sight.
Bran would fall from a castle wall and become the Three-Eyed Raven.
And Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell, Warden of the North, would be beheaded in King’s Landing.
His own sword.
His own justice.
His own mercy.
All of it would deliver him to the executioner’s block.
Aven tightened his grip on the reins and pushed those images back down into the dark.
A servant ran over to take his horse.
He swung down from the saddle, his boots hitting Winterfell’s stone ground with a dull thud.
“Aven Karstark of Karhold,” the captain of his escort announced to the steward coming out to meet them.
“Sent by order of Lord Rickard Karstark, to serve as squire to Lord Eddard.”
Steward Vayon Poole nodded and gestured for Aven to follow.
As they crossed the training yard, Robb paused his sparring and glanced their way.
Curious, but no hostility in it, Karhold and Winterfell had always been close, and a Karstark would not be treated as a stranger here.
Aven followed Vayon Poole through corridor after corridor.
Winterfell was far larger than Karhold, and far older.
The stone was deep gray, dry moss threading the cracks, and hangings along the walls recorded 8,000 years of Stark history, Brandon the Builder, the Kings in the North, Torrhen the King Who Knelt, every name like a blade-scar cut into stone.
Vayon Poole stopped before an oaken door and knocked three times.
“Enter.”
The voice from inside was low and steady, carrying the kind of weight that could quiet a room without ever needing to raise itself.
Aven pushed the door open.
The study was not large, but it held more warmth and life than Rickard’s ever had.
The fire in the hearth burned hot, the crack and pop of splitting wood filling every corner along with the heat.
Bookshelves were crammed with scrolls and tomes, the lettering on some spines worn past reading.
A massive oak desk dominated the center of the room, its surface covered with letters and maps.
On a weapon stand beside it rested a Valyrian steel greatsword.
Ice.
Eddard Stark sat behind the desk.
He was shorter than Aven had imagined.
But that presence — that particular northern quality, silent and hard as granite — hit harder than any screen image ever could.
His face was lean, his cheekbones high, his gray eyes exactly like Arya’s.
Not ordinary gray.
The gray of a northern winter, cold and deep, like the sky in the hour before a blizzard.
His beard was trimmed short.
Brown hair fell to his shoulders, and a few strands of gray had already crept into his temples.
He was holding a letter, its wax seal already broken.
Rickard’s letter.
It had arrived a full day ahead of Aven.
Aven stopped at the doorway and did not step forward.
He waited for Eddard Stark to speak first.
Eddard raised his head.
His gray eyes settled on Aven, and the scrutiny in them was nothing like Rickard’s.
Rickard’s scrutiny was a blade.
Eddard’s was a balance scale.
He was weighing you, not cutting you.
“Aven Karstark.” Eddard set the letter on the desk, his fingers resting on its edge.
“Your father has told me everything.”
His tone was flat.
No emotion showing on the surface.
Aven stayed where he was and waited.
“Arnolf Karstark.” When Eddard said the name, his brow tightened slightly, as if he’d tasted something bitter.
“Your own uncle.
You personally condemned him to take the black and go to the Wall.”
Eddard leaned back in his chair.
His gaze never left Aven’s face.
The firelight fell across his profile, casting one half in warm tones and leaving the other in shadow.
Silence.
Then Eddard Stark did something Aven had not anticipated.
He smiled.
Brief, only 2 seconds, but it was enough to transform his entire face from granite into something living.
“Your father spent three full pages cursing you in that letter,” Eddard said, tapping the paper with his finger.
“He said you acted without authority.
Said you have no understanding of proper conduct.
Said your head is full of schemes and plots.
Said he sent you to Winterfell so you could learn some ‘mercy.'”
He paused.
“But do you know how he opened it?”
Aven didn’t guess.
“He wrote — ‘Lord Eddard, my third son killed my brother.
I do not know whether to be proud of him, or to send him to the Wall.'”
Eddard picked up the letter, glanced at it once, and set it back down.
His gaze returned to Aven, and something in it had softened.
“I have known your father for thirty years,” Eddard said.
“He has never been a man who hesitates.
Anything that can make him hesitate is no simple matter.”
He stood, walked around the desk, and stopped in front of Aven.
Closer than Rickard had ever stood, one step away.
Aven could smell leather and woodsmoke on him, and beneath that, a faint trace of rust from the sword Ice resting against the wall.
“Tell me,” Eddard said, his gray eyes level with Aven’s gray-blue ones.
“Why did you kill him?”
The same question Rickard had asked.
But the weight behind it was entirely different.
Rickard’s why had been an interrogation, by what right?
Eddard’s why was something else.
I want to understand you.
Aven was quiet for 2 seconds.
“He was selling slaves,” Aven said.
“The North does not keep slaves.
That is a rule the Starks have held for 8,000 years.”
Eddard’s expression didn’t change.
But his stance shifted, his weight moved back half an inch, as if something had nudged him.
“He bribed Father’s servants, sold off family assets, and secretly stockpiled weapons,” Aven continued, his voice steady, each word clear.
“If I had waited for Father to return before acting, he would have caught wind of it.
Destroyed the evidence.
Gone back to hiding in Karhold’s shadows.
And the next time he moved, it might have been my father who died.
Or my brothers.”
He held Eddard’s gaze.
“I could not wait.”
Hesitation only leads to defeat.
Decisiveness only leads forward.
➤ Next: Main Branch and Cadet Branch