Beneath her feet the ground had frozen so cold it almost burned, but Sansa moved with unrelenting speed that sent the chill wind ripping through her hair. She was running so fast that she couldn't see the blurred faces of those surrounding her; she didn't know if they were human or animal. But they were hers, and she was theirs. Somehow she knew this without uncertainty or doubt.
An inner howl built up inside of her, one that swelled with both panic and joy, but she couldn't open her mouth to release it. Her teeth were sharp and they cut her lips for all the things she could not say. And then all at once the others around her fell away, receding into the trees, and her feeling of uncommon joy subsided. She was alone and it struck fear into her heart. Everything was hazy, snowy, and cold, and though Sansa strained to see she could not. In the grey surrounding her she could just make out-
There was a sudden jolt, a jerk of disequilibrium-and suddenly Sansa was awake and sweating in her own bed, bedclothes fisted in one hand. She was not bitterly cold; beneath the blankets she was in fact uncomfortably warm, and her heart was pounding wildly. With a shallow, irregular breath she pulled herself up against the headboard. Her mouth hurt, and she lifted a hand to see blood there: had she really bitten through her lip? And there was a noise that Sansa struggled to identify, one that grew louder as the unfocused dread left over from her dream pooled darkly in her stomach. Then she realized what it was. It was footsteps.
The canopy was yanked back abruptly and Sansa squeezed her eyes shut instinctively against the intrusion.
But her sudden dread ebbed away to see it was only her maid Shae, standing silhouetted there in the crisp morning light. "Wake up, Lady Sansa," Shae said in a low voice, and leaned over to turn back the bedcovers. Her hair fell in a dark aureole about her face, keeping Sansa from meeting her eyes. "You have a visitor."
"A visitor?" Sansa drew her naked knees up to her chest, tugging her nightshift down over them with anxious fingers. She felt disoriented and dull, still mired in the gray landscape of her dreams. "Who is it?"
For a moment it looked as if Shae did not want to say, black eyes snapping in her thin pointed face. Finally she straightened and put both hands on her hips, her look halfway between apology and remorse. "It's the Queen Regent, my lady."
"The Queen Regent?" Sansa repeated in surprise.
Shae turned her head, moving to the chair to fetch Sansa's dressing robe. "Yes, she's come to see you. And you must hurry, for she wants you up and dressed."
"But I-" Sansa rubbed sleep from her eyes to focus on Shae's face. The morning light was bright, but the day somehow already felt dark. "Shae, why is she here?"
Shae's entire body looked like a warning, her narrow shoulders stiff and mouth compressed into a tight line. She shook her head briefly. "I don't know, Lady Sansa. But you must not keep the Queen waiting."
She reached for Sansa, and with a head that felt sluggish and slow Sansa stood and was hastily tied into her robe. She went slowly out of the bedchamber, glancing hopefully back over her shoulder at Shae, but then wished that she had not. The clouded look on Shae's face only made her feel worse.
And when she turned her eyes forward, base fear clawed at her to see Joffrey's mother standing in the middle of the solar, looking as beautiful as anything the gods had ever created.
"I've a present for you, Sansa," Cersei Lannister announced. The queen was lovelier than ever in a high-necked gown dressed in garnets, golden hair arranged in ropes on her head-but the contrast of the hard-faced Kingsguard members at her sides made her unearthly beauty seem almost sinister. Sansa took one look and drew her robe more tightly closed, as if that could serve as any sort of protection from what was to come.
"Thank you, your Grace," she heard herself say, voice surprisingly steady.
The queen extended one arm in its trailing silk sleeve. From the corner of the room came the queen's handmaiden bearing something shimmering and silver, and at Cersei's signal the woman let it tumble gently to the floor. Despite her fear Sansa caught her breath admiringly: it was a gown of silvery satin, vair, and lace that unfurled like liquid made cloth, and its material beauty was unparalleled.
"Do you like my gift?" asked the queen, turning to Sansa. "Go on. Take a look."
Obediently Sansa stepped forward, delicately running her fingers over the silken contours of the gown. It felt wrong to appreciate the sensual beauty of the dress when she had to fight not to tremble, but so it was. She paused after a few moments, looking cautiously to the queen. "It's such a generous gift, your Grace, but... Why should I merit such an honor?"
"Please," Cersei said, but her smile didn't reach her eyes. She veiled her hands in the sleeves of her gown and compressed her lips, waiting. "I'm certain it will look even more beautiful on you."
Before Sansa could speak, even to say a mere yes or no, Cersei's woman put one hand on the small of Sansa's back and whisked her behind the dressing screen. "Do show us," the queen's voice said behind them, her words as crisp as brittle bones. On the opposite side of the screen Sansa's maids descended as if they'd been lying in wait there like the obedient denizens of a dovecote, reaching for Sansa with sharp fingers and heads downturned like silent birds.
Naked and bewildered, Sansa stood unmoving and outwardly docile as the women cleaned her body with scented sponges. She let them dress her in silk smallclothes, delicate doeskin slippers, and finally her new gown, not saying a word even when the laces were pulled tight enough to make her gasp for breath.
This could be anything, Sansa tried to tell herself as her heart pounded wildly and her mind raced, merely an innocent gift. But hadn't she learned many times over that no gift from the queen was ever innocent?
"Do you-" she said in a low urgent voice, trying to meet the eyes of any of the women who moved around her, "do you know what this-" But the serving women had eyes and ears only for their task: none seemed to hear her but Shae, who paused to put a comforting hand on Sansa's cheek for just a moment before continuing to work. And Sansa was forced to resign herself to wait.
When Sansa finally emerged from behind the screen, moving in the small, restricted steps that the gown permitted, the Queen Regent looked up quickly. Her eyes flashed for a moment with something Sansa did not want to recognize, before her full mouth curved into a cold smile. "You are beautiful," she said, taking Sansa's arm and leading her to stand before the mirror.
Something stopped in Sansa's throat at her reflection. She was a vision, the waist of her gown nipping in where snowy white satin met crushed vair and dove-grey lace, long dagged sleeves nearly trailing the ground. It was a gown that befitted a true queen of winter-and long ago that would have delighted Sansa. But now all she felt was icy disconnect as she stared at her own image, as if the girl in the mirror were someone she did not know.
Something warm brushed against Sansa's throat, and she snapped back to attention with a little shock. The queen was running a surveying hand over Sansa's exposed neck, stopping to place two fingers under Sansa's chin. Sansa swallowed, stoically meeting the queen's eyes, but Cersei did not look back; instead her gaze wandered almost languidly over Sansa's body in a way that was both rueful and appreciative.
"It suits you," she said, voice tinged with some unreadable emotion. Sansa suppressed a shudder as the queen's hand dropped again to the hollow of her throat, lifting the thin chain and the pendant that hung there. Sansa glanced in the mirror, and her heart almost stopped when she realized what the queen was studying.
It was Margaery's snowdrop flower, the necklace of silver and aquamarine she'd given Sansa the day they'd played at make-believe in her bed. Sansa had not taken it off since. "Very pretty," the queen observed without emotion.
Sansa swallowed, suddenly gone very cold. "Thank you, your Grace."
"But I don't think it suits your new gown," the queen went on, raising both hands to delicately unfasten the clasp. She extended her hand with the necklace dangling from it, and from the corner of her eye Sansa saw Shae step forward to take it.
"Much better." The queen stepped back, gesturing to the dressing table. "Sit down, Sansa." Sansa hesitated, glancing towards Shae.
"Now, Sansa," said Cersei, voice silky with impatience, and Sansa flushed and obeyed. The bodice of her dress was laced so tightly that it was difficult to sit properly, her breasts pushed up like ripe fruit. In the dressing table mirror she could see the Kingsguard standing at not-so-blank attention, many cruelly surveying her with unhidden interest. A spasm of fear clenched her stomach and Sansa looked away.
"Your Grace is too kind," she ventured, folding shaking hands in her lap. "But I-I don't understand why..."
"Here," said the queen as if she did not hear, or see Sansa shaking, and offered Sansa some different scents to choose from. Giving up for now, Sansa sank into the seat and selected something lemony. The queen bent to dab cosmetics onto Sansa's face as the maids worked her hair into an elaborate style to rival the queen's own; unable to move, Sansa studied Cersei's face as the older woman worked. The queen was so beautiful, grace writ into every sculpted golden angle of her face, but there was something cruel and defeated in her beauty, too. Sansa could have studied the queen's face for days, setting her learned fear aside, but that didn't ease the apprehension that leapt in her with every stroke of Cersei's long fingers.
At last the queen rose to her feet, motioning for Sansa to come stand before the mirror. Cersei lingered a step behind, her head hovering just over Sansa's shoulder like some foreboding angel's. In their reflection, the queen's expression was as inscrutable as Sansa's was dully blank. "Beautiful," said Cersei evenly, as one might comment on something displayed on a wall: a portrait, or mounted animal's head. "You look like a woman now."
There was something terrible in the way she said it, calling up shadowy memories of all the times she'd spoken thus to Sansa before. Suddenly a wave of dark suspicion hit Sansa, and she drew a breath that was murky and thick with disbelief. She turned slowly to the queen, unwilling to believe, stupid with denial. No-it can't be...
But the queen had already turned from the mirror, summoning her woman forward with a wave. "I've only one more gift for you today, Sansa." The lady-in-waiting stepped forward with one last garment in her arms, one that tumbled to the floor as she moved to affix it about Sansa's shoulders-
And the instant Sansa saw the Stark direwolf scratched out in seed pearls, emblazoned like a battlefield beacon across the snowy white back of her maiden's cloak, she knew.
All the air left her lungs and she gasped for breath as if she'd been physically backhanded. White flashed before her eyes. Sansa stumbled backwards but she was so clumsy in her confining dress, like some lame animal that had been caged for so long it no longer knew how to run free.
"No!" she screamed in panic, bolting for the chamber door, but Meryn Trant caught her before she had gone even a few steps. She struggled violently in his grasp, bending forward over his sturdy arm and tripping on the hem of her gown. "Please, no!"
The queen looked on with a hard, dispassionate face. "You must do your duty, Sansa."
Gods, no, please... Sansa still didn't fully understand what was happening, but as things coalesced with icy clarity a sense of slow awfulness descended on her. Her blood seemed to chill in her veins, tears springing to her eyes. "No," she repeated desperately, twisting in the Kingsguard's arms. "Please, my queen, I don't-"
Cersei moved forward, taking Sansa's face in her hands in a way that was cruelly maternal. Sansa flinched from Cersei's grasp, but the answering flicker of displeasure on the queen's face made the Kingsguard twist Sansa's arms even more tightly behind her back. Sansa whimpered in pain, taking a deep breath and surrendering to the queen's hands. "You look beautiful, my little wolf," Cersei said coolly and somewhat tragically, smoothing her thumbs over Sansa's tearstained cheeks. Her golden brow was smooth, unworried. "Far too beautiful. It's more than that monster deserves."
Monster?-Sansa thought in fevered confusion, but even that terrifying word was overshadowed by what Cersei had said first.
You look beautiful. The words caught in Sansa's mind, echoing the person who had last said them to her: Margaery. The unbidden thought, profane almost in this nightmarish context, twisted in her chest until she wanted to scream in agony.
And suddenly Sansa saw things quite clearly, as they were and as they'd always been-how Cersei must see them. For hadn't Cersei Lannister accidentally given Sansa this, given her and Margaery to each other? Sansa knew instinctively that this was Cersei's revenge, and yet it was much more than that, too. Cersei would not have had the power to orchestrate this all on her own; she was merely taking her victory where she could find it, and that was at Sansa's expense. Of all the Lannisters Cersei was the most desirous to exercise her power: Sansa's life was merely one of the few chips with which she had to gamble. And thus the order of this awful world was reaffirmed, with Sansa at the very bottom.
Helpless tears sprang again to Sansa's eyes, and the queen narrowed her own. "Now don't cry," she said with sweetness that hardly masked her disgust. She delicately dabbed at Sansa's tears with her sleeve... and Sansa had the sudden perverse inclination that Cersei would lick them away, savoring the taste, if she could. That Cersei loved seeing her suffer, and cry, and learn. "Tears may be a woman's weapon, but you'd be a fool to waste yours on me. Nothing was ever changed for me, no matter how many tears I shed."
But you've taken everything from me. Sansa sagged in the grasp of Meryn Trant, suddenly feeling no older than when she'd first met the queen as a silly girl full of romantic ideas. What had truly changed, since then? She'd still clung to a dream-still stupidly believed that her life would have a happy ending. She had hoped against hope that because she'd found happiness with Margaery, perhaps everything else might also be happily resolved. But it turned out the world had not finished stripping her of her dreams, one by precious one.
"You must be strong, Sansa," the queen said philosophically. "You can struggle and cry and make a scene, or you can go with your head held high and be strong. A woman's strength is all she has." She looked intensely at Sansa, and Sansa fought her tears and stared back. Cersei looked almost curious, one eyebrow quirking up with weary rancor. "You do understand me, don't you?"
Sansa nodded. She suddenly felt very tired-and she did understand the queen, in some terrible way. What else can I do? "Yes, your Grace," she whispered.
The queen nodded at the Kingsguard, satisfied, and straightened up to her full height. "Very well, she's ready. Let's go."
Limp as a marionette, Sansa was marched from her rooms in the arms of Osney Kettleblack.
Much to her surprise it was Tyrion Lannister who stood waiting outside the castle sept. Shock clawed through Sansa's disorientation to see him. Back in her chambers she'd been unable to think further than the maiden's cloak on her back-she hadn't spared a thought for the identity of her unwanted groom. But the way Tyrion looked at her now, his expression a guarded amalgam of apology and courtesy, made Sansa struggle for her composure. It hurt almost physically that beneath the little man's resolute expression flickered a fragment of what looked like genuine hope.
He was kind to me once, she thought with strange, calm detachment; panic burbled up in her chest, but she swallowed it back down. Yes, Tyrion Lannister had stepped in when Joffrey ordered her stripped and beaten before the Iron Throne. No one else had spoken for Sansa then. It seems so long ago, like that was some other Sansa and some other Imp. But it was true-Tyrion Lannister had been kind, and that made Sansa less afraid. And he is not Joffrey who, despite what the queen says, is the true monster in Lannister colors.
"My lady," said the dwarf, inclining his oversized head to her, and Sansa took a deep breath and willed herself to be charitable.
"My lord." She gazed down at him, intending to say more, but suddenly turned her head away. Sideways she saw him hesitate, standing the height of a mere child at her feet. But her eyes had again begun to fill with tears and Sansa couldn't look at him again, she simply could not.
She heard Tyrion draw a deep breath, and he spoke so carefully that he seemed to be measuring out his words. His voice was smooth and surprisingly pleasant: a kind voice, which only made it worse. "I am sorry, Lady Sansa. I had no way to inform you of this marriage beforehand. And my lord father, for reasons of his own, felt that secrecy was necessary. But-"
Sansa inclined her aching head and looked down at him, saw how his mismatched eyes were wide with emotion, making the mangled red gash that remained of his nose even uglier. He was trying so hard to make this less painful for her. She couldn't hold back a shudder.
He flushed, continuing with dignity that was admirable. "You could be wed to my cousin Lancel if you wished. That might be preferable. He is also a Lannister but closer to your own age, a sight easier on the eyes than I am, and-"
"No," Sansa interrupted. If I am to marry a Lannister, better the devil I know. How like a game this all was, exchanging one pawn for another: they were all just pawns, fooling themselves into believing that they were players. Cersei and Tyrion Lannister were hardly better than Sansa herself, for it was clear that neither of them had any true hand in arranging this sham of a marriage. "No," she said again in a flat tone. "I am a ward of the crown, and my duty is to marry as the king commands."
"As you will," said Tyrion, something almost like relief coloring his voice. Sansa looked away, stomach turning.
He seemed to expect her to speak again, but all she could do was close her eyes. Time stretched and snapped in hellish, elastic moments, and presently-mercifully-the Imp's figure receded and went away, leaving Sansa to wait there alone. She could make a run for it, she realized, in between shallow, agitated breaths, but she was utterly aware of Osney Kettleblack's presence at her back.
And even if she did run, where did she possibly have to go?
Like a vision from some nightmare Joffrey Baratheon appeared at last, all golden hair and gleaming teeth in a monstrous smile. Sansa felt her head begin to spin, mouth tasting of acid and blood. "What are you doing here?" she demanded, shrinking from him as he stepped closer.
The king smirked, adjusting the gilded lion's-head clasp at his neck; he was attired as richly as his mother, a velvet cape slung across his chest and sword riding at his hip, and looked as handsome and merciless as a god. "I'm your father," he told her magnanimously.
Sansa bristled, lips curling around her teeth. "You're not."
"Today I am." Joff smiled at her with nasty delight, smoothing down the crushed velvet sleeves of his doublet. "Your father is a dead traitor and someone must stand in for you. It's quite a privilege to have the king give you away at your own wedding, you know. You ought to feel honored."
She longed to spit in his face. "I'd sooner die."
Joffrey tsked. "Watch your tongue, you Stark bitch. That can easily be arranged." He paused unpleasantly. "Although I suppose you shan't be a Stark bitch for much longer, shall you? No, after today you'll be a Lannister bitch, in a Lannister kennel." The way he looked at her, smiled at her, made Sansa's blood run cold. "And just because you'll be married to my uncle doesn't mean I can't make you do exactly as I please."
A nightmarish sense of queasiness overtook her. Sansa bit the inside of her lip so hard it almost bled to keep herself from vomiting, and she had no answer. Looking as if he knew he'd won, the young king smugly offered Sansa his arm and then grabbed her hard by the wrist when she refused him.
It was time for the wedding ceremony to begin. Together they entered the castle sept, the great doors swinging wide to let them pass.
It was like a waking dream. Joffrey's grip on her arm hurt terribly, but the pain was almost sweet in that it was all that anchored Sansa to the ground. Each step down the aisle increased her detachment, peeling her out of her own body until it seemed she were merely observing the scene from some place amid the gilded sconces that hung low over the crowd, and it was some other poor girl being led through the sept like a sacrifice to the cruelest of gods. The bowels of the sept churned with half-familiar faces that blurred together, a silent painted pack of witnesses to this crime of a wedding. In the air was the mingled scent of perfume and overripe bodies, as well as the sickly sweet smell of incense, the acrid stench of centuries of religious decay.
Back on the ground, Sansa raised her head in the hazy ambient light of the thousands of candles that lined the sept in enormous candelabras, smoking and raising the temperature. She walked slowly, only vaguely aware that she had to keep moving. That was until she remembered with a spurt of unfamiliar hope to look at the people in the crowd, to see if perhaps, just maybe...
But no Tyrells were present at this wedding. This Sansa saw with harsh and disorienting disappointment, scanning the crowd with her heart in her mouth-there were the members of the Kingsguard in their white cloaks, cloaks nearly as white as her own, but no Ser Loras. Lady Olenna did not stand in the first rows of the highest-ranking attendees, and neither did-
No, she realized with a sick sinking feeling, here were only Lannisters and their kind, Lannister retainers and allies and court hangers-on like that accursed Taena Merryweather. There was no one she knew or loved. With this realization Sansa at last gave in, no longer fighting back the tears marring her vision. She let them fall, streaking her face with wet heat.
No one seemed to notice that the bride was crying silently throughout the ceremony, or if they did, no one cared. How can this be real? It's too awful. Joffrey, her father's murderer-posing as her father. Her wedding, which she had always imagined as a joyful occasion straight from a storybook, glowing in a haze of true love and attended by her family-being realized as this surreal nightmare. And perhaps most poignantly-she, Sansa, wrapped in a maiden's cloak, when she knew down to her very bones that she was no maiden. Not after Margaery. Not any more.
But none of that, Sansa recognized as the tears came faster, nothing that had passed between her and Margaery, all the kisses and promises and lovemaking, had stopped her from being bundled off into marriage to a man she hardly knew, from the family she most despised. No. It hadn't changed a thing.
But how could you truly think that it would? said a voice in her ear, horrible in its logic.
Margaery has never even told you that she loved you, and you thought it would somehow be enough? Her promises never meant anything-see how she has failed them now. Playing at love in another girl's bed is hardly the same as saying the sacred vows of marriage; it was never enough to shield you from something like this. Now look what has happened.
Sansa sobbed, dizzy with pain, but the prayers and vows and singing were never-ending. Swaying slightly she focused on the lights of the candles instead, breathing as deeply as her tight dress would permit; and she was a world away, staring at the unchanging looks on the faces of the statues of the Mother and Father that stood resolutely on either sides of the marriage altar, when there was a tug on her dress that made her suppress the urge to gasp.
She glanced down to see her husband gazing at her, his face a world of stifled recrimination, shame, and pride.
She could not even fathom the weariness that overcame her to look at him. She saw his pain and recognized it, but she could not bear it. I can't take on your pain as well as my own, she thought, and her heart hardened with resentment. She turned her head away and would not kneel for him to change her maiden's cloak.
But then, as the onlookers' laughter mounted throughout the sept, Sansa relented with a hot flush of shame.
Why should I punish him? He surely had no more will to be there than she did; this marriage was not his fault. How selfish she was to think this way. She turned to the Imp, kneeling, and apologized to him with her eyes.
"With this kiss I pledge my love, and take you for my lord and husband," she repeated after the High Septon, suddenly resigned to it. The sooner this ceremony was over the better, perhaps, but-what was to come next? She remained on her knees, suspended in dull acceptance of the moment, and looked to her new husband as she waited for his kiss.
"With this kiss I pledge my love, and take you for my lady and wife," Tyrion echoed hoarsely. He leaned forward, and Sansa grimaced as she accepted his dry brush of his lips to hers. She straightened to her full height, crimson bridal cloak lying heavy across her shoulders.
The Septon raised his crystal into the air to say the final words, rainbow light thrown down onto the marble floor of the altar. "Here in sight of gods and men, I do solemnly proclaim Tyrion of House Lannister and Sansa of House Stark to be man and wife, one flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever, and cursed be the one who comes between them."
At the foot of the altar, Cersei Lannister turned suddenly to gaze up at the new man and wife, and Sansa felt a horrible shock as if she had been burned. The Queen Regent had a terrible dark look on her face, and when her green eyes locked with Sansa's they ripped through Sansa like claws. And yet suddenly, for the first time, Sansa felt she understood the queen with complete and awful clarity.
Is this how you felt on your wedding day, your Grace? Is that why you spoke to me as you did? Is that why you did this?
The congregation began to murmur and sway, making sounds of exit, but Sansa could not take her eyes from the queen. The queen glared back, proud and haughty and haunted in the rosy light of the sept, and her mouth tightened grimly as if to say: Now do you see?
Yes, Sansa saw. She took it in with icy vividness that seemed to touch her very veins. Cersei must have once stood on a marriage altar like this, and she must have been just as disenchanted and horrified as Sansa felt today.
Who was it you loved, Cersei? Who did they take you away from?
Oh, she ached. Would that she never wanted to make another woman learn the cruel lessons of life as Cersei had taught her this day-but Sansa knew, with ragged weariness, that you never could tell, and she watched numbly as the queen turned to leave the castle sept, trailing after Joffrey as he made his grand exit. No-you never knew what life would make of you, or what it might turn you into. And you never knew what a broken, shattered, furious heart might make you do.
Her wedding was over. It was done, and she was wed. Sansa's entire body felt dizzy, light, and blackened as the charred remnants of a fire, as if she had come into the sept whole but would leave it only ash.
Yet she could not rid the look on the queen's face from her mind.