Chapter Text
Sandor screamed, but no one heard. Not in that house. Not in that family.
Gregor held him down, laughter thick as meat grease, his fist in Sandor’s hair, the heat licking closer. The coals glowed white. The smell of char hit first—horsehair? Wool? No. His own skin.
He tried to fight. But he was seven, and Gregor was a monster. Then the fire took him. And the world broke.
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In the burning he saw the woods.
Not trees, but a place—somewhere cold, old, and watching. The fire became snow. The smoke became mist. He stood in a clearing of ash and ice, barefoot, shivering. The sky above was a slab of stone.
Three women waited by a weirwood tree—its face bleeding black sap, eyes wide with knowing. The women were not beautiful. They were not young. Their cloaks were made of pine needles, mud, and crow feathers. One held a bowl. One held a thread. One held a fang.
He tried to scream again, but no sound came. Only steam.
The middle one spoke. Her voice cracked like thawing ice.
“The wolf-maid and the hound of ash. They shall break the wheel that men call king.”
The tallest crone raised her thread. It was red. It ran between Sandor’s own burned fingers and a shadow of a girl with flame-red hair.
“She will be queen, but not of thrones. Not of gold. Not of lords.”
The third woman stepped forward. She dragged the fang across her palm, letting the blood drip into the bowl. The crone holding the bowl thrust it into his hands. He looked down.
It was full of fire. His own face burned in its surface, twisted and raw.
“The fire that maims will cleanse. The blood that spills will bless.”
He dropped the bowl. Flames licked up his arms.
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He woke screaming.
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The maester said fever. Gregor said weakness. His father said nothing at all.
But Sandor never forgot the tree. Or the thread. Or the girl with the eyes like stormlight.
And years later, when he watched Sansa Stark sing her songs in the Red Keep, it came back—like a blade in the gut.
The wolf-maid.
And in the firelight, her hair was redder than he had ever imagined.