⟪ Everywhere in the world they hurt little girls, women grown. Few days go by that she does not look upon her daughter and thinks of the inevitable, and how she can use the crown's power to stifle it. She can be conscious of it and complicit all the same – back home, she is in the process of finding men suitable for the task of murdering all Robert's whores and the bastards he got them with.

That does not mean the girl here and now does not speak a fear back into her mind. Children do not always take, and she remembers the sudden awareness of how fragile all of it can be when she'd first learned that she was with child. The fragility never stops – even now that Joff wields a sword of his own and sits the Iron Throne he was meant to rule from, she is, often, painfully aware of how small he'd fit into her arms once upon a time. Three children could be an equaliser, in their way: so much of it all from conception to birth was between the gods alone, something no gold nor crown could aid her in. ⟫

Take the godsdamned bed, I will argue with whoever set his bundle on the other high-up one. ⟪ There are four people to the cell, and their companions must have been taken to devour their serving of food.

That is all the kindness she can spare, and it is barely a kindness when she steps away from the ladder. To say there is concern in her eyes may well be a reach, but the advice she'd once received comes to her nonetheless. Three children she has, but four pregnancies, and while Jaime had complied and found her a woman who knew how to do away with Robert's spawn before she was forced to carry it to term, the process had been anything but pleasant. ⟫

You should lie down. Your body needs the rest. ⟪ She sounds near indifferent. ⟫ Are you running a fever, child?