The Queen's Offer
The Queen's solar was drenched in gold light the kind that burned instead of warmed.
Lily Lannister circled Althea like a lioness testing her prey. "You're clever," she said. "Your father would have admired that. But cleverness alone won't save you in this city."
"I didn't come to be saved, Your Grace," Althea replied, her voice calm. "I came to understand."
"Understand what?"
"Why power always costs blood."
Lily smiled, a shard of cruelty glittering in her eyes. "Then let me teach you."
She extended a sealed parchment old, weathered, marked with a sigil Althea didn't recognize.
"This," Lily said softly, "is your true inheritance. Not titles. Not land. Knowledge."
Althea unrolled it. The writing was strange part Valyrian, part something older.
At the center was a phrase written in ink that shimmered red
"When the daughter of the Crow drinks from the Lion's cup, the North shall bleed, and the gods shall weep."
Althea's heart stumbled. "Where did you find this?"
Lily's smile widened. "You tell me. The handwriting looks familiar, doesn't it?"
It did.
Because it was her own.
The Shadow's Warning
That night, Althea couldn't sleep. The words of the prophecy burned behind her eyes.
She walked the silent halls, the whisper of her curse breathing in her ear.
"The Lion's cup overflows with deceit," it murmured.
"Drink, and you will see the truth but lose yourself in it."
She stopped at a balcony overlooking the city. Below, the torches of King's Landing flickered like dying stars.
Job approached quietly, his presence grounding her. "You're trembling," he said.
She turned, her expression unreadable. "Lily showed me something something I wrote before I was ever born."
Job frowned. "You mean in your visions?"
She nodded. "It's a prophecy about me. About us."
He stepped closer, voice low. "Then we change it. No prophecy decides our fate."
But even as he said it, Althea saw the faint shadow creeping across his chest a dark tendril, the mark of the curse spreading.
Her voice broke. "Job it's already begun."
The Lion's Cup
Lilysummoned her again the next evening.
This time, the Queen was less regal almost intimate. Wine glistened in two golden goblets.
"Do you know why the gods favor bloodlines?" she asked, pouring slowly.
"Because they're predictable," Althea answered.
"Wrong," Lily murmured. "Because they repeat."
She handed Althea the goblet. "Drink with me. The Lion and the Crow binding our fates for mutual survival."
Althea hesitated. She could feel it the curse pulsing at her wrist, the Old Gods whispering:
"Refuse, and you lose her favor. Drink, and you lose your soul."
She met Lily's gaze sharp, predatory, beautiful.
Then she drank.
The wine was sweet and bitter, thick like blood.
When it hit her tongue, the world shifted.
The air shimmered, and for a heartbeat, she wasn't in the solar anymore.
She was standing in a snow-covered field.
The Weirwood tree loomed before her its face weeping crimson tears.
From the roots rose her father's voice.
"The Lion's shadow falls across your path, Althea.
Choose your prey carefully before you become hers."
Then the vision broke.
She gasped, clutching her chest. lily's smirk told her everything.
The Queen had known exactly what would happen.
The Betrayal
Later that night, Job stormed into her chambers. "You drank her wine?"
"She offered knowledge I needed."
"She offered poison!"
Althea's voice trembled with restrained fury. "Knowledge is poison, Job. But ignorance kills faster."
He stared at her, betrayal etched across his face. "You're starting to sound like him."
"Who?"
"Baelish."
The silence that followed was heavy almost unbearable.
She turned away, whispering, "Maybe I have to."
The Mirror of Faces
Unable to bear the tension, Althea retreated to the old chamber once used by Varys's little birds. The walls still hummed with secrets.
There, she found a mirror blackened, old Valyrian glass.
When she looked into it, she saw herself but older, colder, wearing a crown of shadows.
And behind her reflection, Lily stood not as a rival, but as a twin flame.
"The Lion and the Crow," the reflection whispered.
"Two queens. One throne."
Althea's pulse raced. "No, I will not become her."
"You already are," the shadow murmured.
The mirror cracked.
The Lion's Shadow
By dawn, word spread through the court
The Queen's new advisor was a Baelish.
Whispers of her influence filled every corridor. Some said she had bewitched Lily; others claimed she plotted the crown's downfall.
But in truth, Althea was walking a blade's edge the curse growing stronger, the Old Gods whispering louder.
That night, as she knelt before the Weirwood tree in her dreams, the face bled once more.
"The Lion's shadow is upon you," it said.
"But even shadows need light to exist."
When she woke, a raven sat on her windowsill.
Its eyes glowed faintly not with fire, but ice.
It dropped a single black feather and spoke
"Winter watches."
Job's voice echoed in her mind. No prophecy decides our fate.
But as she touched the feather, it burned her skin proof that fate had already begun to decide hers.