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( SUNSPEAR, DORNE ) EARLY 286 AC
ELLARIA WAS BLESSED WITH AN EASY LABOUR, and had given birth to Elia Sand not long after the masquerade finished. A bonny babe, a carbon copy of the triplets Gwen had bore. Same fathers, and mothers that may as well have been sisters. Gwendys gave him the angry go-ahead to claim the girl as one of his own, and then did not speak to her husband for a full two moons. They slept in different beds, ate at different times. Gwendys was crushed, and spoke barely a word to anyone, save her handmaidens and the times when Shierle visited her.
There was no talk of annulment, but Gwendys could see it on the horizon, and others could see it too. The once smitten couple hadn't been seen together in a long while, and the princess rarely left her bedchambers, her eyes wet like salt shores, until she was summoned to Oberyn's.
"Pardon me, my lady, but Prince Oberyn requests your company."
"I'm sure Ellaria'll do him just fine."
"I have been assured, your grace, he wants you."
"Did he ever?" she sighed, and waved the servant away. Her head ached, her heart ached. She set down her goblet and stood, shakily.
Her legs didn't feel fit for the job as she walked to Oberyn's chambers that morning, but she arrived eventually, and took a deep breath before she entered.
"Hello, your grace," Gwendys greeted her husband sharply, retorting back to her old formalities that Oberyn insisted were misuse. Her voice already sounded lethal.
"I'm glad you chose to come."
Ellaria laid on her side the featherbed behind him, a chalice of wine in one hand and cradling her little newborn Elia in the other. Gwendys loathed the two of them, even in a passing glance. She was there. She was lying right there, dangling herself in front of Gwendys without a care in the world.
"I'm in no position to deny a prince my company," she drawled, unamused, locking eyes with Ellaria. Her stomach churned at the thought of them together. The thought of Oberyn replacing her with her handmaid so hastily.
"I have made the decision ... to take Ellaria as my paramour."
Gwendys didn't dare to move a muscle. Not even her eyes flickered with diminished hope.
"You have my full permission to return to Saltshore, or stay, if you choose."
"Stay?" she laughed, but there was no humour. It was cold with an edge and a haunting hollowness, like an assassin sharpening a blade with a rock. In truth, it sounded more like a cackle than a laugh, and it was scathing. "I'd rather not, thank you, your grace. And I will take the girls."
"But I am their father," Oberyn protested. "I am their guardian. They ought to be under my protection.
Gwendys was not in the mood to argue. She felt so drained. "Yet you have no problem in taking your other daughters away from their mothers."
