Chapter Fifteen | Petyr
He arrived at her chamber door just before midnight. It was later than he'd hoped by a few hours, but preparations had taken longer than he'd expected and a dozen or so matters needed his attention before his departure in the morning.
He hesitated before knocked, not wanting to wake her, but not wanting to leave without seeing her — without giving her his gift. He couldn't leave her alone without knowing that she would be provided for no matter the outcome.
He knocked softly, and was pleased to hear the soft flutter of her footsteps behind the door. She had been waiting for him.
"You're late," she said crossly as she opened the door, moving aside to let him enter. He could tell that she'd intended her petulance to be playful, but the genuine sadness in her eyes drowned out any trace of feigned mirth.
Could she really be so bothered by his departure? His eyes around the castle had told him that she hadn't eaten all day, and the dinner that she'd finally taken in her chamber at Lady Brienne's insistence sat largely untouched on her table.
Petyr placed the large shallow box he was carrying on the bed and turned to her, opening his arms. She made no move towards him, so he went to her, gathering her to him, one hand in her hair, his eyes searching hers.
"I'm sorry, my love," he said with the ghost of a smile, "don't be cross with me. I came as soon as I could."
"Do you have to leave?" she asked, turning her clear blue eyes up toward his, silently pleading with him from under thick lashes. She knew how beguiling she was, and she was using her wiles to try to get him to stay. Petyr's heart filled with warmth and triumph.
"I'm afraid the king commands it," he replied lifting her chin with his fingers. He took her mouth gently, his kiss slow and tender, smiling against her lips as he felt her soften against him.
"I'll come back soon," he murmured as his lips made their way along her jaw, seeking out the place just behind her ear that made shiver in his arms. "It will only be three days, maybe four."
"Two," she replied, her tone, stubborn but with a hint of smile.
"Three," he said firmly, his tongue tracing the shell of her ear, then devouring the tender flesh below with a wick lash of his tongue.
"Two." Her words were a pant now. With a low growl he hooked his hands behind her thighs lifting her, carrying her to the bed.
"Fine," he said placing her on the high bed next to the box he placed there. "Two."
Sansa's eyes sparkled up at him as he stood between her legs, the ice in them finally melting. Petyr smoothed back her hair and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
"I can't stay for long," he said, "but I've brought you a gift."
"A gift?" she asked, her eyes straying to the box beside her.
"Yes, my love," he said, placing it in her lap, seeing her surprise at its deceptive weight. The box was both wider and longer than her lap, though only a few inches deep. The fine rosewood was carved delicately around the edges with images of roses that Sansa traced lightly with her fingers.
"I know that trusting me has not been easy, but I swear to you that my love for you is true," he said, his fingers ghosting across her cheek. "Consider this a token of my devotion to you."
Sansa regarded him for a moment, her blue eyes deep and unfathomable.
"Open it," he urged.
Sansa's delicate fingers undid the clasp on the front and slowly raised the lid. As she did the low light of the candles that lit her chamber danced in refracted glory across her face.
"Petyr," she gasped in awe. Inside the box was a necklace so large and intricate that it was more an elaborate collar. It began at the neck in the shape of flames set with rows of rubies, garnets, and yellow sapphires, vivid and dancing like fire itself then fading into lighter and lighter jewels until the only color that remained was the candlelight dancing in the diamonds below.
Sansa's fingers ghosted over the jewels, not quite daring to touch them, each one surely larger, more perfect, and more beautiful than any that she had seen before, even in Kings Landing. And at the center was the biggest and most glorious of them all, a flawless diamond set at the center of an elaborate snowflake.
"A token?" she said finally raising her slightly dazed eyes to his. Petyr laughed, a full and throaty noise that sounded foreign even to his own ears.
"Yes, my love. It is but a token." Petyr knelt before her. Looking up into her stunned blue eyes, he took her trembling hands between his own.
"This is the is most valuable thing that I own," he said, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. "I paid dearly for it, and I have guarded it more jealously than I have ever guarded anything — even my own life." Sansa's face was frozen and uncomprehending.
"This is a dangerous game we're playing," he continued, his voice full of emotion, "and the time may come soon when you question my devotion to you. When that moment comes, I want you to remember that I gave you the most valuable thing that I own. No, more than that — the most valuable thing in the Seven Kingdoms, surely. Though I've searched, I've never found its equal. But it means nothing to me next to your safety and happiness, and with this, I can guarantee your safety and happiness no matter what may come of me."
Petyr reached his hand up to cradle Sansa's face as her eyes strayed back to the glittering masterpiece in her lap. At his touch they suddenly snapped into focus.
"Someone will be looking for this," she said, her eyes flashing and wild.
"No, my love," he said with a sad smile. "There is no one left living that knows that it even exists."
Sansa regarded him for a long moment. He could see the questions roiling in her, each one surging to the surface, only to be displaced by another before it could be voiced. She didn't trust him. The knowledge twisted deep inside him, cutting him in secret places.
He hadn't known about Ramsay. He should have, but he hadn't. It's seemed so obvious now, but he'd been blinded.
As Alayne she'd seemed like steel to him, her eyes cold and steady, her chin raised and unflinching. Even as he mourned for the doe eyed girl that she had been before Lysa's death, he was dazzled by the woman that raised herself in her place.
Here she was, his Catelyn returned to him, more perfect and radiant in her youth that she had ever been in even his most feverish boyhood dreams. But this time she was made of something harder. This time she forsook her girlish dreams of knights and honor. This time she could be not only his, but perhaps —someday — an equal.
He was so transfixed by her, by the idea of her, by the idea of them both together, that he moved recklessly. He stepped without looking. He made a mistake. And he'd delivered her into the very jaws of hell.
"I would never put you in harm's way, my love. Never again. I swear it." He bowed his head as he spoke, unable to even look at her. A dark, cloying sickness rose in him bringing bile to the back of his throat — an emotion he had never felt before and could not quite name. The silence stretched on between them, full and humid.
Finally, Sansa reached down bringing his face back up to hers.
"It's beautiful," she said, her eyes softer now, but filled with an unspoken anguish.
"It was meant for you," he said bringing her hands to his lips. "It's made of fire and snow."
"I want to try it on." A smile ghosted across her lips, and Petyr felt his returning grin burst across his face.
Petyr rose in one graceful motion, taking the box from her lap with one hand and offering his other to her as she stood. He drew her across the room to a long mirror with an ornate gilded frame.
Standing behind her, he smoothed her long, silken red hair back behind her shoulders. She was so beautiful that he could scarcely breathe.
He regarded their reflections together in the mirror for a moment. She an alabaster goddess in the dancing firelight, and he dark and flashing behind her, his angular features rendered slightly more sinister by the contrast of her youthful beauty. And yet, somehow, they seemed so right.
With one hand he reached around her, gently tracing the warm flesh above her gown, ghosting beneath her collar bone.
"This neckline won't do," he said, his lips at her ear. "You need something more plunging to show off the necklace to its greatest effect."
Sansa's eyes met his in the mirror, wide and innocent, but something mischievous sifted through them, igniting his blood.
"Well, perhaps you could help me into something more to your liking, my Lord." Petyr felt his cock being to stir beneath his robes. Not breaking his eyes from hers his fingers began to deftly undo the delicate buttons at the back of her gown.
He undressed her slowly, his hands moving reverently over her, his lips at her ear speaking heated word of praise at her beauty, promises of his devotion. Sansa's eyes were hooded and dreamy by the time he had her bare, drinking in the sight of her in the mirror as he stood over she shoulder.
He longed to slide his hands over her milk white skin, to feel the smooth muscle of her flanks, to test the weight of her breasts in his eager hands, but she was so perfect standing there, so surreal in her beauty that instead he pressed a chaste kiss to her shoulder, breathing in the delicate rose petal smell of her.
Reaching behind him, he lifted the heavy collar from its box. Carefully undoing the clasp, he brought it around to the front of her, settling the weight of the massive diamond snowflake between her breasts. From there the necklace splayed extravagantly outward, sticking out across her shoulders and dripping lavishing down her back.
As he secured it around her neck, the ruby red flames licked up the smooth white column of her throat mixing with the fire of her hair. Together they were ivory and crimson, ice and flame. Petyr's breath caught, his heart beat faltering. This was his queen.
"Petyr—" Sansa's fingers drifted up to touch the gems, but flitted away. Her eyes raised to his in the mirror.
"It's beautiful," she breathed.
Petyr turned her in his arms, his lips seeking hers. He wanted to tell her that it could never be as beautiful as she was, but he found that he couldn't even speak.
Wordlessly, he carried her to the bed. It was almost daylight before he left her.
The scent of her still clung to him as he rode through the gates of Winterfell. Dawn crept cold and quiet across the sky, the winter sun hiding behind an endless cover of grey. Ahead of him rode twenty of his best men, the breath of the horses steaming in the morning air as their hooves clopped across the frozen earth.
The town around Winterfell was just beginning to stir. Here and there young boys scampered through the retreating shadows carrying firewood or sloshing buckets from the well. As they made their way between the houses, windows winked to life with the sputtering flame from a fresh made fire.
At the end of the road just at the outskirts of the town, rising two stories above the tallest house was the inn, it's wooden sides grey as everything else in this gods forsaken place — everything grey on grey on grey.
As they reached it, Petyr swung wide from his party, dismounting fluidly. He nodded at Ser Dandrick who nodded solemnly back as he quickly tied his up his horse. He would meet them on the road. He needed only a quarter of an hour to handle this business, and then it would be done.
His grey-green eyes swept the ramshackle town behind him, tracing his way all the way back to the gates of the castle, but he saw no one save some the scuttling peasant children trying to outrun the frigid morning chill.
Petyr made his way to the door, moving like a shadow. It opened before he could knock.
"Come in, my lord. We've been expecting you."
Author's Note: YOU. GUYS. I am so sorry that this update took so long, I have a million excuses — all of them boring. Suffice it to say that I've been busy.
Also, as you've probably noticed, this is not Chapter 14 - Part 2. There will be no part 2. (I'll eventually go back and fix that, but right now I want to drink this wine and crash.) I decided against part 2 for a bunch of reasons. This is better — trust me.
Anyway, I promise to not be so long with the next update. I have the next ten chapters outlined, and I honestly couldn't be more excited about what is to come. Buckle up.