A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

door and drank in the sight of her.
Younger than Marei, sweeter than Dancy, more beautiful than Alayaya, she’s
all I need and more.
How could a whore look so clean and sweet and
innocent, he wondered?
    He had not intended to disturb her, but the sight of her was enough to make him
hard. He let his garments fall to the floor, then crawled onto the bed and
gently pushed her legs apart and kissed her between the thighs. Shae murmured
in her sleep. He kissed her again, and licked at her secret sweetness, on and
on until his beard and her cunt were both soaked. When she gave a

soft moan and shuddered, he climbed up and thrust himself inside her and
exploded almost at once.
    Her eyes were open. She smiled and stroked his head and whispered, “I just had
the sweetest dream, m’lord.”
    Tyrion nipped at her small hard nipple and nestled his head on her shoulder. He
did not pull out of her; would that he never had to pull out of her. “This is
no dream,” he promised her.
It is real, all of it,
he thought,
the wars, the intrigues, the great bloody game, and me in the center of
it . . . me, the dwarf, the monster, the one they scorned and
laughed at, but now I hold it all, the power, the city, the girl. This was what
I was made for, and gods forgive me, but I
do
love
it . . .
    And her. And her.

ARYA
    W hatever names Harren the Black had meant to give his towers were long
forgotten. They were called the Tower of Dread, the Widow’s Tower, the Wailing
Tower, the Tower of Ghosts, and Kingspyre Tower. Arya slept in a shallow niche
in the cavernous vaults beneath the Wailing Tower, on a bed of straw. She had
water to wash in whenever she liked, a chunk of soap. The work was hard, but no
harder than walking miles every day. Weasel did not need to find worms and bugs
to eat, as Arry had; there was bread every day, and barley stews with bits of
carrot and turnip, and once a fortnight even a bite of meat.
    Hot Pie ate even better; he was where he belonged, in the kitchens, a
round stone building with a domed roof that was a world unto itself. Arya took
her meals at a trestle table in the undercroft with Weese and his other
charges, but sometimes she would be chosen to help fetch their food, and she
and Hot Pie could steal a moment to talk. He could never remember
that she was now Weasel and kept calling her Arry, even though he knew she
was a girl. Once
he tried to slip her a hot apple tart, but he made such a clumsy job of it that
two of the cooks saw. They took the tart away and beat him with a big wooden
spoon.
    Gendry had been sent to the forge; Arya seldom saw him. As for those she served
with, she did not even want to know their

names. That only made it hurt worse when they died. Most of them were older
than she was and content to let her alone.
    Harrenhal was vast, much of it far gone in decay. Lady Whent had held the
castle as bannerman to House Tully, but she’d used only the lower thirds of two
of the five towers, and let the rest go to ruin. Now she was fled, and the
small household she’d left could not begin to tend the needs of all the
knights, lords, and highborn prisoners Lord Tywin had brought, so the
Lannisters must forage for servants as well as for plunder and provender. The
talk was that Lord Tywin planned to restore Harrenhal to glory, and make it his
new seat once the war was done.
    Weese used Arya to run messages, draw water, and fetch food, and sometimes to
serve at table in the Barracks Hall above the armory, where the men-at-arms
took their meals. But most of her work was cleaning. The ground floor of the
Wailing Tower was given over to storerooms and granaries, and two floors above
housed part of the garrison, but the upper stories had not been occupied for
eighty years. Now Lord Tywin had commanded that they be made fit for habitation
again. There were floors to be scrubbed, grime to be washed off windows, broken
chairs and rotted beds to be carried off. The topmost story was infested with
nests of the huge black bats that House Whent had used for its sigil, and there
were rats in the cellars as well . . . and ghosts, some said,
the spirits of Harren the Black and his sons.
    Arya thought that was stupid. Harren and his sons had died in Kingspyre Tower,
that was why it had that name, so why should

they cross the yard to haunt her? The Wailing Tower only wailed when the wind
blew from the north,