THIRTY-TWO ——
I'LL TELL YOU MY SINS, AND YOU CAN SHARPEN YOUR KNIFE

110 AC, King's Landing.

Morrigan feels like something is burning into her skin, burrowing deep under into her bones and her very soul. The fabric of her being. She feels too hot, too aware as she dances with Gwayne and she wonders if this is just her imagination. If her mind is playing tricks on her.

She doesn't dare to look back to the royal family and their guests to see if it is.

Maybe she's afraid she's right— but more than all, she is afraid that she is wrong. That he doesn't spare her a second glance. That he doesn't care.

How would she know, after all? 

She thought she'd known him before, and she'd been wrong. So wrong.

Instead, she tries to focus on Gwayne in front of her, but finds that the sight of him hurts.

Morrigan tries not to choke on the way her thoughts are closing up her throat and forces herself to keep the smile fixed on her face. Not his fault, not his fault, not his fault, she chants in her head. The smile feels like a grimace to her.

Some time during the dance, she lets her eyes drift to the small faction of Stormlanders— the faces she could draw blind— and finds Eric watching her with an unreadable sort of expression. Alden is staring at something behind her and the crowd of dancing guests, a slight sneer on his face as Rodrik is talking to him. Her sworn shield is leaned forward, a hard expression on his face, eyes fixed on her cousin.

Distantly, Morrigan thinks how odd it is to see that expression on his face directed at someone but her.

When the dance at last ends, Gwayne sends her an apologetic look. "Forgive me, my Lady  but I see my sister making her way over to my family. I should greet her."

Morrigan makes herself. "Of course, good Ser."

Gwayne reaches out and takes one of her hands in his, raising them up and places a light kiss on the back of her hand. "It was a delight to see you again, Morrigan."

Morrigan tries not to raise an eyebrow at the gesture. Huh, she thinks. She tries to remember the last time this had happened— when someone but her husband had publicly displayed any sort of affection or appreciation for her.

Not that her husband often did.

"You as well, Gwayne," Morrigan replies and the name feels foreign on her tongue as he lowers their hands again, releasing her. The absence of his skin feels oddly chilling. She tries for a more genuine smile as Gwayne backs away from her. Because she means her words— even if his sight feels like a blow to her bleeding heart.

As he goes, her breath lodges in her throat.

Again. She lets him leave again. 

But was there really a choice at all this time?

No, the voice in her reminds her. You've made them all and now you've run out of choices. 

She closes her eyes for a moment, taking in a shaking breath as her finger curl together, nails digging into her palms slightly. 

When she opens them again, she finds Edmyn, jaw tense, staring at her as he rises from his seat and something heavy settles in her stomach. She feels sick at the look in his eyes.

"I hear congratulations are in order, cousin," Alden's voice comes from her side and Morrigan tries not to flinch at the unexpected sound.

She turns her head to find his familiar form towering over her, one eyebrow half-drawn up. "Thank you, cousin," she replies. She isn't sure it's genuine. 

"It seems to become more you the second time around," he continues and Morrigan narrows her eyes on him.

"You look a little less like shit;" Alden adds like he needs to clarify it.

Morrigan glares at him.

Alden smiles down at her. 

With a huff, Morrigan turns her head away from him again.

She only realizes after a moment, eyes locked with another pair across the room that she's let herself slip up.

Like prey caught in a predator's gaze, Morrigan's body freezes, muscles seizing up like Daemon's gaze is a physical trap and she can't look away. She can't breathe, she— she feels like her lungs are caving in.

Daemon doesn't move and she wants to scream at him to look away, but if he can see the panic in her, he doesn't let it on. He doesn't listen. And the way he looks at her— it's like that night. He looks at her like he did that night.

She wants to bare her teeth at him like a cornered animal, want to flash her eyes the way she did in the hallway, full of hate and anger but that look. That look. She cannot tear her eyes from his— by the Gods, why can't she look away?

"Dance with me, cousin," Alden says at her side and then a hand is at her side, palm up, an offering. A lifeline. 

Only when she places her hand in his— like hot coals against her own, ice-cold fingertips— that she realizes her hands are shaking violently. 

Alden pulls her closer to him, in a dance Morrigan is glad to notice is only a little out of place with the music, which is still bright and meant for fun, but slower than the dance before. They're not as out of odds with the rest of them as they could have been as he whirls her once. 

At least, Alden is her cousin. At least, Alden doesn't pose a threat to Edmyn. 

Something cold and oily settles in her stomach at the idea that someone else would dance with her like this. Anyone else— and she could've heard the whispers. Could've seen the look of scandal. Dancing with an unmarried man of age like this was unbecoming for any woman.

But Alden is her cousin and they are not Targaryens and she bears the evidence of her fruitful marriage on her very body— and so, Morrigan forces her shoulders to relax, just a little.

Even as it feels like she is stepping over a lake barely frozen over, ready to crack at any moment.

She turns her eyes to Alden. "What are you doing?" She hisses under her breath, careful not to be loud enough for any other of the guests to hear.

Alden's pale eyes stare down at her. "Please tell me you weren't stupid enough to risk that babe having the name Rivers and not Tully," he grinds out, lips barely moving.

Morrigan can't help herself— her body jerks and she stumbles, just a little, over her steps.

She can feel Alden's hold on her tightening, holding her up. 

Her nostrils flare a little. "I don't know what you mean." 

Alden scoffs under his breath. "Please. Don't instult me, Morrigan."

Her jaw tenses until it's nearly painful. "Alden—" She starts, voice full with a reprimant she hopes he will, for once in his life, listen to and let it be.

"I see how he looks at you," Alden hisses quietly, eyes sharp and unforgiving. Morrigan's throat dries up. "I see how you look at him."

There's so much anger and darkness in his voice and— she recognises the the expression as something so intimately familiar, woven into her very being, because it's her own— there's worry all over Alden's expression, angry and writing and drenched in panic.

She presses her lips together and resist the urge to look back to him.

"No," Morrigan says softly. "There's no way it's his. I was with child before he returned."

She doesn't need to clarify whom, doesn't need to ask. Alden knows, he knows, because he knows her. He looked and he saw.

Morrigan wonders if she would ever see this kind of truth about him if she bothered to look.

Alden lets out a long breath and nods. "Good."

Morrigan stares up at her cousin. "Why are you here?" She asks, feeling suddenly tired.

There's a beat of silence. 

"I did promise Aunt Elenda to visit you soon."

"Alden—"

"— Do you remember?" He cuts her off, looking around the room. Not meeting her eyes for a moment. "That day, year ago, when you came to visit home and we talked about the matter of the Stepstones?"

Morrigan pauses for a moment, unsure where he's going with this. "Yes?"

"Do you remember what you said about him?" Morrigan stays silent. He knows she does. 

"And how you knew him well enought to predict his every step, four years before any of it?"

Something in her heart twists and aches.

"You can't have known then," she whispers and her eyes burn as she looks up at him. "I didn't know then."

It's the truth, it's the truth— and yet, it feels like a lie.

Alden smiles down at her then and it's the kindest smile he has ever given her. It breaks her heart. "I know."

He sounds like it is breaking his, too.

Morrigan tries to open her mouth, tries to answer, but the words catch in her throat. 

For a long moment they watch each other, the silence hanging heavy between them, before—

"— May I dance with my wife?"

Morrigan statles a little at his words and Alden's hands on her tighten.

He stares at Edmyn like he's considering declining, like he is about to decline and Edmyn draws up an eyebrow, challenging. Alden has no say here, has no power in this. 

And neither does she.

She lets go of Alden's hands, smiling softly. "Of course, my love," she says and steps away from Alden.

She thinks it must be a the Gods having a laugh that it feels like leaving safety to step away from Alden and towards the man she married. It feels like some sort of grotesque joke.

Edmyn looks at Alden, a dangerous edge in his eyes when he still doesn't move.

Alden lets out a sound somewhere between a huff and a laugh, before he smiles in a way that bares his teeth at Edmyn. "Of course," he says.

Morrigan can't help but stare at her cousin because— she'd been told all her life how similar they are. Now she sees. Alden looks like her when she smiles at Brandon. At Edmyn. At Otto.

He looks just like her.

Somewhere, deep in her chest, the thought echoes and settles, warming her bones inside-out.

She turns to Edmyn and offers her hand, relieved how little it is shaking as she does. "Shall we?"

Edmyn smiles at her and the expression, the familiarity of it makes her feel sick. 

Wordlessly, he begins to lead her through the dance, skin to skin.

Her skin feels like it's crawling with the contact, but still, someone in the band must've seen Rhaenyra and Laenor dancing again because the music slows to a softer beat. Something fitting for a betrothed couple. It's a romantic song— although, really, for Morrigan it feels a little like being in the Seven Hells. 

She takes in a shallow breath as she leans her head against Edmyn's shoulder, spine so tense it feels like it might snap. 

Some people whistle and cheer at the wedding couple and Morrigan's eyes sting at the sight of them. They're smiling at each other in an almost conspiratorial way. Fond, she thinks. They're fond of each other.

It feels foreign to her. 

Marriage has always been a battleground, littered with wounds and agony.

She tries to imagine what it might look like if it were not and fails— and yet, she cannot help herself but think of one moment— just one instant really, where intimacy was not a fight. Where it was not meant to draw blood— by knuckles or by the inside of cheeks bitten raw.

Daemon's hand hadn't held her to restrain, they'd held her like something precious and she remembers how foreign it felt. How she'd not known what to do with it. Arms around her to hold, not to hurt.

Maybe she still doesn't. Even now that she knows it's all been a lie. Just another game really. 

Still, like a fool, her eyes seek him out and find him already watching her, sitting in the chair they'd dragged towards the end of the table hastily, legs crossed. 

He doesn't move as their eyes meet, doesn't even bother looking caught, and for once, Morrigan's body doesn't react either.

No— it's much more visceral. 

Something in her insides, in her chest reacts— she can't describe it. Can put a finger on it. It hurts and it stings and it aches and it makes her eyes burn, her throat burn as it closes up with the emotion. 

She doesn't know any of it and it terrifies her. 

Daemon looks at her like she is all he sees and for a moment, he is all she sees, too.

It's a lie, she reminds herself desperately.

It's the prettiest lie she has ever seen.

Maybe it's the worst of them all, too.

"Tell me, dearest wife," Edmyn's voice comes at her ear and Morrigan stiffens at the sensation of his breath ghosting over her ear, her jaw, her neck. And there's something in his voice, in his tone—

"Do you enjoy fucking him?"

Something in Morrigan withers and dies and dread spreads like a disease, like something rotten.

She can't breathe. "I—"

"Don't lie to me," Edmyn snarls and his hold on her tightens until small spikes of pain radiate from the points and she knows they will leave tiny bruises over her skin.

Her hands shake, the edge of her vision blurring a little and her lungs feel like they caving in and all the while— she is staring at Daemon, while he is staring at her and she cannot move because Edmyn's arms are like the bars of a cage.

She almost chokes on the air she tries to take in, tries to ignore the way the room is closing in on her, how the crowd is too loud, too much—

She shakes as she takes in a breath through her nose, trying to calm her erratic heartbeat. Oh Gods, oh Gods—

What had she told Daemon those weeks ago?

Do you know what would happen is someone found out about this?

She hadn't worried about any of them, not really— she'd only worried about one.

She can't see anything.

She thinks of Deran and feels sick. She thinks of the child within her and feels sick.

"Don't make me fucking ask again."

Morrigan is shaking as she looks up and forces herself into her husband's eyes.

She knows she will pay for this.

She knows she will bleed for this.

(There'd been an adulterous wife who'd been beaten to death by a hundred blows, a century ago. Afterwards, the punishment for women like her were six blows— one for each face of the Seven-Faced God but the Stranger.)

Her voice is so quiet, it's a wonder it comes out at all. "I imagine as much as you enjoy fucking your whores, dearest husband."

There is something ugly and angry in Edmyn's expression as it twists, as her words hit and Morrigan can already taste the copper of blood on her tongue.

Father. Mother. Maiden. Smith. Crone. Warrior.

She will pay for this.

One blow for each face of the Gods but the Stranger. 

(But then, there is always more to give, is there not?)

AUTHOR'S NOTE,
*ugly sobbing* 😀👍