A Feast For Crows by George R. R. Martin

though the stars still shone.
All but one,
Cersei thought.
The bright star of the west has fallen, and the nights will be darker now.
She paused upon the drawbridge that spanned the dry moat, gazing down at the spikes below.
They would not dare lie to me about such a thing.
“Who found him?”
    “One of his guards,” said Ser Osmund. “Lum. He felt a call of nature, and found his lordship in the privy.”
    No, that cannot be. That is not the way a lion dies.
The queen felt strangely calm. She remembered the first time she had lost a tooth, when she was just a little girl. It hadn’t hurt, but the hole in her mouth felt so odd she could not stop touching it with her tongue.
Now there is a hole in the world where Father stood, and holes want filling.
    If Tywin Lannister was truly dead, no one was safe . . . least of all her son upon his throne. When the lion falls the lesser beasts move in: the jackals and the vultures and the feral dogs. They would try to push her aside, as they always had. She would need to move quickly, as she had when Robert died. This might be the work of Stannis Baratheon, through some catspaw. It could well be the prelude to another attack upon the city. She hoped it was.
Let him come. I will smash him, just as Father did, and this time he will die.
Stannis did not frighten her, no more than Mace Tyrell did. No one frightened her. She was a daughter of the Rock, a lion.
There will be no more talk of forcing me to wed again.
Casterly Rock was hers now, and all the power of House Lannister. No one would ever disregard her again. Even when Tommen had no further need of a regent, the Lady of Casterly Rock would remain a power in the land.
    The rising sun had painted the tower tops a vivid red, but beneath the walls the night still huddled. The outer castle was so hushed that she could have believed all its people dead.
They should be. It is not fitting for Tywin Lannister to die alone. Such a man deserves a retinue to attend his needs in hell.
    Four spearmen in red cloaks and lion-crested helms were posted at the door of the Tower of the Hand. “No one is to enter or leave without my permission,” she told them. The command came easily to her.
My father had steel in his voice as well.
    Within the tower, the smoke from the torches irritated her eyes, but Cersei did not weep, no more than her father would have.
I am the only true son he ever had.
Her heels scraped against the stone as she climbed, and she could still hear the moth fluttering wildly inside Ser Osmund’s lantern.
Die,
the queen thought at it, in irritation,
fly into the flame and be done with it.
    Two more red-cloaked guardsmen stood atop the steps. Red Lester muttered a condolence as she passed. The queen’s breath was coming fast and short, and she could feel her heart fluttering in her chest.
The steps,
she told herself,
this cursed tower has too many steps.
She had half a mind to tear it down.
    The hall was full of fools speaking in whispers, as if Lord Tywin were asleep and they were afraid to wake him. Guards and servants alike shrank back before her, mouths flapping. She saw their pink gums and waggling tongues, but their words made no more sense than the buzzing of the moth.
What are they doing here? How did they know?
By rights they should have called her first. She was the Queen Regent, had they forgotten that?
    Before the Hand’s bedchamber stood Ser Meryn Trant in his white armor and cloak. The visor of his helm was open, and the bags beneath his eyes made him look still half-asleep. “Clear these people away,” Cersei told him. “Is my father in the privy?”
    “They carried him back to his bed, m’lady.” Ser Meryn pushed the door open for her to enter.
    Morning light slashed through the shutters to paint golden bars upon the rushes strewn across the floor of the bedchamber. Her uncle Kevan was on his knees beside the bed, trying to pray, but he could scarcely get the words out. Guardsmen clustered near the hearth.