Lion Wolf
Chapter 1
Deleted Scene
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You must protect him. They killed him. They killed my Ray. They will kill my William. Protect him. Promise me, Rickard. Please.
Rickard didn't want to consider it. He didn't want to believe that his brother by marriage had been murdered. Could he have been? Who killed him? And why?
He put his head into his hands from where he sat in Eira's favorite spot beside the water. This spot was a frequent place where he or their father would find Eira everyday, praying to the Godswood for a good and thoughtful husband. Eira had been a romantic, looking for happiness in a marriage. Rickard had been told from a young age that he would be married for politics and thus was more realistic than his naive sister.
But then Ray showed up.
It had been a snowy day when he stumbled up to them. He and Eira had been throwing snowballs at each other, and he had been on his knees making one when he heard her gasp. He looked up and glanced where she was looking to see a man of tan hair and dark clothes covered in dirt and blood. He watched as Eira ran to the man looking more concerned than intimidated. He wondered what she had been thinking at the time, racing toward an unfamiliar man without fear of injury. That was how his sister was, more concerned for others than herself. The man had tripped and fallen straight into her open arms. While she yelled for their father, begging for help, Rickard had watched the man's face. He hadn't look that old; maybe ten or so summers older than him. The man looked almost glad to be in his sister’s arms having gone from pained eyes to closed; not from having passed out though. Rickard recognized relief in the man’s gaze as his eyes closed. At the time, he had truly wondered if the man had been sent to Eira from the Old Gods to be that good and kind husband; and he was for the blissful years afterward.
Now he wished Ray had never found his way to Winterfell if it would have saved his sister.