you're too young & eager to love

Apparently, not all hotels in DC offer free WiFi. Really?! C'mon, capital city.

These are my two bits from Saturday and Friday. Nothing special at all because I was busy and on ~vacation.~

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1 -

Cersei Lannister was born in the hottest summer between two of the harshest winters. Her newborn cries were said to have been loud enough to pierce the veils that divided the Seven Hells, though she had quieted before her mother’s voice reached her, already sensing the clutch of her brother’s hand on her ankle. Her father had regarded the tiny cunt between Cersei’s legs while Jaime suckled at their mother, and Tywin told his wife that their daughter would never be heard. His son, Tywin said, would have to be voice enough for both of them. Cersei’s cries had began anew then, as if angered by this revelation, only to be muffled by the push of her mother’s breast into her tiny red mouth. She was never the child who suckled first.

Now, as a woman rather than a girl, she understood. But she had always been too capable for them all, too cunning despite her father’s intentness that she be docile and subservient and as sweet as gold, Arbor wine. “War will be the death of us all.” Cersei had heard her father say that more times than she could have ever counted. If she had one Golden Dragon for each of the times any of her father’s bannermen had said that too, she would have a purse large enough to keep everyone compliant. (And then, where would man and his eternal whore lie?) War did bring death, but so did poison, the pox, wildfire, and… love. Love, she knew, was the true destroyer of men for all that it could be worn upon the sleeve.

(Women, Cersei would prove, were shrewder in matters of stratagem and counsel. In delicate yet strong hands, kingdoms could be won and kept.)


2 -


What does he want?

Long before the night of her first wedding, Margaery knew that Renly Baratheon held little interest for her. When the time came, the challenger of the Iron Throne had repeated the sacred words, clasped her small hands in his, and struggled to keep his eyes away from her brother. Loras’ jealousy was marked in the scowl across his face, but she had not minded. Truth be told, despite his handsomeness, she had held even less interest for Renly than he had for her … if it had not been for Loras and his giddiness at his new found exploration of love, she might never have received a decent education on men, on what they liked and how they thought. Renly, she always knew, had wanted Loras and settled for a woman who looked the most like him. All that was expected of her was to be a pleasing arrangement - something for men like Renly to look upon, covet, and move around as it suited them.

What does he want?

Joffrey Baratheon was a monster. Margaery could tell that even before Sansa confirmed it for her. The first time Margaery had seen him, she’d been struck by how cruel his mouth was, how ungenerous his manner. It had been with distaste that she’d allowed him to take her hand, to press those cruel lips against it. But it had been with cunning that she had seduced him all the same, using her words at first to convince him that his cruelty had been a delight for her, that she too could be someone who would savor his shocking proclivities rather than run from them. Later, she had tolerated his hard hands on her slender body, had suffered under the burden and weight of his abject horror. Joffrey had wanted a wife to bed, a thing to swiftly hunt and mount.

Women, her grandmother told her once when she was young, must learn to use their bodies as well as their minds to capture and hold a prize. Joffrey was not the prize, but the crown and the throne were. If she had once visited him during midnight hours, much like she began visiting his brother, there was never any evidence of it.

She had curled Joffrey around her finger just enough to have him bulk the shadow of his mother, and that type of forge always required sacrifices.