It didn't take long for news of what had happened at the Towers to find King's Landing, thus finding me.
I'd been having a nice day, as nice as days in golden crusted hell can get. I was in my chamber's brushing my hair when Shay barged in with a mighty force for such a small girl.
I was about to ask her where the fire was, but as I turned and took in her stricken face, I knew.
No, not a fire. Death.
The faces of each of my family member's flashed before my eyes as I gathered the courage to ask her for the answer I more than anything did not want.
"Who?"
GOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTGOTG
Time moved rather quickly in the days following the death of my mother and brother.
I didn't do much and I didn't say much.
I did not want to talk about it. I was the very last surviving member of my family. We had come to King's Landing all those moons ago as a distinguished vacation and a simple favor to King Robert. And now? Now, Arya and Sansa were lost, likely dead, father's gone, the boys were burned alive and Robb and mother lay dead somewhere half sewn to dire wolves. All of this because a fat man had too much wine and allowed a spoiled little devil-boy the throne.
Father had tried to tell me what this place was, and I hadn't taken him seriously. And now, look where I stand. Where they lay.
What words existed to do anything I felt an inch of justice?
Luckily, it wasn't as if I had friends here to ask me to find any.
My handmaiden, Shae, was the closest thing to, and she seemed to understand that I needed, more than anything, to be left alone.
There was Tyrion as well, I suppose. He'd shown at my bedroom door less than an hour after I'd heard. He'd taken a single moment to look at me, sobbing in the window-sill, and was gone in the next. I figured he'd come to deliver the news, then upon discovering I already knew made himself scarce under the assumption that a Lannister was the very last person I wanted to see.
An intelligent assumption, indeed.
Don't get me wrong; my anger wasn't with Tyrion. I had a theory that his name inherited evilness was stunted with his growth, because he was no Lannister like the ones I'd known.
But with logic aside, he was still one of them by blood and right. He fought for them and ate with them and wore their colors and crest.
And the night I became an orphan, had he gotten close enough, I wouldn't have hesitated to cut his throat with my letter opener. To take anything from those bloody lions, to have them feel even an ounce of what they had caused me would have brought me immense pleasure.
He hadn't gotten close, though; thankfully, or we'd both be dead. And the dreary days that had passed since have doused the fire raging in my belly.
It wasn't gone completely, of course. It would burn idly until stoked or satisfied with blood; I knew this for sure. Until that day, it would singe nothing but me.
Today in particular I needed to shove it down particularly far, as I was to spend the day flocked by those murderers. It was the day of Joffrey and Margery's wedding. There would be merry and celebration, and I would sit at the head table alongside the demon pride.
I watched myself in the mirror, now, as Shay tightened my corset and another maiden pinned my hair like a proper southern woman.
It felt wrong…wrong and sick, to be done up like one of them while my family lay dead. But I kept father's last advice to me on a loop in my head…play the role until the time is right.
I would avenge them all.
I would spill blood in their names, bring justice and freedom to the north and rid the realm of Lannister evil forever. I would. By the Seven Gods, I swore it.
Play the role until the time is right.
They'd just have to never see me coming.
I knelt for Shae to apply the deep crimson lipstick to my cracked lips. I stared at my reflection. Tanned, red gowned and covered in gold admonishments. I could not possibly better look the part.
They'd never see me coming.
A wolf in lion's clothing.
