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Highgarden had taken to Sansa better than she had taken to it.
Oh, it was surely beautiful – the most beautiful place she had ever seen, if truth be told. Everywhere she went, from the vast, seeming-endless rose gardens beyond the curtain wall, to the hidden alcoves within the hedge maze, to the spectacular cloistered garden that filled the innermost parts of the castle, there was some new marvel to wonder at. Even the views north over the Mander, with the sun silver-blue on the water and golden in the sky, even they seemed more lovely than any view before them had.
But there was something hollow in it all. Likely because Sansa was being told at every turn that this was her home now, and indeed they had made every effort to make her feel welcome, to prove to her that they fully accepted her as a Tyrell, from the stableboy who always braided deep blue ribbons through her horse's mane to Marian, the kindly, grey-haired matron who had been assigned as the chief of Sansa's maids, who sang songs that Sansa knew were unfamiliar to her, from the way the other maids looked at her while she sang them as she brushed Sansa's hair.
Sansa knew those songs. They were Northern songs, ones her own lady mother had sang, a lifetime ago, as she brushed Sansa's hair.
But Sansa did not feel at all at home, here in this most perfect of places. She felt an imposter, as though she were playing a role here as much as she had in King's Landing. As though she had as much to fear here amongst the roses as she had there amongst the lions.
Her husband was no Joffrey, of course – he had bedded her but once, on their wedding night, so that there could be no question of the legitimacy of their marriage, and he had been gentle, so, so gentle as he guided her carefully into his lap and stroked his long-fingered hands over her scars to sooth her through the initial pain and the ensuing strangeness and discomfort. He never raised his voice to her, never struck her with his own hands or those of his guards. He never called her stupid or called her slut whore fool traitor traitor traitor.
That all was largely because she rarely saw him – they ate meals together, true, but only the evening meal, and always in the company of his great-uncle and others, including the women Sansa had been assigned as companions. She quite liked some of them – Selina, Lady Leonette's sister, and Amarys Oakheart, who was twin to Ser Arys of the Kingsguard and closer to Sansa's husband's age than to her own, she particularly liked, if only because they did not press her so when she found herself lost in a melancholy moment.
They were so common, those moments. She hated them so much.
Her husband was constantly busy, it seemed – he was ever at work in his lord father's solar, a fantastic room with an enormously high ceiling and vast windows, all panelled in stained glass, that he usually threw open to reveal the view of the gardens below. There seemed a never ending cycle of ledgers and records and petitions for him to work through, and while she admired the work he put into the lands that would one day be his, especially when she compared them to how little Joffrey had seemed to care for his kingdom, she could not help but wish that he might take even just a morning off from his labours, just to sit with her and come to know her a little.
Willas watched his little wife walk the gardens below with Selina and Amarys, wondering when he would be able to look upon her and not see a child.
She was beautiful, of course – the loveliest girl he had seen in a good long while, mayhap had ever seen. That was the problem, though, that she was a girl. He had wed her to see her out of Lannister control, to secure Winterfell and lessen the stranglehold the Lannisters were attempting to get on the realm, and to keep as insurance against a Stark victory, however unlikely that may be.
Seeing her now, he knew that if asked he could honestly say that he had gladly wed her to get her away from the Lannisters. She was a sweet little thing, soft in surprising ways given all she had endured, and such punishment as she had reportedly borne at the King's hands for her brother's treasons was a cruel thing indeed, especially for one so unspoiled.
Despoiled, now, he thought tiredly, wondering also if he would be able to think of his wedding night without his stomach turning at any point – he doubted it, somehow. How was he to think of it as anything but the next thing to rape, when she had come to his bed with tears in her eyes and her hands shaking so badly that she had nearly spilled the cup of wine he had poured her?
She had not stared at his leg, though, as previous lovers had. Even Oberyn, with all his cavalier dismissal of Willas' injury, had stared some when he thought Willas was not looking. Even the Viper had stared at his own handiwork, but Willas' odd little wife had not. She had looked him in the eye, and asked that he be gentle, my lord, I beg of you.
He had been as gentle as he knew how, had tried to sooth her as he might a skittish colt fighting its first bridle, and he had remained in his own bed since then and not extended an invitation for her to join him.
They shared a suite of rooms, just as Mama and Father did, just as Garlan and Leo had before they had been given Brightwater, and that was as close as he dared to push. He heard her weeping in the night sometimes, when the pain of his leg kept him awake, and that was enough to convince him that he was right – he knew something of the black moods that seized her sometimes, sundering her from the world, and understood that time alone was a boon rarely given.
A child in his care, that's what she was. One who would someday bear his children, who would rule Highgarden and the Reach at his side when the time came.
Gods, what a terrible situation for her to be in.
They had a sort of peace, here in the middle of nothing but life. The war seemed a far-off echo of a bad dream when Sansa was riding out with her companions, laughing at some off-colour jape of Amarys' or cheering Selina's flop-eared dogs.
Sansa had dogs of her own, true hunting hounds bred sleek and fast, gifts from her lord husband just as her beautiful horse, but she was near afraid to bring them out with her. Bad enough her poor horse was subjected to so bad a rider as she without subjecting such lovely dogs to a mistress who hardly knew what to do with them.
And besides, the more time she spent with her dogs, who she knew were getting fat and lazy from the treats and attention she lavished them with, the more she thought of Lady, and she did not like to think of Lady any more than she liked to think of her lord father, or Arya.
So she cheered for Selina's dogs and laughed at Amarys' jests and resolutely did not think of her lady mother, or Robb, or Bran and Rickon.
She did not think of them at all, if she could help it, because it was bad enough that she could not escape them and their condemnation in her dreams. Your fault your fault, her dreams rang, you told the Queen it's all your fault you betrayed us all you chose the Lannisters over your own kin your fault traitor traitor traitor.
And now she was wed to a Lannister ally, too, wed and bedded and more comfortable here at Highgarden than she had any right in being, considering the hardship what remained of her family was doubtless suffering.
She thought her husband might know something of it. He was constantly reading those reports, brought by messenger and raven alike, and there were so many of them that some of them had to be about Robb, surely? Yes, her husband must know something, but she did not want to ask him. His family were still allied with the Lannisters, after all. His sister, however kind and good Margaery had been, still was due to wed Joffrey.
They - not the Tyrells - were her family, though. As much as she did not wish to think on them, to dwell on what pain she had caused them in her selfishness – the same selfishness that had driven her to come to Highgarden, to opt for an easy escape from Joffrey than to be strong and chose the more difficult path with her sweet Florian – she did wish to know.
She had just about made the decision to ask him when her husband entered their shared solar, pale and grim, a folded slip of paper in his hands.
Please, gods, please no. Not them, too.
She was a tall girl, his wife, but she seemed terribly small just then.
He could see on her face that she knew what news he bore - a warning from Father, that she was even more valuable now, and a condolence from him and Mama. Willas did not know how to speak the words, though, and so he took the coward's route, chose to simply pass the slip of paper into her hand, hesitated and hovered over her as she read it.
Her hands shook so hard he couldn't believe that she might have been able to read the words, even though her eyes remained fixed on Father's neat, looping hand, even though she did not lift her head when he sat awkwardly beside her on the narrow bench.
She did, however, tip sideways into his arms, her shoulder sharp against his chest, when she began to cry. He held her as tight as he dared, stroking his hand up and down her back, horrified by the clear ridges of her ribs, by the trip of his fingers over the bones of her spine. There was hardly a whisper of her in it, and he could not understand how he had missed such a thing. He held her a shade tighter, unable to keep from threading his fingers into the soft hair at her clammy nape to stroke her scalp, as Mama used when he was upset as a child. It seemed to work, some - her breath came easier, although it was still too short, still gulps and gasps more than anything.
"Willas," she whispered, the first time she had called him by his name without prompting, "Willas, what am I to do?"
Tywin Lannister had given Winterfell to the Boltons, as though it were his to give, as though he had any right to steal from Sansa what was hers more than anyone else's in all the world, now that she was the last of her kin.
So some of the shaking was anger, was it? That was good. He knew what to do with anger. He could help her direct that, turn it into something productive.
"Wait, Sansa," he said, pressing an absent kiss to her temple as plans began to spread themselves out in his mind. Long, slow plans, but safe ones, too. Willas trusted long plans more than short ones, something his lord grandfather had taught him during his time in Oldtown. "We wait, my lady, and we let the dust fall, and from there, we play."
"This is no game-"
"Oh, but it is," he assured her, tilting her face up, making her meet his eyes so she might understand just how sincere he was in this. "It is a dangerous game, a game played with lives as men play cards for coin, but a game nonetheless. I will teach you to play it, if you would like. I have had some of the finest tutors in the land, after all."
She considered this in silence, her pale fingers digging into his doublet, into his chest. She is very lovely, some low, traitorous part of his mind whispered, but for now he was more interested in the furrow of her brow as she turned his words over in her bright mind.
He had always hoped, when Father had had more time to consider the possibility of a wife for Willas, that he might find himself with a clever bride. It would take some time yet for him to see Sansa as his wife in truth, but mayhap for now, he might have a companion. The rest would come in time, he was sure of it.