Sometimes they forget: she's a political science major.

Her clothes ripple away into blue skin, she keeps her eyes on his face as it does. She sees the shock and doesn’t bother waiting for the disgust. She smiles. “What’s wrong baby?” She asks as innocently as she can. “Don’t you think I’m pretty now?” “Beautiful.” He breathes in reverent Vietnamese.

Sansa knows, standing on the steps of the Great Sept, staring into Joffrey's triumphant eyes, the blood her father soaking the stones and all the Lannisters' beautiful promises ringing in her ears, that Starks have always been the best liars.

On the longest night of the year, Cassandra goes to the chapel to pray.

Josephine smiles, and Cassandra smiles back with a reflexive happiness that sends warmth spiraling up from Josephine's belly to her heart. The thing it has taken her a long time to learn about Cassandra is that quite often her impatience and sarcasm are a thin layer, fragile as the skin of ice over a lake--and the emotions they conceal are as drowningly deep as that lake.

Leliana figures it out first, quite possibly even before Josephine does—and definitely before Cassandra does, but then, Cassandra can be very selectively dense. Certainly she figures it out well before either of them says anything to the other.

She is good at such things, and those smiles, crystal-brilliant as sun on snow, are reward enough.