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At the end of it all, Sansa wants nothing more than to go home.
Daenerys of House Targaryen, the first of her name, Mother of Dragons, the Unburnt, Stormborn, khaleesi and queen, has other ideas.
House Tyrell of Highgarden are not to be trusted. House Tyrell of Highgarden turned cloaks more times than Theon Greyjoy. House Tyrell of Highgarden needs to be bound to the throne through marriage.
House Stark of Winterfell are the Queen's staunchest allies. House Stark of Winterfell will be restored to their former glory. House Stark of Winterfell will serve their Queen and give Lady Sansa to House Tyrell of Highgarden.
Daenerys gifts Sansa with gowns and jewels fit for a queen, but Sansa wishes she had no need of any of them. She would be perfectly happy to stay at Winterfell with Bran and Rickon, coaxing her brothers back to civilisation and restoring their home, making it more beautiful than ever (because she is ashamed of how she dismissed the harsh beauty of the North before she came south), but she has no choice.
The Queen has need of her, and Sansa is the only woman highborn enough to bind the Tyrells to the cause without insulting them.
Well, there is also Asha Greyjoy, but she is rough and crude and not near so beautiful as Sansa, according to the people whispering in the Queen's ears, and so it is Sansa who is sent to Highgarden to wed the only surviving son of Mace Tyrell.
Her escort is made up of Northmen and one of the Queen's bloodriders, and they are met halfway along the roseroad by a troop of men bearing golden roses on their breasts. Sansa thinks of Garlan the Gallant and the beautiful Knight of Flowers, of her brother the Young Wolf and her sweet mother, and grieves for all the people who were lost because of the machinations of a tiny minority.
Highgarden is as glorious as she was told, more, and the sharp, clean scent of winter blossoms hangs heavy in the air. Everywhere there is some ornament or other to enhance the natural loveliness of the setting, the rolling hills and the silver curve of river.
Sansa thinks that once, she might have been happy here. Now, though, she longs for home.
She is not sure what she expected of Willas Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden, but she is sure that this is not it.
He is tall and slight, leaning heavily on an exquisite oak cane. He has Margaery's hair and eyes, his shapely mouth and strong jaw laid bare by his lack of beard. She is surprised, perhaps stupidly, to find him oddly beautiful, and reprimands herself for thinking that a Tyrell could be anything other than comely.
He limps forward and offers her his hand as she slides elegantly down from her saddle, and his smile is warm if unsure. From the way he walks, she thinks that he cannot move his knee, and she wonders if it still pains him.
"Lady Stark," he says, and his voice has that same richness that Margaery's always carried.
Sansa smiles tentatively and drops into a courtesy.
"Lord Tyrell."
She is feasted in grand style, and it seems as if the whole of the Reach has descended on Highgarden to celebrate their lord finally getting a wife. The festivities are almost boisterous enough to make it seem as though everyone has forgotten that the marriage is on the orders of the Dragon Queen.
Margaery sets Sansa's hair for her the morning of the wedding, twisting blue winter roses the colour of her eyes among the auburn curls. Her hands are gentle and deft, and Sansa warily hopes that perhaps her goodsister-to-be is sincere in her attestations of friendship.
She is dressed in a gown of white so pure it seems silver in the sunshine, the colour of a dove's wings, with the heavy Stark cloak snarling around her shoulders. She knows that she is beautiful, at least lovely enough for Highgarden, and she holds her head high as she makes the short walk to the altar in the sept to stand at Willas' side.
His hands tremble just slightly when he takes her white and grey wool and her direwolf and replaces them with green velvet and cloth-of-gold and roses, and she finds that oddly reassuring. It is good to know that she is not alone in her nervousness.
She thought that her welcoming feast was lavish, but her wedding feast is, quite frankly, obscene in its magnificence.
There is music and dancing and laughter, and it would be so easy to forget that at the far end of the frivolities lies the bedding if Sansa could ignore the speculative glances her new husband sneaks at her every few minutes.
"My lord?"
She startles him, she can tell, and he flushes the most pleasant rosy pink in his embarrassment – he seems much younger than his eight-and-twenty years, and she feels older than her seventeen in that moment. She finds it disarming that he is so shy compared to his siblings (just his sister now, do not forget), a sort of unsureness in his movement and manners that she thinks must come from his disability.
"I apologise, my lady," he says quietly, taking her hand where it rests on the arm of her chair and twisting his fingers through hers. He has lovely hands, long-fingered and elegant and strangely similar in shape to her own, but stronger, calloused from long hours training horses and holding a pen. "I am not so courteous as you are used to, perhaps. I suppose it is absurd for me to worry about being overly forward now – I am merely attempting to find words for how lovely you look today."
She can feel her own blush rising, darkening when he presses a gossamer-light kiss to the back of her hand, and some of the tension eases from her shoulders. Willas Tyrell is as charming and sweet as his sister promised in those long ago days before Sansa wore a red cloak, before the dragons came, and Sansa thinks that perhaps she might come to like him at least.
The bedding is a nightmare.
There truly is no other way to describe it – it might not have been so bad had the back of her shift not torn, exposing the welts and scars littering her spine, her shoulder blades, but the back of her shift had torn and the men had hesitated that moment too long before the Greatjon Umber, who had led her escort from Winterfell, slung her over his shoulder and rallied the troops by bellowing the opening lines of a bawdy song.
Willas stumbles as he's pushed into their bridal chamber, catching himself on the edge of the desk that is piled high with books.
"These are your chambers?" she guesses, clutching tight to the cup of Arbor gold she poured while waiting for him. "The view is lovely."
He smiles and takes a new cane – she hadn't noticed it, but it was there by the desk the whole time – and limps over to the window to stand beside her. The Reach is spread out beyond the walls of Highgarden, perfect under the pale silver moonlight.
"I hope to make you happy, my lady," he says, startling her. "I know that you did not want this marriage, and that I am not what you might have hoped for in a husband-"
"My lord-"
"Allow me to finish, my lady," he interrupts, lifting his free hand to touch her cheek. "I am eleven years your senior, my lady, and a cripple to boot – which is not to speak of the disgrace the Queen attaches to my House. I ask only that you allow me time to prove to you that I can be a good husband, if I am permitted to make up for my shortcomings."
Sansa has had enough of knights and stories to do her several lifetimes, and she would have told him that if he hadn't leant down and pressed his lips to hers. She can taste wine and honey on her lips when he pulls away, and that light in his eyes is something that might be desire and might be nerves.
She stretches up on her toes and kisses him, her hands resting against his chest. The women stripped him down to his breeches, and his skin is warm under Sansa's hands, the light hair soft.
He lets his hand drift from her face to the back of her neck and twists his fingers into her hair. She parts her lips willingly when his tongue brushes against them, and without her really realising it, she finds herself pressed against him with his arm around her waist.
There's a sort of giddy pleasure building in her chest, at odds with the heat curling low in her stomach, and Sansa isn't sure which to succumb to first.
They stumble across the room to the bed, and Willas pulls his mouth away from her neck to look her in the eyes. He's flushed, a deeper pink this time and down his neck as well as high in his cheeks, the warm hazel of his eyes glittering in the half-light, his mouth very slightly swollen.
He looks torn between the same surprisingly powerful longing that she feels and an equally powerful shame.
"My lord? Is there something wrong?"
She can't see what could be wrong, not with the pressure against her stomach and the delicious sounds he was making.
"I cannot… That is, you will have to…" He swallows, and looks away. "My leg, my lady, it hinders me."
She understands all in a rush, and she is moved by how deeply ashamed he is of his infirmity. He is so kind to her, so gentle, that she cannot bear to think of him feeling the need to make up for his bad leg, and so she kisses him again and turns them so that he is between her and the bed, and then she quite unceremoniously pushes him down onto it.
He watches with wide eyes as she sheds the remains of her shift and begins to work on his breeches, but it is not until she brushes her lips over the worst of the scarring on his bad leg, on his ruined knee, that he lets out a low shuddering breath and holds out a hand for her, beckoning her closer.
At the end of it all, Sansa wanted nothing more than to go home.
Daenerys of House Targaryen, the first of her name, Mother of Dragons, the Unburnt, Stormborn, khaleesi and queen, had other ideas, and Sansa grudgingly admits that perhaps the Queen had the right idea in sending her south.
Willas tickles baby Loras under the chin, and Sansa wonders if Daenerys knew that she would find a new home.