There's dark hair on the floor, darker than he's ever seen: black like the monsters' souls. Dark curls sticky with sweat and blood, though the blood is hardly visible. Not with the Lannister cloaks wrapped around the bodies.
He feels sick, dizzy.
What have we done?, he thinks, his palms clammy and his legs trembling. The room feels hot, so hot; he longs for the North, he yearns for the cold snow under his boots, the wind biting at his cheeks and his chapped lips curling into a soft smile when Lyanna would beat Benjen at swordplay, Brandon twirling some pretty girl on the dancefloor and Father laughing with his bannermen. And he misses the Eyrie, too: Jon Arryn and his imposing figure, aging faster every year, yet still strong and honourable, and respect courses through his body as he thinks of who he deems his second father. Jon Arryn, married to young, scared and weeping Lysa Tully, Catelyn's (his wife, he has to remind himself) younger sister.
We have won a war, but the price we're paying is too much, too high.
The blood is seeping through the cloth, leaving a wet trail over the marble tiles of the throne room and even if it's red, terribly red, red as death, it's turning black, drying and solidifying and he can feel his stomach clenching, preparing to throw up.
Red, red, red. Targaryen red. Lannister red. Bloody and dead and murdered. Sweet and soft and frail. Lovely and dead. Killed. Raped. We've killed hope. Let the Gods have mercy on all of our souls.
He looks hard at the cloak that covers Princess Elia's corpse, he waits and prays for this to be a dream, a nightmare, but he can feel the pain from his wounds and the fresh scars pulling at his flesh and he knows (Gods, have mercy, I'm so sorry) that this is real, this is now, and they're all cursed. He turns to Robert, he knows even Robert will be wroth at the sight, even Robert will not dare be pleased about this atrocity and he prays and prays and prays that the new King will condemn the men, the beasts, that have dared to commit such a crime —if not for him, if not for Elia, for Lyanna.
Yet Robert's face is hard as stone and his wrath is not yet quenched and there is pure hatred in his eyes. It is too late for him already. Gregor Clegane lives, so does Amory Lorch and Tywin Lannister marries his girl to Robert, crowning her Queen. In his head, they're the knights of shadow because they bring darkness and destruction in their wake. And Princess Elia Nymeros Martell (always a Martell, never a Targaryen) and her babes are forgotten.
It is the only thing he'll never forgive him.