The air in the Prince’s solar did not flow; it stagnated, heavy with the scent of frankincense, crushed winter roses, and the metallic tang of old blood—the atmospheric signature of the woman who had turned Baelor’s life into a gilded sepulcher.

She stood by the hearth, a silver-white specter of gigantic height. Even without the gargantuan Kokoshnik that sat upon her head like a cathedral of moonstones and obsidian, she would have loomed over the other women of the court. She was a monument of ivory and spite, her skin so pale it seemed translucent, tracing the "noble blood" of an ancient line that had whispered to the Seven since the dawn of time.

Baelor stood in the doorway, the "Hand of the King" weary and dust-laden. He looked at her and saw the shadow of her grandfather, the High Septon. He remembered the banquet where the old man’s eyes had bypassed the King’s grace to land upon her—his "sweet girl," his poisonous snake.

The marriage had been a political decapitation. To secure the Faith, Baelor had been forced to sacrifice the singular peace of his union with Jena. He had protested with the roar of a dragon, but the High Septon’s house held the keys to the hearts of the smallfolk. And so, the prince was bartered for a fragile stability.

"You are late,"

She said. Her voice was not a melody; it was a blade drawn slowly across silk.

{{user}}⎯the white snake, they called her after they got married, the homewrecker, a husband thief. A dragon claimer.

She did not look at him with a wife’s affection, but with the megalomaniacal intensity of a collector examining a prize.

She despised the world, especially the women of the court, she hated every girl her eyes fell over, she wanted them to be miserable, but for Baelor, she harbored a savage, obsessive hunger.

She moved toward him, her ornate satin slippers silent on the stone, though her heavy skirts—stiff with jewels and lined with the furs of white wolves—rushed like a coming storm. She reached for him, her hands cold and purposeful, capturing his face.

She stared into his eyes—those radiant lilac-violet gems that set him apart from his kin. She traced the line of his broad shoulders, her fingers digging into the muscle with a "savage" grip, as if trying to feel the bone beneath the skin.

"Tonight," she hissed, her mismatched eyes shifting through "inhuman hues" of gold and violet, "you will forget the Dondarrion woman. You will forget her soft words and her common warmth. I am the daughter of the Faith, and I will have my tithe."

She did not kiss him; she devoured him. Her mouth was a "poisonous" sweetness, her lips already swollen from her own restless anticipation.

She pulled him toward the bed— making him lying down like feast for her hands snd greedy mouth, a sprawling landscape of black satin and silver fox—and began to unmake the Hand of the King with cruel, possessive efficiency.

In the dark, she was a creature of dark magic and savage greed. She did not want his comfort; she wanted his "raw" essence. Her touch seared into his skin, her nails carving red crescents into his "wide back" and the heavy expanse of his thighs. She worshipped his body with a "violent" devotion, her long, pale limbs entangling his darker, Martell-toned frame until he was lost in a sea of monochrome silk.

She "ate" his mouth, stifling his protests with a hunger that felt like a curse. Every mark she left on his skin—the bite marks on his neck, the bruises on his chest—was a message sent to Jena. She wanted Baelor to carry her signature into the light of day, a visible map of her possessive conquest.

Hours later, she lay across him, her towering height draped over his body like a shroud. She ran a long, jeweled finger over the "vibrant lilac" of his closed eyelid, her expression one of suspicious triumph.

"You think of her," she whispered, her voice a poisonous needle. "But your body bears my marks. Your sons carry my face. And when you close your eyes, it is the scent of my incense that fills your lungs, not her roses."

Baelor lay still, the weight of her—her touch.