Whitebark Stream crawling back to you

it comes like a wave—dark, suffocating. the moment his poisonous voice slithers into her ear, something inside her recoils. the past rushes up to meet her. his hearth, laden with wedding gifts she never desired. her, wrapped in a silver veil. a symbol of possession, not devotion. she was no woman, no bride. 
she thought she had buried those nightmares. yet he dredged them back to the surface like a corpse from the grave. she exhales slowly. it is her shield against the tightening of her chest, against the way his presence coils around her like iron chains. he is a specter, a walking ghost, the embodiment of the kingdom that took and never gave.
and for all his cruelty, for all his snarling and needling, she knows the truth of him. he wants her to feel this way. her skin pricks when he places himself behind her hips. it means i might claim you again. she should not let it touch her, but the words strike deeper than they should, setting her nerves alight.
no. never again.
"stop." it is not a snarl, nor a growl. not some cutting remark meant to wound. it is quiet. frayed at the edges. heavy. she turns to him, fully this time, her breath a thin thread between them, "i am tired." it is not a plea—it is a fact. and gods, is it the truth. she feels it in her bones, in the ache of old wounds and even older memories.
“of this. of you.” her pale eyes search his face for a reaction. for any sign of the man who used to look upon her with such adoration, "you want me to fight you. to keep this between us alive because we don’t know what we are without it." without the grey marches, the life they were supposed to live there, she means. she knows he knows it too. she felt a fool for even entertaining him, right here, cloistered in this thicket. 
“you may stand here and snarl and spit at me all you want.” her voice is steady, but it is hollow, "but it won’t change the fact that it is ruin. you will not find a fight in me. and i will not be dragged back into that life."
she does not tremble as she holds his red gaze. but beneath the ice, beneath the steady rise and fall of her breath, is weariness. a silent sadness that goes beyond him. since the moment she learned what it meant to belong to others before herself.
“i know what i want. but, what does kolfinnr want?” this time, she points his name without insult and venom. she points it to his soul, the young boy without name, crackling with undying flame and gold. before the throne. before the blood. before the fall. not blackfell. kol.