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CaveLeather
Cersei's muffled sobs echoed through the cavernous room.
The sound was drowning in pure despair, like a she-wolf backed into a dead end by hunters, only to realize her entire pack had already abandoned her.
Her own son had tried to murder her.
The house she bled for had discarded her.
And now, she was nothing more than another man's prisoner—a broken plaything who didn't even own the rights to her own life or death.
Lynn leaned against the heavy window frame, a goblet of wine in his hand, quietly listening to her breakdown.
He didn't rush her. He didn't offer a single word of comfort.
He just waited.
Waited for her to bleed out every last tear. Waited for her arrogant, untouchable pride to smash into absolute rock bottom.
Finally, the wailing dialed down, grinding into a pathetic, suppressed whimpering.
"Done crying?"
Cersei didn't look up. She just kept her bloodshot eyes locked dead onto a single spot on the floorboards, staring so hard it looked like she wanted to burn a hole straight through the wood.
"You must really fucking hate me right now," Lynn said, casually breaking the silence.
"Hate me for destroying absolutely everything you had."
Cersei's body violently flinched—a visceral reaction to having her rawest nerve struck.
"But have you ever actually stopped to think... was I really the one who destroyed it?"
Lynn closed the distance, crouching down until he was dead level with her eyes.
"Your son, Joffrey. The second his ass touched the Iron Throne, he completely lost his goddamn mind."
"He's a rabid dog off his leash. He bites whatever moves, and absolutely nobody can control him."
"Today, he tried to strangle you to death over a 'secret.' Tomorrow, he'll slaughter the entire Small Council just because someone looked at him wrong."
Lynn's words acted like a razor-sharp scalpel, surgically slicing open the brutal reality Cersei was desperately trying to ignore.
"You think you can control him?"
Lynn let out a harsh, mocking laugh.
"Don't be a fucking idiot, Cersei."
"You gave that little psychopath absolutely everything. But in his eyes? You're just a loose end. A bitch who knows too much and constantly threatens his grip on the crown."
"To him, your entire existence is worth less than whatever cheap pillow talk that little slut Lyanna whispers in his ear."
Cersei's manicured nails dug so viciously into her own palms they broke the skin, but she didn't feel a shred of physical pain.
Every single word out of Lynn's mouth was hurting her infinitely worse.
"You pushed all your chips to the center of the table and bet your entire life on a worthless piece of shit."
"A piece of shit practically begging to self-destruct."
"And that is exactly why you lost everything."
Lynn stood back up, strolling over to the heavy wine cabinet to pour himself another glass.
"You really are a pathetic woman."
He swirled the goblet, watching the dark, blood-red liquid coat the inside of the glass.
Cersei snapped her head up. A new fire suddenly ignited in her emerald eyes.
It wasn't hope. It was the toxic, venomous rage of a woman who had been humiliated beyond her breaking point.
"What the fuck is your point?!"
She screamed, her vocal cords tearing.
"Did you just bring me here to laugh at me?!"
"To watch the former Queen of the Seven Kingdoms grovel on the floor like a beaten dog?!"
"Well, you're looking at it! Are you satisfied now?!"
"No."
Lynn shook his head. He turned around, staring at the woman who had all her defenses violently flared up like a cornered animal.
"I'm just trying to tell you that you still have another option."
Cersei froze.
"What are you talking about?"
"Is Joffrey really your only shot?"
Lynn asked.
Cersei's breathing hitched.
Her mind instantly flashed to Tommen, miles away in Dorne, but the boy was way too soft. Too weak.
And then, another name hit her.
Myrcella.
Her daughter.
The sweet girl she had personally shipped off to the frozen North, who was now warming Lynn's bed.
"Are you trying to use Myrcella to blackmail me again?"
Cersei's eyes narrowed into hyper-vigilant slits.
"Blackmail?"
Lynn chuckled.
"Cersei, your vision is way too damn narrow."
"You're so busy looking for the knife in the dark, you completely missed the golden ticket."
He set his wine glass down and closed the distance step by deliberate step. The sheer, suffocating pressure radiating off him made Cersei instinctively shrink back against the chair.
"Joffrey is a dead end. The boy is a lost cause."
"Sooner or later, he is going to drag this entire fucking kingdom, and House Lannister along with it, straight down into the abyss."
"But Myrcella... she's different."
Lynn's voice dropped into a dark, hypnotic register, dripping with lethal temptation.
"She's young, she's surprisingly sharp, and above all... she knows exactly how to obey."
"But more importantly..."
Lynn leaned in, dropping his mouth right next to Cersei's ear, pitching his voice down to an intimate, fatal whisper.
"She is going to breed for me."
"She is going to give me a child carrying my bloodline, mixed perfectly with the pure blood of House Lannister."
That single sentence detonated inside Cersei's skull like a massive stockpile of wildfire.
Her entire body went totally rigid.
She went wide-eyed, staring at Lynn in absolute, paralyzed disbelief.
This man...
What the hell was his endgame?
He was going to put Myrcella's bastard on the Iron Throne?
A King forged from his untouchable power and her family's royal pedigree!
Cersei's heart started hammering violently against her ribs.
She might not have been a master political strategist, but it only took her a fraction of a second to realize just how utterly terrifying—and brilliant—Lynn's master plan actually was.
What did that mean?
It meant the Lannister bloodline would survive and completely dominate the Seven Kingdoms through a totally different vessel!
And she, Cersei Lannister, wouldn't go down in history as a failed Queen Mother or a pathetic joke abandoned by her own psychotic son.
She would become...
The grandmother to the new King of the World!
A massive, electrifying shiver shot straight up her spine and exploded in her brain.
"You... you're completely out of your mind!"
Cersei's voice violently shook.
She honestly couldn't tell if she was trembling from pure terror, or from the sick, uncontrollable thrill shooting through her veins.
"Out of my mind?"
Lynn straightened up, looking down at her like a god assessing a mortal.
"No. I've never been thinking more clearly in my entire life."
"That rabid lunatic Joffrey sitting on the Iron Throne doesn't benefit a single soul on this continent."
"The North needs a stable South to function, and House Lannister needs a viable vessel to actually carry on its legacy."
"And me? I just need an heir I can completely trust to hold the keys."
Lynn stared down at Cersei's face, heavily conflicted with shock and desperate calculation.
"Our endgames are perfectly aligned."
"You..."
Cersei opened her mouth, but her throat was so bone-dry she couldn't formulate a single word.
Her brain was running in absolute overdrive.
Her rational mind was screaming that this man's proposition was high treason, completely psychotic, and guaranteed to get her head put on a spike.
But the dark, power-hungry demon buried deep inside her soul was shrieking in pure euphoria.
Take the deal! Take the fucking deal! This is your only way out!
"Why the hell should I help you?"
Cersei ruthlessly forced herself to calm down, throwing up a cold, calculating negotiator's front to completely mask the chaotic storm raging inside her.
"What makes you so damn sure I'd ever betray my own son?"
"Because he literally just tried to murder you."
Lynn shattered her entire facade with a single, brutal sentence.
"If I hadn't walked through that door, your corpse would already be cold on the floorboards."
"And for the record, I'm not asking for your help, Cersei."
Lynn's gaze sharpened into two lethal blades.
"I am giving you a choice."
"You can either keep clinging to Joffrey's rotting leg and wait for him to drag you screaming straight down to hell."
"Or you can choose to be the grandmother of the future King, and take back every single ounce of power that rightfully belongs to you."
The room plunged into a long, heavy, suffocating silence.
Cersei kept her head bowed. Her messy golden hair fell forward like a curtain, completely masking her expression.
Her hands were balled into white-knuckled fists at her sides.
Joffrey.
Myrcella.
One was the son she had dumped half her life and soul into, only for him to try and crush her windpipe.
The other was the daughter she had completely written off, who was now magically her absolute last lifeline.
How the hell was she supposed to choose?
Sell out her own son to prop up a bastard carrying the blood of her conqueror?
It sounded like an absolute, twisted joke.
And yet...
The grandmother of the King...
That title was like a drop of lethal poison coated in pure honey, radiating an absolutely irresistible, fatal temptation.
A long time passed.
Cersei slowly, deliberately raised her head.
Her gorgeous emerald eyes were completely bone-dry. The crushing despair had totally evaporated.
"If..."
Cersei slowly licked her chapped lips.
"If I help you."
"What exactly is in it for me?"