Who: Elia, Jaehaerys When: day 41- late afternoon Where: Elia's rooms. Status: Open - but anyone else could come after Jaehaerys please. Rating: PG-13
The silk of her dress felt too heavy, too abrasive; the air was freezing in her lungs. The shadows stirred around her, swallowing the room and sharp as steel at the edge... Elia woke, shuddering and cold beneath the layers of blankets. She tried to raise a hand to stop whatever would happen but her maids' hands were holding her arms. "Princess." Syrah's eyes were sad. "You were dreaming again. Your wounds... the maester said to keep you still...." It took her a moment to escape the heavy hold of the poppy dreams and she blinked at the girl for a moment.
Elia batted their hands away and sighed. Two weeks and her side kept opening and bleeding and it hurt. She'd opened it again in her sleep, from the sharp throbbing and the damp feeling on her side. Fucking dreams. "Honeyed wine, please. Now." Her stomach churned. Ugh. "No, just water. Gods, where the hell is Harmon?"
"Attending the halls of healing in the city, my princess," Jaryn said softly as she handed Elia a silver goblet. Syrah was busy slicing some bread and fruit. "He said he would return in a few hours... He has left some milk of the poppy if--"
"No. All I do is sleep. I'm tired of sleeping." Every time she woke they handed her poppy milk or some other concoction to heal that sent her to sleep again. She was sick to death of dreams as well- dreams of shadows and darkness and pain and her screams stuck in her throat until she woke choking on them. "Tell me all I've missed."
"Very little, my princess," Syrah said with a shrug. "Investigations, inquiries but no one makes any progress."
"Why are we still in this place?" she asked, more to herself than Syrah but the girl answered anyway.
"Maester Harmon says to move you is to risk your health. And your lord brother will be here soon, my princess. You need not fear."
Elia closed her eyes lest Syrah see the pain those words brought. There was danger here and Myrwin was walking into it. She seldom worried for her brothers but this was shadows and no matter the sun's light, shadows returned... But she couldn't argue there was not part of her that had the ridiculous hope her brother would still be able to banish the monsters out from under her bed as he had when she was a child. .. though she wasn't a child. She ought to have been already dealing with this stupidity but it was rather hard to marshal a strategem in a haze of poppy dreams. "Has anyone brought any other news?"
Syrah knelt beside Elia and refilled the cup. "Nothing more than whispers. Some say Boltons, others Freys. Still others claim this was all the wolf-king's work, or that of his bannermen. A wandering madman, a curse of the gods, a sign. Others even claim Aenyris is fled rather than slain. Few seem to have heard that you are hurt but still some occasional rumors of what was found in Lord Tymor's and the wolf-kings' chambers."
"I wish they were right and Aeny was fled, but I don't think Polonius would have mistaken that. He looked... angry," Elia said in a quiet voice. "I wonder who he thinks committed this..."
Any further talk was interrupted as the door opened.