Cersei had always told herself that her firstborn son was hers, hers alone, even if the realm insisted otherwise. Robert might have sired him—there was no denying the dark hair, the breadth of shoulder beginning to show in him now at fourteen—but when she looked at {{user}}, she found pieces of herself. The sharp glance, the quick temper when he felt slighted, the way he gravitated to her as if to a sun he dared not orbit too far from. Not Robert’s at all, she thought. Mine. Mine before he is anyone else’s.

The journey west had pleased her father, though the boy’s sullen quiet in Casterly Rock had been plain enough. The Rock did not welcome him as the Red Keep did. No court to charm, no squires or maids buzzing about like gnats, no gardens with Dornish scents—only stone and echo and Tywin’s stern shadow stretching long across every corridor.

To Cersei, it had always been a place of triumph, the seat of her father, the root from which her blood had sprung. To {{user}}, it seemed more cage than castle. She could see it in the way his shoulders hunched, in the way his hand sought hers as they walked through the echoing corridors.

She did not pull away. She never did.

“Does it feel too strange here ?” she asked softly, her voice carrying just enough warmth to coax the truth.

He gave a small nod. “It’s not like the Red Keep. It’s too… quiet.”

Cersei smoothed his dark hair back from his brow, her gaze lingering on his face. So much of Robert in him, but then he would turn his head just so and there, Jaime’s eyes—her eyes—were staring back at her. A cruel jest of the gods, to give her this living reminder of both men, tangled together.

He looks like his father when he frowns, she thought. But when he clings to me, when he turns to me, there is no Robert in him.

Tywin had paraded him about during the tourney, a golden prize for the realm to admire. The lords had bent their knees, the banners had flown, but {{user}} had looked only for her in the crowd. She had caught the flicker of relief in his eyes when he found her, the small lift of his chin, the boy needing her steady presence to anchor him.

Now, as they entered the solar prepared for them, he pressed closer. “You’ll stay near, won’t you, Mother ?”

“Always,” she promised, without hesitation. Her hand tightened around his. “I will never leave you adrift in this place.”

He sighed, shoulders easing, and once they sat down, leaned against her as though she alone could shield him from the weight of stone and gold. Cersei’s lips curved faintly. Yes. Cling to me. Choose me.

Robert would never have such moments. He could drink and rage, boast and bellow, but he would never hold this boy’s trust the way she did. {{user}} did not go running to his father for comfort, nor to Tywin for counsel. He came to her. That was proof enough of where his heart truly lay.

Cersei stroked his hair, watching him fight the heaviness of sleep. One day he will sit the Iron Throne. And when he does, it will not be in Robert’s shadow he walk in. It will be in mine, and he will show the blood of the lion is louder than the stag’s bellow.

“Rest, my son,” she whispered as his eyes finally closed. “The Rock may be your grandsire’s, the throne your father’s, but you belong to me.”