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i.
Lyanna looked at her reflection; long, thin face, serious grey eyes, and the Targaryen crown sitting slightly off-centre atop her long brown hair.
She sighed, and adjusted the crown so that the middle head of the dragon was in the centre of her forehead; she had never gotten used to the crown, and misliked wearing it. Today she had little choice.
"You should leave no doubt as to your position and status," Queen Dowager Rhaella had advised when she'd come to tell Lyanna that her son had arranged for her to have an audience with his mistress.
Cersei and Lysa both seconded the opinion that the crown was a must; it was the first time since Lyanna had come to King's Landing that her ladies-in-waiting had agreed about anything. Lysa was even of the opinion that Lyanna should bring her son to the audience as a living reminder that she was the mother of the king's heir, and would not be so easily usurped. Lyanna had refused to consider it; she would not use little Aegon as a shield.
Lysa slipped into Lyanna's chamber on nervous feet. "She's waiting for you, Your Grace."
"Let her wait," said Cersei, who'd long since given up pretending to be useful and was leaning against a bedpost, watching Lyanna prepare herself with hooded eyes.
Lyanna sighed heavily and stood. "Let's get this over with."
"I could have the prince brought from the nursery--"
"I said no, Lysa."
*
Lyanna had been five-and-ten when Queen Rhaella and her son Prince Rhaegar had arrived in Winterfell at the end of a Royal Progress that had seen them journey the length of the realm.
Rhaella was the first Targaryen queen to venture so far north since Good Queen Alysanne, but that was not why Lord Rickard was so eager to host the royal party for as long as they wished to stay.
It had never been a secret from Lyanna that her father had ambitions to the south; Brandon often joked that his betrothal to the eldest daughter of Hoster Tully was but the first prong of their father's advance, Ned's fosterage in the Vale the second, and that Lyanna's marriage would be the third.
And Lyanna had long known that her father planned for her to marry a southron lord; Robert Baratheon or Elbert Arryn appeared to be the frontrunners, Brandon dutifully reported.
But as soon as the royal party had been spotted wending their way up the Kingsroad Lord Rickard's plans changed: the lord of the Stormlands and the heir to the Vale paled in comparison to a prince of the realm. The Lord of Winterfell saw a crown in his daughter's future; he saw a kingly grandson.
Lyanna had been little enough aid in her father's plans. Prince Rhaegar was a decade Lyanna's senior, and she had not known how to make conversation that would please him; Lyanna's gowns were childish things, and often strategically ripped to make riding astride easier, and they paled in comparison to those worn by even the least of the queen's ladies; and they had no musicians in Winterfell, save Rhaegar himself, so they could not even dance.
Lyanna had swung the bastard sword at the heavily notched post her brothers used to practice the rudiments of hack-and-slash. Robert or Elbert it shall be, then, she'd thought bitterly. She hadn't even been sure that she desired the prince, who played the harp so beautifully and looked like no man Lyanna had ever seen, but was distant and aloof and always looked like he was the keeper of a secret no one else knew - but she'd been frustrated with herself for having failed her lord father so.
Lyanna had taken another swing and been gratified when the blade sank a good half an inch into the wood.
"Are you a swordswoman, my lady?"
Lyanna had whirled; the sword stayed buried in the post. She had not heard Prince Rhaegar approach; her face was red and sweaty, and she'd dragged her arm across it. "I--"
The prince had taken pity on her. "There's no shame it. Aegon the Conqueror's own sister was a great warrior."
"Visenya, I know." As a little girl Lyanna's favourite stories had been ones of Aegon's sisters. "She had a Valyrian steel sword she called Dark Sister."
Rhaegar had regarded Lyanna with haunted purple eyes. "You didn't answer my question, my lady, are you a swordswoman?"
Lyanna thought about it. "I think I would have liked to be," she'd said, "had my father allowed it."
There had been a strange, small smile on the prince's face. "Mayhap I might have a mind to allow it," he'd said, before turning and leaving as unobtrusively as he'd arrived.
*
Lyanna's hasty marriage to the prince had been arranged behind closed doors, between Prince Rhaegar, Queen Rhaella, and Lord Rickard.
She was Princess Lyanna Targaryen, residing in the Red Keep, and heavy with child almost before she knew what was happening.
When she'd first come south Lyanna had thought that the reason that King Aerys seemed to mislike her so was that his son had married her without his consent. By the time she had lived in King's Landing long enough to know why her goodfather was called the Mad King she'd come to realise that the Royal Progress that had brought Rhaegar to Winterfell had been his way of sparing his mother her lord husband's attentions for a time.
Lyanna tried to remember that during the unhappier days of her marriage: her husband was a dutiful son who loved his mother and had tried to protect her as best he could.
*
Lyanna was to meet her husband's mistress in the small council chamber.
Cersei thought that she ought to meet the Dornishwoman in the throne room, seated upon the Iron Throne if at all possible; Cersei's shining eyes as she sketched this scene had been enough to cause Lyanna to dismiss the idea out of hand.
But Lyanna's solar was too intimate, and strewn with the wooden blocks that were Aegon's favourite playthings of late, and this was not an audience she wished to hold in public.
Lyanna squared her shoulders, pushed the doors open, and found the woman her husband had dishonoured her with seated at the head of the council table.
"You'll forgive me if I don't rise," said Elia Martell, princess of Dorne, "my daughter's birth was hard on me."
Elia Martell was small and bird boned; she had shining black hair and dark, depthless eyes with heavy circles underneath. She wore a gown of sandsilk and cloth of gold.
Lyanna clenched her skirts in her fists, smoothed them out, and said, "As my son's was on me."
Songs were written about the beauty of queens and dead girls; Lyanna was the first and Aegon's birth had nearly made her the second. She had a skinny, boyish figure with narrow hips and no teats to speak of.
Those narrow hips were why she would never give Rhaegar a second child, and were in no small part why she was having this audience with Elia Martell.
Lyanna was pleased to note that Elia had also resisted any suggestion that she use her child as a weapon in this standoff. "Your daughter is not with you," she said.
"She's with a wet nurse in Dorne." Dorne was a big place, and Elia did not give the name of a castle. She placed her hands palm down on the council table and her gaze flicked from Lyanna's eyes up to the crown she wore. "I am a princess of Dorne and that is all I wish to be; I have no desire for your crown. My daughter is my sole concern, and I would not be here were it not for her."
Lyanna had not even known that Rhaegar was in Dorne, much less that he'd been there long enough to father a child on a Dornish princess, when a raven had arrived saying that his natural daughter and her mother were to be given positions of utmost respect at court.
"My husband is not with you either."
Elia shrugged one bony shoulder. "He boarded a ship bound for Essos."
"Let me guess," said Lyanna, trying to run her hand through her hair and knocking her crown askew, "a scroll, or a prophecy, or a madman with a vision?"
The corner of Elia's mouth twitched up. "A story of a story of a dragon, I believe."
Lyanna decided that queenly poise was a lost cause. She slumped down into a chair to one side and two down from Elia, removed her crown and placed it on the table in front of her; she ran her fingers through her hair, dishevelling it in an extremely satisfying fashion.
"Why would you wish to be my husband's mistress?" Lyanna asked.
"Paramour," Elia corrected.
Court rumour, one that Lyanna suspected Cersei had started, said that Rhaegar had taken up with the Dornishwoman because he had an ill-tempered teenager whose bed he hadn't shared since she'd given him a son for a bride.
For a moment Lyanna didn't think Elia was going to contradict received court wisdom, but she looked long at Lyanna and said, "I was not my mother's heir, and I am not my brother, Doran's; I am not strong like my brother Oberyn, and he is overprotective. I could be a footnote in Dornish history, or if Rhaegar is to be believed I could be mother to one of the three heads of the dragon."
"Do you?" Lyanna asked. "Believe in this prophecy of Rhaegar's?"
Elia turned the question around. "Do you?"
"I was wedded, bedded, and as big as a house before I ever heard the words 'the prince who was promised'," Lyanna said sourly. "My opinion was not considered important enough to be sought."
She rose, smoothed down her hair as best she could, and set the crown back on her head. "Send for your daughter, Princess Elia, I am no threat to her."
ii
Rhaegar had arranged a tourney to celebrate his daughter's first nameday - at least, he had ordered his Small Council to arrange for a tourney.
Lyanna lifted the one year old Princess Rhaenys, stuck her tongue out and crossed her eyes. It was not behaviour befitting a queen, especially not one sitting on a raised dais to watch the jousting before the assembled masses of King's Landing. Rhaenys giggled, and Lyanna laughed and settled the girl on her lap.
The knowledge that most of the court, Cersei Lannister foremost among them, wished to see Lyanna and Elia claw each other's eyes out had been reason enough to behave with civility.
But the smallfolk of King's Landing had not borne witness to the slow thaw between the queen and the king's... paramour. They had not come to see Queen Lyanna dandle Elia Martell's daughter on her knee while little Prince Aegon clung to the leg of Elia's chair; the Dornish princess had been closest to the boy when he'd had toddled too close to the edge of the dais, and she'd been the one to tug him back. They had come hoping to see a catfight between highborn ladies.
Once it became clear that Lyanna and Elia were not going to oblige them the crowd turned their attentions to the joust; it was possible that Brandon Stark would meet Oberyn Martell later in the lists, and Lyanna was given to understand that a great deal of coin had already changed hands in anticipation of the match up. She tipped her head and said as much to Elia.
"I imagine you know more of jousting than I do," said Elia. It was true enough; Lyanna had learned to ride at rings, but her father had forbidden her the pursuit when he'd begun husband hunting for her in earnest. "Which of the Kingsguard are the best lances?"
"Barristan Selmy and Jaime Lannister," Lyanna answered easily.
"Mayhap they could knock our brothers from their horses before they have a chance to meet in the lists?"
Lyanna had to smile at the notion of Brandon getting some sense knocked into his head; her brother had spent the last year at Winterfell nursing the insult of Rhaegar's betrayal, even more so than Lyanna had.
Elia's position at court was ambiguous still, and while she could give orders to the Kingsguard she could not be sure of them being followed, so Lyanna was the one to wave Jaime Lannister over from where he looked to be conspiring with his sister.
Cersei's expression soured as Jaime flashed the queen a grin and went down on one knee. "Your Grace."
"Ser Jaime, Princess Elia and I have a job for you. We'd like you to enter the lists--"
*
Lyanna watched Elia press a kiss to Rhaenys' temple before handing the child over to her nurse.
She heard a roar from the tourney grounds--
Lyanna had meant to stay and watch the melee herself. She'd sent Aegon back up to the Red Keep with Lysa; young as she'd been when her son was born it had taken Lyanna a while to become accustomed to motherhood, but she knew that such sights were unsuitable for a boy of three.
It was the nameday girl's bedtime anyway, and instead of sending her daughter back to the nursery with a servant, Elia had elected to take her herself. The elaborately carved, but hard and uncomfortable chairs they'd been sitting on all day to watch the jousting could have been doing the delicate Dornish princess no favours either.
Elia's brother was to compete in the melee, her uncle of the Kingsguard had been standing watch over Rhaegar in the royal library, and a cruel smirk was playing about the corners of Cersei Lannister's mouth.
Lyanna had seen Elia dig her fingernails into the arms of her chair and brace herself to rise, a pained expression flashing across her face; she'd sighed, stood, and offered her arm to Elia.
The queen had balanced Princess Rhaenys on her opposite hip, raised her chin, and ignored the susurration of whispers that rippled through the crowd as she helped her husband's... paramour descend the dais.
--There was another roar from the tourney grounds; the crowds were not letting the absence of the royal children, their mothers, or the king himself diminish their enjoyment of the festivities.
Elia smoothed down Rhaenys' dark hair and let the nurse carry her off to bed.
"She looks like you," said Lyanna.
With her dark hair, black eyes, and salty Dornish skin tones the little princess was the picture of her mother in miniature. She looked as much like Elia as Aegon, with his long Stark face and grey eyes, looked like Lyanna.
When Aegon had been but a babe-in-arms courtiers hoping to gain Rhaegar's favour had told him that they were sure the prince's eyes would turn purple as he aged; that hadn't happened, and Aegon eyes had remained Northman grey.
"Do you ever wish you might have named her something else?" Lyanna asked. "Something Dornish?"
Elia mused on this. "My mother's name was Artemesia, and Nymeria is a good Dornish name, but Rhaenys' father had her named before she was born and it is difficult to imagine her as anyone else."
"Aegon was named Jon for his first five days of life."
*
Lyanna's son had come early, which was one of the reasons she had survived his birth. The other reason was that King Aerys had been dying of a bad belly at the time and the massed wisdom of the citadel had been dancing attendance on him, causing Brandon to panic and send for the midwife who attended the girls of Chataya's.
Lyanna had come round sore and woozy and surprised to be alive to the sound of Brandon raging: She's barely six-and-ten, your precious prince couldn't keep off her for a year!, and Ned bathing her forehead with a cool cloth.
"You have a son," he'd told her. "He's with the wet nurse..." meaning they'd thought her like to die. "I gave him in a name..." meaning they'd thought her sure to die. "It's Jon."
Jon was a quiet babe who favoured his mother in looks and reminded Lyanna of her favourite brother.
Within the week Jon's father returned from Dragonstone, where he'd been by his mother's side as she brought his infant sister into the world, and Jon was renamed Aegon, someday to be Aegon Targaryen, the Fifth of his Name.
*
Lyanna let her forehead thud softly onto the table in her solar.
"My husband should have married you," she said in tones of weary resignation.
Rhaegar had planned to marry Elia of Dorne, like the Targaryens of old, but Elia been serious when she'd said that she had no wish for Lyanna's crown, and Rhaegar had become distracted by rumours of a smith in Volantis who claimed to be able to forge Valyrian steel swords from new and he'd boarded a ship for Essos, so the wedding never took place.
The moment Lyanna had realised that she would never be able to truly hate Elia Martell had come after Rhaegar's departure when Elia had stood before the Small Council, knuckles white against the chair back she was gripping to keep herself upright, spine so straight that it must have pained her, and said that while she had no desire to be a queen, her daughter would be a princess, and would bear the Targaryen name.
Elia let out a less than dignified snort, and Lyanna lifted her head from the table.
Elia was standing before her, leaning her weight on a cane of dark Summer Islands wood with the head carved into that of a viper, which had been a gift from her brother Oberyn during his last visit.
"If Rhaegar had wed me first, well, I imagine your family might have been less understanding of your running off with a married prince than mine was. I fear I might have been less understanding in your position, too."
Lyanna had not been long wed when she'd realised that her husband had no interest in her as Lyanna Stark; he saw her as Visenya come again, the mother of his heirs, and not even as that once the grandmaester informed him that she would never bear another child after Aegon.
She begrudged Rhaegar his prophecies, and was jealous that Elia had been allowed to walk into their arrangement with her eyes open, knowing that she was playing Rhaenys to Rhaegar's Aegon. But more than that she was angry, and lonely, and out of her depth, and Elia was the only person who could come close to understanding...
"I was not made to be a queen; I nearly died giving Rhaegar his heir, so how he expects me to rule seven kingdoms--!"
A magister from Pentos, Illyrio Mopatis, had come to court with a story of extant dragon eggs across the Narrow Sea, so Rhaegar was boarding a boat post-haste, and he was doing so without naming a new Hand of the King.
Tywin Lannister had been harbouring ill-will towards the crown for some time now; it was one thing to have his daughter, the light of the west, passed over for the half wild Stark girl, but to have her overlooked again for a sickly, insignificant Dornishwoman could not be borne. And Jon Connington did not have the temperament of a King's Hand at the best of times, and his devotion to Rhaeger was such that lengthy separations from his prince did his mood no good.
When the king left this time his queen would be left to rule in her young son's name.
"I was never even trained to be lady of Winterfell," said Lyanna, hating the whine she could hear creeping in to her voice. "Brandon and Ned at least learned at our father's knee."
"I sat by my mother's knee when she held court at Sunspear, and later at my brother's side." Elia slipped into the seat across from Lyanna. "And if you think King's Landing is a nest of vipers, you should pay a visit to Dorne." She hesitated, then reached out and took Lyanna's hand. "I will help you."
iii.
Lyanna sat next to Elia on a blanket in the castle gardens, their assorted ladies arranged about them, watching the children play.
Rhaegar had spent much of the two year winter chasing dragon eggs around Essos, and had returned in the spring with a toy sword for his son, a kitten for his daughter, and three dragon eggs that were locked up tight in the Maidenvault.
Aegon and Rhaenys had their heads bent together playing some game of make believe and looking as different as any two siblings could look; their silver haired cousin, Daenerys, sat by them taking her turn to pet Rhaenys' little black kitten.
Dany's brother Viserys wasn't present. Although he was the oldest of the royal children he had ceded the leadership role to the six year old Aegon without quarrel; at least, he had until Rhaegar had returned with the dragon eggs.
Viserys had thrown a series of tantrums over why couldn't he be the third head of the dragon that were driving the dowager queen to distraction.
Nymeria Sand, Oberyn Martell's natural daughter, who had been left temporarily in the care of her aunt, watched over the younger children with bored, disdainful eyes.
Lyanna leaned into Elia. "Has Rhaegar said anything to you about a brother or sister for Aegon and Rhaenys, a the third head for his dragon?"
"No." Elia frowned. "Has he said something to you?"
"Er, not exactly..."
*
The Red Keep was riddled with secret passages. Lyanna had learned the layout of them while playing hide-and-seek with Aegon; although neither Elia nor Rhaella had been impressed when she'd included Rhaenys, Nymeria, Viserys, and Dany in the game - it was more fun when she could divide the children up into teams.
Lyanna hadn't been playing with her son, just taking a shortcut back to the royal apartments, when she'd heard her husband's voice through the wall.
"The queen cannot get with child again," he'd said, "of that the maesters are quite sure."
"And what of your--"
"Paramour," Rhaegar supplied.
"If you say so." The other voice belonged to Jon Connington; Lyanna had oriented herself and realised that the passage she was in ran behind Connington's rooms. "Can she give you another child?"
"Her own physician says that she would likely not survive another birth."
"Could she deliver a living child though?" Connington's voice was careless, disinterested.
Lyanna had dug her fingernails into her palms, bit her lip, and hurried away before she gave away her presence.
She ran almost straight into Varys; Lyanna had never cared for the Spider. There was no shortage of suspects when it came to the 'bad belly' that had killed the Mad King, from Oberyn Martell to Lysa's obsequious husband. Lyanna had seen Queen Rhaella the morning after Aerys had got Daenerys on her, and if she hadn't been on Dragonstone when the king died Lyanna might have suspected her. But most of the court silently agreed that Varys was most likely the guilty party, even as they didn't plan to do anything about it.
"Your Grace," said the Spider. "No Little Birds with you today, I see."
Lyanna sniffed. "I do not use the children as spies."
Varys leaned in close, and for a man who was thoroughly powdered he had no noticeable scent. "Did you hear anything interesting?" he asked, and Lyanna pushed past him without answering.
*
"What about Cersei?" Elia suggested in a voice pitched low enough that none of the ladies dotted about the gardens would overhear.
Lyanna had to smother a laugh. It was, mayhap, unusual to be sitting here with her husband's paramour discussing who he might choose as the mother of his third child, but Elia's suggestion was funny.
"That might be worth it just to see Lord Tywin's reaction." Lyanna turned her laugh into a less than queenly snort. "The old lion wouldn't know whether to be offended about Rhaegar taking his daughter for a mistress, or offended that she wasn't his first pick."
"What about Lysa?"
"Lysa's happily married, with a son." Lyanna hadn't had any female companions at Winterfell, so when she'd first come to King's Landing she'd been given Cersei Lannister and Lysa Tully as her ladies. Cersei's father was too powerful for her to be dismissed, and Lysa had been dishonoured and impregnated by her father's ward, but through Catelyn and Brandon she was family, and Lyanna was doing her a kindness by keeping her at court. "To Petyr Baelish, but all the same."
Lyanna suggested Ashara Dayne for their third sister-wife; unlike Lyanna, Elia had been able to bring ladies of her own choosing from Sunspear.
"Ash is quite taken with a member of the Kingsguard," said Elia.
"Which one?" Ser Jaime was the youngest and most handsome of the guards, but when he wasn't on duty he was by his sister's side, so Lyanna was unsure where he'd find the time to take a lover.
"Barristan Selmy."
"I wouldn't have though Ser Barristan one to break his vows?" said Lyanna.
That wasn't true of all the Kingsguard. Elia's own uncle, Prince Lewyn, had a paramour and natural daughter in the King's Landing, and more than once he'd prevailed on Elia to let him take Rhaenys to the city so that she could play with her cousin.
"He's not," said Elia, "but he writes Ashara love notes, and he must have extremely persuasive handwriting."
*
Lyanna backed up before her opponent's ferocious onslaught; she blocked and parried and fell back. Something struck her in the back of the knees, and her first opponent struck true between her ribs.
Lyanna collapsed onto her knees, clutching her side. "You've killed me," she groaned. "I'm dying."
Aegon, who'd struck her with his wooden sword, laughed and said, "Mother," with all the exasperation a boy of near seven could muster.
"No, you've killed me," said Lyanna, continuing her dramatic, slow motion collapse. "You're an orphan now, Aegon. Elia, take care of my son."
"What about me?" Rhaenys piped up; she'd been the one to hit Lyanna on the back of her knees with a stick she'd dragged in from the godswood.
"Look after Rhaenys too, please, Elia."
Princess Elia had woken up that morning unable to feel her legs; she had these episodes occasionally, and she told Lyanna not to worry, that they usually passed within a day or so.
Lyanna had decided that playfighting the children through the royal apartments was an ample way of demonstrating exactly how unworried she was.
She hopped to her feet and sent the children off to find their cousins. "How are you?"
"I can feel a tingling in my left thigh," said Elia, as though this was encouraging news. She was sitting up in bed, surrounded by parchment and letters.
"Rhaegar should make you Hand of the King," said Lyanna, picking up a letter from the Lady of the Reach and casting it aside to sit on the edge of the mattress. Rhaegar was to leave again soon, this time for the Wall.
Elia snorted at that, and Lyanna swung her legs up onto the bed; she sat up against the headboard and said, "Has the king come to you?"
"It has been some years since Rhaegar kept either of us appraised of his movements, Lyanna."
"No--" Lyanna fisted her skirts, smoothed them down, and asked what she meant to. "I wonder-- does he still visit your bed?"
Elia looked at her with a tenderness that Lyanna had come to value more than resent over the years. "No. Does he visit yours?"
"Not since Aegon was conceived." The married ladies of Lyanna's acquaintance - Lysa, mainly - said that bedsport became more enjoyable the more you indulged, but Lyanna had gotten with child almost at once following her marriage and hadn't had the chance..
"My brother Oberyn," Elia said with a sly, sideways smile, "believes I should take a lover."
A gasp escaped Lyanna's mouth, and she put her fingers up to her lips. "Have you--?"
"Ash, for a while." Ashara Dayne; the pictures that flashed in Lyanna's mind were... unqueenly. "She's my friend and my lady, but we're not equals, and..."
"Ser persuasive handwriting came along," Lyanna finished for her, and Elia's mouth quirked up.
"Yes. And as for men - I barely survived Rhaenys' birth, I doubt I'd survive another. I choose not to risk getting with child again." Elia looked at Lyanna out of the corner of her eyes. "I understand that's not a problem for you. You could, if you wished; your secret would be safe with me."
"I am not overwhelmed with tempting prospects," said Lyanna. "I mean, Connington? I'm even less his desired type than he is mine. Ser Jaime? Cersei would claw my eyes out. No, I have my son, I have a crown I never asked for, and seven kingdoms I don't know how to rule." She laid her hand on Elia's knee, squeezed, and said, "And I have you."
Elia looked down at Lyanna's hand on her leg; she smiled, widely, happily, and said, "I can feel that."
iv.
The mystery of who would be third head of Rhaegar's dragon was solved when young Princess Daenerys snuck into the Maidenvault to touch one of the dragon eggs, which cracked and broke under her hand.
The black-scaled hatchling was called Drogon. Nine year old Dany was temporarily missing her two front teeth, and she couldn't say the word dragon clearly, and now the dratted beast wouldn't answer to anything else.
Rhaegar disappeared back into his scrolls and prophecies, searching for any clue he might have missed that his promised prince might be a princess, and though a Targaryen by blood, not a child of his body. Had he known, he might have encouraged his mother to name his sister Visenya.
Dowager Queen Rhaella, who had heard tales of hatching dragon eggs at her father's knee and her grandfather's, suggested that Aegon and Rhaenys be allowed to keep their eggs with them at all times; even going so far as to sleep next to them.
It all left Lyanna with a dull ache behind her eyes.
*
"I'm sorry to leave at a time like this," said Ned. Lyanna's favourite brother had been acting as Hand of the King for a time, with Rhaegar so frequently absent or.... distracted. "It is only that I must return to Winterfell; things appear to be becoming somewhat fraught."
Lyanna nodded understandingly.
Brandon's marriage to Catelyn Tully had not turned out to be all that might have been hoped for. Brandon did not even have Rhaegar's prophetic excuse for his disloyalty; and understandably enough Lady Catelyn had not found the sort of kinship that Lyanna had forged with Elia Martell with Barbrey Dustin.
The whole situation was made worse by the fact that their union was a childless one. All this Lyanna knew from Benjen's frequent, complaining letters; her youngest brother had been forbidden from taking the black until the much anticipated Stark heir made his appearance.
Across the courtyard Lyanna saw Tyene Sand disappearing through an archway. Tyene was the third of Oberyn Martell's natural daughters to be fostered at court with her aunt. After the egg hatching the three girls, Obara, Nymeria, and Tyene, had begun styling themselves the Sand Snakes, and set themselves up as an honour guard of sorts for Dany and Drogon.
It had occurred to Lyanna that if Brandon had fathered any natural children, then he was keeping it very quiet indeed.
"I understand," said Lyanna, embracing her brother. "You are needed at home."
*
To clear her head Lyanna had a horse saddled and rode hard down the Roseroad, easily outpacing her guard. She turned back before she reached the gates of Rosby; she felt that if she reached the castle there she would never stop, only keep riding forever.
Return to the Red Keep she did, to find Elia resting on a low couch, propped up on several pillows to help her ease her aching back, with Ashara Dayne reading a letter aloud to her.
"Your Grace," said Lady Ashara, exchanging a look with Elia that Lyanna couldn't read, and excusing herself from the room.
"I'm not interrupting, I hope," said Lyanna.
"A letter from my brother Doran only," Elia replied easily. "His gout is playing up, his subjects are hot-blooded and troublesome, and his daughter is a trial."
Lyanna could not help but smile; it made her feel better about the distant troubles of Winterfell to know that things were much the same throughout the realm.
On the corner of the desk Ashara had been leaning against Lyanna spied a dragon egg; she rolled her eyes. "I've told the children about leaving those things lying around; it would serve them right if they got broken."
Elia laid her palms flat by her sides as though to leverage herself upright. "No, don't," said Lyanna, gesturing towards the empty space next to Elia on the couch. "May I?"
Elia nodded, and Lyanna sank down with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. Elia laid a warm and soothing hand between her shoulder blades. "Are you quite well?"
"Ned departed today; my son may not be the prince who was promised, but my husband still wishes for him to be a dragonrider; oh, and there are dragons--!" Lyanna gulped down a harsh, ragged breath; it was all too much.
Elia rubbed slow, calming circles on her back, and when Lyanna had calmed herself, she said, "You know what my brother Oberyn would suggest were he here?"
It took Lyanna a second to catch on; her head snapped up, she saw the smile playing about the corners of Elia's mouth, and she realised she was being teased.
Lyanna smiled back.
Elia's palm was still resting against Lyanna's back; the Dornish princess was kind and lovely, and the only person in King's Landing, aside from the children, that Lyanna truly liked. And if she was sometimes unbearably sad, then her sadness blunted Lyanna's impotent rage at the course her life had taken.
"Mayhap--" Lyanna wet her lips. "Mayhap your brother is not wrong." Before she could lose heart she pressed a lover's kiss upon Elia. The princess's mouth was soft and pliant, and when Lyanna didn't pull away Elia nibbled teasingly at her bottom lip.
Lyanna misliked riding side-saddle, so when she took a horse out for a hard gallop she wore breeches and a loose man's shirt; it was her shirtfront that Elia toyed with as she reclined against the cushions, tugging Lyanna with her.
Lyanna followed without breaking their kiss; her knees bracketed Elia's hips, and she mouthed kisses down the column of the princess's throat... and realised that she was lying bodily on top of a woman whose very bones sometimes pained her.
She pushed herself up on her forearms and asked, "I'm not hurting you, am I?"
Elia's gaze was soft; she brushed aside a lock of brown hair that had escaped Lyanna's braid and fallen into her face. "I resigned myself to a certain amount of pain when I agreed to bear Rhaegar's child and live here at court; but you, sweet queen, have hurt me less than most."
*
The remaining two dragon eggs hatched.
Rhaenys' egg cracked in the middle of the night, and a green-scaled hatchling crawled out onto the girl's bed; she called the newborn creature Balerion.
It was said at court that Rhaenys was her mother's daughter in both her Dornish appearance and her sweet and gentle nature, and so Lyanna was mayhap the only person unsurprised when she named her dragon after the Black Dread.
Shortly thereafter Aegon's egg spat out a white-scaled hatchling, which the boy would insist on naming Ghost.
The dragons were devoted to the children first and foremost, but Drogon would snap and flame at anyone who came too close to Rhaella, Balerion could on occasion be found curled up on Elia's lap while she worked, and Ghost had once arranged himself just so along the back of the Iron Throne while Lyanna held court in her husband's absence - it was the most productive court session she'd ever been party to.
*
Lyanna pressed her fingertips to the soft skin behind Elia's ear, where she suspected there would be a bruise tomorrow as she had sucked desperate kisses there while Elia had stroked her fingers skilfully between Lyanna's legs.
After some experimentation they had dicovered that on their sides facing one another was the position that troubled Elia's back the least; Lyanna considered the fact that this meant that they could kiss while they took their pleasure to be a boon.
"Rhaegar leaves again tomorrow," said Elia, leaning into Lyanna's touch like a cat enjoying being petted.
"For the Wall," Lyanna confirmed, in the tones of a woman who thought he'd be as well taking the black while he was there.
The king's presence or otherwise made little difference to Lyanna and Elia. If, on the increasingly rare occasions he was in residence, Rhaegar had noticed what they were to each other, he didn't care enough to stop them. And with three growing dragons and three dragonriders on the cusp on adolescence running around the court had more pressing concerns than whether the queen was sleeping alone or going to the bed of her... paramour.
"I assume Rhaegar still hasn't named a new Hand," Lyanna said.
Elia sighed in weary resignation. "I shall meet with the Small Council to discuss it after the king departs."
Lyanna pressed a quick kiss to the corner of Elia's mouth. "Sooner you than me, princess."
v.
Lyanna travelled north to Winterfell, to see Brandon laid to rest in the crypt beside their father and their father's fathers. Even in King's Landing she had heard tell of an increase in the numbers of Wildlings coming south, both through official reports and letters from her brothers, but she had never dreamed that they would cut down the lord of Winterfell.
She took Aegon with her; her son had never before seen his ancestral home. The lords and ladies who'd once attempted to curry favour with Rhaegar by saying that surely the boy would grow into his Targaryen looks now flattered Lyanna.
Robert Baratheon, when he'd last come to court, had clapped the queen manfully on the shoulder, and told her that she had a fine, strong boy, a credit to his mother. Of course, Lord Robert had later ruined it by attempting to slip his hand down Lyanna's gown at the feast; he'd been halted in his efforts both by Lyanna stabbing him in the hand with a fork, and Ghost's calculating, reptilian eyes fixing on him from across the hall.
Aegon was in many ways very like his mother; he had brown hair, grey eyes, and a long, solemn face that lit up when he favoured someone with one of his rare smiles. He attended to his studies without being bookish; he was tall and strong for twelve, and getting stronger all the time now that he was training daily with Benjen.
Soon after Lyanna and her son had arrived at Winterfell the snows had closed in, making Moat Cailin, and the road south, impassable.
*
"You should wed her," Lyanna told Ned as they walked together through the godswood several weeks after they'd laid Brandon to rest. She had seen the soft smiles he and Catelyn exchanged, the way their heads automatically bent together.
"There was nothing between us--" Ned said, uncommonly flustered. "Not while Brandon lived."
"Of course not," said Lyanna gently, taking his arm. "You always were the best of us, sweet brother. But love is a rare, fleeting thing in this world and must be seized--" she had a flash of olive skin, depthless eyes, and thin wrists leading to elegant hands "--even if it is found in unexpected places."
*
Lyanna was not entirely sorry to be stranded; there were things, people, Elia, that she missed in King's Landing, but she felt that she could breathe freely in Winterfell in a way that she never had been able to in the south.
And Aegon - with his Stark looks; the very image of Ned when he'd been nearing three-and-ten - he seemed to belong in Winterfell; at least, he did so long as you could overlook Ghost.
With his white scales the dragon could all but become part of a snowdrift or vanish atop a snow covered roof; until he belched out a plume of flame that did little to warm the air but much to alarm the castle denizens. As such not everyone was entirely unhappy when after a little shy of a year the roads cleared enough to allow the queen and the prince to journey south.
The day that they meant to depart Ned pulled Lyanna aside; she half expected him to awkwardly thank her for giving him a nudge when it came to Catelyn. The new lord of Winterfell had taken his brother's widow to wife before the heart tree, and her belly was already beginning to swell; the long awaited heir to Winterfell was finally on his, or her, way.
"I rode out to execute a deserter from the Night's Watch yesterday," he told her; Lyanna nodded, she and Cat had watched him go from a high window. "He said he saw something beyond the Wall, something unnatural, something that made him run."
It can't be, was Lyanna's first thought; quickly followed by, Rhaegar was right about the dragons.
Ned was still talking. "He was a deserter, and he knew the punishment for that; I wouldn't credit anything said by a man begging for his life--"
"Ned," Lyanna interrupted urgently. "If you hear of anything else like this you must send a raven to me in King's Landing at once!"
vi.
Rhaegar had ridden north with them, parting from Lyanna and Aegon at Winterfell and continuing on to the Wall. He hadn't returned when the weather improved, and ravens sent to Castle Black to enquire after him returned with the news that the king had led a ranging deep beyond the Wall during the worst of the snows, and none of his party had returned.
There was no body, and the court was loath to declare the king lost without evidence - Aegon was not being crowned king, but as prince regent in his father's absence.
Having been crowned a queen when she was but a teenager herself, Lyanna was in no doubt that four-in-ten was too young to rule. But the Small Council's choice for regent was Prince Viserys, and Lyanna had long misliked the lean and hungry look in Viserys' eyes when he looked at his sister, his cousins, and their dragons. The dowager queen had proved Lyanna an unexpected ally; Rhaella saw something of her husband in her younger son, and believed passionately that keeping him from the throne was the only way to spare him his father's fate.
So Aegon was to be crowned the very next morning.
"There have been young kings before," said Elia as they lay in bed; she smoothed out the worry line between Lyanna's eyebrows with her thumb. "The Young Dragon was all of fourteen."
Lyanna arched her eyebrow; Elia could not have thought of a better example than the boy king who'd been killed in a Dornish uprising? "And look what happened to him."
"Your son is different. He has Dornish allies, powerful ladies who will fight like tigers for him."
It should have been ridiculous; Elia walked with a cane when she could walk at all, and despite her future as a dragonrider Rhaenys was all of twelve, but it didn't feel silly to Lyanna, it felt immensely comforting.
She pressed a kiss to Elia's mouth, rolled over, took comfort from Elia's warmth at her back, and tried to sleep.
*
Lyanna's son sat the Iron Throne; two lesser thrones had been placed to either side of him where Rhaenys and Daenerys sat.
On the steps before the throne the three dragons were coiled in a deadly heap of scale and wing. Lyanna wondered if any of the assembled crowd had noticed that though Aegon sat the Iron Throne, and Daenerys was the quietest of the children, her Drogon was by far the largest and fiercest of the dragons.
Lyanna and Elia stood watching from the balcony. Lyanna had pinned the hand shaped broach on Elia's gown herself this morning, and when Aegon announced, "I name Elia Martell, Princess of Dorne, Hand of the King," Lyanna would take her arm to ensure than she didn't stumble on her descent to the throne room proper.
"Gods," said Elia softly, looking down "they're children."
Elia was not wrong to worry. The king was missing presumed dead, something was stirring beyond the Wall, the dragons were half grown, and the children were children.
"Winter is Coming, princess."
"What do we do?"
"Right now?" Lyanna slipped her hand into Elia's, entwined their fingers, and squeezed. "We hold fast."