Author's Note: This has been a long time in the works, but it took me awhile to decide how I wanted to go about it, whether Margaery would be found out or not. This is also the penultimate chapter in this story, though the tale will continue in an eventual sequel.

"I swear, Your Grace, I had nothing to do with it!" Margaery lied as another blow fell from one of the found herself secretly wondering if she was brave or a coward to lie about it, but lie she did anyway, praying that Sansa had made it back to her brother. She could endure the pain, she had practice.

"You lie!" Joffrey hissed, his beautiful golden face contorted in rage. "I knew that you were lying to me about something!"

Margaery was glad that he still refused to let anyone touch her face, as she looked up with him with her best mournful look. "Only that my moonsblood had come, Your Grace, I was shamed that I had failed you so utterly as a queen."

Grand Maester Pycelle grasped hard onto that idea, he and the rest of the small council struggled with Joffrey's orders and moods, and these public punishments did nothing to endear him to the realm who loved the queen. "Your Grace, perhaps the queen should be confined to her bed, to encourage her body to conceive."

Joffrey considered this, and nodded. Even now, after everything that had happened, he wanted to be like Robert, or to outdo him somehow. The fact that she had not yet given him an heir galled him. "Escort the queen to her bed, Grand Maester, and ensure she does not leave it."

As she was pulled away, Margaery caught sight of her father's pale face, his eyes wide, and forehead sweaty, as if afraid Joffrey's ire would fall on him next. Margaery barely restrained the urge to sneer. 'Aren't you glad I'm a queen, father. Isn't this lovely?' It wasn't entirely his fault, after all. She had been convinced that she should be a queen. If she couldn't have love, at least she could have power. She had neither.

It had all been agreed, and she was pleased, smiling as the ravens spread the word and the cautious, strange Children of the Forest shook hands with those before them, all present surrounded by the strange trees with carved faces. Her own hand was wrapped tightly around that of her beloved. Everything was going well. Finally peace would be found with the Children, as it had between The First King who had taken his men north after the quarrel crossing into this land, and her grandfather Garth, who had settled in the wide expanse further south. She turned her head, hiding a happy giggle in her future husband's furred cloak, and smiled as he wrapped an arm around her,

So distracted was she that she didn't see the child with the strange green eyes approach them until it spoke. "The forest weeps for you." The child intoned.

She lifted her head, startled. "Why? All is well."

The Child shook his head slowly. "You will live and die again and again and again until all these things and all these people have passed far into myth, until you don't believe them yourselves, and each time you will meet but briefly and be ripped apart again, until the Gods say enough and the weirwoods weep. Then in the night that comes will you bring the age of peace between the first men and the children back."

Beside her, her future husband stood solemn, listening, and declared, sounding much like his grandfather: "Love endures all."

"You will endure love." The Child replied, and returned to his kind as silently as he had come to them.

She shivered, overwhelmed and naive. She was a fool.

Olenna was one of the few people allowed to visit her, and even then she was under constant watch. She hated her grandmother seeing her this way, but it was a reprieve from maddening hours with guards forbidden to speak or interact with her, and handmaiden that may as well have been a silent sister, only permitted to help her to the chamberpot and back to bed. That humiliation was perhaps the worst, that she wasn't even allowed use of a privy, only a chamberpot, before once again being put to bed like an invalid.

"I wish you would let me bring you some wine, my dear." Olenna murmured, well aware of their guards, and thus unable to speak freely. "I do so hate to see you languish."

"I am only preparing my body to do its' duty, grandmother, not languishing away like an invalid. My apartments are quite lavish. His Grace takes good care of me." They both knew as the weeks went on that this had become less and less true. Olenna would rather see her out of her misery than be a queen like this. She did not hold with kings and crowns, or she would have never married Luthor. When Olenna was offering to bring her wine, it wasn't the wine on offer.

What amused Margaery, even as depressed as she was, was the fact that she knew exactly which poison the Queen of Thorns would choose. It was a secret thing, carried in the Tyrell line, as yet undiscovered by outsiders. She hated to admit it, but she was sorely tempted. It was only her promise that she would not hasten her own death again that kept her from accepting. How long she would hold out, she didn't know.

"Perhaps one of your Great-Uncle Gorman's fertility brews?" Olenna suggested, with a canny eye. Both Tyrell women knew their conversation was being reported. "They did help your mother greatly, four living children is quite a thing to boast."

Margaery could have kissed her, but kept her expression placid. "I'd rather nature take its' course, Grandmother."

Of course, Joffrey disagreed, and the next time Olenna visited, it was with a bright vial that secretly ensured she would not be bearing a prince. The 'fertility treatments' were one way for Margaery to remain sane, because she would not carry Joffrey's child. She would break her promise and taste Rootsbane once more before that happened.

She thought heartbreak was supposed to get easier. You would think as many times as they had been around this curse that knowing he had perished in the Field of Fire wouldn't be quite so hard. Her father was happy, he had bent the knee easily and been rewarded Highgarden. Many families of the reach were all but frothing at the mouth in rage because they had better claims to leadership of the Reach. A small price, he said, as he spoke about planting a new Oakenseat, little knowing he had cut his daughter deeply.

It was anger and grief and rage. Everything she had known had been destroyed by these people and their dragons. So many were lost, and to be lost in that way...it burned something in her too. Why should she live? Why did they die and she was spared? Why did he get to leave her behind?

So, she locked herself in the Highgarden library, using its' knowledge and years of her own gleaned from experience and everyone she could ever learn from until she had it. A poison deadly enough to give the imbiber no chance, but that took long enough to say any goodbyes. The only symptoms were a chill and an ache in the chest. She named it Rootsbane. She had no idea hastening her death would worsen the curse. Before there had always been a chance that they could be together...afterwards they never had.

One day out of many, while lying in bed aching from Joffrey's latest punishments for her failures and trying to ignore the silent sentinels in her room, she heard a ruckus and the clang of steel. She looked toward the window as the guard hurriedly left to discover what was the matter.

"Go." Margaery told the handmaiden, who was shaking with the realisation that being found with Joffrey's queen was a death sentence. "Hide yourself from the sack." She knew what would happen when Stannis found her and she'd spare the girl that, as well as herself having witnesses. She almost wished he had come a month ago, when she could still stand unaided, so that she could at least face death standing. She pulled at the ties keeping her to the bed, and sighed. This was surely going to be one of her most undignified deaths. Perhaps if she pleaded, Stannis would take a message to Sansa and tell her that she loved her like a sister and the hidden message would get through.

She closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of war going on, letting her mind drift to different places and times. It was hours before the clamour died down, and she waited to see who was the victor. The last time Olenna had been prepared to visit she had slipped her granddaughter a small vial of Rootsbane and Margaery had hidden it in a carved whorl of her bedpost. If Joffrey won, she decided, she would take it, promises be damned.

When the door finally opened, almost a day later, she lifted her head to see which kind of death would greet her, and found love and horror staring back. "Oh gods, I've started hallucinating from lack of food and water." She groaned, closing her eyes and letting herself fall back from the strain. She shook her head, as much as she was able.

She heard whispers, though she couldn't make out the words, and then the door closing. She refused to open her eyes, chanting in her head about how hallucinations were not real, when a touch on her cheek made her open her eyes.

"You're not imagining me, sweeting." He said, stroking her cheek. "I came for you."

Margaery stared into blue eyes, trying to swallow. "How?" She breathed. "Why?" And then she was sobbing because she didn't know if it was a thousand times better or worse, and even after he had cut the leather ties, she was struggling against muscles that hadn't been used and her own emotions to even sit up.

"Shh." He crooned softly, picking her up and swinging her into his arms as though she were his bride, and holding her close. "He's dead. He won't hurt you again. I've got you."