i.
The dusty afternoon sun streamed through the red drapes, warming her face in the way she hated. More than anything, Cersei Lannister loved to sleep in pitch-black darkness, but that was a luxury only afforded between the hours of one and seven in the morning. King's Landing, much to her chagrin, was a hotbed of late-night partiers who rose at an ungodly hour, shrieking tomato prices and amiable greetings in the same octaves they used during their sonorous orgies.
She absentmindedly reached to the other side of the bed, grasping for someone, anyone. It would take a while to get out of that stupid habit. Brushing her wavy golden hair out of her face, she dropped her head back onto the red pillow – red, always red. Even when she closed her eyes, those being the most private, splendid moments of her life, she saw her family's colors. A testament to their power, to her power. But more often than not, just redundant.
Her guards were probably wondering why she hadn't risen yet to greet the King on his name day. In truth, they were even more likely wondering why she hadn't yet been escorted to the Great Sept of Baelor, considering the King's quick temper when it came to ignoring formalities.
She rubbed her pale legs together under her new satin sheets, a much preferable follow-up to Robert's fox fur. The heat of the seemingly immortal summer, combined with her ex-husband's predisposition to sweat, had instilled in her a great hatred for foxes. He would never know how much she enjoyed seeing a few of the beasts slung over the shoulders of his hunting brigade, most especially his shoulder – because usually that meant he had been too stupid to get anything bigger.
The memory of his inadequacies forced a rare smile. It was often the memories of his failures, or the foresight to see them played out in her other puppets, that made her happiest. Robert could have never known how much his repulsive sexual routines truly pleased her, or in other words, how they reinforced her much-deserved smugness. It was nice to be able to stretch her legs without brushing against that fat lard, but in an odd way, she missed being reminded of her own sexual and intellectual superiority.
She slipped a hand down her leg to rub the back of her right ankle, sore from touring King's Landing the day before in a new pair of leather sandals. They'd been forged by the city's foremost shoemaker himself, but still, they were nothing like what used to come in from the Free Cities or Qarth. Before that slimy eunuch insisted nothing should come in or go out of this wretched place, she thought.
Indeed, it was that Spider who insisted she tour the ragged streets of the beggar-infested Seven Kingdoms capital, that Spider who had played on her thirst for ascendancy.
ii.
"My queen," – wisely, a title he never neglected – "I am afraid I have spoken to every member of the Council regarding one particular problem, and it seems to me that there is no one who can think of an adequate solution."
"Is that so," Cersei remarked sarcastically, sweeping down the chipped stone steps leading to Flea Bottom. A toothless old woman smiled at her on the way down and bowed drunkenly, forcing Cersei to look in Varys' direction. "I was under the impression that the Council was capable of making difficult decisions."
Varys chuckled politely, gliding alongside the Lannister lady. "You and I are both well aware that the Council is more than inadequate" – she quivered at the word – "and without Ned Stark to voice his…honorable opinion on the matter, we have come to a standstill."
They passed a small child, no more than six years, roasting a rat over a makeshift spit. Cersei felt the heat lapping at her ankles, just beginning to show blisters. The pain was only exacerbated by her adjunct's insistence that she be reminded of the Council's inability to carry on without her.
Her pain lessened at the thought.
"It's the Targaryen girl," the Spider whispered. "Rumors abound that the Dothraki hold her in very high regards, no mere feat for an outsider. Since plans to poison her have been unfortunately thwarted, I am unsure as to how we should proceed."
Cersei glanced over her shoulder at the twenty Kingsguard following behind them, hands tightly gripped around their swords' shoulders.
"If it were anyone but you, Lord Varys, I should be wary about discussing such private matters in such a public space," she muttered, teeth clenched. "But as it is, my advice to you would be to form another plan. One that doesn't involve the overplayed poisoned wine trick."
They made their way toward Rhaenys's hill, one of King's Landing's three mightiest hills, and one of Cersei's least favorite spots in the whole capital. She could deal with Flea's Bottom and its proliferating population of despicable vagabonds, but she hated being reminded of the Targaryens' ancient beastly companions. All this talk of this Viserys character had induced countless sleepless nights in which she dreamed of cutting up the dead usurper herself – often with Ned Stark's own Valyrian greatsword.
"Wise advice, my queen," Varys smirked. "Perhaps we have learned that sellswords are not to be trusted in such important missions. Alas, I am hesitant to send a member of the Kingsguard, as they are easily recognizable, and invaluable in these uncertain times."
"Although you would not believe we had a Kingsguard from the state of things," the Queen Regent said loudly, stepping over the corpse of a mangled dog, its bloody wounds festering with flies. "Someone get rid of this," she ordered the young knight leading his procession of fellow bodyguards.
"I suppose Janos Slynt is not as adept a leader as our Jaime."
"Perhaps not," Cersei snapped, whirling on Varys at the bottom of the looming hill. "I would tread carefully, my lord." She heard her voice crack and dug fingernails into her wrists to stop everything from flooding out.
The eunuch looked down, a pose of superficial remorse. He moved aside, allowing Cersei to lead him across the hill; she brushed aside her long – red – satin gown and turned to the spectacle that was the Dragonpit. Her face flushed, her hands began to shake, at an unnoticeable pace. Her veins shook, more like. She could feel herself morphing into a singular color; her house's crest was betraying her, but she could never hate red, he loved it so…
Turning to face Varys, she felt the red seep back into her bloodstream, rendering her as pale and fair as she was before. The cleverest of disguises.
"I apologize, my queen," he uttered swiftly, four words he'd perfected in tone and delivery. "I only meant to suggest that we are surrounded by irredeemable mediocrity. To eliminate Daenerys Targaryen requires a finesse unseen in King's Landing by my own eyes, or the eyes of many – "
"Perhaps I should do it myself," Cersei interrupted, never taking her eyes off the ruins of the pit. If men could burn stone, she thought. "It only seems appropriate, if the state of this deplorable city is what you say it is, that we put the best of my house to use. Considering our adept leadership."
"Your house is no mere house, my queen," the Spider said, his words strung together in subservience; but she detected a note of excitement. "I admire your bravery. It is true, what they say. That you should have been born a man."
A bold statement, all formalities dropped. Fit for punishment – Joffrey's punishment – but she reveled in it. "Leave us," she commanded her guard. They obeyed as best they could, dropping back down to Flea's Bottom, kicking at outstretched hands painted in soot. Cersei cocked her head, eyes narrowed to slits, momentarily distracted by the mob of perverse poverty. This city wasn't fit for dead dogs. "One hears talk of Catelyn Stark running all over Westeros for the sake of her children, and now she rides with the Wolf's army. I have better cause to leave my post. As did my father, my brother, and my…half-brother."
"Do you really believe Joffrey will let you go?" Varys asked, a trace of a dangerous smile on his lips. "Or the Council, even? And when get word gets out that you've gone, what then? The thirteen-year-old's regent, off to take her revenge?"
She glanced at his groin, as harmless as the once-fearsome dragon arsenal above them. They'd stopped climbing halfway.
"You don't understand these particular passions," she sneered. "The world will turn without me. Perhaps on a tilt, but it will turn."
iii.
She thrust her hair back in a wild gesture, lifting one leg over the side of her bed. Her bed. Tonight she would flee King's Landing, once Joffrey flew into his last exhausting rage, once Varys' spies were the only ones loitering about. Until then, a low profile.
With a clap of her hands, a cadaverous female servant entered her chambers. This one never looked her in the eye; her hair was a shade lighter than the regent's, although it maintained a bit more of its youthful shine. Cersei knew this, so she explicitly asked the guards to keep her away and occupied, whatever that meant. But here she was, clad in measly brown linen that barely hung off her bones, her blonde hair unable to hide the shine of her gleaming blue eyes.
"What's your name?" Cersei said, her lips wrapped around her teeth in a happy snarl.
The girl froze mid-step.
"Speak, sweet thing." Sansa Stark's red hair came to her mind, and she swept to the bedside table to pour one of the last glasses of Arbor wine.
"M-Melindre, m'lady," squeaked the servant. She tilted her head upward, revealing an annoyingly symmetrical face.
Blood rushed to Cersei's face again. "Hm. Sounds like a highborn name, fit for a Lannister. Or a Targaryen. But tell me truly, who was your father? Or, I should say, your mother? No doubt Littlefinger is at least acquainted with her." She couldn't stop the words from slipping off her tongue; it had been too long since she had exercised her sharp tongue within the safe confines of her bedroom, and it would soon be too long again.
A single blue eye shot upward beneath the girl's curtain of hair; for a split second, Cersei saw it narrow in recognition of Littlefinger's name.
"Ah, yes," she grinned a toothy grin, "I often forget how that name tends to have an effect. How you worked your way into the Red Keep" – she could not stop – "I am unsure; someone will be punished for it, of course, but you may enjoy your last few moments." She took a swig of the pungent wine and thrust the cup inches from the girl's face. A drop spilled onto the ornate carpet, filling in red with more red.
The girl had regained her composure by now. Cersei admired that, how quickly she could snap back to a virgin-like posture.
She suddenly wondered, her hand outstretched toward the stoic face, if she had it in her. Sympathy was not an emotion she felt often, but she feared it would come alive when she had her hands wringed around the Targaryen girl's neck, that it might consume her – blind sympathy, like blind fury. The thought made her blood curdle. Black specs danced in her eyes, and she swayed maybe an inch; enough to make the girl reach out her hand in an ill-timed intuitive moment.
Cersei threw the wasted wine in Melindre's face, desperate to prove she was wrong about herself, desperate to prove this girl was exactly what she knew her to be: a product of those filthy orgies she could hear miles away. Only a few years ago, this girl's mother had bucked and sucked her way to a sudden pregnancy; this girl swam for nine months in a rancid sack of a uterus, and probably had more encounters with cocks during that time than Cersei ever would.
Time slowed as the glass hit the floor and bounced twice; Cersei caught a glimpse of her prey's wide blinking eyes, dripping with red, as she lunged for her throat. A rap on the door sounded – "we're fine," Cersei grunted; they would listen – and the girl ducked under her regent's impending grasp, being nearly a foot shorter. Cersei spun around, but the nimble girl was already scampering across the bed. She caught sight of a devilish grin on the bitch's face; this wasn't her first time playing cat and mouse with a powerful cat.
Cersei didn't know where or how she should pounce. The mere tenacity of this girl must have gotten her far before this, but no one who entered the regent's bedroom could leave without a judgment, whether moral or physical. Some were trickier than others.
Melindre hopped off the bed; Cersei watched her from the opposite corner. They both panted deeply, despite that they had only contended for mere seconds. The girl, the whore, the bitch, the intruder – she wanted her brother back, to play cat instead – bolted for the door, but Cersei was quicker, and she snatched the two frail wrists, yanking them back violently. Her captive gasped gutturally, low enough so the guards wouldn't hear. A smart move – she'd be alive only long enough for the sword to reach her chest.
"Swifter than any cunt I've ever met," Cersei whispered as the girl struggled feebly against her. She could see why her guards were so content to keep this one hidden; she was a rape fantasy realized. Her cheeks flushed. She had never played the cat, but it was exciting to stand in Jaime's place, to be so physically reminded of him. "And so veiled. I might have sworn you were a virgin."
They leaned against the wooden doors, Cersei breathing against the girl's snow white neck. She was right where she needed to be; in a flash, she could bring her hands up to that pristine neck and squeeze until every hidden tendon revealed itself. But she felt Jaime's ghost egging her on, felt him guide her hand over the girl's soft shoulder in a way that made her victim's muscles loosen, made her feel like she was actually safe in a lion's den. The mouse was free, but it stayed put anyway.
She was on the verge of something, but she didn't know what. Her impending journey had shrouded her mind so completely that she had almost forgotten about Jaime, about his unrelentingly rough touch, so perfectly suited to her liking after years of practice. She tried to touch herself, imagine it was his calloused hands stroking her taut nipples ever so lightly or his two digits ferociously teasing her cunt, but usually stopped in exasperation. But here, holding this helpless thing in her arms, she felt her twin's intuitions take hold of her, and so she let them govern her.
Cersei recognized the sharp intake of breath, so wispy, as she bent down to taste her free captive's skin, her first taste of a woman so much more succulent and bizarre than she could have expected. She imagined it was her own self she tasted as she continued nibbling, feeling her own sudden breath escape her lips as her inner thighs ached. Then she was him again, her nails scratching the girl's arms as her hands caressed up and down while their light heaving overlapped in unity, reaching with her left arm up past the brown linen into unfamiliar territory. Yet so familiar; the girl trembled with one passing touch in the same breadth of upper thigh Cersei felt throbbing under her own dress.
She heard a whisper: "I have heard you have not been a virgin since your childhood, m'lady."
Cersei laughed, in that effortless way of Jaime's, and spun the girl around to face her, their shades of white and gold blonde suddenly entangled. "We will see which of us is more skillful, then. You first."
She felt the whore trembling as she started jerking up Cersei's layers of red and gold. Sweat gathered along her newly bathed legs and a fierce prickling at her clit began, and she grabbed the girl's hair like Jaime always did, forcing her head up the choking skirts. The familiar and jolting texture of tongue came quickly, just inches from where she truly wanted it, but it was enough to make her grip the girl's hair even tighter, enough to make her taut lips part and let out a nearly inaudible moan.
She tilted her head down to watch the girl's ass, levitated just inches above the ground, slowly sway from side to side as she clutched Cersei behind her slender knees. A jolt of annoyance pierced her stomach as she realized she had been in this petty position many times before, feasting on Jaime's cock as if it were the last one left in King's Landing. As if the girl had picked up on Cersei's sudden irritation, she shifted her fluttering tongue to the regent's flawless cunt, somehow unmarked by years of furious incestuous – and very occasionally, marital – copulation.
Melindre's tongue lapped unremittingly, without purpose or direction, over Cersei, whose legs buckled beneath her. The girl tightened her forceful grip on Cersei's knees, keeping her steady, a formidable feat considering they were both shaking and glowing with sweat. Cersei felt the bitch pause to pant, puffs of breath gushing over her labia, and took hold of her head of hair yet again, driving her upwards, choking her on her own cunt. In an act of rebellion, the girl forced two, then three, fingers inside Cersei, thrusting at a mocking place so reminiscent of Jaime, who wouldn't fully enter his sister unless she begged. She snatched at her skirts, yanking them up over her head, only pausing, when the girl bit at her clitoris particularly boldly, to respond with another violent tug of hair, or a heavy cry of pleasure she was sure the guards could hear.
She was dangerously naked then, carefully spreading her legs over the whore's face, enough so she could perch on the edge of that ravenous mouth and buck to her liking. Melindre's tongue moved in unending circles around her clitoris, sending Cersei into heaves of breathless pleasure; she was on the precipice of release as the girl reached up to tug at her full breasts, and the regent was overwhelmed as she came, all thoughts and embodiments of Jaime lost. She shuddered a high-pitched sigh as the throbbing of her orgasm descended, and her mouse collapsed back onto the rug, licking her now-plump lips covered in the remnants of Cersei's satisfaction.
She stood over the girl in bewilderment for a few seconds, her lightheadedness giving way to the realization of what had just happened, how she had succumbed so earnestly to a servant girl, and so unconditionally. The whore lay quiet beneath her, waiting for Cersei to acknowledge her as if all formalities had been regained. Cersei was, in fact, unsure as to how to proceed, her afterglow and instinctive contempt contending for the primary course of action.
Compromise. "A Lannister always pays her debts."
The girl yelped like a dog as Cersei clawed at her face, her own expression stoic, as she scampered onto the girl's chest, her wet cunt leaving a light trail across her pale stomach. Melindre's eyes grew in fear as Cersei wound up her hand and slapped her across the face – a badge of honor for a whore, she thought, hitting her again and again, and Melindre smirked with each red mark, only spawning more rage in her assailant; although Cersei was smiling too, only more wickedly.
The girl didn't hit back; she knew better. The slaps continued at a steady pace as Cersei grinded, opening and closing her mouth with each thrust, laughing loudly now, eyebrows furrowed as she fought to defend her superiority. They were in a full-fledged brawl now, and she loved every minute of it – the way her whore's face scrunched up in pain beneath her defiant grins, the sound of flesh on flesh as they collided. She fell entirely on top of Melindre then, their breasts meeting, and Cersei felt her nipples harden painfully as they grazed over the girl's; they were inches from each other, Cersei's angular and spiteful features glistening under a thin layer of sweat, her underling absorbing blows and vile looks with relish, almost egging her on.
She was close again, but she wanted what she came for. Her lank fingers wrapped around the girl's neck one by one, who – judging by her mock stiffness – still thought this was a game. Cersei gritted her teeth and rode, almost sure she wouldn't be able to go through with it without the distraction of a looming orgasm, which was often how she handed out death sentences, anyway. She shut her eyes and flexed, penetrating the girl's windpipe, and felt a distinctly authentic sputter, the first sign that the whore was smartening up to her diabolical intent. Ferocious staccato moans erupted from Cersei then as she leaned back further, amazing again at her own limber torso and strength; she adjusted her cunt to the spluttering girl's sharp hipbone, and it fit so neatly into her groove that she arched back even more, humping like a horny mutt; but she had long lost sight of her station, only concentrating on how she could win. It became almost unbearable as she inched closer to climax; she whimpered, surprised at the servile sound as it burst from her, and laughed almost maniacally as the approaching pulsations pounded harder, and harder, while under her, the whore was writhing to and fro, swinging at her, but the blows only made her laugh more.
She wasn't sure how, or when, an impossibly radiant beam of light streamed onto her unyielding eyelids, but when she opened them, as she let loose a final wail of pleasure and the descending throbs began and she shuddered frenziedly, she realized she was unabashedly coming in the presence of the most dangerous kind of vermin.
"Looking forward to your trip, your grace?" Varys simpered, arms neatly crossed, as Cersei intuitively released the girl, a lifetime's worth of games and power dissolving to pieces, the aftermath of her orgasm still fighting to stay alive in her sore thighs.