if not, winter.

Your legs hurried onward, refusing to let yourself rationalize your feelings until you reached the privacy of your own quarters. Only once inside your room, surrendering to your remorse, could you slam the door shut with a bang and cry out:

"Seven hells! Why?!"

Alone, you uttered countless curses and repeated What have I done? over and over as you paced across the floor of thick, finely crafted wooden planks, stirred by the turmoil within.

There are bluffs that are calculated—false clues laid before an opponent to conceal one's true strategy—but they require control. Your lapse in calculation before Martyn had not been a move. It had no logic of gain and clashed grotesquely with the cold elegance of your own rules. Stupidity! Stupidity and madness.

Your hand seized the golden doorknob and turned it as you struggled to breathe, for inside your chest your heart crackled like a funeral pyre. You knew you could undo the mistake. Right now. Return to Martyn's chamber and tell him that exhaustion and fright had driven you to say "yes"—blame the frailty inherent to your sex and never mention Ormund. Martyn, with a heart greater than his own good sense, would forgive even that, though disappointment would weigh heavily upon him.

Though the path seemed simple, you released the doorknob and struck the wall instead. You were trapped by your own doing.

For if you withdrew your acceptance, you would be admitting—aloud and to yourself—that you had accepted out of pity, and that your ambitions had been stricken by the compassion you felt for Martyn. You had always hated useless sentimentality as one hates a defective baby: with disgust, yet unable to cast it away.

So you would cradle this newborn kindness, fragile and obstinate, because turning back would be worse. It would mean admitting that, for the first time in your eighteen years of life, pity had proven stronger than your own will; that you had been kind without calculating what you would gain in return; and that this weakness had cost you everything you had spent your life building.

You gave action a reprieve over the following days, preferring the solitude of your chamber. You avoided people like the plague, not even joining the Hightowers for breakfast under the excuse of illness. Of course, it was no hardship to lie upon crimson silk sheets and let your body rest, if only your mind had known the same peace—which it was far from doing. Day and night, your thoughts were relentlessly assailed throughout that idleness.

On the third day, you decided to stroll through the castle very early in the morning, imagining that few people would be awake at such an hour. Even so, you avoided the great hall and the places where passersby were most common.

It was in vain.

Gwayne Hightower had hair of a reddish gold, tall in stature, with handsome, delicately shaped features. Though melancholic, he was reputed to be an honorable and courageous man, and a knight. You would have liked to be one yourself had you been born a man—or else a seafaring merchant like Corlys of Driftmark, able to win fame and treasure without having to offer yourself to lords.

You met him descending the staircase leading to the castle's fifth floor. Upon noticing you, the Queen's brother politely approached and greeted you with a kiss upon your hand.

"Good morning, Lady Pommingham," Gwayne said. "Are you on your way to see Martyn?"

"Yes, Ser." Lies came easily to you, always did.

"I've just come from his chambers. He's still asleep," he informed you. "The maester is treating my cousin with medicine for the stomach pains he complained of last night. Remnants of his illness. They said he'll likely remain like this for hours."

"Poor Martyn. I've been praying for him." Your throat tightened with discomfort—guilt, perhaps.

"You may wait with me, if you'd like. We had arranged to practice swordsmanship this morning, and he'll be disappointed if I leave without honoring our agreement, even if he's asleep."

He began walking as though expecting you to follow, which you did not do at first.

"I can scarcely hold a sword," you replied with a puzzled frown.

"Ah, of course. I thought perhaps we might replace fencing with something else."

"Cards?"

"I'd rather play more civilized games. There is a chessboard in the reading room. There will be people there, naturally." Gwayne spoke with effortless amiability. "I'd rather lose to you than explain to Martyn why I broke a promise."

And here you had thought Ormund was the only snob in the family, only for Gwayne to appear claiming himself too refined for cards. He had spoken so quickly that you found no opening to retort, nor did you possess the spirit to do so. Regardless, when he headed toward the recreation room, you followed.

Gwayne walked with his hands clasped behind his back. His steps were gentle, befitting his serene bearing, moving like a shadow. You followed with a shameful longing, for secretly you yearned for another human being's confidence and counsel—someone who might lighten the burden of your secrets and soothe the storm within.

The letter you had begun writing to your father had ended up filled with questions about the sixth month's harvest, inquiries into his health, and long, useless descriptions of the Hightower. You could not tell him what truly troubled you, nor could you confide in anyone else without inviting judgment. The only exception—the only person who would understand—was Ormund himself. And he did not count, for he was the very source of your miasma. Such was the solitude of the wicked.

The reading room was not the only one; you knew there were at least three in the Castle in different locations, and this one seemed the smallest of them. Lord Gwayne wanted privacy, that became quite clear, although the reason was not. There were four bookshelves in rows on its left side, upon bright olive-green carpets and, to the right, a sofa where an old maid was sewing a curtain and a table of black wood. Gwayne pulled out the chair for you to sit while he fetched the board and its pieces from a nearby chest. The game was arranged; He was white and you were black. No wagers were suggested to the honorable Ser Gwayne.

"I'm suspicious of this sudden invitation, Ser Gwayne." You said after minutes of silent moves. The knight showed a hospitable curiosity toward you, but not attraction, as men usually did. It was irritating, but it relieved you as well.

"I simply saw you and thought you would like some company." He moved the bishop forward, his voice calm as a lake. "Though, I must admit, this closeness between you and my cousins intrigues me."

"It's an inspection. You came to see for yourself. Please, don't do that; You won't like me once you analyze me."

"If you take my last pawn, perhaps." He made a joke, but his tone was always so serious that there was no humor in it.

"Patience, Ser. Feelings have no place at a gaming table. A good player keeps it free of ornaments, including them." You captured his queen with a pawn, smiling and gesturing that it was his turn.

"Feeling is a disgrace, not an ornament, unless it leads us to good deeds." Gwayne turned his neck, exposing his delicate nose and profile, to look at the old maid, who had fallen asleep.

"A disgrace, indeed. But good deeds, to me, are only what we do to make ourselves happier."

"And what about others?" When he took one of your rooks, you gained room to advance your knight into his side of the board. Then you said:

"There are no other people. There is you, and there is the World."

"It frightens me that you think that way, but trying to refine your theory from my point of view; Each person has their own world. Mine is fatally gloomy, because there is light in surprising places, and I am bound to it."

"An idealist! You think flowers are born in ravaged fields."

"And indeed they are. That is why all that remains for me is to serve my World." Gwayne ended his self-philosophy, sighed, and ran his hands through his hair while considering his next move. Waves of polished copper fell beautifully upon the moonlike pallor of his face. You lamented so much beauty in such a pathetic creature. When he finally played, Gwayne continued speaking: "My cousin Ormund, for instance, lives in a twilight world and derives the greatest satisfaction from exercising power over others."

He was the last thing you wanted to talk about, even though you thought of him all the time. Ormund. The name alone squeezed you like a lemon, dried your throat and, if you weren't careful, even the color of your skin seemed to fade. You were nothing but a skeleton, calcium and dust, every other element surrendered.

"Was that how he treated his wife as well?" You asked, with the calculated lightness of someone who was merely curious out of politeness. Yet a question like that inevitably sounded suspicious. "Or does he reserve his tyranny for the men of his own family?"

Gwayne, apparently calm, always placid, carried a trace of contempt in his voice: "He reserves it for those who allow it."

"And you allow it." You subtly mocked.

"I am a knight, my lady. I swore to serve House Hightower, not compete with it." He straightened himself in the chair, an almost automatic gesture of discipline, as though his own body remembered its vows before his mind did. "Ormund likes to remind me of that whenever he can, and in public. He asks whether a man without lands or heirs should truly have an opinion on how to govern a House that will never be his. Yet the man who insults me would sacrifice the life of the entire Realm for his own gain, his own children included."

You did not see self-centeredness as a vice and, yes, Ormund was a ruthless man, but you could have forgiven him if someone else, instead of Martyn, had been the victim of his scheme. The greatest agony was that you still longed for him, even though you no longer dared to have him. Thus, at Gwayne's words, you no longer knew what to say, so you said nothing at all; exactly the space he needed to continue.

"When we were children, he was a temperamental little twat. I always let him win."

You laughed, despite yourself, imagining a bossy little Ormund with that roguish smile of his; Gwayne did not. Your laughter died.

"I still let him win, my lady. Only now we call it loyalty instead of cowardice."

That seemed to be the reason Gwayne had twice as many captured pieces as you did, making him the least likely to win that match. A host of conformities to obedience, honor, sacrifice, and the appearance expected of a man and a knight had run through his life since the innocence of childhood, leaving him a man of omission. Ormund's presence in Gwayne's life sounded like the perpetuator of those conformities; he was a devil to many, you knew, because he was yours as well.

"My apologies," he said, moving a knight without any real need, merely to have something to do with his hands. "I shouldn't have spoken of that. It's... tempting to unburden oneself to strangers."

You gestured no and showed your understanding before clearing your throat:

"You didn't answer about his wife." Gwayne raised his brow and moistened his lips, considering what he would say. "Did she fall ill?"

"Succumbed would be the proper word. About a year, more or less. The old maester said one thing, the new one another—we changed maesters twice during that period. Something malignant in her stomach that resulted, in the end, in a tragedy." Gwayne held one of the pieces, fell silent into a grief slumber, and you had to remind him to make his move.

"What was she like?"

"She was kind. Rowena, her first name." He took a deep breath, with no weight at all in his voice; it was a dry sorrow. "She adored Ormund and adored a perfume he had made for her, near the end."

Jealousy subjugated your entire soul, poison burned in your vision. You wanted to ask Gwayne whether Ormund loved the damned "kind" Rowena of the wealthy House Ashford, but you knew your scorn would become obvious, so instead you asked:

"What was the perfume made of?"

"Maiden's Lemon Blossom, I think, with something stronger underneath. She wore it every single day—even after she could barely get out of bed."

Maiden's Lemon Blossom, just like the perfume that was yours alone, or so you had believed until the terrifying epiphany. Lady Hightower had worn it faithfully until she died. Your throat tightened and the game continued in silence, while within you there was frantic terror. You had forgotten the danger your king was in, Gwayne's rook only two squares away and yours farther still from taking it: his thoughts were occupied with the horrors of his past and the unspeakable misery that weighed like a nightmare upon your heart.

"I've lost, I think." Your voice was laced with uncertainty.

"Look again." Gwayne said with a smile at the corner of his mouth, leaning toward the board.

Then you saw that your knight could kill his king.

"Check." You murmured without much spirit, making that exact move.

Gwayne made an empty move, only because it was his duty, refusing to attack you even though he could destroy you. You reached forward for victory and had already extended your hand to make the final move before the knight withdrew his own, and your fingers brushed softly against his.

Gwayne swallowed dryly, but through your black knight, the white king was captured. You had won the match, proclaiming, "Checkmate."

The thought crossed your mind that, if Gwayne had let you win, perhaps the conclusion of his analysis was that you were similar to Ormund.

———————————————————————————

You tossed a million times between the sheets in a fruitless search for the oblivion of sleep — all you could think about was the moment, on returning from the game with Gwayne, when you'd smelled the vial of perfume Ormund had given you. Amid the maiden's lemon and clary sage, a sharp, bitter note of wild boldo had risen up, and your hand shook so badly you spilled the syrupy liquid down one forearm.

You weren't learned enough to know whether the wild boldo was truly there in the fragrance's structure or was a fabrication of your disturbed imagination, nor whether it was poisonous to the skin the way it was by ingestion. Even so, in immeasurable dread, you spent the rest of the day scrubbing and re-scrubbing that patch of skin. By the end of the day, exhausted, you lay down to shiver in the infernal heat of the early hours, your mind churning over the possibility that Ormund had killed his first wife with a poisoned pomander, and would soon kill you the same way. Those morbid theories faded with the arrival of sleep, late as it came.

Three heavy sounds broke through your rest, but they seemed random at first, so you stayed limp in bed. Before long the sound repeated, and your senses connected the knocking to something calling from the other side of the door. You threw your body off the mattress all at once, walking dazed, bat-blind, toward it.

There was nothing outside the room but absolute emptiness, even looking left and right. Without torches, and yet, Hightower was always lit whenever windows stood open, thanks to the splendid blaze of its perpetual flame at the summit, the glow pouring down in gradients to the lower floors.

Certain the corridor was empty, you turned to go back to your chamber, but a pungent smell of maiden's lemon and wild boldo drifted from something far off. So sweet it became oppressive, your stomach turned, a throb starting behind your right eye, and yet you kept following the trail of the scent, because that curious longing had taken shape in you like a kind of spell! A dread of this nature, as it occupies and expands the mind and lifts it into great suspense, leads one to seek out the very object one wishes to flee.

You stepped into the gardens adjoining your room, lit by the beacon-fire, which painted the vegetation a grotesque, living red — a place somewhere between hell and a slaughterhouse, fit only for murderers and demons to dwell in.

When the vision found your admiration — Ormund seated beneath an apple tree like a host at a banquet table, except the buffet hung shrieking from the branches in a horrifying cacophony — your horror and your rapture were both ecstatic. In the tree's wide canopy: dozens of sparrows, a swan with a broken neck, a dozen ravens the color of pitch and ivory; each one singing in its own way, wailing, desperate cries, for all of them were wounded and voiced their torment in blood spilling down onto the table below, their combined sound a song of suffering and screams of fire.

Your cruel lover looked at you like a gourmand, his eyes black with hunger, undressing you layer by layer, slowly, like an artichoke, to reach your core and taste its musk.

"It burns like hell." You pointed out.

"It burns like passion, sweet maiden." The host smiled at you the way he always smiled, the smile that made any woman forget her objections — except a malevolence beyond anything diabolical stained his handsome face this time. "Sit."

He rose to pull out your chair with his usual courtliness, all tenderness, and before returning to his own seat, gripped your shoulders and kissed your hair.

"How do you stand this awful smell?" You kept scratching at your nose, badly irritated by the putrid, ammoniac reek of carcass.

"Because you're with me. You, your perfume dispels the stench, and the loneliness." He inhaled you like a dog, you realized.

"The smell of your poor dead wife." You accused.

"The truth is, no — even though it's the same synthetic fragrance she wore. Maiden's lemon blossom, sandalwood, clary sage—"

"And wild boldo?"

Ormund's laugh was like a soft hiss, like tearing silk, filling your ears. "Not that, my love. Not in yours, not in hers." His fingers found your chin, turning your face to his with a gentleness that left no room for refusal. "It's a miracle. The same formula, the same vial, the same perfumer from Lys, two women. It doesn't smell the same. The skin changes everything, did you know? The body's warmth, the soul's temperament. I never... cared for that scent on Rowena. However, it suits you, the way I always imagined it would, but I needed to confirm that this is fate."

"Did Rowena sit at this table too?"

That irritated Ormund, who went back to sit facing you. He cut a piece of something on the platter — you didn't want to look at what — and brought it to his mouth with perfect refinement.

"Rowena never knew how to appreciate a good dinner. She complained about the smell, the taste, and in the end complained about everything, which is the most exhausting thing a wife can do. Rowena was squeamish!" Ormund shook his head, amused meddled with anger, toying with a napkin. "You're different, my clever huntress, my beloved victim. You want me, you want victory, but you must learn to stomach me."

His appearance was impeccable — in the blood-red moonlight everything was tinted crimson, but he was perfectly dressed in a dark doublet embroidered with fine metal thread. Curls of the most delicious sheen framed his roughly hewn but elegantly symmetrical face. Absolutely beautiful, if not for the thin trace of blood running from the corner of his lip to his chin — remnants of his dinner.

"Disgusted, my love?" He laughed, cruelly. "Everyone pretends disgust at what they really want, at first. Give me a few days, and you'll stop pretending too — or you won't, and that's fine as well. You'll be mine either way."

You stood to pour yourself a cup of wine, though really it was an excuse to be on your feet, ready to flee if you had to. With a sudden pull, he drew you back. You let out a startled gasp as the floor fled out from under you, and an instant later found yourself seated sideways in his lap. The cup tipped, spilling entirely over its rim across the table.

All you could do was watch as Ormund's eyes fell shut, as if in ecstasy, apparently savoring the sensation of your weight and closeness. Slowly, his eyelids opened, revealing a striking blue; soft, so tender, and for an instant, you almost believed that all the affection contained inside him was yours.

You loved him, just for a minute. You loved him and you burned for him and that dread was part of the power, before the shame began, and then the Terror. Ormund stepped out of his person masque to reveal himself as half Lord. Half Beast. The carnivore in the shape of a nobleman.

He is going to devour you.

The hand that had been cradling your face fondly slid down to seize your neck, planting a ticklish sensation that meant nothing next to the iron torque of his grip, pulling you into a hard collision with his mouth. You wrapped your arm around him, but whether to push him away or hold on, you never dared decide either way. Your throat was devoured in turn, his fingers pressing down on it without any lessening of their annihilating force.

"Ah, my lord." You cried. "Don't do this."

He only mocked your protests, and hooked his fingers into the neckline of your thin red nightgown, wrenching the fabric down, aiming to bare your breasts, and partly succeeding. You felt the wet touch of his thick lips, which had just been smearing themselves against your nape, kiss the soft mounds again and again.

With his free hand, you realized, with your mind clouded, that the skirts of your shift were being pulled up to gather at your belly. Naked from the waist down, Ormund began running his hands from your knee to the middle of her thighs. A timid finger slipped between the lips down there to test the waters—a mere gentle touch on her clit—which grew arrogant in a wicked dance with his thumb, which began to circle the clit once, then again… and again, until a wet substance began to seep from the hole below.

Within moments, his index finger was roughly sliding back and forth through your slit, moving incessantly. "Tight cunt, just as I imagined, my girl.” You bit your lower lip hard to stifle the sound, but you couldn’t hold back, whimpering slyly as he used you freely. The pain of penetration—because Ormund’s fingers were thick no matter how soft—was supplanted by an intoxicating pleasure. You feel as though you’re going to faint and die in his grip, but you’re not afraid of him; you’re only afraid of the vertigo, the vertigo with which he dominates you. Afraid of falling. Falling like the thousands of doomed birds that sway in the trees in spring, falling rotten in autumn, at the command of their master.

“You’re such a sensitive little thing,” he purred, seeming almost amused by your reaction to his actions. “If that’s all it takes to make you so obedient, then I can only imagine how close to servitude you’ll be when my tongue and my cock find their way inside you.”

Before long, you’re a chaotic mess of sobs and moans at the work of his hands, and as his thrusts continue to drive you to the peak, you thrash against the object invading you until Ormund orders you to stay still. The lips that suck and bite your neck, your throat, your shoulders, and your breasts keep you more adrift than anchored, as you come in his large palm.

As he withdraws his fingers from inside your virginity, Ormund licks his hand, sweaty and soiled with your fluids, saying he wishes you were small enough for him to swallow you whole.

Staring at you intently, you noticed his eyes were wet; soon he would be weeping with fatal bliss. The next sensation was the neckline of your nightgown tearing in two, leaving you nearly bare.

Then you felt the crimped velvet of his curls against your chest, then a tongue, sandpaper-rough, dragging across each tit. The suckling you braced for never came — instead the tongue dragged across your whole body and took skin with it; every lick tore away layer after layer, every layer of a lifetime spent in the world, leaving behind the first pale down of white feathers.

You saw Ormund from above now, and your head was run through by an enormous brown branch.

You let out mad, blaring trumpet-cries and greedy wheezing shrieks at the top of your bird's lungs, hanging upside down from one of the branches alongside the other victimized animals, and, like your companions, bled — until you woke in sweat-soaked sheets in the light of day, in your room at Hightower.

You parted your lips to scream, but your throat was parched. Clearly, you must have already spent your breath while asleep, in screams or in moans. Your cheeks flushed at the thought, and flushed harder still on noticing the musky smell rising from your underclothes.

Once your heart stopped racing its own loud explosion and your tears dried, you prayed quietly to the Warrior and the Father, that they might cut down those horrible torments, while convincing yourself to remain sane.

There was no red garden, no shadowed dinner — but there was a lone bird on your dressing table. Rising with a body exhausted by the pestilence of the nightmare, you walked over to look at the mounted sparrow. Beside it, a scented note, which you gathered your courage before reading:

"My innocent maiden,

Will you recognize this little sparrow? The very one your excellent arrow struck that day of the hunt, a day I myself could not have been happier to live through at your side. There I discovered that you were more dangerous than anything I had ever hunted, and infinitely more magnificent in skill and beauty.

On account of your beauty, you will find enclosed with this a pair of pearl earrings that belonged to my late wife, and before her, to my mother, and so on. They are genuine, from Lys, as promised. I ask most earnestly that you dispose of the fakes at once — imitations terrify me.

I would like to be delivering these costly gifts to you in person, and to watch your smile as you receive them. Your smile is, to the eyes of the lord who writes to you now, a caress of sunlight.

To my sorrow, your refusals to receive me, and your excuses, have piled up of late. I have noticed you growing more distant.

For now, I choose to believe it is the exhaustion of travel, or your concern for Martyn — you seem to have suddenly acquired too generous a heart for the less fortunate. I am a patient man, but even patience has a bottom, like any cup.

I await you at the ball, in two days. Wear my pearls. Wear my perfume. Be mine.

Your lord, always,

Ormund Hightower."

It was said that the Lord of Oldtown wrote ballads, and reading his letter, you could confirm it was true; in his seductive mastery of knowing how to threaten with love and compliment with venom.

The earrings in question sat inside a little brown silk pouch tied with a black lace ribbon, blending into the color of the wooden furniture, which explained why you hadn't seen it before.

They held a single peridot, set in a diamond shape, ringed by cultured pearls and other olivine stones. You were terrified by Ormund's very name, trying to convince yourself you didn't want to see him again so soon, but those jewels...

They were far too beautiful for you to pass up; you could only imagine how wonderful they would look on your much-admired ears, without even touching those poisoned spoils.

.

.

They're lovely to look at — otherwise young ladies wouldn't embroider so many of them onto handkerchiefs and tapestries, alongside fluffy unicorns and roses. In that sense, some people buy them to decorate banquet tables. In this economy, though, that's rare. Only what will be eaten gets bought, and since pomegranates are too much trouble to eat and give little energy back to whoever eats them, it's the producer of these beautifully useless red globes who suffers.

Your old father had, in his youth, been quite successful at reviving the Pommingham name — trade deals, turning fruit into liquor — but of his other children, only you were left, and that loss brought the promising Lord of SweetSeed low, into a silent lethargy that emptied both his soul and his purse. Unlike her husband, Lady Pommingham tried to outrun her grief by acquiring goods and luxuries, which sank the family finances — and, eventually, sank her into the grave.

Once the current Lord passed, the main Pommingham line would end. The lands and the castle would pass to an uncle, but that didn't trouble you. If being part of the main branch of this house wasn't already anything to boast of, you felt for the lesser branches, whom you imagined skipping lunch just to have something to eat for supper.

You wanted more than that. To acquire jewels at will, not wait a year to get a choker or a gold ferronnière on your name day. You were a girl who threatened to burst with more wants than she could ever satisfy, for lack of money. So at thirteen, you started gambling at cards with cousins, noble ladies, young men, maids — anyone willing to lose a generous sum of coin. That way, through your considerable talent, you could buy whatever you wanted beyond what father gave you.

For it was a talent you took pride in. After all, why would gambling be even slightly worse than any other way of getting money? Worse than trade, say? It's true that out of every hundred people, only one can win — but the Gods favor some more than others, naturally.

But even beyond his legendary trickery, Lann the Clever only secured his victory by marrying the daughter of Casterly. It was through marriage, then, that you would reach a higher social standing. You dreamed of being the Lady of a distinguished line, beside a handsome (and generous) Lord, with beautiful children who'd jingle gold bracelets instead of rattles. Unfortunately, in your first eighteen years of life, there had only been sons of lords from houses as insignificant as your own, or worse — all of whom you turned down. Fortunately, your father loved you enough to grant you the freedom to choose your own future.

That future was already knocking at the door, but a green bird appeared at the window at just that precarious moment. A mature bird, handsome and rich.

Ormund Hightower, Lord of Oldtown, had been widowed at forty. As for money and charm, no one in the Reach would say there was a better match to be had — but there were a few drawbacks. He already had four children from his first marriage, so whichever woman married him would have to accept her own children starting at fourth in the line of succession, at best. Which, on the other hand, narrowed Ormund's options — and the competition for him. It was the perfect opportunity, and you weren't going to let it slip by.

Love was a strong word. You desired to marry him.

Desires born in the heart belong to the horde of the irrational — they flare up like sparks in a fire and die in the air. Desires cradled in the mind, instead, are more focused, if less enthusiastic. The mind knows itself too well, criticizes itself relentlessly; it never exiles thought in favor of passion, since passion itself is built on nothing but a structure of thought.

Youth cannot tell the two kinds of desire apart. Every passion born in a young body is ontologically foolish — they wouldn't be young passions if they weren't foolish. You had never been such a fool before as when you chased after Lord Hightower.

Whether at court or at feasts. During dances, or in the mere pause to fetch a cup of wine, you would find your way to him for conversation. You pursued him into every corner, and he noticed.

The worst part was your persistence. That, and your youth — barely eighteen summers gone against his forty winters — but it wasn't the age gap or the obvious obsession that repelled him most. It was those doe-eyed looks whenever you stood before him: almond-shaped and sweet, endlessly foolish, fixed on him like a devotee before the cloister. At first, Ormund found it rather amusing. Charming, even — what middle-aged man wouldn't be pleased to receive so much attention from a lovely young face — but the charm wore thin fast.

That was because you'd clung too close to him during last week's hunt — Ormund hated clinginess, and besides, you hadn't struck him as particularly interesting. He was an admirer of beauty: pretty scents, pretty flowers, pretty songs, pretty women. Since you'd bloomed, you'd always belonged to that last group, with your long, shining hair, your teeth like poppy milk catching the sunlight. Nothing more than that was worth noting, in his opinion, at that moment.

So he abruptly stopped the encouragements: the compliments on your good taste and beauty, the jokes, the offers to refill your wine cup, the brush of his masculine fingers against your sleeve as he handed it back full. You'd become tedious in his eyes. So tedious that Ormund no longer bothered to meet your eyes.

It was awful to notice his sudden loss of interest — a man once committed to dancing with you at least once at every ball, who used to share a few funny bits of gossip near the drinks table. Never before had you liked someone who fit so conveniently into your dreams of grandeur.

Realizing you'd miscalculated badly, there were no tears, because any move can be redone, and should be redone. At cards, the second greatest thrill, after winning, is losing every last chip to a merciless opponent. When a crushing defeat comes, any great player knows what to do: double the bet, never leave the table.

So today, when you arrived at the Hightower estate and ran straight into the blessed man himself, you could feel his disdain hanging in the air, mixed with his perfume.

There was always rosewater and clove trailing Ormund's every step; and, above all, freshly cut herbs — not the parsley chopped for stew in the kitchens, but rosemary, sage, and the blue of lavender from a maester's workshop when a cure is being prepared. A fragrance of comfort, one that stirred the sick awake and promised recovery.

Sometimes you'd briefly close your eyes to catch Ormund's scent more precisely whenever you were in his presence. Today, there was no such moment of olfactory worship.

For Ormund, used to mocking you in his thoughts, the little time you spent bowed in greeting was already too much. He already found the whole thing terribly tedious. Until he noticed that you hadn't been looking at him at all, but at something standing behind his broad shoulders.

Your smile went to Martyn, visible behind his father, messy and tall as ever.

Deliberately avoiding Ormund's eyes, you focused on the seventeen-summers-old boy. Then you feigned shyness and lowered your blushing face. Let Ormund see how pleased I am with his son.

The young noble hurried over to over his greetings, bringing a bouquet of hibyscus and dahlias to present to you. The bouquet sat cradled in his right arm like an infant, leaving his left hand free to press a warm kiss to yours — a bold gesture for a noble not yet formally courting you.

"How kind of you to invite me to your castle." Your voice came out sweet and lively, brimming with vitality, as you greeted Ormund's second son, who two years younger than the heir, Lyonel — already married, to your misfortune; because the first Heir would've been a better second option than Martyn.

Side by side, father and son were like an almost perfect copy of one another.

The same dark blue eyes, so dark they nudged the onlooker's memory to forget their blue and see black instead — though they caught the light in different cadences, showing that the core of the father's gaze was of a different nature than the offspring's. Besides that, it was the same strong jaw, the same broad nose, the same endlessly full brown curls that not even time could thin.

A cruder comparison might say that if Ormund was the king, then Martyn was the jack. More accurate, though, would be to say the two men were the duplicated figure of the monarch on the card. They weren't exactly identical in looks — some very small thing set them apart, so slight that a less careful eye would barely catch it, were it not for time's cruelty, staking its claim across Ormund's face in harsh lines.

"Hello to you, Lord Ormund. Good afternoon." You feigned shyness at being caught visiting Martyn. Putting on false alarm at his father's presence, which made the young man step closer, as if to shield you. You'd laugh about it later until you couldn't breathe.

As for him, he was dumbfounded by how things had unfolded. You'd given him nothing more than a brief wave. None of the old enthusiasm. And now, here you were, talking to Martyn as if he weren't even there:

"Did you enjoy the books, Milady?"

"Immensely — you guessed so cleverly, like no one else ever has. I confess I haven't started Summer and Winter Annals yet, but I'm eager to, having read Ruined Cities, Stolen Gods; I'm fascinated by the east."

You answered in a gentle tone, without the coquetry you'd been forcing yourself into these past weeks with the older man. Around Martyn, you had to seem natural, to look like you genuinely liked him, without ever abandoning the pretense in word and deed. The insinuation that you'd received other books, for instance, was meant to further stoke Ormund's ego.

"I know little of Essos' history, but I've asked the scholars of the Castle to give me reccomendations, knowing it's your favorite subject." Martyn said. He was not cult man himself, inclined to practical amusements since his upbringing as squire to House Redwyne, instead of the religious and academic-centered given in Oldtown.

"You know the things I like. Those flowers are delightful too."

"It's really nothing, my Lady. I was looking forward to give you flowers for a time now." Martyn felt special. The boy went joyful, but covered it with humor, flashing his dimples in an imitation of someone showing pride in himself.

Ormund, who until then had remained in observant confusion by the door, stepped closer, his gaze falling upon the bouquet still held in the crook of your arm.

"Dahlias," he said, almost dismissively, lightly touching one of the petals. "Pretty, but lacking any scent worth noting. My baby son has a good heart, but the nose of a layman." A thin smile touched his face, and he continued. "The gardens at Hightower boast pink peonies imported from Lys—blooms that can scent an entire corridor on their own. It would be a pleasure to have some cut for you, if you would agree to it."

"How kind, my lord," you replied, without turning your face fully toward him, your eyes still on Martyn. "Perhaps another day. I wouldn't want to delay my staying for the sake of imported flowers."

"Is it, Pomme? Or would I dare saying you don't wish to part from me?" Martyn laughed at his own remark, proud, unaware that he had just driven the knife even deeper into his father's back.

Ormund’s jaw tightened. "Excellent taste, then," he said, his voice perfectly smooth, perfectly dead.

Ormund excused himself to get some air, with an invention about work. Walking the corridors, he found himself laughing at the absurdity of it all.

He hadn't expected this. Not from his Martyn, that had some fire, but was mostly easygoing, a boy who spent more time watching jousts than courting ladies, — suddenly winning your favor. And not from you — the ambitious girl chasing power through marriage to HIM, Ormund — now curling up to his son like some lovestruck maiden out of a ballad.

That day, Daeron had to call the servants to repair his "Uncle's" study, thoroughly wrecked by his Valyrian steel sword in a crashout of rage.

———————————————————————————

Whenever you came to Hightower, you'd stay for hours — no doubt because Martyn kept stringing lunch invitations into dinner invitations. Ormund would shut himself in his study whenever you were there, but he'd constantly find reasons to step out — to fetch something from some corner of the castle, to check the kitchens, to look for leaks. Wandering like that, he'd always run into that girl with Martyn. Further on, he took to watching you in the midst of games with his younger children — cricket with young Garmund, or in little Bethany's company, always giggling in your lap while you entertained her with porcelain dolls.

Even your absence didn't erase your presence — if anything, it made it stronger. If you weren't there, the children would start talking about you completely out of nowhere: how funny the story was that Lady Pommingham told at dinner, how lovely her hands were, whether she'd be at cousin Jeyne's birthday. In the silence, there was worse still: the girl's perfume, which seemed to have soaked into the very walls like a cancer.

He was growing uncomfortable.

At first, Ormund believed he'd seen through your little performances and pantomime, certain it was all an act staged to needle him. You were being brazen about it, like a bitch in heat trying to grab attention — not his son's, but his. The way forward was to keep ignoring you until the foolishness ran its course and your attentions belonged to him alone again, because a man like him wasn't going to fall for cheap tricks. But the days went by, and then months, without the farce showing any sign of ending or wearing thin.

If anything, he watched you and Martyn grow inseparable. The two of you had never been caught kissing, or touching beyond what good manners allowed, but you were never far from each other either.

You no longer sought Ormund out directly — no more lingering looks during court sessions, no more "accidental" meetings in the garden or at evening prayers.

You stopped flirting with him entirely.

So Ormund started flirting with you.

Driven by wounded pride, obsessed with proving himself better than some boy barely out of the nursery. Your meetings and time together started to make him feel drawn to you, to your darkness laced with sweetness. You only managed to catch him once you stopped trying to please him — because that let him watch you with less arrogance and more attention on his part. Whatever ideas Ormund had held about your character were proving wrong the more he watched you: you weren't a foolish, desperate maiden, but clever and cultured — perhaps only excessively lively.

This was the second week you'd spent at Hightower. A (self-inflicted) fever had struck you during a visit, and it was decided, out of guest-right and prudence, that you should hold off traveling back to SweetSeed until you recovered. It was awful being sick, away from home and from your father, who always treated you like a treasure when you were unwell.

Lord Ormund often came to your bedside while you lay ill. In the beginning, to check on you as a good guest, a pang bothered him, yet he buried it in himself. You were only feiging, it was nothing.

Until one day, you started to sob in grief over feeling bad for not having your parents to nurse you there. He had been, in the following visits, sitting beside you to recite prayers for you, kissing your small hands and your whole face, under the pretext of blessing you. You were, for that moment alone, a doll of porcelain over his hands. When the fever gave out, he cursed and yearned to feel that frailty again.

Partly for your vulnerable state of health, and for your inclination to him, you felt your eyes well up at his attentions, and you knew your heart had entered the game — that your desire for Ormund was turning into something crueler, more searing.

Better still, your stay at the family seat had been extended by his order. Never before had you felt so happy — in that lofty realm, the word "castle" seemed to fall short of doing the place justice. As a small child, you'd read the classic Wonders Made by Man, by Lomas Longstrider, where Hightower was listed among its wonders. Seeing it with your own eyes for the first time, your own human mind passively surrendered to the sublime. Hightower, losing itself in the clouds — ever all-powerful, an eternal colossus, its stones piled up gleaming white in shapes both harmonious and solemn. You felt like such a small thing that fateful day, and, like a mere child, you raised your arm, palm open, covering the beacon-fire. Let all this be mine, you begged the Gods, grasping at the air.

SweetSeed, with its tacky pink walls, couldn't hold a candle to Hightower's beautiful restraint. The fruit gardens of your home were mere farm plots next to Hightower's, which had gardens on every one of its countless floors, all perfectly kept. Even the candlesticks there held scented candles, you discovered — and you thought of your father.

Scented candles, Father. Soon I'll be the one choosing their scents. Your lips curled up at the thought, positively bubbling over.

Now, living there, your admiration only fed your drive to fulfill your most intimate desire: to become its lady, for the opulence and for the closeness to the Master of that magnificent building. You didn't regret forcing yourself into a chill through thermal shock — bathing in scalding water, then standing out in the cold rain after. Your plan was marching along exactly as you'd charted it.

Lord Ormund was more interested in you than ever. He'd show up and slip into the role of chaperone whenever you were with Martyn, with the excuse of assessing you as a possible daughter-in-law while making sure nothing indecent happened. Inserting himself between his son and yourself did not do their relationship any good.

Martyn, short-tempered and highly sensitive, questioned the intrusion, which he didn't only considered unnecessary — But a clear sign his own father was getting forbidding his happiness and shortening his chances of conquering his beloved hand. Lyonel will have your lands and name to pass on, and Daeron owns your heart. Will you not let me have anything good for myself?, where his bitter words.

Ormund remained unmoved by the younger man's complaints, going so far as to accuse him of being a lust-driven green boy, that wanted to take advantage of you. It had been a long contend, since Martyn argued back relentlessly, only to lose at the end.

Ending the argument victorious, the patriarch made clear that without his presence, the courting wouldn't happen at all. Before leaving the room, however, he calmed his spirit. Holding his child's hand steady, Ormund apologized for the foul words and assured the boy he wanted his happiness above all, and his intromission came from a Father's protective nature and duty.

In self-contradiction, Ormund denied Martyn a public declarion of courting and never missed a chance to be alone with you. Taken, for instance, the time you crossed paths in the garden.

You were alone with little Bethany, since Martyn had gone to fetch some glass jars from the infirmary so the child could start his butterfly collection. In the shimmering grass, under the great star of day, you sat at the foot of a lemon-lavender tree — or maiden's lemon tree, as it was also called — with the little kid beside you, chasing after yellow butterflies not worth the effort. They died faster than lemons could mold.

You two traded smiles and "Seven blessings."

"You have a way with children. I've noticed you often, with my little ones." Ormund remarked, watching his youngest run through the field after flying insects.

But you knew your manner wasn't exactly maternal; the truth was you simply knew how to play with children and join in their fun. Even so, you found it useful that he thought otherwise, blind to the nuance — every man, the moment he sees a woman beside a child, thinks of motherhood.

"I like them quite a lot. I don't have any siblings, not anymore."

"I know of the tragedy that struck your house with the summer sickness. I'm sorry, for your siblings and your mother."

You didn't correct him about your mother — she hadn't been taken by the epidemy like your older siblings, but had taken her own life over their deaths. Such a sunny day was no place for grief.

"It's nothing. I'm quite well." You said, with sincerity and gratitude, as you picked up a few flowers that had fallen onto the green carpet of grass. "Thank you."

Ormund, all the same, sat beside you in the grass. The older man's hand came to rest on your knee, giving three gentle pats.

"These flowers are a delight for the nose," you found yourself saying, sniffing your hand after rubbing the bud and petals into it. "I've never seen an apothecary use them for perfume. What a shame."

The Warden of Oldtown didn't answer right away, only noted mentally that you shared his sensitivity for floral scents. Then he added: "And what notes would you pair, if you were the apothecary? Spices?"

"Never! Clove or cumin would turn it into a smelly potion out of an old men's latrine." You laughed, gesturing a firm no at an idea so offensive to any decent nose. "Sandalwood and rosemary, methinks, are perfect. Adding warmth to that citrus smell would tame it better for use, and the aromatic shall make it more fragrant."

"Rosemary is good to me only for pork, but I agree about the necessity of citruses. Clary sage would have the same effect, yet more refined." Ormund replied, without adding anything more.

Instead, Ormund turned the periwinkle-like flower delicately between his fingers before bringing it to his face — then pressed it lightly against your cheek, like a fleeting kiss made of petals.

"You have rather a good nose, my Lord." You claimed in a low tone.

Ormund drew close enough for your noses to touch, his blue eyes heavy on yours; without alarm or shyness, you lightly brushed the tip of your nose against his and then pulled away. Still, eye to eye—and not another word.

There it was: the proof Martyn wasn't your true aim; the revelation he seeked for. To him, it was more than alluring.You were one of the most alluring creatures he had ever seen, Ormund thought in delight, but you should guess by his stern expression.

You wondered about it following the connection, you questioned what Ormund had seen in you, because what you saw in his eyes was nothing but magnetic darkness and many wrinkles.

A week later, a maid arrived with a vial of fragrance smelling of maiden's lemon blossom, with sandalwood and clary sage. A touch of him.

When the next shipments of goods flooded the old city's markets and orders, it was you he invited to choose perfumery items and fabric at his side.

He felt clinging to your company, and delayed even further your departure.

You were innocent — not the kind of innocence that pits the mind against clarity and the heart against experience. You knew full well the effect you had on every man around you, and made that your master key for entering whatever world she wished. But in seducing, you relied on smiles, closeness, and words of affection — nothing sensual. He found it more than curious to notice that you lose composure whenever crude remarks came up at court, or indecent songs, or the fool's jokes; staying flustered by them.

Like an angel's in a whore's clothing.

This dichotomy between your provocative manner and evident virginity aroused him past all reason. That ingénue face, with its promise of debauchery only a connoisseur could detect. He would teach you how to unleash your impulses in a holy way, under his guidance of patriarch to serve the Seven. To serve him under matrimony.

In his feverish imagination, he would be your first man, in a marriage bed. Faced with the realization of what you were going through hell to get, with his ring on your fingers like a mark of ownership, you would recoil in sudden fear. Like a good husband, his lips would offer plenty of comfort to soothe you, while his body forced you into submission until it made you scream.

Having soiled his sheets with his seed, by the hard work of his hands — far too rough to mimic the soft folds of a sweet woman like you — Ormund would clean himself up, and turn his mind to gentler things until he fell asleep: the birth of his first child born of your womb. Your place filling the void the late wife had left in the family's heart. Choosing fragrances and fabrics on a trip to market, in your sweet company. Bathing in milk under candles.

You were perfect to be the new Lady Hightower. He was certain you would be devoted to him—loving, even—and, above all, grateful to have been chosen as his bride and raised from obscurity to hold the highest honor a woman could dream of: that of being the wife of a great lord like him.

———————————————————————————

Organizing the hunting trip unsettled the Lord of Oldtown, a perfectionist in all things. Daeron, his loyal squire, was of great help, taking down his dictated notes on provisions, invitations, route-mapping, and other points needed to plan the event. Only one matter was Ormund's alone to architect. He needed to use the opportunity he'd created to strengthen the closeness between himself and his future bride.

The instinct for trickery wasn't very strong in him, he liked to believe — this was an exceptional situation, an emergency measure, one the Gods would forgive, since it was carried out with their wishes in mind. At least, that was what Ormund told himself, to feel better about it.

Things unfolded in perfect step under his masterful hand: Martyn fell ill the morning of departure, right after breakfast, from seemenly unknown reasons. The truth was that hiding the wild boldo leaves in his pomander, Ormund had crumbled them into his son's stew, and he couldn't have been more pleased when the boy vomited in front of Lady Pommingham, who reacted first with disgust, and then with concern.

He took that as one more sign of your innate maternal instinct, but he held back a flare of anger when you offered to stay by Martyn's side instead of going on the hunt — an offer he talked you out of, since he'd assigned his best maester to look after the boy in your absence.

In the woods outside Oldtown, the hunting party was split into small groups, drawn up by Ormund's own careful hand. Unsurprisingly, his group was made up of three: you, Daeron, and himself. The second of them was meant, from the very start, to be dismissed.

Lord Ormund held his horse's reins steady as the hunting party trotted through the splendor of the afternoon. His eyes found you again and again, mounted on a white mare, your cheeks flushed with excitement, and something tightened in his chest. Beside her, the Targaryen prince. That was his boy — kind beyond measure, and beyond measure virtuous. Practically worthy of being his own son, he was worthy of being King.

"Daeron," Ormund called out, paternal, his voice thick with authority. The young man straightened at once. "You've shown a gift for wayfinding lately. Maester Jon says you know the whole geography of the Reach. Today, I want you to ride ahead to Jonquil's stream and see if there's any sign of deer. We'll wait here."

The plan was perfect in its simplicity. Daeron couldn't refuse such a public show of trust without looking ungrateful, or incompetent.

"I believe the stream is far, my lord. I'd guess getting there and back takes some forty minutes. I worry about you and the lady being alone here." The prince pushed back, and though his tone stayed deferential and calm, Ormund saw the flicker of uncertainty in his eyes all too clearly, and it displeased him.

"Care to explain why?" Ormund asked, mildly, though his real question was whether Daeron believed him capable of harming a maiden. In short, the real question 'Don't you know me?' was as sharp as if it had been spoken aloud.

What Ormund would never know is that Daeron's reluctance to leave him alone wasn't fear for Lady Pommingham's virtue — it was fear for him.

"It's, uh—" Daeron stammered. "There could be bandits about, or some dangerous animal lying in wait."

"I'll know how to handle whatever trouble comes, my dear boy. Your role is another one, and I've already assigned it. Go." Ormund replied, working to mask his irritation. "Or will you disobey me?"

"Yes, Sire! I mean, no!" Daeron relented, and, at last, said something that sounded like it was meant for you: "I'll be quick."

Though he lingered in silence for a while before turning toward Jonquil's Lake, you watched the prince pull away at a gallop across the plain, intrigued by him. In your endless curiosity, you'd tried to strike up conversation with the red-haired boy about his Valyrian family and his dragon, always to no avail. The boy always changed the subject, and Daeron, who'd always struck you as quiet and shy, now seemed to be genuinely afraid of Ormund — or rather, of the chance of displeasing him.

Now, the Lord had sent him off with the words of an authoritarian patriarch. If he loved the boy, as everyone said, he made that love conditional on his obedience. You'd never seen him be so demanding with Martyn — but perhaps he didn't love, or expect as much from Martyn, as he did from his ward.

"The prince seemed reluctant to go." You asserted.

"For no reason at all. If anything, I'll protect us both — since your Lord Father is not here, you are mine to guard"

Minutes passed in talk of the weather and Andal ballads, after you asked whether there'd be music at the banquet later, until you dismounted to wait for Daeron in more comfort.

"You look lovely, walking about with that bow, but you don't know how to shoot," Ormund remarked, out of nowhere.

"And how would you know?"

"No archer carries a bow slung over the shoulder the way you're doing. You must have seen that in some pantomime." Ormund wasn't mocking you, so you laughed instead of getting defensive.

"Guilty." You answered, raising your hands like a criminal. "In my defense, they say hunting isn't for women. I'm under no pressure to be any good at it."

Ormund didn't disagree with the notion that a woman's place should be confined to the home and the temple. Few things irritated him more than a woman estranged from the fate the Gods had decided for her station — like that whore Rhaenyra. A simple hunt, though, struck him as harmless enough — or convenient enough — for him to set his traditionalism aside.

"The bow and the crossbow are already feminine enough, to my mind. For a real man, only the sword will do." Ormund said, tapping the Valyrian steel of Vigilance at his belt. Then he held out his hand to you. "Today is your lucky day, Lady Pommingham. I intend to teach you myself. And I hope you succeed."

"Red Robb Rivers' name will lose his fame to me." You quipped, naming the Blackwood bastard renowned across the Seven Kingdoms for his skill with a bow.

Ormund loved playing the teacher, the wise man in the room with all the answers, humbly willing to enlighten the fools around him. The kind of teacher who never learned a thing. Nor taught a thing — except sarcasm, or fear.

In recent weeks, he'd seemed obsessed with proving his superiority to Martyn, for your benefit. Whether on cultural, masculine, or religious matters — Ormund filled your ears with embarrassing stories about his son, and seized every chance to demonstrate his own superiority.

Taking the hand he offered you, you asked that if you were going to shoot, your target be something alive.

"Anything? A tree trunk will do, then?" He teased, but you rolled your eyes and said: "Something that bleeds!"

"It's a relief to know you're no better than me." Ormund replied, good-humored.

The forest was a garden of tombstones, in your captive perception, utterly lost to your muffled senses. There was no sparrow-song to remind you that any company existed there besides Ormund. The world went still; your entire existence narrowed down to your body, entirely frantic. From the soles of your feet — the worn boots thin enough to feel the texture of the stones underfoot — up to your brow, gathering beads of salt water.

You took a deep breath, bracing for the imminent contact.

Shameless, Ormund positioned himself behind you, close enough that his chest nearly brushed your back. Then he adjusted the bow in your hands, showing you the correct grip over your shoulder before guiding one of your arms into the right position, in a silent lesson.

He murmured something about the distance between your feet that you didn't quite catch. Impatient, Ormund wedged his own knee between your thighs to show you should widen your stance. The thing between your inner thighs pulsed at gesture. It was bold, intimate, and fleeting.

Ormund finished correcting your posture, moving your hips to the right angle, and kept his strong hands there over your hunting clothes. The strangest thing happened next: leaning in closer, he pressed his nose to your neck and sniffed.

"Did you just smell me?" you let out a sharp laugh as the hiss echoed in your ear.

"Shh," he ordered, before slowly releasing his warm breath against your neck as if savoring your scent: the leather of your gloves, a faint trace of maiden's lemon woven into your hair. The scent he has chosen for you.

Sighing against your skin, he whispered: "I keep struggling not to."

Your eyelashes trembled at the confession; it took the strength of a bull to stay focused. Still pressed firmly against your body, Ormund pointed to a squirrel perched on the branch of a wild apple tree, among the leaves of green. The chosen target kept pecking relentlessly at one of the apples, making it easy to pick out.

Checking that your aim was true enough to bring down the prey, you murmured: "The fool's bewitched by the apple. Everything else is lost on him."

"Lost? No." A second time, he breathed you in, pressing the cold tip of his nose to the side of your neck and planting a single kiss there. That's how entitled he felt. "He knows there's danger. He just cannot resist the flesh."

Your hands throbbed as your stomach knotted into a violent tangle of butterflies, your chest pounding like drums with the fever of a first kill. It was as if your senses fogged your reflexes; your trembling hand let the arrow fly wide, guaranteeing failure, striking the trunk instead of the animal. The unharmed squirrel's escape into the dense green foliage was immediate. Choleric, you groaned in frustration, snapping:

"It moved! The creature moved!"

"Ah! My lady, that was close!" Ormund threw his head back and let out a genuine laugh. "Once more, hm? Let's go find another target."

Started by you, the two of you walked on a few more paces until finding a flock of small birds in an ash tree, announced by their grating chirping. Without seeking Ormund's guidance this time — because his body, despite delicious, was like a heavy cloak, weighing down your movements — simply repeating what he'd taught you, you loosed, without hesitation, a tearing shot that pierced the sparrow's chest.

As it fell, it startled its fellows, who scattered in clumsy bursts, shrieking at the top of their lungs — mad little birds.

"Bravo, my lady!" Ormund clapped for you.

You gave him your most radiant smile, followed by a wink and a curtsy. Swollen with satisfaction, you felt a strong urge to see your prize, and asked:

"How did you name the dog?"

"Bright Sun."

You recognized the words of House Ashford, "Our sun shines bright," That was the family of Ormund's first wife. Your tongue was guided by good judgment, making no mention of the fact — but you knew that, whoever the late Lady Hightower had been, her husband cared enough to remember her in the smallest details. You were happy that woman was dead.

"It's a pretty name." You answered, with false sweetness, giving no hint of what sparkled behind your eyes. Trying to hide your retroactive jealousy, you asked: "Have him bring me my sparrow."

Ormund needed only a single whistle to make the dog obey. You waited eagerly while the animal snatched up the other, carrying its small body to you and dropping it at your feet.

You thanked Bright Sun with a scratch behind his shaggy ears, then knelt down with a quiet delight — the tiny sparrow still warm — and examined your victim: feathers in two shades of brown, one light and one dark with black markings, smeared now with the dirt of impact. Blood ran along the arrow's cutting edge, which pierced straight through its middle. You snapped the shaft, but didn't pull it free, afraid of marring its beauty.

"My little pet! I'm keeping this. Is there a taxidermist in Oldtown?"

"I've seen lions and bears mounted, and, in a special chamber at the Citadel, a tiger all the way from Yi Ti." Ormund remarked, pleased by her not being squeamish. "But sparrows? that's a first. Do you like them? Ladies tend to see them as a symbol of innocence. They embroider them onto handkerchiefs..."

"There's nothing more irritating than the ones from SweetSeed, chirping at my window. They drive me mad." You answered, wrapping the dead bird in the blue kerchief you'd until then worn around your neck against the morning chill. Ormund opened the pouch strapped to his steed's saddle so you could store your trophy there. "But this one's too dead to bother me."

You tipped your head back gently as you laughed, which drew Ormund's attention even further to your neck, lovely, long, and smooth, like the stem of a flower. He fantasized with such intensity that he could feel the texture of your soft skin on his own tongue.

"There are plenty of taxidermists in Oldtown. One, in particular, has more talent than most. I'll have him prepare this properly for you, to last a lifetime, and... little feet dipped in gold."

"Gold? Only if I sell a thousand pomegranates today."

"I'll have the taxidermist use real gold leaf," he went on, calmly. "And your name engraved somewhere discreet, like on the base of the stand. I'll cover the cost myself. Part of the victory is mine, after all, since I did teach you how to hold the bow."

"Thank you for the gift. Thank you for the compliment." You said, while you took your time carefully arranging the sparrow so it wouldn't get crushed on the way back. "I'm grateful that you see my talents."

"I see. I see very well." Ormund gazed at his hunting companion with a monstrous hunger weighing on his gut like a stone atop a book; he had been waiting for you his whole life without knowing it. "I see you."

So dark, so luminous, so naive, so sharp was she, so surprisingly seductive. This girl who wanted his ggold, his name, his spirit, and his body — and was winning it all through the mere trifle of her own innocence. What she was doing was sin: deceiving, seducing, harming the innocent, and all that filth, because she wanted to be his woman. The mere thought of being the object of such destructive devotion undid him completely. Ormund would console you, when you cried out to atone for your wrongs, to be redeemed.

Ever the eternal victim of your own vanity, you took advantage of the open pouch to use the pomander sitting inside, oblivious to the older man's silent scrutiny. Pouring a little onto your glove to mask the unpleasant smell of blood, you noticed that, besides the usual lavender oil, a bitter, herbal scent (intensely strong, camphorous, faintly minty) had been added to the fragrant blend. Wild boldo was an unusual choice, and Ormund was too refined to pick a note like that, which struck you as strange. It was also strange to find the pomander in the bag and not in his belt as usual.

Trying not to grimace at the smell invading your sensitive nostrils, you looked back up at the Lord, as you returned the silver vial to its place among his other things.

"It's getting dark." You warned, noticing the predatory way he was watching you.

"I'd say summer is coming; the rainfall is a sign. It won't be long before the white raven announces it." Ormund rambled on, pointlessly, barely blinking as he spoke, looking more and more like a Hunter.

"It's Martyn I'm thinking of. It hurt, leaving him in that state." You paced a little, unsure why you started to worry for your pawn — standing still did your nerves no good. "Doesn't it worry you, him being sick?"

"Of course it does. We'll head back to camp soon."

"Soon, you say. Not yet, though."

"Not now."

Ormund turned away for a moment and walked to his horse to fetch a small flask from the saddlebag. He unscrewed the cap and took a sip of wine before silently offering it to you, once he'd returned to your side.

Even before the age your father allowed you to drink wine, you'd always been the type who never refused a drink — always one of your weaknesses, like cards, or chronicles about the savages of Essos. You took a generous sip, only then realizing just how badly you'd been neglecting your own thirst.

When you lowered the flask and handed it back, he took it without a word and drank in turn, sharing an intimate moment, a kind of secret ritual only the two of you took part in.

The air took on a static quality, and so did time, joined in a slowing of emotion and atmosphere alike. It was a bucolic state of affairs, perennial as bodies of water under the moon's pull. A single sentence, a beat of wings on the far side of the woods, and it would all collapse like a house of cards. The only sound echoing through the dense vegetation was the howling wind, playing the rebellious leaves like a lyre — a song promising cascades of rain to come.

"I've been thinking about you." Ormund said, setting the universe back in motion, the way a god might. "Since the day you showed up with Martyn at my door. The day you set this game in motion."

"Game?"

"It's a dark one, this game you're playing — one that will end, inexorably, in a dark victory. Just a game, all the same. I fear, though, that you hardly know what you're doing, my child."

"Are you calling me a poor player?"

"Quite the opposite — you're excellent, ready for fortune's beauty and its ugliness alike, with a plan B if plan A fails. But you shouldn't play against someone who doesn't share that competitive spirit." Ormund replied as a mouthpiece of doom, so oddly smooth in a conflictuous moment, and creepy. "I'm the poor player, because I won't give you up. Not to Martyn, not to anyone."

"You're full of stratagems. Otherwise, you wouldn't have rigged the hunt and sent the prince away just to corner me here," your voice took on an accusing tone, polished with amusement. Until now, Ormund's transgressions struck you as amusing, because they could just as easily have come from her own hands.

"You accuse me of scheming, but it's you who's been playing dumb, after stringing two men along for months. I've been generous. I let Martyn believe he had a chance... because that's what a good father would do. And, about you: You wanted me to notice you," Ormund chose, for himself, that same expressiveness you wore, like a mirror: that harsh calm, to confess his feelings to you. "And I did. I don't care how you got my attention — as long as you have it now. As long as I have you at the end."

There was no reason to defend yourself against his accusations, because he didn't care. The reality of the situation washed your spirit with relief — he didn't care. He wanted you, regardless of anything.

You stood still in front of Ormund. You were being devoured by his words of confession — words your delirious passion had manufactured a thousand times over, yet nothing had prepared you for the real moment. Stunned, half mad with euphoria, and painfully careful even in the way you breathed, you stood frozen.

"But I think it's time we made things clear, once and for all. I'll confess this against my better judgment: you place yourself between me and any good sense, the way an eclipse blots out the light of man. Your insignificant birth, your easy manners, your poor standing — I'm willing to overlook it all, to put an end to this agony—"

"You will not insult my house, my lord. Far as we may be from the Hightowers' greatness, we are an old Andal line, faithful to the Seven." You cut him off, retorting.

That was, to date, the most important hour of your life. You watched the beginning of your grand, longed-for future unfold before you, and you loved it. Yet, Love, they say, must never cost the one in love their own self-respect; you needed to show Ormund your pride, or you'd never truly be respected by him.

"Very well," Ormund replied, reluctantly. "I was rude."

"Andal blood is pure in your veins - that counts for more than any coin. And the Mother blessed you with beauty, that counts too. But, my dear..." Ormund continued, a soft venom creeping into his voice, leaning in to flick at your earrings with a pinch of thumb and middle finger, "Your earrings are fake. That's not real pearl."

"And?" you felt too exposed to retaliate better, he had struck a nerve or, better saying, opened a crack in your pride to access you profoundly.

"In the past, you used to try to impress me with other falsehoods. Not anymore — I see that now, and I know we're more alike than I'd imagined. Nothing happens by chance; everything is written by the Father's hand. He teaches us that if you find a thing, a place, or a person that's perfect, you should do everything in your power to hold onto it. You are to be mine. Not my daughter-in-law. My wife."

Pausing to arrange his hands, heavy as shells, on your shoulders, bringing his face close to yours, Ormund went on:

"These worthless things... I could replace them with real ones, from the seas of Lys, to adorn you. Every woman would envy your ears."

A pause, so they could breathe amid the simmering tension.

"The greatest envy, though, would be directed at me, by everyone. You'd be the jewel of my court, and of my sheets," the man found himself adding the compliments, seduced by the closeness of your wonderful little face. The sight of your parting lips, together with your lowering eyelids, pushed him to the say sweet words.

"You interrupted me, when I was about to truly confess... Did you want me to choose you?", Ormund went on.

"Yes, that's what I want." You spoke with great sincerity, having in mind Ormund and real pearls both. The usual Machiavellian instinct that guides you finally fell obscure, and you were rewarded with the loveliest poem.

"Then: I choose you." Ormund whispered, eyelashes following with his orbes to observe your lips with desire. Shameless, he made a mere brush to test. "I need you to say what you want! Not your little games; the truth, from your own mouth."

He didn't meant speaking. In his view, women were masters of lying with their voices, only their bodies spoke truth, if given enough pressure.

Ormund's lips crashed into yours; wasting no time on tenderness, he immediately demanded your tongue and your breath for a delirious dance. You couldn't have refused him, even if you'd wanted to. With your body burning, you matched his ardor, wishing that moment could spin on in eternal revolution on the clock of the Earth.

Every past kiss became a rehearsal for this one, which seemed, at last, to be the real kiss.

Your hands touched the waist of your cruel lover, as well as his beautifully sculpted face and his powerful arms; laughing, moaning with satisfaction. You imagined he felt the same exaltation in touching you too, that the same flame burned him as well.

Not even the staunchest monk's contrition was any match for a sweet, kindled body, full of good spirits. Ormund was steeped in a sexual exaltation that felt like a happy tingling, as he kissed you. His palm was pressed against your back, steadying you against the assault of his much larger frame. Even so, you swayed slightly backward, yielding to his passion.

Ormund caressed the front of your dress, feeling your nipples harden against his touch; he then circled them with his index and middle fingers, grasping them gently. He chuckled with a touch of playful mischief before wrapping his hands around your neck and pulling you in for another one of those delicious kisses. You could undoubtedly feel how hard he was through his riding breeches, he made no effort to hide his virility, but rubbed himself closer to make you feel it — how you demoralized him.

That was your answer. Aware of your lover's fervor, so ardently pressed against your small body, your mind spun a fantasy of running from him through the forest.

You knew you were younger, faster, and you laughed with pleasure at the thought of your own superiority as you sprang between ground and air with high, light, spaced-out steps. Dry leaves fell beneath your feet and were crushed, then tossed up into the air to glide. Suddenly, you know he isn't fast enough, and never will be, to catch you — unless you wanted him to.

Your legs would gradually lost their speed, then, so the sudden stop wouldn't throw you down. That's how the hunter's arm pulls your waist close.

"My dear one, my little love, my bad child, your mind wanders. Don't make me hurt you." He murmured in your ear, as if reading your thoughts, to pull you back into his world.

Ormund kissed your mouth a hundred times more, with the certainty of possession of a husband, and your forehead with immense tenderness, while holding your face with both hands — with the gentleness of a father. In a waking dream, the fantasy melts to the reality of his grip.

"Are you not happy, my beauty?" He said, peppering sweet kisses over your hand.

The sky was darkening, and the plants seemed to rustle restlessly under some imperceptible wind, murmuring to one another that something was coming. It was Daeron, bearing good news about the does: near the lake, a whole feast of does had gathered.

———————————————————————————

The rain had been forecast as a light drizzle, but what fell upon the Reach was a torrent, bringing as much water as had been expected for the entire season. Powerful winds uprooted trees and sent poorly secured tents flying through the air; the mud rose a full adult handspan above the normal level of the ground. In short, it was a climate of great danger that forced the hunting expedition to be cut short for everyone's safety.

Back at Hightower, you felt exhausted after so many twists of fate and nature alike; your bones seemed to be made of stone. As usual, you intended to pay Martyn a brief visit for appearances' sake (or so you wanted to believe), and then retire to your chambers to sleep for an entire day.

You entered his room silently, approaching the sleeping young man. Leaning over the bed where he slept, you kissed his cheek, but he squeezed your arm in an attempt suddenly to steal a peck from your lips.

"False! You were not sleeping." Frustrating him, you shot back immediately.

"I'm glad you're back. I was already sick of this separation, Pomme," Martyn said as he settled himself against the countless embroidered pillows and cushions behind his back. "And worried, too."

"Afraid a forest goblin would carry me away?"

Martyn let out a little puff of air through his broad nose before replying, "More plausibly that a hurricane would throw you clear across the world. Let me think... the Dothraki Sea! And the Khal-mor would take you as his Khaleesi."

You laughed like a little girl at such nonsense, picturing the scene in your head. Being a Queen did not seem so unpleasant in your eyes, even if it were over bloodthirsty horsemen.

"I think this illness has scrambled your brains," you added once your laughter subsided. "I missed you, though, that I'll admit! The world is far too serious without you."

"Actually, now it is serious, Pomme. I was worried about you being, you know... alone with my father."

"Why?"

"I don't know exactly, but my father doesn't seem to like you very much. I'm actually surprised you came to see me alone. He doesn't even allow us to be in the same room without him present."

"You believe your father doesn't like me?"

"He's a snob. All he cares about is the sophistication of a good surname and lands bordering his own. Well, that doesn't surprise me, since he hardly likes anyone."

You were irritated that Martyn dismissed the possibility that you could win Ormund's favor. That's why you're an idiot, you thought bitterly. That's why I chose your father over you.

Politically and financially, you were irrelevant, but you were hardly lacking in wit, beauty, or charisma. Any man would be happy to have you, even Ormund.

Inertia poisoned you more than anything else, sitting there, thinking about his words made you see red. And so, you picked up the glass of milk resting atop a book on the bed and stood to place it on the table. A random excuse to put some distance between the two of you and wander around the room.

"People seem to like him quite a lot. He's very charismatic, sociable... He was quite gallant with me during the hunt." It was your reply, edged with barely restrained sharpness.

"Cynicism, Pomme. I have the feeling he doesn't even like me." Martyn scratched at his face, too tired to notice your discontent. "Not that I care for him; those years in Redwyne as a squire were the best of my life. Except now, I have you and... I like you and you like me."

Your anger vanished. An unwelcome tightness gripped your heart. At this point, there was no longer any need to use Martyn as bait, because Ormund was already yours. Even so, you could not drive this irritating compassion for him out of your heart. You wondered why he loved you, and why you had never been able to love him in return. You also wondered how badly you would hurt him.

"What did the maesters say about your illness?" you asked abruptly, uncomfortable with where the conversation was headed and inventing a reason to steer it elsewhere.

Martyn shrugged as though the matter no longer interested him very much. "Some nonsense about herbs. Maester Jon found traces of wild boldo in what was left of my stew. He said it was rare for anyone to ingest it by accident." He laughed at his own joke, with not the slightest malice in his voice.

Your heart dropped into your stomach the moment you heard those words: wild boldo. You knew the appearence of its leaves, deep green and velvety to the touch, and also its scent, for it was used to scare bugs away in plantations.

The very same bitter, camphorous scent you had noticed mingling with Ormund's pomander that afternoon when he taught you how to shoot. The same note, far too strange for a man of such refined taste to have chosen by chance.

The connection between the clues might have been strong, but that did not mean it was immediately correct. It could all be nothing more than a coincidence. Ah, that would have given you peace of mind, and yet you could not deceive yourself.

For one shameful instant, something inside you warmed. He had done it. He had arranged the entire hunt, sacrificed his own son's health, orchestrated weeks of careful maneuvering simply to be alone with you among the trees. Could anyone have desired you more?

The sweetness lasted only a moment before being overwhelmed by absolute horror as you truly looked at Martyn. His lovely face was flushed with fever, his curls plastered to his forehead, and he had grown thinner from dehydration.

What is a resemblance? A broken mirror, a miragè manufactured by guilt. He looked like your brothers had when the summer sickness struck them. He looked like your fallen sparrow, dressed as he was in a brown nightshirt.

And just like that, you no longer felt loved. In that moment, you felt yourself to be the center of a catastrophe. You were not an accidental victim of Ormund's lust. You were both an accomplice and the guilty one. And if he was a monster, then you were made from the same clay, the same breed of beast.

Ormund had not surprised you, because powerful men always hide blades beneath silk.

The cruel revelation was about yourself: your betrayal, your seduction, had come from you. That shameful warmth, that fleeting second of pleasure at knowing yourself so desired that a man would poison his own blood for your sake, had not come from outside, either. It had been born within you, a darkness you had never once been ashamed of until you saw its splatters upon Martyn—a boy you had realized, far too late, truly cared.

You decided you did not want to make him suffer any longer.

"You were terribly ill for three days, you..."

"To me it felt like three weeks. An unbearable bore, and my little friend wasn't here to keep me entertained during my confinement." Martyn's humor, born of ignorance, contrasted sharply with your psychological torment.

"Are you angry with me?" You said in a whisper as his blissful blind devotion made you feel small.

"No, actually I'm not... It was good to be alone for a little while so I could think. Boredom does that too."

"Think about what?"

"My life, my future. About you, too." The young man blushed against his own will, but still dared to move closer, his hands brushing yours gently as he said, "Because I love you and admire you more than anyone; for your kindness, your honesty, and your beauty. Now that I'm old enough to marry, it's expected of me that I do. There isn't another woman in the entire world I want to ask this except you: will you be my wife?"

You did not want to meet Martyn's eyes, far too similar to Ormund's. They would kill you—or worse, see through your lies. Martyn, who believed in your sweetness and innocence, would discover how rotten you truly were beneath your veil of courtesy. Your stomach ache with a visceral disgust towards him for his stupidity, towards Ormund for his madness and yourself, most of all, for feeling that unwelcomed pity.

So instead, you fixed your gaze upon the open window and the horizon beyond it, trying to see the edge of the world—or simply as far away as your eyes could reach. As far from Hightower as possible.

But high atop the tower, after so many days of rain, only the perfectly blue sky was visible. It looked false; somehow, that moved you. You were already drowning in lies, so why not tell one more? One that could have the power to redeem you?

For a moment, you covered your lowered face with both hands and breathed—without thinking, you simply breathed. Then, turning to face Martyn in your state of confusion, like someone who spins around and then tries to smile, you answered yes.

When a noble is widowed in Westeros, man or woman, they hardly remain unmarried for very long. Practical matters mingle with ideas about what is appropriate and serviceable to the Seven, making it urgent to celebrate a marriage as soon as the period of mourning is over.

Ormund Hightower did not escape this Westerosi idiosyncrasy. Nine moons after the death of his first wife, caused by a burning fever, the lord had his hands entwined by the Septon's ribbon with a tiny hand belonging to the little lady of House Pommingham. This arrangement was not particularly bold on his part; the girl's family was far from being one of the richest in the Reach, but Hightower was wealthy enough to compensate for the bride's lack of prestige.

May the Mother Above protect him from how bewitched he became by her. He did not know he could dance until Imogen Pommingham showed him how, on the day they met, when the young woman took the initiative to invite him.

Twenty years younger than Ormund, Imogen was only two years younger than Ormund's firstborn son, yet she seemed separated from him by centuries in one regard. While his boy was as shy as a startled gazelle (to his father's discontent), the new Lady Hightower was a glittering star. She was not so stunning as to leave a man immediately dazzled upon her appearance, but she was beautiful upon looking at her a second time, more attentively. And, above all, upon hearing her melodious laughter and witty jests.

Nothing was capable of taking the smile from her face; she laughed at everything and everyone, being a stranger to frowns or tears. This lighthearted manner was not the result of a life of uninterrupted joy, for Imogen had lost her mother and most of her relatives in separate events, leaving her only with an old father who, though not exceedingly wealthy, indulged his daughter's whims.

Ormund imagined that this was the root of his wife's spoiled and reckless behavior, for despite her charming charisma, she was the opposite of what was expected in a Lady Hightower. The maiden wasn't coy or quiet, and Ormund saw from the very beginning of courting her an inclination toward vices. How she drank more than he did at banquets, her sensual manners (in spite of her maidenhood), how she knew every single type of card game ever, and struggled while praying.

He let it slide, because her youthful recklessness was arousing to an extent; it was part of her youthful allure, and the foolishness would fade with time as she matured, settling into the role she was born for. Furthermore, to his shame, he yearned for his frivolous wife's presence, to be kept constantly within her splendor, warmed by the sun of her innocent love. Imogen followed him to his war campaign instead of staying safe in Oldtown, to lighten his mood whenever the pressure or rage were on the verge of making him lose reason.

The calculation proved to be terribly wrong, since neither marriage nor motherhood made her into a proper matron.

He was too occupied with war and administration to pay attention to his wife's transgressions. The discovery came too late, when the foulest and most disgusting rumor spread everywhere.

His hand slammed against his desk with such strength that the wood was damaged, yet no breaking sound came from it; Ormund would not destroy furniture. He was going to resolve his situation in an effective manner.

The decision was made in an instant. She would learn her place.

A servant was appointed to tell his wife he demanded her presence, and meanwhile, he sat in a foul mood until her arrival. The moment Imogen stepped into the room and the door clicked shut behind her, his feet were already in motion.

Ormund didn't walk gently toward her. His strides were sharp, deliberate, his entire body radiating glacial fury as he caught her wrist in his grip and dragged her to sit in a chair like a child being put in punishment to think over her mischief.

Imogen found that sudden aggressiveness strange, but she was not yet frightened. "Ormund? Gods, dear, you look mad."

His jaw tightened at the sound of her voice, which showed some concern but no guilt. Far too little guilt for his liking. There was pride in him, yes, and the proudest men always felt entitled to hear only respectable things linked to their name, not gossip about being cuckolded by their wife. Therefore, he loomed over her and lowered his head until he was so near that his warm breath blew against her skin, as he asked coldly:

"Are you a whore? Is my wife a little slut?"

He saw her previous nervous grin fall away, her pinkish lips parting in confusion before returning to form another kind of puzzled-amused expression.

"Is this dirty talk or?" she whispered, her lips curved in the fashion of insolence.

He felt the double urge to kiss her mouth and strike it with his fist, both overcome by his steady self-control. The gods had separated men from animals; he would not defy them by acting beastly while being a man. Especially knowing there were means of influence other than violence.

"You, who spend most of your time gossiping around, do not know what I am talking about? Or are you simply being your stupid self, child?" Breathing steadily, his mouth sent air against her face with cruel gentleness, almost paternally.

It was evident that understanding reached her immediately, which Ormund took advantage of to continue:

"Tell me it is a lie. Tell me I am not standing here a fool, so ready to defend your name as it is dragged through the mud, entwined with the word 'whore,' while my own stands right beside yours, marked 'cuck,' for nothing."

"You're exaggerating! It's a lie, naturally." She chuckled, rolling her eyes, whether in annoyance or feigned nonchalance no one could tell. "That bit about playing cards and drinking with Lord Lannister isn't. I was bored waiting for you at the tent, and it's not every day you get to gamble with the richest man in Westeros. But nothing happened between us, dear Ormund."

He strangely thought that she would also be gesturing in a coquettish way while speaking if his hold in her arms wasn't excruciating. His rage only increased.

"Bored while your husband risks his life in a war against dragons. Praying and nursing our little Manfred should have remedied that, you would find, if you were reasonable." His calloused hands moved from his wife's shoulders to seize her temples, pressing them firmly. "You aren't reasonable, though. You are a self-indulgent, featherbrained girl who dwells in the lowliest kinds of leisure and is incapable of intelligence."

Ormund knew he was not doing his wife justice, for she possessed great reasoning abilities and even skill in arithmetic, besides artistic and cultural knowledge. Yet his anger made him speak beyond justice, skirting the borders of humiliation. He would make that jovial spirit more humble, lest it slip beyond his reins. The Lord of Oldtown would not let his marriage crumble through neglect of propriety, and there was a popular saying: everything was fair in war and in love. He was living by it at that moment.

"You enjoy cards and dice while poverty and famine murder half the children of this realm." Ormund was mocking her on purpose now. "You enjoy sex and dancing. You enjoy Lannister company."

The greatest sign that his method was succeeding was her silence, even more than her motionless eyes. Gamblers know how a person can sit at cards for almost twenty-four hours without looking to the right or to the left.

"And drinking," he added flatly. "How much did you drink while sitting at that table like some common court whore who can't hold her wine? So dazed you didn't even feel the lion's hand und—"

"Don't you believe me when I say nothing happened?" his wife finally asserted herself, cutting off her husband's sentence, because listening to him for one minute longer would tear her heart apart. "He's our ally in this civil war. That day, boredom wasn't the greatest affliction. My mind was in disgrace from the number of worried thoughts I had about you. Lord Tyland was my distraction. He amused me, but not enough to tempt me. Be sure of that."

Imogen pulled his hands away from her forehead. He allowed her that freedom for the moment, sitting on the desk beside her chair. The distance lent greater coldness to his sermon.

"It isn't a matter of belief," he lectured. "It is a matter of appearance. Do you have any idea what kind of woman they expect my wife to be? The Mother from the Seven Heavens herself made flesh. A paragon of morality."

"This must be a joke," her soft laughter echoed through the chamber.

"A joke?" he repeated, his voice low and dangerous. "You think the disgrace of my house is a joke?"

He took a step forward, towering over her once more.

"You sit there laughing at me while courtiers whisper that my wife fraternizes with Lannisters like some tavern wench."

Imogen did not like being reprimanded. Despite her attempt to appear strong in the face of words of censure that had already gone beyond insult, a dreadful feeling began to assail her heart. She had overestimated her husband's understanding, who had previously ignored her small transgressions whenever he knew of them—rare, because they usually happened behind his back. She truly loved him, ever since the first time she had seen him, with his gray goblet in hand, smelling a perfume pomander in the Tyrell ballroom. His face, combined with his masculine posture, at once vain and imposing, had immediately flushed her cheeks. Even though his heir, Lyonel, was closer to her own age and therefore more suitable, Imogen wanted the father. He would know how to care for and guide someone like her, indulge her little whims, and she, in turn, would be the delight of his sheets and his court.

Imogen couldn't afford to lose this man. From her jewelry to her sentimentality, he was the master of everything she needed to live in joy. The world could rise against her, commanding the air to poison her lungs and the rain to carry her body away, but Ormund could never despise her.

It seemed her greatest fear was now coming true, filling her with spiritual horror, brought about by her own misconduct.

"My wife does not drink with Lannisters while I'm at war. My wife does not play cards like some courtly fool looking for favor." His voice rose slightly now, the first real crack in his composure since entering the room. "And, most importantly, my wife certainly does not speak of jokes when confronted about such disgrace."

"You are no wife of mine."

Her face froze. A flash of terror streaked through her eyes. For a long moment she said nothing while struggling to arrange an expression that might reconcile him.

When she finally blinked, Imogen saw that Ormund was already making his way toward the door to leave her behind.

"Take it back, Ormund! ORMUND, come back! I'll apologize." She sprang from the chair, staggering, utterly distraught. Catching her hand on the chair's backrest, she groaned in frustration and hurried after her husband. "Don't leave me alone. Let me apologize."

He smiled to himself, betraying his contempt. It faded before he turned to face her with that grim executioner's expression.

Imogen took his hand, not to hold it, but to support herself as she knelt at his feet. There she had found the proper expression: woe. Silent tears rolled down her face as her beautiful little hands twisted together.

He laughed. It sounded genuine.

"Oh, really, my girl! Can you do no better than tears? I've had one wife before you, so I'm no stranger to tears. A woman's gambling capital, she's brought up to believe. She throws it onto the table like coins. Rise."

Looking up, Imogen's field of vision was entirely filled by Ormund's body. He stood like the statue of the Warrior in the Sept of Baelor. In contrast, she must have looked to him like a beautiful penitent.

"Not yet," she said after clearing her throat. "I must apologize, Ormund. Sorry, truly—truly."

"You should apologize to yourself first. It's your own honor you wounded the most."

"I—I feel a terrible pull toward vice, gambling and w-wine and... you know. Always did, and when you're away... it's harder to persevere against temptations." Her voice carried an unusual sincerity, and he knew she spoke from the heart. This impious little wife of his. "If not for pleasure, I feel dull. I feel dead."

There are scents that belong to a single master. Imogen would recognize anywhere the mixture of rosewater and sweat seasoned with cloves. When Ormund's thick hand rested upon her hair, the fragrance of his skin reached her senses before the touch itself.

"When did this begin? These vices?"

"I should say I have been a sinner since conception—Well, The Seven-Pointed Star says we all are."

"That's a serious matter, Imogen, and you have no idea what is written in the sacred book. You haven't read a single word of religion. We'll solve that problem too. Confess like you mean it."

She pressed a moist kiss upon his signet ring. Holding him by the hips, Imogen rose to look him straight in the eye, confessing:

"It was troublesome since girlhood... I used to engage in every sort of mischief and tantrum. I would steal my father's ale and wine to drink secretly with my ladies at night."

"A childish indiscretion that I have no doubt your father never corrected. Thanks to him, I am left to teach you what he didn't."

She had stopped weeping and grew angry at the mention of her beloved father. Yet she could not show that anger to this stern, godlike Ormund. Instead, she punished him by revealing something she knew he would hate to hear.

"I used to gamble with your cousin too, every time you went hunting alone while I was expecting Manfred. Once, he and I disguised ourselves and went to an alley to party with commoners at a villa near Oldtown."

"Gwayne?"

"Gwayne."

"I should scourge your back until it is bloody!"

Imogen recoiled at the blaze contained in that dreadful physical threat, as though the instant those words had been formed upon his tongue, that very tongue had become the whip. The searing pain cracked across her back ten times in her imagination before she found the strength to continue.

"Don't torture me further with words. I am here to seek penitence. Tell me what to do."

"Selfishness—your greatest struggle is acting like a proper lady," he said at last, his voice even. "Your 'pleasure above all' mindset is your weakness. This cannot continue."

Her face twisted once again, threatening to dissolve into tears.

"You're my problem. It's my duty as a husband to light your way, and so I will. We begin tomorrow at dawn. You will join me for morning prayers and the reading of The Seven-Pointed Star."

Then:

"And from then on, every day without fail—no matter how tired or busy we are—we will spend one hour together reviewing your behavior and correcting what needs correcting."

His open hand, previously resting upon her left shoulder, moved idly to cup her tit. She found it his most hypocrite act, to reprimand her addictions while enganging in his through her.

"Shouldn't I simply rid myself of temptations?" she asked, then. She knew either the lukewarm absence of feeling or overwhelming emotion; nothing in between fit within her mind. Knowing herself, she understood that meeting her husband's expectations would require changes so radical they would alter her very core.

"Running from temptation isn't balance," he countered immediately, opening an minus in his septon discourse. Of all her lost list of compulsions, the only one he would leave alone would be her sexual appetite. "It's cowardice."

His tone no longer held rage, merely stating facts as they were.

"You can't hide from every pleasure forever. That would make you a miserable wife and an even worse mother to our children. I love you for your passion, but only if I am its guardian, as the tower keeps the fire contained in my house's sigil."

"I wish I were as temperate as you," she told him with an open heart that had been deeply wounded, though he took it as nourishment for his ego.

"You can be, my dove. The way is to face temptations," he said more kindly than in any sentence before.

Ormund embraced her tightly against his body, and she returned the embrace with such docility that it became easy to lay her upon the table.

Another pause followed before he continued in the same no-nonsense tone, while his fragrant fingers wandered across her warm, tear-damp cheeks with fascination plainly written upon his face.

"Self-discipline isn't about never wanting things; it's about mastering yourself so your desires don't recklessly govern your actions."

A pool of red velvet was upon her belly made by his hands that lifted her skirts. Ever since he had seen her kneeling at his boots, he had desired to fuck her until all there was left of Imogen was pulp. Gladly, she didn't need a command to spread her legs open like a flower for him to accomodate himself in between.

"You're my lady inside and out. Your heart is mine. Your cunt is mine. Your womb too. Your hands... your lips. Your mind. They are mine to command. From now on, every one of these pretty parts of you shall behave according to my customs, my ways, my life, my rule, my faith or I will make good on my threat of whipping you."