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Cersei Lannister was not much of a woman of faith.
She had never knelt before the Mother's statue with anything more than cold calculation, never whispered a sincere prayer to the Seven who supposedly watched over the highborn and the low alike.
The gods, to her, were only for the weak, crutches for those who could not bear the weight of their own choices.
She had mocked the septons' droning hymns, rolled her eyes at the candlelight processions, and turned her back on every sermon that promised mercy or justice in some life beyond this one.
Prayer was theater, and Cersei had never been an actress on anyone else's stage.
Yet now, in the suffocating stillness of the birthing chamber, with the copper stink of blood thick in the air and the midwives hovering like pale, useless ghosts, she found herself doing exactly that.
Her son, her perfect, beautiful son, lay motionless in the cradle of her arms. The tiny chest that had fluttered so fiercely against her own only moments before was now still.
The midwives had tried to take him from her, murmuring apologies and platitudes, but she had snarled at them like a lioness, teeth bared, until they backed away.
Now her arms shook with the effort of holding him upright, of willing breath back into lungs that refused to rise.
Sweat plastered her hair to her face; her nails dug bloody crescents into her own palms where they cradled his head.
And she prayed, prayed with all her heart and soul.
Not the measured, proper prayers of the sept, not the polished verses the High Septon intoned in the Great Sept of Baelor. No, this was raw, jagged, desperate. A silent howl flung upward through a throat too tight to scream.
"Please," she thought, the word foreign and frantic in her mind. "Please, I have never asked you for anything. So please! Please return him to me! Take this whole cursed kingdom if that is the price, but do not take my son!"
Her lips moved without sound, forming the shape of words she had never spoken aloud: Mother, Father, Warrior, Stranger, names she had only ever said to appease peasants and lords, now begged.
She rocked the still child against her breast as though the rhythm of her own heartbeat could restart his.
Tears, hot, hated, traitorous, slid down her cheeks and fell onto his pale, unmoving face.
She did not notice the midwives giving her pitying looks, or the words the maester said trying to comfort her, nor the sound of thundering footsteps rushing to the chamber.
There was only the unbearable silence beneath her son's ribs, and the wild, animal prayer tearing itself out of her.
The heavy oak door crashed open with the force of a battering ram, splintering the quiet like bone.
Robert Baratheon filled the doorway, broad shoulders heaving, black hair wild and streaked with sweat from whatever hall or hunt he had abandoned.
His royal guards soon followed after him, with "Jaime" rushing in seconds after the king, eyes landing on her with worry.
Robert's face was flushed the dangerous red of too much wine and too little sleep, eyes bloodshot and wild beneath heavy brows.
"Where is he?" The words came out in a bellow that rattled the silver trays and made the midwives flinch back against the walls. "Where is my son?"
Cersei did not look up at first. She could not. Her gaze remained locked on the small, perfect face cradled against her chest, on the tiny lashes lying still against waxen cheeks.
Every muscle in her body had locked tight around the child as though she could physically keep death from claiming what was hers.
Let her hateful husband scream. None of it mattered. Nothing mattered except the silence where a heartbeat should have been.
Robert took three long strides into the room, boots leaving muddy prints on the rushes. The stench of horse and leather and sour wine rolled ahead of him like a storm front.
"Cersei." His voice dropped, rough and thick. "Look at me, woman!"
Only then did she lift her head.
Her face was a ruin: tear-streaked, hair plastered to her skull, lips bitten raw. Yet there was no weakness in that stare, only a cold, bright fury that made even Robert falter for half a second.
"He is here," she muttered, words came out flat, almost dead, though her voice cracked like thin ice at the end. She shifted her arms just enough to show him the small, bundled shape she held. "My son is here."
Robert's gaze dropped to the cradle of her arms.
The color drained from his face in a single, ugly rush. The drunken flush receded, leaving him grey and hollow. He stared at the motionless child as though he could not comprehend what he saw.
One meaty hand rose, hesitated, then fell uselessly to his side.
"No," he rasped.
A single word, small for such a large man who had once been a warrior of renown.
Cersei said nothing; she only watched him, watched the understanding crash over him the way a wave breaks over rock.
Watched his knees buckle ever so slightly before he caught himself. Watched the way his throat worked, swallowing once, twice, as though he might be sick.
Hatred burned in her chest, hot and suffocating, every glance at him stirring the urge to scream, to tear into him for not being there, for missing the birth of his own son.
But even that fury felt distant now.
Exhaustion dragged at her limbs, hollowing her out until there was nothing left to give, not anger, not words, not even the strength to hate.
He took another step closer, then another. The midwives shrank farther back; even the maester lowered his eyes. No one dared breathe too loudly lest they earn the king's ire.
Robert reached out, slow, as though afraid the child might shatter at his touch. His thick fingers, callused from warhammer and reins, hovered above the still little head.
He did not quite dare to touch.
"Is he…" The question died in his throat. He tried again, quieter. "Is he gone?"
Cersei's lips curled; it wasn't a smile, it was sharper, something that cut.
"He died in my arms," she said, her voice low and steady, each word sharpened to a cruel edge. "His breath grew shallow, and then it ceased, as though the world itself had forgotten him."
Her gaze found him then, cold, unyielding. She wanted him to feel a fraction of the pain she was feeling.
"And where were you?" she continued, quiet as a blade slipping between ribs. "Drowning yourself in wine? Sprawled in some whore's bed? Chasing beasts through the woods?"
A bitter breath left her as each accusation stabbed into him like daggers to the heart.
"You were not here when he drew his first breath nor when he took his last."
Her voice did not rise, yet it struck all the same.
"You have missed both the birth of your son… and his death."
Robert flinched as though she had struck him. For a moment, he looked almost small, almost a man instead of a king.
His hand finally settled on the child's brow, gentle in a way Cersei had never seen from him.
The touch lingered on her son. His thumb brushed once, awkwardly, over the soft down of black hair. Then his shoulders began to shake.
He sank to one knee beside the birthing bed, heedless of the blood-soaked linens, heedless of the midwives or the maester or the queen who stared at him with dry, blazing eyes.
Cersei said nothing.
She only held her dead son tighter, as though she could still protect him from the weight of a grieving king, from the stink of wine on his breath, from the world that had already taken him from her.
And in the silence between them, the prayer she had screamed inside her skull continued, wordless now, endless.
Cersei's prayer had become a single, unbroken pulse now, no longer words but a raw, bleeding need that filled every hollow space inside her.
As everyone grieved for their lost prince, Cersei did not notice the moment the air in the chamber changed, thicker, brighter, charged the way the sky charges before lightning splits it open.
Nor did she notice the midwives' sudden, choking gasps, the way the maester stumbled backward until his shoulders struck the stone wall, or the way the knights reached for their swords.
She only felt the heat.
It began beneath her palms, a gentle warmth that should have been impossible in a body gone cold.
At first, she thought it was her own fevered skin deceiving her, some cruel trick of grief.
Then the light came.
A soft, pearlescent glow rose from the small, still form in her arms. It was not fire, not candle-flame, but something purer, something that made the torches on the walls look dirty and dim by comparison.
The light pulsed once, slowly, like a heartbeat remembered after a long absence.
Cersei's breath caught, sharp and painful.
The glow brightened as it spread outward in delicate threads, tracing the faint blue veins beneath the infant's translucent skin, limning the delicate curve of his ears, the tiny shell of his nose.
The midwives made small, animal sounds, half prayer, half terror. Robert, still on one knee, froze with his hand outstretched, fingers trembling an inch from the child's brow.
And then they were there.
Seven flashes, blinding, instantaneous, like seven stars igniting inside the room at once.
The light seared afterimages across Cersei's vision; she flinched, instinctively curling tighter around her son to shield him.
When the glare faded, they stood in a loose circle around the birthing bed.
Seven figures.
They were featureless, no faces, no eyes, no mouths. Only smooth, luminous planes where features should have been. They gave off no scent, made no sound, yet the very air bowed to their presence.
"By the gods!"
"It can't be!"
"I-It's The Seven! They have come for the prince!"
The midwives dropped to their knees, faces pressed to the floor.
The maester's mouth worked soundlessly, forming the names of the Seven over and over as though the litany could anchor him to sanity.
The knights, hands still holding the hilt of their swords, were unsure of what to do as they witnessed the very gods they worshiped stand before them.
Robert made a low, broken noise deep in his throat, something between a sob and a curse. He, too, wasn't a man who believed in religion or gods, but at this moment, he had eyes of a true believer.
Cersei could not move, could not breathe. She could only stare at the nearest figure, the one who stood directly before her.
It tilted its blank head slightly, as though regarding her not with eyes but with something deeper, something that saw past skin and bone and pride.
One of the seven stepped forward.
No hesitation, no ceremony. It simply moved, gliding rather than walking, until it stood over the cradle of her arms.
Cersei's body locked in instinctive refusal, "Jaime" barely holding back from rushing to her aid, she would not let them take him, gods or no gods, but the figure made no attempt to lift the child from her.
Instead, it extended a hand of liquid light, palm open, fingers long and graceful.
They touched her son's brow, a brief press, gentle as moonlight.
The glow that had been rising from the child flared brighter for a heartbeat, bright enough that Cersei had to turn her face away, and then softened again, sinking inward until only a faint shimmer remained beneath the skin, like starlight trapped in water.
Then, as suddenly as they had arrived, they were gone.
Seven more flashes, silent, clean, and the room was empty of divinities once more. The torches guttered as though a wind had passed through.
The midwives remained on their knees, weeping openly now, while the knights were left in stunned awe.
"S-Seven Hells!" Robert was breathing in harsh, ragged bursts, staring at the place where the figures had stood as though he expected them to reappear and strike him down.
Cersei did not spare a glance for the others. The world beyond that chamber might as well have ceased to exist.
Her gaze rested only upon her son.
And in him, she found something that stilled the storm within her, a fragile, fleeting peace that brought a soft, tearful smile to her lips, filled with a quiet, aching wonder and a joy so fierce it almost hurt to bear.
His tiny chest rose, once, shallow, then again, stronger. A faint flush of color crept back into his cheeks. His lips parted on a soft, almost inaudible sound.
And then his eyes opened.
Cersei gasped, causing everyone in the room to tense in fear, but it was for nought.
"What is wrong, my Queen?" The old Maester asked, finally getting out of his reverie of meeting gods.
Her husband looked down at his son, and he, too, gasped at what he saw.
"By the gods, his eyes! My son has been blessed! Not only have The Seven given me back my son, but they have also blessed him with Divine eyes!"
Cersei ignored all else and only focused on her son, lost in his eyes.
They were the most beautiful blue she had ever seen, impossibly vivid, luminous, like chips of sky caught in crystal. Not the soft cornflower of a normal babe, not even the fierce storm-blue of a Baratheon.
These were something else entirely: clear, fathomless, divided by strange, delicate lines that shimmered faintly when the light struck them just right, as though the irises themselves held hidden constellations.
For one endless moment, she could not speak, could not think.
She only stared, heart hammering against her ribs, as those impossible eyes found her face and focused, really focused, with an awareness no newborn should possess.
Her beautiful son was alive…
And she would sooner burn the world to ash before ever losing him again.
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[Congratulations! You have awakened to the "Work your ass off for tickets, Fucker!" Chaos Gacha!]
W-What?
[3x Gold Random Gacha Tickets to start because I pity you.]
Huh?
[JJK – Six Eyes]
[Cooking Expert]
[Animal Lover]
What is even happening right now?
[Oh! By the way, I threw your stupid ass into a medieval world, so try not to die from Dysentery or an STD or something, Fucker. Buh-Bye!]
FUCK YOU!