Chapter Text
“Come on then! What are you waiting for?”
His head was pounding. Red blood flooded his vision as a chunk of his skull dangled about, lost in his matted hair. His brain was seeping out and spilling onto his calloused hands until he knocked his knuckles against his brow and forced it back in with a groan.
The innkeeper had a shattered smile with the teeth of countless men. A goblet was in his hand. “Ready?”
Robert shuddered as his veins pulsed and wriggled inside his flesh. “For what?” And then he understood and looked down to find his hands gone. His wrists had swollen and been cut open, and his blood had spewed out black and hardened into a great hammer where his hands were. It was weeping and it was hungry and yearned for a ruby-red light that burst from an open cellar. He approached it with gangling steps that hardly knew their place and moved only by memory. Had he done this before?
“Oh, a thousand times,” answered the innkeeper whose own flesh was mangled like a numberless legions squished together. When he opened his mouth a torrent of brown-black stew spilled into his goblet of bone. “Smells like victory,” the man said before forcing the drink down Robert’s throat with a pat on the back. “Come on, King Robert! Robby Bobby Baratheon! Don’t just stand there! It’s time to go!” The innkeeper gave him a hard shove into the pit.
Maggot-filled corpses clogged the river flowing from the sky as ten thousand men circled him atop horses of shadow and flame. Limbs thrashed about in the water wrestling with one another and forgotten jaws chattered and clacked up and down the field biting flesh wherever they could. All the men smiled and the moon burned red. Robert raised his hammer and joined the fight, laughing. Above them all the innkeeper was watching. He finally recognised that mangled face. The Warrior Above, who shut the cellar door and said, “Have fun. You’ll be doing this forever.”
Ever and ever and ever.
Robert woke from the same dream with the same godsforsaken chill. His sweat-slick body slid from his featherbed and onto the fur-rugged floors of his pavilion, and the morning light beat against the tent. The second dawn of the hunt and his muscles ached as it were the thousandth. Hardly a scent of game spotted either. All he had found was a foreboding feeling and the echo of Jon Arryn’s godly lessons looming. Sending me a sign, are you? The old man had shown him the dark in the cellars of the castle and would never let him forget.
The tent flaps opened. The girl who entered thought herself sly, prowling behind him before she pounced onto his back.
Robert smacked her away. “Don’t do that! Too bloody early.”
Mya’s playful smile dropped as she mumbled an apology and cleared her throat. “I thought we were starting early today? Uncle Renly is by the forest-edge already. He says he spotted the white hart.”
“Renly? Early for a hunt?” He almost laughed. The only early mornings his smug little brother enjoyed were that spent with a spotted cock and that pretty little boy-knight that followed him around. The only early morning he wanted of Renly was at Storm’s End far from him and his ears.
“Earlier than you, at least,” Mya mumbled as she scanned the tent. “Who’s that?”
He followed her gaze to the woman beneath the sheets of his featherbed. “The town’s matron or… something like that.” Her moist sex and handful of belly had been plenty warm for the night, but the morrow was cold and day to be long. “Nevermind her. Call me an attendant. And a servant. I want wine.”
She moved to find his breeches and hose. “I can do it.”
Robert squeezed his throbbing brow and grunted, “You’re not a damned servant. Just, get out, Mya. I don’t need your nonsense now. Go.”
His daughter stormed out furious and Robert could not help his frown. She had neither the fortitude nor fear for court. A beating might have done her well if she were still a girl, but now she was a woman with those budding breasts and Baratheon hips. Always the spiteful little shrew with a pouting lip and tongue that lashed out at every little thing.
“Sire,” greeted his kingsguard as he finally left the pavilion. Even the overcast day blinded his eyes. The hunting party was small but very much alive as the lymers barked and squire boys hurried and townsfolk watched from the edges of the fence, cheering. He paid them no mind and made way for the feast first where flagons and roasted fowls and salted beef slices sat beside poached eggs and spiced loaves and platters aplenty of honey-coated fruits and marchpane moulded into animal figures. He took one big whiff of it all and readied himself as a steward prepared a plate and placed it before him. But right in the centre was a pudding as black as blood in the night, with burnt sausages and darkwine the same putrid shade. He looked at his hands and found them still there, clenched and pale.
Mya Stone watched him oddly. “Not hungry?”
He shook his head and muttered something foul before he dug in. The sausage grease spilled across his beard and his mind flooded with the memory of limbs in the dirt. Still he ate. By the end his heart and throat burned with bile.
“And here I believed we were set for an early morning,” called Renly who patted him on the back and stole the last sausage from his plate. “At this rate we’ll be waiting on you at the latrine until supper. And then again until dawn.”
“Fuck off, Renly.” He rose and cleared his tunic of crumbs and scanned the forest ahead. “Game?”
“Rabbits, from what I hear,” his brother said. “A fair many. We can make a game of it. Pick a long spear and stab what you find.”
“We can cook them over the fire for supper. Like a meat skewer,” Mya said with her mouth full.
He ignored them and wandered off to the edge of camp. New tents had been erected where the standards flown bore colours from the Westerland and the town a mile out had filled and the road seemed busier. Shadows hung between every corner, and again he felt that looming feeling. Like Ned Stark at the helm of an army with icy words on his lips, or Jon Arryn waiting around the hallway of the Eyrie with his iron rod in hand. “Pyne!” Robert shouted, waiting for the master of the hunt who flew into view soon enough.
“Your Grace?”
“Where’s the septon?”
The man looked surprised at the ask. “Septon Mullen has gone to the sept at Gannyton, sire. He should return noon.”
Robert scowled. The one time he asked of the gods. “Pack this all up.”
“…Your Grace?”
He gestured to his surroundings sloppily. “This. The camp, the tents. All of it. Pack it up. We’re to return to the city.”
“Of… course, sire. As you say.”
Before long Renly and the girl had heard the news and made sure to smash his skull in outrage.
“One proper day of a hunt and you retreat. Frightened of the boars, brother?”
He brushed past his brother and dragged his daughter off into an open space where his white cloaks could easily defend. She struggled but acquiesced at his tightening grip. “Listen to me, girl. When we return to the castle, say your farewells to those who need them. But do it quickly. By dusk you, Renly and a hundred riders will ride forth for Storm’s End.”
Mya wriggled free and backed away. “What? What are you saying?”
“Don’t…” Robert pointed his finger accusingly. “I know that look. Still as stubborn as a bloody mule. You heard me. No more negotiations, and don’t get any ideas.”
“You’re sending me away,” she whispered more to herself than to him. “You’re sending me away. Are you finally tired of me?”
Robert growled at her impetuous need to fight. “Did I say that?”
“You didn’t need to. I can feel it. You’ve been so angry of late. Why don’t you hug me any more? You don’t come to supper with Lady Lynesse and I. Instead you… you fuck whores and every second alewife who glances your way, and then you say you love her.”
“What’s this then? Are you her justiciar? Her lady-in-waiting? What has Lynesse Hightower to do with Storm’s End?”
“Nothing!” Mya shouted until her voice suddenly fell and her gaze shied beneath his glare. “Nothing. I just… I don’t understand. I thought… I thought you were going to set the queen aside and marry Lynesse. What would we fear then? If we were all together in the eyes of the gods…”
He decided the hunt would have been better than this. Could no one simply listen? “Aye, Lynesse wants what she wants. She’s made that clear. But she is not your mother, Mya. I won’t hear a word more of this.”
“Don’t you love her?”
“Girl! I swear—“
Mya had struck her blow and refused to let him recover. “Did you lie when you said you love me? You must of. You’re sending me away. It’s because I’m a bastard, isn’t it? You’d rather Joffrey to hunt, or Myrcella to play dress up.”
He almost raised his hand to smack her mouth before he clenched it into a fist and bit it in frustration. “All these years you asked of Storm’s End and now you blither when given the chance.”
“I wanted to visit!” She punched him square in the chest. “I wanted to see it with you. Not be tossed aside! Why would you do that!”
Robert held her wrists still. “Listen to me, Mya. Enough of this complaining. If I tell you to fall, you drop like a dead man. If I toss you aside, you go where I throw you. I am your father, and no one else. Now listen.” He held her head in his hands and squeezed so she would remember the pain. “Fear, girl. I know that you know fear. It’s what keeps a man alive. It’s the sway of a ship on the sea struck in the hull that tells us to dive. That tells us to swim. I’ll toss you, Mya. I’ll toss you off the fucking deck, because I can’t save you when we crash. You go now, to Durran’s home. They’ll never take you from Storm’s End. Let them come. They’ll never have you.”
In that moment he realised his daughter was a true Baratheon. Hers was the fury. “I want to stay you with you.”
“I don’t care. You’re better alive than dead with me.”
When he finally let go it was there again. That sinister stillness worse than the storm. He searched the quiet but found only nothing. Not even the wind.
“Father…?”
Robert looked to the sky. Stormclouds were passing by. “I need to see Jon Arryn.”
The ride back was hastened by his anxious mind. Raindrops threatened to fall though never did, but its damp darkness had fallen onto the towns and markets and peatland hovels cold and biting like an early winter draft. By nightfall they stopped in the last leagues of the city’s skirts. He did not sleep but rather sat at the edge of his daughter’s bed until dawn rose, only to vanish before she woke. All these years he had wanted a war. But something had changed. Ever since Ned and his letters, the tune of war felt as if it were played on broken strings, and he felt only an ambush waiting for him.
When the Red Keep appeared on the horizon, Mya’s mood fell. “Edric will be at Storm’s End, won’t he?”
Robert kept his gaze ahead. “Aye.”
“Quite the young warrior,” Renly said. “He enjoys stories overmuch. But they keep him vigorous despite his budding youth. I imagine he’ll be bashing heads and leading his own army before long.”
“Against the Targaryens?” Mya asked.
“Maybe. The king has seven little children to rule, and I hear they are rather keen on infighting. And then of course, we all heard of the wintry demons in the North. Perhaps we—“
“Enough!” Robert gritted. “You watch your tongue around her, boy, or I’ll ship you off to Stannis.”
“I’d rather sup with the Others,” his brother mumbled before riding ahead to the city gates.
Come the castle proper the dark clouds swam eastward across the bay. It was quiet and calm and reminded him of the Trident on the cusp of that day. “Where is Jon Arryn?” Robert asked the guards beneath the old man’s tower.
A lanky guard left the small hall beside them and cleared his throat. “In the city, sire,” he answered. “Something with the Alchemist’s Guild, I think. He should return soon.”
“The pyromancers? What does Jon want with those wart-faced gnats?”
“My lord didn’t say.”
Robert shifted. He could not stave away that feeling. “Go on then. If you see the old man before me, you tell him I need him.”
When Robert stood in the yard, men and boys gave him their bows, women and girls their curtsies. He did not recognise any of them. His empty hands left him aching and the growl of his inside left him wondering if he should seek out Lynesse Hightower and all her promises. She had promised him a child. A little black-haired boy that would leave Cersei enraged. Most of all she had promised him love. Love. Her love that was the sea. How beautiful it could be when the shoreline shimmered shallow and you could step in and feel it tickle at your ankles and see it clear to the bottom. To know entirely what it was. But her love was the sea, and to love the sea was to stand by the shore and fear its vastness. To love her was to want nothing more than to look away, knowing the tide would always retreat and leave him alone.
“Father?”
Mya remained ready to ride off, dressed in her Baratheon bastard-black leathers with white harts stitched at the seams and a single golden antler silhouette splayed across her collar. She almost looked the Lord of Storm’s End, if not the lady.
“I have something for you,” Robert told her.
She furrowed her brow. “What?”
“Something stupid,” he mumbled. “It’s not here. Sent it off to Storm’s End a few days back. You won’t understand it yet. But when all this is over, girl. When the fight is finally over. You’ll know. You’ll hate me, but you’ll know.”
It only concerned her further. “What is it? Tell me.”
“Patience, girl. Take a page from the book I never opened.”
Mya pouted her lips and shrugged. “Fine. Will you at least come with me to see Lady Lynesse? She was to embroider my cloak. I need to give her my farewell. And… she wanted to talk to you. Remember? She needs to see you.”
Robert snorted softly. He wondered which was better. To die with the taste of the sea on his lips, or parched and begging by the shore? “That she did. Lead on. But no stalling. Your king commands it.”
The king could hardly keep up with his daughter and the giddy skip in her step. Even when they found his lady’s room empty she carried on to his own with a single-minded intent as if she were still that girl dancing on the mountainside with only a shade of black and blue for a father. Come his chambers she threw open the doors with a laugh and dashed for the black riding cloak sprawled across his bed.
Mya held it out. “Look!” An embroidered white hart ran in the bottom corner as a herd of little golden does chased after it. In the other corner was a fallen crown resting in a black field. “Like Herne of the Herd. The rainwild king.”
“Very good,” Robert mumbled as she donned the cloak and he studied the room. The perfumed scent of his lady’s sea-salted skin no longer lingered, now replaced with a crisp smoked smell while the walls bore black wounds as if they had been scratched by some fiery creature gone rabid. He pressed his hand against one and found it warm. Someone had been here. Recently.
Mya noticed as well. “What happened?”
A dull sound crept beneath the door to the garderobe.
The kingsguard drew their swords. Instinct took over as his hand rested on the hilt of his knife and he brushed Mya aside to open the door. The room inside was something hellish. The wardrobes were melted like old candles while ash blanketed the floor. His old war armour was by the looking mirror, witness to it all. By the window a woman with hair like pale gold wept as she cradled another coloured much the same in her arms. The body was limp and lifeless.
It took him a moment to realise.
His daughter realised first. “Lady Lynesse?” Mya uttered, quiet and with the ghost of nervous laugh in her voice.
He made no move to stop her, rooted in the doorway. Watching… watching it all go away…
Mya’s knees were shaking. “Lady Lynesse!”
When Robert came to his senses, he reached for her. “No. Back, stay back.”
“What happened? What happened!” His daughter’s stormy blue eyes rained across her cheeks and searched his own for an answer.
The other woman peered up. He recognised her. Malora Hightower, with her hair and face much like his lady, though sculpted of a sterner marble. “It was her…” she croaked. “The witch…”
Robert could feel it. The mangled monster. It was swimming in his rivers of blood that pooled into his mouth. The inside of his cheeks were broken as he whispered, “Cersei?”
The older woman sobbed something decrepit. “No… not in the flesh. It was her… other. That fire heathen. But it was surely the queen who guided her hands. Surely her fear… her envy.”
“Lady Lynesse…” Mya scrambled over her body as the older woman backed away and crumpled against the wall. “Lynesse… no… you come back now. Father, won’t you call the maester?”
“Mya…” he said as gently as he could. His daughter did not know death. Not like this. She did not see the scorched scar strewn across Elenei on the wall. “Mya. Mya, girl. She is dead. Let her go. Move away.”
When she refused, he gestured to the knight. His daughter squealed and screamed and swore as she was dragged away. “Please don’t! Let me be with her. Father, please!”
Robert ignored her and fell to cradle his lady. Her eyes were shut if she were only asleep. A blue dusk settled upon her lips where her last breaths had frozen, and around her ruined neck, a garland of blackened blotches blossomed. Her pale skin that had glowed alive like spring was now pallid and grey like winter. “Lynesse…” He brought her hand to his cheek and found it cold. Had he not thought of her only moments ago? Had she been alive? I should have married you. I should have loved you as you deserved. You were meant to be the mother of my children. You were meant to be more than all of them. You were more. You were more. This was the gods game all along he decided. Twirl and turn him like a mummer on a stage playing one fucking tragedy after another. Mother, father. His betrothed, his lover. What was one more loss? A thousand griefs to bleed together until it was all he had left. He tossed away his crown and cloak, and held her in his arms. He held her close, so close his own burning rage might warm her. A girl cried for him somewhere beyond the storm, but he could not hear her.
“I will kill them all,” Robert promised that pale corpse. “I will kill them all for you.”
He took his lady from that hell and laid her to rest upon his bed. A kiss upon her brow was all he had left. A kiss and his last tears as his heart emptied. Back in that hellish crypt his old armour stool tall, watching.
Malora Hightower had ceased her weeping to stare at a clump of ash in her hand. She blew it away and sniffled. “Forgive me, Lord Father…”
Robert grabbed her by the arm and forced her to stand. “What happened? Why were you here? Talk. Now.”
“I… I came to see my sister. I… the air was afoot. My spirits felt dark, and I have feared for her since the queen’s return. Since that thing returned alongside her. It is unnatural how she wears the queen’s skin. I cautioned Lord Arryn—“
“Don’t mention Jon Arryn to me! What happened!”
“She… I…” Her knees crumbled as she covered her mouth and wailed once more. “I felt a hand of darkness upon the hour. A chill down my spine and I… I followed it. The malice. When I came upon your rooms, sire, I felt it. And when I—when I came upon the witch, it was too late. She had… she wrapped her evil around my sweet Lynesse. Her hands… the room went ablaze as she cackled, and I… I tried to… I tried to stop her…”
His vision went red. “Where did the witch go?”
The woman had drifted away. “I lost my child. My first child. It was Lynesse I had raised, as if she were my own. Lynesse at my breast. Sweet sweet Lynesse…”
“Woman!” Robert roared as he shook and lifted her off the ground. “Where did the fucking witch go! Where!”
She looked at him as if crazed. “To the sept… the sept… they mean to crown the queen in Blessed Baelor’s sept. The witch told me. They mean to crown Cersei Lannister in mockery of the Seven. Defile our gods, as they defiled my sister and her babe.”
Robert dropped her and stepped back. “Babe?”
“She… she was with child, Your Grace.”
For a moment she was there laughing with a black-haired boy without his father’s curse. For a moment there was silence until he cried out in pain as the Warrior’s brand seared into his flesh from within. His hands began to blacken and beside the mirror stood the demon. The old demon born upon the river with a naked flesh that yearned to wear his skin again. The cracked hammer that still called to him.
“Father!” Mya ran in and clutched his arm. “Please, wait. Wait. Something isn’t right.”
Robert shook his head. “No more.” He would kill Cersei Lannister now. Her brothers and father and uncles and whole fucking house. He would crush their fucking skulls and burn their blood until there was nothing left. She would be nothing. She would be nothing.
Mya persisted. “We should wait for Lord Arryn. Please, please. Let us tell Lord Arryn first. He will know what to do!” His daughter sobbed the old man’s name into his arm over and over as if it would summon him.
It only summoned a memory. “Jon…” The warning rung through the air. His crown was on the floor and the hammer was before him.
Then the woman’s words fell on him and blackened his mind. “Cersei Lannister means to destroy you, King Robert. One by one she will take all that you love. She means to humiliate you. To turn your love to grief. To leave you begging in the mud. To destroy you. What can Jon Arryn do that you cannot? What can any of them do? It must be you. King Robert. First of His Name. You must act. Take your hammer and destroy her as you did the dragon prince. Destroy her…”
“Father, please, this isn’t right.”
“…before she does you.”
“Father, I love you. I love you,” Mya begged as she clutched his chest. “Please don’t go. Something is wrong, can’t you feel it? Please don’t go. Please…”
He caressed his daughter’s hard cheek moistened by grief. So soft it had been as a babe. He held her there until a sudden compulsion drew his hand away.
Don’t come near me, girl. Don’t even try. Everything I touch turns to dust.
And then he laughed as the realisation dawned on him. He would do this forever. He laughed and laughed for his heart was a bottomless cup and all that he was born for was to pour and pour and pour and pour hate and misery down his gullet until it spilled out to leave the entire world drowned and dead and once it was done he would still remain to swallow it all and start again and in that terrible torturous moment that seemed as endless as the damnation he had tasted in his dreams he gazed upon his daughter. Her bold blue eyes, and beneath it all, the sickness. The fucking rot his weary father had cautioned him of for years. The one he had never paid heed, and passed along to her the moment his hunger had known no bounds. Black of hair and black of blood and born to a monster black of heart. Her father, made for a single unending purpose.
Robert Baratheon chose the hammer.