She isn't sure what to make of Highgarden. It is everything advertised, from what she can see: rosebushes everywhere, the hedge maze surrounding the grounds, a white-stone castle living in perpetual summer. Lysa utterly understands why the singers are so enraptured by the Reach - it is the picture of all chivalrous knightly tales.

But she cannot help but feel that it must be false. Surely nothing can be so pure and untouched by the realities of the world - she learned the hard way that tales of love and romance can only be false. Lysa decides that she will not trust Highgarden, nor the reputation of the Reach. All of it seems too perfect to be true. Lysa has learned the hard way that things too good to be true often are (Petyr'sbabygrowinginherwombthesymbolofherloveforhim-butifitistheirlovewhywouldhecallherCat?) Yet . . . the castle is utterly gorgeous. She decides that she will not trust it, but she thinks she will enjoy the beauty of the place, nonetheless.

House Tyrell awaits them at the gates of the castle, a vision of green-and-gold that blurs together in the distance of Lysa's eyes, for all that they're getting closer and more quickly. She imagines that the Riverlands' own procession is something similar: are they a smudge of blue-and-red in a distance, or is her husband-to-be capable of seeing more of her than she can of him?

Lysa flicks her gaze to Hoster Tully, his gaze steady on their destination. She can't help but wonder what he's thinking - the number of swords this alliance will bring? The claim House Tully may have on Highgarden, a dozen generations from now? She isn't certain she wishes to know.

Willas shifts his weight from one side to another, both impatient and wanting to wait forever. His cushioned chair - holding his weight until the procession from the Riverlands is close enough to the gate that his sitting could be seen as a insult - is making his backside become numb. Granny is giving him a Look from the side of her eye, along with Mother, her arms full with four-year-old Margaery. A look saying Stop shifting, you look uncouth. Willas stops shifting, instead craning his neck to Granny's other side, where Garlan and Loras are standing, not caring for how bored they look to anyone who can see them. Loras has the excuse of being six, but Garlan is almost fifteen the same way Willas is just sixteen; he should be caring more for how people see him. The Heir to Highgarden's bride is maybe fifteen minutes away - decorum is expected in the heart of the Reach.

Willas sighs through his nose.

He could remember, almost a year ago now, when he'd been in aching pain and barely able to move about, and Granny had given him the news.

('It'll be after your sixteenth nameday, Willas,' she'd said, 'old enough to be a man, says your fool father, and old enough to be wed. The Riverlands are good lands, for all they're incapable of not being a battleground whenever war breaks out. And she's a pretty maid, your Lady Lysa, and Tully has ambitions - his elder daughter is married into House Stark, and he wanted to marry this one to the Kingslayer and Jon Arryn: I imagine he'd rather chew off his own fingers and eat them rather than wed his daughter to a bannerman, so long as she marries you. Your physical condition won't matter a whit to the man. You're a clever boy, Willas. You can make the Tully girl and her father love you.')

Flattering words, from the Queen of Thorns.

Willas has to fight back another sigh. Why is standing about outside for a full hour before guests arrive the norm?

Stepping down from her horse may just be the hardest thing Lysa has ever done. She can feel her grip tightening on the reigns, is sure her knuckles are as white as the stones of Highgarden's walls beneath her gloves. Uncle Brynden's outstretched hand to help her down is the only reason she can imagine she lets go. Uncle Brynden - for all he's gone so often since Hoster keeps hinting at marriage for him - is the one man she can believe wants good things for her. Edmure doesn't count, Ed's a boy still, and he idolises Hoster to a degree Lysa is certain Ed would call her a liar if she told him what Hoster had done to her. (Afterall,HouseTullyisFamilyDutyHonourandtheonly honourstainedthatdayhadbeenherown - aman'shonourisn'tstainedthesamewayawoman'sisafterall)

Lysa wishes Cat was here, with her. Lysa had been there the day Cat had wed her northern Stark man, she thought it only fair if Cat was here for Lysa's. But Cat was with child, (naturally) and couldn't travel. She had sent Lysa a raven full of best wishes, and Lysa has it tucked into her skirts. It's the only piece of her sister she has, right now.

Uncle Brynden helps her off her horse and Lysa remembers her courtesies, turning her full attention to the people who, within the week, will be her family.

She can pick her Lord out of the line immediately - a boy who looks to be growing tall, and handsome too. Curly brown hair, matching dark eyes, a green-and-gold surcoat and an ivory-handle cane that he isn't leaning on quite as heavily as Lysa would have expected. She thinks it's the cane that adds a few years to him - most men would not need one until thirty at the youngest, yet here he is, sixteen and four years Lysa's junior, and one could be forgiven for assuming Willas Tyrell to be at least twenty.

She can't help but think that the age difference would be one more felt than seen between them. For all that Willas Tyrell may be sixteen-going-on-twenty, Lysa can never help but feel nineteen-going-on-thirty. Although, she thinks, as Hoster and Mace Tyrell make the appropriate noises of courtesy at each other, that Willas Tyrell may just feel the same towards her. After all, Lysa's . . indiscretion (saysHosterbutitwasloveonlyeverloveforLysa) is only known to three, and one is now dead. Old Maester Kym, her poisoner and Hoster's collaborator in more than just House Tully's second daughter's agony, is old and rotting in the ground.

Perhaps Mace Tyrell may know of it - no, not likely, she thinks, gazing at Tyrell's doubled chin and smile-lined face. A man so hungry for honour and glory that he pushed his heir into a joust at fourteen would not betroth that same son, no matter how crippled, to a ruined second daughter. Lysa flicks her eyes to Hoster, smiling at his lies coming to a victory. Hoster Tully was a man able to keep his own secrets. Lysa would have to keep them as well, for all that maidens and mother were supposed to be able to trust their menfolk, and Hoster's secrets sometimes felt like bile behind her teeth, burning away at the inside of her mouth in desperation to be spat out.

Perhaps Lysa is simply just the token bargaining chip, the almost-an-old-maid daughter with no apparent prospects, young enough that a crippled boy now recovered enough to fuck an heir into, nothing more or less. Lysa would be not the least bit surprised, if that were the case.

Loras crawls into bed with Willas, that first night. After a feast of seven courses and dancing Willas could not participate in - he may be able to walk but dancing is a bit beyond him just now - Willas cannot do much with his brother clinging to him like a vine except stare at the canopy. Lysa Tully is truly a lovely maid, all white skin and pale eyes in contrast with her striking hair, but Willas cannot help but feel apprehension. She hadn't flinched at the sight of his cane, or his limp, but they were expected to bed in less than a week, and his knee was still a ruin of scarred flesh and swollen blood. Willas had been expecting for a year for his bride-to-be to blanch at the sight of his injury, covered or otherwise, or to pout at his inability to dance. Instead, she had made polite conversation and refrained from dancing the night away.

But still . . she was beautiful. She seemed kind, and she knew that he was injured. Perhaps . . perhaps she may love him, one day.

notes: maester kym, i imagine, is someone who helped hoster in the Southron Ambitions plot, the way the winterfell maester was for rickard stark (says barbrey ryswell, ADWD)

so, uh. lysa's got some self-esteem issues going on in this chapter, and a little bitterness over cat and how well cat's life is going rn. willas has got some issues to, given that he's disabled in the very ableist westeros. don't worry - these two will make each other better, i promise!

(also, i had to try so hard to not end this with willas getting a boner over lysa. cmon. the boys sixteen and lysas pretty. you KNOW it'd happen)

my excuse for not writing more for this sooner is that i'm approaching the end of my school year and my assignments have been KICKING MY ASS. im supposed to be writing an essay on performativity of wealth in roman tyrants, yet here i am