A/N: Chima-lovers, I salute you! You have braved the Seven Realms and come out better for it.

BUT HERE IT IS! After my two year hiatus, I have returned, and with a companion to my Seven Realms hit, Everlasting Night. This time, we take a look into the mind of another Gray Wolf Queen: Marianna ana'Lissa.

Marianna has always seemed to be an unsung hero of the Seven Realms. Beneath all the hate that Raisa gave her for being prissy and ineffective, Marianna had a lot of hurt buried away. Or at least, I think she did. With this piece, I explore that a little.

Summary: Raisa's choice to leave the Fells and travel to Oden's Ford had not only been difficult for her. She had left behind a broken country, and a broken women who had only wished to please her. Marianna had always been quick to love. Gavan Bayar. Her daughters. Her queenship. But as time went on, it seemed to get harder to love them all. After Raisa rejected her love, Marianna could barely find the point in loving any of them anymore. Like her daughter, she found it hard to live in the night when daytime so loudly peered in her window. If only she too could never leave.

Disclaimer: This brilliant woman is the product of another brilliant woman, Cinda Williams Chima.

Onward!

"Silent Night"

By WickedHope

Marianna ana'Lissa was tired. Once she was on the other side of the door to her tower bedroom, her feet could barely hold her up anymore. The skirts that had once hung so beautifully on her hips now felt like armor built for a man twice her size. Her legs shook under their weight. She felt winded just trying to keep them up.

Her frame felt gaunt under the bodice that it had once filled. Now, the only thing that held it up were the pins stuck through her underclothes, and sometimes, Marianna felt like even those weren't enough anymore. Her gowns were all too heavy for her. She marveled that they were yet to snap the pins that held them so well. Each day, she could hardly wait to climb out of them.

That night, Marianna found a second wind as she walked into her chamber. She dismissed her handmaid as she walked in. "I can dress myself," she told her. "Thank you."

The handmaid looked as if she had seen a ghost. "Are you not well, milady?" she asked. "Would you like me to fetch something for you?"

"I am quite well," Marianna snapped. The maid's eyes were wide, and Marianna sighed. "Thank you, Irene. I will not be taking dinner tonight. Please, take the night to yourself."

Irene smiled brightly, backing towards the door before Marianna could even properly dismiss her. She curtsied with each step she took, murmuring, "Thank you, milady. You are very kind, Your Majesty."

"Enjoy," Marianna said.

In a swirl of skirts, Irene dipped behind the chamber door and rushed down the corridor, carrying with her a youthful glow of excitement. Marianna smiled longingly after her. She could remember those days very well. It had not been that long since she had dreamed every night of the days where had been like Irene. So vibrant and full of life, looking forward to every night she could rush off to be on her own. Savoring those girlish moments of freedom, those wanton fantasies, those lingering trysts.

The idea of it made Marianna's eyes hang heavy now. Lately, the only reason she wanted to fall back onto a bed was to fall asleep. Half the time she wished she would never have to wake up anymore.

Her skirts fell away from her easily. It hurt her fingers to pulls pins out from her bodice. Her bones ached as she pulled it off of her body, but she could finally breathe easily when they were gone. When her nightgown was pulled over her head and the smooth We'enhaven silk rested on her body, she wasn't queen anymore. None of that could ever follow her to her bedchamber. She had made sure of that when she had sent her husband to bed in a guest house. No, in her tower, she was just a woman.

Although, that seemed to scare Marianna more than the throne did. As a woman – and more namely, as a mother – she had less to show than she did when she wore that crown that rested so uncomfortably on her brow. Raisa was lost to her, and no matter how hard she searched, she couldn't find anyone to blame besides herself. There was always Lord Bayar, but Marianna had given up on thinking about him.

Her nightgown rested a little easier on her body than her court gown had, but not much better. Nothing seemed to feel right on her anymore.

She walked through the door into her bed chamber. The small table beside the door was piled with letters. She shuffled through a few of them. There were endless amounts from her council members. The war in Arden was getting out of hand, and the people of Fellsmarch were getting restless. There was some mess about the Waterwalkers in the Fens. She pushed them all to the edge of the desk, which was covered in a thick layer of dust. Lying at the bottom was a new letter signed in the familiar hand and seal of Edon Byrne.

Marianna broke the seal open with haste, sighing before she even saw what was inside. She knew what was there. There had been another one apprehended. This one had been a flatlander. He was sneaking along the palace gates with a knife on his person. He had been on Montaigne's orders. Another assassin.

The letter fluttered to the table, and Marianna turned her back to it. There had been many in the past few months, especially with Raisa gone. Marianna felt she could count more people that wanted her dead now than wanted her alive. Now that she had retired to her bedchamber, the Guard would move into the front chamber to keep watch on that door. There were already a host of them in the corridor. Edon Byrne himself would not doubt be stationed behind the door beside her bed, and if not him, one of his better guardsmen.

Marianna had never felt more unsafe. There were guards surrounding her night and day, yet there was never a moment where Marianna didn't fear for her life. The enemies were everywhere. Angry courtiers, disgruntled wizards, flatlander sellswords. The clans were the worst of them. They had been discrete about it, more so than all the others had managed to be, but Marianna knew it was them.

Yet it wasn't the assassins and the deadly, word-slinging politicians that gave Marianna the most fear. It was herself.

She was dangerous. When it had gotten that way, she could never hope to discern, but Marianna had become a true, evident danger, to herself and others. She was destructive. Her head pained her, so she was irritable. Her heart hung heavily in her chest, so she could not focus. Her stomach was tied into knots, screaming for some comfort, but any food churned uneasily until she upheaved it that night. Any time that she spent in court, she found herself ready to slump into sleep, even more than usual. Whenever she tried to remove herself from such a horrid feeling and rejoin the majestic, gilded world that still spun around her in the place where she had once lived in it, she struggled to find a way out. There were no more doorways that could lead her from the darkened corridor she now wandered down. She had closed them all years before. Marianna found that ending up here had been inevitable all along. She had dug her own grave.

The hate, the dissent, even the assassination attempts. Marianna had brought rise to them all. That was the one thing surrounding that bloody crown and living in that wretched palace that she was sure of. Her fault was the greatest thing she had managed to accomplish in her reign.

Queen Marianna had made the choice to defend Lord Bayar long ago, before she even truly knew what it meant to be a queen. That was the only defense she could offer, but it could not excuse a reign of folly. Two decades of defending the man through right and wrong (and more wrong than right) had only made her more foolish and more unpopular, and while not for an instant would she regret it, her mind often preyed on the idea of how mistaken she must have been. If she had known how to be a queen, she might not have let Marianna, the foolish, lovestruck girl, make the decision for the Queen. It would have been a lot easier if it all had not happened at once.

Her mother Lissa was the root of it all, Marianna had decided. If she had not died, Marianna never would have been shoved into this whole business. Lissa had been no friend to the Bayars, but she was also not one to pry into her daughter's personal matters. Had that dreadful chill not caught Lissa and carried her into the night, Marianna never would have had to become queen at all, and she could have been left to live as she pleased. At least, that was how she had pictured it.

Lissa had been a cold, distant woman. Marianna had dreamt up a thousand stories as to why, but she had never been able to deny that it was true. Lissa kept to herself. The only thing she ever gave her daughter was a name and a crown.

And there it was! Not Lissa at all, but the crown! That was the demon-cursed origin of every dread and sadness that festered in Marianna's heart. She looked up from the table. There is lay on its cushion, set atop an ornate dresser standing across from her curtained bed. It was there to bid her a good sleep every night, and it woke her in the morning. It had always been there, her entire life, looming over her with a shadow thirty-one lengths long. She could never have hoped to escape it.

The deafening blow that nailed Marianna's fate into place had been that she had let herself believe that she could have.

Perhaps the crown may not have cursed her so terribly if she had known how to wield it better. It had sat atop her head like as little more than a jeweled ornament for seventeen years, yet even now, Marianna had no idea why it was there or what she could do with it. All she knew how to do was attend balls and give decrees. And fall to her knees and spit praise every time Gavan Bayar opened his mouth to crow.

The man was a tyrant. He was manipulative, self-serving, and greedy. His only lust was for power, not for her, as he had so skillfully led her to believe for their entire lives. He stole from the poor in order to make the mound of treasure that he sat on in the Aerie even larger. He swindled power from the rest of the Wizard Council – and from Marianna herself – with each deft move he made. The High Wizard acted to advance his family, not the realm. Marianna had been blind not to see this, and it had cost her Raisa.

How could I have believed him? Marianna thought to herself with a shudder.

Suddenly, she stood as she had on Raisa's name day, dressed in satins and crushed beneath that awful crown. Her face beamed past its flaws, and she hung on Gavan Bayar's arm like a drunken fool. Still she could see Raisa's face, stained with artfully masked horror and disgust, when they announced her marriage to Micah. Marianna had ignored it all.

Could I really have been that blind? Marianna wondered silently. I cannot think that Gavan had dug his charms that deeply, even after all this time. It was my choice. I let it happen, even after seeing her look at me like that.

I am the monster.

With any luck, that bitterness that Raisa had had inside her that night would stay with her when she became queen. She would use it to turn against the mother who had foolishly tried to live through her, and she would be a better queen for it. If there had been no good for Marianna to leave her daughter with, at least she could leave her that.

Marianna looked at her bed with disgust. She was too tired to sleep. If she could find the strength to climb into that high bed, there would not be enough left in her to fall back onto the sheets and rest. And even then, nightmares were sure to bring her back into the abrasive world far too quickly.

Instead, the Queen of the Fells walked across her chamber and rester her hands on the silver circlet that she had plagued her head for so long. If only she had the chance to wear it, to truly wear it, perhaps it all might have turned out differently. But she never had. That crown had never rested on a queen's head for all the time that it had belonged to Marianna. The thirty-second Queen in the Gray Wolf Line had never existed. It had no more than a big-eyed girl playing queen in fancy dresses and expensive jewels. There had never been a queen beneath that crown. Just as there had never been a wife for Averill or an heir for Lissa. Or a mother for Raisa.

Marianna had loved Gavan Bayar. She still did. That was the great truth that she could find in her life. But, as it had been for the rest of her shadow of a life, it had not really been him. The Gavan she had loved was not the Gavan that had strung her up as a puppet and tried to do the same with her daughter. That Gavan had been the queen's Gavan, and there was no queen.

But if she had to do it all again, differently, Marianna would not have known how. That was just the kind of person she was.

Marianna bowed to the crown and placed her lips upon its cold silver. Despite its feud against her, it had served her well all that time, despite her inability to serve it in return.

Her wrap was snug around her shoulders. The coarse wool pierced through the silk of her nightgown. Marianna hung tight to the edges of the fabric as she walked out the door onto her balcony. The Fells opened up before her. It was too wide and too vast for her to apologize to. Hopefully, Raisa would do that for her.

The trees rustled beneath the windless air, and Marianna chuckled. She was not that foolish. They had underestimated her, but not without good reason.

There was not a moon to guide a wayward soul tonight, which was fitting. But even in that dense darkness, Marianna had no trouble seeing through the shadows. She didn't even need to turn to face him when crept to the edge of the roof he had perched himself on. She heard the brush of the moccasin on tile. A branch creaked under his weight just slightly as he stepped onto it, and Marianna found herself smiling. A sad smile, but a real smile.

"I knew it would be you," Marianna said into the empty night. That was all that would ever been known to have been there when it was all over. Her, and the air. "Time to bring justice to your flatlander queen for not serving you."

For loving wizards. For betraying the realm. For not serving the clan-born Princess Heir.

The deadly wind shifted, and the tree creaked again. Marianna hoped Raisa had the sense to have the branches cut when she took on this apartment.

"Do not fight," Nightwalker commanded. "I am stronger than you."

"I have no doubt of that."

Marianna had always been nervous. The slightest brush against her arm in passing could set her off. Yet when he came upon her, Marianna did not fight, nor did the smile fade from her lips as she folded forward, tipped across the railing, and tumbled off the balcony.

The queen's tower seemed higher than it had even been before. Marianna felt ages go by as she flew across the night. A thousand things sped through her head, but one flame burned past all the rest. Raisa stood clearly in her mind, strong, defiant, and beautiful as she had always been. She was ready to be the queen that Marianna had never been able to be.

But, underneath the hate, anguish, and spite that built the rough exterior of a Gray Wolf Queen, Marianna prayed that Raisa could find a place, even the tiniest, most insignificant nook, to still love her.

The ground came up to meet Marianna, and for the first time in a long while, the voices were silenced, the fear drained away, and the weight was lifted. The Queen was at peace.

I'm gon' go sob a little bit now. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please show Marianna some love by REVIEWING! I'd love to hear from you (unless you're Gavan Bayar or Reid Demonai).

Also, if you are yet to read the story that started it all, Everlasting Night, PLEASE give it a visit here (or on my profile): s/7424405/1/Everlasting-Night

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more!

WickedHope