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Outside the window of the Hand's Tower, the sky had already begun to pale toward dawn.
Cersei woke to a dull, spreading ache.
She opened her eyes. An unfamiliar ceiling. And beside her, already fully dressed, the man standing with his back to her at the window.
Lynn.
Last night came flooding back.
The humiliating positions. The madness she had never known before. She felt like a doll that had been broken apart and left on the floor.
And outside that window, those eyes that had watched her without blinking.
She had expected to feel hatred.
But there was nothing. Only numbness.
This man held everything she had in his fist. Her life. Her daughter Myrcella's future.
What good was hatred?
"Awake?"
Lynn didn't turn around. He lifted the wine glass from the table and took a sip.
"Get dressed. Go back to the Red Keep."
Cersei shifted, pushed herself upright, and picked the torn gown off the floor. She pulled it on in silence.
She understood. This was Lynn's mercy.
He had spared her life. That was already the best she could have hoped for.
Lynn turned. He looked at the woman who had reassembled herself back into something that resembled a queen, except for those green eyes, flat and lightless, nothing left of what they once held.
"Remember who you belong to now."
His voice was calm. Almost bored.
Cersei's heart clenched once.
She lowered her head and answered in a voice that barely made a sound.
"Yes, Master."
...
When Cersei walked back through the gates of the Red Keep, every servant and guard who saw her wore something complicated on their face.
Pity. Contempt. Poorly concealed satisfaction.
The once untouchable Queen Mother had been taken by the new Hand for an entire night. Now she had been returned.
Everyone knew what that meant.
She had become Lord Lynn's plaything.
His personal slave.
Cersei looked through them all as though they weren't there.
She had expected to be taken to the remote tower near the Great Sept of Baelor that Joffrey had mentioned. Instead, the guard leading her turned toward her old chambers.
The most magnificent rooms in the Red Keep. The most spacious.
Her steps stopped. She didn't understand.
The door swung open.
Joffrey was there.
Her son, King of the Seven Kingdoms, sat upright in the high seat, wearing a smile she had never seen on his face before. Something almost like warmth.
"Mother. You're back."
Cersei's heart climbed into her throat.
She did what Lynn had taught her. She lowered her head.
"My King."
Joffrey rose from the chair and walked toward her, slowly, circling her once with the measured attention of someone appraising property.
"I've thought it over carefully. You are, after all, my mother. The Queen Mother of the Seven Kingdoms. How could I put you in some forgotten tower? From today, you stay here. In these rooms. Your servants, your clothes, your jewelry — everything as it was."
Cersei stood lost.
What did he mean?
Hadn't he wanted her dead? Had Liana said something to change his mind? Had Lynn?
Her thoughts were still spinning when Joffrey leaned down and brought his lips to her ear.
His voice dropped to almost nothing.
"Last night. I watched."
"You did very well, Mother."
Joffrey's handsome face twisted around his smile.
"Very well indeed."
He straightened, looking down at her face , the face that shame had made ugly , with open approval.
"Lord Lynn is the most valuable man in this kingdom. Powerful, yes. But also ambitious. A dragon like him needs chains."
He reached out and took her hand. Gently.
"And you, my dear mother, are the sturdy chain I've prepared for him."
"So please — continue to serve him. Make him satisfied. Make him happy. Make him unable to imagine being without you."
"This is for the stability of the kingdom. And for me. So that your son can keep his seat on the Iron Throne."
"You understand?"
Cersei stood perfectly still.
She felt the blood inside her turn to ice.
She understood.
She understood everything now.
Her son was not acting out of guilt. Not out of pity.
He had condoned it. Encouraged it. He wanted her to be Lynn's plaything.
He was using her as a whore to buy loyalty.
A tool to keep himself on the throne.
All that supposed feeling last night, that supposed understanding , it was all nothing. It was the excuse of a selfish, cold-blooded boy who needed a way to tell himself the story came out right.
A wave of nausea rose from somewhere deep in her chest, unlike anything she had felt before.
She looked at the face in front of her. Familiar. Strange.
She looked at those eyes that carried the same Lannister blood as her own.
Whatever remained of the mother in her , that last small warmth , went out completely in that moment.
What replaced it had no bottom.
She wanted to pull a knife from the air and drive it through this creature's heart. To kill him herself. With her own hands.
But she could not.
She forced every feeling down. She arranged her face into something that looked like obedience.
And she knelt.
"I understand, my King."
Her voice was small enough to belong to the floor.
"For you, for House Lannister — I am willing to give everything."
"Ha! Good! That's my good mother!"
Joffrey laughed, full and satisfied. He had never felt more in command of anything. He had this woman. He had everything.
In the days that followed, the Red Keep settled into a strange and particular unease.
The new Hand of the King, Lord Lynn, began entering and leaving the Queen Mother's chambers without concealment. Day or night. He acknowledged no one's stare.
And the sounds that came from those chambers , low, strained, threaded with pain , became part of the rhythm of the Keep's nights.
The guards on watch learned to take another corridor.
The maidservants who passed that way learned to look at the floor and walk faster, their faces red.
Everyone knew.
Joffrey knew.
He would stand alone on his balcony in the dark, looking toward the lights of his mother's wing, listening in silence to the sounds that made his pulse run strange and hot.
His face would do something difficult to describe.
Anger. Humiliation. Jealousy.
And underneath all of it, deeper and more persistent , a sick and swelling excitement. A satisfaction that felt almost like power.
He saw himself as the cleverest player at the board. He had used his most important piece, and now the whole game answered to him.
"A great king must always make sacrifices," Joffrey murmured, running his hand along the gilded edge of his crossbow.
"And he must always make others sacrifice for him."
➤ Next: Making a Move Against Tommen
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