"He cursed you having been buried there," Ned slurs in between breaths. "He demanded you be buried in a meadow with the sun on your face, surrounded by flowers." He can recall the conversation as though he'd only just had it, standing amidst the flickering torches and constant drip of melting ice against stone. "I told him you were my sister. You belonged at home." It was back-and-forth they'd had on a number of occasions, and Ned's answer to Robert's demands had always been the same. Lyanna was a Stark, she was his sister; there was nowhere else she could have been laid to rest, in Ned's mind. "Was that the right thing to do?" he asks, suddenly worried he might've made the wrong decision. Would she have preferred to have been buried elsewhere? At the Tower? With Rhaegar? At Dragonstone with the Targaryens?

He stirs at the feeling of the cool, damp cloth against his scorching forehead, but it does little good to still the words that continue to bleed out of his mouth like a gushing wound.

"My son," he murmurs. "My son, my Brandon. I'd heard his voice, though how could I have? He hadn't yet been born. How could .. how could he have .. I heard him, Lyanna. I heard him call me."