144: Chapter 144 Deterrence

Red Keep battlements. The siege is underway.

Drogon landed in his Dragon form on the highest tower of the Red Keep—the Dragon-nest platform used by Aegon I back in the day. The stone platform at the top of the tower could accommodate an adult Dragon crouching, and the edge of the stone railing still bore the marks of claws from three hundred years ago—four parallel gouges embedded deep into the stone, carved by the Dragon of Aegon I before setting out on his campaign.

He folded his wings, resting his left foreclaw on the tower battlements. He raised his right foreclaw, aiming at the largest Lannister lion banner on the flagpole—a red lion on a gold field, the lion's hind legs pushing off the ground with its front paws raised high, the combat stance of the House Lannister sigil. This banner hung above the main gate of the Red Keep, visible from the gate square all the way to Flea Bottom.

From deep in his throat, he exhaled a beam of extremely thin, extremely cold Ice Fire. It was not the Ancient Valyrian Dragon Magic · Bloodline Burning Ice Fire—that was for combat. He was currently using Ice Fire Micro-sculpting · Flag Freezing Spell, a non-combat application of the Ice Element, requiring much higher precision than in battle.

The Ice Fire did not burn the fabric—the red lion pattern on the gold field remained clear under the layer of ice crystals, merely sealed by a translucent film of ice. The Ice Fire spread up the flagpole, not burning, but freezing.

The wood fibers inside the flagpole were split by the expanding ice crystals, emitting a faint clicking sound. Ice crystals grew into rings on the surface of the flagpole, spreading from the bottom all the way to the top.

The frozen lion banner emitted a faint sound of clashing ice crystals in the morning breeze—the sound of thousands of tiny ice crystals rubbing against each other between the fabric fibers, like a glass flag being gently shaken in the wind.

Then, the wood fibers inside the flagpole fractured completely under the expansion of the ice crystals. The flagpole split down the middle, the crack extending from the bottom to the top, and the entire banner along with the flagpole shattered into countless ice shards, scattering from the battlements.

The ice shards reflected countless tiny rainbows in the morning light—then fell onto the stone slabs of the gate square, shattering into even finer ice powder.

He froze and shattered the lion banners on the battlements one by one.

Along the outer wall of the Red Keep, he froze his way up to the tower above the iron throne hall. Each time a banner was frozen and shattered, the Unsullied besieging the Red Keep let out a brief cheer. By the thirteenth banner, the Unsullied no longer cheered—not because they weren't excited, but because they realized this Dragon had a steady rhythm to its flag-freezing, shattering one every ten seconds or so, as if keeping beat for the siege.

The commoners in King's Landing looked up at the lion banners being shattered. Someone began to pull out old Targaryen banners hidden for years from their cellars—left over from before Robert's Rebellion, pressed at the bottom of boxes for decades, heavily moth-eaten, the fabric full of fine wormholes, but the three-headed Dragon pattern was still discernible.

An old woman from Flea Bottom—the one who had led the charge in throwing broken tiles at the Dragonborn Knight last time—was currently standing on her roof, struggling to hang an old, moth-eaten Targaryen banner on her chimney. The chimney was too thick, and the flag rope wasn't long enough, so she had extended it with a clothesline. She poked the blacksmith next to her with her elbow.

"That one with the black scales—he even haggled at my herb stall last time. I said his eyes would change color. Look at him now, freezing flags on the battlements. The flags are frozen, the lion has become a dead cat."

The blacksmith still held his hammer in his hand. He had used this hammer to strike the Dragonborn Knight's breastplate last time—denting it. At this moment, he placed the hammer on the roof and bowed toward the Red Keep.

It was the respect of a blacksmith for a blacksmith. He understood the technical difficulty of the Ice Fire forging—it wasn't burning; it was freezing. Freezing a flag until it shattered required extremely precise Ice Element output; if the temperature was too low, the flag would freeze directly into powder, and if it wasn't cold enough, the flagpole wouldn't crack.

Every banner had a different flagpole material, thickness, and moisture content, yet the Dragon with the black scales took about the same amount of time to shatter each one—which meant he had adjusted the temperature and flow of the Ice Fire individually for every single flag.

"That's not Dragon Breath," the blacksmith straightened his back and said to the old woman. His voice was hoarse but extremely serious. "That is forging. He is forging the flags by freezing them. A blacksmith's work. A Dragon doing a blacksmith's work."

Red Keep · Maegors Holdfast · Cersei's private quarters.

Cersei Lannister stood alone by the window.

She looked through the arrow slit at the lion banners being shattered on the battlements of the Red Keep. The arrow slit was vertical and narrow—she could only see a small section of the battlements, but it was enough.

Every ten seconds or so, a lion banner turned into ice shards amidst the sound of cracking ice crystals. She watched the thirteenth banner shatter above the gate square, the ice shards reflecting rainbows in the morning light before falling onto the stone slabs.

Her blonde hair was disheveled. But she didn't comb it—not because she didn't have time, but because she didn't want to. Combing it wouldn't help. The city had fallen. The fleet had sunk. The wildfire had been frozen.

Her spine remained straight, her left hand gripping a silver wine goblet—not the new goblet Tywin had, but her own. The Lannister sigil was engraved on the goblet, and the lion's eyes were two tiny rubies. The red wine in the cup hadn't been touched.

From last night until now, she hadn't taken a single sip. Not because she didn't want to drink—but because she was afraid that if she did, she wouldn't be able to control her fingers from trembling.

Her emerald eyes looked colder than ever under the ghostly blue reflection of the Ice Fire outside the window. Not the cold of cruelty—but the cold of cooling down. When a person is pushed to the brink, some break, some go mad, and some use their last breath to maintain their dignity.

Cersei belonged to the third type. She had maintained her dignity for three days—from the moment the defense of Dragonstone failed, to learning last night that the wildfire had been frozen, to watching the banners shatter on the battlements today. Her dignity had been maintained to its limit.

The door was pushed open.

Jaime Lannister walked in. He wore the white armor of the Kingsguard, and the armor was stained with ash drifting from the direction of the city wall—not the green ash of wildfire, but the ordinary wood ash from the charred oak mounts of ballistae, grayish-white, looking like a thin layer of snow on his pauldrons.

His golden hand swayed slightly at his side, while his real hand gripped the hilt of his sword. There was no anger on his face, no sadness, only the weary calm that comes after surviving countless wars and countless betrayals.

Cersei didn't turn back. Her voice was cold and hoarse, as if talking to herself.

"You've come to kill me. Just like the day you killed The Mad King. Coming in through the back door."

Jaime closed the door. His golden hand paused on the doorknob—the fingers of the golden hand could not bend, so he always had to use his real hand to assist every time he closed the door. He had been doing this for twenty years, ever since he was captured, lost his right hand, and replaced it with a golden one; every time he entered Cersei's room, he closed the door like this.

"The Mad King wanted to burn King's Landing. You're no better than him. You placed twelve jars of wildfire above the kitchen. The plan was to ignite the wildfire and blow up the Red Keep and everyone who broke in once the city fell. But those twelve jars of wildfire—they were frozen by someone last night. You wanted to blow it up, but you can't."

Cersei's fingers paused on the rim of the wine goblet. She turned her head slowly. Her emerald eyes stared at Jaime. The cold light in her eyes shattered for a moment—it was a pure, raw disbelief she rarely showed in front of Jaime. Not anger, not fear, but the complete bewilderment of a person whose meticulously designed final line of defense is told it no longer exists.

"...Who?"

"That Dragon. It came in alone on the eve of the siege. You had the guards pile the wildfire jars above the Kitchen Cold Cellar—he was in the cold cellar, and through the stone ceiling, he froze the fuses of your last twelve jars of wildfire. You've been surrounding him for so many years, and he spent half the night under your kitchen. You're not even as good as Qyburn's black magic detection array—at least Qyburn detected the spatial fluctuations when the Chronos Dragon came last time. You had nothing."

Cersei stared at him. Her lips moved but she didn't speak. She put down the wine goblet and drew the valyrian steel dagger from her waist—a relic taken from Tywin's study.

Tywin's personal dagger, the hilt engraved with the Lannister sigil, the blade a dark, wavy pattern of valyrian steel. She held the dagger horizontally in front of her. The tip pointed toward Jaime, but her hand was trembling—not from fear, but from a certain stubbornness that refused to admit defeat even after being completely defeated. Her voice trembled, but every word was gritted out through clenched teeth.

"You won't kill me. You are my brother. My twin. You won't—you killed The Mad King, saying he wanted to burn King's Landing. I didn't burn King's Landing. The wildfire didn't explode. Nothing exploded. What are you accusing me of?"

Jaime looked at the dagger in her hand. He recognized that dagger—his father never let it leave his side, even keeping it on his nightstand when he slept. Now it was in her hand. Her hand was shaking. His father's hand never shook.

His voice was very soft. As if speaking to seven-year-old Cersei.

"Accusing you of killing our father. Not with a blade—but with your decisions. Tywin Lannister died on the toilet, with no wine goblet in his hand. He looked for a wine goblet his whole life, and you never poured him a single cup of wine."

He didn't draw his sword. He reached out and gently took the dagger from Cersei's hand. She didn't resist—her fingers suddenly lost all strength the moment the dagger was taken away. Her fingers clenched and relaxed, clenched and relaxed. Her emerald eyes looked at him one last time, then closed.

Jaime placed the dagger on the table. He placed her hand next to the dagger—back of the hand up, fingers slightly curled, the red polish from yesterday still remaining on her fingernails, with a few flakes already peeled off. He turned and walked toward the door. He paused for a step at the doorway. He didn't look back.

"I won't kill you. I will hand you over to the Mother of Dragons. The Targaryens have no interest in killing prisoners of war. She will probably send you to Dragonstone—there is a lot of black sand and a lot of wind there. You can figure it out there—you and your father are the same, both eaten away by power. He just died earlier than you."

He pushed the door open. Outside the door were the sounds of shouting and the rhythm of Unsullied spears and shields clashing in the direction of the iron throne hall. The door closed behind him. The golden hand jammed again while closing the door—he had to push it with his real hand to close it tight.

Cersei sat alone at the table. The dagger was by her hand. The wine goblet was on her left side. Outside the window, the fifteenth lion banner turned into ice shards amidst the sound of cracking ice crystals. She opened her eyes, watching the ice shards drifting outside the arrow slit reflecting rainbows in the morning light. Then she pushed the dagger to the other end of the table. Pushed it to where she couldn't reach it.

Not giving up. It was finally admitting the truth.