Cate wanted to squirm in the chair before the king's desk, but didn't budge.
"So," Robert said, "I s'pose a marriage isn't in the cards for you and my son."
"I - no," Cate said. "Sorry."
"I understand," He said, sighing deeply, unhappily. "You know when he was ... five, maybe seven, I think, after learning one of the kitchen cats was pregnant, he cut open its belly to see the kittens inside. Showed one of 'em to me."
Cate didn't know what to say. She sat there, mouth agape, hoping the king would suddenly bark with laughter and tell her it was only a joke, but he sat there and she sat there and they stared sadly at each other.
With a groan, Robert suddenly turned in his chair and gestured to the page waiting on him from the corner of the room. "Wine!" He called.
Cate blinked as the boy - a thinner, wispier version of the Kingslayer - stepped forward to pour. She hadn't even seen him there, blending in with the red curtains.
The King sneered, deriding the boy - "Lancel - Gods, what a stupid name" - before he realized all that was in his cup was barely a drop.
The jar was empty.
"What do you mean it's empty?!"
Well, Cate didn't hate the king as much as she hated the queen, but she certainly didn't respect him, she decided then.
"And tell your cousin to get in here!" Robert called as the Lannister boy scrambled off for more wine. The instructions turned out to be moot, however, because as soon as the doors were thrown open Robert called out, "Kingslayer! Get in here."
Jaime Lannister rolled his eyes - maybe Robert hadn't noticed, but Cate caught him from her peripheral - and approached the desk with Ser Barristan Selmy.
The king turned to Cate, his mouth curled up in a sneer. "Surrounded by Lannisters," he groused. "Every time I close my eyes I see their blond hair and their smug, satisfied faces. It must wound your pride, huh? Standing out there like a glorified sentry. Jaime Lannister, son of the mighty Tywin … forced to mind the door while your king eats and drinks and shits and -"
"Your Grace," Ser Barristan spoke up, "perhaps Lady Cate doesn't need to hear this?"
"She might want to hear what she just escaped," Robert grumbled. "Or have you not heard yet?"
The two knights looked at her. Another Lady might have blushed, or turned her gaze to the ground, but Cate held hers instead, turning her face up to meet theirs.
"I'm sorry to hear, my Lady," said Ser Barristan.
"Probably for the best," Ser Jaime finally spoke. "Cersei wanted me to find you the day after the incident."
Everyone's attention was on the Kingslayer now.
Cate spoke up first. "What do you mean?"
He scowled at her. "What do you think? You came after her son with a sword -"
"- he came after me first," Cate argued.
"She wanted you maimed. Like him. The hand, or the face, somewhere nonfatal."
Anger picked at her, flaring up. "So why didn't you?"
"You were always by that Septa, or your father or the guards."
Robert huffed, sitting back in his chair and making it groan with the sudden shift in weight. "Vicious," he muttered. "Always have been, always will. Wouldn't be the first time you'd have struck someone in the back, eh Kingslayer?"
Jaime Lannister fell quiet.
Robert relished in the silence, leaning back over, his corpulent face gleeful. "What did the Mad King say when you killed him? I never asked. Did he call you a traitor? Did he plead for a reprieve?"
"He said the same thing he'd been saying for hours," Ser Jaime finally said in a low whisper. "'Burn them all ...'"
She didn't remember pushing back the chair and storming out of the room, without even a curtsy. She didn't remember throwing open the doors into the weasley little face of Lancel Lannister - "Surrounded by Lannisters" - and racing as fast as she could walk down the hall of Maegor's Holdfast.
She definitely didn't remember Robert telling Ser Jaime to go after her, and couldn't think of a reason why he would.
But suddenly there she was, halfway down the hall and a hand suddenly clenched around her arm, and all her anger came slamming back into her.
"Lady Cate -"
She whirled on him. "We admired you," she snarled into his perfect golden feline face. "My brothers and I - you know? We could overlook the forsaken vows because you were a legend, the hero who defeated the Brotherhood at only fifteen, knighted by the Sword of the Morning himself. We looked up to you."
"I'm not a hero, Lady. You knew that too." His grasp didn't loosen. "I heard what you and your brothers called me even then - Kingslayer." The word, one she'd said so carelessly before, suddenly conjured shame, guilt. "You've always known what I am."
"I wouldn't have minded if you proved me wrong." She wrenched her arm free and fled.
