Arya was the one who started it.
They hadn't even sat down yet. Sansa was still smoothing her skirts, arranging herself in her chair. Septa Mordane was pouring watered wine. Ned was staring at a roasted fowl. And Arya, who had already claimed the seat directly across from Jon, looked at him and said, very casually, "Your eye is twitching."
Jon touched his face. "No it isn't."
"It is. The left one. It's been doing it since you sat down."
"That's the stitches. They pull."
"It makes you look like you're winking at everyone."
"I'm not winking at anyone."
"You winked at the serving girl when she brought the bread."
"I did not wink at the serving girl."
"She blushed."
Sansa looked up from her skirts. "Did you actually wink at a serving girl?"
"No."
"He did," Arya said. "She nearly dropped the honey."
Jon turned to Ned, who was now watching this exchange with a look of amusement. "Father, I did not wink at anyone."
Ned picked up a piece of bread. "There is nothing wrong with winking at girls that you like Jon."
Jon groaned while Arya let out a giggle.
The meal was simple. Roasted fowl pulled apart on a serving platter, brown bread that was decent, boiled eggs, a dish of honey, and the watered wine that Septa Mordane kept sipping. The Tower of the Hand's private dining chamber was small enough that Jon could have reached across and touched the far wall, with a narrow window that let in the noise of the city below: vendors shouting, carts rattling over cobblestones, and somewhere in the distance the bright note of a trumpet testing itself before the tourney.
Jon sat closest to the door. He'd been sitting closest to the door at every meal since he started sitting here, which he told himself was habit and not paranoia. His ribs ached with each breath if he breathed too deeply, and his shoulder was a grinding mess that screamed whenever he lifted his arm past his ear. He'd managed to get dressed without help this morning, which had taken twenty minutes and nearly made him pass out twice, but he counted it as a victory.
"So," Sansa said, and from her tone, he knew she was about to start a conversation. "The jousting."
"Here we go," Arya muttered, stabbing a boiled egg.
Sansa ignored her. "I heard Ser Loras is riding a white mare. White as snow, with a silver mane braided with actual roses. Roses, Jon. In a horse's mane."
"I've heard," Jon said.
"Is it true? You'd know. You're friends with him."
Jon took a bite of bread and chewed slowly, buying himself a moment. He was friends with Loras, or something close to it. They'd sparred together, shared a few meals, talked about swordwork and horses and the sort of things young men talked about. Loras was good company. Charming, funny, better with a lance than anyone Jon had ever seen, and not half as vain as people assumed.
"It's true," Jon said. "Though I think the roses were his grandmother's idea, not his."
Sansa's eyes went wide. "You've seen the horse?"
"I've seen the horse."
"And?"
"It's a horse, Sansa. It has four legs and a tail. It eats hay."
Sansa gave him the look. The one that said he was being deliberately obtuse and she would not tolerate it. "Is it beautiful?"
"It's a very handsome horse," Jon conceded. "Loras takes good care of him."
"Ser Loras," Sansa corrected automatically, then caught herself. "I mean. You call him Loras? Just Loras?"
"He asked me to."
Sansa stared at him for a long moment. Jon could practically see the machinery turning behind her eyes, building toward a request that she hadn't quite figured out how to phrase yet. He went back to his bread.
"Do you think," Sansa began, her voice had never sounded sweeter, Jon was sure she was dripping honey from her mouth, "that you could introduce me?"
Arya snorted so hard that a piece of egg came out of her nose.
"Arya!" Septa Mordane looked horrified. "Ladies do not act like that in the table."
"I didn't mean to," Arya said, wiping her face with her sleeve, which made the Septa look even more horrified.
Jon was trying very hard not to laugh, because laughing made his ribs hurt, and also because Sansa was watching him like a hawk. She'd gone slightly pink.
"I could introduce you," Jon said. "But Loras is going to be busy today. Jousting and all that."
"After the jousting, then."
"Maybe. If there's time."
Sansa smiled, the biggest smile she had ever given to Jon, and Jon felt much worse in that moment. She didn't know any of it. Didn't know about Cersei's plots, about the danger they were sitting in, about the fact that Lord Stark was quietly arranging their flight from the capital. She was dreaming about meeting a knight who braided roses into his horse's mane, planning what she'd say to Joffrey if the prince glanced her way from the royal box, building castles in her head out of songs and dreams.
She didn't know that her brother wasn't her brother.
Jon took a drink to force himself to think of something else.
"I suppose Jaime Lannister will compete as well," Sansa continued, apparently satisfied with the Loras situation for now. "Everyone says he's magnificent on horseback."
"Everyone says a lot of things about Jaime Lannister," Ned said quietly.
Sansa pivoted without missing a beat. "What about the hedge knights? Jeyne Poole said there's one from the Reach who fights with a morningstar from horseback. She said he's nearly as handsome as Ser Loras."
"Nobody is as handsome as Ser Loras," Arya said in a pitch-perfect imitation of Sansa's voice. "He's the most beautiful knight in all the Seven Kingdoms and I want to brush his hair and feed his horse and have his babies."
"I have never said that."
"You said almost exactly that two nights ago. I was in the next room. The walls aren't thick."
Sansa turned scarlet. "I was talking to Jeyne."
"Yeah, I know. I could hear Jeyne too. She agreed with you, by the way. She also thinks his eyes are like pools of amber honey, which is a stupid thing to say because honey isn't amber, it's gold."
"Amber honey is a variety of—"
"The jousting begins after midday," Ned said, cutting through the noise. He set his knife down and looked around the table. "We will attend. All of us. The Hand's family is expected to be present."
Sansa straightened in her chair, practically vibrating. "Will we be in the royal box?"
"We will sit where we're placed."
"But last time—"
"We will sit where we're placed, Sansa."
She nodded, still glowing. The prospect of being seen at the tourney was enough to smooth over any disappointment about seating.
Arya, meanwhile, had abandoned her egg and was building something out of bread fragments. Possibly a castle. Possibly a catapult. Most likely a catapult. "Can I watch from the commoners' stands instead?" she asked without looking up.
"No," Ned said.
"Syrio says the angle from the box distorts the—"
"No. You'll sit with your sister and the Septa."
"But—"
"You'll behave yourself, Arya."
"Behaving myself is the worst."
Ned looked exhausted, and Jon, for a moment, thought Lord Stark would much rather deal with a war than with Arya and Sansa. "I need all of you to be seen today. Smiling, courteous, enjoying the spectacle. We are the Hand's household and we'll conduct ourselves as such."
The instruction was aimed at the table. The meaning underneath was aimed at Jon.
"I have business to attend to in the city this afternoon," Ned continued. "After I've been seen at the jousting, there are meetings I can't postpone. Jory will be with me."
"When the jousting ends for the day," Ned said, "you come directly back to the Tower. No stops. No side trips." He looked at Arya. "No chasing cats."
"I don't chase cats," Arya said, but everyone on that table knew it was a lie.
"Harwin and Alyn will escort you. Do as they say."
Septa Mordane nodded. "Very sensible, my lord. The streets after a tournament day can be quite rough. Drunken men, sellswords spending their coin. No place for young ladies."
"Or injured brothers," Sansa added, looking at Jon with concern, which was rare to see from Sansa. "Are you sure you should be going? You still look awful."
"Thank you, Sansa."
"I didn't mean it like that. I mean you look pale."
"I always look pale. I'm from the North."
"You know what I mean. Septa, don't you think Jon should stay and rest?"
The Septa folded her hands. "I do, in fact. Lord Jon, the Maester was quite clear about extended bed rest. Attending a tournament in your condition seems reckless, if you'll pardon me saying so."
Jon set down his bread. "I appreciate the concern, truly. But I've spent enough time staring at my ceiling. I've counted every crack in the stone. I've named the cobwebs. There's one in the corner I've been calling Gerald. If I spend another full day in that room I'll start having conversations with Gerald, and I think we can all agree that would be worse."
Arya pointed her knife at Jon. "He fought the Mountain and lived. He can sit on a bench."
"He nearly died fighting the Mountain," Sansa said. "That's rather the point."
"And now he's sitting at a table eating bread like a normal person. I think he can handle a bench."
Sansa turned back to Jon. "Will the scar heal properly?" She was studying the gash above his eyebrow, looking at them the same way she looked at stitches. "It's still very red."
Jon touched the line of stitches. Rough thread against rough skin. "I hope not."
"You hope not?"
"Scars make better stories."
Sansa wrinkled her nose. "You sound like Theon."
"Take that back."
The laugh came out of Arya, and even Ned's mouth moved at the corner. For a moment, the table felt like Winterfell.
"Speaking of your face," Arya said casually, popping a piece of bread into her mouth. "Has anyone told you that your eyes have been getting more purple lately?"
Jon's stomach dropped.
"They've always been that color," Ned said evenly, not looking up from his plate. "The light in the south is different. Makes them look more violet than grey."
"They don't look grey at all anymore," Arya said. "They look purple. Like proper purple. Sansa, you see it too, right?"
Sansa leaned across the table and peered at Jon's face. Jon resisted the urge to lean back. "They are quite striking," Sansa admitted. "Very unusual. Almost violet."
"It's the light," Ned said again, and this time there was a note of finality in his voice that even Arya recognized. She shrugged and went back to her bread fortress.
Jon kept his eyes on his plate. His heart was hammering.
"Well, whatever color they are," Sansa said, settling back, "they're lovely. Loras will probably comment on them. He notices things like that."
"Can we stop talking about my eyes?"
"I'm just saying. When you introduce me to him, try not to stand too close. You'll steal all the attention."
Jon blinked. "I'll steal the attention. From Loras Tyrell. At a jousting tournament. While limping on crutches with stitches in my face."
Sansa gave him a look that suggested he was being stupid on purpose. "Jon. You're very handsome. I know you don't think about it, but other people notice. Half the girls at the feast were staring at you."
"They were staring at the stitches."
"They were not staring at the stitches."
"They were absolutely staring at the stitches."
Arya looked between them. "They were staring at his arse, actually. I heard two of them talking about it near the wine table."
"Arya!" Septa Mordane looked ready to faint. "A lady does not repeat such vulgarities."
"I'm not repeating a vulgarity. I'm reporting an observation. There's a difference."
"There is not."
"Maester Luwin says observation is the foundation of all knowledge."
"Maester Luwin was not talking about young men's backsides!"
Jon buried his face in his hands, which hurt his stitches, which made him wince, which made Arya laugh, which made Sansa laugh.
The meal wound down after that. Sansa excused herself to check her hair one final time. Septa Mordane followed, already offering opinions about ribbon placement that Sansa received like they were battle plans. Arya lingered, tearing her bread into smaller and smaller fragments, building or destroying something on her plate.
She caught Jon's eye when nobody else was looking. RedHeart?
Jon gave her the smallest nod. Barely a movement.
"Arya," Ned said. "Go find your cloak. It may rain."
"It's not going to rain."
"Find your cloak."
She sighed hard enough to move the candle flame, but she went.
The door closed.
Jon sat with what remained of his breakfast and thought about whether attending the jousting was wise. He remembered Jaime's warning: Cersei wanted him dead. The Mountain had already tried once in the melee. The jousting grounds would be packed, chaotic, easy to arrange something that looked like an accident. A stray horse. A falling beam. A knife in a crowd.
But staying behind in the Tower while everyone else was gone might be worse. Alone, isolated, with half the household guard at the tourney. Easier to reach.
He decided the crowd was the lesser danger. Public eyes, guards, thousands of witnesses. Harder to kill someone in the open.
His mind went to Cersei before he could stop it.
Winterfell. Firelight. Her golden hair spread across his pillow. Her fingers on his jaw, her green eyes holding him. She whispered his name. Jon. Quiet and close, like a secret, her breath warm on his neck. He'd believed it. Every gasp, every arch of her back, every fist in his hair. He was young still and she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen and he had believed every second of it like a fool.
Then the Trident. The mask off. Her eyes turned to ice as she threatened his sisters. The realization, too late and all at once, that she'd seen a dead prince in his face and decided to chase the ghost. Everything in his bed had been a séance.
Now she wanted him dead. The same hands. The same mouth that said his name in the dark.
Jon waited for the sting. Searched for betrayal, for the bitter residue of something that felt real turning out to be hollow.
Nothing.
There was nothing there. There never had been.
He'd wasted enough nights lying awake, turning those memories over, looking for some sliver of genuine feeling in the performance. He was done looking.
I chose my family. I'd make the same choice every time. And I won't grieve over a woman who would murder a boy for bruising her son's pride.
Ned stood. The scrape of his chair on stone was loud in the quiet room.
"Stay close to the guards," Ned said.
"I will."
"Don't wander."
"I won't."
"If anything feels wrong, you leave. Don't wait for me. Take your sisters and come back here."
"I know."
Ned held his gaze. Jon held it back.
Jon pushed himself to his feet. He felt glass shards cutting through his ribs. He breathed through it. His crutches were leaning against the wall where he'd left them. He grabbed them, settled them under his arms, and started toward the door.
Cersei Lannister
The bolt slides home with a heavy click. Cersei presses her palm flat against the door and holds it there, feeling the oak grain bite into her skin.
"Finally," she breathed.
The handmaidens are gone. Every last simpering one of them, with their clumsy fingers and their sideways glances and their pathetic attempts to read her mood. She'd dismissed them an hour earlier than usual, claiming a headache. They'd curtsied and shuffled out and she'd wanted to scream at how slowly they moved.
She crosses to the bed and sits on its edge. Her silk shift clings to her body, damp at the small of her back where the heat of the day still hasn't released its grip. She reaches up and pulls the pins from her hair, one by one, letting golden curls fall heavy across her shoulders.
"I should get ready for the day," she murmured to no one.
She doesn't get ready. She lies back against the pillows and stares at the canopy above her and her mind does what it has been doing every night for weeks.
Jon Snow.
"Stop it," she hissed through her teeth. Her fingers curl into the sheets at her sides.
You ordered the Mountain to split him open. You watched him bleed in the dirt. You are done with him, she thought to herself.
Her body is not done with him. Her body has never once cared what her mind decided.
She rolls onto her side. The silk pulls tight across her breasts, her nipples already stiff, and she hates the way her skin prickles at the friction. She is Cersei Lannister. She is the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. She does not lie awake aching for some Northern bastard who chose a scrawny little wolf girl over her.
"He is nothing," she breathed. "A dead prince's leftover seed. Lyanna Stark's parting gift to the world. He is nothing."
Her hand moves to her breast before she gives it permission. She cups the heavy swell of it through the silk, her thumb dragging across her nipple, and her breath catches.
Think of Jaime, she thought to herself. Think of Jaime. Golden Jaime. Your twin, your mirror, your other half.
She closes her eyes and summons him. The gold of his hair. The sharp green of his eyes. The way his eyes turn black when he wants her. She holds the image, grips it, forces it to stay.
It doesn't stay.
The gold darkens. Curl by curl, strand by strand, until the hair falling across the forehead above her is black as raven feathers. The green bleeds out of the eyes, and purple blood fills the eyes like a wound. His face changed, turning younger, more handsome, and his grin...
"No," she hissed.
Jon's face, clear as firelight. Those purple eyes looking up at her the way they did in Winterfell, wide and stunned and so painfully sincere it made her chest hurt.
Her hand tightens on her breast. She squeezes hard, fingers sinking into the soft flesh, and feels her nipple stiffen further against her palm. She remembers his mouth there. His lips closing around the peak, sucking until she gasped, his tongue doing something wicked.
He learned fast, she thought to herself, and the memory sends a pulse of wet heat between her thighs that makes her press them together.
She remembers his body. Not the way it looked in the melee, broken and bleeding, the Mountain's handiwork carved into him. Before that. Winterfell. Lean and hard, not yet fully grown but already built like a fighter, the long muscles of his back shifting under her hands as he moved above her. Scars even then, training scars, a nick on his ribs from a sword that slipped, and she'd traced each one with her tongue while he shivered.
There was nothing boyish about him, she thought to herself. Not where it mattered.
Her other hand slides down her stomach. The silk bunches under her fingers. She doesn't push it aside yet. She lets her hand rest on her lower belly, feeling the heat radiating upward, and hates herself for what she's about to do.
She remembers the first night. He was wearing a thin tunic and breeches and she could already see the effect she was having on him, the fabric tenting at his groin.
"Your Grace," he'd stammered, and she'd put a finger to his lips and pushed him backward into the room.
He'd been nervous. Shaking, his hands unsteady when she guided them to the laces of her gown. But the nervousness burned away fast. Faster than she'd expected. The moment her dress pooled at her feet and he saw her naked, something changed. The beast in his chest roared with life. A beast that every man has.
He'd gripped her hips. Pulled her against him. His fingers dug into the curves of her with desperate strength, hard enough to leave marks she'd find in the morning, and his mouth found her neck and he made a sound against her skin.
That sound, she thought to herself. Her fingers slide beneath the silk.
She remembers how he looked at her. Not with Robert's drunken entitlement, that sweating, grunting, graceless rutting that she endured with her eyes closed and her mind elsewhere. Not with Jaime's possessive hunger. Jon looked at her like he couldn't quite believe she was real. Like she was something holy and terrifying and he wanted to worship at her altar even if it killed him.
Her fingers find the slick heat between her thighs. She's already wet. Soaked, actually, the folds of her cunt swollen and aching, and she hates it, hates it, hates how much her cunt loves the thought of him.
She slides two fingers along the length of her slit, gathering the wetness, spreading it upward to her clit. The first touch sends a jolt through her that makes her hips buck off the bed.
In her mind, it's Jon's hand. Jon's fingers, long and calloused from the sword, rougher than hers, sliding through her folds. She remembers how he touched her the second night, bolder, more certain, his fingers inside her while his thumb worked her clit in tight circles and his mouth sucked hard at her nipple. She'd come so fast it shocked her. She never came fast. Not with Robert. Rarely with Jaime. But Jon found every spot like he had a map drawn on the inside of his eyelids.
"Gods," she breathed, her fingers quickening.
She imagines him above her. Those purple eyes burning down into hers, dark curls falling across his forehead, sweat on his collarbones. His body pressing hers into the mattress, the weight of him, all lean muscle and hot skin, pinning her beneath him. The heat of him. Gods, the heat. He always ran so warm, like he had swollen a dragon. Lying beneath him was like lying in front of a hearth, wrapped in warmth that soaked through her bones.
Her fingers push inside herself. Two, then three, curling upward, and she bites down on her lower lip, and the taste of blood makes her moan.
"His cock," she thought to herself, and the crudeness of it in her own mind makes her flush even hotter.
She thinks about his cock. Thick and hard and flushed dark with blood, bigger than she'd expected for his age, stretching her open when he pushed inside her for the first time. The sound he made, a ragged groan pulled from somewhere deep in his chest, his forehead dropping to her shoulder, his whole body trembling with the effort of holding still. She'd wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him deeper and whispered "move" against his ear, and he'd obeyed her.
She can almost feel him now. Buried to the hilt inside her, the thickness of him filling her, splitting her open in that way that walked the perfect line between too much and not enough. His hips pulling back, the drag of his cock along her inner walls, then driving forward again. Hard enough to move the bed. Hard enough to make her grab the headboard. Hard enough to make her forget, for a few desperate minutes, every cold and calculated thing she'd ever done.
Her hips arch off the mattress. Her fingers pump faster, the heel of her palm grinding against her clit with each stroke. Her other hand is still on her breast, squeezing, pulling at the nipple through the silk, twisting it the way he twisted it, rough and gentle at the same time, like he wanted to devour her but was afraid she'd break.
She imagines his voice in her ear. Low and rough, stripped of courtesy, stripped of reverence, stripped of everything but raw need. Not "Your Grace." Not "my Queen." Just her name.
"Cersei."
The way he said it when he was close. When the pretense fell away and they were just skin and heat and need, and his thrusts went uneven and his breathing shattered and he pressed his face into the curve of her neck and said her name like a prayer.
"Cersei."
Her back arches. Her breath comes in sharp, stuttered gasps, each one shorter than the last. She bites down on her knuckle, teeth sinking into the flesh, because even alone, even behind a bolted door in her own chambers, a queen cannot be heard making the sounds Jon Snow pulled from her.
She thinks of his eyes. Those purple eyes fixed on hers while he fucked her, never looking away, never closing, holding her gaze with a ferocity that terrified her because no one had ever looked at her like that during the act.
Her orgasm hits like a fist.
It rips through her from the base of her spine, crashing upward, and her body goes rigid, her legs locked straight, her toes curling into the sheets. A moan of pleasure escapes her throat.
The pleasure rolls through her in waves, each one pulling another spasm from her cunt around her own fingers, and she rides it, her hips jerking, her chest heaving, until it crests and breaks and recedes like a tide pulling back from shore.
She lies there. Panting. Flushed from her cheeks to her chest, the silk shift rucked up around her waist, her thighs slick, her hand still buried between her legs. The canopy above her swims in and out of focus.
"I hate you," she breathed.
She doesn't mean Robert. She doesn't mean Jaime. She doesn't mean Ned Stark or any of the small men who crowd her life with their small ambitions.
She means the boy with the purple eyes who chose a nine-year-old wolf over a queen.
She pulls her hand free. Her fingers glisten. She wipes them on the sheet with a violent, disgusted motion, then rolls onto her side and draws her knees up to her chest.
He chose her, she thought to herself. That skinny, filthy, horse-faced little creature. She threatened him, and he looked Cersei in the eye and chose the girl. Without hesitation. Without a single glance backward.
Her cunt still throbs. The aftershocks pulse through her in diminishing waves, each one a reminder. Her body doesn't care about pride. Her body wants his hands on her hips again, his weight pressing her into the mattress, his cock buried so deep inside her she can feel him in her throat.
I want him dead, she thought to herself.
She curls tighter.
I want him dead and I want him inside me and I want to look into those purple eyes while he fucks me and I want to watch the light leave them.
She squeezes her eyes shut. Her hand drifts between her thighs again. She catches herself and pulls it back and presses it flat against the mattress.
"You are the Queen," she hissed. "You are the lioness of Casterly Rock. You do not beg for scraps from bastard boys."
Her hand moves again. This time she doesn't stop it.
"One more," she thought to herself, already sliding her fingers through the mess between her legs. "Just one more, and then I'm done. Then I'll forget his face."
She won't forget his face. She knows this. She's known it since Winterfell, since the moment she looked across the Great Hall and saw Rhaegar Targaryen's ghost sitting at the end of the table with snow in his hair and his mother's long Northern face softened by his father's impossible beauty.
Her fingers find her clit again. She closes her eyes.
Purple eyes look back at her.
She doesn't fight it this time. She lets him in, lets the memory take her, and her lips part on a name she won't say aloud.