embraces to slowly turn erotic. Usually when Margaery desired a noble lady, after she had befriended her and they spent their days riding and having picnics in the woods, she'd invite her to share her bed for a night of gossip, as friends did. It was easy then to caress a woman's breasts and slip a hand between her legs, and after she'd experienced the pleasure Margaery could give her, even the shyest maiden had happily let Margaery have her again.

Margaery smiled fondly as she thought of the girls she'd bedded. She did not feel sinful, kneeling before the altar of the Maiden and remembering past loves. After all, as far as the septons were concerned, only men were a threat to a maid's virtue. She was amaiden still, pure in the eyes of the gods.

Then suddenly she knew what to do. The men and women of the court called her a whore. Even though they suspected enough about Renly to know that he never bedded her, and even though Joffrey died at their wedding feast and Tommen died while still a child, they still called her a whore. The Whore of Highgarden, who spread her legs for a crown. They said it to put themselves in the new queen's good graces; she tolerated no good said of the Baratheons and the Lannisters, or of Queen Margaery, the Rose of Highgarden, the beloved of the smallfolk.

If Daenerys liked to think of her as a whore, then Margaery would be her whore. Margaery thought she knew