Just two weeks of her being in King's Landing and Alex had already gathered a whole host of facts — mostly useless ones — about Lucía Bolton; call it personal interest, if you must call it anything. She liked summer cherries, but only the bitter ones. She enjoyed dancing and would do so with almost anyone who asked, from fools and kitchen girls to lords and knights. She played the merry bride and the merry child, but when alone in her rooms she looked bitterly melancholic. She wrote to her brothers and sister regularly and in volume. She was a good embroiderer. She was a good singer. She disliked the southern ways and the southern men and the southern songs. She had the laughter of a god.

And she rode like the wind.

Twice every day would she takes her nameless dothraki mare from the stables and mount it bareback, — once at dawn and then again at nightfall. She would run a few laps and laugh her thunder laughter, egging it on with harsh and foreing words, then, she'd stand on the beast's back, open her arms wide and let it run free while her hair and clothes whipped all around her, like the tendrils of the sun.

Alex liked to watch her from his study, liked hearing her joy while half-listening to Varys, and sneak a peak whenever she could. It wasn't infatuation, or at least that's what he told herself. No, it was just envy. If only Alex could ride a horse like that…

"Hosh!" She howled the last night of the second week, like she had done every night before it. "Hosh, lame!"

Varys shook his head, tksing into his work.

"She is going to run the poor thing dry, if she keeps trying to make it go faster." His bearly eyes rose to the celing, as if asking for patience. "Those dothraki, one leaves the Essos and they'll follow one just to spite him."

"You speak their language, my lord?" Alex asked, barely rising her eyes from his paper. If the master of Whispers had taught Alexander Tyrell anything, is to not give away his intentions.

"Hm?" Varys turned his head almost imperceptibly towards the window. Aparently this was way more interesting than continue copying information for a king who won't ever read it. Go figure.

"The dothraki language, lord Varys. You said she was ordering her to go faster?"

"Ah, yes. It is a trade language in Essos, and it's always useful to know how to beg for your life in every language at any given continent." He turned his lips into the slightliest of smiles. "Why, dear boy? Are you interested in learning?"

The Stranger take him, he had caught her.

"I just… Well, if was so far away from my father's land, if my father's tongue was so far away and I couldn't hear his language… I would enjoy entirely someone talking to me in it."

"You pity her?"

"I think her utterly tragic, surrounded by lions and snakes in equal meassure."

"Ah, you are charmed by her." The man was laughing with his eyes, and Alex could feel her face burn up. "Do you wish to give her sweet words? She is to marry."

Alex jumped from her seat, sending his chair and cane tumbling down.

"I just wish to tell her that she rides like the wind!" By now, he probably looked like those cherries that lady Bolton liked so much. She sat back down. "She… she looks like the sun on the winds of the west. That's all."

"Yer hash ven jin gizikhven zheanae erinak shekh dothralat she chaf." The man shighed. "You are as the sweet lady sun riding on the wind."

Alex looked up from his hands.

"But if you wish to keep talking to her in her father's tongue, don't come to me. And finish you work before you run to her."

Alex nodded, still half dazed and got to work.

If she was fully honest, he'd probably would have to re-copy most of his work tomorrow morning. She'd finished it quickly and uncleanly to a point that would usually had made him ashamed — but tonight Alex had a mission.

She was at the stables by the time Alex got there. Lucía Bolton, siluetted by the dark wood of the sheds, her riding skirts dancing around her ankles as she brushed the mare's body.

"My lord Tyrell?" Alex stopped three steps away.

"What gave me away?" Alex asked, feeling something strange curl into his stomach.

She giggled, not unkindly.

"The cane, lord Tyrell. You walk rhytmically."

"Ah." Alex laughed lightly. "I watched you ride."

Lady Bolton turned around and looked Alex in the eyes, wild and cold like her dear North. She looked almost startled and it came to mind that, maybe, she had been riding when she tought no one would see her.

"And what does my lord Tyrell think of my riding?"

"Yer hash ven jin gizikhven zheanae erinak shekh dothralat she chaf." Alex said, quickly, stumbling over his words.

The lady cocked her head and then threw her head back and laughed. She laughed like a king, like a god, like a demon from the hells.

Oh.

Oh.

"You butchered that, my lord." She continued to laugh all her way to the doors, leaving Alex stuck to the floor, feeling stupid. "But thanks you."