A Vow Without Honor

The Kingslayer

Jaime

He had always wanted to hit the king, some days more than others. And Robert, the fool that he was, had figured out that much. While whatever servant girls he'd ushered into his chambers had at it in his bed, giggling and shrieking as they were wont to, the drunken ruler of the Seven Kingdoms would storm right up to him, shirt torn and covered in wine.

"C'mon Kingslayer, have a go," he'd say, casting his arms wide open. "You stabbed the last king, what's this to you?"

Jaime thought himself impatient, yet somehow he would get through Robert's harassment without budging. He would stare resolutely forward until the king grew bored and wandered back to his women, none of them his wife, none of them Cersei. How he shamed his sister night and day with his whores and his maids and his highborn ladies who thought a bastard could get them a crown. And he, the only man who truly loved her, was forced to listen. Sometimes he wondered if Robert didn't know the truth.

Then again, his head was still attached to his body.

Though that might not be the case after tonight.

Standing in the corner of the balcony, Myra Stark trembled under his white cloak. She had not spoken a word since he agreed to stay; she only stared into the distance, though if Jaime were a betting man, he'd say she wasn't seeing anything. The King, maybe, or Ser Mandon, but nothing that was actually there.

He almost had not been able to help himself. All the insults to Cersei he had managed to take, but the sight of that frightened girl pinned against the wall by her king had awakened something in him, an anger and shame he'd never found an outlet for, harkening back to days of fire and blood. Had Ser Mandon not noticed him and given a look of warning, Robert would have gotten his wish: a fist to the face and an excuse to be rid of him once and for all.

Instead, Jaime got the opposite: a fist to his face and a sobbing girl as a reward for his diplomacy.

Jaime sighed. Cersei was going to kill him, if Ned Stark didn't first. After all, here he was alone with his traumatized, unwed daughter, sworn to keep the king's secrets and thus unable to defend himself if the girl decided to remain a mute about the whole thing.

Seven hells, he should have left well enough alone.

But even as he thought it, Jaime knew that he never could.

Damn his twisted honor. Where had it ever gotten him? Here. It got him here with a girl he did not particularly care for in a city he hated surrounded by fools who liked to dance around one another with knives at their backs.

Maybe there was one out there for him. Probably.

"Why did you help?" Her voice was so small, Jaime thought he was imaging it, but when he looked in her direction, those gray eyes were watching him. They always seemed to be. "You made a vow to the king, the same one Ser Mandon did."

"Would you have preferred I leave you with him?" he snapped, still angry at his thoughts.

Regret followed immediately as Myra shrank before his eyes, pulling his cloak tighter. She looked away from him, much like she had in the hallway. The girl was ashamed. She probably expected him to treat her like everyone else in King's Landing had, as a pawn with no thoughts or feelings of her own.

He could understand that well enough.

"That was unworthy of me. I'm sorry," he said, stepping closer. She did not back away from him, but did meet his eyes again. They were the roundest, saddest things he had ever seen, desperate to latch onto something, a source of comfort maybe. She was searching for something he did not possess.