LOVE LIES BLEEDING – HOPELESSNESS
SOUTH OF Highgarden lies a lonely castle on top of the hill it's named after, rising high above the thick forestry it looks down upon. It is tall and foreboding despite its pretty stone that glimmers pink as the sun sets upon it, but it is nothing compared to the glittering white walls of Highgarden whose shadow spans long and wide over the fields of the Reach.
South of Highgarden sits a lonely Tyrell in the window, one leg hanging high over the craggy hill below. It's dangerous, she knows, and if her siblings had been here to see her, they would have pulled her back out of the way. But nobody in Horn Hill cares too much about their liege lord's daughter.
There is no acres-long hedge maze surrounding this castle, no pretty flowers springing up in all cracks and crevices of stone, just halls haunted with memories of Tarly's past, every gloomy picture hanging from the walls meant to impress her. They are all so ugly. The halls are bright in Highgarden. Golden arches everywhere, staircases made out of shimmering marble, sun shining through long rows of windows to keep the shadows from crossing their paths. There are too many ghost stories told about what awaits you in the shadows.
Caecilia finishes off her letter to her mother with her signature, slashing across the parchment in black ink. The ravens here are slow and weary, so it will take more than three days for it to reach her home. What could happen in three days?
At Horn Hill, nothing.
"Hello, my dear." Trevyr swings open the oak door that had separated her from the rest of this dreary castle. Does he hear the wind screaming through the holey walls at night? Like a tortured princess awaiting saving, or damnation. Whichever comes first.
"Good afternoon, darling."
Trevyr had been out hunting with his father and brothers. A morning ritual for the Tarly boys who leave with the dogs after breakfast and come back, near lunch, with a lone deer. It is barely enough to feed them all, but they always look quite proud of themselves. The women are kept in the castle where they do their duties; reading, sewing, singing, looking after the children.
Caecilia always keeps to herself.
She was never like this in Highgarden. Always out in the gardens with her mother, drinking tea beneath the lattice patio as the birds chatter away around them and they can whisper gossip without worry of interference. Or, she was running through the maze with her sisters, giggling as they tried to hide without getting caught by one of the poor knights they had roped into playing with them. Or, if she could stand to be around her brother's pomposity for more than ten minutes, she would visit the clear waters of the Mander and they'd take a pleasure boat to enjoy the sun without needing to engage in an activity together. Her reading and him eating grapes.
Here, what else is there to do but stare longingly out of the window for a brave knight to save you?
"You do enjoy that window, don't you?" Trevyr leans against the wall beside her, letting his eyes rest on the view. There are acres of hilly land stretching far in front of them. Some towns are dotted here and there in between, but mostly there are green hills and staggering forestry.
Where are all the pretty flowers?
"I like the breeze."
Caecilia is a bad liar.
"Yes, that I can understand. It's just gentle enough, isn't it?"
Trevyr is as unobservant as one can get.
Three months she has been here. Three months of endless conversations that do not go further than, oh yes I enjoy the view. Oh yes, I enjoy the food. Oh yes, I enjoy, I enjoy, I enjoy. Three months of laying in bed as he ruts into her, absolutely spoiled for any other man since the loss of her maidenhood by a lion with swordsman's hands, staring at the ceiling as he spills his seed inside, hoping that it will stick. Three months of staring out of this window. Of writing letters to her mother begging to be saved. Of aching for one last glance at golden hair in the distance.
Trevyr smiles as he sits on the windowsill by her feet. His hair is tousled from the hunt and when he shoots her a kind grin, it is a rather beautiful sight. He would be the perfect husband for some women. But not her. Not when she has known the sun.
His fingers graze over her bare ankle, slipped past the long skirts she hikes up around her knees when she is alone. His touch is cold after being out all morning, and she jolts at first at the sudden touch. Trevyr only wants her at night.
That is their duty.
"Do you miss home?"
She nods. His eyes are a soft brown, tinged with little hints of green and amber. She barely looks at him enough to notice. He nods too and leans his head against the cool stone, letting his fingers continue tracing patterns into the skin of her ankle. It is oddly soothing. Nobody has ever been this soft with her before.
"There is nowhere like Highgarden. Nowhere as beautiful, as warm. Everyone is your friend, your family. The flowers grow like there is nothing that can mow them down and the sun shines even when the rain clouds gather." She lets out a long sigh as she tears her gaze away from Trevyr and back to the craggy hills making up her view. It is so dull. "Here, I'm rather bored."
"I thought that would be the case."
His fingers graze softly off of her skin as he stands. She barely glances at him as he rounds the room, picking up their discarded nightwear. Caecilia has been here since breakfast and she has refused to let any of the handmaidens come to clean. She will do it herself when she can muster up the energy.
"I have a gift for you."
Her head snaps towards him. He has only ever gifted her with something on the night of their wedding, just before he lay her down on the bed. He clasped a pretty gold necklace with emeralds hanging from it around her neck and she has yet to replace it with another, rather fond of the delicate floral detailing carved into the gold. Her fingers dance over the oval emeralds.
Trevyr swings open the door and in steps a familiar Highgarden handmaiden. Her deep brown skin faintly glows in the soft sun shining through the window, still carrying the Highgarden shine that had died in Caecilia not even a week after arriving at her new home. Her tight black curls are half pulled up in a bun on the back of her head and the rest fall around her neck and to her shoulders, bouncing along with every delicate step she takes. She wears a dress the colour of calla lilies, twisted around her neck and falling lightly around her feet so that it flows like a petal along the surface of water.
Caecilia jumps to her feet, hands clapping together. "Lunette!"
They meet in the middle of the room with faint cries of greeting, hugging each other tightly. Lunette Crane has been Caecilia's best friend for as long as she can remember, daughter of the master-of-arms of Highgarden, she had been welcomed as handmaiden to the eldest Tyrell daughter when they were only nine and the two had grown fond of each other rather quickly. If Caecilia went anywhere, she was never alone, always with Lunette on her arm, their heads bent low together so they could whisper without anyone overhearing. Her sisters had always been quite jealous of her relationship to her handmaiden.
"I could not take you home. So, I brought home to you."
She has never been so fond of Trevyr Tarly in all her life.
"Come sit!" Caecilia tugs Lunette over to the circular table by the window. Trevyr watches by the door for a moment, his hands clasped behind his back, a grateful smile on his face. He has so wanted for his wife to feel welcome here. Finally, she may be at peace. "Sit, you must tell me everything that has happened since I've been gone!"
Trevyr goes to leave, clearing his throat before he slips out so that the pair of women realise he is no longer there. Caecilia stops him before he goes, calling out his name and rushing across the room. Her slippers pitter-patter across the stone flooring and she grips his arm like she never wants him to leave. His heart thuds against his chest. She stares up at him as if the night was dark without him, as if he hung the stars up above her head and promised her light forever.
He would, if she would look at him like that again.
"Thank you so much for this." She throws her arms around his neck and presses her body against his. She smells of lavender, a scent she must have brought with her from Highgarden, and he knows he will carry this smell with him for the rest of the day. He quite likes the thought. Imagine the surprise on Randall's face when he sits beside him at lunch and all he can smell is his wife on him. "I owe you a debt," her words are a breath against his ear and he settles the feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He knows she does not love him, but he can pretend when his eyes are closed.
"For my wife, I would do anything. I do not intend to be repaid."
Her lips press a soft kiss to his cheek and she pulls away, still smiling. It is the first time he has seen her truly smile since she arrived at Horn Hill. She has never been a very good liar – she must think him silly, but he knows better than to point her mistruths out to her. Better she think him unaware than know the true reality he is choosing to ignore.
She hates this place and she hates him.
"I shall be at lunch with my family. If you wish to join us or you need anything, we will be in the hall."
He turns and leaves, the door swinging shut behind him. The ghosts of Tarly past follow him through the oak door and all that is left are two flowers of Highgarden to enjoy revelry he will never understand.
Caecilia grabs a jug of wine and two goblets.
"Shall we talk, then?"
"Let's call for food." Lunette reaches for a goblet of wine and downs half of it in one go. Travelling is thirsty work. "I would not wish to get drunk on my first night here."
Caecilia laughs as she sips at her own wine. The grapes here are not nearly as good as the ones in Highgarden. "Trust me, you will be getting drunk every night just to stand this place."
"It cannot be that bad."
Her eyes float back to the window, half-expecting a golden-haired Lannister to come crawling through in order to save her. But, no. It is just her and her best friend stuck in haunted hallways that will never be a home no matter how hard Trevyr tries. The sky is grey outside and the clouds are growing closer together, rain gathering to fall around them like a sheet that forces them to stay inside where wind whistles between the cracks in the walls and water splashes onto them from the windows. Nobody is saving her from Horn Hill.
"Do you miss your family?"
She thinks for a moment. Of her mother's bitter laugh that cuts through guests who fail to amuse her sadistic pleasures. Of her father's inability to remember who they are as his age creeps up on him with claws that scratch like a beast against the floorboards. Of her brother's narcissistic way of finding his reflection in every surface while his wife trails quietly behind him, chin ducked into her throat, glowering beneath pretty silver eyelashes. Of her younger sister's rage stirring beneath her navel, tearing them apart in her mind as she flicks through book after book on human anatomy she steals from their Maester's library. Of her youngest sister's innocent giggling as she races through the gardens chasing the birds until her hands are covered in scratches from the rose bushes and the crows get a taste for blood.
How could she not miss them?
"Every day." There is an empty hole in her heart where the faces of her family fade into ghostly shades as the days grow ever longer here in Horn Hill. She will never be able to fill it. "Just as I am sure you will miss your father and brother."
Lunette's fingers tap incessantly on the bronze stem of her goblet. "My brother has left to join the Night's Watch." Caecilia's head snaps over to her handmaiden. "I shall never see him again. I shall never be his sister again. He will most likely die of the cold before he ever gets to kill a wildling and we will never know."
Chilled tears cling to her eyelashes.
Caecilia leans over to wrap their hands together. Lunette does not look up from the swirling red wine in her goblet, afraid that thinking too much about her brother's fate will reduce her to tears that never stop. She will use up all the water in her body crying over her older brother, a boy who was caught stealing just to feed one of the crying children in Flea Bottom. He had been there for months, trying to help the poor, the sick, the ones without a roof above their heads. He'd been working in a local blacksmith. And then, one day he was caught by the City Watch stealing bread and she will never hear from him again.
Her brother – a stranger forever more.
"Acrux will make a good Crow. I am sure of it." Caecilia runs a thumb over Lunette's knuckles. It is meant to soothe her. It does nothing more than enrage the tears already stinging at the back of her eyes.
She blinks them away as fast as she can.
"Please, Cilia, let us talk about something more fun. Tell me of Trevyr."
Caecilia's laugh is the spitting image of her mother's. A sound so unlike her it curdles the hope flaring in Lunette's chest. The innocent daisy of Highgarden has been plucked from her soil and forced into artificial grass – they have turned her into nightshade so deadly it kills the roots beneath her.
"Trevyr is hardly a fun topic to talk about."
"But what about your... nighttime activities?"
"He tries for a baby and I lay there."
Lunette stares, aghast, at her best friend. She takes a long sip of her wine, blonde hair flowing free around her shoulders, barely hidden beneath the slipping shoulder of her emerald green dress. Back in Highgarden, she would adopt the braided hairstyles of all the ladies of the Reach, most of the hair curling gently down her spine while the rest of it was twisted into simple braids that required no more than a simple glance. When was the last time she braided her hair? A dribble of red wine slips over her chin and she roughly uses the back of her hand to wipe it away.
How can Lunette turn back time and take them both back to Hightower? Where they were free and happy. Where they were more alive in the sun than anyone else. How does she turn this shrewd Tarly into the charming Tyrell who could make flowers grow from trodden earth?
"Do you not wish for children?"
"I do. But not Tarly children."
The unspoken words hang between them.
Lunette has known of Caecilia's secretive wanderings with Jaime Lannister for as long as they have been going on. The whispered confessions of love beneath moonlit skies. The clandestine kisses with roaming hands. The conspiratorial glances. Lunette has known all of them almost as soon as they have happened, having been kept up half the night listening to the Lady's secrets.
"You should not talk like that, Caecilia. It will do more harm than good."
And so she does not, for the rest of the afternoon as they drink wine and pretend to be merry in the tower guarded by cloaked ghosts waiting to fit their gnarled fingers around their throats. Caecilia is a prisoner and Trevyr Tarly is her shackles.
Lunette is supposed to be the key to getting out of here.
But what should she do when the key has started to rust and love lies bleeding on the carpet beneath her feet?