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Afterwards, this was what she clung to: Jaime, glittering in the sun, the Warrior reborn, golden and glorious as he slammed into Barristan Selmy and sent him crashing gracelessly to the ground. The cheers of the crowd for their youthful champion as he galloped past the royal gallery, the way he stopped before her in the stands, ripped aside his helmet and shook out his mane of golden hair. His jubilant smile, the triumph in his face and body and eyes. Fixed on her. Only on her.

Then Prince Rhaegar Targaryen defeated him on the third lance. If only – Cersei might have thought just once in a moment of weakness. But that would have been a different story.

--

Led by Ser Gerold Hightower, the men of the Kingsguard were seven, just like the gods. Sers Arthur Dayne, Barristan Selmy, Oswell Whent, Jonothor Darry, Harlan Grandison, and Prince Lewyn Martell made up its ranks, legendary knights and bastions of honor, sworn to defend the king and the royal family. Holy like the seven gods and just as cruel.

Cersei had lived in King’s Landing since she was twelve years old, and knew them all.

Ser Harlan was an old man, serving long into the tenure of his second king. Once, she had imagined a clever scheme. Soon, all the court was saying, he would be gone, and there would be only six cloaks. She told Jaime all of it that night in a small inn on Eel Alley, and together they had imagined a glorious future: Cersei, the queen, and Jaime her faithful knight, Naerys and Aemon come again. After their endless years of separation, he would finally have a chance to come to King’s Landing, and they’d be together forever. Together as one, forever, like they were again and again and again all night.

But the white cloaks were seven, and so it was just a pretty dream that Cersei had conjured for him, as much a mirage as the one he spun for her as he promised her (again and again and again) a crown of flowers at the lists.

Once, she had imagined a clever scheme. She knew better, now. That white cloak would have soiled him.

--

The last letter she received from Jaime was dated twenty days after the first moon of the two-hundred and eighty-second year after the Conquest. It was written in a rushed, messy script and had been folded and unfolded so many times it was nearly illegible, but Cersei knew each word by heart.

He complained of the end of the false spring, the cold of the ocean, the betrothal that their Father was still negotiating the dowry for (to the uglier of the Tully sisters!), bragged of his successes in the training yard and his increased responsibilities for the men-at-arms, rhapsodized about the pups his favorite bitch had whelped, and then cut off suddenly mid-sentence. The letter continued in a different ink:

“My belovd sister,” he had written. “Father wrote that you are returning home. Finally finally finally. I am waiting for you I cannot wait to see you I have missed you so I think of you at all times do not dally on your way & come hurry home to me so I may embrace you & show you all. Tell me you have missed me I know you do now come come come. Yours, always. Jaime.”

He had underlined his valediction three times, and she had traced those lines so many times the parchment had gone thin beneath them. After her ladies began to burn, Cersei had ripped it to shreds and tossed it in a fire of her own with the rest of them.

--

Cersei had not thought of the King at Harrenhal. It had been the Prince’s tournament, the Prince’s triumph, the Prince’s scandal.

She did not think of him when she returned. The Red Keep was the Hand’s court and the Hand’s dominion, and the Hand was Tywin Lannister.

Upon her return to King’s Landing, she reported to her father in his tower, received his blessing and shared the tale of Jaime’s successes, though he had surely already heard them told many times. Then she flitted off to hold her own court.

She was well-recognized as the mistress of the keep in all ways. The Queen Rhaella Targaryen shunned her duties to the women of the realm and decomposed in her own isolation, as secluded as the king himself, and the Princess Elia Martell had fled with her husband to Dragonstone shortly after her first arrival in the capital. So Cersei held her court in the chambers of the Tower of the Hand, where she occupied the apartments of its lady, and relished her power over court fashion, court gossip, court opinion.

She dominated them with her talent for the quick jape, derisive smile, and false compliment. Even those twice her age competed for her attention like waifs at the foot of a sept. After Harrenhal, her brother was a popular topic of discussion among them, and it gratified her to smile knowingly and demur with word of him.

Almost half a year had passed since the tourney, and she reigned as never before. Her body was changing, growing more curved and soft and beautiful, and she reveled in the power it gave her as more and more of the men of the court tried to attach themselves to her coterie. She gave many hopes but no special favors and ruled them all.

When she examined her naked body in the looking glass, her handmaidens gushed their jealous flatteries, and she knew that none would ever mistake her for Jaime again. If Harrenhal were today, she was certain, the crown would have been hers, and the Prince would never had given Lyanna Stark a second glance.

When Princess Elia went into seclusion with her babe, months earlier than was convention, she released her hair into a cloud of loose curls, and let them see her vitality. All whispered of the Princess’s ill-health, and she remembered Maggy the Frog, and her father’s promise. Some day, she knew, she would be queen.

It was among these twittering girls and women, the finest of the realm, that she first heard it, shortly after the turn of the new year.

Prince Rhaegar had left Dragonstone.

The King was a ghost in the court. Only her father had needs must see him, and her father had him under his tight grip. She knew this well, and had never doubted, even when the former captain of their household guard, Ser Ilyn Payne, had lost his tongue for saying much the same. So she rarely thought of the king, except for when her father allowed for the indulgence of his mad whims. In the first moon of the year, when the spring showed itself to be false and the Blackwater froze in the cold of the returning winter, it was to her father, not the king, that she brought the complaints.

The King swore to chase away the winter with the fire that was his birthright, and the walls of the keep danced with the great green flames of the King’s pyromancers. The pungent odor of wildfire lay heavy over the keep, choking them. First Lynora Buckwell had begun to complain of her unending cough, then Elinda Boggs, heavy with child, fainted when overcome by the smoke on passing through the Outer Yard. Her goodsister Myrielle had brought the matter to Cersei the next day, and Cersei had felt the eyes of all the Queen’s ladies upon her as she promised the matter would be seen to.

But when she brought her case to her father, he told her off.

“The King will not be denied his fires, and you will teach those girls to hold their tongues.” Derisively, he added: “His fires, his only true champion.” He was sitting behind his large wooden desk, surrounded by the tall towers of thin papers that were his power.

“I thought to summon you,” he said. “I am sure you have heard that the Prince has left Dragonstone. The King has asked me to fetch his boy. I will return in a sennight. I will leave Sarsfield for you to command.”

She lingered for a moment, thinking of how to plead her case again, but she had lost his attention. “You are dismissed.”

She left.

And when Alysanne Swyft – who was one of her own ladies, treacherous little thing – asked her if she knew when the fires would end, she snapped that they would end when winter had been beat back and turned the discussion deftly to the Prince.

It was the commonly held opinion, then, that Rhaegar was preparing to take the throne from his father, and the question had long been why he had not acted yet, rather than when he would. But now he had his own little prince, Aegon Targaryen, and all were of one accord that his disappearance from Dragonstone could bode only one thing.

But there were some things one would not discuss aloud, and so instead of speaking of the great treason that all were certain was brewing, the ladies wondered when, oh when he would present the new princeling to the court, and if he might favor his mother like little Rhaenys did. Some shared rumors of the Princess’s ill health and Cersei remembered that dark tent in Lannisport and the promise of a prophecy (“You will marry the King,” the witch had said) and did her best to seem sincere and concerned as she prodded for the sordid details of Elia’s bedrest.

They spoke of how dashing the Prince had looked at Harrenhal, and wondered what songs he might play for them now that he was certainly returning to the Red Keep soon. And all pretended to know more than the next, hinting that his return was imminent and that he might be with this or that knight when he came. Someone mentioned that Ser Oswell had not been seen on duty in some time. Ashara Dayne confirmed as much when she said that her brother Arthur, the Sword of the Morning, faithful knight of the Kingsguard, was surely with the prince, and all trembled at the implication.

Cersei held her tongue, but made sure to smile knowingly when asked after her father. He, too, was absent from court, and if he were to return beside Rhaegar...

Her father had left on the twenty-second day of the first moon. Two days later she received the letter from Jaime, and hours after that, curt orders came in a raven from her father.

He commanded her to gather the household and its guard and leave the capital immediately. There was no need to present herself before the king to beg his leave of absence, he wrote. The message ended with a simple command: “Be discreet.”

So Cersei folded the paper up into her bosom and told the simpering schemer next to her that it seemed her brother was engaged. The ladies exploded in questions, but Cersei laughed them off and used the ruckus caused by the unexpected blow that was the removal of the most eligible bachelor in Westeros from their prospects to slip from the room with her handmaidens.

She set them to packing only the most valuable of her things, and called for Ser Erwin Sarsfield, the captain of the household guard. She would have to ride herself, which was a prospect she didn’t particularly welcome, but would get them out of the Crownlands in quick order. Her father was waiting with his men three nights ride down the King’s Road, and though he had written nothing explicitly of the sort, she could feel the urgency of his command. She wondered if he was with the Prince.

She had thought to leave on foot by the postern gate in small groups, but Ser Erwin reported a heavy guard at all exits. So she summoned her nerves and armed herself with an arrogant smile, like Jaime heading for the training ground, unbeatable and well-aware of it, and marched for the Outer Yard.

She approached the Bronze Gates of the keep already on horseback, her guard mounted behind her and her head held high. She announced that by command of the Hand she was riding to meet him for his return.

For a moment, she thought they were free. A goldcloak motioned for her to pass, but his partner was already looking elsewhere, raising an arm. The gates did not open. She heard hoofbeats behind her, and there he was, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Ser Gerold Hightower. He approached, also mounted, and at his sides were two more of his sworn brothers.

“By order of His Grace, the King, there is a quarantine on the Red Keep until winter has been vanquished,” Ser Gerold said. Above his head, the green fires flickered and burned, casting a pale glow over the gleam of his armor. “Return to your quarters.”

Cersei stood firm, meeting his gaze evenly from the height of her tall mare. “I must obey my father, the Hand.”

“Remove them.” He ordered.

The goldcloaks unsheathed their swords. She heard the drawing of steel as her men armed themselves behind her.

“Lady Cersei?” Ser Erwin asked. His sword was drawn, but there was uncertainty in his voice.

Around them, armed men dotted the walls of the keep, and beyond the gates she could see movement on the Barbican Square.

She ordered him to lower his sword. At Ser Gerold’s prompting, she dismounted.

She had known Ser Erwin since her childhood, when he had still been just another redcloak of the household. When she and Jaime fled their lessons and hid among the cliffs to watch the waves of the Sunset Sea crash home, the redcloaks were often dispersed to find them. Ser Erwin was a good climber, and had caught them once. He was good, but they were better – still young and nimble and light – and he stood beneath them threatening and cajoling as the sky darkened, promising: “You will be very sorry if you are late to sup with your lordly father!”

They realized it was too late at the same time.

“He will be so angry,” Jaime had whispered, eyes wide with awe at his own boldness.

“We can never go back,” Cersei had said.

She did not see Ser Erwin again.

--

The Red Keep was abuzz with rumors, but all were sure of one thing: Rhaegar was raising arms against his father. Where had he been seen? Riverrun, Harrenhal, the Isle of Faces, Dorne. Would he march on the capital? Was there to be a Council? Who would declare? Everyone had a story but there was no way of confirming anything: the Keep was under a strict quarantine and no ravens or letters reached its inhabitants. Cersei held her court as always and spoke of trivial things, but the atmosphere that weighed on them all was heavier than light gossip and parlor games could lift.

Where was Tywin Lannister, she knew they were all wondering. So, it seemed, was the King.

Cersei was summoned to the throne room.

The King sat the Iron Throne, clutching at its sides with long, thin hands that ended in cracked talons. She saw a trickle of blood running out from under his left palm. His hair was wild and filthy, falling into his matted beard, and spittle flew from his mouth as he addressed her:

“Your father abandoned me. A simple task I set him, and he writes now that he is ill and must stay at his little rock and can have no visitors. Lies! Why would an ailing man want his daughter laid down on a sickbed, hm? Has he forgotten who his king is? Should I use you to remind him?”

Ser Harlan held her arm tightly with his gauntleted hand.

“Speak, girl! Speak in defense of your treacherous father.”

Cersei prostrated herself before the King.

“Your Grace, I am a loyal servant of the crown,” she said. “If my father is a traitor then I will gladly watch him burn.”

“I don’t believe you!” The king snapped immediately. She did not raise her head from the floor.

She was lying, of course. But she was also thinking angrily and you left me here? and perhaps the King could smell it on her, the filth of her thoughts, because he for a moment he giggled childishly and his voice was light and gay. “Oh, she wants her papa to burn!”

But his voice rose again, angry and almost screeching: “Varys tells me of you. You’re always gathering my wife’s women about you. I don’t like it, I don’t! What is it you whisper about behind my back, hm? Don’t lie girl, I can hear you no matter how quiet you think you are.”

“Your Grace,” Cersei continued without rising. “We are all so grateful that you are fighting to free us from the winter.” She thought of her father and his derision. No one knew the King better. “We watch your fires, the only true champion of our great King.”

She could hear the smacking noise of him licking his lips. “My champion, yes,” he said. “You understand then, do you, girl?” He asked frantically. “The fires, the fires, do you like them?”

“It is beautiful, Your Grace,” she said, unmoving on the cold, ash-stained floor.

There must have been some sign from the King, for Ser Harlan pulled her to her feet, though less forcefully than she would have expected.

“Come closer,” he rasped.

She took a hesitant step towards the throne. Then another. His wide, bright eyes followed her, unblinking as she slowly ascended the steps before him.

As she approached she felt the smell of him for the first time, putrid like wildfire.

“Yes, I see it now,” he raised one clawed hand to touch her cheek and she bit her lip but didn’t flinch away. “Your mother’s daughter. None of him in you, no, no. You’ll be a good girl, won’t you?”

“Of course, Your Grace. Thank you, Your Grace.”

She prostrated herself before him again. He did not dismiss her, but she heard him begin to shuffle away in his strange, unsteady gait, and then Ser Harlan’s boots clicking on the stone floor.

She had bit her lip to the blood. It was a fine excuse, and she sought out the Grand Maester, Pycelle. He had long been an ally of her father’s.

There would be no ravens sent, he told her. Explicit order of the King. In a fit of pity, perhaps, at her next request, he was honest with her.

“My lady, I cannot. You have not received any in days. I’m sure that your Lord Father would not compromise you in such a way.”

She smiled for him, but her face was not a perfect mask, because he continued: “The Lord Hand has always been a loyal friend of the crown. They will reconcile, as they always have. No one need know you were here today, my lady.”

Pycelle was wrong on many accounts, and her father was no longer the Hand. Her chambers were moved to the Kitchen Keep with the other Westerland girls, and she noticed that much of her finery didn’t make it to its new home.

Cersei stopped receiving the women of the court, and when Alysanne complained of boredom she told her she’d have her whipped at the next word.

The Keep waited for Rhaegar, but weeks passed and he did not come. The fires blazed on along the walls, but winter reinforced its frosty grip on the Crownlands.

Rhaegar did not come, but Brandon Stark did.

The motley party of Northerners, Riverlanders, and Stormlanders summoned every eye when they crashed into the Great Yard. They were all ahorse and shouting, and it was difficult to make out the words in the cacophony. Then they went silent, and out rode Brandon Stark on his great, dark destrier. He wheeled his mount, kicking up a cloud of dust behind him.

"Rhaegar!” He shouted. “Rhaegar! Come out and die!"

--

The King assembled the whole keep for the trial. The fire was his champion.

When Rickard Stark burned, there were five hundred men and four white cloaks in the hall, all the greatest knights of the Seven Kingdoms.

Sarella Lantell reached out tentatively to grip Cersei’s hand in her own. Cersei slapped her away.

Even after Rickard Stark went silent, Brandon’s desperate choking was loud in the heavy silence of the hall. The King laughed and laughed and laughed.

It was only the beginning.

--

The green fires stopped decorating the walls of the keep and came inside instead. Rhaegar never returned, and they stopped waiting for him. Now the full court saw the King with great regularity, for Jon Arryn had called his banners and there were all sorts of spies and traitors to be rooted out in the capital. Eddard Stark called his banners. Robert Baratheon called his banners.

She came to learn the tidings of the war the same way the rest of the keep did, from the septon’s rebukes and calls for repentance in his sermons, and from the crimes the pyromancer announced before he set the match.

Anya Belmore burned for her sister’s husband. Robert Grafton burned for his name. Willem Waynwood burned when his uncle answered Arryn’s call. Melyssa Gaunt burned because she attempted to sneak into the Rookery.

She learned to go away inside, in time.

She was running through the bowels of the Rock with Jaime, playing catch-me-not and monsters-and-maidens. They were in the Hall of Heroes, dodging and hiding behind the immense effigies of their immortal ancestors. He was a hair-breadth behind her, and she could hear each of his loud breaths and feel the heat of him against her back, and then his hands were in her hair and he pushed her to the rough stone ground, victorious. Behind him was the sepulchral statue of the Lion King, and it cast a rough shadow on his face.

“Got you!” He shouted, straddling her and holding her down under him, and he crowed in triumph and stole a victor’s kiss with chapped, closed lips. Once, she had wiped it away for the show of it, whined that hair pulling isn’t allowed and demanded her turn to be the monster. But suddenly he wasn’t a child anymore, but Jaime as she had last seen him at Harrenhal, and he kissed her like a man.

Then they were playing rats and cats, and she was the rat, curled up tight in their mother’s armoire and listening to Jaime putter about outside in the solar searching for her.

It was dark and she had stuffed herself into a pile of heavy cottons that were making it hard to breathe.

“I give up,” Jaime said, just as she was starting to get scared. “I miss you, Cersei. Come out. Let’s play something else.”

Four of her handmaidens burned. The Master of Whisperers, Varys, found her two girls without tongues to replace them.

At Casterly Rock, Jaime showed her the new litter of puppies and proudly presented each one to her, beaming as though he was the one that had whelped it.

“It doesn’t count until he’s kissed you,” he said, and made her introduce herself again and again to the silky, squirming runt of the litter because he kept nipping at her instead of licking.

Elinda Boggs burned and Cersei did not allow herself to wonder about the child.

Robert Baratheon won three battles in one day at Summerhall. A dozen traitors in the city watch burned. A scullery maid burned.

There was a soft, light snow falling outside the windows of the throne room, but Cersei didn’t see it. She stared directly at the pyre and she and Jaime caught snowflakes on their tongues in the gardens of the Rock. He stuffed a handful of snow down the back of her hood and she gave him a terrible smile that meant he should start running. They were young and still evenly matched, and they tussled and tumbled in the snow like the dogs that Jaime so adored. Her fingers went numb with cold and she hid her freezing nose in the warmth of his collar and felt his heartbeat in his throat.

Ser Gylbert Swyft burned. Once, almost two years ago, he had tried to kiss her. She ducked her head away so that his lips landed on her cheek instead, and he blushed and apologized.

--

That night, she dreamed. She closed her eyes and she was flying, up and out of the Red Keep, along the King’s Road, over the flat plains and wide rivers of the Crownlands to the craggy hills and mountains of the West. She heard the crashing of the sea and then below her was the Rock in all its glory, colossal and unchanged.

The Rock opened up for her like a music box and suddenly she could see through its massive walls of stone, and she was soaring along them until there she was in her childhood bedchambers. She knew without examination that they would be unchanged, her old dresses still hanging in the wardrobe and the same thick curtains and soft linens around the bed. She saw him, then, laying spread across it, eyes closed, and dreaming of her. She floated above him and looked down on the gold of his hair, the sharp line of his jaw, the strong muscles of his legs, and as she imagined him, building him piece-by-piece out of all the little parts that she knew as well and easy as her own palm, he opened his eyes and saw her.

His lips moved soundlessly, and though she couldn’t hear him, separated by three hundred leagues and three armies, she knew what he was saying.

“If they’ve hurt you,” Jaime swore, “I’ll kill them.”

--

When she couldn’t go away anymore, Jaime came to her. He floated away from the Rock as easily as she had left the Red Keep, always bound to reunite with the other half of his soul.

Alysanne was arrested one day at needlework.

“They really like their dragon cocks,” Jaime said idly, running his hand along a tapestry on the wall. “Look at this, there’s six of them.”

Alysanne was begging Cersei to tell them she had never said it, that she loved His Grace the King, that it was all a lie.

“He’s not quite as big as Balerion was supposed to be, though,” Jaime said. “Does that mean Balerion had seven? Eight?”

Hoster Tully declared for the rebels. Alysanne burned with the rest of them.

“Look at that!” Jaime crowed, “I told you Rykker was a rogue! He’s getting two of them at once.” It was true; Ser Jaremy Rykker was holding a woman’s hand tight in each of his own, one belonging to some dark-haired girl she didn’t know and the other to one of the many Whent cousins. Both girls’ eyes were squeezed tightly shut, and Rykker himself was looking away fixedly into the ribbed vaults of the ceiling.

“Yes, she’s prettier,” he agreed, looking more closely at the girls. “But she’s quite dark, the King hates those. I think I’d rather count on the Whent; it’s more likely to last.”

“Cuckoo,” he snapped his fingers in front of the Whent’s face, but she couldn’t hear him. “Tell me how lucky you are to be blonde.’”

The next man was being affixed to his pyre.

Robert Baratheon defeated Jon Connington at the Battle of the Bells. There was a purge in the castle. Cersei stood in the hallway as goldcloaks ransacked her room, cutting through her dresses looking for secret messages and rummaging through her belongings. They flipped through her letter box, but she had emptied it long ago, and only some old trinkets were left within it.

“He thinks there’s some treasure hidden inside,” Jaime laughed as one of the men palmed an old silver pomander, filled with musk to keep her clothes fresh-smelling. “Or maybe he’ll try wearing it around his neck instead of bathing.”

They thought for a second. “Or maybe he just wants the silver? If he’s going to melt it down, do you think he’ll know to take out the herbs first…?”

The envoy from Dorne vowed again and again that Prince Doran was gathering his troops, that of course Dorne was happy to fight for its throne and its King, and please, just a little more patience. The King demanded he produce at least the fifteen thousand spears that they had mustered for the War of the Ninepenny Kings by the moon’s turn, and the envoy stuttered and stumbled.

His whole delegation burned, and Jaime was beside her, whispering hotly in her ear: “What’s the difference between a Dornish diplomat and a viper?”

He watched her for a moment, then grinned smugly. “Oh, good, I was worried you’d tell me it was too soon for japes.” Then he paused. “Wait, I’m still thinking on it. Well, so, one has a forked tongue, and the other… well, they actually both have forked tongues.”

He was still working on the same joke as they began to beg for mercy.

“The viper only bites when you step on it; the diplomat bites when you shake his hand.”

“One is a cold-blooded creature that crawls in the mud… the other is a snake.”

“If you find a viper in your bedchamber, you call a guard. If you find the diplomat, you’d have to call a midwife.”

“Fine, you’re right, it’s worn out. How about this one: A Dornishman and a Northman are sharing a cell…”

--

The king summoned her to the throne room.

“Joanna,” he said. “I saw you smiling at the fire.”

There was a pyre in the center of the room and the ghostly green light of the flames was reflected in his eyes. “You’re a fiery one yourself, aren’t you?”

--

That night there were no handmaidens in her chambers. She understood why too late, when the King was already being announced and shuffling through the entryway towards her.

For half a heartbeat, Cersei considered – but no, there was Ser Barristan the Bold at her door in a white cloak and full armor, a bulwark of knighthood, and she remembered Jaime slamming into him and sending him crashing to the ground and thought bitterly, violently: he should have killed you. He didn’t meet her eyes.

If only, Cersei thought – just the once, just a moment of weakness. If only he had killed you or killed Rhaegar or vaulted off his horse and into the royal gallery and struck down the King and drawn that golden sword and covered it in blood and –

And Jaime stood above her and promised again and again and again I’ll kill him I’ll kill him I’ll kill him but when she tried to take his hand he faded away from her like fool’s gold. And he said Come to Casterly Rock with me come home to me come come come & I’ll embrace you and she tried, she tried, but she was still under the King and he was calling her her mother’s name and scratching at her with those nails like claws.

And she tried to go to Eel Alley with Jaime where she was waking him up again and again because she wanted more and more and he was saying wait, wait, I can’t yet and she said then please me in other ways and he said as my lady commands and the King was biting at her in the same place he had kissed her and Barristan Selmy was standing outside the door and Jaime was stronger than him so she was stronger than him too and she would not let him hear her cry, she would not cry.

Jaime said let’s count the coffers on the canopy frame and she counted one, two, three, four, she counted and counted and he said you missed one and they started again and if you were counting the seven-pointed stars there were one, two, three, four or you could count the gilded flowers too and he said I’m coming, Cersei, I promise, I’m coming and she reached for him again and again but every time her fingers touched him he melted away beneath them.

--

Sers Barristan Selmy and Jonothor Darry of the Kingsguard were sent to rally the crown armies after the disaster in the Battle of the Bells. Ser Gerold Hightower disappeared from the capital on some unnamed commission.

For a time, Ser Harlan Grandison was the only Kingsguard in the capital. Cersei came to know well the sound of his footsteps outside her door. Varys’s little spies were competent things and helped her hide the marks of it.

Then Prince Lewyn Martell returned from Dragonstone with the Princess Elia Martell and her children.

The little Prince Aegon turned one year old. He favored his father with his fair-hair and violet eyes, but was too skinny for a boy of his age.

“A poisonous seed, tainted blood,” Jaime said derisively.

The King was pleased, however, with the boy, and held him on the Iron Throne before the court, assembled as always for another burning. The Princess Rhaenys was not present. The King had publicly said that the girl “smelt Dornish.”

“You know what they say about dark-haired Targaryens. It’s a curse,” Jaime mused. “Our good King just can’t bear to get attached before he loses her.”

The new year came and went. Cersei counted the days, and then suddenly it had been a year since his last letter. The burnings continued; the rebels marched onwards.

Princess Elia began to hold her own court. Cersei attended with what remained of the Westerland ladies, played her games, dutifully laughed at her jokes, and cooed on command when Rhaenys babbled.

Jaime sat besides her, radiating warmth, as they sewed silk linings and Targaryen favors and oh so many funeral shrouds.

“I always hated when I had to sit in on these lessons,” he complained. “You would take my hawking lessons, remember? And that meant I’d be stuck trying to embroider lions over and over. The dragon’s even worse – how can you possibly fit three heads on that little thing?”

Then he tried to needle her into adding the missing six cocks.

She forgot herself and went to shove at him, and the empty seat was cold beneath her open hands.

These womanly courts were where Cersei had dominated the court, and the ladies of the keep remembered her well and deferred to her often. If people knew of how she served the King they spoke not of it. She hid what she could in scarves and shawls, and it was still winter, so there was nothing to it. If they were thinking of it, well, Cersei knew the power of a knowing smile, no matter how filthy it made her feel. Better thought wanton than weak.

Jaime never said anything about it in the light of day, either, no matter how he consoled her in the dark. It was false of him, of course, and Cersei knew it, but it was an indulgence she allowed herself because she could. Because he was her own creation.

Her face was a worthy shield, but Terressa Celtigar, one of the Queen’s ladies, once attempted to approach her.

“The Queen is doing very poorly,” she said as they walked the gardens, quiet and covert. “She cannot withstand the strength of His Grace’s passions in her illness. Perhaps you might – ”

Cersei fled rudely before she could finish. But the rest of the day the words haunted her and the next morning she stood an entire devotion in front of the Mother and then collapsed to her knees praying, begging as she hadn’t since she was a child missing her mother.

Fifty years, a hundred years to Rhaella Targaryen. Health to Rhaella Targaryen, please, please please.

She thought of Maggy the Frog and begged again: please don’t make me Queen.

The days passed, one after the next as was their ought, and then on one crisp day exactly like all the others, it finally happened. In the first days of the third moon of the two-hundred and eighty-third year, Prince Rhaegar returned to the capital.

Princess Elia was a different woman when he was announced, all ebullient laughter and clapping. She was almost skipping as she ran to him, calling to the ladies to greet their Prince with song. They did while Jaime watched, scoffing. Then Rhaegar took his wife in his arms and kissed her chastely before them. There was a feast for his return and he played the harp beautifully and sadly and no one asked where was the Lady Lyanna.

But Rhaegar took his father’s place in the throne room and the burnings slowed for a time, and Cersei was glad of him.

Even Elia’s court became less of a farce, as he brought with him tidings of the outer world that she dispersed drip by drip, knowing the power it gave her. She brought word of deaths, of shifting alliances, even sometimes a message from a relation. There was no word from the West.

“Oh, my dear, do stay,” Elia addressed her as the women were separating at mid-day.

Cersei curtseyed. Lelia and Melesa, her Lannisport cousins, lingered near the door, and she dismissed them with a nod. They were good girls, but she had preferred Alysanne. Only Prince Lewyn remained, Elia’s ever-present protector.

“I wished to speak with you,” Elia reached forward as though to take her hand. Cersei smiled and folded her hands before her. “I do think we should be friends.”

“I would like that, Your Grace,” Cersei said.

“It is difficult to be so alone in the capital. I wanted to reach out to you before, my dear. But now that the Prince is at home at last, things shall be easier for us. I am not alone anymore, and I do think you would like to have a companion as well.”

“Of course, Your Grace.”

“My goodfather the King is a prideful man, as is your lordly father. But they are friends of youth and all personal quarrels should desist when treason is at hand, do you not agree?”

The King had forgotten long ago that she was his hostage to use against her father. “Of course, Your Grace.”

“The Prince is writing him a letter,” Elia lowered her voice, falsely conspiratorial. “His envoys will deliver it personally, not by raven. Wouldn’t you like to add a message of your own? I thought we could write together.”

Cersei wrote as the Princess dictated. She asked her father to remember himself and his friendship to the crown, wrote that she was well and prayed every day for the health and unity of the Seven Kingdoms, and that she hoped to see her father soon again at court as was his place after victory over the rebels. “I am your always loving daughter and servant,” she signed it, “Cersei of House Lannister.” She imagined her father reading her message, his inscrutable green eyes hard and unmoved. She wondered if he would let Jaime read it. Doubtful. But he would know that she had written.

The Prince summoned her the next day for the same reason. He was silver and beautiful and had the same tragic melancholy as always on his face as he gazed out of the window. They were in the audience chambers of his apartments in Maegor’s Holdfast, and there was a pretty view of the mouth of the Blackwater Rush. The ice had begun to crack; spring was returning.

Ser Jonothor was at his back.

“My lady,” he addressed her. He was always polite. When he had lived in the Red Keep, before Elia and Dragonstone, Cersei had often made a game of arranging coincidental encounters with him. Now she saw what a child she had been, still unflowered, but eager and reaching in her ambitions. He had been perfunctory and uninterested, but never rude to her.

“The King has given me grace to appeal to your father. We are sending a party of envoys to the West. This is a delicate matter, and thus I would speak privily with you if you would not object.”

“Of course, Your Grace,” Cersei responded. She was tight with the awareness that now he was more dangerous to her than even the King, who saw nothing but her body in his madness.

“I will speak plainly, then,” he said. “I spoke with Lord Tywin last year, when my father sent him to deliver me to King’s Landing. We met not far from here. He didn’t understand my doings, and I confess we quarreled. He advised me against…”

Rhaegar trailed off, and Lyanna Stark’s name went unspoken. “Angry words were exchanged and he resigned his post. I wrote my father, of course, but he is a proud man, and took me amiss. He escalated the situation when he confined you to the capital, my lady. It was not well-done. Now, we must be conciliatory. So I ask you: speak for your Lord Father as my Princess Elia has spoken for her brother. Dornish spears now march to us, and we require the same of Casterly Rock. We are sorely in need of your father’s arms.”

She watched his hands as he spoke. He gesticulated with them often to emphasize his words. She had always found his hands entrancing, especially as they gripped at his harp. At Harrenhal, he had sung of Jenny of Oldstones, and she had been near tears watching him. Jaime had been jealous for attention, she remembered, and pinched her painfully under the table. She had discretely put her hand on his lap and distracted him, but watched Rhaegar and his hands all the while.

He had large hands with long, delicate fingers. The skin was smooth and unscabbed, the nails cut short and even. But she could see beyond those superficialities. They were his father’s hands. She wondered if he cared when his father’s hands did to his mother what they so often did to her. She couldn’t imagine that he did.

Jaime was a warm presence behind her shoulder, there to speak the thoughts she couldn’t voice even to herself.

“I wonder what those hands did to Lyanna Stark.”

“The position of the Hand, of course, belongs to your father,” Rhaegar continued. “Then, a marriage would be ideal. Viserys is too young now, but six years would not be so long a time. My children are spoken for, but we may perhaps find a way to bind the next generation. I would hear your thoughts on other roads of redress for old grievances.”

“Not all grievances are so old,” Cersei said. I came to King’s Landing a maiden, she did not say. In any case, she had not gone to the King as one.

Instead, she thought a moment. “There are other positions in the council, and at court. I have many relatives. But my father has been disappointed too many times. He would need guarantees.”

“Guarantees,” Rhaegar nodded seriously at her words, “A wardship, then.” He thought a bit. “There is place enough on my council for another Lannister man. And your brother is a fine young sword, he could find a strong position here.”

Not Jaime. Even in this pointless game, Cersei couldn’t stand for it.

“My youngest brother is a malformed imp,” she said. “A betrothal for him to a lady of high standing would ease that shame. My father has tried since his birth without success. If she were set to inherit, it would remove him from my father’s eyes.”

Rhaegar seemed pleased. He asked her several questions about her father’s brothers, then dismissed her graciously.

“Thank you, my lady. Your council has been well heard.”

He did not ask her how she thought his petition would be received, which was a shame. There he was, the Crown Prince of the Seven Kingdoms, haggling like a beggar over copper coins and thinking himself clever. Lannisters only dealt in gold.

She thought of the Reynes of Castamere, and of their heads, rotting along the walls all summer. It had been a long summer, glorious and golden.

My father will see you all dead and they will sing songs of the horror of it, she thought.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” she said.

No one spoke to her again of the envoys, but she knew all the same. The Rock was silent.

--

Rhaegar rode out from the Red Keep at the head of his army, a host of freshly-raised Crownlands levies, loyalist remnants from Connington’s armies, and ten-thousand Dornish spears.

He took with him three of the Kingsguard.

Elia weeped and wailed and threw herself on the ground in the throne room in front of the entire court. She held her little son tight against her chest, gripping her daughter and pulling the girl to the ground besides her. Both children were crying too.

“You cannot, you cannot!” she cried. “Take us with you. Send us to Dragonstone. Leave me the Dornish. Leave me Lewyn, at least. Husband! Rhaegar! You cannot leave us! You cannot!”

He could. He did.

I could have married you, Cersei thought, watching Rhaegar watch his wife. Then she prayed reflexively: fifty years, a hundred years, endless health for Rhaella Targaryen.

Rhaegar was frowning at the spectacle with his usual detached seriousness. He reached down for Elia’s hands but she pushed them away. He gave her another moment to compose herself, and then gestured with one hand.

A white cloak pulled Elia up and away, even as she beat at him and howled. Rhaenys and Aegon were torn from her, and Rhaegar studied them seriously while they screamed.

“My children.” His Kingsguard held them still and he kissed their little heads. Then they were removed and he addressed the court. “We must part from our families for some time. But soon we will return.”

--

The King was happy to be free of Rhaegar.

The Lord Hand Qarlton Chelsted burned.

--

Word reached the keep bit by bit, like a man limping back after battle while losing pieces of himself.

First, they heard that Prince Rhaegar had met Robert Baratheon, and that both forces were poised for battle. The new hand was a pyromancer and he dedicated a burning for Rhaegar’s army.

Then, they heard that Rhaegar was to ford the Trident and rout the Usurper. The King announced it with Prince Aegon sat on his lap on the Iron Throne. The boy cried.

After, they heard that Prince Rhaegar and the Usurper had both fallen in battle, but the rebel host was scattered. That was a whisper from the servants who had heard in the city.

Finally, they heard that Prince Rhaegar was dead, the Usurper lived, and his troops were marching on the city. Cersei knew not whence the word came, but within hours the whole keep was buzzing and panicked.

Gripping at the Iron Throne with his large, bony hands, grasping his throne so tight his palms bled, the King disinherited Rhaegar and his line in perpetuity for his treason. Queen Rhaella and Prince Viserys were packed off to Dragonstone without ceremony, to protect the new heir to the throne.

Elia summoned her and Cersei went.

There was a Lannister host marching on the capital. They had been marching for over a month and would be at the gates in less than a week. She hadn’t known. How could she have? Elia was the one to tell her.

“It will be a long regency, of course,” the Princess said. “But I am his mother. Your father will be the Hand, and it will have to satisfy him.”

Cersei listened to Elia dictate her terms and knew that she was as mad as the rest of them. If her father was marching on the city, there would be no negotiations.

“What banners are they flying? Is there a stag?”

“Just the lion,” Elia answered. “They will be here at least a day before the Usurper’s army. There are ten thousand men, maybe more. The city will hold easily until the rest of the Westerlands is mustered and Dornish reinforcements arrive. And when Tywin takes the city, Aerys must fall. With Aegon on the throne, we can come to terms with the rebels.”

They fly the lion, Cersei thought, feeling wild and treasonous.

“Aegon was disinherited,” she said. “Viserys would be king.”

“Viserys is a willful little boy without ties to any of the other realms,” Elia said. The Princess had clearly foreseen this rebuff and was pleased with her planned response. “My brother would not send our full strength for Aerys after Rhaegar shamed me, but there are nearly twenty-thousand Dornishmen ready to muster to march north, and my other brother Oberyn is in the Free Cities to hire sellswords. Perhaps the Second Sons. The new King will have need of those men.”

It was a rare sight, but Elia was beautiful when she smiled. She reached for Cersei’s hand and Cersei gave it to her, watching it tremble. They fly the lion.

“Our mothers wanted us to be sisters,” Elia said. “Do you remember? Oberyn and I visited Casterly Rock once when we were young.”

“I remember,” Cersei said. Her mother’s wailing, the deformed little thing that ripped its way out of her. The blood and the horror. She remembered it well. The Dornish party had arrived less than three months later.

“My brother would make a fine husband,” Elia said. “In Dorne, some things are different. No one will judge you for what you have suffered here.”

Another beggar, counting coppers. The throne in exchange for a fine marriage of a spoiled girl to a second son.

“How kind,” Cersei said. “Your Grace, your tidings have excited me, I fear. I must seek my chambers.”

She did not wait to be dismissed.

There was a Lannister army marching on the capital and flying a lion, but Queen Rhaella was gone and Cersei was alone with the King.

There was, of course, Ser Harlan in his white cloak. But he was a cloak and not a man, and when he was there, she was always alone.

When she was weak, she reached for Jaime. He faded like a mirage and she whispered to the ghost of him I love you I love you I love you.

--

She knew what happened to girls when men took keeps. She knew what happened to queens and princesses when men took keeps. But Cersei was not a queen or a princess or a girl, she was more. She was a half of a whole, like a bow and its string, taut with tension before the release. The string was drawn, torn away from the bow, and now it would snap back home, bringing death on a swift arrow.

She thought of Elia. Your husband will not come for you. Your brothers will not come for you. Jaime will come for me.

--

The King summoned her for the last time. He was standing on the steps in front of the Iron Throne with his last white cloak and his council. Pycelle and Varys were arguing.

“You can trust the Lannisters,” Pycelle said. “The Lannisters have always been true friends of the crown.”

“We have his girl,” the King said. He beckoned her towards him and ran a long nail across her neck. His breath was rancid on her face. “Is it true, girl? What has he written, what schemes has he concocted? Answer me!”

There was an empty pyre before the throne. Waiting.

Cersei curtseyed deeply and met the King’s wild eyes. Behind him, there was a flash of gold.

Jaime was sitting on the Iron Throne.

He was wearing a helm fashioned in the shape a lion’s head, and his golden armor glittered in the light. The sword laying across his lap was red with blood. He leaned back, legs spread casually, and she saw that he was wearing a white cloak.

“I’m here,” he said. He smiled and it was like cut glass. “Are you?”

“Lord Tywin has lived only to be your dearest friend, Your Grace,” Cersei said. “I know he must be so happy at the honor you have bestowed upon me.”

“Honor?” The King asked. He examined her face like it was the first time, grabbed her chin viciously and narrowed his eyes.

Cersei smiled at Jaime.

“Oh,” the King said. “Oh. Joanna.”

“Shall we greet him together?” she asked.

“He will sack the city and give it to the Usurper,” Varys hissed.

“Enough!” The King said. “Tywin is my friend. Open the gates and send for him. We will await the rebels together, and then I will show him… Fetch me Rossart when he comes.”

He shuffled towards his throne.

--

Jaime, she thought. Jaime, do not dally.

--

The army was visible from the height of the keep, a mass of colorful, drifting mobs, the metal of their armor shining and glittering as it reflected the sun.

The gates, she thought, might already be open.

Within the keep, Elia was gathering the women for Maegor’s.

“My dear, you must come with us,” she said, gripping Cersei’s hand tightly. “There is always disorder at times such as these, and it is safest to wait for cooler heads.”

There was no white cloak behind her.

“No,” Cersei said. She wrenched back her hand.

“It is not safe!”

“My father’s men will not hurt me,” Cersei said. But that was why Elia wanted her. It didn’t matter. Prince Lewyn was dead and the men-at-arms were not hers to command. “No.”

Cersei turned away. There was a flurry of movement behind her, and Lelia Lannister was at her side.

“Wait for me, cousin,” she said, and then a gaggle of women detached itself from Elia’s crowd and the Westerlands were behind her. Cersei was ready to go home.

They waited in the Tower of the Hand. The Lady’s apartments still bore the impression of Chelsted’s late wife. They settled into the audience hall, sitting near the windows for a view of the city. They closed the door but did not bolt it, and hung a cloak with a large Lannister sigil from above its head jamb and another out of one of the windows. Two girls ran to hang all the crimson they had along the staircases and entryways to the Tower. In the distance, she could make out a haze of rising smoke, but what they could see was still calm.

Someone began to sing to the Mother.

The city was quiet.

Perhaps Elia was leading her women in prayer. Cersei was not the Princess and not the Queen, and was fiercely glad of it. She stared blankly out the window and waited, even when she began to hear restless murmurings about her. Lelia tried several times to start some kind of guessing game, but it kept fizzling out.

There was panic in the city beneath them, but no soldiers.

Cersei waited.

There was a loud crash from somewhere down below that sent them all jumping to their feet and for a second she thought – but then there was silence.

She waited.

There was shouting and slamming and the ring of metal against metal. They were on the stairs, in the hallway, and then the door flung open and a crowd of soldiers burst through in a shock of crimson cloaks. One of them strode forward and his armor was golden, and his helm was golden, and it glittered in the reflecting rays of the morning sun, shining like he did at Harrenhal.

Jaime ripped his maned helm aside and – what if, what if – she stood there stupidly. What if she reached for him and he was gone.

It had been so long that she had forgotten. Jaime always came to her.

Jaime always came to her and then there he was, slamming into her, and there she was, crashing gracelessly against him, and he was holding her. Strong and steady and solid against her.

Jaime had always been warm in her dreams, but now he was made of cold steel, and where he was warm it was with the stickiness of blood. There were crimson streaks on his golden armor, the Lannister sigil writ into history: blood and gold.

He pressed her against his side, half under his arm, tight against his breastplate with his rerebrace biting into her back. She held him so tight it hurt, and if he wasn’t in armor she would have been able to hear his heartbeat, or maybe she did hear it, loud in her head, throbbing too fast in time with her own.

His breath, at least, was hot against her ear. He spoke low and quick, but she couldn’t hear him over the blood in her ears. There was something about his voice, something not right, so she pushed herself back to look at him, and – oh, she thought, because his voice was lower, and he was broader in the shoulders and taller, and there was a light golden stubble across his chin. His hair was dark where it was wet and matted with sweat and shorter than it had been. He was real.

She pulled her hand back from where it gripped across his breastplate. It was sticky with blood.

“Look at me,” Jaime was repeating. “It’s over.”

He took her wet hand in his cold metal gauntlet. They both looked at the blood there.

“It’s over,” he said. “It’s the King’s.”