"Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt." — Sun Tzu, The Art of War
--Cersei--
Cersei Lannister had spent twelve years believing she knew every single heartbeat of her eldest son. She knew his tantrums, unnatural ruthlessness, his delicate stomach, his furious tears whenever Robert bellowed at him, and the precise sweetmeats required to soothe his pride. She knew how to fill his head with soft lies about his royal birthright, shielding her sweet lion cub from a world that did not appreciate his grace.
Now, standing on the high stone gallery overlooking the outer courtyard, she felt like she was watching a complete stranger wearing her son's skin.
Down below, Joffrey was doing those strange movements again. He was not swinging a wooden tourney sword, nor was he hunting cats with his crossbow or shouting at squires to let him win. In fact, he had not touched a weapon since the fever broke three weeks ago. When Ser Aron Santagar, the Red Keep's master-at-arms, excitedly offered him a blunted blade, Joffrey had merely looked at the steel with an expression of quiet indifference, politely declined, and walked away.
The master-at-arms had been left holding the hilt, looking utterly flabbergasted.
Instead, the crown prince was pressed flat against the stone flagstones on his hands and toes, holding his body perfectly still while the morning heat rose around him. Sweat beaded on his brow, but his breathing remained slow, rhythmic, and terrifyingly controlled. He moved from one impossible pose to another, contorting his frame into fluid stretches that looked less like knightly drills and more like the unnatural arts of Essosi dancers.
The physical transformation were what truly terrified her.
Before the fever, Joffrey had possessed the soft, slightly pale flesh of a pampered royal child. Now, in a matter of weeks, that softness was burning away with unnatural speed. His jawline was sharpening into clean, marble angles. His skin had lost its sickly pallor, taking on a luminous, almost ethereal clarity that seemed to catch the sunlight.
When he walked through the halls of the Red Keep, servants and guards stopped and bowed not out of fear of his violent tantrums, but because his presence commanded a strange, magnetic gravity. He possessed an unspoken, radiant charisma that made her heart leap with maternal pride and freeze with deep, instinctual dread.
Where was her sweet, fragile boy?
"Interesting...He hasn't thrown a single silver goblet at a servant in twenty-one days," a dry, rasping voice noted beside her. "I checked with the royal butteries. The cupbearers are practically lighting candles to the Mother in gratitude."
Cersei did not need to turn to know the abomination she shared a name with had joined her and she couldn't even show her usual disdain because she was worried about her golden cub. Tyrion stood with a heavy wine goblet in his hand, his intelligent, mismatched eyes squinting down at the yard below.
Tyrion Lannister considered himself a connoisseur of the strange. He had seen fire-eaters from Qarth, bearded priests from Norvos, and court fools who could juggle daggers while riding pigs. But watching his nephew hold a push-up position for ten straight minutes while staring intensely at an open leather tome on the floor was easily in his top five.
"My son is recovering from a near-fatal fever," Cersei said coldly, her green eyes never leaving her son. "He is building his strength. Is a prince not allowed to refine himself?"
"He is doing something, certainly," Tyrion murmured, taking a slow sip of Arbor gold. "Grand Maester Pycelle came to me yesterday practically weeping into his robes. It seems our beloved prince requisitioned ancient texts from the library. Books on Valyrian metallurgy, ancient trade routes, geography, and forgotten architecture. Pycelle thought the boy had lost his mind. I told him the prince had merely found one."
Tyrion set his goblet on the stone ledge, watching Joffrey rise smoothly from the dust. The boy did not pant or collapse in exhaustion. He wiped his brow with a plain linen cloth, picked up his heavy book, and glanced up toward the gallery.
For a single, fleeting second, Joffrey's gaze locked directly onto Tyrion's.
There was no petulance in those emerald eyes. No childish malice, no arrogant sneer, and no urge to call him an imp. There was only a calm, measuring stillness, like a grandmaster calculating forty moves ahead on a cyvasse board.
It gave Tyrion a sudden, icy shiver right down his crooked spine.
Well.... look at that, Tyrion thought, the hairs on his arms standing on end. That is a prince taking measure of a subject.
"Look at him, sweet sister," Tyrion said, leaning his chin on his hand. "He doesn't touch a sword, yet his posture is better than any knight in the Kingsguard. He doesn't hold court, yet the household guards stand straighter when he passes. He spends eight hours a day reading about ancient forge-fire and logistics, and the rest of his time bending his body into pretzel shapes. If I didn't know better, I'd say our little lion was preparing for a war only he can see."
Cersei's hands tightened on the stone rail until her knuckles turned white. "He is a Baratheon and a Lannister. He is preparing to rule."
"Rule what? The library?" Tyrion chuckled, though the humor did not reach his eyes. "Robert barely notices him, which is probably a blessing. If the King saw his son reading instead of drinking and hunting, he'd likely throw a fit. But you see it too, don't you? The way he looks at us."
Cersei swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly dry. She remembered the quiet, chilling authority in Joffrey's voice the night his fever broke. No poppy. Just water. And quiet. He had dismissed her, his own mother, with a gravity that left no room for defiance.
"He is my son," Cersei whispered, as if repeating a spell to convince herself. "He is sweet, and he loves me."
"That was never in question but while might be your son, sweet sister," Tyrion said softly, taking another long drink from his cup as Joffrey turned and vanished into the shadowed archway of the lower keep. "he most definitely isn't the boy who used to skin cats..... for fun"