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Chapter Text

Tywin I

For the life of him, he cannot comprehend how this has happened. 

Jaime was hardly perfect, or even passable, but he had always been obedient at the very least. 

A good fighter, and loyal to his family above all else, nothing more. Hardly Lord Paramount material, but Tywin did his best with what he had been given and liked to think he had done a halfway decent job. 

There had been setbacks, such as his unfortunate difficulty reading, but by the time Prince Viserys had been born and Tywin had been given the task of arranging the celebrations, he had been fairly confident that he had done all he could.

He had been incautious and the tourney had been his downfall.

His fist clenches at the mere thought of that damnable thing.

He had poured so much gold into it that people had sworn he must have used his entire fortune, and how did Aerys repay him?

By stealing his firstborn, his only heir, and leaving him with only a girl and a dwarf. 

Then, of course, Aerys had married his own heir to that Dornish chit, and scarcely a year later she had given Rhaegar a child and suddenly all Jaime could speak of was the babe. 

His letters had ceased to speak of how he missed Casterly Rock, or the few bits of information he had stumbled over, and turned instead to useless mush, entire pages dedicated solely to a babe who could do little more than sleep and cry. 

That girl had addled his son's brain, made him unfit to be a Lord Paramount or even a knight, or anything but a glorified guard dog.

She was dangerous, both to Tywin personally and to the Realm politically, especially once Robert Baratheon's war hammer caved in her father's chest. 

All of Elia Martell's spawn had been dangerous, but the girl particularly so, especially once her betrothal to her infant brother was broken.

The man who wed her could call himself King, and the man who controlled her didn’t need to. 

If she had survived her grandfather, it would have created yet another power struggle, and the Seven Kingdoms were too exhausted of resources and manpower for such a conflict to be sustainable.

So she and her family had been disposed of. 

Rather more brutally than he would have preferred, but they were gone, and that was what mattered. 

Elia and her son at Clegane's hand (a pity about him, he would have been useful), Rhaenys or Rhaenyra or whatever her name was at Lorch's, and Visenya at her own grandfather's. 

Tywin refuses to admit it even to himself, but he will be forever galled that Aerys got to the girl first. 

The man was mad, everyone knew it, but to burn his own heir to death was even more insane than anyone had expected of him. 

Footsteps on the stairs draw his attention back to the present, before he can become even more irritated remembering what Jaime has done, and he picks his quill back up.

A timid rap on the door.

"My Lord?" 

He continues to write as he calls for the knocker to enter. 

It isn't an overly important missive, merely a confirmation of the younger Clegane's new status. While not as efficient as his elder brother, Sandor Clegane has some promise and it is better than nothing after his heir stabbed Clegane in the back and caught Lorch through the heart. 

The door creaks open, and a servant enters gingerly.

"Well, what is it?" He snaps, the insipid manner irritating him further though he continues to write.

"My, my Lord, Ser Jaime's ship has been sighted."

Finally. 

Jaime has taken far too long about his task. All that he had to do was return the bodies of Elia Martell and her children, and use the Dornish prince's gratitude to wrangle another treaty out of Dorne to keep them from rebelling. 

Hardly a difficult task, yet Jaime has been in Dorne for over a moon and a half, and the terms of the treaty are deplorable, giving Dorne far too much freedom and taking far more than Tywin is willing to give. 

A Dornish marriage for his heir and fostering his granddaughter with the Martells? Even one of the two is insulting, both at once is nearly enough to have him declare war. 

He puts his quill down deliberately, and the servant jumps at the sharp click.

"Very well. Inform the Lady Genna and instruct her to make the appropriate preparations, then show Ser Jaime's party in here as soon as they arrive."

The boy bows perfunctorily and hastens away, the sound of his footsteps fading quickly into the distance. 

Slowly, the Lord of Casterly Rock pushes away the letter, and leafs through the papers and parchments on his desk until he finds the treaty that was the best his heir had managed to give. 

He has read and re-read it many times since it was ratified, but the damnable thing still manages to irritate him deeply each time he reads it. 

It is not only the demands that Jaime wed a Dornishwoman, or that Rohanne, the very picture of Joanna, spend her fostering years with the Martells. It is the raised tariffs on goods from the Westerlands, it is the permanent ban on any of the houses of Lorch or Clegane ever setting foot in Dorne, it is the demand for the heads of the dead murderers of Elia Martell and her children. 

The treaty is a reminder that Elia Martell may be dead, and her son and daughters with her, but her brothers are not, nor are their children. 

Tywin doesn't fear the Dornish princes, but he can admit that they will be an annoyance if they are allowed to do as they please, and Jaime, the heir he has placed all his hopes on, has given them everything that they want. 

He places the parchment back down and pulls a new sheet of parchment to him.

The fallout of this laughable excuse for a treaty has been plaguing him since it arrived, and even his best efforts have scarcely been able to contain it.

Where did he go wrong?

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

Jaime and his bride do not arrive for another hour, and he has had time to write several letters before another knock interrupts his work. 

When he calls for them to enter, there is a slight pause before the door opens and the sound of swishing skirts and clicking bootheels announces the party's entry. 

He finishes the sentence he was writing, and deliberately punctuates it before looking up. 

Jaime had been suspiciously cagey about his bride's looks, and Tywin had been unable to find any record of them, but he had assumed that she would closely resemble those of her siblings who had been in attendance at the Targaryen court.

She does not.

His son's new bride is indeed very beautiful, perhaps even a rival for her famed sister, though thankfully possessed of few overtly Dornish features if dressed in a way that practically shouts of her Rhoynish heritage in the more conservative Westerlands. She is not unintelligent, he can tell merely from the calculating gleam in her eye as she looks at him, and born into a house wealthy and prosperous enough that even he blinked twice at her dowry.

But that is as much grace as Tywin is willing to grant her. 

Her eyes are exactly the same as the king overthrown barely two moons ago. 

Exactly. 

The same colour, the same shape, the same size. 

Her pale hair is closer to white than gold, a shade too close for his comfort to the famed Valyrian silver-gold. 

She has little to no Valyrian blood, of that much he is certain, but the resemblance is enough to be dangerously familiar.

At that moment, he wishes that the imp were not a dwarf and that he had a true spare. 

His heir is clearly mad.

Of all the eligible Dornish noblewomen, Jaime had to choose the only one who looked like a gods-damned Targaryen. 

All of the hard work put into his heir, all of the time and effort and care, and all it has produced is a bastard granddaughter and a gooddaughter who's very face will send his kingly goodson into a frenzy. 

This entire affair has been a disaster from beginning to end.  

"Well?" 

His sorry excuse for an heir starts, and then recovers himself with a smoothness he certainly didn't possess before. "Father, allow me to introduce my wife, Lady Allyria,  formerly of House Dayne of Starfall."

Tywin does not deign to plaster a false smile on his face, but he stands.

"Lady Allyria, welcome to Casterly Rock."

The curtsey he recieves in return is perfunctory, and her voice is cool as she replies, courteously but with a sharp edge to her words. "I thank you for your welcome, goodfather." 

Something will have to be done about her accent. It simply isn't acceptable for the future Lady Paramount of the Westerlands to speak with a thick Dornish drawl.

Genna will be able to get results on that he is sure. He trusts Genna to do what is necessary, always.

"And I believe you have already met Prince Oberyn Nymeros Martell, Allyria's cousin."

If he had not put the quill down, he would have snapped it at the revelation. 

Oberyn Martell may be young, but he is already gaining a singular reputation. Some are calling him the Red Viper now, and as the Dornish prince comes forward, Tywin can see why. 

It isn't the muscle that covers every inch of his lean frame, or the knives glinting from strangest place in his attire. 

It's the poisonous smile that spreads across the young man's face, sharp enough to gut an armoured man, and the lazy threat in every motion he makes that have engendered the strange moniker.

"Prince Oberyn. What an unexpected honour."

The prince's smile sharpens, and if fangs suddenly appeared in his mouth, Tywin would hardly be surprised. "I apologise for the inconvenience, Lord Tywin. I have come to escort my cousin to her new home, and to protect her on the journey."

He pauses, and the tension in the silent room could be cut with a paperweight. "After the...accidental murder of my sister and her children, I'm sure you understand Dorne's hesitance to let another of it's noblewomen travel so far away without appropriate protection."

"Quite." Tywin returns shortly, his mind whirling. 

"Allow me to offer my condolences on the matter of Princess Elia and the prince and princesses. Clegane and Lorch had no such instructions from me, and I deeply regret their foolish actions."

It irritates him to apologise or make excuses to anyone, especially the second son of Loreza Martell of all people. But if his denial of ordering those deaths is to be believed, he must do so. 

Prince Oberyn's face twists into a silent sneer. "Really?"

He clearly intends to continue, but a small hand touches the prince's clenched fist and he visibly starts before restraining himself, stepping back a little so that he guards his cousin's back. "My apologies, I got carried away."

Before anyone else can say anything a child's voice breaks the silence. "Grandfather, the Rock is so big! We could see it all the way out at sea! Are we all going to live here forever now?"

For a moment, Tywin is thrown back in time. Joanna stands before him, smiling and happy. This is our home now, Tywin, not your father's or his mistress's. It is our castle, now and forever.

He blinks, and the illusion vanishes. No, it is no Joanna before him, much as the thought aches.

Tywin does not smile, but he is not as stern greeting his granddaughter as he was when greeting Lady Allyria or Prince Oberyn. "No, not forever, but the Lannisters have lived in Casterly Rock since the Age of Heroes, and will continue live in Casterly Rock when our own age is only another legend."

Rohanne's big green eyes widen in wonder. "That's so long! Did you know that Papa? We've lived here since forever ago!" 

"Indeed I do, I learned it when I was a little older than you are now." Jaime smiles helplessly down at the child, and Tywin finds himself irritated again. 

Really, this is unacceptable. First the Imp, then Elia Martell's infant daughter, and now his lowborn bastard, who may be legitimised and Joanna come again but is still the baseborn daughter of a whore. 

His heir must learn to use those around him, and to cease allowing the most unsuitable person he can possibly find to rule his every thought, even if the child is his own.

Especially if the child is his own. 

The family comes before the individual, always, and Jaime must learn that he cannot melt into a pile of mush around every small child that turns big pleading eyes on him.

It isn't an acceptable way for a future Lord Paramount to behave, even one as inept as Jaime promises to be.

The Lord of Casterly Rock feels a headache building behind his temples. 

Why must Jaime make everything so difficult? Why can't he just do his duty like Cersei?

Chapter Text

Jaime I

As he had suspected, when his father dismisses their party with the usual remarks about how weary they must be, he has no sooner turned to leave than his father calls him back. 

For a moment, seeing his father's stern face in the grim surroundings of his office in the twilight, Jaime feels like nothing more than the erring boy he once was, called up to be disciplined for the most outrageous stunts.

His father has always had this effect on him, always been able to reduce him to little more than a dirty-faced child with nothing but a silent glare. 

Allyria's hand brushes against his own, and she smiles encouragingly at him, taking Rohanne's hand in her own as she walks out of the door.

The sight gives him courage, and a stubborn defiance awakes in him that he has long missed.

No matter how intimidating his father is, Jaime is no longer a little boy to be chastised and whipped for his percieved infractions.

He's a man grown, a knight, a husband, a father.

A Kingslayer. 

He squares his shoulders and takes the three steps to bridge the gap between his father's desk and him, boot heels making sharp retorts with each impact against the stone floor. 

"You asked to speak with me, Father?"

He throws himself carelessly into the chair opposite the elder man, adopting the careless sprawl he's seen Prince Oberyn fall into a thousand times over their acquaintance. 

There's a slight tightening of the skin about his father's eyes at the action, clearly recognising it's origin, and Jaime responds with a lazy grin, daring him to say something. 

"Jaime." The chill in Tywin Lannister's voice could summon snow in the heart of a desert. "Would you care to explain to me why I sent you to Dorne to negotiate very specific terms, and you returned with a Dornish wife, my granddaughter's fosterage promised away, and terms that give the Martells far more freedom than any Great House should possess?"

For a moment, Jaime contemplates telling his father the truth. He likes to think that he would see his father, for once, completely and utterly blindsided.

It would be incredibly gratifying, but instead he only shrugs. "I don't think you realise quite how incensed the Dornish are by the deaths of Elia and her children. You would have had another war on your hands if I had stuck to your terms, you're welcome for that by the way, I know even your coffers couldn't take two wars in a row with impunity."

His father's face does not change. "And you expect me to believe that nothing short of crippling the rest of the kingdoms, fostering my granddaughter, and wedding you to one of their shameless whores would satisfy Doran Martell?"

A totally unexpected wave of rage washes over Jaime, his body prickling hot and cold all over. "If you ever call my wife a whore again, Father, I-" he cuts himself off and clamps his mouth shut before he can say something he'll regret. 

"Your...wife," his father says with enough venom in the word to kill a dragon, "looks more like a gods-damned Targaryen than half of the Targaryens ever did. What in the seven hells possesed you to choose her?"

Jaime only shrugs carelessly, keeping his anger crushed down where it cannot spill over.

Was his father always like this and he just never noticed? Or did something twist him up inside while Jaime was in that shithole of a capital? "There was a list, and I started at the top. The first one just happened to match Lady Ashara in looks, and even the Reynes in wealth."

"And your choice of her has nothing to do with the fact that she could be Elia Martell's daughter grown?"

"I-I...what?" He hates feeling like an ignorant little boy, but it is the effect that his father inevitably has on him. 

"She has the same eyes as that girl you made so much of, and enough of the same features that the resemblance is unmistakable."

The implication behind the older man's words makes a chill run up his spine. How could his own father think so of him? "I never even thought of that, Father. I chose her because she is one of the most brilliant women I have ever had the privilege to speak to, and more than a match for all the empty-minded ornaments in the Westerlands put together."

A thunderous frown creases Tywin's forehead. "So as usual, you paid no thought to the political implications of your choice, and simply did as you pleased. Your marriage, and your daughter's fostering were two of our House's largest advantages, and now both have gone the Martells. What in the seven hells were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that I wanted to keep Dorne from starting yet another war, just as you instructed me."

His father's eyes flash. "I instructed you to negotiate terms that meant that Dorne could not rebel, not ones that bribed the most troublesome kingdom into behaving for a short span of years. The Martells have always had too much freedom to do as they will, yet you took the only opportunity in centuries to return them to the level of an ordinary Great House and squandered it."

The fury boils up in Jaime again. Just what had his father wanted? Those terms had been impossible to get anyone to agree to, least of all the brothers of Elia Martell. "I could not have done that if I had been given four hundred years and an army of dragons! The Dornish are as stubborn as their deserts, and the terms you expected me to get them to agree to were insulting even when I hadn't arrived with the bodies of their beloved princess and her children. If I had done as you instructed-"

He takes in a breath, and expels it slowly, crushing the flash-fire anger back down where it came from. "My apologies. But my point remains. Prince Doran's anger is implacable once roused, and the brutal murder of his sister and her babes stoked it to a roaring fire. There was no chance of him agreeing to the treaty as you proposed it."

Impossibly, his father's voice becomes colder. "One could almost be forgiven for thinking that you sympathised with him."

A cold hand seems to grip Jaime's heart at the words. Surely he couldn't suspect, there is no way he could have found out, no one knows but those who would die before betraying Visenya. "Have you forgotten who killed Mad King Aerys? I struck the final blow in the Rebellion, not you, not Robert Baratheon, not Eddard Stark, me."

"The final blow in the Rebellion?" The mocking undertone makes him wince. "You cut his throat for killing Visenya Targaryen, don't deny it. Then you killed Clegane and Lorch for the deaths of her mother and siblings.You did more to avenge them than Elia's own brothers have."

Jaime can hardly breathe for the chill that creeps through him. If his father ever happens upon anything close to the truth, well, Jaime was a small boy when his father crushed the Reynes but it had made a great impression on his young mind.

He still dreams of rushing waters drowning him sometimes, of being crushed by the tidal wave of his father's cruelty and rage.

In his youth, it was often because he had misbehaved and gone to bed with a guilty conscience, knowing that he should have been punished. The dreams had left him alone as he grew older, but since he betrayed his father's new king by hiding the rightful heir his childhood nightmares had returned.  

After he had married Allyria, they had evolved into something far worse - now Allyria and Visenya were there with him, clutching at his hands as the great dark tidal wave broke over them and they were tossed around like so many pieces of straw in the wind. Sometimes there were other children too, children with his eyes and Allyria's soft curls, who's tiny bodies broke like matchsticks as the water hit them. 

He isn't stupid, no matter what his sister or his father may think. 

Living in the capital forced him to grow up, to change, to be aware that his actions have consequences. 

He knows exactly what he is risking with each breath that Visenya takes, but it is worth it. 

He has not yet found the limit to what he will do for her, to keep her alive and as safe and happy as he can make her. He has spied for her, lied for her, broken oaths for her, killed for her, the list goes on.

This conversation is one such thing, another sacrifice on the altar of his devotion to the girl who is both his queen and the daughter of his dearest friend. 

Jaime straightens his back and tries to keep his hands from clenching at the arms of the chair. "I killed Aerys because he had gone mad and was about to burn King's Landing down around our ears with several tons of wildfire. I killed Clegane and Lorch because they had gone mad with bloodlust and refused to listen to me despite being your heir. They were mad, and I executed them like the rabid animals they were."

He feels as if he is walking along a tightrope blindfolded, knowing that there is a fine balance between the pragmatic cruelty his father wants of him and the idealistic naivety that he expects of him, knowing that he has to hit the balance, but without even a hint as to where the balance is.

The cold cruelty gleaming in Tywin Lannister's eyes sends a shiver down his spine, and he fights the urge to swallow and fidget under his father's glower. "Clegane and Lorch had been given strict orders from me, and my heir or not you had no authority to interfere with their mission. Elia Martell and her children had to be ended in order to secure your sister's throne and ensure the stability of the realm. Be glad that all of them had been put down before you managed to kill two of my most promising knights."

"Put down?" Jaime springs to his feet, gesturing wildly, practically spitting with outrage, all thoughts of consequences and Visenya's safety pushed from his mind by a flood of outrage. "Your 'knights' butchered Elia and her children! Lorch had stabbed Rhaenyra so many times she was more wound than flesh! Clegane had smashed Aegon's head to pulp against the wall of his mother's solar! He raped Elia, and beat her to death, my only friend in the shithole we call a capital!"

"So, that is where your loyalty lies, with Elia Martell, and with her family?" A curious gleam of triumph appears in his father's eye.

Suddenly, Jaime's anger evaporates. He sits back down, feeling as cold as the Wall, but the cold is no longer strangling him. He feels empty, as if he has hidden away everything he needs to hide and found that there is nothing more inside him. 

"Have you heard nothing I have said?" He looks his father directly in the eye. "My loyalty lay with Elia and her children while I was sworn to protect them, but they are dead and my oaths made void. My time in Dorne gave me a new perspective, and made me realise my error in my former loyalties to those who did not share our blood. Now my concern is for the wellbeing of my family alone. You need have no concern for any misplaced loyalties on my part, Father."

Tywin stares at him for a long moment, so long that Jaime's palms become clammy and threaten to slip from the chair's arms. Eventually, the lord nods. "See that I never have cause to again. You may go."

Jaime stands and walks out as fast as he can without running. He opens the door calmly, but cannot resist shutting it behind him with a snap, that cold anger still roaring through his veins but mixed with an even colder fear, for himself and for Visenya and even for Allyria and for the Martells so far away in Dorne.

He has argued with his father many times before, over trivial and not so trivial things, but never before has the elder man awakened such wrath and hatred and fear in him. 

Such feelings were always reserved for the likes of the Mad King, never for Jaime's own lord father. 

He isn't sure what is worse - the knowledge that he fears and loathes the father he once idolised, or the realisation that he no longer cares. 

Both are awful, and make his hands shake with the terrible knowledge of just how much he has changed since Aerys put that white cloak around his shoulders. 

But he is a Knight of the Kingsguard, and he has made his oaths and intends to keep them as much as he can.

Visenya Targaryen is his queen, and his loyalty, love and devotion are hers.

Everything else comes second. 

Family, friends, honour, love, grief, nothing matters but the monarch to whom he is sworn.

Such is the way of the Kingsguard, as it has been since it was founded by his queen's namesake.

It is lonely, and sometimes sad, but every high calling is. His brothers who bore the white cloak were honourable men, brave and true every one of them. 

Prince Lewyn, who had forsworn the riches and comfort of his birth just so that he could protect his niece. He had been butchered on the Trident by Ser Lyn Corbray, who had snuck up on the wounded knight and killed a man worth twenty of him through trickery.

Ser Arthur, who was the most skilled swordsman he had ever met, but one of the kindest and most humble too. He was dead as well, stabbed in the back by one of Ned Stark's men because the Northman couldn't hope to match the Sword of the Morning

"Are you quite finished burning right through to the sea bed with your eyes alone?" 

He looks up at the familiar voice, and finds a smile breaking out on his face. Here, at least, is one member of his kin that he loves still. "Tyrion! You've grown so much!"

The boy smiles wryly. "Hardly. I doubt that I'm much taller than your daughter despite being more than twice her age."

Jaime laughs and springs to the other side of the wide corridor, catching his baby brother in a hug nearly fierce enough to make up for a few of those he has missed over the years. 

His dark thoughts, and the fear and rage that accompanied them, slip to the back of his mind, though he still subtly hurries them to where Tyrion promises his wife and 'daughter' are unpacking. 

It is good to see his brother, but it will never do to forget just where his loyalties lie.

Chapter Text

Oberyn I

Casterly Rock. The Lion's Den. Home to Tywin Lannister and his brutes.

And now, the home of his cousin, and of Elia's last living child.

His heart aches at the mere thought, arms tightening convulsively about the sleeping form cradled in them.

To leave his cousin and his niece here, with no protection but a single knight and their own silence is something that goes against every promise and vow he has ever made. 

It is anathema, to leave them so alone.

And yet, Doran expects him to just abandon them in Tywin Lannister's castle, in the very mouth of the lion itself.

What if they are discovered?

What if a raven arrives one day, bearing not greeting from family, but tidings of their deaths?

What if their broken bodies are delivered home wrapped in Lannister cloaks?

What if it happens all over again? 

Their family barely survived it once, how could they possibly do so again?

"Are you trying to glare the fireplace into submission?" 

Allyria drops down beside him, draped in vivid red silk with little gold lions chasing each other about the neckline. 

The sight is jarring. His cousin is a Dayne, made for pale pastels and purest whites, like the star of her house's emblem.

She looks...different in bright colours. The vivid red and gold are strange, making her look frail and delicate in a way that sends a chill through him. 

With an effort, he manages to meet her gaze, if only for a second, and hoist a careless smile onto his face. 

"And if I am?"

Allyria sighs, and her shoulders slump ever so slightly. "Be careful, please, cousin. Tensions between Dorne and the Westerlands are high enough without you poking the sleeping lion."

He opens his mouth to reply, but she looks pleadingly at him, holding his eyes with her own. Oberyn feels his body tense as he meets her eyes, held transfixed by that painfully familiar deep purple gaze.

"I don't want to die, Oberyn." The words hit him like a physical blow, and he buckles, tearing his eyes from her.

"Lyria, I wouldn't...I would never..."

"I know." Her voice is very low. "But one wrong word could spell all of our deaths, Oberyn. Mine, yours, Jaime's, even Rohanne's."

Allyria has always known how to aim her words. It's an unfortunate trait of their family. He closes his eyes against the image that she conjures, of their broken bodies mutilated like Elia's and sent back to taunt Doran, Loreza Martell's eldest child who watched all of his siblings die.

He lowers his eyes, swallowing against the stubborn, ever present lump in his throat.  "Lyria, I..."

A gentle hand pats his, and the touch feels so much like his sister's that his eyes blur. "I trust you Oberyn, with my life, with my children's lives, even with her life. Do not break that trust."

He swallows hard. "I promise, 'Lyria. Tywin Lannister and his creatures will never hear an incautious word, nor an incautious action, from me. On my niece's life, and on the lives of my daughters."

Allyria looks at him in silence for a moment, and her eyes glisten in the firelight. "Thank you, Oberyn."

"You're family, 'Lyria. There's nothing I wouldn't do for my family."

She doesn't seem quite certain of what to say, only stares into the flames for a long moment. Her stiff posture relaxes, her rigid spine curving, her shoulders hunching, and Oberyn becomes suddenly aware of just how young she looks. 

Not as young as the child sleeping in his arms, certainly, but for once she looks as if she is truly younger than him. 

Grief, for Ashara and Arthur and Ashara's baby girl, has lent a gravity and weight to his little cousin's prescence until she seems older than even Doran at times, despite being nearly half a decade Oberyn's junior.

She will make a truly magnificent Lady, which is something that neither he nor Doran has doubted for a moment. Allyria has their utmost trust, tinged with guilt at their previous distance from her as it is. 

But Oberyn still cannot help mourning the cousin he barely remembers, the joyful, reckless girl who would run about after him and Arthur, who would jump off cliffs and go hunting for snakes. His memories of her are few and far between indeed, for the arrogant boy he had been had seen her as just another annoying child he had to put up with at the Water Gardens. 

His attitude towards her then is something he bitterly regrets.

Lady Allyria Lannister is a proud woman, beautiful and strong, a woman he is proud to call his kin. 

But little Lyria...oh how he wishes he had spent more time with her, before grief had aged her so. 

He wishes he had spent more time with many people.

With Ashara, the beautiful cousin he had never been as close with as Elia had been, simply because she intimidated him so, and all opportunity to change it now gone because she had suffered so much that she threw herself from a tower to end it.

With Arthur, the perfect knight who set the perfect example, and who used to tell the bawdiest jokes when they were but rowdy youths too young for the world, brought down only by treachery but dead and gone all the same.

With Rhaenyra, his wild, boisterous niece, forever a toddler chasing a black kitten, her father's blood condemning her to a death so cruel that he could barely recognise her pitiful little corpse.

With Egg, Elia's merry little boy, who had always laughed at everything, and who's laughter had been dashed away with his life against the tapestries of his mother's solar. 

And with Elia. Most of all with Elia. His sweet sister, his almost twin, who learned poisons and politics alongside him, and who held enough love in her heart for all of Westeros twice over. He had spent the better part of his life so far with Elia, had grown and learned with her, and adored her with his whole heart, and then had her ripped from him in the cruellest possible way.

When the news had come, he had thought he would die too. He had built his world around his older sister from infancy, had loved her with so much of himself that he feels as if he has lost the better part of his soul with her death. 

He misses her fiercely, achingly, as though someone has pressed burning sand into the weeping lesion in his heart where Elia was so deeply entrenched such a short time ago.

If he could make a bargain for even a single moment more with her, he would make it without hesitation.

Just one moment.

Just long enough to swear to avenge her.

Just long enough to promise that her daughter will be safe.

Just long enough to say goodbye.

He would give anything if he could only say goodbye.

The tight feeling in his throat calls his attention as it grows ever stronger, and he chokes on a half-strangled sound, trying not to wake the exhausted child on his lap.

"Sandor Clegane is to inherit his brother's keep."

He blinks, jerking ever so slightly at the non-sequiteur. "What did you say?"

Allyria doesn't look away from the fire, but her manner has changed again. The glimpse of the vulnerable little cousin she once was is vanished. "It was one of the finished letters on the old lion's desk. I couldn't see it all, and it was upside down, but I saw enough - Tywin Lannister may have lost one mad dog, but his kennels are far from empty."

For a moment, Oberyn remains confused. Why would she bring this up now?

Then he notices the glistening sheen over her eyes, and the stinging in his own. A distraction then, a way for them both to channel their grief into something less useless than sitting and weeping and wondering what-if.

"Perhaps this dog is less mad than the last."

She shrugs, glum misery fallimg over her face. "Perhaps, though you would know better than I. This is the first time I have ever left Dorne, and I never expected to marry outside of it. Everything is so strange and different here."

If Visenya were not sleeping on him, draped bonelessly across him in the same way his own daughters often were, he would have put his arm around her. As it is, he merely nudges her shoulder with his own. 

"You are one of the most brilliant people I've ever known, Lyria, man or woman. There is a reason Doran thought of you before any other for this, and it wasn't the blood we share. If anyone can suceed in this task, it will be you."

She smiles tremulously, but it is a smile. "Thank you, Oberyn. I needed to hear that."

Oberyn tries for his usual roguish grin, and he can feel it falling short but he has tried despite the ravenous monster in his chest determined to consume him so he counts it as a win. "What else is family for if not for support and ill-timed comments?"

"Ill-timed comments?" The curiosity sparking in her eyes is new, and he feels his own grief lighten to see it. 

"Such as informing you how ironic it would be if the brother of Gregor Clegane killed the brother of Elia Martell."

The joke is in poor taste, and he is ashamed to admit that it is poorly executed as well.

Allyria's only reaction is to look at him with eyes that are red and puffy but still ably conveying her absolute disappointment and disgust with him. It reminds him of nothing so much as his mother, and the thought cheers him ever so slightly.

If Allyria can imitate Loreza Martell so well, then he has even less doubts than he had before about her ability to forge a place for herself in the very mouth of the lion.

His mother was a ruling Princess in a world ruled by men who hated her sex and her land and her people, and yet she made Dorne strong enough that Elia would have been Queen of Westeros, and Elia's children were to have sat upon the Iron Throne. 

Loreza Martell was the strongest, most incredible woman he had ever had the honour to know, and if anyone can even hope to match her, he thinks that Allyria might have a chance. It is no small thing, for even Elia had never thought to match their mother. 

"Oberyn, that isn't something you should be japing about. Little pitchers have big ears." Allyria's eyes are serious and dark, and her hands are twisted tightly in her lap. 

The meaning of her words is more than clear, and the Red Viper feels guilt rising to fight with the ever-present grief. 

He had forgotten that, while he may jape and use biting words to cover up his grief, others find japes to stab at the very heart of their pain. The child in his arms is one such, little more than a babe but marked with terrible scars already. 

She has lost her parents, siblings, grandmother, even herself, and she cannot mourn them as he can. Japing around her about the event that effectively ended her life is something that even he should remember to avoid. 

"Forgive me, little one." Oberyn presses a kiss to the bright head, and his eyes blur until he could almost fool himself that he is sitting in King's Landing or Dragonstone, and Elia is about to sweep into the room to berate him for some irresponsible act or other. "I did not mean to disturb you."

A tiny hand reaches out to pat his own, accompanied by a sleepy acceptance of his apology, and he cannot help but smile. Such is the nature of children, only to be awake when it does not suit the adults around them. In this, at least, his niece has managed to retain her childishness, and it is indeed good to see.

She has endured so much already, and even the slightest glimpse of the child she should have been is something that he encourages with as much enthusiasm as he can possibly muster. 

Before he can say anything more, someone knocks on the door.

"Come in.'' Allyria's accent seems thicker every time she speaks in this place, he idly notes.

Then all such thoughts are driven from his head as Jaime Lannister storms into the room, his emerald eyes flashing with barely supressed anger, followed by a small boy with curiously coloured eyes who stands awkwardly by the wall.

Oberyn has watched the Kingslayer carefully since the knight arrived in Dorne with Elia's daughter, and he knows that there is very little that reaches through the golden knight's focus on his charge, very little that can elicit such an intense reaction when almost every fibre of his being is focused upon one small girl.

The Seven know Oberyn has tried and failed to get a rise out of him, though not since Allyria decided to accept the Lannister heir's suit. The Red Viper may already be gaining a reputation, but he is no Lyanna Stark to seduce someone happily wed. 

Jaime Lannister is Allyria's, and he will respect that. 

Regardless of his thwarted designs, he has never seen that expression on the younger man's face. 

Pure, unadulterated rage, mixed with fear.

The knight strides across the room in a flurry of gold and unceremoniously scoops the half-asleep girl from Oberyn's lap, clutching her close to him. 

Ordinarily, the prince would protest at someone seizing his kin from him so abruptly. Visenya is his niece, the daughter of his sister, the last thing left in Westeros of martyred, murdered Elia.

But this is not Dorne, where a slip on his part can be easily waved away and forgotten. 

This is Casterly Rock, the very heart of Tywin Lannister's power. 

Every word must be watched, every action thought over, every thought measured, even in private. And there is a child here, a child who's loyalties are unknown. This is not private.

He reminds himself that Rohanne Lannister is Jaime Lannister's daughter, and Oberyn Martell is only vaguely fond of the lively child who reminds him a little of his golden-haired third daughter in the faraway Water Gardens. 

So he only stretches lazily and looks vaguely curious. After all, he has no reason to particularly like the man or be concerned about his moods. This is merely entertainment for the lackadaisical prince. 

It is Allyria who stands with a worried expression and walks toward the feverishly pacing knight, because Allyria is his wife, and so worry deeper than mere polite concern and curiosity is something she can feel without arousing suspicion.

"Jaime? Whatever is the matter?" She places one hand upon his arm, the very picture of a concerned, affectionate spouse, gathering the little girl from his arms and resting her gently on her own hip.

The Kingslayer halts his pacing, though he continues to shift anxiously, his hands clenching and unclenching as if wishing for a sword to wield, to strike down all those who would threaten the child his very life is dedicated to. "A disagreement with Father over my loyalties, nothing more. He believed that my oaths to the Targaryens had carried my fealty to the Martells after the deaths of Princess Elia and her children."

Silence. 

How would they react were the Lannister Heir's loyalties truly where he claims them to be?

Would they laugh at the Old Lion's needless paranoia?

Would the impulsive Dornish prince be offended?

Would the hot-blooded Dornish wife be angry at the reminder of her kin?

What must they do to avoid suspicion?

Allyria only smiles gently and rests her head against her husband's shoulder, reaching her free hand out to smooth her stepdaughter's sleep-rumpled hair. "I am not a Targaryen, my Lord, nor is your daughter. Is your loyalty not to your family over oaths to a mad king?"

"I...my loyalty...yes." 

Something seems to clear in the Kingslayer's eyes, as if the veil of blind fear and anger is lifted. His shoulders slump, and his feverish movements slow until they cease. 

"I know where my loyalty lies, Allyria. Never fear." One hand reaches out to rest by the Dayne noblewoman's on the half-awake child's golden curls. "My priorities are as they have been since the day that the Targaryens fell."

Oberyn clears his throat slightly, aware of the small boy watching them with wide eyes.

"What of your company, Ser Jaime?" 

He keeps his tone light, mocking - Oberyn Martell has no love for the Kingslayer, regardless of how dear he holds the Kingslayer's wife. 

The knight seems to call himself back from some deep thought, and manages some semblance of a smile. 

"Of course, Your Highness." He gestures to the small boy. "Tyrion, allow me to introduce my companions. This is my wife, Lady Allyria Lannister, born Dayne. Allyria, my lady, this is my brother, Lord Tyrion Lannister."

Allyria's curtsey in response to the little lion lord's polite greeting is a thing of art, all Rhoynish flamboyancy and extravagancy despite the child on her hip. 

"My daughter, Lady Rohanne Lannister, Rohanne sweetness, this is my baby brother Tyrion, will you say hello?" The blond girl waves shyly, and the boy laughs.

"She looks just like you Jaime."

Oberyn notes the wry smile that graces the Kingslayer's face before he continues. "She does, does she not. And finally, Tyrion this is Prince Oberyn Nymeros Martell of Dorne. Your Highness, my younger brother Lord Tyrion Lannister."

Oberyn shrugs and waves a hand lazily, smiling a languid, venomous smile with just the tiniest hint of teeth. "Always a pleasure to meet a Lannister, little lion, given our Houses' past dealings."

The boy blanches a little, but bows all the same. "An honour, Your Highness."

For a moment, all that Oberyn can see is the top of the boy's head. 

In the flickering half-light of the fireplace the hair covering it looks almost silver.

His mind goes involuntarily to the last small boy he knew with silver hair, a babe who knew only how to laugh.

Would Aegon have looked like this one day? He could have, in all likeliehood, a small boy with a courtier's bow and accent, clad in deep reds and golds. The firelight darkens the red and the gold, until they could pass for Targaryen red and Martell gold. 

He can easily see his nephew there, his voice cultured even at such a young age, his bow perfect, wearing a carefully balanced combination of Targaryen colours and Martell colours, but most of all alive.

Oberyn's heart aches for what can never be, and his fist clenches, nails biting into the partially healed wounds he inflicted on himself in Tywin Lannister's office. 

Chapter Text

Genna I

In her eight and thirty years of life, Genna has seen many historic events - the rise and fall of houses, the death of kings and princes, wars that span the entire continent, and so much more.

Quite a few of these events have taken place because of her eldest brother. 

The Rains of Castamere come to mind, among other equally bloody ones, such as the Sack of King's Landing only a few moons ago.

Considering Tywin's history of...controversial actions, she should perhaps be less surprised that his eldest son and heir is apparently taking after him. After all, 'like father like son', a saying so old that even the Citadel cannot say for surety where it originated.

And her eldest brother has poured half of his life into Jaime, into grooming the boy for his future role as the next Lord Paramount of the Westerlands, king in all but name of the wealthiest kingdom in Westeros.

It is only natural that the son Tywin has spent the most time moulding and shaping to be his heir will take after him.

And yet...

Jaime has never shown even the slightest similarity to his father before, not even in his face, not like Tyrion has at even such a young age.

Jaime is - well, Genna doesn't dare to speak it aloud, barely dares to think it some days when her brother's mood is as black as the mines he rules over. 

It isn't that she is afraid of Tywin. He is her brother, the only one to speak out against her farce of a marriage, her liege lord, the one to whom her loyalty belongs. She isn't afraid of him, but she is certainly wary around him on bad days.

She knows that Tywin cannot read minds, and yet the very thought is something that would enrage him beyond all sense. 

Better to be safe than sorry, is her line of reason. Should such a thing slip from her lips in a moment of unguardedness, well. She has seen how he treats his younger son.

The very thought is dangerous, to herself and to others, so she keeps it secret, never speaks of it to even Gerion.

Not that her silence diminishes the truth of it, however dangerous that truth is.

Kind, generous Jaime, ever ready to laugh rather than take offense, is more like her father than Tywin will ever admit. 

Perhaps he is stronger than Tytos, more warlike, a swordsman far greater than the Toothless Lion could ever dream to be, but there is a good nature to him that ever sets her brother on edge despite his reluctance to admit it.

Tywin will claim that Jaime's greatest resemblance is to Joanna, but anyone who ever knew Joanna will know that the resemblance is restricted to Jaime's face alone.

Joanna was harder than her son could ever be, Tywin's perfect match, willing to do anything at all if it got her where she wanted to be. 

While Genna loves Jaime dearly, she is hardly blind to his flaws - his parents may have been willing to go too far to achieve their goals, but Jaime is not willing to go far enough, and it worries her.

Oh, he may have killed a king and a few of her brother's rabid animals, but he did so in the heat of the moment and spurred on by grief and goodness knows what else - she has seen his letters over the years of his tenure as Kingsguard, she knows how much he doted on the Silver Prince's children and how much he practically worshipped their mother. None of them could do any wrong in his eyes, and she was not surprised to hear the news that Jaime cut down the ones who killed them. 

But he did so without thinking, panicking, moments after their death. She doubts he could kill anyone with a clear head and in cold blood, not the way his parents could. Jaime could never repeat the Rains of Castamere. 

There is, of course, the possibility that seven years as Kingsguard to a madman have hardened him, but Genna doubts it. 

He is still her sweet nephew, as dear to her as her own sons but with as much intelligence as them too.

His daughter is much the same. She watches her intently over the first few days and weeks, and what she finds is more than a little disappointing. 

Rohanne is Joanna's spitting image, down to the slightly uneven eyebrows. One could hardly be blamed for expecting the resemblance to go deeper, below the skin, for the child to possess the same core of iron that will neither bend nor break no matter the pressure put on it.

Needless to say, this is not the case .

The child is innocent and unspoiled by the world despite her birth, forever smiling and laughing.

She is a breath of fresh air in the gilded, shrouded silence of Casterly Rock, her mane of golden curls like a ray of pure sunlignt, her intensely vivid eyes gleaming in her little face. 

Perhaps Genna should be glad that this girl is so sweet and so full of laughter, but she would have much preferred Joanna's lookalike to have a similar spirit as well. 

She misses her goodsister, more than she had thought to, and hearing that her new grandniece resembles the dead woman she had hoped...

As it is, it is more than a little disconcerting for her, and a disappointment as well. 

Here is another Lannister who could be great, could be a legend to go down through the ages, but who has the temperament of the man who nearly drove their house to ruin. Who is soft.

As a result, to her unending surprise, Genna finds herself gravitating towards her nephew's new wife. 

The woman spends much of the day with her regardless, shadowing her in her duties as the foremost lady of the family until she is ready to take the reins.

It rankles in Genna a little to allow a young, untrained woman, barely more than a girl really, to take the place that she has so competently held since Joanna's death but such is the custom. 

Allyria Dayne is the Heir's wife, and as such is the highest ranked lady of the family - above even Genna herself.

The Dornishwoman has no Lannister or Westerlands blood, not even a link to a minor house, and yet she is accounted higher than the Lord Paramount's own sister who has run Casterly Rock smoothly for over a decade.

Despite this irritation, Genna finds herself liking the younger woman, almost against her will.

Lady Allyria has the core of steel that her husband and stepdaughter lack, a will strong enough for all three of them put together and a mind to match it.

An intimidating woman to be sure, and an excellent match for her nephew - beautiful, wealthy, well-educated, charming and intelligent.

Perfect in every aspect but one. Her damnable looks. 

Genna has spent most of her life in the same place she was born, and as such saw very little of the Targaryens before their downfall, yet even she can still see the resemblance between them and the dead dragons. 

Pale gold curls, deep purple eyes, an air of (justified) tragedy - if Allyria Dayne turned out to be a long lost bastard of old King Scab she would not be surprised. 

In her conversations with Tywin since Jaime's return, this particular issue has come up multiple times.

Not only did Jaime choose to marry a woman from Dorne of all the kingdoms (who knows what sort of strange ideas she has coming from a place like that), but he chose the one woman in Dorne who could pass for a Targaryen.

Of all the dark haired and eyed women of Dorne, he chose the most problematic one possible, not to mention the cousin who came along with her. The Dornish prince, still half-mad over the deaths of his sister and her children, his tongue dripping poison with every barbed word, is a thorn in her side that worsens with every day that passes.

It is infuriating.

All those years spent making sure that Jaime was taught and trained to be the perfect Lord, and apparently nothing sunk in. 

No diplomacy, no memory, no sensitivity...nothing.

Then again, at least he had the sense to marry a woman who could make up for his inability to be a proper Heir to her eldest brother.

Her nephew is sweet, kind, and she loves him for it. How can one not love someone so pure, so good, in such a dark world?

But those who are good are taken too soon (just look at the Silver Prince's wife - perfect in every way, demure, meek, pretty, obedient, and genuinely good, and murdered by her brother's men), and she worries for him.

Genna is not good.

She didn't bat an eye when her brother drowned innocents, drowned babies and their mothers, drowned hundreds and hundreds just because of one woman's discontent.

She heard Tywin planning to send assassins for Elia Martell and her children and said not a word.

She is hard and ruthless in a way Jaime can never be, not for all his strength and skill with a sword.

But Allyria Dayne...

The first time Genna set eyes on her, it was like looking into a mirror. 

There is a ruthlessness to the woman that sets Genna at ease. When Jaime inherits, this woman will prevent him from sending House Lannister into ruins with his kindness and generosity.

She didn't bat an eye when they happened upon the body of a guardsman who had fallen down the stairs, despite later admitting to knowing him by name after his posting before the chambers that she shared with Jaime earlier that day. 

Nor did she turn a hair at Genna ordering the whipping and dismissal of a servant caught stealing food meant for the high table.

Perhaps her looks are unfortunate, more like a dragon than a dornishwoman, like to send her new good-nephew into a fit, but beneath the looks is a woman worthy to rule Casterly Rock. 

Grief and loss have tempered the Dornishwoman, made her iron beneath the fine clothes and polite smiles, turned her into precisely the kind of woman who is perfect to keep a place like Casterly Rock under complete control.

Over the days and weeks after her nephew's return with his bastard and his new wife, she finds herself, almost against her will, befriending the Dornishwoman. 

Allyria grew up without a mother, with siblings much older than her and a father who's mind was on his dead wife more often than his living children.

It is a situation Genna is not unfamiliar with and it engenders something in her. Not pity per se....perhaps sympathy? 

Regardless, she does not dislike the Dornishwoman, who is sharp and hard and whip-smart. She might even approve of her if not for her thrice-damned looks.

Certainly she is impressed by the woman - Allyria Dayne has even managed to reduce Tywin's ire at her since she announced her pregnancy, and Tywin was the last important holdout against the charisma and charm of the efficient Dornishwoman.

No, Genna has no true dislike for her nephew's wife, especially not now.

What she still struggles with is Rohanne. 

Her pretty, sweet, grand-niece. 

Joanna's image and Tytos' spirit. 

A whore's bastard, legitimised because their new king wanted to please the man who had killed the last king. 

Much as she appreciates the sunshine and laughter that the little girl brings to the heavy solemnity of Casterly Rock, she cannot help but remember what her mother was. 

What if the girl inherits her mother's nature? What she disgraces Casterly Rock someday? What if she turns them into a laughingstock again? 

The girl may be sweet and innocent now, but she is to be fostered in Dorne - who knows what sort of ideas and behaviours could be awakened in her there. 

It is not as if loving, doting, soft Jaime can control a daughter as wild as that, or as if his Dornish wife will bother to restrain behaviours which her homeland has naturalised - particularly in a child not her own.

Of course that isn't to say that Genna does not care for Rohanne - the girl is blood, however tainted, and she is lively and endearing. It is almost impossible not to love the sweet child. 

But she is wary of her too. For all her looks, the child is not pure Lannister, not even all Westerlands, or even with a fully noble lineage. 

Who knows what sort of contamination is present in her blood, or how it will manifest. 

Yes, Genna is wary of the girl, for all of her sweetness and life. She may be just what Casterly Rock needs to breathe life back into it, or she may be their greatest shame in generations.

Greatness or shamefulness.

The coin is in the air, and she knows what side she wants it to land on.

Chapter Text

Rohanne I

"Visenya." 

She blinks, her eyes stinging in the way she's learned to associate with changing her face. A single tear falls from one, and she blinks it away.

"Visenya."

She isn't supposed to answer to that anymore, is she? It isn't her name anymore, is it?

"Visenya."

She knows that voice....where does she know it from?

"Visenya."

She buckles, as if from a blow, the grief and pain knocking the wind from her all at once. She cannot breathe, cannot think, cannot exist under the pain.

Why?

Why is she hurting so much?

Why does she know that voice?

Why?

She can't...she can't remember...she can't...

Visenya's eyes open, and she finds herself in her own bed, the sun streaming in through the opened shutters, warm and comfortable and utterly painfree.

Someone is bending over her, long strands of inky hair tickling her nose. 

Deep, black eyes look down at her, crinkled at the corners with a smile so full of love it makes her feel warm from tip to toe. 

Of course.

How could she forget her Mama?

"Good morning, my lazy little lizard."

She laughs, reaching her hands up towards the first person she ever saw in this world, towards the greatest love she has ever known. "I thought I was a dragon Mama."

An answering laugh passes over her mother's face. "Dragons awake with the sun, while the little desert lizards sleep in it. Which are you my little slugabed?"

Visenya pouts. "That's mean Mama."

Rather than truly replying, the princess only taps her firstborn on the nose. "Am I right?"

"Dragons do as they wish, Elia, and by that measure Visenya is more a dragon than any other." At the sound of that warm, achingly beautiful voice, her traitorous heart jumps and her vengeful stomach twists.

Who...how...

Isn't he....

Her father enters the room, Rhaenyra holding to one of his hands and Aegon balanced on his hip.

Rhaenyra is bubbling over with excitement, her dark curls bouncing with every motion, her vibrant eyes snapping.

She's barely suppressing giggles, pressing one hand to her mouth in a vain, rather half-hearted attempt.

Her brother is too young to be as aware as Rhaenyra, and so little Egg is just laughing and clapping his hands, reacting to the mood.

Their excitement is having a visible effect on her father, for his shadowed eyes are brighter than she is accustomed to seeing them, and he smiles when he sees her. Truly smiles, reaching to his eyes, rather than his polite twitches of the lip.

"Good morning, my dearest daughter."

Visenya smiles back, delight welling up in her. He's smiling! Her solemn, tragic, serious father is smiling. 

And her baby brother, oh her sweet little Egg, is laughing, and Rhaenyra is fidgeting in the way she always does when she's happy as if she could burst with the intensity of joy contained in her tiny body. 

And her beloved, fiercely adored mother is smiling too, soft and gentle but really truly happy, and everything is so perfect.

Her heart could burst with it.

She opens her mouth to reply, to bid her father and her siblings good morning.

But before a sound leaves her mouth, another voice interrupts. "Rhaenys! Rhaenys, come here!"

Rhaenys? 

She doesn't know a Rhaenys. Does she?

Rhaenyra was supposed to be Rhaenys, but she's not Rhaenys. 

So who...

A flash of brightness, and a giggle, and a little girl comes pattering into the room.

Visenya has never seen this child before, not in this life or the half-remembered one she left behind. 

Silver-gold hair like Visenya's own, and rich, intensely purple eyes flash past her in a second. 

A Valyrian child? 

Another sibling?

When did her mother have another child?

Then all thoughts fly from her head.

The woman who enters behind the child is not, as she had thought, a frustrated septa or handmaid.

No, her clothes are far too fine for that, the red and grey brocade almost drowning her, and bright gems flashing from every place one could concievably put a gem.

She is too at ease as well, chasing after the little girl and yelling without a care. No septa would ever dare raise her voice so in the prescence of the royal family.

Regardless, Visenya would know the woman anywhere. 

That face is burned into her soul, burned with the blood of her mother and brother and sister.

Lyanna Stark.

How dare she. 

How dare she run and laugh and act like she owns the world in Visenya's own chamber!

Her father, her father, drops Rhaenyra's hand and lets Aegon down to run about and amuse himself. 

Then he catches Lyanna's hand and pulls her to him.

She laughs, her eyes alight, and they smile as they bend their heads together. 

They look so romantic and perfect. 

So happy.

Visenya turns to her mother, rage bubbling up inside her, but the words die in her throat, smothered by sheer horror.

Even moments after giving birth, Elia Martell has always been graceful and in control.

She's the perfect princess, beautiful and kind, with a dark enough streak to keep her and her children alive in the poisonous atmosphere of high nobility life.

Someone makes a wounded noise, and it takes a long time to realise that the someone is her. "Mama!"

Her mother stirs feebly, her vibrant eyes dull. "V...Visenya?"

Suddenly, they aren't in her room anymore.

They're back in her mother's solar, the walls hung with painted Dornish silks in vibrant yellows and oranges and reds, the harsh stone floor softened with a beautiful Myrish carpet, the dark wood of the furniture accentuating the brightness of the Martell colours.

Lively, bouncy Rhaenyra is sprawled on the floor, blood oozing from a thousand wounds and one, the remnants of her mouth opened in an eternal scream.

Giggling, innocent Aegon's head is but a smear of gore and brain matter on their mother's lovely silk hangings, his tiny body looking like a discarded doll.

And her mother, oh her mother.

Visenya uncurls, scrambling over to her mother's broken body. "Mama! Mama, please, don't leave me Mama."

For a moment, she forgets her age, forgets everything. Nothing matters but that her mother is dying in front of her.

"Mama!"

Elia manages a weak smile. "My little viper. Don...don't be afraid. I'm going to join your siblings, my sweet. Jaime is...Jaime is going to look after you for me...alright? Be good for him?"

She nods frantically. "I promise Mama. Don't go, please."

One trembling hand, smeared with blood, reaches out to stroke over her cheek. "I'm...I'm sorry, my little viper. As long as....as long as you live...my daughter...my beautiful sun-dragon. I love you...so much..."

The hand falls away, landing on the floor with a soft thud that echoes horribly.

"No! Mama!"

But there is no reply.

Something that might once have been Elia Martell lies inert on the floor.

The body of a baby with a smashed head lies close by in the ruined solar.

Visenya screams. "Mama!"

She can't be dead. She can't be dead.

"Mama, please, please." She shakes Elia's shoulders. "Wake up Mama, please!" 

Nothing. 

Nothing at all.

"No! Mama, no!" 

But Elia, who has never turned away from her children's pain, makes no reaction to her heartbroken cry 

"Mama." She whimpers, tears forming at the corner of her eyes. "Mama, please."

Her lip trembles, and she starts to cry.

Rhaegar is dead. 

Elia is dead. 

Rhaenyra is dead. 

Aegon is dead. 

They're all dead.

The little girl curls over her mother's cooling body, shaking with awful, shuddering sobs, all alone in the desolation. 

Time loses all sense, all meaning.

All that she knows is that she cries until nothing is left and then keeps crying because her world is falling apart and she can't, she can't, her mother is dead, murdered, and she can't, it's too much.

She doesn't know how long she cries for, but a soft hand rests on her shoulder. 

When she looks up, her father's eyes are resting on her mother's body, their gaze distant as if he's seeing something very far away and long ago. 

"I am sorry, my dearest daughter, I know that you cared greatly for Elia, but this was the only way."

He pats her head and pulls her onto his lap, rocking her backwards and forwards as if she is a baby. Visenya wants to shy away from him, to scream or kick or scratch for his words, but he is her father and she just lost her mother.

She starts to cry again, nestling into him, even as she hates herself for it. 

"It was a regrettable sacrifice, my love, but one you bore admirably. No one would fault you that Elia could not do her duty." The voice...that voice...it's one she heard only briefly, but like everything else about that woman it's burned into her soul. 

Lyanna Stark stands draped in black and crimson with two children on either side of her - a girl with her silver-gold hair plaited in rings and a boy in a shirt of black scales. 

The wolf-bitch continues, each word leaving a bleeding wound. "Tis not your fault that she was weak, but you are king now my love and she is dead. I can give you as many dragons as you desire, and more."

She releases the girl's hand to press to her stomach, which is swollen and round. 

Swollen with child, Visenya realises, from the victorious smile on Lyanna Stark's beautiful, wild face. "I have given you Visenya and Aegon already, and Rhaenys grows within me. What need have you for Elia Martell's sickly spawn?"

Visenya is all alone. 

Her father is gone. 

Lyanna leans close to her, a smile on her face

"Your mother is dead, little desert girl, and I have given my prince a Visenya with ice and fire in her veins. No one wants you, and no one needs you. We have a better Visenya now."

When the older girl pulls back, Visenya sees that her mother's beautiful solar is changed. 

It is grey now, grey and white and red and black, with thick, heavy wall hangings and wolves and dragons and winter roses everywhere.

In pride of place, right in the centre of the wall, hangs her mother's head in a crown of winter roses.

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

Visenya jolts awake, a scream in her throat. 

She swallows it before it can escape, feeling a blooming bubble of panic in her chest. 

It isn't true, it isn't true, it isn't. 

It can't be true.

Before her mind catches up with her body, she's moving, slipping from her bed and running, tears blurring her vision and choking her. 

It isn't, it isn't, it's a lie, it's just a dream.

She never knows how she gets there, never even recognises the passages she uses, but she's there, she knows it's the right door.

Not pausing to think, she barrels through door and then freezes.

No.

Jaime looks up from his desk, and starts up, halfway across the room in a second. 

"Rohanne, sweetness, what ever is the matter?"

She cannot answer, her sobs coming thicker and faster, choking her with grief. 

It wasn't a dream. 

It wasn't a dream.

They're dead.

They really are dead.

She's lost them forever. 

She can't breathe, she can't think, she can't, she can't...

They're gone.

They're dead.

They were murdered.

Her father abandoned them.

They're dead, they're dead, they're dead.

She can't breathe

She can't think

She can't. 

Something warm and soft invades her consciousness. 

What?

What is it?

There isn't anything, there isn't, she's alone with her grief and her loss and her madness

Arms wrapped around her, enfolding her in a tight embrace. 

A low voice murmering indistinguishable comforts to her.

There's a hand stroking her hair, softly as if she's made of glass.

Something loosens in her chest, and suddenly she can breathe again. 

She can think again.

She's curled up in Jaime's arms, a tiny ball of absolute desolation, and Allyria is stroking her hair. 

It feels wrong.

Where is her mother? Where is her father?

They should be comforting her, reassuring her that it was all a bad dream, but they can't. 

They're dead, killed, and so she has Jaime and Allyria in their place.

She closes her eyes and leans her head back against her protector. 

Unconsciously, her fingers reach up to tap at her brooch, but they meet only smooth cloth.

It's gone, gone with her family and her home and her face and her name. Probably melted down or smashed or...

It was her father's gift to her, the proof of his love for her. 

It's gone, gone like everything else, gone like him and her mother and her siblings and...

Her scrabbling fingers encounter something else, a hardness beneath the light fabric of her nightgown.  

She opens her eyes and reaches into the neck of her nightgown, pulling out a chain so fine that it seems spun from a stolen sunbeam. 

Hung on the end is a beautiful locket, with delicate lines tracing an intricate pattern that looks almost like a writhing nest of serpents. 

Crafted from the finest gold money can buy, pure and soft and gently gleaming as if imbued with the light of the very sun, even now in the dead of night.

Heedless of Jaime and Allyria, she opens it, needing something, something to cling to, anything.

Within the locket, is only a single engraving, without colours and with hardly any details. 

No faces with the Martell nose or the Targaryen cheekbones.

No damning shades of purple or silver.

No way to identify the meaning of the miniature without being told.

Nothing to tie her to a family she should know nothing of, should it be discovered.

The three girls in the miniature could be anyone, anyone at all.

One has dark hair, but beyond that there is little that can be discerned.

They are smiling, all three, one bold, one innocent, one bright. And behind each child stands an adult. 

Two men and a woman, each with their hands on a girl's shoulder, each with dark hair.

Nothing else.

No way to tell who the six are meant to be.

It is safe. It is unidentifiable. 

But oh it is so precious.

She blinks away the tears that threaten to blur her sight of the image, and leans back into her protector's arms, the aching howl of grief and loss silenced for the moment.

Comforted and calmed, warm and safe with Jaime and Allyria there, Visenya's eyelids start to droop, and her head to nod.

Before she knows it, she's asleep again.

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

When she wakes, the sun is shining again, and she can just hear the singing of birds. 

She's wrapped in quilts and blankets, like a little snowball, and tucked into the centre of the large bed that Jaime and Allyria share.

Jaime lies sprawled on his stomach, snoring, his golden locks mussed and falling into his face. He's still wearing the clothes he wore the night before, she realises guiltily, as if he had not the time or the energy to change. 

Allyria is nowhere to be seen, but when Visen- when Rohanne listens closely, she can hear a familiar sound, one that she despises.

When her mother had been pregnant with Rhaenyra, she had been constantly sick.

Pycelle had been as useless as ever, and Rhaegar had never been there. Oberyn had been in semi-exile over the sea, and Doran had a child of his own to worry about, a realm to rule and a mother to grieve.

Visenya had spent most of her mother's second pregnancy curled up on Ashara's lap, or Cedra's, or sometimes another of Elia's ladies.

She had seen how the flesh melted from her mother's bones, how her face grew grey and her strength faded.

And she had watched her vomit up the food she needed to live, until she was a walking skeleton. 

It had made her afraid, to see her beloved mother so frail, and now Allyria is sick too.

She knows, of course, that it is normal. She knows that many women are sick when the babe is newly settled in them.

She knows it.

But...

Rohanne swallows. 

Rohanne. Her name is Rohanne. 

Her mother was not Dornish, was not forced to bear child after child for a mad prophecy. 

Her mother was not half-killed with each birth. 

She has no reason to fear, and especially no reason to fear this.

She is Rohanne Lannister. She must remember that, always, and not lose her head as she did last night.

She was lucky that it was only Jaime and Allyria who saw her. If Lady Genna or another had been there, when she was crying over a mother and a father and siblings she should not have...

Well, some things are just too suspicious to gloss over.

She is Rohanne.

Her name is Rohanne.

Rohanne unwraps herself and scrambles down from her papa's tall bed.

Maybe Allyria will want a hug? 

Babies are lovely, and she is very excited to have a little brother or sister, but being sick is awful.

A golden necklace bangs against her chest as she scrambles down, and she tucks it under her nightgown so it won't get in her way.

Chapter Text

Jaime II

He remembers Elia's first pregnancy vividly. Rhaegar was melancholy and withdrawn by nature, but the day it was announced, he had held her hand and smiled so brightly that it seemed to lighten the grim keep somewhat.

All through the pregnancy, the Silver Prince had been ... happy, as if the shadows that lay on him were lightened just by the knowledge that Elia carried his child. It was the most uncomplicated emotion Jaime had ever seen in Rhaegar. 

So then why does he feel so conflicted? The most complicated, infuriating puzzle of a man he ever knew was simply happy when his first child was concieved, so why is Jaime, an infinitely simpler creature by nature, finding it so hard to take joy in Allyria's first pregnancy?

He should be ecstatic, should be positively brimming with happiness. 

A child is a blessing, and more than that, if Allyria is carrying a son then they will have an heir to Casterly Rock after him. He will have secured the line and fulfilled his father's dearest ambition. 

Most men would be happy enough to fly at this moment in time, blessed with a beautiful, clever wife, and a sweet, good-natured daughter, and whoever the child is that Allyria is carrying. 

Most men are not sworn body and soul to a disguised queen. 

But there is the root of the issue. 

He is a Kingsguard. 

He is sworn not to have a family, to dedicate his life in its entirety to the monarch and the blood royal. 

Above all, he is his queen's protector.

She is his first priority, always and forever. There are no circumstances where he can ever put her second to any other. 

But with a child of his own...

Jaime has always loved children, even when he was scarcely more than a child himself. 

There is something about such impossibly tiny things that he cannot help but protect and adore.

Then there is Allyria, beautiful ruthless Allyria who has never once hesitated when others would balk, utterly loyal to their queen. 

He is half in love with her already. 

And now she carries his child, their child.

Seven help him, he's married and his wife is pregnant. 

He's a Kingsguard, he's not meant to have a family and with good reason. 

How does he know that a child, his own child with Allyria, will not distract him? 

How does he know that he would choose his queen over his child? 

What if she dies because of his child? 

What if some harm comes to her because he loves his child? 

And yet...

He knows what it is like, to live without a father and a mother to love and care for one.

He doesn't want his child to grow up alone, with an army of servants and tutors and nursemaids in place of a loving father and mother. 

He doesn't want him or her to grow up the way he did, so cold and lonely that he sought  comfort with his own twin. 

He wants his child to know love and laughter, to be protected and indulged as children should be. 

But what if harm comes to his queen because of it? 

What if his love for his child overshadows his vows to Visenya?

Jaime buries his head in his hands, the impossible situation he is in spiralling around his head over and over. 

He swore never to marry, never to father children. 

His loyalty, his love, his honour, his fidelity, everything is sworn to his queen. 

He is sworn to her - body, mind and soul.

How can there be room for a wife in such all encompassing loyalty, for a child of his own? 

The Kingsguard's have no wife but their duty, no child but the princes and princesses whom they guard. 

So it has been since the first Visenya founded the Kingsguard, over three centuries of unbroken tradition and honour, and for good reason. 

A position on the Kingsguard is not like a seat on the Small Council, where one can have lands and families and other commitments. 

He belongs to his queen, everything that he is sworn to her in perpetuity, body, mind and soul - there is no room for a family.

But at the same time he must have a family to avoid suspicion falling upon them - the heirs of Lord Paramounts do not avoid marriage and heirs, not without drawing unwanted attention and speculation. 

It is simply not done. 

And he refuses to allow any child of his the same miserably upbringing as the one he suffered. He would rather die than be a father like Tywin Lannister.

"Jaime?"

A soft hand touches his shoulder, and he nearly flinches away before he recognises it. 

"Is something wrong?"

The concern in her voice is genuine, though mixed with confusion and a little hurt, and it hits him like a physical blow to realise that he knows her well enough to discern that. 

When did he begin studying her so closely? When did her worry make him feel such sinking guilt?

He turns his head and manages to smile at her. "Nothing is wrong, I promise."

The unimpressed expression that settles on her face in response is exactly what he had expected. "So your sudden gloom and despair is all in my imagination?"

"No, but you needn't worry yourself. It's no threat to us or danger."

Allyria runs a hand over her face and then settles back against the pillows with a tired sigh. "Jaime, I'm your wife. The least you can do is trust me, and explain why feeling your own child kick has suddenly sent you into a spiralling mess."

He winces at the hurt in her voice. 

This is their first child, every milestone and event should be greeted with delight and excitement not with guilt and regret.

And he is excited, he truly is.

What man would not be at greeting the first true interaction of his child with the world?

The little butterfly flutters against his palm resting on Allyria's belly are a wonder and a miracle. 

He had been overwhelmed with love for the babe growing in her womb, and it had frightened him.

Feeling the kicks had suddenly made it all real. 

He is a Kingsguard, but he is married and his wife is pregnant - two things that are totally incompatible. 

The babe that Allyria carries is a real live human being, who will have thoughts and feelings of his or her own and that terrifies him. 

How can he be a father, who failed so dreadfully as only a guard?

Allyria raises her eyebrows. "I'm waiting."

He looks down at his hands, which even moons later still sometimes feel sticky with blood, and tries to gather his thoughts. "It isn't that I'm not happy Allyria, I am - truly. This baby is a miracle and one that I am so excited to meet."

"But..."

"But." Jaime hesitates. Looks at Allyria -  beautiful, ruthless Allyria pregnant with his child. He doesn't want to hurt her. 

She doesn't prompt him again, only waits patiently, one hand resting idly on her swollen abdomen. 

Eventually, after he opens his mouth and closes it several times, the words just fall out in a rush. He trusts Allyria, with everything. He cannot hide from her not truly. 

"I'm a Kingsguard, I'm sworn to put the royal family before all else, before even myself. The vows I took...I swore not to marry or to father children, and for a good reason. What if she dies or, or is hurt because I put our child first? What if I hurt our child because I prioritise her?" 

The next words nearly stick in his throat, but somehow he forces them out. "I can't, I won't be a father like mine. I would rather die. But I swore my very soul to her, Allyria."

For a long moment, she doesn't speak. 

Her eyes, dark indigo and oh so painfully familiar, rest on him and the weight of that gaze is almost unbearable. 

The absence of the usual spark in them makes it worse. 

She doesn't shout or scream or claw at him or make threats, not like Cersei used to. 

She doesn't weep or look away or try to sway his mind. 

She only looks at him, steady and calm and entirely unreadable.

After a long, long silence she finally speaks. "I love Visenya dearly, as I love all my kin. I do not begrudge her your love, nor your devotion, for my love and loyalty is also hers. But that does not mean I do not also love our child."

The words are heavy, like great boulders falling against his spirit. 

"Allyria..."

She raises one hand, and he silences. "I understand that your loyalty is sworn to her. But you aren't thinking straight, and I do not have the strength to fix that, not now. Speak to Oberyn, or to her, and find a compromise that will satisfy you. But until then, I think it is best that we have a little space between us. Time to contemplate and to find out where we stand."

Words rise to his mouth, weighing down the tip of his tongue. Apologies, excuses, promises, compromises all tangling together in a heavy mass of duty and desire that makes him feel liks he's choking. 

He swallows them down. 

"As my lady wishes."

Slowly, he stands and walks around to her side of the bed. 

There are dark circles under her eyes, for they were both active until late into the night. As much as they understand Rohanne's night terrors, occasionally there are remedial measures that must be taken. 

Allyria is the mastermind behind most of these, because as much as Jaime has learned he is still but a soldier at heart. He has not the mind to plan such deceptions as are necessary. 

She is terrifying in some moments, sharp as a knife and twice as clever.

He leans in and kisses her cheek gently. She does not smile, nor does she turn her head so that he kisses her lips instead. But she does not pull away, only accepts the kiss without comment. 

"Are you able to get up by yourself, or shall I call for Lissa?'' He carefully does not ask if she wants him to aid her, though he has been doing so since she grew big enough that she found manoeuvring uncomfortable. Up close, he can see the hurt she conceals so well, and his stomach twists at the knowledge that he put it there. 

Lissa is her maid, the daughter of one of the multitude of Lannisport Lannisters, with muddy blond hair and hazel eyes. She's earnest and diligent in her duties, but that isn't why Allyria chose her above others eager to serve their future lady, who will one day be queen of the westerlands in all but name.

Lissa was born late in her mother's life, and though sweet and hard working, like so many babes born almost too late she suffered for it. In Lissa's case, it turns to their advantage, for she is too simple to understand the secrets they keep. Should they slip around Lissa, they can be confident that none will know.

Allyria shakes her head. "Help me up, and then call her." 

He does so, and then leaves. Lissa passes him on the way in, and he hears Allyria greeting the girl gently, and directing her to help her dress. 

Satisfied that all is well, Jaime moves to his own chambers and calls for his squire to help him dress. 

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

He seeks out Oberyn first. 

The Red Viper has four daughters of his own, and is kin to both Jaime's wife and his queen. 

Most importantly, he is an unparalleled fighter and Jaime is jittery with all of thinking he's had to do lately. He wants to do something, not creep around and plot and whisper like he's imitating the fucking Spider. 

He's a man of action, not a spy. All this secrecy and deception is anathema to him, but it is for his queen and so he does it without complaint. 

That doesn't mean it doesn't frustrate him, however. He doesn't want to think and plot and plan. He just wants to do something.

Even just having a sword in his hand will make him feel better. 

He finds Oberyn in the library, lounging lazily in the window seat with a slender book that is vaguely familiar. Somehow, the prince manages to make the innocuous act seem deeply threatening. 

Jaime starts to clear his throat, but Oberyn interrupts him as he turns a page. 

"I never knew the Westerlands had so many different capital punishments. Most places keep to one or two, beheading or hanging or drowning and the like, but here..." He looks up, and his black eyes are bright with wicked delight. "The sheer variety is staggering. Under different circumstances, I might even enjoy myself here."

The book finally clicks in Jaime's mind. It's a listing of different crimes and their punishments under the Iron Throne's law and under Lannister law. Simultaneously dry and dreadfully graphic. 

Of course Oberyn Martell would find it fascinating. 

"I'm not here to talk about laws." Certainly not their punishments. He knows very well what will happen should the truth ever come out, he does not need the reminder. 

The prince looks at him, raises an eyebrow, and then closes the book. "I didn't think you did. What did you do to my cousin?"

In an instant, the malicious twinkle is gone from Oberyn's eyes and a dark fire has replaced it. Jaime almost takes a step back at the sudden change. 

"Not here, your highness. Somewhere quieter would be the best place for this."

He carefully does not shift about and fidget under the pressure of the prince's gaze, but he certainly wants to. The sheer danger emanating from the man like a tangible thing is intensely unsettling.

After a painfully long moment, the prince jerks his head. "Where is your somewhere quieter?"

Jaime is very careful not to breathe a sigh of relief as the dark gaze relaxes. He may be wed to the prince's cousin, and his niece's most fervent protector, but that doesn't mean he is immune to the Red Viper's venom. "Follow me."

The gardens of Casterly Rock are not as large as those of Riverrun or Sunspear or Highgarden. Like the Eyrie, the Rock is perched too high up on too small a surface for such a thing. 

Previous Lannisters have gotten around this constraint by turning what gardens they do have into a veritable maze that feels about twenty times bigger than it actually is. 

As children, he and Cersei had gotten lost and found each other and gotten lost again until they knew every corner of the tangled web of greenery. The place he has in mind at present is small enough that almost no one knows of its existence, but still large enough to spar and run. 

He should know, it was where he taught Cersei to fight. It was their hidden spot, their castle and fortress against the world.

But Cersei is not here, and so only he knows of the existence of the little corner of the gardens, hidden between the hedges that border larger gardens and the cliff edge, left to run almost wild for how rarely the gardeners find it. 

Cersei wouldn't mind him bringing Oberyn here, he's sure. She always said that they were almost the same person, and so surely they will love the same things. 

If he loves his queen so deeply, so fiercely, then surely his twin will have generosity in her heart towards those who aid and protect Visenya. 

Not that he would ever tell Cersei of Visenya's continued existence. He loves and trusts his sister, but he doesn't want to endanger her and she is too close to the Baratheon king to be safe should she know. 

Regardless, he is certain that if she knew the truth she would not mind. He only brings Oberyn here for Visenya, and Cersei knows how much he loves his little queen who he watched grow from a babe to the child she is now, for whom he killed his own king. 

The prince looks around the little garden with a raised eyebrow. "If I didn't know better, I would think you brought me here to kill me."

Jaime resists the urge to respond to the taunt the way his clenched fists urge him to. "I didn't."

A shrug. "Then please, enlighten me."

"Allyria...I..." He falls silent. Gathers his thoughts. Starts again. "The babe kicked today. I felt it."

The prince smiles, a true smile if tinged with bittersweet memory. "That is good, no?"

He slumps down into the grass. "I'm sworn to your niece, if you remember. My oaths are quite clear- take no wife, father no child, all of that."

For a moment, the prince just looks at him oddly. "I'm assuming you see a problem?"

"I broke my vows." Jaime looks down at his hands, picking at a scab on the back of his hand. "I swore to remain unwed, and I broke that vow. I swore not to father a child, and I broke that vow. I swore to protect the king, and I broke that vow. So after all that, how in the seven hells am I supposed to believe that I can keep my vow to protect her?"

There is a long silence. He looks up to see the prince's eyes on him, steady and calm and unreadable. 

Fortunately for Jaime's peace of mind, the spear is several feet away from the Red Viper's hands. 

After an interminably long moment, the prince sighs and sits down on the grass across from him. "Allyria sent you to talk to me, yes?"

Jaime nods. "You or her."

The prince falls silent again. He plucks a tuft of grass and twists and plaits it idly. 

Neither man speaks for a while, but eventually the grass falls back to the ground. "I should be challenging you for hurting my baby cousin, but I have every confidence in her ability to do take her justice herself."

Not a particularly encouraging statement, but Jaime nods anyway. 

"No, she sent you to me for another reason. Do you remember Cedra?"

It takes a while, but eventually Jaime recollects the woman he thinks the prince means. One of the several Dornish noblewomen who had accompanied their princess to King's Landing.

She had rather blended in with the others, with the same dark hair and dark eyes, and being rather unassuming in appearance. No beauty, but hardly plain either.

"Lord Jordayne's daughter? Elia's lady-in-waiting?"

Oberyn nods. "Now the current Lord Jordayne's sister. Their father was killed on the Trident, defending my uncle Lewyn."

A twinge of something twists Jaime's stomach. He hadn't really ever spoken with Cedra much, but she had been sensible and kind. She didn't deserve to lose her father on that bloodbath of a battlefield, where the losing side weren't even granted the grace of burial.

No one did.

"I didn't know. I'm sorry." The words seem trite and useless in the face of everything, but he genuinely cannot think of anything else. 

The prince blinks, and the glisten in his eyes vanishes. "House Martell honours Lord Jordayne's sacrifice. Thank you."

Unsaid, but not unheard, is the implication that Lord Jordayne need not have died - Lewyn Martell was killed anyway, cut down by some Vale knight not worthy to lick his boots. Lewyn had been a good man, and a better fighter, and a perfect Kingsguard. None of those qualities had ever or would ever apply to that no-name Lyn whatever his name was.

"But of more import to why Allyria wanted me to speak to you. Do you know why Lord Jordayne sacrificed himself for Lewyn so readily?"

Jaime opens his mouth, and then closes it. The obvious answer is clearly not the correct one, if the prince is asking him to guess.

He shakes his head. 

As much as he had admired and respected Lewyn, he had not known him as anything but a Kingsguard. A good Kingsguard, dedicated, unwavering, ever loyal, but Jaime has never known Lewyn the Prince.

"My uncle loved Cedra."

For a moment, Jaime thinks he has heard wrong. "I'm sorry?"

Oberyn smirks a little. "My uncle and Cedra were lovers."

At first, Jaime's instinct is to deny it. Lewyn Martell? The perfect Kingsguard? Breaking his vows? 

But something in the prince's eyes halts the words in his mouth. Instead, it is something quite different that comes out. 

"Did Elia know?"

A lazy nod. Jaime narrows his eyes - Oberyn is enjoying this. 

"She didn't care that his loyalties were divided?" He doesn't say, she wouldn't care that mine are. 

"My sister was wise, and Cedra was generous. Allyria is not generous, but she is practical."

Jaime closes his eyes and buries his head in his hands. His world is spinning. He had believed in Lewn Martell's integrity, and finding that he had disregarded his oaths as thoroughly as Jaime himself is...unsettling.

"But he broke his vows."

A hand pats his shoulder, and Jaime startles. He looks up to find the Red Viper's black eyes uncomfortably close to him, and an unusual look of pity in them. "He broke them for love, and he was still one of the best Kingsguards of the age. You broke yours for necessity, and you broke the lesser only in order to keep the greater. Is it really so difficult to justify?"

Jaime sighs. 

"Perhaps." His loyalty is to his queen above all, but that does not mean his love is all sworn to her. 

He hesitates. "Does she know?"

The answer is unhesitating and definite and not what he thought it would be. "No."

"Surely she should? He was her uncle too."

But Oberyn is already shaking his head. "Uncle Lewyn didn't want her to know. He didn't want her to have to question every promise and oath ever made to her when she was so young. 

"She's seen more now. She's seen me break my own oaths." He does not see how she can be too young to know her uncle had a lover when she saw him open her own grandfather's throat. 

"No. She saw you defending her, and you still defend her with everything you can give. She is too young yet to understand why Uncle took his oaths with every intent of breaking them."

Jaime feels almost insulted on behalf of his queen, Oberyn's niece or no. "She understands more than you think."

"But she is still so young - allow her this little bit of innocence remaining to her." 

Before today, Jaime would have been hard put to say with any truth that she had any innocence left. She has seen so much in so little time. 

He nods. "Alright."

Oberyn stands, and then extends his hand down to Jaime. "Now, you have an apology to make to your wife, but first I could do with a bit of action. This is a long way from the fighting pits, but neither of us is complaining I think."

Jaime accepts the hand with considerable wariness, very aware of the twinkle in the capricious prince's eye.

Chapter Text

Rohanne II

The two hundred and eighty-third year since Aegon's Conquest draws to a close with almost as much fanfare in the Rock as in King's Landing. 

Hardly surprising when considers the wealth of the Lannisters, matched only by their pride. 

Even less surprising when one recalls that for the first time in years, there is a lady of Casterly Rock who is not the placeholder that the lord's sister was, and she will soon give birth to his first grandchild. 

The lord in question sits in the very centre of the high table. He does not smile or make light conversation with those around him, but his elaborate and ostentatious feast apparel glimmers beneath the candles. 

The gold in the ouches on his slashed cloth-of-gold sleeves, and the deep red jewels on the thick chains about his shoulders, as well as the intricate blackwork on his doublet are exactly what is expected of the wealthiest man in Westeros and not a hair more or less. 

Beside him, his son and heir shines as though made of living gold, sitting at his father's right hand for the first time in years. 

His golden curls are clean and bright, and while not quite as layered and cumbersome as his father's, his clothes are made of velvet and ermine and cloth-of-gold and cut and styled more than richly enough to appease his demanding father. Even the fine linen that pokes through the slashes in his doublet seems to glow in the dim light of the candles and fireplaces. 

Allyria sits next to her husband throughout the festivities, her accent cut glass and clear like all the other Western nobles about her.

She says as little to Jaime as possible without arousing suspicion, for though they have had a long conversation or ten and reconciled, she is only human and his rejection of their child had stung.

Rohanne is unaware of this breach in the unity between her father and stepmother. (Visenya knows and worries, remembering similar disagreements between her own parents.)

Despite her pregnancy, Allyria has forgone the comfortable draped silks of her homeland. Instead, she has donned rich velvets and jewels in the style of the Westerlands.

On its own, her gown is magnificent, cut of crimson silk velvet and dazzling in its sumptous richness.

In a rather obvious display of wealth, it's been cut generously enough to accommodate her pregnant form rather than having to leave a gap in the lacing as most women must.

Allyria has avoided the issue so far by wearing the looser gowns of her homeland, but for the celebrations she has had a new gown made, one that she can alter as needed for when she rewears it without the added mass that a child adds to her frame. 

The simplicity of the cut, and the lack of embroidery, is more than made up for by the almost obscenely expensive fabric. At least, that is the implication that will be taken away by the nobles attending their lord paramount's festivities.

In truth, silk of any kind is one of Dorne's greatest exports, up to and including silk velvet, and the kermes insects used for the dye are rather a pest near Godsgrace, where her mother was born. 

Her aunt Nymella had gifted her crimson fabrics of all kinds, and it is from this that Allyria's dress has been made. 

The crimson cloth of gold that makes up the ostentatiously slashed false sleeves and the kirtle was woven on looms that run with the same rhythm as the Torrentine, on which her brother's ancestral castle rests. 

Even the gold and ruby ouches that adorn the neckline of the dress and hold together the slashes in the false sleeves were brought with her from Dorne, as part of her excessively large dowry that would once have been split between two sisters but now has travelled with only one.

They were originally a set of hairpins and shoulder brooches handed down from her long-dead grandmother, but there has been time to rework them.

And in Allyria's one open rebellion, her hair flows freely from beneath her stiffened rounded hood, rather than hidden by a veil as is the Western custom.

Rohanne has little understanding of the politics behind her stepmother's choice of fabrics for her debut gown in the society of the Westerlands, but buried deep within her is a ghost with pale hair and violet eyes that laughs at everyone who compliments the gown as Western. 

The cut may be Western, but every last stitch orginated in Dorne. 

Her father's Aunt Genna was furious when she realised just how neatly Allyria had managed to find the loopholes in Lord Tywin's instructions to 'make a Westerner' out of his Dornish law-daughter. 

Rohanne grins from where she is sat with Genna's sons. 

She may not have a personal grudge against Genna the way she does against Tywin, but the woman is too much like her brother for Visenya to like her much. 

And seeing a Lannister thwarted is always enjoyable, particularly one who looks so much like the man who still haunts her dreams. 

Would he have looked like that if her mother and siblings had lived? If his plots and plans had been foiled? If he had been defied and defeated?

She had laughed until she cried after Genna had swept out in a huff.

Lyonel pokes her. "Stop smiling like that. You're a bastard, but you're a Lannister so you've got to act like one."

Sharp, clever, too old for her years Visenya would have retaliated with words sharp enough to flay him. 

Sweet, obedient, innocent Rohanne only takes a deep breath, counting to ten in a language she never learned, and nods. "Okay, Lyonel."

The eight year old annoys her deeply, even though she is well aware that much of his sharpness comes from irritation that his mother has stuck him looking after her - his five year old bastard cousin. 

And in his own way, he is looking out for her. 

He is trying to help the younger child acclimatise to a complicated social situation that he cannot even begin to understand himself. 

It isn't his fault that she wants to curse his head off for it, because she knows how to read a room better than this sheltered infant.

It isn't. 

She purses her lips and tugs at his sleeve. "Lyonel?"

The older child frowns and yanks his sleeve back. "What?"

"I want to go to bed. It's too big and loud."

He rolls his eyes, the same vivid emerald as her own, the same colour that haunts her nightmares. "You can't go to bed yet, they haven't even brought the desert out yet."

Rohanne twists her face into a pout and her lips tremble. "I'm tired! I want to go to bed."

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

In the end, she gets her way. 

Genna comes down from the high table before too much notice can be drawn to the spat between the two children, and takes Rohanne out of the hall herself. 

Of course, then she dumps her on a serving maid with brusque instructions to put her to bed and stay with her, but at least she made some sort of effort?

Rohanne endures the girl's rough assistance with her dress in silence, and allows herself to be put swiftly to bed without protests. 

After all, once there is no one there to watch her, there is no one there to make her stay in bed. 

Soon, almost immediately after she closes her eyes and drops her breathing, the light footsteps recede and she is left alone. 

It is hardly surprising that the maid has clearly deemed merriment more important than watching a whore's bastard.

She ignores the pang at the thought that her mother would have had the head of any woman who dared abandon her firstborn like that.

Instead, she scrambles up onto the wide windowsill to watch the sun as it descends to the sea in a blaze of fire and light. 

The last time she watched the sun set like this, her mother was alive. 

She had stood on the wide window ledge, clutching her mother's shoulder for balance and watching as the shining armour of her grandfather's army faded out of sight. 

That had been the last time she ever saw her father, or her uncle Lewyn. 

Her father had faced Robert Baratheon and died with his chest smashed, crushing his traitorous, fickle heart. People have started to whisper that with his last breath he said the wolf-bitch's name.

Her uncle had been cut down from behind, already cruelly wounded, and his body left to the tender mercies of the carrion that circle battlefields. 

"You shouldn't be left alone like this."

The thick Dornish accent coming so unexpectedly makes her start, and for a wild moment she thinks it's her great-uncle's voice, wonders if Lewyn has somehow returned to protect her beyond all hope.

She whirls, almost overbalancing, and is caught in the nick of time by strong, wiry arms draped in orange and golden silk. 

Her uncle Oberyn's black eyes look down at her, and the awful solemnity in them nearly takes her breath away. "Be careful in high places like this. If you fall, they'll never find your body."

Rohanne clutches at the arm around her, feeling the familiar smooth silk against her fingertips. “Thank you, your highness.” 

Oberyn only pulls her fully back from the window, and sits down on the wide seat with her on his knee.

Silently, Rohanne buries her face into the silk tunic and closes her eyes, breathing in the familiar scent of sun and sand and spices.

Her eyes burn, but no one is there to see it save for the prince, and he can hardly fault her for it.

Not when she can hear his shuddering breath, not when his arms wind around her and squeeze as if it will stop her from falling and leaving the way her mother and her siblings did. 

She wonders if he used to watch the sun set with his sister, if he looks at the riot of colours spread across the sky with the same painful ache in his chest as she does. If he too can stare right into the sun without blinking, the way her mother could.

Both of them sit there in silence for a long time, clutching the other like drowning men at sea and watching as the sun sinks lower and lower.

When it touches the horizon, it turns the sea all to gold, as if living flame dances across the waters, but neither of the silent watchers looks away. 

Rohanne's eyes slip closed as the first stars wink into view above them, silent and cold.

She barely feels the featherlight kiss on her brow, or the gentle hands that pull the covers over her.

But her dreams are filled with bittersweet memories of laughing children and a dark haired woman who smells of sun and sand and spices.

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

Two hundred and eighty-four AC dawns bright and clear and as beautiful a summer day as one could desire - the first year in centuries to open without a Targaryen on the Iron Throne.

It feels significant, somehow. 

The start of a new era, where the mighty dragonlords are hunted and despised. Where their millennia-old dynasty has been scattered and beaten down once and for all.

As far as the world knows, all that remains of House Targaryen's centuries of glory and power now lies with two orphans lost in Essos. 

And the Iron Throne, the seat and symbol of their power and glory, is occupied by a Baratheon, by the descendant of a bastard line who wears black and gold.

It is the end of an age, and the beginning of a new one.

Rohanne wakes early enough to slip out of bed and run to the window as the sun rises. 

She can't look at it directly out of the window, but if she settles on the opposite side to the one she sat on to watch the sun set, then she can just about watch it rise. 

The last time she watched the sun rise on the new year, her mother had woken her and she had been propped on her hip, bleary and yawning.

Her father had still been alive. She had not known that he would never come back, that she would never hear him sing to her again. 

She had not known that she would soon loose the people she loved most in the world in a welter of fear and blood.

Rohanne stares straight into the sun and does not blink or look away. If one looks closely enough, one could almost think that her eyes look more purple than green.

Chapter Text

Allyria I

Her husband's brother is infamous throughout Westeros, and has been since his birth. 

After all, who doesn't know of the monster who was born to Tywin Lannister. To punish him some say, to humble him say others, and only a few say that it is merely something that happens. 

The boy is whispered to have horns, a tail, a red eye, both male and female parts, all manner of horrible deformities coming together in one under sized body to create a horror previously unknown to man. 

Over the course of their journey to Casterly Rock, Jaime had often spoken fondly of his little brother and she had begun to wonder about the personality behind the rumours, not only the face.

Tales of a boy who dreamed of dragons, who read as widely as a Maester, and who had the sardonic humour of a man many times his age had spilled from her husband's lips, love apparent in every word despite having seen the boy only seldom since becoming a Kingsguard seven years ago.

She had become...curious, almost looking forward to meeting the boy, not because of his rumoured monstrosity, not anymore. 

No, now she had wanted to meet little Tyrion, Jaime's brother, who was young and sharp and had neither father nor mother through no fault of her own. Her husband's stories about the little boy's dark humour and brilliant mind had sparked her interest, and she wished to meet the brother who brought such a light to Jaime's face. 

She has no younger siblings of her own, and all of her close cousins are older than her save for her aunt Nymella's son, but Ryon Allyrion is squiring for Lord Toland and she had not seen him in four years when she left Dorne. 

Her elder siblings had always been kind and loving to her but they had always been more like three extra parents to her than siblings in truth. 

Allyria has never known having siblings close to her as Jaime has, never known the closeness of a twin and the protective urge of being an elder sibling. 

She was never alone as a child, but she was sometimes lonely, wishing for a playmate near her own age. 

In a way, she can sympathise with Tyrion. Both youngests, both losing their mothers before they could know them, both with significantly older siblings.

The loneliness inherent in such a position is something she hopes to alleviate for her new good-brother, and something she hopes no child of hers will ever suffer.

Looking at him now, she is ashamed to remember her initial guilty twinge of disappointment at how...ordinary he looks. 

For being the subject of such furious rumour-mongering over the years, he seems far too much like any other boy of ten. 

Perhaps his head is a little large for his body, and he does not possess the stunning good looks of his elder brother, but he looks nothing like the monstrous dwarf people whisper of. A little small for his age perhaps, but still human, still recognisable. 

The most interesting thing about him is his eyes, which are only so for the sardonic intelligence constantly lurking behind him. And, occasionally, the intense love that softens them. 

She sees that love now, as his little hands press gently on her swollen belly, as the babe inside her kicks back at the pressure.

Tyrion rarely smiles, but he is beaming now, and it brightens every time he feels the babe. 

It is pure and sweet, unusual in the boy so unloved and lonely that he has formed a shell about him of cynicism and cool distance.

Then again, she has known such people before. Often, behind their protective mask, they are some of the most loyal, loving people one could have the honour to know. 

Is not little Obara one such?  Is not her queen? 

The thought of their little queen leads her inevitably to the thought of her husband, and his infuriating, blind loyalty. 

He does not seem to understand the simple fact of life that one can have more than one all-consuming purpose in life, indeed it is impossible to live a full life with only one purpose. 

She is relatively new to the deceits and masks of politics, but she still understands compromises and negotations. 

Jaime may have sworn himself to the queen, but he married her and he gave her the babe she carries. He has a duty to them too. 

Allyria sighs and presses her hands into her aching back.

They have spoken long together, and arrived at compromises and a reconciliation. But she is still angry at him, still nursing the instinctive hurt at his rejection of the child they have made together.

She can't help it, is not proud of it, but the fact remains that she resents his loyalty betimes. 

Did not she too lose those she loved that day?

She who grew up tagging after Elia and Ashara. Who went crying to them after a fall because they were the closest thing she had to a mother. Who had sat at their feet, eyes wide and innocent, as they talked about the prince who had come to woo Elia. Who had spent her life following them, and then watched them be ripped away from her.

She too is loyal to Elia, and to Elia's memory, and most of all to Elia's child. 

She had loved Elia fiercely, her fragile, invincible cousin, and now she loves solemn Visenya just as fiercely. 

Her loyalty, and her love, is given to her little queen, to the small girl who has Elia's smile and her ways, who is so silent and who's eyes are so old for a child who cannot even count her age on two hands yet.

No child should have that awful empty look in their eyes, and still less should they be able to veil it as Visenya does when she becomes Rohanne.

But the child that grows within her has her loyalty and her love too. 

So to does Oberyn, and Doran, and their children, and her brother and Meria and their new daughter Deria. They all have her love and her heart and her loyalty.

Her love is not finite, nor is it lessened for her loving more than one person, yet no matter how long they talk together, Jaime cannot or will not understand. 

In his mind, one dedicates their entire being to one person, and lives and dies for that one person. His cause was once his twin, and now it is their queen.

Mood souring at the reminder of her stubborn husband, she places a hand over Tirion's and sends him away to his lessons. She is careful to keep her voice level and kind however - too often has she heard her goodfather directing cruel words at the little boy.

She is angry at her husband yes, but that doesn't mean she is going to take it out on her goodbrother who is young and sweet and oh so lonely. 

He reminds her of herself too much for her to ever be sharp with him.

Qoren Dayne had been too soft hearted to ever hate his own child as Tywin Lannister does, but had he been less kind, she too could have been brought up knowing nothing but frosty duty and the absent love of older siblings who had their own lives already. 

She knows that there were times he looked at her and saw only the reason his lifelong love died, but they are far outweighed by the times he looked at the only child Deria Allyrion gave him and loved her. 

Loved her as Jaime cannot bring himself to love their child.

Allyria sighs and rubs her temples, trying to stave off the oncoming headache as she inevitably circles back around to the reason for her sour mood. 

She has come all the way from warm, vibrant Dorne to this strange, rigid, poisonous castle. She has put up with sneering golden haired Lannisters, and brown haired ones too. She has done her duty and more to her husband. 

She has sacrificed much for their cause, and all she asks in return is that Jaime love their child, truly love the human they have brought into being together. 

He had not been so hesitant earlier, she thinks bitterly. So it is with all men, quick to seek their enjoyment and just as quick to denounce the results. 

"Allyria?" 

Looking up, she sees the object of her ire poking his head in through the doorway.

He is annoyingly pretty, she cannot help but think, with his golden curls ruffled and his bright eyes bent on her. He looks...young, young and innocent.

But perhaps that is much of the problem. 

They are two children trying to make their way in a world too old and too wily for them. The board has been set, and the pieces are in play, but they are still learning the rules and they hurt each other in the process.

What can they do but their best? 

She does not smile, not yet, but she holds out her hand to him.

"The babe is kicking again."

Somewhat hesitantly, he comes and kneels beside her. 

He does not touch her, his hand hovering over the place where the fabric covering her swollen stomach billows out. 

Allyria does not prompt him or push him.

He may have been thoughtlessly cruel to her, but she was purposefully cruel in return, and for that she is sorry just as he is. 

They are learning, and they are trying, and they are not dead yet. 

That is something at least. 

Chapter Text

Tyrion I

In all his life, he has never been happier. 

Cersei is gone far away, hopefully forever. He's looked at maps, and he knows how far away King's Landing is - it takes nearly two moons to get there from Casterly Rock! 

Tyrion cannot imagine the long journey it took for Cersei to get all the way to King's Landing. He himself has never been further away from the Rock than one can ride in a single day.

Perhaps, because it is so far, she will never come back. He would love never to see her again.

One day, he wants to travel right up to the Wall and down to Sunspear and across to Asshai. He wants to go everywhere, anywhere that isn't the Rock. 

But for now, he is blissfully happy.

Cersei is gone far away, Jaime is home, and his lord father is angry at someone other than him for once. 

Life is good. 

He's an uncle now, too. 

Rohanne is shorter than him, and she smiles at him without it seeming forced. Just for that, he is willing to play even the most inane game she wishes him to - not that she ever seems to play. 

Most children play, he knows that much. He's seen them do it, the few times he's been allowed to visit Lannisport. 

It seems a great mystery to him, for all he's ever had is books and his own imagination. He dreams of riding dragons, but he's never played knights-and-dragons with half a dozen other shrieking children in the streets. 

His Uncle Kevan wouldn't let him because Tyrion is a Lannister not a street urchin. His lord father wouldn't let him because he didn't want Tyrion to disgrace the family name further. 

As far as Tyrion's concerned, if he's going to be a disgrace by simply existing why not let him be a disgrace for something he's actually done? 

His lord father's logic makes no sense. He's going to be ashamed of Tyrion no matter what he does, so Tyrion does not understand why he is so harsh about anything Tyrion does remotely wrong. 

Regardless, he had been excited when he heard that Jaime was bringing back a child. He had hoped for a playmate that no one could object to, someone to fight great battles and discover great lands with. 

But Rohanne does not seem to play. 

She runs around and smiles and prattles, like an aimless beam of sunshine. 

She dances and laughs and clings to Jaime and Allyria. 

As far as anyone is concerned she is just like any other girl of only five namedays. 

But she does not play. 

Not with him anyway. 

She sits with him quietly and pages carelessly through books as large as herself to find the pictures. 

She listens to his stories with wide eyes and laughter. 

She hangs on his every word and looks at him with awe. 

But she does not play. 

Tyrion would be disappointed by that if she were not so bright. 

It is hard to be angry with her when she seems to bring sunshine with her even into the darkest bowels of the Rock. 

Everyone smiles to see her, with her careless prattling and her bright laughter, ever heralded by her head of golden curls. 

Once, Tyrion could have sworn that a winter-pale gleam of a smile crossed his lord father's face, as his granddaughter chattered away to him. 

His lord father has never smiled, not in all of Tyrion's life, or even Jaime's, which is a considerably longer time. 

Well, Aunt Genna did say that he smiled when Jaime and Cersei were born, but Tyrion has his doubts about that. Why would his lord father smile at Cersei? 

But then it doesn't really matter, does it. Because Cersei is gone, and Jaime is not, and it is absolutely wonderful. 

Jaime even has a wife, Lady Allyria, who's everything the storybooks say Cersei should have been. She's kind and generous and sweet and beautiful, and she doesn't hate him or twist up her face into a moue of digust when she sees him.

She even smiles at him, and asks about his day and what he's learned. 

It's almost like having a mother, or at least like the mothers he's read about in storybooks. 

She's sweeter to him than Aunt Genna ever is to her sons, and Aunt Genna is the only mother he's seen interact with her children. All the other mothers he knows about are servants who's children live in places a Lannister does not deign to visit. 

At first, he thought she was just being polite, but she has never even hesitated to smile and greet him, even when she looks sad. 

She even finds him books to read, and is willing to talk to him about them. For minutes at a time! 

No one has ever talked to him about books before - no one has ever cared, except Jaime who doesn't care for books.

It's very strange indeed, but he revels in it, and will revel in it for as long as it lasts. 

He wonders if maybe she's just practicing for when her baby is born, and once she has her own child she'll forget about him, and maybe Rohanne as well. 

It's something he keeps thinking about, especially once the baby starts kicking. 

She always smiles so brightly to feel the little butterfly movements.

It's stupid for him to feel jealous of the baby, but he is just a greedy, jealous little half of a boy. And anyway, he'll still have Rohanne.

Even if Prince Oberyn is always trying to monopolise her. That's a new word Tyrion learned after Jaime grumbled about it to Lady Allyria when he thought no one could hear. 

The prince doesn't like Lannisters, but Lady Allyria is his cousin so he came with her when she was married.

He was going to leave after a few moons, but then Lady Allyria became pregnant and Prince Doran told Prince Oberyn to stay untul the baby was born.

Tyrion is fairly sure that princes have prince things to do, like ruling countries, but Prince Oberyn just seems to wander around Casterly Rock and make sharp comments that no one can take offense at without looking stupid. 

He doesn't like the prince. He's strange, and he's always talking to Tyrion's favourite people. 

At least he seems to like children, though. He adores Rohanne, and he's kind to Tyrion even if he looks at him weird. 

But he is the strangest man Tyrion has ever seen. Like a dangerous prince from the storybooks, or a pirate. 

He fights better than Jaime, and he's beaten Tyrion's lord father at cyvasse, and once Tyrion found him in the secret garden that only Tyrion knows about. He was cooking something, but it smelled weird, and Tyrion felt like he had walked into a magician's lair without realising. 

The prince had looked up and smiled at him, and Tyrion had just caught a flash of sharp, white teeth. He hasn't gone back to the garden since then. 

He isn't afraid of Prince Oberyn, but he's, well. The prince is strange.

The setting sun shines into his eyes, startling Tyrion out of his thoughts.

It glints off the sea, turning it all to gold, and making the pages of his book hard to see. 

It's a book about Florian and Jonquil that Lady Allyria gave him before she went into confinement. He doesn't usually like poetry, but he likes this book.

It's fun, and clever, and a little bit bawdy. He feels terribly grown up reading it.

Lady Allyria's been in confinement for the better part of a moon now, and the baby is going to come any day. 

Every morning, Tyrion wakes up and cannot help but wonder if today is the day that he will lose the closest thing he has ever had to a mother. 

She might die, like his mother did. Or she might stop caring. 

Tyrion puts such thoughts firmly out of his head.

He is excited!

Cersei is gone, and he's going to be an uncle. Everything is wonderful. 

Opening his book again, he burrows deep into the story of Florian and Jonquil.

Reading poetry is boring, but if he ignores the weird verses and lines and stuff he still likes the stories. And Lady Allyria likes it, so there must be something good about it.

"Tyrion?"

He jumps at the unexpected voice, and nearly bangs his head on the side of the window. 

"Jaime?" Leaning out of the deep window seat in his room, he can just see his older brother's head sticking in through a crack in the door. "What is it?"

A broad smile spreads across Jaime's face, though it doesn't quite reach his fearful eyes. "The maester said that the baby will be here in a matter of hours - would you come and wait with me?"

Tyrion drops his book and hurries over to his brother. Close up, the badly hidden fear is even more visible. 

Jaime's hands are shaking. 

Chapter Text

Oberyn II

He remembers Allyria's birth. Well, in a manner of speaking. He remembers the raven that announced it, and Doran explaining to him that it meant he had a new cousin. 

If he is entirely honest, he hadn't particularly cared back then. He had Arthur to play with, and Elia and Ashara, all of them of an age with each other. 

The heedless child that Oberyn was then had only thought of the interruption to his own life that it meant, and he had considered little else. 

Now, watching his little cousin's husband pacing nervously, he can only think of Lady Deria. He has few memories of Allyria's mother, for he had been small and Deria had been Lady Dayne for only a few years, but it is not his own memory that gives him cause for fear.

She had been a healthy woman, or so he has been told, healthier than Lord Qoren's first wife and Lady Cedra had given her husband three children with ease. 

And yet, after Allyria's birth, Deria had quickly sickened and died for no apparent reason. 

Allyria is strong and determined, and he has every faith in her, but everyone had assumed that Lady Deria was well right up until she died. 

What if whatever had happened to her mother happens to Allyria? 

Or what if she is cursed as his own mother was, as Queen Rhaella was, to watch her babe wither away before her eyes? 

No, Oberyn tells himself. Allyria is young, far younger than Lady Deria had been. Lady Deria had been healthy, true, but Allyria was late for a first child - her mother had been closer to forty than thirty. 

That is all it was. Nothing will go wrong. 

Everything will be fine. 

Allyria will be fine. 

Allyria will live. The child will live.

He narrows his eyes at Jaime Lannister. 

The Kingslayer has not stopped pacing nervously the whole time, like a lion in a cage, his hands clenched into fists by his sides. 

He feels quite dizzy watching the young lion after a while, for he moves so quickly that he is turning almost every other step.

Oberyn tears his eyes away from the younger man and focuses instead on his niece. 

As ever, the sight of Elia's child hidden behind golden curls and green eyes sends a stab of rage through him, but Oberyn is man enough to endure it when the alternative is for Visenya to have no eyes at all. 

He has lost his sister and two of her children already - if it is at all within his power, the quiet tomb that holds them will never be disturbed by another addition.

Their bones will moulder and fall into dust, and he will mourn them as fiercely when he is old and gray as he does now. But as long as Visenya draws breath, Oberyn does not care whether her hair is silver or gold or pink, as long as the head it is attached to is living.

Let Robert Baratheon boast of his prowess at murdering babes on his stolen throne, in his stolen keep. It will rankle in Oberyn's pride, but the Martells have stolen a victory from the unsuspecting conqueror, as they have in every age.

In the end, as long as his niece lives, they have won. 

Elia has won. 

He smiles at the thought. 

How like Elia, to have victory even from the grave. 

As if sensing his gaze, Rohanne looks up from the book the stunted little lion had been showing her.

She gives him the smile that she has become known for in Casterly Rock, bright and innocent and full of untainted happiness. Oberyn is one of the few that knows her well enough to see the shadow behind that smile. 

Visenya never saw death in the birthing bed, but she had been deeply familiar with the ugly anticipation that had seized the court every time her sickly mother went into confinement.

Elia had been frail, and everyone knew the Targaryens had bad luck in the birthing bed. Half of the maiden daughters of the land had usually been summoned to court for one inane reason or other the moment his sister went into confinement, parading around with painted lips and coy smiles. 

Not that Oberyn has ever been against pretty women adorning themselves. Usually he appreciates it, but these women had been vultures waiting for his sister to die. 

He remembers his sister's pregnancies vividly.

How can he not?

Elia had been sick all through them, her slender form turning emaciated, her bright eyes turning dull. She had been able to keep hardly anything down, only rusks and blood oranges and a few other things.

Every time she went into confinement, Oberyn had found himself driven nearly mad with fear for her, so frail and thin after the long, awful pregnancies. 

The gods have a sense of humour after all, he supposes. They answered his prayers that Elia survive childbirth, that she not be killed in the birthing bed as stronger women have been by the dozen.

Instead, she was murdered. 

And now his cousin has married the Kingslayer. 

He wasn't opposed to the wedding - after all, it meant more protection for her if her stepmother was kin. 

But oh how he will hate to leave two of his blood here in this awful place. 

Three, soon. 

Allyria's pregnancy has been far easier than any of Elia's ever were, and for that Oberyn is grateful. 

With the amount of stress and pressure she is under, he can easily see how his little cousin could have had a difficult time, but she has not. 

She is practically glowing, her eyes and hair shining. 

It is a relief to Oberyn, to see his cousin healthy and well-cared for. 

Not safe, perhaps, not entirely, but there are few out there who are more dangerous than the Old Lion and she is about to give birth to his grandchild. It would be lunacy for him to do anything to her. 

Not happy either, not after the argument with her pig-headed husband, but Oberyn has already seen enough of life at only seven-and-twenty to know that she could be in a far worse situation. 

Even if he hates every moment she spends here, every breath of air. 

This is Lannister territory, the lion's den. 

This is the home of the man at whose orders Elia and her children were so brutally murdered. 

He hates that Allyria is here, hates that the safest place for his niece is right under the nose of her mother's murderer. 

But they are alive. Allyria and Visenya both, and Allyria's child. 

They are alive. 

Oberyn shifts, and uncurls his hands. His nails have bitten deep into his calloused palms, and he idly wipes away the few spots of blood that well up. 

Rohanne stands and toddles over to the Kingslayer, catching his hand with a beaming smile. "Papa! Look at Uncle Tyrion's book! It's so pretty!"

She pulls Jaime to the floor with her and starts babbling heedlesly about the illuminations in some children's book or other. 

Her eyes are bright and excited, her voice full of excitement without the slightest note of apprehension, her smile as pure as spring water.

If Oberyn wasn't watching her carefully, he wouldn't even notice her hand constantly darting to something beneath her dress, over her heart. 

He turns away, biting his tongue so hard the blood comes.

Nothing he says will be helpful at this moment, not with the thoughts going round and round his head.

Elia had survived bearing three living children, as much out of spite as out of fortune. Allyria has no less strength of will than his sister, and her body is far stronger.

Yet now, sat by the door, he is consumed by the distant memory of Lady Deria's still body, and of the sad little graves he had happened upon beneath an orange tree in the Water Gardens as a child. 

Stating that Allyria has Martell blood is on a par with stating that the sky is blue, but never before has it hit him in quite this way before. 

What if whatever bad blood cursed his mother so has passed to Allyria as well? 

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

In the end, all of their fears are for naught. 

The birth passes quickly for a first one, and the voices sounding from inside the room are jubilant.

No worried whispers accompany the sound of a baby's echoing cry, and he hears no weeping beyond that of the babe.

The relief that washes over him is enough that when the Kingslayer is the first to be summoned into the birthing chamber, he does not protest his own right to be there too. 

Instead, he looks at the two children sat on the floor. 

Rohanne is smiling, a child unaware of anything but joy. She is bouncing up and down, giggling to Tyrion about a baby brother or sister. 

The stunted little lion beside her is smiling too, mismatched eyes shining with impossible relief. Oberyn feels a pang of sympathy, remembering that Lady Joanna had bled out birthing him. He doubts somehow, that Tywin Lannister had been understanding that a babe had no control over what happened during its own birth.

The door re-opens, and the midwife Oberyn had found in Lannisport sticks her head out. 

There is blood splashed on her apron, and she looks tired, but there is a smile on her face. "She is asking for the rest of you now."

A maid slips past her and scurries off down the hall. Oberyn imagines she has gone to inform Lord Tywin or Lady Genna of the latest addition to House Lannister. 

Ignoring the familiar stab of rage at the thought that his cousin's child will be a Lannister, not a Dayne, he stands and herds the two children inside. 

Clearly, the servants have been busy. The sheets are clean and fresh, the windows are open, and Allyria looks far better than he would have thought any woman screaming like that ten minutes ago could look. 

She looks exhausted obviously, and there is pain graven on her face, but she is smiling like the cat that got the cream. 

Elia had always been barely conscious, present only through sheer spite and force of will, but Allyria looks triumphant. 

"Cousin, Rohanne, brother." She smiles wider, rocking the tiny bundle of cloth in her arms. 

The Kingslayer turns from the window, and Oberyn does a double take. He is also holding a swaddled, squirming bundle. 

Allyria's smile is that of a general who has won a battle, but the sheer delight on the Kingslayer's face cannot be quantified. He also looks rather dazed. 

"This is our son," he says, "Gerold Lannister, and Allyria is holding our daughter, Lelia."

Rohanne squeals with delight, the first of them to break from the stunned shock to react. "Two babies! I get two babies!" 

She scrambles up Allyria's bed to peer at the little girl in her arms, gently embracing her stepmother and chattering childish nonsense at the baby. 

Oberyn follows the little lion over to the Kingslayer, still feeling rather like someone hit him over the head with a hammer. Twins. 

By the Seven, twins. 

He doesn't know whether to be joyful or to strangle the Kingslayer for putting twins in his cousin. 

Then he sees the babe. The Kingslayer puts it in his arms, so trustingly. It reminds Oberyn of when he used to visit his sister, and of the young, eager knight who would follow him around and watch him with big worshipful eyes. 

The babe is still squashed and red from birth, and blinking rather owlishly at the world. There is a tuft of pale blonde hair at the top of his head, the same shade as Allyria's curls. 

Oberyn smiles at the baby, and is rewarded with a confused gurgle. 

All is well. His niece lives. His cousin lives. And the babes live. 

Perhaps he could wish they had names less blatantly Lannister, names that honoured their Dornish blood, but he is politic enough to understand that Allyria's tenure as Lady Lannister must be beyond reproach. 

And in the end, everyone came out the other side alive. 

It is more than can be said for many births in Allyria's family or the Kingslayer's. He presses a kiss to Gerold's head, breathing in the sweet baby smell. 

The warm wriggling babe lives, he is whole and beautiful. And he will be raised alongside Rohanne, will love his older sister and defend her. And he will be loyal to her. 

Oberyn feels bad for thinking of that. Gerold is scarce an hour of the womb, and already he is a piece in the great game. 

He hands the baby back to Jaime Lannister, and leaves him to his practically vibrating brother. Instead, Oberyn turns to his cousin, to the tinier, bald baby in her arms.

Allyria is still smiling, her eyes sparkling as Rohanne babbles away.

There is not merely simple joy at becoming a mother in his cousin's eyes. She is well aware of the political side of the birthing bed, and as much as she holds her daughter with the awkwardness of a new mother, there is also a calculation in her eyes. 

She has given her husband a son and a daughter at once, an heir and a child to secure alliances. She has cemented her position as the future Lady Paramount of the Westerlands. 

And she has lived. That is the greatest victory of all.

Chapter Text

Allyria II

Her babies are perfect. 

Two of them, twenty fingers and twenty toes between them, each one perfectly formed. 

Lelia has almost no hair at all, but what little there is appears to be a deep gold, the same colour as Jaime's own. In the light, it is as if the gods have smiled on her baby, crowned with a halo of living sunbeams like Lann the Clever himself. 

Her eyes are still an uncertain, infant blue, like the skies on a clear morning, but Allyria rather thinks that they will settle into a colour closer to her own purple than Jaime's green. There is a hint of indigo to them, darker and more vibrant than she thinks they would be were they to turn green.

Gerold's eyes, on the other hand, are already closer to green than blue, bright and keen for a newborn, and constantly hidden by the creasing of his baby-plump face in gummy smiles. It is good that he will have his father's eyes, she thinks, the famous Lannister emerald eyes. 

He is, after all, Jaime's heir, and he will one day be Lord of Casterly Rock.

The image presented by the Lannister heir is important, and the green eyes and gold hair are such key parts of the accepted image. Gerold's little fluff of hair is paler than she thinks Lord Tywin would have liked, without the deepness of true Lannister gold, but equally without the silver cast the Daynes often bear - so like and so unlike the silver-gold of the Targaryens.

But regardless of what features they bear or do not bear, Allyria loves her children. They are scarce a moon old, and Allyria can scarce breathe at times when she remembers that these precious, beautiful little things exist. 

They are perfect.

Every breath they take is a wonder. 

She also cannot help the feeling of wicked delight every time someone speaks of her beautiful little girl by name. Are the Westerners really so blinded by their own egos as to not recognise the common element in her daughter's name? 

Yes, she is named for the most beautiful Lannister queen of legend. But she is also named for Allyria's cousin, who had been beautiful and strong and had achieved victory even through death. Who's victory Lelia will help to further, out of loyalty to the cousin she will be raised alongside.

Then Allyria always proceeds to feel guilty. Her children are more than merely pawns in their revenge against the usurpers. 

Yes, it is accepted that highborn children are part of the Game from the moment of their birth - she herself had been betrothed to some Dalt or other as a child before his untimely death. And it is not unusual for her children to be positioned and manipulated and used throughout their lives. 

Certainly their grandfather is doing so without qualms - he has sent out invitations to a grand tourney to celebrate their births already, and she has seen the list he handed to the Maester in charge of the rookery. He is sparing no expenses, presumably in rare jubilation that his eldest has finally managed to do his duty. 

But there is something that doesn't sit well in her stomach about involving her children in something that could kill them all.

Betrothals and such are harmless, often not even leading to fruition - such as her own failed childhood betrothal. But this is treason against their new king, however ill-gotten his throne, and should they be discovered there will be no mercy. 

What will the usurper care that Gerold and Lelia were not even born when Elia and her babes died? 

He certainly didn't care that Aegon and Rhaenyra had been innocent. 

***********

It occurs to Allyria, at some point in between caring for the twins and assisting her goodfather with arrangements for the tourney, that Rohanne should probably move out of the nursery.

There is no lack of space, true, it is a Lannister nursery - it could house a dozen children easily. But the twins are babes, and they cry during the night. 

It has been waking Rohanne, she knows, for there is no easy way to partition the nursery in a manner that will block the sound.

Jeyne, the wetnurse, tells her that they cry no more than any other babe, but surely it cannot be good for Rohanne's sleep to be so interrupted?

There is an empty set of chambers between the nursery and the chambers which she and Jaime use. She presumes they are probably meant for use by a wife, or possibly younger siblings, but currently they stand empty. A few moons ago she had tried to move Tyrion there, but her goodfather had been adamant that he remain distanced from them - still in the family wing of Casterly Rock, but not within the heart of it. 

Somehow, she doubts he will be so severe in Rohanne's case - he has a soft spot for her, as much as he tries to hide it. But when everyone exclaims over the likeness to the late Lady Joanna, it is not hard to see.

So, she sets aside time on her schedule and hunts down her stepdaughter. 

Rather predictably, she finds the child in the library, side by side with Tyrion, poring over a big book. 

From what she can see, it is a book about dragons.

One page is taken up with a massive illustration of a golden dragon, breathing golden flames, the gold being, most likely, gold leaf. It certainly catches the light well enough to be gold.

She clears her throat, and the two children whirl as if they have been caught doing wrong, eyes wide and mock-innocent.

The smile that twitches at the corner of her mouth at that is small, but she knows that Rohanne's sharp eyes will have spotted it.

Well, Rohanne would not see it, not the merry, innocent child beloved by all the inhabitants of Casterly Rock.

The child behind the mask of Rohanne however, the one who will grow into a great and terrible queen, who knows how to play the Great Game and cannot even count her age on two hands yet, well...

Allyria knows that her queen misses nothing. 

She raises her hand to stop the childish protestations of innocence. "Hush, both of you. I'm not here to investigate any wrongdoings the two of you have been involved in, I merely wanted to have a word with Rohanne."

The little girl comes forward, and Allyria takes her aside, behind another bookcase where Tyrion cannot see them.

She kneels down, so as to be eye to eye with the child, smiling at the sweet, innocent little face. Her own children will look like this someday, if the gods are good. "Rohanne, my sweet, I know Gerold and Lelia have been very loud lately. Would you like to move into a different room, where you can have your own space and won't be disturbed by them?"

Allyria expects any number of reactions, from joy, to irritation, but she does not expect the fear that suddenly appears on Rohanne's face. "No!"

It is not quite a shout, but it is louder than Allyria's hushed voice has been, and Allyria cannot help jumping slightly. 

She keeps her voice level, however. Whatever way one looks at it, Allyria is the adult here, and she cannot be excused a single slip, when one wrong move could lead to her queen's death - and now the deaths of her children too. 

"No?" She queries, frowning slightly. "Are you sure? There are many empty rooms, and you would still be in the family wing." 

Is it perhaps that she thinks she is being sent further away from them? Relegated to some hidden little chamber where no one can see the child everyone believes a bastard?

As if in answer, Rohanne shakes her head, setting her golden curls bouncing. "No, please. Don't make me leave them."

"Do you not mind the crying? Surely it must disturb your sleep sweetheart."

"I don't mind." The child says desperately, tears glimmering in her eyes. "Really I don't."

She stops, and then continues in a whisper, the childish tone fading away. "They're alive when they cry. I'd be scared if they weren't."

Allyria stops and looks into the green green eyes of her stepdaughter. She closes her own and pulls the child to her. "Oh Rohanne. I'm so sorry sweetheart."

She never saw Aegon, but she had seen Queen Rhaella, and everyone said that Aegon took after her even at such a young age. 

From what Allyria remembers of the queen, Dyanna Dayne's blood had been strong indeed. Just as her husband had the Dayne eyes, Queen Rhaella had the Dayne hair, the familiar pale blond, with the slightest hint of silver.

Allyria rocks her stepdaughter to and fro, and does not mention the silent tears soaking her dress.

She does not mention moving Rohanne from the nursery again.

***********

The royal party from King's Landing arrives after far fewer moons than Allyria would like.

If Robert Baratheon were merely Lord of Storm's End, she would probably be indifferent to the approaching parade.

Perhaps a little irritated, wanting nothing more than to shut herself away with her babies and ignore the Game in which she is now perforce a player, but not hostile. 

As it is, the sight of the black and yellow stag is enough to send molten anger coursing through her veins, lending her cheeks a darker flush than is their wont. 

That is no royal banner, not truly. Were it the true king approaching, or true queen perhaps, the banner would be red and black. 

At the very least, there should be red somewhere on the Baratheon banner - perhaps a bloodstain on the gold. 

Regardless, Allyria knows that this is not the time. This is another test of their cover for their little queen, another obstacle.

She has dressed herself and Rohanne very correctly in the Westerlands fashion, in heavy red velvets and gold brocade that show their rank. 

Rohanne Lannister is a legitimate child, a Lannister of the Rock, the firstborn child of Tywin Lannister's heir, and she will not let anyone forget this. She refuses to let anyone force her queen to hide away like something shameful.

For once, she is almost glad of the way in which most of the other kingdoms regard Dorne - no one seems to bat an eye at her acceptance, even love, for her stepdaughter, putting it all down to her 'strange Dornish ways'. 

She hides a smile as the cavalcade comes to a stop and the king dismounts.

Robert Baratheon is not unhandsome. He is thickset and heavy, with muscles enough for three men and fierce blue eyes that glower darkly from beneath his antlered crown. 

Certainly many a woman would be eager for a chance to bed him. Allyria personally finds that she prefers blondes now, with a swordsman's more slender build. 

He is brusque and curt with Lord Tywin, and is quick to turn to her, his blue eyes trailing over her body uncomfortably. Allyria dips into a curtsey exactly due to the King of the Seven Kingdoms and not a hair more. If she could have gotten away with it, it would have been rather less. 

As it is, she daren't risk it. Not with Gerold and Lelia in the nursery, not with Rohanne at her side.

She will leave the outpouring of grief and rage enough to drive one half-mad to Oberyn, no doubt debating jumping from the ship and swimming back to Casterly Rock at this very second. She would certainly feel safer with her cousin beside her.

Thankfully, before she can be forced to speak to the king who is eyeing her as if he wants to know what she looks like without her clothes or without her head, or both, Jaime steps in.

Allyria turns to Queen Cersei gratefully, but the feeling is quick to evaporate. 

She has never seen the woman before - Allyria had been at court only once, briefly, shortly after Elia's marriage, and Cersei had been at Casterly Rock then. 

The woman is beautiful, with thick golden curls and large, doe-like green eyes. Unfortunately, those soft eyes are looking at Allyria as if she is a piece of dung scraped off of her fine shoes. 

Well, Tywin Lannister's unpleasantness had to go to at least one of his children. His sons are decent enough, so Allyria wonders why she is surprised that his daughter appears to have inherited at the very least his dislike for the Dornish.

Allyria curtseys to her, smiling a practised, innocent smile. "Be welcome back to Casterly Rock, Your Grace. The Westerlands rejoices to have you walk among us once more."

A neutral, polite welcome that Cersei cannot complain about, emphasising the new queen's connection to King's Landing and the throne and thereby her divorce from the Westerlands, as well as identifying Allyria herself with the Westerlands. Nicely done, if Allyria says so herself. 

The queen smiles, inclining her head. "Us, Lady Allyria? Last I looked, you were born Dornish, were you not? I did not think you had any Western blood in you."

Allyria's smile does not waver. "I was born in Dorne, Your Grace. But, as you know, everything changes so much after marriage. I find myself loving the Westerlands more and more since my wedding, and that has only grown with the birth of my children. How can I not love the place where I gained two such beautiful babes?"

The dig at Queen Cersei's continued childlessness, without even a miscarriage or stillbirth, when Allyria herself has already provided her husband with twins, does not go unnoticed by the tightening of the skin around the other woman's eyes. "Not only your own twins, Lady Allyria."

The sickly sweet tone of the queen's voice has every nerve in Allyria's body suddenly on edge, and she sees Cersei's gaze change from Allyria herself to the girl at her side. "You arrived here to find a bastard as well, did you not? Such a pity, to have to endure one in the same castle as your own trueborn children. Did you fail to make other arrangements? I am sure I could help you with procuring them, should you be finding it difficult."

Allyria raises her chin and takes Rohanne's hand, looking the Usurper's Queen dead in her beautiful green eyes. "There are no bastards in Casterly Rock, Your Grace, by your own husband's decree."

Neither woman looks away, both pairs of eyes as hard as the jewels from which they take their colour. "Of course, it must have slipped my mind."

Still staring at the Usurper's Queen, Allyria curtsies once more. "The length of the journey, I am sure, Your Grace. You must be very tired."

Cersei's smile is cold. "Not at all, Lady Allyria."

Chapter Text

Cersei I

The only good thing about being back in Casterly Rock is that she is home, in her own territory. 

She is powerful here, important, because of who she was born. Not because she married some witless oaf in love with a dead woman. 

The memory of her wedding night stings again, and she has to force her jaw to relax before she cracks a tooth. 

Robert Baratheon had married the Light of the West, the most beautiful woman in Westeros, and he chose to lust after a half-grown girl with a flat chest who died moons before. 

Never had she been so insulted before, save for when Rhaegar had chosen sickly, plain Elia Martell over her. 

But Rhaegar at least had been made to marry the Dornishwoman, and he had been good and honourable enough to keep to his marriage vows. 

Robert has no such excuse. He chose her as his bride, as his queen, and yet he still mourns Lyanna Stark instead of falling at her feet. 

He should. 

Every man she has ever met has done so, worshipped her for her beauty and her charm and the wealth she brings. 

She is the daughter of Tywin Lannister, the wealthiest man in Westeros, the Lord who all but ruled the Seven Kingdoms for years. 

None can match her for beauty or wealth or breeding. 

Yet now she finds herself supplanted even in her own home. 

She had expected to find Jaime desperate for her, willing to come to her and give her the golden children she knows she will have. She had expected him to be miserable, married to a flat-chested, dark-skinned Dornish whore after he had had her, the most beautiful woman in Westeros. 

Instead, she has found him clinging to his marriage vows, claiming them binding even after he broke his oath and killed mad old Aerys, and showing off his half-Dornish children as proudly as if Cersei herself had borne them.

His wife is blonde and purple eyed and beautiful, nearly as beautiful as Cersei herself. Instead of looking like sick and gaunt and pale, as Elia Martell had after giving birth, she has the temerity to be one of those women who seem to glow with motherhood.

And her babes are even worse - two of them, golden Lannister twins with golden hair, without even the decency to show their Dornish blood. Twins who look exactly as she had imagined her own children with her twin would look.

Allyria Dayne runs Casterly Rock now, not Genna, and it runs as smoothly as it had when her mother was still Lady. Before the Imp ripped Joanna Lannister apart and let her drown in her own blood.

It's infuriating enough, but then to crown all the other indignities there is her brother's bastard, a child borne before Allyria Dayne got her claws into Cersei's twin. Living proof that Cersei is not enough even for her own twin.

He didn't have to acknowledge the child, let alone legitimise her, for beneath the golden curls and emerald eyes, she is nothing more than a common whore's bastard, no noblewoman's child. He could have left her to rot in whatever seedy pillow house she was born in. 

But instead he brought her back, to Casterly Rock itself. He dotes on her, lavishes on her all the gifts and attention and devotion that Cersei had come to expect from him. 

Instead of worshipping her as he always has, his whole being is directed at the bastard. 

It's enough to drive her mad. 

Bad enough that the only sanctuary left to Cersei from her oaf of a husband has been taken away by Ashara Dayne's sister. Bad enough that her mother's place has been taken by a Dornishwoman. Bad enough that her twin no longer wants her. Bad enough that his Dornish wife has given him the golden twins that should by all rights belong to Cersei herself.

But that he dares to love his bastard more than her? 

She could strangle the child, push her into the same well she did Melara, if she thought that Jaime would not know. 

If she did not know her twin, almost better than she knows herself, and if she did not know that he would just cling tighter to his wife and his twins. 

His wife.

It's enough to drive one mad. The whole point of him joining the Kingsguard was that he would not marry a woman bound to take him away from her, would not father children that would take away more of his love. He would be hers, always and forever. 

She was to have her Silver Prince, and her golden twin both, and have silver and gold children that would bring Westeros into a golden age. 

Instead, she is stuck with Robert the Whoremonger, and Jaime has given another woman the golden children he owes her.

How did it all go so wrong? 

How is it that she has been exiled from Casterly Rock to the stinking pit of King's Landing.

She has only ben allowed to return because Robert wanted to attend the tourney her father has thrown in celebration of his first trueborn grandchildren. 

The indignity of being greeted as a guest in her own home by Ashara Dayne's sister is something that she cannot quickly forget. 

Ashara Dayne had been a particular thorn in Cersei's side - Elia Martell's right hand, as dark as the withered princess and twice as bold.

If Cersei is honest with herself, which she can be occasionally, she will admit that Ashara Dayne had been well nigh as beautiful as Cersei herself, in a strange, dark, Dornish way.

Nothing like Cersei's own pale, golden beauty.

If Cersei has the beauty of fairytale princesses, then Ashara Dayne had the beauty of the wicked, seductive witch.

If only Ashara Dayne's sister had the decency to be the same. 

Instead she is as blonde and beautiful as Cersei herself, and her children as golden as any Cersei could have given Jaime.

It comforts Cersei to some degree that her twin has chosen a woman with such a likeness to her. Surely it means that, even if he seems distant and preoccupied, he still longs for her. 

Cersei smiles at her own reflection in the mirror, at her golden curls pinned carelessly up, at her shining eyes which match the bright emeralds at her neck, at her white skin glowing against the deep crimson of her gown.

Even if Allyria Dayne is beautiful and golden, she is still only a shadow of the woman Jaime truly longs for. The golden children Jaime has now are a shadow of the ones that Cersei can give him. 

He may care for his Dornish wife, his bastard and his half-Dornish children now. But Cersei is confident that the time they will be spending at Casterly Rock will be enough to remind her errant twin where his loyalty truly lies.

She was the first woman he has ever loved, and if she has any say in the matter, she will be the last. 

"For fuck's sake woman," the oaf yells from behind her, clanking in his stupid tourney armour, "we're going to miss the joust."

Cersei plasters a smile on her face and turns to the great boor she has been married to. "I'm so sorry, Your Grace. I'm ready now."

She beams up at him, aware that she looks radiant. "Shall we go?"

********

The tourney is awful.

Not because of any failure on Allyria Dayne's part. 

No, the twin-stealing bitch has the audacity to be perfect. Everything is orchestrated as smoothly as if it is some kind of dance.

It is awful because Cersei is sat in the seat of the guest of honour with her oafish husband on one side between her and her twin. Both men spend most of the tourney gone of course, fighting on the field as men should, leaving Cersei's closest neighbour on her left as Allyria Dayne. 

On her other side sits her disapproving father, with her Aunt Genna beside him, both ignoring her to speak with low voices about some export proposal or other 

She tries at the beginning of the tourney to commiserate with him about Jaime's stupid choice of wife, assuming it to be a safe topic considering her father's famous disdain for the Dornish.

But he merely glances coldly at her, and remarks that at least Jaime's wife knows her place well enough to give him an heir. 

Cersei's cheeks still feel flushed from the hot rush of shame that had coursed through her at that.  

She is trying. 

Even as she longs for her golden twin, even as she rages at the humiliation of her husband's straying, she welcomes the brute into her bed. 

She does her wifely duties, what more does her father want from her? 

She has not even had his bastards dealt with since she heard of Allyria Dayne's pregnancy, thinking that perhaps the gods consider it to be kinslaying through some strange divine logic.

How Allyria Dayne endures the prescence of Jaime's bastard, Cersei cannot imagine. Surely she must feel some resentment for the child, or fear that her own legitimate children will be supplanted?

Yet Cersei has seen a child's bed in the nursery when Jaime proudly showed the twins to her, and when she had tried to prod at Allyria Dayne's trust in Jaime, she had encountered an iron devotion to the bastard in the Dornishwoman. 

Oh, her oafish husband may have legitimised the child, but everyone knows she is a whore's daughter. Beneath the Lannister looks, if Cersei tries hard enough, she is sure she will find reminders of the girl's common mother.

"Your Grace." Cersei turns and smiles at the Dornishwoman who dares to take her place at Jaime's side. "Is the tourney not to your liking?"

Those big purple eyes are filled with perfect concern, and even though she knows it is false, Cersei feels a pang at possibly having made those eyes sad.

Damn Allyria Dayne. 

She keeps her smile on her face. "Of course it is much to my liking, I have missed my homeland so. I am only rather tired."

Tired from the journey.

Tired of Robert fucking Baratheon. 

Tired of being supplanted in Jaime's heart.

Tired of everything. 

Why is she stuck with a man who longs for a dead child, and Allyria Dayne gets the life that Cersei has always wanted? 

Allyria smiles sympathetically. "How strange that the journey should not tire you, Your Grace, and yet a mere tourney should exhaust you."

Frowning creates wrinkles, Cersei reminds herself, and instead of scowling darkly at the impertinent woman, she forces herself to smile. "How strange indeed."

Thankfully, at that moment Jaime rides up to their box in his new armour, shining like the sun itself, save where the crimson of his cloak is untouched by gold thread.

His visor is up, and she can see his lovely face, so similar to her own, framed within the elaborate tourney helm by a halo of golden curls. 

He smiles, softly, lovingly, and Cersei smiles in return as she reaches for the favour hidden in her pocket. She had commissioned it specifically to give to him for this tourney, a ribbon of golden lace and crimson brocade, red lions on gold and gold lions on red. 

She had known he would come back to her. 

"My lady." He begins, his voice touched with a smile. "First in my heart above all others, dearest of all women to me."

His glance flits towards their father with a mischievous crinkle at the corner as he continues, and Cersei cannot help her answering smirk. How daring of him to so openly snub his wife. 

Jaime's smile brightens. "Mother of my children, Allyria, my wonderful wife. Will you grant me the honour of carrying your favour in this tourney?"

It is like a physical blow, leaving her stupid and reeling. That is the only reason Cersei does not claw out Allyria Dayne's eyes as the Dornishwoman leans forward to throw Jaime a Lannister red ribbon embroidered with golden lions and white stars. 

She almost cannot breathe. 

Always, always Jaime has carried her favour. In every tourney, he has come to her. 

And now, her place has been taken by some jumped up Dornishwoman who dares to put her stars beside the Lannister lions as if their houses are in any way equal. 

She barely notices Ser Barristan Selmy taking the bastard's little red ribbon as gravely as any great lady's - everyone knows Ser Barristan the Bold is as kind as summer. 

It does irk her that the bastard has even more attention paid her. Soon the child will get idea above her station, Cersei is sure. 

Thankfully, before the queen can be any more humiliated, another knight bearing the Lannister colours rides up. 

It takes a moment for her to recognise him as Jason Lannister, son of one of her mother's many brothers. 

He had been a few years younger than her, and she had never paid much attention to him - not when she had Jaime. Jason was always too shy, too quiet and boring.

But now, still smarting from Jaime's blatant snub, she notices his golden hair and his beautiful smile. His hair doesn't curl, and his eyes are a duller green, but he really looks remarkably like Jaime. 

She smiles at him as he stammers out a request for a favour, and grants it as gracefully as she knows how. She has practice, after all. 

Cersei watches him go thoughtfully. 

Jaime is clearly going to take a lot of work. Perhaps Jason can stand in for him for a while. 

He's pretty, at least, and a skilled knight judging by his easy seat on his horse.

And after all, isn't that the sum of Jaime's personality. It'll be like he's never left her.

Chapter Text

Barristan I 

He remembers the first time he saw Jaime Lannister. 

The younger man had been little more than a boy then, wide eyed and eager and innocent. So painfully innocent. 

King Aerys had been quick to do away with that innocence, helped by King's Landing and the royal court. 

Barristan doesn't quite feel easy thinking badly of the king he served so loyally for so many years, but even his loyalty cannot deny that King Aerys was not a good king. 

And after all, he is Kingsguard to King Robert Baratheon, First of His Name, now. Vitriol towards King Aerys is part of the order of the day under the new regime.

Still, it sits ill with Barristan. 

He would be able to stomach it better had there been any mention made of King Aerys' true evil. If there had been a reckoning for the murder of Princess Visenya, or even an acknowledgement, Barristan would have been less reluctant.

Yet there is nothing. She is lumped in with her mother and siblings as if all four are a composite who suffered the same tragic end, tucked away into a little box and forgotten about. 

Barristan is a Kingsguard. He has no lands, no wife and no children. 

But he had loved Princess Elia and her children. The whole Kingsguard had. 

The quiet, kind princess with her dark eyes had won them over almost as soon as she had married Rhaegar - 

Then her children, solemn Visenya, boisterous Rhaenyra, laughing Aegon...

Aegon's whole face had split into a gummy, delighted smile every time he saw someone familiar. It had never failed to warm Barristan's heart that the little prince felt so much joy upon recognising him. 

Then there had been Rhaenyra, who would run at the knees of any adult she spotted, and throw her tiny arms around them, demanding to picked up.

It had usually been Jaime, the youngest of them, who would indulge her, but secretly they all had if no one was looking. 

Even Visenya, as uncanny as she could be sometimes, had had an unwavering faith in the Kingsguard that was humbling.

She had grown up too fast that child, her eyes too dark and too old for her face. She had been guarded and afraid, but even so she had trusted them. 

Barristan was never her favourite, or even one of her favourites, he knows that much. That honour would have gone to Jaime or Lewyn or Arthur. 

She had been fond of Barristan, at best, but he had loved her like the daughter he never had. He had loved them all.

And Jaime Lannister had let them die. 

Perhaps it is hypocritical for Barristan to think so when he was so quick to swear his loyalty to Robert Baratheon, but he cannot help it. 

Barristan did what he had to in order to survive. 

Jaime Lannister killed the king and then vanished with his bastard daughter until all the dirty work was done. 

Then he proceeded to marry lovely Ashara's sister and sire twins on her within the year. 

Barristan struggles to think of a sacred oath the other man has not broken, and as much as he pities the loss of the innocent boy that was, he despises the man who has replaced the boy - just as pretty and just as skilled, but with that indefinable core of virtue gone and leaving in its place a smirking, unrepentant shell.

Still, as much as he dislikes Jaime Lannister, it is not the child's fault. 

She is sweet and merry, and everything Visenya had not been. And she is so difficult to dislike.

Barristan had intended to, on behalf of the princess she had replaced so quickly in the heart of her devoted protector.

He had braced himself to resent this interloper, this girl for whom Princess Elia and her children died, but he couldn't. 

She had smiled at him so prettily, her eyes so bright, so pure and he had remembered that she was a child in a world of men. 

How can he blame a child for the actions of the grown men around her? 

So he carries her favour in the tourney, and if he imagines for a moment that it is the princess's favour rather than a bastard's, well, who is to know?

The sheer joy in that tiny face when he asked for her favour as gravely as if she were a great queen had warmed his aching heart, and for a moment he had felt right again.

Ever since he swore his allegiance to Robert Baratheon, he has felt unclean - unworthy of the white cloak when he has turned traitor to his king.

It sits ill with him, even now that Robert has been crowned king. 

After all, Aerys, both his sons, and Rhaegar's children had all still drawn breath when Barristan bent his knee to the man that he is always on the verge of calling 'usurper'.

The closest living blood claim to the Iron Throne now lies with Robert, but had the Lannisters not butchered Princess Elia and her children he would have been a usurper in name as well as in truth. 

The knowledge sits heavily on Barristan's heart, like a great cold stone slowly crushing him. 

And yet...when he had asked for the Lannister girl's favour, when she had smiled so brightly and given him a crumpled red ribbon with yellow masses of knotted thread he assumes are lions...he had felt right. 

He has not done something uncomplicatedly kind, something honourable, since the Trident. It makes him feel, for a moment, as if he is back in the good days, guarding the Silver Prince as he sang for the smallfolk on the streetcorner. 

He has done good, and for the first time in moons, Barristan feels like a knight again. A true knight, who does not stain his white cloak with broken oaths and betrayal. 

With as much care as he would have given to Queen Rhaella's favour, Barristan attaches the ribbon to his armour, and bows to the child from the saddle. 

She giggles and bounces, which makes Ashara's sister lean over and shush her gently, but Barristan can only smile helplessly. 

It has been so long since he saw such a happy, innocent child - not since he rode out from the Red Keep during the war.

The last child he saw with such infectious joy was Princess Rhaenyra, and perhaps Prince Aegon too. 

Privately, Barristan thinks that if the little prince had lived, he would have been Prince Aegon's favourite. 

Princess Visenya had practically worshipped Jaime and Lewyn, and she had adored Arthur to a lesser extent, or at least she had adored Dawn. 

She took after her mother in that - Princess Elia had a natural preference for the Dornishmen in the Kingsguard, particularly her uncle, and there had been something about the younger, more innocent version of Jaime Lannister that had drawn people to him.

Princess Rhaenyra had adored Gerold Hightower and Arthur Dayne, and Whent had been her willing slave of course.

But Prince Aegon, the littlest of the three, his smile had been the brightest when he saw Barristan. 

Barristan misses that, the uncomplicated joy of a child, the sheer life that bubbles up in them and overflows in laughter and smiles unshadowed by time.

He bows to Lady Allyria as well as he rides away, partially because it is common courtesy to greet the lady of the house, partially because she has taken in her husband's bastard and loved her and Barristan respects the strength necessary to do so, but partially because this is Ashara Dayne's sister. 

Ashara, lovely, bold Ashara, who had always had a kind word for the Kingsguard. She had adored the royal children as much as any of them had. 

At first glance, Lady Allyria Lannister is nothing like her sister. Fair where Ashara was sun-kissed, composed where Ashara was bold, golden where Ashara was dark. 

And yet...there is something about her face. An elusive something that makes Barristan unable to look at Lady Allyria and not be forcefully reminded of her dead sister. 

Quietly, looking at the two women, both draped in red, both blonde and lovely, he thinks that Lady Allyria is more queenly than Queen Cersei ever could be.

Perhaps it is merely that his idea of a queen is now and forever shaped by Queen Rhaella, Seven rest her soul.

Certainly Queen Cersei has a lofty manner about her, a royal way of speaking, dressing, and giving orders.

Yet, even though she is young and beautiful and seemingly soft, Barristan can see a hardness behind her lovely eyes that reminds him of King Aerys in his younger days. 

And Lady Allyria lacks that. She is not sweet or kind, for there is steel in her bones and grief in her face, but her smiles are true, and she genuinely cares for her husband's bastard. 

Not like Queen Cersei, who Barristan has seen shooting glares as deadly as any poison at her niece, who he has heard ordering purges of brothel bastards, who walked to the throne over the mutilated bodies of a murdered woman and her three innocent babies.

Lady Allyria is gracious. 

Queen Rhaella was gracious. 

Princess Elia was gracious. 

Queen Cersei is not. 

Perhaps that is all that there is to it. And there should be no more to it - she is the queen, and he is a Kingsguard, which means his loyalty lies with King Robert first and Queen Cersei second. 

That is how it is, and how it always will be. He swore it when he joined the Kingsguard, and Barristan at least keeps to his oaths. 

Still, he cannot help the tiny part of him that enjoys the look on the queen's face when Ser Jason Lannister is downed by Ser Sandor Clegane. 

The red ribbon tied to Ser Jason's armour is rolled and pounded into the muck churned up by the horses' hooves, and Barristan carefully looks anywhere but at the queen. 

She will be in a foul mood tonight, even more determined than ever to show up Lady Allyria, but whatever she does, she will not be the only lady crowned queen today. 

And there is some justice in that, Barristan thinks as he prepares for his next tilt. 

********

He rode as well as he could, Barristan reminds himself as he rolls his aching shoulder. 

There was no shame in being defeated by Ser Jaime, rankle as it might to be felled by a traitor several years his junior.

The little girl's ribbon is only spattered with a little mud, and he tucks it away to keep safe until he can return it to her. 

He feels a twinge of regret that he could not crown her Queen of Love and Beauty, just to see the queen's face, but at least he is not directing Cersei's ire at an innocent child. 

And, he must admit, it is equally vindicating to see Queen Cersei being forced to watch her twin crown Lady Allyria Lannister the Queen of Love and Beauty.

He doesn't know for certain why the queen resents her brother's marriage so, but he can think of several possible reasons off the top of his head.

It isn't unreasonable for her to resent a foreign woman taking her mother's place. But by that logic it is not unreasonable for Barristan to resent some Westerlands woman taking the place of Queen Rhaella and Princess Elia. 

Queen Cersei fancies herself a lion, but she could not match the dragon-blooded women in a hundred years, try as she might. 

So he stands expressionless and silent as any good Kingsguard, and watches the queen's delicate nails draw blood from her smooth palms as Ser Jaime places the crown of red and yellow flowers on Lady Allyria's golden head. 

The young knight smiles at his wife, smoothing her hair where the removal of her headdress has ruffled it, and crowns her with as much dignity as the High Septon.

The crowd roars its approval, and Barristan claps very properly - seven times, quick and efficient. 

Queen Cersei places her hands together once and then drops them, a delicate flush suffusing her cheeks.

Chapter Text

Allyria III

Jaime had wanted the tourney to last for fourteen days - seven for each child she bore him. 

Allyria appreciates the symbolism and his infectious joy, as well as the fact that Tywin Lannister is paying for it, but fourteen days is simply not an acceptable length of time for anything of this sort to last. 

So the celebrations last for seven - a suitably symbolic and sacred number to satisfy these superstitious Andals, and still a reasonable length of time. 

Money is not an issue, of course, as the Lannister coffers are practically infinite. She did the sums as they discussed logistics, and were the tourney to last one hundred and fourteen days it still would not make a noticeable difference to her goodfather's wealth. 

But she has had to plan it all, arrange it, greet every guest, speak with every guest, and a hundred other things on top of her already heavy workload as the acting Lady Paramount of the Westerlands. 

It has all come off splendidly, every meal, every event, every dance as perfect as if it had been rehearsed a hundred times. 

Allyria has dark circles beneath her eyes that Lissa has to conceal with powder every morning, and several times her nails have bitten so deeply into her palms that they have drawn blood. 

She has barely seen Rohanne and the babies since the guests began to arrive, other than their public appearances.

It had been one of those appearances where she had cut herself with her nails - Lord Tywin had handed Gerold to the Usurper to be blessed by the King of the Seven Kingdoms, his uncle by marriage.

Cersei had held and blessed Lelia at the same time, at her father's behest, most likely as a reminder of just how entwined the Lannisters are with the new regime.

Rohanne had been trembling at the sight of the little pale haired baby in Robert Baratheon's meaty arms, and Allyria had been hardly better.

How dare the usurper hold her son so easily when his hands were stained with the blood of Gerold's cousins? 

How dare he smile and dandle the babe as if he bore no guilt or sin on him?

At least Cersei Lannister had the grace to look awkward and uncomfortable holding Lelia, though that was more likely because she hates Allyria and Allyria's children than because the woman had suddenly developed a conscience. 

Allyria doubts the queen had spared even a moment's thought for Elia and her children, beyond perhaps to gloat that they were dead and in the ground while Cersei sits beside the Iron Throne. 

She is not sure which of the new royal pair is worse - the unthinking brute of a king or his vicious bitch of a queen.

Allyria is not a particularly pious woman, but she had taken Gerold and Lelia to the sept as soon as the usurpers had relinquished her babes, heedless of the schedule she was meant to adhere to. 

The septon had blessed her children in the name of the Mother, without questioning her sudden piety, and she had felt reassured that whatever poisonous influences the Usurper and his false queen left had been washed away by the grace of the Seven. Their touch had been cleansed away by the mercy of the Mother, and her children were pure and clean again. 

She would have preferred her own gods, the comforting amalgamation of Rhoynar and Andal, but her children have an Andal father. It will do. 

That had been only on the first evening - the next six days had been equally torturous. 

Possibly the only part she had genuinely enjoyed had been being crowned Queen of Love and Beauty. Cersei Lannister's face at seeing another woman crowned queen would have been well worth a hundred and seven days of careful perfection. 

Allyria had, in all honesty, not planned to wear the crown to the feast that evening,  considering it a little gauche to do so after having worn it all day at the tourney.

It was, in essence, nothing more than flaunting it before every other woman who had not been crowned Queen of Love and Beauty, and Allyria was trying to foster goodwill towards herself and her children. 

But the prospect of tormenting Cersei Lannister had been too tempting, and Allyria had spent the evening smiling at the false queen with a crown of flowers on her head as the true queen sat at her side. 

By rights the other woman is only Lady of Storms' End or, if one wishes to delve into technicalities, she has no title for she is the wife of a traitor who would be attainted the moment any justice was found. 

It is that knowledge that Allyria clung to for the rest of the seven longest days of her life. Cersei Lannister is no true queen of hers - and she need only wait for a little time, as the history books will tell it, before the false queen's reckoning comes.

Elia Martell had survived her marriage as long as she did through sheer spite alone, and Allyria empathises with her cousin more every passing day. 

Between the celebrations her goodfather ordered and her duties as acting Lady Paramount, Jaime's wife, mother in all but name to Rohanne and Tyrion as well as now mother to the twins, Allyria is worn thin.

That is hardly even all she must do - she spends her nights plotting in an attempt to stay at least one step ahead of her goodfather, tying up any loose ends left during the day that could harm the true queen, and writing letters to her cousins in Dorne. 

She is eternally grateful for Jeyne, who looks after the twins for her and for a few extra lions each sevenday cares for Rohanne and Tyrion as well. 

Lissa is sweet and a little slower than some, but she follows instructions well and doesn't gossip, which is a boon Allyria had not expected and had verified thoroughly with Oberyn's aid. She does not trust the girl, but she relies on her more than she had dared hope, and Lissa seems loyal at the least.

And then, of course, there are her ladies. Each one prettier and more empty headed than the last. 

Because Allyria herself is not yet four and twenty, they are all unmarried or only newly wed - the eldest is Medea Marbrand at five and twenty, who's husband of a year died in Robert's Rebellion and left her to return to her family widowed and childless. 

Most of them are useless fools.

If they have a thought in their head it is mostly a driving, all consuming desire to become Lady of the Rock.

Allyria has no idea what the Westerlands teach their women, but she is less than impressed. 

She had been a fourth child, and she had recieved lessons in politics, strategy, languages, philosophy, economics and anything else that her father and then her brother thought necessary.

When she questions her ladies, they speak of lessons in poetry, needlework, dancing, music and other courtly accomplishments that in Dorne were considered only one part of the typical education of a noblewoman. 

Her daughter, needless to say, will recieve a Dornish education if Allyria has to arrange an accident for Tywin Lannister to make it happen. 

Lelia will be at the centre of the two-faced court life that will form around Rohanne - she will not be defenceless as these twittering birds are. 

They have minds, of course, some of them keen ones, but they have been trained to use their minds in limited ways.

Sewing, gossip, and religion are the order of the day in the Westerlands for most highborn women, or at least the unmarried ones who do not yet have to run a household.

It makes for less than stimulating conversation, but Allyria is still relieved when her company shrinks to only these women after the celebrations end and the guests depart. 

Seven days of careful perfection and manipulations had utterly exhausted her, and she is glad to see the back of Cersei Lannister. 

That the usurper's party takes with them one of her husband's many useless Lannister cousins is yet another reason for Allyria to rejoice - as far as she is concerned, the fewer Lannisters she has to see from day to day the better pleased she shall be. 

She may have endeared herself to them to some degree by bearing golden twins within a year of her marriage - like the Lady Joanna of such blessed memory - but she cares nothing for any of them.

By their silence on Elia and the children, they speak volumes and she wants nothing to do with these spineless, power hungry people who jump at Tywin Lannister's bidding and stab each other in the back at any given moment. 

It had concerned her a little that the false queen had been so insistent on filling one of the many empty places on the Kingsguard with the man, but careful searching had revealed nothing about Jason Lannister save that he was a cousin and a reasonably accomplished knight. 

Allyria doubts that Cersei Lannister is capable of having a motivation as simple and pure as wishing to have her family with her in the capital, but she is unable to find another reason. 

And after all, as much as she despises the woman who walked to the throne over Elia's dead body, she is human beneath it all. Allyria cannot forget that - this is no fairytale, and no human is completely evil, no matter how much simpler it would make everything.

Perhaps Cersei Lannister is lonely. 

Allyria cannot find any pity in her heart for the woman who trampled Elia and her babes in a rush for the Iron Throne, but she can understand why a woman who's marriage has taken her far from her homeland would want a cousin near. 

After all, she had done the same when she was wed, and Oberyn is far less popular in the Westerlands than she imagines this nameless Lannister boy will be in King's Landing - even taking into account what the Lannisters wrought with the sack. 

She can understand, but she can find not a drop of pity still. That, she will leave for Jaime, who's heart is softer than hers.

*********

After the celebrations end, and all the guests have departed, Allyria finds herself much less busy. 

Tywin Lannister, no longer distracted by the prescence of the new king and his Lannister queen, decided that Jaime has had enough time to dote on his children. 

Her husband takes a more active role in the rule of Westerlands now, riding out to the castles of various bannermen, hunting down bandits, presiding over trials and generally taking more responsibility where he had once acted like little more than a wealthy hedge knight. 

This takes much of the weight from Allyria's shoulders, though she worries that Rohanne, Tyrion and the twins will suffer for being left alone with only nurses and maids. 

She still spends time with them, of course, as does Jaime, but it takes place around their other duties. 

It is regretful, but a necessity - when the truth is revealed, they need the Westerlands to be loyal to Jaime and not his father. 

That is something they can only accomplish if Jaime is seen, is known and loved for being their shining knight - for rescuing them. 

It is something that she and Jaime had discussed on the voyage from Dorne to the Westerlands. When the time comes, their queen must have as much support as possible - and for that, they must plan carefully.

Doran has made detailed schemes of his own, she is sure, and when Rohanne goes to foster with him and Mellario, Allyria will accompany her stepdaughter to compare plots with him. That is when they shall truly begin the work that lies ahead of them - Doran shall handle their queen's education and protection, while Jaime and Allyria shall work to undermine the Baratheon-Lannister regime from the inside.

For now, however, all they can do is lay the foundation. 

Jaime must win hearts throughout the Westerlands, and Allyria must win the respect and loyalty of the inhabitants of Casterly Rock. More importantly, they must raise their children to adore Rohanne, or they will be a liability.

It still sits ill with Allyria to think of her babes in such cold terms, but it is true. The north of Westeros views bastards cruelly, and if they are not careful, Gerold and Lelia may absorb that prejudice and turn it against Rohanne. 

If there is a habit of disdain towards their queen, Allyria's children may not support her when the time comes - but they must. It is essential. 

The alternative does not bear thinking about. Already her goodfather is making noises about betrothing Lelia to her cousin, whenever Cersei bears a son. 

The thought of her sweet, innocent babe shackled to the get of Cersei Lannister and Robert Baratheon makes Allyria feel rather ill. She would rather die than see her daughter wed to whatever hellspawn the Usurper gets on his false queen.

But if Lelia is raised to want it...

No. Lelia and Gerold will love Rohanne, and when Visenya is revealed they will support her. 

It must be so. She will make it so. This was why she was chosen to marry Jaime - because her cousins trusted her to establish a new dynasty of Lannisters that had Dornish blood and Dornish loyalty to their kin. 

She cares for Jaime, loves him even, but her first loyalty is to her queen.

She will sacrifice anything to see Visenya back on the throne.

She will kill and torture and die for her queen without hesitation.

It is this loyalty that Doran and Oberyn have charged her with passing on to the babes she has born Jaime, and whatever others may come with time. 

Her twins have the same blood running through their veins as their hidden queen, and they are Allyria's own children. It will be enough. Allyria will make it enough. 

Tywin Lannister may believe himself to have achieved the coup of the century, but he cannot match what they will unleash. 

Ten years or twenty, whatever it takes, Visenya Targaryen will sit upon the Iron Throne if Allyria Dayne has anything to say about it.

And she will be supported by the coffers of Casterly Rock that Tywin Lannister has put so much effort into filling.

His golden heir will be her greatest protector, and his golden grandchildren her greatest supporters. 

She smiles at her goodfather across a desk piled high with accounts and incident reports generated by a week of revelry and merrymaking. 

This is just the beginning.