Fic: Queen of Storms for redcandle17
Recipient: redcandle17
Title: Queen of Storms
Author: plaid_slytherin
Rating: T
Character(s) or Pairing: Orys Baratheon/Argella Durrandon
Word Count: ~4500
Summary: Argella may have lost her throne and been wed to a bastard, but she will not cede anything else so easily.
Warning: N/A
She could always kill him. This was how Argella justified it, when she accepted Orys' cloak, his food, his wine.
She said nothing to him as he recounted her father's death, painting the dead king in glowing terms, as though it had been an honor to fight him. Argella simply watched him silently over the rim of her goblet, planning the bastard's death. She could not do it soon, she knew. She had to go along with the conquerors' plans for her to some extent. She trusted the dragonlord and his sisters even less than the bastard before her, but sometimes a queen needed to wait. Even if she had to marry him, even if she had to let him bed her, she would endure it, biding her time. If she was going to have her revenge, she would need allies, resources.
This reminded her of something.
She set her cup down. "What of the men who betrayed me?" It was the first words she'd spoken to the men she knew not whether to call captor or savior. Orys looked at her, nothing showing in his impossibly dark eyes, so she continued. "Do you plan to reward them for delivering an enemy commander to you, or do you plan to punish them for betraying your lady wife?"
"So you agree to the marriage?"
"That's not what I said."
He threw his head back and roared with laughter. "Do you think that is how this game works, princess? That you come to me naked as the day you were born and then make demands of me?"
She took another sip of wine. Poison, she decided. Something that will give him a painful and embarrassing end that cannot be traced to me.
They were wed three weeks later, in the sept at Storm's End. She tried to retain her composure as he draped the cloak of the crowned stag that was already hers about her shoulders in a cruel echo of his actions weeks before. She would betray nothing, nor would she give him anything beyond what he was entitled to as her husband.
She tensed as he brushed her lips with his. Everything about him disgusted her, even when she had to admit he was handsome, in an objective way. His hands were heavy on her shoulders. She kept her eyes on the septon, wondering if the invaders would even continue to permit her her own faith, or if this was just a show. What did dragonlords believe? What did bastards believe?
The Father's eyes seemed to look down on her disapprovingly. I tried, she thought. She had always felt guilty for being her father's only living child; for every little brother she had watched struggle and die, she had wished it could be her instead. For even her father's best intentions, however much he treated her as a son, did nothing to make men see her as a king. At least they would love her husband well enough; at least they did not have to be ruled by a woman.
I will need all of your help, she thought, as her husband took her by the arm and led her down the aisle past the all-seeing statues. The Stranger was the last, and most kept their eyes averted as they passed through his gaze. Not Argella. For the first time in her life, she lifted her head and looked the Stranger full in the face. Even yours.
**
Orys knew not what to make of his new wife. He allowed her to think he and his half-siblings had not yet learned the Westerosi custom of the bedding. He would spare her that indignity, but he would not give her the satisfaction of thinking he'd done it out of the goodness of his heart. She had been silent through the feast and was silent still now that they were alone.
He could tell it was already hard enough on her to be in her father's bedchamber, so soon after his death. Orys poured two goblets of wine, pressing one into her hand without even asking if she was thirsty.
It was she who asked the question.
"Are you not going to have a witness?"
"It's not necessary."
Her skeptical gaze remained on him, those penetrating blue eyes the very same ones that had faced him on the field of battle. He realized how little he knew of her. Not her father, not her ancestors, of her.
"Who would you have wed if not for me?" he decided to ask.
Her shoulders tensed. "What does it matter if it never happened?"
"But whoever it was, you would have been queen in your own right?"
That sharp gaze again, the only thing that kept her from being truly beautiful. "Naturally. My father had no living sons. After his death, I would have been queen." Her eyes seemed to bore into him, as though he had personally stolen the throne out from under her.
He refused to be made to feel guilty about winning the war her father had been the one to start. "And my brother's offer of me was not fit for a queen?"
Her eyes narrowed. "I didn't want to be the third wife of a sister-fucker any more than I wanted to be wed to a bastard."
"Bastard I may be, but at least I have my own name."
She sipped her wine, perhaps to avoid having to answer. "Names do not change a man's nature. You are still bad luck, nothing more than an afterthought between your lord father and someó" She was cut off by his suddenly crossing the room and seizing her shoulder. Her wine goblet fell from her hand, soaking the rushes.
"Say what you will about me," he said through gritted teeth. "I will not have anything said against my mother."
She yanked out of his grip, pushing herself back on the bed out of his reach. Her gaze didn't waver, and Orys half wondered what it would take to break her. He rejected that line of thought immediately. He was not that kind of man. Besides, there was only one way to win her favor and it would not be with force.
He stepped back, letting his hands drop to his sides. "What other recourse did you have?" he asked plainly. He would talk to her as one military commander to another, not as husband to his unwilling wife.
"Had I not been born a woman, we would have withstood you."
"It was not your birth that made them betray you, but the fact that most men do not relish being burnt to death by dragon fire."
Her scowl told him that in her ideal world that would not be so. "Had I been a man, it would not have come to that. I would have taken one of the sisters to wife, or at least died on the field of battle with my father."
"And yet here you are."
She looked away. Twelve hours a queen and one might think she had been one all her life.
"Should I leave you tonight?"
She hesitated, but he would not press the point any further. They could go round and round on this, or he could get some rest. He said not a word before leaving her alone in the bedchamber.
**
Argella slept little that night and was relieved when, at long last, the sky lightened over Shipbreaker Bay. The knowledge of her marriage sat in her stomach like a rock, cold and dull, the rest of her life stretching before her as an interminable slog. She forced herself to call for a bath. She was a Durrandon; she would not spend her life in her bedchamber, hiding from her husband.
After she'd bathed and dressed, she felt a little better, though she was not looking forward to seeing her husband again. A shout from outside drew her attention to the window. She stepped away from the maid who was braiding her hair.
In the courtyard below, a long line of men was being led out through the gates. She pressed her face to the glass, trying to see who they were, but the tower was too high. She pushed away from the window and ran out of the bedchamber.
"PrióMy lady!"
She ignored her maid's shout and the fact that her hair was streaming behind her. There were few here who hadn't seen her in a far more indecent state. She was out of breath by the time she reached the castle gate, having never before run down every step in the castle at once. Her husband was ahorse, watching as the last of the men were marched out of Storm's End.
"Where are they going?" she demanded. She had a suspicion of who they were, though she had seen only a few faces.
Orys looked down at her, his face unreadable. "Your bride gift, princess. Bound for the Wall." He wheeled his horse away, but she remained in the courtyard until the gates had been shut tight.
That night was a repeat of the night before, the wine, the silence. Orys said nothing about the men, his own men now, whom he had just sent away, so it fell to Argella to broach the matter.
"They were your men," she said. "They may have betrayed me, but it was so they could follow your banner."
Orys took a deep swallow of wine and refilled his goblet. "My banner is now your banner. I won't have turncloaks in my service, even if they turned their cloaks to me."
"You are a fool to cast aside good men so readily."
He raised an eyebrow. "So they are good men now?"
"They served my father, if not me. Will the stormlords send us their sons if this is what you do to them?"
Orys smirked. "You know as well as I do how many stormlords' sons were among those men. The best of those died with your father." He paused. "And the stormlords will send us their sons because you are my wife. They may not know the name Baratheon, but my son will be your son and your father's grandson, the same as if I and my siblings were still idling about on our island." He raised an eyebrow. "That is, if you ever let me give you one."
She scowled, but there was no venom in it, and she pulled him into bed.
**
"How is she?"
Aegon's question pulled Orys out of his thoughts. They stood over the Painted Table, looking at the lands they had conquered for what would one day be generations of Targaryen kings. Orys couldn't help but feel a bit of pride, even though he knew as well as anyone that he was no true Targaryen. He was lucky his brother acknowledged him; he could tell he was not as well-liked by either sister.
"Who?"
Aegon laughed. "Your lady wife."
"Oh. She's all right. Child should be born before the New Year." The truth was, Orys had been more or less content to leave Argella once it was clear she was going to have a child. There had still been a conquest to complete, and then, when that was done, a kingdom to manage. Aegon needed him more than she did, especially when one considered she knew full well how to run a castle. He'd even left the naming of the castellan to her, the filling of all the positions that needed filling. If asked, he would have said it was because the people knew her already, trusted her already, but his own heart knew it was because it simply suited her better.
When he had gone back following the end of the fighting, to tell her he would be serving as Aegon's Hand, he had felt almost extraneous.
"Must I come?" He still remembered how she'd looked, outlined against the window in the solar. He had had the sudden thought that she truly was beautiful and any of those knights and lords of the stormlands would have been lucky to have stood in her shadow. And there was no question that she was unfit to be a third wife, even for Orys' brother. Aegon would have been lucky to stand in her shadow, too.
But what was the point in having sentimental thoughts about her if she only wished him gone?
"No," he said. "You may if you like, but the castle is under construction and you might wish to have the child here."
"I do," she said, her voice softening for the first time as she laid her hand on the slight swell of her stomach. Orys found it hard to stop looking at her. His son! He might have been getting ahead of himself, but he was sure Argella would allow no less than a son. He did not have to ask her to know that in her mind he was already a wild-haired warrior, like his grandfather. Orys didn't mind the idea of that, from what he'd seen of the man.
Perhaps it was better if she remained here and he remained away. Not enough to allow any whisper that they were not united, that she was being allowed to continue as though Aegon and his sisters had never landed, but enough that people might accept Orys' son as their liege lord even if they did not accept Orys himself. For he could see it in the eyes of the stormlords who had come to pay him honors, especially the older ones, who had been too old to follow their king into battle. They were as afraid of dragon fire as any man, aye, but they still hated to see their princess wed to a bastard from far away.
Let them think it, he had decided. At least they will not have to look on me.
**
Her son was perfect. Every mother says that, her old nurse had teased, but Argella knew for sure that Davos was perfect. He had ten fingers and ten toes, a fuzz of dark hair, and her eyes like the sea at night. All babies' eyes are blue, her nurse had said, but Argella knew Davos' wouldn't turn. There were just some things a mother knew.
She had not seen her husband in some months, and it did not bother her. He would come to see his son soon enough and he would see that she ran the castle exactly as she would have as queen.
Orys at last arrived when Davos was four months old. He seemed as taken with him as she had been.
"My son," he said simply when Davos had been placed in his arms. "My very own son."
It brought her a strange sort of pleasure to know that she was capable of bringing such a look of awe to Orys' face (although she acknowledged that he had had a hand in Davos' creation himself). As soon as she thought it, she dismissed the thought. She did not need his approval.
"I'm glad you are pleased," she said, rising from her seat by the window. She hated to be idle, but she had not been able to resume her duties as quickly as she had hoped to. This was the reason she'd received Orys in her private sitting room rather than the solar, as she'd done when he'd come back to Storm's End during her pregnancy. Perhaps when Orys had gone, she would take a nap. "I think he favors my father."
She hadn't meant it as bait, but she had wondered if that was how Orys would take it. To her surprise, he nodded. "Aye." He did not even look up from Davos, who was staring, fascinated, at Orys' beard. "I am looking for a scrap of myself."
"The jaw and the ears are all you."
Orys turned the babe so he could see from a different angle, making him squeal with laughter. "I still think they are your father's."
She paused. "Davos' hair is black."
"So is yours."
She looked at Davos again. Now that he was in his father's arms, the resemblance was striking. Why could Orys not see it? They were nearly identical, save the eyes.
She was seized by a sudden fear that everything of her father, her entire line stretching back centuries, was being washed away like seaweed on the rocks. It couldn't be, she reminded herself. Orys would leave again, go back to his king, and she would be left to raise their son in whichever way she saw fit.
After all, she reminded herself, he has a Storm King's eyes.
**
Orys had been away in damned Dorne for so long he hardly recognized the place. This was his castle? That was his wife? That was his son?
"Well," he said, sliding from his horse and nearly losing his feet. He needed some milk of the poppy. Anything to make the throbbing end.
Argella was watching him warily. "Say hello to your father, Davos," she said, nudging the boy forward. Orys squinted at the child through his headache. Solemn blue eyes regarded him from within a tangle of black hair. I could be anyone, he thought numbly. He doesn't know me. Davos had been just three when Orys had gone south, and he'd spent little enough time at Storm's End that he hadn't known Orys even then.
"He will know you," Argella insisted, as she followed him up the stairs to the lord's bedchamber. "He knows who you are; I talked of you every day."
"And what did you say?" Orys stood in the middle of the chamber, turning slowly. This wasn't his room, had never been his room. It was hers. "Wine."
She didn't move. "I told him his father was held captive by our enemies, but that his uncle the king would soon free him. I said you fought valiantly."
"Did I? Well, it won't be so again." He took his arm from its sling for the first time, letting the wrappings fall away.
For once in her life, Argella's face showed her true thoughts as she stared at the place his hand had been. "Damned Dornish."
Orys smiled grimly. "That's what I said.
"I told Davos there would be some trick. The Dornish always have a trick."
Orys laughed. "Of course. I had forgotten. You hate the Dornish. Maybe nearly as much as you hate me."
She looked genuinely surprised. "I don't hate you."
"You've no shortage of reasons to."
"I know." He watched her as she crossed the room and poured him a goblet of wine. Her movements were so precise it was almost infuriating. He would never be able to do that again. "Perhaps I did," she allowed. She paused, goblet in hand, and he took this as instructions to sit. "Is that what you would rather? I can give you rage and bitterness if you would like."
Orys scowled, but he took the goblet from her. "No," he said, hating the way his voice croaked. "That's for me now."
Argella stood watching him. It was the same expression she'd worn on their wedding night, when she had been trying to take the measure of him. He wondered if she ever had. Had they even spent enough time together for her to do that? He knew he didn't have a sense of her, other than that she did a better job as lord than he would have.
"You will have your vengeance one day," she said and sat beside him. It was the last thing he'd expected her to say.
"Want you that I should ride out again?" He smiled, without malice. The wine and her presence had soothed his ire. "Let the Dornish take off the other arm and then maybe the head?"
She smiled back. "I want that you should be patient." She reached up and touched his face. "You might get your due in ways you never imagined."
Orys could not shake the thought that she was speaking from experience.
**
The rain drumming on the windows kept Argella from sleeping. Beside her, Orys had no such trouble. She brushed his hair back from his face, determined to study every curve of it. She was ashamed that she had lost the ability to bring his face to mind in detail when he was away in Dorne. She was not ashamed of her running of the castle in its lord's absence, but she was ashamed of how little she'd thought of her husband.
She pressed a hand to her flat stomach. Perhaps they would have another child. Orys deserved to have a child who would know him from birth, whom he would be able to see grow up. It wouldn't even matter when Davos was grown; he would barely remember his father's absence.
Argella pushed herself up. What was she thinking? She had vowed to do her proper wife's duty, yes, but she had not agreed to any sort of sentimentality. Why, then, was she so absorbed in watching him sleep?
Her gaze traveled down his right arm to the stump it ended in. Hot rageóat the king, at the Dornishóflared inside her as it had each time she'd lain eyes on it. How dare they? If her father were still on the throne, they would not have dreamed of mutilating her husband.
But, of course, if her father were still on the throne, she would not be married to her husband.
She slipped from her bed and went to the window. The view from it was the same as it had been when she was a little girl seated on her father's knee as he told her tales of how the castle had been raised. She'd told Davos the same tales, with the same wording as her father.
She turned back to look at her husband. What tales had he learned in that island fortress?
"Argella?"
"I'm here." She sat on the edge of the bed. He was smiling at her and she took his remaining hand. Thick fingers curled around hers.
"I'm not going back."
"To Dorne? Of course not." She stretched out next to him and brushed his hair back again. She could see now that this was the hair her son had inherited. It was wild like Davos'. She kissed him.
"No, Argella." He looked at her seriously. "To Aegon. I'm done with all this. Done with being his Hand, done with being sent into the snakes' den because the king sees fit to send me."
Argella remained silent. This was what she'd wanted, wasn't it? Orys around for their son, the cursed king all but gone from their lives...
"Are you certain?" she heard herself ask.
He laughed. "You do want to get rid of me."
"It isn't that." She kissed him again. "But I remember what he means to you."
"What would your father say?" Orys murmured. "Defending the best interests of the king who wed you to a bastard."
"I am defending the best interests of my husband, who I thought cared so for his brother." She paused. "What would your father say? To see you turn your back on your brother?"
To her surprise, Orys threw his head back on the pillow and laughed. "My father would revel in it. He cursed my very existence."
Argella stared at him. She had never heard this, in their seven years of marriage. "He should have thought of that before he sired you."
He laughed again. It was good to see it, contrasted with the bitter look he'd worn since his return to Storm's End. "And then you might at last be free of me?" He ran his fingers through her hair. "No, I am glad my mother didn't get rid of me as she should have. I rather like living."
"But Aegon felt differently?" She asked the question gently, used the king's name, in the hopes that it might get Orys to speak more. There was so much she didn't know about the man she was supposed to spend her life with.
"Aye, he sought me out when he learned of my existence. He wanted an ally, someone he knew he could trust." Orys automatically lifted his right arm to scratch an itch, then dropped it back to the bed in disgust. "Someone who would be so grateful to be pulled out of that stinking fishing village that he'd never think to question his liege."
"You don't mean that," Argella murmured soothingly. "He's your brother." She paused. "And he is not the one to blame."
"Aye, I know that. It's Wyl." He looked down at her. "Aegon didn't understand that, you see. He thought I wasn't seeing the forest for the trees."
"You make perfect sense to me."
Orys smiled. "Do I? That's a comforting thought."
"I am your wife," she reminded him.
"Yes." He paused, linking the fingers of his remaining hand with hers. "Is it still an insult? To be married to a bastard with nothing to his name?"
For one brief moment, Argella wondered if this was, in fact, a betrayal of her father and every last one of her ancestors. But it was gone now, the burning desire to rid herself of her husband. It had become indifference, and now, it wasÖ well, she was not sure it was love, but she wanted him near. Perhaps in that nearness, it would change again.
"No," she said honestly. "You are going to stay here, then? With me and our sons?"
Orys looked surprised. "Our sons?"
"There will be others." She was as confident of this as she had been that Davos would be a son. "Baratheons of Storm's End." She found she liked the sound of it.
"Aye." From his look, it seemed to be the first he'd thought of it as well. She wondered if he was seeing the same black-haired, blue-eyed lords she was, a line as strong as the Durrandona, stronger, perhaps for the Valyrian blood they carried, though she would not admit it aloud.
Was that how she would be remembered? For the line she and Orys were starting, not for her failure and shame? She had to hope it would be.
"What?" Orys had noticed her staring. "You don't think I should go crawling back, do you? Be his Hand again?"
"No," she said firmly, leaning down to kiss him. When she did, his right arm came up to wrap around her; she did not flinch at the missing hand, which was not lost on him. "Stay and be the lord of this castle."
Orys' brushed her lips with his fingers. "And that isn't already you?"
"It will be both of us." She was not about to give up entirely what she had been building over the past seven years, but she was willing to let him into it. She had known enough of the world to know that a son needed to learn from his father, even if the father had to learn from his wife first.
Orys grinned wolfishly. "All right. Now, let's assure ourselves of another son." He pulled her down towards him.
"Or a daughter."
"Aye." His face softened, and she fancied she could see the dreams in his dark eyes. "A daughter would be fine."
Title: Queen of Storms
Author: plaid_slytherin
Rating: T
Character(s) or Pairing: Orys Baratheon/Argella Durrandon
Word Count: ~4500
Summary: Argella may have lost her throne and been wed to a bastard, but she will not cede anything else so easily.
Warning: N/A
She could always kill him. This was how Argella justified it, when she accepted Orys' cloak, his food, his wine.
She said nothing to him as he recounted her father's death, painting the dead king in glowing terms, as though it had been an honor to fight him. Argella simply watched him silently over the rim of her goblet, planning the bastard's death. She could not do it soon, she knew. She had to go along with the conquerors' plans for her to some extent. She trusted the dragonlord and his sisters even less than the bastard before her, but sometimes a queen needed to wait. Even if she had to marry him, even if she had to let him bed her, she would endure it, biding her time. If she was going to have her revenge, she would need allies, resources.
This reminded her of something.
She set her cup down. "What of the men who betrayed me?" It was the first words she'd spoken to the men she knew not whether to call captor or savior. Orys looked at her, nothing showing in his impossibly dark eyes, so she continued. "Do you plan to reward them for delivering an enemy commander to you, or do you plan to punish them for betraying your lady wife?"
"So you agree to the marriage?"
"That's not what I said."
He threw his head back and roared with laughter. "Do you think that is how this game works, princess? That you come to me naked as the day you were born and then make demands of me?"
She took another sip of wine. Poison, she decided. Something that will give him a painful and embarrassing end that cannot be traced to me.
They were wed three weeks later, in the sept at Storm's End. She tried to retain her composure as he draped the cloak of the crowned stag that was already hers about her shoulders in a cruel echo of his actions weeks before. She would betray nothing, nor would she give him anything beyond what he was entitled to as her husband.
She tensed as he brushed her lips with his. Everything about him disgusted her, even when she had to admit he was handsome, in an objective way. His hands were heavy on her shoulders. She kept her eyes on the septon, wondering if the invaders would even continue to permit her her own faith, or if this was just a show. What did dragonlords believe? What did bastards believe?
The Father's eyes seemed to look down on her disapprovingly. I tried, she thought. She had always felt guilty for being her father's only living child; for every little brother she had watched struggle and die, she had wished it could be her instead. For even her father's best intentions, however much he treated her as a son, did nothing to make men see her as a king. At least they would love her husband well enough; at least they did not have to be ruled by a woman.
I will need all of your help, she thought, as her husband took her by the arm and led her down the aisle past the all-seeing statues. The Stranger was the last, and most kept their eyes averted as they passed through his gaze. Not Argella. For the first time in her life, she lifted her head and looked the Stranger full in the face. Even yours.
**
Orys knew not what to make of his new wife. He allowed her to think he and his half-siblings had not yet learned the Westerosi custom of the bedding. He would spare her that indignity, but he would not give her the satisfaction of thinking he'd done it out of the goodness of his heart. She had been silent through the feast and was silent still now that they were alone.
He could tell it was already hard enough on her to be in her father's bedchamber, so soon after his death. Orys poured two goblets of wine, pressing one into her hand without even asking if she was thirsty.
It was she who asked the question.
"Are you not going to have a witness?"
"It's not necessary."
Her skeptical gaze remained on him, those penetrating blue eyes the very same ones that had faced him on the field of battle. He realized how little he knew of her. Not her father, not her ancestors, of her.
"Who would you have wed if not for me?" he decided to ask.
Her shoulders tensed. "What does it matter if it never happened?"
"But whoever it was, you would have been queen in your own right?"
That sharp gaze again, the only thing that kept her from being truly beautiful. "Naturally. My father had no living sons. After his death, I would have been queen." Her eyes seemed to bore into him, as though he had personally stolen the throne out from under her.
He refused to be made to feel guilty about winning the war her father had been the one to start. "And my brother's offer of me was not fit for a queen?"
Her eyes narrowed. "I didn't want to be the third wife of a sister-fucker any more than I wanted to be wed to a bastard."
"Bastard I may be, but at least I have my own name."
She sipped her wine, perhaps to avoid having to answer. "Names do not change a man's nature. You are still bad luck, nothing more than an afterthought between your lord father and someó" She was cut off by his suddenly crossing the room and seizing her shoulder. Her wine goblet fell from her hand, soaking the rushes.
"Say what you will about me," he said through gritted teeth. "I will not have anything said against my mother."
She yanked out of his grip, pushing herself back on the bed out of his reach. Her gaze didn't waver, and Orys half wondered what it would take to break her. He rejected that line of thought immediately. He was not that kind of man. Besides, there was only one way to win her favor and it would not be with force.
He stepped back, letting his hands drop to his sides. "What other recourse did you have?" he asked plainly. He would talk to her as one military commander to another, not as husband to his unwilling wife.
"Had I not been born a woman, we would have withstood you."
"It was not your birth that made them betray you, but the fact that most men do not relish being burnt to death by dragon fire."
Her scowl told him that in her ideal world that would not be so. "Had I been a man, it would not have come to that. I would have taken one of the sisters to wife, or at least died on the field of battle with my father."
"And yet here you are."
She looked away. Twelve hours a queen and one might think she had been one all her life.
"Should I leave you tonight?"
She hesitated, but he would not press the point any further. They could go round and round on this, or he could get some rest. He said not a word before leaving her alone in the bedchamber.
**
Argella slept little that night and was relieved when, at long last, the sky lightened over Shipbreaker Bay. The knowledge of her marriage sat in her stomach like a rock, cold and dull, the rest of her life stretching before her as an interminable slog. She forced herself to call for a bath. She was a Durrandon; she would not spend her life in her bedchamber, hiding from her husband.
After she'd bathed and dressed, she felt a little better, though she was not looking forward to seeing her husband again. A shout from outside drew her attention to the window. She stepped away from the maid who was braiding her hair.
In the courtyard below, a long line of men was being led out through the gates. She pressed her face to the glass, trying to see who they were, but the tower was too high. She pushed away from the window and ran out of the bedchamber.
"PrióMy lady!"
She ignored her maid's shout and the fact that her hair was streaming behind her. There were few here who hadn't seen her in a far more indecent state. She was out of breath by the time she reached the castle gate, having never before run down every step in the castle at once. Her husband was ahorse, watching as the last of the men were marched out of Storm's End.
"Where are they going?" she demanded. She had a suspicion of who they were, though she had seen only a few faces.
Orys looked down at her, his face unreadable. "Your bride gift, princess. Bound for the Wall." He wheeled his horse away, but she remained in the courtyard until the gates had been shut tight.
That night was a repeat of the night before, the wine, the silence. Orys said nothing about the men, his own men now, whom he had just sent away, so it fell to Argella to broach the matter.
"They were your men," she said. "They may have betrayed me, but it was so they could follow your banner."
Orys took a deep swallow of wine and refilled his goblet. "My banner is now your banner. I won't have turncloaks in my service, even if they turned their cloaks to me."
"You are a fool to cast aside good men so readily."
He raised an eyebrow. "So they are good men now?"
"They served my father, if not me. Will the stormlords send us their sons if this is what you do to them?"
Orys smirked. "You know as well as I do how many stormlords' sons were among those men. The best of those died with your father." He paused. "And the stormlords will send us their sons because you are my wife. They may not know the name Baratheon, but my son will be your son and your father's grandson, the same as if I and my siblings were still idling about on our island." He raised an eyebrow. "That is, if you ever let me give you one."
She scowled, but there was no venom in it, and she pulled him into bed.
**
"How is she?"
Aegon's question pulled Orys out of his thoughts. They stood over the Painted Table, looking at the lands they had conquered for what would one day be generations of Targaryen kings. Orys couldn't help but feel a bit of pride, even though he knew as well as anyone that he was no true Targaryen. He was lucky his brother acknowledged him; he could tell he was not as well-liked by either sister.
"Who?"
Aegon laughed. "Your lady wife."
"Oh. She's all right. Child should be born before the New Year." The truth was, Orys had been more or less content to leave Argella once it was clear she was going to have a child. There had still been a conquest to complete, and then, when that was done, a kingdom to manage. Aegon needed him more than she did, especially when one considered she knew full well how to run a castle. He'd even left the naming of the castellan to her, the filling of all the positions that needed filling. If asked, he would have said it was because the people knew her already, trusted her already, but his own heart knew it was because it simply suited her better.
When he had gone back following the end of the fighting, to tell her he would be serving as Aegon's Hand, he had felt almost extraneous.
"Must I come?" He still remembered how she'd looked, outlined against the window in the solar. He had had the sudden thought that she truly was beautiful and any of those knights and lords of the stormlands would have been lucky to have stood in her shadow. And there was no question that she was unfit to be a third wife, even for Orys' brother. Aegon would have been lucky to stand in her shadow, too.
But what was the point in having sentimental thoughts about her if she only wished him gone?
"No," he said. "You may if you like, but the castle is under construction and you might wish to have the child here."
"I do," she said, her voice softening for the first time as she laid her hand on the slight swell of her stomach. Orys found it hard to stop looking at her. His son! He might have been getting ahead of himself, but he was sure Argella would allow no less than a son. He did not have to ask her to know that in her mind he was already a wild-haired warrior, like his grandfather. Orys didn't mind the idea of that, from what he'd seen of the man.
Perhaps it was better if she remained here and he remained away. Not enough to allow any whisper that they were not united, that she was being allowed to continue as though Aegon and his sisters had never landed, but enough that people might accept Orys' son as their liege lord even if they did not accept Orys himself. For he could see it in the eyes of the stormlords who had come to pay him honors, especially the older ones, who had been too old to follow their king into battle. They were as afraid of dragon fire as any man, aye, but they still hated to see their princess wed to a bastard from far away.
Let them think it, he had decided. At least they will not have to look on me.
**
Her son was perfect. Every mother says that, her old nurse had teased, but Argella knew for sure that Davos was perfect. He had ten fingers and ten toes, a fuzz of dark hair, and her eyes like the sea at night. All babies' eyes are blue, her nurse had said, but Argella knew Davos' wouldn't turn. There were just some things a mother knew.
She had not seen her husband in some months, and it did not bother her. He would come to see his son soon enough and he would see that she ran the castle exactly as she would have as queen.
Orys at last arrived when Davos was four months old. He seemed as taken with him as she had been.
"My son," he said simply when Davos had been placed in his arms. "My very own son."
It brought her a strange sort of pleasure to know that she was capable of bringing such a look of awe to Orys' face (although she acknowledged that he had had a hand in Davos' creation himself). As soon as she thought it, she dismissed the thought. She did not need his approval.
"I'm glad you are pleased," she said, rising from her seat by the window. She hated to be idle, but she had not been able to resume her duties as quickly as she had hoped to. This was the reason she'd received Orys in her private sitting room rather than the solar, as she'd done when he'd come back to Storm's End during her pregnancy. Perhaps when Orys had gone, she would take a nap. "I think he favors my father."
She hadn't meant it as bait, but she had wondered if that was how Orys would take it. To her surprise, he nodded. "Aye." He did not even look up from Davos, who was staring, fascinated, at Orys' beard. "I am looking for a scrap of myself."
"The jaw and the ears are all you."
Orys turned the babe so he could see from a different angle, making him squeal with laughter. "I still think they are your father's."
She paused. "Davos' hair is black."
"So is yours."
She looked at Davos again. Now that he was in his father's arms, the resemblance was striking. Why could Orys not see it? They were nearly identical, save the eyes.
She was seized by a sudden fear that everything of her father, her entire line stretching back centuries, was being washed away like seaweed on the rocks. It couldn't be, she reminded herself. Orys would leave again, go back to his king, and she would be left to raise their son in whichever way she saw fit.
After all, she reminded herself, he has a Storm King's eyes.
**
Orys had been away in damned Dorne for so long he hardly recognized the place. This was his castle? That was his wife? That was his son?
"Well," he said, sliding from his horse and nearly losing his feet. He needed some milk of the poppy. Anything to make the throbbing end.
Argella was watching him warily. "Say hello to your father, Davos," she said, nudging the boy forward. Orys squinted at the child through his headache. Solemn blue eyes regarded him from within a tangle of black hair. I could be anyone, he thought numbly. He doesn't know me. Davos had been just three when Orys had gone south, and he'd spent little enough time at Storm's End that he hadn't known Orys even then.
"He will know you," Argella insisted, as she followed him up the stairs to the lord's bedchamber. "He knows who you are; I talked of you every day."
"And what did you say?" Orys stood in the middle of the chamber, turning slowly. This wasn't his room, had never been his room. It was hers. "Wine."
She didn't move. "I told him his father was held captive by our enemies, but that his uncle the king would soon free him. I said you fought valiantly."
"Did I? Well, it won't be so again." He took his arm from its sling for the first time, letting the wrappings fall away.
For once in her life, Argella's face showed her true thoughts as she stared at the place his hand had been. "Damned Dornish."
Orys smiled grimly. "That's what I said.
"I told Davos there would be some trick. The Dornish always have a trick."
Orys laughed. "Of course. I had forgotten. You hate the Dornish. Maybe nearly as much as you hate me."
She looked genuinely surprised. "I don't hate you."
"You've no shortage of reasons to."
"I know." He watched her as she crossed the room and poured him a goblet of wine. Her movements were so precise it was almost infuriating. He would never be able to do that again. "Perhaps I did," she allowed. She paused, goblet in hand, and he took this as instructions to sit. "Is that what you would rather? I can give you rage and bitterness if you would like."
Orys scowled, but he took the goblet from her. "No," he said, hating the way his voice croaked. "That's for me now."
Argella stood watching him. It was the same expression she'd worn on their wedding night, when she had been trying to take the measure of him. He wondered if she ever had. Had they even spent enough time together for her to do that? He knew he didn't have a sense of her, other than that she did a better job as lord than he would have.
"You will have your vengeance one day," she said and sat beside him. It was the last thing he'd expected her to say.
"Want you that I should ride out again?" He smiled, without malice. The wine and her presence had soothed his ire. "Let the Dornish take off the other arm and then maybe the head?"
She smiled back. "I want that you should be patient." She reached up and touched his face. "You might get your due in ways you never imagined."
Orys could not shake the thought that she was speaking from experience.
**
The rain drumming on the windows kept Argella from sleeping. Beside her, Orys had no such trouble. She brushed his hair back from his face, determined to study every curve of it. She was ashamed that she had lost the ability to bring his face to mind in detail when he was away in Dorne. She was not ashamed of her running of the castle in its lord's absence, but she was ashamed of how little she'd thought of her husband.
She pressed a hand to her flat stomach. Perhaps they would have another child. Orys deserved to have a child who would know him from birth, whom he would be able to see grow up. It wouldn't even matter when Davos was grown; he would barely remember his father's absence.
Argella pushed herself up. What was she thinking? She had vowed to do her proper wife's duty, yes, but she had not agreed to any sort of sentimentality. Why, then, was she so absorbed in watching him sleep?
Her gaze traveled down his right arm to the stump it ended in. Hot rageóat the king, at the Dornishóflared inside her as it had each time she'd lain eyes on it. How dare they? If her father were still on the throne, they would not have dreamed of mutilating her husband.
But, of course, if her father were still on the throne, she would not be married to her husband.
She slipped from her bed and went to the window. The view from it was the same as it had been when she was a little girl seated on her father's knee as he told her tales of how the castle had been raised. She'd told Davos the same tales, with the same wording as her father.
She turned back to look at her husband. What tales had he learned in that island fortress?
"Argella?"
"I'm here." She sat on the edge of the bed. He was smiling at her and she took his remaining hand. Thick fingers curled around hers.
"I'm not going back."
"To Dorne? Of course not." She stretched out next to him and brushed his hair back again. She could see now that this was the hair her son had inherited. It was wild like Davos'. She kissed him.
"No, Argella." He looked at her seriously. "To Aegon. I'm done with all this. Done with being his Hand, done with being sent into the snakes' den because the king sees fit to send me."
Argella remained silent. This was what she'd wanted, wasn't it? Orys around for their son, the cursed king all but gone from their lives...
"Are you certain?" she heard herself ask.
He laughed. "You do want to get rid of me."
"It isn't that." She kissed him again. "But I remember what he means to you."
"What would your father say?" Orys murmured. "Defending the best interests of the king who wed you to a bastard."
"I am defending the best interests of my husband, who I thought cared so for his brother." She paused. "What would your father say? To see you turn your back on your brother?"
To her surprise, Orys threw his head back on the pillow and laughed. "My father would revel in it. He cursed my very existence."
Argella stared at him. She had never heard this, in their seven years of marriage. "He should have thought of that before he sired you."
He laughed again. It was good to see it, contrasted with the bitter look he'd worn since his return to Storm's End. "And then you might at last be free of me?" He ran his fingers through her hair. "No, I am glad my mother didn't get rid of me as she should have. I rather like living."
"But Aegon felt differently?" She asked the question gently, used the king's name, in the hopes that it might get Orys to speak more. There was so much she didn't know about the man she was supposed to spend her life with.
"Aye, he sought me out when he learned of my existence. He wanted an ally, someone he knew he could trust." Orys automatically lifted his right arm to scratch an itch, then dropped it back to the bed in disgust. "Someone who would be so grateful to be pulled out of that stinking fishing village that he'd never think to question his liege."
"You don't mean that," Argella murmured soothingly. "He's your brother." She paused. "And he is not the one to blame."
"Aye, I know that. It's Wyl." He looked down at her. "Aegon didn't understand that, you see. He thought I wasn't seeing the forest for the trees."
"You make perfect sense to me."
Orys smiled. "Do I? That's a comforting thought."
"I am your wife," she reminded him.
"Yes." He paused, linking the fingers of his remaining hand with hers. "Is it still an insult? To be married to a bastard with nothing to his name?"
For one brief moment, Argella wondered if this was, in fact, a betrayal of her father and every last one of her ancestors. But it was gone now, the burning desire to rid herself of her husband. It had become indifference, and now, it wasÖ well, she was not sure it was love, but she wanted him near. Perhaps in that nearness, it would change again.
"No," she said honestly. "You are going to stay here, then? With me and our sons?"
Orys looked surprised. "Our sons?"
"There will be others." She was as confident of this as she had been that Davos would be a son. "Baratheons of Storm's End." She found she liked the sound of it.
"Aye." From his look, it seemed to be the first he'd thought of it as well. She wondered if he was seeing the same black-haired, blue-eyed lords she was, a line as strong as the Durrandona, stronger, perhaps for the Valyrian blood they carried, though she would not admit it aloud.
Was that how she would be remembered? For the line she and Orys were starting, not for her failure and shame? She had to hope it would be.
"What?" Orys had noticed her staring. "You don't think I should go crawling back, do you? Be his Hand again?"
"No," she said firmly, leaning down to kiss him. When she did, his right arm came up to wrap around her; she did not flinch at the missing hand, which was not lost on him. "Stay and be the lord of this castle."
Orys' brushed her lips with his fingers. "And that isn't already you?"
"It will be both of us." She was not about to give up entirely what she had been building over the past seven years, but she was willing to let him into it. She had known enough of the world to know that a son needed to learn from his father, even if the father had to learn from his wife first.
Orys grinned wolfishly. "All right. Now, let's assure ourselves of another son." He pulled her down towards him.
"Or a daughter."
"Aye." His face softened, and she fancied she could see the dreams in his dark eyes. "A daughter would be fine."