fight like gods. asoiaf

NINETEEN

XIV
LUCELLA
"Lady in the Capital"
⚜️

Even in Lucella's apartments in the Red Keep, the stench of King's Landing couldn't be escaped. It didn't help that their rooms were found in the barracks, tucked beneath the tower of the hand, surrounded with similar small rooms filled with unwashed armour and clothes, and plates of half-eaten food that would never be moved by maids that were too weary to cross into the territory of the men protecting their own city.

Across the great yard, the sparring had begun. Lucella watched them with interest, observing with a scrutinising eye from her place by the window. Most of them would not participate in the coming tourney, but they practised anyway, no doubt imagining themselves as the nights bidding for glory. Lucella could not fault them for that. At night, she too dreamt of taking part, of unhorsing Jaime Lannister or unarming Ser Barristan, of taking the flower crown of white roses and placing it atop the head of a beautiful lady.

Little Arya Stark would watch from the Hand's box, eyes wide and ferocious, a grin spreading across her face as Lucella revealed herself to be a woman. Her hair would fall down her back, a dirty, straw-like blonde and braided, her scars- one dark and bruise-like forming a crescent around her right eye, the other a long, straight stripe down her eye, busting the line of her lip- there for all to see. Lady Sansa would be beside her, looking at her as she did the other knights, giving all the validation Lucella needed.

But Arya had not spoken to her since the day at the Trident. Lucella could not blame the little Stark wolf either, and in the girls' absence, Lucella had only grown restless. She had grown used to having friends if she could call them that. But one could not have friends in King's Landing.

"Would you like to watch us fight, Lady Lucy?"

Alwin's voice drew her from her stare. She pulled away from the bare window closing the thin glass pane to block the noises from below. The man stared up at her, a strange look on his face. It was not kind but nor was it malicious. He was staring at her scars, she noticed, as people often did, but this was obvious.

Swiftly, she brought a hand to the small, red mark that stretched over the corner of her lip. It felt sore as if her skin was trying to regrown around it again. That tiny scar had never healed properly like the other ones. The treatment of not talking for a year had not been seen through. It must be more red and gnarled than normal, she thought, feeling the heat of the mark and knowing it was something to look at.

"Don't call me that," she snapped, taking Alwin's attention away from her face and back toward her anger. She was not a lady, and Lucy was most certainly not her name.

Alwin raised his hands to stay beside his face, quick to calm her. She was surprised he was sitting there anyway, legs crossed above his thin mattress, back leaning against his side of the wall. There was a short sword on his knees, balanced and blunt, and in no way worth anything. The man touched it as if it was his prized possession.

It was not often that he sat so casually in their rooms. Sharing with Lucella was hard enough, with her being a woman and Alwin not being able to see past the fact, but sharing with the Hound as well was poor luck. Her bed was little more than a mattress laid out against the floor next to her brother's bed. In another life, another time, she might've been afforded her own chambers, away from her brother and the stale stench of men, but Lucella was not a girl worth doting on.

"I'm sorry," he said, head tilting to the side so he could watch her from his lower angle. "Just feels wrong to call you Lucella, 's all."