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The first time she wed, she was a girl wrapped in the palest of her summer silks, her hair unbound beneath a crown of horned weirwood and trembling moonblooms.
Even now, Margaery can remember the way her skirts fluttered at the whims of the northerly wind long after she’d steeled her shoulders to bear the weight of her new stag-brocaded cloak, remember the way her slippers were danced to threads after she’d tripped so many measures in the arms of her lord and the arms of her brother. She remembers how she came to Renly as nothing nobler than the lady of Highgarden and a gilt rose of the Reach—and yet when she left the sept, she’d dared to called herself a queen to all the Seven Kingdoms.
Years have passed since the day when she first took a king to wed, and fortune has not been entirely unkind to her. It’s made her a woman who has seen the world she would make hers from the highest towers of the Red Keep, and now she cannot help but see how this first marriage only ever made her the queen of an idle summer pageant. Even then, when she was a fresh-plucked girl and as green as she could ever be, she knew these games of chivalry had no savour of true majesty, but by now, she’s seen enough of gold and iron for her first crown to seem as light as the daisy laurels she made for herself as a child.
It brings her no sorrow, when she thinks on how her first day of bridehood was spent under the leafy arches of poor Renly’s lost fairweather court. Yet when she tries to tell her fire-bright queen just how her heart is gladded when she thinks on how the Gods are granting her another day to pledge her hand to glory, she finds her throat almost too full for words, and lifts sweet unsinged fingers to her lips instead.
*
For weeks, white-sailed ships have blown into the harbours of King’s Landing from across the Narrow Sea, all of them laden with caskets of soft-draping lace and barrels full of dark spiced nectars—treasures that leave Margaery near-ravished with delight, when she sits beside her queen-of-queens and listens to Daenerys tell her tales of all that she once saw, in the cities that sent these gifts to them.
The scale-stitched lace, Margaery will have turned into sleeves long enough cover her arms like dragon’s wings, and sweep the ground beneath her when she stands at the altar of the Mother and the Father. The wines she’ll see spilled freely, until all the city’s cups are full as she can make them; a queen’s joys and triumphs count for little, until they’re shared with her people. That much she knows, even though years have passed since the day when she first learned what it was to be a sovereign bride, since the day she took her second husband in the Sept of Baelor and sent a thousand songs soaring up into the air.
Sometimes, when she returns to the Great Sept and kneels in prayer, she fancies she can hear faint echoes of them all, ringing out through its starry heights. She knows them still, all the dirges they sung for the callow boy who she once swore to love, all the dagger-sharp ditties that cost their bards their tongues when they were heard in earshot of the Queen Regent, all pretty lyre-strung stories that told of how the roses on her wedding gown all withered away to widow’s weeds as her king died in her arms. Later, there were songs that said she wore those very weeds when she came to claim her third husband, wound in a bridal shroud of black and gold. Even before the bells of Baelor rang for her a second time, the bards were ready to make light of the dark fate that hung over the head—and crown—of any man who took her for his wife. When those songs reached her ears from the far corners of the city, she’d laughed at them as well as she knew how, lifting her voice until none heard any music but that of her lilting mirth.
Yet when she thinks back to the trembling hands of poor Tommen as he swathed her in her very last cloak of woven gold, she can only sigh out her regret that she never brought him fame in any sweeter wedding hymns.
If this were all the glory that was hers to claim as a bride to kings and conquerors, her lot might be a bitter one indeed—but now she is to be wed again, and this time there is no man for the songs to swear they’ll mourn. Still the bards are flocking around her in their droves, and the Red Keep is now so full of song that it nearly rivals the groves of Highgarden, where nightingales are nested deep in nearly every tree.
For the next time she weds, she will be the bride of the dragon, reborn from the ashes of all that was burnt away with the coming of Daenerys Stormborn, and there will be no want of things for them to sing of.
*
She was cloistered with her cousins in the Maidenvault, the night the dragons came again. Before Daenerys’ children lit the sky anew, her ladies’ candles had been all that kept back the black of winter, near alone as they were in long-besieged castle. When the easterly towers of the Red Keep began to fall aflame into the sea, Margaery had only the soft-spun silks of her nightgown for armour—yet she was right not to despair, and righter still to gather up her bed’s furs for a cloak and tell her maids that it was time for them to run and kneel.
Years ago and kings ago, when the city’s skies were lit by the kinder blazes of an autumn sun, she’d known a queen who knew no better than to declare war on her own court and kingdom, who caged up her lion’s heart in gilded breastplates and wound great yoking chains of gold around her neck, heavier than anything that Margaery had even seen her brother wear for battle. When Margaery laid herself down before the dais of the throne and the pale queen who’d landed in its iron grip, she saw how molten gold ran slick across the stones beneath her, thick and dark as blood.
Still she let her furs fall from her shoulders, though shivers came to chill her spine. Still she stripped herself of pelts, until she looked as though she were little more than a bare and bone-white effigy for the queen’s dragons to pick over. It was no matter to her then whether she knelt in the last glimmers of her husband’s crown, or whether she matted her furs with the remains of Cersei’s dark-burnished gowns and Ser Jaime’s bloodless hand, though later she would learn that it was something of all three. The bards may have gone astray when they said the last of the Lannisters bled gold at their demise, but it was true enough that gold was all they’d left behind for their Tyrell queen to mourn—the golden crown of a poor boy-king who’d suckled venom at his mother’s breast before the dragons were even at the door; the golden bodice of that once-proud autumn queen; the gold of the hand that crushed her throat. White and winter-wasted, Margaery did as none of them had done, and yielded herself the altar of a new regime.
“Margaery Tyrell,” she’d heard from high above, her name sounded out carefully, delicately, like spun glass on the new queen’s tongue.
She’d lifted her eyes, then, gathering up her bold, steady calm as she slowly grew certain that shows of vanquished queenliness were no longer needed.
“You may rise,” said the dragon queen, the high tones of conviction creeping into her words though she still held the edge of her new throne so tightly that her ends of her nails had turned white. “None need fear my new world, so long as they open their hearts to justice.”
The queen had looked chill and sharp as a crescent moon, when Margaery first saw her curled against the iron of her throne—but though she kept herself so still and distant when it fell to her to play the conqueror, her step was swift and sure when she rose to tend to her newest subject. As Daenerys’ hands came to help her back up to her full height, Margaery saw that the dragon queen was warm and fair as the stars’ fires, no older than she, and as pale as soft-spun as her nightgown from the crown of her head to the hem of her gown.
Summer was still high, when Margaery last stood before a sovereign flushed from spoils and victory, when she’d listened as a craven king told her how the tales of her beauty and grace had done her no justice. And she’d kept down her keen-edged smile, then, knowing from Loras’ court ravens just how much her dark glinting triumph would show in contrast to the soft beaming smiles of Joffrey’s last intended. She’d never been one for storybook princes, as Sansa Stark had been, though she’d long dreamt of perfect power. Now, in this dragon-blasted hall, beside this flame-white girl, she felt something that was perhaps akin to what her poor sweet Sansa felt, when she thought she’d slipped through the bars of a song—something bright and tight within her chest, the sweet burn of awed beatitude.
Margaery had renounced her Baratheon crown, but none of her Tyrell birthrights—and Tyrells always knew a match, when they saw one.
*
Daenerys had raised her high again, of course, on the day that they now call the dawning of the age of queens.
Though they met at first light, it was windswept and grey on the sands of the Blackwater Rush, the leaden sky above them promising nothing so glorious as the rose-soft rays of a true summer dawn. But Margaery still heard bright golden promise in Daenerys’ words, long before they were ever set down in the gilt letters of history books.
I have laid claim to what is mine, with my own fire and my own blood, she’d said, but I will not rule as tyrant, and see your kingdoms lost to flame or your people lost to war. Exile has taught me much of ruling, but above all it has taught me that cannot rule as alien to these shores, and I will not seek to rule Westeros alone.
When Margaery looked down the line of queens, they seemed all bathed in silver in the slow creeping spring light. Her memories of the day are almost all sharp silver fragments, too. There was a thread of something fine as silver in the storm-lined face of the Queen of the Iron Islands. It was a silver-scaled cheek that Daenerys cupped in her hand when she greeted the Queen of Dragonstone. The swooping tail chased silver mockingbird signet bit into Margaery’s fingers, when she pressed hands with the Queen of the North and the Vale, Sansa’s touch turned chill and firm as a stone in midwinter.
You are here because your kingdoms chose you for their sovereigns, Daenerys said, and then the Reach was hers, in all its warmth and riches. And yet still she thought of Daenerys, stood on high at the edge of her kingdom, her voice cutting through the air like dragonglass, like the lost steel of Old Valyria, and her hair spread out behind her like a wave-white flag.
“My queen,” she’d said at last, leaning close to the firesweet flesh of Daenerys Targaryen like a flower seeking out the sun, “let me stay by your side a while, and show you the ways of the city.”
*
Stay she did, even though the Red Keep was never short on courtiers to warn Daenerys that the Tyrells were all strangling climbers best pruned down to size. Margaery is quietly certain that she’s shown much to Daenerys, whether she’s crept catlike by the side of a dark-hooded dragon queen through the streets of Fleabottom or whether she’s curled close to her khaleesi beneath the gentle veils of a soft-canopied bed.
When she returns to her kingdom, the dragons come with her to nestle in the thickets of Highgarden.
*
The sun is low in the sky, by the time she leads Daenerys deep into the maze of tapestried halls that will bring them to her grandmother’s solar. Lazy after the flight from King’s Landing, Rhaegal has bedded down in the golden rushes by the river where Margaery once dreamt of queendom night and day, but from above she can hear how Drogon still circles the castle from above, his cries almost enough to shake the stones down from the castle walls. Through the high arched windows that they pass, she can see the pale hulk of Viserion as he broods on an ivied spire just across the courtyard, one lambent eye bent on his mother. For a moment, she wonders whether it would not be wiser to suggest a quick retreat back to the capital—yet when she turns to Daenerys for guidance, she’s met with only with a warm, wry look.
“To think he’s the one who is still wary,” she says, laughter bubbling like molten silver in her throat as she nods to her child, and that’s enough to have Margaery laughing too. The stewards may still shrink from Drogon, for fear they’ll live just long enough to see Highgarden burnt as black as his dark wings, but Margaery’s ladies of old are already finding themselves quite taken with Viserion. At the afternoon banquet alone, she must have heard no less than a dozen of her cousins and their lords marvelling at how well his gold-tipped scales were matched to the roses of flame-kissed ivory that bloom in all the Tyrell bowers.
Margaery only smiled when heard these murmurs of delight—gently to her cousins, knowingly to Daenerys. The riotous sweetness of this welcome could only sharpen Daenerys’ appetite for an audience with Grandmother, and Margaery was quite content to let the rest of her court spread their homages as thickly as the black damson relishes and bright fireplum jams that were passed across the groaning tables of the arbour feast. Flattery was all part of the bounty of the Reach, after all, and she’d long promised to share all she knew of home with her long-exiled bride.
“Grandmother’s quite well-travelled, you know,” she says lightly, after they’ve watched Viserion fly off to join his brother on the Mander. “Grandfather died when I was still young, and I think she found it rather freeing. Father once said he heard her talking to the stewards after the funeral, telling them what a relief it was that, of all the lordly oafs she had to lose, she’d lost the meddling one—that was before she went to spend half the month in the Westerlands. I can still remember what delicious chaos it was, whenever she came back—Loras would always hide himself away in the armoury, but I’d come rushing to see her. I don’t think I can even begin to count how many times I must have tripped over my skirts, running down this hall.”
Daenerys casts her eyes down the length of the hall, then looks back to Margaery, her brow raised in dark amusement. “I can’t imagine you wanting grace in the pursuit of anything, my lady.”
If she were walking hand-in-hand with any other woman, Margaery is sure that she could have them dashing down the corridor in an instant, running and shrieking until they were both breathless, their legs tangled in their gowns. If it were any other girl at Highgarden, all it would take was a hand clasped tight around her arm, a conspiratorial glance, perhaps a whispered provocation—would you like to see me? But Margaery does not talk to her khaleesi as she once talked to her fellow highborn girls, and she has never been able to touch Daenerys Targaryen with the quick, light hands that she once laid on other maids.
“No, for the longest time I had no grace at all,” she confides instead, her voice low and even. “I was all elbows and knees, growing up—so thin and gawky, and famished for glory. You know what girls are, before crowns come to make queens of us.”
“I fear I do,” Daenerys says, and says no more until they reach the doors of the solar.
When they’re stood at the threshold, Daenerys reaches out and draws Margaery’s face close to her own, as close as she would hold her silver-edged hand mirror. Margaery feels her skin prickle, like a thousand thorns rising below her gown—rising with the queer, proud pleasure that she has only known since she has known a queen to whom she’ll gladly kneel. Daenerys’ hands are strong, and warm enough to sear, yet they still tremble against Margaery’s breast. Flames lick around the finger-bones of the dragon queen, a bard once said, and Margaery half-fancies she can feel them now against her flesh, flames sacred and slight as any sept votive.
She hears a flicker of them in Daenerys’ voice when her brides asks her, “And what becomes of them, those girls? What would you say our crowns have made of us?”
When Daenerys raises a hand to her cheek, Margaery knows her face is being searched for shadows of the bramble-sharp girl that she once was, as though that child is still buried deep below the damask blushes and slow-climbing smiles that they say so become her, as the Rose Queen of the Reach. It’s a look that Margaery returns levelly, intently. Her eye has always been quick, and in her time, she’s used it to search many hearts. If you must play the rose, her grandmother had said to her, when the years brought her grace and guile and she began to bloom in earnest, you must learn where it’s safe to root, and where it’s best to prick. And yet it isn’t quite like that with Daenerys—not when she looks to the girl they crowned as the first of her name, and sees that all a queen should be is stood right there before her.
Daenerys’ eyes shine like pale wildfire in the green-draped halls of Highgarden, but still Margaery does not think of the Mad King, though she knows her royal lore full well. For all that she has seen as queen and khaleesi, Daenerys’ eyes still can be as wide as any child’s, though they are steady and unblinking as the eyes on any of the mhysa statues that are left standing across the Narrow Sea. Margaery knows the history of the Seven Kingdoms forwards and back—compared to all she learned from book and tales of her own blood, her knowledge of the Daenerys who stalked the Great Grass Sea is still a fragile thing. Yet Margaery’s every instinct insists that they still burn with of glimmers of the girl who fed her heart on hearts of stallions, and earned the envy of the moon even before she rode the sky from east to west.
When she says, “I think that girls grow wise, my love, and worthy of their thrones,” it’s the highest praise that she could ever give, and an answer she would swear to on any blade of steel.
But as accolades go, it’s indifferent at best, compared to the one Daenerys gets from Grandmother on the other side of the solar door.
*
“Well,” Grandmother says, when the dragon queen of several thousand songs has sunk down beside her solar chair, all the better to be seen by a winter-worn old dowager, “this one isn’t ridiculous, at least. I can’t say I’m disappointed in you, my dear, even if Targaryen matches are an old fashion you’ll be bringing back.”
*
When deep hazy night has fallen at Higharden, a lantern-lit masquerade sets the woods ablaze. Yet all its shimmering and shrieking seems very far away to Margaery as she steals into the heart of the great maze, the heavy bower hedges on either side of her both deliciously still as she seeks out her queen.
I’m afraid I’ve never had much of an appetite for any revelry that mimics madness, Daenerys had said as they sat before the mirror, Margaery’s hands buried in her pale labyrinth of braided hair. But Margaery knew where they could find respite, knew all the calm night-shaded corners of Highgarden, and now here they were. She’d given Daenerys a head start, gracious in sports as she was at court banquets, and though she’d been following the trailing wisps of Daenerys’ fluttering gown at the start of their game, Daenerys was as swift and sure in the pleasure gardens of the Reach as she once was across the Narrow Sea, and it was not long before the maze was hers to conquer.
“Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen,” she says lilting into the night air, and to the springs of moonblooms that she idly brushes her hand against as she passes another hedge corner half-calling and half-musing. But Daenerys has always been good at keeping herself still as stone, at pretending she is incomparably about it all, and still the bowers are silent around Margaery. “The First of her Name,” she goes on, raising her voice like a septon, one pale flower now between her fingers, and another plucked with every title she lists thereafter. “Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men.” Here, she halts her tongue, savouring the change from the offices of most every other Westerosi ruler to the stranger, sweeter things that are Daenerys alone. “Khaleesi of Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Shackles, and Mother of Dragons—Lover of Roses.”
The last words she says as she rounds the final corner. She finds Daenerys at the centre of the maze, just as she was meant to, her queen sat on the dark throne of a carved ebon bench. Daenerys’ face is turned up to the moon, pale as a stargazer lily in the depths of the dusky gloom, her lips spread out in one of those rare smiles that she allows herself only with Margaery—more girlish than the benedictions that she offers all her people, yet for all that just as bright.
“Bride of Dragons,” Daenerys says by way of greeting, and Margaery lays down her flowers in the silk-veiled lap of the Targaryen queen as she takes her place beside her.
She’ll wear moonblooms again, she thinks half-dreamily, as Daenerys kisses her and her petaled bounty is sweetly crushed between them. Moonblooms woven through the dark braids of a dragon rider, her face revealed to all the kingdoms as the face of a queen who rose from all the ashes of the Crownlands, unburnt as Daenerys Targaryen herself.
She is ready for what songs may come, and she is ready to be a true consort. She is ready for wings, for wonder, for goodness and glory. Summer is drawing near, after all, and with it the ice of winter is at last vanquished; it’s a time for the rising of Tyrell blooms as much as the singing of Targaryen blood.
And she is ready for the songs of flower and of flame.