Plans in the shadows

As the Dornish Prince Lewyn Martell had been one in the Kingsguard, his paramour Rhoyne and their four secret children together, had known about that he could possible face his death in the Rebellion that would be named after Robert Baratheon. As that had proved true, the family had chosen to spit up not many days before the Sack of King's Landing.

The siblings and their mother had spread out both across Westeros and Essos, but not without telling their Martell cousins Doran and Oberyn about the reasons for break up the family and potential plans of affecting the new balance of power in the Seven Kingdoms from the shadows where no one knew their true names.

Now, nearly a year had passed since the horrible day she had lost her dear prince to death. Dressing up as a older septa on the way to the Valley of Arryn, Rhoyne had somehow managed to end up in the household of the new Lady Arryn, the young miss Lysa of House Tully.

"Rhoyne! Rhoyne, the lady….!"

The reason for Lysa's distress was found on the bed sheets as Rhoyne entered the bedchamber with the maid sent to bring her there, the lady's previous lack of moon blood some weeks earlier had hinted to a possible pregnancy, but now lost in a miscarriage. From the way Lysa wailed and trembled in her whole body as tears fell from her blue eyes, the pain from the miscarriage must have triggered some trauma.

"No...no….my baby...my baby…my baby!"

Personally, Rhoyne wanted to punch Hoster Tully hard enough on the jaw to knock him out. At the age of nearly turned seven-and-ten a few months ago, Lysa was far too young as a bride for a old man like Jon Arryn, the age difference being that of a grandfather and a granddaughter. As the third wife, the youngest Tully daughter was under great pressure of giving her lord husband a male heir soon, because Jon Arryn was not growing any younger.

"Lady Lysa, here, something to calm yourself with."

Plain chamomile tea which Rhoyne used to maker her own sleep easier, but it seemed to be what Lysa needed, for her fearful reaction hinted to that she might have expected something else.

Yet when the maids had changed the sheets and helped Lysa lay down to sleep again though the night, a whisper left her lips as Rhoyne checked if the young lady had really fallen asleep:

"Not moon tea...not moon tea, father..."

The terror in the whisper told the former paramour that this ran deeper than being married to a such old husband.

~X~X~X~X~X~X

The following morning, Rhoyne ordered the maids to draw a hot bath for their lady, and to leave the two alone. Lysa was crying again, no doubt mourning her lost babe.

"Did you have a nightmare yesterday, mylady? You mentioned your father in sleep."

Lysa tensed up, then it changed into fury.

"He stole everything I held dear, always focusing on Catelyn!"

Being the middle daughter of a midwife from the Dornish Marches before she had caught Lewyn into a relationship that had lasted nearly their whole life, Rhoyne could spot signs of resenting a sibling of the same gender. She had not been the prettiest sister either, nor the one who got all the attention from suitors for her quick wit.

"Your reaction on all the blood on the sheet...did he steal the life of the baby you might have given Lord Arryn after the wedding night?"

Rhoyne bended forwards, so she only whispered:

"With moon tea? In the hope of making Catelyn the winner in the double wedding by giving Eddard Stark a healthy heir?"

Because Rhoyne asked so motherly with no judgement in her voice, something broke for Lysa as the memories of her abort resurfaced. Crying openly liked a child, she told everything. Of her love for Petyr Baelish, how he always liked her sister more, the time she had given him her maidenhead in secret, the duel against Brandon Stark which Petyr had lost, the night he had placed his seed in her womb while calling her "Cat" in the fever dream, and how Hoster Tully tricked her into drinking moon tea to abort the child when she had confessed to why she felt sick every morning at the smell of the roasted fishes to breakfast.

And how she yesterday had found the names of Petyr and his father on the list of the noblemen and knights from the Valley of Arryn that had died in the Rebellion during the Battle of the Bells.

"Do you know roughly how much moon tea he gave you, Lysa?" Rhoyne asked, and when Lysa made a hint with her hands against a large goblet of steel, the false septa let out a such amount of foul words against Hoster Tully that Lysa got completely shocked. All the knowledge that she had learned under her mother's guidance, about the female body and pregnancy, different ways to do an abortion or prevent pregnancy, and how to assist in childbirth were still there in her mind. By the seven hells, she had even delivered her own grandson by her oldest daughter only two months before Elia had been blessed with Aegon!

"That ignorant fool who dare to call himself a good father! That is far too much moon tea to avoid future harm on the female body, I bet that some of its effect are still within you, after all this time! You need to become detoxified at once, to avoid that all your future pregnancies does not result in stillbirth or miscarriage!"

Calling back the maids, Rhoyne requested Lysa to do nothing else than rest today, because it was clear that the lost blood during the night had drained her strength.

Thankfully Jon Arryn had remained in the capital after the coronation of Robert Baratheon and his marriage to Cersei Lannister, and were unlikely to return home for a few months yet. That would give Lysa enough long time of not needing to do her duties in the marriage bed while getting detoxified from the remains of the moon tea. Rhoyne knew that Lysa would never get her original fertility back, but hopefully this would help her in getting living children that hopefully could make her loveless marriage a little easier to endure until the day she became a widow. Given the age difference between Jon Arryn and his third wife, no one would be surprised if she became a widow in her late 20s or early 30s, depending on how long time Lord Arryn had left in the world of the living.

~X~X~X~X~X~X

Holly, the second daughter of Lewyn and Rhoyne, had returned to King's Landing once the infamous Sack was over. By choosing the disguise of a septa, just like her mother and older sister, no one would think of her as a Sand bastard from Dorne.

"Being here in the capital, allows me to be the eyes of House Martell on the Baratheon-Lannister court, and hopefully find out a clue to what really happened with Elia…"

As one of many septas of various ages that served at the royal court, given that it was not impossible that Queen Cersei would give birth to a princess, Holly was not surprised over that the Faith wanted to ensure that the new royal heir would grow up pious and respecting religion after how Aerys and Rhaegar had acted.

"The godswood, where she and her children vanished…"

Of course there was no traces for her to find, for Baratheon soldiers and servants at the royal court had already searched the forest several times in an attempt to find the missing former Crown Princess and her two children. With Rhaella Targaryen dead in childbirth and her two surviving children escaping into exile in Essos, that left little Rhaenys and Aegon as the last Targaryens here in Westeros. House Martell viewed Ashara Dayne as a hero for ensuring that no one outside the Tower of Joy would know about Lyanna Stark having been pregnant with the child of Rhaegar, or the true manner of her death.

"Elia would never accept the wolf-girl as a second queen after her in rank, or as a sister-wife akin to the original Visenya and Rhaenys!"

Despite that Elia was nearly seven years older, she and Holly had always been close. In fact, at becoming a Kingsguard, Lewyn had brought his family along to King's Landing so Elia would have some family members close, for only Rhoyne had been spotted visiting him by the other Kingsguard and their children acting as spies for their Martell cousins.

"I need to write a new letter to Morgan and through him, tell cousin Doran that nothing have changed so far…" Holly thought for herself, her youngest brother staying at Sunspear with their Martell cousins as he still was only a youngster at five and ten, too young to be able to mask himself as a maester like his older brother Arash.

They may not have been able to predict what would happen, but the descendants of Lewyn Martell would do everything in their limited power to ensure that Elia could return to Dorne with her children.

~X~X~X~X~X~X

Essos, the Free City of Pentos:

Arash, the oldest son of Lewyn and Rhoyne, had joined with his sister Lemore in sailing to Essos to see if there was anything to suggest that Rohan was a distant part of the unknown world. Being adults, no one would raise a eye of the pair of siblings pretending to be travellers, or the children of a old merchant trying to help their father find new customers or markets to sell their goods on.

Right now they were looking around on the big markets in Pentos, dressed up as native people of Pentos to blend in.

"It was Jon Connington we saw there in the distance, no doubt. That redhead was impossible to miss, as often he could be found around that unfaithful silver prince…"

Arash began to hum on a song which lyrics he had improvised at realizing why the landed knight always was found with Rhaegar, and why he seemed so displeased whatever their dear cousin Elia was with the prince. That resulted in a playful smack on his arm by Lemore, followed by a cheerful laugh from a young toddler.

"I do not think "The un-mounted griffin lord" is the best to sing around a pair of young ears, dear brother."

In fact, there was another reason to why Lemore had joined Arash to Essos instead of hiding herself as a septa at some important family in the Seven Kingdoms:

"Yes, yes, Griff, look what I have here for you. Candied ginger!"

It was honest, pure coincidence that Lemore had fallen pregnant from a short affair with a merchant from the Westerlands, and given birth to her son only two months before Agon had been born. Griff, as the boy was named, also happened to inherit a big deal from his non-Dornish lineage; only a light tan as skin tone, very bright blue eyes and fair hair that possibly came from his distant Targaryen blood six generations ago, from the princess Daenerys who had married Maron Martell. If Griff and Elia's son Aegon would be seated beside each other in the age they currently was, with only two months of a age difference, they would look enough similar to almost be twins.

"Ma. Ma, ma, ma, ma!" Griff babbled all suddenly from Lemore's arms when they entered a alleyway that was a shortcut to the inn where they stayed, and Arash noticed too late the shadow behind them. A hard hit in the back of his head by something heavy, a cut-off scream from Lemore before she too was knocked unconscious.

But the attack happened to be witnessed by a servant girl from the inn, as she had been at the market to buy some extra food for the kitchen, and she saw the two huge slaves steal the crying Griff from the arms of his mother before running off towards the manse of Illyrio Mopatis. A fellow maid at that manse had told her just yesterday that a man from Westeros with red hair had been there, talking about a silver prince and his son, about the missing Dornish woman who had vanished with the heir of Rhaegar Targaryen.

Running back to the inn, the servant girl brought some help to carry the two unconscious guests back, and to bring a healer to treat any injuries. When Arash and Lemore woke up again in their shared room, they were told what had happened to little Griff.

"It can be no one else than Jon Connington! If Illyrio Mopatis claims my Griff as the real Aegon for that damned griffon lord, and that Elia managed to escape here to the Free cities before dying with Rhaenys, he would swallow that lie whole because he never accepted Elia as the legal wife, since he wanted to be bedded like a male whore by that idiotic prince!"

Lemore was horrified to lose her son, but Arash managed to calm her down somewhat before she rushed off to do something dangerous. If Griff was going to be raised like a Targaryen, how now Jon Connington intended to deal with his education, she had a chance to be united with her son later:

As a septa teaching him about the Faith of the Seven.

~X~X~X~X~X~X

Author note; I honestly hate how Hoster Tully treated Lysa about the whole thing with Petyr and the abortion. As a man that never needs to think of how to prevent pregnancy, it is very unlikely that he, not being a trained maester, even would know a "safe" dose of moon tea and given the hints of that Lysa almost bled to death during the abortion, I think that he basically threw all the ingredients at learning that she was pregnant and realized too late that his actions ruined her trust in him and also damaged her fertility by poisoning her though a far too strong amount of tansy and pennyroyal which are POISONOUS in RL

About Petyr and his father dying in the Rebellion in this AU: I HATE how creepy he is in canon with Sansa, who is underage to him being in his early 30s and his life-long obsession with Catelyn despite that she is happy married with five children from Ned. Here, lord Baelish had enough of his son complaining about how Hoster Tully would wed off his oldest daughter to a "northern savage" and dragged Petyr along as a squire to the rebellion to make him stop being sulky about the events at Riverrun, but they both died in the Battle of the Bells

Arash means "bright arrow" in Persian, and I liked the idea of Lewyn possibly playing around with the names of his children to both be Dornish names and names that is not from Dorne.

Young Griff as the biological son of septa Lemore, and her as a Sand daughter of Lewyn Martell? Of course! I wanted to avoid him being a secret Blackfyre, the son of Illyrio Mopatis with his second wife Serra who came from Lys, or a illegitimate son of Rhaegar sired on someone else than Lyanna or Elia. Besides, would it not a huge irony if a grandson of Leywn Martell was mistaken as a Targaryen and raised to think of himself as the rightful king of Westeros?