All For Show
by imp

All For Show

imp

Summary

Notes

None

Chapter One

She was not safe.

The Dragon Queen had ousted the Lannisters and the Tyrells - and the Starks, for that matter; she was Queen of Westeros now, Ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, in addition to being the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, and so on. She was a terrifying person but she hadn’t had Sansa beaten publicly, nor had she threatened her with rape, nor had she gently and civilly told Sansa that it was her duty as a woman to be hurt. So she came ahead of the Lannisters, in Sansa’s estimation.

The Lannisters. For Tommen was no longer a Baratheon, and Myrcella in Dorne was also a bastard, though by the Queen’s decree they could call themselves Lannister. It was a strange choice, one Sansa had expected would never be made; but then, the Queen herself was the product of an incestuous relationship, so Sansa supposed she might have a different view on the Lannister twins’ treachery.

She didn’t ask her. She had never spoken to the Queen, though she’d bent the knee with the rest of the Red Keep only a few weeks ago.

The fourth day after she’d relieved Lady Brienne of her vows, she received a summons to the throne room. She was midway through reading a letter from Tyrion, and anticipated that the audience would be related to her marital obligations and the implied loyalty thereof. So she found herself speechless when the Queen said, “I’d like to appoint you to my small council, if you are willing.”

She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t breathe.

“Sansa? I’m sorry, I know it’s sudden.”

She didn’t even tell the Queen it was Lady Sansa; everyone knew the Queen had been raised a barbarian. But -

The small council?

“Sansa, I beg you to speak freely. I can see this request does not please you.”

The Queen’s loyal retainers, Missandei and Jorah Mormont, stood on either side of the Iron Throne. Mormont was armed, and Missandei could have Sansa arrested within the hour. Both were dangerous. She could not speak freely.

“I beg your pardon, Your Grace,” she managed to say. “I was only surprised - you see, I am very young. And I don’t know anything about politics, or - or budgets, whatever it is the small council must know. The Queen - I mean the former Queen - I mean - Cersei Lannister said I’m stupid. I’m a slow learner, I suppose.”

“Lady Sansa, you must not speak thusly of yourself in my presence.” A polite request, but a firm one; Sansa found herself glancing at Jorah Mormont’s sword before she could help herself. “I won’t punish you if you do so, but understand that I will be profoundly saddened. I doubt you wish to treat your Queen in such a manner.”

So, she would be punished, but not by the Queen directly, and not right away. Of course. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“To the subject at hand, I have someone for budgets and I have several for politics. But my existing advisors tell me the North is my most intractable kingdom. Only today I received a letter informing me that the North recognizes no ruler but one who is a Stark. Is that so?”

Sansa could not think of her father without thinking of his head, dead and rotting on a spike, and Joffrey’s cruel voice in her ear. She fought down a shudder as she said, “Your Grace, the North has an independent mind and a - unique outlook. It is said that a Stark must always be at Winterfell; but right now, Winterfell is controlled by the Boltons.”

“Why must a Stark always be at Winterfell, then?”

“The Wall, my Queen,” Jorah Mormont murmured. “The legend is it was Stark power that gave the Wall its power to hold back the dead.”

“And winter is coming, Your Grace,” Sansa said. She didn’t particularly enjoy thinking of legends, or of the dead.

“Yes, that is what your House says, isn’t it?” The Queen pursed her lips, looking at her.

“Yes, Your Grace.” Sansa kept herself calm, placid. She could not let the Dragon Queen see her fear, her hatred, her anger. She could not let herself see them, for if she truly acknowledged the wretched impulses at the core of her, she’d explode.

“I cannot make a Stark ruler of Westeros. And the North must stand united, for I came to conquer the Seven Kingdoms, not the Six. But a place on my council should mollify your people, and I find myself curious about what it is Starks are made of to compel such loyalty.” The Queen nodded firmly, as though they’d had a conversation. As though Sansa had ever had any choice.

It had seemed to her, when Joffrey sat on the throne, that the small council worked mainly to curb his excesses; she had sometimes wondered what they might be doing if that hadn’t occupied so much of their time. Ensuring the smallfolk didn’t go hungry as often, she imagined. She thought of the mob that had nearly raped her, of the drawn, hungry faces that had watched her father die. Already so much hunger, and winter was coming.

Once, Sansa would have trusted that the Queen, so strong and beautiful she seemed to be from the Age of Heroes, would solve the problem. That girl had long since died, replaced by someone who understood hunger and pain and the fallibility of rulers. Sansa was worried the Queen didn’t understand winter at all.

And so, on the first meeting of the small council that she attended, seated across from the Spider and down the table from Olenna Tyrell, with the Queen staring at all of them remotely, she said, “I’d like to discuss the Crown’s preparations for winter.”

“Ha!” said Lady Olenna. “Tell me, child, do the Starks teach their children such single-minded focus, or do you simply have it whispered in your ear by your overgrown godswood?”

Sansa did not frown. She did not. “Winter -”

“Is coming, yes, we know.”

“In fact it is on the agenda,” Varys said smoothly, “and I’m sure Lady Sansa has insight into the particular challenges of winter that we do not. Thank you, Lady Sansa.”

She nodded and kept quiet then, as they discussed preparations for a coming celebratory dinner, and negotiations with Dorne, and what to settle on Gendry, newly-named Baratheon lord of Storm’s End. Finally, after an interminable amount of discussion that Sansa worried she was too stupid to truly understand, Lady Olenna said, “And now: winter. Mormont, you have the balance sheets, do you not?”

He produced a massive sheaf of paper. “Grain stores are down; the Crown is still recovering from being damn near broke. Robert Baratheon seemed to think summer would never end.” His tone said what he thought of such foolishness. Sansa was inclined to agree, but King Robert had loved her father, and she still couldn’t quite reconcile the knowledge of their bond with the King’s own foolish cruelty. “We’re working on fixing that, importing some food and planting swift-growing cool-weather crops - those should see us through years of fall and early winter, before we have to fall back on grain. The Queen is aware of the dangers of the years to come.”

“But the Queen has three dragons,” Sansa said.

“I do,” the Queen said. “What’s that got to do with winter?”

Sansa thought back to her lessons. “When the snows begin, the horses are packed together, but even then they often don’t last through the first year. Large animals are the hardest to keep alive. They need food, and they have to be protected from the hungry - though I suppose for dragons that particular problem is reversed. And crowding engenders disease, also.”

“I will not send my children away,” the Queen said tightly. “Nor will I see them endangered by Westerosi savagery.”

“Of course, Your Grace,” Sansa said. “I know it’s stupid to think you would. Of course you must protect them. But without planning, I fear for them, and for the smallfolk.” And for myself. Why would a hungry dragon go out of its way to spare nobility?

The Queen pursed her lips. Her strange eyes seemed to burn as they looked at Sansa. “I see. You must draw up a plan, then.”

She nearly swallowed her own tongue. “I - me? I can’t - that is to say, Your Grace, I mustn’t -”

“No one else here would tell me that my dragons might not survive the winter. Draw up a plan, Lady Sansa.”

It was an order that could not be disobeyed. Sansa nodded her assent. She hardly noticed the rest of the meeting passing, for it seemed as though her head had been filled with a swarm of angry flies.

After, she sent a letter to Tyrion, brief but urgent, begging for his help with a plan for dragons. Dragons; how could one plan for dragons? She knew the Queen controlled then, but already there were whispered about the limits of that control. Legend held that dragons could turn on their masters, that the Targaryens were masters of dragons in the same way a blacksmith might master fire. How, then, could she plan for their hunger? Who would starve to keep the Dragon Queen’s beasts fed?

She couldn’t. She couldn’t possibly. But to risk the Queen’s displeasure was to risk pain worse than death, so she had to come up with some kind of plan.

Her lady mother had taught her what provisioning for a famine looked like. Cutting rations too much, too soon, always resulted in riots. Cool weather crops would help keep the supply of food going for awhile, but…

She began to write what she thought they might need. Three dragons, each eating several animals per day. They needed grain for the animals, and a continuous supply of new animals; it would be eight to ten months before a lamb or kid became a sheep or goat, assuming they could be bred during the cold at all. What other purpose could the animals be put to? Milk and cheese, of course, and wool. Goats could eat things other animals couldn’t. Chickens and pigs were even more flexible - and so she began calculating how much waste a household in winter might produce, how quickly they could raise up pigs and goats for the dragons.

And of course, that meant the smallfolk would need access to animals too. They couldn’t ask them to give all the meat to dragons and starve for years on end. Gold would be the key, and shelter for the animals. Casterly Rock had empty mines; could that arid land be used? Around and around she went, considering plans and discarding them, already feeling the chill of winter despite the warmth of the room.

My summer children, her lady mother had said. But Winterfell saw snow even in the summer, and the chill in Sansa’s bones hadn’t lifted since she had been forced to gaze upon her father’s head.

She had learned, since the riot, how better to walk among the smallfolk of the city. She always took a guard with her; since being appointed to the small council, the guard was invariably a member of the Dragon Queen’s army of Unsullied. But the guard was not the most important part. She avoided going with other ladies, and had refused the one time Tommen had asked her to be part of his retinue. She kept coins on her person to give to beggars, but otherwise dressed modestly. And she listened, so that when the mood of a crowd began to turn, she wasn’t caught unawares.

She took all of these precautions when going out to purchase a present for Tyrion’s nameday. She thought to send it to Casterly Rock along with a note thanking him for his guidance regarding winter. He’d suggested using the Rock for livestock even as she’d written to him to ask if he found it permissible, and beyond that, he knew more about the actual mechanics of food storage than she did; she hadn’t thought to check to see that Southern houses also had massive stores of smoked meat and pickled vegetables, and it turned out they didn’t. Luckily, even the small houses had maesters to help with the process, and housekeepers to oversee it.

“All the grand folk think summer’s here to stay,” said a woman at the stall next to the one Sansa browsed. “Aye, and when the cold winds come they’ll starve us out first.”

It was a good point. The Lannisters especially had seemed determined to ignore the inevitability of winter.

“Do you think she’s any different?” said the stall-keeper. “She ain’t even seen winter, has she?”

“She’s got the Stark girl. My cousin, he lives up near Karhold, he says the Starks never forget. Can’t, it’s fuck-off cold up there even in summer.”

“Miss, are ye going to buy anything?”

Sansa blinked down at the incense holder in her hand. It was lovely porcelain. Likely they had dozens, but it would serve as a token of thanks. “This, please.”

Business concluded, she made her way back to the Keep. She was nearly there, rounding a corner of shops crowded with wealthy dressmakers and others who catered to the nobility, when a quiet voice said, “You move like a mouse, Lady Sansa.”

Sansa froze, and the Dragon Queen emerged from the shadow she’d been hiding in.

She had no retinue. In fact, she looked remarkably ordinary, in a plain red-brown dress with her hair braided. As Sansa stared, she said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“How - why -”

The Queen smiled. “Of course, you didn’t think you were being followed.”

“I wasn’t!”

“Ultimately, my soldiers are loyal to me. I asked them not to alert you to my presence. I was curious, you see. Lord Varys tells me you visit the market at least once a week.”

“It is useful for me to - get out of the Keep.”

“I find that surprising. Shall we continue?”

They walked side by side towards the gates of the Red Keep. Sansa’s heart was still pounding in fear when the Queen said, “In the Keep you always seem jumpy, and I understand why; your torment at the hands of the false King is well known. But why do you fear the open air?”

“I don’t, Your Grace.”

She begged the gods for clemency, that they wouldn’t make her elaborate. But scarcely a second passed before the Queen said, “It’s the people you fear, then?”

She had never had to put to words her experience the day of the riots. She found herself struggling with speech, her heart frozen. “There was a riot. I was - threatened, Your Grace. It made me wary. Of crowds.”

“Ah. I see.”

She said nothing else, and soon enough they were back in the Keep. None of the guards gave any sign that they were surprised to see their Queen walking with only a single Unsullied guard and a useless traitors’-blood girl. The Queen said, “Thank you for the lovely walk, Lady Sansa,” and left her alone.

She packaged the gift to Tyrion and took it to be sent, then she went back to her room. She dismissed her maid and opened her curtains. Watery late-summer sunshine lit up her bed linens and made the gilt on her desk shine.

Alone, she folded her hands in her lap and tightened her stomach, sitting very straight. She watched the waves crash against the rocks far below, listened to the gulls call as they flew, and sobbed.

Lady Olenna opened the next meeting of the small council by saying, “Randyll fucking Tarly, not satisfied with being my least favorite bannerman, has decided to refuse to recognize the Throne.”

“Who does he think belongs on the throne instead?” the Queen said.

“He claims Tommen Baratheon is the rightful king.”

“Tommen Lannister is practicing calligraphy a hundred feet below us,” the Queen said.

“It would be easier to kill him,” murmured Mormont.

Sansa knew he was right. She had thought the same thing herself, in the early days, when Stannis and the Blackfish’s heads were displayed and then destroyed by dragon fire. She’d thought she would see the end of the Lannisters entirely, for they were the architects of the Targaryen doom. Instead, the Dragon Queen had shown mercy to the one family Sansa could not find it in her heart to forgive.

Including Tyrion, who remained her husband. Sansa stared at the table and tried, once more, to marshal her thoughts. She knew Lady Olenna noticed her fear, even if no one else did.

“I’m not going to kill someone who’s so easy to keep locked up,” the Queen said. “And I’d prefer not to continue burning Westerosi Lords; we’ll run out of people to manage the estates if this keeps happening. Can he be bought?”

“He’s an idiot,” Lady Olenna said, “so in theory, yes. But we already tried that; he insists he is loyal to the Lannister child.” She glanced at Missandei and Grey Worm. “And, begging Your Grace’s pardon, I don’t think more gold or even the threat of dragon fire would help. He hates Dorne, trusts actual foreigners even less, and you come from across the Narrow Sea. Your two most trusted advisors - oh, shut up, Mormont - are foreign too. No, he won’t bend the knee, not even if you managed to hold off winter for a thousand years.”

“I see,” the Dragon Queen said. “But I am a Targaryen, the rightful ruler of Westeros. Protector of the Seven Kingdoms. I suffered for years because the Usurper stole my family’s throne, and I am here now because it is mine by right of fire and blood. He cannot deny these truths and be permitted to live.”

Sansa couldn’t help but stare, just a little. She wondered if the Queen knew how mad she sounded. Of course, it was all true, but - she seemed so confident that she could just take and so contemptuous of anyone who might try to stop her. Sansa couldn’t imagine feeling that way, much less saying it.

“You’ll have to have him brought to King’s Landing,” Lady Olenna said. “He will not come willingly. Do you have a kidnapper among your Dothraki?”

“Ser Jorah will go.”

“Your Grace,” Ser Jorah said, in acknowledgment but also protest. The Queen smiled at him, uncharacteristically soft. Not for the first time, Sansa wondered what they were to one another. Was he her noble knight? He seemed so old, and had a slaver’s brand besides. But then, Sansa was grown up enough now to know that the stories weren’t real.

“I’m sorry. I beg you to ride as swiftly as possible, but you must. I can’t trust anyone else with it. Bring him here and he’ll be put to trial.”

And then he’d die. The Queen’s justice was swift. But that would only compound the problem; the Tarly son would fight too. “What about his son?” Sansa said before she could think better of it.

“Dickon Tarly, Your Grace,” the Spider said. “Loyal to his father, I’m afraid, and very unlikely to change his mind.”

“But if you summoned his son.” Sansa swallowed. “He would come. If you imply it’s a compromise, or a treaty. Once his son is here, arrest him. Hold him on condition of Lord Tarly recognizing your rule.”

“You speak of treachery,” said the Queen.

“I speak of diplomacy,” Sansa said. “Or at least - of a way to resolve this without ending a House, Your Grace, as you said you’d prefer.”

“Would Lord Tarly bend the knee after such a ruse?” the Queen asked Lady Olenna.

The Lady in question looked down the table at Sansa, her expression hard. Knowing. After all, Sansa’s understanding of what parents would do for their children had come at terrible cost. “He might do. Not for you, but for his son, to spare him. And sparing him might at least buy you some goodwill.”

“Do I care about goodwill?”

It sounded like an honest question, but it was one that made Sansa feel cold with terror. Why indeed should the Queen with three dragons, the Queen no one could force to do anything, care about others’ goodwill? Sansa couldn’t imagine being that powerful. And yet -

“Someday you may find yourself in need.”

The room went very still. All the other members of the council looked at Sansa with frozen expressions. Sansa, who had learned to try so hard to keep herself under control, had spoken out of turn.

“Your Grace. If anything were to happen to you - if any of the Kingdoms were to rebel, or even to try treachery - it helps to have loyalty. Everyone needs a friend. Even queens.”

The Queen’s eyes were two chips of flint. “Tell me how you know this, Lady Sansa.”

“The false King had no friends who were willing to tell him the state of his treasury, the distrust of his allies, or the treachery in his marriage,” Sansa said. “And the false King is dead now.”

Air left the room as six very wealthy lords and ladies exhaled. The Queen did not look away from Sansa, and so Sansa did not look away from the Queen. “Ser Jorah, what do you think?” the Queen said.

“Lady Sansa speaks truly, Your Grace. The Starks usually do.” This with a wry tinge to his tone.

“Very well. Have the Tarly boy brought to me, then.”

Her word was law. Ser Jorah told her it would be done, and she adjourned the meeting. Sansa had almost escaped when Lady Olenna appeared at her elbow - well, shuffled, really - and said, “Take lunch with me, Lady Sansa.”

It was not a request. Sansa nodded and followed her to her chambers.

“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” Lady Olenna said, as soon as she’d sent the serving boy away for cakes.

“I - I don’t - the Queen -”

“Be frank with me, my dear. You don’t trust her. I don’t trust her. My granddaughter will never be Queen thanks to her, and it’s a kinder fate than I’d imagined. Yet it is still a stone around my neck. Tell me what you think the foreign queen will do for you.”

Sansa found her voice long enough to say, “It hardly matters, my lady, for she is our Queen. I think she is our Queen and - the rightful Queen. The Targaryen heir. And so -”

“And so,” Lady Olenna said, her mocking tone clear as ice. “Tell me, Lady Sansa, how old are you?”

She knew. Sansa knew she knew. “Fourteen, my lady, fifteen in a month.”

“Wonderful. Fourteen. If someone came into the Red Keep tomorrow, stabbed the Queen to death, dragged Tommen Baratheon-Lannister out from his cell, and declared him King, would you gaze at me and tell me he’s the rightful King and you’re glad the usurper is dead?”

Tommen had never made a single decision free of his mother’s influence. Tommen Baratheon had been vapid; Tommen Lannister was a shade of a person. “I don’t know,” Sansa said finally.

“You’d better think about it, child. You’re a sympathetic figure, having been held prisoner by the Lannisters, but if we see another shift in power, your maneuvering is going to start looking like self-interest.”

She bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from saying what she was thinking. She was fourteen, her family was dead, she had traitor’s blood; what else could she do but support whoever took the throne? But - “The Queen is just, my lady. I trust her. I do not think I would support someone who attempted to overthrow her.”

“Well, I should hope not. You’re on her council, after all.”

Lady Olenna dropped the topic after that, engaging Sansa instead on questions of dress and ceremony. The Queen, having grown up in far-away lands, did not seem to have much regard for Westerosi ceremony, particularly wedding ceremonies. Lady Olenna said that the Queen would have to be married soon no matter what she currently thought, and solicited Sansa’s impressions of fashions and wedding cakes. She knew it was only Lady Olenna trying to be kind, but it was diverting nonetheless.

Or at least - well. It was diverting until later, when Sansa sat at her window and looked up at the stars, a blanket on her lap to protect from the first hints of fall chill.

The Queen had power beyond anything Sansa would have imagined, for herself or for anyone else. But it wasn’t enough, apparently, to keep people from speculating about who she might marry. It wasn’t enough to ensure she didn’t have to marry. Nothing was enough to keep a woman on the throne of Westeros without a husband.

She didn’t sleep that night, nor many nights after. When the Tarly boy was brought to the capital, she scarcely noticed enough to be relieved when the Queen pardoned his father and allowed their House to continue.

No one raised the question of marriage in Sansa’s hearing. Nearly every meeting of the small council brought good news: the Queen’s treasury was recovering thanks to increased trade with, and leverage over, Braavos and Meereen. Dorne had bent the knee after all. Winter, for now, seemed to be coming slowly. The grain stores were being augmented by root vegetables and cold-weather crops. The maesters had great luck disseminating various methods of food preservation. In spite of everything, Westeros seemed to be entering a period of stability. Some might even call it a period of prosperity.

No one spoke of marriage, but Sansa couldn’t stop thinking about it.

She was, after all, still technically married to Tyrion Lannister. No one mentioned it to her, to the point that she suspected the Queen had forbidden it, but she received letters from Tyrion, and her political position was never far from her mind. Traitors’ blood twice over, really; no great House stood in as much contempt as the Lannisters.

The Queen invited Tyrion to King’s Landing for Sansa’s fifteenth nameday. She told Sansa afterwards, with the wide smile on her face that meant she expected Sansa to be happy about it. Sansa, long accustomed to hiding her true feelings, smiled and said thank you and then went to her rooms and hid anything that might indicate loyalty to the North, or love for her long-lost family, or even really a personality at all.

But Tyrion didn’t stay in her rooms. He was given a suite an entire tower away. He first saw her in the morning the day after he’d arrived, and though he greeted her with all courtesy, she saw the wry twist of his mouth that meant he was not simply a husband visiting his wife, and he knew it.

She thought about requesting an audience with the Queen and asking for an explanation. But what might she say? Every time she tried to imagine giving voice to her fears, she felt ridiculous. She had no practice at speaking her mind. No, better to just stay quiet and observe.

They were to have a dinner to celebrate her nameday. She’d rather they didn’t. It felt like no sort of achievement to be the last Stark alive, still captive in King’s Landing despite the great wisdom and justice of the Queen. But the Queen herself had insisted, clutching Sansa’s hands in her own, and Sansa was helpless to refuse her.

She had just finished dressing for her banquet when a maid said, “My lady, Tyrion Lannister is seeking an audience. Should I -”

Ah. Of course. She hardened her heart as best she could against whatever violence he wished to enact upon her, and said, “Invite him in.”

“My Lady Sansa,” Tyrion said when the maid brought him forth. He bowed over her hand, the picture of courtesy. “You look lovely, as always.”

“Lord Tyrion.” She could not force a compliment past her lips. “I suppose you’re to walk me to dinner.”

“If my lady doesn’t object too terribly.”

It must have been the Dragon Queen’s influence: she spoke without thinking, horribly rash. “May I object, then?”

“Excuse me?”

“Surely you’ve come back to King’s Landing to claim that which is yours. If I were to object -”

“My lady, I don’t think -”

“What would you do? Would you -”

“Fifteen is still very young, and I’m busy up at the Rock anyway. The Queen -”

“Would you,” Sansa said, disallowing him to say anything else through sheer force of her fury, “allow me my objections?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. He looked like a fool; he looked like a Lannister. “Of course I would,” he said long after the silence had become awkward.

“I cannot take it for granted, my lord.”

“Right, well, you have my word then: it is your right to object, any time, about anything. In this world my word is law, is it not? So that’s that.”

It wasn’t that simple. Sansa knew it, and her husband must too. But he looked at her, and he looked old and tired beyond measure. She could not contradict him in that moment. She said, “Yes, of course,” and they walked down to the banquet together.

After the fish course, the Queen held up a hand and the hall fell silent. Sansa, at the Queen’s right hand, kept herself as still as she could bear to be. Her traitor’s heart fluttered in her ribs.

“Sansa Stark has been a Lannister for over a year now, on a dead usurper’s order,” the Queen said.

Her breath caught and died in her throat.

“I arrived in Westeros a breaker of chains. Here is one more chain that I shall break, as Queen, and as Lady Stark’s friend, who wishes to see her happy.” She looked over to Sansa. Sansa couldn’t help but look back. The Queen’s unearthly eyes held her as she said, “I hereby declare Sansa Stark and Tyrion Lannister’s marriage to be dissolved. Tyrion, your work on Casterly Rock meets with the Crown’s favor. Any marriage you seek will be joyously welcomed. Lady Sansa, I hope to retain you as an advisor and a friend.”

She could no more deny her than she could grow wings and fly like one of the Queen’s dragons. “Of course.”

“Wonderful! Now, let’s have the boar, shall we?”

Servants sprang into action, bringing the food out. Sansa ate, her hands shaking so badly that she almost had to give up on cutting the meat.

Later, much later, after hours revelry - after seeing Tyrion drunkenly crying, then drunkenly pretending he hadn’t been crying - after catching her breath before she could demand to know what the Queen’s real plan was - Sansa found herself alone in her apartments. Her apartments which, she realized now, had never been large enough for a married woman and her husband, even if they were palatial enough to signify her rise in the Crown’s esteem.

The Queen had planned this, very possibly for a long time.

She had to be wary. She had to be aware. No one in Westeros, or at least none of the great lords and ladies, did things out of simple kindness. The Queen would want something in return: loyalty, certainly, but what else? Sansa had nothing to give, Winterfell being taken from her as it had been.

Fealty. That must be it. Sansa hated herself a bit; it was easy to think of. She had never wanted to be married to Tyrion Lannister, and now she was free. What better way to buy loyalty? She’d barely even have to pretend.

She lay down in bed and closed her eyes. The Queen’s face floated in her imagination. She had watched Sansa so closely, and she was so very beautiful. Cersei Lannister had always been exactly what Sansa thought a queen should be, but the Queen wore power the way Cersei had worn jewels. She breathed it, spoke it. She was power.

So beautiful, and so distant. Impossible to truly know. Tomorrow Sansa would thank her, with true joy in her heart alongside the fear. Tonight, she only struggled to sleep, imagining a world where beautiful queens gave traitors gifts for reasons that weren’t frightening at all.

She meant to beg an audience with the Queen, so of course the following day, the Queen herself arrived at Sansa’s quarters before she’d even finished dressing.

“Leave us, if you please,” the Queen said to Sansa’s maid.

“Oh, Your Grace, I - I’m not decent.” They’d only just finished her hair; she still wore a flimsy dressing gown.

“Nonsense. You know, the Dothraki have very few taboos with regards to nudity? My advisors tell me I must respect Westerosi tradition, but it can be so difficult when fashions tend towards the prudish.” She smiled at Sansa. “But of course if you are uncomfortable, I will wait for you to finish.”

The only thought more horrifying than the Queen noticing her body was the Queen standing outside, waiting on Sansa. “No - no, Your Grace. I thank you, you are most generous, but -”

“Did he teach you to grovel?”

The remainder of her words - her groveling - died in her throat. “Your Grace?”

“Tyrion Lannister. You did mention he was fair to you.”

“No. I mean - that is to say -”

“Speak freely. I beg of you.”

She didn’t look like she was begging. Her eyes on Sansa were calm and serious.

“It was his sister, and her son. Joffrey.”

“Ah.”

“You’d rather I didn’t.”

“I’d rather you were a free woman, not someone still caged despite all our efforts.”

Our efforts? Perhaps it proved her theory that Sansa didn’t ask for an explanation.

“But Lady Sansa, I know it will take time. I, too, grew up with domination as my understanding of the world.”

“I didn’t.”

“Excuse me?”

She licked her lips, already regretting saying anything. “My father and my lady mother were kind. To us, and to their bannermen. I only learned of - domination - when I came South.”

“Ah,” the Queen said, very quietly. “And none of the lessons were easy.”

She thought of her father’s head on a pike, and found she couldn’t respond.

“Last night I called you Lady Stark. Do you prefer it?”

Oh. Oh. “Your Grace, it’s not what I prefer that matters. The form of address -”

“Indicates that I legitimize you as heir to Winterfell, and head of House Stark. Yes; I know.”

“Legally.” Again her words caught in her throat, but this time she could not allow cowardice to win. She forced herself to say, “Legally, a House may have no Hall, no land. And I do not. I could be Lady Stark without Winterfell. The Boltons won’t give up Winterfell for you.”

“I know. They have yet to bend the knee. Do you know why I haven’t gone up there and forced them?”

Sansa shook her head.

“I am advised against it. I am told that without Winterfell, the North ceases to become a minor problem and becomes a terrible one. I am told that my dragons will win the day, but at the cost of all of Westeros. Perhaps the world.”

“And you’re told winter is coming.”

“Indeed.” She smiled a bit. “You take your responsibility seriously.”

“I must. It is all that Starks are raised to do.”

“And ‘there must always be a Stark at Winterfell’. Yes.” The Queen’s eyes wandered around Sansa’s room. “How would you retake Winterfell, Lady Stark?”

“I - I don’t -”

“You don’t need to respond now. I only ask that you think about it. I don’t wish to bring down ancient apocalypse upon our heads.”

It seemed absurd to her, like asking how she might go about pulling down the sky. “Yes, Your Grace.”

The Queen nodded. “I’ll be convening the small council at midday. I’ll see you then.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

For a moment it seemed as if she wanted to say something else. She looked at Sansa, then down, like she was waiting for something. Sansa couldn’t make her slow brain focus enough to think of anything to say. She waited, and the Queen watched her, and then finally she said, “I’ll see you then,” and left.

She was so beautiful and so powerful. She almost made Sansa think taking Winterfell back was a possibility.

Over the next several months, she thought about it a lot: retaking Winterfell, and the Queen’s beauty.

They weren’t remotely related, except in the sense that the Queen had looked very beautiful when asking Sansa to contemplate how Winterfell might be retaken. The first few weeks, she indulged in fantasies of great armies bowing only to her, Sansa, and retaking Winterfell for her. The next month or so she spent in such furious irritation that she felt half possessed; she knew nothing of military strategy, after all. How was she to tell the Queen what might work? She wrote as much to Tyrion - for he had expressed a desire to continue their correspondence, and she didn’t mind it, free of the threat of the marriage bed. He had responded to her frustration with a list of books on military strategy and just enough commiseration that she knew he wasn’t trying to be cruel.

She thought of Theon, who had betrayed her family; she thought of Jon and Arya, lost to her now. They’d all know more than Sansa about how to defeat the Boltons. But the Queen had asked her. She’d asked her looking hopeful and wonderful and stronger than Sansa had known a person could be. Sansa desperately wanted not to disappoint her. So she read the books Tyrion recommended, and thought about the Boltons and how many in the North were likely to accept their rule.

The plan she drew up and sent to the Queen was very simple: an alliance of Ironborn and Stark bannermen, with the Queen’s Dothraki serving as reinforcements. They’d send her dragons north and catch the Bolton army fleeing to the South. It had deception, strength in numbers, and tactics; she hoped it was good enough. The Queen sent her a note acknowledging receipt of the plan, and then -

Nothing.

Oh, she saw the Queen plenty; it was hard not to, since she sat on the Small Council. But the Queen never spoke of their plans, and Sansa discovered she lacked the courage to broach the subject herself. She wanted the Queen’s praise so badly, even as she understood she was unlikely to receive it for a novice’s battle plan for what seemed like an exercise in sheer folly. Retaking Winterfell? She might as well ask winter to halt its advance, for all the power she had to effect either outcome.

As her fifteenth year progressed, the weather turned cooler. It was still warm and sunny during the day, but the air had begun to take on a tang of chill as the nights grew cooler and cooler. Sansa commissioned her first heavy cloak since she’d lived in the North. She was wearing it as she walked down the open hallways of King’s Landing when she saw Margaery Tyrell, not wearing a cloak or much of anything at all, leaning against the Keep’s walls and kissing Missandei with unbridled passion.

She must have made a noise, for they both froze at the same time. Missandei didn’t move away from Margaery, though.

“Lady Sansa,” Margaery said. She smiled, looking for all the world as though she might offer Sansa a lemon cake.

Or a different sort of sweet, Sansa thought, and felt a blush burn through her. She didn’t - she wasn’t -

“It’s lovely to see you.” Margaery trailed a finger down Missandei’s arm. “You’ve caught us unawares, I’m afraid.”

“Yes,” Sansa forced herself to say. “I see that.”

“She knows what we were doing,” Missandei said. “Would you like to let us finish?” That sharp question was directed at Sansa, who felt as though she might combust.

“I’m - I’m sorry, I didn’t - I’ll -” She fled, knowing she wouldn’t get a full sentence out. Not while Margaery stared at her, looking so satisfied and hungry and - comfortable, when her breasts had been out in the open, and she’d been -

Her hand had been -

Sansa had known women could do such things. She wasn’t a child anymore, and everyone whispered such things about Lady Brienne anyway. So she’d known. She’d heard the rumors about Margaery, too, and had always thought it odd that a woman so pretty might indulge in any company other than that of the many handsome men King’s Landing had to offer.

But to know it and to see it were two very different things. She thought of the tight peaks of Margaery’s nipples, of the sheen of sweat on Missandei’s brow. Missandei’s lips had been swollen from kisses, her thighs strong as they clenched around Margaery’s hand. They were both so beautiful. It had seemed, Sansa thought, perfectly natural. Certainly moreso than the couplings Joffrey had suggested, or the Lannisters’ unholy union.

Natural. Beautiful.

She made it all the way back to her room and had hung up her cloak and let down her hair before the thought wormed its way into her mind, as traitorous as Cersei Lannister had once accused Sansa of being. Does the Queen like that?

Surely if she did, she’d be doing it with Missandei, her confidant and closest friend. But what if she wanted someone else?

What if she wanted Sansa?

No. But the thought, once it occurred to her, could not be so easily dismissed. She thought of the Queen pressing her against a wall to kiss her - and then her traitor’s mind suggested the opposite, Sansa pushing the Queen, kissing her. The Queen’s hand on her, the Queen’s fingers in her.

Oh. Oh, no. The room was totally empty and yet she blushed to think of it, the way the Queen might smile as she touched Sansa inside, the way her lips might get shiny and red if Sansa kissed her enough. Sansa had never associated any kind of bedding with pleasure, and for awhile she’d assumed that part of her was broken, but this -

She could want this. Oh, gods, she did want this, in her secret heart that she had tried so hard to preserve during her years as a Lannister captive. What was she to do?

Of course, at first, the answer was: nothing at all.

The Queen couldn’t know about her affections, obviously. If it wasn’t technically illegal to lust after the Queen, surely she’d make it so if she found out about Sansa’s - peculiarities. And Sansa had very few friends in King’s Landing, especially since she’d sent Lady Brienne away, so she couldn’t discuss it with anyone else. Margaery might have discussed it with her - in fact, Sansa thought it very likely. She’d always been open to scandalous things, and Sansa suspected she believed very strongly in a woman’s right to love. But imagining herself broaching the topic filled her with dread. No, she couldn’t sidle up to Lady Margaery, the heir to Highgarden, and say, “Do you kiss her down below, too? How does that work?”

All she had were her own private thoughts and, shamefully, her imagination, which was proving to be quite active and creative. Every time she saw the Queen now, she blushed. If the Queen noticed, she was too kind to say anything, but Olenna Tyrell certainly saw. She thought Lord Varys noticed, too, despite his own professed distaste for such entanglements. She felt painfully, hideously obvious, as bad as she’d been when she imagined Joffrey to be her knight in shining armor - or perhaps even worse, for she wasn’t a child anymore.

Finally, after months of losing her head every time she and the Queen sat at the same table, she humiliated herself: she wrote to Tyrion.

It was a short letter. It begged his understanding, that she had very few people to talk to about confusing things, and that he had seen her uniquely humiliated in ways that meant she was certain she could trust him. She knew the letter would be filtered through Varys’ spies, but then he already knew - he must have already known - so she felt as though she had very little to lose in asking Tyrion how she might go about dealing with her unsavory feelings.

He wrote back promptly. The letter began, My dear Lady Stark, you have seen more violence in your teens than luckier ladies do their whole lives. I beg of you not to call your natural feelings unsavory.

That was all she read for awhile, since the sheer kindness of it brought tears to her eyes; she had to sit still and take deep breaths, counting backwards until she was more composed. Later, she finished the letter, which was mostly book recommendations and mentions of historical figures who’d loved women. As for the logistics, I suspect you will have many years to work it out. I certainly have limited expertise; what whores think will please men who watch them is likely not what they’d enjoy between them, he’d written, and she could almost hear the wry tone with which he might say such a thing.

It was scandalous, of course, but it was also very helpful. And anyway, Sansa was practically a woman grown; she’d been alone for a long time now. She would not allow herself to be cowed by a bit of exciting language and risqé suggestions. She took the list of books Tyrion had given her to the Red Keep’s library. The maester on duty stuttered his way through a feeble protest as Sansa stared at him, as expressionless as the hells of Joffrey’s rule had taught her to be, and he fetched her the books.

They mostly focused on the sex, which Sansa supposed she wasn’t surprised by. It was the part she’d been most curious about, too, until one of the books had a passing mention of courtly love between women. Immediately, that was all she could think about. She didn’t think it was that way between Margaery and Missandei, but what if - well.

The Queen had dissolved her marriage, as a gift. The Queen told her getting her Winterfell would be politically expedient, and she was right, but what if that were also a gift? At night she closed her eyes and imagined the Queen touching the back of her hand and saying, “Winterfell is yours, my Lady Stark,” and her heart fluttered even as she slid a hand down between her legs.

It was all dreadfully confusing, overwhelming and stiflingly dull at the same time. She had grown accustomed to wanting what she couldn’t have, but wanting freedom or her parents to be alive again was a completely different kind of pain. Mostly, wanting the Queen didn’t hurt at all; it was a secret she kept to herself that sent a frisson of excitement down her spine to think of.

But sometimes - well. It wasn’t truly pain. Sansa knew pain, both physical and mental, and this barely counted. But it did still hurt, a bit, to feel such a sharp longing when she looked at the Queen. Occasionally the Queen dealt harsh justice or seemed to be balanced on the brittle edge of Targaryen madness, and then, too, Sansa felt fear and worry mixed in with the want. She had grown up wanting things: wanting to be a princess, wanting beautiful ladies to approve of her, wanting to be just like her lady mother. This was sharper, darker, and much more urgent. She wanted the Queen to look at her. She wanted the Queen to want her. But of course she didn’t and never would, and so Sansa spent much of her fifteenth year in a kind of parody of romantic longing, learning more every day about the half-secret lives of women who fucked other women while telling herself nothing had really changed at all.

Three days after the first snow came to King’s Landing, Sansa turned sixteen.

She had never felt more Northern than she did watching everyone in the Red Keep rush outside. “It’s hardly even a flurry,” she’d said when the Queen ended the council meeting early to go see.

Lady Olenna had snorted. “Stark or no, you’re a summer child in spite of seeing this kind of weather before, I promise you. Right now it’s a flurry; in two years’ time, it’ll be permanent snowdrifts. Famine will threaten and the smallfolk will rediscover religion. Winter cannot be ignored, child.”

Of course Sansa had known that. Winter is coming thrummed in her veins. But - “I only meant - I’d have liked to see the meeting through, that’s all.”

“You crave the Queen’s company that much? Well, I suppose it’s for the best that one of us does, anyway. Oh, don’t look at me like that. Surely you know you haven’t been subtle.”

She hadn’t been able to hold back her blush. She’d known, but - well, she’d thought she was getting a little better, at least. When she’d said as much, Lady Olenna had guffawed. “Maybe to the children who make up half this court, but not to an old woman like me.”

On the morning of her birthday, she was still stewing in embarrassment from the conversation. She half hoped the day would go unremarked upon, even though she knew the Queen enjoyed an excuse to have a banquet. She dressed in a new gown and had the maid braid her hair in a complex pattern she’d seen one of the Mormont women wearing during the last public audience the Queen had held.

She was a woman now. Well, she didn’t feel like one, and she hadn’t been on her last birthday, or when she was married. Sixteen, however, felt like a good time to put her foot down. It felt like the right time to acknowledge to herself that she didn’t think like a child anymore, nor did she accept anyone treating her like one.

She wore fur, to signify that she was still a woman of the North and to stay warm in what was admittedly starting to be genuinely chilly air. She went down to breakfast holding her head high, ready for another year, determined to look at the Queen only as much as any other lady at Court might.

And then, before she even had time to get her breakfast, the Queen bid her to stand before the throne. She sat there, elegant and assured, giving no sign that the brutal blades of the Iron Throne might hurt her, and she said, “Lady Stark, today an alliance of Northmen and my own Unsullied retake Winterfell in your name. To that effect, I name you Lady Sansa Stark of Winterfell, Warden of the North.”

For a moment the hall was utterly silent. Hardly anyone must have even been breathing, for Sansa could hear the waves crashing outside, far below the Keep. She fancied that she could hear a dragon, too, breathing slow and deadly within earshot.

Winterfell. The North.

“My Queen,” she said when she could speak again. Too long, it had been too long; her silence spoke of shock when she must only be confident. “I thank you. The North thanks you.”

The Queen’s smile was not quite happy. “Happy birthday, Sansa.”

Sansa inclined her head, in thanks and supplication, and the Queen laughed. “Let us eat,” she called out over the hall, and whatever spell had kept everyone silent broke; they went back to talking and laughing, a wave of cheerful noise.

That night, Sansa lay alone in bed and thought of the Queen.

She’d heard the whispers that the Queen had more in common with her dragons than Westerosi, and she agreed a bit. She had the same look of distant menace, the same air of fearsome power. But the Queen was still human. She could be warm, Sansa knew, and caring - or at least she could give the impression of being caring. And today she had given that impression by returning to Sansa the only thing she longed for that could possibly be recouped. She had given Sansa back her home.

Sansa Stark of Winterfell. The Queen had spoken with glorious certainty, her power undeniable in that moment. Even remembering it made Sansa shiver. It seemed impossible that she could claim Winterfell for Sansa before she’d even officially retaken it, but of course the Queen could do as she wished - and her Unsullied were fearsome enough that Sansa believed the claim.

Winterfell. Winterfell. Sansa had been loyal to the Queen, but only as any courtier might be. She hadn’t earned Winterfell. She had scarcely earned the position she had, with a modest stipend and beautiful, but second-rate, rooms. She hadn’t earned the dissolution of her marriage and she hadn’t earned the Queen’s regard. What might the Queen ask her to repay this?

It was a thought that was too dangerous by half, yet as soon as it crossed her mind, she couldn’t think of anything else. She was in the Queen’s debt now. How might that debt come due? What might the Queen do to ensure Sansa paid?

Would she ask for servitude? For Sansa’s vocal loyalty, restated as often as the Queen’s caprice required? Would she ask - oh, Gods - would she ask for Sansa’s body?

Come kiss me, now that I have restored your House to you, she imagined the Queen saying.

Or: Sansa. I require service. She would kiss Sansa, press her down, use her tongue and her hands to please herself. She would keep Sansa there until she was satisfied, she would demand -

The Queen would never. Sansa knew this. Daenerys Targaryen had been sold, beaten, raped: she knew what kind of pain women were subjected to, and she would not be the cause of such pain. But Sansa wanted -

Come here, my dear, she imagined the Queen saying. This time it was softer. Perhaps Sansa was there willingly. Perhaps -

Gods -

Perhaps the Queen had chosen Sansa, of all the beautiful ladies in King’s Landing, and Sansa had said yes.

She would. She would drop to her knees and kiss the Queen, spread her legs as everyone whispered Cersei had done, so that the Queen could take her pleasure. Sansa knew so little of kisses, knew nothing of fucking, but she thought the Queen might. She could learn, she thought, if it pleased the Queen.

And now, alone in her bed, she was over-warm and restless. She had thought perhaps she’d never want to bed anyone, after everything that had happened with Joffrey and the rest of the Lannisters. And maybe she still didn’t; the Queen would never touch her, so it was safe to imagine her doing so, just as it had been safe to read books about love between women. It was safe to open her legs and put her fingers between them, to touch herself and marvel at how she shook, the way her stomach jumped at every touch, how sensitive her breasts became.

It was safe to imagine the Queen between her legs, praising Sansa, asking her for more.

Eventually, she brought herself pleasure she’d previously only heard joked about. It shot through her, almost too much to bear, an explosion of warmth and light and pleasure. She stifled her noises despite the fact that no one else was in the room to hear her, and after, she lay staring at the ceiling, her heart pounding, her emotions doing something horrible and complicated that bent, like firelight in a bottle, around the Queen.

“Lady Stark, may I speak with you?”

In the weeks since her birthday, Sansa had grown more accustomed to being addressed thus. Still, it took her a moment to quell the frantic pitter-patter of her heart, her instinctive desire to look around for her mother. She turned with a false smile and told Lady Margaery, “Yes, of course.”

Deception hovered around Margaery’s expression as she said, “Wonderful. This way, if you please.” But Sansa followed, hoping she was wrong and Margaery only wished to discuss the feast to welcome the Iron Islands’ delegation, or perhaps Sansa’s own new dress.

She was right, for Margaery led Sansa to the Tyrell rooms and shut the door behind them before Sansa could flee from the sight of Yara Greyjoy taking tea.

“Traitor,” she said before she could stop herself. “Lady Margaery - how - I must go. I’m going to - goodbye.” She groped behind her for the door, but of course Margaery had locked it. She was all alone here, once again, among enemies.

“Calm down, Stark,” Yara said. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

“Your brother -”

“Is back on the Iron Islands, thinking about his mistakes,” Yara said sharply. “And I’m here to treat with the North. With you.”

“What can a traitor know of the North?”

“More than a girl they call the Queen’s pet.”

“I’m not -”

“Lady Stark, why don’t you sit down? Yara, I’ll explain things, if you don’t mind.” Margaery sat at the head of the table with poise even Cersei Lannister might have envied, and gestured to a servant to pour Sansa’s tea.

“Thank you,” Sansa said. She sat and sipped her tea, waited a beat, then said, “you might as well tell me now.”

“Of course.” Margaery’s smile looked false; her calm, moreso. She set her own teacup down and said, “We’ve received missives from the Freys, the Boltons, the Umbers, and the Mormonts.”

“Winter may take the Freys and Boltons,” Sansa said. “I care not.”

“Naturally, and nor should you.” Margaery smiled. She was all dimples and ingratiating simpering; something, Sansa realized, was very seriously wrong. “But until winter buries them, they are our concern; or more accurately, they are your concern as the Stark who holds Winterfell, and the Queen’s concern as the Targaryen who holds the Iron Throne. They will not recognize her.”

“I thought you said they knew it was me who held Winterfell.”

“Well, it’s complicated,” Lady Margaery said.

Sansa had spent so long in King’s Landing having matters of state explained to her - or being lied to about them - that she had become accustomed to setting all she knew aside to listen to someone else’s advice. It took her a moment to realize how ridiculous this all was. Margaery Tyrell of Highgarden, telling a Stark about the North?

“It’s not, really,” she said. “The North knows no king or queen but the one in the North, and the one in the North must needs be a Stark. Bolton and Frey treachery took that away from us. Queen Daenerys has restored it, and for that I am grateful, but they will not recognize the military might of a Dragon Queen as legitimate Queen in the North.”

“True enough. But what do you suggest, exactly?” Yara said. “It’s a bit late to stick you on a stallion at the head of an army, not to mention the Unsullied don’t go in for figurehead generals.”

“I have no suggestions. I yield to you both on any manner but governance of the North.”

“Not quite a romantic wedding vow,” Lady Margaery said, “but I suppose it’ll have to do.”

Sansa nearly swallowed her tongue. “Wedding -”

“Ceremonial only. Well - symbolic. The wedding will be true enough. The Queen can’t have children, you see, so marrying a woman -”

“The Queen -”

“- is really not so shocking; not to mention that of course, Old Valyria did many things differently.”

Sansa’s hands began to shake. “Why isn’t she here, then?” she forced herself to say. “Why must I hear of this from you, as I heard of Winterfell’s conquest from her? When will the relevant parties present themselves at meetings which decide my fate?”

“The Queen wanted to see if you were amenable,” Yara said. “She was forced into marriage.”

“I know.” It was part of her myth already, the Dothraki and the dragons and breaking the wheel. Normally Sansa thought it was as good a story as any. Right now, helpless anger filled her. “But it sounds like I have very little choice.”

“The Queen can persuade the North to submit.”

Sansa stared at Yara, too tired and confused and terrified to hide her thoughts. “You mean kill them. She’ll go to war over this, and people will die. Northmen will die!”

“Well,” Yara said. “Yes.”

“I know it’s not much of a choice,” Margaery said. Her voice was damnably gentle. Why, how, had Sansa ever trusted her? She wasn’t of the North, and Sansa was, after all of it, still a Stark.

There must always be a Stark in Winterfell. She knew her duty.

“Winter is coming,” she said, keeping her voice as steady as she could. “What I might want for marriage will not make the days longer, nor will they protect my people. Tell the Queen I accept.”

Yara let out a loud breath. “Thank you. You’re making the right choice.”

She felt as cold as the Land of Always Winter. Dragonfire could not have melted the heart of her any more than summer could melt the ice dams at the Wall. “I know.”

And just like that, Sansa was engaged to be married.

She knew they’d have someone figure out all the technicalities. Precedent and titles were difficult enough when they were strictly traditional, and this - wasn’t. She assumed the Queen would have a maester work out all the details, so it was a bit shocking to find herself staring at Tyrion and wondering which god she had offended.

“Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, the Mother of Dragons, the Unburnt, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, etc. And then, of course, Sansa Stark.” He gave her a hard look. “Is she forcing you?”

“The North is forcing me.”

“But is she -”

“She did not force me,” Sansa said. But Tyrion knew her. He did not believe her facade of disinterest. He kept looking at her, and she couldn’t keep from adding, “She’d have had to be present for that.”

“Ah, yes. I did hear about that part. A delegation of Lady Margaery and Yara Greyjoy, quite the pair.”

“They were meant to explain it to me.”

“But you already knew.”

She closed her eyes. She had tried not to think of it. “I suspected, but I hadn’t dared think of it. The North joined Robert’s rebellion, but we were still the North. The Seven Kingdoms is a southron concept for a southron court.”

“Careful, my lady. That sounds closer to treason than I suspect you wish to find yourself.”

“Did your sister not say I have traitor’s blood?”

She regretted the question as soon as she asked it, but Tyrion did not scold her and he did not flinch. He said, “My sister said a lot of things, and someday I hope to see her answer for even half of them. You are to marry the Queen, so very little you can say or do will be considered treason, but of course denying that our Queen is the rightful ruler of the Iron Throne and thus the North will never be anything but treason. However: it’s interesting, the history of consorts in this country. I suspect the Tarlys of the world would like to forget how many ancient Queens we count as our ancestors - not to mention moldering Old God worshipping witches and the like. The North is historically its own kingdom, and though the Starks can’t claim to be unbowed or unbent, they certainly have a stronger claim to sovereignty than the Stormlands. To that effect, I have proposed to the Queen that your official title be Consort to the Queen and Queen in the North. She has agreed.”

Sansa blinked. Then she blinked again.

“You won’t rule the Stormlands, or the Westerlands for that matter. Riverrun will be beyond your purview. But the North, in blood and law, would be yours. The Greyjoys and the Umbers will accept this; others will follow.”

“You seem very certain.”

“I sent letters floating the idea before I came to King’s Landing. All that remained was to secure the Queen’s approval and update your vassal Houses on where things stood.” Tyrion shrugged. “The Queen cares very little for Westerosi squabbles, as long as someone in the chain of command bends the knee. You are reliable; she trusts you, I think, more than she trusts most.”

“If trust were a requirement for marriage, she’d have to wed one of her dragons.”

“And wouldn’t that be in keeping with Targaryen tradition! But you’re forgetting Missandei.”

Sansa meant to laugh. It came out more like a sob. Tyrion’s expression, which hadn’t been particularly cheery to begin with, moved to solemnity. “I am sorry, Sansa.”

“Are you?”

“Of course. Though you must admit -”

“Must I,” she said, her bitterness plain.

“You must admit. She’s prettier than I am.”

She didn’t laugh, but her horror and dread eased a bit. “And you must admit, that’s part of the problem.”

He understood what she was trying to say. “Ah. That does make it more difficult.”

“Can I banish it?”

“Lady Stark, if it were that easy, a good deal fewer wars would be fought and a good many more men and women would live happy, calm lives.”

“What a thought.”

“Indeed.” He flipped a ledger open. “Now, onward to the important things. You’ll need a royal seal: imagine, for a moment, that dragons and direwolves engaged in a mating ritual. What might it look like?”

That time, she did laugh, the sound echoing over the bare stone of her soon-to-be-former rooms.

The wedding itself - well.

The Queen had agreed to a Westerosi-style wedding, but the Dothraki - who seemed to be taking their Queen’s wedding to another woman in stride, to Sansa’s shock - didn’t care to be told they couldn’t celebrate in their own way. So the wedding included a procession through King’s Landing, a traditional dinner in the waning autumn sunshine, and then what could charitably be described as -

“An orgy,” Tyrion said, sounding a bit dazed. “This is an orgy.”

“At least no one’s looking at me,” said Sansa, who had earlier been contemplating if she’d be termed traitorous again if she lost consciousness midway through dessert.

“I wouldn’t go quite that far,” Tyrion said. “The Queen has hardly looked away.”

They were seated together, technically, but the Queen had been drawn into Westerosi tosating, then Dothraki dancing, and so Sansa hadn’t talked to her for several hours now. Sansa herself couldn’t move from her chair, and scarcely anyone asked her to. She likely didn’t appeal to these Dothraki -

Fiends, a voice in her head that sounded like Cersei whispered. But she was practically related to them now, so she must welcome them as family. Besides, she liked her head where it was; the Queen did not take lightly to insults towards the very people who’d helped her retake Westeros.

“They’re remarkably free with their desires,” Tyrion said. “I wonder if it’s - oh, hello.”

“You, the little one. Come here,” said the woman pointing at Tyrion. She looked Westerosi; she was far from the only person taking advantage of the chaos in such a way.

“I suppose I have the right to refuse?”

“You won’t.”

“You’re right; I won’t. Just one moment.” He drained his wine. “I confess, I prefer this to heads on spikes and everyone pretending Joffrey was sane,” he said, and left Sansa alone at the high table.

She preferred it too. At least this variety of loneliness wasn’t infused with terror for her life, or at least it wasn’t always. She still felt frightened when Olenna Tyrell toasted her, and when Missandei smiled at her, and when the Queen -

Looked at her. Touched her, as she had during each event today. To show the people, presumably, that this was a marriage she wanted, that her power was as unending and absolute as she’d promised.

But sometimes she could breathe. The woman who’d taken Tyrion dipped him in a dance even as she took his clothes off: she laughed at that.

“He seems to be enjoying himself,” said a soft voice at her elbow, and her mirth became a flock of starlings trying to escape her throat.

“Your Grace,” she finally managed to say.

The Queen regarded her, absolutely inscrutable. “I’m tired,” she said finally. “Would you like to go to bed?”

She wanted nothing less. Well: Lannister rule, being imprisoned again, being forced to see her father die once more. But absent time reversing itself, this was the thing she dreaded most.

But she must. She must. She inclined her head and said, “Yes, Your Grace.”

“Follow me.” Cold words followed by cold actions, turning and leaving the hall without pausing to see if Sansa would obey. But then, who would deny the Queen? Sansa scurried after her and tried not to notice Missandei’s carefully bland expression, Tyrion’s blithe disregard.

Down the halls they walked, with two Unsullied for companions. “Do not allow anyone entry,” the Queen said, and then she opened her door and stood aside, looking expectantly at Sansa.

As though she could allow the Queen - but this was her wife. Sansa was Queen in the North and Consort to the Queen of Westeros. Her head spun; her chest felt tight. She crossed the threshold under her own power, then waited to be told to demean herself.

The Queen closed and locked the door. She walked over to the wardrobe and shed her dress in one smooth movement, revealing golden skin. She was strong, Sansa realized with warm shock, watching muscles ripple against the Queen’s back. How had she not realized? But then she relied upon her Unsullied and Dothraki and dragons to show force.

Unsullied, Dothraki, and dragons had retaken the North. But it was Sansa’s troth that kept it. Remember your duty, her lady mother whispered, a ghost making her shiver.

“Sansa?”

She blinked and refocused on the present. The Queen stood before her, naked, beautiful. Someone Sansa could not imagine touching or - loving. She could only blush and try not to think of her odd imaginings, and then blush some more. “I’m sorry. I’m not - I don’t -”

The Queen held up a hand, and Sansa fell silent.

“Men forced me,” the Queen said. “Women told me I should be glad of it. I will not force you to do anything, Sansa, not today and not any day in the future. I wish to sleep. Will you keep me company?”

As if she had a choice. Technically, yes, she had a room of her own, but the Queen’s displeasure - the Queen’s -

She must not know, she remembered saying, frantic with the need not to be joined to Joffrey. Three years ago, and a lifetime ago.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course, Your Grace.”

The Queen smiled. It wasn’t as dishonest as one of Cersei’s smiles, but it was still - wrong, Sansa, thought. Not genuine, surely. “Thank you.”

That was how Sansa found herself lying next to a sleeping Daenerys Stormborn, Mother of Dragons. She was soft and very warm, and she snored a little. Sansa ached with an odd combination of regret and longing.

It wasn’t the wedding night she’d imagined for herself; she took a very long time to fall asleep.

Somehow, life changed very little.

She slept next to the Queen every night. Her own bed went unused. Every day she thought of telling the Queen she’d sleep alone, and then every night she found herself setting the idea aside. She didn’t quite understand why. Of course, the Queen was very beautiful and Sansa had thought of kissing her, but the reality of sleeping next to a small, snoring conquerer should really have put her off. But the truth was, Sansa had grown up in Winterfell, rubbing elbows with the Stark men and sharing space with Arya. Years of cringing away from Lannister swords hadn’t cured her of the need for companionship. And somehow, the Queen was a very good companion.

She continued to sit on the small council, but she often took private dinners with the Queen now, too. “I confess, I am taking advantage of this,” the Queen had said after their second meal alone together. “I’ve allowed some of my more pushy councilors to assume that I’m simply mad with wedded bliss. The peace and quiet is lovely, don’t you think?”

Sansa had tried to imagine wanting to be left alone. Commanding Dothraki armies a hundred thousand strong presumably changed one’s perspective. “Yes, your Grace,” she’d said.

The Queen’s smile had been a bit bitter, then, for she wanted Sansa to call her Dany. She asked persistently, at least every few weeks, and so far Sansa had successfully resisted her. She could hardly admit to herself why, for it was foolish. Their marriage wouldn’t be annulled even if the Queen wanted it, for there was no legal precedent in Westeros for determining consummation when both parties were women. But Sansa felt strongly and with powerful terror that if she called the Queen by her name, so intimately, that she’d -

What, exactly?

Take advantage was the phrase she thought of, in her silliest private thoughts, but of course it was impossible to take advantage of a Queen who could have dragons burn her to a crisp with a casual order. No. Sansa was worried that if she let the Queen close, even just a little, the careful longing she kept to herself, the desire and need and sorrow she kept locked away, would transform into something greater that she couldn’t ignore. Fearful of that eventuality, terrified of her own desires, she called the Queen Your Grace and my Queen and politely refused all efforts to get her to release the formality.

And then, two months into their bloodless marriage, Missandei sat down across from her in her study and said, “You’re going to Winterfell.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The Queen will announce it herself tonight, but she wanted me to let you know. She’s treating with the Dornish,” she added when Sansa made to stand.

Meaning she was too busy to deal with her wife. Right.

“Are you feeling neglected?”

Sansa worked to smooth whatever expression Missandei must have seen off her face. “What? No. Of course not.”

“It’s all right if you are. The Queen understands that you -”

“The Queen,” Sansa said, her voice very cold even to her own ears, “should tell me herself, should she like to negotiate the terms of our marriage. Thank you.”

Missandei cut her a look that implied she knew more of Sansa’s private thoughts than she possibly could, but she understood what Sansa was trying to do. She nodded and left, so that Sansa was once again alone - or as alone as consort to the Queen of Westeros ever could be, which in this case meant there were guards at her door and a servant always hovering nearby.

Winterfell. It had been retaken over a year ago now. She wondered if she’d even recognize it. The Queen had received reports that the structure was still standing, but the Stark men had long since left, and there was no trust that a Targaryen Queen would support the North; they’d stayed gone.

Sansa remembered Winterfell as a place where she had been safe, where she’d known and been known by everyone on the grounds. What was Winterfell with only one Stark?

She could still hear Joffrey, sometimes, snarling traitor’s blood. Talking about Robb as though he were nothing. She had thought, before marrying the Queen, that it wouldn’t matter that she couldn’t have children. She had no intention of marrying a man and allowing him to hurt her the way others had. But now…

The Stark line died with Sansa. Winterfell would fall, in truth had already fallen. Naming Sansa Queen in the North was only a means to delay that, not to stop it altogether.

She shivered, alone in her sunlit room, and resolved never to mention such things to the Queen.

“Missandei tells me I owe you an apology,” the Queen said in the carriage on the way north.

Sansa clenched her hands together and fought to sound calm. “I barely spoke to her.”

“Sansa. My dear. She’s staying in King’s Landing, you know.”

Sansa bit her tongue, that she might not say ‘I’m not your dear’. “Yes, thank you, Your Grace.”

“And thus, you can be honest with me.”

Her temper flared and she could not stop herself from responding. “Can I truly? Can I be honest with the Mother of Dragons? If I express discontent, or anger, will you not -”

“Beat you?”

Sansa shut her mouth so quickly her teeth clicked together. She clenched her knees together on the bench and willed herself to be calm. “Your Grace, I misspoke. I’m sorry. Of course you are everything that is fair and generous and just.”

“Is that how you placated Joffrey and Cersei Lannister?”

She felt as though all the air had been pulled from her lungs. She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t. Not even if it meant her life.

They rode in silence for a long time. The shadows on the carriage shifted, throwing the Queen into sharp relief, and then began to fade. The sun had nearly set when she said, “I’m sorry.”

Sansa’s heart, which had already exhausted itself in panic, began thumping once again. “What -”

“I’m. Sorry.” She spoke each word steadily. There was just enough light for Sansa to see that the Queen’s focus was entirely on her. “I should have approached that more sensitively. Of course you feel hesitant; of course you’re afraid. I, of all people, should realize why.” She sighed, an impatient noise that seemed almost shockingly human. “Missandei warned me as much. And so, I’m sorry. You’re my - my wife. And I betrayed your trust.”

“But I don’t trust you.”

As soon as she said it she clapped her hands over her mouth, frozen in horror. She expected the Queen to stop the carriage, to strike her down; in her mind’s eye, she saw Lady, dead once more. But -

But the Queen did not strike her. She did not stop the carriage. She flinched, a bit, and looked down at her hands. “I suppose I owe you another apology, then. It was never my intention to make you - afraid - with this marriage.”

“It was only your intention to secure the North.”

“I had hoped you would agree,” the Queen said. Each word was slow, careful. “I was given to understand, by my Westerosi advisors, that the North holds special importance to Starks.”

“And I am the last Stark.”

“Yes, my lady. I wish it were not the case.”

Sansa turned the words over in her head: what the Queen had said, yes, but also what she herself might say. “I had to deny my family. Abase myself. You speak of your Westerosi advisors, but Your Grace, you are here because you are Westerosi, aren’t you?”

The Queen nodded. “But your customs -”

“My only custom - was to stay alive. My only concern - my only thought -” She shook her head. “You say I am a Stark. But I remember a Winterfell that may not exist anymore. I don’t know if I can command the Stark bannermen. I don’t know if they’ll accept me. I look like a Tully. I was - many speculated I was Joffrey’s whore.”

“You’re Queen in the North now.” The Queen spoke calmly, but she was cold. Angry. “They’ll accept you, or we’ll make them accept you.”

“I don’t want more dead Northmen.”

“And I don’t want a ten-year winter - but the maesters tell me that may well be.” The Queen leaned forward and took Sansa’s hands.

Sansa’s stupid heart flip-flopped in her chest. She felt warm immediately, flushed in her cheeks, shivering, wanting -

“I trust that they will follow you, because all I hear from half of King’s Landing is how much of a Stark you are. I know King’s Landing is the South, but the Northmen wanted me to name you Queen. And so I have. I understand you’re afraid; I was afraid when I sailed to Westeros. But the only solution to such terror is to take what is yours and never let it go.”

Sansa stared down at their joined hands. Winterfell was hers, legally and by right of blood. And she -

She was the Queen’s. Legally.

“Yes, Your Grace,” she said. Her voice was steady. Unbothered. Empty of all emotion.

She thought she spotted disappointment in the Queen’s face when she leaned back and looked out the carriage window. “This journey is interminable.”

“It’s why Northmen tend to stay in the North.”

The Queen’s smile was a wispy, sad thing. “And yet the women travel?”

“We do as we must.” If everything had gone as it ought to have, Sansa would have left the North permanently, not become its queen.

“Yes.” Silence but for the sound of horses, the men outside. “We do.”

She had expected Winterfell to be much changed. Somehow, she hadn’t anticipated the snow drifting over a burned wing of the building.

The Queen understood what it meant when Sansa stopped dead to stare at the burned-out, ruined stone. “The damage was detailed by my men in reports; we can rebuild immediately, of course, but I thought to give Winterfell’s lady the power to determine what should be done.”

“And you didn’t think to warn me?”

A silence, long enough that Sansa had time to think of how deadly her wife could be. Might be, at the slightest provocation, if she chose. “I apologize, lady wife,” the Queen said. Above them, one of her dragons roared.

“It’s fine,” Sansa said, her heart tripping over itself. “It’s - of course you didn’t, why would you, I have no right to expect -”

“Sansa.” The Queen seemed upset now, and Sansa clenched her hands in her skirts, preparing herself to once again beg for mercy from her liege. “But of course you have the right to expect I tell you relevant information about your ancestral home. The lapse was mine; I apologize.”

For a moment, Sansa couldn’t move. She had of course heard the Queen speak, but her words sounded close to nonsense. What could she mean? Surely it wasn’t just an unqualified apology; surely, the moment Sansa moved to accept it, she’d slap her, or have on of her men grab Sansa and beat her.

But the Queen only waited, a terrible expression on her face: she felt pity, Sansa thought, for how small Sansa had made herself, how scared she was. It made sense. Sansa had never expected Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, the Unburnt, to understand how she’d cringed and begged for her life before the Lannisters.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally.

“Don’t be,” the Queen said. “Or do be, if you must, but trouble neither of us about it. You have every right to be upset. I will only ask that you come with me now, that we might discuss how to rebuild.”

She had never heard such a delicately worded double meaning. The Queen held out her arm, and Sansa took it. She didn’t feel like a wife, but she didn’t feel like a hostage, either. “Lead the way, Your Grace.”

The burned-out wing seemed less dire when they got a closer look at it. The heavy stones and wrought iron of the gates and walls had survived the blaze. Furniture and hangings were largely destroyed, but the encroaching winter had its advantages; the burned-out wood hadn’t had warmth to rot. After an hour, Sansa had a plan for restoration and a list of artisans and workers they would call upon to carry out the work.

“Good, good,” the Queen said. They stood on one of the higher ramparts, overlooking the weirwood. “And of course we’ll be staying here for six months; plenty of time to rebuild.”

She had dreaded the time when they rode north. Now it didn’t feel long enough. “Yes, Your Grace.”

The only sign that the Queen disliked Sansa’s chosen form of address came in the form of a sigh, so quiet as to be almost inaudible.

“My Lady Stark,” said Selmyr, the Stark man Sansa had appointed to manage the rebuilding efforts, “I’ve some men who are ready to begin cleaning out the wing. Would you like to meet them?”

“Yes, of course.” And promise them pay and positions for more work, as her lady mother would have. It didn’t escape Sansa’s notice that Selmyr almost entirely ignored the Queen. “Your Grace -”

The Queen’s smile was ice beyond the Wall. “You go. I can always summon Drogon if I need help getting down.”

Sansa nodded. For a moment she had the absolutely insane urge to kiss her cheek, or - pay her addresses somehow. It was only Winterfell confusing her, the memory of her parents’ love not yet dead. “Selmyr, lead the way.”

He didn’t say anything explicit, of course; he hadn’t survived the Boltons by being given to foolish acclaiming. Sansa still saw the way he became more relaxed the further they got from the Queen, the deference he paid her as a Stark, and the way he said ‘Lady Stark’ the way others might say ‘Your Grace’. This wasn’t a liege lady speaking to a bannerman; it wasn’t even the treatment Sansa might expect as Queen in the North and vassal to the Queen of Westeros.

No. It was as the Queen’s advisors had described. The North wanted no ruler but a Stark. The Queen had dragons, but she didn’t have the North unless Sansa agreed.

It was a terrible power. The men she spoke to called her ‘my Queen’, and one sneered when a dragon roared overhead. She was stern with them, saying, “And of course we all must thank my wife, the Queen, for her support in this endeavor,” but it didn’t really help.

She was the last Stark. Her father’s ghost might watch over her, and her brothers’ and sisters’ too, but there was no one here to tell her what to do, how to reconcile her rightful place with how twisted-up and empty she felt when she thought of it. She was Queen in the North and she felt nothing at all.

Of course, the banquet was the Queen’s idea.

Sansa didn’t feel it would be appropriate. “Winter is coming,” she reminded the Queen.

“Yes, I could hardly forget.”

“I only meant -” She bit her lip against impatience. Being back in Winterfell wasn’t good for her; winter hardened her spine and made her disagreeable. “The cost, Your Grace.”

“A worthy concern. But your own leadership has led to the royal coffers being fuller than they’ve been since the start of Robert’s reign. My council reports we have enough cold storage crops to last the first four years of winter, now, and production is only starting to slow. We have grain and ferments for a decade beyond that. I would suggest, Lady Stark, that we demonstrate to the people the benefits of my dragons and your marriage.”

She was right, seven hells take her. Sansa smiled, as bland as she could. “Yes, Your Grace.”

She thought this time the Queen might protest her method of address. But she only nodded and began giving out orders for the food, the decorations, the invitations.

It was to be public, more public than any event in Winterfell since Sansa had been a babe. The Queen’s dragons would attend, and so would all the North’s bannermen. Awards would be given for the heartiest winter crops, and those same crops would go to feed the people. And Sansa, as Queen in the North, would oversee it all.

“What about you? You’re the Queen -”

“Of Westeros. I can command a banquet anywhere. Your people will want to see you.” The Queen smiled, meeting Sansa’s eyes. It was an expression Sansa knew she meant to be entreating, even charming. To Sansa it mostly just seemed mercenary. “Let them see you.”

Planning took up much of her time. Every night, she slept alone in the room that had once been her lady mother’s, trying not to dream of ghosts. The day of the banquet came much too quickly, on the heels of closing the last of Winterfell’s burned-out roof.

Everyone felt celebratory, and everyone deserved to feel celebratory, which made the twisting rottenness in Sansa’s heart feel even worse than usual. She sat at the head of the highest table, the Queen at her side, both of them in their warmest finery. The Queen looked beautiful like this, unnaturally golden-skinned and white-haired, lithe and warm and - commanding. Beautiful.

Sansa sat in her ancestral hall, surrounded by soldiers and farmers loyal to her, and she felt like a traitor who ought to be struck down by the old gods. All she wanted - what she burned for, as she drank wine and laughed and caroused with her people -

Her wife the Queen. A Targaryen, who her father had given his youth to defeat, descendant of a king so mad people still whispered about it. Sansa wanted her so badly she burned with it.

As the banquet went on, the Northmen began to speak to the Dothraki and Unsullied - and then arm wrestle them, and then drag them out in the snow for a tussle. It was utterly ridiculous, and Sansa laughed to see a woman of the North slap a Dothraki in the face. The Queen, too, seemed to enjoy it. She’d had quite a bit of wine and her color was high when she said, “Lady Stark, could I tempt you into a walk?”

“At night? It’s cold, my lady.”

“Are you a Stark or aren’t you?”

Something in Sansa twisted and howled at that. She did her best to hide it. “I - yes, Your Grace, of course.”

So off they went. The Queen led them to the edges of the weirwood. Sansa didn’t understand why until she heard the beating of wings overhead.

The dragon roared when he landed. He looked between the Queen and Sansa, then focused on Sansa alone - the way a cat might look at a mouse.

“Your Grace.” Her heart hammered so hard she worried it might break free from her chest. “I don’t - I am loyal to the Iron Throne, I am your vassal, I don’t -”

“That is still what you think.” The Queen’s voice was soft, a bit slurred. She looked at Sansa with an expression Sansa couldn’t interpret. “Rhaegal’s not here to give you a judgment of justice, Sansa.”

Her throat closed up to hear her name from the Queen’s lips. “Then why -”

“You’re afraid of them.”

“They’re dragons. Everyone’s afraid of them.”

Rhaegal snorted in a positively uncanny way. The Queen looked at him with the expression Sansa had only ever seen her give to her dragons: open, awe-struck, loving. “Yes. That’s why I was able to reclaim my family’s throne.”

Sansa bit back her first, second, and third reactions to that. “Then my fear is what you want?”

“No. You’re not a lord who won’t bend the knee, nor are you a false queen. You’re my Queen in the North. I wish for you to understand them.”

Forget bending the knee; hers almost buckled. “Understand them? They’re dragons.”

“And they are mine, in magic and fire. Sansa, you have nothing to fear from them. I bound myself to you before the gods, new and old. Neither they nor I will hurt you.”

But Sansa remembered well what Targaryen monarchs had done to their wives. She knew, she knew that she couldn’t trust the Dragon Queen, no matter how different she seemed and how badly she might want to.

No matter how tired she was.

“Yes, Your Grace,” she said.

“Rhaegal.” The Queen might be drunk, but her tone was still commanding. Her dragon flew closer and closer, until Sansa could smell the brimstone - and she trembled, she couldn’t help but do so, she felt certain he wouldn’t even bother with fire. Goats and sheep and the occasional person had fed the Targaryen dragons of old, and this one was young and absolutely enormous, terrifyingly -

It lowered its head and rested its cheek against Sansa’s.

Its scales were warm, its touch feather-light. Sansa clamped her jaw shut, that she might not scream.

“That will do, Rhaegal,” the Queen said after a long moment. Sansa was trembling head to toe.

He took off in a beat of wings that brought bitter cold air down over both of them. Sansa gasped, then began to shiver, all her furiously repressed panic coming back at the same time.

“Lady Stark. Sansa.” Warm hands on her wrist, pulling her back towards Winterfell. They stopped in the shadow of the outer wall, as Sansa gasped and shook and fought vainly for control over herself.

“I’m sorry,” the Queen said. “I only thought - they are my children. They were all I had for so long, I thought you’d understand, I’m sorry.”

Sansa did understand; that was the problem. She had learned how to survive among snakes and lions, with the threat of murder and the reality of treachery. She didn’t know what to do when she understood her adversary so well.

“Your Grace,” she began, wholly uncertain of what she might say next.

“Sansa,” the Queen said, and kissed her.

The Queen’s fingers bit into her arm and she held herself very still, trying to be pleasingly pliant.

“Sansa,” the Queen said again, pulling away from her. “Don’t you -”

“Does it not please you?” Sansa said. “I’m sorry. I was trying.”

“What pleases me is what pleases you,” the Queen said. “Missandei warned me, she said you’d been poisoned by Westerosi savagery, but I didn’t think -”

Her lips were very red and her eyes very serious. Sansa felt her heart twist in her chest. “Your Grace -”

Something moved in the Queen’s expression. It might have been anger, or sadness, or simple frustration at Sansa’s inability to be seductive. Whatever it was, it served as a flame to the tinder of Sansa’s heart. She had dreamed of this, thought of it so many times, and it didn’t feel real - it couldn’t possibly be real, not the way she wanted - but she meant to have it anyway. She took hold of the Queen’s shoulders and kissed her back, a clumsy collision of lips that became something else when the Queen gasped and melted against her.

Sansa’s heart pounded; her chest clenched. The Queen, yielding to her? It seemed impossible, yet here was the evidence: the Queen’s softening grip, the way she dropped her forehead against Sansa’s, the trembling of her fingers on Sansa’s hips.

Sansa’s breathing shortened, coming in gasps and bitten-off moans. She touched the Queen’s jaw, her nails just barely pressing into the Queen’s smooth, perfect skin. When the Queen gasped into their kiss, Sansa did it again, a little harder, sliding her hands back to tug the Queen’s hair and guide her closer. The Queen’s tongue dipped into her mouth - the Queen whispered, “Sansa, please,” and Sansa obliged her, pressing forward so that her thigh moved between the Queen’s own legs, wanting more, wanting -

The Queen went very still. Sansa was about to ask if she’d done something wrong when she heard the voice from the darkness: “Get away from my sister, or this knife goes right into your belly.”

Standing just to Sansa’s right, almost invisible in the gloom, was a dirty teenage boy. Rickon? No: the Queen stepped away and curtsied. “Lady Arya,” she said. “I had given up on convincing you to come home.”

Surely her heart didn’t stop; surely such a thing wasn’t possible. But she felt as though it might as well have done, staring at her dead sister as she flipped a knife in her hands and stared at Sansa’s wife with cold eyes.

“You’re dead,” Sansa said.

Arya barely looked at her. “No.”

The Queen’s words sank in. “You - you knew. You knew she was alive?”

The Queen barely looked at her; all her attention was focused on Arya. “We had reports of a girl matching Arya Stark’s description and…disposition. We didn’t know it was her, and she refused to come to King’s Landing. I begged, I bribed -”

“Lies from a queen? I heard them before,” Arya sneered.

Sansa couldn’t help herself. “Arya! She is the Queen!”

Still Arya didn’t look at her. “Up here, you’re Queen.”

“I - I don’t -” Why wouldn’t Arya look at her? Why was Sansa’s head spinning, when she only needed to think logically to understand how this had come to pass? Why wouldn’t the Queen look at her - why did she look at Arya as though she were the answer to a wildly important question?

Deep inside, Sansa’s traitor heart reformed the question: does the Queen wish she’d married a different Stark girl?

Surely not. Theirs was a political marriage; one Stark was much like another, in that sense, though Sansa was eldest and the rightful heir to Winterfell. But -

But the Queen was still staring at Arya with an expression utterly unlike any Sansa had seen before. She looked like a dragon.

“I - I really would like to get back inside,” Sansa said finally. It was a transparently desperate grasp for normalcy, but the Queen seemed to accept it. She finally looked away from Arya, the menace in her expression disappearing as though it had never been. What did it say about her, Sansa wondered, that she wanted that menace directed at her? She wanted the Queen, the real Queen, not the gentle facade she employed around Sansa. The Queen thought her weak and unworthy, and Sansa wanted to scream and slap Arya and rage at her for leaving Sansa alone for so long.

“You’re shaking,” Arya said, and Sansa found a smelly fur thrown over her without a by-your-leave. “Take care of her,” Arya said, attention slipping back to the Queen. “You’re not. Look how scared she is. If you hurt my sister -”

“Yes, yes,” the Queen said impatiently. “If you need a room -”

Arya’s lip peeled back from her mouth in a wolf’s snarl. “I won’t ask you for a room in Winterfell.”

“Arya.” Sansa hated the way her voice shook. “Can you -”

“I’m on watch. Someone has to be.” And before Sansa could protest, ask another question, beg Arya to stay - before she could even take a breath, Arya melted back into the darkness.

The Queen stood perfectly still, staring at the spot Arya had vacated for so long that Sansa briefly entertained a fantasy of offering to annul the marriage so the Queen could marry her sister, as she so clearly wished to. But before she could make the suggestion, or more realistically beg the Queen to love her, the Queen squared her shoulders and said, “Let’s get back.”

It was only much later, as Sansa lay in the darkness of her lady mother’s bedchamber, that she realized the Queen had scarcely worn enough to be warm inside the castle. Her skin had been hot to the touch. The Dragon Queen had magic that Sansa didn’t understand, and it seemed that it thrived within her even in the North.

She hated to think about it. She shook with fear, then with need. When she finally fell asleep, her dreams slid between kisses and executions with quicksilver ease.

Arya did not appear the next day, or the day after that. Sansa had begun to doubt she’d ever see her sister again when Arya appeared in the throne room, almost a fortnight after the feast, with two Wildlings and a chained-up monster.

“White walkers are real and they’re back,” she said flatly. The Wildlings backed up a few steps, dropping the monster’s chains in the process. Before Sansa could even scream, the monster attacked her sister, snarling and inhuman and deadly.

“Lady Arya, I really must object,” the Queen said.

“Should we kill it, Your Grace?” one of the Queen’s men murmured.

Sansa opened her mouth to give her approval - and then stopped, watching as Arya led the monster in a slowly enlarging circle. She moved deliberately, as the wolf stalked a deer.

This was a planned demonstration. Sansa didn’t quite trust Arya - she hardly even knew her anymore. But she understood that her bannermen thought white walkers consigned to the world of myths, Bran the Builder and the Age of Heroes. Any number of dragons couldn’t undo that bias, but this…

This might. “Not yet,” she said, and they watched in silence as Arya cut the monster, as it didn’t bleed, as it advanced without ever seeming to tire.

Arya cut its arm off; it didn’t care. She blinded it; it didn’t pause. Finally, Arya glanced around the room and then drew a knife. The Valerian steel gleamed in the torchlight as she plunged it into the white walker’s heart.

“Your Graces.” Arya turned towards their thrones and bowed. “Nightfall creeps closer every day. Something is making more of these monsters beyond the Wall, and they’re starting to come south.”

Sansa could feel how badly the Queen wanted to talk. But she glanced at Sansa deliberately, yielding to the Queen in the North. It shouldn’t have made Sansa’s breath catch, but of course it did. And she thought, by the way Arya looked at her, that Arya knew some part of it. “How long do we have?” she asked past the lump in her throat.

Arya shrugged. “Few years, maybe. Winter’s coming, we knew that, but this is beyond winter.”

“How do we stop it?”

“Go back to the Age of Heroes and ask them. I’ve no idea.”

It had been years and years since Sansa had seen Arya lie, but she still recognized it easily, because Arya was an awful liar. “Arya,” she said.

Arya flinched. Sansa couldn’t blame her. She had learned to deepen her voice, to hold it steady; she scarcely sounded human. “You found a white walker and brought it to us. This tells me you know something you aren’t disclosing. What is it?”

Arya glanced back at her Wildlings and then lifted her chin. Sansa’s heart sank: she knew that expression. Arya was about to do something awful. “Tell me you won’t kill us first.”

“All of Westeros lives at the Queen’s pleasure,” Sansa said sharply. “What have you done that you think I’d kill you?”

“We’re loyal to the North.”

That’s not an answer, Sansa didn’t say. “As am I. The Starks are a Northern house. But what -”

The Wildling standing at Arya’s right elbow stepped forward and pushed his hood down, and Sansa felt terror squeeze her throat as Jon’s eyes met hers. “Sansa,” he said.

Next to her, the Queen sighed, a minute motion that Arya nonetheless took in. Her eyes flicked to the Queen and back to Sansa, and she lifted her chin with poised defiance. “He’s not a deserter.”

“He’s a man of the Night’s Watch dressed like a Wildling. How could he be anything else?”

“He’s our brother!”

“I am Lady Stark, Queen in the North” Sansa said, as gently as she could. It wasn’t very gently. “I needs must enforce the laws of the North. A man who leaves the Night’s Watch is a deserter.”

“I haven’t left the Watch, my lady,” Jon said.

His voice had deepened. Pain and rage twisted in Sansa. “Haven’t you?”

“In my duties as a man of the Night’s Watch, I found myself taken away from the Wall. The white walkers are much more dangerous than the Wildlings.”

A discontented murmur ran through the hall. Sansa forced her voice to be steady and said, “You have proven that there are monsters in the world beyond the Wall. You have failed to demonstrate why it is necessary to discard the black in order to prove that.”

“My Lady, I didn’t discard the black. I was captured -”

“And you have returned wearing Wildling clothes, speaking of oaths that can be forgotten, like a Wildling.”

“Lady Stark, he said no such thing,” the Queen said. Sansa looked over at her and caught her breath: the Queen stared at Jon like he was the answer to a riddle. Like she wanted him. How foolish Sansa had been to imagine that Arya or even Sansa herself might hold her attention for long. “We shall not imprison him; instead, he may serve the crown by sharing what he knows. Tell me of the white walkers, Jon Snow.”

And just like that, Sansa was dismissed, Queen in the North or no. Jon continued to talk, but his information was directed at the Queen more than Sansa; Arya watched Sansa but didn’t find her after their audience, so Sansa would never know what sort of invective Arya might fling at her for the crime of attempting to enforce the North’s laws.

Sansa retired early and spent some time trying to compose letters to the Umbers and Mormonts, hoping to reassure them of their heads of house doing well in Winterfell. Words wouldn’t come, though; every time she set her quill to paper, she thought of the white walkers or of the Queen’s disapproval, and she couldn’t bring herself to write.

Why had the Queen so quickly denied the North’s justice? Did she not understand the meaning of the Night’s Watch, the sacredness of vows taken before the heart tree? The Targaryens had brought their own laws and means to enforce them with Aegon the Conqueror, and Sansa knew the Queen - her wife - sought to keep Targaryen power paramount. But the Wall -

The wights -

She simply couldn’t ignore its importance. Could she?

Sansa was still mulling over the problem when someone knocked softly on her door. Expecting a maid with extra firewood, she went and answered it without putting anything else over her thin nightgown.

The Queen stood in the doorway. Her odd eyes flared when she saw Sansa.

“I - Your Grace, I’m sorry, allow me to - ah!” She stepped aside, fighting for composure. “Please, come in. Unless you don’t wish to? Is something wrong?”

“I thought we could talk,” the Queen said. She spoke with stiff diplomacy, an echo of how she’d been upon first conquering King’s Landing. Sansa hadn’t seen her so awkward in years.

And naturally, she couldn’t say no. “Of course. Shall I ring for anything? Food, or -”

“Do you have wine? I don’t wish for company.”

Sansa told herself very firmly not to think of Cersei Lannister as she fetched the flagon and poured them both a glass. They sat in front of the fire, in chairs facing each other. Married, yes, but strangers too; they’d never really spent time like this together. “I owe you an apology,” Sansa said finally. “I spoke out of turn.”

“No. Not at all.” The Queen lifted her glass and inspected the wine in the firelight. “After you left I received quite the tongue-lashing from Missandei, who has taken to learning Northern norms with singular focus. Her information comes from the best sources, you know: Tyrion Lannister and all his books, and a maester as well. So I am very confident she is correct, which means I was very, very wrong.”

She had been. But Sansa knew conquering rulers dealt no pretty apologies to their wives. “Your Grace, all of Westeros bent the knee to you. That includes me. I know that we - that is, I know I am Queen in the North, but I also know that it is a vassal queenship, and I must always defer to you. And so -” But there she stopped, for the Queen was shaking her head and looking powerfully, unaccountably sad.

“Sansa, you are so skilled at smoothing over offense. To hear it makes my heart break. The truth is, I know the penalty for deserting the Night’s Watch is death. I cannot kill your brother.”

Sansa couldn’t keep from frowning. “Why not?” Do you love him, now you’ve seen him, she didn’t ask.

“Why not?” The Queen laughed, an odd half-hysterical noise, and drank the rest of her wine in one smooth pull. Again Sansa tried and failed not to think of Cersei. “He’s practically my brother as well! Sansa, we’re married. You thought your whole family was dead; how can I deprive you of one member who yet lives?”

“He’s a bastard.”

“My first husband, my first love, killed my brother.” The Queen stared into the fire and took a deep breath. Flames reflected in her eyes. “I didn’t stop him. I was glad for it, for Viserys had been cruel to me and many others, and was not fit to rule a household, much less a kingdom.”

“Jon’s not like that.”

“No. And so I can’t kill him. If I can’t kill him, then he’s not a deserter.” The Queen met Sansa’s gaze, her own expression somber. “Sansa, please don’t ask me to. Missandei has told me that if you order it - I must defer to you, or we lose the North, and we cannot do that. Doubly so, now that we’ve seen the white walkers. But -”

“If we lose the North,” Sansa forced herself to say, “I will still be your wife.”

“Will you? If we lose the North, I rather think I’ll be fighting a war, and you will lead the army on the other side.”

“You flatter me, Your Grace.”

For some reason, that made the Queen smile. She looked so tragic, Sansa thought, and so beautiful. Her heart twisted as the Queen said, “This is to be our marriage, then?”

“It must be.” By your own decree, Sansa didn’t add.

“Very well. Thank you for the audience, Lady Stark. I…value your input, and our relationship.”

The Queen stood; Sansa followed. For a moment the air between them seemed to turn to stone. Sansa’s heart beat too quickly, her pulse rushing in her ears, and she remembered how it had felt to kiss the Queen, and how badly she’d wanted to keep going.

No. That sort of fairy tale wasn’t for her, and she knew it. “Your Grace. Thank you as well.” She curtsied; the Queen let her, and then she saw herself out.

Sansa kept the fire high that night, but it didn’t help her sleep. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the Queen’s sadness, and felt her own ache to answer. She wanted so desperately to be someone who could soothe the Queen. She wanted to be a true wife.

Here, in her lady mother’s room, she could feel ghosts all around. She could picture her father’s disappointment if he knew what she’d come to, her mother’s horror. She would never bear children as the Queen’s wife. She wasn’t truly the Queen’s wife at all, and she didn’t know which fact burdened her more. She wanted -

So much. She wanted everything. Love, a family, happiness. She was a summer child after all, weak and easily led.

That night, she dreamed of Winterfell burning.

“Tell me you’re all right.”

Sansa looked from the heart tree to her sister. She hadn’t heard even a single stick break on Arya’s approach. “How do you mean?”

“Everyone talks about it. You, the Queen. What the Lannisters did to you.” Arya spat on the ground. “So I need to know: are you all right?”

“Are you? I thought you were dead. Or worse.”

“I nearly was. Several times.” Arya shrugged. Something about the movement was hollow; it hid pain. Sansa’s heart ached to think of what Arya had endured to make her this stoic. “But you didn’t answer my question.”

“The Queen is kind to me.”

“Like Joffrey was kind?”

“No,” Sansa said, too vehemently to pass it off as an uncaring response. Still, she modulated her tone, smoothed her expression. “The Queen is nothing like Joffrey. Nor is she like the Lannisters. She can be strident, and I worry about her will to power, but to me she is only kind and gentle.”

“Didn’t look so gentle when I caught you kissing.”

Sansa’s cheeks burned. “That wasn’t - I didn’t want her to kiss me gently.”

And Arya, who had always hated even a hint of romantic entanglement, caught what she hadn’t said. “But you did want her to kiss you.”

“Yes.”

“Hm.” Arya surveyed the godswood. “I keep dreaming of this place. I dream of stabbing a great ugly man. Think he’s a wight, actually.”

“You intend to stay here, then?”

“Long as I have to. We have to stop this.”

“I hope it can be stopped.”

“White walkers, dragons…” Arya shook her head. “It seems like madness, like something out of stories. But I learned some awful things when I was gone. We can stop it. I just hope we don’t lose more than we can bear trying.”

“We haven’t lost everything,” Sansa said around a suddenly tight throat. “I mean - I found you again.”

Arya moved just a bit, pressing her side against Sansa’s. “Yes,” she said, and they stood beneath the godswood together as the snow began to fall.

With the threat of white walkers and all they entailed, Sansa and the Queen began to make plans to travel back to King’s Landing, much earlier than they’d initially intended. Arya would remain in Winterfell in Sansa’s stead, though of course she hated the idea. “Are you sure you can’t get an annulment?” she said for the fiftieth time, as Sansa prepared to ride away.

“I wouldn’t ask for it,” Sansa said. “You know I always wanted to be Queen.”

Arya rolled her eyes. “And you wanted a pretty King as a husband.”

“Life hasn’t dealt us what we expected.”

“I got a sword, though. Seems like a better deal than marrying the dragon lady.”

Sansa smiled through the now-familiar pang in her chest. “But both are better deals than death.”

“I suppose so. You’ll write?”

“Of course.”

Arya nodded and turned. Sansa had only to blink to lose her in the crowd; Arya’d picked up so many dangerous habits in their years apart.

Dangerous, and useful. Sansa half wished she could disappear, too. Instead, she climbed back into the carriage as Rhaegal roared overhead, the Queen on his back.

Really, the road should have tipped them off.

Snow had begun to fall more frequently, once every week or so. The road in many places was starting to freeze. But as they followed the kingsroad south, they saw tracks leading on and off the road. Fresh tracks, though they saw no men.

“Who’s watching us?” the Queen said one night, in her and Sansa’s tent.

She was the Queen: their tent was very large. But Sansa still found herself lying awake for long hours, waiting for nightmares, or to feel the touch of white walker’s unnatural hand. She was too tired to pretend to care about whatever intrigue the Queen suspected. “I don’t know, Your Grace.”

As always when Sansa pretended to be stupider than she was, the Queen’s mouth flattened in displeasure, and she looked away.

They were taken the next day.

Arryn men in Arryn colors, no subterfuge at all. They handled Sansa gently and spat on the Queen, and they had spirited them both away before the Queen’s dragons noticed anything was wrong. How had they gotten through the guard? But of course they’d been watching for weeks. They had seen some weakness and taken advantage of it.

They kept the Queen unconscious the first day as they journeyed towards the Eyrie. Sansa kept silent and waited for the brutality they surely meant to mete out, but it didn’t come. That night, they allowed the Queen to wake just long enough for her to see them dose her stew with milk of the poppy.

“Don’t,” the Queen said. “I won’t eat it. If you try to make me I’ll scream, and my dragons will find me.”

“We’ll kill you if you scream,” one of the men said. Sansa found herself relieved: he did not seem very excited about the prospect.

“And my dragons will kill you if you kill me. No one leaves alive - except perhaps my lady wife.”

They didn’t even glance at Sansa. “We won’t kill Lady Arryn’s niece. But the Lady don’t care about some dragon queen, except to think her a slut and a pretender.”

Sansa winced as the Queen opened her mouth. Surely she planned to excoriate them.

“How much money do you want to let us go?”

“Abdicate your false throne.”

“That’s not happening,” the Queen said. “What will Lady Arryn do to me when we get where we’re going?”

“Beats me, and I don’t give a fuck,” their guard said. He walked back to his own fire, leaving them relatively alone.

“What will she do?” the Queen asked Sansa.

She had no idea, Sansa realized with dawning horror. No one had explained the Eyrie to her, or Sansa’s aunt’s rumored madness. Sansa had feared being married to the Queen would be like returning to captivity under Cersei, but Cersei had understood Westerosi politics. This was in fact much worse.

“Probably throw you right off a cliff,” Sansa said. “It’s what they’re known for in the Eyrie, and you’re not likely to find Targaryen loyalists there.”

The Queen shook her head, as though the bland statement that Robert Baratheon’s former Hand’s widow hated her was some sort of incomprehensible riddle. Or perhaps it was simpler, Sansa thought uncharitably; perhaps the Queen just didn’t understand someone not liking her personally.

It wasn’t really her business either way. “I can get us out of this,” she said.

“Oh, can you?”

She didn’t miss the sarcasm in the Queen’s voice, but she had learned, mostly, even with the Queen, not to care. “I think so. Lysa Arryn is my aunt, as he said.”

“And that will save you, not your liege lady. As he said.”

Sansa shook her head. “The Eyrie is known for its unforgiving ways, that much is true. And they say my aunt is mad.”

“This gets better every second.”

“But my aunt doesn’t know Arya is alive,” Sansa said. “And some have said…that I favor my lady mother. That I look, talk like her.”

“You think your sentimentality will help us where my dragons will fail?”

“My aunt’s sentimentality, yes,” Sansa said. “My lady, winter is coming.”

The Queen bit back a very obvious groan.

“I know; I’m sorry. But it is. If my aunt kills you, then Westeros plunges into war. My aunt is mad; she doesn’t care. But if your dragons kill my aunt -”

“Westeros plunges into war and a famine kills us all, yes, I understand. Tell me how you think to persuade your aunt not to kill me, then.”

“I’ll tell her the truth.”

She would have to elaborate if the Queen asked her to, which was troubling since she truly didn’t have a plan yet. She knew that trying to talk her aunt out of executing her wife would be easier than whatever chaos followed the Queen using her dragons, yes, but beyond that - she prayed to the Seven she thought of something in time.

But the universe took pity on her. “I suppose that’s a better plan than dying,” the Queen said, and sipped her stew, grimacing all the while.

“It’ll make you sleep.”

“Yes, I know. I imagine you’re not going to drink any?”

Sans thought of her time with the Lannisters. “No.”

“Then I’m safe as a babe.” The Queen smiled, profoundly tinged with irony.

Sansa was disconcerted to discover she’d missed the Queen’s snores.

The next day, she came up with a plan. It hinged on bribery and charm rather than appealing to her aunt’s sanity or care for Sansa, so she thought it had a good chance of succeeding. Unfortunately, it also required speaking, at length, to the rude and dirty men who’d kidnapped them.

“Hello,” she tried as they entered the mountains.

“Don’t talk to me, bitch!”

Not a promising start. “My name’s Sansa. What’s yours?”

“My name’ll be ‘please stop with the murderin’ me’ if you don’t shut the fuck up,” he growled.

“I see. Well then, I suppose you must call me, ‘Thirty gold dragons and a promise of a place in court when you travel to King’s Landing, should you prevent my aunt from making a terrible mistake.’”

“Long name,” said another one of their guards. “…Oi! We won’t take bribery, miss.”

Sansa’s heart pounded. She was so close. “Not bribery, ser. Only two reasonable people talking. Grief has driven my aunt to the breaking point. We talk about it in Winterfell, as I’m sure they do in the Eyrie.”

He looked away: she’d scored a point.

“My wife the Queen returned Winterfell to me,” she said. “Through her, I know my sister and our brother Jon yet live. She has come to Westeros with words of peace and stability, and we need that for the coming winter.”

“Fucking Starks.”

But he hadn’t hit her, or told her to shut up. He was amenable to a bribe, if he could tell himself he was also doing the right thing.

“I don’t want war, nor do I want to lose Winterfell again,” Sansa said. “Yet if my aunt executes the Queen, all that and more will happen. The Eyrie might even become lost to the Arryns. I can hardly imagine it.”

The guard snorted. “Yeah, I bet you can’t.”

“I truly cannot,” Sansa said, as sternly as she was able. “I am but seventeen, ser. I long for a return to the stability I knew as a child. I cannot have that, none of us can have that, if the Queen is killed.”

A long pause. She itched to retreat, but she had to see it through.

“Thirty gold pieces, you said.”

“And a place at court, and my eternal gratitude for your saving my life.”

“And you’ll tell Lady Arryn none of this.”

“Of course not.” She held out a purse containing his price, almost all the money she had; he took it and weighed it, bit one of them, examining each coin.

“All right, then. Untie the dragon bitch. We’ll look the other way.” He ambled off to tell the others.

For a moment she sat perfectly still, thunderstruck. When the other guards exclaimed and looked at her, she roused herself, hurrying over to the Queen.

Of course, the milk of the poppy had set in, and none of the guards looked willing to help her. She untied the Queen’s hands and said: “Your Grace, we need to go. The guards have agreed to let us, but we don’t have much time.”

She didn’t open her eyes. She barely twitched.

Desperate, heart pounding, Sansa seized a thick branch from their fire and waved it in front of the Queen, “Dany. Wake up!”

She woke all in a start, and grabbed the branch. Sansa gasped, but the Queen didn’t even flinch. Fire cannot burn a dragon, Sansa thought, watching as the Queen’s eyes seemed to glow.

One, two, three steps forward, and the Queen had her by the shoulders. “Sansa,” she said, and pressed Sansa against a tree, kissing her.

The guards laughed. It didn’t matter. The Queen’s hands burned, and her mouth was hot and Sansa’s head spun and -

Oh, oh, she wanted this, despite everything. Her hands shook, and the Queen’s fingers bruised her arms as she bit Sansa’s lip and sucked on her tongue.

Finally, she pulled away, but only far enough to say, “Rhaegal, my dear.” Overhead, a dragon trumpeted, and the guards’ laughter died.

Rhaegal landed quickly, and Sansa found herself hurried onto his back before she could object. She sat in front of the Queen, embraced in her arms, freezing cold and profoundly uncomfortable. But it was no matter: Rhaegal took them leagues in a single beat of his wings, and the Queen was unnaturally warm. They reached King’s Landing scarcely two hours later.

There was so much to do; they needed to convene the small council on the matter of the white walkers, and Sansa had to write to Arya to let her know of their aunt’s foolishness, and to Tyrion to beg for help with the Arryns, and then of course there were the usual matters to attend to, statecraft and preparations for winter. Sansa had already braced herself to jump right back into work, but instead, the Queen took her hands and said, “Come with me, please.”

As soon as they were in the Queen’s chambers - doors shut, no servants about - the Queen cupped Sansa’s face in her hands and kissed her.

She smelled, just a bit, of sulfur. She looked wild, more dangerous than she had arriving at King’s Landing a conqueror. Sansa felt a sharp need that overtook her entirely, making her hands shake, her cheeks flush.

“You saved us,” the Queen said. “You saved us, my dear, my wife.”

They hadn’t bathed since they’d been taken, two days and a thousand miles ago. Sansa was exhausted, and the Queen must have still felt the drag of milk of the poppy. But just then, none of it mattered. The Queen grabbed Sansa’s hair, tugging it and kissing her - and Sansa returned in kind, pushing the Queen back until she fell onto her grand bed, then crawling after her.

“Yes, oh, please, yes,” the Queen hissed as Sansa pressed her into the mattress. Her legs fell open easily and without a hint of fear; she urged Sansa on, wiggling out of her dress with almost comical impatience. “My - please, touch me, please.”

And Sansa felt a terribly devilish impulse grow inside her. “Do you like that, then?”

The Queen froze. “Do I like what?”

“Do you like saying please, my Queen?”

It was a transformation Sansa couldn’t tear her gaze away from. The Queen flushed head to toe, her hands clenching restlessly on Sansa’s shoulders. She arched her back, need evident in the line of her body, the brightness of her eyes. “Yes,” she said, and pulled Sansa down to her.

Sansa didn’t really know what to do, but her books had been useful: she understood enough to touch the Queen where she wanted, to bring her pleasure. She could slip two fingers inside Daenerys easily, and her Queen gasped and moaned, fucked herself on Sansa’s fingers as she braced her own hands against the headboard. And Sansa - oh, Sansa was wet and desperate, and after she’d brought the Queen to climax once, she pulled her own dress off and bid her wife to touch her.

That was its own revelation. Daenerys Stormborn was a half-mad conqueror; Sansa knew that. But she touched Sansa so carefully. Reverently. She kissed Sansa on her mouth, her shoulders, her breasts. She put her mouth elsewhere, too, licking her until Sansa came with a half-muffled scream.

After, they collapsed together on the bed. Sansa wrapped herself around Daenerys, and Daenerys stroked her hair. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

Sansa was already half asleep. She hummed acknowledgment, looking forward to doing it again in the morning.

When she woke, she was alone. She had scarcely an hour to try - and fail - to regain her composure before the small council was summoned.

The Queen smiled at Sansa, but didn’t quite look her in the eye. Sansa discovered why as soon as the council officially convened.

“The Eyrie’s defenses are weak,” the Queen said. “I’d like to know exactly how weak.”

Sansa felt as though her heart had stopped. “Your Grace -”

“Am I no longer your Queen, Lady Stark?”

This line of inquiry would have been awful enough had they been alone, but they were in Council; Varys and Olenna looked on with matching expressions of interest. Sansa gritted her teeth and said, “My Queen, the Eyrie has withstood assaults from every great house in Westeros, and from your own ancestors. The Vale has never been taken.”

“My dragons could burn the castle and everyone in it before the Arryns recovered from their shock at being overcome. Why shouldn’t I, Lady Stark?”

Sansa had not forgotten herself once. Not when she was being beaten by Joffrey, not when Cersei Lannister mocked her, not even when her father was executed. She would not forget herself now. “My Queen, you know I have a relationship with the Lady of the Vale.”

“Indeed. I confess, I don’t know what it feels like to have an aunt. Have you many fond memories of her?”

“Lysa Arryn is a famed eccentric. I have fond memories of her, though we’ve no relation,” Olenna Tyrell said. “But I confess, I’ve missed a step or two. Why are we making war on the Vale?”

“Arryn men kidnapped myself and my wife,” the Queen said.

“And so those men should die, but must everyone else? War is so tiresome. The Vale has little to recommend it beyond its supposed impregnability.” Lady Olenna snorted. “The Arryns do so love to brag about retaining a castle no one else wants. I wish you wouldn’t satisfy their delusions by actually attacking them.”

“Lady Olenna, I will not tolerate attempts to manipulate me.”

“Nor should you! But look at your wife, Your Grace. She’s white as a sheet. As a member of your Council, I am duty-bound to tell you that you stand little to gain from conquering the Vale, and your wife might lose her aunt, some of her only kin left in the world.”

The Queen set her jaw. “I’m no Robert Baratheon, to allow myself to be ordered about by a woman who seeks to betray me.”

Her control shattered. “I do not seek to betray you!”

“Careful,” said her wife, and Sansa saw the threat of dragon fire in her gaze.

She had spent so long feeling small and afraid that she almost welcomed the fury washing through her. Had she pined for the Queen? Longed for her? What a fool she’d been. Her wife was a Targaryen, and Sansa had seen hints of madness many times before.

She still wasn’t sure she trusted Daenerys Targaryen, but she understood then, with clarity she’d scarce approached before, what would happen if she sat back and allowed her Queen to make war on their behalf. Pain, bloodshed, loss of family, yes. But beyond that, loss of this odd love she was starting to cherish. Loss of her own mostly-unrealized happiness.

She took a deep breath and stood up, meeting her Queen’s fiery gaze as calmly as she could. “Daenerys. Your Grace. I know I cannot stop you from conquering the Vale if you choose to. No one can, if I fail to persuade you. But I beg you to remember, I am Queen in the North by right of blood, and the Arryns have long had allies in the Starks.” She bowed her head, a king’s goodbye, and exited the council meeting.

She sat in the gardens for hours. No one came to arrest her; she tried not to feel disappointed, tried not to worry what the Queen’s silence meant.

Later, she continued her vigil in her rooms. She’d locked the door to the Queen’s chambers, though she doubted it would help if the Queen truly wanted to see her. She only - she did not wish to be afraid, but she was, and the longer she was alone, the more afraid she became.

The Red Keep had long gone quiet by the time someone knocked on her door. The Queen would have used their adjoining door, so Sansa didn’t hesitate to call, “Come in.”

The Queen stepped inside and locked the door behind her. Ice stole over Sansa’s heart. “Your Grace.”

She didn’t understand why the Queen winced as though Sansa had dealt her a body blow. “Sansa. I had not thought to upset you.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“The Vale.”

“You thought I would not be upset by your intention to kill my aunt?”

“I had thought you would appreciate the actions I am taking to protect us.”

For a moment Sansa was breathless from the sheer gall of the Queen. When she could speak again, she only managed to say, “The foolishness of a few men in my aunt’s employ does not justify making war on the Eyrie, Your Grace. To break long-standing relationships when the men weren’t even Arryn bannermen - it is mad.”

“Madness.” The Queen’s smile looked more like a grimace. “Could you love a mad wife, Sansa?”

“I hope I never have to find out, Your Grace.”

“I don’t think you will. Mad or sane, I am unlikely to be loved by you, am I not? But at least you are kinder than a husband might be.”

She might as well have beaten Sansa with the flat of a blade. Sansa’s face was bright red, her heart pounding; she wanted to protest that she could love the Queen, that she had thought her beautiful and fascinating, but she couldn’t force a single word out. The Queen watched her, still smiling that awful, faint grimace-smile, until Sansa’s blush faded and she was once again breathing normally. Only then did she say, “I won’t make war on the Vale. Goodnight, Lady Stark,” and leave.

It only occurred to Sansa much later to wonder why she didn’t use their adjoining door - why she didn’t even seem to consider it a possibility.

“What did you say to her?”

Sansa blinked at Missandei. It had been a very long time since she’d had to pretend to be stupid, but the motions of doing so came back easily enough. “What did I say to who, my lady?”

“Please don’t pretend to be a lackwit. Not today. The Queen, what did you say to the Queen?”

“You were there. I told her I’d rather she not make war on the Vale.”

“You threatened her,” Missandei said. “And frankly, I thought she might have you killed; I didn’t much care. But instead she’s pulling off; the Arryns will not be punished, though they hate Targaryens. So again I ask: what did you do?”

For a moment, Sansa thought about lying. It served her purposes - or it should - for Missandei to fear her influence with the Queen. But she was so tired of lies, and she knew that Missandei loved the Queen, respected her, and would kill for her. She was everything a retainer should be, and Sansa had no real reason to lie to her. Only Lannister poison made her shy. “I told her I’d be upset, that’s all.”

“You told her -”

“I told her.” Sansa held Missandei’s gaze. Why did she look afraid? “The Queen is not cruel or mad; she held off because I asked her to. There’s really nothing more to it.”

“You’re a fool,” Missandei said flatly, and left her.

She half expected the Queen to storm in for a cinematic row, but not even a septa bothered her for the rest of the day. The next day, against the strenuous objections of no fewer than three high-ranking servants, Sansa went for a walk in the godswood.

The Queen had almost burned it down when she conquered King’s Landing. Sansa still wasn’t sure why she hadn’t done so; she couldn’t imagine her wife having a particularly powerful fear of offending the old gods. But then, who knew how the blood of Old Valyria thought about such things?

Not Sansa. She sighed into the winter air, warmer still than the cooler summer days in Winterfell. The truth was that she knew very little about her wife, except that the Queen desired Sansa, and that she could be counseled into mercy only reluctantly.

She tried to imagine what advice her lady mother might have given her, or her father. Nothing pertaining to this situation, she was sure. The Queen was no Joffrey, to be avoided and borne. Maybe it would have been easier -

No; no, marrying Joffrey would never have brought her anything but pain. The Queen, at least, had occasionally made her smile.

Previously, the Queen’s dragons had been loud. It never would have occurred to her that one could sneak up on her. Nonetheless, that is what happened; Sansa found herself staring into a dragon’s eyes in the godswood.

Now, she thought, was when she would die. But she had to try, first. “Are you looking for your mother?” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “I can lead you to her.”

The dragon - Sansa couldn’t tell the difference between them, a flaw she sorely regretted at that moment - roared and picked her up.

With its claws.

It hurt; Sansa barely had time to register how much, to determine if she was impaled or simply bruised, before the dragon took off. Its wings sent frigid air blowing back against her face, and the shock of impact sent her into unconsciousness.

She woke moments later, as they landed on the parapets of the Red Keep. She didn’t register the Queen’s shouting until hands were on her - huge hands, the Queen’s guard, and Sansa barely had time to struggle before they had laid her gently on the ground and the Queen was looming over her.

The Queen. It was her warm hands on Sansa’s face, fire-hot fingertips pressing into Sansa’s temples.

“Never do that again!” Dany shouted at her dragon. The dragon made a ridiculous noise, a sort of disgruntled trumpeting.

“Leave us,” the Queen said.

“Your Grace -”

“Leave. Us.”

The men filed out. Unfortunately, that opened space for the frigid wind to hit Sansa’s cheeks, and she shamed the Starks by shivering. The flagstones felt very cold.

“Drogon,” the Queen said. The dragon that had taken Sansa opened its wings. She smelled sulfur; the wind ceased.

“I made a mistake,” the Queen said. “Sansa, I shouldn’t have thought to make war on your aunt.”

Something cold and usually-dead, deep in Sansa’s heart, gave a petulant stir. “Your Grace -”

“My name,” the Queen said. Sansa wondered if she meant it to sound commanding; she heard only desperation. “Please, Sansa, use my name.”

“Daenerys - Dany?”

The Queen made a noise that wasn’t quite a gasp, that stopped short of being a sob. “Yes.”

“I…Dany. I would hope ‘please don’t kill my aunt’ would be obvious.”

“I know. I shouldn’t have - I thought to protect us. Your life has been brutal, as has mine, and I was a fool. An arrogant, half-mad fool.”

“When a Targaryen is born, the gods flip a coin.”

She had wondered if anyone had been brave enough to tell Dany of Westeros’ saying. Based on the flush in her cheeks, she’d heard it a time or two. “I don’t wish to create any more Targaryens,” Dany said. She touched Sansa’s cheek again, and this time Sansa allowed herself to lean in, pressing her face against all that strong warmth.

When her heart had slowed enough to allow for thought, Sansa said, “Your dragon kidnapped me. I was praying.”

Dany choked back a laugh. “Dragons don’t recognize the old gods or the new.”

“Is that why you love them?”

“I love them because I’m their mother. They saved me, and I, in turn, saved them.” The warm fingers against her jaw shifted, started to stroke her. Sansa shivered all down her spine, feeling a terrible hope bloom inside her. “I don’t wish a maternal relationship with you, Sansa, but I do hope I can tell you that I love you.”

Something inside Sansa cracked wide open. She caught her breath and said, “I - you must know. It wasn’t only that I didn’t want you to kill my family, or get yourself in an expensive war. I wanted you. I have done, for a long time.”

Dany surged forward and kissed Sansa. Fire licked all down Sansa’s body, curling her toes, making her clench in places she’d scarce even thought about since -

Since.

“I want to go to bed with you again,” she found herself saying. “As often, as many times as we want - but now, most of all.”

Dany didn’t gasp. She didn’t admonish Sansa. Her eyes widened and her cheeks reddened, and she leaned in and kissed Sansa again, intent and need tangled together.

“Come,” Sansa said, clambering to her feet. Dany went over to Drogon and said some low words of Valyrian - the admonishment of a loving mother, if Sansa was any judge, which she supposed she must be. Drogon took off as Dany returned to Sansa’s side.

“Lead the way,” said the Queen. Sansa didn’t curtsy or even bow her head; she simply took her wife’s hand and tugged her inside, directly into the royal chambers.

They made it to the bed. Eventually.