Work Text:
(This is what would have happened, had Lady Alys married Serg.)
(First, Alys would have allowed him to take her, and to do as he pleased with her. She would have argued with him, reasoned with him, fought with him, in the dark where no one could see, night after night until she knew him, and gave up all hope.)
(Then she would have sung spells over him. Spells her grandmother taught her, to defend against and never to use, spells of binding, and bending, and control.)
(And he would have been lightning, yes, impossible to hold. But Lady Alys would have been like Barrayar, like the earth that grounds the storm, and she would have borne her whole weight against him.)
(Even so she would not have been able to chain him to her will.)
(She would have broken him, and broken herself against him, and chained their wills together.)
(And the darkness then would have covered them, and held them fast, an agony, an eternity, their hearts broken and made one.)
(Then they would be one together, Seelie and Unseelie, and not quite human enough to break all the rules.)
(They would have had all of Serg’s ambition then, and every ounce of his cruelty. But it would have been tempered, guided, by Alys’s wisdom.
And Ezra would have been well pleased.)