Michel saw it happen before the words ever reached him—watched the letter tremble in Robb's hands, watched the color drain from his cousin's face in slow, terrible stages, watched something break behind eyes that had, until this exact moment, still carried some fragile, unspoken hope that this war might yet end without costing him everything.
"What does it say," Michel asked quietly, though some part of him had already guessed, already felt the shape of the answer settling cold into his chest before Robb spoke a single word of it.
Robb's hand closed around the parchment, crushing it slightly, his voice cracking when it finally came. "They killed him." His eyes lifted, bright and wet and furious all at once. "That bastard—Joffrey—he killed my father. For treason." He drew a ragged breath that did nothing to steady him. "They put him on trial before the whole city, before the Sept of Baelor, and they killed him there, in front of everyone."
The hall erupted into noise—northern lords surging to their feet with roars of outrage, fists pounding against the table, voices rising in a furious, overlapping din that filled the chamber from wall to wall. But it was not only the northern benches that broke into fury. The Vale lords rose just as fast, just as hard, Yohn Royce's face gone dark with a rage Michel had rarely seen cross the older knight's composed features. Eddard Stark had not been merely an ally to the Vale—he had lived among them for years in his youth, fostered and raised alongside Robert Baratheon under Jon Arryn's own roof, a friend whose memory still carried real weight in these halls.
"Why," Michel said, cutting through the noise, his voice low but carrying nonetheless. "Robb—why did they kill him. What did he say."
Robb's throat worked, and for a moment he could not answer at all, the grief and fury tangled too tightly together to let words through. When he finally spoke, his voice had dropped to something rawer, quieter, more dangerous than the shouting around them. "They offered him his life. Told him to confess to treason, take the black, and they'd let him live." His jaw clenched hard enough that the muscle stood out beneath the skin. "Instead he told the truth. Told the whole city that Joffrey wasn't Robert's son at all—that he and his brother and sister were born of incest, between Cersei and Jaime Lannister. That Joffrey's true father was never Robert Baratheon." His hands had curled into fists against the table's edge, trembling with the effort of holding himself still. "They executed him for saying it. In front of everyone."
A heavy, furious silence followed, broken only by the northern lords' low, murmured oaths, men swearing vengeance in tones too quiet and too certain to be anything but entirely meant.
"We'll kill him," one of the northern lords growled, the sentiment picked up and echoed down the bench in a grim chorus of agreement. "Kill them all. Every lion that wears that name."
Michel let the fury have its moment, let it burn through the hall unchecked, because he understood, better than most in that room, exactly what it cost to swallow grief like this silently. But when the worst of it had passed, he spoke again, his voice steady, deliberate, cutting through the noise with the particular calm that had carried him through the Whispering Wood.
"Then blood debt pays blood." He looked to Robb directly, holding his cousin's grief-stricken gaze. "They had your father, and they killed him. We have two of theirs." His voice hardened, certainty settling into every word. "Jaime Lannister. Tyrion Lannister. Both sons of the house that murdered Lord Stark in front of half of King's Landing. We don't need to march on the capital to answer this, Robb. We already hold the answer within our own walls."
Robb's hands were still trembling, but something in his expression steadied at the words, grief giving way, slowly, to a harder and more focused resolve. "Yes," he said, the word rough but certain. "We kill him. Both of them."
"Robb." Michel's voice gentled, just slightly, though the steel beneath it remained. "Go to Aunt Catelyn yourself. Tell her in person—not through a raven, not through some messenger who never knew your father at all. She deserves that much, and so do you."
Robb looked at him a long moment, something fragile and grateful passing behind the grief in his eyes, and then he nodded once, sharp, and turned without another word, moving fast through the parting crowd of lords toward the door.
The hall settled, slowly, into a heavier, more purposeful quiet once he had gone. Michel turned to face the assembled lords directly, and when he spoke, his voice carried clean across the chamber.
"Lord Eddard Stark told this realm the truth, and it cost him his life for it. Joffrey Baratheon is no true son of Robert's blood. He was born of incest between Cersei and Jaime Lannister." He let the words settle, watching them land across every house represented in that hall. "He is no king. He is a bastard sitting a throne that was never his to claim."
One by one, the lords nodded—grim, resolute agreement rippling down the benches, the truth landing with the particular weight of something already half-believed, now confirmed by a dead man's final, defiant words.
It was Yohn Royce who spoke next, stepping forward with a fresh scroll in hand. "My lord. We've received ravens—from both Stannis and Renly Baratheon. Each claims the throne for himself, and each asks for our support in winning it." He unrolled the parchment, scanning it once more before continuing. "Stannis offers the most, it seems. Should we help secure his claim, he's prepared to name you Hand of the King, Lord Arryn. And the North and Riverlands would both be granted seats on his small council besides."
A murmur moved through the hall at that, lords exchanging glances, weighing the offer's considerable weight.
Michel took the scroll himself, scanning the careful, deliberate language of Stannis's promise, and felt the shape of it settle into the same restless calculation that had occupied him since Riverrun first came into view ten days before.
"A tempting offer," he said quietly, and around the table, the assembled lords nodded their agreement, the weight of grief and vengeance and ambition all tangling together now into the next hard question this war would demand they answer.