King's Landing, the Red Keep.
The Iron Throne, the symbol of the Targaryen Dynasty's supreme power, stood silently in the empty Throne Hall.
Its menacing outline, forged from over a thousand swords, cast distorted, multicolored shadows in the sunlight streaming through the stained-glass windows.
The newly appointed Hand of the King, Lord Tywin Lannister, stood below the throne.
He did not look at the seat that represented the highest authority in the Seven Kingdoms.
His gaze rested on the parchment a maester had just delivered.
The letter came from the North.
Its contents were brief, even somewhat hastily scrawled.
The Vale, the Riverlands, and the North had formed a three-way alliance.
Roose Bolton and his bastard son, Ramsay Snow, had both died at Winterfell.
House Bolton had fallen.
Tywin's face betrayed nothing. His pale green eyes were as still as stagnant water.
But his knuckles whitened slightly around the letter.
Too fast!
Faster than anything he had anticipated!
From the conquest of the Eyrie and the Riverlands.
To Roose Bolton being summoned to Winterfell.
To the uprooting of House Bolton in its entirety.
That young man had used swift, crushing methods bordering on the miraculous to chew through the toughest bone and swallow it whole.
His original plan had been to wait and watch.
Just as he had when Robert launched the War of the Usurper.
He would observe this war with cold detachment.
He would wait until Lynn and those savage beasts-Lysa, the Freys, the Iron Islands, and the Boltons-had torn one another apart and exhausted themselves.
Then he, Tywin Lannister, would march north beneath the Lannister lion banner as an arbiter, a savior.
Whoever won would have no choice but to accept his "goodwill" and pay dearly for it.
He had even prepared several different plans.
If Lynn