Author's Note: New Chapter! For all those asking, I fully intend to finish this fic but am kind of waiting to see how season 7 goes and if anything in the season will affect my ideas for where this fic will ultimately end up (mostly in regards to the final battle of Westeros with the walkers and any storylines with King's Landing). Anyway, with that explanation in mind, here you go. Thank you for continuing to follow this story. :)
Her child was gone. As the once-great Princess Baratheon lay on the cold floor of a dark dungeon, weak and on the verge of unconsciousness, that was the only bleak thought that penetrated the fog of pain and exhaustion clouding her mind.
Amarah had lost track of the days since she had been taken from Winterfell. One had seemed to bleed into the next as she was carted from one road to another, slung like a sack of feed across the rump of a horse that cantered at a breakneck speed towards, what she would soon discover, was the last place in the Kingdoms she ever wanted to see again.
Barely given enough food and water to survive the journey, Amarah was almost incapable of holding herself upright once she had been unceremoniously dragged from her prison on horseback and cast into the dungeons beneath the Red Keep of King's Landing. She didn't have to see much to understand where she had been unfortunate enough to find herself. She remembered the cells well enough from the time she had visited Tyrion before his escape.
She had felt such pity for him then, a feeling which she didn't even have the strength to muster for herself. She was too broken inside to feel sorry for herself. The kicks from her belly that had been such a comfort to her during Jaime's absence had grown weaker and weaker with each passing hour following her capture. Then they had stopped all together.
Even now as she moved her hand anxiously along her belly searching for any sign of life, she knew it was hopeless. The child was gone. With the groan of an abandoned animal that lay dying, she cried weakly as the fragments of her heart flew into a million tiny pieces. Was this how she was to end her life, with Jaime lost to her and their child dead inside her belly? Could the gods really be so cruel?
She wasn't given long to ponder the taunting question.
The torchlight that flickered through the bars covering her prison door wavered as the barricade flew back on its hinges. Through the haze of her tears, Amarah saw the sweep of a silken dress stir up the dust covering the stones before it came to a stop beside her. She knew who had entered before the woman even spoke.
"How long I've waited to see this."
Though it pained her to do so, Amarah managed to wrench herself upright, resting her bruised and aching back on the wall behind her so she could look her captor in the eyes. Her heart and soul might be rent in two, but she would not give Cersei the satisfaction of witnessing it first hand. She would rather die a thousand times than give that woman the satisfaction of seeing her tears.
Wiping a grimy hand across her wet cheeks, she looked up at the woman leering over her. She knew what Cersei wanted to hear. Her plea for mercy would have been like music to the other woman's evil soul. Well, Amarah thought to herself, she shall have to wait some time for that satisfaction.
She had heard the stories along with the rest of the kingdoms, how Cersei had blown the High Sparrow and his followers into oblivion while she looked down from the comfort of her keep. While the rightful heir to the throne had been battling for the safety of the kingdoms, Cersie had been playing games on the chessboard of King's Landing, achieving the power she craved so desperately. Well, she had gained the iron throne, but at what cost?
Looking at her half-hysterical expression of hatred in the flickering light, Amarah could not detect any hint of humanity in this woman. Whatever conscience she had possessed before had obviously eroded away with death of her children. Her only capacity for love that had existed in her affection for them was nowhere to be found. If Amarah hadn't hated her so, she might have felt sorry for her.
In stony silence, she stared up at the face of a woman she had so come to loathe since childhood. How easy it was in the face of Cersei's hate, to slip on the mask of indifference once more. She had grown so accustomed to wearing it when she had lived in this keep that it was with little difficulty she fell into the role once more.
Seeing she would receive no response from her mute captive, Cersei resumed her speech once more, though Amarah thought she saw the look of victory dim the slightest bit under her silent stare. "I've hated you for so long," she mocked, drawing out the word hate lest Amarah doubted how much she meant it. "The calculating princess who strutted around my palace as if you had a place here more important than mine. Stealing my brother's allegiance and affections. Putting his seed inside you."
Her eyes grew more wild with every accusation that fell from her lips, the last ending with a finger pointed in the direction of the small, still swell under Amarah's hand. Despite the danger she was faced with, Amarah couldn't keep from taunting her accuser with a well-placed reminder. "He was more than capable of putting it there himself."
Cersei didn't let a fraction of a moment pass before answering Amarah with a vicious slap across her face. Though her teeth rattled at the force behind that blow, still Amarah refused to show the slightest bit of weakness. "If that's the best you can do, Mother," she emphasized the mock title that Cersei had forbade her from ever using years ago, "then it's little wonder your father preferred to send an imp son to battle over you."
A maniacal laugh filled the suffocating air of the prison. "If you think that is the best I have, then you are surely to be left disappointed, you little whore," Cersei spit the last work out as if it were poison. "My brother thought he could abandon me for you. His own children!" Tears welled in her eyes now as she spun around to face the opposite wall. Despite her different position in the room, she still continued to rant at the captive princess. "His daughter falls prey to the beasts of Dorne! His own son throws himself from a tower window, yet still he refused to return! He abandoned us."
She turned around to pin Amarah with a gaze that glittered like frozen emeralds. "He abandoned us for you."
Amarah had no flippant remark for that accusation. When news had come to them of Myrcella's poisoning and Tommen's apparent suicide under the influence of the High Sparrow, she knew Jaime had grieved for them both as deeply as she. But what could he have done to prevent it? She knew very well that Myrcella had been lost to them the day she had been shipped off to Dorne, and, despite the efforts of his calculating bride, Tommen would never be truly safe from those that conspired all around him.
Jaime had made a choice to stay by her side, and he had paid for it. There was nothing she could say to dispute that. The queen's children were lost, and Jaime had played no part to save them. However, any sympathy that might have stirred at Cersei's mourning withered away as the other woman raised her finger again in the direction of Amarah's protective hand.
"You know some small amount of my pain now," she said in a hollow voice, coming ever so closer in the darkness. The torches beyond the cell caught the mad gleam in her eyes as the sick pleasure at Amarah's pain replaced the anger from before. "He abandoned you for the Targaryen queen, and your child is now fatherless. Just as mine were at the end of it all."
An odd mixture of perverse joy and overwhelming sadness flooded her eyes as she reached toward the small mound of Amarah's belly. Stiffening in defiance, Amarah slapped her hand away with the small amount of strength she could muster. Perhaps she was too late to save her child, but she could do her best to keep this woman as far from him as possible.
Though the blow was weak, it seemed to snap Cersei out of whatever small trance she had been under. The madness cleared momentarily from her eyes, and she looked down at Amarah again with cool calculation. It was unsettling how fast the woman's emotions could turn from one to the next.
"My revenge will be complete when you stand before the whole of King's Landing with that bastard in your belly and you partake in the same fate as your dearly departed uncle." She rubbed her hands together in a semblance of glee as she contemplated the scene. "Jaime abandoned me, and he shall pay for it dearly. As shall you. He will feel tenfold the pain I have had to suffer when he sees your pretty little head decorating a spike as he marches into the city. His triumph will turn to defeat and despair, and I will be there to see it all."
Amarah could hold her silence no longer. "You really think Daenerys Targaryen will let you live long enough to bask in that triumph?"
"You assume she will live long enough to take my throne. Well, the mad king might have been a pathetic ruler for the kingdoms, but he knew how to keep an enemy from taking his city. He might have not been able to make good on such threats, but I will not be so weak. This city will lay in a pile of ruin and smoke before I let another queen take my throne."
With those venomous words, Cersei turned on her heel to leave as swiftly as she had come. "Enjoy these last few precious hours on this earth while you can. I assure you they will not last long."
The door slammed shut behind her and the angry patter of footsteps sounded away from the door and down the hall in an opposite direction. Once certain she was gone, Amarah let her weakened body slump to the floor in defeat. She didn't need to ponder Cersei's ominous warning for long to know what it meant. If the mad queen couldn't keep the city, then no one else would. She planned to burn it to the ground.