We court our own Captivity / Than Thrones more great and innocent; SANSAERY

Look at this tangle of thorns

Beneath her feet the ground had frozen so cold it almost burned, but Sansa moved with unrelenting speed that sent the chill wind ripping through her hair. She was running so fast that she couldn't see the blurred faces of those surrounding her; she didn't know if they were human or animal. But they were hers, and she was theirs. Somehow she knew this without uncertainty or doubt.

An inner howl built up inside of her, one that swelled with both panic and joy, but she couldn't open her mouth to release it. Her teeth were sharp and they cut her lips for all the things she could not say. And then all at once the others around her fell away, receding into the trees, and her feeling of uncommon joy subsided. She was alone and it struck fear into her heart. Everything was hazy, snowy, and cold, and though Sansa strained to see she could not. In the grey surrounding her she could just make out-

There was a sudden jolt, a jerk of disequilibrium-and suddenly Sansa was awake and sweating in her own bed, bedclothes fisted in one hand. She was not bitterly cold; beneath the blankets she was in fact uncomfortably warm, and her heart was pounding wildly. With a shallow, irregular breath she pulled herself up against the headboard. Her mouth hurt, and she lifted a hand to see blood there: had she really bitten through her lip? And there was a noise that Sansa struggled to identify, one that grew louder as the unfocused dread left over from her dream pooled darkly in her stomach. Then she realized what it was. It was footsteps.

The canopy was yanked back abruptly and Sansa squeezed her eyes shut instinctively against the intrusion.

But her sudden dread ebbed away to see it was only her maid Shae, standing silhouetted there in the crisp morning light. "Wake up, Lady Sansa," Shae said in a low voice, and leaned over to turn back the bedcovers. Her hair fell in a dark aureole about her face, keeping Sansa from meeting her eyes. "You have a visitor."

"A visitor?" Sansa drew her naked knees up to her chest, tugging her nightshift down over them with anxious fingers. She felt disoriented and dull, still mired in the gray landscape of her dreams. "Who is it?"

For a moment it looked as if Shae did not want to say, black eyes snapping in her thin pointed face. Finally she straightened and put both hands on her hips, her look halfway between apology and remorse. "It's the Queen Regent, my lady."

"The Queen Regent?" Sansa repeated in surprise.

Shae turned her head, moving to the chair to fetch Sansa's dressing robe. "Yes, she's come to see you. And you must hurry, for she wants you up and dressed."

"But I-" Sansa rubbed sleep from her eyes to focus on Shae's face. The morning light was bright, but the day somehow already felt dark. "Shae, why is she here?"

Shae's entire body looked like a warning, her narrow shoulders stiff and mouth compressed into a tight line. She shook her head briefly. "I don't know, Lady Sansa. But you must not keep the Queen waiting."

She reached for Sansa, and with a head that felt sluggish and slow Sansa stood and was hastily tied into her robe. She went slowly out of the bedchamber, glancing hopefully back over her shoulder at Shae, but then wished that she had not. The clouded look on Shae's face only made her feel worse.

And when she turned her eyes forward, base fear clawed at her to see Joffrey's mother standing in the middle of the solar, looking as beautiful as anything the gods had ever created.

"I've a present for you, Sansa," Cersei Lannister announced. The queen was lovelier than ever in a high-necked gown dressed in garnets, golden hair arranged in ropes on her head-but the contrast of the hard-faced Kingsguard members at her sides made her unearthly beauty seem almost sinister. Sansa took one look and drew her robe more tightly closed, as if that could serve as any sort of protection from what was to come.