For her fifteenth name day, Joanna Lannister had been given her first gown with dagged sleeves a riot of green and gold silk that made her look like a queen, and feel like an idiot.

She had refused dagged sleeves on every gown made for her, from her first woman's gown, right up to this one; such accoutrements being an insufferable hindrance that made walking a chore and transformed reading and writing into physical rather than mental activities. Joanna's long fights on the subject with her mother (and with her mother's dressmaker) had become a kind of ritual, until the two women had finally put their heads together and had hatched some ridiculous scheme to make her wear what they wanted by presenting this monstrosity to her for her name day. She couldn't very well refuse to wear it, but not even the entire dressmaker's guild of King's Landing could force her to like it.

It was in proving this point that Joanna kept her eyes cast mutinously downwards as her name day feast began, feeling irritated and on-edge, valiantly resisting the temptation to shorten her sleeves with the nearest sharp instrument and grudgingly admitting to herself that the true source of her peevishness lay in having spent most of the day engaged in a spectacular argument with Cousin Tywin on the ethics of dragon warfare that had ended as most of their disagreements did:

'Where are you going?' Tywin had demanded as she stormed towards the door.

'To fetch that infernal book from the library, since you refuse to take my word for it!' she had bellowed in return, slamming the door behind her and doing nothing of the sort.

Joanna's eyes searched for him and found him easily. He was at the table almost opposite from hers; sitting perfectly upright in his seat with that mix of austerity and a commanding kind of…something…that was his alone. She had known Tywin since their childhood together at Casterly Rock, and he had never ceased to be the most irritating person she had ever met. The insolence of it. Why couldn't he simply accept that she was right about everything? Her strange, severe, unlaughing friend. His father's work, no doubt; his father's bannermen's; the world's. Poor Lord Tytos. He was not present tonight, having refused to leave Casterly Rock (or his mistress, her brother Stafford had written to her) for the past three years, but he had sent Joanna a book of High Valyrian poetry earlier that week, together with a note calling her a pretty young lady and an honour to her House. She only wished the feeling was mutual. Of course, Lord Tytos was perfectly sweet, and would have fared well as a petty lord, or a younger son. But he was not a petty lord or a younger son, and that foolish old man's inability to understand the fact had single-handedly transformed House Lannister from a feared and powerful family into the laughing stock of Westeros; the butt of japes and drinking songs on every subject from whoring to legacy.

A Lannister always pays…everyone else's debts.

Joanna glowered across the room at Cousin Tywin, with his strong features and slim, yet powerful build, and wondered if he would look like his father one day; his person reduced to an insipid chin and a revoltingly deferential demeanour that the warmth in his eyes seemed to banish completely, if you could get close enough to see it.

Joanna almost snorted. That would actually require Tywin to have some life in him.

No doubt sensing his gaze on her, Tywin turned his head towards her and looked straight into her eyes, and Joanna lowered them immediately, furious at her own weakness.

Let him apologise. He is in the wrong. Killing ten thousand men in battle, cleanly and honourably, will always be better than burning a quarter of that number alive; sowing the earth with death and ash and the gods know what else. I'm right. He's wrong.

She looked at him again, and was rather disappointed to find that he looked utterly unperturbed, abstracted and bored; his thick blond hair still falling into his eyes no matter what he tried to do about it, its colour looking all the more striking against that infernal black leather doublet that he had worn, without fail, to each feast that year. He was a handsome one, even if the average ten year old knew more about strategy than he did. He was certainly a handsome one.

Joanna smiled to herself as yet another lord or bannerman or such-and-such rose to his feet, thrust his goblet into the air, and began to compare her hair to spun gold and her skin to summer snow. As much as Joanna found compliments to be nothing more than rhetoric of a predominantly insincere nature, she had to admit that it was rather pleasant to have them lavished upon her hundreds of times in a single evening, even if she hadn't given a single one her complete attention. So, firmly resolved not to think of Cousin Tywin again for at least a week, or even to glance in his wretched, uninformed direction, Joanna bowed her head in thanks as the present torrent of flattery ended, and the lord or bannerman or such-and-such regained his seat.

Joanna's heart began to hammer unpleasantly in her chest as Prince Aerys rose to his feet; his wife, the Princess Rhaella, laying an immaculate, pristine hand on his sleeve as he did so and saying something to him in a low voice. He ignored her, and began to speak.

'My lords, my ladies, let us look upon –'

Joanna had been relieved when she had learned that the crown prince and princess were the only members of the royal family that were to attend the feast; Joanna's lack of sufficiently intimidating blood ties to the Lord of Casterly Rock, Rhaella's unfailing courtesy and devotion to each one of her companions and Aerys' apparently insatiable desire to make her uncomfortable no doubt constituting the principal reasons for this. Joanna hissed to herself as she listened to Aerys waxing lyrical like a Qartheen merchant prince, wishing that Princess Rhaella had come on her own.

She is the future Queen. She can't go anywhere on her own.

'– and each day since your arrival at court, the light of your beauty has only seemed to dazzle us further, blinding us with its radiance – '

Joanna swallowed. He had said something similar when he had come to her at midnight on the eve of his wedding, telling her that he intended to set Rhaella aside and make Joanna his queen. She had thrown him out as politely as was possible and had not dared to tell anyone of the occurrence, not even Tywin. But the damage was done; the threat of it glowing black in the depths of Aerys' violet eyes each time she saw him. It did so even now; hanging like a greatsword above the head of every person in the room.

' – indeed on this particular night, I would venture to remark that your beauty and grace surpass that of my lady wife, who pales like the evening star contemplating the moon.'

Joanna would have laughed aloud at such preposterous imagery had she been faced with anyone else. But the hush that descended over the hall at Aerys' words; the silence that crashed like a great wave over sound and over music, from the high table to the musician's gallery, was far too awful to laugh at.

Princess Rhaella's face was a death mask; serene, uncaring, but somehow terrible to look upon. She was loveliness itself in white brocade slashed with crimson velvet, and her silver hair tumbled in glorious cascades about her shoulders; the stunning, immaculate whiteness of her only making her pallour seem more pronounced. Joanna was mortified, and furious. She loved her princess; would even venture to call her a friend had she not known better; and while Aerys was…fond of constantly disrespecting his wife, it cut Joanna to the quick that he would use one of Rhaella's own companions to do so.

It also frightened her. It frightened her badly, because she realised, for the first time, that she could do nothing to stop him from using her in such a way, and nothing to stop him from using her in other ways, if he truly wanted to. He was a prince of the realm; the blood of the Dragon. Her father would be powerless to prevent him, and Lord Tytos would be as much use as nipples on a breastplate in such a situation. Joanna felt her throat closing up, and tears invading her eyes, and she blinked them away to find Tywin half out of his seat in anger and clearly wishing that he had brought his sword along, his eyes raging violently as he glared across the room at Aerys.

Tywin would kill him first. I know he would.

Tearing his gaze from the prince, Tywin's eyes flickered suddenly to hers, and though they burned with a penetrating, frighteningly beautiful golden flame, Joanna realised that the expression in them was warm; encouraging; proud.

And suddenly, she understood.

You are a Lannister of Casterly Rock, Tywin seemed to say to her, so stand up and show this dragonspawn your claws.

Joanna heard two hundred people holding their breath as she seized her wine glass, intending to stand up and to tell Aerys, as politely as she could, to go fuck himself.

But Princess Rhaella was there before her, rising gracefully in her seat, professing her hearty agreement with what her husband had said and calling for a toast to her companion's beauty that was all the more awful for being sincere. As the guests roared out their approval, Joanna crossed the hall to where Princess Rhaella stood; went to one knee in front of her, and kissed her hand. When Rhaella immediately raised her to her feet and kissed her cheek, the room erupted once again into a conflagration of whoops and cheers.

In that moment, the musicians took it upon themselves to aid Princess Rhaella in saving Aerys from his own folly by immediately signaling the beginning of the dancing; giving Joanna the break she needed to storm towards the doors and to run for her chambers, where she fully intended to spend the rest of the evening hiding under her bed in shame.

She had almost reached the doors when she felt a gentle hand touch the small of her back and graciously, if abruptly, about-turn her, and she glared mutinously at Cousin Tywin as he steered her back into the hall and led her back to the high table, his face characteristically severe, his grip on her hand brooking no argument. Whatever warmth she had seen in him was gone again. How predictable.

As he deposited her back into her seat, her heart and her throat throbbed in anger at him for thwarting her escape. So in her head, she prepared a cutting rebuttal for whichever one of his customary remarks about the family name he was about to make and waited for him to start speaking, triumphantly preparing to add the infuriated look on his face to her collection.

Her words died on her tongue when his fingers remained clasped between hers for a small eternity longer than she would have expected, and he brought her hand to his lips, kissing it ever so briefly, his severe green eyes softer than she had ever seen them.

'You look beautiful, cousin,' he murmured, before disappearing back to his seat and leaving her so utterly confused that she wanted to make a break for the hall doors all over again.

He didn't asked her to dance once.