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King's Landing, just after nightfall.
Three days since Lynn's wedding.
Cersei's bedchamber was dead quiet.
Robert Baratheon shoved the door open, swaying, the reek of alcohol flooding the room instantly.
His face was bloated from drink and excess, flushed with a sickly red.
Cersei Lannister sat before her dressing table.
She had already shed the splendid queen's gown and wore only a black silk robe. Her long golden hair fell loose over her shoulders.
She didn't turn around. She watched Robert's reflection in the bronze mirror, her expression cold.
"Get out."
Her voice was colder than the wind outside.
"Get out?"
Robert gave a rough laugh.
"You dare talk to me like that?"
He reeled toward her, his massive shadow swallowing her whole.
"All of King's Landing is mine. Everything in it is mine. You are mine. So where exactly do you want me to go?"
He reached out one of his great bear paws and moved to grab her shoulder.
Cersei was on her feet instantly, stepping away from his touch with open revulsion.
"Don't put your filthy hands on me."
"Filthy?"
Robert went still.
Anger ignited in his bleary eyes.
"Where the fuck am I filthy?"
"I am the King of the Seven Kingdoms. You are my lawfully wedded queen." He stepped toward her again. "You should feel honored."
"You love Lyanna so much, go find her. You can't? Then go back to your whores. Either way, stay away from me. I find you disgusting. I'm afraid I'll catch something."
Cersei's eyes held nothing but contempt as they settled on this man who haunted brothels. Not a trace of it hidden.
The conversation with her daughter had stirred up that night again. That humiliation she never stopped carrying.
She was done with Robert. She had already learned he intended to deal with Lynn using 3,000 militia.
Militia.
What could militia possibly accomplish?
They'd just die.
It was the same as doing nothing.
She didn't even fully understand why.
But every time Robert moved against Lynn, something in her turned to fury.
Her contempt landed like a blade on Robert's pride, and his pride had never been sturdy to begin with.
He remembered their wedding night. This woman beneath him, limp as a dead fish, refusing to make a single sound.
He remembered twenty years of reaching for her and getting that same look every time.
He remembered a few nights ago, when she had openly defied him, for Lynn. For that northerner.
Boundless rage and alcohol burned through whatever reason he had left.
The slap rang out like a crack of thunder in the silent room.
Cersei's head snapped to the side. A clear handprint bloomed across her fair cheek. Blood seeped from the corner of her mouth.
She turned back slowly.
She didn't cry. She didn't scream.
In those green eyes, every emotion had drained away. What remained was nothing. Stillness. Something worse than rage.
She touched the corner of her mouth with one fingertip, then looked at the red on her finger.
That absolute calm unnerved Robert in a way the screaming never could.
He took a step back without thinking.
"You — what kind of look is that?"
He roared it, bluster covering cowardice.
Cersei didn't answer.
She just looked at him. The way you'd look at a jester. The way you'd look at a corpse.
"What?" he snarled. "You think I hit you, so you feel wronged?"
Her stare was unbearable. He roared again, louder this time, just to feel something other than afraid.
"You think I don't know what you're plotting? You think I don't know what that scheming father of yours is after?"
"Lannister!" The word came out like a curse. "What's in any of your heads besides gold dragons and conspiracy?!"
Something had cracked open in him. He started talking, and he couldn't stop, all the suspicion and paranoia he'd been swallowing for years pouring out at once.
"You think I'm sending Lynn north just to die? You think this is only about jealousy, that he has a dragon and I don't?"
Robert let out a laugh, high and unhinged, dripping with self-satisfaction.
"You stupid women. You'll never understand."
He moved to stand directly in front of her.
"Wolf. Falcon. Fish."
"Ned Stark. Lysa Arryn. Hoster Tully."
"My allies. The brothers who helped me tear down the Targaryens." His voice dropped. "And now the greatest threats beneath my throne."
Madness had settled into his eyes like something that lived there.
He lowered his voice to a murmur, the tone of a man sharing the most poisonous secret he owned.
"I am going to make them fight."
"I will set them against each other over Lynn, and watch them tear themselves apart."
"Lynn is Ned's bannerman. That stubborn fool can't look the other way, he'll march. I know it."
"And Lysa Arryn, that madwoman, she's the real power in the Vale now. With my blade at her throat, she won't let it go quietly either."
"And behind her stands the entire Tully family. The whole of the Riverlands."
"Wolf bites falcon. Falcon pecks fish. Fish tears wolf."
A sick exhilaration spread across his face. He could already see it, the blood, the ruin of three great houses.
"When they've ground each other down, bled each other dry, I step in as king and broker the peace."
"Lysa dies."
"And after that, none of them will have the strength left to threaten my throne. They'll kneel at my feet like dogs and beg for whatever I choose to give them."
"That is what it means to be a king." He turned to look at her, triumphant. "Do you understand?!"
He was waiting for shock. For awe.
What he got were those cold, empty green eyes.
"So," Cersei said at last, her voice perfectly level.
"You are warning me not to let the Lannisters get involved."
"Exactly."
Robert jabbed a finger toward her. "You'd better write to that cunning father of yours. Tell him to do what he did during the Usurper's War, tuck himself inside Casterly Rock like a turtle and count his gold."
"If he sends a single soldier past the Golden Tooth, I will show him who the true master of Westeros is."
"I won't just weaken the North. I'll make sure everyone knows — Stark or Lannister, it doesn't matter — all of them bow under Baratheon's heel."
Robert finished, belched with satisfaction, and swayed on his feet.
He had never felt more clear-headed. More powerful.
He was certain he controlled everything.
...
He passed out not long after, crumpling onto Cersei's bed like a felled animal, his snores shaking the walls.
Cersei stood motionless.
The swelling on her face didn't hurt. She couldn't feel it at all.
There was only one thought in her mind.
She had to tell Lynn.
Now. Immediately.
She didn't notice, had no way to notice, how completely she had already given herself over to him. Her soul, her body, that proud and unyielding heart. All of it had been conquered in those desperate, maddening nights. Taken apart and remade around him.
Robert was no longer her husband. He was an obstacle. One she would push off a cliff herself, when the time came.
She didn't pause, didn't straighten her disheveled robe. She walked straight out of the bedchamber.
Lynn was Myrcella's husband now. She couldn't go to him directly.
But she could go to her daughter.
When Cersei pushed open the door to the bridal chamber, Myrcella was sitting on the edge of the bed, the little white dog called Snowball curled in her arms.
The moment she saw Cersei's face, Myrcella shot to her feet. The dog startled and whimpered.
"Mother?!"
The shock in her voice was raw and uncontrolled.
"Your face—"
Cersei shut the door and crossed the room to her.
She didn't explain the mark. She simply began to speak, in a voice so calm it was almost worse than weeping, and she laid out Robert's plan without missing a single word.
With every sentence, Myrcella's face went a shade paler.
By the last word, her body was trembling.
She stared at the mark on her mother's cheek. She thought of Lynn being pushed toward his death.
The fury that rose in her was enormous, swift and total, flooding up from somewhere deep.
Robert Baratheon.
That man who called himself her father.
That drunken, useless pig.
He wanted to kill her husband. And he had struck her mother.
How dare he.
"He wants Lynn dead."
The words came out from between clenched teeth.
"Yes."
"So we cannot let him have it."
"But the Lannister army cannot march north." Cersei's voice was quiet. Precise. "That would confirm every suspicion he has. He'd use it as the excuse he's been waiting for, rally the other houses, and move against us. We cannot hand him that."
Myrcella's nails cut into her palms.
Snowball whined softly against her side, sensing what she couldn't say.
"Then what do we do?" She raised her head. The softness that usually lived in those green eyes was gone. What was left was clean and cold and merciless. "Watch Lynn die?"
"No."
A smile touched Cersei's face for the first time.
"Your grandfather may not be able to send soldiers. But he can send other things."
She reached out and cupped her daughter's cheek gently.
"War isn't only fought with bodies. It's fought with gold — with resources."
"What does Lynn's Gift lack most?"
"Iron. Weapons. Smiths who can put steel in the hands of wildlings."
Cersei's smile was beautiful, and it was lethal.
"I will write to Tywin. The Lannister fleet will bypass King's Landing entirely and make for White Harbor. They'll carry the finest iron ore from the Westerlands. The toughest steel. The best smiths Casterly Rock has."
"Your grandfather may not care for Lynn. But he will act."
"Trust me."
She held Myrcella's gaze another moment, then: "Tell Lynn everything I've told you. All of it."
"I will."
Myrcella nodded, her voice steady again.
She reached out carefully and touched the mark on her mother's face with just her fingertips.
It was scalding.
That heat burned through the last of her hesitation. Every trace of reluctance, of softness, of mercy, gone.
"Mother."
She looked up.
The cold light in her eyes made even Cersei's chest tighten.
"Don't worry."
"He won't get away with this."
"I promise."
Cersei stroked her daughter's golden hair. She hadn't caught the edge beneath the words, she thought Myrcella was grieving for her, only that, no more.
Then she was gone, her figure shrinking down the empty corridor until the darkness took her.
Myrcella stood alone in the center of the bridal chamber.
Everything around her was red. Red drapes. Red carpet. Red everywhere, a red that had no end.
Lynn had told her once that red was the color of joy. Of celebration.
Right now it looked like blood.
The mark on her mother's face wouldn't leave her. It was branded into her, behind her eyes, impossible to blink away.
Robert Baratheon's bloated face. His slurred roaring. The sick reek of wine that clung to him.
That man who called himself her father.
He had struck her mother.
He wanted her husband dead.
Hatred moved through her like something cold and permanent, settling into place.
Then,
The door swung open with a soft creak.
Lynn stepped inside.
They looked at each other.
Myrcella took in his appearance, the dust of travel still on him, the weariness in his eyes, and underneath the weariness, something sharp that hadn't gone away.
He hadn't been at banquets or feasts. She knew that much.
He'd been meeting people. Laying groundwork. For what, she couldn't say for certain. But it was connected to what was coming. She was sure of it.
"My mother was just here."
She spoke first.
"Robert got drunk. He told her everything."
She didn't pause. She laid it all out for him, the same way Cersei had for her, clean, fast, nothing left out. Robert's scheme to set the North, the Vale, and the Riverlands at each other's throats. Tywin's answer: supplies, steel, and smiths, landed quietly at White Harbor.
No personal feeling in it. Just facts, stated plainly.
Lynn listened without interrupting. Without asking.
He already knew Robert's plan. The past few days of Greensight had given him that much, the full shape of the trap, and the names of Lysa's allies. He'd known the Lannisters wouldn't openly declare for him. That had always been clear.
Still. He didn't turn the offer away.
The Tyrells had shown him every warmth at the surface, and when it mattered, they went quiet.
Cersei, who had never pretended to like him, had chosen to help.
Even Lynn found that one hard to account for.
➤ Next: Upgrading Skills, Jaime's Promise
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