GOT: I Plunder Skills — Chapter 417 - A Whole New Way to Play

Lynn set Arya gently back on the bed, pulled the blanket up around her, and turned to pick up the glass candle.

His gaze swept the room and settled on Cersei's door.

That proud Lannister lioness had been strangely quiet ever since he'd brought her to Winterfell.

Not a single improper move. Not one.

She was like a golden statue left in a corner , beautiful, haughty, and utterly cold.

Lynn was curious.

Beneath all that pride, what did the former queen dream of? The woman who had once been the most powerful in all of Westeros?

He relit the glass candle with a playful smile.

That pale blue flame rose again.

This time, his target was crystal clear. Cersei Lannister.

...

His consciousness sank into the spiral of flame.

When Lynn "opened" his eyes, he was standing inside a cathedral so vast it stole the breath from his chest.

A seven-sided structure. A vaulted dome soaring overhead. Stained glass windows blazing with the miracles of the Faith of the Seven.

King's Landing. The Great Sept of Baelor.

This was where Cersei's dream had taken her.

In the center of the sept, she knelt alone on the cold stone floor.

Not the red gown of Lannister glory , she wore a simple gray shift of rough cloth. Her golden hair hung loose around her shoulders, her face bare of paint or powder.

Her head was bowed. Her shoulders trembled. A sinner at confession.

The corner of Lynn's mouth curled.

Confession. Fine. Then I'll give you something to confess to.

He thought it, and it was done.

The seven enormous statues — marble and gold, looming in the shadows — opened their eyes at the same instant. Each pair glowed with a faint and sourceless light.

Cersei felt it. She snapped her head up, her face stripped raw with disbelief.

"My child." The voice that came from the Father was deep, ancient, commanding. "Why do you grieve?"

His stone face shifted in the shadows, never settling.

"Your sins," the Mother said, "I have seen." Her voice was soft, merciful, but there was something behind the mercy that saw through flesh and bone down to the rot beneath.

Then the others.

The Warrior. The Maiden. The Smith. The Crone. The Stranger.

Seven voices, seven tones, filling the great vaulted space in turn.

"There is resentment in your heart." The Crone's voice was old as winter, old as ruin. It had the sound of a woman who had watched a thousand lives end badly. "I see all of it."

"You long to be loved." The Maiden's voice was pure and sweet and edged with something dangerous.

"You fear death." The Stranger's voice was a rasp from beneath a hood that concealed only darkness.

...

Cersei began to shake.

Yes.

She resented her fate. She resented her father for selling her like livestock. She resented Jaime for being useless when she'd needed him most. She resented Lynn , for dragging her north, then discarding her like a thing he'd grown tired of.

She had longed to be loved her entire life. No one had ever given her that.

She feared death. She feared the prophecy — old and venomous and patient as stone.

Every secret she had buried deepest inside herself was being pulled into the light. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

"Speak your wish, mortal."

The seven voices came together as one.

"The Seven Who Are One shall grant you a single boon."

"Wealth? Power? Or..." A breath of silence. "Revenge?"

"Remember, Cersei. You have only one chance."

A wish.

Cersei's breathing came fast and shallow.

What did she want?

To be queen again, seated high above everyone who had ever looked down at her?

To have Jaime back at her side?

To watch Lynn die?

No.

The thoughts rose and she killed each one herself. She knew the truth better than anyone. There was no going back. She was a trophy of war, the King in the North's prize, the shame of House Lannister. Even if she returned to her father, all that waited for her was his cold face and another political marriage she had no say in.

She was always going to be someone's plaything.

Lynn had tossed her into a corner and left her to gather dust.

She wasn't even as good as Margaery Tyrell , that girl from the Reach with her soft smiles and careful words. She wasn't as good as that foolish Sansa Stark. At least Lynn talked to them. Taught them. Took them riding.

And herself?

Nothing. Endless waiting. The slow burn of being forgotten.

A desire rose in her then , so strong, so humiliating that she felt shame at the very shape of it.

She lifted her face to the seven sacred and indifferent gods. She gathered every scrap of strength she had left.

She said it.

"I... I pray..."

Her voice trembled with the shame of it.

"I pray to the gods... that Lynn would treat me... the way he treats his other women."

Not love. She didn't dare ask for love.

Not status. She didn't dare ask for that either.

Only this. Only not to be forgotten anymore.

Even as a conquered thing. Even as something possessed.

Just , not nothing.

The last word left her lips and the sept went dead silent.

All seven faces took on the same expression at once , knowing, inscrutable, deep with some meaning she couldn't read.

Then the dream broke apart like glass.

...

Cersei lurched upright in bed, heart slamming against her ribs.

Gray dawn light at the window. The hearth cold, the room colder.

A dream.

She pressed her hand flat against her chest and tried to breathe. The dream had been too real , so real she couldn't find the seam between it and the waking world.

She threw back the covers and went to the vanity.

The mirror showed her face: still beautiful, still striking, but worn at the edges. She gave it a hollow laugh.

Gods.

Wishes.

Ridiculous.

She must have gone half-mad, to dream something like that. To wish for something so pathetically small.

She reached for the comb and began to work it through her golden hair.

The door creaked open.

Lynn walked in.

Cersei's heart lurched sideways in her chest.

He said nothing. He crossed to the bed and looked down at her with an expression she didn't recognize on his face.

That familiar cold indifference , gone. Those dark eyes were intent now, unhidden, carrying the focused heat of a lion looking over its prey.

"I think," Lynn said, "I've been neglecting you."

Something detonated behind Cersei's eyes.

She stared at him. At his face. At what she saw in his eyes , that look she knew, that look she recognized.

The gods.

The gods had actually heard her.

Ecstasy hit her like a wave and she couldn't breathe through it, couldn't think , joy and shock and something almost like terror all crashing into each other at once.

She wasn't the forgotten one anymore.

She had won.

She had beaten Margaery. She had beaten Sansa.

Every last shred of pride, every scrap of carefully maintained reserve , she let it all go.

She looked at him and a smile spread across her face, slow and warm and entirely new.

She sank back onto the bed on her knees, like a cat settling beneath a hand that has finally reached for it. She tilted her face up. She pressed her lips to the back of his hand in a gesture so soft and yielding it would have made her former self look away.

"My king."

The words were honey.

Lynn gave her what she had dreamed of.

And she gave him everything in return , things she had once looked on with contempt, acts she had told herself only common women performed. She held nothing back. She had nothing left to protect.

She wanted to be conquered. She wanted to belong to someone.

At the bottom of that surrender, she found something she hadn't felt in a very long time.

...

When Cersei finally left , satisfied, walking with a brightness in her step she couldn't quite contain , the expression drained from Lynn's face.

He went to the window and pushed it open. Cold air poured in, cutting through the warmth, scattering the last of the room's heavy scent.

So. Manipulating people through their dreams actually worked.

Cersei had handed him an entirely new playbook.

Divine pronouncements. Guided revelations. Any number of interesting applications...

He filed it away.

Enough of that. Time to work.

He took out the glass candle and lit it.

The blue flame rose and steadied, flickering gently.

His consciousness moved. Across the frozen North, over the rushing Trident, westward , through distance and cold and the long dark between.

Euron's Iron Fleet had to be moving by now.

He needed to reach Maege Mormont before those ironborn bastards could strike.

He found her quickly , a temporary camp on the far edge of the Westerlands. The Lady of Bear Island was bent over a rough table with a handful of Northern bannermen, all of them studying a map, their voices low and intent.

Lynn focused, and pushed his awareness through the candle like a needle through cloth.

Inside the tent, Maege Mormont's finger came down hard on a point marked on the map , a Lannister supply depot.

"We burn it tomorrow," she said, loud and certain. "Let them feel what the North's fury actually means."

➤ Next: Journey to Bear Island