The Prince of Dorne

Chapter Seventeen

It had been a hard conversation with his uncle, it had also been one that required a great deal of wine in order to deal with all of the things that had been brought up inside of it. And as always with his uncle and dealing with serious matters, they had somehow managed to wind up inside of a brothel halfway along the road between the Water Gardens and Sunspear, it had been an old holdfast of a family that had gone extinct years ago before a rich woman had bought it.

They did not go alone of course, Obara had come with them and match the both of them cup for cup and it did not take her long before she had managed to surpass the amount of wine that Lewyn himself had drank. Daemon Sand, his uncle's squire, who had been apart of a small group that had come with his uncle but had been left behind with them as Oberyn and his daughters rode ahead, came with them as well and so had some of Lewyn's own friends.

Among them were Thomas Sand, bastard son of a servant girl at Sunspear and a Lannister cousin that had sailed into Sunspear before the usurpation and had left Thomas in his mother's belly, Thomas's mother had been his own wet nurse and that made the two of them milkbrothers and it hurt to admit that he was probably closer to him than he was his own brother's.

Thomas, with his corn coloured hair and jade eyes, had been subjected to his own share of torments after the usurpation but Lewyn had stood by him and soon enough that had stopped the lion's share of the taunts even if every now and then his features caused him to get the aside glance from those who were too bitter against the Lannisters to remember the fact that Thomas had nothing to do with the family that his father had come from.

Sitting next to Thomas was another Sand, Oren Sand was the bastard son of the Knight of Spottswood's late and lamented wife. After she had died, despite his mother's husband offering him a place in his household alongside his sisters who by all accounts had adored him but the loss of his Mother had left it's marks on him, and staying at Spottswood where everywhere he looked held a reminder of her had proven to be to painful for him and so he had fled to Sunspear where Lewyn had welcomed him with open arms.

Mara Jordayne was Lord Trebor's second daughter, wilder and considered to be a great deal prettier than her older sister Myria but Lewyn had never seen her in such a way, more like to see her as another sister when it came to it. Alexander Ladybright, his lady mother's heir, was sat next to her with a goblet of wine held in his hand.

And last among his own friends, but by no means the least of them, was Jynessa Blackmont. Her long black hair was long enough for her to sit on and her eyes were the same shade of black as the night sky, she was a beauty indeed and Lewyn knew that it had been a idea between the both of their fathers that the both of them should be wed.

Lewyn would not have minded that, in truth as Jynessa was one of his dearest friends and she was both in possession of a sharp mind and a calm temperament, she would make an excellent consort for a prince and a wonderful wife for a husband but it would be like he was marrying a sister but he also knew that if his Father commanded it then he would marry her.

But he would not deny that recently when he closed his eyes and thought of the woman that would be sitting at his side she did not have dark hair or black eyes and when she smiled her lips did not twitch a little bit at the corners. No, in Lewyn's mind her hair was a bright red and her eyes were as blue as a river and when she smiled it threatened to outshine the sun high above them.

He knew who he was thinking of, who he wanted but he did not want to admit it himself. Sansa was not someone that he had any right to have an interest in, he had brought her here under his protection and that made her his responsiblity, more than that she was as much their hostage as she would have been the Lannisters even if she did not see that yet, even though Lewyn hoped that they were better captors than the Lannisters ever would be.

His stomach twisted as his mind turned to wondering what he would do if his Father decided that, for the sake of Dorne, that Sansa and Arya both had to die. Logically, he knew that his Father had no real reason to do such a thing and that it was just his mind twisted with fear but that knowledge did not stop him from thinking it.

Ever since he was a babe, he knew what his duty was to be. To some extent, he had never just been Lewyn Martell. He was Dorne, it's future and if he failed in any of his duties than all of Dorne would suffer. When he sat at his Father's knee it was not to be bounced and told sweet stories that would make him laugh but instead to be told about all of his duties, the burdens of those who thought to rule.

He was not prone to nightmares as a child, his dreams always tended to be sweet ones. The few exceptions tended to be centered around Aunt Elia, he always had nightmares about how he was not able to save her no matter how hard he had tried to do so or even sometimes that it was he, Arianne and their own Mother taking the places of Aunt Elia, Aegon and Rhaenys.

But he did have nightmares that night when his father had taught him, it was just an odd collection of images and sounds from what he could recall and it was more a feeling of utter dread than anything else, like he was falling with no ground below him but when he had woken up that night he had gotten the entire castle up with his screaming.

He remembered that his Mother had soothed him, telling him that there was nothing to fear while she had rubbed his back and tucked him back into bed and pressed a kiss to his forehead and sat with him, holding his hand and singing him sweet songs until he finally feel asleep once again and his dreams had been sweet ones once again.

Sadly, the morning that followed that night had taught him another lesson, nothing good would last for long. His Mother and Father had a fight for all to hear, it was hardly the first that they had but it was the earliest that Lewyn could truly actually remember them having, mainly because it was about him. At least that was how he remembered it being. He had been watching at the door

What child would forget when their parents fell out because of them, after all? It had been horrible, his Mother had screamed at her Father, asking him what sort of Father would tell his son anything that would send him to bed with night terrors and his Father, in that horrible way he had of always sounding utterly reasonable even when he was in the wrong had simply sated that Lewyn was his heir, he would be the Prince of all of Dorne and he would need to be ready for what that meant and that Lady Mellario could not understand what it meant to have such responsibility.

She had slapped him for that, it was an image that to this day was burned into his mind and so was the image of Areo Hotah moving forward to take hold of his mother's wrist after she had landed her blow. Such a big man should not be able to move so fast, even less so when he had his massive war-axe slowing him down.

His mother had been shocked as well, not because of how fast Areo had moved but the fact that he had moved against her at all, that he had placed his hand on to her. Areo's face had never been readable to any of them, his training with the bearded priests was to thank for that apparently, and if he held any suprise at his own move then he did not show it.

That was the night that Areo had chosen his side which, looking back, was a dispointment. If he had stayed loyal to his mother, as he should have done as his grandfather had commanded Aero to go with his mother to keep her safe, then that might have meant that Lewyn would have had a creature with access to his father, but then he would have simply left Dorne with his mother if he had chosen to go back with her.

In truth, he could not blame Areo for wanting to stay in Dorne. It was...a hard thing to come to terms with that where his Mother had come from had slaves but if he came to terms with it or not would not change the fact that it was the truth. When Areo had first set foot in Dorne he had become a free man and who would give that up for anyone, for anything?

So no, Lewyn did not blame him but all the same it was a shame that he did not have a friendly ear near his Father, as no one was as close to Prince Doran as Areo Hotah, he was the Prince's captain of the guards and his own guard when it came to that. If Areo meant to hear it or not it did not matter, he would have heard things that would have been useful for Lewyn to know.

His Father had not been angry with him, afterwards. He had not seen him later that same night, but when he had called him to his lessons. His Father had taken his face in his hands gently and he had told him that he loved him, that he was sorry that he had scared him but that it was lessons that he had to learn, for the future. For Dorne.

And in the end, while his Father might love them, he had always loved Dorne more.

And that was the question, did he love Dorne enough to kill Sansa and Arya for it if it came to that, did he have that in him? He honestly did not know and the not knowing scared him more than anything.

Uncle Oberyn had been the first to call for the wine, but Lewyn had not dissauded him from doing so and he had been able to match him cup for cup. The red was a little on the sweeter side than he would like but he had enjoyed it well enough, certainly he allowed more and more cups to be poured for himself and it did not take him long to drink from them.

Oberyn had swung from one mood to the next in all the time it took to blink and eye, Lewyn would have blamed the wine for it but he knew his uncle well enough to know that it was simply enhancing the experince rather than being the cause of it. One moment, he was cheerful and speaking to every man and woman in the brothel who would hear him that it had been his own nephew that had been the one to finally slay the Mountain that Rides and had earned some small measure of justice for Elia.

The next moment, his uncle punched him down to the floor and had the tip of his dagger pressed to his throat and threatened to kill him for tasking his kill away from him as it should have been him, Elia had been his sister after all and Lewyn had barely known her. Thankfully, his friends had been there to pull Oberyn off of him but Lewyn knew that he would not have actually killed him.

Probably.

But the worst of it had been when most of the people who had come with them had gone off with a whore, or in some cases two, and it had just been the two of them sitting together and after he had taken a deep drink from his goblet he had taken in a heavy breath and he had tears in his eyes, a few of them even fell.

Lewyn had not said anything about it, of course. Partly because he knew that one wrong word would end with him being punched in the throat and partly because he truly had no idea what he was meant to say. And so, the both of them had just sat there together for a time. His uncle cried, Lewyn cried and they both drank and neither of them said anything.

Of course, a moment later his uncle had acted like he had never weeped at all and had gone off with two whores, both of them long legged and with dark olive skin and with curly brown hair that would be long enough to sit on. They were both very beautiful, to be certain and Lewyn knew that there was a decent chance that this night would end with having another little cousin on the way.

Well, there could be worse things to come out from a night in a brothel.

He had been on his own then, with his thoughts and probably far too much wine than was good for him. Thankfully the madam of the brothel had been kind enough to provid some food for him, seeing as it was one of the Shadow City's finer brothels it had it's own kitchens and they'd be able to prepare most anything he could have wished for.

In the end, he choose the seven snake stew. It was a thick stew and heavily spiced, just as he liked it and the heat of it helped bring him back to his senses slightly, enough to ask for a pitcher of lemonsweet instead of another pitcher of Red. However, he doubted that those precautions at this point would be enough to save him from a sore head in the morning.

It was after he had placed a bit of richly flavoured and spiced snake into his mouth when the madam returned, she knew he was of course as most everyone in all of Dorne knew who he was, and asked him if he would like anyone to share his bed for the night. Free of any sort of charge, as a gift to him of her esteem.

For a moment, he had been tempted to tell the woman to not bother as his Father would not be pleased to hear that he had come to a brothel nevermind the fact that he had a whore as he was the future of Dorne after all. He did not think his Father was naive enough to think that he had never had a whore, he knew that he wasn't, but all the time every time he did go to a brothel which was a very few times compared to most, he could feel his Father's eyes burning into him, the disappointment.

So, fuck him then. He waved at the madam to bring forth the selection.

It was men and women both, if someone took up a dagger and pointed it at his throat and made him pick then he might admit that he had the slightest, slightest perferance for women but it was only slight and he was not about to close himself off to half of what the world had to offer him.

The one he had ended up choosing was a tall man, broad and thickly muscled with pale skin and a mane of black curls with blue eyes like a mountain lake. Orys, he called himself, a whore with a king's name and Lewyn knew that he had made quite a fair bit of coin by allowing men and women both to pretend that he was Robert Baratheon, the usurper at the height of his strength.

"I thought things would slow down, now the usurper's dead." He spoke to him as they walked into the bedchamber on the second floor of the brothel. "But no, people still want a crack at me."

A bolt of shame ran through Lewyn when Orys turned and pulled of his loose fitting linen shirt and he saw the whip marks on his back, some of the red lines were very fresh indeed. The Usurper was hated, and rightly so, in Dorne but that didn't mean someone should be made to suffer just because he looked like him.

"Oh, don't feel bad for me, my prince." The whore said with a smile as he turned to face him. "I'm one of Nerella's best earners, and she takes good care of all of us. She would stop anyone who would try and take it to far."

Maybe so, but that didn't do anything to stop Lewyn's own guilt in that moment and he knew that while the madam's vow of protection was more than likely genuine there was only so much that she would be able to do when it came to that.

He was as gentle as he could be, and he was tender enough to make certain that Orys enjoyed it as well and yes Lewyn would not deny that he did enjoy himself but when it was done and Orys was snoring like a boar next to him he could not deny the slightest hint of regret brewing in his gut. His Father would be disappointed.

In the end, he allowed himself to fall into a restless sort of sleep.

His waking was not calm, when it suddenly felt as though someone had plunged his head underwater and he could not breath. His face was wet and he forced himself to sit up, hacking up as he tried to force air into his lungs while at the same time rubbing at his eyes in order to clear his vision.

When he did so and he saw Arianne standing there, with what he knew would be an empty pitcher, he picked up a plump pillow from the bed and flung it from her head. "You know, some would say what you just did was treason. I would be within my rights to have your head removed from your neck for that."

"You would if you were the Prince of Dorne, which you aren't. Not yet."

"No, but I will be one day and I have a very long memory sister dear." Lewyn said with a smirk and Arianne laughed at him as Orys quickly jumped out of the bed and rushed out of the room, the flush on his cheeks as left the room without his clothes on made him look more endearing.

Arianne, ever with the appreciative eye, watched him go as she came to sat on the foot of the bed. "I should try and come here more often, if that is the sort of finery that I might be offered."

"Thank you, I do not want to hear that." Lewyn spoke with a roll of his eyes as he looked around the bed and found his shirt at the side of it, reaching down to pick it up and pulled it on over his head. "Why are you here, you could have simply sent a servant to come and get me. Father would more than likely perfer it, what if one of your fine and noble suitors heard of how their future lady wife came into a brother looking to find her brother who was abed with another man?"

"Considering that most of them are so old that they are deaf, I don't think that I shall need to worry so much about that." Arianne said before she rose from the bed and walked over to the sideboard in the room, picking up another pitcher and filling a cup with whatever was inside it which she then handed to him.

He was glad to it see was lemonsweet, or so he thought as when he took a sip his entire face scrunched up. "I am going to have you murdered and leave your body out in the desert for the starving dogs to feed on, do you hear me?"

"Stop being a crying babe, unsweetened lemon juice will bring you back to your senses quicker. You'll thank me for it later." Arianne was insufferable when she was right and so Lewyn took a deep breath and brought the cup back up to his lips and took a deep drink from it, he winced at it but everything around him did seem that much sharper.

"Actually, speaking of my suitors. I meant to tell you earlier, Father has presented me with the newest match for me." Arianne retrived a piece of parchement paper from her sleeve and handed it over to him, Lewyn read the words for a moment and were it not for the fact that he was not currently wearing any pants he would have jumped out of the bed.

"Lord Potunia of Black Rock?" Lewyn asked blankly, his fingers clutched tightly on the paper.

"Yes."

"Lord Potunia of Black Rock?!"

"Yes."

"I-the man is ninty years old!" Lewyn hissed, he accidenly ripped the parchement in his anger. He knew that Father had been offering Arianne men old enough to be her grandfather but this was utterly stupid. Perhaps he should not be so angry, he knew that Arianne would simply say no to the match but what was their Father doing?

"He is, and his youngest granddaughter is a year older than me." Arianne said with sad sigh, he did not think that he had ever heard his sister sound so defeated as he did in that moment. "I am suprised, that Father truly thinks so little of me that he would keep throwing these matches at me. What if he insists on it?"

"I would sneak into his rooms and cut his throat, but to be fair to him he has never insisted on any of the others." He looked down at the two pieces of paper and brought them back together, staring down at the words as if they would finally give him some inner look at his Father's mind at long last. "I do not understand what he's doing."

"Neither do I."

"No, I really do not understand. Lord Potunia is Father's bannerman, his house is not rich and his lands are not the most fertile and he can call up about two hundred spears when it come's to war. Marrying him to you, would be quite possibly the greatest honor that his house has ever had. One they would never even come close to deserving."

His words made Arianne smile, not the smirk she gave the men who flirted with her or the teasing grin when she laughed at something one of her friends did that amused her but a true smile. "There is something here, some game or plot or plan. He's waiting, he's holding you back because he knows you will say no to all the men that he offers you."

"So, he wants me to marry somone that he has not offered, who?" Arianne frowned and then her fists clenched into the silk covers of the bed. "The Usurper is dead, he can't be thinking of marrying to his son, could he?"

Lewyn would give his Father the credit that he knew that was not the case, he worked too slowly for his taste and he was so stuck to his plans that he let a thousand good opportunities go to waste but in the end he knew that his Father's goal was always bringing down the Lannisters and the Baratheons and everyone who had a hand in their humilation, the crime against their own. "No, even he would not do that."

"Then what is he doing?"

"I don't know, I do not know." Lewyn played with a ring on his finger that he did not take it off last night, falling quiet as he thought about it. Ned Stark was dead, he had been killed by the Lannisters and Robb Stark had no currant match so perhaps that was what his Father was waiting for, not for Robb Stark himself but for the realm to turn against the Lannisters, for them to have a clear enemy, that Prince Doran could then bind themselves to

But he had told him that he would not side with anyone, he had said that. Dorne would remain netural in this affair, those had been his words.

Sometimes, he truly did hate his Father.

He sighed and rubbed at his face and Arianne rose from the bed and smoothed down her skirt. "Well, it does not matter who he wishes me to wed. If I do not like them, then I shall still say no."

"Quite right to." Lewyn said with a fond smile.

"And speaking of wedding." Arianne began with the tone that Lewyn at this point had recognised as coming to mean that he was going to regret the fact that his sister had ever been born in the first place. "You know that I spoke to Lady Sansa?"

"I did, she told me so after she had taken your advice to come and speak to me, thank you for that by the way, but what does she have to do with wedding?" Lewyn asked with a raised brow, warning her with his tone to try and avoid this because he truly did not want to speak with it.

"You know what she has to do with it, do not play the fool big brother, it does not suit you." Arianne said with a sigh and crossed her arms and Lewyn made a point of not looking at her. "She is very beautiful, and smart as well. Nymeria and Tyene like her very much, though we best be careful as it looks like Tyene is going to teach her how to poison us all. She's meek, but not so meek as she thinks that she is. There's a strength in her, but she doesn't see it yet. You could do a lot worse, you need to marry someone. Father might see the wisdom in such a match."

"He won't, Sansa and Arya Stark are not meant to be here. Not offically, my leaving the city at the same time as both Stark girls is simply an interesting quirk of timing sister." Only a fool with no sense at all would not be able to see through that lie, but a decent side effect of Dorne being cut off from court meant that there were not so many spies in the sands, the Spider's webs could only stretch so far.

As there had been no offical response from King's Landing, they could hopefully take that as confirmation that none at King Joffery's court knew that they actually were there, even if they suspected that to be the case.

"Okay, Father might not but what about you? What about what you want?" Arianne asked with a tilt of her head and Lewyn had to sigh again and bury his face into his hands, he knew it wasn't fair to expect her to understand. Arianne was not the heir, she was the second child and she was freeer in a way that Lewyn never would be.

His actions had weight, like a huge boulder chucked into a lake and the ripples reached out and bounced off of the shore and each ripple could cause a thousand, thousand lives to be lost. Did he want Sansa? As a man wanted a woman, as a friend, a companion, as a wife?

Yes, yes he did. It was the first time he had admitted that to himself. Yes, he wanted that. Her, all of her.

But what he wanted and what he could have, those were two very different things indeed.

"Dorne, our Father's seat." Lewyn waved his hand over to his pants and Arianne sighed, picked them up and threw them to him with a grimace and then turned away as he kicked the covers off of the bed. "I want my people to be fat and happy, and to never feel any sort of fear. I want to eat almond pastries to break my fast every day and rose water cream cakes for every meal, I want every many who dipped their toes in the blood of innocents to die screaming and I want Aunt Elia and her babes to never have died."

Lewyn rose from the bed, fully dressed and Arianne turned to face him. "And yes, I would like Sansa Stark to be my wife as well. Those our the things that I want, sister. But want and need and can have, well, those our all very different things indeed. For now, I obey and wait for my Lord Father's command in all things."

Arianne stared at him for a long moment, her eyes wet. Lewyn stared back at her, his eyes dry because he commanded them to be and neither of them said anything for a very long while. It was only when the door opened their uncle walked in with a letter in his hand that they broke the gaze. "Your squire rode in this morning, we need to go back to the Water Gardens and pack. Our lord and master has summoned us."

Oberyn chucked the letter on to the bed and Lewyn picked it up, took in a deep breath, and began to read.

End of Chapter Seventeen

Another chapter done and dusted, I love to devel deep into Lewyn's mind because he has a lot of issues when it comes to his family and he more than likely puts his mother on a pedastal, looking back at her through rose tinted glasses but yeah.

Next time, we got over to Sunspear and a different P.O.V from Sansa or Lewyn and I don't think it's going to be a very long chapter but I do think it will be a needed one.

So, yeah see you then and if you enjoyed then please consider leaving a review, a follow and a favourite.

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