Only A Northern Song ~ Game of Thrones / Willas Tyrell ~

Chapter Eighty One: The Princess and the Knight

When a group of four handmaidens dressed in red with lion broaches on their dress lapels arrived to her chamber with a bath, Eddmina did not put up a fight.

That was not a decision purely made out of compassion for fellow women, but might've had something to do with the fact that they were followed by four guards in Lannister armour, each of them with their fists curled around the hilts of the swords on their belts, glaring at her as if she was the most notorious of criminals. Perhaps she was? It was a little amusing that Tywin Lannister sent soldiers to her room just to make sure she didn't attack the group of scared-looking maids, and for that humour alone, she kept quiet and behaved. That unnerved them more though, because any slight movement she made had them flinching or darting away from her. None of them tried to speak to her, and so Eddmina let them get on with their work, allowing them to strip her of her clothes and guide her to the bath.

The water was warm, but not nearly warm enough to her taste. After four months though, who was she to complain? It was possibly longer, given the fact it was at least a few weeks since her meeting with Tywin Lannister, long enough for her to suspect something had gone wrong with his plan. It had been long enough for her to accept her fate bitterly, long enough to suffer nightmares that featured not just the wedding but her abandonment from the Tyrells, but also long enough to wonder if Lord Tywin had been quashed and and her escape was still possible.

The month of no news had led her to suspect that perhaps her Uncle had remained true to his cause and had refused to surrender, keeping her new betrothed prisoner. It would have been harder if he had, as it would have meant the war being dragged on, not that she would have blamed him or felt anything other than pride for his stubborn want for justice. She was sure that if she was free or at his side she would have done the same, fighting until the end, yet instead she was locked away, isolated from the world and any news.

The guards and the maids were clearly proof that things were all still going well for the Lannisters, and so Eddmina forced herself to accept that it meant defeat and possibly death for her Uncle Brynden, reaquainting herself with the idea of being a prisoner as she sunk into the bath. Prisoner or no, the water felt good regardless, and she let her body relax into the tub and relieve her aches, managing a brief flicker of a smile when she felt a kicking inside.

'The soldiers could come over and hold your shoulders down under the water and drown you,' she thought as she came to the surface. She glanced over to them, uncaring that they were seeing her bare. They glared at her regardless.  'Fine. At least I'd die clean. Being drowned is more honourable than what they are cleaning me for.'

If they drowned her then they were stupid. The only reason she had been left alive was to be used as a piece in the games and a key for her kingdom, bending the north to the will of the crown and forcing them to submission. She had been spared from the massacre to serve as a bride to Ser Jaime, the man who had once been her prisoner, and considering in all the months she had served in captivity yet had never been offered the luxury of a bath, she assumed their wedding would be sooner rather than later, perhaps even that night. Part of her wanted to feel more frustrated with that reality, but of everything Lord Tywin had told her that day they met, the prospect of marrying Ser Jaime was the least of her worries.

Her family were all dead and gone. There was no obvious word from Sansa and Harrion and Eddmina hadn't wanted to ask over them in case she drew attention to them and endangered them further. She had no idea of what the condition of the north was like. She had no idea of what the condition of the Riverlands was like. Her Uncle Brynden's fate was a mystery. The one brother she had left that she had secretly counted on to help her had been murdered. Like a candied slice of lemon on top of a cake of trouble, she had also been thrown aside by her marital family, left to die by a man she had loved with her whole being like an absolute fool, abandoned with the knowledge that people she loved and admired despised her enough to let her rot at the mercy of her enemies, left with the worry that their hatred for her would feed into how her son was treated; her son who would one day be sent to the Wall to be forgotten about.