Livid light, green, unnatural, danced through her window. She stared intently at her chamber door, through which he'd walked away.
Those burning eyes gazed straight into my soul, she was stunned to admit, yet they never knew my secret.
Frantic, she dashed over to her cedar chest, yanked back the heavy lid, and fumbled amongst her summer silks, clawing them aside until her hand rested on a once-white garment, roughspun and heavy.
Her fingers left red smudges in that whiteness now; she'd reached out to him, hesitated, lost her grip on his blood-slicked armour, the moment was lost.
It cost her everything, that slip, she saw it in his eyes. Rejection. She couldn't take it back, even though it was never intended, and he'd walked away.
Now she flung his cloak around her shoulders and knelt beside her window. I never knew why I kept it. Even now, I don't know…
But that was untrue. When Joffrey's vindictiveness reached new depths, shaming and humiliating her, that cloak, given in her most vulnerable moment, had invoked in her some previously unknown strength. She clutched it now, as then, reflecting again that no velvet ever felt so fine.
She was strong while shrouded in it, for it was his.
The realisation, he would never hurt me, made her stronger still…
Yet when it counted she hadn't mustered up even a shadow of that strength.
I was wrong. That knowledge, his sudden absence, left her too weak to stand.
So wrong. Gods hear me now, give me the strength and ferocity of the Hound, the courage of my lady mother. Her gaze flitted to the discarded doll, a reminder of an innocence long since departed. Give me all that, then, though I've asked so much already, bring him back to me.
Give me my choice again.