CHAPTER ONE.
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Without a family, man, alone in the world,
trembles with the cold.

ANDRÉ MAUROIS, FORTUNE
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HUMAN LIFE MEANS NOTHING in the eyes of gods and men.

     That is something Helaena Targaryen has known for as long as she thinks she has known anything, since the king decided to chop off the head of Lord Stark, a man more devoted to gods and men than anyone she has known. It is a lesson taught to her daily as she is held captive in King's Landing, when she has to watch, with stony face and hard heart, as Joffrey beats and kills men — men who have done nothing to deserve such punishment. It is drilled into her head during the years of war, repeated when her only friend must suffer so much — that all men must live as all must must die, and in the end they die as easily as they are born.

     Prayers are for the weak, for those who cannot provide for themselves, and although the Sept is not far out of reach, she casts the New Gods out of her life. They did not save her father, or her mother, or her brother, and they cannot save her.

     The gods mock the prayers of kings and commoners alike.

Gods, have I sinned?

     Still, the Godswood is the only place in the Red Keep to shelter the two girls, with no suspicious eyes or ears. They are ignored by nearly everyone in the weeks before the king's wedding to Lady Margaery, and for that Helaena is eternally greatful. She finds herself enjoying being in the background. Better to be ignored.

     They may be ignored, but the cold queen's gaze is always on them, her lips turned upwards in joy of the torment they suffer, as if they have not suffered enough from this golden family. And so they sit and hide and are ignored, trying desperately to be forgotten completely. There is a stillness in the Godswood that they seek; a peace they cannot find in the castle's halls. The world is quiet here.

The trees of the gardens are heavy with blossom. Around them the world is all noise: lords and ladies chatter, the birds chirp and sing, dogs bark. This forest of blossom is quiet, though, in the crimson spill of dusk, and Helaena watches Sansa Stark — not Lannister, never Lannister — as the girl's blue eyes close fleetingly.

Helaena watches, fascinated, as the drifts fall in white and red around her, catching in her hair, her gown, her lashes. Red, like the only lively thing about her. Her hair, wild and loose around her like a lions mane for she is one of them now, at least by name.

     "Imagine," Helaena starts quietly after some time, replaying the horrors of the past moons in her head and trying her hardest to bury them. "Imagine if there was a place we could go."

     Sansa looks down as she stirs the fallen blossoms in her lap with her fingertips. "If the gods were kind, we would have lived a different life," she sighs. "But they are gods. It is not in their nature to be kind."

Gods, have I sinned?

     Sansa's frown remains and she crushes a handful of blossom. "If only we were born men," she says, voice low, "Then we could travel wherever we desire. No one would dare keep us here."

     Helaena's smile grows but little. Sansa is a maid of four-and-ten, not yet flowered, but Helaena senses a wisdom in her, that wasn't there when she arrived in King's Landing. She looks off to the sunset dappled beyond the drifts of blossom, the boughs of trees. "You've been many things to me," murmurs Helaena. The girl's eyes and voice cloud wistfully. "A stranger, a companion —"

"A friend," says Sansa, her voice soft. "You have been the dearest and most trusted friend to me."

Gods, have I sinned?

"We must hold fast to each other now," Helaena whispers. "Bad days are ahead."

    "Aren't they always?"

     Their eyes meet; a collective sigh, a smile.

Gods, have I sinned?

"Always, Sansa. Always."

Gods, have I sinned?

THE NIGHTS ARE THE HARDEST. In the dark silence of her room Helaena is left only with her memories and regrets for company.

Once she'd feared the dawn but now the cruelties the King visits upon her in the light of day feel like a blessed distraction, a reprieve from the reality she must face when she is alone.

My family is dead. The truth is a cold, heavy thing that weighs her down; a stone in her chest where her heart once beat. She wonders then how she could ever have been that young girl who lived in King's Landing beside her siblings. It seems so long ago, her childhood nothing more than some half remembered dream but her family she knows is real for the pain that lives inside her means they must be.

I will never get to know them, she thinks, unable to escape the longing and sadness that wells within her, eclipsing even the fear that has grown into her marrow. She has no name for this lost feeling that lives inside her, this yearning for something long gone, a half imagined life that only existed to her as a child.

I am alone in the world, she realises with a sob, her tears hot against the skin of her pale cheeks as she stands at her window, with all of King's Landing laid out below. Somewhere in Essos, her sister still breathes, yet to Helaena she is nothing more than a shadow, a ghost that will turn to ashes as soon as it is thought to be real. She thinks of Ashara Dayne then, of how they say she threw herself into the sea, overcome with grief and sorrow.

The songs they sang for her are beautiful and sad and Helaena wonders if they would write of her, too. Would she be the beauty from Dragonstone, swallowed whole by her grief for a lost family or would she simply fade away into the night, obscured and forgotten?

     How she loathes it, how she wishes she could tear her lovely hair out one strand by one until none remain. Somedays she wishes she could claw her big lilac eyes out if only to stop seeing the ghosts of her ancestors in the looking glass.

     She resides in shadows now, a ghost of herself. Anguish is her only decoration now.

Would it hurt? she wonders, if she were to jump. Or would it be peaceful, the rush of the air against her face and her arms spread wide like a bird in flight. She imagines what it would feel like to be free of her grief and fear, to walk gladly into the Stranger's arms.

She does not think of her siblings, lost to the wideness of Essos and the vastness of the Summer Sea, when she takes her first, unsteady step up onto the ledge. She thinks only of the wind, cold on her face and the way the moon hangs heavy and swollen in the sky, white as summer snow.

I'm already dead, she thinks, my body just doesn't know it yet.