Chapter 28: The Wolf's Embrace
The door clicked shut, sealing them in a pocket of quiet. The only sounds were the pop of the fire and the rustle of Missandei’s skirts as she turned. She didn’t speak. She never did, at first. Her eyes—dark, liquid, knowing—traveled from Y/N’s tense face to the heavy direwolf clasp at her throat.
Her hands came up, not hesitant, but deliberately slow, giving Y/N every chance to pull away. Cool fingers found the silver mechanism, worked it open. The weight of the cloak slumped. Missandei caught it, her arms sinking slightly with the heft of it, and laid it carefully over the back of the chair. The sigil-carved oak seemed to welcome it.
Next, the leather brigandine. The buckles were stiff. Missandei worked them with a practiced patience, her knuckles brushing the linen undershirt, feeling the damp warmth of Y/N’s skin beneath. Piece by piece, the armor came away, piled on the floor like a sloughed hide. Each removal made Y/N feel simultaneously lighter and more exposed.
Finally, just the thin, sweat-damp linen shirt remained. Missandei moved behind her. Her hands settled on Y/N’s shoulders, thumbs pressing into the knotted muscle, then drifted down, gathering the fabric. She drew the shirt up and over.
The cool air of the chamber hit Y/N’s skin, raising gooseflesh. She stood bare to the waist, staring at the fire, feeling more than seeing Missandei’s stillness behind her.
A breath, softly drawn.
Then, the lightest touch. A single fingertip tracing the raised, intricate lines carved into the skin between her shoulder blades. The ancient sigil of the First Men, a story of vows and vengeance written in scar tissue. It was a map of a past Y/N could never fully explain, a covenant she’d made with ghosts. Missandei traced it as if reading braille, learning a text she’d felt a hundred times but never tired of understanding.
Her other hand came to rest on Y/N’s hip, turning her gently. Y/N went, her body compliant, her gaze dropping to meet Missandei’s. There were no words for this. No words for the way Missandei looked at her—not at the scars that laddered her ribs, not at the flat plane of her stomach, not at the body that felt, in its own way, like a battlefield. She looked at her. At the tightness around her grey eyes, at the exhaustion in the set of her mouth.
Missandei leaned in, pressed her lips to the hollow of Y/N’s throat. A simple anchor. Then she took her hand. “Come.”
The bath in the corner was a deep copper tub, steam curling from its surface, smelling of pine and something faintly floral. Missandei had prepared it. Of course she had.
She untied her own simple dress, let it pool at her feet, and stepped into the water, sighing as it swallowed her to the waist. She held out a hand. Y/N took it, stepping in with a heavier displacement, the water sloshing near the rim. She sank down opposite Missandei, the scorching heat a delicious shock, making her hiss through her teeth. For a long moment, they just sat, knees bumping under the cloudy water, letting the heat unclench the fist of the day.
“It is a beautiful cloak,” Missandei said finally, her voice soft against the stone walls. She reached out, ran a wet hand over the sinewy scar that cut across Y/N’s left shoulder. “It suits you. But it is not you. You are under here.”
Y/N leaned her head back against the copper rim, closing her eyes. “Sansa said something like that. Said the cloak and the mark are the same promise.”
“She is wise. They are both heavy. One is chosen. The other was given.” Missandei’s foot found Y/N’s under the water, a point of contact. “Do you feel stronger?”
“I feel tired.”
“That is the first truth of strength. It is exhausting.”
Silence settled again, filled with the drip of water from a loose strand of Y/N’s hair. The memory of the phantom ache between her shoulders throbbed, a faint echo.
“Sometimes,” Missandei said, and her voice had changed, drifted into a darker, more distant place. “Sometimes I still forget she is gone. I will turn, expecting to see her listening to a petitioner, or looking at a map. I will have a thought—‘I must tell Daenerys this’—and then… the world corrects me.”
Y/N opened her eyes. Missandei was staring at the steam, her face a mask of calm grief. They didn’t speak of her often. It was a room in both their hearts they usually kept locked.
“She thought you were dead,” Y/N said, the words gruff. “When I pulled you from that black cell. When we ran. She saw the Keep fall. She saw the dragon come for her. She flew away believing they’d taken your head.”
Missandei’s breath hitched, just once. A tiny fracture in her composure. “I know.”
“You never got to tell her.”
“No.” A tear escaped, tracking cleanly down her cheek, merging with the bath’s moisture. “She died believing a lie. A necessary one, perhaps. But a lie all the same. Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister… they did not just kill a queen. They killed my friend. And they made her die alone, in spirit, before the knife ever went in.”
The raw pain in the words was a physical thing in the steamy air. Y/N remembered it in flashes, the stink of King’s Landing’s dungeons, the terrifying lightness of Missandei in her arms as she carried her through streets running with mud and blood, the shriek of the dragon eclipsing the world. She had saved a body. She couldn’t save a heart.
“She loved you,” Y/N said, because it was true, and truth was all she had to offer. “You were her voice. You were her conscience when hers got lost. That doesn’t die because a truth was missed. She knew who you were. That’s what matters.”
Missandei looked at her then, her eyes searching Y/N’s face. “You pulled me from the dark. You carried me home. You gave me a new ‘she’ to serve.” She lifted a hand from the water, traced the line of Y/N’s jaw. “My life is a series of rooms left behind. That cell was one. The pyramid in Meereen another. The Shadow Lands. This bath, this moment… this is the room I am in. I choose to be in it.”
The simplicity of it shattered Y/N’s last reserves. She moved through the water, closing the space between them, sliding her arms around Missandei, pressing their bodies together in the slick heat. Skin to skin, scar to smoothness, heartbeat to heartbeat.
“This room is yours,” Y/N whispered into her damp hair, the scent of pine and flowers drowning out the memory of smoke and blood. “As long as you want it.”
They stayed like that until the water began to cool. The future, with its timber disputes and wildling reports and the endless weight of the cloak, waited outside the door. But here, in the water and the warmth, there was only the shared silence of survived wounds, the tangible present of a body held, and the slow, steady momentum of a heart choosing, again and again, to beat.