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Winds of Hatred, Glimpse of Sun

The Bride of Peace

The roar of the crowd was such that Daenerys felt it like a throbbing in her head threatening to split it. The final tilt… the tourney that should have been the peak of her wedding… it would have been if not for him. He who stole the light for himself. He who strutted down the halls of the Red Keep as if he were the one being celebrated, that cursed sword on his hip. Daenerys knew only too well the admiration that people felt for him… and admiring his skills with arms somehow always turned into admiring his looks, exclaiming how Targaryen he looked and always ending up with talks about his vaunted lineage, and how King Aegon had acknowledged him… Daeron should have sent him away the day he took the throne, Daenerys thought resentfully, certain that the mud slung on her mother's honour only served to build up him.

Daemon against Baelor. Equal odds. Equal number of defeated rivals. It could go either way. What did it matter? It was just a tourney… but it did mattered. A look at Daeron's face confirmed that. Oh he hid it very well… but Baelor had to win. He had to.

The signal sounded and the horses trotted towards each other. Daenerys couldn't quite distinguish what was going on in the flurry of dust and spears but Maekar yelled, "He's falling, he's falling down! He cannot withstand!"

Daenerys couldn't see anyone fall but moments later, one did. Daemon.

The uproar that erupted could bring the first one to shame. Everyone on the stands was up and cheering. She saw how next to her, Mariah relaxed and realized that the Queen had wanted her son to win for many more reasons than usual.

"You can let go off my hand now," Maekar said and Daenerys turned to him just in time to see Dyanna Dayne drawing back and cocking her nose, as if she had never clung to his hand at all. Even her new, thirteen year old attendant – or was Dyanna twelve? Daenerys wasn't sure, – who had spent at court all but two weeks had felt just how important it was that Baelor won.

She looked at her husband, wondering what she would see. He was comely enough, Maron. Strangely resembling Baelor, in fact. Old enough to know how to treat a woman and make her feel like she was adored and desired. Daenerys was so relieved that she saw their union as a fertile ground for love. But whenever the conversation had lulled a little and she looked at him engrossed by his own thoughts, there was always a shadow, a lack of smile, a cloud that enveloped him almost visibly. Always, always his expression was pained.

But not now. He was smiling as Baelor turned his horse to them after his victorious lap over the field and all around, the crowd was driving itself mad with its own cheers. "Breakspear! Breakspear! Baelor Breakspear!"

Dorne did not take to her warmly.

Oh, the lords and ladies who had not accompanied Maron to King's Landing assembled to greet her as Maron presented her to his court three days after their arrival and said all the right things. But there was no joy in their eyes and lots of rigidity to their smiles. Especially the older ones. Those who were old enough to remember the brief period when Dorne had been conquered by the Iron Throne. Even Maron's mother who was not Dornish by birth was polite but reserved. Daenerys had thought that perhaps age and frailty had prevented her from attending the wedding and seeing her daughter for the first time in so many years but Siella Martell looked quite agile as she climbed the stairs without stopping for breath. She had simply chosen not to come.

Whenever she rode in the streets or walked the streets of the shadow city, she was surrounded by silence, broken by hesitant cheers and disgruntled murmuring, one about as strong as the other. No amount of alms-giving could make people warm up to her.

"Give them time, my lady," Dyanna Dayne would say. "It won't last forever. Once they see you can be trusted, they will change their mind."

"And when are they going to see it?" Daenerys snapped once. "Has your lady mother seen it? She's still giving me wide berth."

Dyanna blushed and found no more words.

Sometimes, Maron's face looked like those of the others. Withdrawn. Distant. His eyes would shoot her a look as if he were wondering what she was doing here before he remembered and his courtliness returned. But now Daenerys could recognize it for what it was. Politeness. Nothing more. Desire to make her feel welcome. But she wasn't welcome, even to him. When she thought of her hopes and dreams of how she would be the living symbol of reconciliation, she felt like such a fool!

Adamantly, she refused to move to the Water Gardens that he had built for her. Something deep inside her told her that it was his way to get rid of her, settle her away in lonely splendour. Another voice whispered in her ear that he had known that she wouldn't be beloved and had taken measures to shield her from the hostility of his subjects. But she wasn't going to hide away. If she was going to take her rightful place as the Princess of Dorne and not the despised dragon, she had to stay and fight her corner. But it was so hard when she only had the support of young people at court – and not all of them either. Besides, she could say that the ladies assigned to her knew more about the reason for her troubles than they let on – they were hiding something. Looking at each other, shaking heads warningly before some could say something that Daenerys very much wanted to hear!

And that hot! If Dorne didn't love her, its weather would love her to death indeed if she let it! The courtly gowns that Mariah had warned her she wouldn't need lasted about two weeks before she shut the lid of a chest determinedly and reconciled, asked for a robe. Oddly enough, that led to some thawing from both highborn and smallfolk but it was not enough.

Day after day she received lords and ladies from Dorne and the rest of the kingdoms, as well as some from Essos, prayed into the sept, albeit not as devoutly as her lady mother, engaged with the charities she had demanded that she be allowed to establish or run and went out in the streets. The more people saw of her, the faster they would get used to her and stop whispering about her father. She had little doubt that all they say was true, and then some, but that didn't mean that she was reconciled with bearing the burden of it!

Night after night, she lay down with a husband who was gentle and patient with her but afterward, he'd stare out into the darkness with his mind being far, far away.

She met the woman in the streets of Sunspear about a moon after her arrival and was immediately struck by the oddity of the fact that the dark-haired lady hadn't been presented to her. There was no doubt that she was a lady, her robes were proof enough, and there was no way Daenerys would have forgotten such a striking face. She had never seen a woman so beautiful, with such a gleaming river of dark hair and so fine a nose… but her eyes, red and puffy, were cast down and stayed this way even after she rose from her curtsey. Even the curtsey was very elegant for any woman, let alone one so heavy with child.

"My princess," the woman said tonelessly. "I am honoured."

Around them, people were frozen in stunned, terrified anticipation and Daenerys couldn't understand the reason of it. Even Dyanna Dayne, ever so inventive and quick with her tongue, looked helpless.

"What's your name?" Daenerys asked.

"I am Elana Jordayne," the stranger replied in a low voice.

"Why haven't you been presented to me before? I thought House Jordayne was one of the greatest in Dorne… You would have been welcome to the palace at any time. I'll ask the Prince to address whatever grievances you might have."

"I thank you for your kindness," the woman said, still looking down. Daenerys could feel the despair wrapped around her like a heavy cloak. But she also felt that somehow, she was making things worse. People were gaping at her and when her party left, they were seen off with the same stunned silence, here and there pierced by whispers, sharper than ever before.

In the Old Palace, Dyanna Dayne and her brother Ultor quarreled. Oh, they were doing it in low tones but it was a quarrel nonetheless and Daenerys who was eavesdropping on them greatly regretted that they wouldn't say clearly what the matter was.

"That's for the Prince to decide," Ultor was saying. "That isn't to say that I like it but…"

"But she has the right to know! She's placing both herself and Lady Elana in position that is untenable. You saw how the people reacted. They thought she was mocking her, rubbing it in her face…"

At the end, it was her goodmother who told her the truth of the situation, and in gentler way that Daenerys had expected of her. Anyway, it did little to help her overcome the shock to find out that Maron had lived with another woman openly for years… that they were now dealing with the death of their two sons taken away by the speckled monster just two moons before the wedding in King's Landing… that in another few moons, Elana Jordayne would give him another child…

"Does he still visit her?" Daenerys asked, trying to keep her voice even. She felt like such a fool! Even for asking this question! Of course his mother would deny it. What mother wouldn't?

Siella's brown eyes watched her with unexpected sympathy. "I don't know. You'll have to ask him. But even if he does, what harm can this do to you? You saw her. Can you imagine that she's up to receiving him in her bed for such pleasures?"

Daenerys slowly shook her head. The woman she had seen in the street looked as if she was at the Stranger's door. Then again, in his unguarded moments Maron did not look this different.

"Do they have another child?" she demanded, suppressing the urge to grab the old woman and shake the answer out of her. "Answer me!"

"Their eldest lives with his cousins, in the Tor," her goodmother said reluctantly and Daenerys recoiled. Everyone had known. Everyone. Dyanna. The courtiers. Everyone had known and no one had thought to tell her. Now she realized the full extent of the position she had found herself in: the daughter of a man whose name was still cursed in Dorne; the wife of a man whose heart belonged to another; the one who had caused a child to be sent away from his home because his presence at court would offend her. And she couldn't even blame Maron. He hadn't wronged her in any way. He had tried his best to make her feel at ease. If he still visited his mistress, he didn't do it at night because he spent his nights with Daenerys. Toiling over the task of fathering an heir on me, she thought bitterly, feeling how the only support she had been relying on was taken from her. I am just the wife. Am I going to have the courage to ask him about her? Mother! Am I?