Cersei took him aside and whispered that Lord Tywin meant to marry him to Lysa Tully, had gone so far as to invite Lord Hoster to the city to discuss dower. But if Jaime took the white, he could be near her always. Old Ser Harlan Grandison had died in his sleep, as was only appropriate for one whose sigil was a sleeping lion. Aerys would want a young man to take his place, so why not a roaring lion in place of a sleepy one?
"Father will never consent," Jaime objected.
"The king won't ask him. And once it's done, Father can't object, not openly. Aerys had Ser Ilyn Payne's tongue torn out just for boasting that it was the Hand who truly ruled the Seven Kingdoms. The captain of the Hand's guard, and yet Father dared not try and stop it! He won't stop this, either."
"But," Jaime said, "there's Casterly Rock..."
"Is it a rock you want? Or me?"
- A Storm of Swords
They had taken their sewing out onto the terrace, to catch the best of the winter sunlight. The grand dames of the court were working on an altar-cloth to be presented to the Crystal Sept at Oldtown come spring, yards and yards of silk panels embroidered with lilies, unicorns and virgin maids. The younger girls had been tasked to stitching shirts for the poor, to be distributed with the charity bread in Fleabottom - the old queen thought it would keep them humble, a virtue sorely lacking in her maids-of-honor, she often said.
For half a groat I would burn Fleabottom down, Cersei thought resentfully, pricking her finger yet again on her needle. She was but a poor needlewoman and her half-finished shirt was already peppered with pinpoints of blood. If I were queen I would douse the stews of Fleabottom with wildfire and build a pleasure palace for myself over the ashes. She had once seen an exhibition of wildfire, performed by the court pyromancers, and had been quite entranced. It would make such a lovely sight. The filthy thieves and beggars could be moved to the other side of the river - Fleabottom was an unsightly sore on the face of Aegon's city.
The other maids had grouped their stools together, gossiping while they sewed but Cersei, as usual, had elected to sit apart. The girls were giggling together. Hens, Cersei thought contemptuously. She had never sought out the company of other girls her age and they thought her odd and haughty for it. Let them. I have no need of hens when cocks like me well enough.
She had made sure to sit in the best light, so that her hair shone like an aureole of gold around her face. She was very pleased with the picture she knew she made, head bent chastely over her sewing, her gauzy gown half-translucent in the sunlight. If the squires and knights training in the practice yard just beneath the queen's terrace wished they could look up and see her. And she could look down and see them as well.
Young Ser Baelor Hightower was quite vexed with her, she had been told, he was most unhappy over the sudden lack of attention she had been paying him these past days. Baelor Brightsmile, they already called him and he was most charming and gallant but she would never take Elia Martell's leavings. He was quite diverting but of late she had been distracted. Jaime had come for her.
She looked down, just as she was thinking of him, and at that very moment he chose to look up at her. The intensity of his gaze made her color and the half-smile, half-grimace she offered him was raw with need. He has eyes of wildfire, she thought and dropped her eyes to her needlework lest she be caught out.
He had come to King's Landing for her sake only, he had told her so himself. He had served his apprenticeship as Ser Sumner Crakehall's squire, he had earned his spurs fighting the Kingswood Brotherhood. Her shining knightly brother, he was only fifteen. He had been on his way to Casterly Rock, to learn the art of ruling the westerlands under their Uncle Kevan but he had delayed in King's Landing on his way, for her. It had been four years since she had seen him properly. The last time they had been eleven, he had been the same height as she and her chest had still been as flat as his. Now... now all was changed.
"He's beautiful isn't he, your sweet brother?"
Ashara Dayne had crept up on her, like the sneaky Dornishwoman she was. For Dornish she was though, she had the Valyrian looks. Some might call her prettier than me, but they'd be fools. She rested her hands on Cersei's shoulders, smiling as guilessly as though they were the dearest friends. They were not. Cersei hated the little minx, she would cheerfully have poured poison in her morning's milk if she could.
But she had learned well, after three years at court and so she forced herself to smile and say, "Yes. Jaime was always beautiful, like me. We're twins, as you know."
"Their children will be so beautiful," Ashara murmured dreamily, twisting a curl of Cersei's hair around her finger.
"Their children?" Cersei forced herself to sit still though she longed to wrench her hair out of Ashara's grip and slap the cunning vixen so hard that her head snapped back. She's toying with me.
Ashara gave a creamy smile. "What would the poets say? Hair of gold and eyes like sapphire," she mused. "Or will it be eyes of emerald and hair of carnelian? Children as bright and fair as jewels, no doubt."
"I do not understand you," Cersei said flatly. She jerked her hair out of knot Ashara had wound around her own finger. It hurt.
Ashara looked ready to burst, the pompous fartbag. "Oh my love, don't you know? Your brother's to wed Lysa Tully."
"Lysa Tully." Riverrun, she thought mechanically, Hoster Tully's daughter. She had even seen the Tully girls at court last year, at a tourney - their father was Lord Paramount of the Riverlands. The older one was her age, fourteen, the younger scarce flowered, a child of twelve or so. "No," she whispered.
Ashara's eyes, oft likened to violets, gleamed. Not violets, Cersei thought spitefully, sewer water would be more apt, slick with oil. "Her Grace told me," she said. The Queen was fond of Ashara, she called her her sweetest little maid, but the girl might as well have been making it up. Father would never marry Jaime to the trout's daughter. The child was half-mute the last time I saw her, cross-eyed as well as tongue-tied. "The Lord Hand invited Lord Tully to the city to discuss a dower."
Well, that much at least was true. She had seen a half-written letter on her father's desk a few days back, inviting Lord Tully to the city. Business, she had thought then, uninterested, and had quite forgotten about it.
Ashara was all sweet concern when Cersei did not say a word. "I know you love your brother well. This news must come as a great shock to you now. But I know that on his wedding day, you will dance with a heart as light as a feather, for love of him and his sweet bride."
The day I dance with a heart as light as a feather is the day I shove Lysa Tully down a well. "You're a damned bitch," Cersei said through gritted teeth. "And I won't forget today, be sure of that. I'll pay you back in kind someday."
Ashara raised her eyebrows as Cersei swept up from her cushioned footstool, dropping her sewing carelessly on the ground. Her face must have been quite white when she reached the queen, for Her Grace looked up at her with concern. "Are you not well, my child?" she asked kindly. She was a kind woman, for all her exhausting ideas about humility and chastity and severe discipline to be maintained in the maidens' chamber. Beautiful too, with her hair like silver and her face like marble.
But her mother had been more beautiful, King Aerys had told her so himself when she had been first introduced to him. They say the queen was as the moon and my mother as the sun when they were girls together. "No, Your Grace," Cersei said faintly, dipping into a curtsey. "I feel quite ill. Do I have your leave to depart for my own chambers?"
"Would you not like to see a maester?" Queen Rhaella was about to summon a servant to attend her but Cersei quickly shook her head.
"Only moon's blood, Your Grace. I only need to rest a while."
"Do so, child," the Queen said, touching Cersei's hair gently. "I am sure Ashara will be happy to take up your sewing for you while you rest." She smiled faintly, she was not a complete fool and though she was very fond of Ashara, she loved Cersei for her mother's sake.
In her own room, Cersei banged the door shut and fell on her bed, burying her head under her pillow. Her gown would crease and crumple, perhaps it would never be the same again for gauze was delicate. But what of it? Her father would buy her a new gown.
The pieces began to clink in place as she thought of them. Her father was ambitious for her, he had been since the day she was born - no less than a royal marriage would do for her. But for Jaime, an alliance with the riverlands which lay south of the westerlands would do well enough. And there are not so many great lords who have daughters of an age with Jaime.
"I hate them!" she howled, not quite knowing who she meant. The Tully brat for certain, the spiteful Dayne girl and her friends who she must have told - were they all laughing at her, behind her back? -, her father who had been fool enough to think of a marriage... The door creaked open and her handmaid popped her freckled face in.
"Get out!" Cersei screamed, raising her tear-stained and rumpled face off her pillow.
"M'lady please..."
She grabbed a brass candlestand standing on her dressing table and hurled it at the door. The maid shrieked and vanished, the candle-stand clanging on the stone. I wish it had hit her. I wish it made a dent in her smug, fat face.
She did not know how long she lay on her bed, sobbing in helpless frustration, before the door slid open again. "If its you again I'll slit your throat open," Cersei snarled, pushing her face off her pillow. But it wasn't the silly cow, it was her brother. In two quick strides he crossed the room and knelt by her bed.
"Are you ill?" he asked tenderly, touching her forehead. "You're warm. Do you have a fever?"
"No," she mumbled. "Who said I was ill?"
"I saw you'd left so I went to ask the queen. She said you'd taken ill and gone to your room." He looked at her reproachfully. "You should have asked me to come."
"You shouldn't have," Cersei said sulkily, refusing to be cozened. "The other hens will gossip so about it."
"Why should they? I'm your brother. Your twin."
My other half, Cersei thought. When she was small she had always thought they would be together, playing in their mother's bower, forever dressed alike in the long smocks of childhood. When they died - and to a four-year-old death was a shadowy concept - they would be buried together in the crypts under the Rock, stone lions standing guard over them. We were born together but when we die, it will not be together. He'll bed with Lysa Tully even in death and Father will sell me like a filly to a stranger.
"I'm hot and tired," she said sullenly. "Go away." She fell into the pattern they had had since they were children - when she would sulk, Jaime would come running to her side to console her. It had always been that way, much to their Aunt Genna's amusement - she'd said that Jaime was tied to his sister's apron-strings. And so what if he is? Father is tied to hers, she only has to raise her voice for something for him to grant it.
"Let me help you then." His voice was warm and intimate.
She raised herself on her elbow, her hair falling like a mantle over her sides. Her face was red, her eyes puffy and suddenly embarrassed, she scrubbed at them with one hand. "How?"
"I'll show you. Stand up." She slid off the bed, the new note of command in his voice intriguing her. He moved around her and began to undo the laces at the sides and back of her gown, his fingers light and deft.
She giggled nervously as he worked his way from shoulder to waist. "Do you have much practice in being a lady's maid, Ser Jaime?"
He laughed, more like a man of the world now than her brother. "What do you think, my lady?" He pushed the gown off her shoulders and tugged it down below her waist and hips so it puddled to the floor around her feet. He motioned to the bed and she sat down numbly, letting him kneel before her.
Her shift came down to the middle of her calves but he pushed it up now, above her knees to the middle of her thighs. She wore green silk garters, holding up her embroidered stockings and slowly, his fingers lingering on the soft skin, he untied them. Each knot seemed to take an eternity but finally he unrolled her stockings and stuffed them inside her bedside drawer. She offered her arms to him and he slid the heavy gold bangles, engraved with flowers and vines, off them.
He looked up at her with a smile, but now she could sense that he was unsure of himself. "You should rest," he said awkwardly, suddenly abashed, a boy of fifteen once again.
"Stay with me," she whispered, leaning forward to grab the collar of his shirt so that he had no choice but to look into her eyes. As his confidence fell, hers rose in tandem. She had never been so sure of herself. "Lull me to sleep, brother."
"If you wish," he said, his voice slightly choked. Awkwardly he rose to his feet and slid into the bed beside her. She rose and in one fluid movement, pulled her shift over her head so that she was naked before him. "Cersei!" he said, gulping. He tried to avert his eyes but he couldn't, his eyes crawled down her body, from the hollow at her throat, to her round, pink-nippled breasts, down the soft mound of her belly and lower still to the darkness between her legs.
She stretched, laughing softly. Her breasts strained forwards, he could not tear his eyes away from them though he made a valiant effort to do so. "I always sleep naked," she assured him. "And you have seen me so before. We always slept together."
"When we were children," he said faintly.
She crawled into bed on all fours, slithering towards him to give him a chaste kiss on the forehead. Her naked breasts pressed against his chest, she slid one leg between his. He could not stop a gasp. "I am still a maiden," she said sweetly, "Innocent and untouched. Almost a child. Are you?"
She had not expected him to say yes, she had thought that he must surely have tumbled a serving-girl at the very least by now. But he said, "Yes," and she could almost sing for joy. So you were true to me, she thought, vindicated. She kissed him then, her lips as soft as his were chapped. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her on top of him. He opened his mouth willingly for her and she slid her tongue roughly inside, sucking on his lower lip.
This was different from kissing Baelor or Johan or any other of the half-dozen boys she flirted with, this was rawer, more primal.
His hands slid up and down her body and she dug her fingernails in his shoulders, shredding the fine lawn of his tunic. Some washerwoman would have to fix it, not her. She was not her brother's handmaid, she was his queen. She tore open his shirt in excitement, laughing exultantly, and he pulled it over his head eagerly. But when he began to fumble for the ties on his breeches, she stopped him and rolled off. "No," she said sharply.
"Yes," he said, his eyes hazy with lust. Drunkard's eyes. He tried to roll on top of her, to pin her down under his body but she slapped him, her rings drawing blood from his cheek.
He winced, putting his hand to his face. "You hurt me," he said, as sullen as a little boy.
"You wouldn't listen," she said coldly. She climbed off the bed and wrapped herself in a bed-robe. She stood in the center of the room, arms wrapped protectively around her waist, glaring at him.
He was coming to himself. "Cersei-" he began apologetically, reaching out to her. But she was no lovesick milkmaid to be cozened, though her loins were still warm and her head curiously heavy. She glared at him until he mumbled, "I'm sorry. Forgive me?"
"No," she said flatly. "Get out."
"Cersei, please-"
"Do you want me to make a scene?" she snapped. "How do you think Father would like it if you knew you tried to rape me?"
He looked as though she had struck him. "I never-"
She laughed coldly. "I was sick and weary," she reminded him poisonously. "The Queen herself can attest to it. You dismissed my handmaids and crawled in to my chamber to have your way with me. Your own sister, whom you ought to cherish and protect. The shame of it."
He was white with fury, his eyes blazing. She almost caught her breath for lust, he was dazzling when he was angry. "I'll go then," he snapped. "I'll go where I'm wanted, sister."
"Do so," she said, not at all abashed. He would come crawling back to her, tail between his legs, when his rage had abated and when she snapped her fingers for him. He had always done so. He stormed out of her room, his shirt in tatters, banging the door behind him.
As soon as he left, she sank to the floor, her legs as weak as jelly. She wrapped her arms around her knees, the bedrobe falling open. The room was very warm and she could fell a wetness between her legs. Curiously she slid her hand there, working her fingers up and down. Her breathing rose and then came in sharp bursts. Her body tensed and then slowly relaxed as she found her relief. She lay down on the floor, in a patch of winter sunlight, naked below the waist. She felt warm and sated and sleepy.
There was a brooch on the floor beside her, Jaime's, he must have dropped it as he left. Or perhaps she had torn it asunder when she ripped his tunic? She could not be sure. It was a sleeping lion, wrought in onyx. She pulled the skirts of her robe together, covering her legs, and stroked the little lion thoughtfully. A sleeping lion...
She must have dozed for a while because her face was too hot and her body ached from the flagstones when she came to. She had dreamed of a sleeping lion and the idea had come to her in the dream. Harlan Grandison died in his sleep, she remembered, the king will need a new white knight now.
"The first time I saw Riverrun, I was a squire green as summer grass," Jaime told his cousin. "Old Sumner Crakehall sent me to deliver a message, one he swore could not be entrusted to a raven. Lord Hoster kept me for a fortnight whilst mulling his reply, and sat me beside his daughter Lysa at every meal."
"Small wonder you took the white. I'd have done the same."
"Oh, Lysa was not so fearsome as all that." She had been a pretty girl, in truth; dimpled and delicate, with long auburn hair. Timid, though. Prone to tongue-tied silences and fits of giggles, with none of Cersei's fire. Her older sister had seemed more interesting, though Catelyn was promised to some northern boy, the heir of Winterfell... but at that age, no girl interested Jaime half so much as Hoster's famous brother, who had won renown fighting the Ninepenny Kings upon the Stepstones. At table he had ignored poor Lysa, whilst pressing Brynden Tully for tales of Maelys the Monstrous and the Ebon Prince.
- A Feast for Crows
They feasted Lord Tully with splendor.
Her father had given her charge of the banquet and entertainments, he said she was old enough to take her place as the chatelaine of the Hand's Tower for soon he expected her to perform similar duties in her lord husband's castles. Faced with the thought of his wroth, she dared not disappoint him. For her part though, she would have had Hoster Tully dine on shoe-leather and a pie stuffed with his daughters' carcasses if she could. Instead she donned a gown of blue-green silk, embroidered all over with gold leaves, and sat by her father's side at the head of the table, forcing a smile on her face.
The banquet had seven courses. She served spiced lamb meatballs stuffed in a roasted gull, cooked in the style of the Westerlands. Lord Tully smacked his lips and insisted that she pass on the recipe to his daughter, for he had never tasted it before. "Catelyn is a most excellent cook," he said warmly, "she delights in domestic pursuits."
"And Lysa?" her father had asked.
"My little Tansy is of a more ornamental nature than her sister," Hoster said, laughing. "She is the younger and I think, the prettier, of my girls." Her father nodded approvingly and glanced at Jaime, to see if he approved. Jaime only looked bored. They had made up their quarrel as she knew they would - after a day he had come begging like a dog to her door and she had kissed him and told him all was forgiven. If he controlled himself.
She had broached their best casks of wine, and they washed the food down with sweet hippocrass and the best Arbor gold. "You wouldn't believe how much Falyse Stokeworth loves her hippocrass," Cersei murmured to Jaime.
Jaime made a face. "I've seen her. Its a wonder she doesn't piss the stuff."
At the end of the meal, she had the cooks serve a sugar subtlety in the form of a trout. Its scales were limned in scarlet and blue icing, a delicate touch that Hoster Tully appreciated and was good enough to compliment her on. After the servants had cleared the food away, Lord Tywin looked meaningfully at his children. Cersei and Jaime made their excuses and slipped away.
They drifted to Cersei's room - Lord Tully and their father were like to haggle the night away over the dowry arrangements, like fishwives in a market. And even if they did not, Lord Tywin seldom bothered to check what his children were up to together. Not like Mother, who came sniffing and spying after us, Cersei thought. She must have loved her mother once - she had some faint memory of running to her whenever she was hurt as a child - but she could scarce remember her now. She was glad even that the woman was dead.
She let Jaime put his arms around her, after she'd locked and barred the door but before he could try to slip his hands down her bodice she demanded, "Was the Tully girl pretty?" Jaime was a poor deceiver. He flushed and hawed and she said sharply, "So you thought she was."
"Not as pretty as you," he said consolingly. He tried to stroke her hair and sighed when she held him at arm's length. "Cersei, be sweet to me tonight. You know I don't want to marry her, I hate the idea."
"Do you hate her as much as I do?"
He shrugged, annoyed by all the talk. "If you want me to, yes."
She was not appeased. "And if I wanted you to strike her and bloody her face, if you ever married her? If I asked you to tie her naked to your bed and hit her with a burning poker while I watched, would you do that?"
"Yes, yes," he said distractedly. "I'd do anything for you."
She smiled, satisfied, and allowed him to slide her gown down her shoulders. "And you don't want to marry her at all?"
He groaned. "How many times will you have me say it?"
"A hundred thousand times if I want and more."
He threw up his hands in frustration. "No, I don't bloody want to marry simpering Lysa Tully! I'd do anything to get out of it! Is that enough for you, Cersei?"
"For now," she said quietly. "Anything?"
"Yes," he snapped. She gave him a radiant smile and when he moved to cup her breasts in his hands she stopped him with a light touch. "What now?"
"Something special," she murmured. "I want to do something for you, Jaime." She touched his face tenderly. "You've been so good to me, always. You're the sweetest brother I could ever ask for." She kissed him softly and when he tried to deepen the kiss, she stopped him. "Sit down," she said, pointing to the chair. He was intrigued, she could see it from his face.
Kissing she had done many times, with half-a-dozen different boys, but this was new. She had only heard it whispered about, by giggling girls and gossiping maidservants, and she was not sure of herself. They say it gives a man such pleasure that the septons think it almost a sin. She knelt before him, deftly untying the laces of his breeches. Slowly at first she began to stroke him down there and when he began to shift and moan softly, she took him carefully in her mouth. Moonlight fell on the waves of her hair and on his muscled thighs, parted so vulnerably before her.
They say courtesy is a lady's armor, she thought, but a shield is never as good as a sword. This is my sword.
He gasped her name as he came and then sagged in her arms. She spat out the salty taste of him and wiped her mouth with her dagged sleeves. That'll have to be washed and scoured. She stroked his hair and whispered, "And you would do anything, anything for me?"
"Anything," he agreed, his voice a whisper, lips warm against her cheek. He shivered, trying and failing to control his raggedy breathing. "Cersei, please let us finish it-"
"No," she said quietly.
"Please, my love-"
"No."
She wore a scalloped gown of silver satin to the banquet. It was embroidered all over with patches of black velvet, sewn into tokens of her virginity - unicorns and crescent moons and dancing maidens. Her hair she wore as simply as a village maid, in a single long braid down her shoulder, twined with silver ribbons and pearls.
When she walked down the hall on her brother's arm, men turned to stare at her from all the tables as though she was the Maiden, come to earth as flesh. "I could take you right now," Jaime murmured, out of the corner of his mouth.
She smiled mischievously up at him. "For shame, brother. You would despoil me?"
"Yes," he whispered, naked desire in his face.
She curtseyed before the King and he smiled warmly at her. Her lord father nodded approvingly as she sat next to him and called her radiant. "Prince Viserys is growing apace," he told her, pointing to the child. He was not quite six and had been dragged out of his nursery to the royal banquet tonight. He was still sucking his thumb and his nurse, seated on a footstool next to him, had to scold him to mind his manners.
"Yes," Cersei said faintly. My lord and husband someday. Perhaps. "Princess Elia looks poorly."
Her father did not even glance towards the Dornish princess, so sallow and sickly in her yellow silks. But he did nod discreetly. "Childbirth was hard on her."
"Its been nigh on a year since Princess Rhaenys' birth," Cersei said unsympathetically. The little brat was her mother all over again, dark and ugly and so Dornish. "She's a poor breeder. She should just have died in the bloody bed and the midwives should have let her, if they'd had any sense."
"Hush, child." But her father was amused, she could tell he was. The banquet was in honor of the King's nephew, Robert Baratheon, who had just come to court. He was only eighteen but already the Lord of Storm's End - his father, the King's cousin, had perished most untimely in a shipwreak a few years back. "A pity he is already spoken for," her father told her. "Promised to Lord Stark's daughter."
He was a handsome man, she had to confess and when she did so to Jaime he glowered at her. "He looks like an ox," he told her bluntly. "Loutish and stupid."
"I like stupid men," she assured him sweetly. "You should know that better than anyone else."
The Baratheon boy had a great booming laugh and he was taller and more muscled than Jaime. Indeed Jaime looked positively lanky compared to him. But his hair is too black and coarse, she decided, and he has a beard. She liked Jaime's looks, so smooth-shaven and clean. Sometimes when he was asleep in her bed, moonglow soft and silver on his face, she could pretend it was her face she saw on her pillow next to her. My Jaime, she would thinking, touching the long, gold-dust eyelashes. My mirror.
Neither of them could compare of course to the silver prince. Rhaegar Targaryen was in attendance today, though he had been missing for a sennight now. Summerhall no doubt, most likely to escape that harridan wife of his. The eyes of half the women of the hall followed him hungrily tonight, to his wife's serene indifference. Even his mother's followed him, her bright, beautiful son.
Does she lust after him as well? Cersei wondered. Does she see her mirror in her boy as I see mine in Jaime? She wondered what it would be like to bear a son who looked like her and Jaime.
"You like him," Jaime said reproachfully.
She turned a serene face to him. "Of course," she said simply. "He's beautiful." It was a lie though, he was not just beautiful - he was the prince. I should have been his queen, she thought resentfully, feeling a stab of loathing as she always did when she looked upon the flat-chested, black-eyed Dornish princess. I would have given him sons by now, lions with silver manes and purple eyes.
She felt wronged, abused by the tyrannies of women as she always did. Elia Martell, Ashara Dayne, Lysa Tully, they all have much to answer for. And someday I will make them pay. Lannisters always pay their debts. She held her chin up high, knowing that she was the most beautiful woman in the room. Except for...
"Do you think Ashara Dayne is pretty?"
Jaime had learned his lesson. "Some say so," he said discreetly. He added quickly, "But that might be to honor her brother, the Sword of the Morning. I've never favored dark hair myself."
Prince Rhaegar did not sing for them, though she had hoped he might. He plied his royal cousin with wine and questions - he was most curious about the Vale, where Robert Baratheon had been raised. She heard more than she cared to about the Eyrie and the Arryns because she was seated on the dais, so close to the loud-voiced, loutish lord. She was dreadfully bored until Jaime whispered in her ear, "I've heard he's already bred a bastard." That piqued her interest and after that she looked more favorably on Robert Baratheon. Lout he might be, but there was no denying that he made a fine figure of a man.
I wonder what it would be like to kiss him. He would be rough, she thought, he would not be so obliging as Jaime was, so deferential and easily cowed. He looks like a man who would force a woman's lips open, and then her legs. Somehow, the thought excited her though she felt almost guilty for it. I wouldn't want a man like that, she told herself. I only want Jaime. But still...
The King took his leave halfway through the banquet. He was curious that way, he never stayed till the end believing that it would throw assassins off guard if his timings were never fixed. He left with Ser Oswald Whent and after he was gone, she mouthed, "I have something to do," to Jaime and slipped away after them. Aerys had gone to the glassed-in porch to watch the moon and the stars, as he often did at night. He claimed he could see the future in the night sky. Cersei had thought he could, he was a Targaryen after all and they had powers of foresight and seeing dreams, but her father had only snorted when she'd mentioned it to him.
Aerys couldn't see his future in a bloody sword even if it was stuck inside his bowels.
"Your Grace," she murmured softly, announcing her presence.
He turned and gave her a fond smile. "My little maid," he said, "and what a pretty little maid she is, isn't that so, Oswald?"
"Of course, Your Grace."
He waved her over airily. "Come watch with me, little Cersei." She was not so little now, but he must still have thought of her as the twelve-year-old who had first been presented to him at court. "Its a fine night, isn't it?"
"Yes, Your Grace."
"Fine night for magic and dreamers, eh? And lovers, yes."
"I wouldn't know that, Your Grace," she said demurely, dropping her eyes. "I am still a maid." Only just.
"Yes, yes... of course you are. A little flower, eh?"
"Yes, Your Grace." No, not me. I'm a lioness.
He patted her hand absently. She decided now was the time to broach the task. "My brother has always dreamed of serving you," she said softly. "Ser Jaime, he's already a knight though he's only fifteen."
"Tywin's boy, eh?" His voice was still as dreamy and distracted as ever, but suddenly his eyes seemed to sharpen. It quite unnerved her but she plunged bravely on. "His precious boy."
"Yes, his heir. My twin."
"So not the dwarf. The little monster." Suddenly his grip on her hand tightened, almost painfully. She glanced nervously at Oswald Whent, but his face was as stone. He's a White Knight, she thought, he'll protect me. And I'm the Hand's daughter. Nothing will happen to me. "We've heard of the boy, haven't we, Oswald?"
Ser Oswald nodded. "A handsome boy," he said. "A great sword and a good jouster, he's already earned his spurs and from no less than Arthur Dayne, though he's scarce fifteen."
"He was always wanted to serve in the Kingsguard. And now he hoped, now that brave Ser Harlan Grandison is no more..." she let her voice trail off meaningfully. "It would be a great honor for our House."
"I'll warrant it would." He chuckled, his voice thin and high and menacing. "Did your father put you up to this, little flower?"
"My father?" she asked, startled. "No... it was my brother."
He smiled thinly at her, as though he could see straight through her. "What a sweet sister you must be to him," he said, "so devoted. If only my own sister were like you. If only she looked like you as well, like your mother... Tywin's heir, Joanna's boy. That's your twin." Mad, she thought. Mad as a hare. He wheezed. "I'll see what I can do," he assured her. "Its the least I can do to reward a good sister like you. And I won't even mention it to your father, hmm? That's a good bargain."
He remembered that night as if it were yesterday. They spent it in an old inn on Eel Alley, well away from watchful eyes. Cersei had come to him dressed as a simple serving wench, which somehow excited him all the more. Jaime had never seen her more passionate. Every time he went to sleep, she woke him again. By morning Casterly Rock seemed a small price to pay to be near her always. He gave his consent, and Cersei promised to do the rest.
- A Storm of Swords
The sheets were smeared with blood and so were her white thighs. So I will never be a maiden again, she thought. It was a relief, more than anything. And I would rather Jaime have my maidenhead than anyone else.
He was dozing, one hand over his eyes, the other coiled around her waist. His face was pink and gold in the early morning light. Beautiful. She had slept not at all that night, whenever he dozed she would wake him again and they would make love. But she was not tired at all, she had never felt more alive. She began to kiss him again, sucking on his earlobes, biting on his nipples.
"Mmmm..." he moaned and his heavy eyelids lifted. He gave her a sleepy smile, a little boy's sweet smile.
"You'll break my heart," she whispered, caressing his face. They were naked together, as they had been when they were children on hot summer nights in the nursery, as they had been in their mother's womb.
"And you mine."
"You will take the white then?" she asked. She wound a golden curl around her finger, she could not be sure whose it was - his or hers.
"Yes," he whispered, drawing her close. "I would do anything for you."
"Anything?"
"Anything, my love."
You will, she thought, kissing his lips, finally at peace. We came into this world together and so we shall go out. Together.
A/N: I've always been fascinated by all the "cut-scenes" in ASOIAF - past scenes which are alluded to but never described fully. I'm in between my super-long and very tedious AUs so I wanted to write one of these scenes. Watch out for more of these! Perhaps next I'll handle a Catelyn-Ned one which depicts the not-so rosy sides of their relationship.