Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken: The Chronicles of Elia Martell, Part Six
~282 A.L.~
She dreamt long after this birth, and dreamt of fire and screams and of a father and son who should not have died, of a mad man who should not be king, and of a prince who she should not have married.
Her struggle back to consciousness was long, and hard. Her health failed her, once more, and only her stubbornness accounted for her return to life. The maester himself had given her up for dead two or three times at least. She had Ashara send the fool away before she throttled him.
But things worsened as she had slept, in ways she could not have anticipated.
“You should not trouble yourself with this,” Ashara admonished as Elia asked after the happenings in the Vale. “You need to save your strength.”
“I’ve birthed the heir to the throne, and now the kingdom is in revolt,” Elia shook her head. “Nay, I haven’t the luxury for ignorance. Who would guess, in an entire kingdom of groveling, weak-willed fools that the men of honour had hidden themselves away in the Eyrie of all places?”
Ashara was near tears. “You should not say such things, not out loud.”
But Elia had had enough. “If he would burn me, then let him do it quick. I am tired of this whole mummer’s farce anyways.”
Her son was a dragon, through and through. He had some of her, around the nose and shape of his lips, but that was all. Rhaenys was made completely in her mother’s image, and this boy child was Rhaegar remade. Even Aerys was pleased, however much he could be, and actually sent a letter congratulating her on a job well done.
Elia had Ashara burn it, and she felt only half the satisfaction that she should have.
Her recovery was stinted this time, for all her will could not overcome the damage the birth had caused. Ashara had to feed her for well on two weeks before Elia could manage the task on her own. Her attempts to walk were brief and often discouraging, as she could only make herself take a few steps before she was exhausted. She slept long and often, needed Ashara’s help more than she wanted to need it, and was effectively bed-ridden for months after the birth.
She awoke one day, about three weeks after the birth, to find herself not alone as usual. It was midday; she could tell by the streams of sunlight coming through the window. She wasn’t surprised to find the day already half over; she slept more now than she ever remembered before. Ashara usually made certain that there was no one to disturb her, and would come herself when the princess called.
But today, somebody stood by her window, waiting for her. She blinked weary eyes at the dark figure, waiting for the haze of sleep to clear. It was the silver hair that first came into focus, and then the red and black of his tunic. Her heart stuttered, stopped its usual low beating and transformed into erratic halts and lurches. He turned to face her, and she saw now that he held their son in his arms. The babe was fidgeting, face red and tiny fists jerking in the air.
“Our son is hungry,” Rhaegar told her. He lifted his head at last, looked at her with the strangest expression, and then walked to her bed. She had a wealth of things to say, of accusations to scream and recriminations to bestow. The anger had been stewing every day of his absence, frightening her with the darkness and bitterness that her body could hold. She wanted to demand answers, to ask him what he had been thinking; she wanted to rage and be hysterical and rip him apart piece by piece.
But she was Princess Elia of Dorne, and her mother had long ago taught her that hysterics accomplished nothing. She took the babe from his arms, cradling the child in her left arm while undoing the laces on her shift with the other. She put her son to the breast, forced herself to stay upright and look alert.
Rhaegar took a seat on the bed, his knee touching her legs. Elia stifled the urge to pull her legs away; he had debased her enough on his own, she wouldn’t aid him further by acting a child. “His name is Aegon,” Rhaegar informed her, voice quiet but firm, eyes only for the child at her breast.
She wanted to cringe at the name. How like her husband to be so dramatic. “Will you write him a song?” she asked, a derisive tilt to her words.
Rhaegar stared into her eyes, and she did not know what to make of the strange gleam they held. “He has a song. He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire.”
He laid a hand on Aegon’s head, fingers brushing against the bare skin of her breast in the process. “There must be one more; the dragon has three heads.”
“Well, it is good fortune then that you shall soon have a young, new wife. Surely she will be stronger and more fertile than your last.”
He pulled back his hand, violet eyes flickering with shame. “Elia, don’t say such things.”
“What would you like me to say?” she asked, her tone unconcerned and light. “Haven’t you been thinking of the perfect excuse for why you took the Stark girl? What better reason that your blasted three-headed dragon and your weak wife, no longer able to give you another child? I’m sure the maester was quick to inform you of my condition, and you were quick to think of justifications based upon my failings. It is what your father does.”
He rose from the bed, began to pace. She turned her face away from him, content to look down upon her son and trace a finger lightly over his pink cheeks. She wondered how she could hold such disdain and such gratitude for Rhaegar in her heart. He was not the man he proclaimed himself to be, and her illusions were shattered more and more daily. But he had his hand in giving her this child, and beautiful Rhaenys before. She wondered if they would be enough to grant him some forgiveness on her part.
“I have wronged you,” he confessed suddenly, the words leaving him in a rush. “I have tried to convince myself that I could make you understand, but I know I put you through an ordeal most women would not abide. I have thought of what reasons I could give you, what excuses that would give you some comfort, some explanation that would not wound you entirely. I have been dreaming, haven’t I?”
She did not answer; such questions do not deserve answers.
“I shall not try then, for to put you through the insult of listening to a half-hearted justification is something I finally realized I could not put you through. But believe, Elia, I do love you-I have almost since the moment I saw you.”
“Your love is to blame for this mess,” Elia glanced at her husband, anger hardening her words and burning her throat. “This whole family dabbles in madness, in one form or another. Your father has lost his mind. He cooks the northern lords in their armour and expects everyone to bend the knee-never realizing how unwilling people have become to bare their necks for a mad king. His madness is power, the utter belief that he is king and all would try to take them from him. But you, my husband, your madness is that very love you offer to me now as a condolence for breaking my heart and ripping the realm to pieces.”
“Elia-“
“You lose reason, you lose thought-you become so impulsive and rash and so unlike that sweet prince I married. In the short life of our marriage, you have loved me with a passion that I could barely sate. And when I became too weak to bear it, your love turned to a wolf-girl that was not yours to love. Say what you will of fate and destiny and true love-that is not the world we live in. You are the heir to the throne, and you must uphold and respect the laws and customs of our land if you ever wish others to do the same. You have spat upon everything by taking the girl, ripping her away from her family and her betrothed. Her honour and her virtue are gone; even if you have not touched her, no one will ever believe she is a maid. She will be tainted by this for years to come, and she will either be reviled for enticing away a married prince and causing this war, or she will be mourned as an innocent child, raped by a lustful dragon prince who snatched her from her home. That is your destiny now, my husband.”
Rhaegar’s hands shook, clenched into fists at his side. She saw, for the first time, some stirrings of rage in her husband’s eyes. It pleased her where perhaps before it would have shamed her. But she was not that woman anymore.
“Have you told her, your little lady love, what Aerys did to her father and brother? How did you explain your absence, your complete unwillingness to come and face them, to perhaps spare them the fate Aerys had planned for them? Does she hate you now? Has she ever not hated you, from that moment you took her?”
“Oh Elia, I fear the gods may not forgive me this,” he looked to her, crestfallen and despaired. “I have made a cruel woman out of you.”
“No, love, you have just reminded me of the shrewd woman I should have been all along,” she turned back to the babe at her breast, paused to turn him around and switch him to the other before speaking again. “When this war is over, I will move to Dragonstone with Rhaenys and Aegon. You will tell Aerys that this is your wish. You will come to visit, or request the children be brought to court ever so often. This will be done, but I will not leave Dragonstone for King’s Landing until our son is wed. When both are married and happy, I will return home to my brothers, and after that, I would ask that you, most gracious prince, never endeavour to meet with me again. You keep your little wolf-girl here, make her your queen, and do us both a great service to forget that you were ever wed to Princess Elia of Dorne.”
He seemed utterly lost in that moment, disbelief and grief dueling for dominance. “You would end it?”
She looked back to her son, kissed his soft tufts of silver hair. “You ended it, my prince, when you misplaced the crown of winter roses.”
~0~
It was Ser Arthur who came to collect her.
She sat by her window, dressed delicately in a gown of red and black, the perfect Targaryen wife. Ashara fretted to and fro, barking instructions at the nurse carrying Aegon and the maid trying to coax Rhaenys’s curls into braids. A knock on the door turned out to be Ser Oswell and Ser Arthur, both fully armoured. Both bent the knee in front of her, and she gestured almost lazily for them to rise.
“It is time, princess,” Ser Oswell informed her, his tone clipped and formal. She wanted to laugh at him, taking offence for a prince who had wronged her more than she him. Instead, she smiled at him, a parody of sweetness and grace.
“Of course, good ser,” Elia nodded at Ashara. “Lady Ashara, please take the prince. We must be off; my husband leaves for war today.”
Rhaenys, disgruntled by the offensive braids plaited into her hair and uncomfortable in her ornate gown, took hold of Ashara’s skirts in an obvious rebuff of her maid and marched out the door with her brother. Elia smirked at the sight of the princess, head held high and expression almost obscenely fierce for such a small child.
“My mother would have delighted in meeting her,” Elia laughed and turned to Ser Arthur, the knight obviously surprised to hear her addressing him in anything other than derision. She took a moment to look at him, eyes traveling over a handsome face that she knew far better than most would suspect. She offered him her hand and he helped her to her feet.
She surprised him further by settling her hand in the crook of his elbow, gliding gracefully past the bowing maid and nurse and out into the corridor. “You have changed, become so much larger and stronger than that boy I used to know,” she whispered to him, low so the guards in the halls could not make out her words.
He started, arm tensed suddenly and then relaxed. “I am older now, my princess, and no longer a boy.”
“No, that is true, and I am no longer a girl,” her fingers tightened on his arm, squeezing the muscles there and unsurprised at their iron. “Do you remember when I was a girl?”
Ser Arthur coughed, uneasy. “Of course, my princess.”
“Do you remember when you kissed me in the rain, hiding from our brothers in your family’s orchards?”
He stumbled, almost dropped her arm. “Princess, please,” he looked around, but they had walked past the guards minutes past.
There was no one left to overhear them, but she kept her voice to a whisper nonetheless.
“I thought, then and almost every day for a year, that you would marry me. Your father would come to ask the Lady, and she would grant it if only because I would demand it. I would have worn orange and red, and Ashara would have carried the train of my dress. I would move to Starfall and we would all live happily, many children and many nieces and nephews. A life of contentment, riding whenever we wished, trips to Sunspear almost every week. Oberyn would drag you away for many a reckless misadventure, I would be waiting to scold you both upon your return. I dreamt of it so often, it almost felt as though it was fated to be.”
To that, he said nothing. She glanced up at him and found him unable to meet her eyes. She was not surprised by that. This was a topic she had never discussed with anyone before. But there was something in the morning air that day, it seemed to make her nostalgic, perhaps a bit vulnerable, and suddenly her life was full of one regret too many.
“Why did you come here? For the cloak and glory? Why did you not stay?”
Ser Arthur let out a breath, a sound full of resignation. “I am the second son of a lower house-how could I presume to marry the princess of Dorne?”
“That did not matter to me.”
“It mattered to me!” he stopped, tried to reign in his frustration. “What would our children have inherited? A speck of Dayne lands? What would they have had a right to? I was not suited to marry a princess, not when there were far better matches for you. And I, what would I have been other than a princess’s husband? Here I am the Sword in the Morning, and people speak of my valour, not of my gall. I had my glory, and you had your better match.”
Elia laughed, short and brittle. “And look what has happened. I had the best match a daughter could have, and I’d trade it all for a second son of a lesser house. At least he would not have put me through this disgrace; he would have been discreet had he ever decided to betray me.”
The muscles in his arm tensed once more. “He never would have betrayed you, princess.”
“Never say never, dear knight,” she smiled at him, tears pooling in her eyes before she blinked them back. “He betrayed me once, by running away. I think that I was never fated to be loved by any man; there is always something more precious to them than I. For the first, it was glory; the second, it was a little wolf-girl. I cannot say now which betrayal hurt the most.”
Later, she searched for him amongst the knights littering the courtyard of the keep. He looked so gallant upon his horse, and she wished her heart could feel regret instead of bitterness. But perhaps that was too much to ask on a day such as this. She shifted her attention then to her uncle, standing fierce and proud with the banner of House Martell in hand. He caught her gaze and she caught his, and she immediately straightened her spine. She pushed back the self-pity and nodded once briefly at her mother’s brother.
She stood with her children, Ashara surrendering Aegon to her arms and Rhaenys trading her grip on Ashara’s skirts for a grip on Elia’s instead. With Aerys watching closely, Elia dipped her ankles in front of her husband, smiled one last gentle smile for him, and kissed him sweetly before sending him to fight for another.
“Farewell, my love,” he whispered into her ear, his face hopeful.
“Hurry home, my prince,” and she gave him nothing but an empty smile and no promises for the future.
The crowds cheered for him as he departed, the people mindful of their king’s gaze. Rhaegar rode out of the Red Keep with a contingent of soldiers and most of the Kingsguard following in his wake. Only Ser Jaime remained, expression carefully blank as Aerys sneered openly at him. Elia waited beside her good-mother, the queen’s belly swelling in that tell-tale way, and wordlessly turned to leave when she was dismissed. Rhaenys abandoned her when Viserys came tugging upon her hand and Elia deposited Aegon into Ashara’s care.
“Did you do as I asked?” she asked Ashara as she led the way back to her rooms. Ashara nodded once and Elia smiled gratefully at her friend. The guards outside her door bowed to her and opened the door for her. She waved them off, shutting the door herself after Ashara followed her through. Elia motioned for Ashara to take the prince to his cradle, her attention entirely on the man waiting for her in her sitting room.
“Princess,” the man wheezed and dipped down into a ridiculously low bow. Elia rolled her eyes at Ashara and swept towards her chair.
“Lord Varys, I need you to do something for me.”
~0~
Finale