Lord Lannister comes.
In a fury of more then a dozen Lannister Knights, Lord Castellon of the Rock at his side. Despite herself, Melara flinches. Last time that had been an ill omen for her. His arrival had brought her death, and even though it was technically the third time, it had still sucked royally to fucking bite it. Maybe the slit throat had been the third death, oddly gentlest death, but it still had been death.
This time, however, Lady Joanna Lannister is holding her hand, and Ser Tygett is cleaning his blade on her sobbing uncle's shirt.
She doesn't have a ripped dress, a cruel and gleeful Cersei at her side. She has the Lady Lioness herself, a knight and hero of the War of Ninepenny Kings, and she needs to remember that she is alive and with allies beyond her cruel friend.
"Joanna?" a simple question with his word, his face is stone. His voice is cold and tempered, and without the drama of a Lady being beaten because of 'capricious girls' he is very much composed.
Damn had I fucked up. I had been hysterical, but damn had I gone about it the wrong fucking way.
Joanna bares her teeth.
"Lord Micheal Hetherspoon sought to usurp Lady Melara's claim on Hether Keep. As in remove it from the main line of the Hetherspoons despite the will that Lord Tybalt wrote with you," she spits, and she squeezes Melara's hand.
Melara looks at Lord Tywin.
He lifts a single eyebrow.
"Oh?"
"He was killing her to do so, poison, beatings," she further explains.
Melara sighed. A lion's gaze snapped to her. The emerald eyes were cold, assessing. She licks her lips nervously. But squared her shoulders. Cards on the table, bitch.
"I suspected he also killed my previous guardians, Lord Lannister. I was to be in the keeping of Lord and Lady Marbrand, with only a brief stay at the Rock to personally delive the sword of my House to the eldest man of my relation until I wed. Yet the Lady died within a few weeks of my being in Casterly Rock. My Uncle went hunting supposedly into the Casterly Forest and got lost , a forest he has known for near twenty years since he was a boy squiring for Ser Broom. He was alone, during this time. Near a moon. Plenty of time to sail and sabotage an axle of a wheelhouse in Ashemarke and return. The Lady and Lord of Ashmarke, as you know, died on the journey to Casterly Rock," she lifts a brow back at his increasingly stone like face.
"Melara. MELARA SHUT UP!" The man that had hurt her tries to rise.
Tygett Lannister kicks him in the back. Her lips curl as Mikey screams as his bleeding stump hits the sand-covered ground in the indoor training yard. This was all guesswork on her part, but with Melara's memories, shit tended to add up. It was a beautiful educated guess, and he all but confirmed it to her as he withered on the ground. She finds that Ser Tygett is now her second favorite Lannister, after Lady Joanna.
"My Lord, the girl is lying, " begs Mikey, and he starts to crawl towards the Lord of the Rock.
Melara purses her lips.
"He murdered my guardians, poisoned and beat me," she says, voice growing, but steady, no hysterics or swears in front of Tywin, he would dismiss her wholesale, the etiquette abiding fucking weirdo, "He took a far-off cousin and draped her in my Mother's jewels and then used her to physically torment me. And they both lavishly have spent the stipend of my inheritance that the current Lord Marbrand sends me. Ask Lady Joanna how queer it is that the Heir of Hetherspoon wears one winter dress, and none of the jewels her mother left her."
Tywin's stone face twisted. His eyes flickered to Jeyne the Maid, Melara's mother's opals and pearls still around her throat and her ears. In one of the many fine dresses fit for a lady instead of a handmaid, her Uncle had purchased for her. She hoped he saw the parallels to his own life and acted with extreme prejudice.
Extreme . Don't fail me now, no chill Lannister man.
"You have murdered my kin," said Lord Lannister, voice quiet. It makes the room silent, the room take a gathered breath of fear.
Because the Lord of the West is furious. Melara blinked. Jeyne Marbrand had been Tywin's mother, her memories supply.
Holy fuck that means he's like my cousin or something. Fuck. Fuck eww I wanted to marry my cousin like removed or something, fucking banjo bullshit.
"No-" keens her Uncle.
"You have attempted to usurp the inheritance of a Lady of the West," continues Tywin, as if her Uncle had not spoken, "And have brought a whore into my Castle."
Melara blinks quickly, and nearly jumps when Joanna squeezes her hand.
"There will be a hundred lashes, to each. Then, you will loose your heads. Lady Melara, is there anything you wish from these wretches?"
She swallowed thickly.
"My mother's jewels, my Lord, and the ancestral sword of my House. The valerian steel sword… Oak Spoon. "
She nearly laughed as she remembered the name. Ill fitting considering the situation. The man nods, quickly.
"I petition," Lady Joanna said softly, "That Lady Melara comes to be my Ward before her marriage."
Lord Lannister blinks, quickly, the only indication of his surprise. He looks to his wife, emerald eyes assessing.
He nods after a moment, apparently reading something in Joanna's face… Or trusting her wish.
"See it done, Joanna. Kevan, have the knights prepare the block in the courtyard above, and the whipping post. Call the House hold staff and all of the Houses that already reside within the walls for the Tourney of Lannisport. The heads will hang off the Lion's teeth, to show those of the West that no one will do such actions in my realm, let the Lord of Westeros remember that the West will not take anything as the King sups and sleeps in our walls," he thunders.
He personally goes forward. He wrenches Oak Spoon from her Uncle's belt, and with false delicacy removes her mother's jewelry from Jeyne the maid. He turns to her and stalks to her with heavy boots in the sand that covered the indoor practice yard.
"Your belongings, Lady Melara."
He towers over her. She release's Lady Joanna's hand, and reaches for the jewelry first, ripping the setting of her Mother's favored pendant from the monstrously gaudy gold chain. Heavy gold links fall to the floor. She ignores Jeyne's high wail. She fits the pendant to her dress, happy to realize that could function as a brooch or cloak clasp. She slips in her mother's pearls, not winicng as she repierced the partially healed piercing in her ears. And with squared shoulders, receives the sword from Lord Tywin, who was watching her carefully the entire time. It is heavy, the sword, a bastardly sword of nearly four feet, with a black hilt that shone like obsidion. But Melara remembers carrying it the entire way to Casterly Rock after her father's and mother's funerals and being unburdened by the weight. It had only left her side when her Uncle had wrenched it from her.
She unsheathes it, easy as breathing.
She had been the much spoiled daughter of a proud knightly House, and there had been talks of her Father hiring her a water dancer when she had shown interest in the legacy of their House.
She nearly wept, Melara Hetherspoon with the memories of another life, when the Oak Spoon hit the light Because the Oak Spoon was marvelous, as brilliant as the fire opals of Hether Keep, sparkling in the winter sun, gleaming a hypnotic gleam of deep, deep reddish-orange, broken by rainbow ripples like the opals that kept the Hetherspoons rich for much of their five hundred year history.
She breathed, holding back her sobs. She looked at Tywin.
"May my husband serve the West, Lord Lannister, as I will serve Lady Joanna in my time as her Ward," she says, firmly, and she carefully lays the blade at Lady Joanna's feet, in both reverence and thanks.
Tywin's eyes gleam on the valerian steel, jaw working. She smiles beautifully at him, before looking to Lady Joanna.
Tears fall from the older woman's eyes.
"I will take your service and your care well in mind, sweetling," said the woman, cupping her face delicately.
She nearly shits herself when Tywin Lannister places a hand on her shoulder. Gives a single squeeze, a warning that has her blood going cold. Or was it like Cersei, a bit of actual gentleness?
"May you be well in my Wife's keeping, Melara Hetherspoon. Take them to the cells."
Her Uncle and Jeyne are dragged away.
Melara was free of her tormentors.
And it was glorious.