Myrcella was sitting with Renly, Tommen half-asleep under her arm and Rosa pink-cheeked with sweetwine across the table from them, when Joffie slammed into the great hall.
His tunic, previously a splendid golden velvet, was almost black in the arm and flank, torn to shreds around his left elbow, and he had that infernal sword of his clutched in his right hand - the blade was clean, of course, because Joffie would never be so brave as to raise arms against anyone he thought might beat him, and was too clever to wield his blade against a weaker victim if he stood a chance of being found out and punished.
"I want that monster murdered!" he shrieked, striding right the length of the hall to stand before their parents. "I want it skinned!"
Their lord father began to boom and bluster, their mother to rage and scream, and Lord Stark rose very slowly, unassuming for his plain face and quiet manner, and raised a hand.
Everyone in the hall but Mother went quiet.
"This monster of which you speak, Your Highness," he said, "is, I presume, my daughter's direwolf?"
"That bitch's pet, yes!" Joffie snarled, and Myrcella wished that she could press her face into her hands at his arrogance, his stupidity - but everyone was watching the top table, watching them, and so she had to remain calm. A counterpoint to her parents, as even a balance for them as she could manage.
"Might I ask, Your Highness," Lord Stark said, his voice quiet and calm and deadly cold, "where my daughter might be?"
"I'm here, Father," Lady Sansa called from the doors, still open after Joffie's absurd entrance. Her pretty blue gown was a ruin, stained with muck and with what had to be blood, and torn along the hem - was that the wreckage, tied tight around Joff's arm, high up near the shoulder? That was a maester's trick, to slow bleeding, and Myrcella wondered where a lady like Sansa Stark would have learned such a thing. "Please, Father, Lady isn't a monster, she isn't!"
Lord Stark was around the table and down to Lady Sansa before anyone could react, wrapping her in his cloak and gathering her close, his solid hands gentle on her beautiful hair - Myrcella felt that evil jealousy twisting in her belly again, this time not over Jon Umber but over Ned Stark, who loved his daughter in a way Myrcella's lord father had never loved her.
"Lady is not a monster," he said, just loud enough to carry to the high table. "I would like to know what happened to provoke this display - Sansa?"
"We- we were in the woods, by the river, and, and Jeyne had come back to fetch a shawl, and Prince Joffrey- and she bit him! She didn't even bite him hard, Father, look!"
Myrcella looked at Joff, who was tugging at the sticky, bloodied cloth of his tunic, rounded on Lady Sansa.
"I've been savaged!" he shrieked, voice cracking as if newly broken. "Look at this! Look at it, you little-"
"Enough," the King boomed, a roll of thunder that silenced the whole hall, save for Lady Sansa's sniffles. "Where is the wolf now?"
"She ran away," Lady Sansa sobbed, "Prince Joffrey called her a filthy dog and she ran away along the river, I don't know where she went!"
Lord Stark gathered Lady Sansa close once more, and Joffie looked fit to burst when Father cursed, just loud enough for it to carry - a sure sign of defeat.
"If the wolf is gone, there can be no punishment," he said. "Joffrey, get yourself to a maester - go with him, woman, if it will keep you from caterwauling," he added, this to the Queen, and Myrcella winced at the twist of her lady mother's face.
Renly put his arm around her, tugging both her and a now-alert Tommen closer, and Rosa reached across the table to take her hand. Myrcella's stomach felt as twisted as her mother's face, with fear and with annoyance and with shame - as ever, Joffie had behaved a fool. He must have attacked Lady Sansa to raise her dog's ire, because the animal was near as sweet and eager-to-please as its mistress, and had never raised objection to Tommen's presence, or Myrcella's and Ser Arys'.
"What a mess," Renly said bitterly, watching the King thump down into his grand chair with unconcealed scorn. Myrcella barely spared her lord father a glance, more concerned with the gentle way Lord Stark herded Lady Sansa from the hall, chased by Lady Sansa's bland little friend and Lord Stark's captain, all of them frowning, all of them concerned.
Myrcella had never been given such careful consideration by anyone at all, not in all her life. Was that what awaited her in Winterfell, when she became its lady?
She could not decide if it looked wonderful or smothering.
Tommen refused to settle for his maids, so Myrcella went to him herself.
He was such a bright, clever boy - she loathed that their lady mother treated him as an idiot, because once he overcame his shyness, he was as brilliant as Uncle Tyrion, Myrcella firmly believed that. When she went to him, he had a dusty old book of some sort in his lap, and when she lifted it and closed it, she saw that the cover was so worn that the title had rubbed away.
"Surely there is something else you ought to be doing," she said, pointedly leaning across him to blow out the lamp on the far side of his bed. He smiled shamelessly, likely aware that she would never truly scold him. Even when he was unruly or rude, she could never bring herself to speak harshly to him, knowing as she did just how unkind their lady mother could be when she wanted.
"I cannot sleep, Cella," he said, rising up onto his knees when she sat on the bed. "I keep thinking of what Joffie must have done to Lady Sansa - did she seem hurt, Cella?"
"No, Tom, she didn't," Myrcella assured him, gently guiding him to lie down against the pillows, and then settling alongside him - but over the covers, for their lady mother would surely rage if she thought Myrcella had spent the night with Tommen again. It was only that Tommen had such trouble sleeping in strange beds, and the whole journey to and from Winterfell had been difficult for him - especially, she thought, since he had gotten along so well with Bran Stark, only to have that rare chance for friendship so brutally swept away. "Shaken and scared, but not hurt."
She didn't know what precisely Joffie had done to Lady Sansa, and did not think that she would find out - she had gone to Lady Sansa's room after all the hubbub had subsided, and plain little Jeyne had turned her away, saying that Lady Sansa is unwell. Joffie would never admit to any wrongdoing, of course, and even if he did, their lady mother would cover it all up so no one would ever find the truth of things. All she could tell was that Joff likely hadn't struck Lady Sansa, and he hadn't raped her. That, at least, was a mercy, after the mess he'd created by propositioning her during their stay at Winterfell.
"Do you think, Cella," Tommen said, looking far too fearful for a boy of ten, "that I might be allowed to come and stay with you at Winterfell when Joffie becomes king?"
"Oh, sweetling," Myrcella sighed, smoothing his lovely, soft hair away from his face and smiling as warmly as she could. "You will always be welcome with me - never doubt that."
She'd rather die than see Joff welcomed into her home as King, but it would not do to say such a thing aloud. Who knew who might be listening, after all? Ser Arys had always warned her of that, even more sternly than her mother.
"You realise," she said, settling beside Joff at table the next morning, "that every time you insult or attack Lady Sansa, you push the Starks further from loyalty?"
He scoffed, biting into a Highgarden peach - brought by Renly, in a basket wound with the golden hair ribbons Margaery favoured - and watching the juice trickle over his fingers. He was so painfully arrogant sometimes that it made her want to tear at her hair, but there was no reasoning with him. She could only wait.
"That bitch is ripe for the plucking," he said, looking at her sidelong, as if forgetting that she was not one of his many transitory cronies. "If that savage of hers hasn't fucked her already, I guarantee I'll have her maidenhead before the year is out - she wants it, she's just afraid of what her fool father will say."
Myrcella laughed at that, so long and so hard that even Uncle Tyrion's arrival did not halt her.
"What jape has my least favourite nephew shared to make you laugh so, niece?" he said, pouring himself a cup of ale and taking the place directly opposite Joff. "Something vulgar and ugly, I presume?"
"You'd know," Joff said, snickering as if he'd made the wittiest jest in the world. Myrcella rolled her eyes, her own laughter dying a short death, and turned to Uncle Tyrion, who was ignoring Joff with an expression of polite, razor-sharp curiosity on his face.
"Joffrey is of the opinion that Lady Sansa and her betrothed are rather closer than is proper," she said, "and even if they are not, he believes that he will have her for a mistress by the end of the year."
There was a heartbeat of silence, and then laughter ripped from Tyrion like a roar.
Joff stormed away, crimson-faced and fuming, but hopefully diminished - let him remain so, so he might leave her alone.
Myrcella did not think it likely, but she had to pray for it regardless. Once Joff had set his sights on Lady Sansa, he had decided to lay claim to her, and there would be no dissuading him until she was removed from his company. There was naught else Myrcella could do but pray.