She rather likes the way he looks before her, kneeling on his wounded leg as she sits leisurely in the gilded chair. Where is your honor now, Stark, she thinks. But there it is in the set of his face, so unmoving, as if she hadn’t just asked him to put his mouth to her cunt and get her off in return for his life and the safety of his daughters. A fair trade in her opinion for how he has slighted her since arriving in the city and not taking her warning seriously. She finds no fault in how prettily his eldest had begged before the court, nor the idea to let him live out his life in the grey waste of the Wall. There, he could do her no harm. And there is wisdom in not killing him and beginning a war; her son does not need the added stress.
Cersei leaves her thoughts to return them to the man before her. Fingers curling over the chair edges, she smiles and says, sweet and nice, “It’s an easy thing, Lord Stark. Should you not wish to please your Queen when she asks so?”
Had Eddard Stark been a different man, Jaime with his brashness and anger or Tyrion with his clever words, no doubt he would have thrown them back at her. Said something about how she looked desperate and a foolish woman. But he is not, and so she holds the power here.
He stares at her with stone eyes and outside her rooms she can hear the goings of everyone else. It thrills her.
“I would hate to disappoint your daughter so. She did beg so beautifully for your life.”
Despite the dungeons, he bares no marks of disgrace. He has not been broken, but she will break him here.
“I will even allow you to see your wife before taking the black. And once there you will have your little bastard again.”
Her words undo him. Honor flees with the chance to live. But no, it is more he thinks that she will leave his family untouched. She knows him better than he believes.
He reaches for her skirts, the heavy black ones of mourning, and pushes them up to expose her pale skin. Sighs escape her lips as she tells him how to please her. She comes with the knowing that she has put that look of defeat in his eyes and the taste of victory in her mouth.