~ 💎 WEEKLY POWER GOALS 💎🔥 60→1ch | 100→2ch | 200→5ch ⏰ Resets Monday! Thanks!
King's Landing. The Queen Mother's chambers.
Cersei Lannister lay submerged in a tub of scalding water, rose petals drifting across the surface.
She kept her eyes closed, letting the heat pour into her, trying to burn away the cold seeping up from somewhere deeper than bone.
It didn't work.
Joffrey's eyes, venom-soaked and vicious, were still buried in her chest like a blade.
"You are nothing but a woman with no shame!"
"A slut who seduces her own family!"
"What makes you any different from the whores in the brothels who sell their bodies for coin?!"
Ungrateful wretch.
The son she had spent her entire life loving, protecting, paving every road for — and he had torn her apart with the cruelest words he could find.
And then there was her father. Tywin Lannister. That man who was always calm. Always right.
For the sake of family interests, he was selling her again , like a broodmare put up for auction. The same way he'd sold her to Robert, now he was selling her to the Tyrells of Highgarden.
In her son's eyes, she was a shameless whore.
In her father's eyes, she was livestock to be bred on command, exchanged for political gain.
She had survived tragedy. She had thought the nightmare was finally over. And now it was starting again.
What had any of it been for?
For Jaime, she had carried the most vicious slander the world had to offer.
For Joffrey, she had poured out everything she had, endured Robert Baratheon's humiliation and his cold cruelty without flinching.
For the glory of House Lannister, she had staked everything she was on this game of power.
And what had she gotten?
Jaime was in the North, and he had chosen to fight for Lynn.
Joffrey hated her with his whole rotten heart and had used that hate to shred the last shred of dignity she had as his mother.
Her father , the man she had spent her life revering, the man whose approval she had wanted more than anything , had pushed her into another fire without a second thought.
Marry Loras Tyrell?
Who in King's Landing didn't know what the Knight of Flowers kept hidden beneath those pretty silks? He liked men. He loved Renly Baratheon. She was supposed to marry a man who enjoyed being on the wrong end of another man's lance?
That was more humiliating than marrying a goat.
Tywin wouldn't care. It made no difference to him which way Loras preferred his pleasures.
All he needed was the seed.
As long as she could get pregnant, what did anything else matter?
Cersei's body shook.
Those green eyes, once blazing with pride, were ash now. Dead and gray.
No.
She would not accept this.
Cersei Lannister, Queen Mother of the Seven Kingdoms, the most beautiful woman in Westeros , was she really only worth this?
She refused.
She shoved herself upright from the tub. Water crashed to the floor.
In the mirror, a mature, full-bodied woman looked back at her. Still the kind of body that could drive any man out of his mind.
She stared at herself.
This body that the devil Lynn had conquered in the most brutal way imaginable.
Lynn.
The name surfaced, and with it , fear, shame, resentment. And something else. Something darker. A thread of morbid wanting she refused to name even to herself.
That man had come into her life like a true dragon, all force and arrogance, and torn every last piece of her pride to shreds.
He had possessed her. Humiliated her. Threatened her.
But he had also... acknowledged her.
Not as a Queen Mother. Not as a Lannister pawn. In his eyes she was a woman , simply that. A woman more beautiful than others. A woman whose body he wanted. A woman worth conquering.
That undisguised, uncomplicated desire had made her feel, for the first time in longer than she could remember, like a person and not a bargaining chip.
"Your body belongs to me. Only me. From now until forever."
That low, commanding voice came back to her now.
It had terrified her when he said it. Humiliated her.
But now, with the news of her next marriage ringing in her ears, that absurd, unreasonable declaration echoed like the sweetest vow she had ever heard.
She was his.
Even if she was nothing more than a toy he'd grown tired of , she was his toy. His alone. No one else had any right to touch her.
Her father had no right to sell her to anyone.
Cersei's hand moved, unbidden, sliding downward...
"Lynn..."
A wild idea took root in her mind and spread before she could stop it.
Run.
She had to get out of this cage.
She would go to the North. She would find him. She would tell him herself that she hadn't betrayed him , that she had paid a price for their agreement that he couldn't begin to imagine. Maybe he would take pity on her. Maybe he would want her again.
Either way, anything was better than being handed off to a man who'd sooner bed Renly Baratheon than look at her.
Cersei snapped into motion. She didn't stop for a towel. She threw open the wardrobe and hauled gown after gown out, dropping them in heaps across the floor.
She needed a disguise.
She dug through everything until she found them , buried at the very bottom of the wardrobe, forgotten for years. Plain servant's dresses from her girlhood, ones she had secretly worn to slip out of Casterly Rock unnoticed.
Her hands were shaking as she pulled on the linen dress. It didn't fit anymore , too tight across the shoulders, too short at the hem. She wrapped a headscarf tight around her golden hair, burying every strand of it.
The woman in the mirror was a stranger. Small. Lowly.
But her eyes were burning.
She emptied her jewelry box , every gold dragon, every gem she could carry , and stuffed it all into a plain cloth bag.
She knew the Red Keep's secret passages. Aegon Targaryen's legacy: tunnels that branched and wound beneath every wall of the castle. She had stumbled onto one of the entrances years ago, right behind the fireplace in her chambers.
If she could make it out of the Red Keep, she could disappear into the crowded streets of King's Landing. Then find a ship. White Harbor. The North.
She had it all mapped out.
Cersei took one breath, deep and deliberate, and pushed the loose stone behind the fireplace.
Cold, damp air breathed out at her from the dark.
She didn't hesitate. She gathered her skirt and stepped into the black.
The passage was lightless. The stone steps were slick and uneven, and she stumbled more than once, nearly going down on both knees. Every time, she thought of Loras Tyrell's pretty, delicate face. Her father's cold, hollow eyes. And she ground her teeth and kept moving.
She didn't know how long she had been walking when a faint gray light appeared ahead.
An exit.
A way out through the city wall.
Through there — freedom.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. She ran.
She crawled out through a rusted iron grate at the base of a sewer drain. Salt air and rot hit her all at once.
She looked up.
The docks were right there. Ships rocking at anchor in the harbor. And beyond them, open water , blue and vast and free.
She had done it.
She had actually done it.
A laugh was already rising in her throat —
"My daughter."
A calm voice. Quiet as a blade being drawn.
"Where exactly are you going?"
The laugh died.
Cersei turned.
Slowly. The way you turn when you already know what you'll find.
In the shadow of the dock pilings, a figure stood waiting.
Tywin Lannister.
He wasn't wearing the Hand's robes. Just a plain black leather jerkin, two Lannister guardsmen standing at his back. Nothing about him looked hurried or surprised. He had simply been here, waiting for her to arrive.
He was a mountain. Every path closed.
"Father..."
The cloth bag slipped from her fingers and hit the ground. Gold dragons and gems scattered across the wet stones.
She didn't understand. How could he know? Were there mechanisms in the passage she hadn't found? Spies among her servants? Or was it simply that this man could calculate everything , always, every time, without fail?
Tywin crouched and picked up one of the gold dragons that had rolled to his foot. He turned it slowly between his thumb and forefinger. Then he raised his eyes to her.
No anger. No surprise.
Only disappointment — dense and absolute, the kind that left no room for anything else.
"I gave you the Lannister name," he said. "I gave you the honor of Queen Mother of the Seven Kingdoms. I gave you everything a woman in this world could possess."
"And you chose to sneak away in a servant's dress with a handful of coins."
"Cersei. You disgust me."
He slipped the gold dragon into his pocket.
"I always believed that however foolish you were, you had at least retained some shred of Lannister pride."
"I was wrong."
"You are not merely foolish. You are base. You have no sense of your place and no sense of your purpose."
"You don't even qualify as a competent political asset."
He raised his hand.
The two guards moved at once, seizing her by the arms.
"No! Let go of me!"
It broke through all at once , shock gave way to fury and terror, and she began to thrash and scream, twisting against their grip with everything she had.
"You cannot do this to me! I am the Queen Mother! I am your daughter!"
Tywin did not look back. He turned and walked, leaving her with nothing but the flat line of his shoulders.
"Take her back to the Red Keep. Top floor of Maegor's Holdfast."
Maegor's Holdfast.
Again.
That place where the Mad King had locked away his Targaryen queens and concubines.
She had already survived it once.
"No! Father! Please — I was wrong! Please!"
She was begging now. She could hear herself, and she couldn't stop.
Tywin's footsteps never slowed.
"Inform Highgarden that Cersei Lannister has taken ill with a chill. She requires rest. The wedding can be delayed."
His voice sealed every door she had left.
"You will stay there until you understand what it means to be a Lannister. What your responsibility is. What your duty requires of you."
"Or until you rot in that room."
Every word of it was watched by a young girl standing in the shadows nearby.
...
Far away, in the North.
White in every direction, stretching flat and featureless until it blurred into the gray sky at the edge of sight.
And rising from the land itself , the Wall. A colossal scar of ice spanning the entire horizon, like a wound the world had never managed to heal.
It had lost its magic. It was still magnificent.
Miranda pulled her bearskin cloak tighter and drifted, without quite meaning to, a step closer to Lynn.
She stared up at the ice. Her eyes were wide.
"My lord... are we really going to cross it?"
She had heard the stories. The Wall was the end of the world , the border between the living and the dead. The place where the forgotten were sent, and the condemned.
Lynn smiled.
He didn't bother glancing at the Night's Watchmen stirring on the towers of Castle Black in the distance, drawn out of their routines by the sight of them. His gaze passed over the Wall entirely, settling on what lay beyond , that vast, snow-swallowed land stretching into permanent dark.
The Haunted Forest.
Beyond the Wall.
He could feel it. Something in the deep dark of those trees was watching him. Had been watching him for a while now.
"Heh."
The sound came out soft , barely a laugh at all. It turned to white mist in the frozen air.
You like watching from the shadows. You like being the hand that moves the pieces.
Lynn turned around. His gaze settled on a small, slight figure standing nearby , a wight wearing the face of Robert Arryn so perfectly that even Lynn, without his particular sense for such things, might have been fooled.
"Old crow," he said softly, speaking to the empty air beyond the figure. "I've found your heir for you."
A beat of cold silence.
"I hope you like the gift."
➤ Next: Head-On Confrontation
— .—— .—— .—— .—— .——
[FULL STORY ACCESS]
📖 Read ahead up to [Chapter 470]
✨ Support the author: https://p a t r e o n（.）com/DarkGolds