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The door swung open.
Lynn walked in.
Black, close-fitting clothes. Longclaw at his hip. His face utterly blank.
Joffrey spun around like an enraged lion.
When he saw who it was, his fury-reddened eyes flickered , a flash of panic , then something uglier took its place. Something that looked almost like madness.
You.
Of course it's you.
"What are you doing here!"
Joffrey jabbed a finger at Lynn's face, his voice pitching high and sharp.
"This is the King's bedchamber! Who gave you permission to enter!"
"Get out!"
He roared the words. As if volume could cover what his eyes were already giving away.
Lynn ignored him.
His gaze moved slowly across the wreckage of the room and settled on the woman on the floor , clothes half-torn, body still writhing, her mouth shaping words without thought or will.
Liana.
"My lord... I'm so hot..."
"Lord Lynn... please... I beg you..."
Liana's unfocused eyes. Those helpless, wanting sounds. They drove into Joffrey's chest like poisoned blades, one after another.
"Do you hear her!" Joffrey's voice cracked. He was shaking now.
He pointed at Liana, screaming at Lynn across the room.
"She's calling your name! You bastard!"
"She is my wife! The Queen of the Seven Kingdoms! What have you done to her?!"
"You and her — you've been playing me this whole time!"
Lynn finally looked away from Liana.
His eyes settled on Joffrey's face.
"I've come to take back what's mine."
His voice was flat. Like he was commenting on the weather.
"Your thing?" Joffrey blinked, then his face went dark. He understood.
He meant Liana.
"She is my Queen!" Joffrey roared.
"Not anymore. Starting today."
Lynn walked toward him.
Joffrey stepped back without thinking. His hand went to his sword, but his fingers were shaking too badly to grip the hilt.
"Halt! I command you to halt!"
The bluster was all teeth, no bite.
"I am the King! Disrespecting me is treason!"
Lynn stopped directly in front of him. He was a full head taller, and the way he looked down carried a pressure that made it hard to breathe.
"King?"
Lynn smiled.
It was not a kind smile.
"Joffrey. Have you forgotten I have dragons? Do you think I care about treason?"
Joffrey's breath caught.
"Have you also forgotten that I know your secret? The one that would cost you your head?"
"I, I—"
Joffrey's mouth opened. Nothing came out.
"I thought you were a fool."
"I was wrong. You're smarter than I gave you credit for."
Lynn looked at the fear twisting his face and shook his head slowly.
"Smart enough to be inconvenient."
"I was going to let you keep the crown for a while. Once I unified the Seven Kingdoms, you'd have gone to Dragonstone , a wealthy man, comfortable enough, no demands on you."
"A pity. You didn't want that."
"Since you enjoy games so much, " A smile spread across Lynn's face that made Joffrey's scalp crawl. ", let's play a more interesting one."
"What do you want?" Joffrey's voice came out as a tremor.
"From today, the kingdom is still yours."
Joffrey blinked. He means to let me go?
"But your body," Lynn continued, "belongs to me."
Joffrey's mind went white.
His body... belongs to him?
What does that,
He understood.
All at once, he understood.
He felt it happen. Something vast and cold and utterly foreign flooded through him , invisible threads pulling taut through every limb, every joint, seizing control of him piece by piece.
His hand moved.
He hadn't told it to.
It simply rose , on its own , and cracked hard across his own face.
SMACK!
The sound rang off the walls of the silent bedchamber.
Joffrey stood there, stunned into nothing.
He could feel it. The burning spread across his cheek with horrible clarity.
He wanted to scream. To fight. To cut that hand off at the wrist.
He couldn't do any of it.
His mouth was clamped shut. Not one sound could escape.
His body stood like a marionette mid-string, rigid and waiting.
Only his mind was still his.
He was perfectly, horribly aware of all of it.
The other hand this time. SMACK.
Joffrey watched it happen. Watched himself do it.
"Fun, isn't it?"
Lynn's voice came low in his ear, smooth as a devil's murmur.
"You like hitting people. So — how does it feel?"
Joffrey's eyes went wide. The rims turned red , not with rage this time, but with something that cracked deeper than rage.
He wanted to cry. Wanted to beg.
He couldn't even do that.
Both hands now. SMACK. SMACK. SMACK. SMACK. Back and forth, left, right, left, right , relentless, mechanical, each blow landing harder than the last.
The sounds formed a rhythm. Bizarre and steady and inescapable.
His face swelled fast. His cheeks puffed grotesque and red. Blood crept from the corner of his mouth.
His hands did not slow.
What is this. What is this. What kind of sorcery,
He would rather die. He would rather Lynn cut him down with a sword right now than endure this , his soul locked inside his own skull, watching his own hands work while he screamed in silence.
"It hurts, doesn't it?"
Lynn studied his eyes , the focus completely gone, replaced with the hollow stare of a man drowning , and said it simply, without satisfaction or cruelty. Just a fact.
"Don't worry. This is only the beginning."
Humiliation.
Nothing in his life had ever come close to this.
This was worse than death. A thousand times worse.
I am Joffrey. I am the King.
The one true King of the Seven Kingdoms.
I cannot be here. I cannot be doing this. I am not a clown,
Tears came. He couldn't stop them either. They slid down through the blood at the corners of his mouth.
Tears of despair. Nothing else left.
Lynn watched it all with calm interest.
He glanced at Liana, still turning on the floor, still murmuring his name through whatever fog had taken hold of her.
His smile deepened.
"You know, Joffrey."
Lynn's voice settled quietly in his mind.
"I can do this twenty-four hours a day."
"Eating. Sleeping. Even when you use the privy — I'll be there, inside you."
"Watching. Controlling."
"And you? Even if I decided to make you crawl into a latrine and eat what you find there , you'd have no choice. You'd watch yourself do it and not be able to stop."
"Do you understand?"
BOOM!
Something inside Joffrey simply broke.
This animal. This absolute devil,
"Don't look so hopeless."
Lynn sounded almost gentle.
"I'm not going to let you die."
"Not right now, at least."
"Your blood is still useful to me."
"Hatching certain things requires blood with a certain quality. Noble blood. Kingly blood. Yours will do nicely."
"So until I've gotten what I need from you, you're perfectly safe."
"All you have to do is be a good blood bag. A good puppet. That's all."
Blood bag.
Puppet.
Joffrey felt the last of himself give way.
He wasn't even a person.
He was a tool for hatching monsters.
"Ah... ah..."
He tried to scream. To let something out. All that came up was a shapeless sound from the back of his throat, hollow and meaningless.
His body was still slapping his own face.
"Alright." Lynn snapped his fingers. "Warm-up's done."
Joffrey's raised hand froze in mid-air.
Then stopped.
Control flooded back into his limbs , and his legs promptly gave out.
He crumpled to the floor with a heavy thud, gasping, gulping air like a man pulled half-drowned from a river.
Lynn stood over him. Looking down.
"Now, then. My dear King."
"Shall we play the real game?"
He reached out and patted Joffrey's swollen, ruined face. Almost gently.
"Stand up."
Joffrey's body shook. He didn't want to move. Every part of him screamed to curl up and stay down, to put as much distance as possible between himself and this thing in front of him.
His body stood up anyway.
Slowly. Shakily. But it stood.
"Good."
Lynn turned to Liana, crouched, and lifted her into his arms in a single smooth motion.
Her skin was burning. She stirred against his chest like a drowsy cat, rubbing her face against him without any awareness of where she was, soft sounds escaping her lips.
"Lord Lynn... please be gentle with me..."
"No, my lord, please... more..."
"Faster..."
"Don't hold back..."
Lynn carried her to where Joffrey stood.
He looked into Joffrey's eyes , the fear in them, the hatred that had nowhere left to go , and smiled his most brilliant smile.
"Your Grace. I'll take your Queen next door and see to her... treatment."
"You stay here. Reflect on what it means to be a proper king."
He turned and walked to the door.
At the threshold, he paused.
Looked back.
"One more thing."
His voice came from inside Joffrey's skull.
"Clean up your face."
"Tomorrow morning, you'll need to stand before the court and announce , in the King's name , the start of war preparations against Stannis and Renly."
"Don't disappoint me."
A small pause.
"My king."
Lynn stepped through the door and was gone.
The room was silent.
Just Joffrey, alone, in the wreckage.
He stood still for a long moment. Then, slowly, he raised one hand and touched his cheek.
The pain hit him like something new. Sharp and real and absolute.
Not a dream.
He walked to the bronze mirror against the wall.
The face looking back at him was almost unrecognizable. Swollen, red, split at the corner of the mouth, misshapen as something left in the sun too long.
His eyes were the worst of it , blue and hollow. All the pride that had lived in them was gone. Gone completely.
He stared.
His own hand struck him again, without warning, without his consent. SMACK. Lynn reminding him.
Still here. Always here.
"Ha, "
The sound that came out of him wasn't laughter. Not really. But it kept coming anyway, crawling up from somewhere broken and deep.
"Hahahaha, hahahahaha, "
Joffrey stared at the ruined clown in the mirror and laughed until the sound filled the empty room and bounced back at him from every wall.
Madness. Despair. No bottom to either of them.
He had lost.
Lost entirely. Lost in every possible way a person could lose.
From today, Joffrey Baratheon was no longer the King of the Seven Kingdoms.
He was Lynn's dog.
A blood bag that slapped its own face.
➤ Next: Treatment — Tears Unshed
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