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Chapter Text

Visenya I

She remembers, half a decade ago and a lifetime away, when her mother brought her to Dorne for the first time.

It had seemed like a land out of a fairytale, full of new and exciting sights and sounds and smells, where nothing bad could ever happen. 

Now, after the loss of well nigh everyone that she loved, she is more cynical and less innocent - if she could have been called innocent even then. 

Dorne is beautiful, but it is no paradise. 

Her uncles will see to it that she will be as safe as possible, will shower her with as much love as they can pour out on her, will give her the education and training of a queen. 

But they cannot make it a certainty. 

Life is dangerous and uncertain, and if she has learned anything from two lives and two lost childhoods, it is that nothing can guarantee safety. 

The Lannister banners flying high on the mast in place of her royal parents' colours are proof of that. 

"Ro! Ro!" She looks down at the nagging voice, accompanied with an insistent pull on her dress.

It is Lelia, again, clinging to her skirts to keep her balance, little round face turned upward. 

Rohanne cannot help the smile that crosses her face. 

They may not be her siblings by blood, but the twins are her kin, and the children of her most devoted protectors.

How could she not adore these two precious babes? 

How could she not do her utmost to protect them, to strive to suceed where she failed her own siblings. 

"What is it, sweetling?" Rohanne asks indulgently, pushing aside her maudlin thoughts. "What do you want?"

The toddler stretches her arms up, nearly falling onto her rear. 

Before she can do so, Rohanne catches her up, doing her best to conceal the effort it requires.

Lelia instantly clutches close to her, winding plump little hands into Rohanne's golden curls and tugging painfully. 

"No, let go," she says, but gives up as she always does when Lelia looks at her with those big, pleading eyes. "Oh very well then. Be gentle."

The toddler nods seriously, pudgy hands seperating the curls Jeyne had painstakingly arranged that morning. 

"Rohanne," another voice says from behind her, amusement evident in it. "You do not have to give Lelia her way in everything, you know."

"Yes, I know," Rohanne says, turning to her stepmother with her customary bright smile. "But look at those eyes, Allyria - how can you deny them anything?"

Allyria only smiles as her two year old daughter seemingly understands Rohanne's cue, turning her own head of golden curls to look pitifully at her mother. 

Allyria is not swayed however, and merely shakes her head, taking the child from her steppdaughter with ease and chucking Lelia under the chin. "Put those eyes away, little madam, I am not so easily fooled."

Turning back to Rohanne, she continues as if nothing had happened. "You look at those eyes, and you remember that giving children their own way in everything will only spoil them and leave them unfit to rule themselves, let alone a kingdom. That is how you deny those eyes, Rohanne."

Rohanne's thoughts do not turn to Rhaegar.

She never knew him.

But Visenya did, had loved and hated the man in equal measure, and she frowns.

She does not say anything, but by Allyria's face she does not need to. 

Her stepmother's words were, to any listening ear, about the rule of the Westerlands.

But the deeper meaning does not escape Rohanne, or the girl lying buried in her heart. 

Rhaegar Targaryen had been born into the most powerful dynasty Westeros had ever known, to a mother too young to be even away from the nursery and a father who cared little for a child by his unwanted, irritating child-bride of a sister.

He had been raised by maids and nurses and tutors, all of whom had been unable to say no to their future king.

And it had ruined him and his dynasty - he could not deny himself anything, not even a girl who was the daughter of one Lord Paramount and betrothed to another. 

What would his old tutors and nurses say, Visenya wonders, if she told them that the fall of the Targaryens could be partially blamed on them? 

The two of them stand in silence for a moment, watching the docks draw ever closer, and the party waiting for them become ever clearer.

Eventually, Allyria breaks the silence, changing the subject completely. "You really shouldn't pick up the twins so often, Rohanne. They are getting too big for your frame, and you could hurt yourself."

Rohanne frowns up at the older woman, the expression as weaponised as Lelia's eyes. "Neither should you be carrying them in your condition."

Allyria's hand drops almost unconsciously to her still-flat stomach, but she dismisses Rohanne's objection. "They are not heavy enough to cause me trouble, sweetling, though it is dear of you to worry so."

"I agree with Rohanne." Jaime says cheerfully, appearing seemingly out of nowhere with Gerold on his shoulders. "You really should take it easy now that we are away from Casterly Rock."

Allyria raises one sardonic eyebrow at her husband. "Ah yes, time spent with Doran and Oberyn and their growing horde of children will be restful indeed."

"I'm not saying that you shouldn't plot world domination with your cousins," Jaime says, still cheerful, the emblem of a careless, handsome young knight to any eavesdropping Westermen, "only that you don't need to run yourself ragged while we are away. Aunt Genna managed the Rock perfectly well before we were wed, and she will continue to do so during our absence."

Before Allyria can reply, Gerold finally notices Rohanne from her unusual position several feet below him and lunges for her so forcefully that Jaime staggers and nearly falls. 

Rather than whatever Allyria had been intending to say, a laugh escapes her at Jaime's predicament, trying to remove his son from his shoulders without dropping him as the toddler heedlessly strains towards the half-sister who has been with him every day of his short life. 

Rohanne takes pity on her father and reaches up for Gerold as Jaime drops to his knees to limit the distance his excitable son can fall should the little boy suceed in his aim. 

Her half-brother squeals in delight as she takes him, winding his arms about her neck and squeezing as he babbles incomprehensibly in her ear. 

Allyria frowns. "Rohanne, put him down, he is really too heavy for you now."

Ignoring her stepmother, Rohanne bounces her half-brother as she had seen her mother do her siblings a lifetime ago.

She has been withdrawn since they began the journey to Dorne, and she knows that the twins have sensed it, for they are even more clingy than they are ordinarily.

"Rohanne."

The warning tone in Allyria's voice is unmistakeable, and Rohanne reluctantly obeys as Jaime's voice joins his wife's. 

Ever since the twins grew taller than her waist, her guardians have been more and more reluctant to allow her to hold them for long periods of time, for fear that they are too heavy for her slight frame.

Gerold simply transfers his vicelike grip to her waist instead, using her to balance himself and glaring balefully at his parents. 

His mother sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose in an increasingly familiar manner. "Rohanne, I know you love the twins, but you cannot keep lifting them as you do. You could harm yourself carrying babes too big for you."

Before Rohanne can reply, Medea Marbrand arrives with several other Westerlands men and women in tow, and everything dissolves into a mess of preparation for the political dance ahead.

The twins' nursemaid Jeyne is quick to take Lelia from Allyria, and then has to all but drag Gerold away from Rohanne, pressing an absent kiss to the curls of the little girl whose charge is no longer hers as she wrangles an angry Gerold.

Medea Marbrand tuts over Rohanne as Allyria is distracted by Lissa's well-meaning fussing. "You cannot appear before the Martells in that state, girl. Bastard or no, they expect you to have done credit to Lady Allyria's teachings."

She rearranges the curls that Lelia had ruffled in her enthusiasm and straightens the dress that Gerold had well-nigh ripped in his reluctance to be parted from her. 

An assessing eye scans over Rohanne's form and she sighs. "You are in no state to attend a prince's court, but it will have to suffice."

Allyria, batting aside Lissa's worried fluttering, looks Rohanne over once more with a smile. "Thank you, Medea, you have done an excellent job. I am sure my cousins will be pleased with their fosterling."

Then there is the shudder as the ship docks, and the thud as the gangplank slams down against the quay. 

They are here. 

Jaime appears, tossing his head and throwing his sunlit curls out of order as he offers his arm to his wife with a beaming smile. 

The pair descend to the quay first, followed by Jeyne the nursemaid with the twins and Rohanne.

Doran looks every bit the Prince of Dorne, tall and strong and regal, with his lady wife and children by his side. 

Neither Doran nor Mellario have changed in the years since Rohanne last saw them, but Arianne and Quentyn have grown taller, their eyes brighter and their smiles slyer.

Beside his brother stands Oberyn, with Ellaria on his arm and his four daughters gathered around him. 

There is another babe on Ellaria's hip, who Rohanne assumes is his newest child - Elia Sand, the babe named for his murdered sister. 

It is a heavy legacy for any child, and she wishes the little girl well. Ellaria, from what Allyria has said of her childhood friend, is sensible however, and if anyone could raise a child to bear up under the weight of such a name it would be her - or so Allyria believes.

The Westerlands party all bow to the Prince, who inclines his head and then waves his hand. 

A woman Visenya vaguely recalls from her sun-bathed visit a world away steps forward, bearing bread and salt for the Guest Right. 

Rohanne sees her stepmother's veiled disgust at the overly salted bread, and the green tinge that reaches her cheeks. But Allyria swallows it and the nausea down with the same determination that left her the only one not retching during the storm that hit the ship on the way to Dorne, despite being newly pregnant.

As soon as the formalities are over, the Prince steps forward and embraces Allyria, who returns it equally fiercely. 

"You are welcome here, cousin." He says, pulling away to look her over with the eye of an elder kinsman. "We have missed you greatly."

Allyria smiles. "As I have missed Dorne, cousin."

Her accent has returned, Rohanne notes. 

It had quickly disappeared in favour of the crisp Westerlands accent after they arrived at the Rock, but mere moments after landing in Dorne her words are already drawling themselves out again. 

Rohanne herself suppressed her own slight drawl in favour of her guardian's crisp Westerlands' enunciation, but Allyria's ability to switch as occasion calls for it is nigh uncanny.

Oberyn steps forward to greet his cousin then, and the Prince turns to Jaime, greeting him warmly if not effusively, and then to the rest of the nobles in their party, though his greeting to these is much cooler. 

And then his attention turns to Rohanne. 

She steps forward when he beckons her, and Jaime and Allyria turn from where they had been speaking with Oberyn and Ellaria. 

"Your Highness," she says clearly, curtseying exactly as Allyria had drilled her - practiced and pretty, but artless, without the knife-edge perfection that Visenya had mastered so young.

Rohanne Lannister is a legitimised bastard, not a princess as Visenya Targaryen was, and it must show. 

She is trained, and educated, but she is not drilled to razor perfection. She is destined for a castle somewhere, and a quiet, uneventful life with a minor lord for a husband - not for the subtle, unforgiving world of court politics that surrounds the Iron Throne.

Doran smiles, though it does not reach his eyes. "You must be our newest fosterling, child."

"Yes, your Highness." Her eyes are wide and innocent, awed by the prescence of a real live prince. 

The Prince says a few more words of welcome, and then turns away, dismissing her implicitly.

*******

When they arrive at the Water Gardens, Allyria and Jaime's party are quickly hurried off to their quarters by Doran's servants. 

Allyria and Jaime, together with their children, have a more informal reunion with Allyria's cousins and their own children. 

Rather awkwardly, Rohanne stands off to the side with the twins, who have fisted their chubby hands into her skirts as they stare at all of these strange new people. 

Doran and Oberyn's children, of course, are all clustered around Allyria, who most of them have at least faint memories of. 

The princes themselves equally are overjoyed to have their cousin back with them - and at the prospect of her next child being born in the Water Gardens, as they all were.

As a result, the first person to cross the room to greet Rohanne and the twins is Mellario, in a flurry of bright silks that waft the scent of a hundred flowers in eddies about her.

She kneels down before them with a sweet smile. "Hello, you must be Gerold and Lelia."

The twins look to Rohanne, who musters a smile and curtseys deeply to the princess before she bends down to whisper into the twins' ears. "That's your Mama's cousin, Princess Mellario of Norvos. Can you say hello to her?"

Gerold mumbles something approximating a greeting, and Lelia lifts her head to wave shyly at the strange woman. 

A glimmer appears in Mellario's eyes when she sees Lelia's face, but she blinks it away, her smile returning bright as ever albeit with a slightly forced quality. "You have lovely eyes, Lelia. Has anyone told you that?"

She nods, shyly. "Mama's eyes."

"Yes," Mellario says, her voice very soft, every inch the sweet aunt Visenya remembers, "your mother's eyes."

Hearing his wife's words, Doran comes over to the children, Arianne trailing after him like a lost little puppy. 

When his eyes fall on the twins, his step hitches, and he too musters a smile that rings slightly hollow, "A lovely inheritance for any young maiden," he says softly. "You should be proud to bear those eyes, Lelia."

Lelia shrinks against Rohanne's skirt, a little afraid, but nods, the eyes in question wide and a little confused. 

Her uncle turns his attention to Gerold, with his pale hair and his aunt's smile, but Rohanne misses it as Arianne addresses her. "You're the Kingslayer's daughter."

It is blunt and tactless, and very much the cousin Visenya remembers. 

Rohanne blinks and then before she can reply, Mellario jumps in, despite her visible reluctance to defend Jaime Lannister's daughter. "Arianne, what has your father told you about that word?"

"Not to use it around the lions because Papa doesn't want to start another war." Arianne says begrudgingly, though Visenya cannot help thinking that the phrasing reminds her more of Oberyn and less of Doran. 

She does not say so, of course, merely smiling guilessly and bobbing a curtsey more fitted to one of the smallfolk than the granddaughter of a Lord Paramount, in hopes that the quaintness will endear her to Mellario. "It is a pleasure to meet you, your Highness."

Arianne frowns at her, though it is assessing rather than grumpy, resting on the stiff silk-velvet of her Western styled dress. "Papa says you'll be one of my playmates. You don't look very fun."

There is a challenge if ever Visenya heard one. 

Rohanne, Visenya, or dead Victoria, she has always been proud.

She looks Arianne dead in the eyes, smiling that soft, almost gentle smile Elia Martell had once been prone to pasting on her face when she wanted to watch someone die screaming. "Neither do you, all got up like that."

Arianne is still for a moment, her eyes flashing, and Rohanne prays that her gamble pays off. 

Thankfully, Mellaro is distracted by Lelia, and Doran by Gerold, so neither of them notice the dead woman's smile she wears, and Arianne is too young to truly remember it. 

After a long, tense moment, Arianne laughs. Then she holds out her hand in the Rhoynish fashion. 

It could be its own snub, Rohanne being presumed fully Andal, but Arianne is a child and Rohanne assumes that it is merely habit on the other girl's part rather than malice, and shakes it easily. 

"I see why Papa said we'd be friends then, Rohanne." Arianne says blithely. "Come and meet Tyene, my cousin."

As if by magic, Tyene appears by Arianne's side, smiling blandly at her.

She is as angelic as ever, her dimples as pronounced, her eyes as blue, her voice as sweet. 

Rohanne smiles and bobs another polite curtsey to the prince's daughter. "Good morrow, my lady."

"Good morrow," Tyene says sweetly, blue eyes taking every inch of her. "You must be Rohanne Lannister."

Rohanne swallows down the tears that spring to Visenya's eyes and the lump that rises in her throat. 

Arianne, Tyene and Visenya had been, for a few blissful moons, inseperable. Bound by blood and bound by friendship.  

But those bonds have been severed by time and distance and death, and what little remains of them is held in her heart alone. 

Neither girl recognises their dead cousin in the face of the Kingslayer's bastard, and they are too young to see the howling grief that eats up the core of her.

Whatever they become now, it will not be the same, for it be built on a lie. 

Rohanne smiles. "Yes I am," she says, just as sweetly. "It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

*********

There was no feast, not when so many of Dorne's preeminent nobles are mere days away from the Water Gardens. 

There is only a quiet dinner taken in the privacy of family. 

Doran with his wife and children, and Oberyn with Ellaria and his daughters.

Or, Rohanne supposes that is how Visenya's uncles had supped. Perhaps the brothers and their families have spent the evening together. 

She does not know, for Jaime and Allyria have seized the opportunity to eat quietly with their children after the long journey.

All of them had retired early, and the twins are already asleep when Jaime slips into the guest chambers Rohanne is sharing with her half-siblings. 

She is tired, but not at all sleepy, and lifts her head from the pillow as soon as her father enters.

He hands her a light cloak to combat the evening chill, and wordlessly leads her out to where Areo Hotah waits for them. 

The tall man leads them through the corridors and hallways of the palace without a sound, and without encountering another soul. 

Visenya is thoroughly turned around by the time they reach their destination, a door that she takes a moment to recognise as the one to Doran's office. 

At Areo Hotah's gesture, she opens it and enters, barely conscious of Jaime following her and closing the door as her uncle's bodyguard takes up his post outside of it. 

Inside, Doran and Oberyn await them, standing before Doran's great desk, draped in the same silks as they had worn earlier in the day despite the chill that has Visenya shiverig through her cloak. 

There is a moment's silence, and then Doran and Oberyn sweep into deep bows almost in perfect unison.

"My queen," Doran says softly. "Dorne is yours."

Without a moment's hesitation, barely acknowledging the prince's formal greeting, Rohanne throws herself forwards.

She collides with her elder uncle's legs and clings there, burying her face in the sunset coloured silk. 

Doran quickly straightens from his bow, lifting her in his arms and crushing her to him. 

"Visenya," he breathes, disbelieving, as if he is afraid she will disappear if he speaks out loud, "Visenya."

She curls into his embrace, surrounded by the scent of sun and sand and spices, that she associates so painfully with her mother.

Her mother, Elia Martell, queen-in-waiting and Dornish princess. 

She has barely thought of her over the past two years, quashing down everything that made her Visenya in favour of laughing, innocent Rohanne.

She had to, living under Tywin Lannister's very nose as she did.

If she failed to hold up her mask, she courted torment and death for her and all those who risked everything for her.

She has been nothing but Rohanne from the moment she left Sunspear.

But here and now, held in her uncle's arms, she cannot be anything but Visenya. 

"Uncle," she whispers in return, hardly able to speak through the lump in her throat. 

An aching tingle rushes over her, and she blinks tears away from eyes as deep a violet as Rhaegar Targaryen's had ever been. 

For the first time in years, Rohanne Lannister melts away and Visenya Targaryen breathes the cool evening air of Dorne. 

Chapter Text

Allyria I

She wakes to an empty bed. 

It is late, late enough that Sunspear is silent and still. 

There is no sound drifting up from the shadow city, and none carrying through the wall from the children. 

Allyria sighs and lets her heavy head fall back against the pillow. 

She has a fair idea of where her husband has gone, though she would have to go to the next room to confirm that Rohanne is also absent. 

For a long moment, she considers simply returning to her slumbers. 

She and Jaime had planned this, after all, and she is so tired.

But then she remembers how many loose ends they had had to tie up in the Rock, how many plans had gone awry, and how hated the Lannisters are in Dorne.

She would rather be overly cautious than risk waiting crucial hours to raise the alarm should something untoward have happened. 

Years of checking every shadow, every corner, and behind every tapestry have left her...she hesitates to say paranoid, but they have left her overly careful. 

Everything in her is screaming alarm, reminding her how much can go wrong in Sunspear - a place which is the home of her princely cousins, but which is unfamiliar to her. 

The Water Gardens, Starfall, even Casterly Rock to an extent, she can navigate and predict, but Sunspear is an unknown quantity and she hates it.  

Reluctantly, against the protests of every bone in her body, Allyria pushes herself out of bed. 

The night air is chill against her skin, and she can see nothing, for the curtains are drawn against the light of the moon and the stars. 

It is the work of a moment to fumble for a lamp and light the wick floating in it's oil. 

In the flickering, dim light, she locates her robe, soft lilac silk with stars and suns embroidered in glimmering white thread. 

The silk is light, with a close enough weave to keep her warm in the cool desert nights but not heavy enough to be suffocating.

Very unlike the monstrosity she wore in the Westerlands, all heavy brocade and damask, with great golden lions embossed onto crimson. 

She prefers light silks and pastels, but as with her accent, it is easier to pretend to give Tywin and Genna their way. 

It is not an issue in Sunspear, for they are far enough away from anyone who is loyal enough to the Old Lion to report such trivialities. 

Those Westermen who followed her and Jaime to Dorne are either loyal more to dashing Ser Jaime and pretty Lady Allyria, or will have difficulty reporting to their master with regularity.

Wrapping the robe around herself, she slips through the connecting door into the room her children have been given. 

It is, under ordinary circumstances, the chamber for the lady of a visiting lord, but Allyria and Jaime prefer to keep the children close and it is no hardship to share a bed. 

Her cousins had been understanding, and had given orders for the chamber to be converted to a nursery for the duration of their visit. 

She hopes that it will be a long visit, possibly even moving to the Water Gardens, for they had neglected to inform her law-father of her pregnancy before they left. 

The babe is new enough that they could quite believably avoid 'discovering' her condition for quite some time. 

By the time that Tywin Lannister learns of his newest future grandchild, Allyria is certain she will be far enough along that he will not insist on their return until after it has joined the world. 

Her third child (and for the sake of any future children Jaime intends to father, it had better be only her third, not twins again) will be born in Dorne. 

Allyria presses one hand to her still-flat womb as she looks down on her sleeping twins. 

They are so small, curled up in adjoining cradles, their hair shimmering faintly in the weak lamplight. 

It seems only moments ago that they were still growing within her, still thought to be one. 

Yet here they are, speaking and walking and desperately devoted to the girl they believe is their sister. 

The time has passed so quickly, and it almost frightens Allyria. 

How long before her babes are old enough to be wedded and bedded with babes of their own, to lead armies and courts for the sake of their queen? 

Will she blink, and miss their childhood? 

Gerold stirs, his thumb drifting towards his mouth, and she cannot help her smile. 

They are still so sweet and innocent. 

Not yet.

Not for years yet. 

She presses a kiss to each soft forehead, careful not to wake them. 

She does not see them every day, between her duties and responsibilities, but she loves them dearly beyond what they can bring to the cause. 

They are half of her, half of Jaime, and they are so beautiful and so perfect that she could weep for it.

Lelia stirs, with Gerold turning over half a moment later.

Before they can wake and begin to cry at the light, she turns towards her stepdaughter's bed.

Rohanne's bed is empty, of course, the cloak that Allyria had draped over the end of it gone. 

She stands over it, her eyes taking in the depression in the middle of it where her queen had lain. 

The hollow is so small. 

Visenya is so mature most of the time, that it is easy to forget that she has not seen even ten namedays yet.

Her queen is so young, so fragile. 

She has endured so much, and they must ask yet more of her. 

Already, Allyria knows that Doran and Oberyn are plotting, for she has exchanged careful letters with them in all the years she has lived in the lion's very mouth. 

Hidden under idle chatter of children and renovations and taxes, the cousins plan alliances and armies for their little Queen. 

Her marriage will, unless a miracle happens, require the Old Lion's blessing - being, for all intents and purposes, the head of her house. 

And Allyria hates to think of it already, but Visenya will need babes of her own if she intends to take the throne. 

It will be difficult to garner support for a Queen Regnant without land and wealth of her own, but if there is a clear line of succession (and Viserys, from what she heard, had never been a normal child - if he even still lives) it would make everything so much easier. 

If Allyria has anything to say about it, however, it will not be for a long time yet. 

Dorne prefers to wed their daughters later than the nobles of other lands, and their women are healthier for it. 

Visenya will not share her grandmother's fate, if Allyria has to become Lady Paramount of the West several years early to ensure it. 

"Allyria?"

She turns, startled out of her dark thoughts, but it is just Jaime with a sleepy Rohanne in his arms. 

"There you are. How did it go?"

Her husband sighs and walks over to place the little girl on the bed.

He has to physically unwind the child's arms from about his neck, but she is fast asleep the moment Jaime lays her down. 

The two stand together, looking down at the sleeping child, who is curled up like a little cat in the centre of the bed.

'It went well," Jaime says eventually, his voice low enough not to wake their ward, "but becoming Visenya again took its toll on her."

Looking at the tear stains visible even in the lamplight, Allyria can only ache for the child, who's hair is as perfectly golden as Jaime's even after her emotional evening.

"I imagine she was tired as well. She is usually long abed by this hour."

Another sigh from her usually cheerful husband. "We will let her sleep as long as she wishes tomorrow, provided Jeyne manages to keep the twins away from her long enough."

Allyria nods, and then stifles her own yawn. "We should to bed as well, I think."

Jaime wraps his arm around her shoulders, and she rests her head against his as they walk back to their own chamber.

But she cannot help the backwards glance to the children, the sudden thrill of fear, the urge to search every corner and shadow in case something has been missed. 

It is a habit.

*************

The next morning, she is shaken awake shortly after sunrise by Medea Marbrand. 

Her foremost lady-in-waiting looks rather ruffled, and she can already hear Lissa scurrying around. 

"What-"

"Prince Doran has sent for you, Lady Allyria."

At that, Allyria is fully awake. 

She has not properly spoken with her cousin since she left Sunspear, though they have exchanged letters - and she has kept in contact with Ellaria, who was her good friend long before she became Oberyn's latest paramour. 

Jaime groans beside her, and makes to sit up, but she gently pushes his head back down. "Sleep, Jaime. You don't need to come."

He tries to protest, but is interrupted by a yawn, and she cannot help the fond smile that crosses her face. 

Turning back to Medea, she finds her lady-in-waiting taking a gown from Lissa. 

It is a Western dress, heavy golden damask, entirely unsuitable for the Dornish heat - much like the dresses her ladies-in-waiting are wearing.

"Not that one in Dornish heat." She says, brushing past the other women to pull out a gown in the Dornish style, rather than that of the Westerlands. ''If I were you, I would change as well. It is far too warm in Sunspear to wear those dresses."

The first day dress Allyria finds in the style she prefers is a Rhoynish chiton of ivory silk, with a meander pattern picked out in thread only a shade darker.

Medea helps her into it, pinning it about her shoulders with a swiftness that belies her unfamiliarity with Dornish gowns. 

The chiton is light, cut to drift about her legs with the idle desert breezes.

It leaves her arms bare, and shows more of her décolletage than her ladies seem happy with, but it is cool enough for her to be comfortable even in the midday heat she knows is coming.

She sits down before the mirror and lets Lissa dress her hair, piling it atop her head and securing it with pins, leaving several waving strands to fall about her face. 

Lissa reaches for a stiffened round hood in the Western style, but Allyria waves it away, trying not to focus on the little thrill of satisfaction at being away from the Rock and all its unspoken rules.

''It's a little warm for those in Dorne, don't you think Lissa?"

Instead, she selects a few light pieces of jewellery, in Dornish filigree style rather than the sculptures the Westerlands favours, and wraps herself in a shawl Ashara had gifted her years ago - purple linen with white stars and swords dancing about the hem. 

Both Medea and Lissa look a little taken aback, but neither says anything. 

Lissa never dares to contradict her, and Medea never needs words to communicate her displeasure. 

It is all in her eyes, a strange hazel-like colour that matches her coppery hair, huge and bright and sharp. 

Sharper than any blade Allyria has ever seen, despite her lady's warm colouring and doe-like features.

No one could ever mistake Medea as being soft, even if her mind has been left to rot by a family who cared more for her beauty than her brains. 

But she keeps her observations to herself, and when Allyria stands without calling for a different gown, Medea only straightens her shawl with a tsk. 

That is what Allyria likes about Medea. 

She doesn't try and fight battles after they are lost. 

She moves on to the next - in this case her shoes. 

In the Westerlands, sandals are almost unheard of - it is a climate far cooler than Dorne's. 

So the simple leather soles that are laced onto her feet with strings horrify both of her Western ladies, who have never worn anything but slippers, boots and court shoes. 

Neither is pleased at the prospect of their future Lady Paramount walking the halls of Sunspear with her toes on display for all to see.

Allyria decides against informing them that a growing trend among the lower classes of Dorne is to paint the nails of the toes in the same way the nobles paint the nails of their fingers. 

She thinks it might be a little too much for Lissa, who is already flushed from the heat in her heavy gown. 

Neither woman concedes to try Dornish styles yet, even if they are eminently more sensible for the climate, but Allyria wins half of her battle. 

This is her homeland. 

She'll dress as she damn well pleases in her own cousin's palace. 

She can already see Medea thinking that she would not have so quickly thrown aside the Western fashion had she been Jaime's bride. 

But she has grown used to ignoring the looks in the eyes of her ladies-in-waiting (for it is Allyria Dayne, not one of them, who wed Jaime and gave him two golden children within the year) and simply sweeps out of the chamber to Doran's solar.

He is there, sat behind his desk as he ever is, calm and unruffled, while Oberyn lounges on one of the couches at the side of the room with Ellaria beside him, and slightly on top of him.

Allyria cannot help brightening when her eyes fall upon her oldest and dearest friend, knowing her cousins will not mind the break in courtesy when it is just them.

"Ellaria!"

The other woman smiles, standing to come over and embrace Allyria. 

She looks good. 

Motherhood, and whatever arrangement she has with Oberyn, suit her well. 

The silks gathered about her frame are all reds and golds, a mix of Uller and Martell colours that sets a glow into her skin and wakes the tiny golden flecks in her dark eyes. 

She is easy in her skin as ever, but everything has softened a little, her eyes no longer over-large in her face, her shoulders and elbows no longer sharp enough that Allyria fears to cut herself on them. 

Her smile, though, is unchanged - luminous and beautiful, like a spell that draws everyone in around her. 

Allyria has missed her friend. Even when she lived in Dorne, they did not see each other often after leaving the Water Gardens, but there is something different about living several kingdoms apart. 

When they pull apart, Oberyn comes over to wrap her in his own tight embrace. 

They had never been particularly close, but their time in Casterly Rock has created a bond that was not there before. 

She has missed having her murderous cousin there to watch her back. 

As much as she likes Jaime, he does not quite have the mind for the plotting which they are neck deep in. 

He is a quick learner, and he is doing wonderfully, but it would have been nice to have an equal in their plans.

They have managed until now though, and she is sure that they will continue to do so. 

But it was so nice having Oberyn there, someone she could trust, someone she could lean on - another pair of eyes to watch the shadows, another pair of hands to tie up loose ends. 

She hadn't realised how much she appreciated him until he left. 

He had to, of course - as much as she loves her cousin, she knows his temper, and knows that him and the Usurper in the same castle would have led to bloodshed.

Doran finally taps his brother on the shoulder, and pulls Allyria into another warm embrace. 

It is looser than Oberyn's, a little cooler, but she knows it is no less sincere. 

"You look well, Allyria," her prince says, pulling away with a tiny smile at the corners of his mouth, "come and sit - break your fast with us, cousin."

Allyria smiles and sits. "It would be my pleasure, your Grace." 

Oberyn whispers in Ellaria's ear, and she frowns at him with confusion in her eyes for a moment. 

She stands, however, and leans down to press a kiss to Allyria's cheek. 

"It was good to see you, Allyria," her friend says softly, "we must catch up some time, yes?"

Allyria nods, squeezing Ellaria's hands. 

She has missed the other woman dearly over the last few years, and letters do only so much to assuage the distance where once they played together in the sun every day. 

The door closes behind Ellaria.

As soon as her footsteps recede, all three listen carefully for the thump of Areo Hotah's axe against the floor. 

The door is thick, but all three of them have long learned to hear sounds far more muffled. 

Such is the price that one pays for sheltering the queen of a toppled dynasty - to never sleep easily, to watch every shadow and every corner. 

To be afraid every moment of every day, to live like a hunted animal even in times of seeming peace.

The soft thud of the axe sounds, and Oberyn straightens. 

"Now then, tell us of our queen." He blurts out, almost before Doran's eyes have turned from the door. 

Both princes bend their gazes on her, dark and heavy. 

Three years ago, Allyria would have quailed at the sight. 

She was...sheltered, as much as she could have been, and she had not known her Martell kin well. 

Now, however, she is a mother and a wife. 

She has ruled the Westerlands as queen in all but name, born twins to the heir of the Rock.

She has spent years living with the rightful queen right under Tywin Lannister's very nose. 

She has lied and threatened and bribed and murdered. 

There is blood aplenty on her hands, blood of innocent people who knew too much and blood of those who wished them harm. 

Allyria's smile is demure and proper. 

Her hands fold neatly in her lap, and she meets the eyes of her cousins calmly. "What do you wish to know?"

There is a hunger in Oberyn's eyes, the same howling grief that Allyria knows every day. 

Even though she knows Visenya was with her uncles late into the last night, it has been three years. 

So much that they have missed of their niece - of the only thing left of their sister. 

"Everything." Oberyn breathes.

Allyria closes her eyes, pushing away the memory of hot blood gushing over her hands, of the splash of dead weight in the ocean, of the sickening thud of a body falling down stairs.

She can trust her cousins. 

They have more reason than any other to be loyal to Visenya. 

She knows this.

Three years she has had only Jaime to trust in, and three years create habits that are hard to break. 

Swallowing against the lump of practised silence in her throat, she opens her mouth and starts to speak.

*******

There are noble parties arriving in Sunspear by the day.

Thankfully, Doran does not expect Allyria to join him in greeting each one - kin to the Martells she may be, but she is a Lannister now. 

So, when a summons arrives for her that afternoon, she knows at once that there is only one house that can be arriving. 

It is as if her feet have been given wings. 

For a moment she forgets that she is tired and afraid and wary of every shadow.

She is Allyria Dayne again, racing towards her brother, the one who can fix it all and make it better.

Jaime follows after her, one twin in his arms, and Jeyne pants somewhere behind them, the other in hers. 

She hastens through the corridors, only vaguely familiar from brief childhood visits and her briefer adult visit, flashing past half-remembered rooms and corners until she reaches the first courtyard. 

And there, yes, there are the banners of Starfall coming in through the gate. 

Pale purple and white, the falling star, so familiar and so desperately missed that it catches in her throat.

Lord Vorian Dayne rides at the head of the column, his purple eyes fixed on his sister. 

She waits, patiently, as he dutifully greets his liegelord and kinsman. 

Then he presents little Deria, who has her mother's dark hair and the telltale Dayne eyes. 

And then, oh then, he turns towards her. 

Etiquette dictates that she should be contained and polite to her brother, who was once her lord. 

Any emotional outbursts should be restrained in public, reserved for the privacy of their apartments. 

She knows that she should greet him politely, bow her head but not curtsey (for she is the wife of a Lord Paramount's heir), and perhaps offer him her hand.

But this is Dorne, not the Westerlands, and she is so, so tired. 

Tired of plotting, tired of watching every shadow, tired of lying and hiding, tired of tying up loose ends, tired of looking at children like pawns. 

She was allowed a childhood, but she does not think that her children will be - even if they are born in a season of peace. 

It is only peace for those who think they have won - for her, for her queen and all who are loyal to her queen, they are still at war. 

She and Jaime are at the heart of it, and they are so tired, so exhausted from carrying this and being the perfect heirs to Tywin and Joanna.

It has all happened so fast. 

She was wed, and then had to become Lady of the Westerlands, and then gave birth to the twins, and she hasn't been able to breathe for so long, and now there is another child in her womb, another tiny babe to fear for, and she just wants it all to stop for a single moment so she can breathe.

And here her big brother is, his arms open, as steady and quiet as he has always been. 

The one to whom she would run when she scraped her knee, her father in all but name, the one who could always make things better.

Oh, how she misses that childish security.

Vorian seems to understand without her saying a word, for he only holds her tightly for a long time.

She does not cry, but it is close. 

When he finally lets her go, it is for little Deria to tug at her skirt, looking up at her with her own eyes - with her daughter's eyes, and Rhaenyra's eyes and the eyes of so many others. 

"Hello, little one." She says with a smile, unable to stop her laughter as her niece retreats to hide behind Meria's skirts. 

Vorian smiles fondly. "She is shy, I am afraid. Unlike yours."

Indeed, Gerold and Lelia are already pulling forward at Jeyne's hands, and Allyria turns to kneel down before them. "That is your cousin Deria, children. Can you go and say hello to her, very nicely?"

They nod, and she stands, taking their hands from Jeyne. "Good. Be kind to her, yes?"

Her twins smile angelically at her, and she sighs, too tired to ask any more of them. 

Let her children be children, just this once.  

She crosses the courtyard to her goodsister, and releases the twins.

Deria is the heiress of a thousand years of kings. There will be far worse than enthusiastic cousins in her future. 

Her eyes meet her good sister's dark ones, and she can see that they are thinking the same thing. 

A single moment. 

Surely they can grant that to their children?

She is so tired, and they have scarcely begun.

Chapter Text

Visenya II

In a way, Sunspear is stranger than Casterly Rock had ever been. 

As terrifying and dangerous as the Rock had been, it was, in a way, simpler. 

She was Rohanne Lannister and she could not be anything else if she wished to live. 

It was a matter of survival and nothing more. 

But now, here, in Sunspear, everything is so much more complicated.

Sometimes she is Rohanne and sometimes she is Visenya, and everything jumbles up inside of her. 

It is agonising. 

Sometimes when she wears Rohanne's face, she will bump into one of her uncles, and the effort it takes to quash her instinctive cry of delight is always so painful. 

Or she will happen upon a reminder of her mother, and have to keep her face bright and open and her eyes dry and not even give the slightest hint of the howling grief swirling inside her. 

Or Aunt Mellario will pass her by with a cold look and it will lance right through to the last soft part of her heart and draw blood. 

She used to run and laugh and play in these halls, as free as a bird, the beloved daughter of their beloved princess. 

Now she is not. 

At best she is the stepdaughter of the princes' cousin, and a new playmate for their children. 

It stings, somewhere deep down, when she is let into rooms only by dint of who accompanies her - she, who has as much right as any to be there. 

She, who can trace her descent back in an unbroken line to Nymeria of Ny Sar herself. 

Still, it is better than Casterly Rock, she consoles herself. 

The only Lannisters around are those who would kill and die for her. 

And she can wear her true face sometimes. 

She can hug her uncles and weep with them for her mother, and she can revel each morning in the scent of sun and sand and spices that had followed her mother even years after leaving Dorne. 

It feels as if Elia Martell is just around every corner, but it is better than nothing. 

For all that it hurts, she is glad not to be in Casterly Rock anymore. 

*************

More nobles arrive by the day, gathering in anticipation of the celebration Doran has promised - in honour of his son, his newest niece and the children of his cousins. A triumph of House Martell's survival. 

The last party to arrive is, of course, that of Lord Yronwood.

He barely gives the Kingslayer's daughter a glance, where once he had lavished her with gifts - and lavished her mother, the princess he had hoped to wed, with more still. 

It had always irritated her father, who would receive the barest minimum due to his station, and little sympathy from any Martell. 

Oddly enough, his disregard stings. 

She had not thought it would. 

He had been no more than her uncle's vassal, and an old suitor of her mother's who set her father's temper off. 

Yet it is only one more reminder of exactly how much she has lost. 

Little things as well as great, a thousand tiny cuts alongside the great wounds. 

As they all move to return inside the castle, she comes to a decision and tugs at Allyria's lilac skirts like any other little child. 

Her stepmother pauses and turns, taking her hand. "What is it, Rohanne?"

Putting on her sweetest voice, she widens the green eyes she stole up at the woman who bears the same eyes she should by all rights wear. 

"May we talk to Princess Mellario, Allyria? I haven't seen her for ages!"

A soft, tinkling laugh taken straight from Casterly Rock, and a squeeze to her hand. "Of course darling, but not now."

She pouts up, and receives only another laugh. 

But Allyria holds her hand still, tightly, and her eyes are soft. 

Allyria understood, she knows. 

Allyria always understands. 

***********

The feast takes place before they manage to arrange an audience with Mellario. 

It is grand and beautiful and opulent as any prince's feast should be. 

Rohanne, the fosterling for whom it is thrown, sits at the high table with her father and stepmother, and stares wide-eyed around her. 

Visenya twists and howls inside her, seeing the absence of so many faces she once knew - victims of the Rebellion, dead because of her father's selfishness and dead for loyalty, for love of her mother. 

How could Rhaegar have done this to his wife's kingdom? To his daughter's? 

Dorne had been their home, their heart, even more than Dragonstone, so grim and cold. 

They had loved it, and Rhaegar, for all he claimed to love them, had trampled over them and all that they loved - including Dorne. 

She pretends that her wide eyes and trembling lips are a little child's reactions to being overwhelmed by such a great feast, not the only indications of her burning rage and resentment that she cannot quite cover.

But she is Elia Martell's daughter. 

If there is one thing she learned of her mother, it was to put the Realm and her duty to it above all else.

She is a princess, of Dorne and of Westeros, and she was bound to her duty from the moment she was conceived. 

So she does her best to smile and laugh and wonder at all of the celebrations, clapping her little hands together and playing with her new friends.

Rohanne Lannister is a sweet, blithe, golden child who laughs as often as she speaks, and dances as often as she walks. 

No one can connect her to the pale little princess who was wise beyond her years and dead before her time. Not even in Dorne, not unless she wishes them to.

Not even on a feast thrown on her nameday. Nominally, to celebrate her arrival in Dorne, though the nobility of Dorne would see it as a snub to the Lannisters and a defiant reminder of the remnants of Houses Martell and Targaryen - only half a dozen people in the world know the true purpose behind the date of the feast. 

She wanted to weep when she realised what her uncles had done, yet another sly gift to the niece they can no longer acknowledge. 

She wanted to weep again as she looks out at the sea of faces which is so much younger, so much more battle scarred, than she remembers. 

But she cannot.

So she slithers down in her chair until she is under the table, and then crawls out from under the table to join the rest of the children playing in the centre of the great hall. 

Tyene and Arianne greet her with a shout of excitement. 

"Rohanne, come on! We need another one for our team."

Visenya would have given them a quick, quiet smile and slipped wordlessly in among them. 

Rohanne lets a smile spread across her whole face, and claps her hands as she bounces on her toes. "What are we playing?"

The other children launch into an excited babble, their voices overlapping and mingling into a single mass.

Her smile does not waver once, nor does her laughter tremble. 

**************

The next morning, Rohanne slips into Prince Doran's study.

It is the quiet hour just after dawn, and almost no one is awake after the long night of revelry. 

Doran is already sitting silently at his desk however, reading what looks from her position like a report from someone in the Free Cities, though she cannot tell much else. 

He looks up as she enters, a frown furrowing his brow and his hands already reaching for a sheaf of papers on the Allyrion's taxes as he shoves the report under another pile. 

Then he sees her, hair still partway between silver and gold, and his hands still. 

"Visenya, what is it?"

She hesitates for a long moment, and then walks over to peer at the paper still in her uncle's hand as she climbs into his lap.

He lets her, and she frowns for a long moment before she realises it is in code. The paper is Braavosi though and she knows two people of great interest to him who have been there for several years. 

"Viserys and Daenerys?"

Doran sighs. "Yes. Daenerys is a sweet child, and as sheltered as Ser Darry can manage. Viserys is much as he ever was."

So half mad and as cruel as his father then. 

She consciously refuses to let her face twist. "Will he...when I am queen, must he be in my court?"

"He is your uncle, Visenya, and your heir until you have a child of your own."

Visenya sighs. 

How she had hated Viserys, truce or no truce.

"He mourns you.'' She looks up at her uncle in surprise, but his face is serious. "Whatever passed between you in King's Landing, he appears to truly grieve your death."

Hidden depths indeed. 

Visenya pushes away further thoughts of her uncle and aunt. 

There is little she can do for them, far away in Braavos. 

"I want to tell Aunt Mellario."

Doran frowns above her. "Tell her...what? About you?"

She nods, eyes wandering over the unintelligible words, wondering what news they bring of her sundered kin. 

"Are you sure, Visenya? It is...a heavy secret to lay on her."

And yet it is a secret all the same, weighing on her uncle's marriage like lead. 

She has seen the strain between the prince and his princess, and she knows that at least a part of it is her. 

Is the secret that Doran has kept from even his own wife for her sake. 

Besides, she can be allowed to be selfish sometimes, surely? 

She can have her aunt back, even if the others she misses so dearly are bones and dust beneath the earth. 

This is one person she can claw back, and she so desperately wants to. 

There is a long silence, before her uncle wraps his arm around her and presses a kiss to the crown of her head. 

"Very well. We shall tell Mellario later today - but for now, go and play with the other children."

Understanding what he did not say, she slides down and lets Rohanne return. 

She smiles up at him and dashes out of the door.

Down the corridor she runs, and up stairs and down until she finds herself in a courtyard where the children have congregated, milling and playing before they break their fast. 

Tyene and Arianne grab her arms and pull her into a whirling circle of limbs and laughter and, for a moment, she allows herself to forget. 

******************

Doran does not send for her until after the noon meal. 

By then, Rohanne is back with her family, running around the makeshift nursery with her half-siblings as her father and stepmother watch the three of them indulgently.

When the messenger comes, it is Areo Hotah, who whispers in Allyria's ear and departs. 

Not until a good candlemark later does Allyria rise and summon Jeyne to put the twins to bed as Jaime presses kisses to their cheeks and vanishes.

Then she holds out her hand to Rohanne. "Prince Doran would like to see us, sweetling. Would you like that?"

Her eyebrow is slightly quirked as she looks down at the girl, knowing that this is her doing. 

Rohanne smiles innocently and takes her stepmother's hand. 

"If a prince summons us, we go, don't we, Allyria?"

A laugh, only a little bitter. "If only it were so simple."

They walk down the halls in silence for a time, both lost in ghosts of things better forgotten. 

But eventually they come to the study belonging to the Prince of Dorne, and the silence is broken by the sharp rat-tat-tat of Allyria's knock. 

The door cracks open, and Areo Hotah's bright blue eye peers out at them. 

Allyria smiles, the same one that Ashara always brandished like a blade at court. "The Prince requested our presence, I believe, Captain Hotah?"

Silence. 

The door swings wider, and they slip inside. 

The quiet captain steps out of the room and pulls the door shut behind him. 

Rohanne can faintly hear the thud as the haft of his axe meets the floor. 

Then her attention turns to the rest of the room. 

Mellario stands in the centre of it, her eyes wide, face pale and taut, turned away from her husband who sits in the great chair behind his desk. 

The skin about his eyes is tight, and his hands are very flat and still on the hardwood surface before him, much as Elia used to place her hands in a temper. 

As soon as Mellario's eyes land on Rohanne, her face twists. 

It hurts. 

Deep down in that tiny little part of her that is softer than the rest, the part that had loved her mother and siblings so dearly, the part that still loves even her heedless, cruel father. 

The Princess of Dorne tips her chin up and presses her lips together before she rounds on her husband in a flurry of vibrant silk.

 "This is the child that you would have me believe is Elia's daughter?" Her voice wavers a little on her dead goodsister's name before it hardens. "Do you think me blind, Doran? Do you think me simple?"

The ache in her voice mirrors the one in Visenya's heart, and she blinks away the tears that threaten to rise. 

Allyria steps forward, as serene as any icon. "Princess Mellario, if you would simply-"

"No."

Mellario's voice shakes. 

"Elia and her children are dead, and it is cruel of you to do this. Do you think the faces of those sweet babes are not graven in my mind? Do you think I could be fooled so easily?" 

Doran flinches. "Mellario, it is not a trick."

His wife's voice rises again, the steel in it belying the glimmer of her eyes. 

Visenya has had enough. 

She knows why Mellario has been cold, and cannot blame her - the same way she knows her uncles cannot blame her for her fury at Doran's seeming inaction in the face of his sister's murder. 

It had been Mellario who had been closest with Elia and Elia's children, had watched them grow and known them better than even Elia's brothers. 

It had been she who visited King's Landing and Dragonstone most often - for Doran was rarely able to leave Dorne and Oberyn was banished as often as not. 

And so it is that Visenya knows Mellario better than any of her mother's blood kin in turn. 

She knows it can go on and on, for how often had Mellario fled to her goodsister's court after a fight with Doran?

Forestalling her aunt's next words, she takes a step forwards and lets Rohanne go. 

Mellario's voice dies away mid-sentence.

For a long time, she simply stands there, taking in the suddenly altered child before her with wide eyes. 

Visenya can almost feel her cataloguing the silvery-gold hair, the violet eyes, the curve of her brow, the line of her jaw, and a hundred other things that make Visenya into herself. 

After what feels like forever, Mellario kneels down before the little girl, almost falling, as if her knees have given way.

"Oh, sweetling." Mellario is weeping, and suddenly she is holding Visenya, and it is as if something has thawed in the aunt she loved so dearly once upon a time.

The steel and venom is gone, leaving only a grieving woman, and a grieving child in her arms as the prince and his cousin look on.

For a long moment, there is silence, broken only by Mellario's sobs.

There is a knock on the door, and the tableau dissolves.

Visenya ducks under her uncle's desk, gold already spreading through her hair, and Mellario turns away, wiping her eyes hastily. 

"Enter." Doran calls. 

A panting page appears, sweating through his silks, wide-eyed and ruddy-cheeked. 

"Please, Your Graces, Lady Allyria, you are needed in the training yards. It's Ser Ulwyck and the Kingsla- er, Ser Jaime."

In the confusion caused by his news (and his near slip), Visenya manages to slip away unnoticed as Rohanne takes her place.

*************

She goes to the Sept. 

It is quiet and out of the way, and there is a peace over it that she cannot quite quantify. 

But she likes it. 

Visenya is not very pious, particularly by the standards of Westeros, but she likes to hide here, away from everything else. 

Mellario finds her kneeling before the statue of the Mother. 

Her face is that of the whore's daughter, but the name on her lips as she lights a candle is Elia's. 

There are already candles burning in front of the Stranger for her grandmother and her siblings and her great uncle, but Mother Rhoyne has the same eyes as Elia Martell. 

How could she have placed a candle anywhere else?

Elia was her mother, and surely the Stranger will forgive her this. 

"Vi-Rohanne." 

She turns at her aunt's voice, more warmth in the letters of her false name than ever before. 

"Your Grace."

Her curtsey is pretty and childish, and she knows Mellario remembers her crisp, perfect courtesies as Visenya.

She can see it in her aunt's eyes as she traces the little girl's lines, and the slight wobble as she rises. 

A passable curtsey for a legitimised bastard, one that Visenya had outmastered years before. 

Mellario takes in a breath and then turns to close the doors of the Sept.

She doesn't lock them, but they are heavy enough that they will have notice of anyone else trying to enter. 

Then she comes to kneel beside Rohanne, her vibrant silks flowing down around the steps like water. 

The scent of her perfume surrounds them both like a shroud, sweeter and more floral than the tastes of the Dornish, who prefer the heavier, spicier scents that Elia had always worn. 

It is not an unpleasant smell though, and she has always associated it with her sweet, soft aunt. 

So she sighs and leans her head against Mellario's shoulder. 

With her eyes closed, it almost feels like nothing has changed. 

As if Elia will come sweeping in any second, Rhaenyra pattering behind her, and -

She stops the thought. 

Rhaegar does not belong in Dorne. She refuses to place him there even in her own imaginings. 

Not after what he did to it, to them. 

Her aunt wraps an arm around her and her soft voice begins the Mother's prayer. 

"Hail to the Mother, full of grace."

Visenya joins in, her voice scratchy and choked. 

It is good, for once, to not have to pretend. 

Her face is still wrong, but if she stumbles over the words and her throat swells up she doesn't have to explain it away. 

Aunt Mellario just holds her closer and presses a kiss to her head. 

They get though the whole prayer that way, and the prayer to Mother Rhoyne and then the prayer Mellario taught her so long ago to the Unnamed God that rules Norvos. 

 When Visenya opens her eyes she doesn't blink away the tears that well up as she meets the gaze of the Mother. 

Chapter Text

Jaime I

Time passes. 

As the nobles filter away, house by house, Doran and Mellario prepare for the move to the Water Gardens. 

Almost as soon as the last caravan moves out of sight, a long procession leaves Sunspear for the quieter, less formal pleasure palace built for Daenerys Targaryen so long ago. 

Allyria, like so many others, had grown up there, and it echoes with the ghosts of the children she remembers so well.

She weeps a little, quietly, once she and Jaime are alone in their chambers. 

How different it feels, with so many of her childhood companions dead or gone. 

With her brother and sister dead, no longer kind, smiling faces for her to turn to at the slightest hurdle. 

Jaime holds her to him, silently, and just lets her weep. 

What else can he do?

He never visited the Water Gardens, kept at Aerys' side as he was.

All he can do is be there as he was not before.

It is not enough. 

It is never going to be enough. 

But it has to be enough because Allyria's brother and sister are dead and they cannot hold her as she wishes they would.

Visenya too, when she can be Visenya, is more solemn than even her usual wont. 

She looks over her shoulder constantly. 

Jaime would think it born of her fear and her paranoia, but he remembers when his little princess had a smaller shadow. 

He too is constantly looking behind his queen for the little curly headed child toddling along behind her. 

The Water Gardens are full of ghosts so soon after a war. 

All Jaime can do is hope that the ghosts find rest sometime soon, and hold two of the women he loves best in the world as they weep. 

The princes and Princess Mellario do what they can, but they have their own ghosts, so it is Jaime who has to hold Allyria or Rohanne at night and listen to their shuddering breaths as they try to stop the tears. 

And if he sheds his own tears, they are silent enough that no one can hear them. 

****************

Life settles into an odd sort of routine during the next few weeks.

The children spend the days running about Sunspear, and Rohanne fits in as well as if she had always been there.

It becomes increasingly common to see her golden head bent together Tyene's and Arianne's.

The younger children toddle about after them, while the elder children mostly please themselves.

Their lessons take up only the hottest hours of the day, when the children would be shut inside regardless. 

The rest of the day, the cool mornings and evening, the Water Gardens are overrun with shouting, laughing children - most of them so dirty and tousled that one could not tell a servant's child from a prince's.

Jaime and Allyria spend most of these days shut up with the eldest Martells, closeted away where only Areo Hotah can hear the faintest echo of their words.

They debate houses, alliances, armes and everything else necessary for the organisation of a retaliatory coup.

Not yet, of course.

It will be difficult enough to place a queen regnant on the Iron Throne, no matter her right to it.

The lords of Westeros have previously denied one ruling queen after all.

It will not be an easy task to convince them otherwise, particularly for a half-donnish queen when the Usurper's queen is pregnant - son or daughter, the child will have the backing of the Westerlands the North, the Vale, the Riverlands and the Stormlands.

Currently, Visenya's only support is Dorne.

It is not a good position.

There is no need to further weaken it by asking the lords to support a mere child.

If they wait long enough, however, the lords could instead be asked to support a woman grown, with a husband and children of her own - perhaps with a son to follow after her, an assurance that they need only bow the knee to a queen for a few decades. 

All four of them agree that a clear line of succession will strengthen their cause. They also agree that time will weaken the Usurper's.

No matter how good and just a king he is, he will be unable to please all seven kingdoms.

People will start to remember the 'good old days' under the Targaryens, when the streets were paved with gold and a woman could walk without fear from Sunspear to the Wall wearing nothing but her finest jewels.

Untrue, of course.

Aerys had cared more for his grand schemes (and then his fires) over his people, and Rhaegar had known nothing but his prophecy.

The truth is irrelevant, however. In memory, the past always takes on a golden glow that can never be matched by the present.

The Usurper's supporters will be less bound to him, as the ties of marriage and boyhood loosen, and his more reluctant supporters will be easier to lure away with promises of a fresh young queen, willing to bestow numberless bounties upon her noble supporters.

The Tyrell's in particular come to mind as candidates - fear recedes with time and greed comes to take its place.

All this they agree on.

What they do not agree on is whom they wish her consort to be - Doran wants Viserys, to strengthen the inner workings of House Targaryen. 

He fears the rise of another Blackfyre line, fears Westeros being torn in two by the Targaryens once again. 

The rest of them, too young to remember the horrors of the Blackfyre rebellions, are afraid of another Robert's Rebellion. 

They, younger, with different fears, want to bind the kingdoms as close to the throne as possible. 

Viserys, they argue, is half-mad and brings her no wealth - Visenya needs armies and lands and gold from a marriage. 

But Doran's eyes are shadowed with memory, his hands twitching with remembered pain. 

He refuses to budge on the issue, as do the others. 

In the end, they leave it be. 

Any such matters are purely hypothetical for now - and the final decision will lie in Tywin Lannister's hands regardless. 

Still, it is a bone of contention between Visenya's secret guardians, so desperate to protect her and so convinced the others are wrong. 

Jaime just desperately wants her to be happy. 

Her mother had made the best match in Westeros, and even before Rhaegar left her, Elia had been desperately unhappy. 

He has seen so many shades of unhappiness in Visenya's dark eyes. 

The unhappiness of a miserable marriage is one that he hopes fervently he will never see there. 

Two unhappy queens is more than enough for one lifetime. 

*********************

Allyria's stomach grows as time passes. 

They send word of her pregnancy to the Old Lion when she reaches the fourth moon and it is no longer able to be passed off as overindulgence. 

He, characteristically, orders Jaime to return to Casterly Rock with his wife and the twins. 

Almost simultaneously, Caleotte informs Ser Jaime sorrowfully that the child does not lie easy in his wife's womb - he recommends that she remain on bedrest for the duration of her pregnancy, and avoid any sort of travel whatsoever. 

Upon Jaime's letter relating this, Tywin reluctantly allows Jaime and Allyria to remain in the Water Gardens until their child is born and strong enough to travel. 

It would not do to lose the child (a spare for Casterly Rock, maybe even the heir to Starfall if Lord Vorian's daughter dies and his wife's ill-luck continues), still less to possibly lose its mother. 

A second wife for Jaime so soon would complicate things - children by three different mothers, and only one living to push the claim of her offspring. 

It would be one of the Targaryens' dances all over again, but played out in Casterly Rock.

No, the Old Lion is canny enough to know when to let things lie. 

So their cobbled together, bruised little family is promised peace, for a little while. 

Until the new baby is old enough to travel - which they can surely prolong should the child be sickly. 

It will be born early as well, for they have announced the pregnancy later than they should have - they may have a year, or even two, in Dorne. 

Long enough to see Visenya settled in. 

Long enough to make sure that the future nobles of Dorne will not despise her. 

Long enough for Jaime's twins, half-Dornish themselves, to know the land from which their mother and sister hail. 

***************

Jaime is never really comfortable in Dorne. 

It is too hot, the sand gets everywhere, and the food is so overly spiced that his stomach turns over on itself. 

But (almost) every woman who has ever mattered to him loves Dorne, and so he does his best to spend as long as he possibly can there. 

He loves it for the people who live there, not for the land itself.

His twins grow golden and glowing beneath the sun, as does Rohanne (though Visenya stays as pale as ever - it would take a hotter sun than Dorne's to affect the skin of a girl who was not even singed by wildfire).

Their stumbling speech smooths and quickens, with Rhoynish loanwords peppering every sentence. 

Rohanne laughs and grows bolder as time passes, her siblings dancing about her feet as her (unknowing) cousins twirl her by the hands.

(Even when she is Visenya, the heavy shadows in her eyes seem a little lighter, burned away ever so slightly by the bright sun of Dorne)

(She stops looking over her shoulder quite as often)

It is not enough. 

It can never be enough. 

But it is something. 

It is something. 

So time passes, first one moon, and then another, and then another. 

The children's raucous play quietens somewhat, as they become used to the Water Gardens. 

Prince Oberyn takes to spending hours with his niece and dark ominous tomes of the kind that Jaime is fairly sure are virtually nonexistent outside of the Citadel.

He doesn't know what they are doing, and he does not want to know - if it will help his queen, he will not stand against it (not after her ability to change her face was all that saved her head), but he cannot bring himself to know more. 

Allyria is less squeamish, and it is she and Prince Doran to whom Prince Oberyn speaks of these lessons. 

Princess Mellario, like Jaime himself, is more wary. 

The children, thankfully, notice very little.

Even the older children just assume that her lessons are in advanced arithmetic or something else that neither of her closest companions care for - Tyene prefers poisons and prayers to lessons, and it is difficult enough to get Arianne to attend her lessons to begin with, never mind extra lessons. 

And so, time passes.

The sun rises and sets, and the moon waxes and wanes. 

Dorne remains, beneath it all, a land of warmth and spices and the women that Jaime has ever loved best. 

Eight months after they arrive in Dorne, Allyria goes into confinement.

This time, she has Meria and Ellaria with her, and even Princess Mellario, not just her ladies-in-waiting.

Jaime is unutterably glad of that - Lissa is sweet but useless, and Medea has never comforted anyone in her life. 

Besides, neither of them are Dornish. 

Neither of them knew Elia Martell or Rhaella Targaryen or Deria Allyrion.

Neither of them can understand the shadows behind Allyria's eyes the way her goodsister and foster sister and princess can. 

Allyria's confinement ends two weeks later with the birth of a beautiful, pale haired boy who's eyes are a deep purple already, only hours out of the womb.

Allyria names him Arthur.

The baby is warm and solid in his arms, but not heavy. 

He is so tiny, perfect in every way, but tiny. 

Arthur had been a man grown, tall and strong and the Sword of the Morning, the best knight in Westeros.

It will be a heavy weight for a child to bear, would have been a heavy weight if Arthur were alive and well and a distant, legendary uncle.

But Arthur was not his brother, and this little child is only half his. 

And when he sees the expression on his wife's face, on Lord Vorian's, on Prince Doran's...

"Arty." He says, rocking his second son to and fro. "Arthur's a big name for such a little thing just now. Arty's a little lighter, don't you think?"

Chapter Text

Visenya III

About a moon after Arty's birth, the ravens bring the news that Queen Cersei has born her kingly husband a son. 

Joffrey of the Houses Baratheon and Lannister, Crown Prince of the Seven Kingdoms.

But not the Prince of Dragonstone.

That island and the lords of the Narrow Sea remain under the remit of Stannis Baratheon, though he himself remains a lord rather than a prince. 

Lord Tywin writes a blistering letter to his son, one clearly intended to be read by Varys' spies, laying out exactly how this undermines Joffrey's position as heir and gives Lord Stannis the wrong idea. 

Jaime dutifully gives it to his eldest daughter to read, as one page contains greetings for her. 

She, being only a little girl, leaves it out beside her as she works on a reply in the library.

In the brief intervals as she walks away to find another book, Prince Oberyn Martell, a maid in Varys' employ, Medea Marbrand, one of the Queen of Thorns' spies, one of Jon Arryn's, and a visiting Braavosi's servant all manage to read it. 

Rohanne has no idea of this.

She is but a little girl after all, Jaime Lannister's legitimised bastard with as much political acumen as her father - which is to say, none.

Visenya ticks each one off as they breach the ward she set to alert her, and waits for them to finish before she gets back. 

By the next moon, she knows quite well that all of Westeros and a fair bit of Essos will be gossiping about Robert Baratheon's failure as a father, as Tywin Lannister intends. 

If he thinks that will shame his goodson into making Joffrey the Prince of Dragonstone, however, Visenya wishes him luck. 

Robert Baratheon is a spiteful little man, and will refuse to make his son Prince of Dragonstone precisely because of the weight of that Targaryen tradition. 

She is perfectly happy with this state of affairs of course. 

Robert Baratheon will (with some luck and a little help) die young, leaving behind him a son and a brother with the heir's title.

She doubts Stannis Baratheon would have the brains to move against his brother's will, but enough people will be hesitant to support a Crown Prince without Dragonstone that there will be room for another to step in.

Tradition is, after all, a powerful thing.

After two hours, she's fairly sure enough people have read her letter. 

So she gathers up her things and returns to her family's quarters, where Arty is crying again in the nursery.

Jaime is in the yard with her Uncle Oberyn, and Allyria got dragged off by Mellario and Ellaria so it's poor Jeyne who is trying to calm the screaming baby. 

Medea Marbrand, whom Allyria had tasked with watching her stepdaughter in the library, flinches as the sound of a baby's lungs at full blast hits her. 

But Visenya, with two younger siblings and three foster-siblings, just drops her things and plucks Arty from Jeyne's arms, which relinquish him easily to his favourite sister.

His face is all red and swollen from screaming, his arms and legs weakly pumping. 

Rohanne flops down on the floor and rocks him to and fro. 

"Why's he crying, Jeyne?'' She asks curiously, green eyes staring up at her old nursemaid. 

Jeyne shrugs helplessly. "Some babes cry like that, and there's little ye can do about it. It don't help that he mislikes me."

Green eyes blink up and then turn back to her half-brother. 

She starts to rock him to and fro, humming an old Dornish lullaby that he loves.

Medea backs out of the room, away from the crying baby. Jeyne follows her, holding the twins by the hand so they won't disturb their elder sister or little brother. 

Once she is alone, Visenya carries her foster-brother to the window. 

It keeps her back to the door and any watching eyes, while any looking through the window will have to make an effort to distinguish her actions through the light curtains.

He's still screaming, but it's quieter now, losing momentum.

She rocks him to and fro, to and fro, to and fro. 

The lullaby is one she learned from her mother, a nonsensical little thing about one of the great turtles that swim in the Rhoyne. 

By itself it's nothing more than a lullaby, but she's putting her uncle's lessons into practice. 

She's singing quietly enough that no one can tell when she stops singing.

One sharp nail digs into the side of her finger, and a single drop of blood rolls into the baby's open mouth. 

"Rȳbagon brōzagon hen ēdrugon." It's no more than a whisper, but it does the job.

Arty closes his mouth abruptly, swallows, and then burps. 

Visenya smiles down at him. 

He smiles back and giggles. 

Then he yawns and falls asleep. 

The sudden silence is blissful. 

She carries him over to his crib and tucks him in. 

He'll be asleep for at least an hour. 

It's a harmless sleeping enchantment, the first one her uncle had her learn. 

Keeping her back to the door so that it looks like she's just watching her half-brother sleep, Visenya inspects her finger. 

It's deeper than a nail should be able to bite so easily, but then she can't really talk about what 'should' be possible when she wears another girl's face.

It can pass for a vicious paper cut, she decides, and leaves it. 

*************

"I hear you got Arty to sleep for a full hour yesterday." 

Her uncle's voice should echo in the dark, cold room they are hidden away in. 

Instead, it just falls dully in the thick air. 

She rolls her neck to work out the kinks as she moves fron Rohanne to Visenya. "He's all colicky, and your paramour stole Allyria away so all we had was Jeyne, and Arty hates Jeyne."

"Try not to use it too often." Oberyn says thoughtfully. "It would do neither of you any good to become dependent on it."

Visenya doesn't deign to reply to that. 

He seems to sense her changed mood, and presses the familiar little knife into her hand. "Light the candle."

The knife is cool and heavy, and she fancies she can trace the waves within the steel. 

"Can't I do the fireplace?"

It's there in her mind's eye, stacked with fresh logs that they left last time. 

"No, the candle. I don't want you wasting your strength on light today."

Curious and a little excited, she digs the point of the blade into the pad of her finger.

She feels the blood well up and quickly fumbles for the candle with her bloodless hand, leaving the now bloody knife on the table. 

"Mirrī perzys." The words burn as they leave her mouth, and her blood bathes the candle wick in flame. 

It catches, wavers, and steadies into a single tongue of bright fire. 

"Good." Her uncle takes the candle from her and uses it to light the others on the table, before he sets it into its holder. "Let me see your hand."

The wound isn't deep, and the blood has already stopped flowing, congealing in a dark crust over her finger. 

"Can you tell me why the blood has stopped when the candle is still lit?"

He starts to clean her hand with a damp cloth, murmuring in Old Rhoynish as the blood sponges away to leave new, slightly tender flesh in its place.

"Because the spell is complete." She says confidently. "I was setting the wick alight, not keeping the candle burning. It's intent based."

Oberyn nods, and releases her hand. "Good. How's that?''

She pokes it. 

It aches a little, but more like a bruise than the open wound it was only moments ago. "Fine."

A nod.

"Today, I want you to work on scrying."

He pauses, and Visenya hurries to try and work out the trap he's laid. 

There is silence for a moment as she thinks. 

"Valyrian or Rhoynish?" 

She gets a brief smile, little more than a flash of teeth, and knows she's right. "Rhoynish. Can you tell me why?"

Another pause. 

"Valyrian would need me to bleed too much?"

"Nearly. Keep going." 

She opens her mouth, closes it again. Shakes her head. 

Oberyn does not level a disappointed look at her, just reaches for another book. 

"What do you do if you do not have enough blood for the spell?"

"Use a different source of blood!" She nearly lets her face fall into her hands at the obvious answer. "So it's because you don't feel like sneaking a cow in here."

Another flash of teeth. "I will teach you to scry the Valyrian way another time. The Rhoynish version is not only easier to source, but easier to hide. You can explain away a basin of water far easier than one of blood."

"Speaking from experience, uncle?" She tries to match his lazy, fanged smile but cannot quite manage it with her childish mouth.

He just laughs at her. 

"Scrying is beyond me, as you know. I dabbled enough to master poisons and healing, no more."

Unsaid is the fact that he intends her to master every aspect. 

Oberyn pushes a silver bowl filled with clear water in front of her. "Now, what do you know about scrying?"

"You can see things that you can't normally? I haven't read much about it."

It's true. The closest she got in her last life to scrying was the crystal balls Trelawney gave them, and the difference between magic there and magic here is so great that she's working from almost nothing here.

"That's the general idea." Her uncle says. "Scrying allows you to call up an image of the present in any place, as long as you know what it is you want to see. A few with the right predisposition can see the past, or even the future. The water mages of old used only water from Mother Rhoyne, but Nymeria discovered that any water serves as long as it is left undisturbed beneath the sky for four days and nights. Why do you think that is the case?"

Visenya frowns. 

She's better with the Valyrian arts than the Rhoynish, mostly because Rhoynish culture is oral and she has to pretend to be a completely Andal child. 

Her uncles and foster mother do their best to pick up where her mother was cut short, but it has to be in secret or addressed to her foster siblings or cousins. 

It makes each scattered fragment of her mother's people more precious even as it makes fury rise hot in her throat. Visenya is a Martell, is Rhoynish as much as she is Valyrian or Andal and yet she has to claw her mother's ways from the world until her hands bleed.

The injustice stings and rankles until she is ready to break open the very earth just to make herself feel better. 

But that would achieve nothing. 

Her fury achieves nothing, except death. 

She swallows and composes herself, mentally flipping through the tales she learned at the knees of her mother and uncles.

"The sky is Mother Rhoyne's reflection, so it is a substitute for using water taken from her physical form. Four days and nights is the length of time the Old Man of the River held the Crab King out of the water, so something to do with purification?"

She gets a true smile for that, the bright one full of pride. "Mother Rhoyne sees all, hence needing her essence within the water, but otherwise correct."

He passes her quill, ink, and the little bundle of paper they keep hidden under a flagstone - paper because the Orphans' beaten plant mush burns more easily than parchment. 

In her best handwriting, she notes down all he has told her about scrying, and then he dictates the spell itself to her. 

The two line chant's translation goes beneath it, because her understanding of Old Rhoynish is much less sure than her understanding of High Valyrian. 

She passes the sheet to her uncle for the unfamiliar diagrams though, which she does not dare to draw yet. 

Instead, she gets up and peers over his shoulder at the book he's copying out of. 

It's clearly Rhoynish, given the paper and the blue-black ink that smells faintly of fish and the obvious age. She doesn't want to think about how much it will have cost her uncle. 

"There." He hands the paper back to her. "Try it."

She sits back down in front of the basin and stares into the water. 

"Think about what it is you want to see. Take as much time as you need to decide, your visualisation has to be clear."

Visenya closes her eyes. 

What would she want to see?

The Rhoyne? Valyria? 

No, too vague. 

She sees enough of her uncles and cousins and foster family. 

But she has not seen Viserys for years.

She had hated him and he had hated her, but they had both loved Rhaella. And she has never laid eyes on her aunt, the little baby that Rhaella gave her life for. 

She opens her eyes. 

One hand, forefinger outstretched, touches the surface of the water. 

It sends ripples cascading all around the basin. 

She watches them calm and then plunges both hands into the water, drawing them out glistening and wet. Slowly, carefully, her dripping hands trace through the air the patterns inked into the paper at her side. 

Once, then again, and again, and a fourth time. Then she speaks, slowly, her hands still moving. Old Rhoynish is not an easy tongue, but she manages. 

Four times, she repeats it, each movement and each word slow and careful. 

As she repeats it for the fourth and final time, the water ripples on its own accord, up and down, up and down. 

The ripples die, and colours bloom onto rhe surface of the water as something roots itself into her and pulls. She pours herself into it and the colours solidify, sharpen. 

She blinks. Yes, there is Viserys. He's drawn and pale, but his clothes are thick and well made and he is sitting on a bed strewn with furs. 

There is a little girl on his lap, chubby hands gesturing wildly and clapping together as she giggles. Her eyes are the same painfully familiar ones that so many of their family bear, the deep, Dayne eyes that shift and change hue in every light. 

Her hair is equal parts silver and gold, and curly. Little ringlets frame her face, shaking with each movement of her head.

She's wearing a little dress of blue cotton in the Braavosi style, already stained with what was presumably her last meal, and her tiny feet are bare. 

Across her shoulders, mimicking a royal robe, someone has draped a swathe of silk as red as blood. A familiar crown is perched on her head, slipping down over one eye and glinting in weak sunlight.

So that is where her grandmother's crown disappeared to. Visenya had been afraid it had been melted down by the Usurper. 

As she watches, the tiny girl holds out an imperious hand, and Viserys rolls his eyes as he bends to kiss it. He makes a face as he recieves a smacking kiss on his cheek in return, but doesn't push Daenerys away. 

Well, that's something, Visenya thinks as she lets the tug in her chest loose and the water in the basin dissolves into a wash of meaningless colour. Perhaps exile has improved her uncle's character somewhat. 

"What did you see?" Oberyn asks from across the table, and she has to focus to see him in the candlelit room after the daylight of wherever in Braavos the last Targaryens are. 

Doran will not tell her, for he himself does not know exactly. What they do not know cannot be given away under torture.

She pushes the basin away. "Viserys and Daenerys. They look well."

A sound of surprise. 

"What?" She snaps, tired, and realising the spell took more than she had meant. 

"Tone, Visenya." Her uncle chides. "Is it not to be celebrated that you suceeded on your first attempt? It is a Rhoynish working, after all."

Visenya swallows. "My apologies, uncle." 

But she cannot quite keep the smile from the corners of her lips. She worked a Rhoynish spell on the first go - she has never done that before, water magic comes to her so much less easily than Valyrian.

He smiles back at her, and then shuts the book with an echoing slam that sends dust everywhere "That is enough for today, I think. We do not want to be missed."

Reluctantly, Visenya closes her own book and stands to hide her bundle of paper in its accustomed place. 

Her vision greys as she does so, her young body protesting the power that she had forced it to channel. 

She turns her attention back to her uncle as he speaks again.

"Try not to put Arty in an enchanted sleep to often, Visenya." He looks at her sternly until she nods. "But the next time you do so, I want you to use the Rhoynish version, not the Valyrian."

Visenya indulges herself and pulls a face as she passes the last book over. "Do I have to? It doesn't hold as long."

"That is exactly why. You cannot be dependent on one form or the other. If you struggle with the Rhoynish workings then you are to use them more often, not less."

Unfortunately, Oberyn Martell has already seen many things in his travels that are much more terrifying than his sulky eight year old niece. Her glare does nothing as he blithely licks his fingers and pinches out the candles one by one.

The last one, the one that he had her light at the start of their lesson, he holds out to her. 

Visenya leans forwards and blows it out, leaving them in darkness.

*************

The Water Gardens are, Visenya thinks, the best place in all of Westeros. 

The veritable army of gardeners and servants tasked with the upkeep of the pleasure palace are always ready to aid any of the children who dance through it all day long, from naming a flower to plucking a fruit to helping plan pranks. 

Even to Jaime Lannister's daughter, most of them are nothing but kind. Perhaps that is because she is rarely seen away from Arianne Martell or Tyene Sand, but it is still nice. 

The sun is bright and hot, never hidden behind cloud as it so often is in the Westerlands. Instead, it shines all day long and warms her to her very bones, dispelling the chill that has been there for so long.

She can bask in that warmth all day, for even the fierce heat of the midday sun feels no more than pleasant. 

Her basking cannot be done in peace though.

As beautiful they are, the gardens are filled with children almost every hour of the day or night and those children are loud. 

They scream and shout and laugh and cry and everything in between. 

Visenya had been quiet - had run and played with the rest, but with the grave silence of King's Landing still sealing her mouth shut. 

It had set her apart from her compatriots, who had never had to learn to weep silently for fear of their own kin, their own blood. 

That the future queen of all Westeros had had to acquire the skill before she had to count her age on two hands says, she thinks, much about the state of the Seven Kingdoms. 

It is different now though. 

She is a whore's daughter, not a princess, without court manners engrained into her. 

Rohanne is as loud as any of the other children, and she shrieks as Arianne tosses an orange down onto her head. 

"Ow! That hurt!"

The princess only laughs and climbs back down the tree, swinging from the lowest bough before letting go and landing as lightly as any cat. 

"Crybaby."

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

"Am not!"

"You're both idiots." Announces Obara, five and ten, too old to play with the rest of them and thoroughly sick of all their shrieking. 

Taller than any of them, she is no beauty but stares out at the world through a wary version of her father's eyes. She wraps herself in plain leather and cotton and scrapes her hair back, and pretends she has nothing of her flighty whore mother.

In the end it does not matter how beautiful she is or is not. She has made sure that it is the last thing anyone notices about her - and equally sure that she can make anyone regret commenting on her looks.

Most days she spends learning the spear and the sword and the whip and anything else the weapons masters will teach her. Today, however, is her day off and she is clearly regretting attempting to spend it with her cousins and sisters.

She picks up the orange where it had rolled to a stop against the fountain, and then strolls away as she peels it. 

Arianne pouts and makes to chase her cousin, but Rohanne pulls her back. "There's loads of oranges, don't start another fight today Ari."

The future Princess of Dorne doesn't reply. 

She shakes her friend off, and stomps off to the fountain. She shoves her feet into the water and stares into it with all the outrage of a wronged nine year old.

"Obara's mean."

"You can't beat her in a fight." Rohanne joins Arianne in the fountain, the water a welcome respite from the heat.

A glint appears in the princess' eye. "Not yet anyway."

There is a sound of horror as Tyene surfaces, water streaming from her golden hair and sparkling in the sun. 

"Arianne no! I don't know what you want to do, but I know that look, it never ends well."

"It's Obara." A pause. 

Tyene does her best to keep up her facade of the 'good girl' in their group so someone can provide alibis, but she is also a little sister. 

An unholy grin spreads over her face, and she makes very little effort to supress it. 

"Oh alright then."

Rohanne squeals in delight and all three huddle together in the fountain, heedless of the drops of water that cascade down around them. 

A passing gardner, holding a teary Morgana by the hand, peers in and then backs away. 

Chapter Text

Allyria II

The tutors appointed to the Martell children and wards provide reports quarterly to the prince and princess, who share them with the parents of their wards as they see fit. 

Allyria and Jaime had recieved the report on Rohanne almost as soon as it had landed on Prince Doran's desk. 

It had been overwhelmingly unremarkable. A sweet, good-natured girl, one tutor had remarked. Prone to daydreaming, another had scribbled, quill almost punching through the thick parchment. Adequate, a third had written with the air of one unsure of whom they wrote. 

A forgettable girl, even with her bloodline. Sweet, kind, full of daydreams and laughter, and most importantly entirely ordinary. So very ordinary that the Old Lion's granddaughter is unremarkable to Dornish tutors.

Rohanne had smiled when they had called her in, the blithe sunny smile she so often calls on. "I am trying, Papa, Allyria, your Graces. I promise I am trying."

If Allyria were to look behind her stepdaughter, she is almost certain she would see two little fingers crossed. Then again, perhaps not. Perhaps she is telling the truth - it must not be easy for their queen to mum being an innocent, idle child. 

"Rohanne, sweetling." Jaime draws her onto his knee. "Prince Doran and Princess Mellario are providing you with as fine an education as any you would have had in the Rock. You must do your best to ensure that education does not go to waste."

Mellario jumps in with a snide comment about lions sleeping in sunlight, which Jaime parries with one about hunting falling to the female lions. 

They fall to sniping at each other with the bitter sharpness of grief, while Prince Doran tries reluctantly to mediate and Lady Allyria covers her stepdaughter's ears. 

She sneaks a glance to the side and sees the maid clearing out the fireplace. Wide eyes keep flashing back to the nobles trying to verbally gut each other. 

Good. 

The alliance between Dorne and the Rock is shaky, it must be. They are bound to each other through the three children Allyria has born, but the weight of Elia and her three children is constantly threatening to tear it apart.

If word spreads of quarrels and grudges held, all the better. 

Rohanne turns pleading eyes up to her stepmother. "I'm sorry, Allyria." She says softly, tugging on her sleeves. "I didn't mean to make them mad. But the fountains are so nice and Arianne can climb high enough for the sweet oranges, and I kept thinking about that instead of boring sums."

**************

"What would you have done with Rickard and Brandon Stark, then?" Doran's voice sets a pall of silence over the previously lively room, cutting across the enthusiastic insults to Aerys the Mad's person. 

Allyria opens her mouth to protest putting such a question to a child of eight, but subsides as she sees the gleam in her elder cousin's eye. 

Another test then and not one he expects her to pass - one in which the manner of her failure is the test. 

She suppresses the instinct to roll her own eyes. Is it truly fair to put such questions to so young a girl?

But whenever she tries to address this, Doran always reminds her that Visenya is no ordinary child - she is a queen, and a queen in hiding at that. If she wishes to rule, she must understand such matters inside and out. If she wishes to live long enough to rule, she must learn to manipulate these things to her will.

Their little queen tilts her head to the side, thoughts visibly racing through her head. "I know what I would not have done."

A brief twitch of the lips. Doran inclines his head and she continues. 

"I would not have put Brandon Stark in the Black Cells. I would not have agreed to a trial by combat. I would not have killed them or their retainers.'' She takes in a breath, holding herself with as much poise as her mother ever had. "I would not have surrounded myself with courtiers and guards so blindly loyal that they would let me start a civil war out of misplaced loyalty to stupid oaths."

The prince leans forward, teeth showing in his smile. "Good. So what would you have done?"

For a moment there is silence. Not the silence of a child scrambling to fabricate an answer. Their little queen's eyes are bent on her uncle's before she seems to come to a decision. 

"I would not have been in that position." She proclaims, as imperious as if she were holding court in the Red Keep. "The Mad King was in that position through his own madness and stupidity. If it had been me on the throne, things would not have been so desperate."

There is a tense silence that Allyria feels duty bound to break before someone says something they may regret. "Not least because Rhaegar would have been a little too dead to run off with the Stark girl if you were on the throne."

Her comment wins her a rare, brilliant smile from their little queen, before the girl pauses. "I was thinking last night, and wondering. Surely people will doubt my claim? It sounds incredibly suspect for the Kingslayer's bastard to miraculously change form and appear as a dead girl."

"Perhaps.'' Doran says, in the way that says he's ten steps ahead of her but still proud of her thought process. It had been directed at Allyria at times, in her own lost childhood. "Yet you forget that you will have the support of Dorne, and that will go a long way to convince any doubters."

Mellario jumps in to explain further. If their prince has a fault, it is that he often forgets to explain his reasoning to lesser mortals. 

Luckily for them, Princess Mellario knows his mind almost as well as her own. "With any luck, we will have the Tyrells and Velaryons behind us as well when the time comes. If three of the most notorious loyalist houses unite behind you, it will make for a strong argument indeed."

"But how could we possibly get the Tyrells and Velaryons?" It could have been such a childish question.

The simplicity is belied by the dark calculation behind those large eyes, by the picture perfect posture of a mere girl.

A child she may be, but a child of the Red Keep and the Sack. She has watched her mother die and her grandfather burn men alive and her father start a war that ended their house.

What childhood innocence could survive that? It is not innocent curiosity that moves Visenya to ask that - it is the cynical disbelief of an orphan that anyone would come to her aid.

"Ah," the prince says delicately, "that is where your stepmother comes in. The Tyrells are ambitious, desperate to prove their worth beside the other Great Houses. It will not take long before they resume their attempts to claw their way up - and you know what route they will take."

Visenya's little mouth opens in a silent oh. "The Lannisters. They have to go through Allyria. What about the Velaryons?"

"Lady Velaryon died in childbirth a few days ago." Mellario hesitates, and then pushes on. "I was..friendly with her on my visits to court as you may perhaps recall. It shall not be at all suspicious for me to attend her funeral and stay at Driftmark for some time."

There is silence as they wait for Visenya to think it through. It does not take long. "Will Lord Velaryon even want to speak about politics so soon after his wife's death?"

Her eyes are narrow, her hands folded in her lap, the very image of a queen at judgement. Allyria wonders for the hundredth time how a girl of eight years can posses the poise and presence of some ancient god-queen. 

It still unnerves her a little, their child monarch with her shapeshifting and lightening quick mind and unnatural gravity. But Visenya is their queen, is their kin. She has sworn herself to her queen, and loves her despite her strangeness. 

"Perhaps not. But he will appreciate the company nonetheless, and it will strengthen our ties to Driftmark." Doran pauses, clearly waiting for their little queen to continue for him. 

She does, after a moment. 

"You won't address it for years, will you?" Those vivid eyes narrow, hiding the ever present shadows a little. "A marriage alliance would be safer, but he is too old for me and childless."

"No. We shall push him to wed again when you are older, and promise him a queen for a daughter." It is Mellario who says it, Allyria notes thankfully. Her voice softens the bald statement more than Doran would have done. 

Visenya stares. 

Allyria cannot blame her. She is a child herself, and already they are promising off children she has not even dreamed of. 

Such is the price of losing a war. 

If they want to see Visenya sit upon the throne, they will need to see her unborn children carved up between the kingdoms before she is even betrothed. Before she has flowered. 

Her heart aches for what they must do to her queen, but they have little other choice. 

"Well," for once Visenya's voice sounds like that of a child, "suppose my firstborn is not a son. Or that I am barren? Viserys would be my heir then."

They pause, glances flashing between each other. Do they tell her? It is not a nice plan and for all her poise she has not yet ten namedays.

"A problem for another day." Doran says firmly, effectively silencing the words on Mellario's lips. "We shall cross that bridge if and when we come to it."

But their little queen frowns, her mind darting off along some path Allyria cannot quite see. 

"I am not even betrothed yet. How are you so certain I will have enough children to bind the realms to me? How do you know I even want children?" Her back straightens further. "You saw what childbirth did to my mother and grandmother."

Silence falls again, no one daring to speak the words on their lips.

Allyria has watched Rohanne laugh and play in the fountains with Visenya's cousins like the child she truly is. She is only eight. 

How can Allyria tell her that she has no choice? How can she tell their child-queen that she must bear children of her own if she wants her throne back? 

She has been forced to become ruthless to survive the Rock, but this is beyond her. It seems beyond even Doran as well, to tell a girl of eight (the daughter of Elia, the granddaughter of Rhaella and Loreza) that she has no option but to face the birthing bed many times over.

Politics, Allyria reminds herself. The Great Game is a wicked thing and requires you to be wicked in turn. It does not help.

Perhaps Visenya reads something of this in their eyes, because her shoulders slump the tinies fraction from their perfect posture. "Very well then. How do you intend to make me a match to support my claim when Tywin Lannister believes himself the head of my house?

"My suggestion," Allyria says, "was one of the Tyrell sons. Garlan is about your age, I believe. A Tyrell would do well for Rohanne and better for you."

Doran does not scoff, though it is close. "A steward's son for the daughter of kings and princes. Provided we can delay the Old Lion long enough, I would have a king's son for our queen."

"Viserys?" Their little queen says flatly, almost without hesitating.

Doran smiles that irritating, patronising smile. "I know you and your uncle have had your quarrels, Visenya, but surely you can look past that as you did before? If you tie him to you, there will be no threat from another line."

Visenya's lips purse dangerously, mirroring the expression on Doran's own face. 

"He is his father's son. I will not be another Rhaella."

"You would not have to be-" Doran begins, but is cut off. 

"I will not be a kinslayer either, uncle."

Silence falls in the little room, as the prince stares at their queen. If he had been any other man, Allyria would have said he was gaping. 

"I-"

Allyria interrupts before he can finish his sentence. It would be better to end this before the situation can deteriorate further. "With your permission, my prince," she says, falling back into pretty Lady Lannister, "may I take Rohanne back to the nursery."

Doran waves a stiff hand, and the two curtsey, leaving the tiny room as Visenya shifts into the bastard Lannister. 

The transformation goes beyond merely her shape now, after nearly half a decade. Rohanne has become not merely a mask but an individual in her own right with her own quirks that Visenya does not share.

Her smooth, even steps become a patter, her everpresent smile ticks up the corners of her lips, and a hand comes up to hold Allyria's own. 

"Where are we going?" She asks, her voice higher than Visenya's, her words a little less crisp. 

Allyria smiles down at her stepdaughter, slowing her pace a little to match the pattering footsteps. "Back to the nursery, Rohanne. I imagine Jeyne will want you to settle Arty again."

The smile that spreads across her stepdaughter's face is nothing like Elia's anymore. Perhaps that is for the best. 

But it leaves a hollow pang in Allyria's chest. Elia and Ashara had shared that same, unexpectedly brilliant smile. It had hurt to see it, yet now she finds she misses it. 

It only appears if Visenya smiles these days, and Visenya almost never smiles. 

She smiles back down at her stepddaughter, and nods to the Lannister guards on either side of the door to their quarters. 

One benefit of the Dornish court moving to the Water Gardens is that they have been given different rooms. There is an actual nursery, not merely the lady's chambers hastily converted. 

Rohanne, Gerold, Lelia and Arty all sleep together, with Allyria and Jaime in the adjoining bedchamber. It is comforting to have them all close together, to know that she will hear anything that happens to her children. 

The twins shriek as they see Rohanne, quickly dragging her into their play. Arty is the princess, they explain, and they are knights, and can she be the dragon? She's a better dragon than Papa. 

Rohanne roars agreeably as if her heart must not be twisting just as much as Allyria's at the thoughtless, unknowing words of the twins. 

She presses a kiss to Jaime's cheek as she sits down beside him, slipping her arm through his.

"We shall not be taking the evening meal with the Prince." She declares.

Jaime tears his gaze away from their children to turn a puzzled gaze on her. "Why ever not?"

"We had an argument with my cousin." She does her level best to keep her anger out her voice and off her face. "Over her marriage prospects."

Thankfully, this argument has been had several times and she does not need to explain further. His lips simply thin, and he nods. 

She sends Lissa to inform Mellario that Arty is fussing and they cannot leave him for supper. Lissa returns with an acknowledgement, from Doran, and a suggestion to postpone for a few days. 

*************

Allyria has made a habit to invite her ladies to take supper with her family every few days. It is easier to keep track of them if she appears to trust them enough to invite them into her private affairs.

She does so tonight, despite the short notice. Most of her ladies are back in the Westerlands of course, but Lissa and Medea are a handful on their own. 

Lissa less so, of course. Lissa is sweet and obedient and loyal, without the sense to be a spy. But Medea...

Seven and twenty, a beautiful widow without children or even a miscarriage, Medea's likely fate is to be a spinster relying on her family's goodwill, or the fourth wife of some old letch with no need for more heirs. 

It must burn at a woman who would most likely have been Lady Lannister if Allyria had not been wed to Jaime. She has the breeding, the beauty, and the brains to do it well, however much she disregards the last. 

But she would not have been loyal to Visenya, and would not have been kind to Rohanne. She does not know that she would never have become Jaime's bride because of this. 

It makes her..sharp. Prickly. 

Allyria knows Jaime bases his attitude around the Dornish on her own. 

Still, Medea is clever. She refrains from outright flirting with Jaime, and does her job well enough that she has become indispensable. So indispensable that she was brought with them to Dorne. 

No doubt she intends to become so indispensable that she will be able to remain in their household even should she not remarry. It is what Allyria would do in her situation.

Regardless of Medea's situation, it is a pleasant enough meal. Poor Lissa eats something far spicier than she can take, her round face going a painful shade of red as she gulps down cups of milk to cool the burning. 

Allyria tries the dish out of curiosity, and finds it to have only a decent kick to her Dornish palate. She sees Rohanne eat it without turning a hair, and wonders idly if it is Rohanne or Visenya enjoying it. 

A little spice would surely not affect a girl who survived wild- Allyria cuts the thought off and calls for the sweet course. It is a long ingrained habit by now. Do not even think of the secret around those who do not know. 

Rohanne is her stepdaughter. Jaime's legitimised bastard by a nameless whore of King's Landing. A sweet, dreamy girl full of laughter. 

Nothing more.

She helps herself to the ices sent up by the prince. Vorian had always sent her ices when she was sulking, to sweeten her disposition he used to say. Apparently his cousin and prince does the same. 

Perhaps it should annoy her, but she does like them rather too much to be annoyed. Lissa's face finally returns to its usual shade as the sweet ices cool her poor mouth, and she slumps in relief. 

Allyria feels a little sorry for her lady-in-waiting. She makes a mental note to send Lissa some ices tomorrow evening as well - the poor girl is miserable in Dorne. If she has found something she likes, she should have it. 

The Seven only know that none of the rest of them will ever have anything they want. Not until the Usurper is dead. 

She stabs her spoon viciously into her ice, imagining it to be the Usurper. He had laughed at Arthur's death, called him an oathbreaker and rapist. She will laugh at his one day. 

Afterwards, Rohanne offers to put Arty to bed. She takes a cup of water with her so Allyria dismisses Jeyne and her ladies and follows her. 

Jaime wishes to know nothing about the lessons their queen has with her younger uncle. Allyria knows a little more, only what Doran is willing to tell her, but enough. 

She hovers in the doorway as Rohanne drips water into her half-brother's open mouth, crooning a few lines of Old Rhoynish over and over again. Little fingers trace complicated patterns in the air over a tinier face.  

Not Rohanne. Rohanne does not have the ability to force her will upon the world and make it dance to her tune. 

Visenya speaks through Rohanne's lips, moves beneath Rohanne's skin, and Arty is asleep between one breath and the next. 

"You are getting better at that." She says, suppressing her shiver. Visenya would never hurt Arty. She wouldn't. 

A brief smile, the one that sends a dull ache through her chest as she imagines it on another face. 

"It does not hold as well as I would like." Her queen says in her stepddaughter's voice. "Rhoynish enchantments do not come as easily to me as the Valyrian arts. Perhaps because my blood is still Valyrian, and purified water is not the same as water drawn from the Mother."

She does her best to disregard the casual reminder that Oberyn routinely encourages their queen to wound herself and instead helps her stepddaughter out of her gown. "Perhaps we shall go to Essos someday then, and you can see if water of the Rhoyne makes it easier."

Jaime enters with the twins just then, and they switch to talking about her latest adventure with Arianne and Tyene.

She kisses Arty and Rohanne goodnight while Jaime tucks in the twins, and then they swap.

Most nights she and her husband leave the evening routines to Jeyne, but they can make an exception for tonight. 

They leave Jeyne snuffing the candles and return to their own chamber. She is too tired to send for Lissa or Medea, so she unpins her chiton herself while Jaime takes down her hair. 

It does not take long. Unlike Western fashion, Dornish garb is simple enough to get on and off without aid. 

She pulls on her nightgown and slides into bed beside Jaime. He does not even need to be asked to start braiding her hair, perhaps because they have both woken with it trying to strangle them on several occasions.

They speak long into the night, the two of them, lying beside each other in the great bed. 

It became their custom on the voyage from Dorne to Casterly Rock after their wedding, and they have not ceased to observe it in the three years of their marriage. 

She tells him about Visenya's lesson with Doran and Mellario, about the gossip her ladies-in-waiting have shared, about the letters she has recieved from the Rock and all around Dorne. 

He tells her about his time in the practice yard, about his father's latest orders, about the news from his sister. 

They tell each other about their hopes, their dreams and their fears.

Nearly an hour later, her words are interrupted by an undignified yawn. 

Her husband laughs. "I think that as good a sign as any to leave it there for the night."

"Perhaps you are right." She rolls onto her back as Jaime's eyes close, hiding the brilliant green from her sight.

"Good night Allyria." One hand seeks hers out and squeezes. "Sleep well, love."

She squeezes back and presses a kiss to his forehead. "Good night, husband." He is asleep almost before she has finished speaking.

In sleep, his face eases from the forced good humour he assumes every hour of the day. He looks less like the cheerful, carefree heir of the West that he pretends to be as long as he is awake.

Asleep, his resemblance to his father is so much clearer. His face sets into harsher lines, and his perpetual smile eases into something less forced. 

The constant anxiety he lives under is revealed to be carved into his skin, as the mask of Ser Jaime melts away in sleep. 

Allyria prefers him like this, without the pretence he is barely even aware of. She imagines laying beside him in twenty years time, when their hair is greying and the lines on their faces are harsher.

Visenya will be queen by then. The men who killed Elia and her children (who as good as killed Ashara and her child) will have met their just reward. Her children will all be grown. Perhaps she will even have grandchildren. 

The world may be utterly unrecognisable.

And it will still be Jaime and Allyria, lying in bed side by side, talking about their day. 

It is a pretty picture. Perhaps it is even a possible one.

She turns her face into her husband's shoulder and closes her eyes. It does not take her long to drift off to sleep, her last waking thought that she needs to arrange a misfortune for that uppity merchant sniffing around Rohanne. 

Chapter Text

Mellario I

When she leaves for Driftmark, she is only a few days behind Jaime and Allyria's ship. They are going in opposite directions of course, with her little niece's foster parents sailing for the Rock. 

Mellario tries to feel pity for them, heading back into the lion's den as they are. She does not succeed and stops trying after a while. All of them except Allyria have lion's blood in them and for all their faults the Lannisters protect their own. They will all be well, and more importantly Visenya is staying in Dorne with her true family. 

Elia's daughter had almost cried when the babes had been taken from her, promising to write every few days and tell them everything, and then in private demanding that Oberyn help her to scry them every day. Thankfully, her goodbrother seems to have grown some sense and had wrestled her down to once a week. 

Mellario is no sorceress, but even she knows that such a young child working such heavy magic every day would quickly start to suffer for it. She and Doran come down on Oberyn's side for once, which seems to utterly shock Visenya. The resulting tension between them and the girl is put down to her grief at Jaime and Allyria's departure by the other residents of the Water Gardens. 

Even Tyene and Arianne had joined in, though Visenya's tale of woe had no doubt been edited to fit Rohanne. Arianne hasn't spoken to her beyond the dictates of etiquette for two days, and Oberyn's girls are all running wilder than ever. 

Mellario loves her children, and the children of her husband's siblings, but she is not inherently a lover of the young. They irritate and confuse her, and for all her best efforts she is never quite as good at it as Doran. He puts it down to being an eldest while she is an only child. 

All she knows is that when the time comes for her to sail for Driftmark with only Nymeria (Arianne had outright refused to travel with her, and Obara would have carried out her threat to injure herself if Mellario had tried to make her come), she feels a sense of utter relief. Yes, she will be forced to start playing the game that she had thought had ended with Elia's death and yes she is dreading what she will have to do Lord Velaryon, but she will be away from all of the children and for the moment that sounds like nothing less than bliss. 

Even better, Nymeria is quiet and keeps to herself, and mostly just follows Mellario, watching silently from a distance. She is by far Mellario's favourite of Oberyn's daughters. 

The voyage is relaxing, with calm seas and clear blue skies, but Mellario cannot enjoy it as much as she wishes. Not when the looming spectre of the funeral and her task is hanging over her day and night. 

When they do reach Driftmark, they find that Velaryon has sent away the Maester. The replacement is a dragonseed that Mellario vaguely recognises. She thinks that perhaps Elia had sponsored his entry to the Citadel near a decade ago. He admits to Mellario in an undertone that his appointment is very recent - his predecessor had been dismissed in the wake of the Lady Velaryon's death. 

Somehow, she is not surprised.

The whole castle has been stripped of decorations, and the staff's clothes have all been hastily dyed black. When the lord of the castle eventually greets her, Mellario can barely recognise him. Is this the laughing young lord she remembers from before the Rebellion? His hair is limp and tangled, his clothes hang loosely on his body and reek of wine and unwashed flesh, his eyes are bloodshot. 

Was this the Rebellion? Or was this Elenei's death? 

It is not her place to ask, nor are they familiar enough for her to force him to make himself presentable. She simply greets him quietly and thanks him for his hospitality, offering her condolences. 

He nods, and wanders away. He looks so very lost that her heart breaks for him as she is led to her chambers. 

They are clearly unused, slightly musty smelling, with a few cobwebs in the corner where a tired maid's broom has not quite reached. She finds that she does not mind as much as she might once have done, in that strange time before Westeros was torn in two. 

After losing a sister and her children, watching her husband and goodbrother fall into pieces, after...well, after everything. It all puts it a little more into perspective. 

*******************

The coffin is elaborately carved, with mother of pearl inlaid into the priceless teak. Mellario looks at the beautiful, valuable thing that will rot away on the seabed and wonders if Elenei, wherever she is, appreciates her husband's gesture.  

Wonders if she knows that the baby girl she died for lasted only a few scant hours before following her. Maybe she and her daughter have found Elia, Rhaenys and Aegon in the heavens. 

Maybe they are all watching their kin now. What are they thinking, she wonders. Have they done enough for Visenya? Are they too cautious and hesitant? Should they have risen in outright rebellion? Is Elia blessing or cursing them? 

Mellario remembers Elenei Velaryon before she had married, when she had served as one of Elia's ladies-in-waiting. She had been a Tarth then, tall and heavyset as all of that family were, with those intense blue eyes that no one can ever forget. Perhaps they had seemed so very dazzling because the face they were set in had been so very unlovely. 

Those eyes are closed now, hidden by the wooden lid of Elenei's coffin. They will be swallowed by the sea and rot slowly away until they are only part of the seabed. She will sleep forever beneath the waves with her only child in her arms and the world will forget she ever existed.

Mellario swallows, the motion hidden behind her heavy black veil. She attended so many funerals after the Rebellion. 

This one feels too much like Elia's. Elenei had been there, she remembers through the haze of grief and fury that has dulled her memory. She had been one of Elia's ladies in that golden, half-forgotten time before the Rebellion. They had lived on Dragonstone then, and even the grim island had not suceeded in dampening that glorious period. 

That had been how Elenei and Velaryon had met. Velaryon had been visiting his liege lord, and stumbled across Elia's ladies knee-deep in the surf. He had been so poleaxed at the noblewomen with their skirts kilted above their knees, shrieking and shouting like common girls, that he had just stared, his whole face flushed beet-red. 

Elenei had spotted the staring stranger and charged at him with a shout, thinking him a perving local dragonseed. The slender man had been no match for Elenei's solid frame, which had knocked him clean off his feet. 

'Love at first strike', they had often teased the pair afterwards. 

She decides, as the coffin slides into the water with a splash, that she will speak with Velaryon on the morrow. They must broach the topic quickly - but she cannot bring herself to interfere with his grief so soon. Not when she remembers intimately the grief of losing a loved one. 

Thus resolved, she turns to make her way back to her chambers and talk to Nymeria. According to custom, there will be a supper in the hall for the attendees of the funeral and she will have to change for it. Best to do so now, before the chill wind of the sea can cut right through to her bones - her feast garb is from the time Before and appropriate for the intemperate climates of the Crownland islands. The mourning gown that she wears now, however, is the one she had worn to Elia's funeral. It had been a gesture that she does not know if Velaryon is even coherent enough to appreciate, but one that she had made anyway. Shivering in the cool wind, she is beginning to regret such a sentimental, useless decision. 

As she begins to make her way inside, she sees Velaryon surrounded by black-clad figures. Very few of them are ones that she recognises from Elia and Rhaegar's court. They could be from Driftmark itself but she doubts it. 

Those are Riverlands and Stormlands looks, and none of them bear the badges of the loyal houses that are graven into her very soul. Rebels. They seem sympathetic enough but Mellario knows how well people can dissemble. 

Besides, sincere or not, she can tell that Velaryon is feeling cornered. The poor man is too bewildered to deal with all of these rebels telling him how sorry they are for his lovely, gentle wife. None of them will have ever seen Elenei in all her glory, ready to fight any knight who dared to challenge her. 

She sends Nymeria on ahead of her to change and sweeps across the courtyard towards the little group, keeping her chin tilted upwards imperiously. She has as much right to be there as they do, if not more.  After all they are only knights and minor lords. She is the Queen of Dorne in all but name. 

"I'm so sorry, Monford." She says, taking his elbow and deliberately using his name. The vultures draw off a little, reminded that she had been goodsister to the future queen once - and that unlike them, she had been part of the inner circle of the court Rhaegar and Elia had formed on Dragonstone a lifetime ago. She knows things that they can only dream of, and the Baratheon regime is not yet so deeply rooted that it can undermine her. 

She had been more familiar with Elenei than her husband, but they don't need to know that. As far as they are concerned Velaryon is her dearest friend right now, and Dorne's reputation still allows its princess her privacy.

She spares a moment to rage against a world where a princess's rank earns her privacy but not her life or her dignity. Then she turns her attention back to Velaryon.

Dazed as he is, he seems to understand what she is doing. One hand reaches up to pat her own as they walk along the causeway towards the coastline. "Thank you, Mellario."

"Elenei was a dear friend." Not a lie. "And I shall miss her dearly." Also not a lie. "She was like a sister to me." A bald-faced lie. Mellario has owned only one sister in her life and that was Elia Martell - Elenei was a dear friend but she was not kin by blood or marriage.

The woman's husband shudders a little and sniffs. "I loved her so much..."

"I know. She's in a better place now." Mellario manages to force the words out. They had felt trite and useless when people had showered them upon her but she has nothing else to say.

"Yes." He looks at her, and his bloodshot eyes are curiously bright. "She's with her lady now - I don't know if I ever told you, but I am sorry for your own loss. I think I told it to your husband rather than to you."

He had, actually. His hand had rested on the tiny caskets, and that same feverbright glint of tears had threatened in his eyes as he had told her how very much Elia and her children would be missed. 

Elenei had been with him then, her lips pursed and a muscle in her jaw ticking, wearing the Velaryon aquamarine with the Tarth blue as proudly as any queen's robes. They had been..what, a year or two wed then? She remembers that they had married only a scant moon before Harrenhal, but the time between Harrenhal and Elia's funeral has blurred so that she no longer knows how long it lasted. 

Their wedding had been small, mostly attended by their families and retainers and select members of the little court the crown prince and princess had been gathering. But it had been so very bright and happy, in a way that few weddings Mellario has ever seen have been.  

Everyone had predicted them a long and happy marriage, with many children and many golden days. There had been jokes about Velaryon not daring to stray in case Elenei should choose to use a blade instead of her body. 

She wonders if Velaryon, staring gloomily towards the horizon, remembers it all. If it rings hollow and bitter for her now it must be unbearable for Velaryon. 

"Elenei was poisoned." Velaryon tells her abruptly, his eyes red rimmed. "She was so strong, so very...the birthing bed wouldn't take her, I know it. Varys did something. The Usurper wants to punish us for-"

Mellario shushes him. "Monford, there are ears behind every pebble right now. Elenei's death was a tragedy, no more, no less. I grieve with you but it cannot be anything else, do you understand me?"

For a moment, they stare at each other. Velaryon's blue eyes are watery and bloodshot, but they hold Mellario's own gaze well. There is only the sound of the spray and the gulls. His shoulders slump eventually, and his eyes turn back to the sea. "Very well." He says, the sound almost lost beneath the roar of the waves. 

Mellario swallows. "Monford." She forces out past the lump in her throat, past the lips that want to close over this betrayal of Elenei, past the tongue that knows how cruel this will be. "Can I trust you?"

Velaryon stares at her uncomprehendingly. "What?"

She bites her tongue and sits on the rock beside him, pretending to stare out at the sea. Elenei was her friend. It will not be strange for her to comfort Elenei's widower. "Lord Velaryon, you know who my goodsister was. Who my nieces and nephew were. Can I trust you?"

Velaryon still just stares at her. She can see the slow dawning of hope in his eyes. 

"With anything." He breathes at last. "Your Highness, Mellario, are - the pr- have you-"

She pats his hand. "Not now. It is not safe here. Know that the time will come when you are called for, and you must answer."

"Of course." There is life in that face now, animation even. She had known that he would cling onto such a purpose to pull him out of grief for Elenei and the babe. She had known it would not be good for him. And she is doing it anyway. Between Velaryon and Visenya, her niece wins every time. 

"We will need you to vouch for the monarch not being an imposter." She says delicately, patting his hand and casting a look over her shoulder. There are only a few pretending not to watch them for everyone else has gone inside. She is not afraid of being overheard, the roar of the sea is loud and their voices are quiet. As long as they look like she is only comforting a friend, they have nothing to worry about. 

"Of course," Velaryon says, his words almost tangling his tongue into knots in his eagerness for something, anything to give him reason to rise in a world without Elenei. "I knew the royal children well. Like they were my own." 

And there, there is the sudden dulling of his eyes, the convulsive swallow as he tries to hold back a tide of grief that will never quite stop flowing. Hating herself a little, Mellario pushes on. "What will you ask in return?"

"I-there is nothing that I want now, Mellario." His voice is sad and a little bitter, his eyes looking unseeingly out to the spot where his wife's coffin had slid into the roiling waves. "Elenei and our child are gone. I have only my brother now. Keep Aurane safe?"

"Nothing more?" Mellario does not wish to beg, but she almost feels that she must. This is...she is asking him to risk his life without even knowing for whom he risks it. She is sitting at his wife's funeral asking him to possibly condemn his whole house. To blindly trust a woman he hardly knows for a cause that the world believes dead. And all he wants is for his brother to be cared for. If it is possible for her to feel dirtier, she cannot imagine it. 

She gets in return only an apathetic shrug. And silence. She forges on regardless. She has to. "What if I were to tell you that the heir's firstborn son will be betrothed to your daughter?"

That gets her only a few hasty blinks over glinting eyes. "I have no daughter." To his credit, the words are steady. If she were in his place, they would not have been. 

Her voice catches in her throat twice before she can push out the next words, and when she does they are barely audible, even to her. "Not yet."

And there, for the first time, something truly sparks in his eyes. Anger. "Mellario, you cannot expect me to- Elenei is only-" He cuts himself off and buries his face in his hands as his shoulders shudder. 

Mellario thinks about placing a hand on his shoulder, but she does not want to risk him shrugging it off. "Not now, of course not now, I am sorry to have given you that idea." She pauses, takes in a steadying breath. This is for Visenya, she reminds herself, and for Elia and Rhaenyra and Aegon. She keeps her voice as level and reassuring as she can manage. "Take your time to mourn. You have years yet and it need not be a love match."

"How-" his voice breaks, but he forges on," how could I face that after knowing love?" Mellario thinks about it. Imagines losing Doran, having to find another husband to protect her children's inheritance, to rally Dorne's armies behind their queen. Imagines the tug in her heart at betraying her husband, the filth that would cover her for abandoning him so quickly. 

They need this. They need this so badly. But could she do it if it was her role? She sighs, twisting her fingers together. "If you truly cannot, then we will find another option for the monarch's son when the time comes. It is not-we will not force it Monford." Doran would have. Elia would have. Oberyn...might. Allyria, who has become such an impossibly great lady in only a few short years, would have forced it. But it is Mellario here, and Mellario cannot be anything other than herself. "Our monarch only asks it as a sign of your devotion. Think about it. When the time comes, then give us your answer."

She knows by the way that she phrases it that he will agree. 'A sign of his devotion' to a cause that will be his driving purpose? He has already signed himself away to them and he does not even realise it. 

When she returns to the rooms she and Nymeria are sharing, her niece picks up on her sour mood at once and withdraws to the window seat with a book as Mellario's ladies change her for the upcoming feast. Her stomach feels heavy and sick in her body with the weight of what she has done, but she knows that she will eat anyway. It sours her mood further.

*************

She leaves Driftmark feeling cold and hollow. Monford is utterly shattered and yet she has had to place this on him. He is vulnerable like this, she knows.

He will latch onto his brother and onto the cause and pour everything that is left of him into them in the hope that it will quell the empty ache in his heart.

That is why she broached the subject now. It left her feeling dirty, but she knows that it will mean her little queen will have a Velaryon gooddaughter and Valyrian looking grandchildren. 

As fond as she had been of Elenei, her niece comes first. If she has to condemn Monford Velaryon and some nameless Crownlands girl with a few crucial drops of Valyrian blood to an unhappy marriage then she will do so. It will twist in her at night to think of it, but Visenya will need every last shred of advantage that they can claw for her. 

Velaryon's misery is secondary to her niece's life. She feels a little guilty for it but she knows she will push on anyway. Even if - Elia had been the first person to welcome her to the strange land that her dashing lover had spirited her away to. She would have done this for that alone, for the kindness her goodsister had shown her all those years ago. 

But it is more than that. Her niece, her queen, has a way of inspiring almost frightening loyalty in those around her. Mellario loves the child to whom she has taught as many prayers as she knows, with whom she has spent hours in the sept. 

Visenya will have her crown and her throne, however dirty Mellario's hands become. A little water will wash her clean of those deeds far more easily than of her niece's death. It is an acceptable trade. 

Chapter Text

Visenya IV

It is currently winter in Dorne. One would hardly know it by the weather, which is as balmy as ever. But there is less fruit, and the plants in general are growing more slowly. A few of the elders add another layer to their many shawls. The night comes a little earlier and the dawn a little later. Besides that, not many people in Dorne even notice the change in season - it barely affects them down here. 

No doubt in the North the snows have deepened and the days have shrunk almost to nothing. But this is not the North. 

Legend says that even during the Long Night crops could still be grown in Dorne, when the rest of Westeros was frozen under several feet of snow and ice. Perhaps it is true. 

Arianne sighs loudly, startling her out of her thoughts, and Visenya kicks her under the desk before Lady Alyse, or worse the Maester, can notice. He'd given them a whole speech about how important Lady Ladybright's work with Prince Doran's treasury was and how privileged they are to hear her speak. 

It is, admittedly, rather a dry talk, but it's nowhere near as bad as the interminable sermons Visenya had to sit through in the Sept of Baelor as a toddler. This is actually useful, for one thing. 

One day she will have a royal treasury of her own, and if she can apply the principles learned from the princely treasure of Dorne so much the better. It will not do to rely on her advisers overmuch.

That way lies life as a puppet queen, and she would rather die than let her throne's power belong to another once it is hers in truth.

So she listens, despite the dryness of the topic, and takes assidous, dutiful notes. When Lady Ladybright concludes her remarks, she thanks the lady prettily for her time and drags her unknowing cousins out of the room before either of them can say anything she would regret.

"Well that was boring." Arianne bursts out as soon as they are out of earshot.

"It was necessary." Rohanne defends, trying to keep her arguments plausible for the girl she pretends to be. "Finances are important to understand, and Lady Ladybright gave up her time for us today. You could at least be polite for that if you weren't going to listen."

Arianne rolls her eyes and looks like she's about to start sulking before Tyene jumps in. She takes Rohanne's side in this, for once. Usually Tyene is almost as bad, unless they are being taught about one of her interests, but she has always been rather enamoured of the idea of being virtous and good.

Her blue eyes are very large and soft as she speaks in a gentle, measured voice that would have more weight if she didn't practice it in front of the mirror, Arianne and Rohanne. "She did sacrifice an awful lot of time for us, Arianne. Rohanne is right, as the future Princess you have a duty to respect the sacrifice of people's time and effort whether you are personally entertained or not."

Arianne still looks a little unconvinced. She is spoiled, admittedly, by parents who have lost far too many family members to really deny her or her brother anything at all. Kind, and generous, yes, but impulsive and selfish and incredibly reckless.

Visenya is sure she'll grow out of it eventually. In the meantime, she plays her secret weapon - her mother had taught her many ways to find people's weak spots, and Visenya uses all of them ruthlessly.

"Don't princesses in songs always pay attention to their people?" And there, Arianne's eyes are turning thoughtful. "I imagine there are a lot more songs about the kind, patient princesses who do hard things than ones who just play in the sun all the time."

As if on cue, someone starts singing the song of Queen Naerys and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight from an upper window. 

Perfect. 

That couldn't have been better timed if she had planned it.

Arianne shrugs. "Sure, I guess."

It's non-committal and reluctant, but Visenya can see the spark in her cousin's eyes. Arianne is young and innocent in a way her cousins, one a bastard and one a deposed queen pretending to be a bastard, will never be. But she has the same iron will as them when she tries. 

She too is a daughter of Nymeria, no matter how she hides it beneath silliness and tantrums.

Sure enough, while they spend the afternoon playing in the Water Gardens, the next day Arianne is sitting in the classroom with a set expression on her pudgy little face. She fidgets and wriggles, but doesn't try to escape and actually tries to work through the problems Maester Caleotte sets them instead of gazing out the window without touching her slate. 

Afterwards, she looks quite surprised. "I like arithmetic." She says, consideringly. "I bet I can get as good at sums as Father."

With that, Visenya knows she has suceeded. 

***************

She scrys her family that night. Scrying is one of the few Rhoynish spells she can work easily every time, and she abuses that shamelessly despite the power it uses.

It is so easy to purify a basin of water and weave the working in the moments she is alone in the evenings. The old knight who looks after Viserys and Daenerys is ill again. Arthur has colic. The twins are fighting over a toy knight. Jaime is sitting by the fire reading a letter, his face grim, while Allyria sits opposite him writing on a lap desk. 

She cannot see much more beyond that, not tonight. It is not enough. But they are alive, they are well, and the Usurper is not going after them. That will have to do. 

Her maid's footsteps sound in the hallway outside. Visenya melts into Rohanne as she dashes her hand through the water of the basin, breaking the spell in a single clean movement. 

The door opens to reveal not only the maid, but both of her dearest friends as well. 

"Rohanne, Papa said we can all sleep outside tonight and watch the stars!" Tyene bursts out, as soon as her eyes land on Rohanne. "He'll teach us all the constellations, he promised!"

Arianne is giggling hysterically, her arms full of what appears to be an exorbitant amount of sweetmeats. 

Because of the giggles, Rohanne is fairly sure that she must have been snacking on them on the way from the family wing to the room Rohanne has been given as a foreign ward. At the rate Arianne eats, she won't stop giggling for hours even if she doesn't eat any more. 

Rohanne is very tired. It has been a long day full of lessons and games in the sun, and now that Aunt Mellario has returned she will have even more lessons with her and Uncle Doran.

She knows it is important for her to learn to play the Great Game, but those lessons are more exhausting than her witchcraft lessons. 

If she does let them drag her outside, she will regret it on the morrow when she has both, the tutors having given all of the children at the Water Gardens the day off for a minor Rhoynish festival and her uncles having seized the opportunity.

Tyene grabs her hand, batting those almost invisible fine golden eyelashes at her. "You are coming, aren't you, Rohanne?''

"Of course I am." Rohanne replies without hesitation. Visenya is reluctant because she knows that she will regret it come the following morning, and the long-dead girl she can barely remember is screaming at the thought of sleeping outside without protection. 

But she is neither of those girls right now. She cannot even remember the name of one of them anymore. 

She is Rohanne Lannister, a girl of nine namedays, heedless and blithe and innocent and golden. She lets Arianne and Tyene link arms with her, joining them in their giggles as they make their way outside to one of the open gardens of the palace. 

All of Oberyn's daughters are there, save for Elia who is still only a baby. Quentyn is not present either, presumably still in the nursery by the Prince's command to keep the toddler from the night air and the somewhat erstwhile care of his uncle. 

Sarella is already curled up by her father's side on the wide pallet set out for them all, dark eyes gazing up at the heavens as he points to a spot in the glittering spray of stars across the sky. She is listening raptly, her fingers busy with one strand of her tight curls. 

Obara is sitting on the fountain's lip, ostensibly rewrapping the haft of her spear with the greatest concentration. But Rohanne can see the glint of her eyes darting up to the sky whenever her father moves on to a new constellation. 

A pile of cushions and light coverings stirs to reveal Nymeria, her elegant bearing forgotten in favour of sprawling across her father and younger sister, languid and comfortable on her back, staring up into the sky. Her father's hand is absently stroking through her long dark hair as he speaks. 

Tyene drags Arianne and Rohanne down near the group, Sarella reaching out and grabbing a sweetmeat without tearing her eyes away from the sky. Arianne worms her way under Nymeria's arm, and Tyene curls up where she can toy with Sarella's hair. Amid all the bustle, Rohanne somehow ends up tangled within the pile of girls. 

She breaths in the scent of sun and sand and spices that follows them all, the scent that for her has always meant home and safety and love. Tyene's voice rises as she tries to entice Obara to come over and join the pile, until Sarella shushes them both because she wants to hear the story of the Ice Lance. 

Rohanne looks up to the bright stars, half-buried beneath her unknowing cousins, and just breathes. In, and out. 

Her uncle's voice washes over her, telling them stories of heroes and monsters long dead. 

Tyene's elbow is digging into her side, and Arianne or Nymeria's foot into her shoulder, but she wouldn't move for the world. Not when, for the first time in so long, things finally seem right. 

***********

"I can still see you."

Visenya drops the spell with a huff so frustrated that she almost sounds her age. "What am I doing wrong?"

Her uncle shrugs, paging through the book of Valyrian magic he's teaching her illusions from. "The blood is still flowing, yes?"

She looks down at her forearm where she had split her flesh with the knife. She has wound a scrap of old cloth about the wound, the kind that no one will miss when she burns it after their lesson, and it has been almost soaked through with rich, dark blood. "Yes."

It's deeper than she usually cuts, it stings and aches worse than things usually do, but she doesn't mind. If she learns to hide herself completely then it will be worth the pain a hundred times over. Besides, she knows that she or her uncle will heal it when their lesson is over, and it will be no more than a silvery little line on her skin like all the other cuts. 

"Are you visualising it correctly?"

"Yes!" 

Oberyn pauses in his movement down the list, looking at her in astonishment. 

She flops down to the floor with a huff, bringing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them before resting her head in the little nest her arms create. It is not dignified as a queen should be, and even for a girl of nine it is somewhat childish. But it makes her feel a little better. 

"I cannot master it." She says, though her voice is most likely somewhat muffled by her knees. "Can we learn something else?''

There is the sound of the book slamming shut, and the legs of her uncle's chair screeching backwards over the stone. 

A pause. 

Then she hears his footsteps moving towards her

"Shall we make a deal?"

"What kind of deal?" She asks curiously. 

Deals in these lessons are risky things, but usually worth it. Oberyn Martell would never do anything to wilfully hurt his sister's only living child after all.

Her uncle grins, all sharp teeth and fang and venom. "If you can render yourself fully invisible within the next three attempts, I shall forgo my plan and we can work on throwing fireballs."

Visenya is the queen-in-hiding of a whole continent. The daughter through many generations of Nymeria of Ny Sar. One of the last descendants of Old Valyria. She has survived being plunged into wildfire. She had lived a whole life, however short, before being born a princess. 

But she is also nine years old.

"Really?" She asks excitedly. 

Her uncle smiles and spreads his hands. "Go ahead." 

She doesn't get it this time, her outline still faintly visible to him. But the time after, she feels something hook deep into her gut and she knows she's gotten it. 

Visenya smiles, and the impulsiveness of a much more sheltered child wells up in her. As her uncle is staring into the corner she had been standing in, she tiptoes around behind him. 

He makes a sound of triumph, pointing at a shifting shadow cast by the fire. "There you are."

"No." She says into his ear, laughing with delight when he jumps, curses, and promptly demands that she never repeat any of the words he just said. 

Visenya drops the spell, feeling the tightness in her belly ease, and smiles at him. "There. Now may we work on fireballs?"

He throws back his head and laughs. "Go on then. It's in that corner, let's have a look at it." She follows his pointing finger to the ominous looking book written in something that glistens like fresh ink (or worse) even centuries after being written, and scurries back from the pile with it in her arms. 

They sit down on the floor in front of the fire, heads bent over the book. A watcher would hear only slight murmurs, and the crackle of fire indistinguishable from the flames already lit - until Oberyn Martell jumps back with an oath, patting frantically at his smoking tunic. 

"Good." He says sitting back down, a little farther away from Visenya. "Now try throwing it instead of dropping it."

********************

Her elder uncle begins with a long lecture on battle strategy, which she listens to attentively. The girl she hardly remembers may once have known this - though she thinks not. It had been a smaller scale which that girl had worked at. Guerilla warfare at best.

This is true battle, between two opposing armies comprised of thousands of men. Doran knows more of it than she. She will have to know it if they are to fight for her throne, even if just to understand the reports her generals will send her. 

So as Doran sketches out strategies and supply chains and projections, she listens, and remembers.

After he is finished, Mellario takes the lead. "Alright, enough of the battlefield. Queen Regnant or not, you will still have to fulfill at least some of the duties of any other queen."

"I know."

"Good." Doran says darkly.

Aunt Mellario elbows him. "Now, I want you to tell me how you would hypothetically arrange marriage alliances for your cousins."

Mellario favours these little thought exercises very much. She says they help her to learn better than mere lectures. 

Certainly she has to actively think more than she does when listening to someone expound upon a subject.

"Could I legitimise the Snakes?" She asks. That would give her so much more to play with. 

"No," Doran says flatly. "Operate under the assumption the Usurper still holds the throne and you are still believed dead."

Wonderful. It makes sense, she supposes, it is the most likely scenario for them to operate under once she and her cousins reach the age to be married off.

"So Arianne, Quentyn, Morgana and the baby?" She clarifies. They don't know whether the baby will be a girl or a boy (though the girl who was no more could have known, she thinks), so she will probably have to come up with at least two options for him or her.

Mellario nods. "Yes. And yourself provided you take Rohanne into account."

Visenya sits in silence for a moment, before she pulls parchment and quill towards her. This requires thought. Her uncle and aunt do not mind her taking time to answer these thought exercises as long as she is actively thinking them through rather than daydreaming. 

She writes down the names of her cousins, and then herself in brackets. Then she puts down the various factions at play in Westeros. 

The Westerlands are more or less nullified by Jaime's marriage to Allyria, so they're out. She should probably put most of her effort behind breaking the Stark-Arryn-Tully-Baratheon alliance, it having been the alliance to bring down her own House. 

No Baratheon marriages. Even in the theoretical every bone in her body revolts. Robert Baratheon is a kinslayer, he has tainted his house beyond recovery with the blood of her father, mother and siblings. 

The Tullys married into the Starks and Arryns, so really she just needs to bring over the Starks or the Arryns and the Tullys will follow. Hoster Tully might not, but his son is by all accounts a sentimental boy. 

And then, of course, there's the Iron Islands, the Reach and the Crownlands. She could bring in Essosi alliances but those can get messy, and they haven't yet started to do more than briefly cover the political dynamics in Essos. 

She jots down a few more notes, and looks at her parchment in satisfaction. It isn't perfect, but they don't expect perfection - just logic.

Visenya clears her throat. "Arianne and the youngest Greyjoy boy. He's not as brutish as his brother by all accounts, and you could have him fostered here so he'd know Dorne's ways. Dorne's navy hasn't been powerful since Nymeria and an alliance with the Iron Islands could strengthen that. And then Morgana and Willas Tyrell. I know the Tyrells are potentially loyalists, but they do need an incentive to maintain that loyalty. Quentyn and the Stark girl? I can't remember her name, but it would undermine the Stark ties to Baratheon and keep them from taking the girl for Joffrey. And if the Starks are with us then the Arryns and the Tullys will at least hesitate because of their blood alliances. Whether the new baby is a girl a boy, I'd marry him or her into Dorne to appease the houses and keep them loyal."

"And yourself?' Uncle Doran says neutrally, not betraying approval or disapproval. 

"Probably a loyalist knight or lord from the Crownlands. It would pass muster for the old lion as undermining the loyalists, and I'd have a solid supporter." 

There is silence for a few moments. Mellario and Doran exchange a look. 

"Acceptable." Doran says eventually. "You neglected the Arryns somewhat, but until Lord Arryn's newest wife gives him a child the Vale's succession is uncertain, and an alliance would have to wait until the heir is confirmed. I want you to look more closely at the Crownlands lords, and make a list of those whom you would consider for yourself under the conditions you laid out. You must not take one region as a whole, Visenya."

Then he leans back in his chair, gesturing to Mellario. She smiles, the warm kind that tells Visenya she has done well. "One more thing, and then you may consider yourself free for today. What have you heard lately, sweetling?"

Visenya thinks. She's heard plenty of gossip but most of it has been about the daily lives of the people in the Water Gardens. Her aunt and uncle aren't asking about whether Merry the scullery maid swept ash onto Danny the undercook to get back at her for eating the last segment of orange the night before.

They mean noble politics, and things that she isn't expected to know - everyone at the Water Gardens knows about Lady Ellaria's second pregnancy, and as Allyria's stepddaughter she could easily have heard that Deria's mother is expecting another child. No, her aunt and uncle want the things that prove she could survive at the centre of a court.

"Something about the wife of the Baratheon holding Dragonstone?" She ventures at last. "She's ill again, I believe?"

Mellario's face clouds, one hand drifting protectively to her swelling belly. She says nothing, eyes flitting towards Doran. 

Her uncle nods once. "Yes. Another son lost. What do you make of it?"

"Nothing good for them." It's a sly, bitter statement, not a political analysis and her uncle's eyes narrow.

"Elaborate."

"People see fertility as a sign of divine favour." She says slowly. "Rhaegar was considered a promising heir because he and Mama had three children in four years. Aside from beliefs, the Baratheon dynasty now is held in the persons of the Usurper, his son and his two brothers. Renly is barely older than I, and Joffrey only a babe. Children die easily, everyone knows you don't count them until they reach their third nameday. "

She pauses.

Aunt Mellario leans forward as best she can with her swelling belly. "Go on."

Visenya swallows, licks her lips. She thinks she's right, but she's not a player yet and she doesn't know everything they do.

"Should the Usurper die tonight," she ventures, " the strongest member of his house would be Lord Stannis who is awkward, unpopular, and has been removed from his support base in Storm's End in favour of Dragonstone where the lords resent the imposition of a Baratheon after their previous overlord Rhaegar was killed by one. Furthermore, his wife has given him no living children. His rule on Dragonstone is unstable. It would be seen as a curse and a sign of weakness."

"And it weakens the ties between the Baratheons and the Reach for their marriage to sour so." Mellario says. "Well done. You got almost everything."

"Anything else?" Her uncle asks.

Visenya is nine, and has been sitting still for hours. She is allowed a shrug or two surely. "Just complaints about the Ironborn increasing imports again."

Thankfully, neither Mellario nor Doran takes umbrage with the shrugging. Perhaps they too remember long lessons as children.

Mellario's lips are twisting wryly, instead of raising a scolding eyebrow at her. "I think all of Westeros and Essos have heard those." 

"And will continue to hear them for years to come." Doran says, his tone leaving no room for argument. "The Islands always bring in more supplies over winter, they struggle almost as much as the North. It happens every winter, their imports increase and the kingdoms panic, believing it heralds an increase in raiding. And every time, summer comes and the threat dies away."

Chapter Text

Oberyn I

The day that the ravens go out to announce spring, Mellario goes into confinement. Almost before the news has finished spreading she has produced her third child. 

Another son, Trystane Martell, round and loud and red-faced. And beautiful. Utterly perfect, even. 

Mellario sits in her bed, still pale from birthing him, her hair still sticking to her face. She is still shaking, barely sitting upright. Oberyn shoves another pillow behind her back and she smiles gratefully at him. 

"The Starks have a girl around his age." Doran says, looking down at his newest son in his arms. His eyes are soft, his lips curling into an almost involuntary smile as he rocks the newborn back and forth. 

But there is the usual furrow of thought in his brow, and Oberyn knows that even the sheer delight of his third child's birth is not enough to stop Doran's brain working. 

Mellario stares up at her husband with wide eyes, the remnants of the tears shed during the child's birth gathering on her lashes again. 

"He is not yet an hour old, Doran!" She protests. Her voice is trembling. "It is too soon, he is hardly out of my womb, you cannot sell him off yet."

If she were another woman, no doubt the tears would already have been flowing. Luckily for Doran, she has been his wife for many years and she knows him well enough to be more disappointed than shocked at the first thoughts to cross his mind after recieving his newest child. 

To his credit, Doran looks alarmed and genuinely distressed as he takes in Mellario's expression.

"Neither Arianne nor Quentyn has a set match yet." She says, her voice as cold as the ever-frozen North. "Arrange theirs first before you steal my youngest from my arms."

Doran is silent, then starts trying to marshall his protests. Unfortunately for his no doubt excellent arguments, Mellario cuts him off.

"Oberyn." He turns, knowing exactly why she is calling him. 

After all these years even he knows better than to get in between his brother and sister during one of their fights. He has heard a hundred of them before and will hear a hundred more before all of this is over. 

He bows briefly to the both of them and slips out of the door.

As he walks down the hall, he can hear their raised voices. No distinct words pass Areo Hotah's bulk in the front of the closed door, but Oberyn does not need to hear the words to know how the argument will go. 

He has heard it a hundred times, after all, has been dragged into it more times than he cares to remember. 

Doran will keep bringing everything back to politics, to logic and to sense. He will remind Mellario that if they want Visenya to regain her throne then sacrifices will have to be made. Of course he wants their children to have the blissful childhood that she had enjoyed, but he would rather they lived long enough to look back on their childhoods.

Usually he brings Elia and the children into it here. 

Mellario will remind him that Elia had no contract from the cradle, was not wed until well into her twenties. She will demand whether he enjoys selling their children off like pigs at the market, whether he would do the same to their niece if he had the power.

Surely the alliances brokered through marriage would be better if they at least had an idea of the personalities of the people to whom their children will be bound? Does he expect angelic children to grow up into good men and women who can make their children happy? Is he truly such a fool? 

And then it will all spiral, never resolving, ever uglier. 

Oberyn is more than glad to have escaped this one. 

*************

His sixth daughter is born approximately two moons later, just as the spring heat really begins to be felt. 

Oberyn sits at Ellaria's bedside looking down at his squalling youngest, and wonders if considering this a milestone is too dramatic. He has never been with one woman long enough to have more than one child with her. Usually he is long gone by the time she even realises there will be a child. 

But Ellaria...he has not even begun to think about leaving her. He couldn't. There is always something new to learn about her. She loves his girls, all of them. She rides like the wind, and leaves him eating her dust. She is so very alive that even the rotting part of his heart belonging to Elia feels almost whole in her presence. If ever he could love just one woman, it would be her. Perhaps it is. 

He knows he could never grow tired of her as he does of others. She is Ellaria, and he could spend the rest of his life figuring out everything about her. He would love to. 

Love...love? Is it love?

He loves his daughters. He loves his brother. He loves his brother's children. He loved his sister and her children. 

And he loves his niece. His queen. 

Winter is over. If the previous seasons are anything to go by, she will be a woman grown before winter comes again. 

So he has...what, a few years? A few years to teach his sister's only living child enough sorcery to keep her safe. A few years to give her the physical weapons to go with it. A few years for Doran to hone her mind into a political tool that will stop her from being eaten alive. A few years to forge alliances and gain allies to whom they cannot even tell the truth.

A few years to do so very much.

They are running out of time. 

"What is it in your head?" Ellaria asks, her voice hoarse but the teasing note clear. 

He does not even hesitate, the small part of his mind not consumed with the baby bent upon how many enchantments he can pack into the next lesson. "Elia's children."

He only realises his mistake when he hears her intake of breath, sees her paling face. 

"Oh, Oberyn," she says softly, one hand reaching out to his. "I am so sorry."

He lets her take his hand, and press a kiss to it. It is not a lie - the image of his sister and her dead children in their crypt will haunt him for the rest of his life. The pain is a part of him now, lives tucked right behind his heart to roar into being whenever he is reminded of it. 

He had held Aegon when the little boy had been just this size. Had rocked him and dandled him on his knee. Had done the same for Rhaenyra, and for Visenya. 

Obella will grow strong, brave and utterly wonderful like her sisters. Neither Aegon nor Rhaenyra will ever have a chance. They are rotting beneath his feet, forgotten save to be cursed as dragonspawn and deserving of their fate. 

He is still so angry and it turns even the sweetest moments to ash in his mouth.

Oberyn looks down at his daughter, and for a moment he can see only blood-stained wisps of silver hair. 

****************

Doran takes him aside and asks him to include lessons on fighting in the water in his instruction of the girls.

He had meant to teach them the whip next, Visenya having taken to knives like her mother before her and Arianne to a mace like the old guardsman she has always worshipped, while Tyene still prefers her poisons to anything.

He has hoped Tyene would take to the whip as Obara had the spear, as Nymeria the knives, as Sarella the crossbow. But she does well enough with knives and a bow, and he knows his brother is growing more worried about the Ironborn stockpiling timber, iron, pitch and cloth, commissioning weapons and armour with concerning abandon. 

When it had been merely foodstuffs, furs and other necessities that could be excused as provisions for winter it had been alarming enough. But swords? Arrows? What do those do to keep one alive for winter?

His brother has ceased to scoff at the idea of an Ironborn invasion, and his concern is infectious. 

Doran is also his prince, the education of all of the girls under his charge. And Oberyn has learned by now to obey his prince (just about - with some persuasion from Ellaria).

So he takes Sarella, Tyene, Visenya and Arianne out on the Princess of Ny Sar, and teaches them to swim in armour. Then to spar on a pitching, rolling deck, the right amount of force to cut key ropes, how to use the movement of the ocean to put more force behind their own blows. 

With luck they will never need to put his lessons into practice. It can be an eccentricity of House Martell's daughters, nothing more. He prays to every god he believes in and a few more that he does not, that this will be the case. 

He will still be glad to have taught them this, if that is the case.

Elia, darling dead Elia, had never really learned to fight in close quarters. She had been too frail to really fight - throwing knives had been her taste, not needing the strength of a bow.

Visenya is young and hale and healthy. Her body moves easily, and holds more strength than her lithe frame suggests. Her eyes are sharp, her blows neat, and her footwork impeccable. She reminds him of his earliest memories of his own mother. 

If she is half the ruler Loreza Martell was, Westeros will prosper. But more importantly, if she is half the warrior Loreza Martell was then she will not die as Elia had. 

He was not there when his sister died. But he has heard stories, oh he has heard stories, and his imagination has run riot. 

At one point he had nightmares every night, with Elia dying in a different way each time. Even now, his sister's bleeding, broken body hangs behind his eyes ready to drive the breath from him at a moment's notice.

He had always been her champion, and her protector. When she had left for King's Landing and a royal marriage, it had been Arthur and Lewyn who had sworn to take his place. 

But Arthur had broken every vow for the faithless Silver Prince and his Northern wolf maiden, and Lewyn had been hacked to pieces by a man not worthy to lick his boots. 

So Elia and Rhaenyra and Aegon had been murdered in their own apartments by a man whom Rhaegar Targaryen had knighted. They had been avenged not by Oberyn, but by Jaime Lannister. 

And now their broken bodies are rotting away in the crypt beneath Sunspear. 

The only survivor of Elia's line is her eldest daughter. Oberyn will be damned before she joins the nightly parade behind his eyes. 

So he runs Visenya farther and faster than her cousins, hits her harder and drives her into the ground. Then he makes her do it all again. 

She will live forever. She has to. 

His daughters are protected by their bastardy, rendering them unimportant. No one will look at them twice. No one will waste coin and effort to have them assasinated. 

Arianne is more likely to be taken hostage than killed, and she has all of Dorne between her and any attackers. She is a princess one day to be The Princess - and that protects her. 

But Visenya? The last heir of a deposed house, a girl meant to be dead. People will strike first and ask questions later. 

Rohanne is a mask but it will not last forever. He has a better idea of how it works than even Doran or Allyria. Unlike them, he does not assume it will spread to her children. 

If the wrong match is made for her then she could bear children with the Targaryen look and word could spread before she could enchant them. 

Oberyn imagines her bearing a silver-haired, purple-eyed child to a rebel lord, and her broken body joins Elia's behind his eyes. 

Yes, there is a reason that he pushes her harder than any of the other girls. 

When they return to the Water Gardens, he has her down in their little hidden room the same evening. 

She is yawning, eyelids already drooping, exhausted from the long three days of fighting. Rohanne sloughs away like a snake's shed skin even so. His niece returns to herself more and more often the longer she remains in Dorne. 

The sight of her no longer knocks the breath out of him, even when she smiles his sister's smile which is rare, as solemn and full of grief as she is.  

"Candle or fireplace?" She asks, blinking a little in the dim light. 

"Fireplace." He replies, and forestalls her when she moves to kneel before the hearth. "Throw the fire into it."

Visenya takes the knife he hands her, digging it into her forefinger without so much as a flinch. Part of Oberyn wonders if that lack of reaction to pain should concern him. The rest is only glad that if her life should depend upon it she will not hesitate. 

The blood wells up easily, running down her finger as she returns the knife. She clenches her little hand into a fist. When she opens it again the blood has smeared across the palm and every single delicate finger, like a macabre flower. 

"Perzys egros." She murmurs, swaying as a gout of flame appears in her hand. It is bright, almost white, pure fire and light. He can hear it crackling as she holds it, licking up the blood on her skin without burning her. 

Even after nearly a year, Visenya still amazes him. He had studied sorcery on his own, a little. It had been difficult and draining for him, a grown man in the first flower of his youth. When he had tried this, he had achieved only a weak sputter of orange flame, hardly more than a candle, and it had exhausted him.

His niece holds steady white flames without blenching. She twists her hand and they leap into the fireplace, catching onto the logs placed there with a greedy roar. 

The room springs to light and she turns to him expectantly.

"Well done." He manages, reminding himself that to a child who had walked through wildfire lighting a fireplace must seem child's play. 

He dampens a cloth in purified water and sponges away the remaining blood from her hand, murmuring in Old Rhoynish under his breath. It is a little thing he can do for Elia's last living child. It assuages the monster under his skin that claws at him from the inside for letting his sister die.

When the fresh cut has been replaced by pink, new skin, he stops. The fire still crackles greedily in the fireplace even now that the flow of blood has ended. 

"Good." 

And she smiles. It is not Elia's smile, not quite. There are too many teeth. 

The smile dims a little as he opens the book he has chosen and she sees the distinctive shape of Old Rhoynish.

"Must we?" She asks calmly, not whining as Arianne would, or cajoling like Tyene. "I am so tired Uncle, I do not think I can manage a Rhoynish spell today."

Something tugs at Oberyn's heart. She is only nine, it reminds him, nine and exhausted this late at night. 

Better to push her now than when her life is at stake, he reminds it, and steels himself.

"Only one spell, and you may choose it." He promises as a compromise to the warring parts of his heart. 

The smile that twitches at the corners of her lips tells him she had been aiming for something far less indulgent and he has fallen right into her trap. He always does, just as he always fell into Elia's. 

She takes the book from him and leafs through, lips moving soundlessly as she reads through the Old Rhoynish. The tongue comes less easily to her than High Valyrian he knows. Much of the issue is practice, and she is improving by the day. 

When her time in Dorne ends, he intends for her to be competent enough in both languages to cast new spells without supervision. 

She picks a whirlpool spell, one that they can practice with a bowl of water but which she could use to drown armies if the need came.

He gives her a basin of unpurified water and watches as she dips the tips of her fingers into the purified water, before swirling her damp fingers through the basin of ordinart water. She stumbles over the pronunciation a few times before settling into a singsong chant that sounds almost as easy as the common tongue. 

And as she spreads her hands, the water in the basin starts to move.

At first just like as if there is an unseen current, but then faster and faster until a definite whirlpool appears in the centre. Just as the spiral shape solidifies, she stumbles over a word and the spell dissipates.

Oberyn's ears pop, startling him. He looks across the table at his niece. Her brows are furrowed, a familiar pout on her lips as she scans the words.

"Enough for tonight." He says, just as she reaches for the purified water. 

"But-" She begins to protest. He cuts her off.

"We can try again tomorrow." That, at least, seems to mollify her a little. "You did well for your first attempt but you are still a child, and need your sleep."

Reluctantly, she helps him to tidy away the detritus of their brief lesson. The book returns to its hiding place, the purified water placed on a ledge, the basin of water used to extinguish the fire. 

He takes her back to her room, and leaves her there already asleep - he has a brother to speak to.

Doran is still awake, of course. He puts aside his crop reports to listen instead to Oberyn's report. 

They speak long into the night, at first about all of the children and the threat of the Ironborn, and then about Visenya. Always Visenya. Their dead sister's child, and their queen.

Word comes just as he and Doran are preparing to retire that Deria's child has been born. Edric Dayne, small and weak but alive, his mother equally weakened but not yet in the Stranger's grasp. Another cousin for Allyria and Jaime's children. Another piece to dangle before those whom they want to join them, Oberyn does his best not to think.

That is Doran's job.

********************

Doran sends him to the Usurper's court just as Obella is being weaned. He has been trying to negotiate with the Crown for an alteration of their taxes for the last four months, but they have reached an impasse and Arryn has demanded to meet in person. 

They might have had an uneasy peace for the last few years, but Dorne is not yet settled enough for its prince to risk leaving for a trip that could last for gods only know how long. Instead, Oberyn will go, and put into practice the haggling skills he learned during his exile in the Free Cities. 

He has precise instructions for what he can and cannot accept. Doran wants royal taxes on Dornish wines and silks to be lowered, for shipping with the Riverlands to be less restricted. Oberyn has a list of minor concessions as long as his arm that he is allowed to grant, mostly token things that Dorne will hardly notice. The only really major item is agreeing to loosen Dornish restrictions on Western goods, but Oberyn is under strict orders to keep that as the ace in the hole and even then only at the last need. 

With their second daughter so young, Ellaria decides against accompanying him. 

"I will not take a babe to that cursed place." She says, holding Obella close as if that can defend her from the shadow of King's Landing. "Nor will I let you take any of the girls. It is an evil city, one that chews women up and spits them out. You go alone and take only men who can defend themselves, Oberyn."

He obeys, of course. Unlike most of his bedmates, he knows that Ellaria is almost always right. And he cannot bring himself to force her to do anything, let alone to come to that viper's nest with him. 

He does not wish to bring his girls to the place where Elia, Rhaenyra and Aegon were killed anymore than Ellaria wants to go. The mere thought is enough to add his girls to the nightly parade behind his eyes, each body more mutilated than the last.

So he sails from Dorne with a small entourage entirely comprised of his best fighters. He can smell King's Landing as soon as he enters Blackwater Bay, and the stink only increases the closer he gets. 

It is almost unbearable as his party rides up the hill to the Red Keep, through the city itself. In only a few years, the city that had been unpleasant under the Mad King has become downright horrific. This, with a sane monarch and allegedly competent Hand. 

Oberyn wonders what Jon Arryn could possibly be doing to distract him from the frankly desperate state of the city he lives in. Or perhaps the old man never comes down from the Hand's tower. He has certainly sent enough ravens to Doran for that to be believable, at one point Oberyn had wondered if the man had even consulted the king before returning the ravens they had flown back to Dorne so swiftly. 

His idle musings peter out in favour of rage at the sight of Robert Baratheon on the Iron Throne. The King of the Seven Kingdoms, the Demon of the Trident. His eyes are clear and blue, his body larger but still strong and while his nose may have the red tint of one overfond of alcohol it does little to detract from his looks. Unlike Aerys, he certainly looks the part of the king. 

Oberyn hates the man more than he can tell. 

He smiles his best smile, the one of flashing fangs and venom, to the Usurper sitting on his niece's throne. As a prince of Dorne, though not The Prince, he has the right to simply bow instead of kneeling which he takes something advantage of. 

The Usurper seems to feel similarly, rattling off a speech clearly presented to him earlier by Arryn before handing him off to the dubious hospitality of his queen. No doubt Robert Baratheon will spend the remainder of the evening on the Street of Silk, somehow ignoring the stench with which he will be surrounded. 

Oberyn contemplates spurning the queen's invite to supper in favour of his own debauchery, but the mere idea of visiting the same brothel as the usurper is enough to silence that urge. 

Instead, he plays his part as the bitter, reckless second son ruled above all by his lusts (which he still is, for the most part, though tempered by Ellaria and his duties to his queen).

He remembers Cersei Lannister from their shared days at court, and his first ill-fated visit to Casterly Rock long ago. She is as golden and haughty as ever.

The crown that ought by rights to have been his sister's suits her not at all. Hers is too heavy, too elaborate, too much. 

Elia would have had something delicate and filigreed, perhaps a diadem in the Dornish style. Nothing like the great monstrosity these Stormlanders and Westermen seem to find imposing.

He compliments her on it all the same, using the opportunity to rake his eyes over her body as is expected of him. When he kisses her hand his touch lingers a little longer than is polite (though he scrubs his lips and hand until they are red raw afterwards, until the blood he can taste on his tongue is more than a trick of his mind).

Cersei Lannister, he finds, is the one beautiful woman for whom he feels no lust at all. Not when her golden beauty is stained with the blood of his sister, niece and nephew. Not when those delicate slippered feet trod over their bodies on the way to her throne. Not when that lush golden head bears the crown his sister should have worn.

Her son is a rotten menace. Even more spoiled than Arianne or Viserys (though he is sure Viserys is no longer spoiled, growing up on the run will do that to a lad), and a hundred times less controlled than any child he had ever seen. 

He had never thought to meet a worse nightmare than Aerys's second son but at least Viserys had had some understanding of circumspection. He might have been a right royal terror, but he had known to keep his antics out of the public eye for the most part. 

And he had adored his mother. 

For Visenya's sake, Oberyn had cordially detested the child who had tormented her, but even he had been able to appreciate how loyal the boy was to Rhaella. 

Joffrey Baratheon has no such saving grace. 

Cersei is subject to as many screaming fits and tantrums, to as much abuse, as all of his nursemaids and the rest of the court. 

Oberyn pastes a smile on his face and imagines the day that the boy is put into the lists. It will be a wonderful day indeed when the brat will be old enough to thrash without anyone (except perhaps Cersei Lannister) deriding him for it. 

The tasks Doran sent him to accomplish are done in a matter of a few meetings with Jon Arryn. Oberyn may not like the Usurper's Hand, but he has to admit that the man is good at his job. 

Aerys would have instructed Arryn to deny him purely to amuse himself. Baratheon does not seem to care whether the taxes Dorne pays him are changed, nor the implications of the changes Doran wishes to make to trade agreements.

It certainly makes Oberyn's task easier than it would have been five years before. Part of him wonders whether it is not simply a ploy to lull him into a sense of false security - Dorne lost nearly half of its ruling family to the rebellion, in the Usurper's position he would be watching them like a hawk. 

But he watches Baratheon at table, in the yards, in the city, and he comes to conclusion that the other man is no more or less than a warrior. The kind who relies on brute force and applies the same approach to everything in life. 

Oberyn feels sorry for his bedmates.

It does not stop him taking advantage of that, and of the additional fact that Arryn and the Small Council are over-burdened by their carefree monarchs to the point that even Varys cannot spare the time or manpower to monitor him constantly.

He spends his time at court whispering. 

No one would expect anything from Princess Elia's half-mad brother but venom and bitterness. He fulfills the expectations as exactly as he can. 

And he watches. 

Most of the courtiers are friends of the king's from his Eyrie days, young knights with loud egos and louder voices. 

But there are those who are not. Lords and ladies who's smiles to the Usurper and his kin are just a hair false. With bottomless eyes and lips a little too thin. 

Men and women who's laughter rings a little off whenever a joke is made about 'dragonspawn' and 'dragonfuckers'. 

Who hesitate a moment too long. 

Oberyn does not go near them. He has more sense than to put targets on their back for the Spider by connecting them tangibly with Dorne.

But he marks them all nonetheless.

When he comes back to Dorne, he gives his brother every single name and Doran sends the list to Allyria. 

Their cousin sends out the invitations one by one, always with an excuse.

After all, who would suspect the perfect new lady of Casterly Rock? She has her little teas and soirees, and Jaime has his tourneys and hunting parties. 

It is simply the done thing for a young noble couple to do, and it is not suspicious in the way that the dissatisfied nobles coming to Dorne would have been.

Jaime and his bride are supporting his sister's reign, they tell those few who grow curious enough to ask. It is difficult for them to do much when they are stuck in Casterly Rock with three young children but they do what they can.

A good deal of Westeros knows how devoted the young Ser Jaime was to his twin. No one finds it suspicious that such a dedicated brother would continue to do whatever he can for his queenly sister.

With every passing day, the web grows wider.