Suns and Stars Both Light the Way

Chapter 1

Elia Martell's wedding gown was bright yellow, vivid like the sun. "Like Elia herself," Edric Dayne often said but he could not convince anyone, even Ashara, to let him steal a look.

"It's a shame, really! Even at fifteen, Ashara knows that the bridegroom must never see the wedding gown before the actual wedding. Where did I do wrong?" his mother would ask but she was smiling, as amused as Elia and Ashara at his attempts to get to know.

"I can let Arthur see it and he can describe it to you," Elia offered when the playful mood took her and both Dayne brothers choked on their drinks. Arthur would be as good at describing an intricate gown as she would be at explaining the specifics that made Dawn so much better than other blades. Of course, Edric would be just as bad at imagining from any description what the gown looked like.

Everyone awaited the day of the wedding with smiles and joy.

This day never came. "At least Elia is still alive", people said but to her, it was such a scarce comfort. Elia and Edric, people said, merging their names in one. How did one get used to be severed? For months, Elia would go to bed dreading the return of the memories, the roar of the Torentine sweeping away the fishing village – sweeping it away, - that little girl whom the tide was dragging further, further in, the shrieks of the mother and the shouted warnings of the men who had seen enough to know that once going this deeply in against such a raging current, one would never find the strength to fight it and go all the way back.

Edric almost did. His muscles tired from working on the makeshift embankment that had not held anyway and diving in to save those snatched in the deadly embrace of the river, his hair clinging to his face, he dove again and made it for the girl, and seeing their future lord braving the terror that was the Torrentine, strangely beautiful under the pale moon and twinkling stars, they followed.

But he did not quite make it. He was only able to push the child out of the way of the most sucking current where others caught her, tried to catch him as well but his limbs simply refused to work, negotiate these last few feet. From the edge of the river that was now at the other end of the village, Elia could hear her own screams as one of the stars twinkled and fell before her wide eyes.

For a long time, she believed that the river would return him. Alive. But it did not. And she only believed in the reality of his death when she realized that a new life was growing inside her. A child who was already an orphan before it was born.

If I had waited, Elia raged and cursed herself. Silently, of course. She was already the subject of so many rumours and pitying looks, ever since her belly had started growing visibly. The poor pregnant wife as her husband pined after his wild wolf girl! He had crowned Lyanna Stark to Elia's face, had he not? If her anger became visible now, she'd only be confirmed as being the shrew who had tortured her poor princely husband so.

Three years, just three years! She was furious with her mother, with Doran, with herself, with Rhaegar for accepting a wife when all he needed had been a companion in bed – for just part of the night, - his old parchments, and his harp.

Three years, and she would have been making the preparations for her wedding to Edric right now, instead of praying that she and the child she carried lived because Rhaegar just had had to make love to her – as he had called it – in the night the comet had fallen. Not caring that she was still weak, feeble, plagued by headaches and bleedings that should have stopped two months after Rhaenys' birth.

Edric would have never done this. Not to her, not to any other wife.

He had returned. He was alive. And she was already wed because she had not believed this first instinct that had made her defiant and refusing to listen to anyone trying to make her see reality. Because the reality that she had accepted had turned false. Just like everything else that mattered in her life.

She longed to see him again and she never wanted to see him because seeing him when he was no longer hers? She could not think she could bear it. It could be worse than the pain of childbirth and the Mother knew that Elia was well acquainted with pain. She had never expected the one she had had at her births, though. And she awaited the birth of this child, the heir that Rhaegar believed was the Prince Who Was Promised with fear that she had learned not to try and suppress because this just made it worse.

She saw him again when she was trying to chase the nightmare off, wake up and find out that Rhaegar had never absconded with Lyanna Stark, she had never been brought to King's Landing, there has never been a war that was already being passed off as the war for Rhaegar's great love, where her goodfather and husband did not hold her and her children as a sword over Doran's head. That same Lyanna Stark. In other words, wake up and find out that her life was not her life but the bad dream it felt like.

Her Dornish handmaiden asked her in a hushed voice to go the small solar, so she did – and froze.

Rhaegar Targaryen and Edric Dayne stood facing each other.

It was surreal. Something that could not be, although her entire life could not have been for a year but it was. They both were.

Edric had never been a sturdy man but now he had become what some would call gaunt. Elia called it slender. His black eyes were unfathomable, yet it was not lack of feeling but the forcing of any feeling out before a battle that the sandy Dornish were famous for in their lifetime of battles with men and sands – and Edric's mother was of House Qorgyle. His olive face had become even darker in his years in Essos. But when he saw her, the cloud of their years apart seemed to lift and he smiled at her as he had once. She replied in kind, forgetting that her husband was watching.

And then, reality came crashing back, pressing her under its weight. Edric stirred a little, as if throwing it off, and said, "We don't have time. Take the children. I'm taking you back to Dorne."

Elia gasped. And looked at Rhaegar.

"Don't look at him at all," Edric said sharply. "He has renounced any rights over your fate and your children's fate when he had the marriage annulled."

This time, her gasp was more pronounced. Rhaegar shifted uncomfortably and she knew it was true. He had thrown her and the children away and not bothered to tell her. He had not told anyone. Because Dorne would not fight for him – and Lyanna Stark!

Rhaegar made it to support her when she swayed and she staggered back, horrified that he might touch her. Edric didn't even move but then, he had always seen her as strong. He expected that she would not fall and she did not. The nausea, however, could not be fought back. She was not the mother of the future king. She was the mother of a bastard. Two of them. Three, if the truth ever came out.

"Are you better now?" Edric asked after a while and she nodded, not looking at the mess on the floor. "Are you ready to travel?"

"Yes," Elia said. "So, he had the marriage annulled? On what grounds?" she asked, not looking at Rhaegar. She did not want to look at him because she'd throw up again if she did and whatever he told her, it would be a lie.

"That you used to be betrothed to me and since I was not kind enough to die, the betrothal still stood. That you were not free to wed him. He even looked a little sad, I was told. Not for long, though. He married Lyanna Stark in Dorne and they were both brimming with happiness. Are you going to swoon, or what?"

"No," Elia said through clenched teeth, once she regained the strength to speak. "So, he's replacing my children with hers? How could you ever make hum let us go then? He's clinging to us as precious hostages against Doran."

Edric smiled. "His little love, his true princess, or whatever he insists on calling her, is enjoying our hospitality at Starfall. And since he is so keen on meeting his trueborn child, I'll be happy to send it to him soon. I'll cut it personally from his mother's belly. Accompanied by a finger from her white hand. He became very amenable all of a sudden."

Something held Elia's eye. A laurel of dried flowers. The crown Lyanna Stark had obviously kept all this time to remind her of the most glorious moment in her life. She did not even want to step over it, it looked so filthy to her.

"But how?" she asked again.

Edric sighed. "You won't move before I tell you, will you? Very well. Let's say I have a package to deliver. I have to admit that I'm curious at what it reads. Arthur would not tell me, although he intends to have copies send to every important House in the realm to let everyone know, just like everyone will get to know that you've been discarded and your children made bastards… once the Prince of Dragonstone is finished using Dorne to fight his battles. By the way, these men Prince Lewyn is leading? Forget about them. They're marching back. We are not fighting for Lyanna Stark and her son and that's it."

He produced a sealed parchment and handed it to Rhaegar. And a length of white cloth that he tossed on the floor as if he could not wait to get rid of it. "White was never Arthur's colour anyway," he said.

Aboard the ship, Elia turned back to watch the lights of the city that had given her nothing but disdain and humiliation. She held Aegon closer and wondered if Rhaegar had made it safely back to the Red Keep after leading them out through the secret passages that he had known were there all along. She hoped that a random cutthroat will cross paths with him before he returned to the castle where everything he had stood for before Lyanna Stark had fled, leaving only a parchment that had made him white with anger and a length of white cloth. Just a white cloak and nothing else.