MYRCELLA

Casterly Rock was full of silence. The halls had never been loud with bells and trumpets as King's Landing had been, but Princess Myrcella Lannister did not recall ever seeing a place so corpselike. It was bitingly chilly as she crossed the covered bridge that led to her mother's chambers. Rain sheeted down across the western sky, tapdancing on the tiles overhead. Weeping o'er the halls. Now and always.

Ser Robert Strong waited at one end of the causeway. He turned his gold-helmeted head in her direction as she passed him and proceeded down the corridor: a hundred yards of dimly lit stone lit by only the barest candelight.

She knocked on her mother's door, one, two, three. It was not her mother but Joy Hill who greeted her. "The queen will see you now," her cousin said, in a soft, slightly fearful voice. Myrcella did not deign to reply.

Queen Cersei's chambers were by no means austere, but every piece of gold and silver and glass lacked lustre. Even the flames in the fireplace seemed joyless and dead.

The queen rose from her dining table, trailing black lace and red velvet, her arms open in the coldest embrace that had ever been or ever would be. "Myrcella," she said softly. "You came."

"Why wouldn't I?"

"I thought you might…" She pursed her lips. "Never mind that. Come. Sit."

Theirs was a simple supper: venison sauced with cranberries, buttered pease, greens with pine nuts, fresh bread with apricots, mellow white cheese. They ate without much in the way of conversation. Everything worth discussing had already been talked about to death.

"Qyburn says the storm will continue through the night," her mother offered.

Let it. It would suit her mood. "Good."

"Good?"

"King Robert always said storms meant good fortune to his house. Though maybe he was only talking about trueborn Baratheons."

"Ah, yes. Robert was full of these wisdoms. On the rare occasion that he was lucid." She put down her fork. "Tell me, Myrcella. Which is the bigger number, five or one?"

"I suppose you're about to defy basic mathematics and tell me that it is one."

"Indeed. But why, hmm?" She held up a hand, fingers outstretched. "Five—" Now the fingers clenched. "—Or one? Five armies, all with different intentions, or one, united behind a single leader?"

"The five have a tendency to tear themselves apart," said Myrcella acidly. "Whereas we are so united behind our queen."

Mother frowned. "What point are you making?"

"It doesn't matter."

"No, you're right, it doesn't. Storms are storms. They serve no man."

"They may serve armies fighting against impossible odds. House Lannister is likely to find itself in that position rather soon. Soon someone will come to take the Rock from us, Mother, you know that. Though, of course, you have done us a great service by eliminating all the enemies within our own ranks."

Mother sat a little higher in her chair. "House Lannister will withstand its foes. We always have."

Myrcella shrugged. "Well. Maybe you're right."

"About what?"

"Withstanding our enemies." Myrcella took a sip of wine. "But I've been thinking... House Baratheon fell not because of its enemies, but because its members fought among themselves. Stannis and Renly both. And Joffrey, you might say. The Targaryens suffered in both the Dance of Dragons and the recent war because they fought among themselves. And now us... maybe all the Great Houses are doomed to go the same way."

"What is your point?"

How many times must I tell you the same thing? "I'm saying you can't win like this."

"You mean, we can't win like this."

"There is no we, Mother. You broke apart we when you sent uncle Kevan to Castamere, and banished uncle Jaime as well—" Her uncle – her father, rather – had been sent off on some mission to Kayce, to find what had become of Ser Lyle Crakehall and to investigate further into the ironborn invasion. Myrcella had arrived after he left, and there had been no letters back since.

For all she know, he might be dead. But she did not really care. He failed me as well.

"Sending Jaime away was necessary."

"Jaime did nothing wrong."

"He defied his queen."

"You defied your…" Myrcella broke off. She could feel tears already, hot behind her eyes. No. I will not. I am a lioness of the Rock. She shook her head.

"Why are we having this conversation?" Mother asked.

"I don't know." It was the truth. What was done was done. Why waste your breath on the dead? "I'm sorry."

Mother reached across the table, and laid her hand on Myrcella's. "I know."

After supper the rain started falling harder still. Myrcella crossed through the Stone Gardens, abandoned now, the leaves of the trees caked in frost, as they would be until distant spring.

Spring. What a strange and impossible thought.

It would be a long winter, all agreed, and Myrcella doubted they would all see it through. And certainly not in this cold and chilly coffin of a castle, with its foundations built on stone torture cells and the crypts of the hundreds and thousands of Lannisters that had come before them.

Burn them.

The voice leapt suddenly into her mind. It was not her own.

The dead, Myrcella, it said. Burn them all.

Why?

Because winter is coming. You know it is. You have to listen.

She knew that voice. From somewhere, sometime. But whose voice? Whose?

If I listen to it, I am going mad, she decided. And there was enough to suggest that as it was. No point giving Mother another reason to lock her away in a tower. She closed her mind to outside thoughts, and left the gardens and their gnarled trees behind and entered the Keep.

With the ringfort burned to ashes, the household – excepting Queen Cersei and her entourage – had moved to chambers lower down in the Rock, in the New Keep, the most recent of the castle's extensions. They were a bit more cramped than they would have liked to be, but that was not wholly a bad thing. At least here you were never alone. The New Keep was warmer too, with miles of Myrish rugs and hot water running through the walls, which worked on a system similar to the one they had at Winterfell. The final construction work had been completed shortly before Myrcella's return to Casterly Rock, based on Lord Tywin's designs. At the end of one hall was a tapestry which depicted Lord Tywin with his three children as they had been thirty years ago. Lord Tywin, younger and with more hair (yet no less stern) sat in a grand chair, fingers closed around a golden longsword. Tyrion stood across from him, bright eyes under his heavy brow, holding a toy crossbow. Cersei sat with her arms folded demurely in her lap, yet there was a slight hawkishness in her gaze. And Jaime… well, Jaime was so impossibly… something that Myrcella found she could not look at him, lest she be sick.

She passed the tapestry and turned into another hallway. Close by she heard the raised voice of Tywin Frey. "I've checked the watches. We've got men on the third watch: the hour of ghosts."

"We'll have to be as quiet as ghosts," replied Eleyna Westerling.

Smallboar Crakehall broke in. "I worry. Subtlety was never what we were best at."

"It can't be that hard," said Rollam Westerling. And as always, Rollam and Smallboar set to quarreling at once.

"Sneaking out of Casterly Rock in the middle of the night with hundreds of soldiers?" Crakehall snorted. "No, that can't be hard at all."

"All I was saying was—"

"All you were doing was not thinking."

"There's no time for this," said Eleyna.

Rollam cut over her. "I think about things more than you ever do. If we'd followed you, we'd all have died at the battle."

"And what would you have us do?" Smallboar fired back. "Kneel down meekly and surrender without a fight?"

"I'm not going to let you put my sister in danger."

"With respect to Lady Eleyna, this is bigger than her—"

"You're right," Myrcella broke in from the doorway. "It is—"

Smallboar nodded. "Thank you, my lady."

"—but it's bigger than you, too, Robert. It's certainly bigger than your ego, impossible though that may seem. It's bigger than all of us. I advise you to all remember what we're fighting for. We have to do this properly."

"It would be easier to besiege the queen's chambers. That's what we were planning to do, back when—"

"But he isn't. So it doesn't matter. You answer to me now. You can keep on calling yourself the King's Companions in his honour, but he isn't your personal martyr. If you want to avenge him, you can wait in line."

"Your brother—"

"—believed in helping other people." Foolish as he was. "We shouldn't doom them to violence just because we want vengeance." Foolish as I am. "Vengeance will be ours in time, I promise you." She turned to Eleyna. "My lady, with me, if you please. We have matters to discuss away from here."

Eleyna seemed only too grateful for the interruption. She came quickly and without complaining. And they were out in the hall again, passing beneath Jaime's green eyes. "How are you keeping?" asked Myrcella as they walked.

"Fine." She said it with such breeziness that Myrcella almost believed it.

"Both of you?"

"Yes, Rollam and I are – oh, you mean—"

"How is Rollam, now that you mention it?"

"I… I think he's taken it worse than I have. It's the feeling of being powerless, you know. I've talked to him about it, but… well, he was there that night, and I was hiding out in the armoury." She lowered her voice. "Small mercies."

"Small mercies," murmured Myrcella. The Seven-Pointed Star claimed it was a great comfort to be with your loved ones when they passed on, but The Seven-Pointed Star was naïve, and no septon or septa had ever loved or lost anyone, not truly.

Eleyna had a habit of chewing her lip when considering whether or not she should speak. She did so now. "Do you think," she said, "that he would have wanted me to… to marry again? To find someone else?"

Sons of someone else, he said. "He'd want you to be happy," said Myrcella. "Whatever it takes for that, you should do it. When you get to the Reach, I'm sure you'll find someone."

They came to another door, guarded by two Lannister soldiers. Her men, not Mother's. "I'll be a few minutes, Kem, Taren." She'd made a habit of learning their names. It was what he would have done.

Margaery Tyrell was sitting by the fire. She always seemed to be by the fire nowadays, looking dull and wan. In the weeks since her return, Myrcella had not seen a single jewel on the other woman's body, nor any silk or velvet or anything more than the most spare of green woollen dresses. Her hair had gotten tangled a few weeks ago, and she had never bothered to brush it out. She had seemingly aged years in the last few weeks.

"Lady Margaery," said Myrcella. "I've been told you're not eating."

"Don't you think I've tried?" the Tyrell girl replied. "Everything I eat tastes of ash."

"I'll have the kitchens send you some soup. It tastes of ash anyway, so you might not notice the difference."

Margaery managed a smile. Then she saw Eleyna standing behind Myrcella – her smile, and the slightest swell of her belly – and her face fell. "We might have been twins," she said flatly. "Most people think I'm older, but they're wrong. Loras has a year on me. Had. My parents… they kept trying for a girl. So were we, I think. I don't know. Quentyn was. Or I was." She looked at Myrcella, lost in the web of her own words.

"I'm not sure what they wanted," said Myrcella. "Or whether they'd intended for us at all. Or whether it was just a way of stopping Robert from getting suspicious."

"All my brothers mean different things to me," Margaery said, unfeelingly. Willas has always been wisest and cleverest. And I know Garlan will protect me no matter what. But as a friend, Loras was unmatched. We shared every smile and every laugh. We were two, but at the same time, we were one. Renly's death hurt him greatly, but he was coming round again…"

Myrcella caught Eleyna's worried look. So she has heard this more than once, too. "I know. He was all three," she said, quietly.

"Grandmother was right all along," said Margaery. "We never should have come to the Rock. We never should have gone to King's Landing. We should have sat back and waited for Daenerys, and watched you all burn to ashes when she came.

"And Quentyn," she said, changing her tone suddenly. "I never really knew Quentyn. But I loved him. More than you can know. More than he knew. That's the saddest thing. And I know he loved me, that we were all each other wanted or needed." She counted on her fingers. "One, two, three, four. And five. Our son, or daughter. They would have grown up happy, but now I can't have him. I can't have children every again." Her eyes had drifted away, but now they snapped back to Myrcella. " Do you still hate me?"

"No." How could she hate something as pitiful as this? "I don't hate you. I said I'd help you, and I will, once I get the Companions properly organised. I'll get you out of here. I'll send you home."

Margaery nodded, then suddenly broke out with, "Have you heard anything about Ser Jaime?"

"No. I don't even know where she's sent him. Why?"

"He'll side with you when the time comes, I think."

"The time for what?"

Margaery's eyes darkened. "Someone has to end this, Myrcella. Someone has to kill her. You know that."

"Not Jaime," she said. He'd never be able to do it. He couldn't go against her when it mattered, so why would he do so now?

In her confusion of thoughts, she barely heard Margaery speak up. "You'd better get me out of here, Myrcella," she said. "Before I decide to do it myself. I'll die trying, but I'll do it nonetheless. I've got nothing to lose." Then she looked back into the fire, as if trying to discern the future from the flames, the way the red priests could. She was gone again, into another world.

They went back out into the hallway. As they passed the statue of Lady Joanna Lannister, Eleyna grabbed her arm. "Myrcella," she said, firmly. "I'm not going back to the Reach. I don't want to. I'm staying here. I'm staying to fight, and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

"There are plenty of things I can do, Eleyna, you know that. And I have plenty of reasons to send you away. The child—"

"—will not be heir to anything. It will be fifteen years before he or she can take their father's seat. You will be lady of Casterly Rock by then, if things go well. And queen, perhaps."

"All the same," Myrcella said. "Your child is my niece or nephew—"

"And my son or daughter. I will not have them grow up knowing their mother to be a coward."

"You're not a coward. And even if you are, there's nothing wrong with that. What are you planning to do, pick up a sword and lead our men into battle?"

"If I have to."

"Don't lie to yourself. You don't want this—"

"I do."

"No, you don't. And do you know how I know that? Because if you were like that, he would never have married you."

A moment passed, and then Eleyna's shoulders fell. "Why are you always so right?"

Because I knew him better than you, you idiot. "He married you because you cared for him. And you care for him too much to let your child be endangered by war."

She nodded. "Well, you're right. It's… just… strange. The thing I can't bear is, is…"

"Feeling so useless."

"Yes."

There was a long and contemplative silence. Then Myrcella noted Eleyna chewing her lip again. "You have an idea?"

"Jeyne," said Eleyna. "We've been sending letters to one another. She's at Raventree Hall. And… well, there's someone else at Raventree. Sansa Stark."

Oh, bloody shit. "You want to go there?"

"If I can convince them that you want to reconcile…"

"Sansa does not love me. And her bannermen love me even less. She knows I was innocent of poisoning Robert, but they would still love to see me thrown from the Moon Door or drowned in the Trident."

"Which is exactly why you need me to help convince them otherwise. Jeyne is Robb Stark's widow. The things she says still carry weight. And she owes me a favour. I thought… well, if I had the baby there… they would grow up cousins. Besides, I need to see her again. Now that Mother is gone."

The last was a lie. Neither Jeyne nor Eleyna gave a fig about their mother, dead after an ironborn assault on the Crag. Nonetheless… "It's a good idea," said Myrcella. "You can take Rollam with you, if you'd like."

"Rollam will want to stay here," she said assuredly. "I know that much. He might not seem like much, but he wants to see justice done more than anyone else."

Not more than me. "Very well," said Myrcella. "I'll have them make plans."

Eleyna inclined her head. "Thank you, Your Grace."

"It is no inconvenience, Your Grace."

That got her a strange look. "I was never qu—"

"You were. Same as Margaery was."

"Well. I suppose so." Eleyna pursed her lips. "Is there anything else?"

"No. You should get some rest. And so should I."

That she needed sleep was undeniable. There were long dark days ahead of her. When they came, when the ironborn came, when the time to deal with Mother came, she needed to be ready.

She found Tywin Frey in the antechamber outside her room, warming his hands over the fire. "I thought you were at the meeting?" said Myrcella. "Of the Companions?"

"I was. You saw me. But meetings go on and on, and can be dull." He smiled. "…I thought you might want briefing on these deadly dull proceedings, since you walked out halfway through."

Myrcella was not in the mood for his flirtations. "Go on," she said brusquely. "Tell me what I missed."

"We've brought together twelve hundred men," he began.

She was a little taken aback. "That many? Here? In the Rock?"

Ty smiled a little. "You are not alone, Your Grace."

"Don't call me that. I am not the queen."

"Not yet."

"I do not intend—"

"It doesn't matter what you intend," he said, very firmly. "If you intend to do this, you must do it all. No half measures."

And Myrcella thought, no. No half measures at all. "Very well, Ser Tywin," she said. "If I am to be a queen, then who are you to disobey me?"

"Only your humble servant, Your Grace."

"My humble servant." She nodded. "I want you to think about what that means. Pray continue."

"We have twelve hundred men whose allegiance we can be certain of. Then there are those others: lesser lordlings with no allegiance to the Companions or your mother, the few Tyrells and Martells that remain…" He chewed his lip a moment. "We might even have enough to fight—"

"No," said Myrcella. "We will fight our way out, not in. We both know what happened… if our men start to die, they will break, and… well, there are no second chances with a plan like this."

"I understand."

How can you? "Thank you, Ser Tywin," she said. "That will be all."

"But you still don't know—"

"For now, all I know is that I need to sleep. And to pray, I think. Yes, I need to pray. You may go."

She turned away, but then he said, "Myrcella." The flat, coarse way he said her name surprised her.

"What?"

"If… if you ever want…" She could see him going red. "If you ever wanted me to come back, you know I would. For you. I mean, to keep you company. Like on the road."

"Thank you, Ty, but no." She had been weak, back then. She wasn't weak anymore, not now. Was she? "Go."

He let her pass, but Myrcella waited until he had gone out before she continued to her bedchamber. She still kept servants, but she did not care to learn their names anymore. Not after Rosie. She thought of the girl occasionally: Rosamund had been of an age with her, and of a similar appearance. She had followed the princess to Harrenhal, yet only one of the two girls had never returned. Rosamund had no one who cared enough to ransom her back, no powerful relatives to demand her safe return. All she had was a pretty face. And her body.

Myrcella turned to the table by the window. Seven pale candlesticks stood upright, veiled in misty incense. Only one of the candles was lit. But she only needed one. She only had one person to pray for.

They had been about to put him away when they finally reached Casterly Rock. After her night of weeping at the Golden Tooth, she and Ty had ridden double-time to reach the castle. On the day of her arrival he was still laid out in the sept. Part of her had been expecting him to smell awful, had been expecting to see the flesh flaking off his bones, his eyelids peeling back, and the table covered in barely enough roses and fresh rushes to hide the fact that he'd shit himself a very long time ago. But he didn't smell of anything, really. He looked like he was sleeping, sort of – like one of the maidens from the stories – only she knew he wouldn't wake up, ever.

The first thing Mother said to her was, "She told me it would happen. Maggy, she did. 'Golden is the brother, a golden giant's gleam. He shall slay the valonqar, making you a queen.' But he never said whose brother."

She found out from Maester Creylen, afterwards, that valonqar meant 'little brother'.

The candle flame swayed and swung. In the dark watery fog of the window, she could see it reflected, like a lighthouse far out to sea.

A bright scythe of lightning blasted through the sky. Briefly the sea was aflame in white light. Very far away in the distance, she thought she saw a ship. Could it be Jaime? Did Mother send him out by sea to fight the ironborn, or ahorse?

She did not know. She knew nothing.

"It's not right," she murmured. "None of this is right. I don't know… whether I should take it, or not. Half measures, or…" She chewed her lip. "I'm not you. I could never be you. You were always better, you never wanted anything more than what you had. And I… when I was in Harrenhal, in King's Landing… sometimes even when I was standing there talking to your face, there were times, sometimes, when I wished you were dead. And then you died. There you were, lying on your stone plinth, First of Your Name, a line of messy stitches down the middle of your face. They spoke of you like you were some great martyr, but all I saw was a little boy in a golden shroud. I never should have left you."

"I never should have sent you away."

Myrcella turned.

Sometimes she was naïve enough to think he would be standing there when she turned round. He never was, but tonight there was something. The bloody cat. Ser Pounce. Myrcella assumed he had always known that they were brother and sister; the cat had come to her in King's Landing, after all. Brother and sister. Litter mates. Did he understand what that meant?

They stared at each other for a long time. Had Ser Pounce always had green eyes? She had never properly looked long enough to find out. But tonight, in the dark of the room, with the only other light being the fire and the occasional lightning flashes behind her, they seemed almost as green as tall grass that was good for running in, as fig trees good for climbing in King's Landing gardens, as sunlight in golden hair and infinitely green eyes.

That was when she broke.

"Get out!" she screamed at Ser Pounce, advancing so violently she nearly tripped over her own gown, "get out! Get out! Get out! There's nothing for you here, not anymore! He's gone, he's gone, he's dead, Tommen is dead, don't you understand, get out, I have nothing for you!" And then her knees went from under her, and the cat was suddenly in her lap, its fur warm against her cold hands, and she realised she was crying. There was nothing here for her either.


Again, this is all fairly simplistic setup, but I think the important thing with this chapter is to think about what isn't there instead of what is. Myrcella seems to have lost her pride to a great extent. Her hostility towards Cersei is fairly passive - initially I had her going into a rant, but I chose to cut that out - and we get the sense that she is more tired than anything. I wanted to give this chapter a cold apathy, so when there are moments that should inspire great emotional responses, that is left to the imagination. If you'll allow me to praise myself a bit, I think my favourite comment on The Changing of Seasons is one on the last chapter of A Coat of Gold, which calls it "proof of why understatement is so hard-hitting." That's something I desperately tried to capture in this chapter. I hope it worked out.

This wasn't an easy one to write, for obvious reasons. I chose not to dwell on "Mother's Mercy" from TSK, and divorced this chapter from that one so much that it is jarring. Evidently, a couple of months have gone by since the attempted coup, and things have reset themselves in some ways, but not in others.

Jaime isn't in this chapter, as Cersei tells us, but we'll catch up with him soon, I promise you.

Of course, though, the big thing missing from this chapter is ye glorious Kingo Tommo. Do a Ctrl+F search. See how many times he comes up.

Myrcella's arc in KOTN is very interesting. But I would say that, wouldn't I?

General Notes:

I have the story all planned out, far more than I ever did for ACOG or TSK. The chapter count does keep getting bigger; we're now at 87 (up from 83), though at the same time, chapters in KOTN seem to be a lot shorter than they were in TSK.

The story splits very nicely into two halves around chapter 48, which are quite different in tone, but have some themes throughout.

Random thought: I watched The Last Jedi over Christmas, and the more I think about it, the more I think a comparison between KOTN and TLJ is apt. And I hope you liked that movie, because, what goes for that goes for this, too: "This is not going to go the way you think."