A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

with a sword, the craven with a wineskin. We are both kingslayers, ser.”
    â€œRobert was no true king. Some might even say that a stag is a lion’s natural prey.” Jaime could feel the bones beneath his cousin’s skin . . . and something else as well. Lancel was wearing a hair shirt underneath his tunic. “What else did you do, to require so much atonement? Tell me.”
    His cousin bowed his head, tears running down his cheeks.
    Those tears were all the answer Jaime needed. “You killed the king,” he said, “then you fucked the queen.”
    â€œI never . . .”
    â€œ. . . lay with my sweet sister?”
Say it. Say it!
    â€œNever spilled my seed in . . . in her . . .”
    â€œ. . . cunt?” suggested Jaime.
    â€œ. . . womb,” Lancel finished. “It is not treason unless you finish inside. I gave her comfort, after the king died. You were a captive, your father was in the field, and your brother . . . she was afraid of him, and with good reason. He made me betray her.”
    â€œDid he?”
Lancel and Ser Osmund and how many more? Was the part about Moon Boy just a gibe?
“Did you force her?”
    â€œ
No!
I loved her. I wanted to protect her.”
    You wanted to be me.
His phantom fingers itched. The day his sister had come to White Sword Tower to beg him to renounce his vows, she had laughed after he refused her and boasted of having lied to him a thousand times. Jaime had taken that for a clumsy attempt to hurt him as he’d hurt her.
It may have been the only true thing that she ever said to me.
    â€œDo not think ill of the queen,” Lancel pleaded. “All flesh is weak, Jaime. No harm came of our sin. No . . . no bastard.”
    â€œNo. Bastards are seldom made upon the belly.” He wondered what his cousin would say if he were to confess his own sins, the three treasons Cersei had named Joffrey, Tommen, and Myrcella.
    â€œI was angry with Her Grace after the battle, but the High Septon said I must forgive her.”
    â€œYou confessed your sins to His High Holiness, did you?”
    â€œHe prayed for me when I was wounded. He was a good man.”
    He’s a dead man. They rang the bells for him.
He wondered if his cousin had any notion what fruit his words had borne. “Lancel, you’re a bloody fool.”
    â€œYou are not wrong,” said Lancel, “but my folly is behind me, ser. I have asked the Father Above to show me the way, and he has. I am renouncing this lordship and this wife. Hardstone is welcome to the both of them, if he likes. On the morrow I will return to King’s Landing and swear my sword to the new High Septon and the Seven. I mean to take vows and join the Warrior’s Sons.”
    The boy was not making sense. “The Warrior’s Sons were proscribed three hundred years ago.”
    â€œThe new High Septon has revived them. He’s sent out a call for worthy knights to pledge their lives and swords to the service of the Seven. The Poor Fellows are to be restored as well.”
    â€œWhy would the Iron Throne allow that?” One of the early Targaryen kings had fought for years to suppress the two military orders, Jaime recalled, though he did not remember which. Maegor, perhaps, or the first Jaehaerys.
Tyrion would have known.
    â€œHis High Holiness writes that King Tommen has given his consent. I will show you the letter, if you like.”
    â€œEven if this is true . . . you are a lion of the Rock, a
lord.
You have a wife, a castle, lands to defend, people to protect. If the gods are good, you will have sons of your blood to follow you. Why would you throw all that away for . . . for some vow?”
    â€œWhy did you?” asked Lancel softly.
    For honor,
Jaime might have said.
For glory.
That would have been a lie, though. Honor and glory had played their parts, but most of it had been for Cersei. A laugh escaped his lips. “Is it the High Septon you’re running to, or my sweet sister? Pray on that one, coz. Pray
hard.
”
    â€œWill you pray with me, Jaime?”
    He glanced about the sept, at the gods. The Mother, full of mercy. The Father, stern in judgment. The Warrior, one hand upon his sword. The Stranger in the shadows, his half-human face concealed beneath a hooded mantle.
I thought that I was the Warrior and Cersei was the Maid, but all the time she was the Stranger, hiding her true face from my gaze.
“Pray for me, if you