He takes in the way her gaze drops, and his stomach takes a small drop with it. It’s a slight relief when she looks back up at him, but it might be that she is steeling herself for something she doesn’t want to hear.

“Nothing. She was killed at Castle Black — an arrow took her. Not mine. I held her while she died and burned her body north of the Wall, as she would have wanted it.”

So little and thin and pale on the pyre he’d built for her, and he had known not to look back at it, to walk away and keep walking until he’d reached his bed.

“She knows what happened, but to her, it was only yesterday. And she had been angry with me for a while when it happened. I’d left her.”