A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3)

by George R.R. Martin

“You promised him vengeance as well.” “I promised him justice.” “Call it what you will. It still comes down to blood.”

How could he have forgotten? The Mother was merciful indeed.

Was she an enemy too, or only a dangerous friend?

In the world as I have seen it, no man grows rich by kindness.

Let me go now. For our friendship, wish me luck and let me go.”

“GO. Or stay, better, but if you are going, go.” He went.

How could you be so … so very … young.

They are children, Sansa thought. They are silly little girls, even Elinor. They’ve never seen a battle, they’ve never seen a man die, they know nothing. Their dreams were full of songs and stories, the way hers had been before Joffrey cut her father’s head off. Sansa pitied them. Sansa envied them.

A man grows lonely in the dark, and hungers for the sound of a human voice.

Maybe pretending is how you get brave, I don’t know.

“Nothing will happen to you. Nothing. I could not stand it. They took Ned, and your sweet brothers. Sansa is married, Arya is lost, my father’s dead … if anything befell you, I would go mad, Robb. You are all I have left. You are all the north has left.” “I am not dead yet, Mother.” Suddenly Catelyn was full of dread. “Wars need not be fought until the last drop of blood.” Even she could hear the desperation in her voice. “You would not be the first king to bend the knee, nor even the first Stark.” His mouth tightened. “No. Never.”

If you only knew … that was a hard choosing. My blood or my liege. My brother or my king.”

I chose Robert, did I not? When that hard day came. I chose blood over honor.”

Arya felt tears well in her eyes. Thoros used a lot of words, but all they meant was no, that much she understood.

A dozen quips came to mind, each crueler than the one before, but Jaime only shrugged. “I dreamed of you,” he said.

“Mother.” There was a sharpness in Robb’s tone. “You forget. My father had four sons.”

“Jon would never harm a son of mine.” “No more than Theon Greyjoy would harm Bran or Rickon?” Grey Wind leapt up atop King Tristifer’s crypt, his teeth bared. Robb’s own face was cold. “That is as cruel as it is unfair. Jon is no Theon.”

Is this my punishment for opposing him about Jon Snow? Or for being a woman, and worse, a mother?

You were wrong to love her, a voice whispered. You were wrong to leave her, a different voice insisted.

Hope blew out like a candle in a storm.

She had lived too long, and Ned was waiting.

And who are you, the proud lord said, that I must bow so low?

And Arya ran. Not for her brother now, not even for her mother, but for herself. She ran faster than she had ever run before, her head down and her feet churning up the river, she ran from him as Mycah must have run.

He was tempted to ask what she prayed for, but Sansa was so dutiful she might actually tell him, and he didn’t think he wanted to know.

“If Joffrey should die … what is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?” “Everything,” said Davos, softly.

She could feel the hole inside her every morning when she woke. It wasn’t hunger, though sometimes there was that too. It was a hollow place, an emptiness where her heart had been, where her brothers had lived, and her parents.

Jon will want me, even if no one else does. He’ll call me “little sister” and muss my hair.

“You love him.” “He is my brother.”

Half-truths are worth more than outright lies.