An Inconvenient Flame [Sandor Clegane]

Chapter 8 - Will you obey now?

Everything had been turned upside down after that fateful day. I had never cried more than I had that evening. All the emotions I had kept hidden away since Fathers arrest, emerged even stronger. I felt everything, the guilt, the sadness, the loss, the emptiness. Everything at once. With the beheading of Father, the north had upended their loyalty to the crown.

Robb had gathered Father's banner men to fight against the Lannisters and the illegitimate King. The Lannister bastard. They were now marching on Kings Landing, even angrier than before because of what the Lannisters had done.

The Queen had thereafter kept Sansa and I close, exactly like I had expected her to do, but no one had been able to find Arya since the beheading of our father. For all I knew, she could be dead in some gutter, or she could have escaped Kings Landing already. She was quite smart, too smart for her own good sometimes.

The sadness I felt was indescribable and overwhelmed me each time. My thought were no longer innocent and more times than I could count I fantasized about killing that little prick Joffrey. But to gain that very satisfaction, I had to stay alive. It had become my sole purpose, stay out of the way and stay alive, so I one day could avenge Father.

I wiped a lone tear away from my cheek and propped myself up onto an elbow. I was lying on the bed, while starring out onto the blue skies. I had no tears left to shed, my eyes red and puffy most of the day. Despite the fact that the weather had gotten even warmer in the last few days and my clothes became unbearably stuffy during the day, I seldomly put my hair up in the same way the women did here. I could care less. But it did not help with who warm I was feeling sometimes. I truly missed the cold north and the clothes I owned there.

I was doing a silent protest against the Queen and mostly stayed cooped up in my own room. The room I had been granted in the Red Keep was larger than my previous and a bit more luxurious. These rooms were closer to the Queen, close enough that she could keep an eye on us during the day. There was not a time where I didn't see one of the Kings guards guarding me and my sister's room's.

Luckily for me, Thai room had its own balcony, overlooking most of the city and half the harbor. Whenever I liked, I could now just stand there and stare out across the city. I often did it to pass the time. The hours became long sometimes when there was nothing to do.

When a gust of wind traveled through the room and ran across my frame I shivered violently. My new handmaiden Astra had forced me to bathe this morning but I had yet to be dressed. I had not been in the mood at all for being stuffed into one of those damn dresses, not during noon when it was warmest. When she left to fetch a dress from the cleaners, I had thrown myself onto my bed, naked as the day I was born.

In the few days Astra had been assigned to me as a handmaiden, she had already become much more to me. She brought me comfort in my loneliness and I valued her as a good friend. She was brutally honest sometimes but always in a good way. She had taught me much about Kings Landing because she had been born in the city. Her brother were amongst Sandor's men. A squadron of fearless men that protected the city.