"...well, I couldn't really leave her here with that man—"

"Which implies a rather deep level of trust already, does it not?" Zak unsheathes a dagger attached to his leg and starts lightly playing with it, throwing it up in the air and catching it after a few spins. "In her, that is. To leave her unsupervised somewhere like that. Lord Manderly and his men will be with us, and she is clearly smart enough to get away with roughly anything she wants to without anyone guaranteeing she'll behave—"

This time he kicks Zakary's shin, and thankfully Zak's reflexes are good enough to catch the dagger anyway even as he whines about the kick.

"Now you're getting into dangerous territory, Zak."

"I am, aren't I?" he replies with a light tone and a serious look. "You trust that she won't do anything you wouldn't want her to do. You trust her. Even if it's been barely two days that you've known her."

"...well, I—I mean, we are married, I cannot just—"

"I'm not saying you are wrong, brother. Your trust is well-placed."

"And how would you know?" Alis asks, folding his arms and glaring at Zak.

"Is there even a point in explaining? Lord Stark is smart enough to figure it out, if he thinks about it, and he is just being stubborn and trying to put himself and his own intuition down. Stop that, Alis. Stop second-guessing yourself so much."

"What exactly do you think I'm second-guessing myself about? And what was the tell, I was not thinking about anything related to her at all during the meeting, how did you even know?"

"You need to pay more attention to your words, brother, you keep just confirming my guesses. And the answer is that it was a guess, from knowing you, and then you just confirmed it by acting the way you do."

He leans back against the wall and looks away again.

"—ah, I see."

"What! What do you see, Zakary, I just leaned against a wall and looked away from you!"

"You looked away from me because you don't want to think about me—"

"There's a million other things I could have meant instead!"

"Yes, but I know you better than anyone, so what I have to do is ask the little you that lives in my head, 'why is he doing what he is doing?', and the answers are usually right. That's the same for your lady wife, by the by, the way you act when you talk about her, or when I talk about her, and the way you two were acting at the wedding and the feast, and the things she did—I know it wasn't your suggestion to get a Northern wedding—it all adds up. There are many kinds of people your lady wife could be, but all of them have to fit with the things I've seen."

"So what is the little me in your head saying I am worried about, then, Zakary?"

"You feel very comfortable with her, already, and you trust her implicitly. She is very level-headed and she guessed about us yesterday—"

Alis chokes on his spit and has to spend a few seconds recovering his breath. "What?" he asks in an undertone.

"I have no idea what you two were talking about, but she watched you coming to me to ask about Lysa's bedding, and then she looked at me and she wanted to know something. She wasn't satisfied with what I gave her, which was literally nothing, so she's not sure, but she has some thoughts and ideas about our relationship. If nothing else, we're brothers, and it's not like some light sword touching between brothers isn't commonplace."

"...must you put these things these ways?"

"Yeah, actually. It breaks through your icy exterior and makes you have to think about what exactly I'm saying instead of just trying to make guesses about related things that I could be saying."

"Well, fine, yes, I am certain many people suspect we've spent some nights together, why is this relevant to what you were saying?"

"I was saying that she's level-headed and she guessed about us and she seemed fine with it, which as you say does not mean that much, but whenever I bring this up or as we've been talking about it you freeze or flinch or avert your eyes or frown. You do actually want to tell her about us, and you're more certain than you were when we talked that this would not be a terrible idea, but you still feel conflicted about it. She... hmm... You two talked about something like this, yes?"

Alis has to think about all of these things explicitly, and Zak just, just makes it look so easy, just guesses the right answers like it's nothing, and it's infuriating.

"Yes," he grumbles. "She said—she said that I should not make myself miserable while away from her at war, that I should come back to her whole, and that as long as I didn't harm anyone while doing it—not any partners, nor children, then—then I should why are you laughing!!!!!"