Halfway there, her legs began to shake. Not from fear—she told herself it was not fear—but from exhaustion. The cold had seeped into her bones. The weight of a thousand eyes was a physical thing, pressing her down. She stumbled. Her knee hit the cobblestones, scraping skin. A wave of laughter broke over her.
As a lioness who had been burned but not declawed.
Walk.
From her cell in the Great Sept of Baelor, Cersei Lannister listened to the growing murmur of the crowd. It was a sound she knew well—the beast of the mob, hungry for spectacle. She had fed it many times: traitors’ heads on spikes, hands broken, tongues torn out. Today, the beast would feast on her.
The sight of that pretty, unmarked face filled Cersei with a fury so pure it was like hot wine in her veins. cersei shame episode
Cersei recognized no one. She saw only a blur of open mouths and pointing fingers. Men spat. A fishwife lifted her skirts in mockery. A boy, no older than ten, threw a handful of gravel that stung her back.
Not as a queen. Not as a supplicant.
Her hair, the golden banner of House Lannister, had been shorn to a patchy stubble. The sun, breaking through the clouds, seemed to mock the bald, mottled skin of her scalp. She was not a queen. She was not a lion. She was a plucked bird, pale and thin and utterly, terrifyingly breakable.