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Cersei could well believe it. The Myrish woman was too beautiful by half; long-legged and full-breasted, with smooth olive skin, ripe lips, huge dark eyes, and thick black hair that always looked as if she’d just come from bed. She even smells of sin, like some exotic lotus.
“And this lie may spare us. Else you and I must leave the Eyrie by the same door Lysa used.” Petyr picked up his quill again. “We shall serve him lies and Arbor gold, and he’ll drink them down and ask for more, I promise you.”
Men of honor will do things for their children that they would never consider doing for themselves.”
Lord Littlefinger kissed her cheek. “With my wits and Cat’s beauty, the world will be yours, sweetling. Now off to bed.”
Sometime during the night she woke, as little Robert climbed up into her bed. I forgot to tell Lothor to lock him in again, she realized. There was nothing to be done for it, so she put her arm around him. “Sweetrobin? You can stay, but try not to squirm around. Just close your eyes and sleep, little one.” “I will.” He cuddled close and laid his head between her breasts. “Alayne? Are you my mother now?” “I suppose I am,” she said. If a lie was kindly meant, there was no harm in it.
prefer my history dead. Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood.”
a musky scent that spoke of moss and earth and wildflowers.
I will need to sweep them all away and surround the king with mine own people.
Her hair was black and thick and smelled of orchids, a dark and earthy smell that made him so hard it almost hurt.
His desire was as deep and boundless as the sea, but when the tide receded, the rocks of shame and guilt thrust up as sharp as ever. Sometimes the waves would cover them, but they remained beneath the waters, hard and black and slimy.
“Unless she is a Sand Snake. If so, we can share you. I love my cousins well.”
In the Reach men said it was the food that made Dornishmen so hot-tempered and their women so wild and wanton.
“It is not fear you hear,” the old man told him. “That is the sound of grief, and there is no potion for that. Let her tears run their course, Sam. You cannot stem the flow.”
Victarion knew that to mean the girl did not have a hump. Yet when he tried to picture her, he only saw the wife he’d killed. He had sobbed each time he struck her, and afterward carried her down to the rocks to give her to the crabs.
“Every man should lose a battle in his youth, so he does not lose a war when he is old.
“In the game of thrones, even the humblest pieces can have wills of their own. Sometimes they refuse to make the moves you’ve planned for them. Mark that well, Alayne. It’s a lesson that Cersei Lannister still has yet to learn. Now, don’t you have some duties to perform?”
“Send him to join his beloved brother and be glad the gods made seven hells. One would never be enough to hold both of the Cleganes.”
“Jaime,” she said, tugging on his ear, “sweetling, I have known you since you were a babe at Joanna’s breast. You smile like Gerion and fight like Tyg, and there’s some of Kevan in you, else you would not wear that cloak … but Tyrion is Tywin’s son, not you. I said so once to your father’s face, and he would not speak to me for half a year. Men are such thundering great fools. Even the sort who come along once in a thousand years.”
perhaps I wanted to … we all deceive ourselves, when we want to believe. Melisandre most of all, I think. The sword is wrong, she has to know that … light without heat … an empty glamor … the sword is wrong, and the false light can only lead us deeper into darkness, Sam. Daenerys is our hope. Tell them that, at the Citadel. Make them listen. They must send her a maester. Daenerys must be counseled, taught, protected.
He spoke of dreams and never named the dreamer, of a glass candle that could not be lit and eggs that would not hatch. He said the sphinx was the riddle, not the riddler, whatever that meant.
“The dragon must have three heads,” he wailed, “but I am too old and frail to be one of them. I should be with her, showing her the way, but my body has betrayed me.”
Others came in, men and women both, and he listened to them kissing and laughing and mating with one another. Summer Islanders. That’s how they mourn. They answer death with life. Sam had read that somewhere, a long time ago. He wondered if Gilly knew, if Kojja Mo had told her what to do.
Ever since the last Targaryen dragon had died, all such attempts had ended in death, disaster, or disgrace.
attempts of what? revisit this
“Be that as it may. You will return to Lord Gyles and inform him that he does not have my leave to die.”
“Good. You may go.” As he turned toward the door, though, she called him back. “One more thing. What does the Citadel teach concerning prophecy? Can our morrows be foretold?” The old man hesitated. One wrinkled hand groped blindly at his chest, as if to stroke the beard that was not there. “Can our morrows be foretold?” he repeated slowly. “Mayhaps. There are certain spells in the old books … but Your Grace might ask instead, ‘Should our morrows be foretold?’ And to that I should answer, ‘No.’ Some doors are best left closed.”
It is better if she dies, she told herself. She would not want to go on living without her husband. Oaf that he was, the fool seemed fond of him.
“Bloodmagic is the darkest kind of sorcery. Some say it is the most powerful as well.”
These were dark and dangerous men, alive. I doubt that death will have improved them.”
“It is being common-born that is dangerous, when the great lords play their game of thrones,”
Men will always underestimate you, he said, and their pride will make them want to vanquish you quickly, lest it be said that a woman tried them sorely. Let them spend their strength in furious attacks, whilst you conserve your own. Wait and watch, girl, wait and watch.
An old woman selling piglets from a basket stopped to stare at him, a knight with a half-familiar face went to one knee, and two men-at-arms pissing in a ditch turned and sprayed each other.
Your former bannermen will make up the first wave of attackers, so you’ll start your day by killing the fathers and brothers of men who died for you at the Twins.
The second wave will be Freys, I have no lack of those. My westermen will follow when your archers are short of arrows and your knights so weary they can hardly lift their blades. When the castle falls, all those inside will be put to the sword. Your herds will be butchered, your godswood will be felled, your keeps and towers will burn. I’ll pull your walls down, and divert the Tumblestone over the ruins. By the time I’m done no man will ever know that a castle once stood here.” Jaime got to his feet. “Your wife may whelp before that. You’ll want your child, I expect. I’ll send him to you when
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If his aunt had been there, would she still say Tyrion was Tywin’s son?
“I must know how you learned that Quentyn was abroad. Your brother went with Cletus Yronwood, Maester Kedry, and three of Lord Yronwood’s best young knights on a long and perilous voyage, with an uncertain welcome at its end. He has gone to bring us back our heart’s desire.” She narrowed her eyes. “What is our heart’s desire?”
“Justice.” Prince Doran pressed the onyx dragon into her palm with his swollen, gouty fingers, and whispered, “Fire and blood.”
but some knights are dark and full of terror,
