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“Are you alright?”
Jaime depressed the clutch with more force than strictly necessary, fumbling with his left hand to throw the cruiser into reverse. Momentum jerked Brienne forward until her seatbelt threw her back against the seat. She shifted to glare at him, already digging in her pocket for a box of ammo.
Keep that grimace on your face, Jaime thought, shifting into drive and speeding towards town. It’s scarier than that those .38’s.
“Alright?” he repeated. “My step-sister is certifiable, my son is missing, and my brother seems to be part of a shadow organization hell-bent on hiding a ghostly ice portal from the good citizens of King’s Landing.” He shot her a smile as hard as the shells clacking into her palm. “I’m fucking peachy.”
“That wasn’t—I meant to drive. Are you alright to drive?”
Her fingers fumbled the round she’d been loading into her father’s old pistol. Jaime could hear it rolling around on the floorboards. He glanced sideways into eyes so big and blue they could’ve belonged to the creature that had raked his hand, numbing it to the wrist.
“Did you say your son?”
Jaime grimaced, jerking his eyes back to the road. “That’s what you got from that? Ice monsters, government conspiracies . . . none of that making a dent in that thick skull of yours?”
Underneath the bravado, a panicky feeling thrummed in his veins; it was the same sick energy that had sparked to life three days ago when Cersei swept into his office for the first time in four years.
“Tommen’s not strong like Joffrey; he can’t survive on his own.” A sob had hitched in her throat, but beneath her bleeding mascara, her eyes blazed like wildfire. “Someone’s stolen my baby, Jaime. Do something.”
Jaime flexed his hand, grinding his teeth. “What gave you the bright idea to go blundering through the woods alone?” he asked Brienne. If he concentrated, he could feel a trickle of sensation seeping back into his fingers. “Or are all grad students stupid enough to risk dismemberment for a good dissertation?”
She slotted the last bullet into place and chambered the round with a metallic click. “Bran Stark.”
“Bran Stark is dead.”
“I saw him.”
“So did I,” Jaime said flatly. His boots felt lined with lead, dragging his foot inexorably toward the floor. The cruiser leapt toward the horizon. “His parents were dead, too, surviving siblings divvied up to foster homes across the state. There was no one left to identify the body.” All these years later, he could still see Bran’s legs, tucked neatly under his torso like a folding chair. It had been a long fall into that ravine. “There was a funeral, if you recall. The whole town turned out to see the spectacle.” His mouth twisted wryly. “Or were you still attending Storm’s End Prep?”
For the first time since she’d stepped from the mist, brandishing her pistol like a modern day Visenya, Brienne looked afraid. She clutched her revolver, knuckles white on the grip.
“Yesterday.” She swallowed hard. “I saw Bran yesterday.”
Jaime turned smoothly onto River Row, speed never waning. Tully’s Fish Market caught his eye, its windows empty and accusing. “Tell me you’re not one of those conspiracy theorists who sees a Baratheon love child in every raven-haired anklebiter.”
She shook her head, jaw jutting stubbornly. “I nannied for the Starks in undergrad. It was Bran.”
“Blue eyes, auburn hair?” Jaime mocked. “Was the boy still seven, or had he aged all the way to ten?”
“I saw—”
He peeled into a ditch and threw the car into park, rounding on her. “So did I.”
If he closed his eyes, sunlight stamped red spiderwebs behind his eyelids. And soon enough the warm hues would flee from visions of crimson maps on ghost-pale cheeks, broken blood vessels mirroring the tiny, shattered limbs.
“Myrcella went to school with Bran for four years; you don’t think I know what he looked like? I spent nine days drowning in pictures and flyers and school records. You don’t think I recognized the body when they found it?”
That’s not happening to Tommen. Not if I have to fight a legion of ice demons to stop it.
Brienne’s mouth fell open in mute appeal, and Jaime bit his tongue to keep from lashing out. She had saved his life in those woods; he owed her more than abuse. But when he met her eyes, they weren’t glimmering with self-righteous pity, but bone-deep sadness.
Had she heard his silent avowal? What loss had put that look on her face?
“Jaime.” Her voice curled around him like a flak jacket, solid and comforting. “We’ll find him.”
Jaime fought a shiver as the warm weight of her fingers settled onto his arm. It was no more than his imagination, he was sure, but he would’ve sworn the numbness receded.
His radio crackled, startling them both. “Sheriff? Sheriff, you there?”
Brienne’s hand retreated to cradle her revolver. Her thumb traced the dents in the cylinder, and he felt her phantom caress on the patch of skin where feeling began in his wrist.
“What do you want, Marbrand?”
There was a scuffle on the other end—low voices, jangling keys, a heavy sigh. “Sheriff, we’ve got Joffrey and Cersei Baratheon in a holding cell. We’re going to need you to come down to the station.”