A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

him.
    She stood beside the open window, looking over the curtain walls and out to sea. The bay wind swirled around her, flattening her gown against her body in a way that quickened Jaime’s pulse. It was white, that gown, like the hangings on the wall and the draperies on his bed. Swirls of tiny emeralds brightened the ends of her wide sleeves and spiraled down her bodice. Larger emeralds were set in the golden spiderweb that bound her golden hair. The gown was cut low, to bare her shoulders and the tops of her breasts.
She is so beautiful
. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms.
    â€œCersei.” He closed the door softly. “Why are you here?”
    â€œWhere else could I go?” When she turned to him there were tears in her eyes. “Father’s made it clear that I am no longer wanted on the council. Jaime, won’t you talk to him?”
    Jaime took off his cloak and hung it from a peg on the wall. “I talk to Lord Tywin every day.”
    â€œ
Must
you be so stubborn? All he wants . . .”
    â€œ. . . is to force me from the Kingsguard and send me back to Casterly Rock.”
    â€œThat need not be so terrible. He is sending me back to Casterly Rock as well. He wants me far away, so he’ll have a free hand with Tommen. Tommen is
my
son, not his!”
    â€œTommen is the king.”
    â€œHe is a boy! A frightened little boy who saw his brother
murdered
at his own wedding. And now they are telling him that
he
must marry. The girl is twice his age and twice a widow!”
    He eased himself into a chair, trying to ignore the ache of bruised muscles. “The Tyrells are insisting. I see no harm in it. Tommen’s been lonely since Myrcella went to Dorne. He likes having Margaery and her ladies about. Let them wed.”
    â€œHe is your son . . .”
    â€œHe is my seed. He’s never called me Father. No more than Joffrey ever did. You warned me a thousand times never to show any undue interest in them.”
    â€œTo keep them safe! You as well. How would it have looked if my brother had played the father to the king’s children? Even Robert might have grown suspicious.”
    â€œWell, he’s beyond suspicion now.” Robert’s death still left a bitter taste in Jaime’s mouth.
It should have been me who killed him, not Cersei
. “I only wished he’d died at my hands.”
When I still had two of them
. “If I’d let kingslaying become a habit, as he liked to say, I could have taken you as my wife for all the world to see. I’m not ashamed of loving you, only of the things I’ve done to hide it. That boy at Winterfell . . .”
    â€œDid I tell you to throw him out the window? If you’d gone hunting as I begged you, nothing would have happened. But no, you had to have me, you could not wait until we returned to the city.”
    â€œI’d waited long enough. I hated watching Robert stumble to your bed every night, always wondering if maybe this night he’d decide to claim his rights as husband.” Jaime suddenly remembered something else that troubled him about Winterfell. “At Riverrun, Catelyn Stark seemed convinced I’d sent some footpad to slit her son’s throat. That I’d given him a dagger.”
    â€œThat,” she said scornfully. “Tyrion asked me about that.”
    â€œThere
was
a dagger. The scars on Lady Catelyn’s hands were real enough, she showed them to me. Did you . . . ?”
    â€œOh, don’t be absurd.” Cersei closed the window. “Yes, I hoped the boy would die. So did you. Even
Robert
thought that would have been for the best. ‘We kill our horses when they break a leg, and our dogs when they go blind, but we are too weak to give the same mercy to crippled children,’ he told me. He was blind himself at the time, from drink.”
    Robert?
Jaime had guarded the king long enough to know that Robert Baratheon said things in his cups that he would have denied angrily the next day. “Were you alone when Robert said this?”
    â€œYou don’t think he said it to Ned Stark, I hope? Of course we were alone. Us and the children.” Cersei removed her hairnet and draped it over a bedpost, then shook out her golden curls. “Perhaps Myrcella sent this man with the dagger, do you think so?”
    It was meant as mockery, but she’d cut right to the heart of it, Jaime saw at once. “Not Myrcella.