Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I sent you out, I get you back:
tell me
how could the difference be simply
nothing?
Look!
You are nothing at all.
Just a crack where the light slipped through.

· · · ·

Sansa has not seen the silhouette of the Red Keep in years.

She’s not been to King’s Landing to pay homage to Daenerys when the Dragon Queen was first crowned, or when the Seven Kingdoms stopped in national mourning to grieve the heroes of the Great War. Everyone was honored, but only Jon’s body was burnt in a pyre — a Targaryen funeral, the Queen insisted, for he was a Targaryen Prince. Sansa and her siblings disagreed.

She’s not been to King’s Landing to visit her husband, the Hand of the Queen. The last they met, it was in Winterfell, and afterwards he followed his Queen back South: back to the warmth, to his bounty of wine and food and women, to his little courtly games. They agreed that the arrangement was comfortable enough to be kept intact — they lacked interest (Sansa) or patience (Tyrion) for another prospect, and with Jon dead, it was useful to keep a closer connection between the North and Iron Throne after all the bloodshed. Tyrion is welcome to visit her in the North whenever he wishes, but he never wishes it.

It is he who is waiting for her in the Red Keep’s courtyard, at the high of the heat. A mild spring breeze plays with her hair; sunlight kisses the top of the trees, the hightowers of the castle, illuminating a million suspended dots of dust. It’s all too bright for her tastes — she’s been sweating beneath her cloak and dress for days; she feels it dampening the nape of her neck, gathering on the curve under her breasts.

Sansa hates the heat. It makes her graceless.

For the look in Tyrion’s eyes, he seems to disagree. He offers her a hand as she steps out of the carriage that he’s sent to bring her from the harbor to the castle.

“Wife,” he greets.

“Husband,” Sansa replies, primly. Her small retinue is moving behind her, moving trunks and leading horses to the stables.

“How was the road?” He asks.

She delicately lets go of his hand to smooth the skirts of her gown.

“Long,” she answers. The sun burns her cheeks like an unkind lover. “I desperately need a bath. This weather is intolerable.”

“I had one prepared for you,” her husband shakes his head, guiding their way into the Red Keep. Sansa follows. “But of course you’d look at a perfectly pleasant spring afternoon and call it intolerable.”

Sansa doesn’t answer that. They walk in silence, skipping the Great Hall and the Throne Room, instead crossing the Small Hall straight toward the Tower of the Hand.

The Tower is brand new, as is much of the castle, and thrice as large as it used to be in Sansa's time. Tyrion had the steps made shallow and large, the many chambers open to windows and sunlight. Under the brutal midday sun, the pale red stones are uncharred, completely free of scorch marks, as if Cersei Lannister had never touched it with her wildfire.

Indeed, some people would say — and that is the word out in the streets — that, with the Dragon Queen sitting upon the Iron Throne, the whole of King’s Landing thrums with life as if Cersei had been just a bad dream, as if she never existed at all. As if the late Queen is not slowly rotting to death, waiting for its mercy, in the deepest jails of the castle.

But Sansa would beg to differ. In fact, in this town, Cersei is a vice, teeth made out of red stones, fingers of ruthless midday sun rays, walls and keys for jaws and nails.

She crosses the antechamber — the door to Tyrion’s solar is open, and Sansa takes a quick glance inside at his usual mess as she passes it by, but the rest of the rooms are tidy and neat. Inside their bedchambers, there’s a bath, in fact, waiting for her, and also a dress of dusty blue. Tyrion lingers at the door, watching her unfamiliar form as she unfastens her cloak from her shoulders and sits by the bench at the foot of their bed.

He smiles. Sort of.

“You came,” he says. It’s not as if he’s happy; it is something between surprised and, frankly, a little bit amused.

There is an edge of joke to it, though it’s a humorless joke; Sansa has to agree. With so many things unsaid in this marriage, it is actions that are left to bear the weight of all their knowing.

“You invited me,” Sansa feels compelled to remind him, as if it would make it any less awkward. She takes her boots off. “Of course I came.”

He chortles dryly under his breath. It’s not as if she’s always ready to run to him at his slightest invitation for— well. For anything, really. This, after all, is the only thing that could possibly bring her South. Nothing — not grief for lost kin or duty to new monarchs — is as powerful as seeing revenge done.

All things considered, this might be one of the only things they actually have in common.

“I thought you wouldn’t want to miss it,” Tyrion says, casually.

Sansa folds her hands on her lap and studies her husband. It’s not been that long since the last time they saw each other, but war and loss have eaten him away: all the crow’s feet around his eyes and mouth are deeper, and he’s thinner, too, but he’s still wearing fine ermine and there are golden rings on half of his fingers.

“Maybe you do know me, after all,” Sansa says, flatly. It’s an indulgent, kind lie.

He chuckles again, more of a snort.

“I’ll leave you to your bath,” he points vaguely to the tub, full of steaming water. “The Queen looks forward to sharing the midday meal with you in her royal chambers.”

Sansa tries to hide her disappointment. She’s exhausted; she had expected to eat alone and sleep a couple of hours. “Oh?”

“Oh, Sansa,” he rolls his eyes. “Make an effort. I’ll be in the solar if you need me,” he says, and closes the door behind him as he leaves.

· · · ·

Daenerys Targaryen is a beautiful woman. The most beautiful woman in the world, in fact.

Graceful, lithe. Smiles at the maids serving at their table, touches Sansa’s hand over the first course — salad of spinach, chickpeas, plums, candied nuts — as she asks about the North, about the trip, about the weather. Her violet royal dress is adorned with rubies across the cleavage — the same stones encrusted on her crown.

Sansa pictures her eyes crimson red, bloodied.

Daenerys dismisses the servants after the main meal is served, and pours wine onto Sansa’s cup herself.

“I hope your siblings are faring well?” She asks.

“They are, and send their love,” Sansa confirms. She takes the cup; the metal lingers against her lips, out of habit, as she waits. “Eagerly expecting for your visit, still, Your Grace.”

Daenerys pours wine for herself as well.

“Lady Sansa, I must be honest,” she says, with a sly smile that reminds Sansa of her husband, “I miss your sister dearly but…” She twists her nose — even that looks pretty — and tastes a gulp of her wine. Sansa, then, allows herself a small sip. “I do not miss the North. The constant snow and the cold…”

The Queen feigns a shudder. Watches Sansa over the edge of her cup.

“I mean no offense,” she says.

“No offense taken,” Sansa says. You can’t quite take offense from a dragonrider. “You sound remarkably like my lord husband.”

Daenerys smiles. “Oh, we share certain sensibilities, he and I. Speaking of—”

There’s a pause, and Daenerys puts her cup down. In a certain light, she looks like a mother, ready to admonish her children, to teach them. It’s how the realms are fond of calling her. Sansa heard that there was a name for her in Essos — Mhysa.

As much else about the new Queen, it reminds Sansa of another one.

“Yes. Lord Tyrion invited me.”

“Formally?”

“In private correspondence.” When Daenerys sends her a wary glance, Sansa hones her voice. “He’s my husband. We are allowed privacy — though I had hoped you would do it. Send a formal invitation, I mean.”

Daenerys dodges that smoothly. “I had your best intentions at heart,” she answers without hesitation. “Believe me. It was not for lack of consideration.”

“Are we not friends and allies? Are we not part of your kingdom?” Sansa inquires. “Is the North excluded from witnessing justice?”

“I’m not talking about the North,” Daenerys says. “I’m talking about you, my lady. From my experience, some things are better left in the past.”

That makes a dry, bitter smile bloom in Sansa’s mouth — with teeth, a carnivorous plant.

“Oh?” Sansa says. Whatever Tyrion told his Queen about what Sansa endured during her captivity in King’s Landing could not possibly cover even half of it. “I suppose this detachment is the reason you kept her barely alive in a jail all winter through instead of killing her right away.”

“I am responsible for delivering justice, and Cersei Lannister did not deserve a quick death,” Daenerys says. She’s never as monstrous as in those self-righteous moments. Sansa always feels that if she would reach out now, she would touch not unblemished pale skin but the hot, thick harshness of dragon scales. “She usurped my throne, lied to her people, held the citizens of this town as her hostages and human shields during the War. She conspired to steal my dragons and then to kill them. Her crimes against the Seven Kingdoms were immeasurable.”

It sounds to me as if you’re measuring them, Sansa thinks. Let me show you, Your Grace, a crime truly without measure.

Truth be told: she cares very little for the crimes Cersei committed against the Seven Kingdoms.

“Justice,” Sansa mutters under her breath.

“Would you be more merciful than I?” Daenerys asks, unmoved. “Would you have killed her sooner?”

For a fraction of a moment, Sansa feels seen — she’s inclined to look away.

Never, she thinks. I would keep her like this, half alive, half dead, under my thumb, forever. She picks her roasted rabbit apart with the tip of her fork.

“Why now?” She asks.

Daenerys shrugs, takes a piece of meat to her lips. Chews without hurry before swallowing it down.

“Winter is over,” she says, at last. “I don’t want to carry this into springtime.”

“Bad omens?” Sansa asks, cynically.

“No. Just—” Daenerys sighs. “Seasons change, Lady Sansa.”

No, they don’t, Sansa thinks. They don’t: winter is always coming.

· · · ·

It is not until night-time that Sansa sees the shape of winter, its hungry teeth, its open, gaping mouth:

Winter arrives dressed in a pale green dress. It has loose golden curls cloaking its narrow shoulders and a golden lion necklace pending from its dainty neck. It crosses the dinner table where Sansa is sharing the dinner meal with her husband, and it doesn’t settle in it, but winter has terrific manners. Winter sees her — a pair of morbid emerald eyes settling on Sansa’s face, tired purple bruises from sleeplessness ornating them — and curtsies.

“Lady Sansa,” it says, holding its skirts with feeble fingers. “Good evening.”

Sansa finds it hard to find her voice. Myrcella has always been a beautiful girl; it shouldn't surprise Sansa that she would grown into a fine woman, truly after her mother in every detail. She looks so much like Cersei — a younger, more beautiful version of Cersei: the high cheek-bones; the full, rosy lips; the golden of her curls, a little dull; the feline shape of her green eyes; the generous swell of her bosom and hips; the proud raise of her chin, even in her sorrow—

It robs Sansa of her breath.

“Princess,” Sansa murmurs. It’s supposed to be a greeting but it sounds like a song.

“No more,” the lady says, flatly. “Just Lady Myrcella now.”

Tyrion, who has been eating his pork pie, looks at the vacant third chair between them. Until that moment, Sansa hadn’t noticed the empty seat at all.

“Come, Cella,” he says in a hopeless voice, as if he’s just going through the procedure. “Share our table.”

“I am not hungry,” Myrcella replies, as if she is, too, following protocol, as if they’re cursed to repeat those lines over and over every night.

“Lady Myrcella—” Sansa begins, but Myrcella is already turning away.

“If you’ll excuse me, Lady Sansa,” Myrcella says with a bow.

She walks out of the antechamber into one of the doors and closes it behind her with a quiet, resigned thud.

Sansa turns to her husband immediately.

“You didn’t tell me she was here,” she accuses him, not completely cured of the vertigo in her ears. She’d rested from the trip after her meal with the Queen, and Tyrion didn’t bother to wake her until the sun had already set.

He looks apathetic.

“Daenerys commanded her to come,” he explains. “I’ll send her back to the Rock as soon as—” he falters, then. “As soon as possible.”

“She doesn’t look well,” Sansa murmurs.

“Her mother is going to be executed in a public square after months of imprisonment. Her father is dead, her brothers are dead, she’s been expelled from her own home in all but name and the only family she has left has allied with the enemy,” he almost shrugs. “She isn’t well.”

Sansa waits for him to say more, and when he just keeps eating, she presses him further.

“And…?” When he only looks annoyed at Sansa’s expression, she elucidates: “Are you not going to do anything about it?”

He sighs, no longer annoyed but utterly exhausted. “Do what?”

“Talk to her,” Sansa suggests.

“You think I haven’t tried that?” He answers, exasperated. “I’m Hand of the Queen. She blames me.” He fills up his cup with wine again. “With reason,” he adds under his breath.

“But that’s my point,” Sansa argues. “You’re Hand, you must have some leverage here to spare her.”

“I did what I could,” Tyrion says. There’s a siege in his voice. “I kept her from being bastardized as Shireen demanded, and I’m going to give her the Lannister name. She’s to be heir to the Rock after me, but I can’t—”

Sansa is too appalled to let him finish his sentence. “Heir to the Rock? Were you planning on naming her your heir without speaking to me?”

“Well, wife,” he scoffs. Now there are daggers coming out of his throat, entire battles. “Forgive my insolence, but I took the liberty to assume this marriage would remain childless.”

Sansa frowns.

“I’m not talking about this, I’m saying this is not how we do things,” she says. “We do things together. Otherwise we might as well just annul it already.”

“It looks like a better idea with each passing year,” he mutters.

His food is cold on his plate, but he finishes the wine in his cup and reaches for more. Sansa takes the flagon, draws it away, out of his reach. He looks at her as if he’s about to strike her.

“Tyrion,” she says in a small voice. She hates to be in this place, completely relying on his guilt to keep her safe from other, worse men. “You promised.”

“Did I truly?” He wonders. “Because I think it just went unsaid that I owed you.” He rests back against his chair, his eyes glossy. “I keep trying to remember why we haven’t annulled it yet, and then I am reminded that the only thing more pathetic than keeping this marriage is to pretend that it matters enough to be annulled at all.”

“Do you have someone else in mind?” She asks and, with a trembling hand, puts the flagon back in place. This isn’t something she had considered, before, but he is Hand of the Queen and heir to the Rock besides. He must have options, just as she does. “As a match, I mean.”

He doesn’t even reach for the wine in his vicinity, at first. He’s too busy glaring at her, mismatched eyes full of hurt.

“Don’t mock me, Sansa.”

She sighs. This is very, very tiring, every time.

“You don’t have to assume I’m mocking you every time I ask an honest question,” she says.

“No, I don’t have anyone else in mind. Don’t be absurd. It’s you who don’t need this marriage anymore,” he says, out of patience. “You’re safe, your family is safe, the North is safe. You can just say ‘no’ to whoever tries to woo you and both Daenerys and Bran will support you. Our world has changed.”

He knows very well that isn’t true, that a Stark of Winterfell could not afford to be without a marriage. Not after how the War went.

“I’m not even sure we’re having the same conversation anymore,” Sansa says, delicately massaging the midpoint between her eyebrows.

“We probably aren’t,” Tyrion says; but when have they ever? “I have a debt to Myrcella, Sansa,” he lowers his voice to a murmur. “It was the least I could do.”

His voice is ashes and dust; it almost makes her pity him. Oh, Lannisters and their debts.

Well, Sansa has her share of debts to collect, too.

“Can I try, at least?” She asks, trying to sound as gentle as possible. What is a Lannister but a beast to be tamed? “Talking to Myrcella?”

For the first day since the night started, he looks grateful that she’s here.

“That would be actually very kind of you, my lady,” he says, barely concealing the relief in his voice. “I would appreciate it very much.”

Sansa reaches out for his hand and gives it a quick squeeze, before they resume their dinner in complete silence.

· · · ·

After dinner, Tyrion says he has work to do and goes to his solar, and Sansa stands at the door where Myrcella had locked herself in. A princess in a tower.

She knocks, balancing the tray in her other hand.

“Go away, uncle,” comes Myrcella’s voice, muffled by the door.

Sansa shakes with fear, almost disgusted with herself. Is she going to do this? Truly?

And then she tries to remember Margaery’s face, and realizes that the memory is like a faded painting as the years go by.

“It’s me,” she says. “It’s Sansa.”

There’s a pause, a moment of deliberation, and the noise of steps. A bolt is raised; Myrcella opens the door.

She has changed into a pearl-colored nightgown, the silken fabric flowing over her limbs like water — Sansa imagines her by the shore, being licked by salty waves. Her hair remains loose: a crown and cloak in golden strands, falling in gentle curves across her shoulders and back.

Sansa extends the tray in the girl’s direction.

“The last course was lemon cakes,” Sansa says, gently. “I thought it would be better to eat them together. May I?”

Myrcella stares at her for just a second before she widens the opening of the door. “Come inside, please,” she invites, still managing to sound like a princess.

Sansa complies, and wonders what it says about her that she can feel the click of the door being locked again settling in her belly, desire as heavy as a stone. Myrcella’s rooms are clean and organized — her bed, big enough for two, is covered in linen colored the same pale green of her earlier dress; her cushions are ornate with lace; from the canopy hangs a veil, in golden so weak as to be almost white. There’s a vanity at the corner of the room with a great mirror; crimson roses in a golden vessel, full of water; a trunk by the foot of her bed; scented candles — for some reason Sansa expected them to smell sweet, but instead they spread a musky aroma in the room, vervain and cedar and oak trees. It makes Sansa think of forests after autumn rain; of a deer being caught between the teeth of a wolf.

There’s a fireplace, too, and a small couch for two in front of the hearth. It’s where her hostess leads her to, so Sansa follows. She sits by Myrcella’s side, the tray laying between them, and watches as the princess takes one of the lemon cakes, studying it, smelling it.

“Do you remember when we shared those?” Sansa asks. “When we were girls?”

Myrcella doesn’t quite smile, but the corner of her eyes wrinkle as if she’s almost there. “I do,” she says, and takes a bite.

When she closes her eyes in delight, Sansa watches her lips.

“These are delicious,” she says, crossing one leg over her knee, the fabric streaming over her thighs like a waterfall. “I think I heard Uncle Tyrion ordering these for you earlier. They’re your favorite, right?”

Sansa smiles. “Oh, so you remember.”

The smile comes, then, after Myrcella swallows another bite.

(Sansa cannot remember Cersei smiling. In her mind the Queen is always scowling or with lips curled in pleasure. Not even when she commended Sansa’s work — yes, little dove, well done — she would smile.

Sansa wonders if this is why Myrcella looks younger.)

“A princess always remembers those things,” she says, with a mischief that reminds Sansa of the few times she’s seen Tyrion actually happy. Myrcella pauses. “Not that I’m worth much of a crown these days.”

“Don’t speak like that,” Sansa murmurs sadly. “I’m glad to see you, Myrcella. Truly.”

“Why aren’t you eating?” Myrcella asks. “There are two of those.”

“You can have both,” Sansa says.

“You said you came to share,” Myrcella raises her eyebrows, taking yet another bite of hers.

Sansa concedes, and takes a lemon cake to her mouth. The sugar melts in her tongue. She cleans the corner of her lips from its excess.

“Tyrion didn’t tell me you would be here,” Sansa says.

“Oh, I didn’t know you’d be here, either. It seems she invited everyone to watch her little show,” Myrcella says, not hiding her bitterness. Her sincerity is touching; her tone is not that far from treason, and Sansa feels as if she has been invited into the secret space where Myrcella is safe, where her trust is available as a banquet given in good-faith, where she is bare and exposed — her pain and her resentments and her longings, all laid before Sansa to pick and toy with.

“I’m very sorry,” Sansa murmurs, though it’s not true, and leaves her lemon cake half-eaten over the tray to place a hand on Myrcella’s knee.

“I appreciate it,” the once-princess says. She sweeps small crumbs of cake off of her legs. “In any case, it’s good to see a friendly face at court. The Red Keep is not as I remember it.”

“It’s not how I remember it either,” Sansa agrees with a nod.

“Oh,” Myrcella says, “oh...” Her regret, her shame, is so honest that it almost breaks Sansa’s heart. “I am so sorry, Lady Sansa, I did not mean—”

Sansa smiles, fondling Myrcella’s knee, the fabric sliding under her hand as she does so.

“It’s just Sansa for you,” she says, “and don’t apologize. This place was once your home. You’re allowed to grieve its loss.”

Myrcella tangles her sugar-kissed fingers in Sansa’s.

“It must be so painful for you to be here,” Myrcella whispers warmly. Gods, Sansa thinks, she’s like a beacon of sunshine. “I am so sorry that the Queen forced you to come. I can barely understand why she’s doing this to me, but to put you through this, knowing that— ah,” Myrcella sighs. “It’s so cruel.”

“Thank you for your sympathy, my lady,” Sansa says. “But in any case, I’m glad to be here if your uncle needs me.”

Immediately, Myrcella stiffens her spine, retreating her hand and staring at the fire.

“I don’t think he cares enough to need your kindness,” Myrcella mutters.

Oh, but she looks so much more like Cersei in her anger; Sansa’s heart swells with want.

“You, then,” she says in a quiet murmur. “I’m glad to be here if you need me.”

Myrcella turns her face from the fire to stare Sansa in the eye, all wide-eyed innocence and grief, suddenly a girl again, an orphan, a prey, a deer; Sansa holds the look. The flames bathe the right side of her face in orange and leave the other in shadows, like the moon.

“I’ll remember this,” Myrcella says, solemnly.

Good, Sansa thinks. Good.

She gets up on her feet, cleaning the last of the sweetness from her fingers.

“I’ll leave you to your rest,” she says, hiding her folded hands behind her back. “If you’ll dismiss me, my lady.”

Myrcella chuckles — the most lovely sound. Sunshine, Sansa thinks. “Don’t be so unfamiliar. If I am to call you Sansa, you must call me by my name.”

(Cersei had made Sansa call her King, once.

Tell me you like this, little dove, she’d commanded, an entire hand deep into Sansa’s cunt. Tell me you like it when your King touches you.

Sansa was breathless with pain, with pleasure, with shame, with hate, and Cersei was holding it all together, all there, in her fist.

Yes, my King, she’d whimpered. Yes, please.)

Sansa smiles, as demurely as she knows how.

“Myrcella,” she says, testing it, tasting it.

“And sleeping doesn’t come so easy lately but I’ll try,” she says. “Thank you for the lemon cakes. And for…” She trails off.

Sansa nods in silent understanding.

“You know where to find me,” she says — and then curtsies and bows her head, as one is supposed to do before a Princess, before she leaves.

Chapter Text

Oh my friends
who is there to comfort me?
Who understands?
Leave me be,
let me go,
do not soothe me.
This is a knot
no one can untie.
There will be no rest,
there is no retrieval.
No number exists
for griefs like these.

· · · ·

The next morning, Myrcella joins their table.

Sansa and Tyrion are eating in usual silence when the door to Myrcella’s chambers opens, revealing a disheveled Princess who, nevertheless, walks casually to the empty seat and pours a handful of nuts into a ware bowl.

Tyrion is looking at his niece as if a ghost had joined them for breakfast, and Sansa is looking at him. Then at her, at Myrcella: she still has purple bags under her eyes — it’s not a flattering combination to her emerald irises or her yellow curls, but she’s eating. On her own accord. At the table.

“Good morning?” Tyrion tries, after a too long moment of nothing but chewing sounds.

Myrcella looks at her uncle as if nothing’s amiss.

“Are we going to have lemon cakes tonight again?” She asks him.

Tyrion turns a pair of mismatched, baffled eyes to his wife. Sansa takes her cup of tea to her mouth in order to hide her smile, subtly shrugging. I told you, she says to him, wordlessly, with the raise of her eyebrows.

The curling of his mouth seems to concede her the point. He looks at Myrcella again.

“They were delicious,” Myrcella elaborates.

“They really were,” Sansa agrees.

Tyrion nods. “If my ladies want them,” he says. “Of course.”

Myrcella doesn’t smile — not yet, not here — but she seems content with that.

“Good,” she says, with the voice of a Princess having her most basic needs met.

Well, Sansa thinks to herself. That was faster than expected.

· · · ·

At night, Myrcella shares their table for dinner, and Sansa is invited to the last course in her private chambers again.

They eat their lemon cakes sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace, facing each other, their knees touching. Myrcella looks comfortable in her nightshift and a flowery robe. Her hair is still loose around her shoulders — the strands look dull, dry, but she smiles easily, and reminisces about spicy Dornish food.

“Do you miss it?” Sansa asks. “Dorne?”

They have finished their cakes, and there’s sugar in the corner of Myrcella’s lips — red, full lips.

Sansa wants to lick it with the tip of her tongue.

Instead, Sansa runs a thumb over it, gently, and puts the finger into her mouth; Myrcella blushes. She looks at Sansa with her crisp green eyes.

“Sometimes,” she murmurs. “I miss playing cyvasse with Trystane. He was a good friend… I miss Arianne, too. And I miss the robes,” she sighs. “The robes were very nice.”

Sansa chuckles. “The robes?” She asks.

“Yes,” Myrcella looks longly at the fire. “Everyone used robes there, men and women. The dresses were looser, too — they used belts, beautiful belts, made of all sorts of precious stones. Everything was so colorful!” She exclaims. “Tyene once gave me the most beautiful veil — you know, to keep sand out of your face — but I lost it when they brought me back.”

“We could go to the market tomorrow,” Sansa proposes. “Try spicy foods… Maybe buy us some silk netting?”

“Oh, I could use a veil,” she replies. “At least it would hide this hideous thing on my face.” She looks at Sansa and blushes again, suddenly shy. Myrcella blushes in deep red, the same crimson color of her lips. “I don’t really like going out.”

Sansa sometimes surprises herself with how generous life is, presenting opportunities to her like a banquet on a platter.

“There’s nothing in your face that should be hidden, Myrcella,” she says, with earnest gentleness.

And she means it — there’s a scar on the right side of Myrcella’s face, between her jaw-line and cheek-bone, that she tries to keep hidden by letting her hair loose. With care, Sansa sweeps her hair aside and reaches out her hand to touch the scar; the girl shudders.

“What happened?” She asks in a whisper.

Myrcella smiles with grief.

“A misunderstanding,” she replies, and then pulls the whole bulk of her hair to her left shoulder.

It exposes the entire right side of her head — enough for Sansa to see a much uglier, thicker scar, following the one on her face, where her right ear was supposed to be. For a second, Sansa wonders what Cersei would say about this — her pretty princess maimed, brutalized.

But you made me ugly, too, Sansa thinks back. You brutalized me, too.

So it’s fair. Parts of a daughter for parts of a daughter.

“Oh, Cella,” Sansa says, “I’m so very sorry.”

“You need not pity me,” Myrcella says, resolutely.

“I do not,” Sansa replies, with cold stubbornness, deep winter against Myrcella’s fire. “You survived horrible things — it’s all a scar ever means.”

Myrcella looks at her helplessly, impotently. Then, she sighs, as if her strength abandoned her, toying with the worn out tips of her hair, looking down at them to avoid Sansa’s gaze.

Oh, but Sansa will not let her. She delicately holds Myrcella’s chin, and the girl looks so scared — Sansa doesn’t even know of what.

A deer, she thinks, waiting to be preyed upon. Asking for it, for the blood and the violence of it, for an end to the anticipation.

“Listen,” Sansa says, her voice as soothing as she knows how to make it, combing a handful of dry blonde strands between her fingers. “Let’s put some oil in your hair. Tomorrow it will look so pretty. We can braid it—”

Myrcella shakes her head. “No, no braids, they will see—”

Sansa puts the pad of her thumb over Myrcella’s red lips; they are as tender as Sansa had imagined. “We can try to cover the scar if you want, but you will not sulk indoors forever,” Sansa tells her. Commands her. She cups Myrcella’s cheek in the palm of her hand, cradles it with the smoothness of a viper, slithering before the pounce, and steals the focus of her eyes: both the snake and the charmer, at once. “You’re a beautiful girl, Myrcella, and a lioness besides. You were not made for hiding.”

Myrcella searches into Sansa’s azure gaze as if she’s looking for something in there. Whatever she finds makes her unstrain. A red rose of a smile blooms in her mouth.

“Alright,” she says. “Gods, you sound so much like my mother sometimes.” She grasps her lower lip under her upper teeth. “I’m sorry. Is that cruel of me?”

Myrcella is not capable of cruelty. She is utterly unlike her mother; she is like Sansa used to be, once.

“Of course not, sweetling,” Sansa reassures her.

· · · ·

Myrcella keeps perfectly still, hands folded on her own lap, while Sansa splits her blonde curls, patiently oils the strands from the roots to the tip and, when they’re greased enough, smoothly runs an ivory-handled comb through them, over and over, until the hair has turned into liquid gold in her palm.

She hums a song under her breath as Sansa repeats the procedure with each lock, and at the end, starts to braid the bulk of her hair into a single plait with skilled fingers. She twists the braid into a bun, and then tucks it under a silky bonnet. The tight hem of the bonnet crowning her head covers the scar on her ear too, an unspoken kindness.

“You can go to sleep,” Sansa instructs her. “Wash it off in the morning, gently, with foam. You’ll see, it will look much better.”

Myrcella touches the top of the bun covered by the bonnet and studies her own reflection in the golden-framed oval glass.

“This is nice,” she says, excited as a little girl.

Sansa chuckles, wiping the olive oil off of her fingers on a rag. The fragrance of Myrcella’s scented candles fill the room. Oak and cedar. She looks at Myrcella’s slender, bare neck, pictures a bruise of a bite embellishing the milky skin right around her throat, paints it a crimson blood. No good could come out of those woods.

“Are you going to tell me that your mother did that, too?” She jokes.

Her eyes meet Myrcella’s gaze in the mirror.

“No,” Myrcella gives a watery chuckle. “My mother wasn’t that kind of mother,” she says, with fond sadness instilled in her voice.

No. Sansa didn’t think so.

· · · ·

The next morning, despite still looking tired and ill-rested as she joins their table for breakfast, Myrcella’s blonde hair is bright and silky, with lustrous curls flowing across her shoulders, and she smells of cleaness, soap and roses. She eats eggs and bacon, like her uncle, and while her manners are impeccable, she actually seems to be almost hungry.

Tyrion shares a look with Sansa over their cups before he turns to his niece. “You look very pretty this morning, Myrcella.”

Myrcella angles her head slightly toward his voice, keeping her eyes on her food.

“I’d like to go to the market today,” she says. “If you would allow me, uncle.”

Tyrion is so aghast that, at first, he only blinks. It is required of her, then, to look at him — it seems to Sansa that all the Lannister conversations happen there, through shades of green.

“Lady Sansa and I would like to buy silk and threads,” Myrcella says, and now it is an announcement rather than a request. “I need to fix one of my old dresses, and she is going to help me.”

The lies easily roll off of her tongue; but the story written in her eyes is unreadable to Sansa. Apparently it also is to her husband.

“Of course,” Tyrion says. He looks thoughtfully at his wife. “Silk and threads.”

“I can bring you something,” Myrcella says, nonchalantly.

“I appreciate that, but have no need for anything,” Tyrion says. He palms his own chest until he finds it — a small leather bag, heavy with gold. “Whatever you’d like, Myrcella.”

· · · ·

Tyrion sends Bronn to watch over them. Sansa is easily recognizable, and with Myrcella as a pair it is impossible for people not to know who they are; Sansa is not the only person who traveled across Kingdoms to see Cersei Lannister’s execution.

But Bronn is more a shadow than a real presence, and though the way he looks at Sansa makes her uncomfortable and disconcerted, it is easy to forget he is even there as the morning blends into afternoon. Myrcella still wears her hair loose, but in the spring sun, it cascades behind her in shining curls, and it makes Sansa want to bury her fingers in them, to knot her knuckles at the base of Myrcella’s nape.

Instead, Sansa raises ribbons of silk and holds them against Myrcella’s cheek, contrasting different colors with her natural ones — her pale complexion, her green-emerald eyes, her yellow curls.

“I like this one,” she says about a vivid, bright turquoise.

That shade of blue had looked so beautiful on Margaery’s olive skin — Sansa remembers brown curls, and almond-shaped brown eyes, and a flash of bright, white, mischievous smile, all adorned by turquoise skirts, patterns of golden flowers and thorns sewn into it.

Sansa twists her nose now. It clashes weirdly against Myrcella, as if the color is fighting against her and winning.

“I don’t think so,” she switches to a lighter, paler shade of blue, one slightly closer to green to draw attention to her eyes. The fabric flows among her fingers as she tries it against Myrcella’s face again, then neck. “I think you were made for softer colors.”

Myrcella smiles at her. “Crimson and golden are not soft colors,” she replies.

“No,” Sansa agrees. And you don’t look pretty in either, she thinks.

“Soft colors make me look childish,” Myrcella mutters. “I am not a child anymore.”

“It wouldn’t say so,” Sansa kindly disagrees. “That depends on the whole — the hair, the jewelry… The cleavage.” She winks at Myrcella, who promptly blushes. “The Dragon Queen wears soft colors all the time. Do you think she looks childish?”

Myrcella doesn’t answer immediately.

“It is different,” she says, at last. “I don’t ride a dragon. No one looks childish atop a dragon.”

Sansa quietly laughs under her breath. With a pregnant pause, and mindful of Bronn not far away from them, she looks Myrcella in the eye.

“The dress you wanted fixed,” she says. “What color is it?”

Myrcella sighs.

“Beige,” she answers. “But it is dull and irrecoverable. We might as well buy a new one. I was just looking for an excuse to spend more time with you,” Myrcella explains, words as fast a stream — and then she blushes a shade darker, and looks away.

Sansa suppresses a smile.

Oh, she thinks, you poor, poor little girl. You should make this just a little harder for me.

She takes Myrcella’s hand and gently intertwines their fingers together, an easy fit.

“I love fixing old dresses,” Sansa says. “It’s one of my favorite pastimes, indeed.”

Myrcella huffs out a chuckle under her breath — it is a shy, embarrassed sound. Adorable, truly.

“The dress is really ugly,” she says, timidly. “I don’t even know if it fits me anymore.”

“Don’t worry,” Sansa says, picking up a few different silks and fabrics — golden-brown Myrish lace shaped after peacock feathers; blue net veil; black thread. “By the time I’m done with you, you’re going to look like a Princess again.”

· · · ·

“I told you, Sansa,” Myrcella pouts, staring at her own reflection in the mirror of her room, the sunset stains everything in pink. “It is irrecoverable.”

Sansa studies the girl and the dress she’s in. It is not beige; it’s almost a warm shade of brown, which is a good thing. The dress is plain and simple, and because of that, it harbors a thousand possibilities.

“It isn’t that bad,” Sansa murmurs as she tries to draw a draft of a new dress in her mind. “Turn around for me.”

Myrcella rolls her eyes, and fully spins around, holding the skirts of her gown in a mockery of boasting. She stops facing the mirror again, putting both hands over her own waist, sliding them to her front, landing them on her flat belly, her body hidden somewhere under all the loose garment.

“I’m too thin,” she complains.

“Yes,” Sansa agrees, “because you don’t eat. Start eating.”

“I don’t feel hungry,” Myrcella complains. She pauses, shifts to one side, then to the other, trying to find an angle in which the dress could be a little more flattering. “I look like a potato sack.”

“Don’t be silly, Myrcella,” Sansa says, amused, though now she can see it, it’s hard to unsee it. She steps closer. “Hold your head high, look ahead and don’t move.”

Myrcella obeys, standing with a straight spine, motionless and barely breathing as Sansa watchfully folds the excess of fabric and fastens pins at each side of her waist to mark the places that will need cutting, a thimble protecting her thumb.

“It’s not only that I don’t eat, you know,” Myrcella says, perfectly still. “I never had enough to fill this,” she says, pointing vaguely to her own chest.

Indeed, Myrcella has a delicate frame — her breasts are small and firm, and while Sansa could not help but notice the prominent roundness just below her small-back, her hips are not exactly wide.

She smiles, not taking her eyes away from her work as she stands in front of Myrcella, studying the girl’s bosom.

“That is not a bad thing,” Sansa says, trying to sound gentle. “It means we can be a little bolder with this cleavage.”

She pulls the sleeves down until they are hanging from Myrcella’s upper arm, just below the ball of her shoulders. It fully exposes her collar-bones and the smooth curve of her breasts. Sansa imagines a necklace with polished emerald stones falling in place into the crevice between them; maybe a cut in V on the neckline.

She smiles to herself, admiring the picture being formed in her head. “See?” She says, cheerfully. “I could never look so graceful in a dress such as this.”

“Oh, no,” Myrcella nervously laughs. “None of us would be able to do anything but stare, I suppose. You would simply break the court.”

She lowers her eyes to Myrcella, who catches herself too late and furiously blushes, harder than ever before.

Sansa is painfully aware of the stares her own bosom can draw — usually unwanted attention — since she flowered into womanhood. It’s gotten progressively worse with the years.

But this right now is not unwanted.

Sansa blinks twice, delighted at the embarrassment in Myrcella’s face. The once princess awkwardly gawks at her for long, excruciating seconds, until she wakes out of her own self-induced daze.

“I am sorry,” Myrcella blurts out after stuttering for words. “I did not— I am sorry, my lady,” she finally settles, saying her pleasantries as easily as Sansa once did. “That was inexcusably rude.”

“It wasn’t,” Sansa replies.

She is actually flattered, and also happy to gather precious information about what Myrcella likes, but it’s best not to let it show. For now.

“No, I just mean—”

“I know what you mean,” Sansa says, with a guarded tone and a smile that doesn’t show her teeth, and comes back to the task at hand.

She can feel Myrcella’s body is tense and the girl doesn’t speak again, and Sansa thinks this is good. It is a good thing to sit with this shame, with this ignominy, the enormity of this want, and let it fester in the mortified silence. It is a good thing to come to terms with one’s own desires.

Shame is a seed and later, when Sansa comes to gather the fruits, Myrcella will be ready, ripe for the reaping.

So she keeps working, Myrcella slightly trembling beneath her hands, making sure she doesn’t touch uncovered skin for too long, focusing on the new dress being formed in her head.

The sleeves will probably need to go, too — Myrcella’s slender arms are lost inside the thing, only the tip of her fingers edging out of the wide cuffs. Sansa unrolls a measuring tape from Myrcella’s shoulder to her wrist, biting her lip as she thinks, fastening pins along its length — shoulder, elbow, wrist. The skirts could use some structure, too; Sansa measures Myrcella’s legs, and then closes the tape around her tiny waist. The whole time she can feel Myrcella stealing glances, fisting and unfisting her fingers.

When Sansa is finally done, she steps back.

“I think it’s enough,” she says.

Without a word, Myrcella tries to run to the screen at the corner of the room, but Sansa holds her wrist.

“You’re full of pins and needles,” Sansa says, her voice light. “Let me help you out of this.”

Myrcella nods, her head barely moving. With care, Sansa takes out a few of the pins, enough to remove the dress. Myrcella stands covered only in her lower small-clothes, immediately covering her own breasts with her arm as she grabs her earlier dress and hurries to hide behind the screen.

Sansa waits, sitting at the bench at the food of the bed. When Myrcella comes out — fully dressed, blonde curls loose and somewhat disheveled about her shoulders — her chin is held a little higher, as if she’s gathered her dignity again, which strikes Sansa as thoroughly amusing.

Sansa tries her best not to laugh or smile, though; she considers Myrcella, staring at her, a shadow standing quietly in front of the window, against the dwindling sunlight.

She grabs the beige dress. “Would you mind if I took this?” Sansa asks.

Without a word, Myrcella shakes her head in a ‘no’.

Sansa gets up, walks toward the exit of Myrcella’s bedroom. She palms the door-frame, lingering there, until she turns around.

“Lemon cakes later?” She asks, casually.

And Myrcella’s face lights up like dawn. She dumbly opens her mouth, at first speechless, and then gives a feverish nod.

“Sure,” she says, at last, and Sansa smiles.

· · · ·

Back in her private bedroom, Sansa hangs Myrcella’s dress on the frame of the window. She closes the curtains. Outside, the last of the sunlight is gone, but she doesn’t light up the candles.

Instead, in the dark, she bolts the door, and walks to the bed she would share with her husband, if her husband were ever here at all. She lies down and, despite being alone, her nose still remembers the scent of the musky candles in Myrcella’s rooms.

She is thrumming all over under her skin, a blissful, sweet sensation, so very familiar, and when she hikes up her own skirts and touches herself between her legs, she’s not surprised to find her small-clothes wet.

(Cersei was the first person who ever taught Sansa to do this. To pleasure herself. In fact, it was the first lesson of many that followed.

She had stripped Sansa naked from all her garments and pulled her to stand in front of a golden-framed long mirror. Cersei stood behind her, fingers tantalizingly ghosting over Sansa’s neck, breasts, tummy tight with fear. Sansa was forced to watch. To watch her body, bare. To watch the Queen, pleased and still dressed.

Look at you, the Queen cooed. Such a pretty thing, little dove. This is your biggest weapon, you know that? You’re so pretty. You must know this.

Then, the Queen slid one leg in the gap between Sansa’s thighs and forced her feet apart. Sansa yelped, lost her balance, but Cersei wrapped one firm arm around her waist, holding Sansa against herself, Sansa’s back against the Queen’s front, her spine straight.

Then, Cersei took Sansa’s hand in her own, and guided Sansa’s fingers between her own half-parted legs. Sansa panicked.

Your grace, she stuttered. I— I mustn’t— I must not.

She had watched Cersei grinning in the mirror.

Sansa, she’d said, sultrily, no man is going to do this for you, certainly not Joffrey. You learn how to pleasure yourself.

My Septa told me it is a sin, she’d argued, numbly.

She was studying herself as if in a dream: outside looking in.

I’m not here, Sansa had felt, then, studying her own reflection open and naked in the mirror, watching Cersei intertwine their fingers together and gently press the hill of Sansa’s hand against some place between her legs, drawing circles over it. Slowly, and with horror, Sansa realized something good and terrifying piled itself up in her belly, a thing she didn’t name until years later.

A thing as heavy as a stone, desire. It never stopped feeling as too heavy a burden.

That body is not mine, she thought, that’s not me.

Your septa, Cersei reminded her, is not here, Sansa.

That was true. Septa Mordane was dead, as was almost everyone Sansa had ever loved.

Cersei lowered her head, pressed her cheek against Sansa’s.

Trust me, she’d said. You’ll thank me later. I’m doing you a favor.)

Sansa never forgave Cersei for anything; particularly for being right that night. But that was years ago, and Sansa was only fourteen.

Now, a woman grown, she has come to terms with her own twisted nature, with everything Cersei made of her; Sansa the clay, Cersei the potter. She is thinking of it — how it feels wrong, how it feels filthy, how it feels good not in spite of those things but because of them — as she turns on her belly on the mattress, grabbing a pillow and pressing it under her, between her legs.

She starts rocking her hips back and forth, closes her eyes, and tries to keep the pace slow. But images of Myrcella fill her mind and soon she is moving faster — Myrcella spread open, arching her back and softly whining, Myrcella’s mouth feasting on Sansa’s own breasts after all, Myrcella tasting sweet and sharp like lemon cakes; and then, as Sansa chases after her own pleasure, Myrcella has grown older and rougher, from Princess to Queen, and she is Cersei, her mouth slack open with mindless pleasure as Sansa eats her out, again and again, not stopping because she can only stop when Cersei commands her too, hating herself for liking it so much when Cersei shudders in bliss above her, and Sansa has to bite her own hand to muffle the moans scratching her throat, and suddenly one Queen has turned into another, no longer lioness but a dragon, silver locks camouflaged in the white sheets as she rides Sansa’s hand, as Daenerys begs Sansa for more, for faster, and Sansa’s body has surrendered to it, to the claim this hunger has on her, Sansa’s body is moving on its own accord against the pillow beneath her—

Until all those women disappear out of thin air, and like an explosion, filling the center and the periphery of her mind’s eye, filling Sansa’s nose and lungs and womb, filling every empty space, all that royal white skin is replaced by olive skin, all those different shades of blonde replaced by brown waves, and almond-shaped brown eyes, and there’s only Margaery, Margaery’s face contorted in pleasure, the made-up memory as clear as if Margaery was right there in the bed with her, Margaery murmuring sweet girl in Sansa’s ear, her hands running through Sansa’s back and—

Sansa tries to stop it from happening, tries to keep her lust from spilling out and staining something that should remain pure, but the picture trips her over the edge and she stills herself against it as her orgasm rolls across her anyway. She curses gods and men, but her body breaks apart with a long, fractured whimper, stifled against the bed, that could as well be a desperate cry for help.

It lasts forever, and when it’s done, no one has come to save her.

She falls on the mattress, breathless, not even moving the pillow from beneath her, waiting for the small waves of it to wane out.

Then, she gets up, lights up a few candles and, avoiding the mirror hanging over the vanity in the corner, opens the door and goes out to find a maid who can prepare her a bath. She feels dirty.

· · · ·

“I’m going to get fat,” Myrcella says, mouthing at another bite of her cake with actual hunger.

Tyrion didn’t show up for dinner earlier, and Sansa and Myrcella ate alone, moving their meal to Myrcella’s bedroom for the last course. Three nights in a row, already tradition. Sansa waited on that small couch in front of the fire while Myrcella changed into her night-clothes, emerging from behind the screen draped in light-pink satin and her flowery robe to enjoy their dessert.

Soft colors, Sansa thought, as she smiled to welcome the girl back by her side.

“As you should,” Sansa answers, laughing. The afternoon embarrassment seems to be forgotten, and Myrcella comfortably lets her thigh brush against Sansa’s on the couch. “The dress will fit you better.” She pauses for a thoughtful second, “I’ll confess that it’s good to see you eating so eagerly. I was worried when I first saw you, and I know for a fact your uncle has been worrying, too.”

“Uncle Tyrion doesn’t truly care about me,” Myrcella mutters, pressing her lips together. Her eyes are never as bright as when her anger flashes out, but it always lasts just a second. She shakes her head as if she’s trying to shoo away a thought. “He only cares about his own games.”

“He keeps ordering those lemon cakes for you,” Sansa says, kindly. “I think he wants to see you happy, is all.”

“If he really wanted to see me happy he wouldn’t force me to do it,” Myrcella murmurs.

“I don’t think he had a choice,” Sansa says, not sure why she’s defending her husband. “The Queen wanted you to be here. He tried to avoid it but—”

“I’m not talking about this,” Myrcella murmurs.

Sansa frowns, putting her half-eaten cake aside, on the tray in front of them. “What do you mean? What are you talking about, then?”

Myrcella stares at her own lemon cake, too, suddenly disinterested in it, but instead of putting it away she anxiously shoves the last piece into her mouth. After she’s swallowed it down, she delicately cleans her fingers, letting the crumbs fall onto the tray.

“Casterly Rock,” she says, at last. “He exiled me to the Rock.”

Sansa frowns deeper.

“Exiled you?” Sansa echoes. “He’s trying to give it to you,” she explains. “You must know that. He wants to make you his heir, the Lady of the Rock.”

Myrcella laughs bitterly, so much like Cersei that it pains Sansa.

“He never asked if I wanted it,” she says, the ugly, sad smirk still shaping her red mouth. “He didn’t even consult me. He just assumed…” She is shimmering with frustration. “I thought he would try to marry me to Aegon, he would try to keep me here, in the Red Keep, in my home, to make me Queen one day… It’s what Arianne wanted.” She bites the inside of her own cheek, a habit Sansa’s seen in Tyrion before. “Or at least what I thought she wanted.”

She knows well why Tyrion never tried to tie Myrcella to Aegon. As far as Sansa is aware, her husband, Varys and herself are the only people in the realms who truly know who Aegon is, or who he actually isn’t. But that is not something that Myrcella, or anyone for that matter, could ever know about, on the risk of another War soon.

So Sansa reaches for Myrcella’s hand, instead.

“Cella…” She trails off. “Then tell him. Just tell him you don’t want it. I’m sure he’ll change his mind.”

“I tried,” Myrcella shrugs. Tears well up in her eyes, and she pushes them back with her knuckles. “But he doesn’t understand. He thinks it is the best castle in the country, the top of the world. He said I would grow used to it, and that with the Lannister name I’d have a birth-right… Cousin Martyn has been trying to court me, and I know that was uncle Tyrion’s doing, too.”

“Is your cousin not to your liking?”

Myrcella’s eyes are empty as she stares into the fire; Sansa recognizes the feeling.

“He would not be the worst husband,” she says, curling her lips down. “He’s sort of handsome, and he has been polite to me. Gentle, even,” she shrugs. “But he only wants the Rock. If Uncle Tyrion weren’t playing his cards, cousin Martyn would be the next in line. His claim is better than mine. He is older, and a man, besides… He doesn’t really care about me, either.” She doesn’t let go of Sansa’s hand. “I could grow used to him, probably. I have to. Who else would marry me? I know what they all think of me. That I am an abomination born of sin.” She grins, as if the titles make her proud. She tilts her head toward Sansa. “I know you think that, too.”

“I don’t,” Sansa shakes her head.

“Yes, you do,” Myrcella says, fast and to the point. “Everyone does, even the Dragon Queen, whose entire family thrived on this sin in particular.”

“Myrcella, whatever your parents did— whatever their sins,” Sansa says, earnestly, “it is not your duty to bear them for the rest of your life.”

Myrcella laughs sourly.

“Of course I must bear them,” she says. For the first time, Sansa can see the woman blooming behind her young features. “I am their sin, Sansa. No one will ever forgive or forget that.”

This was how Sansa learned to grow up, too, the whole ritual of sin-bearing before the eyes of court. I’m a traitor. My brother is a traitor, my father was a traitor. I am loyal to my beloved Joffrey.

“I don’t see a sin when I look at you,” Sansa lies. It comes easily; Myrcella stares at her for a long moment, as if she’s struggling to believe. “I only see you.”

“It’s because you’re kinder than they all are,” Myrcella says, the acid smirk melting into a wistful, genuine smile.

And there are many things Sansa would like to say, some kind lies, some bitter truths; but Myrcella looks so trusting, so loving and caring and open, blooming like a flower that had been waiting in the dead of winter, sprinkles of sugar like spring rain waking her up to life. Her eyes gleam, alive and bright green in the firelight. Her cheeks are perpetually painted by stains of red heat whenever Sansa is too near. Her mouth half-opens as if she means to say something and then decides to simply catch a breath. She looks so different from the mournful, apathetic girl Sansa met three nights ago.

And Sansa didn’t even touch her yet. She’s barely begun.

“I should go,” Sansa murmurs. “The hour grows late.”

“Don’t go,” Myrcella says. Eyes like a supplicant. Oh, my dear, Sansa thinks, your mother would be ashamed. “Please. Stay a while longer. I can’t find sleep in here anymore. The nightmares—”

Sansa looks behind them, to the empty bed. For two.

“Would you like me to…” She lets the pause, the silence, hover between them for a moment. “We could lie down for a while. Maybe it would help you?”

Myrcella looks relieved. She fervently nods. “Yes, please. That would help.”

· · · ·

Sansa removes her boots, and then her outer gown, keeping the thin shift she was wearing underneath. Now that spring has arrived in the South, she cannot bear to wear wool stockings, and her legs are exposed, kissed by the night breeze coming from the sea.

Myrcella has hung her robe on the post of the bed, and is sitting on the edge of the mattress. Sansa can feel the weight of her gaze while Myrcella watches her every move, while Myrcella waits for her to come.

Without hurry, Sansa blows every candle off, the only light left in the room the distant fire in the hearth. She pulls the blankets, climbs into the bed, stares at Myrcella, at that bounty of blonde curls cloaking her back.

She reaches out a hand across the mattress.

“Come here,” Sansa invites.

Myrcella attends. She lies down on her side, and Sansa does the same, so they are facing each other. Myrcella slides closer until their cheeks are pressed against the same pillow, their chests almost touching. She covers them with the same blanket.

Sansa lifts a hand and lands it gently on Myrcella’s hair, slowly running the fingers through the strands.

Myrcella closes her eyes. She chuckles a little.

“What is it?” Sansa asks. Her voice has turned into air, into a murmur, into a secret.

“Nothing,” Myrcella whispers, voice shaky. “It’s been a while since I shared a bed with anyone, is all.”

Sansa lifts one eyebrow, realizing she is, in fact, jealous. “Who?”

“Friends from Dorne,” Myrcella shrugs. “We always did, when the nights were cold.”

Sansa hums under her breath.

“Tell me about the nightmares,” Sansa asks. Her hand moves to Myrcella’s bare shoulder, drawing soothing circles with the tip of her fingers there.

Goosebumps rise in Myrcella’s arms, and she catches her breath.

“I dream about Casterly Rock,” she says in a small voice. “About the Hall of Heroes and the golden statues. All the ghosts are there.”

“Who is there?” Sansa inquires.

“Everyone,” Myrcella answers, her voice watery, scared. “I see Joffrey taunting Tommen because of his cats. I see Tommen crying. I see grandpa grabbing Joffrey’s arm with a scowl and uncle…” She licks her lower lip as she frowns, catching herself just in time, desperately trying for a better word and settling for, “Ser Jaime is there, too, and he never does anything. He just watches. He wears a bloodied white cloak.” A tear falls across her cheek, the bridge of her nose, until it pools on the pillow. “And I try to speak to them, but they cannot see me, or hear me… And that is not even the worst part.”

“No?” Sansa asks, kindly. “What is the worst part?”

Myrcella sighs.

“It’s that in the dream I always know mother is coming to join them,” she says, swallowing down a sob; her shoulders shake with it. “And there’s nothing I can do to stop it, and I’m afraid that when she does, she will be able to see me. I’m afraid she will know that I didn’t save her, that I couldn’t— that I’m not—”

Sansa shushes her, presses the pad of her thumb against her wet, salty lips.

“Hey,” Sansa coos. “Hey, it’s alright, Cella.”

So she brings Myrcella closer, into her arms, against her heart, and lets the girl damp her shift with tears.

“I’m here with you,” Sansa whispers in her ear. Myrcella doesn’t stop crying, but she clutches Sansa’s waist as if her life depended on it. “I’m right here.”

· · · ·

Later, when Myrcella at last falls asleep, Sansa tries her best not to make any noise or sudden move as she gets up, her dress hanging on her arm and her boots in hand as she crosses the common antechamber toward her own bedroom in the hour of the wolf.

She opens the heavy door, closes it with a quiet thud, and has to cover her mouth to contain a scream when she notices there’s someone on her bed, lying awake, staring at the ceiling in the dark.

Her husband barely lifts his head.

“Wife,” he greets.

Sansa palms her own throat, feeling the wild pulse of her heartbeat and breathing out with relief.

She folds her dress, putting it on the bench at the foot of their bed and climbing onto the mattress, sliding beneath the sheets.

A long silence follows.

“It is late,” he says, casually. It is not an accusation.

“I didn’t know you’d be here,” Sansa murmurs, but it’s not an accusation either. He’s never there when she goes to bed, and he’s never there when she wakes up, and most nights, his side of the bed is exactly as she’s seen it the night before; she doubts he’s slept there once since her arrival in King’s Landing. By all available evidence, she doubts he ever sleeps at all. “You scared me.”

“It’s my bedroom, too,” he says.

Sansa stares at the ceiling, just as he does.

“I was with Myrcella,” she explains. Hesitates. “She has trouble sleeping and she asked me to stay a while.”

Tyrion seems to weigh that information in the silence that follows.

“Putting her to sleep?” He asks. “I noticed you’ve been mothering her.”

Sansa feels almost hysterical. She clutches the sheets and pulls them up to her chin. If he expects her to do the same for him—

Well. Her husband is many things, but he’s never been stupid.

“I’m her friend,” she says, but it doesn’t sound convincing even to her own ears.

“Of course you are,” he murmurs. Another long pause. “Thank you for that, Sansa.”

Sansa doesn’t answer. She turns her back to him and closes her eyes.

· · · ·

“You’re a hard woman to find alone,” Sansa says, boldly, as soon as the Unsullied closes the door of the Queen’s solar, right after Daenerys asks him to leave.

The Queen smiles at her, dropping the parchment she’d been reading.

“That’s your husband’s fault,” she says, getting to her feet. “Come to the balcony with me. The morning is too beautiful to be wasted indoors.”

Sansa follows. Daenerys offers her a cup of tea as they walk together to the balcony. It is larger than the one on the Tower of the Hand, and the view is better, too — it overlooks the godswood.

“It’s quite beautiful,” Sansa comments. It’s different than she remembers in her childhood. The oak covered in smokeberry vines that stands for a heart-tree is not lonely anymore, surrounded by bushes, flowers, redwoods and pines.

“I have it tended regularly,” Daenerys says, simply.

The ghost of Jon dwells between them in friendly silence.

Sansa looks past the godswood, to the red towers of the Red Keep, beyond its gates to the morning rush of merchants in the streets of the city. She misses Winterfell, black walls covered in the purest white of snow.

The Queen is staring melancholy, her gaze not captured by anything in particular, and Sansa wonders if Daenerys loves King’s Landing. Truly loves it, as one does a home.

“I’m sorry to disturb your peace,” Sansa says, quietly. “I’ll be quick.”

“It’s alright,” the Queen says. “Say your petitions.”

“I come to you to ask for your help in a private matter,” Sansa begins. “I would appreciate your discretion.” Pause when Daenerys turns to look at her face, “it’s about Lady Myrcella.”

Daenerys raises both of her very expressive eyebrows in sincere surprise. “Oh?”

“It is my understanding that she is to marry one of her cousins? Kevan’s last boy?” Sansa says, putting a question mark at the end of the sentence, just in case. “And to hold Casterly Rock for Tyrion after his passing?”

Daenerys seems wary. “Yes,” she says. “Not that we are expecting him to leave us anytime soon.”

“No, not anytime soon,” Sansa agrees immediately. “But— I would ask you to reconsider that, Your Grace. Myrcella’s marriage to her Lannister cousin.”

Daenerys turns her body fully toward Sansa; the spring breeze dances in her braided hair. Sansa keeps staring at the godswood beneath them.

“In favor of…?” The Queen asks, trailing off.

She had walked in that godswood with Margaery, once. Remembers, still, how it felt to have their arms laced as they walked among the flowers and the dying bushes and departed gods.

Now, the memory could bring her to full weeping if she thought about it too much — for all the things that could have been. But, back then, it felt like desecration. Like she was doing something unholy, like she was staining Margaery with whatever the disease Cersei had put in her.

She had stepped away from Marg, then, one day at a time, and then Marg didn’t want much to do with her anyway. Sansa had surrendered her loneliness to the old gods in atonement, drawing divine ecstasy from their similitudes — how they refused to show up, so far from their home; they were an absence she prayed to. They weren’t there. Sansa was barely there, either, in her own body.

The next time she met someone in the godswood, it was Dontos Hollard.

“Of Willas Tyrell,” she answers, now.

Daenerys dabs the tip of her fingers on the handrail of the balcony, tingling silver bracelets around her dainty wrist.

“Highgarden,” she says.

The Queen is wearing a blue gown this morning with short, loose sleeves, and a deep cleavage that makes Sansa remember one of Marge’s dresses.

“Yes,” Sansa confirms.

“You would have Myrcella Lannister as the Lady of Highgarden.”

Sansa keeps her voice steady, her gaze empty. “Yes, Your Grace.”

Daenerys seems to ponder the idea. “And why would I do that?” She asks, her voice giving nothing away.

“Many reasons,” Sansa replies. “Not the greatest of them because he is the heir to one of the greatest Houses of the country and he remains unmarried and without an heir.”

“Ser Garlan Tyrell and Lady Leonette—” Daenerys starts.

“Lovely people,” Sansa interrupts her. “But if they could conceive they already would have, and Ser Garlan would die before he annulled his marriage. Ser Loras—”

“—is dead,” it’s Daenerys’ turn to cut her off, but she seems to be deep in thought. She has her violet eyes deeply focused on Sansa’s face. “As is Lady Margaery. I know.”

Sansa does not know what to do with this pain but to wear it. She turns her body toward the Queen and reciprocates her attentive gaze. “You have been successfully bridging what the War destroyed. Tyrion and I, Shireen and Bran, Aegon and Arianne… Those are good, solid alliances,” Sansa says, in tones of praise. “I noticed, however, that the situation between the West and the Reach has not been…” Sansa licks her lower lip, picking words apart, “Handled with.”

“Some things cannot be fixed, Lady Sansa,” the Queen says, in a calm, resigned tone.

“Yes. I would know this,” Sansa says, with a slow nod. She chooses her next words carefully. “I would also know that it must be very difficult for you to rule with a Hand that the realms do not approve of.”

Something in Daenerys seems to snap, as Sansa thought she would.

“The realms don’t need to approve of my Hand,” she says, hardly. “The realms need to approve of me. I need to approve of my Hand.”

“Yes,” Sansa agrees. “But if there’s animosity between your Hand and the richest kingdom under your rule—”

“What is your point?” Daenerys asks, on the verge of her patience.

“Myrcella could be that bridge, Your Grace,” Sansa says, soothingly, as someone would speak to a wild beast. “All that happened in the War— what Lady Olenna did to Tyrion, what Tyrion did to Lady Olenna in return, what Cersei did to Lady Margaery and Ser Loras, what you’ve been doing Cersei— that the Tyrells see as revenge and justice for Margaery and Loras, and that inevitably puts Myrcella against you…” She sighs, tired just from thinking about it. “All those horrors could be healed with this one, sweetest girl. She is a strong, fierce, smart lady, who deserves a better match than a lesser cousin, and who could be useful to you besides.”

Daenerys is temporarily tamed. For a moment she seems to see past Sansa’s winter eyes, to some untouchable scar, deeper than spring— deeper, even, than the pain of loss.

“Lady Sansa, may I ask you a question?” She says, almost smiling. The smile is what Sansa fears the most. “For you to answer me frankly.”

Sansa folds her hands primly over her own belly. “Of course, Your Grace.”

“Is Lord Tyrion a good husband to you?” She asks.

Sansa frowns.

“Yes,” she answers, confused. “Yes, of course he is.”

“Then why are you doing this?” Daenerys asks, placidly.

“Doing what?”

Daenerys smiles fully, then. Without teeth, and it never reaches her eyes.

“Why are you trying to take the only heir he has left?” Daenerys explains. “I understand the… Arrangement between the two of you is a childless one.”

Sansa lets out a long sigh. She overlooks the city again, trying to escape from the weight of the Queen’s gaze for a moment.

“You asked me to be frank,” she says.

“If you could.”

Petyr once told her that the secret to those things was to believe them so fervently that not even yourself couldn’t tell the lie from the truth anymore. It’s what drives Sansa to stare the Queen in the eye once again, with more bravery this time.

“I come to you for Lady Myrcella’s sake,” Sansa says.

She gives them a moment of pause, of silence. Daenerys is waiting.

“I imagine Your Grace probably knows the pain of being sold as a bride, a pawn in another person’s game,” she continues.

Daenerys softens.

“You would know it, too, I gather,” she murmurs, with motherly gentleness.

“Yes,” Sansa answers. She nervously twists her fingers into each other. Queens and Kings alike enjoy it when people are nervous in front of them. “I just— I cannot help but have sympathy for the girl. She is a dear friend of mine. And Lady Myrcella doesn’t want Casterly Rock, Your Grace,” she pleads. “She doesn’t want to live in the West. She wasn’t raised there, and everything about it reminds her of her dead kin. She’ll be put there to be a sort of homage to Tywin Lannister, but even if you recognize her as Lady of Casterly Rock in her own right, the safest option — and the one Tyrion surely plans for her — is to give her a Lannister husband to ensure no confusion will be made in regard to the name of their children.” Sansa exhales in exasperation. “It is so unfair. If anyone has to pay the price for the mistakes made by House Lannister, it shouldn’t be Lady Myrcella.”

“You speak as if I’m asking the girl to live as a peasant,” Daenerys says, curling her eyebrows. “Casterly Rock is one of the biggest castles in the Seven Kingdoms. The place is all gilded. It is a beautiful seat.”

Sansa smiles sadly.

“It is beautiful,” she agrees. “Just not for her. I thought you would understand this, too.”

Daenerys is taken aback by that. Her tone switches to pragmatic again.

“If not his niece, who will inherit the Rock when Tyrion dies?” She asks.

“Martyn Lannister was intended to be husband to Myrcella, was he not?” Sansa shrugs. “Just marry him to someone else and pass it directly to him instead of using her as the intermediary.”

“Martyn Lannister?” Daenerys says, unbelieving. “The third son of a second son?”

“Bran is the third son of a second son,” Sansa points out.

“Bran is different,” Daenerys replies.

“How so?” Sansa inquires.

Daenerys doesn’t really know how to answer that, and Sansa takes advantage of her half-heartedness.

“That is, Martyn is an option if you insist on a Lannister,” she continues. “But there are other Houses loyal to you in the West. In any case, you might want to consider that the line of Tywin Lannister has been tested by History and found lacking, and if it’s truly worth the effort of trying to deny that.” She carelessly shrugs. “It happens in the best Houses.”

Daenerys suppresses a smile, lips against each other, as if Sansa is telling her a very funny joke.

She is a disorientingly beautiful woman, Sansa cannot help but notice. She considers Daenerys for a moment, trying to see past the Conqueror and the dragons, past the myth and the endless titles, past Jon’s heartbreak and past the War; trying to see beyond the Queen who gives her husband a reason to live, to stay away from Winterfell and who most likely fucks him in their spare time.

Trying to see her as she is— a woman fighting, as all women do. And Sansa decides she looks beautiful doing it.

“Tested by History, you tell me,” the Queen echoes, amused.

Sansa smiles in return.

“Myrcella is wasted in Casterly Rock,” she summarizes.

Daenerys runs her tongue on the razor of her teeth as she thinks. Sansa pays close attention to it. Her lips are full, but pale-pink— just a shade darker than her skin.

“It’s not a bad plan, Lady Sansa,” Daenerys says. “But I don’t think Tyrion will allow his only niece to marry Willas.”

“That is why I came to you first,” Sansa says, and places her palm over the Queen’s hand on the balustrade.

In spring, here in the South, Sansa hasn’t seen anyone using gloves. Daenerys eyes their joined hands, white over white, Sansa’s slightly bigger than hers.

“You didn’t talk to him about it?” The Queen asks.

“Not yet,” Sansa says, trying to keep her fingers from trembling. “Because if you support Lady Myrcella in her decision, then she won’t need his consent. She just needs to be given a chance. A choice. That is all I ask.” She wants the Queen to look at her face. Waits for it, before she proceeds. Try to paint her own eyes with devotion. It’s not hard with a woman as beautiful as Daenerys Targaryen. “You are the Queen. Your word and wish are the law.”

Daenerys shakes her head. She looks, for a second, like a maiden, and not the fierce warrior Queen whom the realms call Aegon the Conqueror with teats.

“He will never forgive me,” she murmurs. “Tyrion.”

“Tyrion is Hand. He knows how ruling works,” Sansa argues, carefully slipping her hand away. “He cannot resent you for putting your kingdom above his pride.”

“No, he cannot resent me,” Daenerys says. Her fingers twitch, as if they miss something. Perhaps a glove. She braces her elbows against the balustrade and contemplates her kingdom. “But he can resent you.”

Sansa snorts. It’s an unladylike sound.

“Oh, he already resents me anyway,” she says, turning to watch the godswood by Daenerys’ side. “Don’t worry. We can survive another one.”

Chapter Text

— You are a woman marked for sorrow

— Yes I know sorrow. Know it far too well.
My life is a tunnel
choked
by the sweepings of dread

· · · ·

It’s late morning when Tyrion storms into the Tower of the Hand, or at least waddles as furiously as he is able. Sansa and Myrcella enjoyed a quiet morning indoors together after they broke their fast, tirelessly working on Myrcella’s dress; when her husband arrives, she is losing the saggy fabric and stitching back the dress to a fit shape and size, while Myrcella is cutting a veil net, a blue pattern of feathers to be added later, meticulously following Sansa’s measures.

They both raise their heads in surprise as they listen to the boisterous opening of the door.

“Oh, uncle,” Myrcella says, surprised; Tyrion doesn’t usually appear until after the sun sets. “Are you joining us for the midday meal today? I think—”

Tyrion supports all his weight on the handle of his cane. He uses one, sometimes, when his bones hurt the most. He is looking straight at Sansa.

No. He is glaring.

“I just came to have a talk, niece,” he says, cutting Myrcella mid-sentence. “Would you mind if I borrowed my wife for a moment?”

Myrcella looks, scared, at Sansa, as if she’s waiting for a direction.

Sansa smiles, soothingly, at her.

“It’s alright, Myrcella,” she says. She carefully lifts the dress up from her legs, laying it over the couch again as she gets up on her feet. “Keep working, as we planned, will you? And be careful with those pins.”

Tyrion’s jaw is tight with rage as he silently waits for Sansa, following in her wake into their private bedchamber. When he shuts the door with a loud thud, Sansa does not flinch. She calmly turns around and waits for the thunder of his voice.

But it comes out as very low, and restrained, which, for some reason, feels even worse.

“Highgarden,” he says, simply.

Sansa sits on the bench at the food of their bed, folds her hands together and rests them over her lap. She looks at him and blinks. “Highgarden?”

Tyrion presses his lips in a thin line. She can see his hand shaking on the handle of his cane, the other closed in a fist.

“Would you care to explain to me,” he tries again, “why the Queen came to me today to strongly advise me to send a letter to Highgarden, offering Myrcella in marriage to Willas Tyrell?”

“Why should I explain this to you?” Sansa asks.

“Because I know that was you,” Tyrion closes his eyes, as if he can’t bear the sight of her. “It smells like you. Gods, Sansa—”

“Why are you angry?” She asks.

He opens his eyes. She wishes he hadn’t.

“Why am I angry?” He echoes. “Why am I angry that you talked to the Queen behind my back about my niece—”

“Talk to her behind your back? Your niece?” It’s Sansa's turn to repeat, disbelieving. “You don’t own the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms any more than you own me, or Myrcella, for that matter. Do you ever entertain the idea that the women around you don’t exist to serve you?”

“I would consider that, if you weren’t so clearly trying to get to me,” he shakes his head. He is trying to keep his voice low — keep Myrcella from listening — but Sansa can see it is hard for him not to yell. “You think I am stupid? I know why you’re here, Sansa. I know you only think of revenge. Why else would you try to take away my only heir?”

“You have an heir! A male, healthy heir!”

“I don’t know that boy, Sansa. I was barely aware he had survived at all until three months ago.”

Sansa knows well why he doesn’t want to leave the Rock to anyone but Myrcella: Tyrion never talks about Jaime, or Cersei, or his own role in their demise — and yet.

And yet. 

“But Martyn Lannister is your last male relative. You don’t need to like your heir,” she argues. “And anyway. If I’m acting on revenge alone, why aren’t you celebrating with me? I thought that getting revenge against House Lannister was your greatest goal in life.”

He takes a deep breath, the scar he has for a nose pulling at the side of his lips.

“Do not,” he says, simply, his tone full of contempt. “I will not discuss that. Not with you.”

Good, Sansa thinks. She doesn’t want to discuss any of that with him, either. She sighs, and pours a little honey onto her own voice.

“Did it cross your mind that I was doing it for your niece?” She asks, looking at him with sadness. “For Myrcella?”

“No. It never crossed my mind,” Tyrion says. He limps across the room toward the armchair at the corner, lets his weight fall on it like a bag of lead. “Not for a second. I know who I married.”

“She doesn’t want it,” Sansa says. “Myrcella doesn’t want the Rock, or Martyn Lannister. You must know that.”

“She was going to get used to it,” Tyrion pinches what’s left of the bridge of his nose, shuts his eyes again. “She just needed time and patience.”

“She needed a choice,” Sansa argues.

For the first time, her husband looks at her face with something other than unfiltered rage: a drop of guilt into his black eye, a drop of shame into the green one. He quickly looks away.

“You don’t understand,” he mutters under his breath. “I was trying to secure her future.”

“So was I,” Sansa argues. “Honestly, I thought you would be thanking me right now.”

Tyrion curls one incredulous eyebrow at her. He keeps a long silence.

“Why should I thank you, exactly?” He asks, all sharp edges and cynicism.

“Because this is your only chance to make amends with her,” Sansa says, as if it were obvious. “How can’t you see that?”

“There is no mending for that,” he shakes his head. “That is broken beyond repair.”

“Tyrion,” Sansa begins. “You sided with Aegon and that got her little brother killed. You sided with Daenerys and her mother will be executed. I don’t know what happened between you and your brother, but I know he is also dead now. Everyone is dead but you.”

He stares at her with cold, empty eyes that send a cold chill to Sansa’s bones. “And?”

Sansa gets up, walks toward him. She sits on the arm of the chair he’s in.

“And still I just know that she would be willing to try to let you back into her life,” she tells him. “If you just gave her a way out of Casterly Rock. She knows you did what you did because there was a War. But we are at peace now, and there is no excuse anymore. Do you want to spend the rest of your life estranged from the only real family you have left? Do you want your own niece to hate you forever?”

“It’s a no turning back situation with her, Sansa.”

She grabs his hand, cradles it between hers. Forces him to raise his eyes to her face.

“It isn’t,” she says, with certainty. “I know it isn’t. She would try to forgive you, if only you gave her any sign that you could see her at all.”

He seems to ponder that for a second.

“And it wouldn’t hurt to have a good relationship with the Lord of Highgarden again, either,” she quips. “Besides, marrying Myrcella to her cousin and keeping her in Casterly Rock is wasting two marriages. If you send Myrcella to Willas, not only you secure a bridge to the Reach, but Martyn is available. Don't you have any debt to pay or to collect in the Westerlands?”

He lifts his eyes to her. “You really thought of everything,” he jokes, humorlessly.

Tyrion is a simple creature, really. He needs approval and praise, as most men do. Sansa strokes the back of his hand with her thumb. They don’t usually touch each other; he’ll probably notice it for the move that it is, but she doesn’t mind. At this point, it has become a language.

“You’re a clever man,” she says. “I’m sure you thought about that, too. If you won’t do it out of familial love, at least try to be pragmatic about it. It’s good for the Queen, it’s good for Myrcella, and it is good for you.”

Her husband studies her face for a long time. He doesn’t take his hand back.

“So you’re not doing this to completely eliminate my father’s name from the surface of the earth,” Tyrion says.

It sounds so foolish and pathetic when he says it out loud; lying comes easily to Sansa.

“Of course not, Tyrion,” she rolls her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

He keeps looking her in the eye.

“And you’re not doing this because this is what you always wanted? Highgarden?” He asks, smoothly and without pause.

Sansa keeps her calm.

“I told you I’m happy in Winterfell, with my family,” Sansa says. “It is my home. I want nothing else.”

“Because sometimes I cannot help but wonder if you’re not forcing my hand,” he proceeds, still scrutinizing every inch of her face. He delicately slips his hand away from her grasp. “To find myself a wife actually willing to bear me an heir.”

“If I wanted out of this marriage, I’d simply take the annulment that you keep offering me and would go to Highgarden myself,” Sansa says. She knows a threat when she hears one. Her voice trembles, and she allows it. It often works with him, her sadness; it’s why he keeps her, after all, the tragedy of it. “But this is not what I want.”

“No,” he braces himself on his cane to get up on his feet. “No, of course you don’t. I think there’s nothing in Highgarden that would interest you anymore, wife.”

Sansa watches his back as he walks out of the room, slow like rain.

· · · ·

That night, Myrcella is sitting in front of the long mirror of her bedroom, wearing only her soft nightshift, her legs folded in butterfly-wings while Sansa stands behind her, styling her hair.

Myrcella likes this, Sansa can tell; she likes that Sansa’s hands are delicate and never tug too hard at her scalp; she likes to have her hair caressed and not merely combed. She likes the quiet intimacy of it, the safety of the moment. When Sansa glances at her through the mirror, she sees that Myrcella’s eyes are wandering, distracted, but her shoulders are at ease, comfortable.

Sansa doesn’t ask what is wrong. She just waits.

It finally pours out of Myrcella after a while, a small, timid, almost fearful voice:

“Sansa?” She says.

Sansa’s fingers are skilled in their task; she doesn’t stop while she answers, “Yes?”

“Why do you think the Queen hates me?” She asks. “What did I do against her? I bent the knee just as she asked me to… I don’t understand.”

Sansa frowns. She searches, and finds, Myrcella’s sad gaze in the mirror, her hand finally stilling for a second.

“Oh, dearest, the Queen doesn’t hate you,” Sansa says, placing her palm on Myrcella’s shoulder for comfort. “Why would you think that?”

“Because I’m here!” Myrcella exclaims, both angry and sorrow in her voice. “Because she forced me to be here.”

Sansa runs a hand over Myrcella’s upper arm. “It isn’t personal, Cella. It’s just how this game is played.”

“Which game?” Myrcella asks, almost demanding an answer. “I’m done playing and being played, I didn’t even want—”

“Oh, honey,” Sansa says, pitifully. She takes a deep breath and tries to speak the words with care, slowly, as she comes back to finish the last braid. “You’re the last living child of the previous Queen,” she explains. “You’re an heir with a claim.”

“I lost my claim,” Myrcella reminds her, “she made me do it. Before the court, before the old gods and the new, in front of everyone—”

“I know, but people need… Reminders,” Sansa says, patiently.

This is hard to phrase, hard to explain: that the Queen needs to send periodical reminders of who’s in power, because the other memories, the memories of War, are still fresh, and memories can battle each other, memories are their own internal War.

“She doesn’t want you there simply because she wants you watching your mother dying,” Sansa goes on. “She wants you there so the Seven Kingdoms can watch you watching it. So they’ll remember who is sitting on the Iron Throne now. It’s not about you. Does that make sense?”

“No, it doesn’t,” Myrcella pouts, and Sansa has to chuckle because in fact, it doesn’t. “She wants to humiliate me. How is that not personal?”

Sansa curls her mouth. “She wants to… remind you of your place.”

“My place is beneath her feet.”

“Your place is not on the Iron Throne,” Sansa corrects. “Anywhere else you might want to be, she probably won’t have any qualms about it. And that is not something that most Kings or Queens would allow, in her place.”

Myrcella’s lips are tugged into an acid half-smirk, and for a second, it is as if Cersei escaped from her jail, materializing right in front of Sansa; her heart clenches with the sudden presence. “So am I supposed to be grateful that she hasn’t caged me? Or outright killed me?”

Sansa kisses the top of her head. “No, darling. You can feel however you want. Some things are not fair.”

And the sooner you learn this, the better, she thinks, but it would sound needlessly rude to say it, so she doesn’t.

“I didn’t even want that thing,” Myrcella mutters. “I never wanted to be Queen anyway. Look what it did to me,” she says, looking at the reflection of the scar across her ear and face with shame.

Locking their gazes in the mirror, Sansa finishes styling her hair. She places the intricate plaits blended into a single braid — a more elegant version of the hair women from the North often use; women who wield swords, who go into battle — upon Myrcella’s left shoulder, completely baring the right side of her face: the wound visible, exposed.

“A scar,” Sansa says, leaning down to rest her chin on the top of Myrcella’s head and wrapping her arms about her shoulders, “is something we should wear proudly, Cella. You are a survivor. Let the Dragon Queen know that. I assure you, she will respect you for it.”

Myrcella is studying her own image, almost scared of what she sees.

“Do you want me to show up in court like this?” She says.

“Why not?” Sansa asks, innocently.

The Queen is throwing feasts for all the guests now that everyone has come to court to watch Cersei’s execution, now that the Red Keep and King’s Landing are full with guests and friends and allies and foes. There is a bounty of food every night, an even greater bounty of wine; it is utterly exhibitionist, and the help of the stores of grain from the Reach was undoubtedly required.

“Because I—” she stutters, at a loss for words. “I can’t.”

“Why can’t you?” Sansa insists with a smile.

Myrcella looks at the mirror again.

“This is not who I am,” she murmurs. “I’m not— I’m not like you. You’re strong, and confident, and I’m—”

“In fact, you are just as strong and brave,” Sansa says. “You just forgot it. But I remember.”

Myrcella sighs. She bends her neck backwards, looking at Sansa upside down, with a blot of self-doubt.

“You’re very kind,” Myrcella whispers.

Sansa places a kiss at the tip of her nose.

“Trust me,” she says. “I thought your House had a song about lions still having claws? Or at least your uncle keeps reminding me. Be a lioness, Cella.”

“Oh, don’t even start,” Myrcella mutters, shaking her head, and Sansa laughs.

· · · ·

Later, when they’re in bed — Myrcella’s hair already unbraided, loose again, the candles blown out, the distant glow of the fire in the hearth not enough to properly warm them — Myrcella nestles closer to Sansa under the blankets, until she has her back pressed against Sansa’s chest. Sansa wraps her arm around Myrcella’s waist as they share a pillow, a blanket.

“Sansa,” Myrcella asks, her voice shaky.

“Yes?”

And, in the dark:

“Do you think I am a horrible person for not wanting my mother to die?”

Sansa doesn’t answer, at first. With their bodies so close, it takes intentional effort not to tremble or shudder.

“I know she is not a good woman, I think I always knew,” Myrcella adds, in a hurry, as if she is afraid of hurting Sansa, and clutches Sansa’s hand about her to keep her from leaving. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t— I know she was cruel to you,” she murmurs. “I remember, I do not mean to be unkind. But—”

“But she is your mother,” Sansa says, quietly. She brushes her lips on Myrcella’s shoulder as she speaks. “And no, Cella, it doesn’t make you a horrible person. I think it just makes you a daughter.”

And it is enough. Myrcella exhales and Sansa feels the small frame of her body molding itself against her own, as if trying to merge in.

“Can you stay tonight?” Myrcella asks. “Until morning?”

When Sansa answers, her voice is a warm breath against Myrcella’s neck. “Of course, dearest.”

· · · ·

Sansa dreams of Cersei, that night, wrapped up in her daughter’s scent.

It is the misshapen reconstruction of a memory: she is summoned up in the dead of the night to the Queen’s chambers. Her husband is not in bed with her.

Later, in the Vale, she will find out that Tyrion had a mistress. Later she will connect the dots and realize that Cersei knew this, as she knew the hours in which Tyrion was, or wasn’t, in his own bedchambers, and therefore the hours in which Sansa was alone. That was consistent with what Sansa already knew to be true from experience: that Cersei, in fact, oversaw everything, had King’s Landing wrapped around her finger; she knew about Joffrey, she knew about Margaery, she knew about Willas, she knew about Tyrion and about the mistress Shae, she knew every step Sansa took, she knew everything— until Dontos.

To run away was to find out that to which Cersei, all-seeing Cersei, was blindsided. And Sansa dreams of it, of the night she figured Cersei out:

She is brought to the Queen’s chambers and a white cloak shuts the door behind her and locks her in.

Cersei is lounging across the hearth and drinking from her wine. She is draped in a golden robe and her golden hair is falling across her back in waves.

Sansa reaches for the fastening of her dress in obedient, resigned silence, and Cersei catches the movement with the corner of her eye.

“You can keep it, little dove.”

Sansa’s hands are still in the ribbons of her gown.

That was a first; it had never happened before. It will never happen again. From the first summoning, the first encounter, in which Cersei bared her and held her in place and exposed her to her own perverted nature in front of a mirror and made Sansa see, she’s never had Sansa anything other than naked in her bed. Sometimes Cersei took her own clothes off; sometimes not; but Sansa never kept her clothes on.

She wonders— is it a game? Is Sansa supposed to obey? Will it displease the Queen if Sansa is relieved by that? Does that mean she is supposed to get ahead of the Queen and open herself up even if the Queen does not demand it? What is she supposed to do, to say?

Sansa is frozen by fear, and Cersei sees it, and sighs, as if she’s disappointed with her stupidity.

“You can come over here,” Cersei says, “have some wine.”

Sansa does as she’s told. She walks to the fireplace. Beneath the robe, Cersei is wearing a red nightgown, bright, smooth satin. Cersei looks at the console, where the flagon of wine is resting, a bowl full of fruit by its side; and then she stares at Sansa, raising her own eyebrows, annoyed.

Sansa rarely drinks, but she goes to the console and grabs the spare cup, pouring wine for herself and tasting a small sip of it.

“Are you hungry?” The Queen asks in a flat voice. “There’s grapes and cheese.”

Sansa doesn’t know if she’s hungry. She feels ill, vertiginous with dread born of the unfamiliarity of the situation. Cersei is usually very practical, very open about her wants; whenever she summons Sansa, Sansa is made to know, one way or another, she is bearing some pain that happened outside that chamber. Cersei had never offered her food before. Perhaps the food is part of the game.

Cersei sighs again, no longer disappointed but frankly irritated.

“Do I have to tell you everything?” the Queen asks. Sansa feels very small. She tries her best not to vex Cersei. “Sit down, girl.”

Sansa sits in the armchair across from the Queen. It is too big; she sinks into it, disappears into it.

Cersei stares at the fire.

“That little scheming bitch you like has her dirty paws all over my son,” Cersei mutters.

And Sansa is so dizzy that she doesn’t get it, at first.

“Lady Margaery?” She asks, dumbly.

“Do you know any other scheming bitch?” Cersei sneers.

I know you, Sansa thinks, but she is not that stupid, and so she drinks more wine. She puts her cup aside, and folds her hands on her lap.

“Your Grace—” she begins, afraid of speaking out of turn.

“You can sleep, if you want,” Cersei says. “Just pour more wine for me, first.”

And that is when Sansa realizes that Cersei is sad. Beneath the anger and the fear, she is just miserable.

Sansa gets up, heads to the flagon of wine. Cersei doesn’t look her in the eye while Sansa pours more into her cup. She draws away, back to the armchair, studying Cersei, all gilded, and thinks to herself:

You’re lonely. You’re just a lonely, pitiful woman.

For the first time in her life, Sansa feels anything other than contempt for the Queen: she feels pity. And then, a cruel satisfaction. And at last, a realization:

Cersei does not know that Sansa is happy to be a witness to her sorrow. Cersei does not know that Sansa can see her for the pathetic, small thing that she is, a Queen resorting to a young hostage for company.

It occurs to Sansa, then, that Cersei might actually believe Sansa will never, ever leave her, that Sansa has been chained so completely to the point of obliteration, that there’s nothing left of wolf in her, that she is barely a Stark any longer. Cersei thinks Sansa is meek, and obedient, and weak, and will never bite back.

When Dontos comes to her in the godswood, Sansa is fearless.

She dreams of it, that night. Of Cersei Lannister commanding her to stay, and not to undress. Of Cersei’s sadness, more naked than nakedness.

In her dream, Sansa spits into the Queen’s cup of wine, right in front of her, staring her in the eye, before she hands her the cup.

· · · ·

And when they wake up, the sun kissing their skin through the curtains, Myrcella stretches like a friendly, docile cat in her arms.

Lioness who? Sansa wonders, watching the muscles on Myrcella’s neck go taut.

Myrcella finally realizes she is not alone, and smiles, shyly, in the dim, gentle morning light.

“Good morning,” Sansa says.

Myrcella chuckles. She shifts, lying on her belly, pulling at the sheets and uncovering Sansa in the process.

“Good morning,” she says, in love, and Sansa sees it for what it is.

· · · ·

“My dress is nearly done,” Myrcella announces, after they are done with their dinner and the servants take away their empty dishes and clean the crumbs off of the table.

They serve Tyrion more wine, and then leave. Her husband looks at his niece; he’s been distracted the entire dinner, but Myrcella looks healthier and begins conversations unprompted now, and so he decides to engage.

“Really?” Tyrion asks, sending a quick glance at Sansa before settling back on Myrcella again. He isn’t talking to her, just sending sullen, furtive glimpses at her vicinity. “That was really fast.”

“It just needed minor adjustments,” Sansa says, quietly, sipping from the last of her wine. Her fingers feel stiff from needling and sewing and cutting through fabric since the sunrise.

“Hopefully, it will be ready to wear tomorrow night,” Myrcella says, with genuine excitement.

“Tomorrow night,” Tyrion echoes, as means of a question.

“At the feast,” Myrcella says, and gives him a mischievous smile. “The Queen is throwing feasts every night, isn’t she?”

It is funny to watch her husband’s surprise ascending with each turn of phrase. Sansa tries not to laugh — he’s still mad at her — but can’t. Sometimes, she likes poking at the beast.

“Maybe you’ll have the chance to dance with Prince Aegon,” she says.

“Maybe I will,” Myrcella beams.

Tyrion glares at his wife.

“Maybe she shouldn’t do that,” he says, voice cutting hard and sharp. “She has a betrothed, and we are in King’s Landing. People like to talk.”

“It’s not official,” Myrcella returns, “and my dearest cousin isn’t even here. Anyway, everyone dances with everyone in feasts,” she shrugs, amusedly studying Tyrion. “You should dance with me, uncle.”

“I would never do that to you,” Tyrion retorts, bitterly. “Believe me or not, I do care about you, Myrcella.”

“We can practice,” Myrcella suggests. She is in an excellent mood; even Tyrion is being swayed by her cheerfulness, but dancing is beyond his boundaries. He finishes his wine, shaking his head.

“Absolutely not,” he answers, and reaches for the flagon of wine to pour himself another cup.

“I’ll practice with you,” Sansa says, getting up on her feet and offering a hand, palm up, her other hand holding onto the skirts of her gown in deference. Myrcella widens her eyes in surprise, and Sansa smiles at her. “I cannot let you embarrass yourself in front of the Prince. Come.”

Myrcella gives her the brightest smile as she takes Sansa’s hand.

Sansa hums a song under her breath, just rhythm, no words; she claps her hand in the beat of the song, emulating drums. Myrcella giggles.

“What should I do?” She asks.

And Sansa is wondering if Tyrion can hear that question, the shape of words underneath. Sansa is wondering if her husband is turning a blind eye to it, as he did when she was a little girl sharing his bed. Sansa is wondering what exactly he is choosing to see.

“Just follow my lead,” Sansa instructs. She raises her palm in the air, and Myrcella does the same, their hands almost touching.

As Sansa sways Myrcella around, guiding her through soundless music, her husband watches, with a distant, dispassionate curiosity, and drinks his wine.

· · · ·

It had been Cersei the one to claim Sansa’s maidenhead, one week after her wedding to Tyrion.

She was in one of her generous moods that night — that was generosity, for Cersei: whenever she felt like making Sansa come instead of forcing Sansa’s mouth between her royal legs. Even though Sansa knew better, by then, than to fight, she hated herself from preferring one thing to another, for liking it better when she was made to please the Queen, because it didn’t feel so horrible afterwards if she was pleasing someone else, if she was good at it.

Cersei cooed under her breath, let it go, little dove, let it go.

It was never not humiliating that Cersei could draw so much from her with only one thumb. It always felt so empty. After a while, the emptiness started to feel better than all the other options — the crushing rage or the shame or the guilt. For the rest of her life, Sansa will only ever think about it as relief, that moment when the pressure breaks in, breaks through, breaks her apart.

So she conjured images of Margaery, and let go. She tried to remember the iteration of Margaery’s voice calling her sweet girl. Her body convulsed; she reminded herself to scream the right name, that Cersei muffled from her, clamping her mouth as she came; it felt like dying, it felt like suffocating, like being breathless.

When it was over, she thought, I’ll never look Lady Margaery in the eye again.

Cersei pressed her wet thumb into Sansa’s mouth. Sansa yielded without resistance.

“Suck,” the Queen ordered. “Don’t bite.”

So Sansa didn’t bite, eyelids drifting closed.

“Has my brother fucked you already, little dove?” The Queen asked, out of nowhere.

Sansa opened her eyes. She waited until the Queen took her finger out of her mouth to speak. With Cersei, it was very dangerous to speak out of turn.

“No— no, Your Grace,” she answered, meekly.

She was vaguely aware she was supposed to lie about this, but Cersei, all-seeing Cersei, drew the truth from her with the ease she could pull out Sansa’s pleasure, hidden between her soft tissues, where it was easy to break her.

Cersei curled one eyebrow, her beautiful blonde waves tickling Sansa’s cheek as she propped herself on one elbow.

“No?” She questioned, looking upon Sansa. “Why not? Does he even have a real cock between his legs? Is he a man at all?”

Sansa blinked, heat pooling at her cheeks.

“He has, Your Grace, he just— told me we would wait, until…”

Sansa trailed off, and Cersei laughed. Loud. With frank amusement.

“Gods,” she cackled. “Until you wanted him?”

Sansa does not answer.

Cersei got up, and Sansa remained in the bed, studying the many folds of the golden canopy above Cersei’s mattress. She waited.

“Open your legs, little dove,” Cersei commanded, from the foot of the bed where she stood.

Sansa looked up. She saw the Queen, naked, with a— a thing between her legs.

She sat up, scared, shutting her legs closed and pulling the sheets over herself. She stared at it, frightened.

“What is this?” Sansa asked.

But she knew what it was. It was a cock, like a man’s, but covered in leather instead of human skin, attached to Cersei’s hips by many belts and buckles.

Cersei crawled onto the bed.

“You know what it is,” she said. “You’re a Lannister bride, aren’t you? You need a Lannister cock.”

Sansa stared again at it, could not take her eyes away from it.

“I— I don’t—” she shook her head, could not finish the sentence, could barely form the thought.

Cersei had never put anything inside her before.

“Sansa,” the Queen said, pulling her knees apart. For the rest of her life, Sansa will wonder why she allowed it without the smallest hint of a fight. Just pliantly opened her legs, laid back down on the mattress. “My brother will not wait forever. Or do you favor him over me?”

Sansa knew the answer to that, but it didn't matter much. She breathed hard and heavy beneath Cersei, who was propped on both her elbows, golden hair falling like curtains— floating above her, so far away.

“Relax,” the Queen instructed, her voice like an echo. “It hurts less if you relax… I’ll make you like it.”

Sansa released a breath. She stared beyond Cersei’s shoulders at the canopy, at its many golden folds.

· · · ·

“People will stare,” Myrcella says, staring at herself in the mirror before them.

The new dress embraces her slender frame; there is no leftover fabric on her bodice, and a tight girdle underneath enhances her delicate curves. A golden, thick rope marks her waistline, wrapped around her as a belt and falling from her small back across the middle of her skirts. Short sleeves expose her shoulders and collar-bones. The skirts fall in bulky layers around her legs, the peacock feathers drawn in embroidery in shades of golden brown and small dots of green and blue. Her golden hair is braided to one side, completely exposing the scar on her ear and face; her shyness naturally gives her cheeks a warm shade of pink, and her lips are puffy, red from all the nervous biting.

Sansa stands behind her and fastens a necklace around her neck. It belonged to Cersei, once; Tyrion offered it to Sansa, but she refused. It is a scandalous large thing, but somehow light and balanced, made of emerald and sapphire beads, flowing and woven into each other by a diamond-set leaf.

Myrcella touches the necklace, the largest emerald gemstone that falls right into the upper crevice between her breasts.

“This belonged to my mother,” she says. It isn’t a question. “I remember.”

“Yes,” Sansa confirms. She pours a drop of sandalwood oil in her hand, and rubs it behind Myrcella’s ear, on the nape of her neck, on her wrists. When she slides a finger on the top of Myrcella’s bosom to spread the essence, the girl blushes even harder. “And it is only fair that you inherit it.”

“They will stare,” she repeats.

Sansa fastens an emerald bracelet around Myrcella’s wrist.

“Well, that’s the idea,” she shrugs, and, standing behind Myrcella, places both hands on her hips and presses their cheeks together as she stares into the mirror, to the image of them together.

Myrcella looks small in her arms. Smaller than usual.

“You look stunning,” Sansa whispers. Her lips brush against Myrcella’s earlobe when she speaks, and the girl trembles under her hands. She inhales Myrcella’s scent — woody, musky; a forest after autumn rain; a deer in flight. In her skin, it feels better than all those candles.

Myrcella shivers. She covers Sansa’s hands on her hips with her own, and lets out a fearful, uneasy sigh.

“So, we are late,” Sansa says. “Are you ready to go?”

They are late, indeed, but that is going to be to their advantage. 

“No,” Myrcella frankly answers, pulling a brave face. “But it doesn’t matter. We can go.”

Chapter Text

Not from Hades' black and universal lake can you lift him.
Not by groaning, not by prayers.
Yet you run yourself out
in a grief with no cure,
no time-limit, no measure.
It is a knot no one can untie.
Why are you so in love with things unbearable?

The first course has already been served when Sansa and Myrcella arrive at the Great Hall.

Long tables delimitate a square at the center of the Hall, still empty of dancers, all the chairs full; but in a shadowy corner, musicians ready their fiddles and harps, their tambourines and lyres, their flutes and pipes. There is a loud sound of laughter, of excited conversation; the Hall is interwoven by a web of silent stares and whispers, of intentionally occupied chairs and seats, of methodically placed groups — who is sitting across who, who was left in the corner, who sits closer to the dais. Servants come and go with trays of food and flagons of wine, delivering dishes, filling up empty cups, in a graceful, invisibly coordinated dance, from the shadows of the Kitchen and back to it.

The dais stands as the front side of the square. It isn’t a proper dais; it doesn’t stand higher than the other tables — Queen Daenerys Targaryen, Breaker of Chains, doesn’t like to look at her people from above. But her table is occupied only by her family and Small Council, and two members of the Kingsguard stand dutifully at her side while she entertains her guests. Lords and ladies come to greet her and reassert their loyalties and tweet their flatteries.

Daenerys is wearing a classic Targaryen dress — into the white fabric, a single large dragon is embroidered in black and red thread: its head on the Queen’s bodice, its body and wings wrapping around her skirts. The sleeves and corset are adorned with golden beads and darker shades of crimson thread that, in candlelight, look as bright as flames. Here, at court, she always wears a crown similar to Aegon the First: it is a severe crown, Valyrian steel and square rubies clashing with her delicate, ethereal face, but Sansa always thought that contrast was the intended effect. The original crown of the Conqueror had been lost; the present one was a gift from Arianne Martell, in the name of Dorne.

The heir to Sunspear had married Aegon not long after that.

Aegon Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne, occupies the seat at the Queen’s left, along with his wife. At her right sits Tyrion, Hand of the Queen. Jorah Mormont is there, as is Missandei, Grey Worm, and at last Varys, talking discreetly with Tyrion.

The Spider is the first to notice their arrival.

Sansa gently squeezes Myrcella’s hand as they cross the center of the Hall together toward the Queen. Varys looks at them, and then Tyrion follows his gaze; and Daenerys follows Tyrion’s gaze over the shoulders of the northern lords paying their compliments to her, and then Aegon and Arianne follow Daenerys’, and suddenly the laughter and conversation has muted down: there is no complete silence but the Hall grows quieter as the scarred daughter of Cersei Lannister approaches her new Queen.

For all her fear and apprehension, Myrcella is not untrained. She naturally wears the demeanor of a princess: her chin is held high and proud, her steps are confident and gracious. Her eyes are fearless, even feline. She patiently waits in line.

Daenerys quickly dismisses the northern commission before her table, and she beckons Myrcella closer.

“Your Grace,” Myrcella says as she steps ahead, holding the feathered skirts of her gown and bowing in a curtsy just a fraction of an inch deeper than necessary. Her eyes remain fixed on the Queen’s face, though. “My apologies for disturbing your feast. I am late.”

Daenerys smiles.

“That is no matter, Lady Lannister,” the Queen says. “You arrived just in time for the main course. Rise.”

Myrcella obeys. Daenerys extends her hand. Myrcella kisses her royal ring.

And the Great Hall exhales the breath it had been holding, the wave of hushing whispers rising to cheerful voices again.

“It is so good to see you, Lady Myrcella,” Daenerys says, with her usual motherly tone. “I was talking to your uncle just this morning… I was starting to feel worried about you. I don’t think I’ve seen or heard of you leaving your chambers since your arrival.”

“I do appreciate that, Your Grace, but there is no reason for concern,” she says, throwing a quick glance at her uncle. “It was just a spring flu.”

“It happens a lot in the changing of the seasons, I’m told,” Daenerys says, and it doesn’t even sound like a jibe. It doesn’t sound like she has been torturing Myrcella’s mother for months at all. “This court welcomes you, my lady.”

Myrcella’s smile is perfectly placed in her face, unwavering.

“That is most kind, Your Grace,” she agrees. “Thankfully, this court is full of friends and family. Lady Sansa has been helping me greatly. I am only sorry to deprive you all of her company.”

Daenerys shifts her eyes to Sansa, then.

“Lady Sansa is an incredibly generous friend, indeed,” Daenerys says, absently, as Sansa half-bends her knee to bow.

“Your Grace,” Sansa murmurs.

(Court is a dance, and court is a mummer’s play, and court is a humorless jester’s story, but above all:

court is a battlefield.)

Daenerys waves a hand, signaling for her to rise.

“Both of you, have a seat close to me,” Daenerys says, with gentle, but firm, command, vaguely pointing to her right. “You belong on this dais.”

Sansa and Myrcella surround the table just so they can take their place beside Tyrion. Varys gets up from his chair to give Sansa a seat, formally muttering “my lady” as he pulls the chair for her.

Sansa greets him with no more than a glance, a muttered “thank you.”

“You do look gorgeous, Myrcella,” Tyrion says, without getting up from his chair. He is not dressed any different than the usual: his beard is neatly trimmed; his hair has grown too long, so now he combs it into a bun on the back of his head; his clothes are nothing extravagant like the puffy crimson and golden he used to wear when they first married. He uses black garments but for the red sigil of House Targaryen on his right sleeve, and the golden brooch of Hand of the Queen over his heart, and the many golden and diamond rings on his fingers. Their wedding ring is lost among them, unexceptional, unremarkable. He takes Myrcella’s hand and distractedly kisses her knuckles while he stares at Sansa. “So do you, wife.”

His voice is warm; Sansa wonders if he’s still mad at her. She tried, with intention, not to be anywhere close to gorgeous. Except for the sapphires she is wearing around her wrist and hanging from her ears, gifts from Tyrion himself (you can’t dress like a bastard in King’s Landing, Sansa, or gods forbid, a northerner), her dress is relatively plain, compared with Myrcella’s or truly almost any other high-born lady in the Hall — light gray fabric, with puffy sleeves and a square neckline. Her gloves are satin white. Her auburn hair cascades, free of any braid or hair net or pin, about her shoulders.

She removes her gloves for the dinner, and gives them for Tyrion to hold before she offers her bare hand for him to kiss.

“No, I don’t,” she murmurs, taking her seat, sitting between him and Myrcella.

He throws her a wary glance. “Yes, you do.”

“This is her moment,” she whispers, leaning to kiss his cheek. This part is important, how they behave when people are watching. It really doesn’t matter that they haven’t had a real conversation in days, or that she has been sleeping in Myrcella’s bedroom every night, and he has been sleeping the gods only know where. “I don’t want to be the center of attention.”

Tyrion chuckles.

“It’s nice that you’re trying, and in any case, I’m glad you’re here.” He looks around before wrapping one arm on the back of her chair and leaning closer to her ear, keeping his lips away from prying eyes and speaking low, quiet. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Ser Garlan and his wife are at court for the execution.”

A servant approaches their table and fills Sansa’s cup. She watches the wine being poured, the crimson so dark it looks almost purple.

“Oh,” Sansa says, flatly.

She was not aware. She’s been so invested in bringing Myrcella out of her depressive humor that there was barely any time to engage with anyone but the Queen or Tyrion.

Sansa scans the Great Hall. She doesn’t find Willas but she spots Garlan and his wife, Leonette, very close to the dais and surrounded by a party of other lords and ladies of the Reach — a jester performs magic for them, and they giggle and cackle at him.

She keeps scanning the room, as bored as she is able, as if nothing had caught her eye.

“In fact, I spoke to him this afternoon,” Tyrion proceeds. “It was a very long conversation.”

“Hmm,” Sansa takes a small sip of her wine.

“And if you would ask my advice, I’d tell you to accept a dance with him,” Tyrion says, leaning back against his chair, “when he asks.”

It is sound, friendly advice, Sansa thinks. The Queen is watching.

“Not if,” Sansa murmurs, smoothing out imperceptible wrinkles from his jerkin. “When.”

“When,” he confirms. Pauses. “Your idea, wife, not mine. I told you I don’t dance.”

“Very amusing,” she says. Pauses, too, just for a second, and considers thanking him, acknowledging that he decided to listen to her, that she doesn’t take this for granted. She considers saying she appreciates this, that he is not mad at her anymore.

And as another row of servants come to serve the main dish, she decides it’s better not.

A Lannister never forgives or forgets, no more than they ask for forgiveness. A Lannister either holds on to debt or pays it. She has been holding his debt to her over his head for years. The shadow that it casts over them is heavier than the bridal Lannister cloak he once wrapped her shoulders with; the shadow of it binds them together. As she watches Myrcella putting on a valiant face for court and fidgeting with her fingers under the table, she wonders who is keeping track of Tyrion’s accounts, and of her own.

· · · ·

Myrcella reaches for Sansa’s hand all throughout the dinner.

People come to their table, mostly to have a word with Tyrion, but they never fail to acknowledge her and pour a rain of faint praises on her. Underneath it all, there are the unspoken lines.

Lady Myrcella, how much have you grown! (You look like your mother, and also your father, and well— does it even make a difference?)

Lady Myrcella, how good to see your face in the Red Keep again! (How does it feel to be sent away from the home of your childhood, how does it feel to kiss another Queen’s ring and know you will never take her place?)

Oh, my lady, how pretty is your dress! (Are those your mother’s jewels?)

Lady Myrcella, how relieved we all are that you are well and safe! (That is a hideous scar.)

Sansa can clearly hear every iteration of it, and by the look on Myrcella’s face, she can hear just as well.

But the girl is dauntless, it must be said. She offers polite smiles to some people, and witty remarks to the nastier ones — tongue sharp enough that it genuinely surprises Sansa and makes Tyrion hide his chuckle behind the edge of his cup of wine at times, his satisfaction noticeable.

There is pride in her — the Lannister kind of pride, the one to keep one’s chin held high despite circumstances. But beneath the table, she buries her fingernails into her own palm. Sansa strokes her knee in a soothing caress and watches as Myrcella picks apart at her fish, eating only half of the food on her plate and drinking her wine faster than she is used to.

It is only when they are done with the last course and the musicians have changed the song from cheerful to slow that they are approached by Prince Aegon and his wife, Arianne Martell of Dorne.

The Prince is very handsome, Sansa cannot lie. Sharp jaw, nice nose, all the marks. His silver hair is cut short, and his garment is of a blue so dark that it looks almost black. It makes the shade of color in his eyes confusing — are they violet? Are they light-blue? It’s hard to tell indoors with only candlelight as a guide.

In any case, he shares the ethereal features that Daenerys also displays — the pale skin, pale eyes, pale hair. Side by side with his aunt, it is easy to believe they share blood. Most importantly, he has the manners and the attitude of a Prince — he’s refined, sophisticated, and a little pretentious but definitely charming about it.

His wife, Arianne, is adorned in gold — there’s gold in her hair band, gold in her nose ring, gold in her hoop earrings, gold in the many, many bangle bracelets ringing in her arms. She wears a blue dress, just a shade lighter than her husband’s, but with golden details on her skirts, too. Her brown skin is perfectly unblemished, her dark black hair is thick and silky, and her smile is contagious.

More than any dragon, she steals the fire and the warmth of the entire Hall.

By her husband’s side, comfortably leaning against Aegon’s arm, they look like an almost perfect balance, like the sun and moon; but the image is stolen by their voices, by the way they move. There is something off.

If Margaery were hereshe would have found a way to marry Aegon. Lady Margaery perhaps wouldn’t be able to defeat a literal dragon, but she would be unstoppable until she was the next in line for the Iron Throne.

It is Arianne who initiates the conversation. Sansa, for some reason, is not surprised.

“Oh, look who I’ve found,” she exclaims with a wide smile when she sees Myrcella. “So far from Dorne!”

And Myrcella gives the first honest smile of the night. She gets up on her feet, and so do Sansa and Tyrion, as it is fit to do before the heir to the Iron Throne. Her husband is quick to sit down again, though, drinking from his wine.

“My Princess,” Myrcella says, with deference, but undeniable glee.

The Princess waves her hand in the air.

“Nonsense, Myrcella,” she feigns offense. “We’re friends. Call me by my name.”

Myrcella chuckles.

“Arianne,” she says, politely. “It’s good to see you.”

Myrcella seems to be nervous about the break in protocol; they should have greeted the Prince first — a mistake, Sansa thinks, Margaery would never have allowed — but Aegon doesn’t seem to mind. He smiles at Arianne as if she were the sun herself, and Tyrion studies the pair of them as if they are a rare specimen of a wild, but carnivorous, flower.

“You, of course, have already met my husband,” Arianne says, presenting Aegon not unlike one who would present a horse at a race or a joust. She looks at him fondly. “But we weren’t married then, I believe.”

“You weren’t,” Myrcella bows her head to him, at last. “My Prince. Congratulations on your new wife.”

Aegon indulges her and laughs.

“My lady,” he says, his voice like a song. He smiles, and reaches out to kiss Myrcella’s hand. “Thank you. I am very lucky, indeed. Arianne and I are glad to see you’re faring well.”

“I am,” Myrcella confirms. “Have you met Lady Sansa yet?”

Violet, green and brown eyes settle on Sansa at once; but it is the Princess of Dorne who disturbs her the most. Sansa bows her head, also, a little shallow but perfectly executed.

“We have not. My Prince, my Princess,” she says. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“It is our pleasure, Lady Sansa,” Aegon says.

“You are as beautiful as your husband boasts about, my lady,” Arianne jokes, and gingerly looks at Tyrion, then, to greet him, or to simply acknowledge he is there. “My Lord Hand.”

Tyrion raises his cup to her, with such a cold calculation to their inscrutability that Sansa is immediately convinced something happened there.

“My Princess,” he says, plainly, and then, turning to Aegon, “and my Prince. It’s always a pleasure to have you in the capital.”

Tyrion had told her in a letter once that Aegon and Arianne split their time between Dragonstone — out of pure necessity and duty, Dorne — for sheer pleasure, and King’s Landing, which stood somewhere between the two.

They were also known to have a close friendship with, and visit often, Willas Tyrell, who pledged Highgarden for Aegon before he bent for Daenerys — even before the actual dragons arrived in Westeros.

“It is delightful to be here,” Aegon says.

He delivers his lines without hesitation or pause, as naturally as breathing. It is fascinating, truly, for a man who must have as much royal blood running in his veins as herself. She doesn’t check to see if Varys is watching.

If Jon were here, Sansa thinks, he would be sullen and annoyed at all this flattery, and the thought makes her want to laugh and cry in turns.

Before the silence can get weird, Aegon extends his hand to Myrcella.

“I came here,” he says, palm up, “because I’d like to have the next dance, my lady. Would you give me the honor?”

Arianne lets go of her husband. It is a careful, deliberate but sophisticated gesture, like a step of the dance, as if the song has already started. Court is all about this, all about small movements in the right timing. Suddenly, the Prince’s extended hand, blessed by his wife’s approval, is an irrefusable act of kindness toward a poor ruined orphan.

So Myrcella accepts. She could never be so rude as to deny a Prince.

Arianne hasn't retired back to her own table when Garlan comes to them, and Sansa berates herself for not noticing his proximity sooner, too caught up in reading between the lines of Arianne and Aegon. The man continues to be the most gallant knight Sansa has ever seen; he bows to Arianne, properly greeting her, before she dismisses his honors.

Only then he turns to Sansa, palm up in offering.

“My Lord Hand,” Garlan Tyrell says, though his eyes are on Sansa, “I would like to borrow your wife for a dance. I believe the last time I had the pleasure was on the occasion of your wedding.”

Tyrion drinks from his wine. He answers the knight, but he is watching Arianne over the border of his cup.

“You can ask my wife directly, Ser,” he says, “She’s right there. Though I am afraid none of us want to remember that dreadful day.”

“Lady Sansa?” Ser Garlan asks.

Sansa puts her smile in place. “It would be my pleasure, Ser.”

· · · ·

The crowd of dancers makes Sansa feel closed in. It is shameful to feel so young, so childish, to grant Garlan Tyrell’s palm cupping her elbow the right to feel like a comfort.

She steadies her voice.

“It has been a while since the last time I danced,” Sansa says.

Through the shoulders and heads of shorter people, Sansa spots Myrcella and the Prince: Aegon whispers something in her ear, and she laughs.

“Do not worry, my lady,” Ser Garlan says as they walk together to the center of the Hall. “Just follow my lead.”

The pairs of dancers fill in the lines, finding their places. The silence builds anticipation for the breaking out of the music. In the waiting, couples share gazes and smiles and soft touches. A hand on the shoulder. A strand of hair being tucked behind an ear. A palm against the lower back.

Sansa notices that, on the dais, Princess Arianne has taken a seat next to Tyrion.

“I have been talking to your husband, just this afternoon,” Ser Garlan says.

“Oh?” She makes her best impression of surprise; easier than dancing, by all accounts. “Really?”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Garlan says; Sansa doubts it. “But he was my friend before we— before he—”

The knight pauses, reconsidering, and sighs. He really is as good as men get, Sansa thinks. He holds Sansa’s attention.

“My lady, I did not know about my grandmother’s plans, may the Seven protect her rest. I would never agree to anything that could possibly put you in the way of harm. Or Lord Tyrion, for that matter.”

The drums signal the start of the dance, and the lines of men and women give two steps back from each other.

As the music starts, setting her apart from Garlan and releasing her from the grasp of both his arms and eyes, Sansa sends another glance at her table. Her husband is not looking at Arianne, and neither does she look at him; instead, they watch the Hall together. But their mouths move in turns. They’re talking to each other, almost imperceptibly.

When Sansa is back into Garlan’s arms, she speaks quietly to him, their faces set on opposite directions as he swings Sansa around his side.

“It is all forgotten and forgiven, Ser,” she says, kindly. “I personally never held it against you. I am sure my lord husband did not, either. He is very fond of you.”

The dance breaks them apart again. Sansa looks at Myrcella, happily swaying her feathery-skirts. She looks beautiful: a light onto herself, a gemstone.

Aegon is a skilled dancer, but when he smiles at Myrcella, it just doesn’t reach his eyes.

Sansa is back to Garlan, his arms around her waist as they move together when the music grows slower.

“I wish you could visit us in the Reach,” he says, and it sounds almost sincere. “I think my brother Willas would like a visit, too. Cersei is about to be executed… We can put all of this behind us.” He is looking over Sansa’s head, to nowhere in particular. “I invited your husband. You could join him. Highgarden is beautiful during spring.”

“Oh,” Sansa says, again feigning surprise. She is stunned to realize a pang of pain at the invitation, the faint echo of the last time a Tyrell offered to host her in Highgarden. It just doesn’t compare. But that’s unfair to Garlan, who doesn’t even know his sister once made the offer; anyway, nothing in the world could compare.

Garlan steps back, spins her around, catches her again. As she grabs his arms for balance, she peeks over his shoulder to find Myrcella dancing with the Prince, only to realize that Arianne is intently studying her as she looks at Myrcella.

It makes something cold and sharp settle in her guts. She realizes, a beat too late, that it is something like fear.

“Maybe you would like to take your friend Myrcella with you,” Garlan whispers, just an octave above the music. “The girl would welcome a distraction. Meet new people.”

“You’re very kind, Ser, as usual. I’m glad that has not changed,” Sansa says. She looks Garlan in the eye, trying to ignore the weight of Arianne’s gaze, or the possible meanings behind it. “I have responsibilities waiting for me in the North. But I am sure Myrcella would love to visit Highgarden with her uncle.” And, with a smile: “Perhaps you would like to invite her yourself?”

Garlan narrows his eyes.

“She’s a very good dancer,” he comments.

So he noticed. Gods, Sansa thinks, if all of us were wearing masks, it wouldn’t make any difference. She shrugs as best as she’s able without meddling with their dance.

“I taught her myself,” she says.

That makes Garlan laugh. She has a feeling they are not talking about dancing, and that Garlan knows this.

“Of course you did,” Garlan Tyrell says, amused.

“I know for a fact she would be delighted to dance with you tonight,” Sansa adds.

“A bit of a slight for her, I’m afraid,” he clicks his tongue, “After dancing with the Prince.”

“I don’t think so,” Sansa says, confidently. “Ser? I don’t think so at all.”

Garlan studies her face carefully.

“Very well,” he nods. “Maybe we could switch partners. Wouldn't you like to dance with him?”

Sansa bites her lower lip, a bad habit from Arya. “Well… Honestly?”

Garlan laughs again — there are crow lines around his eyes. Sansa allows herself a small chuckle, an indulgence. She really likes Garlan.

“He’s not a bad boy,” Garlan says.

“No,” Sansa agrees, heartfelt, though she cannot know and it doesn’t make a difference. “But still a Prince. Better safe than sorry.”

Garlan nods thoughtfully at that. He knew Joffrey.

“Always,” he says. “You know, I am right here. You have nothing to fear from anyone. Not even dragons. This is what knights are knighted for. To kill the dragon and save the lady.”

“And this is why they call you Gallant,” Sansa quips. “I’m afraid your heroism must qualify as some kind of treason nowadays, though.”

“Then I must beg you to keep it between us, my lady,” he says, with humor and without fear. “You protect me and I protect you. What do you think?”

Sansa smiles. “I think it is better than your usual song.”

The music ends, and Garlan holds her knuckles against his lips in a modest kiss.

“Thank you for the dance, my lady,” he says. He is scanning the room, searching for Myrcella. “That’s my clue to chase my next partner.”

Sansa sees, with the corner of her eye, as Arianne gets on her feet; the Princess touches Tyrion’s shoulder before she starts to make her way to the center of the Hall.

“And that is mine to leave before the Dragon gets me,” she winks at him. “We’ll talk again, Ser Garlan.”

Sansa doesn’t stay to witness whatever it is that Arianne wants; she doesn’t look back on the Hall to see Myrcella mantled on a knight’s arms, or her husband nursing his wine, or the Queen, silently watching it all from her place on the dais, or the Spider, doing the same from the lowest shadows.

· · · ·

“Lady Sansa!” Arianne calls behind her. “Wait.”

Sansa is not running away.

There is nothing to run away from — there is no danger, she assures herself — and so she forces her own feet to walk at the fastest reasonable pace possible; not running; not in a hurry. But fast.

She pretends not to hear the conspicuous steps following behind her, echoing through the empty hallway. Arianne soon gets closer, and then too close. Sansa turns around on her heels, suddenly.

The Princess halts.

And then, in the dim light, Arianne smiles. A flash of white, perfect teeth. Sansa stares down — she’s one head taller than Arianne — before she bows in a shallow curtsy.

“My Princess,” Sansa says.

Arianne laughs.

“You are every inch a proper lady indeed,” she says. “As they told me.”

“Who told you?” Sansa curls one eyebrow.

“Ah, you know,” Arianne twists her nose, tilts her head. “It's a court. They talk. Running away from me, though, pretending you didn’t hear me?” She tsks. “I expected better manners.”

Sansa doesn’t smile.

“I was not running,” she explains. “I was retiring.”

“Tired already?” The Princess asks.

“It was a long day,” Sansa answers, stiffly.

She doesn’t like how comfortable Arianne is with getting closer.

“Yes, yes… Tutoring a child is hard work,” Arianne says.

Sansa does not have the time or the energy for this. She tries, but cannot avoid rolling her eyes.

“Well, if I’m excused, my Princess,” she says, turning around again to head for her own chambers,

And Arianne holds her, reaches for her wrist just as she’s shifting away, and though she doesn’t pull Sansa back, the mere touch is startling enough to keep her there. Arianne’s hand is very, very warm, even through the fabric of Sansa’s gloves.

“You’re not excused,” Arianne says.

The faint light of far-away candles and fires are swallowed by Arianne’s dark, voluminous hair, by her dark eyes, by her dark skin. Absently, Sansa thinks she would like to see this woman bathed in silver moonlight, or surrounded by snow in the North, instead of those weak, distant golden flames, or even the Dornish sun. At the tip of her tongue, the question: did it snow in Dorne, at the worst of winter? She supposes the moon must look beautiful in the desert. She paints Arianne in pale blue starlight, and wonders if she would still feel warm, then.

Instead:

“Lady Myrcella is not a child,” Sansa says. She tries to unlock her jaw to free her voice.

Arianne’s smile is unfaltering.

“No, no more,” she agrees. “She’s grown into a beautiful young woman. So much like her mother.”

Sansa keeps her silence.

“Even without the claim,” Arianne goes on, “She still carries herself like the little princess I knew.”

For the first time, Sansa allows herself a smile. An amused one. “Are you jealous, my Princess?”

Arianne feigns confusion.

“Of what?” She asks. “Of being stripped of my birth rights and claims? Of being reduced to a mere, common lady, below the station I enjoyed my entire life? Of having to rely on everyone’s mercy and pity?”

“Did your husband dance with her out of pity?”

“Don’t you ever doubt it,” Arianne sweeps invisible dirt from Sansa’s right shoulder. “Aegon is a Prince to the bone. It is becoming for a Prince to show kindness to the smallest of us. It’s in his blood — just look how the Queen treats her beloved peasants and the smallfolk.”

Sansa is wondering if this — kindness — comes in the blood. And who passed it on to Daenerys, then; who passed it on to Jon. By old gods and new: who passed it on to Aegon.

This talk of royal blood is unnerving, so Sansa changes the subject.

“Myrcella deems you a friend,” she mutters. “At least have the decency of pretending to respect her.”

Arianne looks even more confused. She palms her own left breast, heart under her hand in contrition.

“But I am her friend,” she argues. “I just cannot tell a lie, for the life of me, Lady Sansa. Have I lied?”

Sansa did not miss King’s Landing. Oh, she did not, though she can clearly see what this is about. She stares at Arianne’s fat lower lip as the Princess absently runs the tip of her tongue across it while staring Sansa in the eye.

Sansa swallows down.

“I’d insist on being excused again,” she asks, “if you’re done with your games. As I told you, I am tired.”

Arianne swells in the silence, and then breaks it with a sigh. “I wouldn’t keep you from resting,” she answers.

“That is much appreciated, my Princess. Have a good night.”

Sansa has begun to leave, without the courtesy of bowing again, but she has not given two steps when Arianne holds her wrist once more. This time, the Princess pulls at it, careful not to remove her gloves in the process.

“Wait,” she says, softly, in the almost dark. “My lady.”

Sansa lets her body be swayed by the gentle tugging. She turns back around.

Arianne is holding a bracelet. She is fastening it around Sansa’s dainty gloved wrist — surprisingly skilled in such low light, Sansa cannot help but notice — and Sansa is confused by the sudden gift until she recognizes the jewelry: it is her own bracelet, the blue sapphire squares adorned by white diamonds.

With the hand Arianne is not cradling, Sansa touches her own ear, on a whim, checking her earrings. They’re still there. Matching sapphires and all.

“It is tempting to keep this,” the Princess says with a chuckle, “It would give me a good reason to see you again, but I’ll be decent.” She looks up at Sansa’s stunned face, and winks. “For once.”

Arianne runs a thumb over Sansa’s pulse point over the silk, just below the hill of her hand, and lets Sansa go.

Sansa is standing there, wondering how did Arianne remove her bracelet without her feeling it slip, wondering how they had an entire conversation without her noticing the woman had been holding the damn thing all along, wondering why would Arianne give it back at all — does she want Sansa to know she can do it, does she want Sansa to think she is being kind, is she being earnestly kind, what in the Seventh Hells—

And then Sansa forgets she was the one supposed to leave. Touching her own bracelet, she watches the Princess of Dorne and heir to the Iron Throne smile at her and turn around, slowly swaying her hips back to the feast.

· · · ·

Tyrion does not bother to come back home that night. Sansa orders two tubes to be prepared in their bedchamber, one with milk diluted in the water, and honey, and rosemary oil, and rose petals; the other with steaming water.

She lingers in the first bath while the sound of merriment and music is still heard in distant echoes, rumbling across the walls of the Red Keep. She wonders if Cersei can hear it every night from the depth of the dungeons — the people celebrating the arrival of her death, the consummation of justice.

She doesn’t know how much time has passed when she goes into the second tube to rinse the excess of milk off of her skin; the water is tepid, but the tube is placed near the fire. Sansa is just out of the water, into a soft robe, when she hears the noise just outside her door.

Her spine goes rigid on a reflex until she recognizes that the steps, albeit hurried, are not Tyrion’s characteristic waddling. Neither is a male voice that calls, anxiousness edging it:

“Sansa? Sansa, are you there?”

Sansa opens the door, tying her robe in a sloppy knot around her waist.

In the dark, Myrcella is searching inside her own bedchamber when Sansa steps out. Her hair has been messily combed into a bun at the top of her head — she tried to keep it from getting wet in the bath, but the humidity of the steaming water still dampened the strands.

“Myrcella?” Sansa asks, lingering just inside the door entrance. “I’m here, what happened?”

Myrcella turns toward the sound of her voice, toward the light that comes from Sansa’s bedroom, and—

She is truly like a prey, Sansa thinks fondly; Myrcella stares at Sansa, stares at the gap of bare, visible flesh between the layers of her robe, stares at her unruly auburn hair, stares at the drops of water still gathering in her milky skin. She’s still wearing her feast gown, the dress they’ve fixed together. Her hair is still braided as Sansa styled it, though some curls are wildly out of place.

“Oh,” Myrcella says.

Sansa lingers at the door of her chambers. The door is a poor attempt at demarcation of territory. The world outside of it belongs to the realms; what is inside belongs to the man that holds power over both their lives. But this man is not around — he must be in the bed of some whore, somewhere — and the realms are bubbled in their own jubilation.

So it follows they are free to set new demarcations to the land.

The jolly sounds of the feasts are still heard, like from afar. In the Tower of the Hand there is stunned, pregnant silence and swollen desire and a door that is a boundary between what is private and what is public, what is light and what is dark, what is secret and what is not.

“Is there anything wrong?” Sansa asks.

Her voice alone lures Myrcella closer, lures Myrcella in. Or maybe it’s just the light from the fire behind Sansa, maybe Myrcella is understandably afraid of the dark.

“Yes,” Myrcella says, and smiles. “I— I just received the most wonderful news, and I wanted so much to share with you, but I didn’t find you and I thought you could be here…”

Sansa leans against the door frame, that liminal space, not inside the bedroom, not outside it.

“I felt tired and retired sooner,” she says, simply, crossing her legs at the ankles. She studies Myrcella from head to toes, cautiously and with intention, and smiles. “Tell me, then.”

“Uncle Tyrion— wait, where is he?” And there is apprehension, and fear. Like a child being caught. She tries to see past Sansa’s shoulder, into the bedchamber: “Is he inside with you?”

“No, I’m alone,” Sansa says, reassuringly. “I don’t think he will come back home so early.”

Myrcella seems to ponder that.

“Your news?” Sansa reminds her.

“Oh, Sansa,” Myrcella comes closer; Sansa gives a small step back, and then another; Myrcella approaches closer still, and there they are, inside the bedchamber, after all, bathed in golden fireglow, fully in the light. Myrcella takes both of Sansa’s hands in her own and smiles widely. Her breath smells of sweet wine and cherries. “He will set me free from— from cousin Martyn, and Casterly Rock! He told me, if I wanted to, he would try to arrange a visit to Highgarden—”

Sansa smiles in return.

“Highgarden? Oh, Cella, those are excellent news,” she says.

“I know!” Myrcella sighs dreamily. “It is the most beautiful castle in the Seven Kingdoms, and then Ser Garlan asked me on a dance, and I don’t know if he already talked to uncle Tyrion about it, but he was so very gentle to me…”

“I think Ser Garlan is just a gentle man,” Sansa says.

“And if he is so gentle and courteous, then his brother— Willas,” she says, tasting the name as Sansa once did against her pillow at night, “Willas cannot be that bad.”

There is absolutely no correlation between the two sentences and Myrcella should know this more than, perhaps, anyone; but she is so thrilled that Sansa smiles gently nevertheless.

“Ser Willas is a good man, by all accounts.” She caresses the back of Myrcella’s hand with her thumb.

Myrcella squeaks with joy, and lets go of Sansa to hold up her skirts and sway around in a happy, lonely dance. It makes Sansa laugh.

“Oh, I am so happy,” Myrcella says, giddy with the swaying, “I am free!”

And as she stops in her spot, as if her body is still dancing, catching up to her stillness, her feet lose their balance.

Sansa holds Myrcella by the waist before she can fall, face first on the floor.

“Hey— hey,” Sansa says, chuckling under her breath. “Careful. You drank too much.”

Myrcella holds on tight to Sansa’s elbows.

She has stopped giggling and is staring at Sansa’s mouth in the glow of the fire. Sansa can see now, clearly, the warm pink on her cheeks, the breathlessness between her half-parted lips. It is the last thing she registers before Myrcella kisses her.

Myrcella’s lips are sweet, tender and almost chaste. She kisses Sansa with no malice, no venom and no deceit, pressing her entire chest against Sansa’s as she does so. Sansa, who was already holding Myrcella steady, struggles to keep her hands where they are, instead of running them all over her body.

This restraint will be important in a moment.

Myrcella breaks apart on a whim, as quickly as the one who drew her to kiss Sansa in the first place. She covers her own lips with her hand, as if she’s horrified with herself.

Sansa tries to mirror the surprise she sees there in her own face.

“Myrcella…” She begins, distangling her arms from Myrcella’s waist.

“Oh, gods,” Myrcella murmurs behind the pads of her own fingers. “I am sorry.”

“It is alright,” Sansa tries to soothe her.

“No, it isn’t, it is—” she gasps, ashamed, “This is so sick, Sansa, please, don’t— don’t tell uncle Tyrion.”

“I will not. Calm down.”

“He is going to punish me,” Myrcella’s hands are trembling; she is starting to panic. She is swallowing down all the guilt of it, all the embarrassment. “He is going to send me back to Casterly Rock, oh, oh gods, he just changed his mind and I am ruining everything—”

“Myrcella, wait—”

But Myrcella has already rushed out of the bedroom, not minding to close the door behind her. Sansa hears her feet stumbling across the antechamber, all the way to the other side. She hears another door opening, shutting down.

Sansa smiles, at last, pleased. She sits at the edge of her own bed and waits. She listens to the feast down the stairs. The abundant sound of joy.

· · · ·

One hour later or so, skin already dry, smelling of rosemary oil, the Tower of the Hand in absolute darkness and silence and Tyrion still not back home, Sansa crosses the common hall and knocks on the door to Myrcella’s bedroom.

Once. Twice. No answer.

Sansa knocks a third time, and adds, “it’s me, Myrcella. I know you’re awake.”

More silence.

Finally, Sansa hears timid steps, the door opening in half a crack. One emerald eye lurking, prying outside.

“It’s just me,” Sansa says.

Myrcella opens the door just enough so a body can slide in and closes it in a hurry.

(It is the door that creates the secret. It is the existence of the door that determines what is outside and inside, in varying degrees of arbitrability. Try as you might: you cannot picture a kingdom without doors. A kingdom implies a key that implies a door that implies a secret bred in darkness.

The alternative would be a vast, open wilderness.)

Myrcella has her eyes cast down as she sits on the side of her bed. She fidgets with her fingers. She does not speak. The room is illuminated by candles, the fire in the hearth out.

Sansa waits, standing in front of her.

“Cella, darling,” she says, sweetling, tenderly. “Look at me.”

Myrcella shakes her head, mortified. “No.”

Sansa puts her finger under Myrcella’s chin and raises it.

“Look at me,” she repeats.

Myrcella is left with no choice but to obey. In her eyes, Sansa sees naked fear and abject shame, but not an ounce of Cersei. Which one of us is her daughter, after all? She wonders.

“What do you want?” Sansa asks.

Myrcella’s lower lip trembles as she opens her mouth, with no reply at her tongue. She seals her lips again, a secret, a door. Sansa wonders if she even knows the answer to that question. She runs her thumb across Myrcella’s lower lip until her mouth hangs open again.

Myrcella stares at her breathlessly. She does not move.

“I am your aunt-in-law,” Sansa murmurs. “We may not share blood, but we are family, now, Myrcella.”

“I know,” Myrcella finally whispers. Tears pool in her eyes, unshed. Her voice shakes with them. “I am so very sorry, Sansa. I would never offend you or stain your honor, and I did not mean to be ungrateful to Uncle Tyrion, I just— we were friends before and you have been—”

“That means no one can know about it, outside this chamber,” Sansa continues, ignoring her. “Do you understand?”

Myrcella gazes, wide-eyed, deer-eyed.

“I’m sorry?” She asks, confused.

Sansa leans down. She cradles Myrcella’s cheek in her hand.

“Because if they find out,” Sansa continues, in a small, quiet whisper, “you know what they will say... You know what they already whisper about you— that you’re an abomination born of sin.”

Myrcella nods, as if she understands perfectly, clearly, as if the words strike a very precise aim inside her ribcage, as if she had already thought about that before.

“Yes,” she assents. A tear falls into the crook between Sansa’s thumb and index-finger. Sansa gently wipes it away, and then presses her mouth against Myrcella’s.

Just this, a pressure of lips together, without movement, barely breathing. Myrcella gasps into their kiss. Sansa draws back, speaks words in the edge of distance, inches apart.

“And they wouldn’t understand,” Sansa argues. “They will not understand this. Not Tyrion, not the Queen, not your future betrothed… No one, Myrcella. They won’t show you any mercy. I will tell no one — I’ll keep us safe. But you must promise me, too.”

“I know,” Myrcella agrees. “I— I promise, Sansa.”

Sansa sits by her side on the bed; she brushes Myrcella’s air off her face with the back of her fingers — soothingly, gently; she carefully grabs her by the nape and leans forward, pushing Myrcella down, until the girl is lying on her back and Sansa is hovering above her propped on one elbow — her hair free, falling like curtains. Sansa touches her hip, watching as Myrcella holds her breath in anticipation.

“So— tell me,” Sansa asks, “what is it that you want?”

“I want to kiss you again,” Myrcella confesses, her voice broken, wrecked.

Sansa nudges the tip of her nose against Myrcella’s, slides it over her warm, heated cheek. She scents the blood.

“No, that does not sound right,” Sansa says, “I think you want to be kissed.”

“Yes,” Myrcella agrees, and it is almost a moan.

“But this has to be our little secret,” Sansa murmurs. “Alright?”

Myrcella launches forward, chasing Sansa’s mouth. Sansa draws back just enough not to be caught.

“Alright?” Sansa insists.

“I promise, I will tell no one,” Myrcella nods feverishly, even while her hands remain dutifully still at her sides, clutching the sheets, never reaching out to hold on to Sansa. She waits for permission. “No one in the world will know. Sansa, please—”

Sansa smiles.

“That’s my girl,” she coos, and ends the distance.

Sansa runs the tip of her tongue across the seam of Myrcella’s lips until they open up to her — she kisses Myrcella with an open mouth, with open eyes. Despite the spring breeze, the air smells of autumn rain.

Chapter Text

Ah now there you mistake me.
Shame I do feel.
And I know there is something all wrong about me—
believe me. Sometimes I shock myself.
But there is a reason: you.
You never let up this one same pressure of hatred on my life:
I am the shape you made me.
Filth teaches filth.

· · · ·

Myrcella’s disposition toward her uncle significantly improves after he grants her freedom from dwelling with the ghosts of their family in the West for the rest of her life. She is the one who invites him for a round of cyvasse after dinner, and he complies.

Sansa is finishing an embroidery in one of her cloaks, her legs stretched across the length of the couch by the hearth while they play. Myrcella and Tyrion are sitting on the ground: Myrcella’s back is resting against the couch Sansa’s in, and Tyrion sits across her, legs crossed beneath him.

Sansa watches the board. Myrcella is not a bad player, but she’s a childish one. Sansa remembers, absently, that she learned in Dorne. Her line of attack is solid but she has no defense for the way Tyrion moves in the corners of the game, planning for many, many moves ahead.

“Cella,” Sansa says, casually, “do you plan to use that catapult still in this round?”

“Hey,” Tyrion exclaims. “I did not agree to play against two.”

But Myrcella is smiling, happily knocking his dragon down with her catapult with her next move.

The maids assigned to Tyrion’s household come in to clean the mess they’ve left on the dinner table, and as one of them piles dishes and empty cups on a tray, she turns toward their gathering in the fireplace.

“Lady Sansa?” She makes it into a question; casts down her eyes; waits.

Sansa raises her eyes from the embroidery set. “Yes?”

“A letter has been sent to you,” she says.

When Sansa beckons her close, the maid hands Sansa a small parchment, sealed with red wax, no sigil. Sansa stands up and walks towards the hearth, silently cracking it open as she unrolls the message, holding it under the light of the fire, her back protecting its content from wondering eyes.

It comes in gracious handwriting:

Come meet me tomorrow in my chambers, in the afternoon, it reads. I’d like to finish our conversation.

It isn’t signed. Sansa feeds the flames with the parchment.

“Has some horror befallen us?” Tyrion asks, mockingly.

Sansa comes back to the couch, casually taking her embroidery set back into her lap, searching for the needle.

“No horrors,” Sansa shrugs. “Just the same old boring people.”

As Tyrion stares at the cyvasse board, thinking of his next move, Myrcella absently wraps her hand around Sansa’s bare ankle from where it hangs just at the edge of the couch, softly fondling it. Tyrion sees it; his gaze lingers on the caress for a second too long— and then he looks away, back to the board.

Back to the game.

· · · ·

Prince Aegon is settled in the royal rooms, not far from the Queen’s chambers. Following tradition, his consort, Princess Arianne, is entitled to a private chamber of her own; it’s where Sansa is led in the next early afternoon. Arianne’s chambers are spacious and bright, with wide windows and a large balcony overlooking west; it keeps the noise of the city away.

Arianne is waiting for her when she arrives. She turns around from the window when Sansa is announced and promptly dismisses the guard that has brought Sansa in. Sansa takes note of a table that has been set in the shadows for two: a golden ewer, two cups, and bowls cradling fresh fruits and berries.

It’s quiet there, and when the royal guard closes the door behind Sansa, she feels almost trapped, in this corner of the castle very few people have access to.

Arianne smiles. She’s wearing a deep blue dress in Dornish fashion, with thin layers that seem to float around her. Her shoulders are exposed, her waist is wrapped by a thick leather belt that enhances all her prominent curves. Her wrists are adorned by many bangle bracelets with sapphire stones encrusted in pale gold. Her hair is loose, falling gloriously all over her back, with a net of golden rings covering the top of her head.

“Lady Stark,” she says. Her bracelets sing when she moves to join her own hands together. “Or should I call you Lady Lannister?”

“Stark, my Princess,” Sansa answers, hiding her own folded hands behind her back, and bows.

“Of course, of course. We have another Lady Lannister now, I suppose. And there is no one here to bear witness to your decorum, Lady Stark, as charming as it is, so we can skip that part,” Arianne says, signaling for Sansa to raise her head and resting her own hands on the back of one of the chairs. “Would you care to join me?”

“I just ate,” Sansa replies, politely. “Thank you.”

“Me too,” she answers, though there is no evidence of leftovers from a past meal over the table. She takes one of the strawberries, fat and red, and takes a bite. The juice lingers at the corner of her thick, dark lips. “Do you have berries in the North during winter?” She asks after swallowing. “Or any fruit at all?”

“Rarely,” Sansa answers.

“Pity,” Arianne says. She takes another fruit from the bowl. A peach, whole. Walks toward Sansa until she’s too close for comfort or propriety and hands it over in a way that would be beyond discourteous to refuse. “Taste this.”

Sansa takes the peach. Smells it before she bites it. It is delicious; she hasn’t eaten peaches in years. She is successful in suppressing a groan, but not a quiet gasp of delight — Arianne seems to enjoy both sight and sound.

Sansa chews slowly, and then swallows. Looks around the chamber again; takes note of the well-made bed, the mirrors, the vanity and its many oils and golden jewelry. It is so eerily, disturbingly quiet for a place so bright; it is like meeting in secret, in the middle of the day, at an open field.

“Where is your husband?” Sansa asks.

Arianne seems to find that amusing. “Where is yours?” She retorts.

Sansa never knows where Tyrion is. “Ruling the Seven Kingdoms,” she answers, instead.

Arianne laughs.

“Of course he would,” she answers, finally stepping back from Sansa, allowing her space to breathe. The princess is back around the table again. She pours the content of the goblet in one of the cups. “Wine?” She offers. “It’s Dornish red.”

Sansa decides to finally take a seat. She bites another chunk of the peach, delicately cleaning the corner of her lips from its juice with her thumb.

“Thank you, but no,” she says.

Arianne looks at her with a severe look.

“Lady Stark,” she berates. “I’m starting to feel as if my hospitality is not welcome to you.”

“I’d like to keep my wits about me,” Sansa says, with honesty.

Arianne smiles again. It is a smile that Sansa knows well, a smile that Sansa has practiced to perfection herself; it’s shaped for court.

“Don’t be rude. Or rigid,” the Princess gently chides. “I’ve been told northerners often are, but I ordered it for you. And it is established that you are a proper lady, despite running away from your Princess.” She tilts her head, goblet in hand. “So? Please?”

Sansa sighs and at last nods, watching the Princess pour wine onto the second cup. The crimson of it is so dark; it looks like blood. Sansa takes a small sip, and flinches. It’s strong, stronger than she’s used to. Arianne laughs, a sound of bells and songs. She sits across Sansa, on the empty chair.

“We started on the wrong foot that night,” she says, plucking out a dark blue grape from its cluster and putting it whole in her mouth.

Her lips are so, so thick. Gods. One can’t help but notice, and wonder.

“Did we?” Sansa asks.

Arianne holds her cup but doesn’t drink her wine. She has rings, too, many, on all her fingers, like Tyrion. But Tyrion’s hands are not as gracious.

“You misunderstood my intentions,” the Princess says, “and, I feel, I might have misunderstood you.”

“I don’t think I misunderstood you at all,” Sansa says.

Arianne crosses her leg over her knee. Folds of blue fabric, as dark as the night sky, shape her voluptuous legs and Sansa finds herself peeking curiously for a scrap of bare skin — the roundness of her knee, maybe two inches of her thigh, a curve hinting at a calf, anything.

If the Princess notices her inclinations, she doesn’t say a thing about it.

“You’re protective of Lady Myrcella,” she says. “So am I. I’m trying to protect her from all this… foul court scheming.”

Sansa unites her eyebrows. That is enough to end her distractions.

“She has a scar to prove that you’re not as protective as you claim, and that as far as history can tell, you’re the one who is always scheming,” Sansa says.

“That was an accident,” Arianne says, without losing her calm. “I never wanted Myrcella to be hurt. All I wanted was to make her Queen.”

“Why did you want to crown Myrcella?”

Arianne drinks. Just a small, shallow sip.

“Why not?” She asks, as if it were obvious. “By Dornish custom, she was the heir to the Iron Throne after Joffrey’s passing, not Tommen. By the way, I’ve always meant to ask — did you really kill him? Joffrey?”

“Does it really matter now?” Sansa asks. She leaves her peach, half-eaten, over the table, and reaches for a grape, too. “It sounds to me you just wanted to start a war inside a war.”

Arianne curls her mouth downward, indifferently. “Well, the times were different, then… Now it’s all peace and quiet,” she says, as if it all bores her.

Sansa eats the grape, swollen and sweet.

“I prefer it that way,” she says.

“So do I!” Arianne exclaims. “So do I, Lady Stark. We are all weary of War.”

Sansa drinks from her cup, the wine so strong that the taste alone emboldens her.

“Of course now you’re weary,” she says. “Now you’re in line to be the next Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and you’re wondering if I have the same mind as you once did. I’m here because you want to know if I plan to replace you with Myrcella and make her Queen someday.” She looks at Arianne over the edge of her cup. “Is that it?”

Arianne looks, at once, staggered and amused. She raises one thick, dark eyebrow.

“Do all northerners do this?” she asks. “Skip the frills, straight to the fucking? Doesn’t it make everything a bit dry?”

Sansa would be offended in other circumstances, but the thing is: Arianne’s fingers are so long, and her voice is so smooth, and the shocked delight in her dark eyes is so flattering.

“Only when convenient,” Sansa answers, primly.

“Well,” Arianne asks, at last: “... Is that it, then?”

Sansa laughs a little. She didn’t miss the way Arianne had watched the Hall as she danced with Ser Garlan, or as Myrcella swayed in Aegon’s arms, or the Princess’ expression as she talked with an uncharacteristic reserved Tyrion that night. Maybe, if Sansa were the heir to the Iron Throne, if Sansa were in her place, seeing what she was seeing, she would be paranoid, too. Who can tell?

“Isn’t it a bit late for that? Prince Aegon already has a wife,” Sansa points vaguely at Arianne, at all that abundance of a woman.

“I don’t know,” Arianne seems to be pondering. “Your husband is an ambitious man.”

“He is known to be, yes.” Sansa cannot deny it.

“Look how high he’s risen after such a great fall,” Arianne continues. “From kinslayer to Hand of the Queen. A mere royal pardon and all his sins were washed away... One could not help but wonder if he would want for more.” Arianne studies her, and Sansa thinks of vipers, of poisoning snakes. “To see his own blood on the Iron Throne again.”

Sansa comfortably rests her arm on the chair she’s sitting on. “Why don’t you ask him directly? It is a little bit insulting that you think I have no mind of my own and that I’m just working to achieve whatever my husband plans.”

“I meant no insult,” Arianne suppresses a smile. “If you can take it as a compliment, I also considered you could easily annul your marriage to Tyrion and take Aegon yourself.”

Sansa has to laugh. It’s been years since the last time she even entertained the idea of being Queen. “What sort of compliment is that, exactly, my Princess?”

“One that recognizes that you could, if you wanted. Not only are you a beautiful and smart high-born lady of an ancient and respected House: you’re Jon Snow’s family. Our Dragon Queen is a fierce warrior, but she can also be prone to this kind of nonsensical sentimentality, and the affections she nurtured for your late cousin are just as known as the real status of your marital bed with our Lord Hand,” Arianne shrugs. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Sansa says. “Don’t let it steal your sleep, my Princess. I have no intention of stealing your husband for myself, or of being Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, for that matter.”

“What about Myrcella?”

Sansa smiles, slow and sly.

“How exactly do you think Tyrion would accomplish that? Murdering you in your sleep?” She mocks. “Maybe poisoning your wine?”

“Of what I know and hear, that would not be below him,” Arianne shrugs. “But I thought about a more traditional approach. Like an annulment.”

“The interested parties have to agree to the annulment,” Sansa retorts. “According to the law. Do you want an annulment? Does your husband? If not, you should think yourself safe. Unless…”

Sansa trails off. Arianne tilts her head.

“You know very well that isn’t true,” Arianne says, simply. “The Faith follows commands just as the rest of us. All they would need would be an order from someone…” She swings the stem of her cup, watching the wine swirling inside, fascinated by the hurricane of her own making there. “... Higher,” she finally finishes. “Higher than the High Septon.”

“Oh, that is so puzzling. Who could stand higher than the High Septon, enough to command him?” Sansa wonders.

“The Queen often does what your husband tells her to do,” Arianne says, bare and simple.

Sansa raises her eyebrows. “My Princess— do you mean to imply our Queen is weak and easily manipulated?”

“Not at all. Daenerys rides the last surviving dragon in the world.”

“A dragon does not equal strength. A dragon is a weapon. Like a sword. And like a sword, it can be used to conceal many shortcomings.”

“Well, who is implying that the Queen is weak now?” Arianne laughs, sipping at her hurricane-wine. “I merely state the obvious. The Queen relies heavily on the counsel of her loyal, trusted advisors.”

“But the Queen has the last word,” Sansa says. “She doesn’t follow anyone’s advice blindly, not even Tyrion’s.”

“I do not deny that,” Arianne agrees. “I also know your lord husband enough to know he can plant an idea in her head, as if he had nothing to do with it, if he wants to. It would not be the first time.”

“He might know how to pull one or two of her strings, but he can’t make her into someone else in his image altogether. What my husband wants is of no consequence. All you need to know is what Daenerys Targaryen wants, and I don’t think Her Grace would imprison, humiliate, torture and execute Cersei Lannister only to allow her daughter to be the next Queen of Westeros,” Sansa says.

“She did give the girl the Lannister name, though. It would have been natural to bastardize her.”

“But what is the Lannister name worth these days?” Sansa asks. “Anyway. I don’t even know why we are discussing this. Our beloved Queen is still young and it’s not as if I think about her death all the time.” She presses the cold metal of her cup against her own cheek. “Do you?”

“Oh, never,” Arianne says, waving a hand about. “Never. Long may she reign. I was just being cautious. As I say, protecting Myrcella, protecting the Queen from—”

“Foul court scheming,” Sansa quotes.

“Exactly,” Arianne nods, raising her cup — to whom Sansa is not sure; probably herself — and drinking the last of her wine.

“Spoken like a true servant of the crown,” Sansa says, with faint praise.

“Well, I am a Princess, aren’t I?” Arianne shrugs. “What is the title for, if not to serve the realms?”

“That is humbling,” Sansa says, without sincerity.

“But I would still like to count with your word and honor on this matter, Lady Stark.”

Sansa laughs.

“My princess,” she says, “you’re not in Dorne. This is King’s Landing. You can’t count on no one’s word or honor here.”

Arianne leans over the table, bracing herself on her elbows. She rests her chin on the hill of her hand.

“I’m starting to wonder if I truly misunderstood you, after all,” she says, casually, as if talking to herself. Her beautiful dark eyes glint with a particular shade of curious warmth, fascinated and interested: no longer caught up in courtly games.

The pull of it is just too strong. Sansa mirrors her, leaning forward as well.

“Is that all?” She asks. “Do you have all the information you need? Because I must go.”

“Back to your little Princess?” Arianne asks, in a mocking, low, quiet voice.

Sansa is paying attention to those lips, wet with grape juice and wine and thick, made for eating more and talking less.

“Myrcella is not a princess anymore,” Sansa reminds her.

“No,” Arianne agrees. “But I still am, and twice at that, if you’re in need of one.”

Sansa is almost appalled at the straightforwardness, but after dancing around words, she appreciates it. It isn’t just Northerners, after all, who know how to skip the frills. And she finds, in the heat of the moment, she is not at all surprised.

She could use a princess. As it turns out, she is not in a hurry to leave.

“Where is your husband again?” Sansa has to ask once more, just to make sure. It is very quiet in this wing of the castle.

Arianne gets up. She takes Sansa’s hand in her own, and gives it a gentle tug.

“Nowhere near,” the Princess says, and Sansa lets herself be guided to the bed.

· · · ·

Afterwards, neither of them move for a long time; the Princess of Dorne is sitting between Sansa’s legs, cradled by them, her back against Sansa’s chest. Her hands are idly splayed on Sansa’s thighs, no longer clutching them, and the back of her head rests against Sansa’s shoulder.

Arianne is catching her breath and Sansa is simply enjoying the feeling of a warm, sweating woman against her. Arianne’s pleasure still coats her hand, and after a while, Sansa brings her fingers into Arianne’s mouth.

The Princess tastes herself, cleaning Sansa’s fingers off with a tongue as eager as it had been on Sansa’s own cunt, and laughs.

“Alright, you won,” she chuckles, still breathless. “I'll take it back.”

Sansa smiles, lazily cupping what she can of Arianne’s left breast, and slowly massages it, tenderly kissing her shoulder. “Which part?”

Arianne is still smiling. Her nipple starts to grow hard under Sansa’s caresses. “When I called you a rigid northerner.”

It’s Sansa’s turn to laugh a little through her nose.

“All forgiven,” she says, simply.

From this point of view, Arianne’s body is all valleys and hills, sultry Dornish dunes, suntanned and glistening with sweat under the gentle afternoon spring sunlight. Sansa had shifted the bulk of Arianne’s black hair over the woman’s right shoulder — she wanted the feeling of bare skin on bare skin. The dark curls are so long — they cover Arianne’s right breast entirely, reaching her belly.

“I’m prone to all kinds of insolence,” Arianne says. She looks very comfortable in that position. “You’ll get used to it, I’m sure.”

Sansa runs her hand over Arianne’s body: from her left breast to her waist, down to her wide hips, delighting on the curves of it, the abrupt, rough waving of her.

“You were the one suspecting treason from me, of all people,” Sansa says, clicking her tongue.

“I’m still wondering about your plans for the girl,” Arianne says. “I mean, if not the Iron Throne.”

Sansa’s hand stops moving.

“You didn’t ask me that,” she says, her voice hardening against her will.

“There’s no plot here, Sansa,” Arianne says, running her toes across Sansa’s calf, up and down; Sansa hates how much it works. “Just sheer curiosity.”

“Curiosity,” Sansa mimics. “Nothing of pledging my word or honor.”

“I wouldn’t be so naive,” Arianne says.

It’s not about trust: Sansa just wants to divert Arianne’s attention. The less anyone talks about Aegon, the better.

“Willas,” Sansa says.

Arianne shifts her head back and to the side, trying to stare at Sansa, who accommodates her. The absolute surprise in her wide dark eyes is so honest that Sansa is almost flattered.

“Willas Tyrell?” Arianne asks.

“Is there any other?” Sansa inquires. There isn’t, at least not one who matters.

“Well, that is interesting,” Arianne says. “You know I wanted to marry him, once? But I was just a little girl, then.”

Sansa chortles. “So did I, when I was a little girl myself.”

That makes Arianne even more surprised. She curls both of her thick eyebrows to Sansa, skeptical.

“What is it?” Sansa asks.

Arianne licks her lower lip.

“I’m sorry, I just thought…” She stares at Sansa under her voluminous eyelashes. “I was under the impression your inclinations were… exclusive.”

“Oh, but they are,” Sansa shrugs. “I just wanted out of King’s Landing.” She does her best not to think of Margaery; fails.

For the first time since they got into bed together, indeed for the first time since she first spoke a word to the Princess of Dorne, Arianne’s eyes were saturated with true gentleness.

“You should come to Dorne,” she says, pinching Sansa’s chin.

“Oh?”

“You’d like it there,” Arianne says. “Take your husband. He’ll like it, too.”

“I’m sure he would,” Sansa says, absently.

“You can’t possibly be happy surrounded by snow all the time,” Arianne says, settling against Sansa’s chest again. She takes Sansa’s hand and slides it back to her breast, and as Sansa rests her chin on Arianne’s shoulder, she watches their fingers laced together, appreciating the contrast of their skin, light brown on white. “No one can. You must be lying. Humans need warmth.”

“I adore the snow,” Sansa says. Arianne’s chuckle is torn apart by a whine when Sansa pinches one taut nipple between her fingers. She is, Sansa has learned in the previous hour, a very sensitive, receptive woman. “And there are many fun ways to keep warm. Maybe you should visit me.”

Arianne’s hand, that had been calmly resting over Sansa’s thigh the whole time, tightens. Sansa feels the cold, blunt shape of her rings, contrasting with the sharp bite of her fingernails. She slowly licks the tender skin behind Arianne’s ear, nibbles at her ear-lobe, drawing lazy circles around her nipple with her thumb.

For a blessed moment, it is easy to believe that she was made for this, that this is the rightest thing in the entire world.

“Ah,” the Princess moans. She tries, helplessly and needily, to push back against Sansa, her ass teasingly rubbing Sansa’s cunt. The change of angle exposes the notches of her spine, from her nape downward, and Sansa cannot help but follow the trail of her bones with the tip of her tongue. Arianne shudders.

“It’s such a long way from Winterfell to Sunspear,” she gasps, breathlessly, “A pity.”

“The longest,” Sansa agrees, hands on each side of Arianne’s hips, keeping her still. Arianne writhes against her grip. “Maybe we can meet somewhere in between.”

“At Highgarden?” Arianne asks, laughing with the last of the air she has left, but Sansa closes her fist into her thick, luscious hair, pulling her head for a kiss while her free hand dips lower, between Arianne’s legs again, and Arianne surrenders, stops laughing, plotting, or speaking altogether.

· · · ·

That night, her husband actually retires to sleep in their private bedchamber, at a reasonable hour. Sansa does not think it a coincidence.

At first he’s quiet, reading his book in silence in their bed while she braids her hair to sleep after her bath. It is not completely unfamiliar to her; for a moment, the dusty pink bricks are replaced by black stones, and the view of Blackwater Bay out of their window is painted black and white with snow. She remembers those months in Winterfell during the War, when they settled into this marriage as one would settle in a warm featherbed after months on the road: with exhausted relief, more than any sense of joy.

Jon had already died, then, and Tyrion had been hurt on the Wall; only Daenerys had remained to lead the armies of men against the Others. With Jon gone, Tyrion needed to forge an alliance for his Queen, and Sansa needed a husband, preferably one that would leave her alone as often as possible. Their discussion about it was brief and pragmatic.

Now, he doesn’t raise his eyes from the pages as he asks, “How did it go?”

Sansa — whose fingers had been twisting the ropes of her hair on their own accord as her mind drifted — blinks twice, woken out of a stupor. “I’m sorry?”

“With Arianne,” Tyrion says. Rolls his eyes. “Besides the…”

He does a vague, dismissive sign with the hand that isn’t holding his book.

“Oh. It went well,” Sansa answers. She shouldn’t be surprised that he knows where she has been. Hesitatingly: “She invited us to visit Dorne.”

“Hmm.” He chuckles, humorlessly, absent-minded. “How formal was this invitation?”

“Not very, but it was sincere,” Sansa answers. “She also wanted to know about Myrcella.”

He angles his head toward her. Carefully. “Myrcella?”

“She thought you were trying to replace her and make Myrcella the next Queen in line,” Sansa explains.

Tyrion only snorts through the scar of his nose.

“Of course she would think that,” he mutters. “Did you tell her? About Highgarden?”

“I thought it was better than to let her wonder,” Sansa says, finishing her braid. She lets it loose, unknotted at the tips. “I didn’t want to leave any room for her imagination.”

“That was probably a good idea,” Tyrion says. This is, Sansa knows, the closest he’ll get to acknowledging that her plan of sending Myrcella to Highgarden was not actually bad. He sighs out loud. “Fuck. I need to write that letter to Willas.”

“But why? Ser Garlan is at court,” Sansa offers. “I can speak to him, if you’re too busy.” She grabs a vial of oil, pouring a drop onto her hand and rubbing her palms together. “You worry about feasts and executions, how about that?”

“I’d appreciate that,” Tyrion closes the book, giving up on the pretense of it, and lays the back of his head against the headboard of the bed. He closes his eyes. “Now I just need to find a wife for my cousin, and I’ll be settled for life.”

Sansa has no idea of what he means by settled for life. This is his life already, and he complains, but he adores it.

Or maybe he just complained when she was around to interfere with his plans.

“What about Jeyne Westerling?” She says, spreading the oil on the tips of her hair. “She’s alive, isn’t she?”

“Jeyne Westerling,” he echoes, too baffled to add anything.

Sansa blinks innocently in the mirror. “You once wrote to me that you had a Westerling problem.”

“I do. It’s not going to be solved by making your brother’s widow the next Lady of Casterly Rock.”

“But do you have a better option?” Sansa asks. The lack of high-born young women is a real problem in the West.

Her husband grimaces. “I don’t want to give her parents the satisfaction.”

“Her parents are dead,” Sansa reminds him.

“Satisfaction from beyond the grave, in the Seventh Hell in which they surely must be burning,” Tyrion expands.

Sansa rolls her eyes so hard she thinks they’ll be stuck at the back of her skull. “Oh, gods, Tyrion,” she mutters. “The girl is just serving as head of her little brother’s household. She’s one of the last eligible ladies you have at your disposal. Don’t you want to put her to better use?”

“Well, personal feelings aside — and I’m sorry for you, you know I am — but she did betray Casterly Rock during the war. I’m not going to reward treason with the highest honor for a western.”

“Believe it or not, husband,” Sansa turns around so she can say it to his face, “it is not a high honor to be forced to marry into House Lannister for those of us who tasted the freedom of the North.”

Tyrion laughs. It’s as bitter as the rest of him.

“Oh, wife,” he only says, “You are delightful.”

“From personal experience, believe me: she’ll probably take it as the punishment it is meant to be. And it would kill once and for all the wild rumors that Bran still needs to handle, from time to time.” She turns around again, back to the mirror. “I could visit her in the West, deliver the news if you’d like. Help her, even.”

“That’s very generous,” he says, suspicious. “What are you planning?”

“Nothing.”

He narrows his eyes. “Liar.”

“I never knew her,” Sansa shrugs. “I’ve always wanted to.”

“To see if she was worth it?” He asks.

“I don’t need to meet her to have an answer to that,” Sansa says. “I know for a fact it wasn’t.”

He has the decency of agreeing with her on that. He nods, and for a long moment, there is a friendly silence between them. Sansa strokes her oiled pads against her wrists, and then behind her ears.

“Tyrion,” she says, looking at her own reflection in the mirror of her vanity. She studies her own face and tries to mask it into fearlessness. Tries to sound fearless when she asks, “Arianne doesn’t know, right? About Aegon?”

Tyrion is trying to massage a headache away; his eyes are closed.

“No.” A grin splits his mouth open. “Unless you told her in the throes of passion.”

“Of course I didn’t.”

“That woman has power between her legs, is all I’m saying,” he argues.

For a moment, Sansa is convinced her husband has known whatever power lies between Arianne’s legs, and for a moment she almost asks, but then she realizes she doesn’t really want to know. There are more pressing matters at hand.

“Does Daenerys know?” She asks.

In the mirror, she sees when he opens his eyes, straightens his head, and his gaze finds hers. He is always very merciless when he looks her in the eye.

“Are you asking me if the Queen knows that her only heir is actually a bastard?” Her husband asks, as quietly as he is able. Sansa shivers. She doesn’t like to say the words out loud; she feels as if the Queen on the Iron Throne is always listening, walls for ears, windows for eyes. “Or if she knows that you and I know and we have been lying to her this whole time?”

Sansa swallows down, dry, trying to repress her fear, trying to turn it into something more productive. Maybe anger.

“Did you tell her?” she says. It would be like Tyrion to ruin everything out of a warped sense of loyalty to Daenerys. “Because it will make it harder to sleep at night if being beheaded by treason in the morning is a possibility here.”

“Why do you think she would take your head? Or mine?” Tyrion curls his eyebrows. He looks very much like the Queen when he does so. It is unnerving. “She can’t have children. Jon is dead. She doesn’t have any heir but Aegon. It will throw us into War again if she decides to make it public. It was already hard enough to make Aegon settle for heir rather than King.” He looks away from the bond of their locked gaze, away from the mirror. “No, Sansa. I wouldn’t worry about that, if I were you. Daenerys would play along, and the Seven Kingdoms would be none the wiser. The boy is perfect for the job.”

Sansa doesn’t like the way he’s phrased it. “She would? We promised each other we wouldn’t tell anyone. We promised Varys.”

Worse than breaking a promise to Tyrion, Sansa really, really, really doesn’t want to betray Varys.

She really doesn’t. She never drinks her wine, unless everyone else at the table has already drunk it first.

“Are you accusing me of not keeping my promises to you?” Tyrion mutters. Whenever he has the chance, he reminds her of his great, great kindness in not claiming his rights as her husband. She doesn’t even think he wants to, at this point, only so he can keep reminding her of how very lucky she is. “Please.”

Tyrion thinks that, of the three of them, Varys is the least likely to spill the secret out, because he doesn’t have a motive. He was the one who created the lie, after all, who raised Aegon to be heir and King across the Narrow Sea, who gave him the keys of the kingdom.

But Sansa spent the first year of winter under Littlefinger’s thumb — Petyr, who told her about Aegon in the first place, and then died by Sansa’s own doing. The lack of motive is what concerns her. Three people is a lot to guard a single truth, a single lie; as far as secrets go, three people is almost a crowd.

And if Varys is the least likely to tell, that only means he is the most likely to murder one of them, or maybe both of them, at the slightest suspicion.

It is a precarious balance that Sansa would not like to disturb.

“Oh, gods,” it suddenly occurs to her, “does Aegon know?”

In that, her husband is not as ambiguous.

“No,” he answers, promptly and without doubt. “He doesn’t. And he never will.” He almost smiles at that, without joy. “But he would not do anything about it either. He’s no true son of Rhaegar.”

A flash of pain crosses Tyrion’s eyes, for a fraction of a second, as it always does whenever Jon is tangentially mentioned. Tyrion avoids speaking of Jon in Sansa’s presence, as much as possible; it’s been one of the dozen unspoken rules of their marriage. They mourn Jon in completely different manners.

He catches a glance of her face in the mirror, and maybe he sees that it pains her, too, Jon’s death, because he veers away from the subject as swiftly as he knows how: talking about the endless game their lives have become.

“Sansa, no one is more interested in peace than I am,” he promises. “Alright? Don’t worry about Aegon, or Daenerys, for the matter.” He blows out the candle by his side of the bed. Slides underneath the sheets. “Can you speak to Ser Garlan tomorrow, first thing in the morning? I need this out of my head.”

· · · ·

Tyrion doesn’t mind that Sansa is late for dinner almost every night, but Myrcella does.

Myrcella does not say a word, proper girl that she is, only seethes with jealousy in her seat in silence; but after it happens three nights in a row, the anger bursts out of her behind the closed doors of her bedroom.

She puts her hands on her waist, the very picture of a waiting wife, standing on her feet and refusing to sit down before the fireplace with their embroidery sets.

“You’ve been away so much lately,” Myrcella says, in the most adorable demonstration of passive-aggressiveness Sansa has ever seen.

“Oh, I know,” Sansa says, regretfully, walking toward the couch. “I don’t plan to stay too long here, so every day at court counts.”

Myrcella crosses her arms beneath her bosom, restlessly.

“Are you with the Princess?” Myrcella asks. “Princess Arianne. When you go out.”

Sansa frowns, confused.

“Of course I am,” she says. “You know this, I told you where I’ve been. Or with Garlan. Or with the Queen, or with your Uncle.”

It’s not even a lie. Myrcella closes her eyes for just two seconds, eyelids fluttering.

“I mean,” she repeats, measuring every word, “are you with her? As you are with me?”

Sansa almost laughs. Myrcella’s naivety is endearing; does she hold Arianne tenderly in her arms and put her to bed and kiss her carefully? Sansa is thinking about early in that afternoon — how beautiful Arianne had looked above her, grasping the headboard as she rode Sansa’s mouth, biting her own arm to keep from screaming.

“Of course I’m not, Cella,” she answers, trying to sound hurt. “It’s just… Boring bargain and commercial dealings.”

“The entire afternoon and even after sunset?” Myrcella asks, skeptic. “Alone with her for hours, every day?”

“Sunspear and Winterfell are on the extremes of the country,” Sansa explains. “We need a dozen middle-men. The logistics are tricky, is all. Besides, there’s a lot about your engagement that passes by the Crown, and Arianne and Aegon are closer to Highgarden, in every sense of the word. They live closer, they’ve been good friends for years. It’s just easier to deal with them rather than occupy the Queen’s time.”

Myrcella looks at her as if she very much wants to believe in it. She opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again.

“It is very lonely without you here, you know,” she says, voice thick with tears.

Sansa smiles with sympathy and gets close to Myrcella again. She wraps her arms about Myrcella’s waist, cradling the girl against her, and Myrcella easily surrenders.

“You can go out, Myrcella,” Sansa says. “You’re still the niece of the Hand of the Queen — no one would turn you down for company.”

“I don't want to be their friend,” Myrcella pouts. “This place is full of liars, and they only see my mother when they look at me.” She casts her eyes down, speaks humbly: “You’re the only one who sees me as I am.”

Myrcella rests her forehead against Sansa’s collarbone. Sansa gently rubs her back, resting her chin on the top of Myrcella’s head.

“I know, sweetling,” she coos, rocking Myrcella in her arms. “I know.”

“I’m sorry I was jealous,” she mumbles, softly. “Don’t be mad at me. I did not mean—”

“It’s alright,” Sansa says, kindly. “I’m not mad. Come here.”

She palms Myrcella’s cheek, raising her face, kissing her on the lips.

It is long and sweet and utterly toothless. Myrcella swoons, melts into Sansa, like a lady in a song.

· · · ·

The next day, she is summoned to the Queen’s solar, which is already alarming, but even more so when her husband is already there.

He seems just as stunned as she is when the Unsullied closes the door, locking Sansa in. “Why is she here?”

Sansa bows to the Queen first. “Your Grace.”

“Rise, Lady Sansa, and come closer,” the Queen asks. And, to her Hand: “Because I value her opinion.”

“Lady Sansa is not part of your Council, Your Grace.”

“Not yet, but she is a friend and an ally to me,” Daenerys replies. “Smart and resourceful.”

“That is a Lannister matter,” Tyrion says, staring so hard at Daenerys that Sansa is convinced there is a conversation happening in there she is not privy to. “Not for my wife to decide.”

“She won’t decide,” Daenerys replies. “Neither will you. I will decide. Would you take a seat, Lady Sansa, please?”

Sansa obeys, feeling a perverse satisfaction in the smile Daenerys gives her, or in the way Tyrion seems thoroughly annoyed by her presence.

“At your service, my Queen,” Sansa says.

“Lady Sansa, your husband and I were discussing the future of Casterly Rock. Again.” It seems to upset her. “I spend so much of my time arranging marriages, trying to avoid wars that lurk at every family feud in this country for generations, that I don’t think it unreasonable to ask for aid in a task like that, particularly involving a kingdom as important as the West.”

Sansa nods.

“I understand, your Grace.”

“So Martyn Lannister is now Tyrion’s only heir,” Daenerys goes on, “and I need to find him a wife. Of course, Tyrion has his own opinions about who the wife should be. I just wondered,” Daenerys says, so delicately, so humbly, “if you had opinions of your own. You were so useful to me, dealing with the Highgarden situation. It is all going so smoothly.”

Tyrion is impatiently tapping his fingers against the armchair.

“I— Yes, your Grace, I confess. An idea has crossed my mind… I see an opportunity in Martyn Lannister that should not be wasted,” Sansa says, carefully.

Tyrion groans by her side. He pinches the bridge of his nose, the only part of his nose that is left anyway. “Oh, for the gods, Sansa.”

“Her Grace asked me,” Sansa mutters.

“Yes, I asked,” Daenerys agrees. “My lady. Go on.”

“Jeyne Westerling, Your Grace. I think it should be her.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” Tyrion says.

“Let her speak, my lord Hand.”

This is— oh, this is so much better than Sansa had hoped when she came South. She thought merely witnessing Cersei would be enough, but King’s Landing has turned out to be a feast.

“Well, I am married to your Hand,” Sansa raises one finger up. “Bran has officially pledged the North to you, my sister is knowingly a great friend of yours and Jon was… Well.” She shifts in her seat. “Any northern conspiracy for independence cannot rely on House Stark anymore.”

Tyrion laughs, bitter and mean. “You think northerner separatists would choose Jeyne Westerling as their champion?” He mocks. “This is absurd.”

“She was the last Queen in the North,” Sansa shrugs. “She’s unmarried. And there are rumors that she was with child at the time of Robb’s passing.”

“Folklore,” Tyrion retrots. He’s starting to get angry. “It has been years.”

“Folklore is how wars begin,” Sansa says.

“Is there anything you want to share with us?” Daenerys narrows her eyes. She’s been studying the pair of them with interest. “Do you know something?”

“Nothing concrete,” Sansa reassures her. “Nothing of consequence, too. No action has been taken… Yet. I’m just saying it’s how the rumors go in the North… That she is raising Robb’s child in secret so he can reclaim the northern crown when he is of age. And those things have a way to take root, even if it’s not true.” Sansa pauses. “If the rumors run free and unopposed for long enough, any red-headed child could be Robb’s child. It wouldn’t need to be true at all. Do you understand what I’m saying, your Grace? I can’t think of a better way to end this lie than to marry her to a Lannister and make her the mother of the next generation of little lions. The appeal would be simply lost.”

Daenerys turns to her Hand.

“Why are you so opposed to this?” She asks. “It’s not a bad idea.”

Tyrion runs a hand through his beard. “I don’t believe in rewarding bad behavior. It sets precedent and breeds resentment on those who have been loyal. The girl is a traitor to Casterly Rock. She deserves punishment and not honor.”

“This is the punishment,” Sansa says. “I know it’s a hard concept for you to grasp, but this is the worst possible punishment for her.”

“And why would you want to punish her?” Tyrion exclaims, exasperated. “What is wrong with you?”

And Daenerys is watching her face closely. Indeed. Why?

“I don’t,” Sansa answers. “I’m just thinking ahead.”

· · · ·

Tyrion is insufferable when they retire back to the privacy of the Tower of the Hand. He strides all the way to their bedroom, barely acknowledging his niece, and Sansa throws Myrcella a wary glance as she follows her husband and closes the door.

He is, of course, running to the comfort of his flagon of wine. Sansa waits for his fury to be unleashed upon her.

“Are you doing all this,” he waves a hand about, “to make me miserable?”

Sansa sits at the edge of their bed. “Doing what?”

“Undoing all my plans,” Tyrion replies. “You removed my family line from their rightful seat in favor of a distant cousin, now you’re plotting to put a traitor there—”

“Not everything is about you.” And she’s not, on principle, lying. She’s aiming at Tywin’s legacy; Tyrion merely happens to be the survivor on her way.

He laughs, the sound caustic, ugly. “Well, are you doing this to make the Westerling girl miserable? Because it will.”

As if he cared. “No one thought about my misery when they married me to you,” Sansa shrugs. “Suffering is part of how this game works.”

He’s already finished the first cup of wine, and, despite being visibly upset, not a drop is wasted on the ground as he fills up his second cup. He drinks a deep swig before he speaks.

“So this is what it is about. You suffered, so you’re taking every single lady in this country with you.”

For some reason, that one hurts. Sansa tries to dodge it, hide it; she looks away.

“It’s not a problem now, but if no one puts a stop to those nonsense rumors, at some point my brother will be forced to punish his bannermen in your Queen’s name for treason against her,” Sansa explains, calmly. “And I’d rather avoid that.”

Tyrion’s eyes are red as they bore into her. He’s in that first state of drunkenness, the illusion of clarity. “What is your angle here, Sansa?”

“I need the Queen to trust House Stark beyond a shadow of doubt.”

“No,” he is breathing hard, fuming. “You need the Queen to trust you beyond a shadow of doubt.”

“Does it make any difference?” Sansa wonders.

“Yes, it does,” he says, finishing his second cup. “It does. You care not for the realms— I think you don’t even care for the North anymore. You only think of revenge. Nothing, nothing else moves you. And you think it’s leading you somewhere, but it isn’t.”

“You would know,” Sansa says.

And he looks at her with a rage that Sansa thinks shocks even himself. Sansa tires of him, suddenly. She gets up. “You’re not a very gracious loser, husband,” she says, passing him by toward the door. “But you’re an even less gracious winner, so I think it’s better to leave it at that.”

· · · ·

When the candles are blown out, after they get into bed and tuck themselves beneath the sheets, Sansa caresses Myrcella’s hip.

The satin fabric slides pleasantly against her fingers and Myrcella’s skin; Sansa feels the shape of bones sharply jutting out, the downslope of her waist. She runs her nose against Myrcella’s neck.

Myrcella gasps a little. Sansa smiles. She supposes this is how people feel when they’re really, really drunk on something.

“Have you done this before?” Sansa asks. It sounds ominous in the dark.

“This?” Myrcella’s voice is shaking. “What do you mean?”

Sansa chuckles.

“Share a bed,” she explains. “With your lady friends.”

It’s Myrcella’s turn to laugh. Quiet and covert.

“Oh,” she says. “Well, yes, but we were just children and we didn’t— we didn’t do this.”

“Never?” Sansa wonders. She listens to the way Myrcella catches her breath, and it urges her to slide her hand higher, to rest her palm on the girl’s ribcage, thumbing the side of her breast, too close but not close enough. “I thought Dorne was different.”

“It is, I just— I didn’t realize I could,” Myrcella says. “I felt… curious, sometimes. But I was so afraid of misrepresenting the crown,” she gasps again when Sansa nibbles at her throat. “Oh. Sansa—”

When she kisses Myrcella it is as if she is running after lost years, lost time. Myrcella is a sweet girl to taste, but the best part is how the girl tastes her, how she clings to Sansa, tries to eat Sansa whole into her mouth to the point of clumsiness when she kisses back. Her hands are still cautious, the dead shadow of a forfeit inheritance still looming over her, but it is only a matter of time until Myrcella finally understands that she is not a Princess anymore, until she starts to behave like she really feels: like nothing but a hungry body. Nothing, perhaps, but a whore.

She trembles all over, and Sansa smiles in the dark. All that gentleness is not going to last long.

· · · ·

There’s a tower in the Red Keep for prisoners. The highest cells are relatively comfortable, for noble-men waiting for payment or ransom. The deepest dungeons are reserved for prisoners toward which whoever is sitting upon the Iron Throne is not as well-disposed.

Sansa crosses its levels, going down from the opening on the floor into the tower. The first level, closer to the surface — for common criminals — still has windows to the outside world. The people in there see her passing them by — robbers, murderers, rapists. She supposes some of them haven’t seen a woman in a while. They reach out their hands trying to grab her clothes, making leer comments about private visits for all of them at once. There are dozens of them sharing a cell.

Sansa marches on.

The second level doesn’t allow for sunlight but it is illuminated by torches on the walls. Its individual cells are mostly empty.

The third level, the black cells, are called black for a reason. Her father, once, was kept here by Cersei’s orders. The doors are made of wood instead of metal bars, so she has no idea if they’re empty or not.

Only Sansa’s trembling candle clear up the pathway ahead of her as she spirals further deep down.

(Tyrion told her once Cersei was kept in the fourth and last level of the dungeons.

He mentioned it in passing, when they were in Winterfell. Tyrion had been injured at the Wall and had to be sent back and tended to. Back then, they talked for hours; they were snowed in, Tyrion could not walk without help and so he did not want to walk at all, and there was nothing else to do to pass the time.

What’s in there? Sansa had asked him. In the dungeons.

He had looked at her, with eyes that were both pleased and haunted. Things that should never meet the light, he answered.)

But Sansa carries light along.

It’s very cold, there, in the heart of the Red Keep, below the earth. There’s a corridor with many cells, all empty of people, all full of— of instruments, everything illuminated by golden, trembling candlelight. Sansa doesn’t want to figure out what they are for but she cannot avoid seeing. One of the cells has a table in the form of a cross, with leather straps at the endings. She sees many different kinds of whips, many different shapes of knives. She sees a wooden tub — harmless furniture, a tub, nothing special about this one; it could have been made by the same people who made the tub she bathes in. She sees a room with ropes on the ceiling. She sees chain belts, metal leashes. Passing by a locked door, she listens to the squeak and skittering of rodents. Many rooms have dark stains on the stony ground, on the walls, all over the objects: old blood.

But they’re all empty, except for the last cell, where Sansa meets a guard draped in black clothing and a red dragon sewn on his right arm. It’s one of the Queen’s Unsullied— he points a spear toward Sansa, his face as cold as the stones around them, even before he takes note of who she is.

Sansa pulls the hood of her cloak down as fast as she can and raises one of her hands in the air, the other still holding on to the candleholder.

“Qeldlie pryjata,” Sansa says. Her Valyrian accent is not very good, but she hopes the words are understandable. Daenerys had repeated them to her and forced her to repeat back to exhaustion until she got it right, but it’s harder to speak anything in her own language, let alone in a different one, with a weapon pointed at her belly.

The Unsullied’s face doesn’t change.

“Put that candle down,” he says. He has a heavy accent, too, which is, for some reason, comforting.

Sansa slowly kneels, enough to balance the candle holder on the ground, and then stands in her full height again, raising both hands.

“I’m Sansa Stark of Winterfell, wife to the Lord Hand. I have a letter,” she says, “from the Queen. May I?”

He ponders for a moment, and then nods.

Sansa slides the rolled parchment out of the bag-pocket under her cloak, still sealed with royal wax, and gives it to the man.

He takes the candle she’s brought and reads the letter under its light, raising his eyes to Sansa again.

“So you come to play with her?” He asks.

Sansa swallows down, her throat dry.

“No,” she shakes her head, though she wonders if that’s true. “Just— just talk.”

He nods, as if the answer couldn’t matter less.

“She is dangerous,” he tells her. “You can’t get inside. And be careful with that fire.”

She can’t hurt me more than she already has, Sansa would tell him, but there’s no point. He leaves through the hallway without looking back, the clang of the keys hanging from his hip as he walks.

Sansa picks up the candle again. She walks closer to the cell, letting the small flame cast its light upon it.

It’s hard to see her in the dim-light, but behind metal bars, Cersei is lying at the corner, on the ground, in a pile of straw. The other corner has a bucket, and that’s it. There’s no window. The cell stinks of shit and blood. Her hair has been cut, her bones jut out under the skin in weird angles — shoulders, collar-bones, hips, even elbow. She looks shrunken.

She looks small.

Sansa tries to steady her hand, but all around them shadows tremble harder in the walls, and her heart tears apart like soft fabric in a rough fist. It bleeds out into her chest and for a moment, Sansa breathes it out in a drowning exhale — feels the taste of metal all the way from her lungs up her tongue.

Cersei doesn’t turn to her. Not at first.

“Little dove,” she says.

Her voice hasn’t changed — cold steel, hard but smooth.

Sansa puts the candle over the empty bench just outside the cell, far enough that Cersei could not reach it.

“Your Grace,” Sansa says, as respectfully as she can manage, and when Cersei turns to look at her, she holds her skirts and half-bends her knee in a perfect curtsy, her head held high.

There are chains attached to the wall, Sansa notices, but her ankles are free. Cersei follows the path of her eyes and smirks.

“They let me free sometimes,” she explains, “when I behave nicely.”

Sansa frowns. The Cersei she remembers would rather be chained than behave nicely for her torturers. In fact, the Cersei she remembers would have already found a way to be done with it.

Cersei seems to see through that reasoning in her face as well, and shrugs.

“They force me to eat,” she explains, and, with a chortle, “But this part doesn’t matter anymore, little dove.”

Cersei braces herself against the wall to sit and then get up.

In a moment of madness, Sansa thinks she’ll request an audience with the Dragon Queen right now, in the hour of the wolf. She’ll kneel and beg for her not to kill Cersei. Let her live, Sansa will plead. Don’t give her the mercy of death. She doesn’t deserve it. One winter, even a long one, is not enough. Let’s delay it until summertime. Give her a spring of agony.

In a moment of madness, with the former Queen’s thin body exposed as she limps forward, Sansa considers breaking that lock with her own hands, with her teeth if needed, to get inside, to rescue her. I’ll get you out of here, she thinks, completely forgetting the Unsullied waiting on the upper floor. Let’s get out of here. We could fix it, just you and I, we’ll get on a boat, cross the Narrow Sea, and we would— we could still—

In a moment of madness, Sansa almost steps back, as if this woman, hungered and tortured and behind bars, could, through some magic trick, hurt her.

Sansa, however, does none of those things. She remains in her place, unable to move, just watching as Cersei hobbles closer and closer, until she lunches forward to find support on the metal bars.

Sansa gasps, jolts. Stays still.

Cersei is studying her face with devoted attention. Closer, Sansa can see bruises on her jaw, her nose distorted as if it had been broken and fixed wrong, a missing little finger in one of her hands, barely any nails left.

Cersei reaches between the bars to touch Sansa’s loose hair with dirty fingers, and Sansa would smack her hand away, if her body would just obey her commands.

“It’s been so long,” Cersei says. “You’ve grown.”

Sansa cannot move.

“I have,” she says, because what’s left to say but this? Time has passed.

“You’re even prettier now,” Cersei says, in that voice she used at court. “I’m glad you came to see me. I missed you, too.”

“I came,” why am I here, Sansa asks herself— she had a mission here, below the earth, in the depths of the dungeons, but she can’t remember it now. “To witness justice being done—”

Cersei smirks.

“Of course, justice,” she nods her head feverishly. “Is that how the dragon bitch names it?” She scorns, hands tight around the metal bar, stronger than Sansa would have imagined for her in this situation. “You would know, little dove. The lot of you Starks would know. All of this is fair, you say?”

“You ruined the Seven Kingdoms,” Sansa says, though her own voice sounds very far away, words from another girl’s mouth, words bred in another girl’s mind. Repeating their lines like a little bird—

Cersei shakes her head.

“No,” she says. “No. I didn’t care enough about you to ruin you. I tried to save my children from certain death and you were on my way.”

Sansa remembers the lesson. Love no one but your children. Cersei’s hands drop from the bars of her cage, but she presses her cheek against its coldness.

“But I ruined the Seven Kingdoms and she’s rebuilding them after her own image, I suppose, out of the goodness of her big, motherly heart, with fire and blood.” She licks her lower lip, grasping it between a pair of broken teeth. “What’s the difference between us again?

“You’re delirious,” Sansa says, with pity.

But it isn’t true; she’s not more delirious than she used to be. The Dragon Queen and her torturers couldn’t break Cersei Lannister; her eyes remain the hard emerald they’ve always been, just as clear and sharp. She might be mad, in a way, but she still knows who she is and where she is and why, and she will never apologize for any of it. Perhaps Cersei has a point and there is no difference between Lannister crimson and Targaryen-red — it’s all blood. And yes, sometimes she sees flashes of green in Daenerys’ violet eyes, depending on how the sunlight hits them. And there’s Aegon, of course, lies upon lies upon lies keeping the realms together, one bastard at a time. But at the end of the day…

“Daenerys is a good woman,” she says, trying to believe it. “That’s the difference.”

“I hear she’s barren,” Cersei points out. “No children except for those beasts she fancies herself the mother of. You tell me she’s a good woman,” she narrows her eyes. “But you’ll never have the chance to put this to test.” She presses her entire body against the bars, then, almost as if she’s offering herself through the gaps, eyeing Sansa from head to toes. Sansa is pulled closer by the sheer force of her gaze. “I could not help but notice, however, that she’s very pretty. To your liking, sweetling?”

Sansa cannot move.

(She’s fourteen again, and breathless. Cersei had made her kneel in front of her open legs, her cunt exposed and uttered a simple command: Go on. Eat it.

Sansa did not quite know what to do. She assumed she was not supposed to literally eat it, but a knot of ecstasy and curiosity was tightening her stomach at the idea, and so she followed her instincts. She darted out her tongue and delicately flickered the tip across the Queen’s slit, sighing with the salty taste of it, doing it again, and again—

Above her, Cersei shook her head.

No, Sansa, you’re doing it like a green boy, the Queen muttered, displeased. She buried her fingers into Sansa’s hair and pulled her head up. You taste a cunt with your whole mouth. Not just the tip of your tongue. We call it eating for a reason.

Sansa felt ashamed of her own ignorance. Yes, Your Grace, she answered.

Cersei stared at her for a long time before sighing and pulling Sansa up, urging her to sit on the edge of the mattress in her place.

I’ll show you, she said, spreading Sansa’s legs and kneeling on the ground. Watch and learn.

Sansa was too stunned to speak. Nothing could have prepared her for the sight of Cersei kneeling in front of her. She braced herself on the mattress as Cersei ran two fingers across Sansa’s folds, opening her up and then—

Then Sansa understood what Cersei meant by eating. It felt, as a matter of fact, like being consumed, like parts of her were being bitten even without teeth, diggested, swallowed down. Sansa closed her eyes and grabbed the sheets and tried not to whimper; failed.

Cersei drew away, her mouth glistening with the evidence of Sansa’s pleasure. Why are your eyes closed? She asked. I told you to watch. How are you going to learn?

Sansa struggled to open her eyes. She did, after a while.

Yes, Your Grace, she crooked.

Cersei was looking at her, too, as if to make sure Sansa was paying attention. She put her entire tongue into Sansa while her lips sucked and kissed, her pace fast and hard from the start; it was a work of hunger. Looking at it made her feel, somehow, even wilder, and she felt the urge to move her hips. She tried; but Cersei held her hips down, kept her still. Sansa whined, loud, and felt as if she was about to explode, and then—

Then Cersei stopped. She drew back, just slightly breathless, and wiped out Sansa’s wetness with the back of her hand. Did you understand? She asked, pragmatically.

Sansa was throbbing everywhere in her body that had a pulse. Sansa could barely find her own voice, and her throat felt harsh and dry.

Yes, but, Your Grace, I— I did not—

I know, Cersei said. She laid on the bed and opened her legs again. Maybe I’ll finish you later, if you’re good enough to me. Come.

Sansa understood it well enough. That was the most important lesson Cersei had ever taught her. As she lay on her belly and put her entire mouth on the Queen’s cunt, her tongue deep, her rhythm constant and eager but slower than Cersei’s had been, Sansa thought: she did this to me. She made me hungry and insatiable.

Above her, Cersei writhed in pleasure.

Gods, that, Sansa, like that— you’re such a fast learner, you were made for this, and Sansa thought that was true, yes. She was made for that. Nothing had ever felt so natural.

And for a moment — and it was blessed, and it would haunt her, years later — Sansa forgot she didn’t choose to be there.

Cersei buried her fingers into Sansa’s hair and Sansa realized, terrified, that the pleasure that had built in her bones was breaking through only by doing this. Only by the mere act of eating. She was so, so very close to her own release. She wondered if Cersei would notice if she slipped her fingers between her own legs, or if she rubbed her body against the mattress. Probably not; the Queen was lost in her own bliss.

My own wolf-bitch, she groaned, eyes closed, head thrown back against the pillows. No Queen has ever been so lucky.

Sansa moaned against Cersei’s flesh; in the end, neither Sansa nor the Queen needed to do anything. The thunder of pleasure rolled through her, her own cunt entirely untouched as she came, thinking she was being so good now, she was being so useful now, and even then she did not stop, her tongue kept going, pushing Cersei forward, and she wondered— was that a compliment?)

Whatever her face shows makes Cersei grin with pride. She chuckles, then, a sigh of laughter under her tired breathing.

“Oh, let the realms believe you’re the proper lady they believe you to be, the Maiden herself amongst us, thrice wedded, never bedded; I know what you are, Sansa.” She slips a hand between bars, one entire skinny arm, until she touches Sansa again — grabs Sansa’s waist, as if she means to melt Sansa into her cage. “You can’t help yourself with beautiful Queens. That’s just your nature,” she continues. “But don’t let your urgings fool you. What we have happens once in a lifetime.”

Sansa cannot move.

“Oh,” she whispers.

“I could still make you feel good,” Cersei murmurs, and the hand on her waist slips between Sansa’s legs over the layers of her attire, grabbing her hard, with painful familiarity. “Did you see the keys hanging from the guard’s hip? I’m sure you’re smart enough to find a way to get inside. I’ll show you a good woman, little dove.”

Oh, Sansa remembers, at last.

This is what she came for. She thinks about this, once in a lifetime— it slowly dawns on her like a pocket of clarity.

“Let me tell you the reason why I’m truly here,” Sansa whispers.

“Tell me,” Cersei murmurs, pressing the bony hilt of her hand against Sansa’s mound. Out of habit, Sansa fights the way her body is trying to turn the mere pressure into actual pleasure. “I’d like to hear it from you.”

“I came to King’s Landing to offer my support to my dearest friend Myrcella,” Sansa tells her.

She savors the words slowly.

Cersei, as shrewd as she’s ever been, snaps her eyes to her face. Sansa takes in a gulf of air, and she’s breathing. Finally, she can breathe.

Cersei lets go of her body with a sudden jerk, and, sick as it is, Sansa misses the touch of her hand, but not enough to let go of this. Tyrion was right about her. She’s not even sorry for it. No mourning for dead lovers or kins, no respect for new monarchs, not even the release of pleasure itself — oh, nothing, nothing is as sweet as revenge.

She seizes the chance of Cersei’s stupor to keep talking.

“Indeed,” she goes on, “I’ve been sharing her bed almost every night. I’ve been taking very good care of her, my Queen. Don’t you ever worry.”

Love no one, Cersei advised her, but your children.

And Sansa could never help it. She just always paid close attention to her lessons.

“This is between you and me, Sansa,” Cersei says, so serious, so reasonable, so self-possessed. So afraid.

Death couldn’t scare Cersei, no; pain couldn’t scare Cersei, torture couldn’t. Only one thing could break her.

Daenerys didn’t know what, but Sansa did.

“Myrcella has nothing to do with us,” Cersei continues.

Sansa pouts.

“I disagree,” she says, taking a step back, because she knows this is a violent woman. She sips on the freedom, gets drunk in it. “Don’t worry. I’ll do nothing except what she asks of me.” Sansa crosses her hands together behind her back, as demurely as she knows how. “But rest assured she’ll ask — actually, I think she’ll beg.”

Aren’t you proud of me? Sansa would, genuinely, ask.

Cersei is halfway from denial to anger. She uncontrollably shakes her head.

“Don’t you dare to touch her,” she threatens.

“Oh, but I will,” Sansa says, taking another step back. She picks up the candle again, resting her back against the wall of the corridor, as far away from Cersei as possible, and lets the flame brighten up her smile. “I’ve been touching her and I’ll keep doing it because she wants me to,” Sansa says. “She needs me. She’s all alone without me. No friends at court, no allies…” Sansa trails off. Pauses. “Did they tell you she was given the Lannister name? Tyrion’s doing. In truth, she’s almost his daughter now. And you know how I have my husband in the highest esteem. It is as if Myrcella were my own flesh and blood.”

“If you hurt her, Sansa—”

“Hurt her? I’d never,” Sansa palms her own heart. “But you made her into such an obedient little thing, my Queen. I congratulate you on that. A proper lady, truly a pearl of a girl, so pliant, so eager to please me. I would never hurt my favorite toy.”

It breaks Cersei. She throws herself against the bars like a rabid animal, her eyes red with tears of fury as she tries to shake the metal to the ground. An eruption of a woman. A wildfire of a woman.

I’m more merciful to her than you’ve ever been to me, she thinks.

“You little bitch,” Cersei screams. “You’re nothing but a northern whore.”

Sansa won’t argue. Maybe that’s what she is, after all.

“You did this to me,” she replies. “You made me like this.”

And in her emerald, sunken eyes, she can see that Cersei knows she is telling the truth.

Sansa’s hand is unshaken, fearless. Suddenly, the shadows cast by her candlelight are dancing rather than trembling, swinging graciously to the sweet music of retribution.

It is beautiful, Sansa thinks, watching it, the fire and the shadows and the dried blood on the walls. There is no peace in it — she aches, still, even now — but there is beauty. There is balance.

If she were to pass the sentence, she would do it in the name of Margaery Tyrell, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.

She won’t do it, though — she will watch, she will dwell in the darkened side of justice, here in the deep shadows that should not see the light. And it will have to be enough.

“Anyway, I must leave. I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says, like a sacred vow. “That I promise, on my honor as a Stark.”

Cersei frowns, confused in the middle of her wrath. “Tomorrow?”

“Oh, you didn’t know,” Sansa says.

That makes her smile. For a second, Sansa almost laughs with joy. She didn’t understand why Daenerys allowed her to come here, but it makes sense now — that the Dragon Queen would want Cersei to know, to spend the night knowing what waited for her, without a window to denounce the dawn, left with nothing but anticipation.

She’ll have to find a way to show her gratitude to Daenerys later for this gift, this moment of realization dawning on Cersei’s face right in front of her eyes — oh, Sansa is so very thankful.

“Tonight is the first full moon of spring,” Sansa explains, with motherly patience. “You’re going to burn in the morning, Cersei. And I’ll be there, by Myrcella’s side, holding her hand while we watch you die together. I just came because I wanted you to know this,” Sansa whispers, as candidly as she’s able. “She’s mine now.”

(As I am yours, Sansa is thinking, as she walks out of the deep dungeon back to the surface, leaving a screaming, storm-raging Cersei behind her.)