The Lady of Casterly Rock.
The wind howled beyond the red-veined glass of Casterly Rock, carrying the salt of the western sea—a sound that had lulled kings, betrayed knights, and cradled ghosts. But within the nursery, silence reigned. Only the faint breaths of the four newborns broke the stillness, their chests rising like the ebb and flow of fate itself.
Tywin Lannister stood before the cradle, unmoving. Candlelight gilded the edges of his armorless form—his broad shoulders cast long, golden shadows over the crimson silk. His gaze rested on the smallest of the four sons, the one with eyes of molten yellow. The boy blinked once, as if aware, as if he already knew the weight of the legacy placed upon him.
Behind him, a soft rustle—bare feet brushing the stone, the whisper of silk over marble. Rowan.
She had risen despite the maesters’ protestations, her body still weak from the ferocity of birth. Yet she walked with the quiet majesty of a queen born to be worshipped, not pitied. The candlelight clung to her pale skin, her hair—silver-gold and unbound—falling like a river over her bare shoulders.
“Even the gods must envy you,” Tywin murmured without turning.
Her voice, low and fluid, slid through the silence. “Or fear me.”
He turned then, slowly. Her beauty was not of this world. The exhaustion only sharpened it—those hollowed cheeks, the soft bruising beneath her eyes, the faint sheen of sweat still clinging to her skin. She looked both divine and undone, as though creation had demanded too much of her but dared not break her completely.
When his eyes found hers, something unspoken burned between them.
“You should be resting,” he said, though there was no authority in his tone, only a kind of reverence.
“I cannot rest,” she answered, stepping closer. “Not when the whole of your legacy sleeps beside us. Not when I feel the weight of the Rock pressing down, whispering what it cost to bring these lives into the world.”
He reached for her then—not gently, but deliberately. His hand caught her wrist, pulling her closer until her body brushed against his. “And would you change that cost?”
Her lips parted. The breath she took trembled. “Never.”
There was silence again, heavy and trembling with something dangerous. Then he leaned down, his voice deep and rough as crushed velvet. “Then you understand me.”
The space between them dissolved. His mouth found hers with the heat of ownership, and she yielded—not out of weakness, but out of defiance, because yielding was its own kind of power. The kiss burned through the air like wildfire consuming dry leaves, desperate and deliberate all at once.
When his hand trailed down her spine, she shivered; when it rested at the curve of her waist, he felt the lingering trace of her sacrifice—the hollow where divinity had poured through her veins.
The flames in the room trembled, bending toward them as though in homage.
He broke the kiss only to whisper against her jaw, “You have given me four lions, my lady. You have outdone even prophecy.”
“And yet,” she said, her voice a fragile whisper, “I fear what we’ve unleashed.”
He studied her face for a moment—the fragility beneath the fire, the mortal thread beneath all that Valyrian silk. Then he brushed a strand of hair from her temple. “Fear is a tool, not a weakness. Our sons will wield it. As we have.”
From beyond the door, a faint echo—a heel striking stone, deliberate and measured. Cersei.
The lioness of King’s Landing, wrapped in pride and venom, had come to see the spawn of her father’s ambition. Tywin’s gaze hardened.
Rowan noticed the shadow under the door first. “She waits,” she murmured. “She burns with envy.”
“Let her burn,” he said, voice cold and final. “It will temper her, or destroy her. Either way, it serves me.”
Then he turned to Rowan once more, and his voice softened. “You are my blood now. And nothing—no queen, no daughter, no god—will undo what you have done here.”
He took her hand—large, calloused, commanding—and kissed her knuckles with something dangerously close to tenderness.
“Rest, my lady.”