The Lion and the Wolf ~ Game of Thrones

11

King's Landing.

Visenya Targaryen.

Four days after Lady Stark departed, I found myself thinking about my uncle digging around in places he ought not to be digging around in. Like him inquiring about Lord Jon Arryn from that grimy vermin Pycelle, who deflected Eddard's assumption that poison was the culprit, pointing his wrinkly finger in Varys's direction. If I hadn't already known about Varys's true goals, I'd have looked into it more—but Lord Arryn was ever the prudent lord.

Thus, I was left with only three likely candidates: Petyr Baelish, Cersei Lannister, or Pycelle himself. Now, Baelish did seem the least likely, having owed everything he now had to the Hand, but Varys had warned me that Littlefinger was one of the most dangerous players in the game. So, I'd not count him out just yet—Varys was digging around there in hopes of finding something. Pycelle was a craven, but ever the queen's man. Perhaps he'd killed the Hand thinking it would please Cersei. And the queen herself was likely the most dangerous player in the game.

Not that she was impeccable at the Game of Thrones or anything grand like that, but in the sense that she was damn near impossible to predict. Ruthless, wilful, cold, ambitious, she may be, but prudent, patient, and intelligent, she was certainly not. A child had better foresight than the queen, who might as well be a wayward fifteen-year-old trapped in an adult's body. Yet, I had no doubt in my mind that Cersei Lannister would go to extreme lengths for her children.

I could admire the woman for that, if nothing else.

Clearing my head, I rounded the corner and glimpsed the captain of the Hand's household guard speaking with Erryk outside Joanna's door. That door was the best part about our room—a heavy slab of dark wood bound in black iron. I didn't think you could hear anything through it if you pressed your ear right up against it and anyone inside screamed bloody murder. Which was a good thing, I thought wryly. My lioness could get rather loud some nights.

When Jory Cassel noticed me, he turned away from Erryk and said, "Lord Stark has invited you to sup with him." The brusqueness in his voice didn't surprise me. "He demands that you arrive before the hour of the bat."

The impertinence of it shocked me. How dare Ned Stark make demands of me? "Fine. Run back to your master, and tell him I'll humour him for one night," he drawled. "Well? Don't keep him waiting." I'd never seen someone leave that quickly before, his new cloak fluttering after him as he hurried down the hall.

When he was gone, I clicked my teeth. Ser Erryk looked down at me from his staggering height of seven feet. "I have been wondering," he said gruffly, but not unkindly. "But it seemed rude to ask: why don't you speak with your family at all these days? It cannot all be because of your preferences."

There was no point in denying that I preferred women—probably everyone and their mother knew the truth of it. "The truth, Erryk, is that two years of giving them a chance to apologise have made me sick and tired of it," I told him. "Is it so wrong of me to hate them just a little?" The large knight grunted sympathetically and opened the door for me.

I found my sister inside, humming a Valyrian song as she made the bed. Not willing to interrupt her, to end her gentle song, I fiddled with my fingers behind my back as I leaned against the wall beside the thick door and watched her. All I could think about was how effortlessly graceful she was, even doing something as simple as making the bed. It was nearly enough to bring me to tears just observing her—she was so beautiful, so elegant, so incredibly perfect.

We'd spent as much time together as we could over the last month since we'd found each other, sometimes sitting in her bedroom and just talking about inconsequential things, sometimes going on walks, neither of us saying a word as we enjoyed the sand on our bare feet. Some nights, when I had horrible dreams, I'd go to her chambers near Varys's own, and she'd hold me and stroke my hair and sing me back to sleep...