GOT: The Great — Chapter 273 - The Execution of Joffrey

Joffrey knelt beside Tywin, twisting his body to dodge the stones flying at him.

The crowd's attention was shifting from Tywin to Joffrey.

"I am," he said, his voice was shaking when he opened his mouth, but the will to survive made him louder than Tywin.

"I am Tywin's own grandson. A bastard born of incest between the Kingslayer Jaime Lannister and his filthy, whorish sister, Cersei Lannister!"

"I have no rightful claim to Robert Baratheon's throne!"

He gasped for breath. Tears and snot ran down his face together.

"My wicked mother — she murdered my stepfather, she killed the former High Septon, she committed adultery with her Kingsguard while ruling the realm, and I knew nothing of any of it. I knew nothing!"

A voice cut up from the crowd: "You're lying! You knew about her plan to burn King's Landing with wildfire!"

Joffrey dropped his head. His shoulders began to shake, a wet, broken whine seeping out from that trembling frame.

"I was still a child... I was only deceived by her... She was the one who made me give the orders. She was the one who made me do those things."

He turned his head toward where Cersei knelt. But Cersei was kneeling next to Jaime, naked, her shoulders drawn in slightly against the wind and snow.

She stared back at him with a blank face.

Sansa Stark walked down from the steps.

She stopped in front of Joffrey and looked down at him, her swollen belly and her young face set against Joffrey on his knees, face streaked with tears and filth.

"You gave the order to execute Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Hand of the King."

Joffrey's mouth hung open. His gaze snagged on Sansa's face for a moment, as if he wanted to say something. But Sansa didn't look at him again.

She turned away and raised a hand toward the crowd, signaling them to wait.

Then it was Jaime's turn. He lifted his head. "I am a Kingslayer. You've always known that."

Someone in the crowd cursed at him. He didn't react.

"Many years ago, Mad King Aerys also tried to burn King's Landing."

"He had the pyromancers bury wildfire caches beneath the entire city — under the Great Sept of Baelor, along the Street of the Sisters, in the drainage ditches of Flea Bottom. Everywhere."

"I killed him. I dragged him down from the Iron Throne and cut his throat with my sword."

"I saved you."

A brief silence fell over the crowd.

Some murmured to each other. Some watched him without moving. Some lowered hands that had been raised.

Jaime went on: "What I've come here to confess today is not my crime of kingslaying. It's the matter between me and Cersei."

He drew a slow breath. "While Robert Baratheon was still alive, I slept with Cersei right under his nose."

"He lay drunk on the ground. I was with Cersei beside him."

His voice came down steady and level.

The crowd erupted, an uproar like they'd been scalded. Curses, jeering, laughter, and somewhere in the noise, a voice calling out: The Lannister breed is all the same.

Jaime said nothing more.

He brought his gaze back from the crowd and let it rest on the stone slab in front of his knees.

Last was Cersei. She was the only person on the grounds who was naked.

Snow had been falling for a while. A thin layer had settled on her shoulders, piling before it could melt, building a fine white line along the ridge of her shoulder blades.

Goosebumps covered her skin.

She had no shoes. Her toes had gone purple from the cold. She knelt with her knees slightly together, hands hanging at her sides, making no move to cover herself.

She hadn't said a single word. But the charges the High Sparrow had leveled against her in life, incest, regicide, treason, deicide, and the slaughter of the people, had long since been made known to every soul in King's Landing.

Drogo lifted the sword from the wooden rack at the side of the platform.

The blade was wider than an ordinary sword, a faint dark pattern running along its edge. Valyrian steel, the one Tywin had given Joffrey. Widow's Wail.

He hefted it in his grip. The balance was just right.

He walked up to Tywin.

Tywin knelt there. The blood from his forehead had stopped flowing, but the cold had hardened it into a dark red crust stretching from the bridge of his nose down to his chin.

Drogo raised the sword.

Tywin looked up and met his gaze.

His lips moved, as if he wanted to say something. In the end he only pulled his gaze back and let it fall on the stone slab in front of him.

The blade cut through the air with a short, sharp hiss, then came down on the back of Tywin's neck and drove through between the vertebrae.

Tywin's head slid from his shoulders, rolled once, and came to rest at the edge of the platform. Face up.

His body held its kneeling position for two breaths after the sword fell. Then it pitched forward, and the blood from the severed neck ran slowly along the grooves in the stone, soaking into the spot where Joffrey knelt.

Cersei's body moved at that moment. It was the first visible reaction she had shown since entering the square.

The tension in Joffrey's face went slack.

The relief was plain. His clenched jaw loosened, his chin edged slightly forward, and his breathing came a little easier than before.

Jaime knelt beside Joffrey, head down, left hand balled into a fist.

Drogo held the sword at his side, took two steps over, and stood in front of Joffrey. He glanced at Sansa.

Sansa stepped out from behind the Kingsguard's shields.

"I pleaded many times for my innocent father — begged that he be allowed to take the black and join the Night's Watch."

"Joffrey refused. He ordered my father's head taken off, had it mounted on a spike, and forced me to stand on the city walls and watch."

She tilted her head slightly. "Now, with so many grave crimes to his name, what should be done with this man?"

Her smile in the cold wind was like a thin sheet of ice cracking open. Sharp. Brief. Then sealing shut again.

"There has not been a single day I haven't thought of vengeance. As long as I draw breath, Joffrey will face justice."

She paused.

"Take his head."

Joffrey's voice stabbed out: "We made a deal in the dungeon!"

Shrill and hoarse. "You said you'd let me join the Night's Watch, you said so, "

Drogo didn't wait for him to finish.

Widow's Wail traced a second arc through the snow-bright air, faster than the stroke that had taken Tywin, and cut clean across Joffrey's neck.

His mouth was still open when the blade came down.

Joffrey's body toppled, curled once, then lay flat on the stone platform beside Tywin.

Sansa took a long, slow breath. Cold air, filling her lungs all the way down, like a breath she had been holding for years had finally found its way out, released in slow, measured beats.

At the sight of her son's death, Cersei broke. The sound that came out of her was raw and wrecked.

"I demand trial by combat."

Jaime knelt beside her, head down, left hand balled into a fist. The instant the blade had fallen, one knuckle had visibly jutted out, a sharp, solitary crack.

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