Highgarden had clothed itself in roses.

They hung in thick sweet ropes from pale stone arches, red and gold and white, their perfume heavy in the warm air, so rich it near smothered the sharper scents beneath—roasted boar crackling with honey and cloves, buttered trout fresh from the Mander, lamprey pies, wine spilled on rushes, beeswax, sweat, silk. Musicians played beneath a carved gallery, all lutes and pipes and high sweet fiddles, whilst above them banners stirred lazily in the summer draft that wandered in through the open hall.

A wedding fit for a king, men had called it.

Lord Mace Tyrell had made certain of that.

He went booming through the feast in cloth-of-gold and green velvet, red-faced with pride and strongwine, one plump hand forever sweeping grandly toward the boards, the singers, the fountains running hippocras in the yard beyond. “Let it not be said,” he declared to any man within earshot, “that House Tyrell does things by halves. My son is wed at last, and wed gloriously.”

At the high table, Ser Garlan laughed and raised his cup. “You’ve fed half the Reach, Father. Another course and we shall need to roll the guests back to their chambers.”

Mace only snorted. “Then let them roll. It is a day for plenty.”

Willas smiled at that, though more softly than either of them. He sat beside his bride in a doublet of deep green sewn with little golden roses, a mantle of cream wool clasped with a brooch of beaten gold. He looked every inch a great lord’s heir, save for the cane that rested against his chair and the careful way he shifted when the old ache in his leg woke to remind him of bo.yhood folly and a horse’s cruel misstep. Yet there was no bitterness in him tonight. His face was open, thoughtful, kind; his joy the quieter sort, no less true for being still.

Now and again he turned to the woman at his side, saying some small thing too low for others to hear. Whatever her answer, if answer there was, it brought that same look to him: a warmth that lived chiefly in the eyes.

Before the feast, in the cool green hush of the Maidenvault gardens, his grandmother had found him.

Olenna Tyrell sat beneath an arbor of pale roses, thorns sharp as cat’s claws, her hands folded atop her cane. “Well,” she had said, peering up at him, “you have done it.”

Willas had smiled. “So it seems.”

“Do not sound so startled. For years half the realm wanted you for your name, your seat, or your roses. Dorne sent glances. Casterly Rock sent ambitions. Even the North was sniffed at, for all that frozen gi.rl knew nothing of us.” Her mouth puckered. “Bah. Let them gnash their pretty teeth. Better a wife you chose than one chosen for you by a pack of grasping fools.”

“I am glad you approve.”

“Do not be impertinent, bo.y. I said nothing of approval. I said only that this once, your instincts seem less witless than your father’s.” Then, after a beat, her lined hand covered his. “She looks at you and not at Highgarden. That is rarer than rubies. See that you value it.”

At the feast, the dancing began after the sixth course. Lords led ladies out beneath floating silk lanterns, and the floor turned with color—saffron, sky blue, maiden pink, sea-green, cloth-of-silver and cloth-of-gold. Laughter rang against the rafters.

Willas watched for a little while, fingers light upon his cup. Then he looked to his bride.

“You should go,” he said.

Her head turned toward him.

He touched the carved pommel of his cane and gave a rueful half-smile. “I know what songs say of wedding dances. They leave out the part where one partner limps and the other must feign not to notice. I would spare you the pretense.”

When she did not rise at once, he leaned closer, his voice warm as summer dusk. “Go on. Dance. Be admired. It is your right tonight.”

Still she lingered.

Willas’s smile deepened, touched now with something gentler. “Go,” he said softly, with all the patience and tenderness that were so much a part of him. “And when you are done, come back to me and tell me which lord trod most clumsily on your feet.”