Summer eyes

by ihaveastorminme

A sister for a kingslayer; a princess for a kingdom. A precarious alliance forged through a marrige, and a union that would become as undestroyable as it would be unmendable. "-so soon have you forgotten the promise i made you?"...where you go i shall go; where you die i shall die and there shall i be buried.' Her hiss drew blood: "You lied then. You lie now." (minor jonXsansa)

7. All the truths that you dont know, (pt2)

- AN: for the dance that you will read about here, I had imagined something very much in the spirit of Roxanne's Dance in 'Alexander' – at least that's what inspired me. Something vaguely eastern-sounding, exotic and seducing. Hope you like – let me know!

- Even-MORE-ridiculous-length Note: I am so sorry! This one is like, 20.000 words worth of descriptions, dialogue and monologues... and i honest to god hope its worth it. Maybe i should split this one as well, but after promising to post it whole, i thought it would be cheating, so I won't break it for now.

o

5. All the truths that you don't know (pt2)

'I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.'

Leonardo da Vinci

Arriving at Riverrun had been a blessing in many different ways. A ground to rest and a place to set his men for a few days, ease the horses, rest his soldiers and speak calmly and without haste to his bannermen who would, hopefully, be calmed out of their evil tempers that the harsh marching induced them with.

All these should have been his priorities. He was a King of his people and had a responsibility to each and every one of them… and yet, the moment his eyes fall on his daughter he could no longer find any thought within himself for his army or his men. There could be no words for what he felt, none to adequately describe what it was like when you know you have a piece of yourself cut out from your own body, waiting for you somewhere… and the only moment it stops hurting it's when you set eyes on her again and she is safe, and whole and happy. That Rose remembered him was the very top of his joy, it filled his heart with such happiness that for a moment he thought that, perhaps he had been left in a state of frozen limbo the entire time from the moment he left her, just so that he could feel this way when he saw his daughter again. And when he held her, a tiny bundle of cloth and soft limbs too frail to be real, he finally felt like his own self again. Finally he could draw a true breath and it would rest easily in his lungs.

'We're going home soon.' He told his daughter as he put her in her tiny bed, hours later. She'd fallen asleep on his shoulder – after spilling ink on the table, crinkling half his letters and stuffing in her mouth the wooden direwolf he used to pinpoint the location of his forces. She'd done that and more – Sansa and Arya and mother chasing her around his solar, laughing after her, none of them having the heart to get her to stop. Little Rose had them all wrapped around her tiny fingers and unfortunately for his desk and maps, her father was no exception either.

As Robb sat by his little girl's crib and watched her sleep – the heart-shaped face and puffy pink cheeks, the round lips just slightly open as she took breath after soft breath - he found his thoughts going to his own father.

Robb wondered about his father more these days, as time went on and the responsibilities of the crown he'd never wanted piled up and made him feel so much older than his one and twenty. What had Ned Stark felt, Robb asked himself, when Rickard and Brandon Stark had been killed by the Mad King? What had he felt, riding into war when he was barely more than a boy himself, with responsibilities that were never meant to be his at all? Ned Stark too had had to sent men to war to die, thousands of them; he had fought and killed who knew how many, he had lost a father, a brother and a sister… What had been his father's thoughts when he climbed the steps of the Tower of Joy only to find his sister Lyanna dead? Or when he went back home and his uncle Benjen was already set on taking the Black? His father's family, his history, all that he had known of his house had burned to ashes during Robert's rebellion and Ned Stark had been left alone: the one Stark in Winterfell. He had returned to a whole life that had never meant to be his in the first place. Had his father felt like a stranger walking Winterfell's halls? Ned Stark - my father, he was my father - had always seemed to Robb born to be exactly who he had become: Lord of Winterfell. There was nobody else Robb could imagine as such. But then again, there were plenty of those that could see none but him as King of Winter… and sometimes when he heard that, Robb felt like they were speaking nonsense. There had been no Kings of Winter for three hundred years! Now he was the first. Had been for years, and would be for many more, it seemed. And now more than any other time, what Robb wished he could do was speak to his own father about the doubts and fears that he still harbored in his heart. But Ned Stark was dead and all Robb could do was wonder what it had felt like for the father he'd loved, when he had gotten a title that he too never expected to receive. Robb did not know the answer to that. He had ever known Ned Stark as a father, and those were questions Robb had never thought to ask before. Thoughts like those had never even brushed by his skull before the war, and by then it had been too late. Time had seemed eternal, until one day it wasn't.

There were nights when he couldn't stop dreaming about his father in the dungeons of the Red Keep, hungry and hurting and alone with only his doubts to prey upon him. These were dreams of darkness and pervaded by a sense of heavy dread, fear and regret. The ghosts of nightmares and the past that seemed just around the corner, shades that Robb could never catch a glimpse of but that he feared all the same. and it didnt even matter that in his dreams RObb could not quite tell if the ghosts that haunted him were his own or his father's. It did not even matter: the thought alone of his father rooting in a dungeon and dying alone was enough to make Robb want to tear his hair off sometimes.

He had heard it said that his father had had to chose between his honour and the lives of his daughters. That Ned Stark had been made to declare himself a liar and a traitor in front of all of King's Landing, only to have his head cut off for his effords. Had his father known, suspected, that his words might bring him to his death regardless? Had he chosen to speak those damming words regardless, for Sansa and Arya alone? Chosen love over honour, lies over his own given word?

Robb ran a finger gently down Rose's tiny arm, feeling her skin so soft and miraculous… and knew in his heart that if it came to it, he would burn the whole world down to the bone for that little girl sleeping so soundly in her bed, duty and honour be damned. If it was ehr life in the balance, his honour would mean little: for her he would pay the price that he would never be willing to pay for himself. It was a fierce feeling, of the kind he'd never felt before, not like this; one that he could barely comprehend and yet knew in his heart that he didn't need to. It was on the same scale with all the other truths of the world: the sun rises every morning, the night follows the day as winter follows summer, and so it is that you love your children and you'd die for them, kill for them and if you must, lie for them as well.

Anything, everything, for your children.

His father had taught him that, and his mother both.

The soft knock on the open door called him back to the present and when he looked behind himself he saw Sansa, swathed in a dress of the softest blue he'd ever seen, shiny silks over warm and soft wool and simple flowery patterns woven with silver thread in the delicate fabrics, looking every bit the princess she was and smiling at him knowingly. With her hair unbound and about her, she looked the living emblem of House Tully. He knew enough of her now to suspect it had been intentional.

"They're waiting for us." His sister said softly and Robb nodded. He got up, left a light kiss on his sleeping daughter's brow, ever careful not to disturb her sleep, and then left the room, leaving Sansa to close the door behind him.

"She is a beautiful child Robb. And so very sweet as well." His sister said around a smile as she tucked her arm around his elbow. His smile widened.

"Yes she is." He said and tried not to think too much of the mother that had given him that child. Roslyn would have adored her, he knew.

Sansa gave a small laugh, something caught between surprise and amazement. "I still cannot believe it: I have a niece… and you a daughter." And then, after a short pause, she spoke more softly. "It's not so strange, I know. It's as it should be. And yet, it seems to me sometimes that as if it were yesterday that we were children ourselves."

Robb looked at his sister from the corner of his eye. It had been such a long time since they had been together like this, on a quiet evening, about to dine in the hall with their family. Years really since their family had not been scattered throughout all corners of Weteros… and even then, even as children in Winterfel, Robb and Sansa had never been as close as they felt now. She was too young, too much of a girl then full of her own thoughts - and he had been just the same. She had changed though, changed so much from the girl he remembered that sometimes it felt as if she was not the same person anymore. And she was not. There were heavy things in her eyes that told him so, that likened her gaze to his more now, in both sharpness and expression, as well as their frosted Tully shade of blue.

Robb wondered if he too looked like a different person from her eyes; if sometimes she looked at him and it was a stranger she saw and not her own brother.

In the end it did not matter. Time did not, and neither how much it had changed them. They were altered but they were still family: they were the blood of Winterfell and would be till the day they died. All the changes and the space and emptiness between them had not mattered when he'd seen her again after so long: when he'd held her, safe in his arms again, it had been as if she sister never left his side. She had been his little sister then, just as Arya had become when he'd held her for the first time after years, and he had felt his eyes prickle with tears when his little wild sister had held herself so still and cold in his arms, as if she didn't quite dare believe that she was there with her family again.

In Winterfell, before the war, none of them had known the keen pain of missing family… and now that they all did, and that string had only pulled them closer than ever before, whether they liked it or not. Arya was ever watchful, ever weary of the smallest thing that could go wrong. She was changed and much fiercer, but still very much within her own nature and sometimes, for all her growling and jaw-snapping, Robb could see the frightened little girl still living beneath the hard skin of steel his sister wore like an armor. Sansa on the other hand... she was differently altered. It was as if she wanted to wash over her family all the love and affection that she had been denied these long years, as if all the amounts of it had been accumulating inside her and now were spilling in endless smiles and hugs and kisses, armfuls of honest love that tasted bittersweet... and which echoed inevitably with the sound of deep and painful loneliness. She was so much more grown than Robb remembered her - it still surprised him sometimes how open to the world her eyes were now, how quickly she could understand his mind once she got the gist of his thoughts. She seemed to sense him so acutely. Some days all it took between them was a look, and she'd know what he needed from her - something which never failed to surprise him... and make him feel as if they truly had never been a moment apart at all. She was perceptive, his sister, and full of things that nobody else noticed. Robb only wished that he could have the same understanding of her needs as she seemed to have of his. But for all the frankness the shared between them, there were creases in Sansa's mind as well and dark things hidden between them that she'd rather speak to nobody about (as there were in his, after all… and Arya's too, and mothers. Sansa was simply better at hiding them than all her family combined). Edges that made him feel as if he'd lost her for an entire lifetime, and not just a few years.

The distance of time and growing was both material and ephemeral at the same time, it seemed, and could be both solid as rock and as unreal as the memory of a dream.

Robb turned his head to look at Sansa in the eyes, a memory coming back to him then, one that he thought he had forgotten.

"Remember our last day in Winterfell? Before you left with father for the capital?"

Sansa's eyes flickered to his. Pain was always like a sharp flash in her expression whenever a mention of their father was made, but she nodded and smile faintly. "I remember. You had snow melting in your hair."

Did he? That he could not recall. He remembered laughing with his sisters however and putting Sansa on her horse himself. She'd been so small then, a little girl.

"It seems to me sometimes as if a thousand years have passed since that day." Robb said slowly, softly as if voicing out loud would make it all too real, and lengthen the time they had spent apart as if by magic. Fears were such silly notions: they made fools out of even the wisest of men, apparently; and turned even warriors back into boys.

Sansa's hand on his sleeve tightened and Robb felt the pressure of her fingers on his wrist, all the things that she did not say were there. Her smile was tremulous but grew sure as her eyes grew shiny.

"We'll be home soon, brother." She said softly… and Robb couldn't help but smile at that. His sister promised him the same thing he had promised his daughter only moments ago. It was the truth that the war seemed to have reminded them all of: there must always be a Stark in Winterfell, yes, but that coin had another face: Starks belonged in Winterfell, every last one of them. Its ancient walls called to them, sang them home from every distance, even across time. The north was their home, the winter was in their bones and it was from its frosty blades that they drew their strength, where it only daunted other men. It was north they all turned towards, when they looked of home and peace and a life that starts again. Winterfell was where they belonged and its song was in their blood, as it had been for thousands of years; the high grey walls of granite were the call of every wolf, a call that echoed in every tree and every stone; a song that was repeated to them from every heart tree and their weeping eyes. Home was the godswood and the darkness of winter too, the summer snows, the crypts of their forefathers and all that lay in between. Winterfell was hope of a life that didn't feel interrupted anymore.

They would be home soon, yes… and wanderers no longer.

Sansa leaned her head a little closer to her brother, the look in her eyes lighter, the smile on her face teasing.

"You've forgotten your manners completely, haven't you brother? Too much time among soldiers, I reckon." she said, bumping her shoulder with his – or rather with his arm, because though uncommonly tall, his sister was still shorter than himself.

"And what have I forgotten now?" he asked, playing to her tune. It cost him nothing to let his sister string him along, allowing themselves small freedoms; pretenses of forgetting some of the things that made them sad. Sansa was especially good at it.

"You have not complimented me on my appearance yet. It's bad manners not to tell a lady she looks lovely."

Robb's smile turned lopsided. "Haven't you yet grown tired of hearing it? I'm sure you know exactly how beautiful you look."

And if the Sansa he remembered would have once blushed and ducked her head; his sister now laughed low and leaned her arm against his further.

"Oh I know it. But a lady never tires of hearing it, especially when it's spoken sincerely." She stated.

Robb rolled his eyes. "When I meet this lady you speak of, I'll make sure to tell her, sister."

It was men to be a jape at Sansa's poor teasing, but his sister's smile was much too aware for his tastes. Looking at it Robb felt as if he'd just played into her hands, though he didn't know for what, didn't even know they'd been playing at all.

"Make sure you do. And try not to stare too much as well. It's flattering to the lady, but you wouldn't want others to notice it too openly." Sansa continued, more enigmatically than usual and this time Robb turned questioning eyes at her. What was she speaking of? But Sansa had already diverted the subject and into a territory so new that even had Robb truly wanted to know what she'd meant, he wouldn't have had a chance to ask.

"I even managed to get Arya into a dress. A red one, would you believe it? She looks beautiful and I doubt anyone will even recognize her - but don't say that to her or she'd turn her nose up and come back into the feast in breeches and a shirt."

Robb stared at his sister as if she was utterly absurd. "Alright… how did you manage to get her into a dress?" mother had been trying for months and to no avail. True, she did not insist too much, but still…

Sansa's smile was co and knowing at the same time. "I have my ways." And that was that.

Robb was about to turn and ask her further when she stopped her steps and, in turn, he had to do the same. He looked up to see his mother rounding a corner and smiling at him, his sister too - stunning in her red dress, just like Sansa had said she looked, with her short dark hair shiny and her pale face clean, grey eyes serious and just a little bit irritated, as Arya always looked when she was uncomfortable. The sight made Robb smile widely and unguarded, in that way that he reserved for his family alone… and that smile froze on is lips when he looked just over their shoulders and saw the princess, hovering in the corner, hands clasped in front of her as the Snakes, dressed in the bright colors of their country, surrounded her with talk and smiles. Among the tones of gold and orange of their dresses, the warm bonze and bright, fluttering silks, the princess's intense-violet dress made her look darker and more serious… yet she was a sight as vivid as any. And if before Robb had seen her wearied by the long marching and the cold, now he saw her as she was: a princess.

Her every feature stood out for all those with eyes to see, from the deep pink of her lips and the sun-kissed shade of her skin, to the green eyes made brighter still, surrounded as it was by waves and waves of hair that in the light of the candles looked a deep shade of gold, as if truly is was spun from the very same.

Looking at her then, it was so easy to believe that she had been created by the gods solely for the purpose of distraction.

Robb didn't know if he'd been willingly blind to her before, or if it was the fact that he felt he knew a little more of her now – at least enough perhaps, to admit without too much regret or resentment that yes, the sight of her had managed to literally stun him for a moment; made him feel as if he'd looked at her – looked for lies, deceit and manipulation, for her secrets (that he had not uncovered) and the shades of her nature that he could manage to learn - but never really seen her before this moment. Or rather, he'd refused to admit to the most superficial thing about her: her face, her loveliness…

He could admit to it now though: she was utterly lovely in her own way; even that scar on her cheek and her watchful eyes could not take away from that both exotic and familiar in the same breath. He was forced to concede the princess her beauty, because at this point not even a blind man would deny it, she was just that difficult a sight to ignore; made especially so because Robb knew that he had not seen loveliness so vibrant, so bold, in quite a long time. The reason didn't matter in the end. All he knew was that, try as he might, she was difficult to look away from… and in the same space that the admitted that, he also realized the thrill of danger that the admission comprised: the razor sharp blade that the power a woman like her could hold over a man who had forgotten what beauty looked like, the headiness it provoke, like strongwine in the belly.

Their eyes met from the distance, as if she'd felt him watching. She inclined her head to him in greeting and Robb found himself doing the same. The ghost of a smile hovered on her lips – small but true - as if she didn't quite dare decided whether she wanted to smile at him or not, before she gave him one of those glazed smiles that she had in her royal arsenal… and he found himself wanting to see the teasing tilt of that smile, whenever she thought of something that amused her, or the brightness of it when she'd rather laugh, but decided she should not. Her true expressions were few and far in between - most of the time she guarded them as closely she guarded her words around him. And perhaps it was for that reason that he liked them more: they felt real where all else about her felt practiced. Not false exactly, but still… she denied herself to all but those she kept closest – something for which Robb did not fault her for, but he had to admit he had not expected that kind of quiet, undemanding reserve from her - it made her the strangest Lannister he had ever met by far. Still, Robb could see that the princess tried to be reasonably open with him, approachable and as much her won true self as she dared to be, even though she never shed her title. And though she was very well controlled always, sometimes she slipped, as even the best are wont to do.

Those flashes of stubbornness or irritation, amusement or sharp irony, they were the ones that he most liked to catch. They were glimpses of the person that lived beneath the polish of her royal detachment, that finer manner that she'd been fed from birth. Those things, the not so careful things, were the woman he was bound to marry.

That fraction of a smile earlier, that pause between her eyes and her lips – that had been the true smile she had given him.

Robb felt Sansa's sharp elbow nudging him in the ribs (and for a very short moment, a heartbeat, he was back in Winterfell, a boy, with his sister elbowing him on the dinner table to remind him of manners).

"Remember what I told you about staring, brother." She whispered, and when he looked at her face she looked as impish as Arya did when she successfully got away with something she should not be doing. Robb gave her a twitch of one eyebrow, to dare her to say more. But she did not, she only laughed and let go of him in favour of their mother.

It didn't escape his notice just how serious his mother looked. In the back of his mind he heard again the words she had spoken to him, a warning given just a few days ago when his mother had seen him with the princess smiling at whatever she had said to him then - Robb did not even remember anymore. He did remember his mother's words though, those that she had spoke in a blank ton with eyes that wouldn't meet his, but that chose to stare at the table instead - at where Winterfell was on the map.

'Take care, my son... the beautiful ones are always the best liars.'

oOo

While he ate and spoke with the men around him, Robb had almost forgotten that he was not in the camp, having dinner among his bannermen and his royal guard – the sons of those bannermen. The people and the talk were the same, but the mood around them was not. Riverrun had a wide hall, lit by countless candles and tall ceiling that made for an open space. The noise was loud and lighthearted, resounding with laughter more often than usual. The subjects under discussion changed and interwove so often that Robb couldn't remember what he had been speaking a moment before once he changed topics. But it didn't matter: his men were unperturbed and merry once the music started and the dancing began, so did the true feast, one that celebrated a won war and the peace to come.

That was when the guests left their tables and started moving about, pockets forming here and there, of lords and ladies that exchanged talk among each other, before joining the dances. Robb did not leave his place and neither did his mother or the Greatjon, Karstark and Galbard Glover among others, but his sisters did. Arya found herself comfortable among the Sand Snakes – that was Lady Nym talking to her now, and by the looks of it, showing her how to hold a dagger before throwing it - while Sansa walked the hall pausing to address the guests, speaking to them seriously and charming them by turns, her smiles irresistible as far as men and women alike were concerned. As he watched her, Robb found himself wondering of the future: he had never held court, never been part of one, but Sansa had lived in King's Landing for years… and as he looked his sister gather lords and ladies about her, he found himself wondering if the Great Hall of Winterfell would ever be suited to something like this; if this was what courtly life was like, or if it would be like the councils during the war, always speaking to different lords, always negotiating for something.

He imagined it would be something of both… and admittedly, the thought alone seemed to tire him. But his attention was thankfully drawn away from his grim thoughts and to another corner of the hall by a burst of laughter very close to the high table… and there she was.

It seemed strange but he had managed to forget entirely about her and her beauty both, for as long as he was not looking at her. And now that she was within the line of his sight, he could not look away.

She was sitting by Dacey and Maege Mormont, Elia Sand by her side in a foreign-fashioned dress of a bold sunflower-yellow decorated by paler suns and a bronze belt, little bronze chains woven through her black braids. There were others around them, Mormont's men by the looks of them, and all seemed to be laughing at something the princess was saying. Dacey and Elia were flanking her closely and had Robb not known better, he would have said that their stance was almost protective – especially Dacey's, seeing that he knew her better and therefore could read her easier: her quick hazel eyes darted about every now and then, landing hard on some lord or lady whose eyes were not so kind.

Dacey had taken a shine to the princess, and in a way it gave Robb a sort of comfort to know it - or rather, to see that it was possible. All his men without exception had been hostile to the idea of Cercei Lannister's daughter as queen – whether she was a bastard or not - and Robb could not fault them for it. But he could not have said 'no', not to the terms she came with from her grandfather… and Robb suspected Tywin bloody Lannister had known that.

But he would not think of that. It was done now… and perhaps he was being foolish, but he did not resent it as much as he had in the beginning.

As he dared admit that to himself for the first time, Robb found himself smiling: despite knowing that beauty was like a blade without a hilt, he still thought he wouldn't mind holding it a bit, as if he thought himself as the one man that the blade wouldn't cut.

He should know better than that – the girl he spoke of was Cercei Lannister's daughter and the Kingslayer's bastard…

And there it was again, the unfairness of it all, what made that girl - the Iron Throne Princess - such a double-edged sword. Because despite knowing her so very superficially, Robb was nevertheless sure that there was more to her than a pretty face and scandalous name; that she was neither of her parents - though there seemed to be in her echoes of both - and that this much was obvious whenever he spoke to her, in the little gestures that she made, the small discoveries he could unravel from her, ever so slowly. And yet, she could not stop being her parents' daughter, her grandfather's niece, her brother's sister. All the reasons she was there were the reasons nobody wanted her there… which was a shame, since beneath her reserve and usual coolness of manner, the princess really did seem to be of a sweet sentiment. There was a certain charm about her, one that she yielded masterfully and - to her credit - with a transparent sincerity that precluded falseness, because she knowingly used her charm to amuse rather than weave webs around him. In fact, Robb had found that the princess was, in that particular context, quite the pleasant distraction – she knew how to be one spectacularly well and practiced her talent deliberately, and so well that when he concentrated in unravelling her, he forgot about other things that, at other times, weighted more heavily on his mind.

He could see the effect she had even now, as he watched her speak from a distance: her presence echoed around the hall like ripples of a thrown stone in a pond, loud and clear. The awareness that people had of her was sharp, the command she had over a room's attention, powerful. It would have been so even if she were not so notorious by association – but it was amplified by her name and birth, whether she liked it or not.

Heads did turn whichever way she went that night… and in that light, Robb found once again that her stubbornness showed: she refused to be guided by the hand in anything: not when she stood before him and looked him in the eye as an equal, nor around the camp among men that looked at her with contempt. Even now, when so many were only less obvious in their distaste, she did not seek the protective company of the Snakes or his sister. She'd rather face it down herself.

As irritating as the implicit challenge had been at first - especially that time when she dared seek (or was it 'demand'?) his company alone, as if she had a right to it - Robb could not help but respect her for it now that he understood her a little better. She did not act out of self-importance, not entirely, though there was a great deal of pride in her. Her actions seemed to be more motivated by a stubborn need to be acknowledged as worthy in her own right.

Now that, he could understand a little better. He had not been quite so disregarding (reckless perhaps?) as she was being about it, but he certainly could understand the sentiment.

So he watched her. People moved about to meet and speak to other people, the company rotated like a wheel and the princess moved with it: she walked around the hall and waited until the next person that wanted to speak to her found her – and those were not for wanting. The princess greeted everyone with a pleasant smile and the polite interest of the well-mannered. Such a presence she made in all her lady's graces that Robb thought again, for the second time within mere hours, that he had not seen her at all before this night, not like this: this was a princess holding court that she had transformed herself into, walking about the hall and sizing up men and woman with a glance (he could see her doing it, how her mind calculated each and every person she met. Those eyes were like quicksilver and thought they hid much, not even she could hide it all).

Charm and grace and a hundred other subtle things she was yielding like a good warrior yields a sword, and it made her into a different person, warm and cheerful, bright as torch. She would have mesmerized the entire hall to her submission just as Sansa so easily did, had the stain of her family name and sins not been so heavy on her person. She sipped from her cup like a bird, spoke with many and smiled warmly to all. Anyone less observant might not have noticed, but there was a pattern to her movements: she did not actively join anyone except for Elia or Obara (and once or twice even Sansa) every once in a while, for a reprieve and a sincere smile. Rather, the princess waited for others to come to her presence and if that was because of arrogance or dignity, or perhaps a bit of both, Robb could not say.

Once or twice, he saw Prince Oberyn appear by her side and steal her for a simple-tuned turn or two on the dancefloor. She smiled at him with true smiles - small and real - and watchful eyes. There seemed to be a queer understanding between them, one that Robb did not feel he understood properly: they were both people of too many layers to be unveiled quite so easily. Still… she looked beautiful when she danced, as fascinating as an exotic oddity, and perhaps made even more unique because she was unlike any other person in that hall: trapped as she was between the foreignness of the dornishmen she had grown up with, so obviously different in their customs and appearance, and the familiarity of a westerosi born north of the Red Mountains. The princess was both and she was neither – and when she took the floor to dance, half the people in that hall stopped to stare… though Robb was sure, their reason for looking were different from his own.

Curiosity was a human feeling, Robb knew that, and a human weakness. He'd be curious about her too… hells, he was stillvery much so, but perhaps unlike all those that considered her a queer attraction in display, he had more solid reasons to ground his curiosity on: after all, she was to be his wife. And besides, simple curiosity was not the issue, as Robb soon came to observe. What he took issue with was that hunger he saw in so many eyes when that tracked her; a glinting intent like the one he sometimes saw being directed at himself, only, in the face of the Lannister princess, none bothered to be particularly subtle about it. They circled her with glinting eyes and sharp smiles and it was not hard to think of vultures, as if they were wanting to tear the flesh from her bones in their hurry, in their hunger. Robb knew the feeling well and he had never liked it, but he appreciated it even less now that it was directed to someone who was… well, who was a woman, for starters.

Even though she looked nothing like it now, it was still all too easy for him to recall the princess' tearful eyes that day in the middle of camp and it was because of that sharp memory that he could not easily forget she was as human as he was, made of flesh and blood and fears and doubts - and if one managed to strip her of that confidence that seemed to be as unshakable as a hundreds-year-old oak, the princess showed her youth so much that, had he been the boy he once was, Robb was sure it would have pierced him all the way to his heart. But though a boy any longer, the thinly-veiled bad manners she was treated with by some still made something inside him curl up in distaste. A distaste that soon translated into irritation, for her sake, and his own as well: whoever Myrcella Baratheon had been before didn't matter anymore; here and now she was the woman that their King was going to marry and she should be treated as such!

Even Sansa had warned him of it. Told him that Myrcella was not the enemy and she should be treated with caution, but not distain, lest he should make her into his enemy with his own hands. She was wise and very much right, his sister, but Robb could not explain that to all the lords that looked at the princess and only saw Cercei Lannister.

It made him wonder though, if the disliked her so much, why the bloody hell speak to her at all? Why not keep it to themselves? Or were they trying to prove some kind of superiority in her face, now that she was just a Lannister among strangers with no visible power to yield?

Robb scoffed in his cup, sipping his wine without truly tasting it at all. People who lose those they love always wanted revenge, on the gods if they can't find anyone else – and Robb knew that better some and more intimately than most - but if any of those lords and ladies down there thought they would find a soft target on the Lannister princess, they should take a long second look at her, and then mayhap a third. Robb himself knew little of her, but even that little he ha dgathered was enough to know that there was nothing anyone could say to Myrcella of House Baratheon that would even touch her, let alone hurt her. There was something sharp about her, something that had the potential of burning hot and cutting deep; a quality to her character that the princess painstakingly tried to hide beneath smiles and lighthearted wit and charm. Robb didn't know her well enough to be able to grasp what that quality about her was, but he did know that she was capable of many things and that those who'd think of hurting her should reflect over it well before acting.

(he would have thought her a schemer and a liar for how had she tried to hide her edges from the eyes of all about her, had she not been a bit freer with that part of herself when she was with him alone. That had been when he had understood that no amount of charm could ever make this princess open herself to him, even if Robb still remembered how to go about that kind of thing. But patience – patience just might work.)

He thought of those dark and hidden corners of Myrcella Baratheon's character, and wondered if perhaps he wouldn't mind seeing her unleashed upon those that thought it entertaining to ragger her about. Perhaps he'd even stand by and let it happen. She was a patient creature, this princess, but not even the most well-paced man or woman could be patient forever. Perhaps he was even curios: what would her fire look like, what would it feel like?

(But those were thoughts fueled by his cock, no doubt, and not his brain.)

Tolerance and serenity however, was all the princess showed to the guests of Riverrun that night. She carried herself with straight backed and unperturbed as she smiled and fended off subtle attacks with practiced cool courtesy. She could not bend anyone to her will just yet, but her defensive tactics were, Robb had to admit, utterly flawless. It must be disheartening, he thought to himself, amused, to bash against a wall that wouldn't even chirp, let alone yield. And that was what the princess reminded him of: a pretty thing surrounded by thick high walls painted with the shiny varnish of etiquette. It gave her an unreachable quality, creating a palpable distance between her person and everyone else. Her dignity was the bricks and her pride the mortar: and both formed an armor against which every look and sneer simply bounced off, leaving her untouched. She smiled pleasantly through it all, - a void smile on a warm face, but one that did not waver.

Robb wondered if it even amused her – that glint in her eye every now and then was not faked. What was she laughing at? Whom?

It stunned him for the entire width of two seconds when he realized that he would have liked to ask her, to hear her answer. He had no doubt that it would have made him smile. She could have a biting sort of humor, her backhanded irony teased him, and one that could easily become heavy-handed, if she pleased. It was her way of evening the field he supposed: they sneered at her, she made fun of them. Not an entirely right way perhaps… but fairness was rather scarce in her circumstance, so he didn't fault her for her little amusements at all.

"You forgot my advice so soon, Robb, I wonder if you even heard it at all."

Robb would be a liar if he said that his sister's voice did not surprise him. He turned his head to his right and found her there, sitting primly on an empty chair, looking at him with a small knowing smile. She was needling him… and it was working, Robb realized, amused at himself.

He could do that now – smile and laugh at himself. It had been a long time since he last could, but with his sisters, he had that freedom.

"I've forgotten nothing." Robb said, trying not to smile. "You look lovely this night, sister."

Sansa raised one thin eyebrow at him, pursing her lips. "Why, thank you brother. But perhaps your charms would be of better use if they were lavished upon she whom you have been staring at all evening."

Robb's lips twitched. His charm indeed! He'd long lost track of what charm he'd once had, but it seemed his sister was determined to make him find it again.

But he was not one to go gently into the night, as time had proved.

"So formal. I'm not getting on your nerves am I?" he asked, raising one eyebrow at her. Sansa rolled her eyes at him openly and finally Robb smiled fully at the face she made. She seemed so composed and put together all the time that watching her release all that and fall back into a freer self was always a small pleasure... and a small relief.

"Not in the least." Sansa said haughtily, but then shook her head and just like that, the little game was over, and the eyes that looked at him were honest and true. "Really Robb, why don't you ask her for a dance?" and then her eyes got more serious still, a small pucker appearing between her brows. "Almost everyone is being insufferably rude to her, you know, throwing little quips left and right, as if she couldn't smell their intentions a mile away."

There is an edge of anger there that Robb suspects is not entirely on the Princess' behalf, but then again he can only imagine what his sister is thinking because even if he was callous enough to ask her right then, she would brush him off with a smile and a little shake of her head, and immediately change the subject in such a way that he'd be bound to let it go for another time.

Not that he would ask her anyway. Not now at least. Perhaps even not ever. Sansa's tales about King's Landing unleashed something in him that Robb tried very hard to keep under control. Something dark and dangerous and reckless that was no good for him or the men under him.

A strange smile curved Sansa's lips, one that was new to his sister and that never seized to surprise Robb for it: it was the smile of a woman that is having a bitter thought, but that amuses her anyways.

"It's almost funny, how cleanly she dispatches them." Sansa said, looking him in the eye then. "She used to do just the same in the Red Keep, but she was a lot less kind about it then - and much more amusing, I must admit. It made attending court almost bearable those last few months."

Robb felt a frown settle on his face but he kept silence. If there was one thing he had learned of his sister these past few weeks that she had been back with him, was that Sansa never dallied with words, even when she seemed to be speaking in circles. So this time Robb didn't even ask, he only stared at her without blinking for a moment or two, waiting for his sister to make her point, which she did after a weary sigh.

"If you let people indulge in their pettiness long enough, brother, at least one of them is bound to do something stupid." She said meaningfully…

He was about to ask his sister if she had someone particular in mind, but Karstark was nowhere close to the princess and the Blackfish was down there, shadowing her from afar, as Robb had asked him to, precisely for the purpose of preventing anything out of the line from happening.

"What are you proposing, then?" Robb asked, just for the sake of listening to what Sansa had to say, because when it came to these more subtle dealings of society, he had found out soon enough that he had little practice at them, and she all but too much of it. Sansa smiled, and made off with the surprise in her eyes with only one blink. She had been so stunned in the beginning, when he asked her for her opinion, and spoke with such care and hesitation. She was not used with being asked anything, speaking about anything or being listened to, and that she was now always seemed so surprise her. She should not have: she was home now and she was his sister. And if he had to encourage her to believe it every time, then he would.

"Come dance a turn with me. Then with Arya or mother. And then ask the princess for a dance as well."

Robb raised one eyebrow at her. "And my dancing with her will make so much of an impact that the lords and ladies will change their manners?" he didn't try to hide his disbelief at all, in the face of which Sansa only smiled however.

"It should remind them of who she is and why she's here at least. And that she will be their queen one day very soon."

Robb would have liked to say that perhaps that was the very reason for some of the resentment the Princess was being show, but he did not have the chance to do so. Sansa had not yet even finished her words when and unnatural hush fell over the hall, starting at the heart of the hall and spreading in ripples all the way to the corner where. Sensing the halting silence in the air, even the musicians stopped their tunes. The unnatural stillness of what had been a merry company just a moment before drew Robb's attention like a call… and it took one look over the Hall to know what had happened.

He saw it in his mind's eye as if he had truly seen it happening: the princess being begged for a dance; the music that went on and she that moved among the couples ever so gracefully with that glazed smile on her face… and then a foot in the wrong place, or a spin a little too careless and a partner all too eager not to steady her. As he looked he found himself thinking that, even if that same hall had been as silent as a crypt, nobody would have heard the princess make a sound as she fell.

And there she was now, sprawled on the stone floor of the hall, the curtain of gold that was her hair hiding her face so he could not see it at all, let alone read it, with a boy that hesitated for a moment too long – the look on his face transparent enough to see the smugness beneath - before he offered blank apologies and aid. Aid that the princess did not even have the time to decline (he could see, as she began to raise herself from the ground, that she had no intention of taking that outstretched hand) before the Blackfish grabbed the boy by the back of his neck and shoved him aside so forcefully that the youth staggered and would have fallen face first himself, had another not steadied him.

Robb felt his muscles tense and he began to rise, but Sansa's hand on his arm stopped him. "Wait." Was all she whispered as they watched the princess accept the Blackfish's hand and the old knight helped her up on her feet again.

She stood straight and tall and blank-faced as she brushed the dust off her skirts, and Robb knew then with a clarity he had not had before that he was going to marry a woman that was capable of absorbing all the strength of the blows she was dealt and that never would she ever grace anyone with any part of herself for it. If anyone down there was expecting to see her waver into a creature a little more easily hurt, they were bound to be disappointed: all she had for them was the inflexibility of cold-rolled steel, as if there were no emotion at all living beneath her face.

But what truly surprised Robb was how far she was willing to go to prove that she was not helpless nor was she harmless… and how easily she managed to do it – with a simple dance, just like Sansa said.

ooo

She had fallen on her face plenty of times before, literally and figuratively both. She knew what it was to lose track of your limbs and feel that small bite of panic, like the prick of a bee, before the hard surface of the earth slapped you, unforgivingly and without fail. She had in fact, known the feeling so intimately that she knew what would happen the moment her foot caught on another and she missed her next step. She knew and did not flail like a fish out of water, did not even flinch of gasp. She had not the time for it, it all happened so fast.

In that moment when she fell and her own weight did not matter, she was void of all thoughts and all worries… and she would not remember it after, but she knew that that was exactly what happiness tasted like, and freedom.

But the next moment, her palms slapped the stone of the floor and she felt the blow echo all the way to her shoulders. Her knees landed hard, taking all her weight and as the bite of pain came, so did the rush of anger, seething inside her with a hiss and a growl.

She did not see the way everyone around her froze, the fast turn of so many heads. Nor did she see the way Obara caught Elia's arm and froze her, not allowing her to come and help, knowing that she should not, not this time. These were the times when Myrcella was all on her own, when any kind of rushing held would have been seen as a weakness on her part… and she felt it too. She felt her own fingers shape into claws as the weight of the daggers hiding in both her boots became heavier than ever. But instead of reaching for one of them her nails bit into stone instead, hurting as she pulled herself up. But it didn't matter, none of it did. She was tearing at stones instead of that fool's face who thought he could do as he liked with her… and that more than anything made her want to unleash the true meaning of violence upon him.

She was a Princess, a Lannister, a creature of the desert. She was the daughter of a merciless queen and an honourless kingslayer, sister to a vicious king and niece to the cruelest man Westeros had ever known. She was born of lions and raised by vipers. She was the Myrcella who had outwitted the schemers of the Red Keep more than once and torn a man's throat out with her teeth!

...and she was as powerless as a new-born kitten.

The thought alone was enough to flood her veins with white-hot rage.

It was in moments like these, when she was closest to the madness inside her, that her mother's voice whispered to Myrcella the loudest. She was full of hisses, her mother, little secrets of contempt, threats, venom and cruelty… all things that Myrcella had known well and survived to, all things that she could reproduce most faithfully, well enough to curdle the blood in the veins of any man.

And we would see then, if they dare do anything to me again!

And it was in moments like these - when the thought of being feared started tasting the sweetest, when her bloodthirst was so deep that she could almost taste it – that Myrcella was grateful for the life she had led and the all the things that it had taught her. Because it was when she forgot herself utterly that some memories came back to her, undeniable and undaunted even by her rages. It was in times like these, when she wanted to become all that came easiest, that she could not forget the desolation of a life spent hating, and the bitterness that fear left behind. She knew all too well the price of vengeance and the taste of blood in her mouth. She could not unsee that, unfeel that – she would not until she died, she had promised. And it really was in times like these that those promises she'd made to the dead and to the sand proved hardest to keep, and also, the strongest link to her own self.

Breath by scorching breath Myrcella pushed her feelings into something more controllable, something that she could mold and use, and something that would answer to her own nature without damaging it irreparably. Something in short, that would not alienate her so thoroughly from whom the person that Myrcella had chosen she would become… and something that would allow her to be cold and unflinching, because she could feel the weight of every eye in the room upon her.

And it was a good thing that sometime she could force her feelings into quiet submission so thoroughly, because by the time she took sir Brynden Tully's hand (later she might find it funny, how he had shoved that boy off like he too was a toothless kitten) and allowed him to help her to her feet with a softly spoken 'thank you', all that she had to present her audience was the cool face of a princess that could be anything, feel anything… or nothing at all. The whirlwind was still there beneath her flesh, but it swirled deeper and deeper inside her by the moment, out of sight and within control.

She would not cringe for them!

Lions don't cry and cower. We look our enemies in the eye andsmile!

And though Myrcella knew she was a girl and not a lion at all, smile razors was exactly what she did when she looked at that little Lord whose name she did not even care to remember, and who looked far less steady on his feet now than a moment ago. And the expression on her face when she met his eyes must have been something indeed, because Myrcella say the boy gulp and fidget under her unblinking gaze. It must have made him forget that he was supposed to apologize then, because it took him a beat to remember it.

"I do beg your pardon, princess. I… I was not… I am a rather poor dancer, it seems, forgive me."

Myrcella felt her insides freeze over and finally, finally, she had a mastery of herself again. Lies were always the best catalyst to her reason and her sanity, she knew. She despised being lied to her face – it made her mind jerk into work whether she wanted to or not and it was the same as ever now. In a corner of her mind where the child she had once been still breathed, she almost felt sorry for that boy looking at her now, a little lord she probably would never meet again. What that boy didn't know was that she was a much better liar than he ever hoped to be, and that if she had a little more freedom, she would have crushed him like a bug beneath her boot and felt no remorse at all doing so.

Stupid boy.

No, I don't feel sorry for you at all. Men have died for less.

It was with an unfeeling face and unflinching eyes that she lied when she next spoke, making it almost believable, but too cold to truly be so, too sharp and deliberate.

"Oh, it makes no matter my Lord." And as the smile on her lips stretched just a fraction wider, she could swear that if feelings could make sounds, hers would sound like nails scratching on a board. "I have spent such a long time in Dorne that I have quite forgotten the steps of the more northern dances myself."

The idea had her by the throat even as the words left her mouth and Myrcella could do nothing to resist it. She was all that a princess should be for them, she had played her part flawlessly to her own detriment. And yet they were not satisfied. Fine! If there was no means for her to hurt them properly, she could still go behind their back and fuck them in their arses.

If they want my blood, then my blood is what I'll give them. On my terms.

It took on glance, just one look in Elia's direction, and the understanding that Myrcella saw dawning on her friends face was immediate, absolute. When the octanes were ringing high, Elia's senses became sharper than a dagger's blade.

"Indeed, my Lord, the dances of my country are quite different." Elia spoke then, loud and clear and drawing attention of the surrounding faces to herself as she joined Myrcella in the eye of the storm, having a similar smile on her face as well, and a fire in her dark eyes. When they looked at each other, their expressions mirrored so closely that they might have been sisters. "And they are lovely as well. So lovely that it is a shame we have not danced to a dornish song yet."

It was the perfect distraction and Myrcella knew that as soon as Elia finished the words, there would be many of those that would beg her to show them these famous dances. They did, and the collective enthusiasm of that hall of people tasted a little of the hysterical. It was not Elia's dance they wanted but a reprieve from the stifling tension that had been caused by a straying foot. They wanted to glaze over the repercussions now that the act had been done, now that they had had their entertainment.

Myrcella despised them for it – cowards, she thought, not wanting to face my fury, not wanting to know what happens after the blow is dealt. Cowards and cravens all of them… - and yet she hid the feeling well beneath the right smiles at the right time.

It took moments for the snakes to take the floor and everyone else was delegated to the fringes. Ellaria too came to dance along her daughter and so did some other few dornishwomen that were traveling with their husbands… and when Myrcella did not move away – on the contrary she placed herself right in the middle of the fray - eyes lingered on her too, but the princess did not have eyes for any one of them.

It was on the King that she chose to look at when the first high note of the flute came calling and the first steps of the Dance of Blades were taken. And as she spun and turned and not once smiled, her eyes always found his and never wavered.

It was not for his benefit that she was doing this though the king may take it any way he liked. This is a show that was for everyone else. Let them remember who she was and why she was among them. Let them remember to whom she'd been sold and what she was bound to become. That a lion could never be toothless, no matter how pretty to smile of sweet the look... and that the next time they reached a hand at her she would bite it off.

ooo

The first note hit high and the dornishwomen started their dance all at the same time, as if they had done this a thousand times among themselves. Robb was not surprised to see her among them: she looked like a dark flower among so many bright silks of all the imaginable shades of red and gold and orange and bronze. And yet she moved with the same assurance they did… and her eyes didn't leave his for a moment.

She was angry, she must be – her face did not show it but her green eyes blazed. She watched him unflinchingly as she moved about following the foreign rhythm of smoky flutes, rolling percussion and tiny bells dusting the rhythm - a music that felt smoky and alluring as it felt like a warning - moving to a dance of fluttering arms, rolling shoulders and flexible waists that made the women look like birds about to take flight… or snakes. And the whole time, her green eyes did not look away from him, not even when a blade flew up in the air and she – as they all did – caught it with nimble fingers and started slicing the air with it as if she was cutting down enemies. She moved with ease and the way she held that long dagger was practiced – not reminiscent of a dance at all, but of someone used to slice flesh and bone. The unease of every single man and woman in that hall at that blatant threat of violence was palpable and yet the princess seemed miles away from them as she danced… and keeping her eyes steady with his own, Robb felt the same.

The fine tune of the dance lingered and called, and the dancers turned and met and their blades did too, the singing bite of steel meeting steel adding to the rhythm of the music. The princess turned and turned with that dagger in her hand slicing air, dark skirts fluttering about her, and Robb wondered if she'd rather be yielding it on someone alive. Though he could not think of that for too long – the question seemed inconsequential.

Was this a dance for seduction he wondered, as he watched her bend at the waist, arms stretched in front creating waves in the air, shoulder rolling with the motion? It was not so hard to believe. And the intent in her eyes, that blazing feeling that he could sense just beneath the surface, that was not something he could readily escape. She was a girl, and yet as she danced and looked at him as if she was about to jump over those steps and take a bite off him, Robb could not help but want to flinch in his seat. That unwavering gaze, bright as wildfire, her unsmiling mouth… she was full of intent and though he did not know what it was, it was not hard to imagine that she was being fueled by feelings that a moment ago she had concealed.

She must know what she was doing, know it better than the rest of the dornish for whom this kind of dance was perhaps normal. She must have known how much it would provoke, and yet she must not have cared. This was done to make a point, Robb knew. But knowing that did to mean immediate escape from her eyes, nor did it mean immunity to it.

He was aware that he was not the only one who could see it in her: the way she looked at him without fear, without modesty, bold and deliberate enough to be both a challenge and an invitation. Robb knew that, where he was almost fascinated by it, others would be threatened. He knew that, and he did not care in the least.

The music continued, picking up as the women spun with their arms out and their daggers above their heads, skirts fluttering out in a way that seemed they would go on forever, until the last boom of the drums came and they fell to the floor all at the same time, as if their strings were cut, bending forward as if bowing, their blades digging on the stone in front of them. Robb could imagine that if they had been dancing on sand, those sharp daggers would be hilt deep into it by the end.

A sharp kill on the final step.

They held their place for a moment longer, and then lifted up. The princess straightened her spine and kept looking at him even as the applause that had been a beat too late to come (courtesy perhaps of how much the dance had shocked the more reserved sensibilities of some, and how much it had entranced others) and she and the other dancers rose from knees on the floor. The dornishwomen were all smiling among themselves and enjoying the attention, but she did not. She was breathing hard with exertion and looking at him still, even as she took the blade to her hand and started walking towards him.

Perhaps her walking to him with a sharp blade in her hand equated to unease for some, but he did not feel even the barest brush of dread. There was not death in her eyes, but rather that fevered intensity that she had captured him with earlier, an expression that he had never seen in her before.

The men around him froze when she climbed those two steps of the high table and came as close to him as the table between them would allow. He did not blink as he watched her because he knew she would not. She had held his eyes without blinking the entire time.

Stubborn girl…

"Your grace." She said simply, just the barest touch of breathlessness in her tone, and yet it was enough... And when she offered the dagger to him with both her hands, he looked at it and did not miss the tension vibrating from the men around him, nor did he miss the smear of red on that blade, one that had not been there as she danced.

The meaning of it was lost on him, but her intention was clear.

Robb got up from his seat and reached out to take the dagger from her. (he could almost feel Karstark bristling close to him. He didn't need to see it to know that all their hands had gone to their sides looking for their swords. It would have been funny that a girl of sixteen years that was almost half his size could fray the nerves of fearless men of war so easily)

"Forgive me princess, but I am not familiar with dornish customs." He said as he pressed a thumb at the smear of blood on the cold steel and felt it smear easily. It was fresh. "What am I supposed to do with it?"

The small twitch of her lips told him of her amusement, but the expression was barely there and as fleeting as lightning: gone as soon as he noticed it.

"To keep it, your grace. That is all."

The princess inclined her head to him and without a word more, stepped down from the dais and for the very first time since this evening had started, she went to find refuge among the Snakes, who were all quick to snatch her away. And it was only when he saw Obara Sand draw her hand forward and wrap it in a white cloth that he knew it for certain: that was her blood on that blade.

The meaning of it was not lost on him anymore.

ooo

"No one should go that close to our King with a dagger in their hands."

But the Blackfish's snort was louder than Karstark's grumble. "She's little more than a child and yet you piss yourself."

Some chuckled, others outright laughed. There were more murmurs up and down their company, of how the Lannister princess was nothing like a child at all - louder and freer murmurs now that the princess had deigned to show to all with eyes how thoroughly bloody fuckable she could look if she had a mind to it.

"She's a Lannister." Eddard Karstark mumbled. She's the Kingslayer's bastard he would have probably liked to say as well, but he did not. The Greatjon laughed soundly.

"She's a girl… and a beauty at that." Because the Greatjon was always the one that would voice loud and clear all that the others were weary of saying. He spoke now with a laugh in his tone, and a tease in his eyes when they met Robb's and his huge hand patted Robb heavily on the back. "Even with that gash on her face, she's far prettier a sight than most."

Eye, she is. And Lannister or not, you'd have to be dead not to want a taste between her legs... Robb found himself thinking …and I am quite alive.

He could pretend to be surprised at the turn of his thoughts, and perhaps a part of him was, a very small part. But the rest of him knew that he had been thinking something along those lines since the first moment she'd met his eyes, burning and fierce, and started that dance of hers of waves and daggered steps. Being seduced was something that felt so far back in the past that Robb had almost forgotten what it felt like. But that was what she'd done, wasn't it? Ever since that dance, Robb couldn't stop thinking about it, and it had astounded him, really, just how easily he had been led into it. Were men really such simple fools then? Was he the same? He had been so weary of her that the thought of being between her thighs had always been miles from his head. But not now though… and he enjoyed and resented it in the same measure. But he could burn in all seven hells before he got played by the cock from a girl! A Lannister! He was not a green boy anymore, damn her!

And yet he could not stop thinking about her blood on that blade either, and how he was supposed to 'keep it, that is all'.

Robb sighed. He really was being a fool, wasn't he? Tying himself in knots just because a girl with golden hair had danced for him once. So what? What was the point anyway. It was just a dance, she was just a girl, albeit a shrewd one, and in the end, she could have no more power over him than he allowed.

Because that was what worried him so, was it not? Being deceived. Being played. Being betrayed...

Before to got up to ask Sansa for a dance, he speared a single thought on a question that had been banging around his skull for a while now: would he really be so distrustful of himself and of that girl with golden hair, if she were not the daughter of a family he despised? If she were not a Lannister.

But that was a useless question, because she was a Lannister and that would never change.

ooo

It had started with congratulations for the beautiful dance from before, which Myrcella had accepted as gracefully as her station commanded her to, while in her head reminding the lord who had introduced himself as Garret Paege of House Paege of Riverrun, that it had not been her dance at all, and that should he have come near her while she had been in those steps he could have lost a chunk of himself... preferably those thin lips and that unpleasant smile.

"Quite a beautiful dance, princess: so exotic. I was fascinated. As were many others, I am sure." the young man continued and those around him agreed, thought the ladies did not seem to appreciate it much. Did they think she did not notice those glances they exchanged or was it done deliberately openly so that she would notice?

Myrcella inclined her head. "I will be sure to tell the other ladies that danced with me that you said so, my lord."

In short, go bother someone else!

But of course not.

"Ah yes, the other ladies." And he leaned in a bit, seemingly conspiratorial if one wanted to judge by the smile on his face, as if he was confiding a secret to a friend. Myrcella barely kept herself form scowling and stepping backwards from his presence.

Gods but her patience was wearing thin!

"The Sand Snakes, was it? I am told they are all Prince Oberyn's bastard daughters and that he has four more hidden in Dorne. Is that true, princess?"

Perhaps he meant nothing by it. Perhaps he just wanted to be funny.

Perhaps he was a snooty bastard who thought he was so very smart and needed a good beating. Perhaps he would not smile so smugly, look at her with such amusement, if he knew what it was to taste Obara's spear, Tyene's poisons, Nymeria's arrows or Elia's fist. Perhaps she should to him a favor and take him to Prince Oberyn...

The thought made her smile.

"They are the Prince's daughters it is true. All of Dorne knows them as the Sand Snakes because of how deadly they can be." Myrcella knew that her eyes sparkled and her smile looked sharp enough to cut, right then. A small pause there, just to let it sink in. "Obara, Tyene and Nymeria are the eldest. Sarella comes after them but she is not here. And Elia is the eldest daughter of Ellaria Sand, the Prince's paramour. The others are too young to travel a land torn by war, I'm afraid, even if in the middle of their father's army."

The army he brought to liberate your lands, my lord, and fight your war.

Myrcella smile the whole time, as if she was having the most pleasant conversation of all, as if she was utterly unaware of his meanings. Her meaning however did sink into the head of that Lord, or rather, he remembered himself. She could not be sure.

"Though Obella, Dorea and Loreza are fearless creatures and would have braved any army. But Prince Oberyn loves his daughters dearly and wisely chose to keep them safe, until they are grown enough to keep themselves safe."

One of the ladies to her left giggled. She could not be so much older than Myrcella herself.

"Indeed. And how queer that they call us 'northerners'."

At that Myrcella too could smile, and it was not fake at all.

"Everyone born north of the Red Mountains is a northerner to the Dornish." Myrcella said softly, perhaps a little more so than she should have, since she should never trust any real emotions to these people... and in immediately interested looks she got in return were proof of that.

"You are quite close to them, are you not princess?" one of the ladies asked, a small smile curling the end of her thin lips.

"I am. They have been my companions for a long time since and Princess Arianne of Dorne, who was my keeper, loves all her cousins dearly and always wanted them about her."

The same Lady as before, spoke again and this time her contempt was more obvious. Someone needed to teach her how to humiliate without being so obvious.

"It must be a relief to live in such a tolerant country."

Myrcella could have laughed. Dorne, a tolerant country. That was a joke she must remember to tell Elia tomorrow. Myrcella could see just the way she would snort at that, through the nose and then roll her eyes.

"I'm sure it must be." Myrcella said, knowing she should smile a little more wanly, but not really caring. Let them take it as they like.

"You are a lovely dancer as well, Princess." The lady said, turning to her fully now. What was her name? Why could she not remember it? Perhaps Myrcella had chosen not to remember because she did not want to to have a name in her mind to connect to that pale face, so that later, if the fancy struck her, she would not have easy means to make his girl cry a bit.

There were ways, she had found, to keep herself in check. This was one of them, even for those like herself, who could never forget anything.

"Thank you, my lady." Myrcella said instead.

"Such a shame that Eamon is not a better dancer. Imagine his disappointment at not having the honor of dancing with you again."

Yes, imagine.

"I am trying." But this time Myrcella was just a short breath from chuckling herself. A disappointment indeed.

"Oh, I meant no offence, princess." The lady said then, and Myrcella fond herself raising her eyebrows to her, gracing the company with a true expression of surprise.

"You could never give any, my lady." Myrcella replied calmly, with an incline of her head.

"Princess Myrcella, good evening."

Myrcella turned to her left to see sir Brynden coming to her with two cups in his hand, one of which was clearly meant for her. She took it with thanks to the man. He could not have known she did not like to drink wine, no matter how sweet. But when she took a small sip, she found that it was not wine at all, but iced honeymilk, sweet and fresh that cooled her tongue. The surprise showed in her eyes in the sipped with which they seeked sir Brynden's face. The old knight smiled at her.

"Thank you, sir." Myrcella said softly, perhaps more so than she should have. Now everyone would know when she said thank you and she meant it, and when not.

"You're welcome, princess."

"How do you find the feast, your grace." He asked, and this time, instead of anything else she had seen in the faces of men and women most of the night, she saw real enquiry and even a touch of amusement – as if Brynden Tully already knew her answer

"Very entertaining, sir Brynden." Was all Myrcella said. And it had been. "Though after so much excitement, I'm afraid it has left me a little weary."

There was a snort from her left and Myrcella turned to see her Garret Page exchanging a look with his friends that seemed to speak louder than words and they all were wearing the same smirks on her face... smirks that lessened under Brynden Tully steel eye.

"Get on." The knight said looking at the boys hard enough that his eyes would have driven holes in their skulls. Myrcella felt like giving those boys a very wide smile indeed at that, but that would have been too openly pleased. When the boys did not move, the Blackfish's hard stare turned into a scowl. "Now, boy. The princess is bored of your company and so am I."

Myrcella took the opportunity to sip form her cup, so that she did not have to say anything back... and openly have to lie. The boys scrambled away and the ladies bowed and left as well, leaving her in the company of sir Brynden who offered her his arm and escorted her out of the thick of it and into the outer halls where the air was cooler and fresher.

"I have no grounds upon which to speak you familiarly, but I would, if you allow me."

Myrcella was a bit surprised by the request, but then she remembered the way everyone would speak of this man, the kind of man they said he was, and how he had pushed that little lord off her before, when she had been tripped.

"I would do well, I think, to listen well to whatever you have to say, sir Brynden. Please, speak freely."

"I would council you to ignore them. They are all too young to know better and too pleased with themselves to realize that they're actually being bloody stupid."

Myrcella felt her mask slip at and break apart when faced with such blunt honesty. She looked upon the knight's face searching it. Was this a trap or was he being truthful? And if so, why? But when she did look at him she saw nothing but honesty in his face and that was when Myrcella decided that she could at least, give him some of her own honesty in return.

"I have lived for years in a place where they have cursed my family's name for the last twenty years, sir. A few overeager boys and their japes don't exactly shock me."

The Blackfish chuckled low at that, as if surprised and also amused by her – or was it her nerve? Myrcella didn't know. And then after a moment, he spoke again.

"I am sorry... for before. Aemon Frey is a stupid, cruel boy and I should have never allowed him near you."

And this time Myrcella did startle. So much that she took back her hand form his arm and looked at the knight as if he was something he had never seen before. She bit back the first words that came to her, the sharpest ones... and always the most unwise.

After another breath, she did speak.

"I appreciate the sentiment, sir, but you are not my keeper." Myrcella said and her voice didn't trembled from neither hurt nor anger. She sounded surer than she felt she would, and harder than she ever had, for this was one thing that she would always know.

I have no keeper, nor do I want one.

The Blackfish have her a long look, as if he was trying to break her open and read her from within. And though his blue eyes were sharp and sure as swords - and familiar because the King and his mother and sister had those eyes - they were not unkind.

"I am not, you're right." And a smile that was not cheery as much as if was fierce, curved his lips. "Seems to me you hardly need one."

Myrcella felt her own smile before she had a mind to give it. "Thank you for that." Because at least he could be kind enough to say it, even if he might not mean it.

"No need to thank him if it's the truth. And it seems to be the general understanding of most lords and ladies in that hall as well."

Myrcella felt the rigidity set in her shoulders when she heard that voice, (thought she understood from that very moment that his tone was light and almost teasing really), coming from much closer than she had expected. She had taught herself to tell his voice apart from others, tried to be able to do it since the very first time she heard it, so that whenever she heard him speak near her she would know it was him and he might never catch her off guard. And yet he continually did, and Myrcella found herself wondering if perhaps it amused him, sneaking up to her like this.

Wolves like to hunt, a mocking voice whispered in her head. But she didn't need to hear her mother whisper to know how to answer that. She didn't need anything but her own self and what she knew.

I am not his prey. He bought me to be his queen.

By the time Myrcella turned to greet him, she had a smile for him. "Your grace."

"Princess. Sir Brynden."

"My king."

But aside from a flicker of his eyes towards the old knight and an incline of his head, the King in the North was entirely too focused on Myrcella and she felt that focus now much more strongly than she ever had before. She had provoked him before. She had provoked the entire hall, all of them. They would probably be calling her names by the morrow… thought it would be fun to listen to the new stories they had to say. No doubt by first light there will be one according to which she'd fondled the king in front of the entire company of his guests.

The thought made her want to laugh.

"Am I interrupting?" the king asked coming closer.

"Of course not, your grace. Sir Brynden and I…" she caught the eye of the old knight and suddenly the whole thing was just too funny to ignore anymore. She had always prided herself with being able to see the light side of any situation and there was much to laugh about here. Paege's face when Brynden Tully had told him to fuck off was definitely one of them. "We were discussing the social utility of being courteous and maintaining an awareness of other people's sensitivities."

The King smiled and nodded with an 'Ah' that immediately gave way to a chuckle. "So you were discussing Aemon Frey?"

Myrcella's eyebrows dived upwards before she could stop them and she was sure that her lips switched for a smile.

"I can't imagine how you would make that connection, your grace." She said lightly, a breath away from a smile… which really came when the Blackfish snorted.

"Neither can I. The bloody ungrateful whelp wouldn't recognize 'courteous' if it slapped him in the face and not even squiring for the Dragonknight himself could change that."

Myrcella hid her smile behind her glass, but not for long. "I really don't think they have anything to be grateful about to me, sir Brynden." … and only too late did she realize that instead of saying 'he', meaning the poor witless Aemon Frey, she had said 'they'.

The night really had wearied her down. Much more so than she had noticed if she was slipping so badly.

Myrcella dared a look at the Blackfish and then the King… and her cup paused on the way to her mouth. They were looking at her much too strangely, staring really with an amount of disbelief that made her uncomfortable.

"Beggin your pardon, your grace, I must return to the feast." Sir Brynden said quite suddenly and Myrcella was left feeling even more out of pace. Had she really offended him that badly? But the knight didn't give her a chance to speak at all, he was out of sight before she could even open her mouth.

And the king was still looking at her that strange way, as if he could not quite make up his mind over what he was seeing.

"I hope I did not say something to offend him. He has been kind to me since I arrived here." Myrcella said, hoping to get at least some indication of where she had gone wrong.

The king shook his head, but said nothing. Myrcella finally lost her patience for silence.

"Forgive me your grace, but why are you looking at me that way?"

She saw the ghost of a smile pass through his features. It wasn't even real, but his expression softened with it.

"Looking at you how, princess?"

Was this a game to him now? Myrcella resisted the impulse to huff. Even if it was, she had had enough of playing for one night.

"As if you know something about me that I do not, your grace." She said with a voice that did not leave room for play of japing. She was serious and needed a serious answer. That should not give him that much of a surprise as it did: he was always far more serious than she after all.

And yet, the tempered look of disbelief did not fade from his eyes.

"You really don't know, do you?" he asked, as if he was asking himself. As if he could not quite believe it.

"There are a great many things that I don't know. Which one do you speak of?"

The King frowned, that small pucker between his brows bringing him back to the man that she could more easily recognize. There he was…

"There were certain terms that came with our marriage." He said then, speaking as frankly as he always did. The moment she heard those words however, Myrcella felt the cold seep into her spine, straightening it to the point of rigidity, setting her shoulders as if she was about to be dealt a blow. "Since the Trident was not north of the Neck it did not belong to the North, and therefore could not be part of its independent kingdom. Your grandfather and I were at odds a long time over that. I did not want to abandon men who'd fought for me, but keeping the Riverlands free would have bled them dry. So a bargain was proposed."

He paused, the barest hesitation in his voice, in his eyes. Myrcella wished she could tell him not to bother. She already knew the sort of bargain her grandfather had made – she had gotten the gist of it immediately, the same moment the King explained the conflict.

"A full royal pardon for the Riverlands, in exchange for making you a queen." The king said, and she was not a fool: she could sense that apology in his tone, the way he felt he was being callous by speaking of it. He should not have. He must have deduced by now that he was the very first to tell her of it.

Well, she had been wondering about this since the beginning had she not? Now she had her answer. She'd thought she was being exchanged for peace and union of two great bloodlines and perhaps that had been her grandfather's intent. But she had been accepted for entirely different reasons.

Perhaps she should be more surprised than she felt, but she was not. Her grandfather was the kind of man to know how to take advantage of any tragedy. And she could not fault the King either. Of what could she possibly fault him? He was as stuck as she was. But what Myrcella did find was a new cause of anger for the way she had been treated all night.

She had paraded around like a fool, acting the gracious princess and always being polite and courteous and for what? For whom? For people who didn't even bother to see her for what she was, who could not even look past her face. She doubted they even know how. And now she learned that not only was she instrumental for peace, but she was also the peace of ass traded to secure them a future without having to fear their houses being razed to the ground and their children take as wards and their taxes raised, their crops seized…

The beast in her roared in outrage and spite. Who are they to judge me? With what right do sheep judge a lion?

Gods, she sounded just like her mother. How pathetic.

The child in her stomped her little feet, balling her hands in fists and pouting. Why do they hate me then? If I'm the price for their pardon, for their precious peace, why do they show me such reckless malice?

"I did not know." Myrcella heard herself say, flatly, co very coolly. She sounded so foreign, as if another woman was speaking. A woman that was wiser than the child and stronger than the beast.

A woman who was, at the very least, a better liar than both.

"I suppose it does not matter, since it changes nothing for me." And this was when she remembered that she was talking to a King, and one that had the good sense to offer her a hand. "But I do thank you for telling me, your grace."

But she sounded as cold as she felt. Gods how she wished she were alone! She wanted nothing more than to go to her room and collapse on the bed, and sleep for days. Sleep the exhaustion away, the irritation at having to put on so many faces, the utter frustration at herself and her family and her situation.

"Would you walk with me, princess?"

No. No!

"Of course, your grace." She said softly, taking his arm and following his lead down the many corridors and into the night. She let herself be led and it was in times like these, in times when she was frustrated with her own self as well, that she wished she was a little more like her mother and cared nothing for the consequences of her actions.

The sight of gardens in front of her was a surprise. She had not known that Riverrun had inner gardens – nor could she have, Myrcella told herself, since she had been there only for a day. As far as she could see, they were lovely, in an esthetically pleasing, useless way. The moonlight washed them with silver gleam, but the moon was only halved, and the shadows of that garden stood far longer and darker than the places the silver gleam of the moon touched. All the flowers looked different degrees of grey and white under that light… and perhaps that was what Myrcella liked best about that garden.

"My sister told me that you were being treated ungallantly by some and rudely by others. I apologize for that."

Myrcella found herself being jarred out of her own musings by that. This was not the first time that the king had apologized to her, and again, it was of no fault of his own that he was apologizing.

Did he really feel so responsible for everyone under his reign?

"There was nothing to warrant an apology, your grace." Myrcella said slowly, looking ahead though, choosing not to stare up in his face in the off chance that her own expression might show him a little more than she would have liked to. "Not everyone has Lady Sansa sense of fairness, or her kindness… or her tolerance. Indeed, few are those that possess even a inch of her fine qualities."

Nobody is quite like Lady Sansa in many ways, but the king did not need to hear all about his sister… because his sister was not who they were speaking of.

They arrived at a bench and as the king stopped, Myrcella let go of his arm to sit. She expected him to sit next to her, but instead he sat down in the other stool, in front of her.

There would be no escaping his eyes now.

"You handled everything without a hitch though, I must say." And his smile was almost playful, as if the thought amused him, and he leaned his elbows on his knees, getting just a bit closer, their eyes falling to one level. "When you started dancing with that dagger in your hand, I thought I saw Aemon Frey pale quite a bit."

This time it was her turn to smile. She felt daring tonight.

"If you were looking at Aemon Frey while I was dancing, then I must have been doing a very poor job of it, your grace."

The king laughed – for the very first time since he had been in her company and she in his, he laughed freely, and sincerely.

"You were doing a marvelous job of it. And quite an impressive one as well. The whole of the Riverlands will be talking about it for months."

Myrcella wanted to laugh. Life must be dull indeed in the Riverlands if her dancing was all that was worth a rumor… and Myrcella doubted that it was so.

But instead of saying that, she shrugged. "I'd rather they speak of my scandalous dance than my falling on my face."

The King's eyes were heavy on her face as she spoke, and his levity fell away a little as the silence stretched. "I think we both know you didn't fall, princess." He said carefully, never once blinking.

Myrcella sighed. "As we both know that it does not matter."

A side of his mouth, where most of his smiles seemed to begin, twitched a little upwards, but there was no cheerfulness in it.

"I promised you your safety, and yet, where I am able to guarantee the safety of a realm, I cannot seem to do it for just one princess. It does not seem to speak well of me, that."

Myrcella blinked against the admission. He was one for frankness, this King, and she had told herself to remember that well because he never seemed to be able to act differently. And yet, for all her observations and her so careful study of his person, he still managed to surprise her. Every time she exchanged words with him, the amount of things he seemed to say that were able to shock her only grew.

Who was this man?

"I am quite safe, your grace, and I feel safe as well." And what did it matter if it was not yet true? It didn't, not now. Now, in this darkness and alone with him, she could pretend better than in the harsh daylight. But did she have to? Could she not speak some truth as well? Truths of the likes of those that she usually hid from him, in particular? Myrcella paused hesitated, and then told her doubts to fuck off. Nothing good would ever come if she did not risk it. And the time had come to take her chances with this King. "I will doubtlessly have many difficulties adapting to the life that awaits me, but the court and its liars will never be one of them. I was raised in the Red Keep and Sunspear. I've been trained for this my whole life, even before I knew it was so. Believe me when I say, I know my way around a King's courtiers."

He looked at her with contemplation and Myrcella was sure that she saw a flicker of surprise in his eyes as well, when she spoke to him so openly about things that she tried to make everyone avoid thinking of: that she was a creation of the world they had fought so hard to free themselves from: a world of liars and deceivers and little men playing their little games and pretty women with sharp smiles who spun their tales and ensnared their flies.

"What's your secret then, princess? To surviving as well as you have to all the liars and the treasons?"

Myrcella felt her heart thump in her chest. 'Surviving well' he said… Her hand had gone to her cheek before she even realized what she was doing and once she did realize it, she put if down swiftly, a little too swiftly perhaps. He must have noticed that, no doubt.

She should not allow herself to be quite so open with him, Myrcella knew that. She had to drop her guard to speak to him as honestly as his sharp eyes always demanded of her and once she did, she ended up giving away little bits of herself that she never meant to.

"I don't think there is a secret." she whispered, looking at her hands. But it was not to herself that she was speaking to, so she made herself look up into his eyes. Even in this darkness, his eyes shone pale and clear. He looked like he was made of white marble and the shadows that the planes of his face cast upon him sharpened all his features. "I think you get lied to one time too many before you really start believing that everyone is a liar unless proven otherwise."

He looked at her unflinchingly, without blinking and for the very first time, Myrcella did not feel observed, but rather seen.

"So what is the answer? Do you trust no one?"

Myrcella felt a bitter smile begin on her lips, but she surprised it before it cold properly blood its ugly colors.

"The wiser answer to that would be 'no'." she said, trying to sound lighter, more cheery. She did not want to be such a droll conversationalist, but the Kings seemed to have a preference for heavy topics. "But alas, I do trust some people. Life would be so very lonely otherwise."

And it already is such a lonely, brutal and cruel affair. Why make it harder?

"Besides, allow me to point out, your grace, that I actually did enjoy my time at the feast tonight." Myrcella said, when it became clear that he would not break the silence, and his eyes so carefully studying her face were making her uncomfortable, especially so because they were under the cover of the night. She could not read his expression as cleanly as she would have liked, and every flicker on his features seemed like a secret he was yet stealing from her.

In a moment such as this, when tension felt high, but not the kind that made one afraid, Myrcella would rather speak than be silent. Silence was always more dangerous when the eyes looking at you were trying to see you truly.

"I'm glad you did." He said simply.

It wasn't enough.

"And some of the riverlords and especially the ladies were quite entertaining as well. Once or twice I must have been very close to laughing at quite the inappropriate moment."

His smile was knowing. "I did notice that, once or twice."

"Not too kind of me, I'm afraid." She admitted.

"And you didn't think to deflate any egos then? I'm sure you can, if you try."

"Oh that would have been truly foolish. Life has a way of puncturing self-inflated senses of worth in cruel ways. It hardly needs my help." Myrcella thought back at how easily she could spot a lie or a game sometimes, and how easily she too could be manipulated and bent against her will and played. To each their own. Valar Morgulis. "Besides, I have found that all of us are not half as difficult as we think we are, and not nearly as mysterious."

"Is that true for you as well, princess?"

Myrcella didn't need to see the glint in his eyes to know that he was teasing: he'd been smiling at her. She remembered what Arianne had said to her once, and the memory made her smile despite herself.

"It is true about myself most of all, I suppose." Myrcella admitted with what she hoped was a placid expression on her face. People like her survived by letting people like that boy who had stumbled her to the ground believe that she was far much more complicated than she seemed; or by turns, far more simple. Lies were the way for a princess: nobody was supposed to know what lay even a small inch beneath your flesh: whenever enemies saw weakness, all they thought of was digging up for more. "After all, I am a woman, a princess and a Lannister; three very good reasons to be seen as the most deceitful creature on the earth."

She had meant it as a jape, a little twist on her own expense to show him that she did not take herself half as seriously as people seemed to think… but the King did not smile - he even lost what lightness that had been there before. There was a look in his eyes that told her he never would, not at such a thing.

Had she miss-stepped then? Was that frail truce between them broken?

"You should not let anyone believe that if it is not the truth." He said finally, with such gravity that Myrcella knew immediately he was not speaking to her lightly at all. That he was not even speaking to her as King, but as one person to another… and in that respect this may very well be the first conversation she was having with him. Which was probably why Myrcella felt like she had many years ago when she'd first stepped into the shores of the rocky sea of Dorne, feeling the water so shallow the first two steps and then on the third she had found depths beyond her own height, and sunk down in the sea unexpectedly, swallowing a good mouthful of salt water and even inhaling some for good measure.

Any moment now, she would sink, just like she had then.

She wanted to ask him how he supposed she was to change their minds… but instead she felt something else was needed. Something that was less of a challenge, and more of an acceptance.

Myrcella felt herself gulp down her doubts.

"I will try." She said, but even as the words left her mouth, they felt wrong. They were not enough – she did not know his standards yet, but it didn't matter: it was not enough for her own. "I will try my very hardest to make them see me as I am."

As I want to be, she thought, but did not say it out loud. There was no need for the King of Winter to know everything.

The king offered her a calm look, a sort of serenity that lacked the smug satisfaction she had hoped he could not get, when she said those words. And as she looked back at him, Myrcella felt relief.

"Tonight was quite the start in that direction. You seem determined to make a good impression upon everyone."

He made it sound so very pathetic… and perhaps it even was. But Myrcella was not daunted by that. Appearances were just that: they were the inch-thick matter that covered the second layer, which covered another, and then another still. Most people lived and died without knowing the truth of things or the people around them. Most people built themselves up because it was easier.

"If you don't give people something of yourself to see and speak and think of, they will fill the void themselves." She said carefully. "And I already know what they'd rather fill it with… Most people look at me and see my mother." You did as well, didn't you? Perhaps you still do. But no, she was not quite crazy enough to tell him that. "Do you remember my mother at the feast of Winterfell, your grace?"

Do you remember how rigidly she sat, how tightly she smiled and how bitter she was? Do you remember?

From the look that passed in his face, the understanding in his eyes that was reflected in his little smile, Myrcella gathered that he did remember. And he understood that she had done all that she had done tonight to make people see that she was only Cercei Lannister's daughter, and not Cercei herself.

"It's bad enough that they'll gave to have a Lannister for a queen, but to have the same Lannister queen twice would be called cruel… and I'd rather not be known for cruelty."

She spoke so softly, she might as well be speaking to herself, but she knew that he heard her. She knew it, and felt that familiar bite of fear in her breast when she realized that she'd just given away too much, far too much. Everything seemed to bee to much with this King, and Myrcella could not control that.

But she could dominate it. She refused to be a slave to her own insecurities. He wanted to know of her, and she would give him that. Whether he believe her or not, that was an issue that was out of her hands. In any other case, she would not even have tried - Myrcella had never cared much for being judged, and people had a tendency to do just that the moment they heard the word Lannister. (…and his silence made her feel very much so, even though his eyes did not hint at it) But this was not any other case: she was going to marry this man. Sooner or later he would have to see her for who she was.

"I would ask you something, princess, and I would also ask that you speak truth to me in answer. If you cannot, then don't answer at all."

Myrcella look at up at him, but said nothing. If she would have the option of silence, then what harm was there in listening to his questions?

Plenty of it. Silence is as good as an admission, a denial, a lie. Silence is out of your hands and left for him to decide.

"Did your family tell you nothing of me or where you were going when they send you off to the enemy?"

Of course… of course he would ask the one thing she had not expected him to. Though why not? Everyone was curious about her family. They were always asking and asking. And he asked for himself. It was better than most, at least.

Was He sounded both disbelieving and not so surprised at the same time and Myrcella suspected it was because he felt so weathered by Lannisters that nothing they could possibly do could surprise him anymore.

She wondered what he would have thought if she confessed to the same.

"I was not told anything but what whispers suggested and court rumors are often fables, especially when they are about an enemy."

And now he frowned at her. At least that was a familiar expression, though she had never seen his lips pulled into a smile as he frowned. It made for a dark expression, one Myrcella did not like.

"I suppose so…" The King said, as if speaking to himself. And then his eyes snapped back to hers… "Is that why you seemed to be so afraid of me, in the beginning? You thought I was some sorcerer that turned into a wolf at night, just like they say?"

Myrcella was caught a little off guard by his bluntness, but she knew better than to stagger under it now. Whether he spoke to her as the Winter King or Robb Stark, he always spoke directly and expected the same kinds of answers from her. And apparently, the more at ease he felt, the more his frankness increased.

"They say that about you, it's true." And Myrcella allowed herself to smile as she looked at him. "They also say that your wolf is a demon with a coat of steel fur and that he has eyes of fire." She gave him an amused look and saw that he was rolling his eyes. Her smile widened at the sight of it. He looked younger when he did that.

But he had asked for the truth and she had decided she would give it. Whether he believed it or not.

"There were plenty of people I could have asked who would have told me something true about you – your sister among them. I simply chose not to ask."

The question was in his eyes. 'Why is that' the Winter King asked her with a small tilt of his head and a curious curve of his lips. And in that moment he was Robb Stark and Myrcella found that she could tell him exactly why that was… and regret it later, of course. But what mattered was she felt she could speak to him now. Robb Stark had a way of being expressive which was astounding, considering how unreadable his face got whenever he needed it to, as if he was carved from cold stone.

"I didn't want him to know that I was asking. My grandfather, I mean." And this time Myrcella looked away from him as she spoke, choosing to stare away at the bushes by the King's head instead, unable to speak of things that felt so private and still look a stranger in the eye. "It's one of the games he likes to play: he tells you his will and nothing else, leaving you to scurry about and find out for yourself, if you can. He likes to pit us against each other – his family, I mean – and see who comes out on top and how. I think he decides our worth this way." Myrcella took a deep steading breath and released it slowly. She still hadn't looked him in the eye, but she had not looked down to her hands either. And she would not. She was not ashamed of anything. "So you see, had I asked questions, I would have been playing his game… he would have known about it, and from my questions he would have been able to deduce my thoughts and intentions."

Myrcella spoke flatly, tonelessly. She always found herself speaking that way whenever she was trying to hide her emotions on any matter. Perhaps, Myrcella thought absently, that more than anything gave away her emotions…

"I didn't want him to know my intentions. Why should I give him the pleasure of getting what he wanted so easily? So I didn't." and that was worth a smile. "There was no point anyway – I wouldn't learn anything from the Red Keep's overgrown butterflies that I would not learn myself a few weeks later."

Myrcella shrugged away her stubbornness, knowing it was not so easily explained away, but not wanting the King to understand that her stubbornness and that particular vindictive streak she had, had gotten the better of her and she had wanted to take her victories wherever she found them.

And in a sense, she had gotten them. The thought of it made her twist her lips in a small smile that was not entirely kind… nor should it be.

"Once he realized I was not going to go fluttering about, worrying over my upcoming nuptials to the realm's worst enemy, he had me placed under armed guard. Five knights to guard a little girl. It was quite hilarious for a while." She chuckled at the memory even now, but there was the sting of tears that only she knew how to recognize in herself. It started with a tightening of her throat, but never went farther than that. Myrcella never allowed herself certain freedoms and tears were one of them. She could count on the fingers of one hand the times she had cried in the last five years.

"He thought I planned an escape." Myrcella smiled at the memory, perhaps more sharply than she should have, more darkly than she could afford with Robb Stark there, but the pleasure was undeniable. "I had a good laugh about that in private. I doubt he thought much of it, but small victories are worth it."

"And were you? Planning an escape?" the king asked… and this time she could not held but look at him. He was looking at her with very thoughtful eyes, but there was something in his question that hinted at his amusement… as well as the utter seriousness with which he asked it.

Myrcella thought about it for a moment, thought about how to answer him. This time she did look to her hands, clasped as they were in her lap. "I thought of it. For quite a while actually, I thought of running to the Free Cities, or Dorne." Her smile was bitter, as had been her thoughts. "I know it was selfish and thoughtless, I knew it even then as I entertained the possibility, but it didn't stop me."

"We're all entitled to a bit of selfishness every not and then I suppose. Though I'm glad you didn't rung away." The King said and when she looked up to meet his eyes, they were kind and his face open. She gave him a small smile, one of those that didn't even look real enough, that was just a softening of her face… and he mirrored the expression just as carefully.

They really were just puppets dancing to strings, weren't they? Just like her uncle had told her not so long ago. He a King and she a Princess, and still neither of them was free. There seemed to be no freedom in this world. Not in Westerost at least, and not from those whose main duty was to honor their ancient, noble and powerful houses.

Myrcella couldn't help it: she leaned forward a bit, setting her elbows on her knees as he'd done, coming perhaps two palm's-width away from his face. "It's funny though, isn't it: how women can be traded like livestock and yet the fate of entire kingdoms can still rest on the whims of a girl."

His eyebrows jumped up a fraction. "You think the war would have gone on if you'd decided you liked the free cities better than the thought of being queen?"

Myrcella smiled. The thought of being queen, was it? But of course he would think that. What did he know of her after all?

"No, I don't think that." And she mean it. "I think my grandfather would have found a way to delay my coming, and in the meantime he would have scorched town after town to find me, leaving only bones behind, until I either came back on my own or anyone who could remotely recognize me brought me back in chains."

Myrcella knew that her tone was dry enough to scrap stones, but he must know that those were facts, so she spoke them as such. The sun shone by day, the moon by night, Tywin Lannister didn't readily give up his possessions. All facts of the same proportion.

The King wisely chose not to have anything to add to her assessment. But he looked at her as if he had just now seen her for the first time, or rather, as if he could not quite believe what he was staring at.

Surprised, your grace?

Her mother used to tell her that men like pretty women and silent women, preferably both in the same body and that intelligence is considered a fault if it comes with teats… but looking back into Robb Stark's face now, Myrcella doubted it very much. She had a feeling that a man such as him would find a silent woman dull and a stupid woman frustrating.

But it was only once the silence stretched that she realized that this was the longest she had spoken uninterrupted to him and that put her in a state of almost uncomfortable self-consciousness.

That is, until he interrupted the silence.

"So, allow me to ask, Princess… what are your intentions?"

Myrcella heard the humor in his voice but she turned her head to look at him despite that, smiling as coyly as she dared without being outright open about it. She could be playful with him, couldn't she?

"I suppose you'll be the first one to find them out, your grace."

He chuckled. "I rather like the sound of that. Like it better, I think, than the thought of another man knowing more about my marriage than I do, before the marriage actually happens."

The laughter escaped her before she could put her lips together and stop it.

"That would be most unfortunate, your grace, especially considering the man in question." But the laughter fluttering around the words, making them dance with good humor that had no reason at all but for the situation itself, and how she longed to laugh it away simple because it really was as dire as one could imagine it to be. And so it was that, despite the weight that lingered in her from all that had happened throughout the evening and even that pleasant revelation of just how much exactly her womb was worth… she felt the way she sounded, in that moment: lighter and merry for some reason that seemed too far along to understand, but not enough not to enjoy. It took a moment for Myrcella to realize that she was plainly – stupidly perhaps – happy that Robb Stark could have a lighthearted thought over this union that they were supposed to enter in. Their marriage, he called it. That he could think of it that way was a relief of sorts. She had not been able to do the same quite a while.

And there must have been something in it that moment, perhaps the sheer ridiculousness of it (of ludicrousness, was that more right?) to make him chuckle too.

It was in that kind of silly mood that a strange pause came over them both, a sort of weightlessness that linked the sound of her laughter stopping and his chuckle as well. It sounded like silence but it was not so quiet, not so stilled. There seemed to be something between them, an understanding perhaps, or something that pretended to be like it. A sort of truce maybe, that in that moment vibrated with self-awareness.

"I think we should get back to the feast, princess." The King said without looking away from her, his smile still on his lips and not yet melted. He looked so much better when he smiles.

But then his suggestion sunk in, and her lightness was brought back to the solid ground. She really didn't want to go back into that hall. She was tired of smiling and pretending. Tired of having to play around words and the wits of people which wearing silk gloves for fear of damaging sensibilities.

"I would love to, your grace, but I'm afraid I'm rather tired. I had wanted to retire after this." Myrcella said and already she could feel herself slipping back inside the princess. Even her words sounded different. More contained, so much more self-aware.

He felt it too – his smile faltered for a moment, and then achieved a whole new tilt, amused and mischievous almost. Myrcella would not have been able to imagine that kind of expression on his face, had she not seen it herself. It gave her pause.

"And if I were to ask you for a dance before you retire, would you grant it, Princess? I promise you, I won't let you fall even if you do trip on my feet." He added with a good-naturedly.

Myrcella blinked twice before she caught herself.

"Oh… of course." She said then, a little too fast and when the smile on his lips stretched a little wider she called herself a fool. A bit of quick thinking and she was back into her own good graces.

"But we really don't have to go inside for a dance." Myrcella added quickly, standing up as he did. The confused expression on his face was worth her own reaction from before – which was wonderful. It would be terribly unfair if she were the one to be so garbled every time the situation turned for the normal. "We can have our dance here."

His eyebrows flew up, and he looked both amused and disbelieving. But not contrary. "Here? With no music?"

With no one watching. Myrcella felt that was a bit more important.

"I can imagine the music. And we can dance, just to dance." She said to him instead, feeling more uncertain than she ever had in a very long time. Feeling almost shy.

We can dance just for us… thought that was a thought she hardly dared to have.

"And you would like that?" he asked her. Immediately Myrcella nodded, though her heart was a little at her throat. She was doing it on purpose, she was. She wanted him to stop seeing her as the representation of the enemy and she wanted to see him as more than just the King she was marrying. Here and now, alone in the dark when they could have been anyone, that seemed like a pleasantly easy illusion to keep.

Please say yes.

"I would prefer it." I would.

But then the King smiled at her… and it was the kind of smile she had seen sometimes on his face, but never directed at her. That was the kind of smile that was both amusement and happiness and openness to those feelings. It was unguarded and the king of expression that he only ever wore around his sisters, away from prying eyes. That was the king of smile that reminded her of a bright-eyed boy that she had met a long time ago and who had been the very first boy to ever turn her head when she was so very young and silly.

Seeing it on his face now made her gulp down a notch that had formed in her throat all of a sudden and that made Myrcella feel as if she could hardly swallow or breathe or anything remotely functional.

Say yes.

He didn't, of course.

He offered her his hand instead, and Myrcella took it with a deep inhale of relief that came out a smile. He moved away from the stools and into the cobblers that cracked beneath her boots. His hand felt warm and his fingers rough… but it was nice.

She turned to face him and put a hand on his shoulder, her arm falling to her side just as his palm found her waist.

"What would you like to dance to, princess."

His face was so shadowed as he looked down at her that he looked as if he was made of sharp angles and high planes and Myrcella could hardly see his expression at all. But his smile, so very still on his face that she could hardly see it, but there none the less, was visible. It changed him whenever he chose to look at someone fondly. You could not help but be drawn in. Even though the echo of who he was was very much present in her mind - just like that night when Sansa had slept in her bed, his eyes too shined in the darkness like a wolf – Myrcella did not mind it that much. This was real and it was them alone, which was the most she could have asked for.

"You'll have to sing." He said, but instead he pulled her with him to the steps of a slow rhythm that he alone could hear. Myrcella followed.

"You wouldn't like that." She spun, hand slipping from his shoulder down his arm and to his hand, where he caught it and turned her around, back into his arms again. "Elia says I sound like a cat who is about to be drowned. I've never heard one, but it sounds unpleasant… just about as much as my singing."

He chuckled and the sound was different form so close. She could feel him laughing.

It was nice.

They moved around the shadows, dancing to their own tunes in their heads, but though perhaps to different songs, their steps were perfectly in tune. He moved slowly and Myrcella could tell from the way he held her that it had been a while since he last danced with anyone. She didn't know the northern dances well and she followed him with carefulness of someone used to improvising, someone who can find their own steps even in the dark. But his hands were gentle and his smile kind, his steps as measured as his touches and not once did she trip. And as they danced around each other the silence was only broken by her smiles and laughter every now and then, when her skirts caught on the occasional branch or her hair spun and hit him in caught him in the eye once.

He watched her… and though it was night and the moon was in the sky, she felt like she usually did when she was standing under the hot sun and dry wind, aiming her next arrow at the target, holding the bow with both hands. And the same as with the target, she could not really concentrate herself on the steps. The way he watched her spit her attention between the next spot where her foot should be and the awareness of his eyes on her face, watching her cheek or her nose, her eye or her lips or her scar, all shadowed by the night and yet, lit by the moon, because she had to look up at him to see him, and this time, she never one had looked away from his eyes. And she thought, as they danced in silence just a little while longer, this is what it feels to be beautiful."

o

TBC::: And OH MY GOD am i tired. this chapter almost killed me! let me know your thoughts though, you know how i love them.