Lord Tywin slept alone, as he had a decade since his wife's bones were interred; and though her spirit might live on through the creature who now made Casterly Rock its roost, Lord Tywin could hardly call upon any measure of warmth.
The strong feelings that might have been evoked were powerfully reduced by the loss of his son.
The capital was being rebuilt, troubling reports came of Cersei, House Martell fixed its eye upon the creature that flew the Sunset Sea and called House Lannister its kin.
It was, Lord Tywin thought, as though he had still paid the price to show his allegiance to the rebels. There could be no doubt of who ordered the attack when sightings of the dragon regularly came from the west.
The dragon, ever bigger, always his wife, forever a stain on his memory, could not be removed.
Some whispered that so great was Lord Tywin's wrath, that he would cook his own son alive to get back at the Mad King. The lion did not trouble himself with the concerns of the sheep; it only bolstered House Lannister's reputation, and the dragon itself a deterrent; yet Lord Tywin had to continue.
It was in him to wade through the thickest muck, head held high, and tell all the muck was gold.
The blackened carcass that had been the capital would never fully recover, but time would pass, and in that time, could Lord Tywin continue to raise gold, drill soldiers, and plot.
It was when a septon blustered into his chambers, and confessed to his part in an indiscretion, that gave Lord Tywin pause. There was still fire enough in him to castigate.
Yet it was the dragon crying in the distance that made the matter all the more curious.
Tyrion came into Lord Tywin's chambers, and as Lord Tywin must expect, every penance which was due. His guards had been unable to find the whore, and so the punishment he planned to mete out must wait.
Every second with this Imp's mismatched eyes upon him was too long, in Lord Tywin's opinion.
"Father," began Tyrion, "We rode… "
And so Lord Tywin was related a tale of the dragon. This bane and his ire. Tyrion could not comport himself a Lannister when he confessed that in rapture of their matrimony, Tysha had begged a flight on the dragon.
Tyrion himself had known such raptures; such raptures, Lord Tywin knew, was not fitting for a Lannister. And so he was informed of a punishment all its own; Tyrion began to weep, and related that the dragon, soaring with the small two on its back, and then by misstep, Tysha had flung her hands in the air.
"It was my fault," said Tyrion, born for mummery, "I loved her, and - "
Lord Tywin, seeing the opportunity rose. "Enough of this."
There was ample room had Tyrion not take the bait to be dismissed. Little more was needed, that in the length of their relationship, could demand such and not be accepted as a breach of the greatest kind that did not already exist.
Lord Tywin steepled his fingers. Had Joanna lived, she would have pushed for the match to go ahead. This dragon had the faults of his wife, and no foresight that the gods could provide.
He would never hear from Gerion again.