lyssapeake:
When they’d first met she had been blinded by fear and sand. She and Arnem had ridden for miles, crossing the Dornish border just after sunrise. To go to Dorne was more of a betrayal than going North; Lyssa had been raised to fear the Dornish almost more than fire, or sharpened steel. Everytime they passed what might have been a dwelling, she thought of the tales her old nurse had whispered - poisoned wells and the way the Gardeners had died of thirst and sickness in the great dunes while the Dornish soldiers laughed, eyes glinting cruelly. When they reached the camp, it was only Arnem’s information about the Tyrells’ that saved them. Sometimes Lyssa thought about that evening, her skin sunburned and her eyes dry of tears because she had none left to weep. If the Darkstar had been in Sunspear rather than gathering men; if he had had a little less sleep, or a little more wine, he would have laid her down and kissed the head off her neck with his sword.
As it was, she had learned to survive in the sands, and then, later, in his soldier’s tent. She had worn breeches and tied her long skirts up and kept her hair wrapped in the gauzy scarves the Dornish women liked, and he’d taught her exactly where to press her dagger in a man’s ribcage to kill him in one even stroke, and where to twist it to drag things out. She counted some Dornish women as friends, once they realised she wouldn’t flinch at their threats and taunts; there is no such thing as a whore in Dorne. Being from the Reach was far worse than sharing the Darkstar’s bed.
She missed the sight of the sky, here in Dragonstone; she turned her cheek into his palm with a faint sigh, blood rushing to the contact. She still flushed so easily; under the desert sun she had refused to tan, only burned until she freckled. She had eyed the long brown limbs of the Dornish women with furious jealousy; they could hide their emotions so easily. “Proof,” she murmured, her mouth brushing the bunched muscle at the base of his thumb, archer’s muscle. “I don’t think I want to see this ‘proof’ - I will take your word for it.” She swallowed against the tremble that threatened to overtake her and wrapped her fingers around his wrist, keeping his palm against her cheekbone as she turned her face proper, pressed a kiss to the centre where the deep lines interconnected. She let him tug her upwards and settled easily on his lap, hooking one foot over the arm of the chair, letting the other fall loose; she leant against him then and exhaled, and felt the tension leave her, easy as water running off feathers. With a possessive movement, she tugged his arm and settled it over one of her shoulders, hanging down past her collarbone so she could take his fingers and turn them over, tracing the nails, the knuckles with their rough scars.
She said, stifling a yawn, “I should like to meet the wildlings, though. Is it true that they are half bear?” Tilting her head back to smile at him, she let it fall back against his shoulder and rest there, eyes alternately on the sharp lines of his jaw, his nose, then to the ceiling with its high rafters, then closing, her eyelashes casting shadows on her cheeks. She said, “I shouldn’t like you to fight dead men. Live men I still quarrel about, but I’m used to them. What shall I have to do if there is no blood to wash off you?”
A grin overtook him, pallid, reserved only for her. Darkstar’s hand willfully let itself tangle in her canopy of curls, brushing with familiar variance over her neck, the crook dug along its nape, the soft scalp, like gold spilling. All the spots he could trace by rote, though he reserved no memory for them, not with any intent. He felt her drifting on and off, dozing, almost, the curtains between fear and fact already drawn. This was her strongest card, Dayne reckoned. This precise ability to draw arbitrary lines in the sand, demarcating what could be done, what should be, and what she needn’t concern herself with. How else could one survive Dorne? How else could one survive him?
« They’re no more bear than Arys Oakheart on a bad day, bird », the knight scoffed, something languid taking hold of his own voice as well. The urge to sleep suddenly drew up before him, scratching not to be denied, howling as only powerless needs do. Not for the first time, Darkstar wished he could subsist on sheer momentum, self-professed strength; immune to any detractors, regardless whether they came from within or without. What use is ambition, if a man still sheds blood, still pangs for meat, yearns to lay his temples against a headrest and welcome nothingness?
« Seems to me you’ll have to get used to it, and fast. Just like you weaned yourself into quarreling less. » They jested, toying with the past in their conceit, like he supposed all lovers who think themselves superior do. But the past had been a fierce thing — he saw it even now, with her pliant form against his body. Not the quarrels in particular, no, a man would be hard-pressed to accuse Lyssa of outright fierceness, but the melding of their different parts. Different frames on which their lives had unfolded thus far. So bloody, painstaking salient, those differences were.
It had looked like this: him, snarling a command only to have it shattered by her wide eyes, by the seashell mouth-gape which relayed more hurt than any of Arianne’s diatribes. It looked like him shouting, throat already scraping itself hoarse, don’t you understand this is what I have lived for until you came? Will you cast it all aside like you’d cast a bedmate? It looked like his hand batting hers away in her attempt to scrub the blood clean. Hard, unrelenting gestures. Her silence like an undercurrent of all the rivers he had never seen. Her silence like the other face of the desert. But they had done it in the end, had they not? Melded together? A jagged alloy, but theirs — at least this is what Darkstar made of it. He couldn’t frankly see how it might owe to someone else, to circumstances, to fancies, to the ploys of an amber woman; at the weakest of moments, he only hoped it didn’t.
