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The nobles and knights around him wore stiff smiles, all echoing the king's "wise" decision.
No one dared object.
The dragon that had just landed swept three pairs of differently colored eyes across the hall with cold indifference.
Foolish words invited dragonflame.
Lynn watched Joffrey calmly.
The little madman was even more useful than he'd expected.
A tourney held solely in his honor. The Hand of the King. Joffrey had announced Lynn's arrival to the entire Seven Kingdoms in the most direct way possible, and his status along with it.
The banquet ended in a chorus of hollow cheers.
Lynn was escorted to the Hand's private residence.
Hand's Tower.
This place had once belonged to Jon Arryn, then briefly to Ned Stark and Tywin Lannister.
Now it belonged to Lynn.
The rooms were spacious and lavish, the walls hung with woven hangings tracing the Targaryen dynasty's long history of conquest. Lynn dismissed the attendant with a wave and stood alone at the window, looking out over King's Landing below, its lanterns scattered like embers across the dark.
This city was a swamp.
Soaked through with desire, conspiracy, and rot.
And he would be its only predator.
The night deepened.
The fireplace burned quietly in the corner of the room, logs crackling soft and slow. Lynn stripped off his leather armor and stood bare-chested in simple black trousers, the firelight carving out the lines of his body with precise, unhurried detail. Every muscle coiled and still, restrained power worn like a second skin.
From somewhere in the shadows came the faint rustle of fabric.
A slender figure slipped out from behind one of the hangings without a sound.
Liana.
She had exchanged her court gown for a thin white silk robe. Her black hair fell loose over her shoulders, and her face, always so clear-featured and young, carried something tonight that didn't quite belong to her age: a composed, quiet determination.
"My lord."
Her voice was barely there, soft as a feather settling in still air.
Lynn didn't turn. He kept moving, hands busy.
"Used up all the medicine?"
Liana's cheeks colored. She moved behind him, eyes tracing the breadth of his shoulders, the way the muscles shifted beneath his skin as his arms moved. Her gaze went slightly unfocused.
"Yes, my lord."
A faint tremor ran through her voice.
"It works very well. Joffrey always believes something actually happened between us. He enjoys the feeling."
Her gaze moved over him without shame, drawn to the tight cut of his waist, the spread of muscle across his back. Her throat was dry.
This man was nothing like that screaming mad king.
He was the real lion.
"He'll enjoy it more and more."
Lynn turned around and dropped the linen cloth over the back of a chair. He crossed to a cabinet in the corner, opened a locked hidden compartment, and drew out a small crystal vial. Inside, a pale pink liquid caught the firelight.
The same drug Cersei used to avoid sharing Robert's bed.
But Liana's eyes had not left him. Seen from the front, the effect was worse. A solid chest. Sharply defined abs. And...
Her face was burning. Her breath came faster.
She knew she shouldn't look.
She couldn't help it.
Lynn walked toward her, vial in hand. He had more than a head of height on her. He looked down, and those black eyes held the particular stillness of someone who could read every secret a person was hiding.
"Use it carefully."
He held out the vial.
"This isn't cheap."
Liana took it on instinct. The cold glass snapped her back to herself. She looked up and met his gaze, and her heart dropped a beat.
"My lord... I..."
She wanted to say something. She didn't know where to start.
"You've done well."
Lynn's voice eased, just slightly.
"Don't worry. I remember what I promised you."
Liana bit her lip. He had seen through her. All of it.
"I only wanted to ease your burdens, my lord."
She said it quietly, looking down.
"Good."
Lynn nodded once.
"Remember those words."
"Now go. Back to your king's side. Be a good queen."
She didn't leave.
Her gaze drifted back to his bare torso. The firelight jumped and swayed, throwing shadows across the planes of his chest, the sharp ridges of his stomach. Every line of him read like something carved from old stone, like the hero-sculptures in epic poems no one had written yet.
Liana's cheeks burned. Her breathing wasn't steady.
"Something else?"
Lynn's voice cut through.
"No. Nothing." She shook her head quickly and shoved the vial into her robe. "I'll take my leave, my lord."
She curtsied, turned, and walked to the door a little too fast, her steps not quite even.
At the threshold she stopped. Something made her gather herself, and she looked back one last time.
Her eyes found him again. They stayed there a moment, unreadable. Then she pulled the door open and slipped out into the dark without a word.
Lynn watched the door settle shut. His brow moved, barely.
The girl's ambition was growing.
He walked to the cabinet, poured himself a glass of Dornish red, and settled into the chair in front of the fire.
King's Landing was a more interesting game than he'd anticipated.
Joffrey made a perfect puppet. Liana was sharp enough to know how to play him. Sansa was quietly wrapping her hands around the kingdom's finances. Varys's web stretched across the entire city, feeding him everything he needed to know.
Everything was moving in the right direction.
Except.
Lynn turned the wine slowly in his glass.
The Lannisters.
Old Tywin had retreated to Casterly Rock after his departure and gone completely quiet, as though he'd truly become a sickly cat gone to ground. That wasn't like him.
A knock at the door.
This one carried no hesitation. There was an urgency to it that no reasonable late-night visitor ought to have.
"Who is it?"
"Me."
A woman's voice, pressed thin with something she was barely keeping down.
Cersei Lannister.
Lynn didn't rise.
"It's not locked."
The door swung open hard. Cersei came in like a gust through a broken shutter.
She looked like she'd had a rough night. Wine stained her silk gown. Her golden hair was loose and disordered. The face that had once been formidable in its beauty was written over now with something that looked a great deal like panic.
The moment she was through the door she locked her gaze onto Lynn. Her green eyes burned with a tangle of things she hadn't sorted through yet.
"You're finally here."
Her voice trembled at the edge.
Lynn settled deeper in his chair and took a slow sip of wine.
"I thought you'd have come sooner."
Cersei's chest heaved. She crossed to him and braced both hands on the table's edge, leaning in, close enough that the wine on her breath mixed with her perfume.
"You have to stop Joffrey."
"He won't listen to anyone now."
Lynn set his glass down and looked up at her with calm, unhurried eyes.
"Why would I stop him?"
"Because..." The force behind her voice faltered.
Yes. Why would he?
"Is that all you came to say?" Lynn asked.
"No."
Cersei stepped back. The authority she'd walked in wearing crumbled off her face, replaced by something that was almost a plea.
"Lynn. I know I broke our agreement. My father, he's too stubborn. But the Lannisters are still the most powerful family in Westeros. Help me, help me take back what's mine, and I swear to you the gold of Casterly Rock opens for you. The Westerlands armies march for you. Everything."
She laid the Lannister name down like a trump card.
"I don't need it."
Four words. They went through her last hope like a blade through cloth.
"I have no use for an ally content to sit on her hands while others bleed."
Lynn stood. He looked down at her.
"I gave you a chance, Cersei. When my armies were fighting, you gave me empty words. Tywin tucked his tail and buried himself in Casterly Rock. You, the former Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, spent your days drinking and weeping like a scorned wife." He paused. "Is that what it means when a Lannister pays her debts?"
Every word landed like a strike across the face.
The color drained out of her completely.
"I..."
She opened her mouth to argue. Nothing came.
Because he was right.
"I thought you were a clever woman."
Lynn stepped forward and took her chin in his hand, tilting her face up until she had no choice but to meet his eyes.
"You've disappointed me."
"Your value has nothing to do with your beauty. It has nothing to do with your name. It is only ever about what you can bring me."
"Right now, you bring me nothing."
He let go. Picked up a handkerchief. Wiped his fingers clean, the way a man wipes off something he shouldn't have touched.
"Get out."
Quiet words. Absolute.
Cersei's body went unsteady. She stared at him like she hadn't heard it right.
Get out?
He was telling her to get out?
She was Cersei Lannister. Queen Mother of the Seven Kingdoms.
The humiliation, the rage, the wounded pride, all of it surged up at once. She wanted to scream. She wanted to hurl every glass on that table into his face.
Then she looked into his eyes.
No anger there. No desire. Nothing at all. Just a flat, distant calm, like a man regarding something already dead, something that had stopped mattering.
Cersei began to shake.
She understood it then. She had pushed too far. In front of this man, she had become worthless.
She turned. Her legs barely carried her. She walked toward the door like a puppet with its strings cut loose, empty and stumbling.
Her hand found the knob.
"Tell Tywin."
Lynn's voice reached her from across the room.
"My patience isn't endless. If he doesn't give me something worth caring about, I won't mind arranging a different name for the Westerlands."
Cersei went rigid. She didn't turn. She pulled the door open and fled into the corridor.
Lynn looked at the empty doorway. He picked up his glass and finished what was left.
The Lannister lion had better wake up.
It was running out of time to deserve to live.
➤ Next: Pycelle Digs His Own Grave
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