He had fought her all the way, unwilling to believe, unwilling to submit. Not to her, but to her god. Their god, she wanted to be able to declare. But in her heart of hearts, she knew he had but the one god. Duty, that was his god. She would have to make do with that, would have to arrange her ways around it. Through it.
His queen wanted to believe. Yearned for it, hungered for it, in fact. Melisandre saw it in Selyse's bright shining eyes, that day she was summoned to meet the lady of Dragonstone. "He could be so much more, my husband, if only he is willing to reach for it," Lady Selyse had declared. "I want him to have everything that he deserves, and more. We are not to be ignored, my husband and I. They have laughed at us both for too long, much too long," she had whispered to Melisandre later, when she was queen to a king still trying to win his throne.
"No one will laugh at you or your husband once we are done, my queen," Melisandre had promised Selyse.
Putting him on the throne was a means to an end. He had a much bigger purpose, one she was determined to make him see.
"You are the lord's chosen," she whispered to this unbeliever.
"Your god has chosen the wrong man," was his reply.
"It doesn't matter. You still have a duty."
He had made his own calculations, and saw her god's hold on his men as his path to the throne, she knew from the very beginning. "She bewitched him," men whispered behind her back, as if she could not see them whispering in her flames, as if their words were not merely child's play to her ears. "If not for her, he would not be this cruel, this lost." Their naivety, their gullibility, their faith on a man who existed only in their imagination amused her considerably.
Your king knows exactly what he is doing. He made all the choices. I merely presented him with the options, just like his onion knight. Those men never knew how hard she had to work to steer their king to a particular path, how often he had frustrated her plans, how frequently he had told her 'No.'
And they would never know. Never. The trick, she was taught, a long time ago, was to make it all seem easy. To make everything appear effortless and painless. Only then would they believe in your power, and in the power of your god. She would keep her pains and her strains to herself, always.
But he had had an inkling, somehow. He saw more than she wanted him to, in the moments of intimacy that was supposed to reveal his weaknesses, his fears, his doubts, not hers. She was seeking to unravel his defenses, to penetrate his ice shield, to reach his iron core, and yet it was as if she was revealed too, naked in all her glory and un-glory, mind and heart, not just her body. She did not dare pull back, for fear of losing her tenuous grip on what made him who he was. They danced an intricate dance of concealments and revelations, of knowing but not telling, of understanding but not disclosing.
"I see you as you truly are," they never said to one another, even when the veracity of those words could no longer be denied.
There were no hidden truths between them, not after a while. They knew the best and the worst about each other, without anything ever being said. It would bring them to their doom one day, she feared.