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Joffrey's dead, hollow eyes stared straight through his mother.
There was no love in his gaze. No hatred, either. Just a barren, dead wasteland.
Cersei looked at her son—drenched in blood, looking like a demon freshly crawled out of hell—and a wave of unprecedented, primal terror gripped her heart.
Her eyes drifted uncontrollably toward the only other man still standing in the room.
Lynn.
He stood there like a complete outsider, quietly watching this Lannister family tragedy unfold.
But Cersei knew damn well he was the mastermind behind all of it!
"Lynn..."
Cersei's voice broke into a desperate sob.
"Please. Can you just step outside for a moment?"
"This is family business. I want... I need to speak with my son alone."
She desperately needed Lynn out of the room.
His mere presence was like a suffocating mountain pressing down on her chest.
Joffrey didn't say a word. He just kept his dead eyes locked on Lynn.
Lynn shifted his gaze from Cersei's tear-streaked face down to Joffrey.
Lynn offered a faint smile.
"Of course."
He strolled toward the door, looking as relaxed as a man taking a walk through his own backyard.
Lynn pulled the heavy door open and stepped out.
The massive wooden door slowly swung shut behind him, closing with a heavy, echoing thud.
The sound hit Cersei like a hammer straight to her chest.
The council chamber was now completely empty, save for the mother and son.
And a butchered corpse slowly going cold on the floor.
The metallic stench of blood grew even thicker, practically choking the air.
"Now, you can speak."
Joffrey hadn't moved a muscle, but his voice had dropped into an absolute, freezing abyss.
"Why?"
Cersei scrambled up from the floor, staggering unsteadily until she stood right in front of him.
"Joffrey, my sweet boy..."
She reached a trembling hand out, desperately trying to touch his cheek.
"Don't fucking touch me!"
Joffrey violently recoiled like he'd just been stung by a scorpion.
He glared at Cersei with raw, unfiltered disgust.
Cersei's hand froze dead in mid-air.
Her heart felt like it had just been brutally gutted.
Every ounce of her mask, every shred of her tough exterior, utterly disintegrated.
"Why?"
Cersei suddenly started laughing—a shrill, desolate, broken sound.
"You're asking me why?!"
Her voice spiked into a hysterical shriek.
Her flawless face warped into a mask of pure, toxic resentment that had been festering for over a decade.
"Because he didn't deserve to live! Robert Baratheon! That braindead, fat pig whose head was stuffed with nothing but cheap wine and whores!"
"He didn't deserve to be my husband! And he damn sure didn't deserve to be your father!"
Joffrey froze, completely stunned.
"You actually think he was some kind of hero?"
Cersei pointed a trembling finger at Joffrey, screaming like a lunatic.
"He wasn't! He was a worthless drunk! A piece of shit!"
"He crawled into my bed blackout drunk every single night, and while he was inside me, he was moaning another woman's name!"
"Do you know who that woman was?! Lyanna Stark! A fucking ghost who had been dead for years!"
"I bled for him! I gave him children! I held the dignity of this entire kingdom together, and in his eyes, I was worth less than a rotting corpse!"
Joffrey stared blankly at her, his mouth hanging slightly open.
He had never seen his mother look like this. Never.
"I fucking hated him! I wanted him dead every single day of my life!"
"Whenever he wanted to fuck me, I drugged his wine so he'd pass out in his own sick fantasies, thinking he actually had me."
"The mere thought of him touching me made me want to vomit!"
For some reason, Joffrey's stomach suddenly dropped. A sick, twisting feeling knotted in his gut, even if he couldn't quite put his finger on why.
Two lines of clear tears spilled from Cersei's eyes.
But there wasn't an ounce of sorrow in those tears. Just pure, bone-deep hatred.
"So, when Tywin told me he was going to put Robert in the ground, I kept my mouth shut."
"I just watched it happen."
"I was praying they'd hurry the fuck up and get it over with!"
"A man who didn't give a shit about me, a King who only saw me as a breeding mare—his death was the best thing that ever happened to me, to you, and to House Lannister!"
"Shut your fucking mouth!"
Joffrey finally snapped out of his trance, letting out a rabid, furious roar.
"I forbid you from talking about him like that!"
"My father was the King of the Seven Kingdoms! The warrior who conquered the Stormlands! The hero who ripped the Mad King off his throne!"
"You vicious, toxic bitch! You're the one who wasn't good enough for him!"
"I wasn't good enough for him?"
Cersei looked like she had just heard the funniest joke in the history of the world.
She closed the distance, backing Joffrey up, a manic, psychotic fire burning in her emerald eyes.
"You think you knew him, Joffrey?"
"You honestly believe you were his proud, golden son?"
Joffrey's heart seized violently in his chest.
He saw something in his mother's eyes that terrified him to his absolute core.
"You are dead wrong."
A sick, undeniably cruel smile twisted Cersei's lips.
She leaned in right next to Joffrey's ear, and in a voice that sounded like a whispering demon, she spelled it out, word by agonizing word.
"Robert Baratheon is not your father."
That single sentence hit Joffrey's skull like a bolt of black lightning.
His brain completely, instantaneously shut down.
The entire world—every sound, every color—was instantly sucked into a vacuum.
Only his mother's words remained, echoing endlessly inside his skull.
He is not your father.
Not your father...
Not...
"What... what did you just say?"
Joffrey felt like his own voice was coming from another dimension—hollow, alien, and miles away.
"I said, you are not Robert's son!"
Cersei watched every drop of blood drain from her son's face, a sick, twisted rush of vindication flooding her system.
"You are my son. Mine and Jaime Lannister's!"
"You bleed Lannister blood! Pure, unadulterated lion's blood!"
"You don't have a single drop of that stupid Baratheon stag in your veins!"
BOOM—!
Joffrey's entire reality violently collapsed in on itself.
He wasn't Robert's son.
He was... the bastard spawn of his mother and her own twin brother?
Then his throne...
His royal title...
It was all a complete, fabricated lie?
An absolute joke?
A massive wave of vertigo hit him like a freight train. He staggered backward, his spine slamming heavily against the freezing stone wall.
His legs gave out completely, and he slid down the wall until he hit the floor.
He grabbed his head in both hands, letting out an agonizing, broken groan.
No.
This couldn't be real.
This had to be a sick, twisted lie this venomous bitch cooked up just to hurt him!
"No... you're lying to me... you're fucking lying!"
Joffrey snapped his head up, his bloodshot, rabid eyes locking dead onto Cersei.
"You know damn well if I'm lying or not."
Cersei stared back at him with absolute, crushing apathy.
"Look at your hair. It's Lannister gold."
"Now think about Robert's endless trail of bastards. Has a single one of them ever been anything but black-haired?"
"Tell me, what part of you actually looks like that miserable drunk?!"
Joffrey sat there, completely paralyzed.
She was right.
Why was he blonde?
Every single one of Robert's bastards had pitch-black hair.
He had spent his whole life blindly assuming he just inherited his mother's looks.
But now...
The one brutal truth he had never dared to entertain, the reality he had subconsciously buried, was ripped wide open and shoved in his face.
He really was... a bastard.
An incestuous bastard who had stolen the Iron Throne through nothing but lies and deceit!
"Haha... HAHAHAHAHA!"
Joffrey suddenly erupted into a hysterical, ugly fit of laughter, snot and tears streaming freely down his face.
He laughed at himself. He laughed at his mother. He laughed at the complete, absurd joke his life actually was.
The laughter died instantly.
Joffrey slowly raised his head.
The devastating sorrow and panic completely evaporated from his face in a matter of seconds.
Replaced by a terrifying, dead calm.
The suffocating silence right before a hurricane makes landfall.
His eyes shifted.
All traces of human emotion were completely wiped clean from his pale blue irises.
Leaving nothing but the cold, calculating madness of an apex predator backed into a corner.
The Throne.
He was not going to lose his Throne!
As long as his ass was in that iron chair, he was the undisputed King of the Seven Kingdoms!
Anyone who dared to question it was going to die!
The truth didn't mean a damn thing!
The only thing that mattered was making sure absolutely nobody else found out!
As long as the secret stayed buried, he would remain Robert Baratheon's trueborn son and the rightful heir to the realm!
"This secret..."
Joffrey slowly hauled himself off the floor, his voice dropping into a lethal, guttural whisper.
"Who else knows?"
Cersei watched the physical shift in her son's eyes, an inexplicable, icy dread gripping her spine.
The boy standing in front of her felt like a total, terrifying stranger.
"Tywin... he knows."
Cersei answered instinctively.
"And... and Jaime..."
She didn't mention Lynn's name.
She didn't dare.
Her gut screamed that if she breathed Lynn's name, Joffrey would do something infinitely more horrific.
Something that would ensure the complete, permanent eradication of House Lannister.
"Tywin... Jaime..."
Joffrey chewed on the two names.
One was miles away in Casterly Rock, and the other was missing in action.
They were both massive threats.
But the biggest, most immediate threat was standing right in front of him.
His mother.
If she was dead, there would be one less person breathing who knew the most lethal secret in the world.
Pure, unadulterated murder violently exploded in Joffrey's eyes!
He lunged forward like a rabid leopard locking onto its prey, charging directly at his own mother!
His hands snapped out, his fingers violently locking around Cersei's slender throat like a steel vise!
Cersei's eyes bulged out of her skull, her face a mask of absolute, paralyzing disbelief.
She tried to scream. She tried to cry for help.
But his crushing, iron grip sealed her windpipe completely, choking off every sound.
She was just a woman; no matter how pathetic Joffrey was as a warrior, he easily physically overpowered her.
Suffocating, blinding panic instantly swallowed her whole.
"Once you're dead..."
Joffrey shoved his twisted, psychotic face right up to hers, his voice sounding like it was scraped straight off the floor of the seventh hell.
"There'll be one less loose end keeping this secret!"
"Don't worry. I'll make sure Jaime gets sent down to keep you company."
"You filthy, incestuous whore. Don't blame me for killing you. Blame yourself for betraying my father."
"You brought this on yourself, Cersei."