Daella wakes, after the war of childbirth, and thinks fuck.
"And here I thought you'd surrendered," Rodrick says, his voice soft as it only becomes when he is exhausted, or terrified. Perhaps both, this time. "Welcome back, my love."
She turns her head to see his beloved face, his long nose and soft, thin mouth, his star-bright brown eyes.
"Did I win?" she asks, and he smiles wider than she's seen since their wedding day.
Aemma is a beautiful child, with Rodrick's thick brown hair and Daella's deep violet eyes, and a gurgling laugh that makes Daella's heart sing. It reminds her of her mother, who she sees only half so much as she would like, and of sweet little Gael, who she hardly sees at all.
"A fine Lady Arryn she will make," Rodrick coos, balancing Aemma against his barrel of a chest as she snores happily to the rumble of his voice. "Don't you think, my love?"
The midwife thinks Daella will have no more children, and they are inclined to believe her. They had such trouble having Aemma, after all, so many years of grief and disappointment behind them, so many years of cursing the gods for denying her her mother's bounteous fertility - but enough. Aemma is more than enough, and Rodrick so good a man as to want to guard her inheritance.
"We will need to choose a husband for her," Daella says, even though she wishes she didn't have to. There has been such blissful peace, since she woke from the birthing bed, and this will shatter it. Alas. "A good husband, one who won't try and usurp her."
"So none of my cousins, then," Rodrick agrees, soft face hardening. "One of your nephews, maybe?"
"One of Baelon's boys, maybe," she says thoughtfully, "if Aemon succeeds in convincing Father to accept his Rhaenys as his heir."
Aemon has always had their lord father in the palm of his hand, whether Father would admit it or not, and Father adores Jocelyn, too - there are good odds that they will get their way, when it comes down to it. Baelon is cannier and more cunning than Daella usually likes, but Alyssa is a soft thing, and perhaps one of their boys will inherit more of Alyssa's nature than they will Baelon's.
Or perhaps Jocelyn and Aemon will have more than one boy - Aemon has always been her favourite brother, and she has always loved Jocelyn. If their children are even half the people her brother and his wife are, she would happily see Aemma wed to one of them.
Aemma grows tall, like both Rodrick and Daella, with Rodrick's broad shoulders and Daella's long legs. Her hair curls just like her grandmother's, and her gurgling laugh remains sweet as a plum, and she follows at Rodrick's heels with a sharply attentive gleam in her eyes that reminds Daella of her father, of Aemon.
Aemon, who is missing. Aemon, who Baelon insists is dead.
Jocelyn and Rhaenys both are certain that Aemon lives, and Daella is more inclined to believe their word than Baelon's. No one in the world stands to gain more from Aemon's death than Baelon, after all - it would be a simple thing to nudge Father away from maintaining Rhaenys' rights in his grief, if one were so inclinedl.
Baelon's eldest boy is reported to be a jolly, fat boy, fifteen to Aemma's ten, and Daella and Rodrick have tentatively settled on choosing him for a consort for their sweet girl.
Not that they've told anyone, of course - there's rumour enough circling King's Landing to fuel the whole realm, and Daella won't see her seeking out a son of Baelon's to wed her daughter be used as support of his claim over Rhaenys'.
"Mama," Aemma says, skidding sideways into Daella's solar in her soft slippers. "Cousin Albrecht is saying that he will have the Eyrie when Father dies - will you come and tell him he is wrong?"
Albrecht is Rodrick's cousin, a hardy young man of twenty-three who is a Grafton, not an Arryn, because his claim to the Eyrie is two generations removed and on the distaff anyways. Daella loathes him, has done since he boasted to everyone who would listen at the new year's tourney that Aemma would be his wife as soon as she was flowered. Rodrick heard, and broke his nose for it, but even that has not quelled the fool's ardour.
"He is wrong," Daella says, waving Rhea and Melantha and the rest back into their seats as she rises. Daella has her mother's height, her mother's strength, her grandfather's careful rage, and she will crush this boy who thinks to claim her daughter. "I will remind him of that, my dove, worry not."
She breaks not only his nose but also his cheekbone before Rodrick, laughing, tugs her away - and there is nothing more spoken of Albrecht Grafton wedding Aemma Arryn.
"It's the talk of the realm, apparently," Rodrick says, looking at her over the tops of his letters. "Outrageous, some are calling it."
"Fewer than might say so, if we did not have dragons," Daella says, amused - she can imagine how much more opposition her father might face, if he did not have Vermithor looming at his shoulder. The Fury guards Father more fiercely than the Kingsguard ever could, more fiercely even than Mother, and few dare to speak out against him with Vermithor roosting in the dragonpit.
Rhaenys has a dragon, too. A beautiful thing, shining red as the dawn with teeth like swords. Perhaps that will keep her more securely on the throne - that, and Corlys Velaryon's gold.
Rhaenys being named heir in Aemon's absence bodes well for Aemma, though. If there is to be a Queen on the Iron Throne, how can anyone dispute a Lady of the Eyrie? Which is not to say that Daella is glad that her brother is missing - she could never be glad of Aemon's absence - but if this might make Aemma's life easier, well. She loves anything that improves Aemma's lot.
"We ought to go to King's Landing," Rodrick says, setting aside his letters and rising to stand over her. "Swear our fealty to your niece, as Princess of Dragonstone."
"Aemma can spend time with my family," Daella agrees, taking his hand and settling against him as she has a thousand times before. His arm settles heavily against her lower back, one big hand as good as sitting on her arse, and she nestles closer against him, fitting her hips to his, in retaliation. "It would do her good, to stand among them."
"Mayhaps we can discuss it on the morrow," he says, hefting her over his shoulder and booming out a laugh. "What say you, wife?"
She bites his shoulder blade through the thin linen of his shirt, which makes him laugh more and pinch her backside, and they're both laughing even after she pushes their bedchamber door closed behind them.
"Could I have a dragon, Mama?" Aemma asks. "I am as much a Targaryen as the others, aren't I?"
"You're more a Targaryen than any of these dragonseeds who seek a mount, my dove," Daella says. "I shall ask my mother, and see if she can't find an egg for you, my sweet."
"Make sure it's blue," Rodrick says, bracing his arm around Aemma's shoulders to keep her from curling in on herself, as she does when she's feeling shy. "Can't have Lady Arryn riding a dragon in Targaryen colours, can we?"
Aemma giggles at that, standing straighter for having Rodrick beside her, and smoothes her pale hands over her skirts. She's pretty as a picture, in rich, creamy Arryn blue, with a chain of lapis and moonstones wound through her dark hair, and Daella is certain that her daughter is the finest of all her parents' grandchildren - even proud Rhaenys, sixteen now and fierce, so much like Mother that it catches Daella's breath in her throat when Rhaenys crosses the throne room to greet them.
"Your Highness," Daella says, dipping as deep as she had for Aemon, when last she saw her brother - such is Rhaenys' right now, after all. "It is good to see you-"
"Come now, Aunt Daella," Rhaenys chides, smiling so much like Aemon that it hurts, right between Daella's ribs. "Surely we need not stand on such ceremony with one another? We are family, after all!"
Over across the floor, Baelon is watching with sharp, resentful eyes, and Daella wonders at that - yes, he is cunning, yes, he is canny, but he has never been greedy or unkind, and that is all she can see on his face now, as he watches Rhaenys crouch just a little to look Aemma in the eye.
"And here," Rhaenys says, "my cousin, who is my equal - what say you, Lady Aemma? Will you serve me as your father does our grandfather?"
"I would be honoured, Princess," Aemma says breathlessly, flushing the same unpleasant, blotchy pink as Rodrick, and seeming twice as charming for the lack of artifice. "Oh, cousin- may I call you cousin?"
"Of course, little one," Rhaenys laughs. "Come, we shall speak with our lord grandfather, and then our lady grandmother, and then I will show you off to all of court while your poor mama has to stay here and chat with our aunts and uncles - how does that sound?"
"You would have my son," Baelon says, jaw locked in temper, "take his wife's name."
"We would," Rodrick says calmly. "For it will not be by his blood that any children born of his union with my daughter claim the Eyrie, but by hers. By their Arryn blood."
"You would have a Targaryen throw aside his heritage," Baelon says, rising from his seat, "rather than have your daughter honour the Valyrian blood in her veins?"
Rodrick rises too. He stands three or four inches taller than Baelon, Brave Baelon, and is half as broad again in the shoulder, but Baelon does not back from him. Daella watches Rodrick, aware that Alyssa, across the table, is watching Baelon with frantic eyes. With angry eyes.
Daella always thought Alyssa soft, thought her gentle, but she has seen none of the sister she remembers since their arrival at court - perhaps it was not so much Baelon as Alyssa who so pressed to have Baelon recognised as their father's heir. Perhaps it is Alyssa, who always tried so hard to catch Aemon's eye when they were girls, who seeks to force Aemon's daughter by another woman out.
Perhaps she ought to say as much to Jocelyn. Daella loves her aunt dearly, but she knows that Jocelyn is a true Baratheon, a tempest, fierce but utterly without forethought. It could do no harm to advise her to be cautious of Alyssa.
Perhaps she will have a word with Mother, too. Mother does love Rhaenys so.
"I think," Rodrick says, fingers twisting through the spill of her hair where it lies moon-pale across his chest, "that introducing Aemma to your niece was a splendid idea."
Daella hums an agreement, sweeping her thumb over and back across the thick, gnarled scar just above his elbow, a remnant of a fall onto a tangle of thorny briars in his youth. She has never known him without it, no more than he knows her without the ugly mark across the backs of her thighs, where she sat on the edge of a hot anvil while flirting with the smith's apprentice.
"Your father approached me about having her foster here at court," Rodrick says quietly, gently, knowing how much this will hurt her to even consider - for it will hurt him just the same. "We cannot rightly refuse him."
"And I cannot leave her here alone," Daella says, lifting her head to rest her chin on his collarbone, so she can look him in the eye. "My love-"
"I know," he says. "I don't think your mother would even think to guard against your sister. They're all so worried about your brother that she would go unnoticed, like a thief in the night."
"Her," Daella agrees, sitting up and taking Rodrick's restless hands in her own. "Or that odious younger boy of theirs."
Yes, Daella has watched her sister's sons - Viserys, the one they would have for Aemma, is as plump and pleasant and genuinely sweet as promised, but Daemon, the other one, has a nasty streak that puts Daella in mind of the stories Father and Mother reluctantly shared of their uncle.
He is a charming boy, of course he is, no son of Baelon's could be otherwise. But he is also cruel, in a way that has nothing to do with even this new, hungry side of her brother that Daella is only now seeing. She will not see him anywhere near Aemma, if she can help it.
Rodrick sits as well, sweat shining on his skin in the clammy, humid heat of the city, and she longs very suddenly for their elegant, airy apartments in the Eyrie, and to have Aemma there as well.
"Mayhaps," she says, "if I speak with Mama, I might find a way around your having to leave our girl and me behind when you return home."
"I would send Rhaenys with you, if I thought I'd get away with it," Mother says, Daella's arm looped through hers as they walk the gardens. "Keep her away from all the poison for a year or two more, but I think Corlys Velaryon would declare war on me if I tried."
Yes, Daella has seen the way Rhaenys' soon-to-be-husband looks at her. Rodrick looked at her like that, in the very first thrill of their love. He would have gone to war for her then, and likely still would, if necessary.
"Viserys is a good boy," Mother says, as fond as she only ever is speaking of her grandchildren. "Baelon would have him be more a warrior, and Alyssa would have him be more a scholar - but he is just himself. A poet at heart, I think, but kind and sweet."
Ah. He reminds Mother of her father, then, of what few soft memories she has of the father who died when she was hardly more than a babe.
"He would be safe with us, Mama," Daella presses gently. "And it would do he and Aemma good to know one another, don't you think?"
"It certainly did your brother and Jocelyn no harm," Mama says, smiling now. Oh, how it had infuriated Alyssa! Aemon had gone to squire with Lord Robar, had been meant for Alyssa, but had fallen so desperately in love with Jocelyn that Father, soft at the best of times, had not been able to refuse them. "I will speak with your father, sweetling, and see if I can't make him see sense. Viserys would thrive in the Eyrie, I think, just as you did."
Aemma will always take precedence in the Eyrie, too - best get the boy used to it early, so he won't chafe at it the way his father does now.