— Dany —

Dany woke alone, which was unusual, and heard her sister in the next room swearing softly in High Valyrian, which was also unusual, and smiled into her pillow before she had properly opened her eyes.

The Old Palace of Sunspear had given the visiting queens a suite of four rooms opening onto a private terrace above the water gardens — a courtesy Dany suspected had been arranged by Arianne Martell with the particular thoughtfulness of a woman who had correctly intuited the sleeping arrangements and had declined to embarrass anyone by asking about them. There was, officially, a queen's chamber and a queen's other chamber. Only one of the beds had been slept in. The other had acquired, over the course of their first week, a steadily growing collection of maps, letters, a half-eaten plate of figs, and — as of last night — Ēdrugon, who had decided the unused mattress was the finest thing in Westeros and had taken possession of it with the quiet implacability of a cat.

The swearing was coming from the map room.

Dany pulled on a robe, padded across the cool tile, and leaned in the doorway.

Her sister was standing over the great table in a thin linen shift with her silver hair loose down her back and ink on her left cheek. Morning light came in golden bars through the lattice. She was glaring at a letter as though she could set it on fire by will alone. Ēdrugon, on the unused bed behind her, was watching with his long black-and-red tail twitching in sympathy.

"What," Dany asked, "has the world done to you before breakfast, my love."

"Stannis Baratheon," Aelya said without looking up, "is a stupid man, Dany. He has burned the weirwood of Storm's End. He has burned it in front of his own bannermen. He has a red woman at his ear telling him to burn more, and he is listening to her, and half his stormlords have ridden off in disgust, and now he is losing a war he was winning three months ago, and I cannot decide, Dany, whether to be delighted or appalled."

"Both," Dany suggested. "Usually it is both."

"Both." Aelya set the letter down. She turned. Her face softened in the particular way it had been softening every morning for three months now, the way Dany had not yet entirely stopped being shaken by. "Good morning, wife."

"Good morning, wife."

"You slept."

"I slept. You did not."

"An hour or two. Stannis is having a very exciting spring and I wanted to keep pace."

Dany crossed the room. She took the inked cheek between her palms and kissed her sister once, unhurried, the way she had learned she was allowed to now.

"Come to the gardens with me," she said. "Arianne said she would meet us there. The children splash in the pools and the old women feed them oranges and I want — I want one morning, Aelya. One morning where you are not reading a letter. Can we?"

Aelya smiled.

"We can."

— Arianne —

The Water Gardens were Arianne's favourite place in the world, and she had a great many places in the world to choose from.

They were three leagues inland from Sunspear, set in a fold of pale hills: a series of pools and fountains and shaded colonnades where the children of Dornish nobles and Dornish smallfolk had, by old custom, been raised together since the time of Princess Daenerys — the first Princess Daenerys, Arianne reminded herself, there were going to be two now and it was going to get confusing at feasts. The pools were fed by cold mountain springs. The colonnades were hung with climbing jasmine. Old women in orange robes sat on benches with baskets of blood oranges and tossed them, one at a time, to whichever child looked hungriest. It was the most civilised place in Westeros and Arianne loved it the way some women loved gods.

She was there early, with her cousins Tyene and Nymeria — Obara was off somewhere scowling at a practice dummy, and Sarella was in Oldtown still being, officially, a boy — and they had staked out the best colonnade, the one with the view down over the lower pools, and Tyene had brought a jug of chilled citron wine.

"They'll come?" Nymeria asked.

"They'll come. I asked nicely."

"You asked the shorter one nicely," Tyene observed, pouring. "You batted your lashes at Daenerys over breakfast. I saw you."

"I did not bat."

"You batted, cousin."

"I was being cordial."

"Was Aelya cordial back?" Nymeria asked, dry.

Arianne considered this.

"Aelya," she said, "looked at me the way a large friendly dog looks at a very small dog that has wandered into its dinner. Politely. With great interest. Fully prepared, if the small dog did not retreat, to eat it."

Tyene laughed into her wine.

"So," Nymeria said. "Married, then. Properly married. Not the polite kind."

"Properly married. The kind where one of them will kill you if you look at the other one wrong. I find it charming." Arianne stretched luxuriously in the shade. "It is going to make the next decade of my life fascinating, cousins. Do you know how long it has been since this realm had a queen who loved someone back? Truly loved. Not a political fondness. An actual — someone."

"Rhaegar," Tyene said, quietly.

"Rhaegar loved our aunt Elia the way one loves a sister," Arianne said. "He loved Lyanna Stark the way one loves a poem. I do not think Rhaegar ever loved anyone the way the tall one looks at the short one. No one has. Not on the Iron Throne. Not in my lifetime."

"It is going to make them stronger," Nymeria said.

"Yes. That too."

They heard the queens before they saw them — a laugh, Daenerys's laugh, coming up the path from the lower gate — and Arianne arranged her face into a welcome.

— Aelya —

She had not wanted to like Arianne Martell.

She had arrived in Dorne prepared to respect Arianne, to work with Arianne, to be amused by Arianne at suitable distances — the way one is amused by a friend's clever younger cousin. She had not wanted friendship. Friendship was a thing Aelya had rationed carefully in this life, for reasons that had a great deal to do with being a planner of wars and a keeper of secrets and a woman who intended, within the next two years, to do several things that friends might feel obliged to argue her out of.

Arianne was making the ration difficult.

Arianne was, for one thing, funny — in the dry understated Dornish way that Aelya found disarming. Arianne was also extremely good with Dany. She did not flatter Dany. She did not try to charm her. She simply included her — asked her opinion on small unimportant matters first, before asking Aelya on large ones, so that Dany was never the ornamental queen in any room Arianne arranged. Aelya had noticed this in the first dinner and had watched for it in the second and by the third had understood it was deliberate. Arianne Martell, princess of a realm where women inherited equally, knew exactly what it cost a younger twin to walk a step behind her sister, and had quietly decided not to cost Dany that.

Aelya was grateful.

They spent the morning in the Water Gardens. Dany took off her sandals and waded in the shallowest of the pools with a gaggle of Dornish children, half of whom had figured out who she was and half of whom had not; the ones who had not were bossing her around with the complete confidence of five-year-olds, and Dany was laughing, and Aelya sat in the shade with Arianne and Nymeria Sand and a cup of citron wine and watched her sister be happy, and thought: this. This is what I have been building. All of it. All along. This.

"She is very lovely," Arianne said quietly, beside her.

"Yes."

"You have been married how long?"

"Three months. Formally."

"Formally."

"We have been — us since we could speak," Aelya said. "The rest was bookkeeping."

Arianne smiled.

"And do you know," she said, "when you will sail north?"

"Soon. A moon. Less. I am waiting for two things."

"May I ask?"

"You may. The first is word from a maester in Oldtown who owes Illyrio a very old favour. The second —" Aelya hesitated "— the second is a man I have never met, who I believe is already travelling south to find us, because I wrote him a letter three weeks ago that should have reached him by now."

"A man?"

"A knight. He was ours once. He — fell out of favour, before we were born. I am bringing him back into favour."

Arianne's eyebrows lifted.

"Cousin. Not Barristan Selmy."

"Barristan Selmy."

"You wrote to Barristan the Bold. And you expect him to come."

"I expect him to be halfway across the Narrow Sea by now. He was dismissed from the Kingsguard by the boy Joffrey on his first day of rule, in front of the whole court. He has been drifting the Free Cities under a false name for a year, trying to decide whether to come home and die useful or stay abroad and drink. I sent him a letter offering him the command of my armies and his white cloak back. I did not expect he would refuse."

Arianne stared at her.

"Cousin," she said slowly. "You have been busy."

"I have had fifteen years to be busy, princess."

"How old were you when you started?"

Aelya smiled into her wine.

"Four," she said.

Arianne looked at her for a long moment.

Then she lifted her own cup in a small private salute, and drank, and said nothing more, and turned her attention to the pool, where Dany was now being crowned with a wreath of jasmine by a very serious four-year-old who had decided she was a princess and required a crown.

She was, Aelya thought. She was, and she did.