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"Littlefinger taught her well," Lady Olenna comments to Margaery. "See how she moves through the crowd? How she enchants them all with a smile and a whisper?"
Willas, Margaery notes, seems particularly enchanted. He is seated beside Tyrion Lannister, the Dragon Queen's Hand and Sansa Stark's former husband, but whatever it is the Imp is saying bypasses Willas completely - he is staring after Sansa like a lovesick boy.
Perhaps not a boy, exactly - Margaery is amused by how oblivious the Imp is to her brother's newly discovered infatuation with Sansa, how oblivious Sansa herself seems to be to it as she floats around the room with a small, sweet smile on her face, a smile as deadly as the knives Margaery does not doubt hide in Sansa's skirts - Petyr Baelish's fate is legend by now, after all.
Sansa ducks her head as Margaery and her grandmother watch to speak to the Queen, some comment or other that makes Daenerys Targaryen laugh and toss her tinkling braid over her shoulder, and Sansa curtsies so elegantly that there are perhaps two men in the great hall not fixated on her by the time she leaves.
It is not until much later that Margaery notices Willas' absence.
"Nobody suspects a thing," she gasps. "Oh, Willas, do be careful of your leg-"
"Damn my leg," he grunts against her neck, pressing her tighter back against the wall. "And everyone suspects that I'm besotted and you're sparing my feelings. Damn Daenerys for not wanting you to marry someone from outside the North-"
"She feels that marrying Jon would consolidate my hold on Winterfe- Oh, gods, Willas-"
He laughs into her throat at that.
"I'll kill Jon bloody Targaryen or Snow or Stark or whatever name he's using if he proposes marriage to you," he swears, nipping at her collarbone. "I promise you, Sansa, no man but me will ever drape you in his colours. Not again. Never again."
Sansa sighs and twists her hand into his hair, pulling him tighter to her even as she tugs at his laces.
"Your leg-"
"My leg is fine," he insists, pulling her skirts up and up. "Gods, Sansa, do you ever wear smallclothes?"
She giggles breathlessly, triumphantly, and shakes her head as his breeches fall open.
"As often as you do," she says as primly as she can with his fingers buried in her cunt. "Oh, oh, Willas, oh-"
"Daenerys spoke to me about marrying today," he tells her, pressing his face into the curve of her shoulder to try and rein himself in. Her hands though, her hands are everywhere and it's very difficult not to simply hitch her legs up around his hips and fuck her right now. "She asked me if I'd considered one of the Tarly girls-"
"Those filthy whores? I'll burn them before I let you near them. Mayhaps it's time the Queen heard the truth of Randyll Tarly's brood of sweet boy, beast, and sluts," Sansa murmurs, sucking his ear lobe between her lips until he moans.
"I love it when you get angry," he says hoarsely, curling his fingers inside her until she chirps for him. "Oh, little wolf, the things I'm going to do to you-"
"We don't have time for that," she says, her voice amazingly sharp considering he can feel her fluttering around his fingers while his thumb strokes-
"Oh, fuck, Sansa, I won't last if you do that," he curses, jerking his hips away from her quick, clever hands to prevent her from ruining him before he has a chance to ruin her. "We have plenty of time-"
"Hurry up," she urges. "How are we to convince Daenerys to move against the Greyjoys if we aren't anywhere near her?"
Sansa sits at Willas' side at dinner the following evening, and Grandmother is quick to give Margaery another lecture on why Littlefinger's tutelage did wonders for the Lady of Winterfell.
"The grace, the poise – the humility, Margaery. That humility that she learned while pretending to be a bastard stands her in good stead. People like a humble lady, you know."
How Grandmother ever wheedled information from anyone if they speak only to humble ladies, Margaery will never know, but she keeps a closer eye on Sansa from then on and sees nothing that she thinks can be learned – Sansa seems genuinely concerned with the wellbeing of all the minor lords and ladies who flock to her gentle little smile.
Well, minor lords and ladies, and the Lord of Highgarden. Willas seems to have overcome his infatuation, but he still speaks often with Sansa, still lingers in her company after council meetings.
He waves it off by saying that they share remarkably similar goals, which seems true, but Margaery still keeps careful watch on Sansa Stark, daughter of the most honourable man in the Seven Kingdoms and student of the least, a queer hodgepodge that Margaery knows not what to make of.
He's never been sure why it is - and he knows that she's just as mystified - but they do their best plotting while half-naked and in danger of being caught.
"She'll need to understand the danger the Ironmen present," he agrees, wincing at the strain on his bad leg as he lifts her up, his hands underneath her thighs. "I don't think she truly comprehends just how lethal the Crow's Eye is, even after him sending Victarion after her-"
They moan against each other's mouths as he hits home inside her, and she's quick to loosen her stays to leave the neck of her gown gaping so he can get his lips on her breasts, quick to wrap her legs as tightly around him as she can to pull him deeper.
"I wonder how effective our individual petitions to the Queen would be if she knew they were not at all individual at their source," he japes, biting down hard on the inner swell of her breast to muffle the shout that accompanies the roll of her hips into his. "Gods, Sansa-"
"She'd probably force Jon and I to the godswood there and then," Sansa laughs, clawing at his back under his doublet and tunic with the same sort of ferocious determination she applies to controlling court. "And then you and a Tarly slut would have to march all the way to the sept so you could drape her in green and gold-"
"Never," he reminds her, his hips snapping hard enough against hers to draw a keening cry from her. "None but you will ever wear my cloak, little wolf."
"See that none do," she warns him, tilting her head back against the wall. He can feel her shuddering around his cock and under his hands and gods, gods but he's close as well, but he has to remind her of something else-
"We need to begin working together publicly," he says, sucking on the thin, pale skin on the corner of her jaw until it's red and tender and she pushes him away with trembling hand and a throaty little whine. "I'll be in my chair tomorrow, sweetling, come speak to me-"
"Oh, yes, oh, I will, I promise, oh, Willas, do that again-"
"What, this?"
"Oh, yes that," she whimpers. "Yes, I shall sit with you tomorrow morning, I swear it, just please, please, Willas, I need-"
"What do you need, Sansa? For me to bribe someone for you? For me to convince some lord to stay away from you with a well-placed jest?"
"I need to come," she all but wails, pulling his mouth to hers viciously, kissing him until their heads are spinning and the usually steady rhythm of their fucking - not coupling, not love-making, not yet - spirals wildly beyond their control until they're gasping and grunting and biting into one another to stop from screaming.
He manages to force himself to pull out just as he spills, careful as ever not to risk getting a child on her before they can wed, but she moans in disappointment and refuses to let go of him until her breathing has returned to normal and she can stand without her legs giving out from under her.
"Ready to rule the Seven Kingdoms, my love?" he asks as he pulls her stays tight for her.
"Only if you are, my lord," she says over her shoulder, sashaying away from him and leaving him to lace himself back up.
Margaery finds herself sitting between her grandmother and Willas some weeks later at a tourney to celebrate Jon Targaryen's name day - it is a warm day, the first hint of summer in the breeze that ruffles her hair.
"Lady Stark," Willas says, sounding as unsurprised to see Sansa approaching as Margaery is stunned, and he moves to rise.
"No, my lord, please, do not trouble yourself," Sansa insists, touching his shoulder in a way that is altogether too familiar. "Will your brother be joining you today?"
"Garlan is riding," Willas tells her, motioning for her to take the vacant seat at his other side. She sits too close, leans too close, is generally just too- too affectionate in a way that has Margaery worried. All her hard work in seducing the Prince of Dragonstone, in making Jon Targaryen hers, will be wasted if Daenerys thinks Willas and Jon's sister-cousin are too close.
She only needs one link between Houses Tyrell and Stark - because , after all, and Margaery fully intends on that link being her.
Next to her, Willas murmurs something too low for her to hear to Sansa, something that makes the other girl giggle and slap at his shoulder, and when he leans in and kisses the pale skin left bare by the daring, wide-cut neck of Sansa's gown, Margaery's heart stops for an instant.
It's not even a month later that victory over House Greyjoy is announced, followed closely by the announcement of Willas and Sansa's betrothal and impending nuptials, and when Margaery notices them sitting together with their heads close, eyes scanning the room and lips curving up into speculative smiles, she realises the advantage of having an ally in the game of thrones.