AN: Yeah, the first GoT oneshot I write in months is the darkest story I've written to date. This is a short story of Elia Martell and her doomed love with Rhaegar Targaryen. Her story is so tragic and I wanted to write something for her. This is the story of the Sack of King's Landing.

Trigger warning: rape, blood, character death

All the King's Horses

Elia Martell had given Rhaegar everything.

She bore him two children; two beautiful children. Rhaenys and Aegon. Aegon was fair of hair, the same as his father's, while Rhaenys looked like a Martell. It was perhaps this reason why Aerys refused to touch her when she was presented by Rhaegar. She would have bore him another child, had he asked it of her, despite being bedridden for half a year after Rhaenys' birth. She would have done anything for Rhaegar.

And Rhaegar ran off with another woman.

Locked in Maegor's Holdfast, Elia could hear the roar of battle. Her gold dress rustled about her feet as she paced the room. She felt like a caged lion, but she was a viper. She'd walked among them and never been bit. She'd lain with dragons and not been burned. It seemed trivial that the castle would soon be over run with lions and dogs. Dragons and vipers were unpredictable; Elia believed canines and felines to be creatures of habit.

She thought Rhaegar would come riding back and claim this war had been nonsense. She had to believe that he'd sweep her off her feet and kiss her like he used to before he gave his favor to the Stark girl at the Tourney of Harrenhal. Perhaps it was the naive hope of a caged animal, but one had to hope.

She was still hoping when they broke down the door. She was still hoping when Ser Amory Lorch tore her daughter from beneath Rhaegar's bed. She was still hoping when Ser Gregor Clegane wrapped his meaty hands about her slim shoulders and held her back as Lorch tangled his fingers in Rhaenys' dark hair and held her still.

"Don't you touch her!"

And Elia struggled. Elia struggled against The Mountain and not for the first time she wished she were made of fire. She wished she was the viper her brother was. She wished she could spin around and strike down the large man where he stood. Though, she could do nothing as Lorch pulled his knife, glinting in the midday sun. Her daughter trembling, whimpered and Lorch sneered. Elia sobbed.

"Look at me, dearest… Don't look away Rhaenys…!"

She lost hope when Lorch's knife connected the first time. It tore through Rhaenys' dark skin and the screams of mother, daughter and infant son mixed together in a grotesque symphony. Had Elia's body been made of glass, it would have shattered into a thousand pieces and struck down her attacks in one last act. Instead, it was not her body breaking before her. It was her daughter's. Again and again and again the knife found home, buried in her little body.

"She's only a child!"

Elia screamed her throat raw. She didn't have a voice left when her daughter's body slumped to the ground. She just had shock. A raw, open wound the size of the world. The pressure on her upper arms fell away and she surged forward, cradling the bloody body of her poor, innocent Rhaenys against her chest. The blood soaked into the gold of her clothes, staining it the color of death. She brushed the hair from her daughter's cooling corpse, rocking it back and forth, humming past the lump in her throat. Her hands trembled and she didn't have the strength to fight when Lorch yanked her to her feet and away from her baby.

Gregor Clegane, more monster than man, was holding her son. Her baby Aegon. She wailed for him to be spared, that he was a baby. She was still wailing when Clegane dashed Aegon's head open against the wall. His hands dripped with her son's blood, her own hands curled into the fabric at her breast, tears clouding her vision. Her knees buckled and Lorch held her up with a grip of iron.

Then Clegane came for her.

He threw her down upon her husband's bed and positioned himself above her. His breath was hot against her neck as his hands tore her clothing away. He pressed the heels of his palms into her shoulders when she struggled away from her, tears against her face. She screamed when he took her. She sobbed at the morbid touch of his lips across her body. She whimpered at his bloody hands wandering her curves. She pleaded for the mercy that never came.

When he'd had his way with her, he ran her through. She stood for a moment before the great sword was yanked from her stomach. She fell to a heap on the ground, eyes open wide and staring as Clegane and Lorch took their leave. Her last moments before joining the gods were agony.

Elia Martell died in a room that smelled of death and tears, beside the cold bodies of her dear children with her own tears on her lips. She had given everything she had to Rhaegar Targaryen and in the end, it hadn't amounted to anything.

Somewhere along the way, she'd broken apart into a million pieces and there had been no one there. There had been no one there to lift up her frown because she had been taken away from Dorne. Away from all those who would fight and die for her.

Away from the brother who'd always fought and feared for her.

The brother that vowed justice until the day that he too found his end at the hand of the monstrosity that was Gregor Clegane...