“Many years before that, one of the boys came down with the pox. Maester Luwin said if he made it through the night, he’d live. But it would be a very long night. […] When my husband brought that baby home from the war, I couldn’t bear to look at him. I didn’t want to see those brown stranger’s eyes staring up at me. So I prayed to the gods, take him away. Make him die. He got the pox. And I knew I was the worst woman who ever lived. A murderer. I’d condemned this poor, innocent child to a horrible death all because I was jealous of his mother. A woman he didn’t even know. So I prayed to all seven gods, let the boy live. Let him live and I’ll love him. I’ll be a mother to him. I’ll beg my husband to give him a true name, to call him Stark and be done with it, to make him one of us. And he lived. And I couldn’t keep my promise.”
