a gambit of gods.

ZERO. TASTE IS ALWAYS THE BEGINNING.

000.
taste is always the beginning .

✶                             (it begins with taste. always.) before the mind stirs, before the heart falters, it's taste that betrays you. it's not a shout or a violent blow; no, it's soft, silent—like the ghost of a kiss, sneaking past your lips and curling itself around your spirit. one taste. one fleeting moment. and suddenly, everything inside you bends, leans, crumbles—toward that slow, seductive unraveling.

sin isn't loud. it's never the storm that drowns you. it's the current beneath the surface, pulling you under before you know you're already sinking.

power has a taste. so does revenge. so does everything forbidden. and it all starts there. men think they're strong, think they can hold it, taste its sweetness and walk away. fools. the moment it touches your tongue, the chains are there. you think you're free, but you're not. power doesn't need chains of iron or bars of steel. it only needs a mouth willing to open. a tongue ready to taste.

adam wasn't brought low by a serpent or a curse. he was undone by taste. the bite wasn't just of a fruit—it was the bite that gave birth to hunger. a hunger that gnaws, that eats away, never satisfied. the apple was nothing. it was the taste that cursed him. forbidden, sweet, clinging to the tongue, and in that single bite, the world collapsed into his mouth. one taste, and all men after him would live in the shadow of that hunger—aching for something they would never own, never hold.

desire doesn't roar. it doesn't rip at the soul like some beast. no. it seeps in, seeps like wine into the cracks of wood, like ink bleeding through paper. it stains. slowly, quietly, it wraps itself around you. at first, it's soft, like silk grazing the skin, and you welcome it. but you don't notice, don't feel, as it tightens, little by little, until it owns you.

men don't fall because of need. it's not hunger that brings them to their knees—it's want. it's that first taste, that sweet tease of something more, something just out of reach. the taste lingers. long after the bite is gone, long after the moment has passed, it stays. and it's that memory, that craving, that drags men to their ruin.

✶                         and so it was with rhaenys, the bitterness festering in her marrow long before she could name it, long before she could untangle its venomous roots from her soul. it clung to her like the salt in the air, corrosive, relentless, until it hollowed her bones, leaving behind a woman who still stood but no longer lived.

love—they once called it love, didn't they? that glorious myth she and corlys wove, bright as flame, strong as dragon's breath, but oh, how easily fire turns to ash. she felt it rot, tasted it decay, long before he ever noticed the foulness on his tongue. love was a promise, and she, the only one left choking on its lies.

how long? how long had she been the discarded queen, the almost, the nearly? years—years of being passed over, of being spoken about in whispers, the queen who never was. and maybe that's where it began—the first fracture in the dam.

she wasn't chosen to sit on the throne, and with her rejection came corlys's disappointment. for she did not give him the power he craved—the power he believed was his by right. their son, laenor, was not named heir. their blood, their legacy, their line, was left on the fringes of history, while others—less deserving, less powerful—took the seat that should have been theirs.

it was not her failure, and yet, somehow, the blame fell on her. unspoken, but felt in every glance, every sigh, every quiet moment in their marriage. she could feel it—corlys's hunger for more, his thirst for the crown that slipped through their fingers. he had once looked at her as his equal, as his fierce dragon queen, but now, there was something else in his eyes. a distance. a longing for something she could not give him.