"There's something wrong with this wine," Jaime muttered to one of his men.
"My lord? Has it gone off?"
"I don't know, but it's bloody not working."
Jaime had no words for the buzzing in his head. It was like carrying around a nest of bees. He was seated at Brienne's table, her insistence, of course, and she was smiling and eating cake and sipping wine and he'd be goddamned if she didn't look like the Princess of Tarth, after all. Gone was Oathkeeper, only worn for the ceremony and now locked away as some keepsake.
He'd stood at the wedding, with a small, persistent ringing in his ears, watching this warrior princess say her vows, and the buzzing grew and grew until Gerald kissed his bride, and Jaime turned his eyes away and threw down his first cup of wine. The first of many, this night.
She'd grown out her hair in the year since he'd seen her, and she looked more like a woman, more like a woman indeed with her generous curves under that tight white bodice, even coming up in a neckline to show cleavage, for the gods sake.
And then there was Gerald. Gerald, who Jaime had written off as a sweet, useless thing, now had his huge arm draped around Brienne's shoulders, and she looked so small. Small and womanly, nothing like his warrior, anymore.
Jaime drank his wine and barked for more. He couldn't remember the last time he'd drank so much. He liked to keep his wits about him, prepared always for his sister's outburts or his father's rage, but tonight he could see no reason to have any wits. He didn't want to have any. Brienne did not wish to be rescued. She wasn't a maiden in distress, and in fact wouldn't be a maiden much longer at all -
Brienne's father at that moment stood, with difficulty from all the wine he'd been drinking, and shouted, "It's time for the Bedding Ceremony!"
Jaime, without a thought, lurched up from his seat. He nearly fell over. The wine had indeed been doing it's job, at least on his body if not his mind, if not on his stupid, flighty heart, which like a bird with a wounded wing was flapping all around.
Brienne gave him a puzzled look, but then as everyone stood, dismissed it as some kind of - exuberance for the bedding ceremony, he supposed.
What could she be thinking? This wasn't the Brienne he knew. This wasn't his warrior. This was some...some...woman.
Brienne was blushing redder than you would imagine, almost tomato red, as the bed was trotted out.
Jaime felt his stomach churning from the wine or the buzzing in his head, or both, and part of him wanted to cry out for them to stop, that the room was spinning, that something wasn't right.
Gerald placed her on the bed, easily as a child picking up a doll, and as he climbed up on top of her Jaime knew the buzzing in his head was too loud, the room spinning too violenty, and he was going to be sick.
He lurched out of the room.