Title: Songs, Silks, and the Queen of Love and Beauty
The second day of Harrenhal proved that the first had only been the castle breathing in.
Now it breathed out.
Every path between pavilion and lists seemed narrower, though no tent had moved in the night. Every banner hung brighter for having been looked at once already. The songs were worse because the singers had found confidence in surviving the first evening. Men who had arrived cautious now swaggered. Women who had arrived observant now let themselves be observed. Boys who had barely dared touch their swords in the presence of older knights now strutted with borrowed importance. Squires ran messages, spilled wine, got cuffed, recovered, and learned nothing. The horses had settled just enough that they no longer screamed at every passing gust and only bit when properly offended.
Mordred liked the second day better.
The first day belonged to arrival and display. The second belonged to pattern.
You began to see which lords clustered again by instinct rather than arrangement. Which women withdrew when others approached and which pretended not to notice the little rivalries around them. Which young knights looked for one another before the lists opened because admiration, envy, fear, and lust all wore similar expressions at seventeen. Which men watched the king and which watched those who watched the king. Harrenhal became honest by increments, not because anyone meant it to, but because no one could perform themselves perfectly without pause for very long.
Mordred woke before dawn and left the women's pavilion while the sky was still the color of ash over water.
She had not asked permission.
That was not unusual.
She had not needed to. Joanna slept lightly enough that she probably knew the moment Mordred moved from her bedroll and still chose not to stop her. That too was not unusual. Joanna believed in reins, but she also believed in horses needing air. If one was fortunate, one's mother knew the difference between discipline and suffocation. Mordred was fortunate.
She wore a dark green riding dress with the skirt pinned up enough for movement and a plain wool cloak over it against the morning chill. Her hair had been braided back again because open gold waves were all very well when one intended to sit under a canopy and pretend the world ran on songs, but less useful when one meant to move through camp before the proper courtly faces had all been put on. The dagger still sat at her belt. It always would if she had any say.
The fairground before dawn felt almost intimate.
Cookfires smoldered rather than flamed. Men on watch stood with cloaks tight around their shoulders and stamped their boots in the damp grass. Somewhere behind the line of pavilions a horse snorted and rattled tack, answered by another farther off. The lake smelled cold and metallic. Harrenhal itself rose black and huge against the paling sky, looking less like a castle than a threat old enough to have become landscape.
Mordred followed the edge of the field until she found the practice ground that had been set apart for those too serious to leave everything to the lists.
Half a dozen men were already there.
One was a Baratheon bannerman broad enough to cast his own weather.
Two others she did not know by name but knew by bearing—men from the Reach, likely, because they looked too polished even in sweat.
Another was younger, perhaps only a few years older than Jaime, and moving through cuts with the narrow perfection of someone who had been taught by a master and now practiced every morning because he feared what he might become if he stopped.
And there, off to one side, alone with a spear in hand and no audience but the damp earth, moved Oberyn Martell.
Mordred paused under the lean of a supply cart and watched.
He was dressed simply, at least by princely measure. Dark linen shirt unlaced at the throat, leather bracers, training trousers, boots dampened at the edges by the grass. No jewels. No silk. No attempt to dress the thing up. The spear moved like part of him, and that was the problem. Not that he was skilled—many men were skilled. It was the way he seemed to understand every inch of the weapon not as a set of formal positions, but as a living argument between distance, timing, and spite.
He thrust. Turned. Recovered. Shifted one hand lower and became all reach. Shifted again and the same length of wood became a close, ugly thing full of hooks and sudden reversals. There was grace in it, yes, but not the kind singers liked. No, this was practical grace, the sort born from wanting the other man dead before he finished deciding what sort of duel he had stepped into.
Mordred smiled before she meant to.
"Most girls would at least pretend to be scandalized before staring that intently."
The voice came from behind and to her left.
Mordred turned at once, hand already brushing the dagger hilt before she fully saw who had spoken.
Ashara Dayne stood with one shoulder against the same cart and looked amused enough to be dangerous.
She was older than Mordred by enough to matter and young enough still that beauty had not yet become burden. Dark hair, clear eyes, skin touched by Dorne and daylight both. She wore a pale morning gown under a dark cloak and carried herself with the easy self-possession of a woman accustomed to men looking too long and women noticing that they did.
Mordred let her hand fall from the dagger. "Most girls aren't me."
Ashara's mouth curved. "No, I had gathered that."
Mordred looked back toward the practice ground and then at her again. "And most women don't creep up on armed Lannisters before dawn."
"Creep is an ugly word."
"It was an accurate one."
"Perhaps. But if I had meant you harm, I doubt the little knife would have saved me from the embarrassment of your expression first."
That won a real laugh.
Ashara, encouraged, inclined her head toward Oberyn. "He is very good."
"Yes."
"That sounded almost resentful."
"It was appreciation."
"Mm." Ashara studied Mordred more openly then. "You're Tywin Lannister's daughter."
"That accusation keeps returning to me."
"And you answer it like a challenge every time."
"Wouldn't you?"
Ashara thought about that. "No. But then I'm not you."
That was true enough.
For a moment they watched the practice ground together in companionable quiet.
Then Ashara said, "You don't watch him like a lovesick fool."
Mordred barked a soft laugh. "What a recommendation."
"It is one here. Harrenhal is crawling with girls prepared to mistake a man's wrists for destiny."
Mordred's gaze flicked briefly toward the nearest practice circle where some stormlord youth was indeed putting far too much effort into looking impressive for an audience of one maid and her much less impressed mistress.
"That sounds like a structural weakness in noble girls."
Ashara smiled. "That sounds like something you say often."
"Only when I'm right."
"That must be exhausting for everyone around you."
"It improves them."
Ashara laughed then, and the sound came easy and warm in the cold morning air. "You know, my brother said the Lannister girl was strange."
"Which one?"
Ashara's brows rose. "Fair point."
There was movement on the practice ground then. Oberyn had finished with the spear and was now speaking to one of the men beside him. Elia Martell, coming down from the pavilion line under escort and wrapped in a morning shawl against the damp, had appeared to the right of the field. Her beauty was of a different kind entirely than Ashara's or Cersei's—finer, more delicate at first glance, and made more striking by the clear intelligence and weariness in her face. Illness had left its mark there, not as frailty exactly, but as something already fought and never entirely gone.
Ashara's expression softened. "Princess Elia."
Mordred followed the line of her gaze.
So that was Elia.
The woman who would one day become a point around which kingdoms broke or did not. The thought came unbidden and she locked it down at once. Harrenhal first. The future after.
Oberyn saw his sister and went to her at once, the spear abandoned, his whole energy shifting from the solitary danger of practice into something far more human. Protective. Attentive. He took her elbow not because she looked unable to walk, but because she had coughed once into the morning air and he had reacted before most men would have registered the sound.
Mordred watched that too.
Ashara glanced sidelong at her. "You approve."
"What makes you think that?"
"You looked pleased. Very briefly. Most people need not see family tenderness in Martells and register satisfaction."
Mordred considered lying, decided it was pointless, and shrugged. "Men who are dangerous and still capable of care are less tiresome than men who think one cancels the other."
Ashara's smile turned thoughtful. "You really are not like the other girls."
"That must be terribly disappointing."
"Not at all. It makes the morning less dull."
A trumpet sounded from nearer the lists. Not the full ceremonial call yet, but enough to tell the camp the day had started in earnest.
Ashara pushed away from the cart. "I should go save my lady from a breakfast she doesn't want and three cousins she'd like even less."
"That sounds charitable of you."
"It's mostly self-preservation. They'll all come to me after." She turned, then paused. "For what it's worth, Oberyn noticed you watching before I did."
Mordred looked back at the practice ground instinctively.
Oberyn stood with Elia now, his hand still at her arm, speaking low enough that the words did not carry. But he was looking directly toward the cart. Toward Mordred. Not long. Not enough to make a scene. Just one clear acknowledgment before he turned back to his sister.
Ashara smiled like a woman who enjoyed leaving little fires in her wake.
"That should make the day more interesting," she said, and left.
Mordred stared after her for a moment and then laughed under her breath.
Interesting.
Yes.
It probably would.
By breakfast, Joanna already knew.
Mothers knew these things not because daughters confessed them, but because they came back from dawn with damp hems, bright eyes, and expressions far too composed for innocence.
The Lannister breakfast table had been set within the family pavilion complex rather than the great communal boards because Tywin preferred beginning his mornings with fewer opportunities for fools. Good bread, smoked river fish, fruit, soft cheeses, a dish of honeyed oats Cersei refused to touch on principle, and enough strong tea to wake a corpse if poured with conviction.
Jaime was in an excellent mood because he had slept well and looked forward to riding again. Cersei looked luminous and faintly murderous, which usually meant she had not slept enough and would take that personally out on the first simpering woman who addressed her before noon. Tywin had already received two reports and one private message before the rest had fully sat. Joanna looked, infuriatingly, like a woman who had slept exactly as much as she needed and not one breath less.
Mordred took her place, reached for bread, and immediately felt Joanna's eyes on her.
"What?" she asked.
Joanna buttered her own slice with serene precision. "You smell like the field."
"I walked."
"So I assumed."
Jaime looked up at once. "Before dawn?"
Cersei did too. "Without me?"
Mordred tore the bread in half. "Yes. Both."
"That's treason."
"It's exercise."
Tywin did not look up from the note in his hand. "It is recklessness if done without escort in a camp this size."
Mordred bit into the bread and swallowed before answering. "I was not murdered."
"That is not the standard by which I judge sensible conduct."
"No," Jaime said around a grin, "his standards are much more annoying than that."
Tywin lifted his eyes just enough that Jaime immediately applied himself to his fish with exaggerated devotion.
Joanna sipped her tea. "Did the walk improve your temper?"
Mordred almost smiled. "That depends who you ask."
Cersei narrowed her eyes. "Who did you meet?"
There was no point pretending too hard. Cersei would only enjoy the hunt more.
"Ashara Dayne."
Jaime's head came up. "Really?"
Cersei leaned forward. "And?"
"She's clever."
"That is not an and."
"It is if you care about the right things."
Cersei made an impatient sound. "No, no. I mean what happened?"
Mordred looked at her sister over the rim of her cup. "We spoke."
"You are impossible."
"So I'm told."
Jaime laughed. "Did she like you?"
"She found me alarming in a refreshing way."
"That means yes," Cersei said.
Joanna hid a smile in the tea.
Tywin folded the note and set it aside. "And who else was there?"
There it was. The father's version of the same question. No interest in gossip for its own sake. Only in who had crossed his daughter's path before dawn in a camp full of rival houses.
Mordred met his gaze. "Oberyn Martell. Elia too."
Jaime's grin sharpened instantly. Cersei's eyes flashed with interest. Joanna's face remained composed, which only meant she had become more attentive, not less.
Tywin said nothing for a moment.
Then: "How long?"
Mordred knew what he meant. How long with Ashara? How long in their proximity? How long observed?
"Not long," she said. "Long enough to know Martell men practice as though they mean it."
That made Jaime laugh again. "Now that sounds like you liked him."
"I liked the spear work."
"Of course you did."
Cersei sat back with folded arms and looked between Mordred and their mother. "This is going to become intolerable, isn't it?"
Joanna lifted one shoulder. "Most likely."
Tywin's face did not change. "If you are seen speaking with the Martells, you will remember that they are not your friends merely because they are interesting."
Mordred nodded. "Yes, Father."
Jaime glanced toward her, amusement dimming a fraction. "That was sterner than necessary."
"No," Tywin said. "It was exactly as necessary as this place makes it."
Joanna's eyes rested on him a brief moment. Not rebuke. Not agreement alone. Something older. Shared. They were not discussing Oberyn then and there, not truly. They were discussing Harrenhal. What it concentrated. What it made possible.
Mordred saw that and let the banter die.
Good.
That, too, was part of becoming. Knowing when laughter ended and listening began.
Cersei finally broke the silence. "If the Martells are not friends, then at least let us hope the Tyrell girls remain dull. I cannot endure beauty and wit in one feast hall. It is gluttony by the gods."
Jaime laughed immediately, and Joanna's smile returned.
Tywin looked at his daughter with the long-suffering patience of a man whose children were all, in different ways, public problems. "Then do not compete on ground where you fear even terms."
Cersei gasped in outrage so theatrical it almost became real. "Father."
Mordred leaned back and grinned. "That was very good."
"Yes," Jaime said. "Cruel. Efficient. Almost affectionate."
Tywin ignored all three of them with the full majesty of a man who had never once in his life admitted to making jokes.
That only made breakfast better.
The lists drew half the world's attention again before noon, but Harrenhal had by then already become more than the tilts. Men moved between pavilions too often and too carefully now for anyone with eyes to believe the true business remained only on horseback. Lords dined privately. Squires ran the same messages twice by different routes. Women took walks they pretended were harmless. Music floated over camps where agreements were being sharpened beneath the songs.
Mordred spent the late morning under Joanna's eye and not unhappily.
Her mother had received Lady Dustin, Lady Whent, one of the Blackwood women, and a pair of cousins from lesser branches of houses Joanna would never have admitted mattered less even if they did. Mordred sat near enough to be useful and far enough that her presence still felt ornamental to those who underestimated her.
That suited her.
From there she watched her mother work.
Gods, but Joanna was good.
Not simply gracious. Any pretty fool with tutors could be gracious for ten minutes. Joanna made conversation into architecture. She let people speak until they revealed more than they intended, then answered in ways that never looked like cutting while still quietly setting every line back where she wanted it. She could flatter without fawning, discourage without insult, and remind women of their own rank or lack of it with nothing more than a well-placed question about a sister's health or a household move two years gone.
Mordred had seen men fear Tywin and understood why. But watching Joanna among women who thought themselves subtle made her suspect that fear was not the highest form of power after all.
After Lady Dustin finally withdrew, trailing scent and resentment in equal measure, Mordred let out the breath she had been holding.
Joanna did not look up from the orange she was peeling neatly into a little silver dish. "Well?"
"That woman smiles as if she wants teeth."
Joanna's mouth twitched. "That's not inaccurate."
"She hates half the room and wants the other half to know she noticed they were there."
"Still not inaccurate."
Mordred leaned forward. "How do you do that for an hour and remain polite?"
Joanna set one slice of orange into the dish before answering. "Because politeness is not surrender, and because women like Lady Dustin are dangerous mostly when they think they've unsettled you."
Mordred looked toward the tent flap where the woman had disappeared. "She did not unsettle you."
"No."
"You almost looked amused."
"I was."
That made Mordred laugh.
Joanna finally looked at her and smiled properly. "You think I enjoy this less than I do."
"I think you enjoy victory."
"That too."
Mordred grew quieter then. "Father wins by making people afraid."
"Sometimes."
"And you win by making them comfortable enough to misstep."
"Sometimes."
Mordred folded her arms over her knees. "That sounds very much like yes with prettier stitching."
Joanna laughed softly. "You are too young to be this observant."
"No, I'm exactly the right age. It's everyone else who's being lazy."
"That attitude," Joanna said, pointing one peeled orange segment at her daughter, "is why half the world will fall in love with you and the other half will want to smother you with a cushion."
"Only half?"
"Optimism is one of a mother's rights."
For a little while they sat in companionable quiet.
Then Joanna said, very lightly, "You liked Ashara."
Mordred did not flinch, but only because years of living under Joanna had taught her the futility.
"Yes."
"And Oberyn."
Mordred tilted her head. "That sounds more like a statement than a question."
Joanna arranged the orange slices with infuriating serenity. "It can be both."
"I found him interesting."
"That was not what I said."
Mordred looked at her mother.
Joanna met the look without haste or cruelty.
"Well," Mordred said at last, "then perhaps I liked his competence. And his face. Though not in that order."
Joanna's smile widened just enough to show she had not expected her daughter to answer so plainly. "That sounds honest."
"It is."
"Good."
There it was again. That little word. The one Joanna used when she approved not of the outcome necessarily, but of the clarity.
Mordred exhaled and then, because honesty had been rewarded and therefore could be indulged, said, "If I must spend my youth surrounded by lords, I reserve the right to appreciate the ones who don't look as though they were carved from stale butter."
Joanna laughed in full then, quiet but helplessly real.
"That," she said once she recovered, "is perhaps the least romantic thing anyone has ever said about attraction."
"Romance is for singers and girls with weak judgment."
Joanna raised one brow. "And what are you?"
Mordred smiled. "A girl with standards."
Her mother's gaze warmed. "Yes," she said softly. "You are."
That stayed with Mordred long after the pavilion filled again.
Rhaegar won the final tilt of the day with the sort of beauty men resented and women remembered against their will.
Mordred stood with the rest of the women in the stand and watched him ride because no one in their senses would have looked away. Even Jaime, standing farther off among the young men and pretending not to care overmuch about anyone else's glory, had gone still at the last pass. The prince rode like a man hearing music no one else was granted. Lances shattered. Horses screamed. Armor rang. And through all of it Rhaegar moved with that same eerie self-possession, as though violence had simply agreed to dress itself in elegance for him.
When the final knight hit the earth and the crowd broke into full-throated roaring approval, Mordred looked not at Rhaegar but at the faces around him.
That was where truth lived.
Men who admired too much.
Men who hated too quietly.
Women who had just begun imagining themselves into songs.
Women who already knew songs were where trouble hid.
Rhaegar took the crown of blue winter roses.
Everything in the field narrowed.
Mordred felt it before she knew where he meant to ride.
So did Cersei.
Mordred looked at her sister and saw, not hope exactly, but expectation sharpen into something too open for safety.
No, she thought. No, no, no, don't be a fool now.
Rhaegar did not ride toward Cersei.
He did not ride toward Elia either.
He rode past too many respectable answers and drew up before Lyanna Stark.
The whole world seemed to stop and tilt.
Lyanna sat dark-haired and fierce-faced among her family like winter given a girl's shape, and for one brief terrible beautiful heartbeat even she looked startled enough to forget her own self-command. Rhaegar lowered the roses before her.
Queen of love and beauty.
The field made a sound like breath torn from a thousand throats at once.
Cersei went white.
Jaime swore under his breath.
Joanna did not move.
Tywin, farther below among the lords, became stillness itself.
Mordred felt the future lurch.
Not because she knew all of it yet. No one did. But because she had eyes and had been raised by Joanna Lannister, and anyone with eyes and that upbringing knew this was not merely romance or pageantry. This was insult. Signal. Desire made public in a room full of politics. A prince choosing spectacle over safety before all the realm.
Lyanna Stark looked at the roses as if unsure whether to be honored or furious.
Elia Martell sat very straight.
Oberyn, near his sister, did not move at all.
That stillness frightened Mordred more than any visible rage could have.
The cheering came late and wrong and scattered, because no one knew what the sound ought to be. Some called out because the prince had acted and princes were to be applauded. Others stayed quiet because they could already feel how badly this choice had landed.
Cersei did not cheer.
Mordred touched her wrist before she quite knew she meant to.
Cersei turned toward her with eyes bright and hard and humiliated enough to cut.
"Do not," she said.
It was not clear whether she meant do not comfort me, do not look at me like that, or do not speak.
Mordred chose the safest answer.
"All right."
That was what real sisters did sometimes. They did not fix what could not be fixed in the moment. They stood near enough that the other one knew she was not alone in the ruin of it.
Joanna's hand found Cersei's other wrist from the far side.
Not dramatic.
Not obvious.
Steady.
The prince rode on.
The roses lay in Lyanna Stark's lap like the first beautiful thing in a tragedy no one yet had the courage to name.
That night Tywin called them together.
Not the whole household. Not a formal family council. Something smaller and more dangerous than that. Tywin, Joanna, Jaime, Cersei, Mordred. No servants within earshot except those Joanna trusted beyond gossip and those Tywin trusted beyond bribery, which was a shorter list.
The pavilion walls held the night out. Lamps burned low. Outside, Harrenhal still roared around its own scandal, the feast louder than usual now because every fool in the realm had suddenly become an interpreter of princely meaning.
Inside, the air felt cut cleaner.
Tywin stood by the center table with one hand resting on the map of the grounds though he did not look at it. Joanna sat, because she knew her own strength well enough not to mistake standing for command. Jaime leaned on one carved chair back. Cersei remained near the bedspace curtain as if she had not yet decided whether stillness or movement better held her anger. Mordred stood beside the lamp and watched all of them.
No one spoke first.
At last Tywin said, "You all understand what happened."
Not a question.
Jaime's voice came first, and sharper than usual. "He humiliated Elia in front of the realm."
Cersei laughed once, low and without humor. "That is one way to phrase it."
Tywin's eyes shifted to her. "Then phrase it another."
Cersei held his gaze. "He told every lord in Westeros that his wife is not enough to keep his songs in line, and he did it while the king sat watching and half the realm weighed what it meant for Dorne, for the crown, and for any woman stupid enough to mistake princely attention for stability."
There.
That was Cersei at her best. Not simply wounded vanity, though there was some of that too. No, she had seen the politics through the bruise immediately.
Joanna nodded once. "Yes."
Jaime pushed away from the chair. "Do we think he means to insult Dorne? Or is he simply mad enough to follow his own fancies in public?"
"Those are not opposing possibilities," Mordred said.
That won the smallest glance from Tywin that might have been approval in another man and still likely was in him.
He looked at Jaime. "Intent matters less than result."
Joanna added quietly, "And result is chaos."
Cersei folded her arms tighter. "Good. Then at least we all agree it was stupid."
Joanna's voice softened. "You may be angry without making yourself smaller by pretending this was only personal."
Cersei looked at her mother, and for a second the fifteen-year-old girl inside the beautiful almost-queen showed plainly enough to hurt. "I know that."
"I know you do."
Cersei looked away first.
Mordred hated Rhaegar for that. Not for some imagined slight to Cersei's fantasies. For forcing a room like this into being at all.
Tywin finally moved from the table.
"When kings are unstable and princes are theatrical," he said, "wise houses become less visible, not more."
Jaime frowned. "You think this worsens things with the king."
"I think everything worsens things with the king now," Tywin replied. "The question is only pace."
Silence followed that because no one in the room could dispute it honestly.
Aerys had become weather of the worst kind: not dramatic enough every day to justify rebellion, too unstable on the wrong days to permit peace of mind.
Mordred said, "And if the prince means to chase songs after this?"
Joanna looked at her.
Tywin's face did not change, but some little line around the mouth hardened. "Then he proves himself a fool in a way more costly than poetry."
Cersei let out a breath that might have been laughter in another life. "Wonderful. We are ruled by one madman and one romantic."
"No," Joanna said, with a steadiness that pulled all their attention back to her. "Do not make the mistake of thinking romance makes men less dangerous. It often makes them worse, because they begin imagining they are morally excused for damage they desire."
Mordred looked at her mother and thought, not for the first time, that Joanna saw further into people than almost anyone alive.
Jaime rubbed a hand through his hair. "So what do we do?"
Tywin answered without hesitation. "We remember. We watch. And we give no one reason to think House Lannister can be baited into public foolishness."
That was for all of them, but it landed especially on Cersei and Jaime and Mordred alike because he knew his children too well not to understand where heat sat in each.
Cersei said nothing.
Mordred could almost hear the effort in it.
Joanna rose then and crossed to her daughter, not the queenly one not yet queen, but simply her child, and touched Cersei's cheek lightly with the back of two fingers.
"You are allowed to hurt," she said softly. "You are not allowed to let pain make your choices for you."
Cersei's lips pressed thin. "You make restraint sound noble."
"It often isn't. It is simply useful."
That won the faintest unwilling smile from Cersei.
Jaime looked at Mordred over their mother's shoulder. "You know, when she speaks like that, I understand why Father actually listens."
Tywin said, dry as old parchment, "I am standing here."
"Yes," Jaime replied, "and still proving the point."
Mordred laughed before she could stop herself. Joanna's shoulders loosened half an inch. Even Cersei's mouth moved.
Good.
Again, that was how families survived gathering storms—not by denying them, but by keeping enough life in the room that fear did not become the only voice.
When they broke for the night, Joanna caught Mordred's hand before she slipped through the inner curtain.
"One thing more."
Mordred turned.
Joanna looked tired then, not weak, but tired in the way only the wisest person in a room full of loved fools ever truly did. "Your face speaks too clearly when you are angry."
Mordred sighed. "I know."
"No. You know it in theory. I mean you must remember it in practice here."
"I will."
Joanna searched her face. "And if you find yourself deciding something in your own head because everyone else is being absurd, you will tell me first."
Mordred almost smiled. "That sounds very specific."
"It is. That is why I'm saying it."
There it was again. Joanna hearing the wrong note before the music had even fully begun.
Mordred squeezed her mother's hand once. "All right."
"All right because you agree, or all right because you're humoring me?"
Mordred's smile turned real. "Both."
Joanna rolled her eyes and kissed her brow.
It was absurdly comforting and embarrassingly so at fourteen, which meant Mordred would rather die than admit it.
Still, when she lay awake later listening to the distant noise of Harrenhal carry through canvas and cursed stone alike, it was not Rhaegar's crown of roses she thought of first.
It was Joanna's hand on Cersei's wrist.
Tywin going still as judgment.
Jaime covering unease with humor.
And the simple unforgiving fact that this place had tipped.
Good, she thought grimly in the darkness.
At least now it was honest.