A/N: As a reminder for my long-time readers: I changed the title of the story to 'Lyarra' from 'Bastard in the Cradle' (the first arc). This story has been spinning in my head for over a year and is self-indulgent. Let me know your feelings with a review!

The Bastard in The Cradle Arc

Chapter One

There is a moment right before your death when you know this is the end. For Camille, her end was the bombing. She was in Lebanon treating refugees. One child she was accustomed to had come into the clinic. They had trained Camille over and over to identify risks — but with the child…. she had not suspected. The boy had come many times before but this time, but there was no question to ask or a person in need. She looked into his eyes, still as stone, and her heart hammered. Camille hardly a looked at his chest before her sight melted to black and her body went alight in a pain so horrific Camille knew she would go mad.

What was a burning pain turned into a wet, pressing feeling, and her chest burned as she gasped for air, screaming. The first thing Camille saw when she finally opened her eyes was the look of a crying face. God, Camille had thought ashamedly, when she first saw her.

Camille realized that God was, in fact, her mother Ashara, and she was her infant. Her initial months in this life were painful, melancholic, and filled with confusion. This new world was far different from Earth. The colors more vivid, the food richer, the jewels finer, the sun brighter. It was only when one of Camille's nannies- she had several- had given her a shiny piece of metal, did she see herself as she was then: a baby, sweet and dimpled with dark curly hair, olive skin, and lilac eyes. Camille hoped she would not have sight issues later and had wailed for days after she saw it. What she had thought before was a dream was, in fact, a reality.

The attention Camille gave to Ashara was as near to worship as she had ever known to her in her adulthood. She preferred to be with her mother than without her. It was her face she knew beyond all others, and Camille knew now why babies loved their mothers the most. Ashara was the most beautiful person she had ever seen even if she was so young. She had purple eyes, though darker, with the same dark curly hair and a dimpled smile. Camille could not look away.

Ashara's breasts answered Camille's cries, or should her mother had been away from the rooms, her nurse who had milk just as good. Shamefully, she always took it. It was frustrating to be this way, unable to do anything for herself, but with the first pain of hunger, it was Camille's only option. She could not tell them what she wanted anyway — every word she made was babble rewarded with smiles and cooing. When Ashara was in her rooms or Camille's nursery she would undo her gown, hold her in her arms and look at the sea and sing until she dozed off. Camille loved her. As her love for Ashara grew Camille recognized that one repeated sing-song tone: Lyarra. That was her name now.

Camille had stopped breastfeeding early, at one. Now more active, Ashara would bring Camille to open spaces where other women and girls would have their children and dressed in sheer linens, shiny silks, and gold and gems. In these places, she would lie in her mother's arms until her small body gained strength, and then they allowed Camille to crawl and play with the others while her mother and the women sat and sewed. It was amongst velvet pillows Camille found she could do a curious thing.

All the ladies around Ashara had a pet: dogs, cats, and even one woman had a monkey in a cage that some great sized man carried. One puppy, similar to a Dalmatian, had been laying on her mother's lap, enjoying scratches behind the ear. Then suddenly it was Camille who felt it. Her mother's bright yellow satin dress was in view along with her ringed fingers and nothing had ever felt so good in her life, she did not want it to stop- until it did, as one of her nurses had picked her up, thinking Camille had become tired in her shock.

Camille had named the puppy Spot, and through him, Camille found the entire world beyond her room, her mother's room, and a few balconies. Her mother seemed delighted with the puppy and found himself in the pile of pets she adored with silver collars and purple gems. Spot could go where she could not, and so when her nurse would lay her for sleeping in a canopied cradle, Camille would slip to him. She would be at her mother's feet when she went to other rooms and looked over parchments, or sewed with women who looked near to tears, and spoke to a flurry of people that came in and out of a room, where her grandmother Ariadne, a woman with the same skin and inky curls, sat all seeing. Camille could walk with her mother, and her ladies, and see a great and wide waterfall that poured into a great crater where their castle sat in the center of. Smaller islands dotted this lake and there were two mighty bridges that connected the shining white castle to the town of pink-hued buildings. Camille lived in a fantasy world, she was certain.

She had soon discovered that this ability, to slip, was much harder than she thought. Puppies and kittens were easy, and so were the little birds in the window sills but the larger birds Camille saw would shake her away, leaving her to admire the sky from afar. All of her time trying to get over the bridge, however, had left her tired, and led her handmaid, Ypolita, to call her a dreamer. Ashara did not approve of such things, and Ypolita swore not to say it again. Though Ypolita was young- she seemed to be the same age as her mother- Ashara commanded and spoke to her strongly she would paint herself on the wall. But that was only with her mother. With Camille, she giggled and hugged and played, to the irritation of her other nurses. It was through her she first learned of things: Starfall, Camille's home, was the center of House Dayne, and Lords of the Torrentine, the great river that ran fast into the ocean outside her windows. Her mother was Ashara Dayne, daughter of the Lady of this castle. Camille still didn't understand why Ypolita had to act like an abused cat when her mother spoke to her.

As she was "the child of someone of great importance," Ashara had said, "Great care should be given to her education". It was a strange way to talk about yourself. They taught her typical things for a child: shapes, colors, words. She was taught her house's words, As Sure As Dawn, and how to spell her name. To cope with the change of this life, Camille knew she quickly mastered what she could as a two-year-old in speaking and reading Dornish, a melodic, emotional language that rolled like Spanish and moved on to the Common Tongue, and even High Valyrian, to her mother's delight. Ashara seemed proud to have such a smart daughter and Camille could only smile as her mother had no clue to just how smart she was, or how…talented.

It was right before Camille's second nameday when she was told something curious by her handmaid. Camille had always been curious about her father, and when she had asked Ypolita, her favorite nanny, she did not need to be pressed to talk.

"Your father is a wolf who had fell in love with your mother at a grand tourney," she had sighed dreamily.

It was no surprise to Camille that she arrived nine months later that was something common in her time too. What had shocked her was what at what a tourney was. They seemed stuck in the Dark Ages here from the clothes, to the food, to the people. The story had depressed her some time until her mother had convinced her to tell her of her woes. Camille had told her mother in bed about her father the wolf. The reaction had not been pleasant. Ashara had put Ypolita to tears with her anger. Ypolita would be watched by Essine her main nanny and every other woman around her from that day forward.

Time passes and in the early morning Ashara gave Camille kisses told her that "she must stay in her room and be good for now". She agreed but slipped from Spot to her mother's fussy cat, to the birds, until she looked down into the great hall where her grandmother sat emotionless and still as stone. There was a chorus of wails as they placed trunks in rows of seven before the Lady Ariadne. It was the men and women left, bloody and defeated, who placed them there. She cried when she saw what was in them. Bones. Wails and cries had come up, as a man dressed in their colors had come, limping yelling out words Camille wished she understood.

Soon enough the group of people in the castle seemed to explode in rapid activity. She had not learned enough words to know what her mother said as she had come to her room, but Camille knew it wasn't good. Ashara's face was dark with eyes red and puffy as she tore jewels from her hair and ripped her sleeves. Her women in identical lilac dresses took the ruined clothing she wore away, and draped her in a fathomless black gown, embroidered only in minimal silver detail.

They dressed Camille in black too, her dressed of bold colors gone, replaced small jewels were in her hair with hundreds of gold pins with black pearls. Ypolita, her handmaid, had dressed her, all kisses and smiles and wet eyes. People had died. No one would tell her what happened, and it frightened her, but she knew it was war. There were no more trips to the balconies and sunny spots, and they carefully hid Camille in her room where she only saw her mother and grandmother. She was a prisoner in her own nursery none of her nannies let her leave her room.

There was a lull in the days as her nannies entertained her, dealing with growing teeth and trying to walk again. Camille enjoyed the pillows and sweets and puppies and kittens but wanted to know so badly what went on. Ashara had still kept her eyes on Ypolita, and so she was quiet. Camille had found out soon enough as the servants' whispers turned to talk between each other.

"It was the wolves who did this," they said. The new king had forced them all to a bitter submission. Soon enough Camille was brought back into the courts of her mother on balconies and patios, and she was glad of the heat and light. But this did not last long as word had come from by one of their own.

"The Wolf was coming," the servants had near screamed. He had found Ser Arthur, they said, and the Lady Yadira makes her way with him down the valley. But to each other, they spoke much more bluntly. She followed her mother as she went about her day, and there was always one question: Had the Wolf come to claim his bastard?