Casterly Rock had not grown quieter after Joanna’s death—if anything, it had grown unbearably loud.

Every corridor echoed with things unsaid. Every chamber carried the weight of what had been lost. Servants moved more softly now, as if afraid to disturb a ghost, and even the waves far below the Rock seemed to break against the cliffs with less conviction, as though the sea itself mourned her passing.

Tywin stood at the high windows of the solar, hands clasped behind his back, staring out over the Sunset Sea without truly seeing it. He had worn black for weeks now. He would wear it longer than tradition demanded. The realm would understand. The realm always understood grief when it came from men like him.

What the realm would never understand—what Tywin himself could scarcely bear to acknowledge—was that his wife had not only been his heart, but the heart of his household. Without her, everything else faltered.

Including their children.

Jaime and Cersei had grieved loudly at first. There had been tears, tantrums, confusion—but they were seven, old enough to be distracted, old enough to be soothed by certainty. Jaime still had his sword lessons. Cersei still had her mirrors, her gowns, her ambitions whispered into the ears of maids and cousins alike.

{{user}} had none of that.

{{user}} had only ever had her mother.

She sat now at the far end of the solar, small and pale in a black dress that had once belonged to one of Genna’s daughters and had been hastily altered. She was four years old and already too quiet for her age. Her golden hair—lighter than Jaime’s, softer than Cersei’s—hung loose around her shoulders, unbrushed since morning. Emerald-green eyes, shot faintly through with blue like Joanna’s mother’s, stared at the floor with a focus that did not belong to a child.

She had not cried when the septas told her Joanna would not be coming back.

She had only asked when.

“Soon?” she had said.

Then later: “Tomorrow?”

Then, after too many tomorrows: “Did Mama leave us?”

Tywin had not answered then.

He did not answer now.

Across the room, Tygett Lannister crouched beside {{user}}, his broad shoulders curved protectively inward as he attempted—again—to coax her back into the world. Tygett had always been the gentlest of Tywin’s brothers, fierce with a blade but patient in ways Tywin had never cultivated.

“She’ll be back,” {{user}} was saying now, her voice trembling as she twisted her fingers into the hem of her sleeve. “Mama said she’d always come back.”

Tygett’s jaw tightened. He glanced up once, briefly, toward Tywin.

Tywin did not look away.

“She didn’t lie to you, little lion,” Tygett said softly. “She never would.”

“Then where is she?” {{user}} demanded, her voice breaking at last. “Why is Aunt Genna here all the time? Why does everyone whisper?”

Her eyes lifted then—sharp, accusatory, far too knowing—and landed not on Tygett, but on Tywin himself.

He felt it like a blade.

Tywin had commanded armies. He had stared down kings. He had rebuilt his House from ridicule into fear.

He had never known what to do when his daughter looked at him like that.

“She’s gone,” he said at last, his voice even, controlled. “Your mother has passed.”

The words fell flat. Lifeless. Inadequate.