[right][i]I have been made a prisoner by my own flesh and blood because of you. 
Right this wrong.
– Your Jehar[/i][/right]

She had written, torn, and re-written the message countless times that day. It pained her to put words to paper and beg [i]that[/i] man for help. She tasted bile at signing the name that he had given her when, briefly or not, he had seemed besotted or at least consumed by a lust for her. She hated seeing it in black ink, the way it glistened wetly in the dim candlelight. Her hands trembled above it, wrestled with the impulse to shred it once more and burn every scrap as if she could burn it all out from her memory. 

But she had no friends here. Locked away by her brother, for protection he swore to any who questioned it. Ceryse knew better. She had been a play piece for her uncle and they sought to use her again. Gods, she hoped she would live to see them understand how grossly they overplayed their hand. 

It hurt more that there were no whispers of what Vittoria or House Tyrell were doing. Had they abandoned her too? Or did they fight to retain their control of the Reach over the machinations of the High Septon his lordly family? It was those questions that at last gave Ceryse pause to roll up the missive and secure it in it’s waxen holder rather than set it to fire once more. 

She had already wasted days in blind fury. Her bedchambers looked as if they had been looted after a siege. Gowns were still strewn about from her initial protest and refusal to go the sept for quiet reflection. Ceryse had at least allowed the maidservants to clean away the broken glass and pottery from when she had upended a table in a moment of rage at being barred from exiting without the escort of half a dozen septas. Hideous women who tutted and tsked at her for thinking to defy a most holy knight of the Warrior’s Sons. 

Beneath the anger loomed the fear that gnawed at her in the quiet hours of night until she passed into fit-filled hours of restless sleep. If half the rumors were true, the heir dead and king dead or dying, then the peril was great. Maegor would not waste such an opportunity. What good was she, having already been discarded? Ceryse slammed her hands to the desk and muffled a cry of anger. If Maegor received her message, and if he decided to act on it - surely his pride would not allow him to ignore it no matter if he loathed her, she would make him pay for hell she had traversed because of him. 

When morning came her escort was surprised to find the princess dressed conservatively in a simple gray and pale green dress, awaiting their arrival. Ceryse’s eyes passed over them, nonplussed at the suspicious glances they shared between them. “I would like to go to the sept for prayers. Then a walk in the garden for better airs and quiet reflection.” Her voice was flat, void of the anger of previous days. She hoped she sounded broken. They were right to be cautious and the princess knew if not that day, then the next or the one after she would at last find a way to get her message sent on to Dragonstone. The consequence of it being intercepted was not lost on her. She would let them think her meekened, be the dutiful daughter of Oldtown once more and bide her time. 

Ceryse had been made a play piece to move about a board long enough. She had learned the most important lesson from her husband, to take what was hers.