Chapter Text
For as long as Cersei could remember, everyone had said she’d been born to be a queen. Now that she was Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, it was the last thing she wanted.
As a child she’d been betrothed to Prince Rhaegar, and did not take this honor for granted. “I’ll be the next great Dragon,” she’d boasted to Jaime as they played at fighting with wooden swords. He knocked her to the ground. “A dragon doesn’t stumble,” Jaime laughed, as Cersei arose and wiped dirt from the ground off the breeches he’d lent her to practice in. As he laughed, she leapt up and pointed her wooden sword at his neck, right at the point of his jugular vein. Taking a few steps forward, she’d forced him to walk backwards until her sword had his back pressed against the wall of the stables. “I’ll be a greater warrior queen than Visenya, you will see. They’ll all see.” She’d even dreamt of riding a dragon like Visenya had, drawing images of herself and Rhaegar atop one, high above the world, instead of paying attention to her lessons.
When she closed her eyes before going to bed each night, she thought of Rheagar and what it would be like to kiss him, what it would be like to run her hand down his face and onto his chest, his soft lips kissing her neck as she touched his breasts...for some reason, Rheagar always had breasts when Cersei dreamt of him, and a woman’s parts where his cock should be. In dreams, one of her hands would grab long silver hair, and the other would slip inside her...his…and as she pushed Rhaegar’s face into hers to kiss his lips, his already-delicate face turned into a woman’s face...
Cersei always woke up at that part of the dream, heart racing and breath panting from either fear or ecstasy—it was difficult to know which.
Now she lived in a nightmare, but it would be over soon. The King who slept in her bed was not Rhaegar but Robert Baratheon, snoring loudly as drool trickled from his mouth to his chin. The potion Jaime had slipped into Robert’s drink during the wedding feast had worked magnificently; he had not even made it to the end of the bedding ceremony before falling into a deep slumber. Thank the Gods , Cersei thought. She knew she did not have much time left; Jaime was waiting at the bottom of the rope hanging from the window, and he had always been impatient. She drew the dagger from inside her sleeve and carefully traced a thin line along the outside of her thigh, blood from the cut dripping onto her pillow. She winced for a moment, but she was a lioness of the rock, and lions had no fear. Let them think I’ve been kidnapped, the way Lyanna was. Robert will be known for being unable to keep a woman , she’d said to Jaime as they’d plotted her escape. Lyanna… she couldn’t think about that right now, only about her escape...and her revenge.
The slim circle of blood on the pillow looked too dainty. They might think it is the blood from losing my maidenhood, not from a kidnapping . She frowned. How can I make this look more like a capture? , she thought, the tip of her fingers running along the edge of the blade. The wind from the open window blew a stray curl that had fallen out of her braid across her face, and she knew what she must do. Her hand trembled with a mixture of fear and hesitation as she pulled her cherished braid tightly to the side of her head. She brought the dagger in her right hand down upon the point where the braid began to form, and began to saw through it. Her hair was so thick that she needed to grasp the blade tightly to hack through it, the noise of its sharp edge meeting thick waves crunching. After dutifully sawing away at her braid, it lay limp and heavy upon her breast, disconnected from the rest of her hair, which fell in short curls about her chin. How odd , she thought, as she felt the wind on her bare neck for the first time in her life, and she laid the braid on the pillow next to Robert’s. That’s all he’ll ever have of me. Never my maidenhood. A horse’s saddle claimed that long ago.
She walked up to the mirror, under which Jaime had hidden the clothes she’d wear for her escape during his regular Kingsguard bedroom duty. Cersei unlaced the bodice of her white wedding gown and shook it off, replacing it with loose breeches and a white shirt, with mail underneath that pressed her breasts closely to her chest. Cersei looked in the mirror. Too pretty, still , she thought. I’ll never pass as a boy. Gripping the dagger again, she lifted the chunk of blonde curls that fell over her eyes and hacked it off, almost drawing blood from her scalp as the blade grazed it. She winced and her whole body shuddered, but no, I will not cry. I am a lioness, and hair grows back. , she told herself as she grabbed the section behind her head and hacked it off close to the scalp. As she repeated this with the rest of her hair, drifts of blonde curls fell upon the floor, shining brightly where the moonlight hit it. Lyanna once called it my golden crown , she remembered, I’m giving up both my crowns...for her .
When the task was done, Cersei stared at the stranger in the mirror with disbelief, seeing a pretty boy with hair cut close to the scalp, green eyes flashing with mischief. She stretched her head to the left, then to the right, getting used to how light her head felt. Perhaps she was better off without both crowns, a thought at which her child self dreaming of being queen would have raised an eyebrow with disdain. But she could no longer linger. Sweeping the hair on the boudoir onto the floor with her hand, she ran to the window and grasped the rope that Jaime had hung outside it. The sky was as black as the hole where her heart once was that only rage, not tears, could fill. Peering into darkness, the words hour of the wolf ran through her head, and the wolf girl’s laughing grey eyes, filled with joy right after she and Cersei had first kissed, flashed in her memory. As she grabbed the rope and climbed down it, she felt no fear, only lust. For the night, the darkness. For vengeance. For Lyanna. I will avenge you better than that Baratheon beast ever could.