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That single breezy greeting punctured the fragile, charged veil hanging over the room.
Sansa Stark went rigid as stone.
She was still perched on the armrest of Lynn's chair, fingertips inches from his lips, frozen in that exact pose.
The blush that had just bloomed across her pretty face, excitement, anticipation, the flush of a girl leaning too close, drained in an instant. Nothing left but white.
Shame. Humiliation. The sheer panic of being caught.
She felt like a thief snatching candy, hand still in the jar, staring up at the owner.
No. Ten thousand times worse than that.
Because the one standing in the doorway wasn't just anyone.
It was Myrcella Baratheon.
The stag princess about to become Lynn's lawful wife.
Her rival. By every definition that mattered.
Sansa's mind went blank. She couldn't bring herself to look at Myrcella's face. She could only sit there like a statue, locked in the incriminating posture, wishing the floor would open up and take her.
Myrcella, for her part, seemed not to have noticed a thing.
The sweet smile on her face was slowly turning to stone.
She had come to talk to Lynn. That was all. A private word, to ask him, gently, to keep his distance from Cersei. Cersei's position made things complicated in ways the others didn't.
Ygritte was different. Myrcella had spent enough time in the North to understand that, and she understood what Ygritte meant to Lynn.
And Arya had a betrothal that predated everything. If anyone was the interloper in that situation, it was Myrcella herself.
One. Two. Fine. She could make her peace with that.
But now Sansa?
Just how many women did Lynn have?
She was genuinely angry this time.
The kind of angry that lasted a lifetime.
Myrcella set the fruit basket on the table with a soft, deliberate click. Then she lifted her skirts and gave them both a curtsy so flawless it could have been drawn with a compass.
Every movement measured. Every angle exact. Not a single thing to fault.
"Lady Sansa." Her voice was still like a cool stream on a clear morning, bright, pleasant, perfectly controlled. "Are you here to report on your work to Lord Lann as well?"
The words landed on Sansa's ears sharper than any insult.
Report on work.
Because naturally, everyone traces their employer's lips with their fingertips when going over the accounts.
Sansa's whole body flinched. She lurched off the armrest so fast she nearly knocked the chair over.
"I, I —"
She opened her mouth. Nothing useful came out. Her tongue had simply stopped working.
"I — I just remembered, there's still an account I haven't finished checking!"
She practically choked the words out through clenched teeth, grabbed the first roll of parchment her hand touched, irrelevant, it didn't matter, clutched it like a rope thrown to a drowning woman, hiked her skirts, and fled.
The figure that ran out the door bore no resemblance to the girl who had walked in ten minutes ago, all confidence and that soft, girlish charm.
BANG!
The door slammed. The sound sealed everything behind it, the awkwardness, the humiliation, all of it.
Lynn stared at the closed door.
What the,
No. Absolutely not. You were the one testing me, Sansa. You started this. And now trouble shows up and you're the first one out the door?
What even is that?
He was done for.
Lynn dragged his gaze back to the room with considerable effort.
Silence settled in.
Just Lynn and Myrcella.
And the faint ghost of lemon cake still drifting through the air, not quite gone.
The moment Sansa disappeared behind the door, the smile left Myrcella's face.
She set the fruit basket on the table. Not gently this time.
Then she straightened, lifted her skirts, and gave Lynn a curtsy just as immaculate as the one before.
"Lord Lann."
Her voice was ice. Her face wore a smile that had nothing to do with smiling.
Lynn looked at her and said nothing. Wisely.
There wasn't much to say, really. He'd been caught. That was that.
Brace for the storm. This day was always coming.
He'd known that. He'd been ready for it, more or less.
And looking at her now, he could feel it, this Myrcella was not the girl who used to sit quietly with a book in the glass gardens of Winterfell. Same face. Same golden hair. But the edges had changed.
She was still a golden rose. Only now, fine sharp thorns of ice had grown along every petal.
Myrcella reached into the fruit basket and lifted out a peach. It was perfectly ripe, the skin covered in soft down, sweetness rising off it in waves.
Then, from a hidden compartment in the basket, she produced a small silver fruit knife. The handle was set with tiny emeralds that caught the candlelight and threw back a cold, quiet gleam.
Lannister cutlery. Anyone who knew the family would recognize it.
She didn't sit.
She stood directly in front of Lynn, dropped her gaze, and began to peel.
Slowly. Steadily.
The silver blade pressed flat against the skin and drew a shallow line through the fuzz.
She wasn't peeling, exactly. She was stripping, taking the skin off in long, deliberate slivers, one after another.
Shhk.
Blade across skin. A faint, papery tearing sound.
Pale pink juice welled along the cut and ran down the blade, slow and bright, like something alive had just started bleeding.
The room was very quiet.
Just that sound, over and over.
Lynn watched her slender pale hands work the knife with absolute precision, each strip no wider than the last, each one peeled away with the same controlled patience. And after every strip, she looked up at him. Silent. Clear.
The illusion crept up on him before he could stop it.
The knife wasn't peeling the peach.
It was peeling him.
Myrcella didn't speak. Her face held no expression at all. That beautiful face that usually carried its faint shadow of melancholy was blank now, cold as Ned Stark at a sentencing.
The hands holding the knife didn't tremble once.
She spent a full quarter of an hour on one peach.
God only knows how anyone executes a piece of fruit for fifteen minutes.
By the time the last sliver of skin curled away and fell to the table, the peach was barely recognizable, bruised, damp, pulped into something that looked like it had lost a fight.
Myrcella set the juice-slicked silver knife down on the plate. Gently. Carefully.
Then she picked up the ravaged peach in both hands and held it out to Lynn.
"Lord Lann."
Her voice, when she finally used it, was perfectly level.
"Please. Enjoy."
Lynn looked at the peach.
Then at Myrcella's hollow green eyes.
He hesitated for a moment.
Then reached out and took it.
He actually took it.
Myrcella's eyes sharpened instantly.
The flesh was cold. Sticky.
Lynn bit into it.
Sweet. Deeply, cloyingly sweet, the kind of sweet that turned uneasy halfway down.
"How is it?"
Soft voice. Patient.
"Good."
"Good."
She nodded once.
Then she turned to the water basin nearby and began washing her hands, unhurried, working the juice from between each finger with methodical care.
"Lord Lann."
She watched her own reflection move on the surface of the water.
"Our wedding is almost here."
"I know."
"As your future wife, there are some things I think I should say to your face before it begins."
She dried her hands on a clean linen cloth, folded it, set it aside.
Then she looked up. Directly at him. For the first time since she'd entered the room.
No performance in those green eyes now. No courtesy, no warmth. Just warning, pure and undiluted.
"Whatever you get up to outside, however many 'good students' like Lady Stark you collect — that's not my business, and I have no interest in making it my business."
"I'm just a piece House Baratheon moves to buy what it needs. Aren't I."
Not a question. Cold. Hard.
"But."
She stepped forward. The soft scent of her, young, clean, faintly sweet, hit him alongside something else entirely. Pressure. Weight.
"I hope you'll remember this one thing."
"From now until the wedding is over, I don't want to hear a single word of gossip about you that shouldn't exist."
"I have no interest in being the Seven Kingdoms' laughingstock and King's Landing's biggest joke at the same time."
"I don't care whether your feelings for me are real. But I care about my dignity. And I care about the dignity of House Baratheon."
She held his gaze. Every word crisp, deliberate, unmistakable.
"So for the next 3 days — keep your 'students' in line. And keep yourself in line."
"Don't give me trouble."
She didn't wait for an answer. Didn't give the room another second of her time.
She lifted her skirts, dropped one final curtsy, impeccable, as always, turned, and walked out.
The door closed behind her with barely a sound. Like she'd simply ceased to exist on his side of it.
Lynn was left with the mangled peach.
He looked at it for a long moment. Looked at the door.
Then let out a short, humorless laugh and dropped the peach into the brazier.
The flames caught the sweet flesh immediately, and a low sizzling rose from the coals. The air filled with something burnt and sugary and strange.
Well. He'd really made a mess of this one.
Not that he'd planned to hide any of it forever. This was who he was. Sooner or later, they were all going to have to look at that clearly. There was no way around it.
He'd figure out how to make it up to her.
Myrcella was genuinely angry. He was sure of that.
...
The walk back to her room felt to Myrcella like the longest corridor she had ever walked in her life.
Every corner. Every pillar. Silent witnesses, all of them, watching her pass with eyes that didn't exist.
The maids she passed dipped into curtsies. She gave each of them a small nod, the smile still in place, poised, distant, precisely what a princess was supposed to look like.
Nobody could see what was underneath it.
A volcano, one breath from erupting.
BANG!
The door hit its frame so hard the maids posted outside flinched.
Inside the room, the mask came apart.
Myrcella's chest heaved.
"Lynn!"
"You absolute—!"
The girl who was never anything but composed and quiet was swearing.
She crossed the room in quick, hard strides and stopped in front of the dressing table.
Stared at the face in the mirror. Pale. Beautiful. Completely unrecognizable.
Those green eyes. Her mother's eyes, exactly.
The thought arrived, and behind it came everything she'd been holding back, the images from last night forcing their way back in. The muffled sounds. The degrading shapes of it. The wet, awful noise of it.
And Sansa Stark.
That woman, with her wide eyes and her endlessly performed innocence.
How dare she. How dare she.
Disgust and shame and jealousy and fury hit all at once, and the last of Myrcella's reason went under.
She grabbed the comb from the dressing table, the heavy one her mother had given her, solid silver, emeralds set into the spine, and with everything she had, she hurled it at her own reflection.
CRACK!
The sound tore through the room.
The ornate bronze mirror, silver-edged and carved, split apart.
It wasn't enough.
Not even close to enough.
Myrcella swept the entire dressing table clear with one arm, sending everything to the floor.
CRASH. Shatter. Splinter.
Perfume bottles from Lys. A jewelry box holding Dornish pearls. An ivory figurine from Pentos. Every beautiful, expensive, carefully arranged token of her life, all of it hit the floor.
Glass breaking. Ceramic cracking. Wood snapping. The sounds piled over each other in the silent room until there was nothing else.
"Your Highness?"
A maid's voice from outside the door. Small, careful, afraid.
Everything inside the room went still.
Myrcella stopped.
She stood in the wreckage, broken mirror, shattered bottles, scattered jewels, her chest still rising and falling hard.
In her eyes, the fire hadn't gone out.
➤ Next: Myrcella Learns Her True Parentage
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