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Jadis Graybane had once enjoyed the trickery of riddles against her tongue, liked to let them sit there, rolling around in her mouth like a secret kept, all debating and fun as they curled around her curious mind that hungered for that peculiar power in knowing, in becoming something far more than her virtue for her father to sell and stake claim. What was not flesh, not feathers, not scales or bone, but had fingers and thumbs of their own? What did everyone have that no one could lose? What had a beginning but no end, and yet was the end of all things that began? When was fire not fire but life?

When was fire not fire but life?...It was the last one that had always stumped her, that had left her scratching at her head, frustrated and spiteful and full of bewilderment because what kind of mocking riddle could it be?

And then one night she had stumbled away from her bed because there was a rather odd calling at her chest, this all consuming pull, winding around her mortal flesh in the ever bloodied strings of fate until she had no choice but to answer it...where she found something rather odd beneath the growth of the land around her. A rock, coiled with sapphires, shining in the lull of darkness like a beacon guiding her home, enchanting her forward until those searching fingers of hers had brushed against its gleaming surface...only to find the answer to the riddle that haunted her as her palm erupted into flame and flesh to breathe new life.

She came home to her castle in panicked ruins with a scar upon one hand...and a dragon curled around the other, looking upon the terrified faces of her house, their horror, their stench of fear sweet agony upon her tongue...and it was there that everything began to change...when greedy intentions began to burrow deep into her skin, shadows looming over her, guiding her every move, forcing her hand, trying desperately to taste the fruitful sin of what she had found on that dark night, of what she had become. And soon, Jadis had other riddles that kept her awake at night with only the moon and Medousa to comfort her.

What was drowned beneath the waves but did not sink? What monster had turned death into a mere hunger for the blood of mortality in ever sharp teeth, for the crimson waste in the sea she'd been reborn in? What creature was ruined by the greed of men, frozen to the floor of the god she'd worshipped and blessed with the eyes to bestow upon the same fate only to be hunted by the same terror that had bit at tender flesh? What happened to those with intelligence and wit? To those with a beauty to be envied that their fate fell to flames melting their once radiant skin, to a rope around their neck, cursing the damnation that plagued them with their final breath.

Those histories and tales and riddles had made monsters of victims, had twisted the narrative to make themselves the saviour, the hero against the sirens, the gorgon, the snakes and the crone, all the witches and saints...holding their blades and swords, cutting them down with bared teeth and ignoring their weeping, still expected to die pretty and freshly fucked because how dare women be anything more, how dare they want power, want love, want understanding.

She had found that legends were simply slippery things...because for all of the glory that shines upon the man, the tale hides the pain and suffering and death of the women that spun them.

And somehow through all the stories of old, through the dynasties and empires that crumbled beneath the abyss of nothingness, of war and famine and plague...it was still the horror of women that men shuddered at, the stories of women swallowing vengeance with their bloodied mouths, gobbling it up with desperate fingers, getting a taste for it when they were licking at their own wounds, from the violence of rage, of hatred, of a need to control. The tales of a woman's wicked willingness to dance with the devil if it meant their salvation, to wear the flesh men had ruined like it was a gift from the heavens above.

Jadis could almost see the bloodstained path
drenched in sin and ash awaiting her, could see the way her hunger would make her the villain, how they'd name her monster, name her witch, they could even name her death if they so wished it. Medousa would be the she-beast, the horror in the skies that she rode upon, the way they clawed their way to power something to fear and not admire because they didn't have a cock between their legs...they were going to be the startling thing, the blade between sharp teeth, and the rest of the world was going to have no choice but to watch and burn and die before them.

But you see, there was another riddle that Jadis had never quite understood when she still held innocence in a world that sought to crush it, had never truly worshipped like the others because the answer always seemed so far out of her reach until it had been left in the dust in the ruin of her memories to be forgotten about, just like the others, just like most things that didn't serve her any longer. When was a monster not a monster?...the answer was so easy, so why had it had slipped through her fingers like blood in the water, like sand in a clenched fist, like flesh to flame.

When was a monster not a monster?...When it was loved.

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"OH PRINCESS, IT SEEMS YOU HAVE YET TO REALISE THAT YOU COULD TAKE ME BY THE THROAT AND MY EYES WOULD SPARKLE AT THE MERE INCHES BETWEEN OUR LIPS."

"YOU MAKE MY DESIRE TO RUIN YOU SOUND SO ROMANTIC, KINSLAYER."

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Dedications;
-dehishouse JabberJay_011 soulatire padmehoe -hanlonss goldencomplex Devioussdevil BorkiDork jediruins bxtterflxs peakboredom t-rexinatiara janeclarrize Blue-eyed-saturn Wanderland_walker_16 The_Books_Music_Life RhaenyraTargaryen-1 and to whoever else reads this! This is the Eragorn/Game of Thrones sapphic fic we deserve <33