𝙨𝙖𝙣𝙨𝙖 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙠 + 𝙠𝙖𝙙𝙚 𝙨𝙣𝙤𝙬

𝙨𝙖𝙣𝙨𝙖 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙠 + 𝙠𝙖𝙙𝙚 𝙨𝙣𝙤𝙬

I’m dying, he realized. And Gods but it was a peaceful thought. He’d been born half a corpse, and all his life he’d spent limping towards this conclusion.

He closed his eyes against a shuddering breath. And there was his mistake. For behind his eyes, even now as his blood pooled beneath him in the snow, he still saw her.

Sansa.

Her hair like autumn, her winter eyes . . . I will never see her spring. Never see her blossom and bloom and burst forth from the dark and cold. Petals unfurling, hair uncurling as it cascades down her back—

He forced his eyes open. Even now he didn’t dare to dream of her. And what a waste of all the beauty he’d hoarded away in his mind. A thousand tender images he never dare retrieve. Of the long slope of her neck, a loose strand of hair looping the curve of her ear, the delicate arch of her fingers as she held a quill.

His breath fogged the air in front of him and he felt his eyes water as though it were smoke.

Sansa, brave Sansa. Oh he wanted to tell her. Needed to tell her.

I’m dying, he thought again, but it was not half so peaceful now. A sudden desperation was taking hold—the fervor of a deadman. But without think on his madness, with a cry and a grunt, he pushed himself onto his side, and then onto his front, and with his one good hand he began clawing at the frozen earth and started to crawl.

He pulled himself across the yard, through the massacre, and over the scores of bodies. There was no much blood it was hard to know just how much of it was his. He was not strong, not fast or even very alive, and his arm and leg were screaming for reprieve as he hauled himself towards the crypts.

He was dying, and she would never know. For, fool that he was, he had never told her. And he could not abide his own failings. He had to tell her, all of it, every last word. He had to . . .

But then he remembered. Locked. The crypts are locked. There would be no way in.

And death was coming, headlong and undeterred by his passions. His arm burned while the rest of him chilled, and Kade felt the coolness of the ground rush up to meet him. He had to tell her, but that darkest darkness was wrapping around him. Oh but she knows.