King Robert had suddenly, forcefully visited Cersei's chambers—an increasingly rare occurrence—loudly declaring he had taken pity on a poor war orphan from the Riverlands and insisted she be taken on as a royal maid to serve the Queen.
Initially, Cersei had violently, fiercely rejected the idea, despising any "gift" from her drunken, oafish husband. She had suspected a spy. But Jocelyn had proven incredibly resourceful. She was impeccably docile, completely invisible and silent when required, and possessed a wicked, cunning wit that Cersei soon found indispensable.
Over the past twelve months, Jocelyn had expertly woven herself into the Queen's confidence. She knew where the bodies were buried; she knew Cersei's most secrets, and she expertly handled the Queen's dirty work in the shadows of the Red Keep.
The council members stood as one, scraping their chairs back. "Your Grace," they intoned in perfect, hollow unison.
Cersei walked toward the high table, her face a mask of pale, aristocratic perfection. She commanded the room entirely. But as she took her seat at the center of the dais, her green eyes instinctively sought out her son.
Yoriichi was looking directly at her.
His deep burgundy eyes were perfectly calm, unblinking, holding not a single shred of judgment, disgust, or anger. But to Cersei, that absolute, stoic neutrality was more devastating than a physical blow across the face.
The memory of the ajar door, of her naked, sweat-slicked degradation, slammed into her chest with the concussive force of a warhammer. A profound, suffocating shame burned the back of her throat like bile.
Cersei physically flinched.
She snapped her gaze downward instantly, staring intensely at the intricate silver patterns on her empty plate. She found herself physically incapable of meeting her ten-year-old son's eyes for more than a fraction of a second. The goddess could not look upon the sun.
The Small Council members, whose very lives depended on reading micro-expressions and exploiting weaknesses, immediately noticed the Queen's downcast, incredibly meek posture. It was entirely unheard of. Cersei Lannister never looked away from anyone. She stared down lords and knights until they broke.
"Is the Queen unwell tonight?" Lord Baelish asked softly, his voice dripping with faux concern as his eyes darted between Cersei and the silent prince.
"The Queen is perfectly fine, Lord Petyr," Cersei snapped back, though her voice lacked its usual venomous, commanding bite. It sounded hollow, brittle. She kept her eyes glued to the table.
Sensing the dangerous fracturing of her mistress's composure, Jocelyn expertly stepped up behind Cersei's high-backed chair.
With practiced, soothing motions, the maid placed her hands on Cersei's tense shoulders, beginning a slow, deep massage. The physical grounding, the rhythm of the kneading fingers, helped Cersei steady her ragged breathing and push the shame down.
Tyrion, utterly oblivious to the true, incestuous cause of the tension but happy to ignore the suffocating mood, hopped up onto his specially built chair beside his nephew and nieces.
"Well, aren't we a lively, joyous bunch tonight!" Tyrion cheered sarcastically, grabbing a massive drumstick of roasted fowl from a passing platter. He immediately began chatting with Myrcella about a spectacularly bawdy mummer's troupe he had seen in the lower city, filling the awkward, heavy silence with mundane, joyful noise.
Jaime remained standing directly behind the Queen, a silent, miserable sentinel, wondering why Cersei refused to look at him or the boy.
Then, the booming, thunderous laughter of the King echoed from the stone corridor.
The heavy doors banged open so violently they struck the stone walls. Robert Baratheon strode into the Great Hall, his massive belly preceding him, a jeweled goblet of dark, potent wine already sloshing dangerously in his grip. The room stood once more, but all eyes immediately bypassed the King to land on the figure walking confidently by his side.
It was a boy, perhaps twelve or thirteen years old.
He possessed the thick, midnight-black hair and striking, deep blue eyes of the Baratheon line, but his facial structure was entirely different from Robert's. He was sharp, handsome, and utterly haughty. He walked with a boastful, arrogant swagger, his chin tilted up as if the Great Hall and everyone in it already belonged to him. He wore a rich doublet of black velvet slashed with cloth-of-gold.
No one on the council dared to voice the question screaming in the room. A King could do as he pleased, and Robert had increasingly begun to flaunt his bastards, parading them in the training yards.
But this was entirely different. To bring an illegitimate bastard to a private, formal family feast with the Queen and the trueborn heirs was a monumental, calculated insult. It was a political earthquake.
The boy, Joffrey, stepped up to the high table, taking a seat directly beside Robert's massive chair. He cast a sweeping, deeply disdainful glance over the lower table where the royal children sat.
His lip curled in initial, visceral disgust at the sight of Yoriichi's strange two-toned hair and the jagged, demonic mark on his brow. But in a split second, that disgust smoothed over into a mask of smug, untouchable superiority.
At that exact moment, Yoriichi's highly trained peripheral vision caught a microscopic flicker of movement.
Behind Cersei, the trusted maid Jocelyn paused her massage for a mere fraction of a second. She caught Joffrey's eye across the wide dais. The auburn-haired maid offered a minuscule, almost imperceptible nod of her head.
Joffrey's blue eyes flashed with immediate recognition, and he gave a tiny, secret nod in return before turning his attention back to his plate, acting as if he were merely reaching for a piece of bread.