Author's Note: So I've taken some small liberties here. This is basically a slight AU, where Kevan Lannister had a daughter after Lancel, and his youngest son Willem was only eight by this time. He wasn't at the Battle of Stone Mill with Martyn Lannister, who was taken hostage and later killed by Robb's men. Also, Walda Frey's death has come earlier by natural means rather than by Ramsay.

It's my first time writing a GoT story, so please let me know if I've gotten it right!

Every Loyalty

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Chapter I:

A Great Honor

"Someone poisoned 'em, that's what I heard."

Larisa cuffed her little brother's ear and ignored him when he protested.

"Don't speak of such things," she said. "Straighten your letters or you'll start from the beginning."

She pointed out the words on the parchment that were uneven or crooked. If they were misspelled, she made him start the line over. When his hand holding the quill relaxed again, she pursed her lips and nearly sighed in aggravation.

"How much poison would it take to kill all those people?" he wondered. Larisa tapped the writing desk impatiently.

"Look here—"

"They said whoever did it put it in the wine…but how could the Freys be that stupid?"

Larisa turned to Martha, a girl who had been one of her mother's ladies-in-waiting before Larisa returned to Casterly Rock.

"Bring me some wine, if you would."

Martha set down the stitching she'd been working on. She nodded once in respect and was gone.

"The Freys weren't stupid, Willem," Larisa said. "They made enemies of their former allies by choosing to side with us."

And for massacring Robb Stark and his men with House Bolton, she thought, but knew better than to voice it. It was the truth, one that their father wouldn't speak of disapprovingly, least of all against the brother he had loved. The brother murdered by his own son, her cousin Tyrion.

As much as she didn't want to think ill of the dead, it was a dishonorable thing Uncle Tywin had done.

And yet, they had been at war and now they weren't, effectively ending the Northern threat. They were all safer because of it.

"Did they ask for our help?" Willem asked, and reached for a small custard tart on a nearby tray. "They must've known their friends would hate them."

"They wouldn't. House Frey was proud, but—"

"So they were stupid," he said with his mouth full.

It isn't that simple, she would've said, but didn't want to engage him further on the topic. A boy of eight shouldn't be thinking about horrid things like that.

Larisa rapped his knuckles just hard enough to make him hiss in pain, and plucked the second tart out of his other hand.

"You have twenty more lines to go, little brother, and we won't be breaking before dinner."

Willem reached for the tarts again, but she slid the tray out of his reach. He growled and jammed the quill back into its ink bottle, then crossed his arms in annoyance. Larisa leaned over and brushed his golden hair away from his forehead.

"If you want to squire for a knight so badly, you will need to read and write suitably well," she said, "along with many other skills besides snacking."

A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth, mirroring her own, until he smacked her hand away and stole the tarts out of the room before she could catch him.

She sighed. "Little cretin."

And where is Martha?

"Did she crush the wine grapes herself?" she muttered.

She got up, intending to scour the kitchens for the girl and scold her for her impudence if need be.

"Lady Larisa." Ser Thane Brisby, one of her father's men, stood at the door. "Your father wishes to speak with you."

The fire in the hearth crackled in the near silence. Larisa worked to keep her temper as she stood before her father, Kevan Lannister. Her mother sat near the hearth with her knitting forgotten in her lap.

A shuddering breath escaped Larisa's lips. "I will not."

"It is done," he said. "The preparations are set for your leave within a fortnight."

"I will not be sold to the North—"

"You understand, don't you? That you will become Lady Bolton of Winterfell," he said sternly. "King Tommen has commanded it."

A raven had come in from King's Landing just that morning; the message brought news of the unfortunate and untimely death of Lady Walda Bolton, due to complications from her pregnancy.

Since the all too recent slaughter at the Twins, House Frey was in no position to offer another bride. And if what Larisa had heard of those plain-faced Frey women was true, Bolton wouldn't want another one of them.

As a token of condolence, supposedly House Lannister would help in the matter.

"You mean Queen Cersei has commanded it," Larisa guessed, correctly if her father's shifting expression was any indication.

"You will honor your house, just as you have done before."

"You rescued me from court after the Battle of Blackwater," Larisa began, as she tried in vain to work out why this was happening to her. Again.

"After Harden's death, you let me come home."

"So that you could mourn your husband in peace, away from that snakes' pit of King's Landing."

"And now you would cast me out again?" she stressed. Kevan only joined his hands behind his back.

"Lord Bolton is an…honorable man," he said. "The match is suitable."

Larisa shook her head. An honorable man, who broke his oaths to the Starks when it suited him? I think not.

"This union will secure House Bolton's loyalty to our family, and to our king."

Ah. That's what this was. She was stupid not to make the connection before now.

"So this is where we are." Larisa said. "We forge alliances with turncoats, and I must become another man's wife."

Kevan looked down at her with a mock smile of disbelief, mostly of her audacity. She knew she spoke recklessly, as she would never have to anyone at court, or even to her late husband. But she knew her father would never strike her.

And after Blackwater, she would no longer quietly accept her fate.

"Did you speak so freely in Joffrey's court? Or in Golden Tooth, to your husband?" he asked. "Or is it that you've become too comfortable in commanding your mother's ladies."

She quieted, chastened slightly, but she held her chin high and stubbornly defiant.

"You will not go alone," Kevan said eventually. "Willem will squire for Lord Bolton as well."

Larisa sucked in a breath, blinking in shock. "You can't mean that."

"It is agreed. Both of you will ride north."

It was one thing to give her—a widowed woman, young though she was—to an important ally. It was something else entirely to give away his youngest son to squire for such a man. Not even a knighted man, though named Warden of the North.

"Their sigil is the Flayed Man!" Larisa shouted. "Father, how could you, in good conscience—"

"Are you lord of this house?" He raised his voice over hers, loudly enough that it startled her. Her father had always been a restrained man, honest and usually fair.

But the hard, frustrated anger in his eyes frightened her into silence.

"Answer me."

"…No, Father. I'm sorry."

Kevan nodded. "Go then."

Larisa quickly took her leave.

She held her tears until she could turn her back and return to her quarters.

The Lord of Casterly Rock remained, and tried in vain to ignore his wife.

Dorna Swyft regarded her husband with a mixture of disgust, anger, and fear for her children.

"If you had only taken Cersei's offer," she said, "this would not be happening."

"She is a spoiled child who uses her son's weak will to rule as she sees fit," Kevan said dryly. "Tywin wouldn't have allowed it. To speak of that fabricated title she would offer me, Master of War."

He nearly spat the words. As much as it rankled to admit, Cersei had insulted him. His family, that had always supported his brother in all things. She presumed to think she could manipulate him as well as her son.

"If Tommen will not name me Hand of the King, then I have no reason to sit on the small council."

Dorna refused to hang her head, or shed tears, but she felt sick for how heavy her heart felt. "Your pride might destroy us."

Dorna watched bemused as Martha set another small pile of books into a travel case. Larisa lit another candle; the window in her chambers was large, but the sun was falling below the sea and soon there wouldn't be enough light.

"You mean to take a library with you?" Dorna remarked.

"I suspect reading will be my only pastime," Larisa said, and collected up her personal stationary to be set with the rest of her belongings. "Besides watching snow fall on dead trees."

"You will be Lady of Winterfell," her mother reminded. "Do not forget your household duties."

Larisa huffed and sat heavily on the edge of her bed. "And how will the northern lords recognize me as Lady of Winterfell with Sansa Stark sat beside me?"

"Sansa Stark is the bastard's wife," Dorna dismissed with a wave of her hand.

"King Tommen legitimized him. He's been notarized as Ramsay Bolton."

"He may claim his father's name all he likes, but Roose Bolton's men will recognize his authority only. Especially once you give him a son."

Larisa gripped her hands in her lap tightly. Once the war began, she had done all in her power to keep from giving Harden Lefford a child, let alone a son. If she had, it would have secured her fate as lady of a noble Southern house, should his father Lord Leo Lefford die sooner rather than later. But…

"Lara, dear heart."

Her mother's hand resting over hers interrupted her thoughts. Larisa raised her head, but Dorna set a thin golden chain in her hands. An oval-shaped pendant hung from it—gold plated, for her house. Spiral scrollwork circled a dark green stone.

"You will not be surrounded by people who bear much love for Lannisters, as you were at court, and at House Lefford," Dorna warned in a hushed voice. "You will not find anything familiar to you in the North. Nor anything safe."

Larisa wanted to know why she should wear something that would so obviously mark her as a Lannister then. But before she could, Dorna opened the pendant—a locket really—and revealed the small glass vile inside. It was less than an inch long and looked as if it only carried a few drops of the clear liquid it held, but looking into her mother's eyes, Larisa knew it would be enough.

Dorna closed the pendant carefully. She caressed Larisa's hair and was grateful it was brown, like her own, and not golden like her brothers, or her infamous cousins. But the bold green of her eyes were too clearly of her father's blood.

"Protect yourself and your brother, if you can," Dorna said. "Remember who and what you are."

It was too bright and cloudless the morning Larisa and Willem were to ride north. Incidentally, their father would be riding south.

A raven had come the night before with news from the capital, and this morning, Kevan Lannister was pleased.

"It seems Lancel made some use of himself after all," he remarked.

"You speak of him as if he were dead," Larisa said, only just veiling her disgust toward her father's attitude. Meanwhile, Ser Thane readied her horse. He and a select few would be escorting their small party north, while the rest of her father's hired knights traveled with him to the great southern city.

"He forsook his own house to serve a cult," Kevan drawled.

It was true. The Faith Militant were known as the Faith of the Seven when they began whispering to Lancel, and convinced him to leave his family, titles and future in order to join their fold. Now they apparently struck more fear in King's Landing than the royal family, with Queen Margaery and Ser Loris Tyrell imprisoned by the High Sparrow, the leader of the Faith Militant.

And armed with Lancel's testimony and supposed "repentance" for his sins, they had Queen Cersei imprisoned on accusation of incest with her own cousin.

Larisa had little love for Queen Cersei, but she hoped they would judge those repulsive accusations baseless. She would rather her older brother be called a liar.

But now, with no one left to guide King Tommen, Grand Maester Pycelle now summoned Kevan Lannister to serve as Hand of the King.

"Father, what about Will?" Larisa asked him. She tried to grab his hand and hold it in hers, as he had done when she was a child, and lulled her to sleep with stories of the great battles fought to create Westeros. Those stories she had spent her entire life reading about as she added more and more precious books to her collection: The history of the Iron Throne. The histories and sigils of houses. The free cities and peoples across the Narrow Sea.

And the other things her father had taught her to value: What it meant to carry the name Lannister. Why family should be cherished above all else.

"He is now your heir," she implored. "Why would you send him away as well?"

Her father hesitated, and she watched him as he watched Willem struggle to get up onto his horse. He had to be assisted by Ser Thane, who dutifully reminded the boy of how he should handle himself while on the animal.

"I am not sending him away. He will return when it is his time to become Lord of Casterly Rock," Kevan said. He slipped his hand out of hers, and instructed Ser Thane to help Larisa onto her horse as well. "Until then, he will learn the way of the world. Become a man."

Once she was situated onto her horse, Larisa shook her head. She looked up at the bricks that made up Casterly Rock, the place she was born and had lived since childhood with her brothers and cousins. She saw her mother watching from her chamber window.

Dorna didn't smile. She had stood there an hour already, and promised she would not move until she could no longer see the horses.

Ser Thane gave the order to begin their ride. Larisa gripped the reigns of her horse and glanced back at her father.

"Cousin Cersei will eat you alive when they release her," she muttered. Kevan mounted his own horse and gave her a sharp, reproaching look.

"The Queen Mother is not to be feared," he said. "But you'll mind your tongue, Larisa. From this day forth, do you understand?"

She turned her head forward and followed Ser Thane's direction.

"From this day forth, you have no daughter."

It was a long and hard ride to Winterfell.

A little over three weeks, and the immense castle came into view. Willem was excited for it; he had enjoyed just being on a horse to begin with, seeing the villages and rivers and other landmarks familiar to him pass by to new lands he'd never seen. Every day of their journey was a new adventure for him, while every day along the Kingsroad weighed Larisa more with trepidation as they got farther into northern territory.

Through Riverrun, past the Vale of Arryn, through the Neck and the Barrowlands. She was nearly sick with anxiety by the time they reached the large black gates, which opened for them easily.

Men waited for them when they got down from their horses. Northern men. She could see it in their lean faces; hard, unrefined men accustomed to living through long winters.

But they were not greeted by Lord Bolton.

"I welcome you to Winterfell." It was a young man, likely only a few years older than Larisa. He was unshaven, but well-dressed in dark gray furs and leather.

"My Lady," he addressed her with a courteous bow at the waist. "It is a great honor."

Remembering herself, she gave a deeper curtsy and cast her eyes downward. "It is a greater honor to be here, my lord."

"Where is Lord Bolton?" Ser Thane asked. Larisa rose slowly, but she watched the young man closely, warily.

He joined his hands behind his back. Then he smiled, a slight pull at the corner of his mouth that…unsettled her. His expression changed to one of sadness, as if he had been grieving for some time.

"Oh, that's right," he said. "We only just sent a raven south this morning."

His pale blue gaze met Larisa's and held it.

"My father is dead. I am Ramsay Bolton, Lord of Winterfell, and Warden of the North."