Cersei?

  It was not the first time that she found her dreams taken by the familiar sight of the Stone Garden, scents of old wood and damp soil tickling her nose. Though it had never felt as true as it did now, as if she were truly there.

  "Solomon?" Her heart had ached when he spoke to her of leaving for Volantis, daring to reopen the wound her twin's betrayal had left.

  Cersei waited nervously for a response, tugging at her fingers, though none was forthcoming until she dared to blink. In that moment Solomon appeared before her, his presence smothering the room in a way that made it hard to think.

  The yellow covered him like paint, stretching across the floor from him for a distance, but it was his eyes that seemed most queer, green and piercing and green. They looked through her in an unpleasant way, drawing her own eyes to the more pleasant way his lips quirked in a smile.

  His hand delicately touched her cheek. "A storm swept through the royal fleet on the way to Gulltown. It won't be long now before the news reaches King's Landing."

  A heady malaise took her at the meaning in the words. Victory. Satisfaction. The brute was gone, taken by the sea. "My Joff will be king."

  Cersei dared to meet his eyes again. There was nothing she couldn't give him now. Surely he would be pleased, even eager to return to her.

  What need had he for Volantis now?

  "Renly will not allow a crown to so much as touch your son's brow," he softly said instead.

  Her triumph curdled like old milk. She had worried for knives in the dark and poisoned wine, not this naked thievery. "By what right does Robert's youngest brother deny my son his crown?"

  "By right of sword and lance. With the might of the Reach behind him, he need only say the right words."

  She swiftly marshalled her fury as well as any Baratheon. Forewarned, there was still time to tear out the weeds that would smother her in her sleep.

  "The Reach will fall to heel as soon as Renly perishes," she hissed. "He still has yet to even put a babe in his Tyrell wife's belly."

  "You might perhaps succeed, Renly's ambitions stillborn, but it would be a gamble even with the advantage of surprise. Nor would that be the end of it. Stannis would return and name your children bastards." He looked at her with softer eyes now. "Perhaps he would crown Prince Lann and not himself, but you are not like to see it."

  Even with the oaf dead and gone, his brothers were still determined to haunt her in his stead. Cersei wanted to say that her lord father was riding to King's Landing, but she did not want to seem a fool telling him what he already knew.

  "Then what are we to do, Solomon?" He wouldn't abandon her. He couldn't. Cersei had seen how he looked at the twins she bore him. Her hands clutched at the yellow as she waited for him to tell her that he would keep them safe.

  "King's Landing is lost to you, but you need not become hostages or corpses." He wound her curls around his finger as he stared down at her. "I will take you from King's Landing with all your children. Let Renly crown himself. In doing so he will make an enemy of Stannis."

  The two brothers at one another's throats? Yes, the thought was sweet to her.

  "You will see your guide when you wake. You must move quickly, for on the morrow a crown will already rest on Renly's brow."

  Maggy's words came to her again in spite of her. Queen you shall be… until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear.

  A kiss from Solomon swept them away. "Maggy has no more power over you. She spoke of a queen, not a king. She spoke of three children, not three-and-two."

  Cersei nodded her head fiercely. "You are right." She still clutched at the yellow that mixed with the black of his hair. "I will wait for you at Casterly Rock, and so will Lanna and Lann."

  Truly, who but the scheming flowers would dare throw their support behind a precedent as the youngest brother succeeding over the eldest son? In time all would see Renly for false, pretty to look upon and nothing more.

  Solomon seemed to agree with her as he graced her with another kiss, and then he whispered in her ear what sweet words should pass her lips when her lord father demanded from her answers. Cersei took every word to heart as she found herself back in her chambers, the sun not yet risen.

  Her heart caught as something jumped up on the bed, but it was only a cat, one she had sometimes seen around the Red Keep. Solomon's words came to her as its eyes shined in the gloom. A guide.

  She found her slippers as she stood. Ser Barristan Selmy and Ser Preston Greenfield had went with the brutish oaf, but Ser Boros Blount, Ser Meryn Trant and Ser Mandon Moore, they all knew where their loyalties lay. As for Ser Arys Oakheart, she could not take the risk, for the Oakhearts owed their fealty to House Tyrell, however grudgingly.

  On Jaime she did not think long. He could rot in Braavos for all she cared.

  She had one of her ladies retrieve Captain Vylarr, and he did not dare gainsay her despite the uncertainty she saw in his eyes. Not a whisper could leave Maegor's Holdfast until they were gone.

  She watched as he left to carry out her commands. Next would be her children.

  Tommen and Myrcella had meekly nodded as she explained, but Joff grew furious. "It is a woman's wont to flee," he argued. "All the realm knows I am Father's heir!"

  She tried to make him see reason, that the gold cloaks were more flowers than men, but he was always stubborn.

  "They would know their king for true if he rode out to them! The smallfolk loved my father!"

  His words left something bitter on her tongue. "Renly would not let you. You have to—"

  "My uncle need not let me do anything! All of King's Landing will rise against him!"

  Whatever stubborn foolishness this was, she had her fill of it. "Ser Mandon," she whispered to the unmoving knight at her back. "Watch my son closely as we leave."

  Joff looked at her betrayed and mutinous, but she hardened her heart. He would understand in due time.

  Vylarr returned after a time. "It is done, Your Grace. It will take them at least some hours to hack through the doors." The man scratched at a cheek. "But how are we to navigate the tunnels? There must be hundreds of them."

  "Solomon left for us a way."

  She glanced at her twins in a wetnurse's arms, sound asleep despite the commotion.

  Solomon soon led them to the dark and cavernous cellars where they found the skulls of the Targaryen dragons, each of them as black as polished onyx under the torchlight. The greatest of them belonged to Balerion the Black Dread, empty sockets watching them as they passed. There they found a passageway that went lower still.

  She raised a cloth to her nose as it led them to a sewer that emptied out into the river. She heard Joff grumble under his breath not far from her, but Ser Mandon might as well have been his shadow.

  The damage from the wildfire had reached here as well, yet the stones, while blackened, still stood.

  Cersei greedily breathed in the salt-stained air after their procession had cleared the sewer, leaving them to head west along the banks of the Blackwater. The docks she saw were still in disarray, only a few parts repaired.

  Still, it proved more a boon to them than not, for there were none to raise a ruckus as they passed.

  By the time the sun rose at their backs, they were already on the goldroad, Solomon having exchanged the cat for a raven that soared in the skies above them.

  They dared not stop and rest lest Renly ride them down, and her nerves only dared to relent when she spied the knights of the westerlands, all the steel they bore like a second sun.

  Her lord father was at the front, the deep crimson and gold of his enameled steel separating him from the chaff as much as the cloth-of-gold greatcloak clasped around his shoulders.

  Her uncle was next to him, near as splendid. "Cersei," he greeted with some surprise. "What has happened?"

  Cersei spoke it all as her father looked on from his destrier with a frown that could have been carved from stone. His eyes turned on Joffrey, who tried to stand taller for noticing. "We will return to Casterly Rock where you will be crowned, Your Grace."

  She hoped that would be the end of it, but… "We have the strength in knights now, grandfather. We can end my uncle in the swing of a—"

  "We do not have the men to hold it, Your Grace. We will return and we will consider our options closely." Her father circled his destrier around with orders that were repeated along the procession.

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  Joff smarted at the dismissal, but he at least had the sense to hold his tongue.

  A palfrey was soon retrieved for her. "You will tell me everything you know about this supposed sorcerer," her lord father commanded after she mounted.

  Cersei met his hard eyes, flecks of gold among Lannister green. A sweet smile on her lips now, she nodded.

  She would tell him only what she wanted him to hear.

  Brienne?

  She awoke with the sun, beginning her morning ritual without much preamble. It would be another hard day of keeping the peace in King's Landing.

  There were still jests spoken behind her back, but she hardly imagined she would ever truly be rid of them.

  Solomon's absence had cut her deeper, even it embarrassed her to admit it. The gentle kisses, the way he held her hand or the words he spoke to her in that way of his, her heart ached to even remember it.

  The Seven knew she had brushed her hair more and even let it grow out, desperate to seem more a woman in his eyes. And of course he noticed. She had turned as red as a beet when he commented on it, but he had said he loved it as he cupped her cheeks and kissed her again.

  If he had asked, she knew she would have allowed him to have her without him as her husband. It was not a thought worthy of a lady, but there it was all the same.

  Not that he had deigned to ask…

  She gave a huff as she fiddled with the straps of her armor. Knights had squires to assist them, but all she had were her mannish hands.

  Brienne was surprised to find her father waiting for her in the commons, a smile catching his lips when he saw her. "I thought we might break our fast together."

  She tried to return a smile as she sat and dug into the plate of whisked eggs and cheese of lamb the servants must have brought. It reminded her of home.

  Her eyes caught her father as he ate more sedately. Sometimes she still wondered why he had never taken another wife, but he had only smiled when she asked and insisted that she was the only heir he ever needed.

  Those thoughts brought her what few memories she had of her brother, though at least she could say she had memories of him, taken by the Stranger when she was only four. Her mother had died of a chill only some months after she was born, and her older sisters had never even left the cradle, she heard said.

  Sometimes Evenfall Hall felt like a haunt of ghosts for it.

  "The queen had left King's Landing in the night," her father mentioned suddenly. "Not long after a raven reached us from Stannis Baratheon that they had run afoul of a storm. King Robert's Hammer had vanished in it, and a dozen other ships besides." A chill had quickly settled in the pit of her stomach. "They found what remained of it two nights ago, broken upon the rocks."

  But then why had Cersei fled? Her son was king now.

  As if he had seen the question on her, he continued. "Stannis named her three eldest children as bastards born of incest. Renly has suggested that her flight proves her guilt."

  The twin revelations left her reeling. Her thoughts soon went to how much Lannister each of them looked, but could that alone be proof? "Then Prince Lann is king?"

  Not even a moon old and already with a crown upon his brow. History was not kind to boy kings and half as kind to babes still at their mother's teat.

  "Mayhaps. The queen had taken all her children with her. Stannis is sailing back to King's Landing with all haste."

  And so leaving the Vale to its madness. Brienne imagined their former master of coin and his co-conspirators would be quite pleased to hear it.

  "I will argue for a great council," her father finished. "With any luck we might avoid the bloodshed to come."

  "It would be the first in near a hundred years," she whispered. The last had seen Aegon the Unlikely taking the throne. "What had the Hand and Renly said?"

  "We will soon know. There is a small council meeting at noon."

  Brienne picked at her eggs for some time with her fork, but her appetite had fled her. She stood instead, touching a hand to her father's shoulder. "Whatever my words are worth, I think you have the right of it."

  He laid his hand on her own. "They are worth everything."

  Her mind was still troubled, so it was no surprise that she had soon found herself in the training yard. While few would spar with her, she could at least rely on her father's knights. Men that had known her since she was a girl waving a stick over her head as she shouted at imagined dragons.

  It was not even noon when one of Lord Renly's servants interrupted them. "You are called to the throne room, Lady Brienne."

  She wiped at her brow with a cloth. Already? Brienne would not have been able to help her curiosity even if it was not her liege lord that asked.

  Her father's knights followed her to the throne room already teeming with lords and ladies of every stripe. She spied Lord Renly first, a wide smile on his lips as he stood near the towering monstrosity that was the Iron Throne.

  Lord Stark stood not far from him, his eyes cold in a way she had only seen a few times. Her father stood at his side, his expression uncertain. What had happened?

  The Grand Maester was pale as a sheet, she saw.

  Brienne soon joined her father, a question in her eyes.

  "It won't be a great council," he whispered. "We will have a king before the day is done."

  She did not have to think on it long as the heavy doors soon closed and Renly spoke. "My lords. You have all likely heard the news already. His Grace, my brother, taken from us by a storm from the seven hells. And his queen? Vanished in the night."

  Ser Loras watched them all intently, while Lady Margaery seemed somewhere far away.

  "Stannis writes that her three eldest children are bastards born of incest, and given the manner of her flight, I am inclined to agree. Perhaps some of us have already suspected, already wondered why each of them was every inch a Lannister when all my brother's bastards have looked anything but. My nephew can attest to that much."

  He turned to a boy Brienne remembered from her time in Storm's End. Edric Storm. Not even two-and-ten and already he had the stirrings of a Baratheon. Also the ears of a Florent, but that much was not pertinent.

  "Should we then crown Prince Lann, a babe of some days? Stannis might think so, or perhaps he would argue we should crown him and call it a mercy."

  There were murmurs at that. Lord Stark's jaw tightened, one of his hands clasped around the silver hand that denoted his station. Her liege lord continued as he spread his arms wide, his kingly raiment more evident with every word he spoke.

  "I say neither much appeals to me. The realm needs a king that can right it, that can clasp together the frayed threads of the kingdoms tight again. That is not my brother, much as it pains me to admit it. Stannis and his red priestess would instead throw pitch on the flames, a war with every sept and motherhouse. Is that to be our fate?"

  The lords of the Reach shouted louder than the stormlords, though none as loud as the few Vale lords in the room.

  "Are we to allow the treacherous Lord Grafton and the savage mountain clans to escape the king's justice?"

  The throne room erupted again as Lord Renly drank it all in. He had turned the room against Stannis with only a few words.

  Brienne was not sure what to think of it herself as she toyed with the yellow ribbon around her wrist. She was not much fond of Stannis, but this seemed…

  "In this room stand the great lords of the realm. I think this more than enough for a council, or shall we wait for the proud lions and the Dornishmen to join us? Or perhaps the murdering rapers from the Iron Islands?"

  There were jeers at the mention of the Dornish and worse at the mention of the ironborn.

  "Then who, my lords, shall be your king?"

  It started with a whisper but soon it picked up as a chant. "Renly! Renly! Renly!"

  "You would have me for a king?"

  The shouts echoed off the walls this time. Her father was right, though perhaps he should have said that they would have a king before an hour's time.

  "RENLY! RENLY! RENLY! RENLY! RENLY! RENLY! RENLY!"