Casterly Rock had never seemed so unbearably quiet.

A week had passed since Joanna's burial. Seven days since the bells had tolled, since the mourners had gathered, since Tywin Lannister had stood beside his wife's grave and watched the earth swallow the woman he had loved more dearly than anyone in the world.

Seven days, and still, he found himself expecting her to be there.

In the mornings, he would turn toward her side of the bed before remembering. At supper, he would look to the seat beside him, only to find it empty. Sometimes, in the brief moments between waking and consciousness, he could almost imagine hearing her voice somewhere beyond the chamber doors.

Then he would remember.

And the world would become unbearable all over again.

Tywin had little patience for such weakness. Grief was a private matter, one to be endured in silence and conquered through discipline. There were ledgers to examine, petitions to answer, and matters of the Westerlands that could not simply cease because he had suffered a loss.

So he worked.

He worked until his eyes burned and his fingers cramped around his quill. He worked until the candles guttered low and the servants hesitated to interrupt him. He worked because the moment he stopped, there was nothing left between himself and the terrible, suffocating reality of Joanna's absence.

And there was the child.

His son.

The words alone were enough to sour his temper.

Tyrion had been born healthy. The maester had assured him of it, speaking with the sort of careful optimism that made Tywin want to throw him out of the room. Healthy. As though that were enough. As though the babe's first breath had not coincided with Joanna's last.

He had not yet found it in himself to visit the nursery.

He knew what awaited him there: a small, helpless creature who had done nothing wrong, and whom Tywin could not look upon without remembering the wife he had lost.

The distinction was perfectly clear in his mind.

It made no difference to the anger in his chest.

A sharp knock interrupted his thoughts.

"Enter."

The servant who appeared in the doorway bowed low, visibly reluctant to speak.

"My lord. There is a visitor."

Tywin's quill stopped moving.

"Then you may inform them that I am occupied."

"I have, my lord. They insist—"

"Then you have not been sufficiently clear."

The servant swallowed. "They are a friend of the late Lady Joanna, my lord."

For one brief, treacherous moment, Tywin's heart stirred.

A friend of Joanna's.

Someone who might have sat with her in the solar, laughed with her over some private joke, or heard the sound of her voice in the corridors that now seemed so empty. Someone who might remember the little things Tywin had already begun to fear he would forget: the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled, the particular warmth of her laughter, the quiet touch of her hand against his when no one else was looking.

Then came the familiar, bitter weight of reality.

Another visitor. Another pair of eyes to watch him with pity. Another mouth to tell him how dearly Joanna had been loved, how terribly she would be missed, how no words could possibly express their sorrow.

As if he required reminding.

"I did not invite them."

"No, my lord."

"Then why are we discussing this?"

The servant looked as though he would rather face a drawn sword than answer.

"They have made it quite clear they do not intend to leave without seeing you."

Silence settled over the solar.

Tywin slowly set down his quill.

He could have refused them entry. He could have ordered the guards to escort them from the Rock and been done with the matter before the hour was out. It would have been perfectly within his rights.

Yet Joanna had been fond of this person.

That, more than anything, stayed his hand.

"Very well." His voice was cold enough to frost the words. "Show them in."

The servant bowed and disappeared.

Tywin rose from his desk, smoothing the front of his dark doublet with unnecessary precision. His face settled into the familiar, formidable composure that had served him well for years. Whatever this visitor expected to find, they would not find him weeping. They would not find him begging for comfort, nor would they find him grateful for sympathy he had never asked to receive.

He was Lord of Casterly Rock. Lord Paramount of the Westerlands. The head of House Lannister.

He would not be pitied in his own home.

The doors opened.

Tywin turned toward them, his expression stern, his posture rigid. For a moment, he merely regarded Joanna's friend, taking in the audacity of someone who had apparently mistaken his grief for an invitation to intrude upon it.

"How considerate of you to arrive unannounced," he said at last.

There was no warmth in his voice. Not even the faintest attempt at courtesy beyond what the words themselves demanded.

"I believe my servants have already explained that I am not receiving visitors."

His gaze remained fixed upon them, sharp and unwelcoming.

"And yet, here you are."

He gestured toward the chair opposite his desk, though the movement held none of the graciousness one might expect from a host. It was less an invitation than an acknowledgment that, since they had already forced their way into his solar, he might as well discover what they wanted.

"Well?"

The single word fell between them like a stone.

"If you have come to offer your condolences, you may spare us both the trouble. I have heard quite enough of them."

For the first time since the funeral, something almost uncontrolled flickered across his face. His jaw tightened. His fingers curled against the edge of the desk.

"My wife is dead. I am aware of it."

The words came out harsher than he had intended. Or perhaps precisely as harshly as he had intended. Tywin no longer seemed capable of telling the difference.

He looked away for half a heartbeat, toward the narrow window overlooking the sea, before forcing his attention back to his unwanted guest.

"Now. Did you have a reason for disregarding my wishes, or have you simply decided that my household has not suffered enough indignity this week?"

The hour was late, and Lord Tywin Lannister had yet to retire.

The servants had long since cleared the supper table. The corridors of Casterly Rock had fallen quiet, save for the occasional footsteps of a guard making his rounds, and the candles in Tywin's solar had burned low enough that wax had begun to gather in pale rivulets along their holders.

Still, he worked.

A stack of correspondence lay open before him, accompanied by accounts from Lannisport and a report concerning the western mines. Matters that ordinarily would have taken little effort to attend to had occupied the better part of his evening. He had read the same paragraph three times without retaining a word of it.

His quill hovered over the parchment.

Somewhere beyond the solar's walls, a door closed.

Tywin's eyes lifted.

For the briefest instant, he expected to hear Joanna's footsteps.

The thought was so sudden, so utterly unwelcome, that his hand tightened around the quill until the feather bent beneath his fingers.

Nothing followed.

Of course nothing followed.

Joanna would not come through the door. She would not chide him for working too late, nor remind him that even a lord of the Westerlands required sleep. She would not cross the room to peer over his shoulder at the accounts, making some quiet observation that would have earned a disapproving look from him and a smile from her.

She would not come at all.

The quill snapped.

Tywin stared at the broken shaft in his hand.

For several moments, he did nothing. Then, with a sharp exhale, he dropped it onto the desk and pushed the parchment away.

"Useless."

He could not have said whether he meant the quill, the accounts, or the entire wretched evening.

His gaze wandered to the chair beside the hearth.

Joanna had favoured that particular seat. She would sit there in the evenings with a book in her lap, sometimes reading, sometimes merely watching the fire while he occupied himself with his correspondence. There had been a time when he had considered the arrangement an indulgence. He had responsibilities, after all, and the affairs of the Westerlands did not attend to themselves.

Yet she had never demanded that he abandon his work. She had only asked him to look up now and then.

Sometimes, he had.

Sometimes, he had even put his quill aside.

The memory settled over him with a tenderness so painful that he immediately looked away.

A knock sounded at the door.

Tywin's expression hardened.

"If this is another report, it can wait until morning."

"It is not, my lord."

He recognised the servant's voice. The same unfortunate man who had been forced to announce Joanna's friend earlier that day.

Tywin closed his eyes briefly.

"What is it?"

"The visitor you received this afternoon has not yet retired. They asked whether you might permit them a moment of your time."

A humourless laugh escaped him.

"Did they?"

The sheer persistence of Joanna's friend was becoming an irritation of considerable proportions. Most people, having encountered Tywin's displeasure, possessed the good sense to withdraw. They offered their condolences from a distance, sent letters, and left him to endure his grief in peace.

This one appeared determined to make themselves a nuisance.

"Tell them I have no further business with them tonight."

A pause.

"Forgive me, my lord, but they said—"

"I did not ask what they said."

Silence.

Tywin looked back at the empty chair beside the hearth.

He could order the servants to send Joanna's friend away. He could make it abundantly clear that their presence was neither required nor desired. There was no reason whatsoever to entertain them a second time.

And yet, the thought of returning to his correspondence, to the silence, to the chair beside the hearth—

"Very well." His voice was clipped. "They may have five minutes."

The servant bowed and withdrew.

Tywin rose, crossed to the hearth, and stood beside Joanna's chair. He did not sit in it. He had not sat in it since her death.

He could not explain why.

Perhaps because it had been hers. Perhaps because sitting there would feel like an admission that she would never return to claim it.

Or perhaps because, in some small and irrational corner of his mind, he still expected her to.

When the door opened again, Tywin did not immediately turn.

"You have a remarkable disregard for instructions," he remarked, his voice carrying across the room. "I should think a friend of my wife would possess a greater understanding of when they are unwelcome."

He finally faced them.

The familiar severity was there, the straight-backed posture and the cool, measuring gaze. Yet the hour had worn away some of the day's carefully maintained polish. His eyes were tired. His expression bore the strain of too many sleepless nights, and the shadows beneath them were difficult to conceal in the firelight.

He looked, for once, less like a lord receiving a guest and more like a man who had forgotten what to do with himself when there was no one left to come home to.

"Well? You have your five minutes."

He returned to his desk but did not sit. Instead, he remained standing behind the chair, one hand resting against its carved back.

His gaze drifted, almost involuntarily, toward the empty place beside the hearth.

"You knew Joanna well, I am told."

It was not quite a question. He had known, of course, that his wife had friends. He had even met some of them over the years. But there had been so many things about Joanna's life beyond the walls of Casterly Rock that he had never thought to ask about. Little stories, old friendships, memories that belonged to her alone.

He had always assumed there would be time enough to hear them.

Tywin's fingers tightened against the chair.

"What was she like," he asked, then stopped.

The words had escaped before he could properly consider them.

His mouth pressed into a thin line. He looked almost angry with himself for having spoken at all.

"I know what she was like," he corrected sharply. "She was my wife."

As though that explained everything. As though loving her had meant knowing every corner of her heart.

He looked toward the window, where the darkness beyond the glass offered nothing but his own faint reflection.

"She was a good woman."

The statement was stiff, almost formal. It sounded like something a lord might say of his late wife at a funeral, rather than a husband speaking of the woman whose absence had hollowed out his days.

For a moment, the only sound was the crackling fire.

Then Tywin spoke again, quieter this time.

"She deserved more time."

His expression tightened at once, as though he regretted allowing even that much to be heard.

He released the chair and moved back toward his desk, reaching for the nearest parchment without looking at it.

"Five minutes," he repeated. "You may use them as you please."

But he did not tell Joanna's friend to leave.

And when the silence stretched between them, Tywin found that, for once, he did not quite know how to fill it.

The cries had begun shortly after dawn.

They carried through the corridors of Casterly Rock, thin and insistent, rising from the nursery tucked away in the quieter portion of the family apartments. The servants had grown accustomed to them over the past week. The wet nurse knew when to soothe the babe, the maester knew when to examine him, and the guards stationed outside the nursery had learned to ignore the occasional disruption.

Lord Tywin Lannister had learned no such thing.

He had spent the better part of the morning attempting to review the reports delivered from Lannisport. Each time the infant's cries reached his solar, his attention strayed from the parchment before him. His jaw tightened. His quill scratched more forcefully against the page.

It was an absurd thing, to be so thoroughly disturbed by a child who could scarcely do anything beyond cry, sleep, and demand to be fed.

Yet every sound seemed to find the same raw place within him.

A week.

It had been a week since Joanna's death, and the world had continued as though nothing of consequence had happened. The mines still produced gold. The ships still sailed. The bannermen still sent their correspondence, and the servants still went about their duties.

His wife was dead, and the world had not even had the decency to stop.

And the child remained.

Tyrion Lannister. His youngest son. The babe whose arrival had cost him the one person he had never imagined losing.

Tywin knew, in the cold and rational part of his mind, that an infant could not be held accountable for the circumstances of his birth. He knew that Tyrion had neither chosen to be born nor understood what had happened to his mother.

It was a simple truth. An indisputable one.

But grief was rarely interested in what was reasonable.

The door to his solar opened after a knock, and a servant stepped inside.

"My lord, the maester requests—"

"No."

The servant faltered. "My lord?"

"If this concerns the child, the maester may attend to him without requiring my presence."

"Of course, my lord. He only wished to inform you that the babe is well."

Tywin's expression darkened.

"Then he has accomplished very little by telling me."

The servant lowered his eyes.

Tywin returned to his parchment, though he had ceased reading it.

"Is there anything else?"

"No, my lord."

"Then go."

The servant bowed and withdrew, closing the door behind him.

For several moments, Tywin remained perfectly still. Then he pushed the parchment aside with enough force to scatter the papers beneath it.

"Gods be damned."

The words were scarcely more than a mutter, but the bitterness behind them filled the empty room.

He rose and crossed to the window, staring down at the sea. He had always found comfort in its immensity, in the reminder that the world was older and greater than any single man or his misfortunes.

Today, even the sea offered him nothing.

A knock sounded at the door.

Tywin turned sharply.

"If this is another report concerning my son, I suggest you find something more useful to occupy your time."

The door opened.

It was Joanna's friend.

Of course it was.

Their presence had become a peculiar fixture of the past several days, an intrusion he had neither requested nor managed to discourage. They had come to Casterly Rock despite his objections, lingered despite his coldness, and continued to make themselves available with a persistence that Tywin found increasingly difficult to tolerate.

They had known Joanna well. That was the only reason he had permitted their continued presence.

It was also the reason he could not bring himself to dismiss them as readily as he might have dismissed anyone else.

"Must you always arrive at the most inconvenient hour?" he demanded.

His gaze shifted briefly toward the door, beyond which the infant's cries had begun again.

"Or have you come to inform me that my son has survived another morning?"

The words were spoken with a contempt so sharp that even Tywin seemed to hear it once it had left his mouth.

He turned away, jaw clenched.

"I am surrounded by people who appear to believe that the child is some sort of consolation. The maester assures me he is healthy. The servants tell me he is sleeping. Every other person who enters this room seems determined to remind me that he is alive."

His hand struck the edge of the desk.

"Alive."

The word emerged as though it were an accusation.

"And Joanna is not."

Silence followed.

For the first time, Tywin looked directly at Joanna's friend, his eyes bright with exhaustion and an anger that had nowhere sensible to go.

"Do you imagine I do not know what they think of me? That I am a cruel husband, an unfeeling father, because I cannot look upon that child and feel grateful for his existence?"

His mouth twisted.

"Perhaps I am expected to thank the gods for the privilege of burying my wife and raising the son who survived her."

It was a terrible thing to say. Cruel, even by the standards of a man whose words were often sharper than his sword.

And yet, he did not take it back.

He could not bear the sight of the child. He could not bear the sound of his cries. He could not bear that Tyrion's existence would forever mark the moment Joanna had been taken from him.

And he could not bear that a part of him knew the child was innocent.

That knowledge only made the shame worse.

"Do not look at me like that," Tywin snapped, catching whatever expression had settled upon Joanna's friend's face. "You knew her. You loved her. You have every right to mourn her."

His voice lowered.

"But you did not lose what I lost."

The words hung between them, final and merciless.

Tywin stood rigid behind his desk, his hands braced against the polished wood. He looked every inch the Lord of Casterly Rock, proud and unyielding, but there was something desperate beneath the anger now. Something raw that he had neither the strength nor the willingness to name.

Then came another cry from the nursery.

Tywin's eyes closed.

"Make it stop," he muttered.

Whether he meant the child, the sound, or the memories that seemed to follow every breath he took, even he could not have said.

And then Joanna's friend spoke.

Perhaps it was the finality of his words. Perhaps it was the contempt with which he had spoken of an infant who had done nothing to deserve it. Perhaps it was simply the knowledge that Joanna, had she been standing in that room, would never have allowed her son to be spoken of in such a manner.

Whatever the reason, their patience had finally reached its end.

They scolded him.

Not cautiously, not with the careful deference afforded to a lord of his standing, but with the fury of someone who had watched a grieving man turn his pain upon the most helpless person in the household.

Tyrion was a baby.

He had not chosen to be born. He had not asked for any of this. He had not taken Joanna away from his father, and he could not possibly understand why the man who should have loved him would scarcely bring himself to look at him.

And Joanna would never have wanted her son to be hated for surviving.

Tywin went utterly still.

For a heartbeat, the room seemed to shrink around him.

Then his expression hardened.

"You presume a great deal."

His voice was quiet now, which was always more dangerous than shouting.

"You presume to enter my home, to speak to me of my wife, and now to lecture me on how I ought to feel about my own son."

He rounded the desk, stopping several paces away.

"You have no notion of what you are asking of me."

The anger was there, unmistakable, but it no longer seemed to possess the same certainty. His eyes flickered toward the door, toward the distant sound of the infant's cries.

"I have buried the woman I loved."

His voice caught on the words.

Only slightly. Barely enough to be noticed.

But Tywin noticed.

His face twisted with immediate fury at the betrayal of his own voice, and he turned away as though the movement could erase it.

"I cannot look at him without remembering her."

There it was.

Not an excuse. Not quite an explanation.

A truth he had spent seven days refusing to speak aloud.

He stood with his back to Joanna's friend, one hand pressed against the edge of the desk. The silence stretched on until the infant's cries faded into the distance, soothed at last by the wet nurse.

When Tywin finally spoke again, his voice had returned to its familiar coldness.

"You have made your opinion abundantly clear."

He drew a slow breath.

"If you intend to remain in Casterly Rock, I suggest you remember that I will not tolerate being spoken to in such a manner again."

It was a dismissal, or an attempt at one.

But he did not call for the guards. He did not order Joanna's friend from the room. And when he turned back toward them, the anger in his face had been joined by something far less comfortable.

Doubt.

He looked toward the door once more.

His son was alive.

Joanna was not.

And for the first time, Tywin was forced to confront the possibility that, in his efforts to endure the loss of his wife, he might be making an enemy of the only part of her that remained.

"Leave me," he said at last.

The words were quieter than before.

This time, they sounded less like an order than a plea.

Tywin Lannister had never been a man who tolerated idleness.

There was always something to be done, some matter demanding his attention, some problem requiring a firm hand and a sharper mind. The affairs of the Westerlands did not cease simply because their lord had suffered a personal tragedy, and Tywin had no intention of allowing them to.

If anything, he had become more diligent.

The past week had seen him rise before dawn and retire long after midnight, burying himself in correspondence, accounts, and reports from his bannermen. He had taken meetings he scarcely remembered and signed documents he had read twice over, all in the name of keeping the world in order when his own had fallen apart.

Sleep was an inconvenience.

Silence was worse.

And meals, apparently, had become an entirely optional affair.

The tray beside his desk had been delivered nearly an hour earlier. The meat had gone cold, the gravy had begun to congeal, and the bread remained untouched beneath its linen covering.

Tywin had barely glanced at it.

He was halfway through a report concerning the western mines when a knock sounded at his solar door.

"Enter."

The door opened, and one of the servants appeared.

"My lord, your meal—"

"Leave it."

"But, my lord, you have not eaten since—"

Tywin lifted his eyes.

The servant immediately fell silent.

"Must I repeat myself?"

"No, my lord."

"Then close the door on your way out."

The servant bowed and withdrew, leaving the tray precisely where it was.

Tywin returned to his work.

At least, he attempted to.

The past several days had made concentration an increasingly difficult exercise. His eyes moved across the same lines of parchment, his mind catching on words that refused to form anything resembling a coherent thought. Every so often, he found himself looking toward the window, only to discover that he had been staring at the same stretch of sea for several minutes.

He hated it.

He hated the exhaustion that clung to him, the headaches that followed his sleepless nights, and the constant, unwelcome awareness of everything that was missing from his life.

Most of all, he hated that there was nothing he could do about any of it.

He could issue orders. He could command men. He could ensure that every mine, ship, and holding under his authority continued to function as it should.

He could not command Joanna to return.

A sharp knock interrupted his thoughts.

Tywin's jaw tightened.

"If that is another servant come to lecture me about my supper, I suggest they find something more productive to do."

The door opened regardless.

And there, standing in the doorway, was Joanna's friend.

Again.

Tywin stared at them for a long, silent moment.

He had begun to suspect that they possessed some peculiar inability to recognise when they were unwelcome. Most people had the good sense to retreat after being met with his displeasure. Joanna's friend, however, appeared to regard his irritation as little more than a minor inconvenience.

He should have found it infuriating.

He did find it infuriating.

Unfortunately, that had not yet proved sufficient to discourage them.

"Have you taken to ignoring doors entirely," he asked coldly, "or is it only my instructions you find so difficult to follow?"

His gaze shifted toward the tray.

Then back to them.

"If you have come to offer another condolence, I assure you that nothing has changed since your last visit."

He returned his attention to the parchment, dismissing them with the practiced ease of a man accustomed to having the final word.

"I am occupied."

The silence that followed was suspiciously persistent.

Tywin's quill continued moving across the page.

"I believe I have made myself quite clear."

Still, the visitor remained.

Slowly, he lifted his head.

His expression darkened when he realised that Joanna's friend had apparently taken an interest in the untouched tray beside his desk.

"No."

The word came before they had even spoken.

Tywin set down his quill.

"Whatever notion has entered your head, you may dismiss it immediately. I have neither requested nor required your assistance in managing my household."

He leaned back in his chair, regarding them with the cold scrutiny that had made more than one bannerman reconsider the wisdom of arguing with him.

"I am perfectly capable of deciding when I shall eat."

A pause.

"And I should be grateful if you would refrain from looking at me as though I were some infirm old man incapable of tending to himself."

The irony of the statement might have been more apparent had Tywin not looked thoroughly exhausted. His eyes were shadowed, his face drawn, and the faint stubble along his jaw suggested that even his usual attention to appearances had begun to suffer.

He looked less like a man who had decided not to eat and more like one who had simply forgotten that he was expected to.

But Tywin Lannister was not inclined to acknowledge such distinctions.

He reached for the parchment again.

"Now, unless you have something of actual importance to discuss, I suggest you allow me to return to my work."

The tray remained untouched.

The food grew colder.

And Tywin, apparently determined to prove that he could survive on little more than stubbornness and sheer force of will, bent over his correspondence once more.

He did not look up when Joanna's friend moved.

He did, however, notice when they failed to leave.

His quill stopped.

Slowly, he raised his eyes to meet theirs.

"Surely," he said, with the particular restraint of a man standing at the very edge of his patience, "you do not intend to make a matter of this."

For the first time, there was something almost incredulous beneath his irritation.

They could not possibly be serious.

They were serious.

Tywin stared at them.

Then, with a quiet and thoroughly disbelieving breath, he pushed his chair back from the desk.

"Gods preserve me from Joanna's friends."

The words were muttered beneath his breath, but they carried perfectly well across the room.

He looked toward the ceiling for a moment, as though asking the Seven for the patience his visitor had apparently been sent to deprive him of.

When he looked back, his expression was once again composed, his voice clipped and authoritative.

"Very well. What, precisely, must I do to convince you that I am not in need of supervision?"

The question was delivered as a challenge.

Tywin Lannister was a man who had commanded armies, governed the Westerlands, and earned the obedience of those who served him.

He was not about to be bullied into eating his supper by one of his late wife's friends.

Absolutely not.

The fact that the meal remained untouched beside him was, in his opinion, entirely irrelevant.

The rain had been falling over Casterly Rock since midday.

It swept in from the Sunset Sea, rattling against the tall windows and casting the western horizon beneath a veil of grey. The weather had driven most of the household indoors, leaving the corridors quieter than usual and the great halls illuminated by the warm glow of hearths and candles.

Tywin Lannister had always preferred a clear sky.

Rain made the castle feel smaller. It kept people close to one another, encouraged idle conversation, and offered far too many opportunities for those with nothing better to do to intrude upon the affairs of others.

Unfortunately, Joanna's friend appeared to possess an inexhaustible supply of free time.

They had been in Casterly Rock for several days now. Long enough that the servants had stopped looking surprised when they appeared in places they had not been invited to, and long enough that Tywin had begun to recognise their footsteps.

He found that last detail particularly irritating.

He had more important things to concern himself with than the movements of his wife's friends. The Westerlands required his attention, his children required supervision, and the household needed to continue functioning despite the considerable disruption of the past week.

And yet, here he was, sitting in his solar with a half-finished letter before him, listening to the rain and thinking about Joanna.

Again.

His gaze drifted toward the chair beside the hearth.

He had begun to resent that chair.

It was merely a piece of furniture, carved oak with a high back and cushions Joanna had once selected herself. There was nothing remarkable about it. It had stood in the solar for years, and there was no sensible reason why its presence should trouble him.

But she had always preferred it.

Sometimes, when the evening grew late, she would sit there with a book and quietly keep him company while he worked. On other nights, she would abandon her reading entirely and begin talking, telling him some story about her day or recounting a conversation that had amused her.

He had occasionally complained that she distracted him.

She had always smiled as though she knew perfectly well that he did not mean it.

Tywin lowered his eyes to the letter.

He missed that smile.

The realisation came without warning, simple and devastating in its familiarity. His fingers tightened around the parchment, and for several moments he could do nothing but stare at the words blurring before him.

Then came a knock.

"Enter."

The door opened, revealing Joanna's friend.

Tywin's expression settled into its customary severity.

"Have you come to inform me of another matter that requires my immediate attention?"

His gaze moved briefly over them before returning to his desk.

"I assure you, the castle has not collapsed in your absence."

There was a faint trace of irritation in his voice, but less than there might once have been. He had discovered that Joanna's friend was remarkably difficult to discourage, and he was beginning to suspect that attempting to do so required more effort than simply enduring their company.

A thoroughly inconvenient discovery.

He gestured toward the chair opposite his desk.

"If you insist upon remaining, you may as well sit."

It was not a particularly warm invitation, but it was an invitation nonetheless.

Tywin returned to his letter, allowing the quiet to settle between them. The rain continued against the windows, and the fire crackled softly in the hearth.

For a time, neither of them spoke.

Then Joanna's friend mentioned her.

Not her death. Not the funeral, nor the condolences that had become so tiresome over the past week.

Joanna herself.

Some small story from years earlier, perhaps, or an amusing recollection of something she had said. The sort of memory that would ordinarily have been shared over supper or during an afternoon spent in conversation.

Tywin's quill slowed.

He did not look up immediately, though his attention had abandoned the letter entirely.

"What was that?"

He heard the story again.

His brows drew together.

"Joanna said that?"

There was something almost disbelieving in his voice.

He could picture her doing it, of course. That was the trouble. He could picture her far too easily: the glint of amusement in her eyes, the way she would press her lips together when attempting to conceal a smile, the absolute lack of remorse she displayed whenever she had managed to catch him off guard.

His mouth tightened.

"She has evidently neglected to mention this particular incident to me."

A pause.

"Though I cannot imagine why she would find it amusing."

He returned to his letter, apparently satisfied with this explanation.

He lasted approximately three seconds.

"What else did she say?"

The question escaped with such speed that Tywin seemed to hear it only after he had spoken.

His eyes lifted toward Joanna's friend.

"I mean," he added, with a sharpness that suggested the clarification was entirely necessary, "if you intend to recount the matter, you may as well do so accurately."

He set his quill aside.

"Start from the beginning."

There was no mistaking the interest in his voice now, though Tywin appeared determined to disguise it as an interrogation. He leaned back in his chair, his expression carefully composed, as though he were receiving a report of considerable political importance.

Joanna's friend had the distinct advantage of knowing better.

Tywin had never been an especially demonstrative man. He had loved Joanna deeply, but he had rarely felt the need to announce it to the world. Their affection had belonged to the quiet moments between obligations: a hand resting briefly against hers beneath the table, a conversation carried late into the night, the occasional smile he allowed himself when he was certain no one else was watching.

He had assumed those moments belonged to them alone.

Now he found himself listening to someone else speak of them, discovering that Joanna had carried pieces of their life into conversations he had never been part of.

It was a strange sensation.

Unsettling, even.

And yet he wanted to know more.

The thought left a dull ache beneath his ribs, but it was not quite the same as the pain that had followed him through the previous seven days. For once, the memory of Joanna had brought something other than the image of her grave.

He could almost hear her laughing.

Tywin looked down at the desk.

A faint, unwilling smile threatened the corner of his mouth.

He suppressed it immediately.

"She was always far too pleased with herself when she managed to make me the subject of a story," he remarked.

The words were dry, but there was a warmth beneath them that had been absent from his voice for days.

Then, before he could reconsider, he added, "She once spent an entire afternoon insisting that I had no sense of humour."

He paused.

"An entirely unfounded accusation, naturally."

The claim was delivered with such solemn conviction that it might have been taken seriously by someone who had never met him.

For a moment, Tywin seemed to remember that he was speaking about Joanna in the past tense.

The faint amusement faded.

His gaze drifted toward the chair beside the hearth once more, and his expression grew distant.

"She had a remarkable talent for making me look foolish."

There was no bitterness in it. Only a quiet, aching fondness.

His fingers rested against the edge of the parchment, tracing a crease that did not need smoothing.

"I did not always appreciate it as much as I ought to have."

The admission was small. Almost nothing, compared to the things he had refused to say aloud since her death.

But it was honest.

Tywin drew a slow breath, then looked back toward Joanna's friend.

"Tell me another."

His voice was quieter now.

He did not dress the request in a command or pretend it was necessary for any practical purpose. He simply asked, and for once, made no attempt to conceal why.

"I should like to hear it."

Tywin Lannister had faced difficult decisions before.

He had been young when he learned that a lord's authority meant little if he lacked the resolve to wield it. He had watched his father's weakness threaten the standing of House Lannister, then spent years restoring what had nearly been squandered. He had negotiated with stubborn bannermen, managed the affairs of the Westerlands, and made decisions that lesser men would have spent their lives avoiding.

He understood responsibility.

He understood duty.

He understood what was required of a man when circumstances offered him no pleasant choices.

None of it had prepared him for fatherhood without Joanna.

The nursery was quiet when he reached it, save for the soft rustle of linen and the occasional, unhappy sound from the cradle. A servant stood near the hearth, while the wet nurse adjusted the blankets around the infant.

Tyrion was awake.

Tywin stopped just outside the doorway.

He had not intended to come here. At least, that was what he had told himself when he left his solar. He had merely been passing through the family apartments, checking that the household was in order, ensuring that the maester had attended to his duties.

There were any number of sensible reasons for being here.

None explained why he remained at the threshold.

The child began to cry.

Tywin's shoulders stiffened.

It was an ordinary sound. An infant's cry, no different from the countless others heard in noble households throughout the Seven Kingdoms. The wet nurse moved to soothe him, murmuring softly as she lifted him from the cradle.

Still, Tywin found himself unable to look away.

Tyrion was small. Smaller than Tywin had expected, though the maester had assured him there was nothing unusual about his size. His tiny face had reddened with crying, his fists curling against the linen, his voice rising in indignant little bursts.

He knew nothing.

Nothing of Joanna's death. Nothing of the funeral, the mourning, or the strange silence that had settled over Casterly Rock. Nothing of the anger that followed Tywin from room to room, nor the terrible, senseless resentment he had been unable to extinguish.

The child had simply been born.

And Joanna had died.

Tywin's fingers curled at his sides.

"Has the maester examined him today?" he asked.

The wet nurse looked up, startled by the question.

"Yes, my lord. The babe is well."

"Then why is he crying?"

The woman hesitated. "He may be hungry, my lord. Or tired. Sometimes there is no particular reason."

No particular reason.

Tywin looked at her as though she had offered him the most useless explanation imaginable.

"Surely there is something to be done."

"We are doing what we can, my lord."

The infant cried again, louder this time.

Tywin turned his face away.

"Very well."

He left before anyone could say another word.

By the time he reached his solar, his temper had deteriorated considerably.

He shut the door harder than necessary and crossed the room, only to stop beside his desk without sitting. The reports awaiting his attention remained precisely where he had left them. The fire had burned low. A half-finished cup of wine sat untouched near the window.

Everything was exactly as it had been.

And yet he could not return to work.

He could still hear the child's cries.

Worse, he could remember Joanna's voice from years earlier, speaking of the children they might have, the sort of mother she hoped to be, the little things she intended to teach them as they grew.

They had spoken of the future as though it were something they could arrange between them.

They had been so certain there would be time.

Tywin pressed the heel of his hand against his brow.

"Gods."

He had no patience for this. No patience for the memories, the exhaustion, or the miserable realisation that he had no idea what Joanna would have done in his place.

He knew how to provide for his children. He knew how to arrange their educations, secure their futures, and ensure that they understood the responsibilities attached to their name.

But what was he supposed to do with a crying infant?

What was he supposed to do when the child was his son, and every glance at him brought the memory of his mother's death rushing back?

A knock sounded at the door.

Tywin lowered his hand.

"Enter."

The servant who appeared bowed deeply.

"My lord, the friend of the late Lady Joanna is here."

Tywin's first instinct was to refuse the visit.

He was tired. He was angry. He had no desire to endure another conversation about his wife or explain himself to someone who seemed to have appointed themselves the conscience of Casterly Rock.

Then he remembered the nursery.

He remembered standing in the doorway, unable to make himself take another step.

And he thought of Joanna.

She had trusted this person. Had welcomed them into her life long before they had come to Casterly Rock, and had evidently cared for them enough that they had refused to abandon her family after her death.

Tywin had spent a week resenting the fact that Joanna was gone.

Perhaps he had not considered what remained.

"Send them in."

The servant bowed and withdrew.

When Joanna's friend entered, Tywin was standing beside his desk, his hands clasped behind his back. He looked composed at first glance, but the tension in his shoulders betrayed him. There was a restlessness to his movements, a faint crease between his brows that had become almost permanent over the past week.

"I require your assistance with a matter," he began.

The words were delivered with the same grave formality he might have used to summon a steward or consult one of his advisers.

He paused.

"This concerns my son."

His expression tightened almost immediately, as though the admission itself had cost him something.

"The child has been crying. The wet nurse assures me that he is perfectly healthy, yet no one seems capable of explaining what is required to settle him."

He looked toward the window.

"I am told you knew Joanna well."

There was a moment's silence.

"You knew her before she was my wife. You knew her habits, her preferences, and the things she considered important."

His jaw flexed.

"Perhaps you know something I do not."

It was a carefully constructed explanation, practical and reasonable. A man asking for information that might prove useful.

Not a grieving husband who could no longer ask his wife what she would have done.

Not a father who was frightened by how little he knew about the child in the nursery.

Tywin drew a slow breath.

"I would like you to accompany me to see him."

The request hung between them.

He seemed to recognise, a heartbeat too late, that he had asked rather than ordered. His expression hardened in an instinctive attempt to recover the authority he had momentarily surrendered.

"If you have no objection, of course."

The qualification sounded distinctly unnatural coming from him.

He turned toward the door before Joanna's friend could answer, clearly unwilling to linger over the matter.

The walk to the nursery passed in silence.

Tywin kept his gaze ahead, his hands clasped behind his back. He did not explain himself further, nor did he attempt to disguise the tension that gathered in his shoulders as they approached the family apartments.

When they reached the nursery, the wet nurse rose at once.

"My lord."

Tywin acknowledged her with a brief nod.

Tyrion lay in the cradle, awake but quiet now. His tiny hands moved beneath the linen, and his eyes followed the light from the nearby window.

Tywin stopped beside him.

For several moments, he simply looked down.

The child's face was still unfamiliar to him. He could not yet find Joanna in it, nor did he know what he was supposed to feel when he looked at his own son. There was only a small, living person who had entered the world under circumstances neither of them could understand.

His throat tightened.

He hated that the first thing he felt was fear.

Not fear of the child himself, but of what it meant to stand here without Joanna. Of the years ahead, of the decisions he would have to make alone, of all the moments when his son would need something that Tywin would not know how to give him.

He had always believed that competence could be acquired through discipline, that every difficulty could be met with sufficient preparation.

He had never imagined a situation in which he would have to learn how to live with an absence that could not be remedied.

The infant stirred.

A small hand emerged from the blankets, fingers opening and closing against the air.

Tywin stared at it.

"He is very small," he said at last.

It was a foolish observation. He knew it as soon as the words left his mouth.

He had nothing else to offer.

After a moment, he looked toward Joanna's friend.

"What would she have done?"

The question was quiet.

Not what would the maester recommend. Not what the wet nurse had been instructed to do. Not what was expected of the Lord of Casterly Rock.

What would Joanna have done?

His gaze returned to the cradle.

"She would have known what he needed."

There was no anger in his voice now, only the sort of helplessness he would never willingly have shown another living soul.

He stood beside the cradle, his hands still clasped behind his back, afraid to reach out and uncertain what he would do if he did.

Then, after a long silence, he spoke again.

"Show me."

Two words.

A simple request, spoken by a man who had spent his entire life ensuring that no one would ever have cause to doubt his ability to manage his own affairs.

Tywin looked down at his son.

"I cannot ask her."

For the first time, he did not try to conceal what that meant.

His expression tightened, and he swallowed against the ache in his throat.

"So you will have to show me instead."