Dancing with Dragons, Playing with Fire

And she grinds weirwood into his wine, to chasten him, to show him the error of his ways, to drive him mad: all at once.

The old gods show her the future, the past, the present. It is all true, and yet a sunset is gold then pink then red, and just like that, she must put one vision before the other, in the right order, or she will have the waggon before the horse. She knows his beginning and his end. She knows the blade by which he will meet his end. She knows the man against whom he will wield it. There is a bitter irony in it: undefeated, even in death.

Alys sees all this, and yet, the future is hazy, and more oft than not does she understand, truly understand, the weirwood dreams only when it is too late.

She is a barn owl, cursed to live in human form. She is one with the rivers and the earth and the trees, and yet here she is, in an ill-fitting roughspun gown, grinding weirdwood roots and bones and feeling tired with her work.

He barges in once again. Alys is not surprised, and neither is he.

Daemon, who distrusts everyone, even guileless old Ser Simon, is at ease around her. Does he know? That she is the root of it all? That he owes his nights and visions to her?

Perhaps he does. Every penitent welcomes penance, however recalcitrant they might appear at first glance.

Daemon sees horrors, yet he recognises the truth in them.

“You truly are an odd sort of woman,” he says, as he finds her preparing pastes and teas once again, in the darkest hour of the night.

He has said that before. He does not know what else to say. He is glad to see another living soul, to have a heart near him that is beating, like his own. He is no man for shadows and dreams. He likes a foe of flesh and blood.

“You are an odd man.”

They all told her he wants to be “Your Grace” but he does not much look like a Grace now, in his nightshirt, his hair a tangle, and his grip around his sword handle much too tight.

This is a man at his lowest, confronted with his lowest.

Crimes. Sins.

“What are you preparing?” he asks, with a hint of that suspicion that is his signature otherwise.

“Salves,” she only says. It is true. Alys rarely lies.

There is some of the juice she drops in his wine at dinner on the worktable, but he has asked a different question.

“Grover Tully died.”

“So I heard.”

He does not ask from whom. Daemon will not confront the darker powers at play here, will sooner believe himself the victim of overindulgence than the victim of gods. 

“The boy will ready my army.”

Every single word is a shield. A good man needs no protection from the truth.

Alys smiles and grinds a handful of beetles.

There is a pause. Daemon stares at her and she knows which impulse he is fighting. They all want to know. And then they curse her.

“Have you seen it?”

A man brought down. Low. 

She turns around to face him and finds him much closer than she had thought.

“The army?” 

Alys knows what it is he means. All men fear death but this man fears defeat. It is peculiar, since he is so well practised at it.

Daemon cannot ask her. His tongue would stumble over the words and his pride would sooner take his breath than voice his fears.

Alys raises a hand to his cheek. Her fingers are red with weirwood juice and blood but he does not flinch. Daemon Targaryen is a man well accustomed to bloody hands.

Three red streaks like claw marks.

Alys’ fingers linger. The warmth of him. 

She felt that when he battered down the castle doors and interrupted their dinner.

How hot the blood of the dragon runs.

Alys' blood is cold. How many has she seen born and raised and slain? Her heart has remained cold throughout the years. A barn owl cannot care for a man. It is not in her nature.

Her dark eyes find his. Violet. It is such an unnatural colour. Alys has always loved the purple flowers in the godswood, but they too are dangerous.

Daemon's gaze is wild with fear. She knows the look. In the sea of dreams and dread, he is a drowning man. 

And like every drowning man, now that he has found purchase, he will not let go.

When he reaches for her waist, Alys drags her fingers down to his heart. The juice leaves marks on his nightshirt. Should they find him dead on the morrow, they might blame the ghost.

Alys looks up. His face is hovering above hers. It is not desire that moves him, not this time.

Daemon is a man in pain, looking for the only comfort he knows.

Aegon's wife has often seen him go into the city and return the next morning, still in his cups, with his doublet lost, his breeches unlaced and the rank smell of brothel all over him. It was always humiliating to find your husband unfaithful, but worse than the sting of infidelity was the public shame that came with it. She could see it in her ladies’ eyes: a mixture of glee and pity, to see one who had risen so high reduced to a spurned wife.

It had not always been so. When her father had given her to the prince in marriage, he had been proud. She had been the prettiest maid in all seven kingdoms with her golden curls and deep green eyes. A true Lannister. And Aegon had been charming. She had rescued him from a marriage to his own sister, all because her father had insisted that she be wed to the prince to forge the alliance Princess Rhaenyra had once turned up her nose at. And Otto Hightower had agreed, knowing full well they would need the westerlands in the war to come.

She had been so proud to wear the red and black and green of her new house, always chased with gold. And how she had loved Aegon at first sight! Her handsome prince. Her love. Her knight and champion. She had known before their wedding that he would be a wonderful husband, a doting father, and a great king, like his namesake.

The only fly in the ointment had been the prince's younger brother. Aemond had called her father greedy, and her a prize calf. Perhaps he had been annoyed that he would now have to wed Helaena, who was only half as beautiful as she herself. Or so her father had told her when she had come to him crying. Aemond was always kind to Helaena. She remembered how surprised she had been when she had first seen him with her, how quiet, how gentle he had been with her. She had doubted her father's words then, and anyway, no marriage between them had happened, so it had all been wrong.

 Now, it was not Aemond who made her cry, though he still looked at her with derision. It was her husband, who'd sooner bed every unsavoury whore in the city than his charming and beautiful wife.

A few times he had lain with her, and it had been sweet enough. She had been well prepared not to expect the same sort of pleasure her husband felt, so it had all been well. To hear him moan and shudder had been enough for her. But now, he would moan for another woman, and find his release with her. And she would be blamed for the lack of an heir.

Had she known back then, when she had been a little girl despite her looks, how this marriage would turn out, she would have begged her father to wed her to one of his bannermen. But no such luck. 

She was the prince's wife, and would be his queen should he ever ascend the throne, and would one day have to bear him his son. That was her duty.

Half a dozen times had she resolved to go to his chambers and seduce him, only to do her duty. She had had a nightgown made for that especially, daring and well-cut, so that everyone in the room from the seamstress to the guard had ogled her. It lay, folded carefully, in the chest at the foot of her bed, and a few times she had donned it only to lose her courage at the last moment.

She had envisioned it all: how she would enter Aegon's chambers, where he would be drinking with his knights and followers. How she would let the cloak fall to her feet and stand in all her beautiful glory before them. Aegon would rise from his chair then, not at all drunk yet, and, with his eyes on her, would send away his friends, who would leave reluctantly, eyes only on her. Perhaps one or two of them would stumble over their feet, too distracted by her beauty and she would help them up and chuckle good-naturedly. And once they were gone, Aegon would make love to her the way he had once, before they had even been wed, and fill her with his seed. A few moons later, she would give birth to his heir, and they would call the silver-haired, green-eyed boy Jaeson to honour their alliance, or perhaps Aegon, she had not quite made up her mind.

But for her dreams to come true, she would have to act.

That night, when her maid had combed her hair until it looked like molten gold and left, she put on the nightgown, fastened the hooks and laced it up tightly to cinch her waist and lift her bosom. It was more uncomfortable than a court gown, but it was a good pain, as she knew it made her beautiful.

She donned her green velvet cape to hide the revealing gown and set out to visit her husband.

Aegon had decreed that her chambers should be far from his, so as not to wake her at night, and the halls of the holdfast were draughty and cold this late in the summer.

At last, she reached his door. None of his usual guards stood vigilantly at the door but that meant little. Often her husband asked them inside to drink and gamble with him and his friends.

But as soon as she had entered, and closed the door carefully so as not to disturb the queen – and, in truth, not draw attention to herself in this state – she saw that she had come in vain.

The table was littered with cups and flagons of wine, playing cards lay in puddles of wine and ale, bowls of bread, oil and cold meat were becoming a feast for flies and other vermin. 

She was too late. They had already moved on into the city, where now some whore earned her pay under him or on top of him, if he was already deep in his cups.

And it was all too much. The disgrace, the indecency of it all, and Aegon's sheer ignorance, worse, his open and downright disregard for her after all she had done for him. 

She seized one of the flagons – no doubt fine Myrish glasswork with a brass handle shaped like a proud dragon – and threw it against the wall with all her might. It shattered not, as she had hoped, into a thousand pieces. The glass was thick and well made, and the flagon had only broken in two, the curved front with its spout now in the fireplace, the other half with the dragon handle on the soft rug in front of the fire.

This failure to truly wreak havoc only enraged her more, and a glass chalice and a finely carved clay bowl followed. Soon enough, the floor was littered with shards of glass and pieces of broken stoneware.

She was out of breath now from the effort, and her cape had long slid off her shoulders to pool at her feet like a forest pond.

Her heartbeat quietened as she took in the sight of destruction around her. There was no need to panic, no one would suspect her. It was like Aegon and his cronies to leave the chamber in disarray for the servants to clean up.

Not even Aegon would know. He would have forgotten the events of the night before sunrise.

At first, it had felt good, to see it all go to ruin, to see it broken beyond repair, just as she herself felt at times, when she saw them all laughing, when she was once again alone in her chambers, with no one to call friend, when Aegon had once again made her the butt of his joke, or flung some insult at her in his cups.

But now that the rage had abated, it left her cold and empty as a grave.

She turned towards the door to leave and froze.

Her good brother stood there, the door closed behind him, his one eye trained on her with an unfathomable expression.

She had never heard him enter. Had she just thrown something against the wall when he had come in?

It was just like him to stay and watch while she was at her lowest.

She loathed the way he looked, his moon pale hair smooth and silky, and bound back with a simple ribbon, his long, harsh, scarred face, his sensitive lips, and his one eye, periwinkle blue and staring at her.

How could a man so cruel be so handsome?

Now that she was facing him, he surveyed her attire dispassionately and she knew he had deduced why she had come here as swiftly as only Aemond could. 

She would have felt better with her cape on but could not bend down in the tightly laced nightgown, and even if she could, her bosom would tip out of the low neckline and it would all look very grotesque and inelegant, so she stood still as a statue.

“He has long left for the city,” her good brother informed her tonelessly.

“Thank you,” she replied, though her tone made a barb of her gratitude. “My husband has left his quarters in quite a state.”

Aemond's lips pulled into a smile like a longbow. So he had been here for some of her performance. Good to know.

Would he tell on her? He loved her little, yes, but he hated his brother.

“Mh.”

“I meant to pay my dear husband a visit,” she said, because she loathed the way he shut her down with his cursed little hum.

“What is your excuse to be here?”

His gaze travelled over the broken cups in reply.

Of course, she must have made a racket.

“I was awoken by the noise, too,” she lied, daring him to object. “So I went to see if my beloved husband was hurt.”

His smile intensified. Naturally, he enjoyed himself most when he was playing cat and mouse with a mouse that gave him a chase. 

“You should not have left the safety of your chambers,” he said, and that was the longest sentence he'd ever directed at her. “You might have got hurt.”

What a tragedy that would have been, his mocking smirk seemed to say, my brother's upstart wife struck down at his side.

“I'm now a princess,” she said, although they all still called her lady, but her father had said so, “I'm free to go wherever I please.”

“Free?”, his voice was delicately inflected and she thought he was being derisive, but there was something else there too that she could not place, “you are bound up like a fish in a net.”

“Well, if you are lucky, your own wife will one day make an effort with her appearance as well.” She put her hands on her hips and the fabric of her tight sleeves dug into the soft flesh of her upper arms.

Again, Aemond made no reply, though his smile had lost its amused edge.

For a long moment, he stared at her and fear rose inside her like a morning sun. He was known to be fierce and terrible when roused, and he could not bear being taunted. Aegon had done it once too often in the yard  and Aemond had been pulled off of him, fists bloodied and mad rage in his eye.

She only noticed that she had edged away from him when her hip made sharp contact with her husband's dinner table.

Aemond turned around without warning, and it seemed he meant to leave –

“Why?” she asked, and Aemond halted with his hand on the door handle his back still to her.

“What have I done wrong? I have done my duty, I have smiled for him, dressed for him, I have done everything he wanted and yet –”

Aemond did not turn around. 

“I shouldn't be asking you of all people, I know you think I deserve this for reaching so high. I'd wager you're pleased that he's humiliating me.”

“No,” he said at last, and turned around. “You should not.”

That was the straw that broke the mule’s back.

“Fine. You've always looked down at me and my family, but let me tell you that Lann the Clever has settled here many thousand years before the Targaryens. Let me tell you that my ancestors needed no dragons to conquer a kingdom, their wits sufficed. Go on, talk about how I am an upstart, greedy, ambitious. But remember that you were a boy when you set out to claim the largest dragon in the world, the dragon who lost his rider less than a week before. Look me in the eye and tell me I am overly ambitious, I am greedy, but know that you are the same. Do you think I do not see the way you look at Aegon, at the throne, the crown? Do you think I do not understand why you study the histories, philosophy, geography, like a young king should? Because you lust for a crown, just like I did. And let me impart this wisdom upon you: it is not worth it.”

She meant to storm past him but his hand shot out and suddenly, she was with her back against the wall, the door handle just out of reach, and a very angry Aemond Targaryen was towering over her with a thunderous look on his face.

A part of her, the one that logic and thinking did not reach, was cold with fear.

He would not harm her, she thought, not here, not her, his good sister. He knew she was the key to the west. He was no fool. 

But he made no move to let go of her neck, her waist, and his body did not allow her so much as a twitch.

Gingerly, she tried to wrench free her left arm, caught between their bodies, but only succeeded in pressing it firmly against Aemond's hard stomach.

“Let me go,” she said and tried to push him away. Aemond was slim as a lance, though tall and strong, and he wouldn't move.

“You hate him,” Aemond said, giving no indication that he had heard her.

He seemed surprised by this revelation, as if it was somehow strange and unheard of that a spurned wife might loathe her husband with all her being.

The rage that was so close to the surface these days erupted once again: “Of course I do. Did you think you were the only one he humiliated? The only one he likes to make fun of, taunt, play fool's games with? Ever since one night, he was too soft to do his duty, he's taken it out on me, he's shamed me with his whores, taken them to bed, paraded them around the keep for all to see. He has a dozen bastards by now, but no trueborn son, and that is seen as my failure, not his.”

She had never told anyone about that night. How he had laboured on top of her, reeking of old wine and other things, how he had tried and tried to get it in with fumbling fingers, scratching her skin down there, bruising her thighs. And she had asked him to stop, to try again some other time, but he refused, told her to shut up and bear it silently.

“A son,” Aemond repeated softly, and there was something sinister in his tone. He was taller than her, though not by much, and she could not escape his gaze. Intense. Questioning.

And she understood.

A way to pay back years and decades of humiliation.

At the cost of righteousness, of morality, and, if it all came to light, at the cost of their lives.

She threw all common sense to the wind and kissed him.

~Aemond~

Her vehemence took him by surprise. He had never thought she would agree, let alone agree so readily.

For years had he loathed her, her and her greedy father whose bidding she did at all times. How she had revered Aegon, with large, bidding eyes, grateful for whatever shred of courtesy he bestowed upon her in his grace.

And Aegon had been pleased enough with his bride at first. That had angered him, too.

How perfect they had been, the golden prince and the golden princess.

But then Aegon had shown his true colours, as Aemond had long known he would, and his wife had not faltered. She had continued to admire him, be soft and gentle with him when she should have raged.

Raged as she had today.

Aemond was glad now that he had come. She was pretty but he had never had a taste for beauty. Had never had the opportunity to acquire it.

What he had seen…the heat of her anger, her destructiveness.

All her treacherous softness was gone, her simpering smiles, her honeyed voice.

He, and he alone, saw her how she really was. Raw. Angry. Wanting.

The ease with which she betrayed Aegon, the swiftness with which she had kissed him. Aemond could taste desperation and fury on her lips. It was a powerful aphrodisiac, he knew best.

There was no man who could stand up to Larys Clubfoot, sneaky and treacherous as he was. But there was a woman who could. She was thrice widowed, with a dangerous sort of beauty that should warn men of the dangers that lay in her alluring eyes, her blood red lips, underneath her silken skin.

But men were fools and she liked to draw them in, and ruin them.

For the longest time, she had played her own game: a dead husband here and there, an obedient lover, an obsessed knight. But when she had come to the Red Keep, the stakes had grown, and she with them.

Men liked to tattle, women liked to share the gossip they had picked up on during the day, and the widow of Blackcrown shares her bed with them, her wine or friendship, whatever was required to hear what she needed to hear.

In time, she had drawn the eye of a prince, and his desire protected her better than any armour.

Larys Clubfoot wanted her gone, but a prince’s whore could be as powerful as a queen and she had long made her throne in Aegon's bed, and Tyland’s, and a dozen others.

Did Larys loathe her for the power she held? Did he lie awake at night and dream of besting her, like she did?

He was the one person at court whom she could not win over, the one man who proved invincible to her charms.

Sometimes, he would come to haunt her in her chambers, always giving some threadbare excuse to threaten her, or goad her. And so he had come today, to speak of soldiers and whores.

“You are a shrewd man, Lord Larys,” she said, without any regard for his threats, “though few will ever see that. But you pay your spies in silver or gold – and I have a purse you cannot match.”

She traced his cheekbone with one long finger.

He followed her with his eyes, grey like cruel midwinter frost.

“It seems an…affliction has befallen many of those who have frequented the street of silk of late,” he said, and although his face was a mask of pity and his voice carefully inflected to suggest the same, she realised that this was his great moment of triumph and the true reason he had come here today.

“An affliction.”

“A disease caught from some concubine, no doubt. Many of those women hail from the Free Cities and the uncivil lands beyond.”

“It does give one occasion to pause and contemplate our construct of civility, does it not?”

“Indeed.” He inclined his head. “For now, my prayers are with the afflicted. Such a terrible pox befalls them. Many are disfigured afterwards, if they survive the disease, that is.”

“I understand why you must empathise with those poor souls. But let their fate not burden you overmuch, my lord.”

“I shall heed your counsel, my lady. Only the most depraved fall victim to it, or so word has it.”

“So it begins. Yet, if it should befall those of gentler birth, of the gentlest birth – why, I am certain the origin of this disease will be found and uprooted.”

Larys Strong only smiled. He was not fool enough to spread the disease to Aegon's brothels. And yet…was there a way to limit the spreading? If so, she needed to find it, and quickly, or else her business would soon run dry. Larys seemed to believe that she opened her legs to any man she asked for a favour, and good for her he did.

But it was the promise of her cunt that moved many a man to do as she pleased. With a pox as terrible and dangerous as that, not only would she herself be at risk, no, the promise of coin would lure more men than her smile.

“I do pity the whores,” Larys said, and there was little of his usual softness remaining, “how will they earn their keep when their purses…run dry?”

“A dry whore is as useful as wet firewood,” she agreed amiably.

Larys Strong had no taste for the whores on the street of silk. He preferred his bed warmer crowned and reluctant. And when the queen was indisposed, rumour had it his tastes were perverse and strange, and those women that had to satisfy him never talked to anyone again.

She knew what he liked.

As she leant against the table and stretched out her legs, the hem of her gown rode up to reveal her slippered feet.

It was a dare.

Larys looked down on cue, and for a moment, his eyes rested on what she had bared to him.

No stockings. That alone was scandalous.

Her slippers were velvet, soft and clinging like a lovers’ embrace, and left much of her feet bare.

Her ankles were just visible underneath the hem of her gown.

When he looked up at her again, he was smiling.

“Those women are never out of tricks, though,” she said.

“Cheap tricks.”

Larys did not look down again but she sensed that he wanted to. And he wanted to do more.

Her obvious seduction attempt had shifted something between them.

And now, when he wanted to subdue her, he would think about ways that would be gratifying for him.

~o~

“Lord Larys.” She welcomed him into her chambers. “You bring happy tidings, I trust.”

“Indeed. It seems the Silk Street pox has vanished as quickly as it came.“

It had indeed, and turned out not have been a pox at all but a concoction made by some northern witch. A few drops had been enough to make boils appear and hearts slow, and soon enough, the panic that had followed had ferried some more poor souls to the Stranger.

She had caught wind of at all not in the city, but here, when a vial had been attached to a scroll for Lord Larys. He had taken great pains to hide it, her little lover had said, and had succeeded in doing so even from the maester, yet not from him. She had bedded him in return, but by morning, the boy had fallen down the serpentine steps and broken his neck. She considered herself innocent on that front. Larys was thorough, and it had been folly to observe him so obviously. She loathed to lose faithful informers, but he had tasted the sweet nectar of her cunt and oftentimes men became less loyal after that particular promise was fulfilled, so all in all it was no loss she couldn't cope with. There were two score where the page had come from, and there was a never ending supply of foolish, cuntstruck men.

The only exception stood before her.

“How wonderful,” she said and gave Larys' her most seductive smile. “We must drink to that.”

She led him to the table in the centre of the room, then slowly poured a fine Arbor vintage into two cups.

Larys had followed her to the table without a hint of suspicion in his eyes. Did he desire her already? Had he come not only to bring her these tidings and find out what she knew but to see her, smell her, maybe taste her?

He plunged his hand into the folds of his doublet but not to open the clasps, she realised with some disappointment, when he produced a ring.

It was an ugly thing, with a thick band made of yellow gold and set with a large, square onyx. She knew it well: her first husband had once given it to her as a nameday gift.

“Have you by any chance seen this ring before?”

She took it carefully and examined it, saw where the stone had been filed down to hide the carving it had once borne, the ill-fitting seams of the heavy gold band where it had been widened.

That had been done at Oldtown ten years ago. She doubted the jeweller was still in business, it had been a small, dinghy little shop far away from the cobbled main street. Not even Larys could know.

“I cannot say I have. Is it yours?”

Larys smiled. “It was found in the pocket of a soldier.”

“No doubt he stole it.”

“He sings a different song.” Larys' pale grey eyes were trained on her.

“A bawdy one, no doubt.”

“Not so much, no. And won't ever again, I'm afraid.”

“Poor creature.”

She seized the cups to offer him one, but froze as her fingers wrapped around the brass.

Had the right one not been closer to the edge of the table? And the other one had been further away from the pitcher.

She turned to look at Larys, whose eyes still rested on her. He looked calm, very pleased.

Had he switched the cups?

It made no matter. The antidote was in her pocket, and smeared over her lips.

If he thought he could trick her this easily, he would soon have to reconsider.

She gave him the right cup, then raised the left.

“To justice.”

He replied in kind, and drank deeply. She did the same.

The wine was sweet and heavy. She drank again, to prove a point.

“A good vintage,” she said and licked her lips until the antidote coated her tongue bitter and waxy, with an odd sort of aftertaste.

He nodded and took a measured sip.

“I have come to request your aid,” he said, slowly.

“You flatter me, my lord. How could I, a lonely widow, possibly help the Lord of Harrenhal?”

There was no man who looked at her like Larys Strong. His eyes were soulless and cold, his gaze unwavering, never lustful or heated, always intense, always calculating.

“Maester Mellos was quite troubled. He had found that his study had been broken into.”

Ice flooded her veins.

“The door is rarely locked, I heard.”

“Indeed. Are you not curious how he knew someone had entered without his leave?”

Her heart beat furiously in her chest.

“I had thought you would enlighten me momentarily, my lord.”

“Something was stolen.”

“How terrible.”

She blinked. The light of the candles was strangely blinding.

“A rare poison.” His voice was a seductive whisper.

“Not deadly, I hope.”

Her voice sounded breathless.

“Very, I fear. It heightens the senses at first, quickens the heartbeat. It is most…stimulating for a while as the blood flow is increased. And then, after a few hours, the heart gives out.”

“How gruesome.”

A treacherous throbbing began to spread between her legs.

“In the Free Cities, they call it Widowmaker. Many a wife has found her husband dead after coupling. Did not your first husband's heart give out one night?”

“A horrible tragedy. I still remember how the light went out of his eyes that night, as we made love. But he was an old man, and liked ale and venison overmuch.”

“Mh.”

Larys considered her for a moment. “The poison was not all that was stolen, however.”

“No? A greedy thief.”

“There was another vial Maester Mellos found missing. It had been erroneously labelled as an antidote to the Widowmaker poison.”

“That is a curious mistake to make.”

“Do you not wish to know what that second vial contained instead?”

“Of course.”

“Mainly beeswax,” he replied, “mixed with something quite revolting, if you catch my meaning.”

She took a swallow of wine as the first wave of lust took hold of her body.

Larys smiled.

“I remember you saying you came to ask for my help.”

“Yes,” his voice was soft, almost a caress, and it stroked something inside her. She needed this man between her legs, she needed his hands, his tongue, his cock.

Her laboured breath filled the silence for a moment, as he took in the effect of his workings with unhidden delight.

“To justice, you toasted. I have come to ask which punishment you consider fit for this thief.”

“Have you found him then?”

Larys took a step towards her, then rested his hands on his cane. “I am drawing closer.”

“Good.”

“It is customary for a thief to lose their hand, and for a liar to lose their tongue.”

“Mayhaps they could put both to good use, though.”

She opened the first clasp of her overgown. The chemise underneath was thin, almost translucent. Larys’ eyes dropped to the neckline but there was little interest in his gaze.

She raised the hem of the gown.

“Mayhaps,” Larys agreed. “Though there must be some form of punishment.”

“I suppose the Lord Confessor has other ways of punishment? Less….bloody?”

His grip tightened on his cane, the only indicator that he was not as calm as he pretended to be.

“Certainly. To break a man's spirit – or a woman's – can be just as…righteous as to break her bones.”

His voice…cruel, hard, and yet so soft. She rubbed her thighs together to calm the pulsing desire between her legs but to no avail. Larys watched eagle-eyed, his lips slightly parted in a smile, the wet tip of his pink tongue softly caressing his lower lip.

“Some do not break easy though, I trust.” Though she no longer felt invincible. She would die within a few hours, poisoned by what she had given her first husband the night he'd chosen to bed a chambermaid instead of her.

There was some justice in that, she supposed, and the sort of bitter irony she could appreciate.

What she could not appreciate was the way the poison began to cloud her judgement and take over her body. She had long wanted him to want her, wanted to drive him mad with desire, and now he had turned the tables on her with alarming ease.

“All break eventually,” he said, gazing at her curiously, “Though of course, should the thief have accidentally sampled the poison, thinking the antidote is at hand, the thief will not give me a lot of time to get a confession.”

“The antidote. I trust Maester Mellos still holds on to it?”

“He thought it best that I store it safely, just in case the thief makes another attempt.”

“And you keep it in a secret hideaway, I suppose.”

“No.” Larys raised the other cup, the clean cup, to his lips and took a measured sip as he made her wait for the answer she needed. “I have it on me.”