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Daemon
Jon pulled back from the kiss. Cersei's lips followed his for a moment before she realized he was withdrawing. Her green eyes opened, pupils slightly dilated, lips parted. Her hands remained tangled in his hair.
"No," Jon said.
Cersei's expression changed from surprise to something sharper. "No?"
"I'm not going to your bed." Jon reached up and gently removed her hands from his hair. "Not tonight. Not ever again."
She straightened, her face hardening into the mask he recognized from the throne room, from the Trident, from every moment when she wasn't getting what she wanted. "You don't have a choice, Jon. I've made that very clear. If you refuse me-"
"You'll tell Robert the truth about who I am." Jon stood, ignoring the protest from his ribs, and faced her directly. "And Robert will have me killed. My uncle will lose his head. My sisters will be murdered in their beds with Baratheon cloaks covering the evidence. I know all of this. You've explained it very thoroughly."
"Then sit back down, Jon Snow." Cersei said, her voice dropping to steel. "And we can discuss what happens next. What you'll do for me. How you'll-"
"My name is Daemon Targaryen."
The name sounded so strange, yet so right.
"I am the trueborn son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark. My father took my mother as his second wife in the tradition of Aegon the Conqueror. I am not Jon Snow. I never was. And I will not be threatened by you as if I'm still some frightened bastard boy you can bend to your will."
Cersei stared at him. For a moment, genuine surprise flickered across her face before she controlled it. "You-"
"If you tell Robert who I am," Jon continued, taking a step closer, "I will die. You're right about that. But before I die, I will tell him something else. I'll tell him I fucked his precious queen and she moaned like a whore. Behind his back. In Winterfell. Three times, actually. Sometimes twice in one night." He saw her eyes widen. "I'll tell him you came to my chambers. That you initiated everything. That you seduced a boy because you saw a ghost in my face and wanted to fuck your dead prince one more time."
"Robert won't believe-"
"Robert believed me at the Trident," Jon said quietly. "He believed me over you then. He believed me over his own son. What makes you think he won't believe me about this?"
Cersei had never looked this enraged, her eyes shining like wildfire. "If you tell him that, you'll die anyway."
"I know. But so will you." Jon held her gaze. "Robert won't care that I'm Rhaegar's son when he hears you've cuckolded him with a bastard boy. His rage will be for you first. And he'll kill you, Cersei. Maybe not quickly. Maybe not cleanly. But he will kill you."
"My father-"
"Your father will be horrified that you lay with someone you thought was a bastard. The great Tywin Lannister's daughter, fucking the Hand's bastard son. That alone would be scandal enough to damage House Lannister's reputation for generations." Jon took another step. "But it gets worse. Because your brother won't let you die without a fight."
Cersei's face paled slightly.
"Jaime will try to protect you. Any brother would. And Robert will have to kill him too. Then Tywin Lannister will have lost both his golden children in one day, all because you couldn't control yourself." Jon's voice was almost gentle. "Do you really think Tywin will let that stand? There will be war, Cersei. War between House Lannister and House Baratheon. The realm will burn. All because you wanted me in your bed."
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the sounds from outside the pavilion, the distant roar of the crowd, the calls of vendors, seemed to have faded away.
Cersei stood very still. Her chest rose and fell with controlled breaths. Her green eyes burning, looking at his face, as if trying to see uncertainty.
Then, slowly, her lips curved into a smile.
"Gods," she breathed. "That was... that was almost perfect."
Jon blinked. "What?"
"The way you said it. The steel in your voice. The confidence." She took a step toward him, and Jon realized with uncomfortable awareness that her pupils were more dilated now than they'd been during the kiss. "You stood there and threatened mutual destruction, you threatened a Queen. You are ready to burn it all down if I push you."
"I meant every word."
"I know you did." Cersei's smile widened. "That's what makes it perfect. You're not bluffing. You would actually do it. You'd take us all down with you rather than submit." She moved closer. "Do you have any idea how arousing that is?"
Jon took a step back and immediately regretted it. His crutches caught on the carpet. Cersei noticed. Her smile turned knowing.
"Don't run from me now, Daemon." She used his true name like a caress. "Not when you've finally shown me who you really are."
"This isn't-" Jon steadied himself. "I'm not trying to arouse you, Cersei. I'm trying to make you understand-"
"Oh, I understand perfectly." Cersei stopped just in front of him. "You've drawn your line. If I expose you, you'll expose us. Mutual destruction. A very Targaryen solution, actually. Fire and blood and let the realm burn." Her eyes moved over his face like she was memorizing it. "Your grandfather would be proud."
"Then we have an understanding."
"We have a stalemate." Cersei tilted her head. "Which is not the same thing."
"Close enough."
"Is it?" She reached out and straightened his collar with a proprietary gesture that made Jon's skin crawl. "Because you're still here, Daemon. You could have left already. Stormed out, made your grand exit, declared yourself done with the wicked queen and her schemes. But you're still standing in my tent. Why is that?"
Jon said nothing.
"I'll tell you why." Cersei's voice dropped to something softer, more intimate. "Because you're curious what I'll do next. You've made your threat, established your position, shown me you're not afraid. And now you want to see if I'll fold or raise the stakes." Her smile returned. "You're playing the game, Daemon. And part of you is enjoying it."
"This isn't a game."
"Everything is a game in King's Landing." She moved past him to the small table and refilled her wine goblet. "Would you like some? It's Arbor gold. The good vintage."
"I don't want your wine."
"Pity." She took a slow sip, watching him over the rim. "So. Let's say I accept your terms. I don't expose you to Robert. You don't tell him about our... indiscretions. We maintain our mutually assured destruction and go our separate ways." She set the goblet down with a soft clink. "What happens then?"
"I go back to Winterfell. You stay here. We never speak again."
"Winterfell." Cersei repeated the name like it was something foul on her tongue. "Back to the North. Back to the cold and the snow and the endless winter nights." She moved toward him again, her crimson gown whispering across the carpets. "Back to being Lord Stark's... what, exactly? Not his son. Not his bastard, now that you know the truth. What will you be, Daemon, when you return to Winterfell?"
Jon didn't answer.
"You'll be nothing," Cersei said softly. "Oh, Lord Stark loves you, I don't doubt that. He'll give you a place at his table, a room in his castle, work in the training yard. But what future is that for the son of Rhaegar Targaryen? What future is that for a boy with royal blood and a dragon's name?"
"A safe one."
"A wasted one." She stopped directly in front of him. "You know why you really came south, don't you? Why you agreed to leave Winterfell and ride all this way to King's Landing?"
"Lord Stark asked me to."
"Lord Stark asked you to, yes. But that's not why you said yes." Her smile turned knowing. "You said yes because of me. Because I whispered in Robert's ear and made sure you were included in the party. Because I gave you the chance to be more than Ned Stark's bastard." She paused. "Because deep down, Daemon, you didn't want to freeze your balls off at the Wall."
Jon felt guilty to admit it, but she was right.
"And now here you are," Cersei continued. "You've fought in a tourney. You've made friends with the son of Highgarden. You've been cheered by smallfolk and dined with lords. You've tasted what life could be like if you weren't trapped in the North pretending to be something you're not." Her voice dropped to a purr. "So I ask you again: what will you do when you go back? How will you go back to being just another bastard when you've seen what else is possible?"
"I'll manage."
"Will you?" She tilted her head. "Or will you lie awake at night in your cold little room, thinking about warm pavilions and soft beds and a queen who wanted you?"
"I'll forget you."
Cersei laughed. It was almost girlish. "No, you won't. You might want to. You'll certainly try. But you won't forget." She reached out and took his hand. She placed it on her breast. The warmth of her skin burned through the silk. "Because you're a greedy person, Daemon. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's what I liked about you from the start."
"You make friends with Loras Tyrell," she continued, her smile turning sly. "The pretty knight with the roses in his horse's mane. I'm sure he appreciates your... company. He certainly looks at you enough. Though I suspect his interests in you aren't quite what you think they are."
Jon frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"Oh, nothing." Cersei's eyes gleamed with amusement. "Just that Ser Loras has very specific tastes when it comes to companionship. And you, my dear Daemon, are exactly his type. Handsome, dark-haired, brooding. Like a particularly attractive storm cloud. I'm sure he finds you absolutely fascinating."
"Loras is my friend."
"I'm sure he is." Her tone suggested she was sure of the exact opposite. "My point is this: you've already changed, Daemon. You've already tasted the pleasures of life beyond Winterfell and the bastard's table. You've already made friends in high places, fought in tourneys, been wanted by a queen." She leaned closer, her breath warm against his ear. "You can never go back to just being a bastard. Not really. If you go North, it's only a matter of time before the greed returns. Before you want more."
Her free hand came up to rest on his chest. "Especially since you're not really a bastard at all. How long before you refuse to wear that badge again? How long before the name Daemon Targaryen wants what it's owed?"
Jon stood very still. Her words carved through him like a blade through water, finding the truth at the bottom. The thought of going back to Winterfell, of pretending to be Jon Snow again, of bowing his head and accepting scraps from the high table-
He didn't want that.
"You're right," he said quietly.
Cersei smiled, triumphant. "I usually am."
"I can never go back to being just a bastard." Jon met her eyes. "But that also means I'll never submit to you again."
The smile faltered.
"You've made your point, Your Grace. I've changed. I want things I never wanted before. Power, pleasure, a place in the world that matters." He removed his hand from her breast. "But if I'm going to have those things, I'll earn them myself. Not by being your plaything. Not by crawling into your bed whenever you snap your fingers."
"You think you have a choice-"
"I don't think. I know." Jon took a step back, putting distance between them. "You can threaten me with exposure all you want. But we both know now what happens if you do. So either we destroy each other, or we go our separate ways. Those are your only options."
Cersei stared at him. Her face had gone very still, very cold. For a moment, Jon thought she might scream. Might call the guards. Might do something violent and unhinged that would bring this whole precarious situation crashing down.
Then she laughed. It was not a warm laugh.
"You know the problem with Robert?" She moved back to her chair and sat. "He thinks winning is the same as ruling. He thinks because he swung his hammer and broke Rhaegar's chest on the Trident, that means he knows how to wear a crown."
"I don't see what that has to do with-"
"Robert doesn't understand limits." Cersei picked up her wine and drank. "He drinks like a boy of twenty. Hunts like a man who can still outrun his belly. Eats and fucks the same way." She looked into her cup. "The maesters have been warning him about his heart for years. Robert listens to maesters about as well as he listens to his queen."
Jon felt the cold of it go through him. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying men like Robert burn out, Daemon. They always have." She met his eyes over the rim. "Look at your father. Rhaegar was, what, twenty-three when he died? Twenty-four? Robert has almost lived twice that already, and he's spent the extra years trying to kill himself with food and wine and women." Another sip. "It's a matter of time before his body decides it has had enough."
"And when that day comes," Cersei went on, setting the cup down with care, "the realm will need strong leadership. A regent for the young king. Someone who knows how to rule, not just how to swing."
"You."
"Me." Her smile was patient. "And when that day comes, Daemon, you will remember this conversation. You will remember that I offered you a place. You will wonder whether refusing me was the wisest thing you ever did, or the most foolish."
Jon said nothing. His head was full of her words and he could not tell if she was predicting the future or describing it. The line between the two was the only thing that mattered, and he could not find it.
"But that's for later." Cersei stood and smoothed the front of her gown. "For now, go back to your uncle and your sisters. Enjoy the rest of the tourney. Pretend everything is fine." Her smile sharpened. "And think about what you actually want, Daemon Targaryen. Wanting is only the beginning. Eventually you have to decide what you are willing to do to get it."
Jon picked up his crutches. He wanted to say something that would tell her he wasn't afraid. What came out instead was: "This isn't over."
"No," Cersei agreed, almost gently. "It really isn't."
Jon turned and left the tent. The afternoon sun hit him like a wall after the dim inside, and he stood for a moment blinking. Behind him Cersei's voice came out cheerful and bright as if nothing had been said in there at all: "Ser Jaime! You may take Lord Jon back to his seat. He's finished speaking with me."
Jaime was waiting a few paces from the tent. His eyes went across Jon's face once and then away.
"Are you well?"
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine."
"I'm alive. That counts as fine in King's Landing, doesn't it?"
Some sympathy in Jaime then, briefly. "Follow me."
They walked back through the tourney grounds without speaking. Jon kept hearing it. The easy way she had said it. His body decides it has had enough. That was not a guess. The specifics were too specific for a guess.
And underneath that, the worse thing. The thing she had seen in him and said out loud. He had been a bastard before he knew he was a prince. He did not know how to be one again.
Eddard Stark
The smithy was exactly where Littlefinger had said it would be, tucked between a fletcher's shop and a tavern that smelled of old beer and older vomit. Ned dismounted and handed his reins to Jory, who gave him a look that said I know you're not telling me everything, my lord, and I don't like it.
"Wait here," Ned said.
"My lord-"
"Wait. Here."
Jory's mouth thinned, but he nodded. Ned turned and walked into the smithy.
The heat hit him first.
The forge burned in the corner of the room, and at its mouth stood a young man with a hammer, working a length of steel. Sixteen, perhaps seventeen. Black hair curled wet against his neck. His arms were thick from the work, and his chest under the leather apron was thicker still. A boy on his way to becoming a big man.
The master smith was bigger yet, his beard down past his collarbones, his arms knotted with the old burn-scars of his trade. He looked up from his bench. "Lord Hand. We did not expect you."
"Master Mott." Ned inclined his head. "I have come to see the boy. The one Lord Renly sent."
Mott's face changed, very little, very fast. Then he turned and called: "Gendry. Come here, lad."
The boy at the forge set his hammer down and came over, wiping the sweat from his face with a rag that did not look as if it would help. Up close, there was no doubting it. Black hair, blue eyes, a hard Baratheon blue Ned had seen across a hundred feasts and a half-dozen battles. The heavy jaw. The way the boy stood, hands at his sides, chin not quite lowered. He did not know how to bow yet, but he knew enough to want to.
Robert, Ned thought. Robert twenty years ago, before the wine and the crown.
He told the boy his work looked fine. He asked, gently, after the mother. Dead, the boy said, when I was small. Ned asked, more gently still, after the father.
"Never knew him, my lord." The boy's jaw tightened in a way Ned had seen on another man, in another country, when that man did not want to give an answer. "Master Mott says some lord paid for my apprenticeship. I do not know which one."
You know, Ned thought. Or you have guessed. You are not a fool. But you have been clever enough to keep your guess in your mouth, and that is more than most men of your years can manage.
"Thank you for your time," Ned said. "Keep at your work."
He turned and left before the boy could ask him anything. As he stepped through the door he heard Mott's voice behind him, gruff. "Back to it, lad. The Hand of the King has no more time for you today."
Ned stood in the heat of the street and let himself feel the full weight of what he had seen. Another one. Another bastard Robert had got on some woman and then forgotten before he was done lacing his breeches. How many were there in this city alone, with black hair and blue Baratheon eyes? Scattered through the lanes and the brothels and the apprentice rolls of King's Landing like seeds on a wind.
"Jory."
"My lord."
"One more, before we go back."
The Brothel
The place had been painted recently, and the windows had curtains, but the paint did not cover the smell. The women in the doorways had the tired eyes of women who did not expect anything good from this day, nor from the day after it.
Ned gave the stout woman who kept the house his name, and her face went the colour of curdled milk. She climbed the narrow stair ahead of him as if she had a knife pressed to her back, and brought him to a door on the second floor.
The girl who opened it was not yet eighteen, by Ned's reckoning. Honey-coloured hair. Hollows under her eyes. She held a small child on her hip. The child was perhaps three years old, with a head of black curls and eyes that were the same hard Baratheon blue Ned had seen at the forge an hour before.
"My lord." The young woman, Mhaegen the brothel-keeper had called her, curtsied with the child still on her arm. "I was not expecting... is something wrong?"
"Nothing is wrong." Ned made his voice as soft as he knew how. "I came to see your daughter."
Her eyes went wide and then, when she had understood him, she pulled the child closer in to her ribs. "Her name is Barra, my lord. She is a good girl. Quiet. She does not cry overmuch."
Ned looked at the child. He could have been looking at a wax doll of Robert Baratheon at three years old, if Robert had ever been three.
"She is a beautiful child," he said, and meant it.
Mhaegen's face changed at that, all at once, the way clouds change when the sun comes through them. "She is everything good that ever came of my life, my lord. The only thing I got from..." She caught herself and flushed. "I mean no disrespect to His Grace. He was kind to me. The one night. He gave me coin for her keep and said he would come back to see her when he was able. I keep hoping. My lord, I keep hoping."
The child reached up and put her small hand on her mother's cheek. "Mama."
"Yes, sweet. Mama is here."
There was a thickness in Ned's throat that he had not felt in a long while. Not since he had set Lyanna down in the dark of the crypts at Winterfell and laid the stone hand upon her stone breast. This girl believed Robert would come back. Believed the King of the Seven Kingdoms had carried her face out of this room with him and was carrying it still, that he thought on her in the small hours.
He does not, Ned thought. He put you out of his head with the rest of them.
"Does the child know," he asked, "who her father is?" The girl was on the corner now, playing.
"Not yet, my lord. She is too small. But when she is older I will tell her. I will tell her that the King himself was her father, and that makes her something, even being a bastard. I want her to have a thing to hold to."
Or a thing that will get her killed, Ned thought. A black-haired Baratheon child, in a city where the Queen's children are all gold from crown to root.
"Keep her close," he said instead. "Keep her safe."
"Always, my lord. She is all I have."
Before leaving, Ned, for the first time in his life, gave coins to a whore, three golden dragons, telling her to leave the city if things ever went bad.
He left the brothel and stood in the street outside, feeling older than he had felt in many years. Older than he had felt since the day he had ridden out of the Tower of Joy with his sister's body laid across his saddle. The sun beat down on King's Landing. The stench of the river and the gutters and the cookfires rose around him in a haze, as if the city itself were sweating from a fever.
How many more, he thought. How many more black-haired blue-eyed children in this city, waiting for someone with eyes to see them?
And when Cersei did see them, what then.
Nothing good, he thought. Nothing good at all.
The Tourney Grounds, Late Afternoon
By the time he had got back to the tourney grounds the jousting was running through its later rounds. The crowd had been refreshed by wine and by the sight of blood, and was the louder for it. Ned pushed through the press of bodies toward the royal pavilion, where Robert was meant to be holding his court.
Robert was not in the pavilion. Robert was in the armouring tent, stripped to his breeches and a sweat-stained undershirt, and Lancel Lannister, the Queen's cousin, was struggling to get him into his jousting armour. Lancel was perhaps fifteen, with pale lashes and a face that had not yet decided what it was meant to be doing in this world.
"Not like that, you fool!" Robert was shouting. "The strap goes under the gorget, not over it. Are you trying to strangle your king?"
"I am sorry, Your Grace, I thought..."
"Don't think. Do as I tell you."
Lancel's face went the colour of a beet. His fingers slipped on the strap, and the gorget came loose and fell to the rushes with a clang that turned half the heads in the tent.
"Seven hells." Robert bent for it, and his belly made the bending into more of an undertaking than it had any right to be, even worse than a pregnant woman in her final month. "Ned! Ned, get over here and show this boy how to put armour on a man before I am too old to ride."
Ned went to him. In spite of the day, in spite of the boy at the forge and the small girl named Barra and the long slow knowledge of where all of this was bound to end, he felt the corner of his mouth lifting. There was something about the sight of the King of the Seven Kingdoms shouting at a frightened squire over a buckle that was almost a comfort to him.
"Your Grace." Ned kept his face grave. "It may be that you have grown since the last time you wore this."
Robert glared. "I have not grown."
"You have grown a great deal, in truth."
"That is muscle."
"That is wine and roasted boar."
The glare held a moment. Then Robert let out the laugh Ned remembered from the days before they had been kings and Hands, the days when they had drunk together in Jon Arryn's hall and ridden the Vale roads in the rain. "You are a bastard, Ned Stark."
"So I have been told."
"Help me with this damned armour before I joust in my smallclothes and frighten my Queen."
Ned stepped forward and took the gorget from Lancel, who looked as if he might weep with the relief of it. "You are truly going to ride?"
"I am the King. I will do as I please."
"You have not ridden the lists in years."
"Which is why I am due." Robert stood still for him while Ned set the gorget right. "Besides, the southron lords need to see their king can still sit a horse. I will not have them whispering I have gone soft."
You have gone soft, Ned thought. Soft in the belly and soft in the head. If you put yourself on a destrier in this armour the horse will throw you and you will break your fool neck in front of seven kingdoms.
"I think it might be wiser..."
"Wiser, he says." Robert grinned at Lancel as if to share the jest, though Lancel did not look as if he was in any state to share jests. "My Hand thinks everything I do would be better if I did less of it. Drink less. Spend less. Whore less. If I had listened to Ned Stark all these years I would be the dullest king the realm has ever borne."
"You would be a healthier one," Ned said.
Robert's grin slipped a little, and for a breath there was something almost sober in his face. "You worry too much, old friend. I am well. Better than well. I am the King." He clapped Ned on the shoulder, hard enough to set Ned half a step back. "Now help me into the rest of this and we will see how a stormlander rides the tilt."
Ned helped him, because there was no arguing with Robert when his mind was set, and Robert's mind had been set on this since well before the morning. Piece by piece they strapped him into armour that was at least two sizes too small for the man he had become. His breath grew short in it. The sweat ran down his temples and into his beard. He kept grinning. He kept jesting. He kept pretending nothing was wrong with any of it.
"There." Robert turned to a polished shield one of the squires was holding up for him. "I am magnificent."
"You look like a sausage that's been forced into a casing two sizes too small."
Robert's head swiveled toward him. "What?"
"Magnificent sausage, if you prefer," Ned said mildly. "But still a sausage. The armor doesn't fit, Robert. It hasn't fit for years."
"It fits fine."
"You can barely breathe."
"I'm breathing perfectly well." Robert demonstrated by taking an exaggerated breath, which ended in him wheezing slightly and trying to hide it. "See? Magnificent and breathing."
"Magnificently dying, more like."
Robert glared at him, then burst into laughter. "Gods, Ned. You're worse than the maesters. Always telling me what I can't do, what I shouldn't do." He clapped Ned on the shoulder hard enough to make him stagger. "It's a tourney, not a war. I'll be fine. My horse. Bring me my horse and my lance. The King rides."
The crowd let out a roar when Robert came out of the tent. He raised his arms to them, and turned, slow as he could manage, so every man and woman in the stands would have a clear sight of him. The golden antlers of his helm took the sun. The black and gold of his armour shone like a thing freshly made.
He looked like a king.
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