Chapter Text
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Prologue One
[ Lysa I ]
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Lysa was roused once again by the first light that touched the looming castles that sat atop the distinguished Eyrie summits. Both from afar and near distance, the high stone structures were the bergs itself, desolate and proud in its steep solitude like the High Lords and vassals of the Vale that gather in her now new home.
Before another Stark bannermen along with Rivermen army marched to the capital to seek vengeance for the injustice done to the North’s Warden and Heir as well as rightfully rescue the whisked wolf maiden, Lord Hoster Tully made another political agreement with another potential ally.
A daughter of Riverland shall wed the next liege lord that will continue House Arryn.
Lysa remembered feeling furious and hopeless when the news was brought to her. At that time, not three moons had passed since she was forced by her own father to drink the bitter tea and lost the life that once cradled in her womb. It had also been that long since she heard and seen Petyr.
He vanished like thin air and she needed him the most. She was young, in love, and very afraid. Everyone seemed to be against her. Everyone seemed bent on stealing her happiness. Petyr belonged to her as she was to him. They can’t understand that separating them would mean misery, even death?
She asked for him so many times, even begged to her father, whom she had grown resentful of, to bring her to him. Yet all those pleadings were left ignored, unanswered. If she managed to pry a little harder, she would only get few sharped words meant dissuade her from knowing, “Forget about the boy, Lysa. You’ll never see him again or ever.” Yet it only ignited the burning desperation she had to be with Petyr. If the answers did not lie with the Trout then she will seek it in other waters.
Yet those who knew where the spindly ward of the River Lord went were not willing to tell her and those who were clueless about the real reason the second Tully daughter had gone delirious could only offer empty comfort and pity. As days grew near for her and her sister’s wedding day, her heart also waned in wars between anguish and wrath. Despite how much gossip Hoster could quell, word had gone out that Lysa Tully could be half as mad as the King Scab himself.
She smiled thinly when she recalled how reluctant Elbert was when he first met her. She could not blame him as she looked quite miserable and frightening in a supposed joyous day. Yet each night as they laid asleep and grew to know one another, he would tell her that she looked like a glorious lady during the grand ceremony and continued to be so to him. It escaped him that he was receiving a bride to wife. Of course, she would scoff at his words and reminded him it was the first time they saw each other. A coerced union wasn’t exactly memorable in a pleasant way. Yet his sweet words brought nothing but soft butterflies to her stomach, embalming the pain that had long settled there which will continue to haunt her as years will pass.
The very reason why she had become so pious despite never been a firmed believer to the Seven nor to any gods that were known.
Lady Arryn, as they now called her, would spend most of her days tending the castle affairs, visiting the sept and the weeping woman at the godswood, and helping the young Falcon transition from being an heir to the Arryn seat to be the Head of a dying Great House.
‘And a nearly extinct bloodline needs children to survive. But where are they, as the Lady herself may be barren.’
Lysa touched lightly above the layered skirts she was wearing, before her was the still statue of the weeping woman who remained nameless. Like the motionless sculpture, never did her hand make other movement, but she slowly yet gently rested it above her thick skirt where her lower abdomen could be.
A fortnight ago, she visited the castle’s maester complaining feeling unusually drained, only to come back to her quarters plagued by the strange remarks of a passing midwife who came to help the old scholar to allocate medicinal herbs.
It disquieted her so. Her maid that accompanied her to the maester’s quarters scolded the poor woman for saying those things in front of Lysa when almost the entire Westeros knew how she suffered few miscarriages since she married into the Great House of Arryn. It became somewhat a taboo to mention a possibility of little falcons with red hair or trout with golden tresses around the halls of the Mountain keep. Well, for sure not in the face of the Great Lord and Lady themselves. Outside the Moon’s Gate, heavy bets were already made; either another bride for the young Arryn Lord or a dead babe to the pitiable Tully woman.
Lysa was first affronted when the midwife told her she could be with a child. Elbert and her had tried for many times and they lost three. Elbert had mourned for their unborn babes, Lysa grieved for four.
Both of them had ceased in trying for an heir. They shared doubts and fears after the last tragedy. Elbert was concerned that if they persisted he would not only lose an infant to stabilize the shaky ancestral tree that befell on his lap but he may also lose the mother, his wife who he learned to love. Lysa grew wearier too as the former Head of the Arryn House, Lord Jon Arryn was considering for his nephew to have another bride and set her aside. She was torn between letting the inevitable to happen and clinging blindly to hope once more.
Her hand shook as she gripped her gown. If she was truly pregnant as the midwife stated and again lost the babe along the way, she doesn’t know if she would even survive to live another heartbreak. So, she made people who were present on that day she went to the maester to secrecy. Better for a few to know so she could embrace her sorrow in quiet than letting outsiders feast upon her pending misfortune. Yet a part of her heart sang, her soul achingly clung, as she put her yearning to prayers to whatever willing supreme that would answer her fervent whispers.
‘Gods. Goddesses. Old and New. Let this be true. Let this child in me be true. May it grow, healthy, strong, and true.’
Some higher being must have watched and heard her. For a strange response to her petition arrived on the Eyrie’s stronghold, a wandering hag that once lived in the wilderness of High Heart.
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to be continued
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