Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken: The Chronicles of Elia Martell, Part Four

[eenaangel]

~280 A.L.~Viserys came into her rooms just after breakfast, avoiding the curtsies and adoring coos of the many ladies present. Elia smiled encouragingly at her little good-brother, but inside her stomach was turning sickeningly. And the fault lay not with the babe still forming in her womb, but with the hooded eyes of the young prince.

“Viserys, my love,” Elia quickly handed off her sewing to Ashara beside her and opened her arms for the boy. He climbed onto her lap and settled quietly in the cradle of her arms, little silver-topped head resting against her shoulder. “Did you break your fast, my darling?”

He nodded, face pressed tight against the hollow of her throat. When he spoke, it was barely a whisper, words meant only for her to hear. “Mother did it again; I told her not to, but she did it anyway.”

His small hands clutched at the fabric of her bodice, shame turning his face deeper and deeper into her neck so that others may not see the unshed tears there. He raised his face just enough for his lips to hover just below her ear. “She woke the dragon.”

Elia suppressed a sigh, smiled benignly at the overly curious ladies trying to hear what the little prince was whispering to his good-sister. She squeezed Viserys quickly, so brief that many would have missed it. She helped him off her lap, rising to her feet with an apologetic look on her face. “Excuse me, dear ladies. But our beloved princeling is in need of some sweets.”

The gathered ladies tittered and preened, even as Viserys glared disdainfully at them. Elia led him out, Ashara following on her heels without having to be told. Waiting at the door of her rooms stood before Ser Barristan and Ser Oswell, and they too fell in line as she carefully guided Viserys down the corridor. She stopped just before taking the turn that would lead them to the queen’s apartments. Now she looked to Ashara and the young lady stepped forward with a pleasant smile on her face.

“My prince, would you like to accompany me to the kitchens?” Ashara offered her hand to the prince, knowing her part very well.

“We shall have to find you very many sweets to fill your royal belly.”

Viserys frowned a little less severely at this, a true sign that he liked Ashara better than most people. He did look to Elia first, for assurance, and she smiled encouragingly at him. Once Ashara had departed with the prince, Ser Oswell on their heels, Elia dropped her smile and exchanged a look with Ser Barristan. She resumed her march without a word.

Ser Jonothor Darry stood outside the queen’s door, stoic and steadfast as any of his brethren. She glanced over him, knowing the man would not meet her eyes. None of the brave knights could seem to accomplish that task on days such as these. It was times like these when she missed Dorne the most, missed her fierce mother and her brothers. No one in Dorne would have abided this nonsense.

“Go get the maester,” she ordered shortly, not really caring which knight stayed and which left. She pushed open the door and marched past both men, their pristine white cloaks fluttering uselessly behind them. There were two maids, white-faced with dried tear tracks on their cheeks, standing within, just outside the entrance to the queen’s private chambers. Both flinched at her presence, gazes glued to their feet as she swept past them. Elia wasted not a second for either of them.

Alerie Hightower was the only lady present by the queen’s bedside. The girl was young, but barely blinked at the sudden appearance of her princess. The girl dipped her head in acknowledgement and then immediately went back to wiping Queen Rhaella’s face clean of sweat and dried blood. “His Grace left just an hour past.”

Elia moved to stand at her good-mother’s bedside, eyes taking in the bloody lip, the swelling around the left eye, and the angry bruise forming on the right cheek. Rhaella watched her calmly, with those violet-blue eyes that Elia sees almost everywhere these days.

“One day, he might kill you.”

Rhaella averted her eyes, waving Alerie away impatiently. “He is my husband; I’m told it is his right.”

He was your brother first; both Oberyn and Doran would cut off their own hands before ever striking me, Elia took a seat at the end of the bed, hands folded calmly in her lap. “Viserys came crying to my rooms, again. How much longer will this go on, Your Grace?”

Rhaella pressed her lips together, a frown crossing her features. “They have gone on long before your arrival, princess. How do you propose to stop it? He is the king, there is no one to tell him what to do.”

Elia bit her tongue to hold back all she wanted to say. The king’s madness left them all feeling powerless. Rhaegar himself did not stop his father, bound as he was to obey the laws of his kingdom. A son is a son, but a king is a king. Isn’t that the nonsense they all spout here? Lackluster words that cover not nearly as much shame as they were designed to cover.

It was better, though, when the prince was here. Certainly, it was better for the queen herself. Aerys laid not a finger on his wife when his son was in the Keep, the king’s insanity not deep enough to try so completely the love of a son for his mother. But the impulses were becoming harder and harder to control, as any man could see. It was the burnings, that sickening display of wildfire and the madness of a once just king, that fuelled the change. It excited her good-father to see a man burn, to watch him flail in the flames, see his anguished screams of pain, to smell the scent of burnt hair and skin filling up the air of his hall.

“A delicate situation, complex indeed,” Elia flicked her eyes over to Alerie, assessing the girl quietly, perhaps coldly. It pleased Elia to see Alerie straighten her back, to look back at her princess a bit too boldly for a mere lady-in-waiting. Elia hid a smile, forced her lips to stay pressed together instead of curving upwards as they so obviously wished to do. She had become too accustomed to useless women these days, of highborn, well-dressed ladies who pay more mind to gossip than anything that might actually be of importance.

“I fear I am myself too young and too naïve to understand the complexities of this complexing situation,” Elia turned back to her good-mother and did not smile, though the queen obviously fought not to do so herself. “However, my lady mother is both wise and experienced with the most complex of complexities. Viserys could accompany you, as the poor boy’s never had the joy of visiting Dorne himself, and certainly no one would think twice of him going with you as you visit an old and dear friend. I shall at once write to mother and Rh-“

The queen’s hand on her shoulder stopped the rush of words from Elia’s mouth. “He does not look to you,” Rhaella told her evenly, so quiet and so severe. “You are almost of no concern to him. You have the heir in your belly and Rhaegar’s love about your shoulders. The people adore you, but only in the way they adore beautiful women who are dutiful wives to handsome lords. If you stand out, in any other way, he will notice, and you do not want him to notice you, Elia. He’s mad.”

Elia looked at the hand on her shoulder, found it easier to stare at then those weary violet eyes. She had often felt encumbered by her own weakness during her youth in Dorne. The shock of her marriage announcement had left her feeling a bit more powerless than usual. But never, in all her years, could Elia remember feeling as trapped and as useless as she did now.

It was not a feeling she liked. Something down within her, something wild, angry, Dornish, rattled unhappily, screaming Nymeria’s name at the top of its lungs. Her own hands, trembling at her sides, clenched tightly into fists, bone white knuckles set against the darker tint of her skin.

Rhaella took it all in, with one glance, and her hand tightened slightly around Elia’s thin shoulder. “Rhaegar will be home in a fortnight. Be happy, child, for your husband will never strike you. And when he is king, no one shall strike me as well.”

Elia thought it odd and uncomfortable that they all believed themselves to be loyal subjects, bound by the king’s laws, when all they did, all anyone ever did, was wait for Aerys to die. But the king, for all his insanity, for all his scabs and suspicions-the king was still strong, healthy.

He could burn down half the kingdom, one home at a time, before the Stranger came to claim him, and she did not know if this made her bitter or scared, but she did know that it did not make the situation at present any easier to stomach.

“I will write Rhaegar,” she said, the words like ash in her mouth. “And I will ask him to come home soon. I fear, Your Grace, that I miss my husband too much when he is gone.”

The queen’s hand moved from Elia’s shoulder to her back, a light touch before dropping away all together. “Then you are a most lucky woman, dear daughter.”

The maester arrived and Elia stepped back out of the queen’s room. As Ser Barristan followed her back to her own apartments, Elia wished, not for the first time, that she was back in Dorne, cajoling some mirth out of Doran or chastising Oberyn for never listening to anyone.

Elia had been a princess all her life, but only once the Targaryen mantle was laid upon her shoulders did she find the station perhaps too hard for her to handle.

~0~

She did write her husband, away in the Stormlands with his friend Ser Jon Connington and her own uncle among others. Rhaegar had been gone a month at this time, a month in which her belly swelled just a bit and the king ran rampant just a bit. She can hardly remember the business that had pulled the prince away from her, something about trade and squabbles and the recent passing of the Storm Lord, Steffon Baratheon.

Rhaegar sent a reply, as quickly as was possible. Elia found her husband was good in that respect, that he never kept her waiting for long. Rhaegar claimed that he would always come when she called, as long as she paid him for his fealty in sweet smiles and soft sighs. She jested, often, that his price was far too cheap for a prince of the realm, and he would always reply that she merely undervalued the graces of his lady wife.

It was in those moments Elia felt that she loved her husband. All dutiful wives loved their husbands, bended to his will and smiled all the while. Elia did all that, and yet sometimes she felt that she might love him more than just what was expected of her. It was a frightening notion, though she knew people fell in love and then minstrels wrote songs about it and young girls sighed dreamily when hearing of it. But she had never thought of such love for herself, because it seemed like such a strange and cumbersome thing. Elia would prefer not to love someone so much that she could not bear to be apart from him. Perhaps it was her Rhoynish blood, that bit of Nymeria in her, which quailed at the idea-Elia didn’t know for sure. But she knew on some days it unsettled her, because for all her preparation for marriage and her wifely duties, Elia never received instruction on how to deal with something as trivial and monumental as love.

It was Rhaegar’s fault, she decided not too long after their wedding. Her husband had the annoying habit of being overly sweet and yet unyieldingly sincere, two traits most Dornishmen did not possess (and those who did would certainly never boast of them). He seemed utterly convinced that she should love him, as he loved her too, and did many things that made it impossible for her to regard their marriage with a mere comfortable affection.

His letter, never too long, never too saccharine, promised her a swift return, almost a week sooner than he had previously intended. That alone made her heart swell, for she knew many wives received rebukes instead of concessions and made her wish that he was near enough to kiss, she was so grateful. She shared the news with the queen and together they planned a lavish dinner to welcome back the prince, plans that had the added benefit of keeping Rhaella legitimately preoccupied and out of her rooms should the king come calling.

(There was nothing she could do of the nights, other than to lie awake in her bed and pray to the gods that Aerys had been too long in his cups that night and now slept soundly without the urge to trouble his wife.)

So intricate were their plans, and so overjoyed they were with his impending arrival, that Elia was quite honestly stunned to emerge from her daily prayers at the Great Sept to see the commotion that preceded the wave of black and red banners steadily coming her way, a full week before his promised return. She found herself almost mute with shock, hand going forward to lightly touch the back of Ashara’s hand, asking silently for confirmation of what she was seeing.

“It is the prince,” Ashara whispered, and her voice was as breathless as Elia felt. Elia felt her ladies gather behind her as Ser Barristan stepped forward, kneeling as his crowned prince dismounted from his horse.

Elia stayed at the top of the steps, directly across Baelor’s statue and that the children that seemed to ever be climbing it. Rhaegar strode towards her and she regained enough of her wits to smile before dropping into a curtsy before her husband.

“My lor-“

He caught her by the waist, hands tugging her forward to his chest in a display that was downright inappropriate for such a public forum. And he kissed her right there, on the steps of the Great Sept, and it was not a light, sweet kiss that would cause the public to cheer and her ladies to sigh. It was a deep kiss, one of barely contained passion, and it sent the crowd of commoners to hooting and her ladies to tittering and his men to shouting and whistling.

She pulled back from him, eyes wide and lungs breathless in a way that only Rhaegar seemed to make her feel. The look in his eyes was more than just love, it was desire and longing and she felt her cheeks redden in a way that would make Oberyn fall over with laughter. But what could she do? Rhaegar, soft-spoken, private Rhaegar, was kissing the breath from her lungs where all of King’s Landing could see.

“Have you come to scandalize the High Septon so thoroughly that I am to be banned from the sept altogether?” she asked, hands braced against his chest as he did not seem inclined to release her from his embrace. “Where will I pray, when all the world will think me a sinful, lusty woman bereft of shame?”

Rhaegar merely smiled. “You shall pray wherever your heart desires, and I will hold the world at sword point until they apologize for ever daring to think such things of my beautiful, pious, blushing bride.”

Elia felt her heart twist again, squeaking a noise entirely unbecoming a princess of the realm when he pulled her back in for another kiss. She felt disoriented and overexposed, wondering what would become of the world when a Dornishwoman must remind her husband of the laws of propriety. Rhaegar was usually the contained one, smiling politely as the crowds madly cheered for him. But there were times, like this one, like the incident at the Storm’s End tourney, when Rhaegar outright defied the perception many had of him.

“Stop,” she demanded, voice hardly more than a gasp of air. Her lips tingled, she could feel them bruising as she spoke, and it made her feel warmer than she should at the doors of a sept. She may be a Martell, but she was not Oberyn Martell, and septs were perhaps not a place where she would want her husband to ravish her.

Well, at least not when there are so many eyes upon us. The Dornish are loud and boastful, yet not known for such scandalous exhibitions. Even Oberyn, who would count a day as wasted if he had not lain with at least one woman, had enough sense to lay with his paramours in private.

Rhaegar looked at her, entirely too overjoyed by her reactions. “I thought you wanted me to come home early,” he reminded her.

“Aye, and you said you would return the following week. You’ve ruined days of planning, I’ll have you know.”

“So, you are cross with me for hastening to your side?”

And to that she smiled. “I am neither cross nor in any state of excessive bliss. Though, I must admit, you do make a daring entrance, my husband,” she leaned closer to him, lips to his ears, “and I shall make my appreciation known when we are somewhere not so public, if the prince feels he could stand to wait that long.”

His eyes were burning when she pulled back to see them, making her equal parts proud and nervous. Targaryens, it seemed, were all prone to excess in some form. With the king, that excess took a hideous form, one that made her stomach churn and her chest ache with worry. With Viserys, it came in his obsession with dragons, whether it was hours spent gazing upon the skulls in the throne room or speaking of nothing but Balerion, Meraxes, and Vhagar for days on end.

Rhaegar’s love was his own excess, and though Elia enjoyed the nights she spent in the arms of her husband, she could not deny that he exhausted her at times. Rhaegar, so calm and reserved before others, had an appetite for her body that Elia often struggled to fulfill. He was never forceful, never cruel or violent-but his lust put her brother’s to shame, and Rhaegar had not three or four outlets for his passion. It was a sign of how much he loved her, she knew that without having to be told, and of how much he desired her. She wanted to melt every time she saw the heat glowing in his eyes when he came to her chambers. In the months following their wedding, Rhaegar had come to her nightly, and there was not a spot in her chambers where he had not taken her.

It was caused whispers, and not kind ones in every case. No wonder her belly swells so quickly, they would whisper when they think she had not the ears to hear them, the prince goes not one night without visiting her. Who will stop him, when she is too big with child to indulge his lusts? It isn’t right, it isn’t proper-he should know better than to risk the babe to feed his needs. This is not our prince-perhaps the Dornish woman has cast some spell upon him to make him forget himself.

Elia pulled back from him then, ears ringing with the mutterings that will no doubt be short in coming. “It’s a ploy I think,” she murmured teasingly to her ladies. “He thinks this will make me forget that he had left me on my own for so long. But we Dornish have long memories, do we not Ashara?”

“Frightfully long, my lady,” Ashara agreed, a sweet a smile on her face as the one Elia could produce. “And yet, he is a prince. He could merely order us to neglect to remember.”

“And we would comply, as we are but the most loyal and devout of all subjects,” Elia dared a glance at her husband, thrilled at the amused grin stretched across his face. “But he would not, for my prince is far too kind and far too sweet for such tyrannical behaviour.”

The crowd was still cheering madly, and the mounted men were now coughing to conceal their laughter. Elia dipped down, finishing her curtsy properly this time, and received a bow in return. “Welcome home, my lord.”

Rhaegar reached for her, though this time to softly stroke her cheek before moving his hand to settle upon the tiny bulge in her belly. If the crowd was loud before, it was deafening now. He kissed her again, almost chastely upon the cheek and then offered her his arm. “I am most pleased to be home, my lady.”

Sometimes, when he was like this with her and she was like this with him, Elia could almost forget all her worries.

But then the Red Keep came into sight and all Elia could see was green flames, charred flesh, and angry bruises colouring pale white skin.

Her mother had given her Rhaegar, and perhaps for that she was grateful. But the Lady had also given her King’s Landing, a mad king, and a world so far from Dorne that she felt inconsequential though they told her she was in the center of it all.

~0~

Elia’s daughter was born in a flood of life and death.

“Balerion was the Black Dread . . .” Viserys emphasized this point by jabbing at something on the page in front of him whilst Arianne nodded knowingly. The young prince was only two years older than the Dornish princess, though he acted as if those two years were a decade apiece. And little Arianne, Doran’s impossibly perfect little girl-child, doted upon the silver-haired boy as if he were responsible for hanging the sun and the moon in the sky. It was a high point in her days to watch the two sprawl across the floor of her apartments, unmindful of their royal and noble dignity, and act as children were meant to act.

“She’s hardly so agreeable at home,” Mellario muttered from her spot by the window, her sewing blatantly disregarded in a heap at her feet. “I’ve half a mind to leave her here.”

“Doran would walk the entire way back to reclaim her,” Elia laughed, though it was short. What followed next was a sharp gasp and painful twist in her swollen belly. The idle chitchat of the surrounding ladies fell away suddenly, leaving only the childish tones of the prince and princess to fill the silence.

Elia forced a laugh and tried to pick up her sewing once more. “Just a little twinge,” she assured everyone, though she felt it again, minutes later. Elia touched her stomach gingerly, fingers brushing over her gown and touching against something damp. She looked down at the blooming wet stain on her gown incredulously.

Mellario rose to her feet, a look of glee on her face. “Finally! Lady Ashara, call the midwives.”

“It’s too soon,” Elia protested, even as the pain returned, harder than before. The children had caught on by this point, Viserys running to Elia’s side and touching a hand to her right cheek.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, as serious as the grave.

“She is fine, sweet princeling,” Mellario answered, moving swiftly to push the boy gently aside before looking pointedly at Ashara again. “Lady Ashara, please take the children with you. I believe Ser Barristan should escort them elsewhere to play. Perhaps the dragon skulls, my prince? Arianne has talked so much of them since we’ve arrived.”

Arianne came forward, put her little hand into Viserys’s little hand and tugged him away. “We have to go,” she told the prince, blunt and authoritative as usual. “The baby is coming,” she pulled the boy towards the door, stopped suddenly, and gave him a smile. “You’ll be an uncle.”

“And you a cousin,” he added, content to share some of the glory with his new friend.

Arianne shrugged, an almost perfect imitation of her father’s movements. “Uncle is better than cousin, but dragons are better than babies. Aunt Elia is going to a very big mess.”

Elia laughed at that, her last laugh for the rest of the day, as the pain came searing back with vengeance. The few remaining ladies helped her towards her private chambers while Mellario barked orders like a military commander. “If you are lucky, dear sister, the child will come fast.”

Elia was not so lucky.

She did not know too much of what happened beyond the edges of her bed. Mellario remained present, slipping a hand into Elia’s own when the pain became too much and she had to scream her agony for all to hear. The queen came as well, took her place at Elia’s other side, hands gripping Elia’s own tightly. Elia felt fingers brushing across her forehead, heard soft sounds of encouragement from all sides, but it was not quite what she wanted, what she needed.

But the Lady of Dorne was not here.

Illness had kept the Lady back, when Elia had been certain that her mother would hasten to bear witness to the fruits of her labour-her own daughter, birthing the heir of the kingdom. Elia thought an army of savage aurochs would not keep her mother away from her now.

But her sons would not let her go. “She wears herself thin as it is,” Doran had explained shortly after his arrival in King’s Landing with his wife and daughter at hand. “She hardly ever rests as much as the maester tells her she needs to. It’s weakened her, a bit, and I might have forced Oberyn to stay behind with her in Sunspear while I came to see the sister I haven’t seen in over two years. He snarled the usual amount, and then consented. Apparently he took it upon himself to remember that I loved you too.”

She had laughed while she hugged him, somber and cautious Doran who she loved as dearly as Oberyn. “I must admit, it sounds out of character for him.”

Doran had returned her smile with a small one of his own, a sign of endless amusement on Doran’s part. “Mother says she will take the opportunity to teach him something of diplomacy. What that proposes to be, I cannot be certain. I just hope they do not strangle each other in my absence.”

Doran’s presence had been a blessing, in the end. Her elder brother, less brash and obvious than Oberyn, got on much better with Rhaegar and the others at court. He was quiet, unassuming, and handled even the occasional outburst from the king with polite grace. Mellario was the one to cause some ripples, with her bold tongue and high, free laughter. Elia delighted in every bewildered look and disdainful noise Mellario earned; she had not had this much fun amongst her ladies the entire time she had been married.

Even now, as the midwives rushed to and fro and the queen murmured sweet encouragements in her ear, Mellario made jokes at her expense, describing her own labor of Arianne in vivid detail, and admonished Elia for engaging in pointless theatrics. “It can’t hurt that bad, dear sister.”

She had not enough air in her lungs to spare for laughter. Elia gasped and shook her head, pain colliding with mirth to render her completely incomprehensible.

The queen could only stare at Mellario. “How did Doran marry you?”, and it was not an unkind question, but one of genuine curiosity. That too was normal, whenever people met the pair, as Mellario was as different from Doran as night was from day.

“I have always believed the better question to be why I ever marry him.”

Mellario began to lose some of her humor later on, hours and hours later and the babe had not yet shown. She pushed back the hair off Elia’s sweaty forehead and tried to smile, but Elia could see the concern plainly. The babe was taking too long in coming, and the blood kept staining the sheets an obscene scarlet.

The queen remained at Elia’s side, not leaving once for food or rest. She talked to Elia calmly, and when the pain became too much, she would sing some of the Dornish lullabies that the Lady had taught her when they had been young at court together. Elia asked often for Rhaegar, and was always assured that he was just outside the door, waiting anxiously on both his wife and child.

“Men have no place in the birthing room,” Mellario clucked her tongue and shared a quick smile with the queen. “Give them a lance and horse, and they’re bloodthirsty savages. Ask them to watch while you push their spawn out of your body, and they’re hysterical old women, of no use to anyone.”

But it was Elia who was hysterical, screaming the full hour preceding her daughter’s eventual arrival into the world. She could feel her body ripping and breaking in the minutes before the birth, and the relief at the its end was short lived. She remembered briefly hearing the sounds of a babe’s cries and Mellario’s claims of “it’s a girl! Another sweet princess!” before Elia shut her eyes and fell into oblivion.

Waking was difficult, and it did not take the first few times she attempted it. Elia’s eyes would flutter open, and some sort of consciousness would come back to her, but she could not decipher the sounds and voices around her. She could feel the push and pull of hands on her body, cold fingers, warm hands, and even the dampness of wet clothes across her forehead. She felt hot, impossibly hot, hotter than she ever remembered feeling. The sands of Dorne in the middle of glorious summer day were never as hot as this, and Elia thought perhaps she would just burn away in the aftermath of the birth.

It was perhaps on the fourth or fifth time that Elia tried to wake, she felt better, though not well. She no longer burned all over, but her body was worn, battered, and sore. When she moved her arms, trying to shift her body into a more comfortable position, the pain flared hot and fast. She gasped, loudly, and suddenly there was a swarm of women all around her.

“Princess!” Ashara pushed her way to the front and grabbed hold of Elia’s hand, pressing it to her heart. Elia stared at confusion at the unshed tears obviously swimming in Ashara’s eyes. “We thought-we feared-the maester! Call the maester!”

More people came and went. Elia managed to force herself to sit up, back resting against a mountain of pillows even as the maester admonished her for the effort. Her arms were shaking with the strain of having the hold up her body for even a small fraction of time, and that sent worry thrumming through her brain. Elia was no stranger to bouts of weakness and ill-health, but she was never been so close to being invalid.

“The child,” she rasped, waving away the maester’s potions and concoctions. “Where is my child?”

Ashara flew away at this request, and it was still too long before Elia had any answers. It was Rhaegar himself who came, a small bundle in his arms. She watched quietly, near tears, as he ordered everyone from the room, eyeing those who took too long to obey. The door closed behind the maester and then he was beside her, on the bed, and their daughter held out before her.

“She is you, love,” he told her, voice breathless and full of wonder. “Every little bit is you, though the gods granted me a bit of vanity and coloured her eyes the same as my own. But look, how beautiful she is.”

Beautiful, and small, but with rosy cheeks and pink lips and such a healthy glow of serenity about her as she slept. Elia let out a garbled breath, tears running down her cheeks at last as she ran a trembling finger down the side of her daughter’s face. Rhaegar kissed her on the forehead then, but she had eyes only for the babe. Elia did not remember ever feeling such love and gratitude ever before in her life.

She had many visitors in the days that followed, everyone watching her shrewishly, waiting for her to get up onto her own feet. She would oblige them, but she hadn’t the strength. Most days she felt utterly lifeless, and perhaps this would have sunk another woman into a melancholic state, but Elia was no stranger to feeling weak and trapped in her own skin. Rhaegar kept her company, as did Mellario and Doran. Viserys never went a day without one visit, and Arianne could think of nothing better than to dog his heels. The queen came often and the king, blissfully, came less than often.

“You need an heir,” Aerys spat on one of his more heated visits, ignoring Elia completely in favour of scolding his son. “Get her out of her bed and back into your own-you need a son! I didn’t bring her here to birth Viserys a wife.”

“Did he mean it?” she asked the queen later, both seated upon Elia’s bed, watching baby Rhaenys sleep soundly upon the furs. “Will he make her marry Viserys if I don’t have a son?”

Queen Rhaella did not look at her, merely shrugged and placed a hand on Rhaenys’s dark locks. “If you have a son, he will make her marry that son.”

The queen pulled back and looked Elia squarely in the eye. “We are Targaryens, all of us. Do not forget it, ever. No matter what you want for them, no matter what they want for themselves, they cannot escape their fate.”

Elia set her mouth in a thin line. “Aerys will not live forever.”

“But the dragon must have three heads,” the queen shrugged her shoulders, a pretence at lightheartedness. “And those heads must be as pure Targaryen as they can be. I am sorry, Elia. Rhaegar, for however much you love him, is still a dragon. He might well be a better king than his father, but he will never be entirely different. This is in our blood; this is what it means to hold the Iron Throne.”

She had a thought to speak of this to Rhaegar, to let him know right from the start that she, Princess Elia of Dorne, would never let this happen.

But Rhaegar visited her that day not alone; Doran followed her husband into her chambers and she could feel the dread before she knew the truth of it.

The Lady of Dorne was dead.

“I am sorry, my love,” Rhaegar told her, pressing a kiss to the back of her hand.

Elia took her hand back, and for once in her life, had not a single thing to say.

~0~

Part Five