The slap cracks across unfeeling skin, the insult behind the gesture meant to sting. Lyanna looks at the other woman with tranquil eyes. Elia is shaking like a leaf, anger painting her delicate features. "How dare you stand before me?" Her black eyes spark with hatred. This is the loss of her children, the shame she has endured in her own home. "Cursed be the day my eyes landed on you."
"No doubt it already is," Lyanna replies, her smile nothing less than feral.
Elia grimaces at this response, her hands balling into fists. "You have taken everything from me!" she cries out. The recrimination shoots from her lips like a sword. But it still misses its target. Lyanna Stark merely acknowledges the accusation with a small nod. She further derides Elia by glancing at their host, impatience in her grey eyes.
"I have no apology to offer," she speaks, her gaze still on the Stranger. There is a fiendish gleam in her eyes. "What am I but a mere speck of dust? If it please Your Grace." And she lowers herself on her knees, all the way down, her skirts crushed. But then her insolent smile returns and the blood boils in Elia's veins. "I did what I thought best. And I accept whatever judgement you wish to pass upon me. But I will not beg forgiveness for my conscience asks it not of me."
The she-wolf stands to her feet and the Stranger touches her arm, wrapping skeletal fingers around it. "Enough."
"Enough," Lyanna agrees.
And Elia is left to wonder how in the seven hells this creature has managed to bleed her dry. But the ruler of the realm has spoken and here King is the Stranger. Crowned heads bow before him, for his is the power. So Elia must hold her tongue again.
"Your children await you," the Stranger speaks. A door opens and the sweet laughter of a girl reaches Elia's ears. "It is time for the dead to take their rightful place."
For Elia may have won back her children, but Lyanna has won something else.