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.)