Salt

Chapter Five

"What?" Myriam clamored suddenly, flouncing to her father and picking up the scroll. As she read it, she began to cry, clamping her slender fingers over her mouth in affliction. Hysterical, she fell to her knees and wailed like an infant.

"Blasphemy!" Tatyana hollered in anger, "That boy was this family's ticket to the Iron Throne! Control over Westeros, and now you mean to tell me he is dead?!"

"He was more than your Gods-damned ticket to Westeros!" Myriam shouted, peeling her hands from her face. Her dark eye make-up leaked down her cheeks now, her hair scraggly and out of place where she gripped it hard and cried. "He was my husband-to-be, killed in Vaes Dothrak by savages! A death without honor..." The slender girl stood up now, her blue dress unkempt and sullied, and she scrutinized each person sitting at the table. "You all speak of Westeros as if you hate it...all you want to do is control it. Now, the man that I love is dead. He will never be the rightful king, he will never serve and rule the seven kingdoms with me. The Dothraki will pay for what they have done to my husband; my husband, my unborn children, the honor of this family. Father, tomorrow you will send your soldiers to cross the Narrow Sea. They will go to Vaes Dothrak and kill whatever Dothraki they can find. I want painful, bloody deaths for all of them."

"Is that truly the right way, sister?" Valentina interrupted, standing up from her seat and walking to Myriam in slow steps. Her auburn hair bounced with her movements and she cocked her head to the side, folding her hands over her waist. "Kill innocent savages? Torture Dothraki children? Ruin families? Think about what you are doing and what it will start."

"Innocent?! They killed my husband! I've always known you to be the stupid sister, but this is bringing dishonor on us all."

"You are in no place to speak of dishonor when you castigate this family over a man you have never seen, never met, never even spoken to!" Valentina was doing her best to remain calm, but Myriam's face was burning with anger. In her fit of rage, she lifted a hand and struck Valentina across the face once with her palm and a second time with the back of her hand on the opposite cheek. The slaps were hard and the marks of Myriam's many rings branded themselves into Val's face in deep, red impressions; blood began to gush out of Valentina's cheek. Buffeted, she kept her eyes glued to the ground, refusing to make eye contact with her sister.

"I loved him." Myriam rasped.

"You love no one but yourself." Hissing through her teeth, Valentina looked up at Myriam and spat blood onto her face and dress. Myriam seethed in disgust, wiping her sister's blood from her face before smiling a hellish little smirk. For a moment in time before she did, Valentina wondered if maybe her sister had been hit with a wave of guilt for her callow outburst and rash decision making, but in the world of Myriam Castillon she was a perfect woman. Valentina should have known that her sister was too noxious of a person to realize what she'd done.

"My darling, who are you to speak of love?" Myriam said calmly, as if she didn't just two moments ago beat her sister across the face with silver rings. "You know nothing of love. You know nothing of what it feels like to be in love because a man has never loved you and no man ever will, sweet sister of mine. You will be alone your whole life, you will die alone, and after you die your sad little corpse will rot alone in the ground. I almost feel sorry for you." Myriam lifted a hand to stroke Valentina's cheek briefly, causing the girl to wince in pain and Myriam to suppress a laugh. "Come now, Septa Winnie. I need consoling while I mourn my husband's death."

Septa Winnie, a frail old woman with long fingernails, nodded timidly and scuttled behind Myriam, leaving the family in shock of what had just happened between the eldest and youngest Castillon sisters.

-

"I should have done it. I should have hit her back, given her a good beating. I was weak out there."

"You were."

Valentina looked up at Sandor, furrowing her eyebrows and smiling before pushing his shoulder in a playful fashion. He was no maester, but Sandor did his best to tend to the wounds she had suffered that night. Valentina sat with her blanket draped over her shoulders and her hair pulled back by elegant pins, wincing slightly as he wiped over the cut on her cheek with a damp rag. "You're my beau. You shouldn't kick me when I'm down, Sandor Clegane of Westeros." She sighed, playing with a loose curl that fell from her clips.

Sandor paused. "Beau?" and he looked down at her. She smiled at him and Sandor, for a moment, had forgotten about where they were or who they were. All he knew was that he was alive, wiping blood from a beautiful woman's face; his beautiful woman's face. As far as he was concerned, he was the luckiest man alive; luckier than any King or any Lord. He, Sandor Clegane who was a horribly disfigured giant brute of a man  got to hold this woman at night and love her, and for that reason he was grateful to be alive. He was living, and because of Val, for once in his life he wasn't very miserable at all. He was happy.

"San?" Valentina interrupted his thoughts. Her hands had found a way to stop fussing with her loose curls and her brain had found a way to make itself serious for a moment. "When Myriam said that I would be alone forever...do you...find that to be true?"

"What the fuck kind'a question's that? Are you alone right now, dove?"

"San," she whined, "yes, I have you with me now...but what if we can't be together forever? What if they find out about us?" She spoke in low, sad intonations, her hands moving to cup Sandor's face delicately. Softly, she brushed the hair that hid his burns away and she kissed his scars. She slid her arms around his neck and nuzzled their noses together gently. "They'll take you out of my life just as quickly as you came into it. They'll take you away from me, San. Promise me you'll never let them do it."

"I promise," he assured her, kissing her lips once first, and then her nose and forehead. "If they even try it I'll cut their throats, all of them. I'll put you on a horse with me and we'll ride off. We can get a boat and start a new life in Pentos. We'll change our names, you'll dye your hair...we can live comfortably there. Forever."

"Children?"

"So many fucking children. They'll look like you, hopefully, and they'll drive us completely batshit mad but we'll love them, Val, because they'll be ours."

Valentina exhaled a breath and embraced him tightly, burying her face into his neck and pressing gentle kisses onto his flesh. "You're all that I need in this world," she conceded, "fuck my family. Fuck my mother, fuck my father, fuck Myriam, fuck all of them. You're the only person who has ever loved me, San. I want to spend my whole life with you."

"Then spend your life with me, Valentina!" He expressed, his hands now cupping her face. He moved them to hold hers gently, their eyes locking with one another's. "Live a quiet life with me. Make beautiful children with me. Make love with me..." For a moment, there was an interlude in the universes of the two of them. There was so much life glittering in both of their eyes, two social outcasts who had found love in the arms of one another. Both Sandor and Val had never thought in either of their lives that they would see love, yet here they were, finding it right in the eyes of each other. "Valentina Castillon, first of her name..." Sandor begun,

"Marry me."