Winds of Hatred, Glimpse of Sun

Just at the Mirk and Midnight Hour

At the end, she did ask. She had not truly expected that she would. But the memory of her mother's white face as she waited for a tourney where everyone knew King Aegon's mistress would be crowned Queen of Love and Beauty proved a strong incense. Till the very end, Naerys had refused to ask Aegon about anything, for anything. Because she had known that she'd be denied, so she had not wanted to give him the pleasure. Daenerys did not intend to humble her pride either but she had seen Maron's desire to make her feel as comfortable as possible. Her father had never done that with her mother. It would be different for her. And besides, she wouldn't cry and beg him to leave the woman. She just wanted to know. Still, it was hard to keep her cool composure all day long when her ladies didn't quite dare look at her. Even Dyanna was in no mood to amuse the solar with her fantastical tales that sounded so truthful. But when they all headed for the great hall, Daenerys put a smile on her lips and spring in her step. She was not going in as a broken woman. No way. She played her part so great that from time to time, she caught her lord husband look at her as if he was trying to read her. It was then that she knew he had been told.

Perhaps he'd have the decency not to come to her tonight. But if he didn't, how would she know that he wasn't with the black-haired beauty, his love of more than ten years? Daenerys didn't know what she wanted to happen and when she suddenly saw him in the mirror, she felt immensely relieved that he had taken the decision off her hands… and that he had come.

"Thanks you, Ingara," she said and her handmaiden brought down the silver hairbrush. "You may go."

For a while, they were both silent. She waited for him to say something and he wouldn't. Finally, he sighed. "I am sorry, my lady," he said. "I should have never allowed that encounter."

He was apologizing for the wrong thing! "And how were you going to prevent it?" Daenerys demanded. "By supervising my outings and keep me under lock until you could be sure that the two of us wouldn't meet? Or keep her under lock?"

Maron came close. She could see his face in the mirror but he didn't reach for her – very wise of him indeed! "If the Seven are good to us, she'll leave in two months."

"Two months?" Daenerys asked, fury giving edge to her voice. That was what her father had done, it was said. Sending the woman who had just given him a son away mere days after she had given birth to her son. The fact that it had been on Daeron and Uncle Aemon's insistence didn't matter… and the fact that Barba Bracken had been a witch mattered even less. The wild joy that the woman would disappear quickly went away at the thought that she had married a man like her father. "You'll send her away with her babe as soon as she gives birth? You should have sent her away long ago, then. It should have been more merciful."

Surprise flickered through Maron's eyes. "You're defending her?"

Daenerys shook her head. "No. But it's cruel anyway."

"I agree… if things were as they are. In fact, she'll give birth in a few weeks."

Stunned, Daenerys found no words. The woman certainly hadn't looked this far along. Her health was clearly far worse than Daenerys had thought. Perhaps she'd die in the birthing bed.

The thought didn't disturb her. When she hated, she did so without pangs of conscience. She wouldn't do anything to harm Elana Jordayne but she wouldn't pretend sadness if something did befall the mistress. The paramour, as they called it in Dorne. Daenerys did not care to find out what the difference was but she suspected that she knew.

Then, the sweet relief came. He'd give Elana the time to recover. He wouldn't just throw her away when the first harsher wind blew. He was not such a man.

"Where is she going to go?"

"At the Tor. Her sister, Lady Jordayne, is dead but she won't be unwelcome. And then, she'll be wed."

Happiness filled her to the brim, yet experience made her wary. "Is he going to be a courtier?" she asked.

Maron sighed. "I guess I deserved that," he said. "I still don't know who he's going to be. I must find her the best match possible. I won't allow her life to be ruined just because she gave so many years of it to me."

"How many?"

Why had she asked that? She didn't want to know!

"I was sixteen when we got together," Maron said calmly. Daenerys quickly made the calculation and her heart fell. What chance did she have if he had spent so many years with a single woman? Other woman. "And she lost a great deal of things to be with me." He paused. "She isn't a threat to you, Daenerys. She never was. You're my princess and she's in the past. I was with her before I knew you, that's all you should know. Not when I was with you already. It only looks otherwise because of the babe… and because she's so gaunt that she doesn't look as far along as she is."

For the first time since she had met him, his voice held undisguised pain and Daenerys wanted to slap him but it would be unwise. She knew that it was breaking his heart to say it and that filled her own heart with fury, as black as the midnight hour.

"I wasn't very good to you, was I?"

Daenerys gave her goodmother a wary look. Siella watched her calmly, her hands rested against the embroidery in her lap. "You weren't bad," she said carefully.

"Still," Siella sighed. "I am too obsessed with my past, it seems, and you represent all that was bad in it. I wasn't right to hold it against you."

This wasn't going well. Daenerys looked her in the eye. "All that was bad in your past?" she demanded. "How so?"

The Conquest. No matter what, we always come back to the Conquest.

"You're a Targaryen," Siella said indeed. "And Rogare. Let's not forget Rogare."

Rogare? Daenerys searched her mind. Siella Martell had come from Lys. Did she belong to one of the families that had killed Lysandro Rogare and – oh Mother! – Drazenko? Had she come to Dorne as the bride of peace of her time, offered to the son of the man her own family had killed?

"Did you know my grandmother?" she asked, to her own surprise. She didn't know anyone who had known Lady Larra and wanted to answer Daenerys' questions.

"I did." A pale smile, pale like her hand, touched Siella's lips. "She was the loveliest woman I have ever seen. And the saddest."

Now, that took her aback. She wanted to ask more questions but she was afraid that they'd lead to the fate of Princess Larra Martell who should have still been alive but instead had thrown herself off the Tower of the Sun. Daenerys had heard her own handmaidens whisper about the rumours they had heard here, of how Larra had been unable to reconcile with the thought that she might be carrying Prince Aegon's child… and Daenerys suspected that it might well be true. Had this other Larra, her lady grandmother, truly been unhappy? She had always thought that returning to Lys had made her bloom. That had been what she wanted, after all. It was so strange to think how tied they all were – she, from King's Landing; Siella, from Lys; and House Martell that Daenerys was tied for life to, now.

"I am sorry," Siella said again. "I should have known better than take it out on a child."

"It's fine," Daenerys said.

It wasn't, but perhaps it was a start. She looked at the old woman and smiled, no entirely forcedly.

At the end, she went to the Water Gardens, mere days before the birth of Elana's child. She could not bear the whispers behind her back and the worry on Maron's face as he looked up at the door at any noise, eager to know if it was word from her. Let the woman have her baby in peace. Daenerys would come back after Elana was on her way home and not before. Oh, and she'd have Maron's room entirely cleaned, from floor to ceiling, to erase any trace of the woman's presence! But as days went by, it became harder for her to keep to this fierceness as the sun caressed her bare skin, the blood oranges went ripe for the first time and Dyanna had to stop her little sister from jumping in the pools, headfirst, as Lady Elsbet and the child had stopped here on their way to Sunspear. "It isn't for bathing," Dyanna explained earnestly and Daenerys barely kept laughter in. Dyanna spoke as if she didn't go there for baths herself when it was the dead pitch of night and there was no one watching.

Then, the news came. Elana had given Maron a fine boy and she was fine as well, despite the fears of maesters and midwives alike. Daenerys felt chilled. A son, she thought. She has given him another son. What if I never do?

It didn't matter. In Dorne, a daughter was an heiress. And still, her heart told her that her first child should be a boy. Everyone knew that! And Elana Jordayne had taken that from her. But she felt even more chilled when the new word arrived. The child had died at three days of age, having declined unexpectedly and very rapidly, and for a long moment of sheer terror she thought she might have caused this somehow with her resentment.

Her return to Sunspear was sheer torment. People shouted insults around her litter. Her guards dispersed them but could not make them shut up. They thought that she had poisoned Lady Elana. That she had made sure that her babe would die. At times, the shouts grew so loud that she felt as if they were coming from just beyond the hangings.

"Do you think I have something to do with this?" she demanded in the depth of night when it became clear that Maron wouldn't look at her – only that now he did.

"Of course not. I am just trying to find an explanation, that's all. He was such a strong, healthy child. All of them were. I know sometimes it just happens but it was so unexpected. I…"

The black shadows under his bloodshot eyes revealed that he hadn't slept in days. His olive face was paler than hers now. And something urged her to not tell him what she had been dying to announce all the way from the Water Gardens: in less than seven months, she'd give him a child. A son to replace the one he had lost. Be even more important than this: an heir. She'd give him an heir. But looking at him, she knew that it would be better if she kept silent. For now.

Elana Jordayne was wed a mere month after her babe's death – Daenerys prayed that her lord husband would wait before he bedded her. The voice that spoke the words was as hoarse as a crow's. The bride looked as if the faintest murmur of the breeze could break her and watching her, Daenerys realized why Maron had been so insistent that the wedding take place now. With every passing day, Elana was dragged further down by her misery. A new husband would be something else to think about. Not that she'd become infatuated all of a sudden. Lord Gargalen was an old man who had lost all his heirs in the last few years. He had taken her for her proven fertility but he wasn't a man who could make a young woman's heart beat faster. If Elana's beat at all. It must be, Daenerys thought, because she lives. As dead as she was, she still walked. She tried her best not to look at the boy who resembled Maron so much, and yet it didn't feel right to ignore him, although ignoring him she did. He was her husband's bastard.

When the ritual was over, she and Maron were the ones who lead the line of well-wishers. Daenerys shivered at the bride's cold hand in hers. Maron seemed to have realized that he was staring for far too long, so he looked away from his longtime whore. Elana didn't seem to even register him, or anything. Daenerys had heard that she had accepted the news of her upcoming wedding with absolute indifference but this was so eerie that Daenerys wondered if Elana hadn't been given something to make her this docile.

Despite everything, she spent the next few months in worried anticipation, dreading the moment when it would be announced that the new Lady Gargalen was with child. It would be her husband's, right? Elana's husband. And yet, a tiny part of her kept worrying even as the gifts for the upcoming birth of her own child kept piling and the hostility towards her in the palace and streets ebbed, replaced by content and joyful anticipation, and Maron smiled as he placed his hand on her belly to feel the movements and she no longer burned to ask him if he had done the same with Elana.