A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

Then he began to shake. It started with no more than a little shivering, but within a few short heartbeats he had collapsed across the castle, his limbs flailing about violently. White towers and snowy bridges shattered and fell on all sides. Sansa stood horrified, but Petyr Baelish seized her cousin’s wrists and shouted for the maester.
    Guards and serving girls arrived within instants to help restrain the boy, Maester Colemon a short time later. Robert Arryn’s shaking sickness was nothing new to the people of the Eyrie, and Lady Lysa had trained them all to come rushing at the boy’s first cry. The maester held the little lord’s head and gave him half a cup of dreamwine, murmuring soothing words. Slowly the violence of the fit seemed to ebb away, till nothing remained but a small shaking of the hands. “Help him to my chambers,” Colemon told the guards. “A leeching will help calm him.”
    â€œIt was my fault.” Sansa showed them the doll’s head. “I ripped his doll in two. I never meant to, but . . .”
    â€œHis lordship was destroying the castle,” said Petyr.
    â€œA giant,” the boy whispered, weeping. “It wasn’t me, it was a giant hurt the castle. She
killed
him! I hate her! She’s a bastard and I
hate
her! I don’t
want
to be leeched!”
    â€œMy lord, your blood needs thinning,” said Maester Colemon. “It is the bad blood that makes you angry, and the rage that brings on the shaking. Come now.”
    They led the boy away.
My lord husband
, Sansa thought, as she contemplated the ruins of Winterfell. The snow had stopped, and it was colder than before. She wondered if Lord Robert would shake all through their wedding.
At least Joffrey was sound of body
. A mad rage seized hold of her. She picked up a broken branch and smashed the torn doll’s head down on top of it, then pushed it down atop the shattered gatehouse of her snow castle. The servants looked aghast, but when Littlefinger saw what she’d done he laughed. “If the tales be true, that’s not the first giant to end up with his head on Winterfell’s walls.”
    â€œThose are only stories,” she said, and left him there.
    Back in her bedchamber, Sansa took off her cloak and her wet boots and sat beside the fire. She had no doubt that she would be made to answer for Lord Robert’s fit.
Perhaps Lady Lysa will send me away
. Her aunt was quick to banish anyone who displeased her, and nothing displeased her quite so much as people she suspected of mistreating her son.
    Sansa would have welcomed banishment. The Gates of the Moon was much larger than the Eyrie, and livelier as well. Lord Nestor Royce seemed gruff and stern, but his daughter Myranda kept his castle for him, and everyone said how frolicsome she was. Even Sansa’s supposed bastardy might not count too much against her below. One of King Robert’s baseborn daughters was in service to Lord Nestor, and she and the Lady Myranda were said to be fast friends, as close as sisters.
    I will tell my aunt that I don’t want to marry Robert
. Not even the High Septon himself could declare a woman married if she refused to say the vows. She wasn’t a beggar, no matter what her aunt said. She was thirteen, a woman flowered and wed, the heir to Winterfell. Sansa felt sorry for her little cousin sometimes, but she could not imagine ever wanting to be his wife.
I would sooner be married to Tyrion again
. If Lady Lysa knew that, surely she’d send her away . . . away from Robert’s pouts and shakes and runny eyes, away from Marillion’s lingering looks, away from Petyr’s kisses.
I will tell her. I will!
    It was late that afternoon when Lady Lysa summoned her. Sansa had been marshaling her courage all day, but no sooner did Marillion appear at her door than all her doubts returned. “Lady Lysa requires your presence in the High Hall.” The singer’s eyes undressed her as he spoke, but she was used to that.
    Marillion was comely, there was no denying it; boyish and slender, with smooth skin, sandy hair, a charming smile. But he had made himself well hated in the Vale, by everyone but her aunt and little Lord Robert. To hear the servants talk, Sansa was not the first maid to suffer his advances, and the others had not had Lothor Brune to defend them. But Lady Lysa would hear no complaints against him. Since coming to the Eyrie, the singer had