First breaking his fast and gettign answers

Jon nodded once, the decision settling over him like a cloak of weirwood leaves—cold, unyielding, eternal.

"Send for him," he said to the nearest guard, a grizzled veteran of the Wall whose face bore the scars of wights long dead. "Lord Baelish. Tell him the King in the North wishes to break his fast with his sister and her... guardian. He is to come at once."

The man bowed low and vanished into the corridors, boots echoing like distant thunder.

Sansa watched Jon with those Tully eyes, sharp as Valyrian steel now, all traces of the frightened girl burned away. "Breakfast?" she echoed, a faint arch to her brow. "With him?"

Jon met her gaze. "We start gentle. Let him taste the honey before the venom. It's easier to watch a man **** when he thinks he's sipping wine."

She considered that, then inclined her head. "As you say. But if he smiles at me..."

"He won't," Jon promised. The power coiled in his chest, patient as Ghost in the snow.

It took less than an hour. The Great Hall had been transformed in the interim—servants bustling under Sansa's quiet commands, laying out platters of black bread, smoked trout from White Harbor, wheels of cheese veined with blue, and pots of steaming oats sweetened with honey from the wolfswood hives. The fire roared high, chasing away the morning chill, and winter roses bloomed unnaturally in vases along the high table, their petals blood-red against the stone.

Petyr Baelish entered as he always did: a shadow in fine velvet, mockingbird brooch glinting at his throat like a predator's eye. His hair was oiled to a sharp widow's peak, his goatee trimmed to a mocking point. He bowed to Jon with flourishes that spoke of tourneys and tourneys lost, then turned to Sansa with a smile that was all teeth and no warmth.

"My lady," he murmured, voice smooth as oiled silk. "You grow more like your mother every dawn. A vision to rival the dawn itself."

Sansa's lips thinned, but she said nothing. Not yet.

"Lord Baelish," Jon greeted, gesturing to the seat across from him and Sansa. No throne for this meal; just three high-backed chairs carved with direwolves and falcons intertwined, a tapestry of fragile alliance. "Sit. Eat. We've much to discuss, you and I. The Vale's banners fly true now, and the North remembers its debts."

Littlefinger's eyes flicked to Jon, assessing, always assessing. He sat with the grace of a cat folding into a sunbeam, though there was no sun here to warm him. "Your Grace flatters me. The Vale has ever been a friend to House Stark. Blood ties us, after all." His gaze lingered on Sansa a beat too long, possessive as a lord with his lands.

A servant poured mulled wine, dark as garnets, and Jon took a slow sip, letting the spice burn his tongue. The power hummed, a low song in his blood, urging him to weave the first thread.

"Tell me, Lord Baelish," Jon said conversationally, breaking a chunk of bread and dipping it into the oats, "your role in all this. Protecting Sansa. Keeping her safe from the wolves at her door. How does a man from the Fingers end up the shield for a Stark wolf?"

Littlefinger paused, spoon halfway to his lips. His smile didn't falter, but something flickered in those green eyes—calculation, perhaps, or the ghost of old hungers. "Ah, your Grace. A simple tale of loyalty. I have served House Tully since I could walk, fostered at Riverrun under the eye of Hoster himself. Lady Sansa... she is the very image of her lady mother, Lady Catelyn. It was ever my honour to watch over her blood."

Jon leaned forward, elbows on the table, voice calm and curious, as if they were simply two men sharing old stories over breakfast.

“Lord Baelish… you were fostered at Riverrun, weren’t you? With Lady Catelyn and her siblings. People say you were close.”

The air thickened, the fire's crackle falling silent for a heartbeat. Littlefinger's spoon clattered against his bowl, wine sloshing over the rim of his goblet. His face drained of colour, then flushed crimson, the mockingbird brooch rising and falling with shallow breaths. He pressed a hand to his chest, fingers splaying over velvet as if feeling for the ghost of that long-ago scar—the one that had nearly spilled his life's blood on the tourney grounds of Riverrun.

“I…”Littlefinger’s throat bobbed. When he spoke again his voice cracked like a child’s. “Gods… Your Grace, I…” The confession poured out before he could stop it, rough and helpless. “Cat. Catelyn.”

His hand pressed over his heart, shaking. “I loved her from the first moment I saw her. I was barely six, hiding in the godswood while she laughed with Edmure down by the river. She was sunlight on water; I couldn’t look away.”

Lord Baelish dragged in a ragged breath. “I stole a kiss once, just lunged at her like some clumsy pup. She slapped me hard enough my ears rang and told me I was a stupid little boy. Didn’t matter. I never stopped wanting her. Never could.”

His eyes were glassy now, fixed on nothing. “When Lord Hoster betrothed her to Brandon… I went mad with it. Drunk on Arbor red and dreams. I challenged him. Brandon Stark, heir to Winterfell. A swordsman born.” A bitter, broken laugh escaped him. “I had a blade no longer than my forearm. He… he carved me open.”

His trembling fingers traced the path through the velvet, slow and deliberate. “From here—” Down his belly. “To here.”

Up to his throat.

“The maesters said the fever would take me. I should have died on those blood-soaked sheets. But I lived. For her. Always for her.”

He looked at Sansa then, eyes wet and shining with something far too raw to be called love anymore.

“And Sansa… my sweetling… you are Cat reborn. Protecting you… it’s all I have left of that fire.”

He blinked, dazed, as if surfacing from a weirwood pool. The hall seemed to swim around him, servants frozen mid-step, the winter roses wilting slightly in their vases. Sansa stared, her face a mask of ice, but her eyes—oh, her eyes burned with a fury that could melt Valyrian steel.

The glaze left his eyes as cleanly as frost melting from a windowpane. His hand dropped to the table. The tremor vanished. That practiced smile slid back into place, soft and harmless, as though nothing had ever clawed its way out of his throat.

A linen napkin rose to dab the corner of his mouth. A courteous nod followed toward Sansa.

“Forgive me, my lady. The ride north always stirs old memories.”

Her fingers whitened around the stem of her goblet. She said nothing.

Silence settled, thick as fresh-fallen snow.

Across the table, the man who had just confessed his life’s obsession believed he had merely spoken fondly of Riverrun. He believed the mask had never slipped. He believed the game still belonged to him.

The power curled inside Jon’s chest, warm and invisible, leaving no bruise.

A quiet smile touched the corner of his mouth, he knew what to do now.