THRITY-FIVE ——
OH SIMPLE THING, WHERE HAVE YOU GONE?

116 AC, Riverrun.

Morrigan's hands are shaking a little, fingers cramping together with the letter still clutched in her palm. Something inside her is cracking wide open and she isn't sure if she can hear it like thunder cracking across the sea or if she can feel it breaking wide open like spiderweb cracks over ice falling apart at last— but it is there and it is inevitable and it hurts and she cannot breathe around her lungs caving in.

She curls into herself as she sits, eyes burning, mouth open but no sound comes out, the scream stays silent. No voice to her agony, only hurt as the rotten, old wound in her chest bleeds, bleeds, bleeds.

Silent sobs wreck her body as she rests her forehead against her fists, like a grotesque prayer, and she closes her eyes, rocking herself into a comfort that she will never feel. THat has abandoned her years ago.

Loneliness is a lover, and Morrigan Tully knows him intimately. She knows him better than anything else.

Except, perhaps, for grief and regret, twin stars that have left a bitter taste on her tongue so long ago, she doesn't know what their absence tastes like. Doesn't remember a time where it was ever different.

Some women take lovers of flesh and sinew and bone.

Morrigan Tully took hers of bitter rot, years ago, making a home inside her bed.

———————

At first glance, Mya and Andrey Tully could have been twins. Morrigan has been told many times how much her daughter looks like her cousin. With the same sky blue eyes, and wild hair curling from their head, anyone can see the family resemblance at one glance. The only stark contrast is the time of a little over a year separating them in age. Where Mya can already run and move freely, curious about all she finds, Andrey has just learned to stagger after his cousins on his own two feet without aid.

Darla Tully's son, like her own daughter, has retained little of the light brown hair and hazel eyes of his mother, and instead looks every inch the Tully heir he is.

She blows out a soft breath as she makes her way over the edge of the courtyard, forcing her eyes away from where Darla is watching the two children play with one of the new pups that'd been birthed a few weeks ago, the kennel master next to her.

Instead, she makes her way straight towards the other side of the courtyard, where two familiar tall figures with red hair are watching the master of arms of Riverrun train with Deran.

Sometimes, Morrigan wonders why Brandon even bothers— he holds no affection for a child that used to represent all he stood to lose the same way Edmyn doesn't hold any affection for Andrey for what he took from him in one fell swoop. Or maybe it's because of Andrey that Brandon can now laugh and clap his brother on the back, hollering encouragement and jokes at Deran as he trains with the wooden sword in a way he never could before without resentment.

Because the poison has been siphoned from him and injected into his brother, leaving a tension in his shoulders like a building storm. It began when Brandon had announced that Darla was with child, only a little after Mya had been born. There'd been a deep-seated restlessness in her husband in a way she had never seen in him before since that day.

Edmyn had never thought he could lose what he stood to gain— not truly— not after all these years when Malora had born not one child that lived to see its first name day.

But, just as fast, he'd been pushed aside. Darla had no issues quickening with an heir— Andrey had been born within the first year of the marriage and now, no two years after her first child had been born, her belly was swollen with another.

Like a thunderstrike, Edmyn had lost his birthright as his brother's only male relation, as his heir by law and blood when Andrey had been born.

Edmyn had never lost the dark thing brewing beneath his skin since the day of the announcement— even with the knowledge that he stood to rule the Stormlands as her husband one day. The Stormlands were not the Riverlands and they were not what coursed in his blood.

That was, of course, until not even three moons ago, the raven had come from Storm's End, much like the one who's letter she'd been delivered by the servant today, bearing the news that her mother, who'd been thought long past her child-bearing days, was carrying another child beneath her heart.

Just like that, with the snap of a finger, they'd both been cast off as heirs. They'd both lost the security they'd had for years and years.

Just like that, the future Lady and Lord Paramount of the Riverlands and Stormlands stood to inherit nothing but what a second son and a firstborn daughter stood to inherit in their world— an empty name and blood full of memories of lives long past.

Like being tossed into the cold, unforgiving sea of Shipbreaker Bay, Morrigan has been trying to learn to swim again with the knowledge of her entire life upheaved. Even if her mother managed to carry the child to term— would it be a boy? How likely was it even that it did not take her and the child at her mother's age?

Since the news had been delivered, worry had taken root in her bones, plaguing her nights, her thoughts.

She stood to lose her place as heir to the Stormlands but gain a brother; she stood to keep her place but lost her mother in a disastrous childbirth her body was not able to support anymore.

Healthy, young women lost their lives in childbirth. What were the odds for a woman of six-and-forty?

Her fingers cramping together, Morrigan feels dizzy and she tries not to think about what it means— what it could mean. For her. For her children. For a home she had not seen in seven years.

That her father is gone and her mother carries his child.

Brandon sees her first, his eyes catching on her by what she thinks must be an accident and there's a smile that stretches across his lips. It's an odd sight, jarring, because she doesn't have it in her to believe it to be anything but an act— she knows how little warmth her good brother has for her in his heart. Knows how much she returns the sentiment.

It'd always been like this— but different, in a way. They had never liked each other, only enduring each other for sense of necessity. But then, Morrigan had held a certain ounce of respect for him because she'd known how truly he had loved Malora— even if the love turned bitter the longer they'd lived childless— he'd truly loved her. With whatever love he'd been able to. Even if he hated Morrigan for what she gave to Edmyn what his own wife had never been able to give to him.

The hate had transferred with the assurance of his own succession, but Malora was gone and nothing had changed— not really. The hate and resentment had only been transferred and living in Riverrun felt the way it always did. Walking with a sword over a head, waiting for the first strike to fall.

Following his brother's gaze, Edmyn turns over to her and it's only as she approaches that she notices that the tension in his shoulders has relaxed a little; more than it has in weeks and she feels sick at the knowledge that it's because he thinks that at least the little scrap of having the Stormlands are his now. Because the Riverlands can never be his now— but at least he will have something.

"I'd like to inquire when we will depart to Storm's End," Morrigan says, looking at her husband and doesn't bother to tell them. To explain. Because they know. She knows they know. And perhaps it is too, because she can not put it into words yet.

"By first light tomorrow," Brandon replies before Edmyn has a chance to and she can see her husband's jaw tick as he closes his mouth again, but he doesn't say anything.

What is there to say?

Brandon is the Lord and Edmyn is the second son.

He can answer for anyone he pleases, can silence anyone he wants, even his own brother.

Morrigan presses her lips together, wondering how, in the name of the Seven, they will be able to make it in time for her father's funeral with the days it'll take to make the journey, before Edmyn says, eyes fixed on her, "I send word when we're most likely to arrive so your mother knows when to set your father to rest so that we will be there, too."

She stares at him for a long moment. It's odd— a kindness from him. A word without venom.

She forces herself not to think about it too long because she knows if she does, she will taint it and she doesn't have the strength to carry this, too. So, she takes it for a kindness and lets it go.

"Alright." Morrigan says instead.

Edmyn smiles down at her and it's a smile like the one he gave her before they'd been married. Like in the gardens of King's Landing. Soft and small and kind.

Once, she might have smiled back, in kind.

Now, she does not bother to. Where is the sense in it? They have all been laid bare, any secrets exposed. Puppet master, strings and all.

There is no reason to pretend anymore.

AUTHOR'S NOTE,
welcome to act 3 & this lil introduction to the new timeframe we're in <3 

no it's NOT emdyn mor's wearing black for because that's all you've been getting away from the act 3 divider moodboard apparanently, sorry (but not sorry) to disappoint 😅 also sort of related but can we please try to reduce the "kill edmyn" comments just a little? like as much as i get not liking a character i'm getting kinda frustrated with the fact that edmyn's death seems to be the single largest topic in the comment section since like chapter 20 or so, so yeah i'd be thankful for that ❤