#in case it wasn't clear this is a reverse cinderella au

[samwpmarleau]

hi! can i just say i love your fics? also if i may request rhaenys x robb in 34? thanks either way!

34. meeting at a masquerade ball au

For this meme.

She would rather be anywhere but here. She’d rather be in the dungeons than here, rather be mucking out the stables. Anywhere but being on display like a well-bred cow at auction, the prize for one of the simpering fools that fill the ballroom. She wears a mask—they all wear masks—but between that red and black dragon accoutrement and her matching gown, her identity is no secret.

Which, she supposes, is the point. One of these men, if Father has his way, will by night’s end be her betrothed. Never mind that she’s met and discounted most of them.

Some have been handsome, some have been charming, some have been witty—most have been dreadful—but all want one thing: her crown. They don’t want her. They don’t even know her. The invitation to the ball had advised them all to choose masks that don’t give away their sigil, she presumes to increase the odds of her finding someone to her liking, but the majority have ignored that part. If they don’t have their sigil on full display, they’re wearing their house colors or tell her their name immediately.

“Princess?” asks the lord who has made no impression at all upon her.

“I’m very sorry,” she says by rote. She must have drifted. “Please excuse me.”

She leaves him there and seeks out her mother, seated in her gilded throne and talking animatedly with Ser Arthur of the Kingsguard. An old friend, one who never minds hearing her complaints. Father stands not far away, engrossed in a conversation of his own with Lords Tywin Lannister and Mace Tyrell.

“Mother, must we continue this tedium?” Rhaenys asks. “Surely it’s not too late. You can just tell them someone has already been found.”

Mother sighs. “Rhaenys, you are already two-and-twenty. I, too, wish there were another way, and do not normally agree with your father on such things, but you must be wed.”

“The young lads can’t all be terrible,” says Ser Arthur, sweeping his eyes around the room. He pauses, his gaze landing on Lord Frey. Which Lord Frey, Rhaenys can’t be sure—there are so many. “Or old lads.”

Rhaenys casts him a withering glare. “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have to marry anyone.”

“You have your pick of the ball,” says Mother. “As you well know, if you do not choose, then the choice will be made for you.”

At the very least, she knows she must choose someone to dance with. The doors at the top of the stairs are shut, and there’s a growing sense of unrest filtering amongst the guests. She is the centerpiece of the ball, after all; without her mingling, the event is purposeless.

“Lord Renly is not a bad sort,” Mother continues, gesturing to a raven-haired lordling whose blue-green eyes peek out from behind an antlered black-and-gold mask. He is one of the many who eschewed the invitation’s parameters. “You could start with him.”

Rhaenys droops. Mother’s right, Lord Renly isn’t the worst. “Oh, very well. I’ll—”

She trails off at the echoing sound of the doors groaning open once more. A man stands at the top, clad in gray and white, and both conversation and music abruptly ceases. She knows instantly who the latecomer is, despite half his face being covered in a nondescript silver mask.

She’d hoped the amended announcement, that all people were welcome at her ball, never mind their station, would catch his attention. And it has.

It is Rhaenys’s distraction that Mother notices more than the man who had just entered. Her tone is careful, yet curious. “Who is that?”

Rhaenys has no answer for her other than a wide smile. She had prayed he would be here, this mysterious man she’d met in the woods, but had had no way of being certain he would. Especially not with what he’d told her of how his stepfather restricted his movements.

She pushes through the crowd as graciously as she can muster, and meets him at the base of the stairs. It’s quite unprincesslike to show her emotions so plainly, but she can’t help it. Ever since their meeting, she hasn’t been able to stop thinking about him. She may as well show it.

“You came,” she says, gazing up at him. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

He is clearly uncomfortable in all his finery—wherever did he get that, anyway?—but there’s a sort of stunned confusion as well. “You’re Princess Rhaenys,” he remarks. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“If I had, would you have spoken to me as you did?” She could count on a blacksmith’s hand the number of people who would speak to her as candidly as him, and even less who wouldn’t have recognized her on sight.

“No, I suppose not.”

“Well, there’s your answer.” She holds out her hand. “Will you dance with me? Or have I scared you off, woodsman?”

“I’m not a woodsman,” he says, “and I don’t scare so easy.”

“A stranger then.”

She wants to know his name—she wants to know everything about him. But he’s not offered it yet, and she doubts he’d answer her truthfully if she asked. She nearly laughs aloud at what her mother’s face looks like right now. Even more so, Father’s. What they must think!

He takes her outstretched hand, puts his own around her waist. Yet more mystery: while he had shown up at the ball, she admittedly hadn’t expected that he would know how to dance, had thought she would need to guide him. It’s a pleasant surprise.

She tears her eyes away from his to signal the musicians, and they strike up a lively tune. Her gallant stranger begins to lead her into a dance, and for the first time tonight, her heart beats in double-time.

Mother, she thinks, you said I could choose my suitor. And I have.