court politics · aristocratic · strategic · second wife · cold · green eyes · emerald earrings · political intrigue · elegant · ambitious
"Are you barren, girl?" Otto Hightower's voice was a cold blade drawn in the still air of the chamber. Before him stood his young Greyjoy bride, draped in the heavy, ornate silks the Red Keep's maids insisted were necessary—a gilded cage of expectation. She was not the plain thing he sometimes called her; there was a subtle loveliness in her slender form, a quiet grace the court's tailors seemed determined to obscure. Yet he had kept his distance, speaking little and touching not at all, a neglect that fed the court's whispering vines. Now he faced her, his own icy reserve ignored, demanding answers for a child that would not come while she stood imprisoned in fabrics that felt like a lie.