"It will be a long day," Sansa says softly, sitting on the floor at his feet and rubbing feeling into his leg with careful hands, "but then, if Prince Aegon has any sense of propriety, we may leave for Highgarden."
It is raining, which seems appropriate, and Willas sighs.
"I know, love," he says, reaching down to cup her chin and turn her face up to his. There is such warmth and compassion in her eyes that he almost breaks down once more, but he has work to do today and cannot afford to waste any more time on pointless, shameful tears. "I know. Still…"
"The sooner you go to Prince Aegon, the sooner we may return home," she reminds him, and that she thinks of Highgarden as home makes him smile just slightly. "There now, is that better?"
He can feel his foot, which is more than he could before she started, so he nods and offers her his hand as she rises. She leans in and presses a kiss to his hair, oddly maternal, and then swishes away in a twist of copper curls and not-rosemary to gather a plate for him. She is dressed in green today, the colour of fresh moss, and her hair is pinned away from her face to tumble loose down her back.
She looks exquisite, and he tells her so when she returns and takes the seat beside his. Her blush is so pretty that he has to trace his fingertips over the curve of her cheekbone, and she holds his hand against her face with a small, sad smile.
"I am not going anywhere," she promises him. "You do not need to fear my loss, Willas."
He sighs again and picks at the bread and fruit she brought for him, and then Garlan knocks at the door, looking pale and tired and as lost as Willas himself feels, has felt since that damned raven arrived yesterday evening.
"Come, then," Garlan calls, folding his arms and leaning against the doorframe with a ghost of a smile. "Let us tame the dragon, hmm?"
There is considerable taming to be done, it would seem, because the prince is more confrontational than before, arguing against everything Willas and Garlan offer – Willas wonders if the inclusion of Nym and Arianne to their meetings has anything to do with that – and scowling when they prove that they know better than he does.
Tyene lets herself into the room near midday, her usual serene smile firmly in place as she settles herself at Arianne's side, eyes wide and innocent and decidedly blank. Obara and Nym and even Sarella, clever, wickedly amusing Sarella, may be more obviously dangerous, but Willas has always wondered if mayhaps Tyene is not the most lethal of Oberyn's brood. There is so much of Oberyn's cunning hidden behind that septa's face that she can only be lethal, can only be as much a hazard as her father and more, because at least Oberyn made no effort to hide the fact that he was a cad – he was entirely brazen about it, and all the more fun because of it.
"If it please your highness," she murmurs to Aegon in the middle of one more argument, when he is trying to insist that at least some of the Arbor's fleet be given to him to attack King's Landing, "mayhaps turning west would be of greater benefit to you?"
Tyene catches Willas' hand afterwards, tugging him away from Garlan and from her sisters and Aegon.
"My sister was… Unconscionably rude to you the other day," she says, eyes wide and beseeching. "Pray you forgive her, my lord – we are all overcome with grief for our dear father."
"As you say, my lady," he grits out, longing for the solitude of his and Sansa's rooms for just a few moments before he and Garlan must discuss what Aegon demanded this morning. "If I may-"
"You must see how difficult this is for us all, Willas-"
"What I must do is conclude our business here as quickly as possible so my brother and our wives and I may return to Highgarden at the earliest possible opportunity. What I must do is remove my wife from the company of a man who frightened her so thoroughly last night that she hardly slept a wink. What I must do is do right by my family, Tyene, and that is what I intend to do. Now, if you will excuse me-"
"Aegon is jealous," she hisses. "Don't you see, Willas? He is jealous of you having a wife and a family – he does not see himself as one of us, not truly, and he wonders if mayhaps that is more important than winning his throne and defeating the Lannisters."
"Then he is a fool," Willas says on reflex. "Surely he cannot think that the Lannisters will allow him time to form healthy relationships with what family he has and to find a wife? The man is an idiot if he does!"
"Precisely," Tyene agrees, and Willas sees at last that he has been backed into a corner. "Which is why he needs advisors from outside his family. Advisors with a good working knowledge of Westerosi politics, of the armies of the Seven Kingdoms. Advisors like yourself and your brother, my lord."
She curtsies then and backs away with Oberyn's smile playing about her lips.
"Think on it, my lord," she calls softly. "And hurry back from Highgarden."
"Do you know," Willas says as he lies with his head resting against Sansa's belly after they've eaten, "I can almost understand why House Tyrell has ancestrally hated House Martell at this precise moment in time."
Sansa laughs quietly and strokes his hair, leaning further back into the pillows. "I wish there was some way I might help."
He struggles upright and then settles himself alongside her, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her close.
"You can stay here, away from Aegon," he says into her hair when she pushes him easily onto his back and curls up on his chest. "That will at least put my mind partially at ease."
Her lips touch against the scar under his left collarbone, a remnant of a particularly adventurous trip to the Oldtown harbour with his youngest uncle, Humfrey, when he was a boy (the Old Man had shouted himself hoarse at them both for that, even though it had all been Willas' idea in the first place and he was the only one who had been hurt, mostly because of his own foolish bravado and the false belief that all ten year old boys share that they are, in fact, invincible, and at Baelor for being stupid enough to let them out of his sight for more than an instant), and he sighs.
"They are grieving for their father," she murmurs, turning her face to look at him. "Give them time, Willas. They will come around. Prince Aegon needs the Reach if he wants to take the rest of the Seven Kingdoms – the Stormlands will fight him to the last, you said it yourself, and even if he has the Golden Company, it is not enough. He needs Highgarden's support if he wishes to claim the Iron Throne."
"I did say that, didn't I? I imagine I say a great many things that serve no purpose other than to depress everyone who hears them."
She taps her fingertips against his lower lip, then the tip of his nose, as if in reprimand.
"You are very morose tonight," she teases gently, sitting up and tucking her hair behind her ears, back over her shoulders, so he can't play with it unless he sits up as well. "We will be on the road home soon, remember – just a little while longer. Come, you should bathe – the water will be cold if you don't come now."
He sighs and lets her gently guide him across the room, stripping off carelessly along the way, too tired even to be ashamed of the way she helps him into the enormous tub.
"Join me," he implores once he's settled in, catching her by the smallest finger of her right hand just as she turns away. "Please?"
She smiles, touches his face, and peels off her clothes slowly. There's no seduction intended – Sansa is always careful of her clothes – but by the time she's bending down to roll down her stockings, her hair parting to spill down either side of her neck, leaving her back exposed to him, he's as hard as he ever remembers being.
She raises an eyebrow when she notices, and he blushes.
"I did not ask you to join me so I could make love to you," he promises, not a little embarrassed, but she smiles and slips into the water with him anyways, on her knees straddling his hips but not actually touching him.
"We will be home soon," she whispers, sinking down onto him slowly, her eyes steady on his as she takes his face in her hands. "We will be at Highgarden again soon," she breathes as she rises and then falls again, every movement gentle and so exquisite he can't possibly think straight. "We will be home soon-"
He kisses her then, leaning forward and sliding on arm around her waist, his other hand cradling her nape, and his good leg bends to steady them so he can keep moving with her as he kisses her with the same languid rhythm as their hips. She has one hand braced on the edge of the bathtub, but the other is scratching over his scalp just as he likes, just as slowly as everything else.
"Home," he whispers, dropping his face to the crook of her shoulder when that tension pulls taut in the base of his spine, when the rocking of his hips becomes uneven. "You and I and home," he gasps, turning his face to kiss sloppy, open-mouthed love into her skin. "Oh, Sansa-"
She makes the most delicious little sound in the back of her throat, somewhere between a moan and a sigh, and then she takes his hand from her hair and guides it between them, between her legs, and he is only too happy to oblige, to bring her with him to the peak that is looming ever closer, the tension is pulling tighter-
"Home," she reminds him, her mouth a caress against the pulse hammering in his temple, and he jerks and pulls her down hard onto him and spills into her with a moan, coaxing her to her release a moment later with the press of his fingers as she likes. "Home," she sighs as she sags against him, loose and lazy and so trusting it just about breaks his heart, because for her to be able to trust him at all is a miracle, as he leans back against the bathtub. "We will give Aegon Targaryen our support, and we will go home."
He kisses her hair, breathing in the sharp scent of it, and then laughs.
"You know," he murmurs, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her tighter against him, "the purpose of a bath is usually to become cleaner."
It's not until the following morning that he realises his mistake.
"I should not have finished inside you," he says as he pulls her stays tighter, having dismissed Marian and Aldwin so that he might have this conversation with Sansa. "Please, Sansa, forgive me, it was a foolish thing to do-"
"I am your wife," she says firmly, motioning that he has pulled tight enough, and then she waits patiently for him to tie off the laces before turning to face him. "And it is not the first time you have done so, after all."
"But we have agreed to postpone having children," he says, angry with himself and worried for her – neither of them are prepared for children, not yet – as he takes her hands. "I can send for the maester, ask that he prepares-"
"No," she says even more firmly. "If I do take moon tea, I do not want Prince Aegon and the Martells to know of it. I will wait until we return home."
"The longer you wait the more dangerous it is, is it not?" he asks, feeling sick and remembering-
"I do not know for certain, but I imagine so," Sansa admits, watching him curiously. "Have you past experience, my lord?"
He does, that was how he recognised the smell of the tansy that evening while they were still at King's Landing, but now is not the time to share those memories with her.
"Some," is all he says, and then he bows his head to kiss her knuckles. "Please, Sansa-"
"If I am with child, I am with child," she says quietly, her eyes so sincere that he can't help but admire her bravery. She is so very young still, so fragile in so many ways, and yet she is so brave. "I think I might like a child," she adds in a small voice. "I hope I might be a good mother."
"I think you will be a wonderful mother," he assures her, still holding her hands to his mouth. "But Sansa, if you still wish to postpone-"
"What will be, will be," she whispers. "We have both lost- Would it truly be so terrible for us to have a child now?"
"I can think of nothing I want more than to have you bear my children," he admits, letting go of her hands so he can pull her close, "but I do not want to force that on you before you are ready, my love."
She nuzzles her way under his chin, hair catching and snarling on his beard, and then she sighs.
"I do not know if I will ever be ready, but that is no reason we should not try."
This morning's council with Aegon and the Sands is less antagonistic than yesterday's, which is a relief – Willas isn't sure he could take another day of Aegon demanding things that he has no right to demand. He still seems unaware of (wilfully or otherwise) how precarious his position here in Westeros truly is, and Willas and Garlan find themselves dropping less than subtle hints about how ridiculous Aegon's claims that he would be able to take the realm without the swords of the Reach are.
"He's a child playing at being a warrior," Garlan says over lunch, dunking a chunk of bread into his soup as though both have offended him somehow. "He's been spoiled and pampered his whole life, and no matter that they've trained him – he was trained for kinging, not for soldiering. He really is-"
"Hold your tongue," Leonette scolds, thwacking him over the knuckles with her spoon. "Honestly, man, have you no sense?"
Garlan pouts like a child, but Sansa giggles into her cup of nettle tea and Leonette grins, but then Garlan sighs heavily and…
"Do you remember-"
"Mother doing that to Loras when he tried to steal her strawberries?"
"Exactly."
"You have the right to swear loyalty to me in your father's name," Aegon says, leaning back in the big winged chair (he doesn't fill it out right, like Renly used) and folding his arms. "I would ask you do that before you return to Highgarden. We might discuss the details of our arrangement after-"
"We will swear open allegiance now," Willas breaks in. "Our family is away from King's Landing. We ask only that Tommen Waters be spared – he is a child, and he has nothing to do with the Lannisters' doings."
"He is sitting my throne."
"Your aunt would say that you are a pretender to her throne," Garlan says lightly, examining his signet ring. "And yet here we are."
"The support of Highgarden and House Tyrell is nothing to take lightly," Willas adds, steepling his fingers and frowning over them. "We have the largest armies in the realm, we are the wealthiest house after the Lannisters – possibly as wealthy as them now, considering the money the Queen has wasted on building fleets that were near destroyed in taking Dragonstone. We have the fealty of House Hightower, and we are the only people in the realm with the capacity to feed the North and the Riverlands now that they have been ravaged and winter is coming."
"You also have the true heir to Winterfell under your sway," Aegon murmurs, eyes darkening. "Lady Stark-"
"Is a Tyrell by marriage," Willas says sharply. "My wife wishes to remain my wife, your highness, and so she will remain my wife."
"Who then are we to repair to Winterfell?"
"My brother's second son, I would imagine," Garlan pipes up, smiling slightly. "It may be that Winterfell is held in trust for a time, but it will pass to one of Stark blood."
"It will just happen that that person will also have Tyrell blood," Willas agrees, "and, after all, my wife and her brothers and sister were Starks with Tully blood – you yourself are a Targaryen with Martell blood. It is no bad thing for the Great Houses to be interlinked, I think."
Aegon looks very young when he scowls at them, and Willas feels very old – twenty-four is not old, he scolds himself, slotting his fingers together and sitting up straighter.
"We do not mean to lecture, your highness," he says lightly. "But my wife is the only remaining Stark – her brothers are all dead, her sister probably as well. If our children do not take Winterfell, it will pass to… Robert Arryn is the next male heir to Robb Stark's line, I believe, and he is already Lord of the Eyrie and, if Edmure Tully's wife births a girl, heir to Riverrun. You would not want a sickly boy to be lord of so much of the realm, surely?"
"Mayhaps the Starks should not be restored to Winterfell, then," Aegon counters. "Mayhaps some Northern House will prove themselves-"
"The North will always rally to Winterfell, and there must be a Stark in Winterfell," Lord Connington interrupts from his place in the corner. Willas had forgotten that the older man was even in the room, he sits so quietly. "Lord Willas and Ser Garlan have the right of it, your grace – but that is not a concern for today."
There is a warning in Jon Connington's tone for Aegon, one Willas only notices because he remembers receiving near identical warnings of his own from Baelor once upon a time, and Willas is glad that someone in Aegon's inner circle has the good sense to warn the prince away from Sansa.
"We will give you our oath," Willas says after a long, tense silence. "But please, your highness – let us go home to bury our brother. We beg it of you."
Another silence, and then "Tomorrow. Tonight, we will feast our alliance, and tomorrow you may go home to Highgarden."
Aegon turns his disquieting gaze – those violet eyes are unnerving – to the window.
"I never had the chance to know my sister," he says quietly. "Mourn your brother, and then help me avenge all that has been taken from us by the Lannisters."