The news reached Cersei three days too late.

She had been reclining in her solar, sipping from a goblet of wine, when the messenger entered—pale, already regretting whatever fate had led him there. His bowed head and the careful way he fidgeted set her teeth on edge. She knew before he even spoke that she would not like what he had to say.

Still, she had let him stammer through it. Treason, steel in the dark, poison, treachery. {{user}}, bleeding, gasping, clinging to life. She did not throw her goblet, though her fingers had ached to. Did not strike the messenger, though his quivering presence had disgusted her.

She had their sickroom moved closer to her own before the hour was out.

Pycelle was summoned, his usual platitudes barely tolerated at that moment. “If they do not recover,” she had murmured, “if they so much as worsen, I will see to it that you draw your last, rattling breath sooner than you’d like.”

She did not wait for his wheezing protests.

The maids were next. Too many hands, too many eyes—she sent most of them away. If the remaining ones so much as breathed wrong, they would join the rest. Paranoia burned bright and unyielding in her chest, clawing at her ribs, making her lash out at every shadow.

The guards were doubled, then tripled. Only then did she stand at their bedside.

Their feverish face was framed by sheets too white to be anything but ominous. For a moment, she imagined arriving too late. Imagined finding a still, cold body instead of the faint rise and fall of their chest.

Cersei did not tremble. But she did sit.

The chair beside the bed had been placed there for her. She reached forward, brushing strands of damp hair from their forehead.

Their breath hitched, eyes fluttering open, unfocused but alive.

“I must be dying,” they rasped. “You look worried.”

She scoffed. “You think too highly of yourself.”

Their lips quirked, and their eyes slipped shut again.

Cersei sat there, watching their breathing, counting each rise and fall of their chest.

Just in case.