Work Text:
Arianne is six years old and Tyene only weeks short of six when the war comes.
No one will tell them anything about what's happening, not even Tyene's older sisters. They have to leave Sunspear, make the long ride to the Water Gardens in a stifling wheelhouse. Princess Mellario tells Arianne to pay it no mind when she asks why. Obara says only that they'll all be safe in the Water Gardens.
They hear that a lot: you're safe here.
The Water Gardens are beautiful and they can spend all day swimming and splashing and climbing the trees in the orangery and it's safe – but they both know something is wrong. Neither of their fathers visit. Oberyn doesn't even write. Day by day they see Mellario grow thinner, shadows scored under her dark eyes. The very air is thick with tension, inescapable, the way the air in Sunspear becomes on hot days when no sea breeze or pomander is enough to dispel the stench of the shadow city.
Outside the tiled walls of the Gardens, something terrible is happening. They are only six but the dread is like a physical thing, a veil that lies over the palace, stifling.
At night Tyene creeps across the room they share and into Arianne's bed. Together they lie hand-in-hand beneath the mosquito nets and listen to the echoes of grown-ups pacing, whispering in the halls.
The only thing they can trust is one another, but Tyene thinks that is enough.
One day when they are both going-on-seven, no different from any other, the Princes of Dorne ride out of the desert.
In the grand courtyard of the Water Gardens, they wait to see their fathers for the first time in more than a year. Arianne sits next to Mellario beneath the cedar tree, wearing her best vermilion sari. On the western side of the courtyard, Tyene stands, her sisters holding her hands. Her heart beats in her throat as she imagines running to her father, throwing her arms around his neck as he lifts her up off the ground.
It doesn't happen like that.
Prince Doran and Prince Oberyn ride into the courtyard wearing robes of pure white, the colour of mourning, their horses caparisoned in white. A servant runs forward to help Doran down from the saddle, but the Prince gives no sign of seeing him, swinging down on his own. He steps forward, his dark face drawn and masklike.
"It is over," he says heavily. "Robert Baratheon sits the Iron Throne. King's Landing has been sacked."
On Tyene's left side, Nymeria gasps. Tyene doesn't know what that means, for a city to be sacked.
Doran says, "Princess Elia and her children are dead. Murdered."
For a moment all is silence. Then the noise breaks over them like the sea against Sunspear's walls.
Mellario is on her feet, rushing to her husband, grabbing the front of his robes and begging him to tell her it isn't true. One of the few servants permitted to witness the Martell reunion starts praying aloud. Both of Tyene's sisters drop her hands and go running off into the corridors of the palace, crying out, woe, woe woe! The Princess of Dorne is dead!
And Oberyn – Oberyn falls to his knees on the dusty mosaic floor, and Tyene's father begins to weep. He cries like a child, face tipped up to the sky, tears running down his cheeks as his chest heaves with sobs.
This, more than anything, terrifies Tyene. She thought nothing could possibly make her father cry. All her life he has been half a legend to her, invincible, invulnerable, fierce as the desert sun. The Red Viper.
But he is crying on his knees and Prince Doran's face is a mask, rigid and shuttered, and all Tyene can do is run over to Arianne, sitting frozen with shock beneath the cedar. They hold each other tight, so tight Tyene can feel Arianne's heart beating against her own ribcage as they watch everything they have known fall apart. Dust in the desert wind.
Late that same night, her father summons Tyene to his chamber. Oberyn is unshaven, his eyes reddened and sore-looking. When she ducks through the beaded curtain and into his room he gathers her into his arms and clutches her tight, his face pressed into her shoulder. His breathing is unsteady, threatening to break again into sobs. This is more frightening by far than any of the times Tyene has seen him lose his temper.
She strokes his back and tells him what her mother would: "Aunt Elia and her children are with the Gods now, father."
"Ah, my daughter. My wise little girl." Oberyn releases her, holds her out at arm's length. Tucks a stray lock of blonde hair behind her ear. "You remember Elia, don't you?"
"Yes, father." She remembers a lady with hair in a braid that reached her waist, who called Tyene dear heart and gave her sugared violets, who wore Targaryen black and red, and a gold circlet on her brow. She remembers how happy her father was when she came to Sunspear, how they'd laughed together like Tyene and Arianne did. "You loved her very much."
"I did. I do." Oberyrn takes a glass of red wine from his desk, and drains it. "Tyene, you love your cousin Arianne?"
Tyene nods, hard. "She's like another sister. She's my best friend."
"Good, that is what Doran and I had – that is good." For a moment Oberyn hesitates, then he puts his hand on Tyene's shoulder, heavy. Looks at her intently, black eyes bright. "Listen to me, daughter. My sister was a Princess of Dorne, like Arianne is. Mayhaps it seems to you that being a princess is all pretty clothes and being pampered, but that is not true. In this world, princesses will always be a target for those who want power. A princess will always be in danger. Always."
Slowly, Tyene says, "Aunt Elia was killed because she was a princess."
"Indeed so," her father says, and he smiles, bitter and dangerous. "Now you and I, and your sisters, we have the royal blood, but I'm no heir and you are no princess. We have more freedom. We have more weapons. And we must stand by our family."
Tyene nods again. She doesn't think she can speak, not with her father's gaze on her like that, not with the way he's smiling snakelike. She's rooted to the spot like a mouse hypnotised by a cobra, but she's not afraid. Not of him.
"I couldn't protect my sister. She left and I didn't go with her and I could not protect her. So you learn from me, Tyene, my little white viper. You stay with Arianne. You protect her. Do you understand?"
"I do, I will," Tyene promises, and at that moment she feels herself become a true Sand Snake.
They're twelve years old when Tyene notices the change in Arianne for the first time.
It's been six months since last they saw each other – Oberyn went to visit Oldtown, and took Tyene with him – but now they're back at the Water Gardens. Together, as they were always meant to be.
Still young enough to love nothing more than playing in the cool waters of the baths, but old enough to be assigned lessons for most of the day, on the first day Tyene is back they wake up with the dawn. The plan is to go down to swim and chase each other through the Labyrinth Pool before the rest of the palace is awake to spoil the fun.
In the early hours of the late spring morning the air is heavy with the luxurious scent of flowers. The pink water lilies are in full bloom, pale-winged butterflies drifting through the air. Mist still hangs in the open courtyards, but within the hour the sun will have burnt it off, and be beating down on them, the emblem of the Martells victorious and inexorable.
From long experience they know Tyene's milky skin will be scorched red by the sunlight, unable to tan the way the full-blooded Dornish do. So before running into the water, Arianne snaps a leaf from one of the aloes framing the Labyrinth, and squeezes the rich cool juice onto Tyene's naked shoulders.
This is something Tyene loves above all else: Arianne's soft small hands running over her skin. Massaging in that wonderful fragrant juice. No one else does it like Arianne, gentle and playful all at once.
When it's done, Arianne swipes Tyene on the arm with the leaf. "You're it," she says, grinning widely, and screams with laughter when Tyene gives chase.
They splash through the Labyrinth, pursuing one another, forward and back, forward and back. This has been their favourite part of the Water Gardens for years – no-one knows its paths as well as Arianne and Tyene. Arianne says no-one ever will.
So Tyene knows she's about to be caught when, with Arianne on her heels, she takes a wrong turn into a dead-end. Quick as one of Princess Mellario's pet monkeys, she pulls herself up and clambers over the waist-high wall and jumps down with a splash onto the path on the other side.
"You broke the rules!" Arianne stamps her foot and splashes herself in the face.
Tyene tosses her wet hair back, laughs. "Rules are for Princesses, not Sand Snakes."
"Oh, is that how it is?" Smiling despite herself, Arianne climbs up and stands on top of the blue-tiled wall. Hands in little fists on her hips, chin up, shoulders back, the way Mellario had taught them a noble woman ought to stand.
This is the point where Tyene should come back with some jape, some quip, so they can duel with wit the way their fathers do. But – all of a sudden she sees Arianne. Really sees her. Standing atop the blue Labyrinth wall, naked save for the gold rings in her ears and nose, the tiger's-eye ankle bracelet. Her hair a mass of jet-black curls all over her shoulders, her deep bronze skin glittering all over where the sunlight catches droplets of water running down her sides, the length of her legs, the nascent buds of her newly growing breasts.
Before they left for Oldtown, Tyene's father had told her that the days when she and Arianne could run naked through the Water Gardens would soon come to an end. She'd dismissed it. That time would pass, that they would metamorphose into women – it all seemed mythical. Irrelevant to the reality of their lives.
But now she looks at Arianne – as perfect as a statue – and feels something stir inside her. All Tyene's life, she's swum naked with her sisters, with Arianne, with their other playmates, and cared not a whit for what she saw.
This – this is different. This feeling of heat that comes from within, burning more brightly than the noonday sun, stealing her words. That makes Arianne, whose face and body she knows as well as her own, someone strange, compelling and frightening in equal measure. She wants to touch her, kiss her, feast her eyes on this strange-familiar girl, and she wants to look away, run and hide.
Tyene knows the history of all the kingdoms of Westeros, can recite the four epic Rhoynish poems of Nymeria's Conquest and the Maiden's Book of the Seven-Pointed Star, has read Qoren's Philosophies, knows how to play the nine-stringed lyre, the beginnings of the art of algebra, knows all the species of Dornish scorpion and the qualities of their poisons. She has the education of a Princess and more, but she has no words for this feeling.
It is as though for twelve years there has been a veil over her eyes, and Arianne has swept it away. She can see for the first time, and all she sees is Arianne.
The way Drey Dalt looks when he sees them both naked makes Arianne laugh out loud.
They're fifteen and – if Drey is man enough – about to lose their virginities. Together.
For weeks, almost months, Arianne's been talking about it. Every evening they retire together to Tyene's solar, every night spent lying side-by-side beneath the silk sheets of Arianne's bed, she talks about it. Whispers, her lips hot and damp beside Tyene's ear, about this boy and that man, how she aches for it, can't stand waiting, wants so badly to know how it feels to be taken, to be filled, to do something with this need that lives beneath her skin like a constant itch she cannot scratch.
Some nights, her breathing grows heavy, and Tyene feels the sheets shifting against her skin and knows that Arianne is touching herself. Lying there, inches away from her cousin as she slides her fingers down to her own sex, listening to the shuddering breaths she takes – it's like a fever dream. Like the delusions that overtook her when she made a mistake and her black-headed rattlesnake bit her, sweet and sickening and overwhelming all at once.
To Tyene's mind, Drey is nothing to exclaim over: his face and form pleasant enough, but unremarkable. But he is safe, and their friend, and he is more than willing, and Arianne wants this, and wants Tyene to be part of this.
Nothing else needs to be said.
Drey is slack-jawed and stuttering, fumbling with his robes, unable to tear his gaze from the two of them, sprawled naked across Arianne's bed. Arianne laughs, a clear rippling sound like water over smooth stones, and Tyene smiles, slow and languid.
"Are you feeling unwell, Andrey?" she asks, keeping her voice breathy and light. Pulls her blonde hair over her shoulder, shifts against Arianne so their breasts brush together. The sensation – Arianne's hard nipples against her skin – makes her belly clench tight, but she keeps her eyes wide, her expression guileless.
"I – I –" The tips of Drey's ears are bright red. Arianne laughs again, turning her face into Tyene's shoulder to muffle the sound. "You're – you look – both of you – I –"
"Enough," Arianne interrupts. She's using her Princess voice, haughty and imperious, not to be disobeyed. With her left hand, she makes a lazy little gesture. "Come here and kiss me."
Drey kicks free of the last of his robes, stumbles in his haste to climb onto the bed. Tyene cannot blame him. He lunges forward, frames Arianne's face with his broad hands, and kisses her, deeply, all hunger and no finesse. She runs her delicate ringed fingers up over his chest, grips his shoulders.
The sight of Arianne's gold-burnished nails on Drey's taut skin stirs something in Tyene. She rises up onto her knees beside the two of them, presses herself against their sides. With one hand she strokes down the curve of Arianne's spine, the way she knows Arianne loves to be massaged, and with the other she reaches up to pinch Drey's nipple.
He moans out loud, breaking the kiss with Arianne, and his hips buck hard. His cock, curving up from the thatch of his wiry hair, twitches. Tyene has to bite her lip to keep from giggling – it seems so ridiculous, the head all angry-red and shiny like that.
Again she pinches him, twists the nub of his nipple, and he thrusts again, and again, buries his head in the curve of Arianne's neck. Arianne gasps, a noise that goes straight to Tyene's sex. She grabs at Tyene's nape, pulls her down to the other side of her neck, and – yes. Gods, yes. Tyene opens her mouth and bites down, savours the taste of Arianne's skin, the clove massage oil she rubbed into it earlier, the beat of her pulse, the way she whimpers when Tyene licks over the bite mark. Arianne's hand flexes in Tyene's hair, holding her tight, and gods, she can barely believe this is real.
"Drey, come on," Arianne says, her voice raw, throaty. She shifts on her knees, and Tyene turns her head to see her cousin is reaching down to grasp at Drey's cock where it juts against her thigh. "Are you going to fuck me, or not?"
Drey moans again, and then, without warning, his hips buck sharply, and his breath catches as a hot flood of seed rushes out, spattering over all of their hips. He gasps again, eyes closed, and then his knees seem to give way and he falls back onto the bed.
Arianne and Tyene look at each other. Arianne's round face is screwed up with frustration, and Tyene can't help but giggle.
"Seven hells, Drey," Arianne exclaims. "Is that it?"
"I'm – sorry, Arianne, I just –"
"Augh!" Arianne lets out a wordless half-scream, and tosses her head. "Gods above!"
Tyene reaches down to the floor to pick up Drey's robes, throws them at his head. "You upset the Princess, Andrey. Time to go."
"But – but I –" He sits up, eyes huge. Tyene's almost sympathetic – he had Arianne served up on a golden platter for him. Losing that must be a bitter cup to drink from.
But it's his own fault, so she just smiles at him, unblinking. He goes vivid red, and starts yanking his clothes back on immediately.
When Drey's fled her chambers, Arianne throws herself down on the bed dramatically. "I can't believe it. I can't believe it! What must I do to get myself deflowered around here?"
Tyene would laugh at Arianne's pique, but her cousin is flush-cheeked, her hair spread like smoke across her pillows, her full breasts heaving as she breathes. As she lies in place, her hips shift restlessly. The sight is entrancing, fascinating. Tyene feels like a desert mouse hypnotised by the dance of a cobra, unable to look away, even if she wanted to.
There are streaks of Drey's seed white against the perfect rich brown of Arianne's belly and thighs. It looks not just obscene, but wrong to Tyene. No silly boy who cannot even satisfy the Princess should be allowed to mark her so.
"I think we are more woman than he can handle," Tyene says, dry. She reaches out, takes a gauze kerchief from one of the bedside tables, and lies down beside Arianne. Propping herself up on her elbows, she starts wiping away the trails of semen.
Arianne makes a little moue with her lips – swollen from kissing. "Mm. Feels good."
"I'm glad." Tyene turns her head, presses a kiss where she's just cleaned, the soft skin at the inside of Arianne's thigh. Here, she can smell her cousin, smell the wetness at the crease of her thighs, caught in the silky black hair on her sex. She's smelt it before, a little, those times when Arianne touches herself at night, but never like this, so strong and raw. There is something delicious about it, heady and intoxicating.
A soft sigh from Arianne. Unconsciously she spreads her legs a little more, and Tyene sees the flash of skin, water-lily pink and glistening. "Tyene," she says, soft, "I'm going to die. This feeling, I can't stand it. I just – I need."
"I know," Tyene tells her, and then she breathes, "I can help you."
"What?" Arianne sits up, shocked. No, not shocked – her voice sounds like she wants to be shocked, but her eyes are hooded and her lips parted and she's staring at Tyene with a gaze so hot it is like standing beneath the sun at its height. And Tyene has always been powerless in the face of the Martells' element.
"Let me help you," she says, and then, because it feels right, because it is what Arianne has always been to her, she adds, "My Princess."
For a moment Arianne stares at her wordlessly, then her lips curve up in a smile. "Yes. Yes, cousin. Yes."
No-one has ever told Tyene how to pleasure a woman. She knows there are volumes of erotic poetry in her father's library at Sunspear, but she has never read them. But this is Arianne, who is closer to her than her jugular vein, who she loves more than any other in the world, and she does not have to be taught what to do. Her body knows.
Gently, reverently, she pushes Arianne's thighs apart. Sighs as the folds of Arianne's sex are opened to her, strange and familiar at once, and she presses her face against her. Breathes deep. Then starts to move, kissing, working at Arianne with lips and tongue, finding that bud of nerves that feels so sweet to the touch, and suckling.
It tastes – like nothing she's ever tasted before. No spice, no fruit, no sugared confection could compare to this, the animal taste of Arianne in her mouth. When she hears Arianne's breathing start to speed, to go high and urgent, the world falls away. She could do this forever, draw these sounds from that sweet mouth over and over again and never stop.
"Inside," Arianne gasps out, "inside."
Tyene understands at once. Perhaps another time she'll tease, draw things out, but right now she doesn't have it in her to deny her princess anything.
When she sheathes two long fingers into her, Arianne screams. Comes arching off the bed, grabbing at Tyene's hair. Tyene begins to suckle on her once again, moving her fingers inside and out, forward and back, finding a rhythm and a place that makes Arianne shake beneath her.
Another finger, and she can feel Arianne clenching down tight around her. Wetness flowing hot and sticky over her hand. Arianne is making noises, long and high and wordless, and Tyene feels as though she is flying. It is her who is drawing these sounds from Arianne, her who is bringing Arianne to this place of wild pleasure, and no matter who Arianne fucks from now on or who she marries, it is Tyene who has taken her maidenhead.
No-one can ever take that away.