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Margaery lowered her head and withdrew from the hall.
Every step was careful. Deliberate.
The tearing sensation deep inside her body made it nearly impossible to maintain the grace of a nobleman's daughter. She practically shuffled back to her guest room.
Her handmaiden had already prepared scalding water and clean clothes.
Margaery sank into the tub. The warmth eased the ache in her muscles, but it couldn't touch the heaviness sitting in her chest.
They had agreed it would only be from behind. She never expected Lynn to change his mind mid-course.
She stared at her reflection on the surface of the water.
That face was still beautiful. But something new lived in her eyes now, something that hadn't been there before.
The exhaustion of a woman utterly undone. And beneath it, flickering up through the wreckage, a fiercer flame than anything she'd felt before.
Lynn had given her a chance.
A chance to become a real queen.
But that chance had a price, and the price was her value. So what was she actually worth?
Her beauty? Her body?
In front of that man, those things, which she had spent her whole life cultivating as weapons, had stopped meaning anything sometime around last night.
Lynn was never short of beautiful women.
Sansa Stark's beauty was like winter sunlight. Pure, and warm.
That guard, Miranda, had the feral magnetism of a she-wolf on the ice plains.
And Myrcella. The Baratheon princess, forever soft-faced and untouched-looking.
Margaery closed her eyes. Everything Lynn had shown her came flooding back.
The Wildling army, fearless and bloodthirsty.
Food conjured from nothing.
And that dragon , the one that could reduce a mountain to powder.
A wave of helplessness moved through her.
Faced with that kind of absolute power, Highgarden's wealth and the Tyrell armies seemed almost funny.
What could she possibly offer that would matter?
She stayed in her room for the rest of that day.
It wasn't until the next morning that she opened the door.
She put on a plain linen dress and tied her glossy brown hair back with a simple strip of cloth. No powder, no paint on her face. She looked like any ordinary woman of the North.
She stepped out of the stone building they'd set aside for her and walked into the part of Dragon's Fall Keep where people actually lived.
In the open yard, a cluster of Wildling children were roughhousing in the snow. One of them — the scrawniest , got shoved to the ground by a tall boy.
"Ha! Useless!"
The tall boy stood with his hands on his hips, grinning. The others jeered along.
The small boy lay face-down in the snow, shoulders hitching, crying in short, suppressed sounds.
No adult looked up.
Beyond the Wall, everything was earned through competition. Women, food, iron. Weakness was the original sin. The strong took what they needed, and the weak deserved to lose it.
Tears were the surest sign of a loser.
A half-grown boy packed a snowball, meaning to throw it at the crumpled figure. He threw wide.
It hit Margaery's dress.
She walked over.
The jeering died. Every child in the yard recognized her , the beautiful southron woman, the honored guest of their King-Beyond-the-Wall.
A few of the more skittish ones were already edging toward the far end of the yard. They had no idea what she would do.
Then she did something that stopped them cold.
She ignored the tall boy entirely. She walked straight to the child lying in the snow and slowly crouched down.
That simple movement made her breath catch , the pain was sharp , but she kept her face still.
"Are you alright?"
Her voice was soft. Gentle.
The small boy raised his head. Red-rimmed eyes, wary, staring at her. His face was streaked with tears and melted snow.
Margaery reached into her bodice and produced a white silk handkerchief, one she'd carried from Highgarden. She raised it to his face and carefully wiped him clean.
The boy went rigid. He had never been touched like that before.
"Don't cry." She smiled at him, warm and unhurried. "Men don't let their tears show easily."
She took his hand and pulled him to his feet, then brushed the snow from his clothes.
"What's your name?"
"...Jili." Barely a whisper.
"Jili." She nodded. "That's a good name."
She turned to the tall boy.
"And yours?"
"Tormund!" He threw his chest out, loud and proud, like the name itself was an achievement.
It was. Tormund was the fiercest warrior among the Free Folk, and parents gave their sons that name hoping it would rub off.
"Tormund." Margaery looked at him steadily. "You are very strong."
He grinned, pleased with himself.
"But a real warrior doesn't use his strength to hurt the people beside him."
Her voice stayed gentle. Still. But it carried something.
"He uses it to protect them."
She pointed past the walls of Dragon's Fall Keep.
"Your enemies are out there."
"Your fathers. Your brothers. They're fighting right now to protect your home."
"You will do the same one day."
"You are comrades. Brothers."
"You should stand together — not knock each other down to prove you're bigger."
The grin faded from Tormund's face. He looked at Jili. He looked at Margaery. Something shifted behind his eyes.
The other children had gone quiet too, not quite sure what to do with the feeling in the air.
"Hold out your hands," Margaery said. "Both of you."
Tormund and Jili hesitated. Then they each extended a hand.
Margaery took those hands and pressed them together.
"From today, you're friends."
"Tormund — you protect Jili."
"Jili — you build yourself up. When Tormund needs you, you step forward."
"Understood?"
"...Understood."
The two boys said it together.
Margaery smiled.
Not far off, a group of Wildling women sat mending hides. They had watched the whole thing. Their expressions were unreadable.
The way they saw the world: resources were scarce beyond the Wall, the strong hoarded more food, and the weak were meant to wash out. That was just how things were.
At first, they'd written this southern woman off as soft.
But watching her smile , that unhurried, unperformed warmth , something stirred in them that they couldn't quite name.
Besides. They were in Dragon's Fall Keep now. No one was going hungry.
Over the next few days, Margaery came to the yard every morning.
She stopped giving speeches. She just sat to the side and watched the children play.
Sometimes she'd dig into her traveling bags and pull out small things she'd brought from Highgarden , dried fruit preserves, sweet and strange. Flavors these Wildling children had never tasted in their lives.
She sat with the Wildling women too, listening to them talk. Stories of the lands beyond the Wall. Encounters with White Walkers. Close calls with beasts.
She never flinched. Never wrinkled her nose. She just listened, and every so often she'd exhale a quiet sound of awe.
When she noticed the women's hands , cracked and roughened by years of cold and hard work , she took out a small pot of hand salve she'd packed from Highgarden and offered it around.
"This works well," she said, smiling, as she smoothed it into the hands of one of the older women. "Once every night. You'll see the difference quickly."
The women were skeptical at first. Too delicate, this one. Too southern.
But the salve went on smooth and cool, and then the scent reached them , faint roses, something none of them had smelled before , and their faces went a little pink.
After that, things shifted.
They stopped treating her like a fragile guest who needed managing.
They started treating her like one of their own. Offering her food. Teaching her how to tell one animal's pelt from another's. Cracking rough jokes at her expense and cackling when she laughed back without missing a beat.
Margaery took all of it in stride, easy and unruffled. There was no trace of noble stiffness about her , none of the haughty reserve you'd expect. She was more like a rose that had worked out how to grow in any soil.
Tough. And impossible not to warm to.
Up in the castle tower, Lynn watched it all through the window.
Miranda stood at his back.
"My lord. She's winning hearts."
A note of wariness in her voice.
Lynn smiled, nodded once, then shook his head. He didn't answer her.
He could see exactly what Margaery was doing. Every gesture, every word had a purpose behind it. She knew precisely what she was building.
But she did it so naturally that you couldn't feel the calculation at all.
She was like a woman born to be a queen. She knew instinctively how to make people love her.
"A capable ruler needs more than a sword that makes her people fear her," Lynn said after a moment, quiet, mostly to himself. "She also needs a rose that makes them want to follow."
He turned the thought over, and Daenerys came to mind.
He and Daenerys had taken Astapor together , blood and fire, and the slaves had worshipped them for it. But the slavers and the noble families had loathed them with a cold, patient hatred.
A sharp sword. No hands to close the wound after.
Then he thought of Sansa.
Sansa was kind, principled, and steady , Stark blood, impeccable breeding, every inch a highborn lady. She ran her finances shrewdly. She had survived King's Landing, which was no small thing.
But she was bound by rules. She lacked whatever it was Margaery had , that natural ease that dissolved the distance between herself and whoever she was talking to, regardless of birth or station.
His kingdom needed a sword that could cut through every chain.
It also needed a rose that could bloom through the ice and make people believe life was still possible.
Lynn realized suddenly that choosing a queen was harder than conquering the Seven Kingdoms.
Daenerys. Sansa. Margaery.
Each of them irreplaceable in her own way.
Daenerys had legitimacy , real, undeniable legitimacy. Choosing her would save enormous complications down the road.
Sansa was a careful manager. The soap trade had peaked, but the gold dragons she'd been channeling his way still added up to something significant. Her contribution wasn't nothing.
Arya couldn't do much of anything, practically speaking. But her feelings for him ran deeper than anyone else's, and she was the first woman he'd ever actually wanted to marry.
Ygritte was the most devoted. And she was inventive, in more ways than one. Time spent with her never got boring.
And Myrcella , well. A Baratheon princess on the surface. That counted for something. But underneath, Lannister blood. In terms of outright status, she might actually rank above all the others.
Every one of them had something none of the rest could replicate. If he were forced to pick, he genuinely didn't know how he'd do it.
Maybe...
A wild thought crossed his mind.
Who said there could only be one queen?
Aegon Targaryen had married two sisters. Why couldn't he take three?
No , four. Five. Why stop there?
A strange smile spread across Lynn's face.
"Miranda."
"Yes, my lord."
"Go and bring Lady Tyrell up."
"Yes, my lord."
Margaery arrived at the tower shortly after.
A few days had done her good. The color was back in her face, and she moved easily, without the careful stiffness of before. The smile on her face was confident again, unhurried.
"My lord."
She inclined her head.
"Sit."
Lynn gestured to the chair across from him.
It was the first time he had ever invited her to sit as an equal.
Margaery's heart gave one quick, hard beat. She knew what it meant.
"How have these past few days been?"
Lynn asked it casually.
"Very well." She smiled. "Your people are plain-spoken. Genuine. I find them quite lovely."
"You seem to like them."
"They are willing to give their loyalty to you. I like anyone who is loyal to you, my lord."
Clean, flawless. Not a crack in it anywhere.
Lynn smiled and dropped the small talk.
"You have proven your value, Margaery."
His tone shifted, settled into something more direct.
"Not through your beauty. Not through the Tyrell name or Highgarden's gold."
"Through this: you can make my people love you. Genuinely. From the inside."
Margaery's breath stopped.
"My kingdom is a fortress built on ice and bones." Lynn rose, crossed to the window, and looked down at the Wildlings drilling in the yard below. "I need a sword to push its borders outward."
"And I need a rose to dress its walls. To tell the world that even in the coldest winter, something can still grow."
He turned and looked at her.
"You're clever enough that you've already figured that out."
He paused.
"Come with me. I'll show you how the preserved rations are produced — the ones that keep for months."
"I haven't forgotten what I agreed to. I'm not a Tyrell, but I keep my word."
➤ Next: The Key to Surviving the Long Night
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