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Elsewhere.
Liana held a ripe apple to Joffrey's lips.
Her fingertips were pale and slender, faintly sweet with the fruit's fragrance.
Joffrey opened his mouth.
His lips didn't touch the apple. They brushed her fingertips instead , not quite accidentally.
Liana pulled her hand back like a startled fawn, a flush spreading across both cheeks in a charming, helpless bloom.
"Your Grace... don't do that..."
"There are so many people around in the daytime..."
"Call me Joffrey."
He laughed, smug and satisfied, savoring her shyness.
He liked Liana.
She came from a brothel, which made her lowborn, but she was nothing like Sansa Stark with her permanent mask of hollow courtesy. Liana's eyes were always bright with something unguarded and real , open admiration, open longing, all of it directed at him.
That feeling made him feel like the true master of Westeros.
"Joffrey..."
Her voice was sweet as honey.
"The way you were shooting the crossbow earlier , you looked so heroic! Like Prince Aemon the Dragonknight himself!"
"Of course." Joffrey straightened, puffing his chest out, feeling his short frame somehow grow taller. "No one in all the Seven Kingdoms handles a crossbow better than I do."
"I know!" Liana nodded eagerly, those wide, liquid eyes full of pure belief. "I heard that Lord Lynn once shot and killed an enormous direwolf with a bow, up in the North!"
"He's a true hero — just like you!"
At the name Lynn, the smile on Joffrey's face hitched.
He didn't argue. He nodded.
But something stirred beneath it , guilt he hadn't asked for, irritation he couldn't quite place.
He had already planned the appointment. The Hand of the King.
That position was supposed to be Lynn's.
Lynn, who had crushed the northern rebellion for him. Lynn, who had brought the Vale and the Riverlands to heel. And yet his mother had twisted his arm until he handed that position, that symbol of supreme honor, to a gold-counting old man who hadn't left Casterly Rock in years.
"Lord Lynn is truly something else," Liana continued, her voice soft with a longing she didn't bother to hide. "He crushed the entire northern rebellion on his own. Uprooted House Bolton completely." She paused, her eyes wide. "I heard he personally cut off Ramsay's head. Right in front of everyone."
Each word was a small needle, pricking somewhere under Joffrey's ribs.
He would not have Liana admiring another man.
And if it was Lynn, the man who had saved his life , well. Even then. Even Lynn.
That was what a king looked like, wasn't it. What Lynn looked like. Executing traitors with his own hands. Letting the blood of his enemies speak for him.
What had Joffrey done since taking the throne?
Everyone treated him like a child throwing a tantrum. A puppet waiting to be yanked by the right string. His mother did it. Those damned lords did it. And now even the old man who'd ridden in from Casterly Rock did it too.
"An old man who only schemes from inside a castle , how could anyone compare him to a hero like Lord Lynn?"
Liana tilted her head, genuinely puzzled.
"Joffrey, I don't understand. Why didn't you make Lord Lynn your Hand? With him at your side, you'd become a greater king than Aegon Targaryen himself."
That sentence lit the fire.
"Enough!"
Joffrey lurched to his feet and hurled his wine cup at the floor.
"It wasn't my choice!"
"They forced me!"
He paced the room like a caged lion cub, all barely-contained fury.
"It was Mother. She's the one who insisted on Tywin Lannister. She doesn't understand anything! An old man who reeks of coin , how is he fit to stand at my side?" He wheeled around. "Only Lynn. Only someone like Lynn — brave, brilliant — only he deserves to be my Hand!"
Liana shrank slightly at the outburst. But there was something in her eyes, barely there, that wasn't fear at all.
She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him from behind, soft and warm.
"Don't be angry, Joffrey..."
"I was just talking. I didn't mean anything by it , don't take it to heart. What you need right now is to stay calm." A pause. "You're still young. You can't fight them yet. Not directly."
"But I believe in you. One day you'll be a king whose word is law , not the puppet they're trying to make you now."
The word puppet hit like a slap.
"Liana." He stiffened. "I simply don't want to waste my time on them. That's different."
"Do you think I'm weak?"
"Of course not, Your Grace." She shook her head. "I would never think that. I only meant, "
"Forget it."
Her body was soft against his. Her voice carried something that settled over the heat in his chest.
"The difficulties are only temporary. Liana will always believe in you." She spoke quietly, steadily. "You are Robert's son. The rightful heir. The Seven Kingdoms are yours. One day, you'll name whoever you wish as Hand, and no one will dare say a word against it."
Joffrey seized on that like a rope.
He spun around and gripped her by the shoulders.
"I am the king!"
"I am the king!"
Something surged through him , something that felt like courage, like certainty, like he was finally standing on solid ground.
He would make every last one of them understand who truly sat the Iron Throne.
He would take back what was his.
And he would start with the old man who had stolen Lynn's place.
---
The Hand's Tower, Red Keep.
The air at dinner was suffocating.
At opposite ends of the long table sat the two most powerful men in Westeros.
The King, Joffrey Baratheon.
And the Hand of the King, Tywin Lannister.
Joffrey attacked the roast squab on his plate with a knife, the blade scraping against porcelain with a sound that set teeth on edge. He hadn't eaten a single bite. He just cut , methodically, viciously, going through the motions of something that looked like eating and felt entirely like rage.
Tywin ate at his own measured pace. Each movement deliberate, composed, textbook in its elegance.
He hadn't looked at Joffrey once. The King of the Seven Kingdoms might as well have been an empty chair.
Gods be damned.
The disregard stoked the fire higher with every passing minute.
"The situation in the North has stabilized." Tywin set down his napkin and finally spoke. "Lynn has unified the forces of the Vale, the Riverlands, and the North. He is now the most powerful faction in the Seven Kingdoms outside the Crownlands." He paused. "We must acknowledge that he can no longer be ignored."
"So?"
Joffrey dropped his knife and fork with a clatter.
"What exactly are you saying? That Lord Lynn is a threat? That he's scheming for my Iron Throne? You want me to move against a loyal subject?"
Tywin's brow tightened, almost imperceptibly.
"Your Grace, you've had too much to drink."
"I have not had too much!"
"I haven't had a fucking drop!"
Joffrey's palm hit the table. He stood.
His face had gone red, his handsome features sharpened by fury.
"I am completely sober! And since we're here , let me be very clear about a few things!"
"I think it's you who's gone senile, Grandfather!"
"Do you think I don't see what you're doing? You want to control me. The way you control my mother. You want to turn the entire Seven Kingdoms into Lannister property." His voice rose, cracking at the edges. "Never forget , the Seven Kingdoms belong to House Baratheon. Not to you Lannisters. Not to you!"
Tywin set down his wine cup.
He raised his eyes.
Those pale green eyes settled on Joffrey without urgency, without anger , the patient, faintly weary look of an elder watching a child make a mess.
"Your Grace." His voice was perfectly level. "You are tired. Return to your chambers and sleep. Whatever needs to be said can wait until morning. We will discuss matters of state then."
Tired.
Gods.
That word again.
That tone , that particular, infuriating tone that said he was a child, a nuisance, a thing to be managed and set aside.
The last thread in Joffrey's mind snapped clean.
"I told you — I am not tired!"
His voice cracked into something shrill, unhinged at the seams.
"The one who's tired is you, Tywin Lannister! You're not just old , you've gone cowardly!"
He locked eyes with that unreadable face and poured every ounce of fury he had into the question that had been eating at him for years.
"Tell me, Grandfather. When my father was bleeding at the Trident — where were you?!"
Silence.
"You were in Casterly Rock! Cowering in your hole like a frightened rabbit! No , worse than that. You were better at hiding than the turtles in the Neck. Waiting. Watching. Scheming. And the moment my father had won the war, the moment it was safe, you crawled out with your armies and marched on King's Landing to claim what wasn't yours!"
"My father won his throne with a warhammer and courage. And you stole the fruits of his victory."
"It's no different now. Lord Lynn conquered the Riverlands and the Vale with steel and blood , he held up Baratheon rule with his own two hands. And you?!"
Joffrey rounded the table, step by deliberate step, until he stood over Tywin. He pointed , the way he'd seen his father Robert do it, that overbearing, sovereign finger , directly at Tywin's face.
"Same as always. Hiding in Casterly Rock. Relying on nothing but betrayal and opportunity. You're no lion." His lip curled. "You're a hyena. You only move when you smell blood that someone else already spilled."
"You are not fit to be my Hand of the King."
"You are not fit."
The room went absolutely still.
Every servant, every guard standing along the walls had gone the color of old ash. They stared at the floor, at the ceiling, at anything else , desperately willing themselves into the tapestries, into the carpets, into the stonework itself.
Was this something a person could actually say?
He'd lost his mind.
Joffrey really had taken a boar's tusk to the skull.
None of them had ever seen anyone speak to Tywin Lannister this way. And of all people , his own grandson. The King of the Seven Kingdoms.
Cersei sat motionless, staring at Joffrey with empty eyes. Her mind had gone blank. She'd been scared past the point of speech.
Lynn's unpredictability. Tywin's dismissiveness. And now her son lighting the whole room on fire.
She felt tired.
Bone-tired. Soul-tired.
What was there even to say?
Nothing. There was nothing.
This wretched, impossible boy never gave her a moment's peace.
Tywin Lannister did not move.
He sat in his chair exactly as he had before , unhurried, composed, not a flicker of change in his expression.
Only his eyes.
His pale green eyes had gone a shade darker.
Like two wells with no bottom , the surface perfectly smooth, and something cold and deep moving far below.
He looked at the boy in front of him. Joffrey's face was twisted and triumphant, flushed with rage and the intoxication of finally saying it all.
He looked at him for a long time.
Long enough that the flush began to drain from Joffrey's face. Long enough that something small and uncertain crept into his eyes.
Then Tywin Lannister smiled.
No sound. Just the corners of his mouth lifting, slowly, barely , a thin curve that was almost nothing at all.
That smile was colder than the ice at the bottom of the Lands of Always Winter.
"Very good."
Two words, spoken softly.
"Very good indeed."
He rose from his chair. The movement was slow, unhurried , and somehow every inch of it pressed down on the room like a physical weight. Joffrey took one step back without meaning to.
"It seems I have been far too lenient with you."
Tywin's gaze traveled past Joffrey and settled on the two Kingsguard knights at the door, white cloaks, tight expressions.
"Ser Trant. Ser Oakheart."
His voice hadn't changed. Still even. Still quiet.
The two knights flinched as if struck.
Tywin looked back at Joffrey. The boy's face had gone pale.
"Take him to his chambers."
A beat.
"Then take his trousers off."
"I will teach him personally what it means , to respect one's elders."
➤ Next: The Audacious Joffrey
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