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The maids inside Cersei’s quarters were crying.
Or, one maid was crying. Ranel (young, good and kind, would shape into a loyal, clever woman for the soon-to-be queen) had the back of her hand pressed to her mouth to stifle her sobs. Endin (former whore, brilliant eye for fashion, with a tongue a tad too sharp for most noble ladies) resignedly comforted Ranel, muttering, “Why are you weeping like you knocked her off the balcony by accident?”
Lauris (middle-aged and experienced with the innerworkings of the court, loyal to whomever she served and did not loosen her lips) was the one to greet Meriam. She curtseyed. Her gaze was lowered at first, but then it lifted to meet Meriam’s when she straightened.
“My lady, Lady Cersei was not in her bed when we arrived to awaken and dress her.” Without glancing back at Ranel, she pointedly continued, “Some of us are rather concerned for her safety.”
“Well, worry no further,” said Meriam. She strode forward to collect some of the breakfast food laid out on the table and set it on a tray. “If Gerold and Markas aren’t at their post, it means they’ve gone with her. I believe I know exactly where she is.”
To Ranel, Meriam offered a small smile. “Take a breath. We can’t have you teary-eyed when she returns.”
“Y-yes, my lady.” Ranel sucked in a few loud, watery gulps of air. Endin rolled her eyes.
Meriam lifted the tray now laden with breakfast and said to them, “We won’t be gone more than an hour.”
“Will that give us enough time to prepare her for the ceremony?” asked Lauris.
“I’ll ensure her hastiness.”
Meriam departed from the chambers with the breakfast tray, each step poised and purposeful, her face a well-worn mask of neutral pleasantry. She took the servant’s corridors to shorten her journey, which was starting to trickle with the life of the Red Keep. The servants that she passed paused to give her acknowledgements, though no more than a quick dip and a muttered, “My lady.”
She returned the acknowledgements with a tilt of her head. Occasionally she would reply, “Good morning” and address many of them by name. Then they would all continue on to their own duties and destinations, which circled around today’s grand and blessed event.
The corridors were chilly at this hour, making Meriam long to be back in her own bed and next to her betrothed, who had tried his utmost to keep her there. She could still feel his calloused fingers trailing across her inner thighs, his mouth on her breasts, and how his breath tickled her neck as he coyly asked if her attendance was truly needed at the light of dawn.
She kept her huff to a soft rush of air through her nostrils so nobody would overhear an outward noise of emotion. Damned Cersei.
No, no. It wasn’t her fault that she did exactly what Meriam expected her to do by bolting to their only refuge in the palace since they were girls. For everyone else, this was a day of celebration that symbolized a new peace in the Seven Kingdoms. But for Cersei, this was a walk to the gallows. And who could ever face such a death before them and not try to escape it for as long as they could?
The servant’s corridors eventually dumped her out into a familiar hall. Meriam walked silently across the sleek stone floor, taking two turns to the right, one turn to the left, straight for thirty-six steps, then another right turn. She had memorized countless things for her lord and her whispering tutor, but this trek she memorized for herself ten years ago.
Ten years. How could a decade feel so short? Her little loves were but children a moment ago, with matching golden curls and naughty grins. And they were still children in some ways—seventeen was the furthest from being grown—but the responsibility and suffering from their noble births had also shaped them with unforgiving hands.
Not to mention what the rebellion and all its consequences did to the twins.
Gerold and Markas stood at the old entrance, looking ready to sleep for a few hours before they had to be back on duty during the pomp and parade. The two trusted Lannister guards, also ten years older from when they were assigned duty to a lord’s willful children, perked up at the sight of Meriam.
“Little—” Markas started before he remembered her new, official status and bobbed his head in deferring acknowledgment. “I mean, my lady. Good morning.”
She lightly chided, “None of that, especially when we’re alone.”
“Nobody is ever truly alone in this wretched place.” Gerold unsubtly glared at the empty air and invisible enemies all around them.
Meriam raised her brow at him, slipping her mask to the side in their presence. “Yes, and this wretched place will be your home for the rest of your lives. Best start thinking with a more positive attitude.”
The two guards wilted. They spent so much time together for so long that even their movements were in unison.
To ease their pain, Meriam plucked the two figs she brought just for them. Gerold and Markas eagerly extended their palms out (and yes, indeed, they were still just boys in her mismatched eyes too). They chorused, “Thank you, Littlehill.”
She continued on through the entrance, passing from the domain of men and into the domain of gods.
The godswood remained largely unchanged since the first time Meriam treaded among its wild grasses and flowers and vines, but the path to the great smokeberry-covered oak was tidier, and the dead plants had long been cleared out for new growth.
A figure slumped beneath the leaves of the oak tree, right at the threshold before the dragon’s breath flowers that surrounded the trunk began. Meriam padded up to her, and she set the breakfast tray down before she, too, sat.
“I wish to be left alone,” Cersei muttered, but the thickness of her voice said anything but.
“You worried your handmaidens. Gerold and Markas are just about sleeping on their feet as well.”
“I don’t care.”
“Lying to me? In the godswood? After the oath we swore so long ago?” Meriam tutted, and Cersei’s frown twisted even more. “You are fortunate that I don’t believe you. Otherwise, the old gods may just strike you down.”
She glared at the carved face partially concealed by smokeberry vines. Its lack of weeping red sap made it less haunting and more somber. “Let them. Then I won’t have to be a bride.”
Meriam said nothing; she didn’t have to. As soon as Cersei hissed the words out, a sob followed, and she leaned over to rest her head on Meriam’s shoulder. In turn, Meriam wrapped both arms around Cersei and laid her cheek upon the crown of her bushy morning curls. She didn’t often have the chance to hold Cersei this way anymore because of age and long periods of separation, but they folded together just as easily as they did when they were gangly-limbed and tiny.
“I don’t—I don’t want to—” Cersei cried, her breath harsh and words violent. She never was a gentle person in anything she said or did. But that was what Meriam loved about her. “I don’t want to m-marry that fucking beast of a man!”
“I know,” Meriam whispered back. “I know.”
“Why couldn’t you c-convince Father to leave me be? Why? What good are you? Now I’m t-to be sold like a mare! To be fucked and forgotten!”
The barbs bounced harmlessly off Meriam. They had been thrown at her months before this day, and her own guilt at failing to maintain Cersei’s youthful freedom had faded. She couldn’t change everything; this marriage, it seemed, was always destined. Nor could Meriam deny the strategic, iron-clad advantage it gave House Lannister, and as she served House Lannister, its gain was always her gain. But after today, the rest of Cersei’s childhood would be gone. She had the right to grieve and rage.
“You? Being forgotten? I don’t think so. You would never allow that.”
“He would happily forget me,” Cersei spat, but her tears waned in favor of fury. “I’m no grey-eyed Northern girl. Never mind that you and Father secured King’s Landing for him to stride on through with his army! Never mind that King’s Landing adores the Lannisters because of what we did! Never mind that I’m beautiful, and smart, and rich, and that I can do all the things that she could—if I’m not Lyanna Stark, then according to Robert fucking Baratheon, I might as well be just as dead!”
These were all things Meriam had heard before, but she listened as always.
With grating despair, Cersei asked, “Why couldn’t it have been me on the battlefield? Why couldn’t I have simply called the Seven Kingdoms to war? And then when I won, I could have been crowned queen. Not by marriage, but by deeds—”
She abruptly stopped, a snarl still in her throat. Then the anger washed out of her all at once. She pulled away, eyes red-rimmed and mouth now in an apologetic pout. “I didn’t mean—I wouldn’t have—Rhaegar—”
“Shush,” Meriam said. “I know what you meant. It’s alright.”
Cersei’s moue only deepened, making her look like the little girl that Meriam first loved. Sniffing, she then said, “I fear I may gut Robert Baratheon the moment the lout tries to lay with me. After what he did to you…”
Her thumb grazed over the thin scar that peeked from Meriam’s hairline right beside her brow, forever proof of her deeds on that horrible night. Anyone who thought to question her own betrothal would simply have to look at it, and they’d be forced to swallow their sour gossip.
Meriam reminded, “He never did anything to me.”
“But he could have, Meri! He could have killed you and Elia and the children—”
“Except he didn’t.” Meriam’s brows drew together. Then she was back in the throne room, unsure if the reek of blood and metal came from the Iron Throne and the corpse of a king and a pyromancer or if it came from herself. “The moment…the moment he realized what he was thinking…the look on his face, Cersei. Utter ruin.”
After a pause, she grated, “I’ll still never forgive him.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. It will be a long, ugly marriage if you never do, though.” Meriam tilted her head to the oak, and the two set their gazes on the carved face once more. “And it may be just what Robert wants. If you don’t forgive him, then he doesn’t have to forgive himself, and he can go about being a bad husband because he doesn’t have to fight to be a good one.”
Cersei blew out an indignant puff of air. “Why can’t you be unreasonable about just one thing?”
“I’ll be unreasonable the day you are reasonable.” Meriam bumped her shoulder into Cersei’s. “Which will be the day the seas boil. So, labor I must.”
“I hate you.”
“I hate you too.”
Then, hesitantly, Cersei asked, “Do you forgive Robert? Could you?”
It was a question she had skirted around for some time now. It was a question Meriam hadn’t been certain she could answer for some time as well.
“I believe I have. I don’t feel as betrayed these days, but…war takes more than death. I fear we will never again have a friendship like we once did, regardless of how he slew Rhaegar on the battlefield. And that cuts me deeply when I least expect it.”
She did not care to dwell on what and who she had lost, both in death and divide. Wallowing was a useless course in this world—those strong enough and smart enough merely continued to take the path forward, and Meriam was neither weak nor stupid. Lord Tywin might have never said those words to her, but the decisive thought spoke in his voice all the same.
“Even so,” Meriam forged on, “you and I both have plans. I won’t let the past get in the way of the future.”
Cersei snorted inelegantly. “Tell that to our king.”
“One day, maybe. You can watch while he squirms. I’m sure it will delight you to no end.”
They snickered, and more of Cersei’s thunder faded from her. She reached for the breakfast tray and took the bowl of cherries. Meriam snagged a couple. Together they ate as though Cersei’s doom wasn’t approaching. They ate like they were just two tiny girls who had snuck away from Septa Adrya and her droning lessons, reveling in their escape.
When they finished, they laid on their backs and stared up at the canopy of leaves. Pale orange started to bleed into the gray sky.
“I don’t want to be married,” Cersei spoke for a final time, though she was resigned now. “Not to Robert.” She waved her arm in the air. “I’d be more content marrying his bore of a brother, I think.”
Meriam chuckled. “Stannis? Now that would be an undertaking of its own. You’d want to kill him just as much as Robert, but for different reasons.”
“Mm, I’m sure you know better than I.” Cersei turned her head to Meriam with japing wistfulness. “And I would still have to compete for a place in his heart since it belongs to another.”
“Stop it.”
“I never have, and I won’t now. Stannis has loved you since he first laid his surly gaze on your odd little face.”
“Even if he did, he never would have been able to marry me, and he’s not one to take lovers.”
Cersei scoffed. “If only Robert were like his younger brother in that regard. But—here you are, marrying someone so far above your station that you might as well have been catapulted to the clouds, regardless that he is a second son. I’m sure Stannis’ poor heart is beyond repair that it could not have been him.”
“Don’t jest about the matter of hearts,” Meriam retorted, but it was windless.
“Would you have married him, if you could?”
“Why are you so concerned with ifs this morning?”
“Because I want to be distracted from the reality of this morning.” She shook her body like a petulant child. “Tell me!”
Meriam exhaled. “I would do what my lord bids.” She ignored Cersei’s groan. “And if he determined that a marriage between the Stormlands’ new lord paramount and myself was advantageous and obtainable, then I would marry. I could not refuse, not with my station.”
“Argh, you know what I mean!”
“What do you mean?” Meriam’s voice was light, which made it goading.
“I mean, would you want to marry Stannis Baratheon if Father bid you to?”
A smile twitched on Meriam’s mouth. “Yes. Stannis is kind and awkward and honorable, and we have a good friendship.” And no matter what Robert did, Stannis’ possessive nature regarding the love others gave him would keep his older brother’s deeds from affecting their relationship. “I would have married him knowing that I’d be safe and respected. I likely would have fallen in love with him one day, too.”
“He’s quite handsome, for all he gives the impression that he wouldn’t know what to do with his cock in bed.” Slyly, Cersei added, “Not like your betrothed.”
Meriam couldn’t contain her pleased giggle.
Cersei kicked her legs excitedly. “Oh, you must tell me! You haven’t told me a single thing about it, and I demand that you do so at once.”
“I have so told you about it. You were beside yourself when I regaled how I convinced him that marrying me would not be a burden.”
“Yes, but that was then. This is now.” Cersei pretended to be disgusted with Meriam. “Look at you, smug and glowing—he fucked you silly last night, didn’t he?”
“It was…a pleasant, albeit sleepless, time.”
“And he didn’t mind your little hills?” she snickered, unceasingly amused with herself and the stupid nickname that she coined for Meriam’s small breasts years ago.
Meriam snipped back, “No, he didn’t. He quite enjoyed them, and I quite enjoyed everything he did to them.”
“You shameless whore.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“Of course I am!” Cersei glared at the leaves above. “I doubt I’ll be bedded like a queen deserves despite Robert’s proclivity for fucking well.” She yanked a fistful of grass and tossed it into the air, where it lazily scattered back down. “Nobody cares who he pumps his seed into, queen or no, but if I so much as glance at another man, I’ve committed an unforgivable sin in the eyes of the Seven.”
She imploringly looked to Meriam. “Why must I marry him again? Why must my greatest desire and greatest evil be what is between my legs?”
Meriam found Cersei’s hand and clasped it. “Why must this world be the way it is, you mean?”
“That is the only true question to ask and answer, in the end.”
“One day, it won’t be like this. And it won’t be like this because you’ll change it. But I wish somebody could have already done it for us.”
“They must have tried, all those Targaryen sister-wives. And one did try. See how it turned out for her. For everyone.”
“Except you’re not a Targaryen. You’re Cersei fucking Lannister, and you have me.”
Cersei sprouted a grin, which made Meriam smirk.
“I suppose I do, don’t I? Nobody has ever had Meriam fucking Hill on their side. And look at what you’ve accomplished so far, you little creature.”
“Some could say that it is only the beginning.”
“Bold words from you!” laughed Cersei. “Rare as they are, they must be the truth.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m plenty bold.”
“In action, yes. That is undeniable. But I can count on one hand the times I’ve heard the cat roar like a lion.”
Meriam snorted. “You Lannisters and your metaphors.”
“Why do you always sound so derisive? You carry the blood of a Lannister.”
“Which gives me all the more reason to be derisive.” Meriam pointed her nose to the air. “I have the right.”
“Don’t remind me.” Cersei sat up, and Meriam followed. Without ire, she said, “After all, you always have been Papa’s favorite.”
“He called me a beastly little creature not three days ago.” Over a petty squabble concerning unimportant network matters in Lannisport, no less. But the royal wedding preparations made them both stressed, so Meriam let it be and didn’t retaliate by having the cooks serve him his least favorite meals.
Cersei smiled saccharinely. Meriam mirrored it in mocking. “A testament to his love and adoration.”
“Yes, well, if anybody has such a currently desired commodity, it is you. A Lannister queen.”
Face growing somber again, Cersei muttered, “If only Jaime had taken the throne after he killed ugly King Scab.”
“Jaime never was ambitious. He only did what was right.”
“Like the two cannot coexist.”
“They can. They do.” Meriam nudged Cersei so they faced each other. “In us, obviously.” Her smile then grew in full, revealing the gap between her front teeth that made her so disarming once she did show joy. “Because who runs the world?”
Cersei huffed a laugh but replied, “Girls.”
Meriam asked again, “Who runs the world?”
Louder, the future queen said, “Girls!”
“Who runs this fucking world?”
“Girls!”
They broke into more giggles. But although the call brought Cersei cheer, it faded soon after it came; her thoughts were too heavy to be buoyed up for long. She looked to the tree again—to the face, first, then below it and off to the right. In a little spot mostly concealed by smokeberry vines and dragon’s breath, the brown bark was marked by two crudely carved letters.
CM
“I have been thinking of the Dream, as of late,” Cersei then confessed.
Meriam stilled. The oak tree did not; leaves rustled in the wake of the words.
“Oh?”
There could be no other dream that Cersei spoke of except the Dream, which had swallowed up other dreams of hers for so long that she forgot what it was like to dream anything else. There was nothing but the Dream, and when it did not give her blankness, it gave her fragments of the whole.
The Dream frightened Meriam. Not only because Cersei had never spoken about it to her at great lengths—and ever since they were children, Cersei spoke about everything at great lengths with Meriam—but also because of what it meant that greater forces had set their sights on the Lannister. And for all the skills that Meriam possessed, she couldn’t protect Cersei from it. She had composed her entire life and personality around the undeniable truth that she wasn’t useless in this world, which placed her where she was now. The thought of being useless to those who mattered most sickened her, and rightly so. Meriam knew how to control people and influence politics. She knew the smell of poisons and antidotes and how to concoct both. She knew how to plant information and rumors that could affect the entire Seven Kingdoms. She knew how to inflict pain and heal wounds and make death as quick or as long as she needed.
Yet against gods and magics? Against dreams and prophecies? How could she possibly make use with her hands, her whispers, her knowledge?
(So much was changed. So much that Meriam could not trust what she had remembered in the other life to be valuable. Again, useless.)
“I have known it for some time, but I suppose I refused to acknowledge it. One of the people who speaks to me is Robert.” Cersei drew in a breath. “And if Robert is in the Dream, then I truly cannot fight this marriage at all, and my raging is childish and pointless.”
“Not childish,” Meriam said with quiet vehemence. “And not pointless. The Dream…it’s not the sum of all things, Cersei. You shouldn’t—”
“Pay much heed to it, yes, I know. You always say as much. But I cannot ignore it—it will not allow me to ignore it.”
She gave Meriam a wan smile.
Gods, when had Cersei grown up so much?
“But a smidge of flattering me will lighten my spirit, I believe.”
Meriam forced herself to play along. Cersei didn’t want her to linger on the Dream, so she wouldn’t today.
She ran a hand down the bride’s golden braid and stuck out her lower lip. “You poor thing,” she cooed, and Cersei made a despairing face. “Marrying a brute of a man when you deserve a knight from the days of legend. But when everyone sees your radiant beauty, their envy and awe and love will likely be so great that they’ll drop dead.”
“Everything will be tiring.”
“Yes, it will, but you’re so strong for being able to survive this day. I doubt anyone could do it as gracefully and steadfastly as you.”
Cersei eyed Meriam sidelong. “Not even Elia?”
“Pah—Elia was close to fainting from exhaustion not even half a day into the celebrations. But you’ve got a constitution that could rival Robert’s. Strong and sturdy. Like Berry.”
“Flatter me, don’t compare me to that mule of yours!”
Meriam smirked. “Come, I shall continue to flatter you on the way back to your apartment. Because we are on a schedule.”
“You speak as if you didn’t already schedule my escape to the godswood.”
“I did, yes, but I suspect that your father and Lady Tyrell will have heard that you’re missing by now. We can manage if Lord Tywin sends Jaime to ensure that everything is fine. But if Lady Tyrell makes it to the apartment before we do, I fear that not even all my preparations could keep us from being late.”
Cersei scoffed. “Liar. You have a plan for even that.”
Meriam did, true.
“A plan that involves some indignities on your part, including simple braids and nary a hairpin in sight—”
“Oh, very well then! Hurry!”
Laughing, Meriam stood and helped Cersei to her feet, then picked up the tray. Cersei stood straight-backed—a trait instilled into her since she could walk and further emphasized whenever she lauded her taller height over Meriam. She patted her face, gave the skin beneath her eyes one final wipe, wetly sniffed, then walked the path through the godswood with a queenly gait.
Meriam fell in a step behind her. She raked her gaze over the back of Cersei’s disheveled, golden head for as long as she could just to memorize a final moment of her little love before she became queen.
A tight knot formed in Meriam’s throat, and for several painful moments she couldn’t breathe.
Then they stepped into the cool hall of the Red Keep, and Meriam’s head demurely dipped down.
Ever the faithful servant of House Lannister, the cat slinked after the lion and into the dawn of a new Westeros.