There are spots of blood on the sheets.
When she sees it, half asleep, and boneless, she knows it's not hers. She turns in her lover's arms to slide her hands over the firm muscles of his back. She can feel the raised lines of scratches and the flakiness of dried blood on his skin. 'Oh my darling, I'm sorry.'
'It's all right,' he says, fully awake. 'Gods know, I've had worse.' Elsa remembers tracing his scars with her fingertips earlier in the night. He protests wordlessly with his embrace when she moves from the bed, but she resists him. He sits up to watch her cross the room and resigns himself to not sleeping a little longer.
She pours wine over a clean cloth and returns to the bed to sit behind him. 'Do you believe in them?'
'What?'
'The Seven Gods of the Andals.' She cleans the scratches. They're not nearly as bad as they looked. The lion's hide is getting old and thin.
He thinks for a long moment; long enough that she worries she's stepped over some invisible line. 'I suppose I must,' he admits eventually, 'but I've not prayed to them in a …very long time.'
She suspects when the last might have been, and has visions of pale hands and long blond hair.
Tywin sits on the edge of the bed, feet flat on the floor. His hands are on his knees and he looks like he's about to rise; leave her there. It's the last thing she wants. Putting the cloth aside, she wraps herself around him from behind, naked front to naked back. She can see the side of his face, and part of her regrets asking her question. She knows he thinks about Joanna every single day, and always will, but she'd rather he not think about her end; about begging unresponsive gods to save her. She kisses the long scar on his shoulder and he turns to her, takes her face in his hands.
'You are so unexpected.'
Her expression asks him to elaborate.
'Where did you come from? Why did you come?'
She's about to tell him he knows the answers to those, when he continues: 'I know what you've told me, but why did you come here to me, now?'
She shakes her head, unsure what it is he's asking.
'I'm an old man; nothing for a lady to want. But you've captured me, taken me, taken me apart.' He presses her back into the mattress, kisses her neck, sends his free hand to wander down her side. 'Why are you here, now, changing everything?'
She stills his hands; 'What have I changed?'
He looks up, helplessly, as if the answers will appear from out the window, 'Everything.' His gaze returns to her. 'And nothing.'
'Nothing?'
'This-' he presses his semi-erection into her hip, '-part of my life was meant to be over.' His hand cups her breast. 'I wasn't meant to find this again.'
It's the word again that gives him away, and she realises with blinding clarity what it is he's just admitted. He's not talking about the hunger between them, though that's probably what he thinks he means. And there is certainly that, reasserting itself now, distracting her from this not-so-small revelation.
She knew from the moment she saw him that she was about to be in an awful lot of trouble, but she'd always thought she'd be able to free herself from that with a little effort. He'd give her no reason not to – their dalliance was just that to him; something he could set aside and forget. But here he was now, giving her one, huge, insurmountable reason. As he bent again to kiss the spot under her ear, the word again floated about in her head, changing everything.