The sun's first rays peeped reluctantly through the window as a strong breeze filled the room with the typical King's Landing smell of garlic, stagnant water and occasionally, corpses, depending on how hot it was. The bedclothes pulled right over his head, Tywin listened to Joanna whispering at him, her body so closely entangled with his that he couldn't tell which limbs were his and which were hers. It was a pleasant feeling.

They had often shared a bed as children – before propriety and seriousness and growing up had deemed it inappropriate. Tywin thought it spectacularly ironic that he had had to get married in order to secure the right to be a child from time to time. From others, and from himself.

Joanna's eyes were wide and green and beautiful despite her lack of sleep, her flushed cheeks a storm of blood and life against the whiteness of her skin and her sleeping shift.

'Thank you,' she was murmuring softly, with a sweetness that almost made his chest burst.

'It was nothing,' Tywin mumbled in reply.

Joanna smiled sadly at him

'All the same. Thank you.'

'I could hardly bed you when you were….so upset.'

When you were crying, he had wanted to say; when you cried so hard that you almost seemed to scream.

As Joanna leaned in and kissed him softly, Tywin remembered how he had stood listening to her curse Aerys and every highborn man in the city to the seven hells; and how he had waited and waited for the tears to come. When they eventually had, and she had laid her head on his chest, as she always did when she cried, he had repeated the words 'I will kill them all,' to her and to himself, trying hard to ignore the fact that she was stark naked and beautiful; and hoping against hope that she'd have the good grace not to notice that the laces of his breeches appeared to be misbehaving in a most audacious manner.

Well, he had thought to himself, his cheeks flushing in embarrassment, at least I may take comfort in the fact that I am normal in some ways.

Tywin pushed his hair out of his eyes and watched Joanna poke her head above the covers and sit up as the room grew lighter and lighter; the sun turning the curtains, the floors, the furniture, and her, the colour of King Aegon's hair.

'Beautiful,' she remarked.

Sighing in annoyance as his hair once again flopped back into his eyes; Tywin raised an eyebrow at her, amused.

'All sunrises in King's Landing are like this,' he said, 'it's your own fault if you're in the habit of rising too late to enjoy them.'

'And if you're planning on getting up this early every morning, then we have a problem,' she shot back, throwing a pillow at him and laughing when he threw it right back at her, the impact knocking her down again and winding her.

'The next time you do that,' Joanna breathed, staring up at the ceiling, 'expect to be punished. Today, I will spare you, since it's our wedding morning. But only today.'

'I am grateful,' Tywin replied gravely, with a perfectly straight face.

Joanna rolled her eyes.

'What a cold fish you are. I hope you're more interesting than this when you do eventually get round to bedding me.'

Tywin promptly tossed his own pillow straight into her face and took advantage of the indignant squeal of surprise and the whirlwind of thrashing limbs to pin her to the mattress, kissing her deeply and hungrily; the way she opened her mouth almost desperately for him; the tip of her tongue as it rolled over his; claiming it; the beautiful, deep moan that arose from the back of her throat; her slender fingers jerking hard on his hair as she pulled him closer to her; and the way her skin seemed to want to melt into his thrilling each part of him, unbearably, to the marrow of his bones.

When Joanna gasped for breath, she did so like a woman exhilarated by the experience of half-drowning; her fingers still buried deep in Tywin's hair; holding onto the water that she knew she would return to time and time again; the exhilaration far greater than the danger.

'Cold fish, am I?' Tywin demanded breathlessly, with as much authority as he could.

Still too winded to respond, Joanna shook her head, smiling and closing her eyes until her breathing slowed.

'So,' she said, 'what do people usually do on their wedding mornings?'

'I believe we are required to engage in tedious formalities of visiting people and listening to them congratulate us,' Tywin replied with a sigh.

'Didn't they do all that yesterday?' Joanna grumbled, her bottom lip pouting sullenly.

'I also find such customs to be tedious and devoid of sense,' Tywin agreed sensibly, wondering briefly if she knew how funny she looked.

Joanna turned on her side to face him, smiling broadly.

Beautiful.

'I have heard that a horse can always be relied upon to facilitate any escape,' she remarked conspiratorially.

In response, Tywin grinned, startling himself. It was his third smile in eighteen hours.

I must be slipping.

The halls were empty, even of servants, as they began to make their way down to the stables; Tywin watching Joanna with a kind of fond disbelief as she enjoyed the sound of her riding boots on the stone floor and swung his hand back and forth as she held it in hers.

How is it possible that this strange, whimsical creature has become my wife? he thought to himself, this impossibly intelligent, fiery, adult, child?

They were walking down the long, winding corridor that circled the dry moat (mercifully empty of heads) when a familiar cackle of laughter drove all the colour and life from Joanna's face, and Prince Aerys came into view at the far end of the corridor, walking alone, his head flipped back in laughter at some unknown joke. Tywin whirled Joanna around immediately and pushed her through the nearest door (an armoury, he believed) before continuing towards Prince Aerys himself; praying that the prince was not in need of some specialised weapon; his heart haemorrhaging at the way Joanna had not even protested; had not even spoken. It was so unlike her to be silent. So unlike her.

'Lord Tywin!' Aerys greeted cheerfully.

'My prince,' Tywin returned, bowing smartly.

'And where is the beautiful Lady Joanna this morning?'

'She is…overtired, my lord.'

Aerys smiled with all the incandescent glory of Old Valyria, the silver threads of his hair dancing in his violet eyes.

'She must be exhausted after yesterday,' Aerys remarked, 'it was a glorious feast, was it not?'

'Indeed, my lord,' Tywin agreed courteously as he and Aerys began to circle the dry moat; the prince's eyes distant, yet warm.

'It reminded me so much of the day I wed my dear Rhaella,' Aerys remembered, 'she squirmed and fought in exactly the same way that your dear lady wife did.'

'During the bedding, my lord?' Tywin enquired.

'No,' Aerys replied, 'when I took her.'

Tywin noticed with alarm that his habitual composure was beginning to desert him. Though the muscles of his face were as serene and unaffected as they had ever been, there was a roaring in his chest and stomach that threatened to claw their way out of him and shower the entire Red Keep in blood; none of it his.

The last time you lost your temper, you almost started a civil war. So control yourself.

Tywin nodded respectfully and once again began to listen to Prince Aerys blathering about his wedding.

'Rhaella was quite the minx in those days, Lord Tywin,' the prince reminisced, 'but then, all women were. She spent the entire evening dancing in a manner that would shame a Braavosi courtesan. Every man in that hall wanted her, which of course was what she wanted. She wanted to be desired; to make men kill for a dance with her. Nobody died, of course, but it drove me mad with jealousy. A pleasant enough feeling, when one is accustomed to being driven mad by nothing but boredom at weddings. By the time the evening was over, I was positively on fire for her, but she succeeded in enflaming me still further by attempting to claw my eyes out the moment we were alone. Her cruelty was extraordinary. Until it occurred to me to simply take what was mine. It was the first time I had ever taken a woman from behind. And certainly not the last, you may be sure.'

'I see you are familiar with Dothraki wedding customs, my lord!' Tywin exclaimed with disconcerting delight, 'I had a passing interest in the subject myself a few years ago.'

Aerys paused, looking somewhat put out.

'You are mistaken, Lord Tywin,' he stated, 'I have little interest in such barbaric cultures.'

'Barbaric, but surprisingly beautiful,' Tywin continued, relishing the evident confusion on Prince Aerys' face as he tried to determine how the conversation had turned from his wedding night to the Dothraki, 'beautiful in a brutal, horribly uncomfortable sort of way.'

'Indeed?'

'Certainly. The wedding itself takes all day, and is little more than a riot of butchery and drunkenness performed for the entertainment of the couple. Men fight each other on the smallest pretext, and the fermented mare's milk they drink only makes them bolder and more prone to violence. This situation is rendered all the worse by the constant presence of veiled, half-clothed women that dance provocatively for the entire duration of the feast. If a warrior sees a woman that pleases him, he may mount her immediately in front of the entire assembly.'

Prince Aerys had the good grace to look scandalised and to remark that the very idea was horribly sordid.

'Not at all,' Tywin disagreed, 'It is only thanks to your ancestor King Jaehaerys that similar customs have not prevailed in Westeros. Though I have recently heard that we may expect a revival before too long. I must congratulate your grandfather the King on his respect for the past.'

Aerys turned white and attempted to speak. Tywin ignored him.

'Where was I? Ah yes, warriors mounting women. Now, if it occurs that two warriors desire the same woman, it is required that they fight to the death immediately. Fights may last for hours, or only for a few minutes, but when a warrior is victorious, he hacks the braid off his opponent as he watches him die, so that all the world may see his shame. How would one introduce a similar custom to Westeros, I wonder? No self-respecting Westerosi man braids his hair…ah!'

Aerys jumped at Tywin's exclamation, his face colouring slightly in embarrassment.

'Do you not see the solution, my lord?' Tywin asked, jovially clapping the prince on the shoulder.

'No, Lord Tywin, I do not,' Aerys replied in an admirably firm tone as he eyed Tywin's hand on his shoulder, but did not seem brave enough to tell him to remove it.

'Castration!' Tywin announced with satisfaction, his fingers still poised on Aerys' shoulder, 'Removing a man's braid in the Dothraki Sea brings as much shame upon him as removing his genitals does here.'

Tywin remembered bringing an entire hall of laughing bannermen to heel when he was ten with one flash of his eyes; and the exhilaration that had pulsed through his young body as he had watched mouths dropping open in surprise and eyes widening in fear. He could feel it building in him now, rising in his eyes, roaring in his voice, though he scarcely spoke louder than a whisper. He could see it in the way that Prince Aerys' mask of highly trained, courteous indifference was beginning to crack; in the firmness of his mouth, the hardness in his eyes and the way he clenched his fingers into fists before releasing them.

Tywin saw with satisfaction that the prince understood him.

An intelligent enemy is a joy forever.

He continued.

'Introducing such a custom to Westerosi weddings would be nothing if not advantageous, my lord. As my lord has so correctly remarked, we are certainly not undersupplied with attractive young girls; or with drunken young men that fight over them; nor indeed with the boredom that results from all the tedious dancing and singing that one usually has to suffer at weddings. If a Dothraki wedding without at least three deaths is considered a dull affair, then one gelding should be quite sufficient to make even the dullest Westerosi wedding seem a triumph. I sincerely regret not having thought of this last night. It could easily have been the wedding of the century.'

Aerys' eyes were wide, lavender, and discomfited. His lips quivered like bats exposed to the light and his shoulder lurched involuntarily as Tywin let his hand drop; the sound resonating down the hallway, through the metal spikes of the dry moat and up into the blue.

'If you ever touch Joanna again, I'll have you gelded you while you sleep.'

Tywin looked into Aerys' eyes.

And he bowed, turned on his heel, and walked back to the armoury.