Asric near had to carry Oberyn ashore at Sunspear, but he still managed to find a moment to bid Dara farewell.
"My lady," he said, surprising them both by falling to his knees before her. "I pray that one day, when this all is in the past and you have found your home once more, that you can forgive me and my House any part we played in your sister's death. It is much to ask, I know, but-"
Her hand was gentle in his hair, and when he raised his head to meet her eyes he was surprised once more to find her in tears. She had not cried in days, not outside of her little cabin, and to see her doing so now made him wish that he might continue his journey with her, might stand by her side and keep her from the ship's railings. She lingered there overlong every day even with him to guide her away, and he worried that there might only be a casket of bones for the mountain man and the frogeater to bring to Winterfell for Benjen Stark to bury.
Asric could not allow that to happen, and had spoken with little Reed and demanded, on pain of death, that he guard Dara from her melancholy. He could no more allow her to die than he could abandon Oberyn to suffer through these days of horror.
Elia's bones and those of her children were yet in King's Landing, the last Asric knew. There had been no word of plans for their release, no word that they would be sent home to Sunspear, and just the thought of all that was left of the sweet princess and her babes being held by the men who'd murdered them turned his stomach. No, Asric could not leave Oberyn to suffer this alone. He would stand by his friend, his oldest friend, just as Oberyn had stood by his side when Arthur had turned into something other than himself.
But Dara. He was abandoning her to her misery and grief, and loathed himself for that.
"There is nothing to forgive," she said quietly, sniffling against her tears. "You and Lord Dayne helped me find Lya, Asric. You allowed me to offer her some comfort during her final moments. What sin is there in anything you have done?"
He stood on the dock and watched the ship depart, watched until it was out of sight, and then he turned and wove through the shadow town to find Oberyn.
"You must eat, Dara," Howland said gently, pressing a hard biscuit into her hand and tugging her away from the railing. "It won't do any good to let yourself waste away to nothing."
Her hair was long enough now for the salt-spray to stick it to her cheeks and lips, and the roaring wind made it easy to ignore Howland's soft words. She chose to do so, and tightened her grip on the railing.
The sea had been wild ever since they passed the Stepstones, since they had come closer to the Stormlands, and Dara half wanted to weep with anger at this. Even the seas by Robert's home was making it difficult for her to leave the south behind, and she cursed them and it and him to the heavens and back down to all the hells.
She wondered if the anger that burned in her belly at the very thought of Robert was hatred. She did not know, because it felt different to the dizzying loathing that twisted her insides when Rhaegar Targaryen came to mind, as he so often did. He raped her, he took her and used her and abandoned her to her doom.
She supposed it might have been. She had never hated anyone before, not until so very recently, and wondered if hatred was always so exhausting.
She let go of the railing and took the biscuit from Howland. She would get Lya home, get home to Ben, and mayhaps then she could sort through all these terrible feelings.
But home was not to be.
They docked somewhere just south of Storm's End for provisions, and were met there by a large party of men all dressed in Baratheon colours, all bearing the crowned stag.
"His Grace King Robert of the House Baratheon," one began, and Dara felt faint. She had hoped and prayed that the reports of Elia Martell and her children's deaths had been wrong, had been lies, but how else might Robert have become King? Had he killed the Queen and little Prince Viserys, who had watched the tourney at Harrenhall with such rapt attention, too?
She found her ears again some long way into the man's announcement, and what she heard made her wish once more that none of them had ever come south. Had Father fostered her in the North as he had Bran, had he arranged Northern matches for Bran and herself and Lya, gods, they might all yet be alive and well and safe and home-
But no, it was not Father's fault. She could not blame him for wishing the best for his children. She would blame the men who had chosen war, the man who had stolen Lya, the man who had murdered Father and Bran. She would blame them. She would not blame her lord father for something not his fault.
"His Grace requests that you come to the capital immediately, Lady Eddara," the man said, and Dara thought she mayhaps recognised him - he had something of Robert's arrogance about him, that was likely it - but set that aside in favour of... In favour of what?
"You may tell my foster-brother, ser," she said, fully aware that her voice was colder than was courteous but not caring a whit, "that I must escort my sister's bones home to Winterfell. Mayhaps once I have done that, and seen my brother settled as Lord of Winterfell-"
"No, my lady," the man said. "Your companions are to continue on to Winterfell with the Lady Lyanna's bones, but you must accompany us to King's Landing immediately. Both the King and the Lord Hand have ordered it."
"The Lord Hand... Lord Arryn? Lord Arryn would demand this of me?"
She had always known that kindly though he could be, Lord Jon was not a warm man, or a man given to any true show of feeling. He trusted in his stoicism and found refuge there when other men would turn to their cups, something she had once found comforting, but now? Now she loathed it of him.
Of Robert, this was all less surprising. Doubtless he was thinking only of himself, as he was wont to do, and wanted his foster-sister to comfort him in the loss of his betrothed. Never mind that his foster-sister and his betrothed had been sisters, never mind that his betrothed had died in her sister's arms while he celebrated the murder of innocents. Innocents like Lya.
"So I am not to bid my sister a proper farewell, on the orders of two men who doubtless profess all affection for me?" she asked, shaking her head and holding up a hand to forestall the man's reply.
Howland seemed sad, and Buckets angry, but she felt only tired, all of a sudden, too tired to fight anymore. Fighting had lost her Father and Bran, had lost her Lya, had lost her Elbert and Mark (and Asric).
"Bring her home for me," she said. "I will follow on as soon as I am able."
Oberyn's grief rang out through the whole of Dorne, or at least it felt as if it did to Asric.
He howled, rage and sorrow tearing out of him in great sobbing cries, as Elia and her children were carried from the ship. Doran was silent, eyes shadowed and hooded and jaw clenched tight, the Lady Mellario clearly alarmed on his arm.
Asric did not know what to do with himself. Elia had been his friend, true, but he had always been closer to Oberyn than to the Princess. He had loved her children - had thought them to be as much his blood as they were Oberyn's - but they were not his.
He had no true claim on Elia, and felt that Arthur's involvement in what had been done to Lady Lyanna lessened what little he had once thought to have, so he stood aside - back with Larra and Mors - and bowed his head as the caskets were carried by.
Oberyn disappeared the following day, reappearing as a spectre at the ceremonies and standing mute by Doran's side, his girls clustered close around the little Princess save for the youngest, who he carried high against his chest.
Larra was silent, too - she clung tight to Mors' side, and Asric noticed how her gaze lingered on the tiny, tiny caskets that held Rhaenys and Aegon. He saw how Mors pressed his hand firm into the curve of her spine, how he gathered her even closer and murmured something in her ear, something that Asric half-heard and thought sounded like not ours.
Could she be with child? What a strange thought, Larra as a mother.
Asric wondered if ever he would be a father, and could only think of quiet babes with striking grey eyes. A dream long lost now, he supposed, and never held as anything other than a fancy in truth, for what hope could he have ever had to claim a daughter of Winterfell?
Robert wept when he beheld her, and Lord Jon was as quiet as she might have predicted.
Catelyn Tully - Catelyn Arryn, now - was a balm, or as near to one as Dara thought she might find until she was allowed to return home. Lady Catelyn arranged a bath, a long, hot bath, and a chance to properly wash her hair, and to dress in clothes that fit for the first time in so, so long. It was a small comfort, but it was a comfort all the same, and Dara luxuriated in it for as long as she was able.
It was late in the evening, after she had dined with Catelyn in the lady's solar in the Tower of the Hand, after she had finally taken note of the heavy swell of Catelyn's belly, that Robert and Lord Jon came to her.
"It is only right that Robert honour the betrothal between yours Houses," Lord Jon said. "I will be advising your brother to do the same - Lady Lysa, my goodsister, is yet unwed, and not impossibly older than Benjen. You would make a fine Queen, Eddara."
Dara was so, so tired.
"But I just want to go home," she said, and Robert ignored her and Lord Jon sighed in that way of his.
They - that is, Lord Jon and Robert - agreed that the wedding would be held a week hence, and also that a week beyond that again Robert's brother, Stannis, would wed Cersei Lannister, who apparently would have been Queen had Dara not been foolish enough to agree to come to the city.
Ben wrote to her and begged her forgiveness, and she thought of Asric Dayne's violet eyes bruised black by the shadows of Sunspear as he had done the same, and she cried.
Oberyn slammed the door of Asric's chamber shut behind him and sat heavily on the divan at his side.
"Speak to me, Oberyn," Asric murmured, pulling Oberyn to lie across his chest. "I cannot offer comfort if you will not accept it."
"You will be gone too far to offer me any comfort," Oberyn said, tugging a letter from his robe and setting it by Asric's hand. "You are summoned, at the behest of the Usurper King and his new Queen, to King's Landing."
Asric had heard of Dara's marriage - he supposed he ought not think of her as Dara any longer, not now that she was Queen Eddara of House Baratheon, consort of the Usurper.
"What reason could they have to summon me of all people?" he said, sitting up but keeping one hand on Oberyn's back - his friend had rolled over to lay in the warmth he had left on the sheets, like a cat seeking heat - as he unfolded the letter.
"You could well be Sword of the Morning now, my friend," Oberyn said, sounding angrier than Asric ever remembered him to be. "And it seems that the bastard who sits the throne would claim you as Aerys claimed Arthur."
Raised to the Kingsguard. Asric could not imagine it, especially not now, not after everything that had occurred these past months.
"Dara," he said. "Do you think...?"
"I know not," Oberyn said, sitting up enough to lean against Asric's back, "but having met Robert Baratheon, I do not think an ally at court would do the new Queen any harm at all."
She had had only Catelyn with her, the morning after the wedding, only Catelyn to witness her pain - Robert had been drunk, had been violent, had been Robert, and there had hardly been an inch of her that had not ached.
"He called me Lyanna," she remembered whispering, and it had been that which hurt worst of all.
So she had thought then. But this? This was a thousand times worse than that.
She had told Lord Jon and Robert all that had occurred during her journey - her quest, as Robert had japed - to find Lya, and Robert had taken it into his head to reward House Dayne. Dara had thought little of it at the time, but now, now she wondered if there had been something in the way she had spoken of Asric that had hinted to Robert of her feelings for the new-made Sword of the Morning, sworn brother of the Kingsguard.
Lord Jon had explained that it was an attempt to appease Dorne, just like the plan to offer little Renly for Doran Martell's daughter - since discounted, as Robert planned on installing Renly at Storm's End. Dorne and the Westerlands, the Westerlands and Dorne, but nairy a whisper of the North because Robert and Lord Jon were sure that having made her Queen-
No, she would not think on that. She would drive herself mad if she did.
She turned her thoughts back to Asric. Asric, who was pale and angry, so clearly angry that Dara wondered how in the world Robert could not see it, Asric who spoke his vows in a sharp, clipped voice so different from what she knew of him.
They have trapped you here, too, she thought, and later, at the feast to celebrate his new white cloak, she danced with him as she had at Harrenhall, and when the skies were dark and none paying any mind to their Queen, she pulled him close and kissed him, just once, in the godswood.
It would never be enough, she did not think, but she would not dishonour either of them further.
He never once called her Dara after that, not until the day Robert gutted himself on a blasted boar in the kingswood.
He was good to her, though, better than any of his sworn brothers. He bore as much of her weight as she would allow after Robert had spent the night in her bed, carried the children without complaint when she simply could not. He said nothing when she cried at night for missing Ben (and Lya and Bran and Father and Bran). Sometimes, when she was utterly overcome, he dared to hold her, dared to whisper of the coded messages Lord Dayne and later their sister sent, messages carrying news from Arthur, news from Dara's little nephew.
That and the children - two boys and a girl, named Robb for his father, Bran for his uncle, Lyarra for her grandmother - were all that kept her sane. There were times when the children were all that kept her from driving a knife through Robert's heart, and that frightened her.
Asric was always there, though, during those terrible, dark moments, to remind her that she was better than that. That she was not a murderer.
The day Robert met his end, Ser Arys was sparring against Robb in the yard with Bran watching on, utterly enthralled. Lyarra - never Lya - sat happily at Dara's side, chattering up to Asric, who stood just behind them, and who supplied her with a constant stream of caramels.
It was Asric's hand on the small of her back when the Kingslayer came for her, to announce the King's impending death.
She sought comfort in his arms that evening, as she had in a tower in Dorne so long ago, and it felt good to hide her relief at Robert's death under the protection of the man who had shared her grief at Lya's.