[ More anxiousness, though Alayne covers it with a laugh of startled humility. ] When I was a girl there was a hound that lived in the alleyways behind the House of the Seven. It was a wild wild thing and none of the sisters would go near it, but I hadn't been afraid of it, even as a little girl.

[ It surprises her how easily the lie comes, how readily it slides off of her tongue as if it were the truth itself. ] Birds sing when I speak to them. Animals listen. [ A smile, soft and relenting. ] But it is not magic, not like the Starks.

My father says it must be my mother's beauty, for she was much the same.