Lya had already started birthing her babe when Dara found her, and so they did not dare to move her. The midwife was released and set to work - with Larra's help - and Asric was dispatched to bring a maester from Blackmont.
"Ride as hard as you can drive your horse, and take fresh from the stables," Larra ordered him, and he nodded once, face tight, and was gone with a sweep of his dust-coloured cloak of silk. "I hope he is quick enough, but I worry..."
There was blood in Lya's bed - Dara had expected that, of course, as soon as she had understood her sister's condition, but apparently the quantity of it had the midwife worried.
She came from Starfall, Dara guessed, because she spoke of Asric and his brother the way she had often overheard folk from the winter town speak of herself and Bran when they were home. Members of the House, mayhaps not familiar ones, but much loved all the same for who they were.
She ached for Winterfell then, ached to see Lya in their home once more, and wondered what would become of her little sister no matter who won this war. Bound to Robert, who Dara had come to see more clearly for a little distance, who would mistreat her simply for being a woman of flesh, not of his dreams? Or stuck forever with her rapist?
"Ned," Lya said, all gasps and whimpers, "Ned, I didn't want it, I didn't, Papa and Bran, Ned, I didn't I didn't-"
"Hush, sweetling," Dara cooed, shifting to sit by Lya's head, to hold her hands and guide her back to lean against Dara's shoulder. "I know, my darling, I know, Father and Bran knew as well, sweetling. They fought for you, Lya-"
"I didn't want it," she sobbed, and Dara held her as close as she could while Lya bore down on a pain so bad it made her body curl in on itself.
Larra, Dara noticed, was watching the midwife with a studied concern, and it made her stomach twist.
Dara had Lya's son, her tiny little boy, tucked into the crook of her elbow when Asric returned with the maester.
"He took me, Ned," Lya slurred, her head lolling onto Dara's shoulder, her fingers trembling against the babe's fat little arm. "I tried to fight, but he had Arthur bind me and gag me, and I could not win, I was too weak."
"You are the strongest person I know to have survived all this, Lya," Dara assured her, kissing her hair and making certain her hold on the babe was secure. "We will go home after this, Lya, I promise you, we will go home, and I will make you safe."
"Do you promise, Ned?" Lya sighed, sounding for the first time since Dara had found her anything but terrified. "Promise me, Ned, promise we'll go home."
"I promise, little one," Dara said, kissing her hair again and passing the babe to Larra so she could turn and settle Lya against the pillows. Her sister snored, and Dara followed Larra out into the purple-gold of the setting sun to find Asric.
He had brought not only the maester, who Dara directed inside, but also Prince Oberyn.
Dara did not know Oberyn Martell well - she had seen him at Harrenhall, and seen him a handful of times at Blackmont, but he had always shone with life during those times, a vitality that had been a part of his disarming charm, burning bright enough to stand out even beside someone so beautiful as Asric.
That light had been snuffed out, and Dara had a terrible feeling she knew why. Hadn't she felt as though her own light had been snuffed out when word came of Bran's death?
"Rhaegar Targaryen was slain on the Trident by Robert Baratheon," he said, voice hoarse and soft. "Aerys Targaryen was slain in the throne room of the Red Keep by Jaime Lannister, and my... My sister and her children were slain by Lannister men in their beds."
Dara touched her hand to his shoulder, gripping tight when he did not push her away, and swallowed hard.
"I am so sorry," she said softly, and hoped he would accept her sympathy as sincere. She had not been able to do so in the wake of Bran's murder, because how could any other understand? How could they know what it was they were sorrowful for? But Dara knew. She hoped it would be enough to give Prince Oberyn some comfort, the knowledge that he was not alone in his pain.
"Your foster-brother seeks not only your sister, but also you," Asric said, wrapping an arm tight around Prince Oberyn and biting his lip. "Your deceit has been discovered, Dara, and he has sent a missive to every keep in the realm demanding that any sight of you is reported. What would you have us do?"
The maester and the midwife came down the tower stairs, looking near as sympathetic as Lord Jon had when telling her of Father and Bran's fate.
"My sister?" she said, and what did Robert matter when she had promised Lya?
He stayed in the close little room that smelled of blood and roses at Dara's request, and ached to offer her some comfort as she held her sister and watched little Lyanna Stark pass from this world.
He offered what prayers he knew - felt awkward doing so, but wasn't it better to offer some than none, even if the Starks kept different gods to his? - and otherwise stayed silent, standing by the window or crouching by the bed, resting his hand on Dara's knee as an attempt at comforting her, or supporting her. He knew not which for sure.
Larra had the babe, he knew, and so he knew that Dara's nephew was safe. He had less confidence in Oberyn's safety - he did not doubt that his friend was capable of harming himself, even killing himself, now that Elia was gone - but knew that there was naught to be done for Oberyn. Oberyn would not accept comfort now, and Asric did not expect him to when the pain was still so fresh.
So he stayed in the close little room at Dara's request, and when Lyanna Stark breathed her last he slipped out the door to fetch the maester and to ask Larra to send word to Blackmont for two carts, one for Lyanna's body and one for Arthur, who still breathed but seemed to do little else.
When he returned to the little room, Dara had thrown the windows open as wide as they would go, and turned the sheet up over her sister's face. He held her and stroked his hand over her unevenly-cut hair as she wept, and hated hated hated Rhaegar Targaryen with everything in him.
"What of the babe?" Asric asked her, as they rode slowly for Blackmont the next morning, and Dara had no answer. She did not know what she was to do about her little nephew, who looked so terribly like Bran even already - precisely as Ben had looked as a babe, she remembered suddenly, Ben who was growing so like Bran, and Dara felt a fresh wave of tears that Lya would never see how Ben had started to grow into his shoulders.
"Robert cannot know," she said. "He- he would not understand. I think he would blame Lya. And Rhaegar. No, he cannot know. I am a poor liar, but it is not a lie to say my sister died of a fever."
"Do you think to leave him in Dorne?" Asric asked, pressing her for answers she did not have. "Or do you mean to claim him as your own, gotten on you by one of your companions? Or by me, mayhaps, for it is well known at court that I have some regard for you."
Some regard was a poor shadow of the love Prince Oberyn professed Asric to bear her, but she said nothing. What did such things matter, when there was only her and Ben and this little babe, with his fat little hands and his tufts of dark brown hair, left?
"I might claim him as mine and Mark's," she said, wishing her voice were firmer, not clogged with more tears that she did not wish to shed. "Mark asked for my hand, it is not impossible to believe that we might have lain together."
"And set some of your brother's bannermen on the child?" Asric demanded, and Dara wondered why he was being cruel. "And ruin your own chances of a good match, Lady Eddara? Is that what you wish?"
"Asric," Larra snapped from ahead of them. "Enough - I understand that you feel you must take responsibility for your brother's faults, but this is not the way to do it."
They rode on in silence, Dara digesting what Larra had said, and Blackmont was looming above them when Asric spoke again.
"I would claim him as mine," he said quietly. "If it would spare you pain, I would claim him as mine alone and raise him in safety at Starfall, but none would believe him mine and not yours if I tried. I did not mean to hurt you, Dara, but you must see the danger you are in."
Oberyn dripped the antidote down Arthur's throat that night, while Dara and Larra tried to decide what to say to the new King in their letter. It allowed him to move and speak, but could not restore the strength lost. Asric did not lament it one bit - it was a small penance for what his brother had done, for the pain he had helped cause, for the death.
Allem, sitting on a chest under the window, looked older than Asric had ever known of him. His hair seemed more grey than silver in the moonlight, his eyes shadowed, and Asric loathed Arthur suddenly for causing pain to Allem, too, and to sweet Lyria, and to Father, who of all people needed this pain least.
They told Art all they knew, of Rhaegar's death and the deaths of Elia and Lyanna, and Elia's sweet babes, and then they waited for him to speak.
"The child," Arthur said, "the child is the rightful king."
"The child is a bastard," Oberyn said. "A Blackfyre, not a Targaryen."
"Rhaegar wed-"
"Rhaegar already had a wife! And children!"
Asric wound an arm over Oberyn's shoulders and pulled him back, pulled him close, away from Arthur.
"Targaryen or no, we have no word but yours now that Rhaegar did wed Lady Lyanna," Allem said softly. "And your word is shit, Art."
"I will take him," Arthur said, his arms shaking under him so badly he only got as far as his elbows. "I will raise him away from Westeros - let that be my penance, if you wish. I will keep him safe as I could not... As I should have..."
Asric felt no sympathy for Arthur's long love of Elia in that moment, and knew neither Allem nor Oberyn did, either.
"What will you do to support him?" Allem asked, a cold whisper of a sneer in the curl of his lip. "Will you become a sellsword, Arthur? Do you know how to wield a normal blade, little brother? For I swear to you now, you will never lay a hand to Dawn again, not so long as my line holds Starfall."
Robert sent word that she was to come to the capital, and Dara could not breathe.
Lya's bones had been picked clean - she did not ask how, could not bear the thought of knowing what had so speedily turned her sister from flesh to bone - and laid in a casket of scented wood. Dara had asked Larra for a gown, because she would be sailing home, or at least most of the way home, and...
And if she stopped wearing breeches, it was at an end. A gown and the look of a lady ruined by her short hair - a mark of her failure - and she could bring Lya home. Would Robert punish her for disobeying him? She did not much care. Let him and all the rest put it down to the madness of a woman's grief.
She supposed, bitterly, that Robert was giving voice to his own grief for Lya, as if he had known her. Dara, to ease her own mind, had convinced herself that Robert had loved Lya, but how could she have ever thought to believe such a thing when she knew Robert?
It had all been for naught, anyways. She had wanted to bring Lya home, to have her sweetlings tucked away safe at Winterfell again, but now...
"Arthur is well provisioned," Asric said softly, his little finger warm against hers on the sandstone railing of the balcony. Sometimes, when she was alone, she wondered if it would not be easier to hurl herself into the gulf below, but guilt and worry for Ben also stayed her hand. "He will keep your nephew safe, Dara. Allem has sent a wetnurse who will report back to him, just to be safe, but Arthur... For all his faults, I would trust him with this. He does understand that he has helped commit a great evil."
Oh, he had done more than that - he had planned Lya's kidnap, he had admitted as much, and only Buckets' big hand on her wrist had kept Dara from tearing him apart with her bare hands at that revelation. Had Arthur Dayne not helped his Prince so completely, Lya might yet be safe in Winterfell. And I might be safe in the Eyrie, wed to Elbert, training Robert to be better for Lya, she thought suddenly, and longed for the library and bright afternoons spent with Elbert.
"I will find him if he does not," she said, unable to look at Asric because he, too, was part of something she could no longer have - selfishly, during those days when they had lingered and waited for Prince Oberyn's arrival, she had started to think that mayhaps that easy way they'd had in one another's company at Harrenhall could be built on, a thought that had been bolstered by Prince Oberyn's assertion that Asric was in love with her (and oh, didn't he often look at her as if he was?).
But it could not be.
"I will kill him with my own hands if he allows harm to come to that child," Dara said. "Call him Jon - a plain name, one of no remark. Call him that, and keep him safe."
"Oberyn and I will come as far as Sunspear with you," Asric said, offering Dara his arm and walking the length of the deck with her - the river boat was small, but sturdy, and they would transfer to a larger vessel at Starfall. "I would escort you home, but there are observances to be kept. Elia was my friend as much as she was anyone's, and I would not insult her memory by abandoning Oberyn now."
She stared blindly back in the direction of that accursed tower, and Asric's throat felt closed because he wished more than anything that she would smile again, but how was he to make that happen? How was he to brighten those fine eyes of hers when they were weighed down with so much very real grief?
"I wish I could have done more," he said softly, remaining at her side because he had seen the longing on her face whenever she stood on her balcony in Larra's keep, because he feared the same longing would take her for the swift waters of the river. "I wish I could have saved her."
"So do I," she said, and then she left him for the little cabin at the rear of the boat.
Starfall and Sunspear were beautiful, she was sure.
Dara did not pay them any mind, though. Her only concern was for Winterfell, and Ben, and the babe that had been sent away as the child of Arthur Dayne and a wet-nurse called Wylla, Ser Arthur's starlight hair dyed as dark as Dara's own in an attempt to make him less singular, less recognisable as the shamed Sword of the Morning.
Be safe, little Jon, she prayed, resting one hand on Lya's casket and the other over her eyes, as if by hiding her tears she could deny them. Howland and Buckets always ignored any sign of her grief, respecting that she longed for distance, but Asric...
Asric did not allow her distance. He crowded close to her, forcing her to speak, sitting by her at meals and frowning at how she picked at her rations, walking her to her little cabin at nightfall and, Dara knew, lingering outside her door for some time, as if guarding her, as if waiting to hear her sleep.
He was so beautiful, her traitorous mind reminded her all too often, especially when he shed his shirt to work with the crew, and half of her wished to keep him by her always while the other half wished never to see him again if she could not have him.
She wondered if the gods hated her, at the end of it all.