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They meet through Ashara, Elia's friend and Arthur's sister, and they are lost within moments. She is small and dainty, delicate rather than frail (he will never understand how so many people miss the strength in her eyes), the most strikingly beautiful creature he's ever seen.
Ashara is elated to hear it from each of them separately, and somehow manages to trick them into meeting alone in the most secluded corner of the Water Gardens in the late evening.
Elia's lips taste like blood oranges, and there are stars in her eyes. All Arthur can think is how beautiful she would look in lavender and silver.
She is there when he falls to one knee before a madman and has no choice but to accept the white cloak and shield offered to him, as pale as his sword but uglier than anything he has ever known – it is an honour to serve in the Kingsguard, Allem tells him, but Arthur hates everything his brilliant new cloak represents.
Elia looks at it with such hatred that his heart stops, and when she looks at him he can see nothing in her eyes but a pain that echoes the anguish breaking him apart.
He travels extensively with Prince Rhaegar and even becomes fond of the man – that he is loyal is never in doubt, of course, because Arthur takes his vows seriously, but he also knows that the King is likely to tear the realm asunder through sheer force of will.
When it is announced that Prince Rhaegar Targaryen will finally take a wife, Arthur is happy for the man who he tentatively names his friend.
When he hears that that wife's name is Princess Elia Martell, something in Arthur's gut twists and he thinks that he hates no man more than the silver prince.
It quickly becomes clear that Rhaegar and Elia's is a marriage of convenience, a political match, and Arthur feels a savage sort of satisfaction at that knowledge even though he wishes more than anything for Elia to have a husband who appreciates her passion, her fire, her beauty.
Lewyn alone of his new brothers seems to understand, Lewyn with Melaine tucked away in a different house every week, and he sympathises. He knows why it is that Arthur becomes quiet, taciturn, why he broods and suffers from black moods.
The note, unsigned and sealed with an unmarked blob of red wax, bearing only an address in the city and a date and time, lifts Arthur's mood.
King's Landing wants to see either a Targaryen or a Martell when Rhaenys is born, and so that it what they see.
All Arthur sees is Allyria's face, Allem's face, but coloured like Elia and Oberyn.
Aegon, born five years later, is so thoroughly Targaryen that he allays any sneaking doubts about Elia's fidelity, and both she and Arthur breathe a sigh of relief.
Word of the sack reaches the Tower of Joy long before Ned Stark does, and Arthur thinks that he would gladly take Dawn to every Targaryen and every Stark and Baratheon and Lannister – especially the Targaryens and Lannisters – in the whole world for taking Elia and Rhaenys from him.
He is the greatest knight in the realm, and he knows it, but when Ned Stark challenges him and has a purpose, the very thing Arthur lost the moment he heard of Elia's fate at Gregor Clegane's hands, of what Amory Lorch did to Rhaenys, Arthur fights back only enough so Oswell and Gerold can't say he forsook his duty.
Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, sworn brother of the Kingsguard, took his vows seriously, but he broke them and it breaks him.
He dies with her name on his lips, no more than a breath, but it is enough.