“Some instinct made her lift her hand and cup his cheek with her fingers. The room was too dark for her to see him, but she could feel the stickiness of the blood, and a wetness that was not blood. "Little bird," he said once more, his voice raw and harsh as steel on stone. Then he rose from the bed. Sansa heard cloth ripping, followed by the softer sound of retreating footsteps.When she crawled out of bed, long moments later, she was alone. She found his cloak on the floor, twisted up tight, the white wool stained by blood and fire. The sky outside was darker by then, with only a few pale green ghosts dancing against the stars. A chill wind was blowing, banging the shutters. Sansa was cold. She shook out the torn cloak and huddled beneath it on the floor, shivering.”

“Frederick?Had she really spoken? Certainly she'd tried, but her voice had failed to materialize and all she heard was the sound of her nightgown ripping as Frederick pulled it over her head and threw it aside. He was kneeling now between her ankles, pushing at her, forcing her knees apart and then her arms until she was entirely splayed on the bed beneath him. Nothing was said. Not a word. Ede felt his hand between her legs, forcing the way for the rest of him. Stop, she wanted to tell him. Stop. I don't understand what you're doing. But nothing - still nothing was said. He seemed to be raging inside her, moving his hips in a circular fashion, all the weight of his upper body help above her, resting on his arms, his hands pushing down into the mattress. Stop! But he didn't. Don't! But he did. Nothing. Not one word. The only sound he made was a choking noise in his throat at the end, as tough he might be going to strangle. But when he rolled away from her onto his back, she felt the shudder of his first free breath and she heard him sigh. It was over. Tonight. It was done. Ede could not bare the thought of seeing him, or of being seen. Still without speaking, she rose from the bed and through the dark, found her way to the bathroom. She had brought the torn nightgown wit her, but when she turned on the light and saw it, she threw it down in the corner. Ruined. Spoiled. Everything. When at last, she returned to the bed, Fredrick was sound asleep beneath the covers - and nothing - nothing - nothing was said.”

“I was with her when she died,” Ned reminded the king. “She wanted to come home, to rest beside Brandon and Father.” He could hear her still at times. Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister’s eyes. Ned remembered the way she smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black. After that he remembered nothing. They had found him still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland Reed, had taken her hand from his.”

“She shouldn’t have been beautiful—she was too forward, too freckled, too thin. Still… Oh, to hell with it all. He wasn’t hungry, anyway. He reached out and took her hand, drawing her to him. She drifted near, until she was close enough to kiss. Close enough for him to see the green of her eyes, widening as he turned her hand over, palm up.“There’s something I’ve wanted to do since the first moment I saw you,” he said. It came out close to a whisper.“Oh?” He could feel the puff of breath from that word against his nose.“Don’t even think of arguing.”She shook her head. Her lips opened, an impossible, inviting fraction.He set the fork in the palm of her hand and closed his fingers tightly around hers. “I want you to eat,” he said.”

“The first ripple of unease hit him. He lifted his head for a moment, and his prey’s blood spurted out. He bent once more to his task, this time all efficiency and quickness. It was Alexandria. He could feel the first wave of pain hitting her.He flew to her, to be close when she called out for him. And he hoped, for both their sakes, that that would be soon. She needed him, but he had promised to compel her no further than the blood exchange. She had to call for him.Outside the underground chamber he paced, Alexandria’s pitiful cries sending shards of pain through his own heart. A dozen times he reached for the door, wanting even needing to kick it in. But she had to call for him. She had to express faith in him or she would never believe he was helping, not harming, her.He rested his forehead against the door, then was shocked to see a crimson stain from the contact. He was sweating blood, in agony hearing her pleas and feeling the pain twisting and burning within her body. The physical agony he could manage, but his heart and his mind were in torment.“Where are you? You promised to help me. Where are you?”He had waited so long for the invitation, he thought he was hallucinating when it actually came. He hit the door with the flat of his hand and burst inside. She could see her own agony reflected in his eyes. There was a scarlet smear on his forehead.”

“She looked up at once, pierced to the heart by the sorrow in his voice and knowing, from the question and the sorrow together, that he had no notion of what had just happened to her, nor why. From that she pitied him so greatly that she cupped her hands again to hold a little of the salamander's heat, not for serenity but for the warmth of friendship. But as she felt the heat again running through her, she knew at once it bore a different quality. It had been a welcome invader the first time, only moments before; but already it had become a constituent of her blood, intrinsic to the marrow of her bones, and she heard again the salamander's last words to her: Trust me. At that moment she knew that this Beast would not have sent such misery as her father's illness to harry or to punish, knew too that the Beast would keep his promise to her, and to herself she made another promise to him, but of that promise she did not yet herself know. Trust me sang in her blood, and she could look in the Beast's face and see only that he looked at her hopefully.”