The blade pressed down.
A shallow line of crimson bloomed across the heavy folds of Pycelle's ancient neck.
He could feel the freezing steel, and the sharp, stinging bite as it barely broke the skin.
Joffrey wasn't applying real pressure.
He just held the sword there, his bloodshot eyes locked dead onto the man who had burned his entire world to ash.
The council chamber was terrifyingly quiet.
Everyone was holding their breath.
Waiting for the answer that would decide the old man's fate.
"Speak."
Joffrey's voice suddenly dropped into a dead, unnatural calm.
"Did Cersei have a hand in this?"
"Don't worry. If you tell me the truth, I won't sentence you to death."
Pycelle's entire body went into violent spasms.
His eyes instinctively darted over to Cersei standing a few feet away.
Cersei's face was the color of chalk.
She stared back at Pycelle, her eyes a chaotic mix of lethal warning and desperate begging.
She shook her head frantically, mouthing the words over and over.
No... no...
Pycelle understood exactly what she wanted.
But he also understood the raw, unfiltered murder burning in Joffrey's eyes.
It was a pure, absolute killing intent with absolutely zero room for negotiation.
If he lied, his head was going to hit the floor in the next second.
But if he told the truth...
Maybe he had a shot?
The primal instinct to survive completely overpowered his lingering terror of House Lannister.
"She... she knew..."
Pycelle forced the words out of his mangled throat, burning the last fumes of his strength.
Those three words hit Cersei like a physical lightning strike.
She swayed violently, her knees almost buckling under her.
Joffrey's expression didn't change a fraction of an inch.
He just kept asking.
"Knew what?"
"She... she knew... that Lord Tywin... was moving against King Robert..."
Pycelle's words started spilling out faster and faster. He was desperately vomiting up every piece of dirt he had to buy his life.
"She wasn't part of the actual planning... but she knew!"
"And she did absolutely nothing! She just stood back and watched it happen!"
"She wanted King Robert dead just as badly! So she could control you! Control the entire realm!"
"She complained to me about it multiple times! Telling me the King needed to die!"
"So she let it happen! She implicitly authorized the entire thing through her silence!"
Pycelle finished screaming his confession.
He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the verdict.
The council chamber plunged right back into a suffocating, graveyard silence.
Joffrey slowly, agonizingly, turned his head inch by inch.
His gaze drifted off the top of Pycelle's head and locked dead onto his mother's face.
Cersei's lips were violently trembling.
She desperately tried to defend herself.
"Joffrey... I... it's not what he's saying..."
Joffrey smiled.
It was a twisted, broken grimace that looked worse than crying.
Tears freely spilled from his eyes again, completely out of his control.
One drop, then another, splashing down onto Pycelle's white hair.
His own mother had sold him out.
He really was the most completely alone, isolated person on the face of the earth.
"Haha..."
"HAHAHAHAHA!"
Joffrey threw his head back and roared with laughter. It was a desolate, hollow sound completely hollowed out by pure despair.
He raised the heavy steel longsword high into the air.
Pycelle felt the rush of displaced air above him, and his eyes snapped open in absolute terror.
He watched the razor-sharp edge of the blade rapidly expanding in his vision.
He said he wasn't going to sentence him to death!
SCHLUCK!
The sword came down.
But it didn't take his head off.
It violently buried itself deep into his shoulder!
"AAAGH—!"
Pycelle let out a bloodcurdling, inhuman shriek, his entire body convulsing from the explosive agony.
"Enjoy every second of this, Pycelle. I won't 'sentence' you to death... I'm going to butcher you myself!"
Joffrey stared down at him, tears still streaming from his eyes.
"But letting you die quick? That's way too good for you."
He ripped the sword out, pulling a thick spray of arterial blood with it.
He raised the blade again, and drove it brutally into Pycelle's other shoulder.
SCHLUCK!
"AAAAAAGH—!"
"I am going to make you suffer!"
The agonizing screams bounced off the stone walls of the chamber, making every single lord in the room sick to their stomachs.
"This one is for my father!"
Joffrey roared, ripping the sword out and driving it straight through Pycelle's thigh.
"And this one is for me!"
He went completely rabid, hacking and stabbing into Pycelle's body over and over again.
He actively avoided all the major organs and fatal arteries.
He wanted to drag it out. He wanted the old man to slowly bleed out in agonizing, blinding pain.
A massive pool of dark blood rapidly expanded across the polished floor.
The heavy, copper stench of fresh blood completely flooded the room.
Pycelle's high-pitched shrieks slowly ground down into weak, pathetic whimpers, and finally into a wet, gurgling silence.
Cersei was slumped on the floor, absolutely paralyzed, her face bone-white as she watched her son butcher Pycelle like a psychotic slaughterhouse worker.
She felt like she was looking at a complete stranger.
Ser Barristan Selmy's hand shook violently on the hilt of his sword.
He wanted to intervene, but he didn't dare cross the line.
This was royal family business.
This was the King's vengeance.
Varys stood with his hands tucked in his sleeves, a faint, excited tremor running through his fingers.
What an absolutely flawless piece of theater.
The Lannister lion was actively ripping out its own claws.
He was one massive step closer to his endgame!
Finally.
Pycelle stopped twitching.
His body looked like a shredded bag of meat dumped on the floor, his limbs twisted at sick, unnatural angles.
Joffrey stood over the corpse, his chest heaving violently.
His face, his hair, his clothes—everything was splattered with hot, wet gore.
The extravagant gold tunic was now a horrific, wet crimson.
He let the longsword slip from his grip.
Clang.
He slowly turned around, his dead, hollow eyes sweeping over the frozen crowd.
The high-and-mighty lords of the Seven Kingdoms all instantly glued their eyes to the floor, absolutely terrified to make eye contact.
"Get out."
Joffrey's voice was a ragged croak.
"Every single one of you. Get the fuck out."
Nobody hesitated for a fraction of a second.
Several of the lords practically trampled each other scrambling for the door, terrified that if they lagged behind, they were going to end up looking like Pycelle.
Varys offered a shallow bow to Lynn and silently melted into the shadows out the door.
Ser Barristan looked at the butchered corpse, then up at Joffrey. He let out a heavy sigh, signaled the Kingsguard, and evacuated the chamber.
Within seconds, the room was completely empty.
Except for three people.
Lynn.
Joffrey.
And Cersei, still paralyzed on the floor.
And the rapidly cooling, butchered corpse.
Joffrey slowly walked over to one of the chairs, grabbed a relatively clean tablecloth, and methodically started wiping the gore off his hands.
He moved slowly. Deliberately.
Cersei watched him wipe the blood away. Every instinct screamed at her to run.
But her legs felt like they were cast in solid iron. A suffocating, crushing silence pressed down on her chest like a physical weight.
Finally, Joffrey finished cleaning his hands.
He tossed the blood-soaked rag directly onto Pycelle's ruined face.
Then, he stood up and took a slow, heavy step toward Cersei.
Cersei frantically started scooting backward across the floor in blind panic, until her back hit the freezing stone wall and she had nowhere left to go.
"Joffrey... my sweet boy..."
Her voice was a pathetic, broken whimper.
Joffrey slowly crouched down right in front of her.
He just stared at the woman who had brought him into the world, and subsequently destroyed his entire life.
The rage was gone from his eyes. The psychotic edge was gone. The hatred was gone.
All that was left was a freezing, dead apathy that was infinitely more terrifying.
A long, agonizing minute passed.
He finally spoke.
"Why?"
Joffrey stared into his mother's eyes—eyes that used to be so full of arrogant life, now completely hollowed out by terror.
"Why did you kill him?"
"He was my father."