Joffrey's voice carried a sick, twisted tenderness, but the hand locked around Cersei's throat was steadily tightening its crushing grip.
Cersei's face had already swollen into a suffocating, deep crimson.
She clawed uselessly at Joffrey's wrist, her manicured nails carving bloody, desperate scratches into his flesh.
Black spots began swimming in her vision. She was seconds away from passing out entirely.
Right at that exact second.
Creaaaak—
The heavy wooden doors of the council chamber were pushed open from the outside.
A silhouette stood perfectly still in the doorway, backlit by the flickering torches of the corridor.
Joffrey's lethal grip on Cersei's throat instantly froze.
He slowly turned his head, looking toward the open door.
The moment he recognized the face in the shadows, the rabid, psychotic fire in his blue eyes was instantly doused by raw panic.
It was Lynn.
Hadn't he just left?
Why the hell was he back?!
Lynn took in the completely unhinged scene playing out in the room, his face an absolute, terrifying blank slate.
He just stood there, letting his gaze slide off Joffrey and lock onto the woman currently choking to death in his grip.
"You..."
Joffrey instinctively yanked his hand back like he'd been burned.
"Hack... cough, cough, cough!"
Cersei grabbed her own bruised throat, coughing violently as she greedily sucked in huge, desperate lungfuls of air.
She dry-heaved and gasped, tears and saliva mixing in a pathetic, humiliating mess down her chin.
Joffrey looked at Lynn, then down at his mother who had just cheated death on the floor. His brain was a chaotic, short-circuiting mess.
He got caught.
Caught red-handed trying to butcher his own mother, by the one man he simultaneously worshipped and feared more than death itself.
"Lord Lynn... I..."
Joffrey opened his mouth, desperately trying to formulate some kind of excuse.
But he quickly realized there wasn't a damn thing he could say to explain this away.
Lynn slowly pulled the heavy door shut, plunging the chamber back into suffocating dimness.
He walked toward Joffrey, his steps slow and deliberate.
Every single footfall felt like a boot coming down directly on Joffrey's racing heart.
Lynn stopped right in front of him. Towering over the boy by a full head, his sheer physical presence radiated a crushing, lethal pressure.
"You were going to kill her?"
Lynn tipped his chin toward Cersei, who was still violently hyperventilating on the floor.
"She deserves to die!"
Joffrey instantly bristled, exploding like a feral cat backed into a corner.
"She betrayed my father! She betrayed me!"
"She's a toxic, venomous bitch! She's a fucking whore!"
"She doesn't even deserve the right to call herself my mother!"
"And so your solution was to murder her?"
Lynn's voice was perfectly level. So unnervingly calm that it made a fresh wave of panic spike in Joffrey's chest.
"I... I..."
Joffrey choked on his words.
He had absolutely no idea how to answer that.
"No matter how venomous she is, no matter how filthy her sins are, she is still your mother."
"She is the Queen Mother of the Seven Kingdoms."
"And you, the King of the Seven Kingdoms, just tried to strangle your own mother to death in the middle of the Small Council chamber."
Lynn stared down into Joffrey's panicked, twisted face, continuing his verbal vivisection.
"How exactly do you think the lords of Westeros are going to react when that news gets out?"
"A matricidal tyrant?"
"Do you honestly think your uncles, Stannis and Renly, are going to let a golden opportunity like that slip by?"
"They'll march straight out of Storm's End and Dragonstone, flying the banner of 'avenging the Queen,' and hammer their way right to the gates of King's Landing."
"And what about your grandfather? What the hell do you think Tywin Lannister is going to do?"
Every single word out of Lynn's mouth was a sledgehammer, brutally smashing into Joffrey's fragile, fraying sanity.
Joffrey's face visibly drained of blood, turning a sickly, ghostly white.
It hit him.
He suddenly saw the entire, catastrophic fallout perfectly clear.
If he actually murdered Cersei today, his reign as King was completely, permanently over.
He would become the undisputed public enemy number one of the entire realm.
Every single lord would spit on his name and rally to put his head on a spike.
He had just barely managed to claw his way out from under Tywin's shadow. He had just finally started to feel like a real King who actually held the reins of power.
He absolutely could not afford to lose it all!
Not a fucking chance!
"And you actually thought that killing her would keep your little secret buried?"
Lynn's next sentence completely, violently obliterated the last remaining shred of Joffrey's psychological defenses.
Joffrey's body swayed violently; his knees practically gave out on the spot.
The secret!
He knew!
Lynn knew his absolute darkest, most lethal secret!
A massive, suffocating tidal wave of primal terror completely swallowed him alive.
His hands and feet turned to ice. It felt like his lungs had completely forgotten how to pull in oxygen.
Thud.
Joffrey's legs turned to jelly, and he dropped straight to his knees right in front of Lynn.
He desperately grabbed fistfuls of Lynn's leather trousers.
"Lord Lynn... I... I'm begging you..."
He looked up, his blue eyes bleeding with naked, pathetic terror as tears streamed uncontrollably down his face.
"Don't tell anyone... please, I'm begging you, you can't tell a single soul..."
"Keep your mouth shut, and I'll do whatever you want! Absolutely anything!"
"The Hand of the King is yours! The entire goddamn realm is yours!"
"I'll be your absolute puppet! I'll do whatever you say!"
"Just please, let me keep the crown!"
"I'm begging you!"
He was sobbing.
The psychotic maniac who had just been a hair's breadth away from strangling his own mother to death was now kneeling on the floor, bawling his eyes out like a pathetic, helpless infant.
Cersei slumped against the wall, staring at the scene in a blank, shell-shocked daze.
Her son. The King of the Seven Kingdoms. Kneeling on the floor, wagging his tail and begging for mercy from another man like a beaten dog.
It was the ultimate, sickening irony.
Lynn looked down, his gaze coldly taking in the utterly broken King groveling at his boots.
"Get up."
Lynn's voice was still a dead, flat calm.
Joffrey didn't dare disobey. He scrambled frantically to his feet and stood before Lynn with his head bowed, terrified to even breathe, looking like a little kid who had just been caught stealing.
"Remember this: a King never kneels."
Lynn stared him down, delivering the words with casual, chilling indifference.
"Yes... yes, of course..."
Joffrey nodded furiously.
"I'm not going to spill your little secret."
Lynn's words sounded like the literal voice of God to Joffrey's ears.
He snapped his head up, staring at Lynn with absolute, naked disbelief.
"Because once that skeleton gets dragged out of the closet, it's a massive headache for both of us."
Lynn continued smoothly.
"A bastard sitting on the Iron Throne plunges the entire realm into absolute, chaotic anarchy."
"And everyone right now needs the realm to stay stable."
"Thank you... oh, Gods, thank you!"
Joffrey was practically weeping with gratitude; he looked like he was about to drop to his knees all over again.
A sharp, warning glare from Lynn instantly stopped him in his tracks.
"I'm bailing you out, but it comes with a price tag."
"Name it! Just name it! I'll agree to absolutely anything!"
Joffrey aggressively swore his compliance without a second thought.
Lynn shifted his gaze over to Cersei, still slumped in the corner.
Cersei visibly shuddered.
"Her."
Lynn pointed a finger straight at Cersei.
"She's done living in the Red Keep."
Joffrey's face instantly twisted into a mask of pure, unfiltered disgust.
"Exactly! Throw her out! I never want to look at this venomous bitch's face ever again!"
He pointed at Cersei and practically spat the words at Lynn.
"Lord Lynn, take her! Get her the hell out of here!"
"I don't care where you dump her! The North, Essos, or a cheap fucking brothel for all I care! Just erase her from my sight!"
"I never want to see her goddamn face again!"
Cersei's heart plummeted straight into the abyss.
Her own son was handing her over to another man like a piece of discarded trash, openly suggesting she be tossed into a brothel to get gang-banged?
What an absolutely sickening display of a son's love.
Lynn looked at Joffrey, then back at the deathly pale Cersei. A slow, highly loaded smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth.
He walked right up to Cersei and offered her his hand.
"Let's go, Queen Mother."
"Looks like your sweet boy doesn't want you anymore."
His tone was laced with a dark, predatory amusement.
Cersei stared at the hand suspended in front of her, then looked up at Lynn's violently handsome face—a face that chilled her to the absolute bone.
She had absolutely zero options left.
She slowly raised her trembling hand and placed it firmly into Lynn's palm.
His grip was incredibly strong, radiating a steady, heavy heat.
With a smooth, effortless pull, he hauled Cersei up off the cold stone floor.
"Starting today, you live in my quarters. You'll be taking care of... whatever physical needs I require."
Lynn pulled Cersei firmly toward the door, dropping his voice into a lethal, intimate whisper.
"I just pulled your neck out of a noose. Have you figured out exactly how you're going to pay me back, Queen Mother?"
Cersei didn't put up an ounce of resistance.
She was completely dead inside, letting Lynn drag her along like a compliant, broken puppet.
Right as they reached the threshold, Lynn paused. He shot one last look over his shoulder at Joffrey, who was still standing there frozen.
"Oh, and clean up this mess."
Lynn's eyes coldly swept over the butchered meat sack that used to be Pycelle.
"Lock down the intel. Tell the public the Grand Maester was old, frail, and suffered a sudden, fatal heart attack."
"Yes! Yes, absolutely! I'm on it!"
Joffrey nodded like his life depended on it.
Lynn didn't waste another word on him.
He pulled the door open, dragging Cersei with him, and vanished into the shadows of the corridor.
The council chamber was completely empty again, leaving Joffrey entirely alone with the scattered, bloody ruins of the room.
He stared down at the massive pool of blood and the butchered corpse, the horrific events of the last hour violently replaying in his head.
A sick, acidic wave of nausea rolled through his stomach.
But he knew one thing for sure. He was safe. For now.
As long as Lynn kept his mouth shut, he would remain the undisputed King of the Seven Kingdoms.
And in exchange, he had just officially become Lynn's personal, obedient attack dog.
But was he really going to just sit back and be someone's bitch?