The massive, iron-studded wooden doors of the Throne Room were slowly pushed open with a heavy, grinding sound.
Euron Greyjoy leaned against the doorframe, twin longswords held in reverse grip, still dripping with warm blood. Behind him, the corridor was littered with the bodies of dozens of Red Keep guards, blood slowly soaking into the fine carpets.
Euron looked up and saw the white-cloaked figure walking step by step toward the Iron Throne, and the body pierced by a sword lying on the steps. A smile mixing bloodlust and amusement curled his lips. He raised his voice, breaking the deathly silence of the hall.
"Hey, Jaime."
Euron's voice was exceptionally clear in the empty hall. "I advise you not to touch that chair." He tilted his head, scanning the hideous throne forged from countless twisted blades. "It looks like it would prick your arse harder than the wildest stallion."
Jaime turned his head slowly, his armor making a slight scraping sound. "I killed Aerys." His voice was calm.
Euron nodded indifferently, glancing at the cooling corpse on the steps. "I saw."
Jaime didn't heed the warning. He turned back, and with a resolve bordering on martyrdom, slowly sat upon the Iron Throne forged from a thousand swords. The sharp edges stung him instantly, but he merely frowned slightly.
"It is... indeed very uncomfortable." He looked down at his hand resting on the cold blade of the armrest, speaking as if to himself, or perhaps asking the empty hall. "But I don't understand why so many people would pay any price to sit here."
Euron chuckled lightly, the sound jarring in the bloody air. "Because everyone desires something different. Perhaps you crave some kind of clean honor, so you will never understand those who crave power itself." He took a few steps forward, his boots making a sticky sound in the pool of blood. "In your eyes, it is torture; in theirs, it is the peak of the world."
Jaime seemed not to hear Euron. Immersed in his own world, he stared blankly ahead, pouring out the words suppressed in his heart:
"I stopped him... stopped him from using wildfire to burn all of King's Landing to ash. I saved hundreds of thousands of smallfolk in the city." His voice began to tremble, carrying an unspeakable pain. "But I am also a traitor. I killed the king I swore to protect with my life, right here beneath the Iron Throne... no matter the reason..."
This speech wasn't an explanation to Euron, but a belated trial for himself, spoken to the silent heavens and earth.
Euron looked at the young man torn apart by oaths and sin on the throne. He paced forward two steps, blood dripping from his blade tip, tapping out a clear rhythm in the silence.
"Kingslayer," he asked, his tone ambiguous between mockery and inquiry. "Setting aside all oaths and accusations, ask your own heart—do you think what you did was right, or wrong?"
Jaime's gaze remained empty, staring at a place that didn't exist. After a long time, he spat out three words: "I don't know."
Euron didn't let him off. His follow-up question was like a cold dagger, stabbing precisely at the core. "Then, a simpler question: Was the life of a mad king more important, or the lives of hundreds of thousands of living souls in King's Landing?"
Jaime's body trembled almost imperceptibly. He closed his eyes, seeming to want to hide in the darkness to find an answer, but in the end, what came out was still filled with exhaustion and confusion: "I don't know."
Seeing this once-proud knight crushed by a massive moral dilemma, Euron let out a rare, soft sigh. He understood that some knots were like rusted locks; they had to be picked from the inside by the person themselves. The words of others, whether comfort or condemnation, were like scratching an itch through a boot—ultimately useless.
A scream of extreme terror, sharp as a blade, suddenly pierced the deep silence of the Red Keep.
It was the desperate shriek of a woman on the brink, coming from deep within the castle.
Euron's brow furrowed instantly, the cynical expression on his face replaced by vigilance. He didn't spare another glance at Jaime on the throne. Moving like a cheetah, he darted out with dual blades in hand, becoming a blur as he rushed out of the Throne Room, chasing the source of the sound.
The Throne Room was left empty, save for Jaime.
Jaime had no reaction to the scream or Euron's departure. He remained seated like a soulless statue, stiff on the Iron Throne. His right hand rested unconsciously on the sharp blade of the armrest. The cold steel cut his skin, and blood flowed slowly down the black metal, but he felt nothing.
Pain seemed unable to reach him anymore. Jaime stared blankly ahead, as if looking through the stone walls into an abyss filled with fire and betrayal that only he could see.
---
Ser Amory Lorch kicked open the exquisitely carved wooden door of the nursery. The loud crash sounded exceptionally violent in the cozy room.
Under a soft bed in the corner, a tiny figure was curled up, hidden by his mother. It was Aegon, not yet a year old, clutching a faded cloth dragon doll tightly as if it were his last sanctuary.
"Dragonspawn bastard! And a wild one at that!" Amory growled, grinning hideously as he raised his arm.
"No! My baby—!"
Witnessing this, Queen's handmaiden Arriana Whent let out a heart-rending scream. She rushed forward madly but was choked from behind by the strong hands of Ser Salmon Stockpie . Stockpie ignored her immense pain and struggle, using brute force to press her onto a nearby velvet-covered chaise—the very place where little Aegon usually napped.
"Let me go! Beast! My son... my son..." Arriana's sobbing was broken by suffocation.
Stockpie's foul breath sprayed on the back of her neck. One hand roughly tore at her dress, while the other began to undo his belt.
Euron swept into the room like a wind of death. His gaze instantly locked onto the woman being assaulted—Arriana Whent. He remembered this face; at the Tourney at Harrenhal, she had been radiant as the original Queen of Love and Beauty.
Without a shred of hesitation, Euron delivered a side kick straight into Salmon Stockpie's ribs. With the dull sound of breaking bones, Salmon was sent flying, smashing heavily into the wall.
Salmon struggled to get up. Seeing it was Euron, he opened his mouth hurriedly: "Wait! I am with Lannist—"
Before the word "ter" could leave his mouth, sword light swept past like a cold moon.
A head rolled to the floor, an expression of shock still frozen on its face.
Seeing this, Amory Lorch drew his sword in horror. But his blade was only half unsheathed when Euron's backhand strike parried his weapon, and another slash followed—
Another head flew, blood spraying like a fountain.
The entire process took only an instant—clean, efficient, without a trace of hesitation.
Euron's gaze swept over Arriana's terror-stricken face. A cold thought slithered into his mind like a viper—he had indeed changed the fate of Elia Martell; the Dornish princess should be living peacefully in Sunspear right now.
But he hadn't expected the scales of fate to rebalance so cruelly. One woman's misfortune was cancelled out, but the price was another woman falling into the abyss.
This silent substitution was more chilling than naked slaughter. The corner of Euron's mouth pulled into an arc no one could understand. It wasn't a smile, but a mockery of the business of fate.