Brienne gave Cersei no chance to prepare. She simply appeared in their sitting room the day after Cersei had found her crying and, as Cersei poured herself another glass of wine, said, “My lady, I’ve received permission from the Queen to accompany you and your brother to see Tommen.”

She nearly dropped the flagon. “Excuse me?”

“I’ve received permission -”

“You were seeking permission?”

Brienne had the nerve to look surprised by that - shocked, in fact, at the idea that Cersei might have wanted to know that Brienne was meddling in her life. “I - yes, my lady, I had assumed you’d want to see him.”

“That is absolutely none of your business.”

“Your freedom is dependent on my protection.” Brienne spoke quietly but firmly, giving Cersei no quarter to protest. “I’m not going to apologize for what any lady might do for those dependent upon her. You’ve been given leave to see Tommen today over tea. We’ll be escorted there and back. Does this suit you?”

Cersei refused to feel chastened by honorable words and sad blue eyes. “Yes, fine. Does Jaime know?”

“I told him at breakfast, yes.”

Brienne and Jaime liked to eat with the soldiers. It disgusted Cersei. “Fine. I’ll see you then.”

She spent the rest of the morning frantically trying to make herself look as she thought Tommen might remember her. In truth, she’d grown gaunt and freckled in Tarth; she might still look like Queen Cersei from far away, but she knew the whole experience had aged her. Still, she could put on a lovely day dress dress and have a maid braid her hair in elaborate patterns, and she could rouge her face into a semblance of dignity.

“Are we going to a coronation?” Jaime said when he saw her.

“We’re going to see our son. You could stand to shave.” She really hated his beard; it made him look simultaneously aged and too young, as though some of Brienne’s naivety had physically transferred to him.

“Our son,” Jaime repeated softly. He glanced back at Brienne, who wore a plain blue tunic and looked more like the vassal of a great house than the fianceé of a Lord Paramount.

“I know who he is,” Brienne said. “You needn’t fear I’ll be squeamish.”

Squeamish. As though her beautiful son were a beetle on a tea cake, or a head on a spike. Cersei gritted her teeth. “If you were -”

“I know you’d try to kill me, my lady. But -” Someone knocked at the door. “It’s time for us to go.”

And Cersei hated her, she hated her, that condescending attitude towards the very real danger Cersei presented, that calm confidence that turned humility into arrogance. She wanted to fly into a rage, and she hated that she couldn’t, for it was Brienne who had convinced the Dragon Queen to let Cersei see her own child again.

Jaime silently took her hand, and they all left together.

She wasn’t looking forward to going into the dungeons of the Red Keep, and so she was on edge enough that she noticed the diverted route immediately. “This isn’t how you get to the dungeons.”

“No,” Brienne said. “Tommen’s under confinement, but he’s not chained up.”

Cersei’s heart squeezed her chest. He was safe, then. Not diseased, not dying. Perhaps he even saw sunlight.

Far down they went, into a corner of the Keep that Cersei had vaguely known housed servants. They stopped outside a room on the very edge of the building, almost buried in the cliff-side. The guard unlocked the door and said, “You get an hour,” then turned to stand with his back to them.

If Cersei had a dagger - but only Brienne had one, and she wouldn’t use it for that. So Cersei tapped the door instead. “Tommen? It’s me. Are you well? Can we come in?”

“Yes, mother,” Tommen said, and so Cersei took a deep breath and walked into her son’s prison.

It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. A room like this would house three or four scullery maids. It had small a window that looked out at the surf, and a sweet breeze blew through the bars set in the frame. Tommen himself looked pale but otherwise healthy, standing in the center of the room with his arms behind his back.

“Lady Mother,” he said, and bowed deeply. Cersei choked back a sob.

His eyes drifted over her shoulder, landing on Jaime. “My lord,” he said, bowing again.

The sob clawed out of her throat. She was shaking, she was a fool. But before she could scream or rage, Brienne was there, an enormous warm hand braced on her back, her bulk shielding her from Tommen. “Apologies, my lord,” she said. “It’s been - she’s just overwhelmed. May we sit?”

Courtly manners danced around Cersei as she cried, silently, shaking head to toe. It was unforgivable weakness, yet Jaime didn’t slap her and Tommen didn’t repudiate her. They sat around her, her lover and her son and Brienne of Tarth, waiting until the sobs subsided and she was able to breathe again.

“It’s good to see you,” Tommen said when she’d wiped her eyes. “I’m - happy - to see you well. I wasn’t sure, for awhile.”

Of course. The Dragon Queen wasn’t merciful enough to let Tommen know what had happened to his family. “Lady Brienne has taken good care of us, I assure you,” Jaime said.

“They told me she’s to be married.” Tommen looked between the three of them. A question lurked there, the sort of question she’d done her best to make sure he never knew to ask. Damn the Dragon Queen for ruining her plans, for nearly ruining her children.

“Yes,” Jaime said when Cersei didn’t answer. “To Gendry Baratheon.”

“Gendry…” Tommen’s nose wrinkled. “I don’t know of him.”

“Because he’s no one,” Cersei said. “A blacksmith bastard.”

“A kind of brother to you, my lord,” Brienne said.

She was hit with three Lannister winces at the same time. Cersei watched her flush, ugly and humiliated.

“My son knows the truth now,” Cersei said. “He’s no Baratheon, thank all the gods.”

“But all the same, I thank you for your kindness,” Tommen said. He was still every inch the little prince.

“Gendry’s a good lad, if also a Baratheon,” Jaime said.

“I’d rather not speak of it,” Brienne said. “I - forgive me, Ser Jaime. I’d leave you alone, but -”

“A condition of the visit was that the Maid of Tarth ensure we’re not plotting treason. Yes, I know.” Jaime looked nearly mirthful, damn him. And Brienne blushed in response, like the maid she wasn’t anymore. Cersei gritted her teeth.

“Are you being treated well?” she asked Tommen. “If you are being abused at all, we need to know.”

Tommen shook his head. “The guards are a bit rude sometimes, but they don’t beat me. They feed me. I only miss you, Mother, and Myrcella as well.” He darted a glance at Jaime. “And you, uncle. Ser.”

“We miss you too,” Jaime said softly. “I’m not sure when we’ll see you again.”

“I know. Well.” Tommen stared at the table for a moment, bereft, before he perked up. “I’ve been practicing my calligraphy. I could show you!”

It was heartbreaking, how perfect his lettering was, how much practice he’d clearly had. But the Dragon Queen hadn’t denied him access to books or paper; she apparently had granted his requests for small items like jacks and extra pen nibs, too. Cersei ended the visit with a tight knot of almost-rage in her chest.

“What’s the matter?” Brienne said as they climbed the stairs back to their suite.

“She’s been kind to him.”

“He’s just a child. And it’s not particularly kind to keep a boy separated from his parents.”

“And here I thought you’d defend your benefactress.”

“The Queen knows I’m loyal to her,” Brienne said. “But I never lied to her. I told her that Tommen should be with his family.”

His family: two hopelessly entangled sibling-lovers, a deformed uncle, and a rapidly dwindling supply of gold. “Well, then, I suppose I should thank you for interceding on our behalf.”

“You don’t owe me anything. Neither of you do.”

“And yet you’ll give us whatever you can. Truly, my brother’s ability to compel loyalty astonishes me.”

“Let her be.”

Something about Jaime’s exhausted command infuriated her. “You will not give me orders!”

“Thank you, but I’m fine,” Brienne said. “My lady, your brother earned my loyalty. It’s very different from compulsion. It’s my hope you’ll be able to see Tommen again soon, not because of your brother, but because children shouldn’t be separated from their parents.”

Cersei would have loved to hear a threat in her words. Damn it, she should have been able to, but she’d known Brienne too long to seriously think she meant to hurt Tommen, or Cersei herself. And certainly she’d never hurt Jaime; she was in love with him.

Damn her.

===

“I’m to be married in two days,” Brienne told Jaime as they ate their breakfast amidst the soldiers of the Red Keep.

Jaime hadn’t just been counting the days; he’d been counting the hours, an agonizing exercise in inevitability. “Yes, so I remember.”

“Before I - that is, before Lord Gendry and I leave…” She shoveled porridge into her mouth. Damn him for finding her alluring even now, with it dripping from her chin. “I just thought perhaps you’d like a bout.”

He blinked. “A bout?”

“Of swordplay.”

“Yes, I’d gathered that.” He’d already had plenty of the other kind of bout with her and Cersei.

Plenty, what a word. Not enough, never enough, but she was to be married and he was a bastard, in truth if not in legality. “Of course. Only let me finish my breakfast, my lady; I need every advantage I can get.”

She looked so fucking happy just then. Glowing, practically, smiling at Jaime like he’d performed a miracle. He ate his porridge and did his best not to scowl, and then he all but dragged her to the ring.

“Just remember, a practice sword’s not the same.” He quirked his brow at her. “Oathkeeper will help you where this bit of wood won’t.”

“I never much needed help,” she said, and came at him.

He’d managed to forget how powerful she was. She had a raw strength that he could only just match, and her technique had only improved in the last year. In truth it wasn’t much of a fight, but she drew him out, evaluating him as he’d once tried to do to her.

“Will you make the son of a vassal house duel you, in Storm’s End?”

She knocked his sword away viciously. “That’s none of your business.”

“On the contrary. Gendry’s going to fuck you day and night, I imagine.” He dodged her brutal kick. “And if you grow soft with child and then struck down by some third son of the Stormlands, my sister and I might be put out into the street. It concerns me very much.”

“You think you know everything about your future, don’t you?”

“Most of it.” Of course, he’d once imagined he’d die in the Kingsguard, too.

“You’re an ignorant fool,” she said, and disarmed him. “Again.”

He stared at her. She was red with exertion and blushing on top of that, furious and golden and beautiful. Everything he’d never been, everything he’d lost hope of having, stood in front of him, beating the living shit out of him. It was awful, and it was glorious.

“Why not just refuse to marry him?”

Brienne didn’t answer, only disarmed him. Jaime picked up his sword and said, “Is it because you’re scared of her? I’d have said you weren’t scared of anything.”

“I’m scared of plenty,” Brienne said, “and you know it.”

Sapphires. The girls hanging from the tree. Failing Lady Sansa, as she’d failed her other liege lords. Shadow creatures who murdered kings. “I suppose, but you’ve never actually let that determine your actions before.”

“You don’t know that.”

Thrust. Parry. Step forward, then step back, for Brienne was almost impossible to pressure. “Allow me the assumption that I’m only talking about your choices that I’ve been party to. Still.”

“The Queen wants an advantageous match. Refusing her would cause trouble for people I care about.” She knocked his sword into the dirt again, but this time she kept pressing. He stumbled and fell, right there in the dirt, hitting his elbow brutally. And she followed him, pressing him into the ground, huge and utterly overpowering.

“Please don’t ask me about it anymore. The wedding’s happening day after tomorrow. You won’t persuade me not to go through with it by being terrible.”

He could feel her breath on his cheek. He wanted, more than anything, to turn his head and capture her lips. He knew if he made the tiniest movement towards trying, she’d never forgive him.

“All right,” he said.

She got off him and made for the armory, taking his practice sword with her, and leaving him to the indignity of getting back to their suite with an absolutely miserable erection.

Their rooms were empty, so he called for a bath. He was halfway asleep in the rapidly cooling water when the door slammed and Cersei said, “What on earth has happened to your face?”

He smiled almost in spite of himself, for she sounded as she always did: angry that someone had hurt him, but also angry at him for making her notice. “Brienne.”

“What did you do to her?”

“Why do you assume I did anything?”

“She’s the most tediously honorable person I’ve ever met. She wouldn’t hit you without a reason.”

And she was right, damn her. “We were just practicing. Swordplay. And I told her that agreeing to a marriage with Gendry Baratheon was foolish.”

Silence. Then: “I’d have beaten you too, you fool.”

He sighed. “You mustn’t ever let her teach you swordplay. One woman who can beat me like this is enough.”

“You seem to enjoy it well enough.” Cersei’s tone sharpened, an exaggeration of a dearly familiar cruelty. “Anyway, can’t most middling fighters beat you now?”

“Brienne’s not middling.”

“I don’t care.” But of course she did. She sounded both contemptuous and jealous, of course she cared.

“She’s incredible. Brutal and beautiful. I’ve never wanted her like I do when I see her fight.”

For a moment he thought his twin might test her theory of his skill by trying to kill him herself. But only for a moment; then he felt cool fingertips on his cheek. “Get out of the tub.”

She spread him out on the chaise in their sitting room and rode him, pinching him when he tried to speak, holding his head back with a vicious grip on his hair. When he came, she locked her thighs around him and rubbed herself until she came, too, holding him inside her, not even letting him kiss her neck.

Brienne returned not too long after they’d finished. If she smelled the sex in the air, if she noticed their matching flushes, she didn’t see fit to mention it.

===

Cersei felt certain she had in some way been cursed, for after being in King’s Landing for weeks, it was only the day before Brienne’s wedding that Tyrion showed his ugly face.

“Jaime told me you weren’t coming.”

Tyrion toasted her mockingly with his wine. “I wasn’t going to. But Varys wrote to me and told me there were interesting observations to be made in the Capital. Only imagine my surprise when he meant that you and Jaime were both living with the bride-to-be.”

“Living with is a bit of a stretch. We’re living in the Red Keep, at the Queen’s sufferance.”

“In a suite with Brienne of Tarth, yes.” Tyrion studied her over his wine. He was as ugly as ever, and granite mining didn’t suit him. He looked stupider, too. “Cersei. What are you doing?”

She ripped her gaze away from him and cast it around the room. Not at the corner with Brienne’s armor, though, or the corner where Jaime’s cloak hung, and certainly not the wardrobe that Cersei knew contained Brienne’s wedding gown. She picked a particularly large bit of stone and fastened her gaze on it. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Is Jaime fucking the Maid of Tarth?”

“She’d hardly be a maid then.”

“Gendry won’t care. It’s not a condition of the marriage.”

“Has he seen her? He might care if he realizes he can’t beat her for whoring herself out.”

“What does it matter? He’ll see her tomorrow if he hasn’t before. And then you and Jaime will be free to do - what, exactly?”

The stone she’d chosen was likely very old, rough-hewn and pitted in places from years of wear. This whole suite would be uncomfortable come winter; on the edge of the Keep as they were, these were rooms that had been created with summer in mind.

“Cersei -”

“Brienne of Tarth is sworn to Jaime, or he’s sworn to her; I’m not clear on the details, nor do I care.” She finished her wine and poured herself another glass. “All that matters to me is that my children are safe, and that’s only half true, if that.”

“Interesting.”

“What?”

“I was told Myrcella was returning from Dorne.”

“So they’ve informed me. And yet, as you can see, neither of my children are here with me.”

“Will you take them back to Tarth, once they are?”

“If I ever get them back, we will return to Tarth. A place will always be there for us, or so I’m told.”

“I’d have thought you would try for the Rock.”

“We cannot.”

“Who came up with this scheme? You?”

She sneered at him. Brienne’s words were too fresh in her mind to respond properly.

“Ah. Lady Brienne’s.”

“How -”

“Jaime’s not politically minded enough to mind the difference between a home on Tarth and a home at the Rock, and you are, which is why you’d provoke the Dragon Queen by settling your Lannister bastards in their ancestral home. Lady Brienne, on the other hand, has spent a considerable amount of time trying to work out how to keep our brother safe. Naturally, this extends to you and your children.”

“Our shared children,” Cersei said.

“Do you enjoy saying it?”

She enjoyed that no one could stop her, that Robert was dead and the Dragon Queen had sworn not to kill her children. She enjoyed the immunity she’d granted them with the choices she made; she enjoyed telling everyone that she valued her brother more than anyone, that she’d forsake everything for her family. “No.”

“Hmm.” Tyrion finished his wine and emptied the flagon into his glass. “Oh, look, we’re out of wine again.”

“There’s more.”

“For a Lannister, there’s always more.”

“It’s a ridiculous match, and the Queen’s a fool for making her do it,” Cersei said.

Tyrion couldn’t have looked more shocked if she’d proposed the two of them marry. “But you’ll have a home on Tarth either way. I’d think you’d prefer for her to be as far from Jaime as possible.”

“Marrying her to a bastard blacksmith dishonors her, regardless of which estate the Dragon Queen’s given him.”

“But you don’t care.”

“I don’t -”

“You do.” Delight suffused his voice. She sipped her wine and glared at the stone across the room. “I never thought I’d see the day. Why? How? Does Jaime fuck you both? Do you share him, or is it more that you two share an affinity for ugly virgins? If I go into the bedroom there -”

“If you continue speaking, I’ll gut you like a fish,” Cersei said, as calmly as she could manage. It wasn’t very calmly.

Tyrion held up his hands. “Well, I don’t understand how someone as upright as Lady Brienne can stand it, but I agree: Gendry’s a bad match. There’s very little to be done about it now.”

Cersei knew that. Why else would she have finished the wine? She was about to tell Tyrion as much when the page arrived. “A message from the Queen, My Lady,” he said.

She read it and felt the blood drain from her face. Damn it. Damn it.

“Don’t tell Jaime where I’ve gone,” she said, and rose to prepare herself for an audience with Queen Daenerys Targaryen.

===

“Your Grace, you summoned me?”

“Lady Cersei.” The Dragon Queen looked around the room. Her small council sat arrayed around her, including the Spider, who looked like he thought Cersei might be on the verge of regicide. How well her monstrous little brother knew her after all. “Thank you for coming. Wait for me outside, please, all of you.”

“Don’t do anything foolish,” the Spider muttered as he passed Cersei. If only he knew how stupid she’d been lately.

When they were alone, the Dragon Queen sat down on the Iron Throne and said, “I’d like to hear your honest opinion about Lady Brienne’s impending marriage.”

Cersei’s tongue turned to stone. “My -”

“As a woman. Your candid opinion, please, as honest as you can be. I know I’m your Queen, but I beg of you not to mince words.”

Fine, then. “She doesn’t want it.”

The Dragon Queen frowned. “I was told she had received no credible offers for her hand, and indeed was unlikely to, unless compelled by political expediency. Yet she agreed, she did not protest.”

“Lady Brienne knows nothing of life beyond honor and duty,” Cersei said. “She’ll marry Lord Gendry if you tell her to, and she’ll spread her legs and let him get an entire platoon of babes on her, and she’ll never complain. But she doesn’t want it.”

“I was sold into my first marriage,” the Dragon Queen said.

“As was I. And so I know you understand.”

“I understand why such a fate seems terrible to you, yes. But Lady Sansa, a trusted advisor, told me you never seek gain for anyone but yourself. So now, Lady Cersei, I’m afraid I must ask: what do you seek to gain, if I allow Brienne of Tarth to remain unwed?”

If she got her hands around the girl’s neck, she could snap it before any of her Kingsguard could stop her. For a moment it was sorely tempting, compared to being forced to discuss her motives. “I’d hoped to make Tarth a home for my children, Your Grace. It’s far enough away to be exile, and Lady Brienne owes my brother a debt. She’ll pay it by letting us stay.”

“But only if she has no liege husband to interfere. Yes.” The Dragon Queen stared at her. “I suppose Brienne didn’t tell you?”

“I’m at a loss, Your Grace, which means she must not have.”

“A condition of her agreeing to marry Gendry Baratheon was the return of your two children, of course, and an official pardon allowing you all to live on Tarth. I had assumed that to be your contribution.”

Cersei’s heart stopped in her throat.

“I can tell her the agreement is void.”

She wanted to protest. For her children - she would, she must, she’d kill the Dragon Queen. She’d drag Brienne into the sept herself. But she couldn’t make herself say it; the words caught in her throat. She could think only of Brienne’s fear and adoration as she stared at Jaime, as she looked between them. She’d been a maid, damn it, and she’d submit herself to the abuse of marriage for -

Two children, the get of a union she hated, mothered by a woman she hated. A woman she’d fucked. Damn her. Damn her.

“And now I see that Lady Sansa was wrong,” the Dragon Queen said, very quietly. “For you aren’t begging me to force her to honor the bargain. Would you lose your children to maintain her freedom?”

Cersei shook her head, fighting back traitorous tears, burning with hatred.

“Would you sell her to get your children back?”

“Yes,” she snarled, but it was a lie, and she could tell the Dragon Queen knew it.

“You’d have him killed before the wedding night was out, I think. Or me. Very well: as I said, I see my advisors were mistaken. I am known as the Breaker of Chains, and I came here to reclaim my rightful throne, not to tear families apart. I sentence you and your brother, Jaime Lannister the Kingslayer, to exile on Tarth. Permanently. Your children, too, I sentence to exile on Tarth. Lady Brienne is the lawful heir of Selwyn Tarth, and thus may marry or not as she sees fit.” The Dragon Queen waved a hand. “You’re dismissed.”

She walked back to Jaime in a daze. He met her at the door, caught her as she crumbled. “What’s happened? What are they going to do? Are Tommen and Myrcella -”

“Safe. They will be returned to us.”

“And Brienne?”

“The Dragon Queen thought she was honoring Brienne,” Cersei said. “And that stupid cow let her think it. She bargained, Jaime. Her marriage, for our children.”

Jaime’s expression crumbled. “Gods, no.”

“We’re to be exiled on Tarth. All four of us.”

“No.”

“And Brienne -”

“She cannot marry him, I will not see her raped, I will not -”

“I told her no.” Hysterical laughter bubbled up in her throat. “She thinks I’d kill her if she insisted upon it, actually, and so we are exiled and Brienne is to remain unwed. Or not, if she doesn’t wish it.”

Jaime stared at her with something approaching horror. “You risked our children for her.”

“No. I risked nothing, I refused to give up anything. And because it pleased her, she let me.” Bitterness lodged in her throat. “I hate it here, Jaime. I hate the Dragon Queen, I hate these halls, these people.”

“Well, we won’t have to stay here long. Not if we’re in exile.” He sounded bemused, and stared at her like she might even now decide to try her hand at fratricide. “Did you speak to Brienne about this at all?”

“The Dragon Queen’s summoned her, too.”

“I…well. Well.”

Vicious joy sang in her heart as he kissed her.

===

He expected Brienne to be surprised. Perhaps she’d weep, though not for the loss of being Lady Baratheon, he knew. He didn’t expect her to go white and look between the two of them like they’d tried to kill her. “You did what?”

“Stop being so missish,” Cersei said. “The Queen asked me for an honest opinion, and so, as her loyal vassal, I gave her one.”

“You’ve never been loyal to anyone or anything but a Lannister,” Brienne said. “What have you done? What’s to become of me, did you think of that at all?”

“You’ll go back to Tarth with us, I expect.”

He knew Brienne believed Cersei then - not her prediction, but her tone, that studied carelessness she was so skilled at affecting. He half believed her himself; it seemed like the sort of thing she’d assume without ever stopping to consider Brienne’s own wants or needs.

Except of course that she was his damned sister, the other part of his soul, and he knew better than to trust her lies. “I wasn’t consulted for this,” he told her. “I’d ask that you would - be patient. If you do want to marry Gendry -”

“I don’t!”

“Well, then, Tarth it is, I suppose.”

He knew the smile wasn’t fooling her, nor the warmth in his tone when he said, “That is, if my lady allows it.”

“Oh, come off,” she said. “Yes, fine, I’ll start preparations. By the way - your daughter’s here.”

It was a perfectly executed blow. Cersei gasped, but she couldn’t berate Brienne for not telling them that first, as Brienne was already on her way out. They had to wait there in agony for a servant to bring Myrcella to them, more tanned than she had been and tired from the road, and looking at Jaime like -

Like she knew, like perhaps she didn’t hate him. She’d been apart from Tommen from some time now, and they could no longer be counted on to have basically identical opinions.

“Myrcella,” Cersei said, rushing to her. Myrcella sobbed and let Cersei pull her into an embrace. “I missed you so much, darling, I wanted to bring you back sooner, I’m so sorry, we will fix this, I will fix this for us, the Dragon Bitch can’t take you from me again, I swear it. I swear it.”

She didn’t speak. She barely cried. It was only when Jaime joined them, when he tentatively touched Myrcella’s shoulder, that she looked up at him and said, “I didn’t want to go.”

For a moment he thought Cersei might slap her. He watched her fingers become claws, a vicious anger flash in her eyes. But the fight in her, for now, was dampened. She said, “I know, darling. But you are truly our daughter now, do you see? And that means -”

“A prince of Dorne is not for me.”

“Yes,” Jaime said. “But it also means you won’t ever be murdered for your potential claim to the Iron Throne: so you see, there are benefits as well.”

Myrcella pulled away from them, but only to look around the room. “Blue,” she said, taking in the wall hangings and Brienne’s own cloak. “What is this? They told me they were taking me to the maid’s rooms. I thought it was a joke.”

Of course the Dragon Queen’s men hadn’t bothered explaining anything. “The maid in question is the Maid of Tarth. She’s our…host.”

“Jaime’s liege lady,” Cersei said, muting most - or half - of the biting sarcasm she normally imbued the statement with.

“Oh.” Myrcella’s gaze moved between them. “But I thought - well. I know you’re…you and Mother -”

“It’s not something you need concern yourself with,” Jaime said, as gently as he could. “She is honorable and good; you can trust her.”

“That’s good.” She stepped away from them both. “I’m told there is a room for me. I’ll go there now, and prepare myself for dinner.”

And thus Jaime found himself summarily dismissed. “She’s grown,” he said.

“Girls always do, when they’re sold for parts.”

“That’s not what I -”

“Meant. No, I know. Nevertheless.”

“Can she and Tommen be happy with us?”

“On Tarth? They’ve scarce seen the like. I couldn’t say. They’ll be bored, certainly, and if they find Lady Brienne as infuriating as I do -”

“She’s not going to fuck our children, so there’s not much you can predict there.”

Cersei stopped dead and stared at Jaime with a look he’d almost forgotten: cold, angry, and heart-stoppingly dangerous. “I’m going to do us both a favor, and forget you said that,” she said.

He wanted to keep fighting. He wanted to say, will you? or you find me infuriating, too, and look how we’ve ended up, or just simply fuck me, let her walk in on you fucking me. But he knew people would be in and out preparing for their trip - servants, Brienne, maybe even Tommen, if they let him out of his not-quite-prison-cell. He bit back his venom and his flirting and said, “Tyrion told me that a few of our belongings from prior to the invasion were saved. You may want to see if you can find them, and ensure they’re brought back with us.”

“Anything of value?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Leave it,” Cersei spat, and stormed off.

He had no idea what he’d done. It was starting to become a distressingly normal state for him.

Later, he returned to their rooms to find Brienne sitting at her writing desk, scribbling something out with a scowl on her face. “Sailors acting up?”

She froze, a blush rising in her cheeks. When she looked at him, it seemed she’d had to exert great effort to do so - like he was a head on a pike, maybe. “Ser Jaime.”

“No, it’s not that. Hm. Maids stealing silver? Bannermen waging war for your hand?”

He realized it was a mistake right as he said it. She flinched and looked away. “That would hardly signify. It seems I’m not to be married after all; your sister saw to that.”

“Technically speaking, the Dragon Queen saw to it.”

“Do you know what she told me?” Brienne burst out, whirling on him.

His tongue felt stuck to the roof of his mouth. He could hardly dare speak. The way she advanced on him - it was like when they’d fought, like when they’d fucked, yet not at all like either of those things. He wanted her. Now, during her engagement, the first fucking time he’d seen her - he wanted her. It was only getting worse with time, not better, following an arc that was exactly like his love for Cersei and yet nothing like it at all.

“She told me I’d lied to her.” She said it like a snarl, the echo of a battle cry. “She told me that when I’d said, no, I have no family to object to the union, I have no ties that might make the marriage false - she told me she knew I’d lied, and when I asked how, she said Cersei Lannister was a tie, that Jaime Lannister was another tie. Can you imagine?”

He could, unfortunately, damn his sister and the Dragon Queen both. “Well. At least now you don’t have to marry that blacksmith.”

She stared at him, eyes wide, nostrils flaring. Even in her fury, Cersei was always beautiful. She made sure of it. Brienne wasn’t beautiful just now, only magnificent.

“Get out. Get out!”

Jaime obeyed with haste, before she took it in her head to throw him out herself.

===

She supposed it had been foolish to imagine Brienne would want to go back to Tarth. Cersei didn’t want to, after all, and her other option was a jail cell.

Still. It rankled, the ungratefulness, the clear fury in her gaze every time she looked at Cersei. Cersei had let her have Jaime! She’d saved her from a marriage with a ridiculous upstart. She’d done everything for Brienne, and in return, Brienne switched between stilted politeness and avoiding Cersei altogether.

She wasn’t cruel, though. When they returned to Tarth, Cersei and Jaime occupied a set of apartments clearly meant for a family; their children slept in two adjoining chambers, vastly less grand even than Tommen’s prison cell at the Keep, but nicer than most of the rooms in Evenfall. They were just down the hall from Brienne herself, so Cersei knew it wasn’t a snub. She could live here - not happily, she’d never be happy here, but it would do while the children recovered and she worked out what her next move should be.

If - if - Brienne stopped being so beastly all the time.

“I just don’t see what she thinks we could have done differently,” Cersei said one night over dinner. The four of them usually took food in their rooms; the few dinners they’d attempted in the hall had gone very poorly. Apparently Cersei and Jaime were a common enough sight that no one had much cared about seeing them together, but the addition of two children led to staring and whispers, even when Brienne ordered the servants to behave.

“Is that really an appropriate topic for dinner?” Jaime said mildly.

He meant, of course, that he thought they probably shouldn’t have fucked Brienne, and that they definitely shouldn’t be discussing it in front of their children. Cersei didn’t roll her eyes, because she knew how important good examples for the children really were. “Darling, I don’t want Tommen and Myrcella to be in the dark about why our relationship with your liege is so strained.”

“I hadn’t noticed it,” Tommen said. “She’s brilliant at teaching us.”

“Teaching you?”

“Sure. Swordplay, knives. Of course, Ser Jaime is also skilled, but -”

“Brienne still has her sword hand,” Jaime said. He managed to sound drolly amused, as though he didn’t care - as though losing it hadn’t made him vastly less of a man. “Don’t worry; she’s keeping Myrcella to daggers, for now.”

“The most ladylike weapon would be nothing at all.”

“Oh, but I don’t want that!” Myrcella sounded downright uncouth. “In Dorne -”

“We’re not in Dorne.”

“Well, on Tarth, there are women who fight, and I’d like to at least know the basics. Please, Mama, it’s not as if I’m going to be married now that everyone knows we’re -”

“Myrcella.” That was Tommen, with the particular strangled tone that meant they’d discussed this very problem when their parents were out of earshot.

Myrcella stopped talking, but she sighed with that specific tone that meant Cersei would be hearing more about it later. Fine. “Do whatever you like,” she said, trying her best to sound uncaring. “I’m sure it doesn’t matter, as you said.”

Later, when they’d sent the children to bed, Jaime said, “You miss her.”

“Miss who?”

“You know who.”

“I missed you, when you were panting after her in King’s Landing.”

“Liar.”

She was lying. She’d enjoyed it, and she’d wanted more of it. At the time, fucking Brienne had been diverting. But now -

She couldn’t miss what she held no affection for, and thus, she did not miss Brienne. “Fuck off, Jaime,” she said, and tried to ignore his laughter.

He’d planted a seed in her, though he likely didn’t realize it. She found herself annoyed with Brienne after that, and thinking about it every time she thought about her at all - which, since they were in Evenfall, was almost all the time. She simply disliked having been dismissed in favor of grunting around with farmers and conferring with common sailors. After all, when they’d first been here, Brienne had barely been willing to let them out of her sight. The children were an effective leash, Cersei would give her that, but the presumption of weakness positively rankled. She wasn’t weak; by extension, neither was Jaime. Brienne behaved incredibly presumptuously for someone with hardly any fortune, who’d had her marriage taken by a simple conversation between two higher-born women.

She hated it. She’d been furious with Brienne back in King’s Landing, and she’d carried that anger back to Tarth. It was the least Brienne could do, really, to stop being such a coward and let Cersei aim that anger at her.

Fortunately, Cersei had quite a bit of practice at hunting down people who wanted to avoid her. Brienne might be a wildly different target from Father, but the same strategies worked. It only took three tries before Brienne walked into the baths at the right time and caught Cersei riding Jaime in the very tub Brienne preferred to use.

“Oh, for - yes, hello, how many people did you have to bribe to ensure I’d be the only one who walked in?”

“Not many,” Cersei said, clenching around Jaime’s cock at the sight of Brienne’s hands curling into fists. “Keep going.”

“I don’t know how I didn’t suspect something like this. I really should have. You were so focused on fucking in here.”

“Keep. Going,” Cersei said, and slapped him for emphasis.

“I owe you an apology,” Jaime said.

Cersei looked over his shoulder at the recipient of Jaime’s lovely manners. She stood there half naked, ungainly. Ugly. Cersei’s whole body thrilled to see her.

“You should give it when you’re not -”

“Deep inside me?” Cersei supplied when Brienne trailed off. “Well, come in or get out; we’re not leaving.” And she bore down on Jaime, fucking him as hard as she could given the water.

“Why did you do that?” Jaime said once she’d gone.

“Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy it.”

“I didn’t!”

She grabbed a fistful of his hair, feeling him jump to attention inside her. “Don’t lie to me. I feel you, I felt you, not for one second did you become less interested in all this. Quite the contrary.”

“Just because I want -”

“Her, you want to fuck her, and she’s a stubborn ass who can’t even see what I saved her from. No, don’t speak.” Jaime closed his mouth with a click of teeth. “We’re here because of her. Maybe she ought to be made to understand what she should be getting from that.”

He gasped and came deep inside her. She wound up bringing herself off, still sitting in his lap, impatient to be done now that she’d gotten what she wanted: his seed, his obedience, and Brienne, her wide hurt eyes lurking in the back of Cersei’s mind.

===

“I really am sorry,” Jaime said the next day.

Tommen and Myrcella had been sent off after their usual lessons, but Brienne and Jaime remained, trading off footwork critique. It was Jaime’s turn, and he executed a backwards movement after lobbing his apology at her.

“You can’t help your sister. Weight’s still off, you keep pulling your knee out to your right.”

He’d done that with a sword in his right hand, and it had mattered much less then. He sighed. “Thank you. And I might not be able to help her, but it’s been a long time. I should have recognized what she was up to, and I didn’t.”

“Should you?” And oh, fuck, she looked hurt in a way he fucking hated to see, even more knowing it was his fault. “It has been a long time. She was always - you were always -”

“Hers? Brienne, no.”

She looked away.

A kind of madness seized him then. He had no sword, only a stick, but he knelt and propped it up anyway in the usual gesture of fealty. “I owe you my life. You’re not my liege in truth and we both know it; would you like to change that? I am hers and she is mine, but we are very thoroughly yours. You know that.”

“Get up.” Terror laced through her voice as clearly as if she were an fox chased down by the king’s dogs. “Stop that. Stop it!”

He hadn’t meant it when he’d knelt, but that had changed as soon as he’d started talking. Of course he’d swear to her; of course he could do nothing else. “Brienne of Tarth, Evenstar, Lady Tarth, I swear to you my sword and my hearth, all the wealth I have. Everything I am is yours. I will be loyal to you until I die.”

“Get up.”

Jaime didn’t move.

“Damn you. Damn you. I accept your oath, now rise.”

He felt lighter when he stood, even though she was indeed upset, and he couldn’t comfort her as he might Cersei. He said, “Does that clarify things?”

“Not even a little.” She wiped tears from her eyes, blew a great honking sneeze into her handkerchief. “I think we’re done for the day.”

A thrill went through him when he realized that he couldn’t argue. He’d sworn an oath, after all. “Yes, my lady,” he said. He let her leave without him; she clearly needed some time to come to terms with what he’d done.

When he told Cersei, she looked at him with contempt she normally reserved for pageboys who spilled her wine. “You’re an idiot.”

“How? Why? I just made it clearer, it’s not like I wasn’t already -”

“But you weren’t.”

“I owe her my life. Your life. Our children -”

“Brienne of Tarth drank tales of Nymeria and the age of heroes from her mother’s tits instead of milk,” Cersei said, over-pronouncing every word like she thought he truly had taken a blow to the head. “She doesn’t care about informal arrangements. She probably doesn’t even care about your feelings. I’d wager she assumed we’d move on eventually, that your sense of obligation would fade. But now you’ve sworn an oath. That’s law to her. Stop being an idiot and think, you know she cares more about oaths than some unspoken, noble life debt between the two of you.”

Oh. That was a good point, actually. But - “I’m an oathbreaker.” He forced himself to smile at his sister, the only recipient of an oath he’d never broken. “Kingslayer, all that. So you see, it really shouldn’t matter. She’d be a fool to think I’d keep this oath, after forsaking so many others.”

“She loves you: she’s a fool.”

“And nothing I say can dissuade you of this?”

“Bring her to dinner. Let me see her look at you indifferently. I’d believe it then.”

Jaime knew just as well as Cersei did that Brienne wasn’t capable of looking at either of them with indifference. He sighed. “Well, what do you want me to do, then?”

She looked more like a snake than a lion when she smiled. “Break your oath. Take the children with me to Casterly Rock. Claim what’s yours by birth, what’s ours.”

“From Tyrion? I would never. He’s got a whole scheme to keep us rich, remember?”

“Take us anyway.”

It sunk in later than it should have. Break your oath. “You want me to say I’ll honor my oath. Why?”

“Why not? Won’t you?”

“Of course I will,” Jaime snapped. “I was discussing hypotheticals. I’m not taking the Rock from Tyrion and I’m not abandoning Brienne, either, but why make me deny it at all?”

“Maybe I just think it’s funny.”

“Your sense of humor isn’t that good.”

“True. I did want to hear you say it, though.” She kissed his cheek. “Dorne won’t bend the knee without a war, and Baelish seeks to convince the Arryns that the Starks have abandoned them. There are plenty of wars for you both to run off and fight. I won’t be made a widow on an island that stinks of goats because of your devotion to honor.”

“You’re already a widow.”

“Don’t argue technicalities with me!”

“What do you propose I do, then?”

“Convince her to fuck you again. She’ll stay if she thinks it would hurt her dependents to leave.”

“I’m not her -”

Cersei fixed him with a flat look. Oh, fine. “I’ll try. I can’t promise more than that.”

“Good.” She kissed him cruelly, with more than a hint of teeth. “I’ve sent her a note in your hand, saying we’re to dine with her tonight. You’ll dress handsomely and bring her a gift.”

“Where the fuck am I supposed to get a gift?”

“You’ll think of something,” she said.

She swept out of the room then, always loving a grand exit, leaving Jaime to feel like a fool.

===

Brienne had clearly grasped that dinner wasn’t just three adults eating in a room together. She wore a tunic with the sigil of her house, more finely woven than anything Jaime had seen her in before. Tarth’s color might be sapphire, but the tunic was a deep green-blue; it looked beautiful on her. Her breeches had been closely tailored and made her long, strong legs seem even more monstrously powerful than usual. On her feet she wore supple boots, again of the highest quality tailoring. Jaime lasted through the first round of wine before he said, “I didn’t even know you owned clothes this lovely.”

The turquoise of her tunic worked wonderfully with her blush, too. “Since I returned, I’ve been told it would be fitting of my station to be able to - dress the part.”

“I suppose any other woman would need to bind her breasts to convincingly play the Evenstar.” Cersei beamed venom across the table.

And Jaime decided that he hadn’t sworn any oaths to watch his mouth. “I recall you quite liking her breasts, small as they are,” he said. It was practically a whisper, but both women heard it - and to his delight, Cersei flushed with shock.

Brienne, of course, looked likely to catch fire. “Ser, I’ll ask you not to discuss that.”

Ask. Not order. “Of course, my lady,” he said. “I didn’t think it was a sensitive topic, since we’ve all…enjoyed them. But of course such things are best reserved for after dinner.”

“Jaime. What are you doing?”

He was positively overjoyed to hear her say his name. Oh dear. “Making conversation.”

“Barely,” Cersei said.

“I’m inclined to agree. Stop discussing my - my breasts, please.”

How could he, when he could see them peaking even now, betraying that she hadn’t worn any sort of undershirt - had probably thought she didn’t need it. “Of course, my lady.”

They made true conversation after that, awkward though it was, about Tarth’s preparations for winter, and Evenfall’s need for renovations, and Brienne’s own work with the long-neglected accounting books. None of the stewards had tried to cheat her father, she explained, but it had been ten months’ time between Selwyn Tarth’s death and Brienne’s own arrival, thanks to the chaotic nature of the Queen’s conquest. Bookkeeping had fallen by the wayside; there was much to do.

He was halfway through inquiring about her plans for trading with the North when Cersei said, “This is one of the most boring conversations I’ve ever had to sit through,” and kissed Brienne.

It was a mean kiss and Jaime hated how aroused he was, instantly, just from seeing Brienne gasp and Cersei dig her fingers into her shoulder to keep her from jerking away. His other half did what he couldn’t, playing the bully and the rogue as he’d once threatened to. It was bad enough that he thought it made a pretty picture, but Brienne loved it, he could tell she did. She moaned into the kiss, all her long, lean muscles tense as Cersei fucked her with her tongue.

“There,” she said, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. “Now, you were saying? Something about trading grain for cloth. You realize the North has naught but homespun.”

“They’re good leather-workers,” Brienne said. “I had thought to equip our sailors a bit better, as the Queen is interested in increasing trade across the Narrow Sea, and - what are you doing?”

Cersei paused from where she’d been leaning into Jaime’s arms. “Kissing my brother. What does it look like?”

“Don’t -” But it was too late; Cersei’s lips met Jaime’s, and of course he couldn’t push her away. He felt her smiling against his mouth as she sneaked a hand down to squeeze his cock.

“I really don’t think this is appropriate.”

“Oh, stop being such a miss,” Cersei said. “We’re having a private dinner. No one can see us. We’re on an island so unremarkable even the Spider didn’t bother with more than a few informants. What are you so afraid of?”

Brienne looked between them and didn’t respond.

Cersei squeezed the back of Jaime’s neck. “Kiss her.”

“I don’t kiss the unwilling,” Jaime said, for that was how Brienne looked: frightened, annoyed, flushed not with arousal but with embarrassment.

“She’s not unwilling.”

“Cersei, don’t -”

“Don’t what? Lie? Brienne, do you want my brother to kiss you?”

“Cersei -”

“Answer the question, dear.”

Brienne stared at the table. “Yes.”

“Kiss her.”

He could tell his sister no, he could, but perhaps not when it was something he wanted so badly. He did his best to smile as he said, “I have a better idea. Brienne, if you’d like to kiss me, please do.”

He was certain she wouldn’t do so. This was Cersei’s cruel game, not hers; he couldn’t imagine a version of Brienne who would steal a kiss from him, much less in front of his cruel sister.

But Brienne had always been so much more than he could imagine. Now was no different. She set her jaw mulishly - charming, it was always so charming, just like everything else she did - and grabbed him, strong fingers in his hair, broad arms pulling him forward.

It wasn’t as clumsy a kiss as it had been a month ago. His knees trembled by the end of it.

“Good,” Cersei said when she’d finished. “Now, go back to talking about your leather-working.”

Brienne looked utterly unconvinced that Cersei was done, but she did as Cersei bade. Jaime did his best to participate in the conversation, which even Cersei dropped interjections into every now and then. But he would die long before he admitted to Brienne that the whole time they spoke, Cersei’s hand crawled along his thigh, not enough to do anything other than keep him in a tortured state of need.

They fucked as soon as they got back to their room, unheeding of any servant who might hear. Jaime had Cersei bent over a table when she gasped, “What do you think she’d have done - if you grabbed her. Got on your knees. Ate her out right there.”

His chest lurched just to think of it, and he fucked her harder, brutally, biting the back of her neck. She moaned. “She’d tell me to stop. She’d want it. Fuck, she was wet. I know she was.”

“Next time I’ll tell you to do it.” She reached between them, touching herself, and came screaming on his cock.

He spilled inside only moments later. He hadn’t asked if she’d been ensuring she wouldn’t become pregnant. He almost didn’t want to ask; he almost wanted another child. One who’d grow up as his child, yes, and one who’d grow up on Tarth, knowing Brienne.

Damn him, curse him by the old gods and new. He wanted it.

===

After a month in Tarth, Cersei began to think that perhaps they wouldn’t need to leave as soon as she’d initially assumed. Jaime being sworn to Brienne helped, of course; Brienne was too dull to callously throw them out. But additionally, via her own correspondence with Olenna Tyrell and Jaime’s letters with Tyrion, she was discovering the convenience of a location too remote to bother with yet close enough by raven to still receive updated news. It might do for a few years, she thought, at least until Dorne had declared war or declined to do so.

And then fucking Littlefinger arrived.

Brienne hadn’t been warned; of that, Cersei had no doubt. Leaving aside that Brienne was utterly incapable of lying or even omitting information, everyone from Evenfall’s housekeeper to the lowest scullery maid was sent scrambling when they spotted his banner on the noon boat. Before he opened his pointy little mouth, Cersei knew he intended trouble.

“Lady Tarth,” he said, and bowed. “What a pleasure it is to find you here, surrounded by…friends.” He glanced at Jaime, so obviously they could see it from the Wall.

“It’s great to see you too, Lord Baelish,” Jaime said - quickly enough that Cersei knew he meant to prevent Brienne from speaking entirely, as a loyal bannerman might. “What brings you to Tarth? And don’t say ‘winter is coming’; I’ve been corresponding with the Starks too much not to see through that one.”

“You’re most amusing, Kingslayer,” Littlefinger said. “But I came to speak to Lady Brienne, of course; why else would I be here?”

“That’s up to you to say,” Jaime said. “Lady Brienne is here, as you see, but you didn’t need to bring fifty men to speak with her.”

This was Jaime as Cersei remembered him - devoted to protecting who he cared about, and diligent about protecting what he didn’t care for. He’d identified the threat and intended to make Littlefinger come up with a convincing lie. That lie would travel to the capital, so if they all wound up slaughtered in their beds, the Queen would know who’d done it.

Not particularly comforting. Cersei enjoyed her head attached to her shoulders.

“Ah, I see,” Littlefinger said. His wormy little eyes darted from Brienne to Jaime, up to the men on the wall, and finally to Cersei - who he immediately and obviously dismissed, the rat. “Well, I suppose there’s no sense in remaining duplicitous. Lady Tarth, Lady Evenstar, who defended my dear departed Lady Catelyn’s daughter Sansa, who stood against dragons and won the regard of the Dragon Queen -”

“Fuck,” Jaime muttered, and Cersei was inclined to agree.

“- I offer you my hand in marriage.”

Silence. Above them, gulls cawed.

“Is this a joke?” Brienne said. Her fingers had been resting on her pommel, as a knight’s might; now she curled her fingers around the hilt of her enormous sword, seemingly ready to play the foolish cutthroat. “Lord Baelish, I don’t know what they told you about me, but as you see, I’m not a marriageable miss. You probably ought to keep looking.”

“I was told very little about you, my lady, only that you were ugly and enormous and unsuitable for marriage.” Lord Baelish paused, clearly trying to give the impression that repeating others’ cruel words pained him in some way. Cersei, who’d used this maneuver countless times, knew he was waiting to see if Brienne flinched. “I see that such news was slander. You are very impressive, and eminently marriageable. Thus, I am here to court you, if you are amenable to such a union. I would beg a month of you to press my suit, no more.”

A month of feeding fifty-one men and enduring Littlefinger’s slimy advances was the sort of thing people declared war over. But Brienne was responsible and honorable; not a single person in this entire sad tableau could have imagined she’d deny him, Cersei least of all. And indeed, even as Cersei indulged in a fantasy of throwing him off one of Tarth’s many cliffs, Brienne bowed and said, “Lord Baelish, it would be churlish of me to deny you after you’ve traveled so far, with myself unmarried and desirous of a husband. You are welcome here.”

Damn it. “Desirous?” Jaime muttered next to her.

“She’s polite,” Cersei said, and smiled as Littlefinger again looked at her.

The game of thrones never really abandoned its participants, it seemed. But Tarth was small; the stakes were lower. Cersei looked forward to taking advantage of that imbalance. If Brienne married anyone, it certainly wouldn’t be the kind of man who was sure to throw Cersei and her children out on their ears. She simply would not allow it.

===

Jaime let himself in to Brienne’s study. “Don’t tell me you’re going to allow him to court you.”

“You already know what I’m going to say.”

“But -”

“I told him I would entertain his suit.”

“No, you didn’t. You said you were desirous of a husband, that’s completely different. I’m desirous of a new hand, but I wouldn’t let someone sew a horse hoof on.”

Brienne shook her head. “There’s no way I can push him away now. Everyone on Tarth knows I’m unmarried. It weakens my position -”

“You’re the lawful ruler! You don’t need a husband. The Dragon Queen made sure of that.” And fuck, it had been one of the only things he’d thought laudable, something that gave him hope for the Seven Kingdoms’ future. If even Brienne repudiated it - no, he couldn’t think of that.

“Hosting him doesn’t mean I have to marry him.”

“And now you sound like the naive one.” Jaime shook his head, trying and, he was sure, failing to hide his disgust. “Littlefinger won’t courteously smile and bow out of the horse race when you reject him. He’ll try to kill you. He’ll attack your household - which includes my family. You’re endangering a lot of people.”

“And what do you think would have happened if I’d sent him away?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re right that he’s dangerous. Everyone knows that. He does not behave honorably. But what if I’d sent him away? It would be a violation of hospitality. It would be cruel to his soldiers. And he’d come back, because he is interested in women who don’t want him. I might be big and ugly, but I still have an island. And I have you and Cersei, which just makes me an even bigger target.”

He said the first thing that came to mind, unfortunately. “You don’t have us.”

“Don’t I? You’re sworn to me, and she’s -”

“Not sworn to me.” The words tasted like ashes in his mouth. “Not even a little bit, which we both well know.”

“Devoted to you,” Brienne said softly. “And devoted to her children. I know you think she’d leave you. I know she did leave you. But insomuch as she has a north star, it’s the children. And it’s you.”

Damn her. Damn him, too. Damn everyone and everything. He wanted so desperately for it to be true, even though he knew perfectly well that Cersei had no north star, not even her children. “That’s not the point. Littlefinger will press his suit; how do you plan to deal with it?”

“I’ll reject him. I’m well within my rights. Maybe I’ll challenge him to a fight and unman him.”

“Do you mean cut off his -”

“I mean disarm him!” She didn’t laugh, but he did.

“You think that will work? When you beat me, I was only more interested.”

“Littlefinger’s perverse in completely different ways.”

And that was the end of it, he realized wearily. She wouldn’t bend on this, and he couldn’t make her. He might want to bundle her up and carry her off to a sept, but he couldn’t -

Oh, fuck.

“I have to go,” he said, and stumbled out of her study half-blind before she’d given her leave. It rang in his ears, throbbed in his blood, as he walked back to their rooms. He would carry her off to a sept. Well, he would and he wouldn’t; he didn’t want to do that to Cersei. But he would and gladly, if it would protect them. The three of them.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Cersei was writing a letter when he returned. “Cersei. Would you like to go for a walk?”

“Is this about Littlefinger? He’ll run screaming as soon as he realizes how easy it is to get lost in her cunt, don’t worry.”

“You ran screaming towards her when you realized that,” Jaime all but snarled. “And that’s not why! Just - a walk. Around the gardens. Please?”

“Do you think that’s wise?”

“I think a Baratheon ass will never sit on the Iron Throne again, so our actions don’t matter.”

Cersei pursed her lips. “A Lannister might.”

“If Tyrion’s issue marries into royalty, it’s hardly our concern.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

Jaime shrugged. Their children would be safe; he didn’t care about what happened to the throne so long as that was true.

“Fine; a walk. Offer me your arm.”

They strolled silently for a time. Jaime couldn’t get the image of Littlefinger pressing his suit out of his mind, and he couldn’t stop noticing the little changes since he’d shown up: Baelish retainers running to and fro, harried-looking servants working at double pace, and wary soldiers around every corner. Weeks, perhaps months of this. He wasn’t sure he could stand it.

“…doesn’t matter, does it? She’s in bed with both of them.”

Cersei stopped dead and, utterly silent, pulled Jaime behind a thick hedge. The men continued talking, only a bend in the path away from them. Jaime could hear them clear as day when one said, “That can’t be true. Both of ’em? You expect me to think the Kingslayer can be cunt-struck by anyone except his sister?”

Fucking Littlefinger. It was his men out there, and Jaime found his hand straying to his sword hilt before he’d even thought of it, preparing to step out and challenge them.

“Don’t you dare,” Cersei hissed, nearly silent. Her fingernails dug into his arm, the message clear: step out and she’d kill him herself. He was forced to stay there, trembling with fury, as the first man said, “I don’t pretend to know what’s going on in the Kingslayer’s head. Who’d sleep with that bitch of a sister of his, anyway? She’s not right in the head. But she must be pretty fucking sweet between the legs. That’s what they say, you know, I heard it from Lord Baelish himself. They’re all three fucking and the Tarth bitch won’t give it up for a dragon’s horde of gold.”

“Why’s we here then? There’s other unwed ladies.”

“None that control a fucking island, idiot. That’s why we’re here. He’ll make her see sense. Oi, is that a blueberry bush?” And finally, they were moving down the path again.

Cersei made him wait until they were long gone, wait until his cold rage warmed from the press of her body, wait until his cock was hard and desperate to prove that he wasn’t who they’d said he was.

Not that fucking Cersei would prove that. But it was the principle of it all. They’d made it sound so crass, dishonored Brienne so thoroughly -

“Let’s keep going,” Cersei said.

He knew better than to complain about his condition. He followed her lead, stepping back into the sunlight with her. She looked the very picture of serenity, golden and perfect. They’d dishonored her, too. He would kill them for it. He would.

“You’re not going to do anything,” Cersei said, soft and sweet. She might have been telling him about Tommen’s new calligraphy set.

“What he said about her, about you -”

“About you, too.” She smiled and tilted her face towards the sun. “It’s funny, don’t you think? Speculating on the state of my cunt is dishonor, but speculating that you’re cunt-struck is, what? A challenge?”

“I don’t care.”

“And I don’t care about them. But of course, I’ll kill them for you, darling.” At his scoff, she smiled. “Try telling Lady Brienne that she can’t defend you. What do you think she’ll say?”

And of course he knew the answer to that, as undeniably as he knew he was a Lannister. “Honor demands my defense; I’m sworn to her. But -”

“Stop arguing. Honor does demand it, and so we’ll pass this information on, and wait. And when those men meet a bloody end, you’ll know that it isn’t just men who take offense when their family is slandered.”

Jaime was a fool; he’d already known that. But he truly must have lost his mind between King’s Landing and Tarth, because suddenly all he wanted to ask was whether or not she meant Brienne, too. If he was cunt-struck, it wasn’t just by one of them. Would Cersei kill the men just for calling him so, or would she kill them for their slander of Brienne too? Did she understand how he felt? Would she let Brienne live if she did?

He couldn’t ask. He was too much of a coward.

===

It was a shame she couldn’t share her triumph with anyone else. By the end of their little walk, her brother was very convinced that she intended to murder Littlefinger’s men, rather than Littlefinger himself.

The rumors about their relationship had been circulating for ages now. At first Cersei had been enraged, as anyone would by the implication that they’d lower themselves to fuck a woman so ugly she was barely a woman. But of course, Cersei had fucked her several times now. She had refused the Dragon Queen’s attempt to make her sacrifice her. And Jaime was tied to her, damn him, damn them both. Rumors might continue to fly; there was more truth to them than the gossips knew. But Cersei would not allow Littlefinger, of all people, to make her feel threatened by rumors. Not again, not here, where little was at stake except a pile of rocks and some goat-herders.

But of course it would take preparation. None of the people Cersei might turn to for help in such delicate matters were available to her in Tarth. She had to go walking for several days, mingle with villagers, and finally bribe one - a woman named Juva, whose husband apparently thought Jaime Lannister wasn’t so bad as the others said - to direct her to someone who might help.

The person in question wasn’t a maester. She was a woman who lived at the base of the mountains, neither young nor old. A witch, Juva had said, and Cersei had smiled and not called her small-minded as she’d wanted to.

But just now she was reconsidering it, for the woman in question gave her a goblet that was smoking from some mysterious berry, and said, “Drink up.”

“Do you take me for a fool? I will not.”

“Then I won’t give you what you ask for.”

“Do you not care about the Lady Tarth? She’s in very real danger right now.”

“When that fancy lord dies they’re going to ask who had cause to kill him.” The witch shrugged. “You’ll find a way to do it. Most won’t be as safe as what I can give you. But I still need to make sure you won’t run tattling at the first sign of danger, after. I’ve heard tales of you Lannisters, you know.”

“So you’ll poison me first? No. I’m not going to.”

“Then leave. But it’s not poison; it’s a binding. You won’t be able to tell anyone of me for all your days.”

The implication hung heavily in the air. If Cersei was caught and beaten, if she was tortured and raped, she could never point the finger anywhere else. If Jaime were here, he’d do something stupid, laugh and try to steal from her or challenge her for implying Cersei was a liar. If Brienne were here, she’d hotly protest that she would never sell out someone she’d done business with. But only Cersei stood in the hut, and so she said, “Yes, yes, I understand. You’re right to be cautious,” and drank the potion.

It tasted disgusting but didn’t strike her dead. Mere moments later, she’d paid the witch and received a packet of powder in return. It was a slow-acting poison, which came with its own risks. If Littlefinger decided to order someone’s execution in the three days between drinking it and it killing him, she’d be powerless to stop him. But when it did kill him, it would simply look like his heart had given out. “Usually strikes ’em when they’re asleep,” the witch had said.

Cersei didn’t trust her. But she was out of options, and she did trust that the people of Tarth loved their ugly Evenstar. So she took the potion.

“I’m having Littlefinger for dinner,” she told Jaime that night. “Tomorrow. You should keep Brienne occupied during that time.”

He nearly choked on his food. “Occupied. Do you mean -”

The children were gone, so she let herself enjoy the moment as he blushed and stuttered. “Whatever it takes to keep her out of here.”

“Right. I can do that.” He frowned. “Wait, why are you having Littlefinger for dinner?”

“Perhaps I intend to marry him.”

He dropped his fork.

“Don’t be a fool, of course I don’t. I’m just hoping to help him…understand his position here.”

Jaime was so bad at hiding when he was feeling skeptical. “Right. What is his position? His men are acting like they already own the place, and he’s got more money than Brienne.”

“Not more than we do.” Tyrion had seen to that, one of the only decent things he’d ever done with his life.

“He might be able to change that.”

She couldn’t quite suppress her smile. “He won’t.”

“Cersei. What are you planning?”

“Nothing you need concern yourself with, dear brother,” she said, and kissed him.

Littlefinger answered her summons with assent, as she’d known he would. He arrived with three men, all of whom he ensured Cersei saw before leaving them to stand outside the door. Cersei had worn one of her newer gowns for the occasion, and had had her hair put up in the most complex style the maid knew. She was still a shade of her former self, reduced from the glory of the Queen to a dowdy backwoods pretender. But even on her worst day, she outshone Littlefinger, and she knew it.

“Lord Baelish, how lovely of you to come.”

“Lady Cersei. I’m delighted to see you.”

Liar. “Please, sit. Will you have wine?”

He would, of course, and she poured him some, into the glass on her own side of the table. Her own glass she filled even more than his.

He did not refuse her, as she’d known he wouldn’t. He didn’t refuse the meal she’d had set out either, great steaks of boar and rich, sweet bread. It was a meal beyond price in Tarth, which almost allowed them to pretend summer wasn’t fading.

His, of course, would taste a bit bitter. He’d likely blame the wine. Cersei had instructed her seasoning powder be distributed all over the boar on his plate.

“Tell me, Lady Cersei,” he said, chewing a slice of poisoned meat, “what do you hope to gain from this meeting?”

“What a question. I hardly know, Lord Baelish. I only sought you out since company is so lacking on this island.”

“Really? How interesting. My men tell me you’ve had quite a bit of company since coming here.”

“Unless you hired them when you arrived, I’m not sure how they’d know.”

“Word travels, my lady. I’m sure you’re well aware of that.”

“How quickly rumors travel often depends on how scandalous they are. I doubt rumors of my company are considered interesting. It’s a matter of public record now that Jaime and I are in love.”

“Well, that you fucked, anyway.” He smiled, narrow, pretending at friendliness in that way he did so well. She couldn’t respond in kind. Her face felt frozen in a half smile. You fucked, he said, about the relationship that had given her children. You fucked - she thought of Joffrey, of Myrcella nearly lost to them, of the pain in Jaime’s face every time one of their children had called Robert father.

You fucked.

“Be that as it may,” she finally managed to say, “those rumors aren’t new and they aren’t rumors. Why would they interest you, or anyone else, now?”

He didn’t answer.

She felt her throat close up. It had been years since she’d been truly young, years since she’d been transparent - to Robert, to her father, even to Jaime. Yet she had to fight to stay unreadable just then.

And she didn’t succeed. “You know of what I speak,” Littlefinger said.

“Leave Tarth. Run away, and no one will harm you for this.”

“For what? I thought there were no new rumors.”

“You seek to marry Lady Brienne. Surely you don’t wish to profane her.”

“Ah. So it’s true, then.”

“Of course not! Do you think I’d lower myself to fuck some horse-faced virgin whose father couldn’t even hold his arse-end-of-nowhere island against eunuch mercenaries? I’ve heard your men talking, so I know what the rumors are. They’re false. But you clearly think they’re true, and yet you’d marry her anyway. It’s pathetic.”

“What’s pathetic is that you think that’s a convincing argument, when even now you’re ready to fly into a rage. I’ll admit my…desire, for Lady Brienne and Tarth both, is a bit unconventional - but you, my lady, understand unconventional desires better than anyone, it seems. Truly your time together must be enlightening.”

“If you want titillation, Lord Baelish, go back to King’s Landing and spend some time in your brothels.”

“Imagining Lady Brienne rooting around you isn’t titillating, my lady, though I understand that it might be to you.”

She nearly threw her wine at his head. The only thing that stayed her hand was the cold knowledge of his imminent death - and, of course, the fact that he so clearly wanted her to lose her temper. Flouting Tarth’s hospitality would drive a wedge between herself and Brienne, from which Littlefinger could only benefit.

He was so transparent, and such a snake. But he was dead, she reminded herself. In three days’ time, he’d never wake up. All she had to do was wait.

So she forced herself to lower her glass and smile at him. She made herself say, “Lord Baelish, I don’t want harsh words to lie between us. Soon you may be my brother’s liege lord; let us finish today peacefully.”

He would never touch Brienne; he would never threaten Jaime. Her remaining children would be safe from his influence. It would have to be enough. They finished dinner quietly as she imagined the yellowing of his skin, the stiffening of his limbs, his servants finding him in a stinking pile of his own shit.

===

He’d really thought Cersei intended to kill Littlefinger, for all that she’d implied she’d kill his men instead. It was a disappointment to see the man still alive the next morning, standing at the edge of the practice yard while his men performed their subpar morning swordplay.

They were cutthroats; that much was obvious. Worse, they weren’t even as talented as Bronn. None of these men would ever be called Ser even sarcastically. He meant nothing good here, nothing honorable. Brienne knew it, too; he’d tried to explain it to her last night, only to be reminded of her damnable nobility when refused to be drawn into another argument.

Cersei would have never been like that. She’d have begun plotting with Jaime as soon as they saw Littlefinger’s banner on the ship. Brienne wasn’t Cersei - that was part of the appeal - but just now, for Tarth, he wished she was, even just a little bit.

But apparently Cersei wasn’t like Cersei either, for there Littlefinger stood, smug and unbearable as he watched his cutthroats go through the motions they’d presumably use to cut down every single able-bodied soldier on Tarth. He was positively the picture of health. Jaime didn’t understand it; he’d been so sure he’d hear the alarm that Lord Baelish had died.

“I really thought you meant to kill him,” he said that afternoon.

Brienne, who had been cajoled into snubbing Littlefinger for an hour, fumbled her teacup.

“You think a lot of wrongheaded things,” Cersei said. She was hardly paying attention to him, absorbed in the letter Tyrion had sent. He must’ve mentioned money, then.

“Yes, but -”

“This is not a conversation I would like to be witness to!” Brienne said.

Mischief possessed him. “Then come kiss me.”

Brienne huffed and glared at him, the very picture of startled honor. He smiled at her, cheeky, relieved to be distracted.

“I will not!” she said, too late to be convincing.

“You might as well.” Cersei pulled out a sheet of paper. “I’m going to be busy over here for awhile.”

The moment hung in the air like the sea-salt scent of King’s Landing after a decade of summer: indelible, unavoidable, not entirely pleasant. Jaime’s first thought was a kind of wondering at Cersei’s perversity. His second thought was that Cersei’s perversity was his, and gods, he wanted it. Wanted them.

And Brienne didn’t say no. Oh, she didn’t say yes, but she stared at Cersei and then Jaime with wide eyes, eager and repulsed in equal measure. Jaime wanted to yell then: choose us, say yes to us, let me touch you. But he couldn’t, he didn’t, and after a moment the suggestion became stale. Cersei said, “Pity,” and began writing her letter.

That night, he said, “What would you have done if she’d said yes?”

“You’d have to say yes too, you know.”

“I’ll always say yes to that. To this.”

“That and this aren’t the same, Jaime.”

“No, but my answer is.” He should say more - he needed to say more. He was desperate to ensure she understood, even though he knew it was impossible, that a soul split in half would never truly know itself.

“She wouldn’t have said yes, so it doesn’t matter.” A touch of viciousness there. “I won’t discuss it further.”

Jaime didn’t want to discuss it; he wanted to fuck about it. But Cersei had turned away from him; there was nothing else he could say.

In the morning, Littlefinger was dead.

They were awakened by shouts that started outside their door and continued inside it, as one of Littlefinger’s cutthroats made to kill Cersei. Brienne was there, sword drawn, and she yanked the man back before being attacked by another -

And Tommen and Myrcella ran out of their rooms, both armed, as Cersei screamed -

And Jaime drew his sword and killed the sell-sword as Brienne battled three more back and out of the room.

“Enough!” she roared as men of Tarth came running. “Arrest these men! And alert the Queen that Lord Baelish passed in the night, of heart issues, swear two maesters of his own retinue!”

It was an impossibly convenient heart attack, but Brienne wouldn’t lie, Jaime knew that. So it must be true; for once, they’d gotten very lucky. Brienne’s men dragged Littlefinger’s men away, and Brienne dragged Jaime and Cersei to her rooms. She closed and locked the door and turned to face them.

She looked at Jaime, a once-over to establish he wasn’t injured. He nodded.

She looked at Cersei, who raised her chin, proud and unashamed - of what she’d done, Jaime realized with awe. They weren’t so lucky after all.

Brienne’s face contorted. “You are a fool,” she said, and kissed her.

It was so satisfying to see Cersei as overwhelmed as Jaime was. Her hands clutched at Brienne and she went up on tiptoe to give as good as she got, until both of them were flushed and gasping as they broke apart. “I’m not going to apologize,” Cersei said.

“Do you think I don’t know where you got it from? Do you think I want to arrest you -”

“But you can’t,” Cersei said. “It was subtle and slow; I paid an awful lot a money for it, to someone who swore me to secrecy. I haven’t done anything at all, actually. And you can’t make me say otherwise.”

“You - you -”

“Is that all you have to say? Yes, me. I did this because you wouldn’t, because he couldn’t.”

“Hey,” Jaime said, though he had no real defense of himself. Killing Littlefinger via a sword to the back would have angered Brienne.

“He planned to force you into marriage, to take this island and everything on it - including us, including the children. You had to have known I wouldn’t allow it.”

“It hadn’t occurred to me you’d care!”

“Then you’re an idiot.”

And oh, Jaime knew that tone. She was furious and a bit hurt, and probably didn’t realize that Brienne was only relieved and determined to spare them harm again, honorable devotee to impossibility that she was.

“I might not have been much help dispatching our little problem, but may I point something out?”

“No,” Brienne and Cersei said at the same time.

“Then let go of each other and stop me. No? Well, here: the danger is passed. Quite literally, in fact. My dear sister has done us a favor, and all we really have to do is ensure other threats don’t deposit themselves on our doorstep.”

“Really?” Brienne shook her head. “You think someone who engages in something as dishonorable as -”

“I haven’t done anything -”

“Murder will just stop?”

“I was fixing something you’d failed to deal with. In the future, there’s a simple solution to your problem.”

“I was trying! I can’t magically prevent Tarth from being attacked!”

“But you can include us in your planning,” Cersei said. “Consider this a lesson in strategy, and a promise. I will not stand by while you play dice with my home. Do you understand? I don’t care if it’s also your home, or if your honor forbids actually solving the problem. Bend your honor enough enough to find a solution, or I’ll find one for all of us, and you will never, ever like it.”

It sounded a bit like a declaration of war, and gods, it made Jaime’s blood run hot. Brienne must have felt the same, because she dropped the argument and kissed Cersei again, desperately, wildly, tugging at the laces on her dress and urging her towards the enormous bed.

“Jaime, get over here,” Brienne said.

Jaime hastened to obey. Cersei lay beneath them, staring up at Brienne with an expression torn between lust and fury. It was an achingly familiar look, and he found himself suddenly feeling tender.

He kissed her, stretching out next to her with Brienne looming over them both. “She’s very impressive, isn’t she?”

Cersei snorted.

“I am,” Brienne said. “And we all three know it, which is why I need you to listen to me.” She leaned down and kissed them, Cersei then Jaime then Cersei again. He was quite frozen by the time she said, “No one in this room kills anyone without discussing it with the rest of us first. But especially not you.” She nodded to Cersei. “But any of us - myself included. Not unless they’re coming at you, dagger drawn, and there’s no time to discuss. Is that clear?”

Jaime was all ready to swear to her; she was his liege lord, after all, and he only wanted her to be happy with him. So of course Cersei said, “That hardly seems practical. What if the reason we need to kill someone is you’ve been captured?”

Brienne shook her head. “You’d figure it out. Or I’d delegate to Jaime, but either way, the promise holds.”

“What if I want to?”

Jaime expected Brienne to remind Cersei of honor, or at least of the difference between right and wrong. Instead, she said, “Tommen and Myrcella are just down the corridor. Would you agree to flip a coin on if they live or die, because you want to?” She shook her head. “I can defend myself, but they can’t. If you won’t restrain yourself for me, do it for them.”

The air seemed very cold for a moment, as Cersei and Brienne stared at each other and Jaime tried to contain his desperate love for them both. Finally, after a moment so long Jaime felt he’d aged a thousand years, Cersei said, “Very well.”

“Thank you,” Brienne said, and kissed her again.

It was another kiss that bordered on being a fight; they didn’t grapple, but Cersei’s nails dug into Brienne’s jaw, and then into Jaime’s arm when she reached out to grab him. Jaime thought to join Brienne in torturing his sister, but then Cersei broke the kiss to say, “I think my brother’s had an easier night than he really deserves, don’t you, Brienne?”

Not my lady, not that great cow, not even Lady Brienne. The familiarity hit Jaime at the same time as Brienne; they both blushed, but only Brienne said, “I think he has, yes.”

“Wait just one moment, what exactly do you -”

Brienne didn’t just kiss him. She covered him, laying her entire body over his and pressing his hips down with her own as she took his mouth.

Cersei grabbed him, too, a slender hand knocking his thighs open and playing with his cock as Brienne kissed him, then moved on to his jaw, his neck. He was outnumbered and overwhelmed - and he loved it.

“Please,” he said, unsure exactly what or to whom he was pleading. Cersei, who knew his body like her own, pinched him, and looked to Brienne when he gasped.

“He’s a little too pushy for his own good, don’t you think?”

And oh, gods, Jaime loved them both, for Brienne didn’t react with adorable flustered indignation. Instead, she seriously considered the statement, then said, “Well, more than I’d be in his place, anyway.”

“He loves to play the conqueror with me.” Cersei kissed Brienne again, fucking her with her tongue. Jaime could only watch; Brienne and Cersei each pressed one of his arms into the mattress. “He’s so arrogant. But I think he’d like it if someone…conquered him.”

“You’re going to have to be plain with me,” Brienne said. “I was a maid before I kidnapped you two.”

Fuck.

He knew that look on his twin’s face, the predatory interest. It could be directed at no one better than Brienne. “I mean I want you to fuck him,” Cersei said warmly. “A finger or two in him, a mouth or cunt on him - he’ll beg for release, I promise you.”

Red, red, red, up Brienne’s thighs and around her peaked nipples. Fuck, they were so beautiful. “That - makes sense.”

“But I’m not trying to be sensible,” Cersei said, and proved it by putting her mouth on Jaime’s cock.

He’d never learned to be immune. He gasped and tried to fuck her mouth - failed, when Brienne caught hold of his hips.

“He needs to be wet, doesn’t he?” Brienne said. “Or I’ll hurt him.”

“You could hurt me if you wanted.” Oh no. He was already gone.

“I don’t!”

“If he keeps talking, you might, though.” Cersei reached under Jaime - under his pillow, the conniving witch - and handed Brienne a bottle of oil. “Use this.”

“Hold still, or I won’t do it,” Brienne told Jaime.

She sounded like she meant it. She sounded severe. He shivered in delight. “Yes, whatever you like.”

Cersei rolled her eyes and put her hand back on his cock - but she didn’t stroke it, only held him a shade too tightly as she said, “You should get on your knees.”

“Fuck, Cersei.”

“Should he?” Brienne said.

“It’s easier. The angle. Plus, he’ll look so good.”

“Hm.” Brienne looked at him, bright inquisitive gaze, obscenely gentle fingers stroking his thigh. “Well - what about this?” And she lifted him, holding him up with his legs splayed obscenely as she shoved pillows under him.

The resulting position was flatly ridiculous, him flat on his back with his hips canted up towards the sky. He felt simultaneously silly and hotly vulnerable. His cock was leaking in Cersei’s hand.

“Better?”

“Yes.” But Brienne wasn’t asking him, he realized. She was looking to Cersei for direction.

“Much,” Cersei said. “Go on, then.”

Brienne looked at him. She’d been blushing for so long that it was a little hard to picture her skin its normal shade. “Tell me if you don’t like it or it hurts,” she said, and poured oil onto her hand.

He didn’t think it was possible for this to be anything but incredible, not when it was Brienne’s broad fingers pressing him open. She stroked at first, exploring, an oiled finger on his balls and then lower, holding him open so she could look and touch. She kept her free hand on his hip, right next to Cersei’s. He knew she meant it to keep him from moving, but fuck it: he moved anyway, just for the thrill of her frowning a bit and pressing him down, for the edge-of-insanity feeling of Cersei digging her nails into his ribs.

“Behave,” Cersei said severely, “or I’ll take her off and we’ll just leave you like this.”

“Please don’t. It would be a terrible waste of time if we stopped now.” Brienne’s earnest blue eyes blinked at his sister as she finally, finally, pressed her finger against his hole.

Against. But not in. “The mechanics of this are similar to what we’ve already been doing, you know.”

“I’m aware, thank you. But it’s still something new.” Slight movement, up and down, catching at him in the worst, most tantalizing way.

“Would it help if I begged?”

“I’d like to see that,” Cersei said. She twisted her hand on his cock, vicious and beautiful.

“It wouldn’t make much of a difference to me.” Brienne looked between them, something impossibly soft sneaking around her usual composure. “But you can if you’d like. If you’d enjoy it more.”

“I’d enjoy it more if you would just -”

She pressed inside.

She went slowly, of course, ever conscious of her own strength. But that was Brienne inside him, a blunt fingertip and an inexorable press. He moaned and tried to fuck Cersei’s hand, but of course neither of them would let him; they held him still as Brienne tilted her head and moved her finger, up and down in a parody of a thrust.

It felt better than it had any right to, especially when she found the right spot in him and noticed, immediately, when he gasped, going boneless. She pressed against it again, watching him writhe, then fucked against it, a smooth and strong movement that jarred his hips and made him moan.

“Fuck, please,” he said, “Brienne, please,” and she understood, she must have, for she nodded and pressed another finger into him, fucking him steadily.

“Tell me how it feels,” Cersei said. Her bright eyes were moving between him and Brienne with greedy almost-jealousy.

“Good,” he said at the same time Brienne said, “He feels small like this.”

“What!”

Cersei laughed at him. “You’ll hurt my brother’s pride if you keep talking about him like that. So please, continue.”

“He feels…” She tilted her head, considering, obviously deep in thought even as she drove him closer and closer to the edge. “Breakable, I suppose. Look.” Her hand on his hip flexed. She could move him easily; she could, in fact, break him. The realization washed over him and he closed his eyes against it, straining to fuck Cersei’s hand.

“Ah,” Cersei said, and put her mouth on him again.

He couldn’t converse after that; he could barely even think. He’d become a creature of sensation, need and desperation overwhelming any of his higher senses. Usually he only felt this way immediately after being grievously injured. To have his mind overwhelmed by sheer pleasure felt like a gift of immeasurable value.

“Please,” he heard himself say, “please, Brienne.” She was wet against his thigh. “Cersei -” An answering pinch to his stomach before he could get further. “Gods, please, fuck me, harder - please -”

Brienne did something obscene with her fingers, curling them and driving into him brutally hard, and that was it for him. He came in Cersei’s mouth, crying out and shaking, dislodging the pillows beneath his hips as he moved, as they finally let him move. He didn’t realize he was shaking until Brienne stretched out alongside him, soothing.

Then Cersei said, “Do your job, brother,” and he remembered he wasn’t done yet.

In the end they both used his hand, his mouth. Brienne came from his fingers in her and Cersei’s mouth on her cunt, and Cersei took orgasms from both of them, using Brienne at least as brutally as he had. He felt that he might expire from sheer over-stimulation when they were finally done, falling back on the bed together, sweat-slick and stinking of sex.

He wound up between them, Cersei a small weight of warmth on one side, Brienne anchoring them both on the other. Awareness returned to him slowly: the sound of gulls outside, the muted noise of his sister’s sleepy breathing. He opened his eyes at one point to see Brienne watching them both, tender and unashamed.

He kissed her. He couldn’t help but to kiss her, and he kept kissing her until he fell asleep, pulled under by bone-deep warmth and contentment, and confident that they’d still be there when he woke up.

===

===

Brienne was very sure that it wouldn’t, couldn’t last. She only hoped it didn’t keep going long enough that the children would be hurt when she was inevitably removed from their lives.

Except, of course, she also wanted it to keep going for as long as possible - forever, if they’d have her. They wouldn’t. Eventually Cersei would tire of being told no, of being stopped, or Jaime would remember that Brienne was ugly even if she was also tLady Tarth, and would leave her. It had to happen, surely.

But it had been a little over a year since Cersei had killed Lord Baelish, and Jaime hadn’t kidnapped Cersei and ridden for Casterly Rock yet. Cersei hadn’t tried to kill Brienne. They were happy, Brienne thought, or as happy as they could be, given the news from King’s Landing: summer turning to fall, famine and civil war threatening. Brienne felt reasonably confident that when those ills came to Tarth, they’d face them together.

Still, when Cersei said, “You’ll meet us at the gates this afternoon,” her stomach lurched and foreboding fluttered in her.

“Why?”

“Tommen and Myrcella have arranged to have dinner with a friend of theirs.” Someone too low-born for Cersei to approve of, said her tone.

“But what does that have to do with it? Are we escorting them there?”

“No.”

Brienne knew Cersei, maybe not as well as she knew Jaime, but still pretty well. She could tell from the set of Cersei’s jaw that she wouldn’t get more details, not even if she ordered Cersei to tell her as the Lady of Tarth. She’d have to just trust them, something that became easier by the day but still wasn’t quite natural. “All right.”

Cersei practically glittered with triumph. “Good.”

They’d changed in the year since coming to Tarth. Cersei was more tan and a bit more muscular, having taken to walking about the island with her children. Brienne would never tell her, but she looked like a Tarth native sometimes, sun-bleached and beautiful. Jaime had taken to swordplay again, with so much time only to practice, and now rivaled a King’s Landing cutthroat in his use of a hook - when he chose to wear one. And Brienne…

Well, she was still ugly and too tall. That much couldn’t be denied. But she thought she probably looked happier. She certainly felt happier, and if Jaime looked like he’d bloomed a bit, content and feeling safe, then surely she did too.

“Lady Brienne,” Jaime said when she met them at the gates. “You look lovely.”

She didn’t roll her eyes, quite. “You do as well.”

“Shall we ride out?”

“I still haven’t been told where we’re actually going, you know. What if I’d arrived on foot?”

“You’d have followed us like a goatherder, I suppose,” Cersei said. “We’ve miles to cover before it gets dark; come along.”

Brienne could have, should have, protested about being summoned like this, on her own island. But Jaime looked as excited as she’d ever seen him, and even Cersei looked - eager. Curiosity ate away at her. “Oh, very well.”

They rode out past Evenfall, taking the busiest road past pubs and homes, then farmland. There was something naggingly familiar about it all that Brienne couldn’t pin down, until after two hours, they came to a stately manor house set back among beautiful meadows full of fall wheat.

“I know this place,” Brienne said, wracking her memory.

“I’d hope so,” Cersei said. “It’s your own house, through your mother. According to your wretched housekeeper, you often visited here as a child.”

So long ago. She’d been no more than eight when they stopped going. “Oh.”

“Yes, oh,” Cersei said, not quite kindly mocking. “Shall we investigate?”

She felt - vaguely sick, almost tricked. But Jaime was still watching her with that keen anticipation, so she nodded and took her horse up the drive.

There were trees on the property, she remembered, apple and cherry and plum. In addition to the farmland, there’d be a stable - there it was. Only it wasn’t falling down or full of spiders. Someone had been here recently to freshen things up; the windows were intact, their sills free from dust.

This was their surprise? How had they even known? That wretched housekeeper, Cersei’d said. Had she been interrogating the poor woman?

“Come along now,” Cersei said, and Brienne, frozen-tongued and clumsy, followed them inside.

A fire was banked in the old dining room. She looked around to see the same furnishings she remembered from all those years ago, freshly aired out. The table was made up for three, and a picnic basket sat in the center of it. Jaime went over and pulled out their dinner: fresh bread, fruit from the orchards, cured fish and some kind of cooked vegetable, carefully stored in its own separate tin. Salty cheese, too, and crackers, and wine.

Brienne choked back a sob, and Jaime froze. “Don’t you like it? We can go back. I’ll have someone come get us, it’s not -”

“There’s no one around, this is the country,” Brienne said, “and what can you mean by this? How did you - when -”

“Evenfall is lovely, but it’s so busy, don’t you think?” Cersei swanned past her and took a seat at the table, picking out some bread and pouring herself some wine. “You’ve been over a year now putting things to rights, with hardly a break. Jaime thought we should take you somewhere lest you die of stress, or something. I wasn’t listening too closely.”

But she was lying, Brienne understood that now. She’d been the one to dig up information about this house. This had been a collaborative effort, to - make her slow down? Get her alone with them?

“We’ve enough food for a few days, and there will be servants coming every morning to freshen things up,” Jaime said.

Brienne looked at the fire, at the shining stone floors, at the carefully prepared picnic basket, and then finally at the two of them. They sat there, golden and perfect, waiting for her to make a decision that wasn’t really a decision at all. She couldn’t say no to them. Surely Cersei, at least, knew that.

“Everything will be taken care of,” Jaime said softly. “We made sure of that. The housekeeper, your man-at-arms, everyone has instructions.”

They’d acted in her stead, and the household had allowed it. Something deep inside her uncoiled. “I hope you didn’t give them too many bribes,” she said. “There’ll be no getting them to do their duties, if you did.”

“Just a few,” Cersei said. She toasted them both, looking smug as a cat that caught a bird. “Sit down, Brienne.”

Brienne sat.

It was a long, meandering meal, full of wine and laughter. At the end of it, Jaime dragged them to their bedroom in the guest wing. “Your family’s rooms have been refreshed, but we didn’t move anything,” he told her.

Which meant she’d be able to go back and get her father’s papers, her mother’s drawings. Her throat closed. “Thank you,” she said, and kissed him. “Thank you.” She kissed Cersei, then took Jaime’s cloak and laid it on the carpet before the fire. “Come here, please.”

They fucked right there, wine-drunk and laughing, before moving to the bed. Cersei ate Brienne out for what felt like hours, and she let herself moan as loudly as she wished; there was no one to know how easily the two of them could make her beg. And in the morning, hours later than she’d normally awaken, she kissed Jaime in the golden-soaked light and thanked the gods for her bizarre, impossible luck.