Chapter 2: The Viper in the Garden
The throne room was a mouth waiting to swallow her whole.
Roslin stood beside her betrothed, the cool silk of her gown—a Tyrell green embroidered with golden vines—feeling absurdly delicate against the looming dread of the place. The Iron Throne wasn’t a seat; it was a carcass. A twisted, blackened heap of a thousand swords, fused by dragonfire into a jagged monument to violence. Light from the high stained-glass windows sliced through the dusty air, painting the marble floor in fractured colors that did nothing to soften the edges.
King Viserys II, a man whose kindness seemed etched into the weary lines of his face, smiled down at her. His voice echoed kindly in the vast space. “It is our hope, my dear, that a household of your own choosing will make the Red Keep feel less a fortress and more a home.”
He gestured. A line of people shuffled forward on the dais below. A stern-faced head cook, a giggling young seamstress, two quiet maids. Roslin nodded, smiled, recited their names in her mind. The performance of gracious acceptance was one she’d mastered in Highgarden’s sunlit halls.
Then the king said, “And to attend you personally, Lady Alys Rivers. Of House Strong. A most accomplished and… discreet companion.”
She stepped forward, and the very air in the room changed.
Alys Rivers was the kind of beautiful that felt like a secret everyone knew. Her dark hair was a cascade of shadows, her eyes a blue so pale it was almost unsettling. She moved with a silent, fluid confidence that made Roslin feel suddenly clumsy in her pretty gown.
“My lady,” Alys said, curtsying. Her voice was smooth, like dark honey. “It is an honor to serve the future Princess of Dragonstone.”
But her eyes, for the briefest second, flicked past Roslin to Jace.
It was a glance that held continents. A private, knowing territory. Then Alys straightened and, as she did, her hand came to rest on Jace’s forearm where he stood rigid beside Roslin. It wasn’t a grab, just a light, familiar touch, the kind one shares when standing close in a crowd. Her fingers lingered for a heartbeat too long.
“You look tense, my prince,” Alys murmured, her voice low enough that only they three might hear it. “The training yard did not sweat it out of you?”
Jace didn’t pull away. He didn’t look at her. He stared straight ahead at some point on the far wall, his jaw a knot of stone. A muscle ticked in his cheek. He said nothing.
But the smirk that touched Alys’s lips was a victory banner. Small, subtle, and entirely for Roslin’s benefit. It said, I know the texture of his skin under my hand. I know what weighs on him. You are a decoration.
The obsidian dragon in Roslin’s hidden pocket felt like a shard of ice against her thigh. She kept her face a perfect placid lake, the Tyrell sun shining on its surface. She smiled, broader now, turning it fully on Alys.
“How kind you are to notice,” Roslin said, her voice light as spun sugar. “I’m sure your attentiveness will be a great comfort to us both.”
The slight emphasis on us was a needle-thin thrust. Alys’s blue eyes narrowed a fraction before her own smile reaffixed itself, more polished, more dangerous.
King Viserys, blissfully unaware of the silent duel on his dais, droned on about protocol. Roslin felt the crescent moons her nails were pressing into her own palms. The pain was a anchor, a real feeling in a world suddenly made of smoke and mirrors. She kept her mouth shut. She smiled. She accepted.
Because what was the alternative? A scene? Tears? Demanding this elegant snake be removed? That was the move of a child, a spoiled girl from the rose gardens. It would undo her in Jace’s eyes, in the king’s, in the court’s. It would make her the weak, fragile thing they all expected.
The audience ended. The court began to disperse in a rustle of robes and a hum of murmured conversation. Jace turned, finally breaking his statue’s pose. He didn’t look at Alys. He didn’t look at Roslin. He just left, his boot heels ringing on the marble with a martial finality. Alys melted into the crowd after him, a shadow trailing its source of darkness.
“A difficult day.”
The voice beside her was gravelly and low. Ser Arryk Cargyll had materialized at her elbow, a grizzled monument in white enameled steel. His face was a roadmap of old battles, his eyes the color of flint.
“A necessary one, ser,” Roslin replied, smoothing her gown, a gesture to steady her hands.
“He is not a man for pretty words or gentle hands,” Arryk said, his gaze following where Jace had gone. “He is a shield. A sword. The realm needs that edge. It does not need it… blunted.”
The warning was plain. Do not try to soften him. Do not get in the way.
Roslin met the knight’s hard stare. She thought of the brutal, lonely figure in the training yard, striking at a dummy as if it held all the world’s wrongs. She thought of the fleeting, unguarded pain in Jace’s eyes before he’d walled it off again.
“A sword kept in a dark scabbard,” she said quietly, “will eventually rust. Even the strongest steel.”
Arryk’s eyebrows lifted slightly. He gave a slow, non-committal grunt and walked away, leaving her alone in the vastness of the throne room.
Later, in the chambers assigned to her—rooms full of Targaryen grandeur but devoid of warmth—Roslin stood by the window. Below, in a courtyard, she saw them.
Jace was speaking with a group of armor-clad men, his posture all command. Alys stood slightly apart, near a flowering thorn bush, pretending to examine the blooms. As the men departed, Jace turned to leave. Alys said something. He paused, his back to her. She moved close, her mouth near his ear, speaking words Roslin would never hear. She placed a hand on his back, between his shoulder blades. A possessive, intimate gesture.
Jace didn’t lean into it. He stood there, accepting it like another piece of armor, or a chain. Then he walked away.
Alys watched him go, her expression unreadable. Then, as if sensing eyes upon her, she turned slowly and looked up, directly at Roslin’s window.
She didn’t smile. She didn’t smirk. She just looked. A long, cold, assessing look. Then she turned and walked through an archway, disappearing into the bowels of the keep.
Roslin unclenched her fist. The little obsidian dragon was warm from her grip. She placed it on the cold stone windowsill, where it caught the dying light.
This wasn’t a song. It was a game of cyvasse on a board she couldn’t fully see. Her pieces were smiles, silence, and a stolen dragon. Theirs were history, habit, and a cold-blooded beauty who knew all the secret passages into a prince’s fortified heart.
She took a deep breath, the scent of the distant thorn blooms mixing with the ever-present smell of cold stone. The performance was over. The real work began now.