Lord Tywin leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, his mind punctured by a thousand quivering short swords. He only had to cross the room to the cabinet opposite him to find something for the pain, but he seemed to have lost all feeling in his legs, and the thought of putting his weight on them was…unpleasant.

His headaches always began as a slight tingling above his left eye that no amount of wine could banish or alleviate, and within two days, he would feel like some demon from the deepest of the seven hells was trying to pull his hair out by the roots; each individual strand burning red against his skull. Though he had often suffered such inconveniences as a young man, he thought they had ceased altogether after Joanna – after –

Because of her characteristic astuteness, the girl always saw them coming long before he did; and after the ordeal of the first two occasions, both of which had turned into gladiatorial contests between his pride and her stubbornness, she had ceased to talk of them altogether, obtaining the relevant tonics from Qyburn, and - knowing Tywin would refuse to take them if offered to him directly - leaving them where he could find them easily. She would serve water instead of wine without comment, and would allow no one into his solar unless a battle had been lost or someone of importance had died.

Had she been at her duties that afternoon instead of languishing in a cell in the dungeons, she would certainly not have permitted him to get into such a heated argument with Jaime. The boy wanted to return to King's Landing rather than remain at Harrenhal – a significant blow to the war effort – and Tywin knew, though Jaime had not breathed a word on the subject, that his eagerness to return to the capital had nothing to do with the Kingsguard and everything to do with Cersei.

Tywin did not give credence to the rumours about his children, and it surprised him that a person of the girl's intelligence and evident flair for strategy could do so either. But what he did give credence to was Jaime's enduring inability to do so much as think without his twin sister, a disturbing state of affairs that had annoyed Tywin greatly since the boy's childhood, and had made him do everything in his power to correct the situation.

He had clearly not done enough. His children were intellectual nonentities, all three of them. He had always hoped that one of them, at least, would have inherited Joanna's brilliance; a brilliance that had always far outstripped his own. Instead, his daughter had inherited his late wife's soaring sense of defiance (of questionable value when wedded to Cersei's vanity and low cunning) and his sons her penchant for driving him to distraction with relentless, irritating wit. Though sometimes Tyrion…no. He would not think of Tyrion.

Tywin placed his hands firmly on the arms of his chair and tried to haul himself to his feet, cursing his own weakness when he failed. Weakness was a far worse hindrance than pain when these storms struck his mind. Pain did not trouble him. He was so accustomed to it that it might have been his best friend. But weakness turned him from iron to glass and made him like ordinary men, giving him their desires and their thoughts rather than his own. So he tried, unsuccessfully, to crush it to powder as he had always done, and wondered what in seven hells he was going to do, both to keep Jaime here and to avoid executing the girl for trying to kill him.

He had known who she was for years. A highborn Northerner posing as a commoner, a father killed by loyalty, a face like Lyanna Stark and a quick letter to Lord Varys, asking for a description of the missing Stark girl. It had hardly been a difficult deduction. He had known who she was, and he had done nothing.

He had planned each campaign against the Starks with her at his elbow as she moved wraithlike about the council table with wine or ink (sometimes both), biting hard on her teeth to keep from laughing if one of his commanders made a suggestion of questionable logic. At the end of each day, he would ask her severely what she had been grinning about so impudently, and she would tell him. If her assessment of the situation was correct (and it usually was), he would accuse her of being too smart for her own good; and she would thank him cheekily before he dismissed her for the night.

Every day he had been aware of the danger of allowing her to remain, but she had proved him wrong again and again. She had never betrayed him, and she had never tried to kill him. He could not tell if that made her loyal, or merely patient. Whichever one it was, it was extraordinary.

But she had tried to kill his first-born son and heir; the impulsive, unthinking little fool; and honour demanded that she die. No one could be allowed to make an attempt on the life of a Lannister without impunity. No one. Failing to act would bring with it the kind of humiliation that House Lannister had not seen since the days of Tywin's father, and he would not tolerate that under any circumstances.

The House that puts family first will always defeat the House that puts the whims and wishes of its sons and daughters first.

Tywin's blood pulsed harder in his head.

I don't want to do it.

He almost jumped as one of his guards entered to make an announcement.

'Lord Petyr Baelish begs the honour - '

'Get out.'

Baelish can wait, he thought, as the guard got out immediately and closed the door behind him.

Tywin was in no mood for intrigue, and to own the truth, he hadn't the slightest interest in discovering what Baelish was doing here or what he wanted. He had more important things to consider.

The pain in his head was unbearable.

I don't want to do it.

He steeled himself.

A good man does everything in his power to better his family's position, regardless of his own selfish desires. Occasionally, that means getting one's hands dirty.

But I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it.

Tywin downed two glasses of wine in quick succession; almost groaned aloud at the towers of flame that surged in his head as a result; told himself to stop thinking like a child; and forced himself to confront the truth.

The girl reminded him of Joanna. She didn't look or sound the least bit like her. But she had Joanna's fierceness, her infernal stubbornness, and she was better educated than half the lords in Westeros put together. He loved her. She was like his own child.

Weakness. Weakness and stupidity.

His heart hammering in his chest, a painful counterpoint to the beat that pulsed in his head, Tywin's fingers moved to his belt and closed around his dagger. He drew the blade, the Valyrian steel rippling dully in the gloom.

Joanna is dead. She is never coming back. And this little barbarian tried to murder your son. You will cut her throat yourself, and you will feel no sorrow when you do so. She is not your child. She is not your blood. Honour demands that she die.

'Guard!' he called, needles erupting all over his skull.

'My lord?' the guard responded promptly, coming in as swiftly as he had gotten out.

'Fetch the girl,' Tywin commanded, and laid the dagger on the table.