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The First of Many Hard Things
The birthing room smells of herbs and hot beeswax. Candles are lit all around the queen's bed, and septas move with purpose about their business, boiling water, mixing poultices, whispering prayers for a safe delivery. Jaime sits at his sister's side, her hand, for now, resting lightly in his. Soon, she will grip him again, with a strength that will cause even his hand to ache.
The septas tried to send him from the room, telling him that what happened in the birth room was women's business.
"I am King of Westeros, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and my wife is brought to bed with our first child," he said, meeting the steely gaze of the eldest woman. "What happens here concerns me above all others, and so I will stay."
The septas did not say another word about his presence after that.
Cersei's golden hair is unbound, and the contrast between her belly, full with child, and her lean, lithe body fans the embers of his desire. She sees it in his eyes, and presses his hand to her lips to show she understands.
Later, when her face is slick with sweat and her back curved with the effort of the birth, Jaime sits beside her, silent in the face of her hoarse screams. He tries to keep it from touching his face, but he is worried. He has heard such sounds from dying men before. The septas do not seemed concerned, however, and so he lets her screams and curses break around him like the sea beating against the cliffs at Casterly Rock.
There is a final wave of heat and agony and labor, and then silence. One septa takes the new, red child in her hands while another cuts the cord that binds it to Cersei. He watches their faces carefully, for there is too much of the stuff of birth on the child for him to see its sex. The head Midwife wraps the child in a white cloth embroidered with rampant golden lions and places it in Cersei's waiting arms.
"A daughter, your Majesties," she says. "A healthy girl."
Cersei's face slackens, and she is too exhausted to hide her disappointment. She had been hoping for a boy, for she knows too well the bitter fate of first-born daughters. The septas look at her with a mixture of pity and what he imagines to be tacit condemnation. He can almost hear their unspoken words: The gods denied you a boy, Kingslayer, for your broken oath and for your arrogance. None of them would ever say such a thing, of course, and he cannot punish them for words that stay behind their lips, no matter how much he might want to.
Seeing Cersei so worn and tired, looking down at their first born child not for what she is, but what she might have been, Jaime does the first of many hard things he will do as a father. He pushes back the blanket, kisses the girl-child's red face, and tells a great lie for the both of them.
"A daughter is a blessing. We are greatly pleased," he says.