The Sun Will Shine On Us Again | Oberyn Martell

The Gift

"A snake? You want me to catch a snake, kill it and send it to that Baratheon princess? Why?" Tyene Sand asked her mother. Just by the tone of her voice and the expression on her face, you could tell that she didn't really want to do it. She would do anything for her mother, but this was a little below her level, Tyene realized.

"You can also catch the scorpion and send it along with the snake," Ellaria mockingly answered her. She was sitting at her desk writing the letter she planned to send with the little present to Princess Joanna.

"Mother..."

"Since when have you been asking me why I want to do this or that, Tyene?" Ellaria turned and looked her daughter in the eyes.

"You are so obsessed with getting revenge for something that was not the girl's fault that you are not even realizing that father is going to find out and it's going to be a huge problem? For both of us."

Ellaria remained silent, unable to utter a single word. Instead, she just sat, staring into Tyene's eyes, tapping her fingertips on the table, the only sound that echoed through the room. Maybe Ellaria had a bit of a problem with Oberyn getting married. But now the problem wasn't that he was going to get married. The biggest problem for her was that the girl was pregnant and that Oberyn seemed to be starting to have feelings for her. That the love he felt for Ellaria was slowly fading away. That she was slowly disappearing from his heart.

She stood up from her chair and took a few steps closer to Tyene. She stroked her daughter's cheek and smiled. "I'm doing this for us, my sweet child. When that Baratheon whore comes here after the wedding, me, you, and your sisters will have to leave because she won't want us here. She will take your beloved father from you, ban him from seeing us."

Tyene laughed. She didn't believe her. Father would never do that to them. He would never put anyone else before them, especially not her mother.

"You know very well that it's not true. Father would never do it."

"I'm afraid so. He went to King's Landing to see her as soon as he found out she was pregnant."

"There is no proof that the child is his. She could have had it with someone else."

Ellaria was silent again and just stared at Tyene. She could see in her daughter's eyes that she was terrified. She even glimpsed a faint hint of tears in them, which Tyene tried to hide by blinking her eyelids too often.

"You catch and kill that snake and then you come to me. I will give you a letter and you will send it."

Tyene truly didn't want to get involved in this idea of her mother's, she knew her father, and she knew what a problem it would be. But she couldn't disobey her mother, so she just nodded and walked away from her to do what she asked her. Ellaria, on the other hand, kept looking at the door through which her little girl left and returned to writing a letter addressed to Princess Joanna Baratheon, the future Princess of Dorne and her rival, all in one person.

✺ ┅ ♛ ┅ ✺

Oberyn had been thinking about one thing for two days, and that was the family background of his betrothed - Joanna. It all started with him telling her that their child would have the same dark hair that he had. It was like that, wasn't it? That the dark one will beat the light blonde as she had. At least that's what he thought because it made sense to him, and he hadn't yet encountered it being the other way around. Those were genes that couldn't be beaten. But it was different with her - her father, Robert Baratheon, had dark hair; her mother, Cersei Lannister, had golden blonde hair, and yet Joanna had the same shade of hair as her mother. And so do their remaining three children.