Chapter 2: The Lion's Auditing
The moon’s turn passed in a strange, fevered rhythm. Nights were a silent, sweat-slicked transaction in the crimson-canopied bed. Days were a performance. Jaime attended his guard duties, the weight of his white cloak heavier than ever. Rhaenys did her needlework with the other highborn ladies, her laughter during their gossip a touch too sharp, her stitches perfectly, rebelliously even.
The summons came every seven days, as regular as a drumbeat marking a march to the gallows.
Tywin’s solar never changed. The same cold light. The same bare desk. The same eyes.
The first report was brutal in its simplicity. They stood before the desk like errant children.
“Well?” Tywin had asked, his quill poised.
Jaime’s tongue felt like leather. “We are… adhering to the schedule, my lord.”
“Schedule.” Tywin tasted the word, found it bland. “I did not ask for a ledger entry. I asked for a report. Is she receptive?”
Jaime felt Rhaenys go very still beside him. Her voice, when it came, was cool and clear. “I am receptive to my husband’s attentions, Lord Tywin. As instructed.”
Tywin’s gaze lingered on her flat stomach. “See that it yields results. You are dismissed.”
The second week was worse. Jaime, frayed and angry after a day of listening to men call him “Lord Husband” behind his back, had been rougher than intended in bed. He’d seen a wince she couldn’t quite hide. The memory of it curdled in him now as they stood once more in the solar.
“Progress?” Tywin asked.
“Yes,” Jaime bit out.
“Elaborate.”
Jaime said nothing. The silence stretched, thin and dangerous.
Rhaenys smoothed the skirt of her emerald-green gown. “My lord husband is most… vigorous in his diligence. I find the nights… enlightening.”
Jaime shot her a look. Enlightening? What the hells did that mean?
Tywin’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Vigour is good. Enlightenment is irrelevant. You may go.”
The third summons found a shift in the air. The perfunctory nature of the meetings was gone. Tywin was watching them now, really watching, looking for cracks, for signs of rebellion or, worse, alliance.
“Report,” Tywin commanded.
Jaime was tired. Tired of the whispers, tired of the gold hand, tired of his father’s voice in his head. He defaulted to the clinical. “We perform the act nightly. Sometimes twice. There is no indication yet of conception.”
Tywin’s lip curled. “You speak of my grandson’s making as if you are describing the farrier shoeing a horse.” He turned his pale fire on Rhaenys. “And you? Does this… performance… satisfy you?”
Jaime felt a spark of protective rage. This was too far. But Rhaenys just smiled. It was a small, private thing, but it reached her eyes.
“Satisfaction is a complex notion, my lord,” she said, her tone conversational, as if discussing a new book. “There is a difference between duty and pleasure, is there not? One performs one’s duty. But pleasure… pleasure must be discovered. Cultivated.”
Tywin went utterly still. “Explain.”
She didn’t flinch. “At first, it was merely a duty. An obligation. But my husband is a man of… considerable experience. He has taken it upon himself to educate me in the varieties of physical sensation.” She let the words hang, sweet and poisonous. “Last night, for instance, he spent a great deal of time with his mouth between my legs. It was not, strictly speaking, necessary for conception. It was, however, remarkably effective in achieving a different kind of result. I screamed quite loudly. I apologize if the guards were disturbed.”
The room plummeted into a silence so absolute Jaime could hear the blood roaring in his ears. He felt his face burn. He had done that. He had, in a moment of frustrated desire, wanted to erase the calculated look from her eyes, to make her feel something real. And she had screamed, her fingers fisted in his hair. He’d thought it a victory. Now, laid bare before his father, it felt like a betrayal, a secret weapon she’d stolen and turned on them both.
Tywin’s expression was unreadable. He looked from his son’s stricken face to his good-daughter’s composed one. The calculation in his eyes was faster than any swordplay.
“I see,” he said, the words icy. “Your dedication to… comprehensive marital relations is noted.” He leaned back, steepling his fingers. “Pleasure can aid conception. A contented wife is a more fertile wife. This is acceptable. Continue.”
Jaime was reeling. Acceptable? She had just described a profoundly intimate act to his father as a political tactic, and it was acceptable?
“However,” Tywin continued, his voice dropping to a whip-crack. “Do not forget the primary objective. Your moans are not the proof I require. Only a child is. You have three weeks until the Grand Maester’s examination. I suggest you ensure his findings are positive.”
Dismissed, they walked back to their chambers in a new kind of silence. It was charged, humming with what she had done.
Once the door was closed, Jaime rounded on her. “What in the seven hells was that?”
Rhaenys unpinned her hair, letting the wild curls fall. “That was survival.”
“You humiliated me!”
“No,” she said, turning to face him. Her violet eyes were blazing. “I humiliated him. I took the thing he wants to reduce to a base transaction and I made it messy. I made it about my pleasure, not just your duty. He cannot control that. It infuriates him. And a furious man is a man who makes mistakes.”
Jaime stared at her. The girl who’d faced him with defiance on her wedding night was gone. In her place was a strategist. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”
“We have been in a dangerous game since the moment your father decided to put a Lannister inside a Targaryen.” She stepped closer. The scent of her, jasmine and warmth, hit him. “He wants a broodmare. So I will be the most willful, pleasure-seeking broodmare he has ever seen. I will detail every sigh, every touch, until the sheer humanity of it disgusts him. Until he sees that the creature he’s trying to breed is not a docile animal, but a thinking, feeling woman who remembers her family’s blood.”
Jaime grabbed her arm, not hard, but firmly. “And what am I in this? Your tutor in pleasure? Your accomplice?”
Her gaze softened, just for a second. She looked at the hand on her arm, then back up at him. “You are the only one in this entire red fortress who looks at me and sees a person, not a prize or a problem. Even when you hate yourself for it.” She pulled her arm away gently. “Use that. Hate me if you must. But when we are in that room with him, see me. Not your father’s orders. Not your guilt. See me. It’s the only weapon we have.”
She moved to the window, looking out over the city. The fourth week’s meeting loomed ahead. Jaime stood in the center of their opulent cage, understanding dawning. The battle wasn’t just against Tywin’s expectations. It was against the very dehumanization he demanded. And Rhaenys, with her wild hair and sharper mind, had just drawn a new line in the sand.
She was no longer just surviving the game.
She was changing the rules.
And Jaime, the Kingslayer, oathbreaker, golden lion, had no choice but to follow.