green lies, black hearts

XII

a/n - hehe another one (mostly cause this is one of my fav chapters)

~+~

Shaera

The sept was quiet.

It was quiet and dark and Shaera did not feel welcome in the holy house.

The walls were cast in varying shades of blues and oranges. The stones felt cold even through the soles of her slippers and Shaera thought that if she reached out and pressed her hand to a wall, ice would eat away at her flesh and crumble her appendage like snow powders upon touch. Looming statues judged her every move, even when she blinked and breathed. She could feel the unseeing stares burning through her from seven different angles and it made her skin crawl. Like bugs had burrowed under her flesh and were devouring her muscles one tendon and ligament at a time. Like she was one of them, desperately in need of ripping out of this mortal prison she called a body.

It was only the warm hand guiding her that kept her from digging her bloodied nails into her sternum and tearing herself apart.

"Why the sept?" Aemond whispered, mindful of those who prayed at this odd time of day. Very few filled the sept, but words carried easily in the cavernous building in the Red Keep. Especially when the only other sounds were flickering flames and an odd cough here and there or a shuffling of knees to stone.

Shaera bit her cheek. "I just...you said that..." She wasn't religious. She didn't believe in these seven gods who judged her now. She didn't. But she missed him. "You told me that" -she looked up at Aemond for the first time, tears welling up in her eyes again- "that I could...pray to...to-ahem-him?"

The pair paused in the shadow of one of the forever-still Seven, and though Shaera itched to squirm like a worm trapped beneath a boot, it was Aemond she forced to stay looking at. If she could look at him and only him, no matter how much her chest began to squeeze at her heart at the sight of his scar hidden behind that leather patch, then she could pretend the statue was not behind him. She could pretend that the floor didn't seem ripe to crack open with hands stretching from the Seven Hells to drag her down.

She feared that she had something stupid, that Aemond would point it out with a cruelty so like him and she would be made to feel like nothing more than a fool. And right now, she wasn't sure her pride and heart could take that. She had already excused herself from her mother and stepsisters with barely held back tears and fled like a petulant child. She felt like she was back in the throne room with Otto Hightower questioning her before everyone. She felt...smaller than she did even now compared to the towering statues.

But Aemond's lips only twitched and his jaw clenched. Thrice.

"The Stranger then," he said, nodding towards a cloaked figure immortalized in that ugly, grey stone. Still trapping her hand in the crook of his elbow, Aemond led her to the statue and he peeled away only for a moment to pull out two candles and a mildly burnt stick from a box off to the side.

Shaera eyed the ring of stone around the Stranger's base, watching as candles melted over the flat surface. She remembered the feel of one digging into her lower back. The way those men had laughed. The heat of candles threatening to singe her hair and cloak. The wooden spike of a dragon's detailing digging into her palm. The low Valyrian promise as boots nearly clipped her skirts.

"Take this."

Aemond's voice was like the sun in that moment, telling Shaera exactly which way to swim in the dark waters of memory where she didn't know up versus down, and before she drowned, he had called to her, beckoning her to the surface. She was met with one candle extended to her.