"So, how long have you and your lady been together, Your Highness?" Kurt asked Ryder Lynn from his seat on the man's left on the dais, his tone loud to be heard over the music of flutes and violins filling the room as the wedding guests ate and drank.

Farther down the hall, he could glimpse Brittany, Santana and Quinn fawning over the Northern ladies' dresses and long intricate braids, Rachel and Finn making out unashamedly halfway over a table (too much wine, he guessed), Wes and David fighting over a chicken leg and Grey Worm looking at them with a small – yet reassuring – amused smile on his face. Sam was sitting at his same table next to Blaine, but he was trying to court some unknown lady so Kurt couldn't hear his words. Ryder's smoke grey direwolf prowled along the room to look for food, which was promptly given to him by panicking guests throwing leftovers to the floor as he passed, the normal household dogs of the castle huddled in a corner of the room in fear of him just as horses would have done with one of Kurt's children.

They say he slips into his direwolf's body at night when it goes hunting, he'd heard other guests whispering secretively about the king. They say he can see with its eyes and smell with its nose and taste the blood in its mouth when it kills its preys in the snow.

"About a month" the King in the North answered him, averting his gaze from the wine cup he was about to take a sip from, bringing Kurt back to the conversation he was supposed to have.

"Oh, that's- that's quite a short amount of time" he replied, realizing only afterwards how offending that must sound and adding quickly, "So I guess it was love at first sight?"

"We didn't even know each other, Kurt" Blaine whispered in his ear from the other side, a playful lilt to his voice. Kurt rolled his eyes and kicked him silently under the table.

"You could say that" Ryder said, the hint of a smile grazing his lips as his eyes automatically shifted to his right, where his wife was chatting animatedly with someone else along the narrow table the most honored guests shared. He fell silent then, frustrating Kurt with the task of finding something else to talk about and breach the thick shield of his formality, but it wasn't long before he spoke again.

"What about you?" he said, still omitting the titles – as a matter of fact, Kurt was no Lord and no king and it wasn't like Northmen knew what a khalees was anyway. "How long have you been together?"

It struck him as odd that he'd never thought about it, but he hadn't. Time had passed without him realizing it, but if he had to guess, it had been at least a year since the marriage, so that's what he said with a casual shrug. Marley – Queen Marley – turned around just in time to hear it.

"A year? Did you hear, my king? You must be so in love! And tell me, how did you meet?"

Kurt bit his lip nervously. What was he supposed to say to that?

Well, my dead brother – who was killed by my husband, for the record – sold me in marriage against my will so we spent the first few weeks having dubiously consensual sex and not talking to each other.

"We met at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons" Blaine spoke up before Kurt could, leaning over the table to be heard by the newlyweds. "But the rest of our lives shone clear and bright like the moon he is to me, and the sun and stars I am to him."

Kurt spun around and stared at him, mouth open in wonder. Blaine was looking at him with the same adoration he was feeling, and he felt the sudden urge to grab his face and kiss him senseless. He restrained himself from doing it, but barely.

"You speak our language?" Ryder asked, breaking the spell quite abruptly, before his wife slapped his shoulder in outrage.

"Don't be rude, my love! And how come you never say such sweet things to me?"

"Oh, it's alright, Your Highness" Kurt reassured her, slipping one of his hands under the table to twine his fingers through Blaine's and squeeze his hand just to feel that little bit of physical contact. "It's just... a Dothraki thing, to be so metaphorical. To this day, I still can't match my husband when it comes to romance."

"I can't argue with that" Blaine agreed, grinning in that wicked way he did sometimes, eyes crinkling up and eyebrows arching. He was wearing an ocean blue tunic Sam had lent him for the occasion, little suns of golden thread framing the end of the sleeves, so the only visible tattoos were the twin ones on his temples. It was so strange to see him like that, but Kurt liked it, too. He knew he would like every version of himself Blaine would find along the way.

The conversation seemed to die down a little after that, but Ryder's bluntness rekindled its interest.

"I spoke to your pledged knight, Finn Hudson, right after the ceremony" he told Kurt out of the blue as his servants brought in yet another round of meat dishes – boar, it seemed. "His mother has joined my cause. Yet when I asked him if he wanted to go back to the Bear Island to visit her, he said he wants to go through with his task first."

"I told him he could go if he wanted" Kurt assured him, not knowing what the king was aiming at exactly with the subject. "It's his decision entirely, I would never force him."

"I know, he told me. I have to say, his loyalty to you impressed me" Ryder said as he took the first bite off his plate. "He is a Northman too, after all. I didn't know he was under your service when I wrote that letter to your cousin."

"Oh, it's fine, Your Highness. I didn't feel offended or anything" Kurt told him with a nonchalant flick of his wrist, but in that moment Ryder's expression turned deadly serious, as if mocked my Kurt's lighthearted way of speaking.

"I didn't say I've made up my mind" he pointed out a little coldly. "I still have... reservations."

"Do you really have to talk about politics now, my love?" Marley piped up again, chocolate brown locks dancing with the movement of her body as she turned to face them, pouting. "It's our wedding."

"I'm afraid we do, my queen" Ryder told her, gently but firmly. "Guest right doesn't last forever, after all."

"Are you threatening us?" Blaine asked him bluntly. Kurt squeezed his hand harder under the table, praying to the Seven nothing violent would happen – they were guests, sure, but if Blaine lost his temper, no kindness was due to them anymore.

"Absolutely not" Ryder replied with sincere (and thankfully calm) eyes. "Nothing will happen to you while you're under my roof, but once you leave, I need to know if we're enemies or allies."

"Well, as you know, I would really like us to be allies" Kurt said, catching the opportunity to steer the conversation where he wanted it. "I know you think I will not respect my end of the deal and refuse to give you independence after we win the war. But I ask you: why haven't I left you to fight on your own and destroy the Claringtons for me? Why haven't I decided to wait it out and attack you when you're weak and vulnerable?"

Ryder seemed to consider it for a moment, chewing thoughtfully. Delicious smells drifted from the hundreds of plates being served, and the rows of fireplaces all along the walls kept the chill of the Northern night away.

"Maybe you don't think we can actually defeat the crown" he answered at last, searching Kurt's face to see his reaction. "Still, it's best for you to have us as allies than having to deal with us and the Claringtons at the same time."

"That's not what I think, but what if it was? What matters is that our alliance would be the best choice for you too, and you know it."

"Would it?" Ryder asked, crown slightly askew over his head when he cocked it to the side as if it was too big for him, making him look so young that Kurt couldn't help but think sadly, Neither of us should have to be doing this.

"Yes" he answered, putting all the emphasis he could on that single word. "You can trust me."

Ryder gave a chuckle at that for some reason, which Kurt discovered a moment later.

"Trust is a word we use very carefully in Westeros" the King in the North warned him. "You should learn to do the same, if you plan on ruling it."

"Will do" Kurt said with a slightly forced smile, exasperated by the other man's reluctance. "Tell me, what do I have to do to convince you?"

Ryder stared at him with unblinking, powerful eyes for a tense couple of seconds.

"Answer this question" he said slowly then, pausing to heave a breath. "Why do you want the Iron Throne?"

Kurt tried not to let his surprise show on his face, since Ryder was studying it closely as he waited for his answer. It sounded like a very simple question, yet somehow it wasn't – and maybe that was exactly why the king was asking it in the first place. It felt as if there wasn't a single, universal answer he could give; it changed and shifted according to the person he was talking to, but every version of it was sincere, and the one he decided to give was, too.

"For the same reason you want Hunter Clarington's head and the independence of the North. Justice."

It was difficult to tell whether it had satisfied Ryder's curiosity, but it seemed to Kurt that his gaze was less hard when he spoke again.

"Some people might call it vengeance" he reflected, staring for a moment into his cup of red wine.

Thinking about his father, Kurt supplied, feeling a pang of sorrow at the fact that he couldn't think about his father the same way the other man was, because he'd never truly known him. And to want the person who had taken that away from him dead, after all, was vengeance; Kurt would not deny it.

"Call it what you like, Your Highness" he said, feeling like he was slowly gaining some ground. "Be that as it may, we both want the same man dead, and for the same reason."

Before Ryder could reply, his direwolf climbed up the steps leading to the dais and slipped under the table to settle at his master's feet, his yellow eyes shining in the shade provided by the hanging tablecloth.

"Grey Wind, to me" Ryder told him, gesturing for the direwolf to come out from under the table; when the animal did, he positioned himself between him and Kurt and stared at his master with a sort of quiet yet clear adoration, waiting to be petted. After a few strokes on his head and scratches behind his ears, Grey Wind turned around and stared at Kurt intently, studying him with his enormous fuzzy head tilted to the side. Then he slowly leaned in, making Kurt hold his breath in silent panic, and licked playfully at his hand on the armrest.

"That's- that's good, right?" Kurt asked in a squeak, trying not to move too much. He could feel Blaine's hand tensing in his grip from the other side of his chair, worried about what he was seeing.

"He likes you" Ryder said dazedly, wrenching his gaze from the direwolf to stare at Kurt in an entirely different way from before, open and shocked and vulnerable. "He doesn't like many people."

Kurt looked down at the animal again, hesitantly lifting his hand from the armrest to place it gently on his head. The direwolf closed his eyes and relaxed after the first tentative stroke, leaning silently into the touch as Kurt stared in wonder. His fur was so soft, softer than anything he had ever touched.

"He seems to... recognize people's true intentions" Ryder went on, his voice reverent as if experiencing something holy, something sacred. "Some Lords meant to betray me after my decision to marry Marley, and when I found out I realized they were the ones Grey Wind used to growl at all the time. That's why I carry him with me everywhere; no one can protect me better than him."

"He's beautiful" Blaine whispered from behind Kurt, craning his neck to look beyond him where Grey Wind was.

"Thank you" Ryder answered, smiling what may be the first honest smile he had ever directed at either of them. "My brother, who's a Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch at the Wall, has one too. We were together when we found them, half-starving in the snow."

His words rang a bell in Kurt's mind.

He'd gone to King's Landing to speak to the king in person, about something very important going on at the Wall, Sam had said about Ryder's father, former Lord of Winterfell. He considered asking him about it, but then he figured the King in the North might take his knowledge of the matter the wrong way, or get suspicious because of his curiosity. Plus, he didn't want to make him sad by forcing him to recall the circumstances of his father's death. There would be the appropriate time for that, if they managed to bond along the way to the capital.

If Ryder accepted.

"Tell me about your dragons" the Northman said just as Kurt was thinking that. As if realizing they were no longer interested in him, Grey Wind slipped away from his hand and under the table again, snuggling against his master's leg on the floor.

"What about them?" Kurt asked, his body suddenly tense and rigid.

Please don't say you want one, please don't say you want one, please don't say-

"I want to be sure they are properly tamed" Ryder explained, an amused grin stretching his lips as he took a purposely long sip of wine. "I won't put my men in danger by letting them fight close to them if they're not."

Kurt resisted the urge to beam proudly, or stand up and erupt in cries of victory. From his left, he heard Blaine chuckle. Ryder was looking at him expectantly, and next to him Marley was paying attention to their conversation again, probably waiting for it to be over so she could steal her husband from them for good.

"They are perfectly tamed, I can assure you" Kurt said. "It took me a long time and a lot of... trying, but they are. I give you my word on it."

It took murdered children and chains bound with my guilt and shame, broken knees and bleeding arms and a hell of swirling fire, but they are.

The answer proved to be convincing enough.

"Do you plan on riding one of them to battle?" Ryder asked him, his eyes serious and intent.

"Yes. My husband, my cousin and I are training for it."

"You rode one?" Marley spoke up, but she was visibly staring at Blaine. Kurt turned around to find him suddenly shy and fidgety, avoiding the queen's eager look of expectance.

"I'm- I'm learning" he said, picking at a loose thread in the tablecloth with the hand he'd just disentangled from Kurt's, and he looked young, too, just like Ryder and himself, all of them nothing but children grown up too fast to play a game they didn't even know the rules of. And Kurt loved him so much in that moment, just for trying, just for being there, leagues and leagues away from what had been his safe place all his life, surrounded by customs and languages and peoples he hadn't even known existed.

Because for that, Blaine would always be the bravest man Kurt had ever met. Not for facing death hundreds of times, not for laughing at the sight of blood spilling from the bodies of his enemies; for being with Kurt, and loving him despite all the hidden, most vulnerable corners of his soul he had had to come to terms with because of it.

"You're great at it" Kurt told him, leaning in to kiss his cheek as discreetly as possible, feeling Blaine's skin heat up immediately under the soft press of his lips.

"You two are so cute" Marley gushed, a hand pressed over her heart, before her expression turned sharp and demanding. "You'll say yes to them, won't you, my love?"

"I- yes, my queen. I will" Ryder reassured her, rolling his eyes at her fondly in that mocking, yet sweet way lovers do.

"Good" she said, nodding with finality. "It's time for the dessert. After how long it took me to choose it, it would be a sin in the eyes of the Gods for you to spoil it with talks of war."

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"Yes, yes, fuck, right th-"

Knock knock.

Blaine paused mid-thrust at the sound of someone knocking at their temporary bedroom's door, his bruising grip on Kurt's hips relaxing as his other hand threaded through Kurt's sweaty hair and pulled his head back from where he had kept it pressed against the wall as Blaine fucked him into it from behind.

"Do you want me to keep going?" his husband whispered hotly in his ear before nipping at it, mouth skimming down the column of Kurt's neck to suck bruises over it.

"Yes, God, please" Kurt whispered back, trying to push his hips backwards and get Blaine deep inside of him again, where he had been just a moment before. Blaine's grip turned strong again, preventing him from doing so, and oh, right, the fighting thing. Sometimes Kurt loved it, other times he hated it; that was definitely one of those.

"Do you want me to keep fucking you, even though they could hear?" Blaine asked, mouthing at the top of Kurt's spine as he spoke. "Hear you scream for more, scream my name?"

This, instead, is a game I know the rules of, Kurt thought smugly.

"I do" he said, turning his face so he could look at Blaine with a wicked grin, his hands pressed as firmly as he could against the wall given that his whole body was trembling with the effort to stay still. "Want the whole castle to hear how much I love your cock inside of me."

Blaine practically growled as he claimed Kurt's lips in a furious kiss, his hips finally thrusting forward and up again to hit just right, their moans of relief getting lost somewhere between their panting mouths and dueling tongues. And the fact that it was frowned upon for them, for two men, to do what they were doing, just made it hotter in Kurt's mind; the fact that they should be more discreet yet they simply didn't give a fuck about it.

"Harder, Blaine, come on" he panted, pressing his cheek back against the wall as Blaine's hands left his hips to travel up along his arms and settle over his own hands, their fingers intertwined on the cold stone, too cold against the hot temperature of their skin. "Want you to-"

Knock knock knock.

"I'm- I'm really sorry to disturb you, cousin" Sam's voice called from behind the door, way louder than necessary. "But the King in the North wants to talk to you. He says it's urgent."

"Fuck" Blaine sighed exasperatedly, his head falling on Kurt's in a gesture of quiet surrender. He planted a kiss into his hair and slowly pulled out from his body, both of them wincing at the movement. As Kurt hastily recollected his trousers from where they were pooled around his ankles, Blaine walked to the bed and fell on it on his back unceremoniously, still gloriously naked.

"This isn't over" Kurt assured him, pointing a finger at him before pulling his clothes back on.

"I might start again without you, so you'd best hurry up" Blaine replied with an eyebrow raised, one hand trailing lazily down his own chest and stomach, Kurt's mind blacking out for a second as it clouded with lust at the sight of Blaine beginning to touch himself in front of him.

"I hate you" Kurt said, willing his eyes to look elsewhere. He found Blaine's trousers on the floor and picked them up.

"Here, put these on!" he said as he threw them at Blaine. The garment landed on the khal's face, making them both burst into laughter.

"You love me!" Blaine shouted after Kurt as he turned around and headed for the door, the trousers suddenly hitting the back of his head just as he was slipping past it.

I do.

He found Ryder in the little solar he used for private meetings on the third floor of the keep, sitting in front of a fireplace with Grey Wind laying at his feet as always. The direwolf lifted his ears in alarm for a fraction of a second, then relaxed as soon as he realized it was him.

"You sent for me, Your Highness?" Kurt asked, pushing his hair away from his forehead self-consciously and hoping what the king had interrupted wasn't as obvious as he thought it was.

"I did" Ryder said, taking in his disheveled appearance with the raise of an eyebrow, but nothing more than that. "Something came up. It will take me away from Riverrun for a couple of days, delaying our departure. I wanted to tell you in person and apologize to you."

Well, you could have waited a couple more minutes, Kurt sulked, sighing internally.

"That's very... considerate of you" he said instead, shifting from foot to foot. "What came up, if I may ask?"

Ryder's face turned wary, but he answered Kurt's question all the same.

"Did you hear about... what happened when we passed at the Twins?"

Kurt hesitated. He didn't want to let Ryder know that some of his own men – or Tully men, as if that made a difference – had doubts about his behavior. At the same time, though, he didn't want to lie to his face and play dumb.

"You made a deal with Lord Walder Frey: to make your way South through his towers in exchange for the hand of one of his daughters" he said simply, hoping Ryder wouldn't ask how he knew. He didn't.

"Well, as you can see, it's too late for that" he said in a sort of self-deprecating way.

"I don't judge you" Kurt felt the need to tell him. "It's not my place."

"I wouldn't blame you if you did" Ryder replied, looking at him sadly for a moment, the weight of history pressing down on his shoulders and giving him a slightly slumped appearance in Kurt's eyes. "Anyway, the Twins are the quickest way for us to head back to the North. I don't mean to be pessimistic, of course, but in case of defeat, it can turn quite useful to have the Freys' permission to pass through them. Thankfully, Walder Frey accepted my apology through the envoys I sent to him, and agreed to let my uncle, my mother's brother, marry one of his daughters instead. My mother, my wife and I are invited to the wedding."

"Oh, I see" Kurt said, nodding solemnly. "Don't worry about it. I waited all my life; I can wait a few more days."

Ryder smiled at him. It was honest and grateful and nothing like how the smile of a man fighting a war should have been. Kurt couldn't help but wonder what his own smile looked like.

"Thank you" the king said. "Please consider yourself my guest while I'm gone. I'll leave a small garrison here; you can eat and drink what they do. I'll see you after the wedding, blood of the dragon."

When he bowed and turned around to leave, Kurt couldn't know he had just heard a lie.

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They were having breakfast in the long hall, where the wedding had been celebrated; it looked bigger without all those people crowding it, and colder too, the heat dispersing quickly every time someone opened the door to enter from outside. The shaggy household dogs roamed it freely now that the big grey direwolf of the king wasn't there to scare them, annoying the guests with their hungry insistence. Blaine, however, looked at them just as adoringly, mainly because he'd never seen a dog before, so he couldn't know they could look way healthier and prettier than that.

"The Meereenese eat them for lunch, you know" Kurt informed him airily as Blaine gave yet another of his sausages to one of them, smiling at the animal's eagerness to eat it from the palm of his hand.

"Well, thank you for proving my point about them" Blaine shot back, cleaning his hand over his trousers – Napkins, Blaine, Kurt resisted the urge to say – and crossing his arms over his chest. "They seem like such faithful animals! Can't we take one along with us?"

"What? No" Kurt told him, his tone final. "We have three dragons to take care of and you want a dog?"

"It's not like I can take them into our room or play with them, Kurt" Blaine complained. "I mean, don't you want a pet that's actually a pet?"

"I'll have you know I-"

Before he could finish, a man burst through the door, making all the occupants of the large room – mainly Northern captains and soldiers – turn around abruptly to look at him. He was bleeding from a wound on his left leg and his face was pale and sweaty.

"He's dead!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, collapsing to the floor right in the middle of the hall. "He's dead! The King in the North is dead! Everyone's dead!"

"Somebody call a maester!" Kurt heard someone shout as a crowd of people surrounded the wounded man. He stood up from the bench he was sitting on and put his knees over it to be able to see over their heads and hear what they were saying.

"What happened, boy? Calm down now, don't move, don't move" someone said.

"The Freys, they- they killed them, killed them all... They... We left the weapons outside because- because we were guests, you know? And then they- the direwolf kept snarling and growling and the ladies were all scared so he left him outside tied to a post because the queen asked him to, and then... after the ceremony was over, they locked the doors and pulled out swords and daggers and crossbows. I fought my way to the door and I saw him, I saw him clutching his lady's hand as they both died. And then I- I went outside and the direwolf was dead, too, with an arrow between his eyes. He was dead, they were all dead, dead..."

He wept like a baby after that, his sobs the only sound echoing in the air as the rest of them stayed immobile, silent, frozen in time. Men stared at each other in mute horror, dogs barked nervously at the fuss the man's arrival had created; and Kurt – Kurt fell back on the bench with a loud thump, staring vacantly ahead of him. Blaine slipped a hand across the table to grip his, trying to meet his eyes.

I saw him clutching his lady's hand as they both died.

Kurt flinched back at the contact. Blaine grabbed his hand again.

"Kurt, look at me" he whispered, squeezing. Just as Kurt was about to do it, the Northmen all around them erupted in a frenzied, uncoordinated conversation that grew louder in volume as the seconds passed.

"Let's go to the Twins and avenge our King!" someone shouted.

"He would want us to keep going, to avenge his father! I say let's go to King's Landing!" another man said.

"He brought this on himself, and on everyone of us! He woke the Gods' wrath when he betrayed his oath! Let's go back to the North, my friends, before they curse us too!"

Kurt stood up again to say something too, but Blaine leapt from his seat to pull him down by his arm.

"Kurt, look at me" he repeated in a hushed, fervent whisper, yet Kurt was able to make it out among the yelling. When their eyes met, he kept going, "Don't move. Don't say a word. They could start fighting against one another at any moment now."

Kurt's eyes inevitably fell on his other hand, slowly disappearing under the table to grip the hilt of his arakh.

"But they- we- we made a deal with-"

"It's none of our business anymore" Blaine cut him off. "They don't care. He cared."

They waited in fearful silence, Blaine still clutching at Kurt's arm as if to ground him and keep him where he could see him, until the conversation seemed to flow toward a seemingly univocal direction: going back to the North. Those who wanted to go to the Twins weren't enough to convince the others, and those who had wanted to keep travelling to King's Landing seemed to have disappeared – they had left, or decided to stay silent for their own sake. A whole cause, a whole mission, fell to pieces in front of Kurt's unblinking eyes like a mirror crashing to the floor, killed by hate and broken promises. Killed by love, too.

He left him outside tied to a post because the queen asked him to.

How na�ve of Ryder, who'd lectured Kurt about trust and told him how important his direwolf's instincts were, to do such a thing; na�ve like young hearts tended to be, but it shouldn't cost them that much. It was too high a price to pay for being stupid and in love.

When the Northmen left the hall to get ready for their departure, they looked at Kurt and Blaine long and hard, and words weren't needed for them to know what it meant: You have to leave now. So they stepped into the cold yard together, and for the first time, the first time in Kurt's whole life, it snowed. White flakes drifted in the air, slowly landing on trees and towers and people alike, forcing Kurt to blink and chase them away from his eyes.

"It's snowing" he heard himself say in a nervous, almost manic laugh as he looked up at the early morning sky. "It's snowing, Blaine."

"It is" Blaine said in a worried tone, his gaze fixed on Kurt even though Kurt knew snow was something Blaine had never seen before, either.

"It's beautiful, isn't it beautiful? I think it is" he announced, arms open wide as the flakes kept falling down, covering the world in white, concealing its blood-soaked earth from sight. In the back of his mind, he knew he was in some sort of shock, but he couldn't shake himself out of it.

"Kurt-"

"I'd never seen it before" Kurt laughed, staring down at Blaine in disbelief. "I mean, isn't it absurd? That this is the first time I see it?"

Blaine seemed to be in search of something to say, something to bring Kurt back to reality, but Finn and Sam arrived before he could.

"We heard what happened" Finn said hollowly, face drawn in apprehension. "Gods, I'm so glad my mother wasn't there. But I'm... I think I'm in shock."

"You're not the only one" Blaine said, glancing at Kurt worriedly before speaking to Sam. "Turns out guest right isn't that sacred after all."

Sam looked down at the ground for a moment, defeated and ashamed.

"It should be" he murmured sadly. "It was a terrible, terrible thing. The North won't forget."

"It looks like it already has" Blaine replied, no real sarcasm in his tone.

"There were survivors at the Twins, I heard" Finn informed him, shivering and pulling his cloak around himself. "I think they're going to reassemble and storm the towers."

"I'm cold" Kurt announced, realizing dully that his teeth were clattering. Blaine looked back at him apprehensively.

"I'll get him something warmer" Sam spoke up, gesturing for Finn to follow him. They left the yard, leaving deep wet footprints in the snow as it accumulated on the ground. For a moment, there was only stretching, blessed silence.

"Moon of my life" Blaine whispered, and Kurt didn't know why that was the thing that made him snap out of it – Gods, but it always was. He held onto it, he cherished the words, and every time Blaine said them he couldn't help but turn his complete attention to him.

"They were so in love" he said, clenching his jaw against the cold.

"Come here" Blaine told him, enveloping him in his arms and nestling Kurt's head under his chin, where Kurt could feel his heartbeat thump against his skin, his hot-bright life flowing through his veins; where everything was simple and the world, the world he was fighting for, wasn't as cruel and mean as it was; where people were forgiven if they made mistakes, and love was always right.

"I know you" Blaine murmured in Kurt's hair, stroking his back to infuse some warmth in it, "you're going to over-think this and relate it to us in some way. I beg you, don't."

He sounded so calm, so collected, that Kurt couldn't help but perceive it as coldness somehow.

"Why are you always like this?" he asked him abruptly, lifting his head from Blaine's chest to stare into his eyes sort of accusingly. "Why don't you feel anything? Why am I the only one who feels- who feels like this?"

"You're not" Blaine told him in a monotone.

"Then say something!" Kurt shouted at him, thumping his fists against his chest hysterically. "Shout, cry, punch something, kill someone, just- just do something!"

Blaine stopped him by gripping his wrists, but not too painfully. Kurt resisted him weakly, compelled by the determined look in Blaine's eyes to stop and listen to him.

"You know why I don't?" his khal said, voice breaking. "Because I'll crumble if I do, Kurt. After my brother, and my father, and my mother, after all the times I risked losing you, if- if I let the world get to me, I'm done for. And the same goes for you. You feel this- this need to take all the suffering of the world on your shoulders, and it's what I love and hate the most about you, because I'm scared, I'm so fucking scared, that it will crush you. So I have to keep control, I have to remind you – remind both of us – that we're still here, Kurt. That the world keeps turning, and time keeps passing, and we have to keep going because neither of them will stop for us to catch up."

For a moment Kurt could do nothing but stare at Blaine with his mouth open as he tried to reach inside of him and find what he truly felt, wrenching it away from the tangle of emotions wrapped around his heart. He didn't know why Ryder and Marley's death had affected him so much – after all, he didn't even know them that well. His parents had died before he was born, and then his brother, his child and the woman who carried it, yet he'd always pushed forward; there had been hesitations and missteps, sure, but he'd never faltered like that before. Then why?

And after thinking about it, and then thinking some more, he understood.

Theirs was the first death he'd ever experienced in Westeros. The place he had idealized, fantasized and dreamed about; the place he used to fall asleep thinking about, the place he used to daydream to fly to when things were bad, the place that had always registered as safe and beautiful and right in his mind. But it wasn't. It was evil, just like the rest of the world, and how could Kurt have ever believed it was nothing but that when his father had been killed for helping people? After everything, why couldn't he just grow up already?

"This isn't how it was supposed to go" he whispered as Blaine's grasp on his wrists loosened, the khal's hands framing his trembling face now. "This isn't how it was supposed to be."

"I know" Blaine told him sadly, as if wanting to apologize himself for all the wrongs of mankind, his thumbs brushing cold humid flakes away from Kurt's cheekbones. "I know, baby."

"How- how can I rule over people like this? Turncloaks, oathbreakers, murderers?"

"By making them suffer. By taking the throne they stole from you and making them regret every single thing they did wrong" Blaine replied, his jaw clenching. His skin was so starkly dark against the whiteness of the snow – he was gorgeous. "I promised once, back in another lifetime, that I would tear the false king off his iron chair with my bare hands to give it back to my khalees, and I will. Don't back down now, moon of my life. We're so close, so close."

They were, and maybe it was because of that that Kurt felt so full of doubts all of a sudden. But Blaine was right. There was no going back, there couldn't be. History would always remember him as the coward who'd run away before even seeing the Iron Throne, and most importantly, he would never be able to look at his reflection in the mirror again if he gave up. He owed it to his parents, and to all the people who had died for his cause – even to Sebastian, somehow – to succeed or die trying.

And he owed it to Blaine, just like he owed everything else to Blaine, to be the man he wanted him to be – a man he could be proud of, a man he could always look at as an equal. It was time for Kurt to prove he could be it, once and for all.

It was time to get it over with.