# The Water Gardens, Dorne
The sun bled out over Dorne like a man dying of thirst—slow and red and beautiful in its agony. The Water Gardens caught the last light and threw it back in shades of copper and rose, every pool a mirror, every fountain a hymn to some wet god who had never known winter. The air hung heavy as a whore's perfume, thick with orange blossom and night-blooming jasmine, with the green smell of water on hot stone and beneath it all the salt-sweat musk of flesh in the heat.
Oberyn Martell reclined among silk cushions the color of old blood, one leg drawn up, the other stretched long and lazy. He was shirtless, bronze skin gleaming in the dusk, and the muscles of his chest and stomach were carved clean as a statue's—the body of a man who had killed more men than he had fucked women, and he had fucked a great many women indeed. And men besides, when the mood took him. Dark hair fell to his shoulders, shot through with silver at the temples. His beard was neat, pointed, wicked. He looked like something dreamed up by a Lysene pillow-house: beautiful, dangerous, and absolutely certain of his own appeal.
In one hand he held a cup of Dornish strongwine, in the other a piece of blood orange that he was eating with the sort of attention most men reserved for their lovers' bodies—sucking the juice from each segment, tongue working the flesh, eyes half-closed in pleasure.
"You know," he observed to no one in particular, "there are men who claim the oranges of the Reach taste sweeter. These men are fools and liars. Or they are still virgins and know nothing of sweetness." He bit down, juice running over his lip. "The best things are always hot, wet, and a little bit bitter. Fruit. Wine. Women. Truth."
Arianne Martell—or rather, the woman wearing Arianne's face like an actress still uncertain of her costume—paced the terrace with the kind of nervous energy that had nothing to do with Dorne and everything to do with cold northern places where people bottled their passions like preserves and pretended desire was something shameful. She was beautiful, gods yes—tits like ripe fruit straining against amber silk, hips swaying with each agitated stride, dark hair spilling down her back in waves that would have made a septa weep with envy. But she moved wrong. Too stiff, too controlled, as though she was constantly aware of her own flesh and trying not to be.
Oberyn watched her pace with the lazy interest of a cat watching a bird flutter against a window. Interesting. Entertaining. Not yet worth the effort of pouncing.
"I cannot fathom," she began, her voice carrying that northern edge, that hint of propriety that made Dornishmen want to corrupt it, "how a man who has fathered eight bastard daughters could possibly remain so monumentally unconcerned about the absolute chaos he has inflicted upon the world."
"Nine," Oberyn corrected, still eating his orange. "Elia counts. Wherever she may be. Fucking her way across the Free Cities, most like. Or learning to forge Valyrian steel. Or training with the Second Sons. She writes infrequently and her letters contain more questions than answers, which suggests she is enjoying herself." He smiled. "And I object to your terminology. I have not inflicted chaos. I have gifted the world with nine extraordinary women, each beautiful, each deadly, each utterly devoted to wringing every drop of pleasure from this short and brutal life. If that is chaos, then the gods are fools for preferring order."
"Your second daughter," Padma said, her voice climbing half an octave, "cornered me in the bathhouse this morning. While I was naked. Wet. Vulnerable."
"Nymeria does enjoy a tactical advantage," Oberyn agreed. "She learned that from her mother. Lovely woman, her mother. Volantene. Tits like ripe melons and a tongue that could—"
"I do not need to hear about her mother's tongue!" Padma snapped.
"Pity. It is an excellent story. There is a part involving a trapeze artist and a bowl of olive oil that would make you reconsider your position on public bathhouses." He finished the orange and licked his fingers clean, one by one, with evident satisfaction. "But please. Continue. You were saying my daughter cornered you while you were naked. I assume she paid you a compliment?"
"She said—" Padma stopped, visibly collecting herself. "She looked at me the way a woman looks at a horse she is considering purchasing. Evaluated me. Every inch. From tits to cunt to the curve of my arse. And then she smiled, gods help me, she smiled, and said: 'You carry tension like a drawn bowstring, cousin. Tight enough to sing. Let me loose the string with my tongue before it snaps and takes out an eye.'"
Oberyn's laugh rolled across the garden like thunder before rain—low, rich, filthy with amusement. "Did she specify which eye?"
"This is not funny!"
"It is objectively hilarious," Oberyn corrected. He poured more wine, the liquid catching the last light like liquid garnets. "My daughter paid you the highest compliment a woman of her talents can offer. She looked at you—truly looked—and saw something worth wanting. Worth pursuing. Worth the effort of a campaign." He raised his cup in mock salute. "You should be flattered. Nymeria is exquisitely particular about where she puts her tongue."
"Flattered." Padma's hands clenched at her sides. "I told her no. Very clearly. I said I was not interested."
"And what did she say?"
"She said: 'Every woman says no the first time. It is a courtesy. A ritual. The dance before the bedding. But you will say yes eventually. They always do. And when you do, cousin, I promise you will forget every other mouth that has ever touched you.'"
Oberyn grinned into his wine cup. "That is my girl. Confidence like that cannot be taught. It must be earned through long practice and many satisfied partners."
"Are you not even slightly concerned," Padma demanded, "that your daughters treat every conversation like an elaborate prelude to fucking?"
"Why would I be concerned?" Oberyn spread his hands, genuinely puzzled. "They are healthy. Lusty. They know what they want and they pursue it with vigor and creativity. These are virtues, not sins." He leaned forward slightly, his dark eyes gleaming in the torchlight. "Would you prefer they sit in some tower like good little maids, embroidering pillow-cases and waiting for husbands their father chooses? Spreading their legs dutifully on their wedding night and pretending not to enjoy it? Bearing heirs like brood mares and never once knowing the sharp bright joy of choosing their own pleasures?"
"I would prefer they respect the word no," Padma said tightly.
"Have they touched you without permission?"
"No, but—"
"Have they forced themselves upon you?"
"Not exactly, but—"
"Then they have flirted," Oberyn said simply. "With style, yes. With persistence, certainly. But flirtation is not force. Desire expressed is not assault. And if you cannot tell the difference, then perhaps you have been living among northerners too long."
Padma crossed her arms beneath her breasts—a gesture that only served to lift and display them more prominently. She caught herself after a moment, adjusted, scowled. Oberyn noted the flush creeping up her neck, the way her pupils had dilated slightly. Interesting.
"Besides," he continued, settling back among his cushions, "you have not even mentioned Tyene yet. And if Nymeria has been plying you with words, I can only imagine what gifts my youngest has been leaving in your chambers."
Padma's flush deepened. "How did you—"
"Because I know my daughters," Oberyn said. "Nymeria hunts with words and looks and the promise of her tongue. Tyene hunts with gifts and knowledge and the slow seduction of curiosity. She prefers to make her prey come to her, begging for what they claimed they did not want."
"She left oils," Padma said, her voice tight. "Lotions. Unguents. Little pots and bottles wrapped in silk, each one smelling of spices and honey and things I dare not contemplate."
"Thoughtful," Oberyn observed.
"The last one came with instructions," Padma continued, her voice rising. "Written instructions. In two languages. Describing precisely which parts of my anatomy would benefit most from application, and in what order, and with what degree of pressure." She paused. "She included anatomical diagrams. Labeled in High Valyrian."
Oberyn's grin could have lit a room. "Education is important."
"She told me the oil would make my skin more sensitive to touch. That it would heighten sensation in the—" Padma stopped, seeming to choke on the words. "In the tender places."
"And did she offer to demonstrate?" Oberyn asked, already knowing the answer.
"She said she would consider it a privilege and an honor to apply the oil herself. That she had studied extensively—and I quote—'the art of touch in all its forms, from the whisper-soft caress that raises gooseflesh to the firm pressure that releases tension from muscle and soul alike.' She said I looked like a woman who had been touched by duty but never by devotion. That she could teach me the difference."
"Poetry," Oberyn murmured appreciatively. "Tyene always did have a gift for language."
"I warded my door!" Padma's voice cracked slightly. "I cast locking charms and detection spells and a bloody alarm that will wake half the palace if anyone tries to enter my chambers uninvited. Do you have any idea how that looks? The servants already think I am bedding both your daughters. The maids whisper when I pass. Yesterday I overheard two of them taking bets on how long before I surrender to both of them at once!"
"Well," Oberyn said reasonably, "it would be efficient."
Padma stared at him. Just stared, her mouth working soundlessly.
"They are both extremely skilled," Oberyn continued, as though this were a perfectly normal conversation. "And they work well together. Complementary techniques. Nymeria is all passion and aggression—she likes to devour, to consume, to leave her lovers wrung out and trembling. Tyene is more patient, more precise. She takes her time. Learns every response, every hidden place of pleasure. Together—" He made an appreciative gesture. "Together they are rather devastating. I have heard reports."
"Reports," Padma repeated faintly.
"Well, one hears things," Oberyn said. "Dorne is not so large that rumors go unnoticed. Especially when both parties involved feel compelled to share explicit details over breakfast." He paused thoughtfully. "There was a merchant's daughter from Tyrosh. Lovely girl. Red hair, freckles across her tits like stars. She stayed in Sunspear for three weeks and emerged looking like she had survived a war. A very pleasurable war. She sent my daughters a gift basket."
"A gift basket."
"Exotic fruits. Very exotic. And a thank-you note that would have made a septa spontaneously combust." Oberyn's eyes gleamed with unholy amusement. "I may have kept it. For posterity."
Padma pinched the bridge of her nose, a gesture of pure exasperation. "You are not helping."
"I am not trying to help," Oberyn said honestly. "I am trying to make you understand that what you perceive as assault is, in Dorne, simply how people express interest. My daughters see something in you—beauty, intelligence, fire buried beneath ice. They want to draw that fire out. To make you burn." He leaned forward again, his voice dropping to something more serious. "And I suspect some part of you wants to burn. The part you are trying very hard to deny."
"I have told them about Hadrian," Padma said, her voice going quiet. "I have explained, clearly and repeatedly, that my heart belongs to another. That I love him. That I have crossed worlds to find him and I will not—cannot—betray that love for the sake of your daughters' amusement."
"And what did they say?"
Padma's jaw tightened. "Nymeria said: 'Love is beautiful. I celebrate it. But your lover is not here, and you are. One does not negate the other. I can warm you while you wait for him. Keep you company. Make the waiting less lonely.' And then she had the audacity to wink."
Oberyn chuckled. "And Tyene?"
"Tyene smiled—that dangerous smile of hers—and said: 'Loyalty is admirable. But loyalty to memory is cold comfort on a hot night. You need not love us to let us pleasure you. Think of it as... maintaining the instrument until the true musician returns to play.'" Padma's voice had gone tight with frustration. "She compared my body to a musical instrument, Oberyn. And herself to someone who would keep it tuned."
"That does sound like Tyene," Oberyn agreed. "Always with the metaphors." He studied Padma more carefully now, noting the tension in her shoulders, the way she held herself as though braced against assault. "But tell me true, Padma Patil. Is their attention what truly troubles you? Or is it something else?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean," Oberyn said carefully, "that you wear Arianne's body. My niece is many things—beautiful, sensual, keenly aware of her own desires. That awareness does not simply vanish because a different mind inhabits the flesh. The body remembers. It wants. And sometimes what it wants conflicts with what the mind claims to want."
Padma's hands clenched into fists. "That is not fair."
"Fair?" Oberyn laughed, bitter and sharp. "What in any of our lives has been fair? You wake up in a different body in a different world wearing a different face. I wake up as a prince of Dorne with a dead sister and eight—nine—daughters who fuck and fight their way through life with equal enthusiasm. Hadrian gets torn from one reality and hurled into another, naked as the day he was born. Fair has nothing to do with any of this."
He rose from the cushions in one fluid motion, all coiled grace and dangerous intent. He crossed to her slowly, and she stood her ground even as her breath quickened. When he stopped, he was close enough that she could smell the wine on his breath, the faint spice of his skin.
"But I will tell you something true," he said quietly. "The body and the mind are not always allies. Sometimes they are enemies. Your mind says you belong to Hadrian, and that is well and good—I believe you, and more than that, I respect it. But this body?" He gestured at her, at the curves barely contained by amber silk. "This body has known pleasure in all its forms. It has been touched and kissed and fucked by skilled lovers. It remembers that pleasure. Craves it. And when my daughters speak to you of desire, when they promise you pleasures you have never known, some part of this flesh responds whether you will it or not."
"Stop," Padma whispered.
"Why?" Oberyn asked. "Because the truth makes you uncomfortable? Because you want to pretend you are purely mind and spirit, untouched by base animal wants?" He shook his head. "You are not betraying Hadrian by feeling desire, Padma. You are only human. Flesh and blood and hunger like everyone else."
"I don't want to want them," she said, and there was raw anguish in her voice now. "I don't want to feel this—this heat when Nymeria looks at me. I don't want to wonder what Tyene's oils would feel like, what her hands would do. I want to be loyal. I want my body to obey my heart. And it won't, and I feel like I'm going mad."
Oberyn's expression softened. "Ah," he said. "There it is. The real confession."
Padma turned away, wrapping her arms around herself. "I loved someone once," she said quietly. "Before Hadrian. A boy at Hogwarts. Ron Weasley. Red hair, terrible at spellwork, made me laugh until I couldn't breathe. I loved him the way you love at sixteen—completely, desperately, with every piece of your heart." She paused. "He died in the war. Died badly. And I thought I would never feel anything for anyone ever again."
"But you did," Oberyn said.
"But I did. Hadrian found me in the wreckage. Put me back together piece by piece. Made me believe I could love again. That I was allowed to love again. And I do—I love him more than I thought I could love anything in this world or any other." Her voice cracked. "And now I'm here, in this body that wants things I don't want, feeling things I don't want to feel, and I'm terrified that if I give in—even once, even for a moment—I'll lose him. That I'll prove I'm not worthy of the second chance he gave me."
Silence fell between them, broken only by the whisper of water over stone.
"Come here," Oberyn said finally.
She hesitated, then turned back to him. He reached out and pulled her into an embrace—nothing sexual, nothing demanding, just the warm solid comfort of flesh against flesh. She stiffened for a moment, then collapsed against him, her face pressed to his bare chest. He smelled of wine and spice and clean male sweat, familiar somehow despite the foreignness of everything else.
"Listen to me," he murmured into her hair. "The body is not the soul. Desire is not betrayal. You can feel a hundred things and still love only one man. I know this because I have lived it. I have bedded men and women across two continents, have taken pleasure in every form the gods permit and several they probably don't, and yet there is one woman I loved above all others. Elia. My sister. Not in that way," he added quickly, feeling her tense. "But I loved her more than I have loved anyone before or since. And no amount of fucking has ever changed that."
"It's not the same," Padma said against his chest.
"It is exactly the same," Oberyn countered. "Love is the constant. Pleasure is the variable. You can take your pleasure where you find it and still return home to love. The two need not be in conflict."
"I can't," she whispered. "I can't do that. I'm not built that way."
"Then don't," Oberyn said simply. He pulled back, holding her at arm's length so he could meet her eyes. "If it is not in you to separate pleasure from love, then hold to your loyalty. Tell my daughters no, and mean it so completely—body and soul—that they finally hear you and cease their pursuit. They are persistent, but they are not cruel. If they understand you will never yield, they will turn their attentions elsewhere."
"And if I can't make them understand?"
Oberyn's smile was sharp as broken glass. "Then hex them. Turn Nymeria's cunt to sand for a week. Make Tyene so sensitive she cannot bear the touch of her own clothes. They will respect you for it. My daughters admire strength above all things. Show them you have teeth."
Despite herself, Padma laughed—a wet, shaky sound. "You truly are a terrible father."
"The worst in seven kingdoms," Oberyn agreed cheerfully. "But my daughters are extraordinary, so I must have done something right." He released her, stepping back to give her space. "Now. Are we finished discussing my parenting failures and my daughters' determined efforts to seduce you? Or would you like to continue cataloging every time one of them has made you feel things you wish you didn't feel?"
Padma wiped at her eyes, visibly gathering her composure. "We're finished."
"Good. Because we have more important matters to discuss." His expression shifted, all traces of amusement bleeding away. "Fawkes arrived an hour ago."
The name hung between them like a blade.
Padma went very still. "Hadrian."
"Yes." Oberyn moved to the far side of the terrace, gesturing toward the reflecting pool. "Look."
She turned, and her breath caught in her throat.
The phoenix sat upon the pool's edge like something out of legend—feathers of crimson and gold, eyes like molten amber, presence so vast it seemed to pull at the air itself. Steam rose where his talons touched water. The fountains had gone silent, as though in reverence or fear.
"Gods," Padma breathed. She moved toward him like a woman in a dream, and Fawkes watched her approach with those ancient, knowing eyes. In his beak he carried a small leather case, bound with cord and sealed with wax that shimmered faintly even in the dying light.
"From Hadrian," Oberyn said unnecessarily. His voice had gone rough, stripped of all artifice. "I sent for you the moment he arrived."
Padma reached out with trembling hands. Fawkes stepped onto her forearm, and the weight of him was surprising—solid, real, warm as a hearthfire in winter. His heat seeped through her skin, into blood and bone, a warmth that had nothing to do with fire and everything to do with life itself.
"Hello, beautiful," she murmured, and Fawkes trilled softly—bells underwater, music in a forgotten tongue.
She took the case with careful fingers, broke the seal, and drew out parchment covered in bold, slanted handwriting. Her eyes moved across the words once, twice. Her expression shifted—surprise giving way to recognition, recognition to something like grief, and finally settling into grim understanding.
"Read it aloud," Oberyn said. His voice was barely a whisper. "Please."
Padma swallowed hard. Then she began:
*To the Red Viper of Dorne,*
*I write seeking counsel on matters that defy conventional explanation and challenge assumptions I'd made about the fundamental nature of identity, memory, and the persistence of bonds that some forces consider unbreakable.*
"I've recently learned that my own origins may be considerably more complex than I'd believed—that the boy who arrived in this world might actually be someone else entirely, someone whose disappearance sparked grief that has shaped kingdoms. That I might be the son of Robert Baratheon and Cersei Lannister.*
*If you remember autumn afternoons spent teaching a stubborn child the proper way to ride a broom, or winter evenings filled with stories about marauding through corridors that should have been forbidden, or a specific night when you fell through an archway while fighting someone whose name still carries weight despite her death—then I need your counsel with desperate urgency.*
*If these references mean nothing, then please accept my apology for cryptic correspondence and dismiss this as the ramblings of someone whose recent experiences have exceeded his capacity for rational processing.*
*But if they do mean something—if you remember what I think you remember—then Fawkes will wait for your reply with the patience of something that's survived more impossible situations than either of us care to enumerate.*
*Yours in hope and growing confusion,*
*H.P.*
The words hung in the thick Dornish air like smoke after a fire. Padma lowered the parchment slowly, her hands trembling. When she looked at Oberyn, she found him sitting with his face in his hands, shoulders rigid with tension.
For a long moment there was only the sound of water on stone and the distant chirp of crickets waking for the night.
Then Oberyn spoke, and his voice was raw as an open wound. "Seven fucking hells."
"You knew," Padma said. Not a question. A statement of fact.
"I suspected." Oberyn dragged his hands down his face, leaving his expression stripped bare—all the masks and wit and easy charm burned away to reveal something desperate beneath. "Gods, I have suspected for years. Since the moment I woke in this body and remembered who I had been, what I had lost. But suspicion is not certainty. And to speak it without proof..." He shook his head. "I thought perhaps I was mad. That death and rebirth had corrupted my memories. That I was seeing patterns in chaos because I needed there to be meaning."
"Tell me," Padma said softly. "All of it."
Oberyn was silent for a long moment, staring at nothing. Then he rose and moved to the wine, pouring with hands that were not quite steady. He drank deep before he spoke.
"Lily Potter could bear no children," he said, and the words came slow, reluctant, heavy as stones. "A curse. Cast by Bellatrix Lestrange—my own cousin, in that life—during a raid on a safehouse. Dark magic, precise and vicious, designed not to kill but to maim in ways that could never be healed. The best healers at St. Mungo's tried everything. Potions, spells, blood magic, rituals older than Merlin's balls. Nothing worked."
He paused, drinking again. The wine left red on his lips like blood.
"She wept," he continued quietly. "For weeks. And James—brave, stupid, loyal James—tried to tell her it didn't matter. That they had each other and that was enough. That they would fill their lives with other things. But you could see it eating her from the inside. The hunger for a child. The emptiness. Women are not meant to be empty, or so the gods keep telling us."
Padma said nothing, only listened.
"And then one night—October, dark as a grave, cold as the North—there was light." Oberyn's voice went distant now, seeing something seventeen years and two lives away. "Brilliant. Blinding. It filled their sitting room like the sun had fallen through the roof. We thought it was Voldemort. Finally. The moment we'd been dreading. James and I had wands drawn, Lily was casting wards that could have leveled half of London. We prepared to die defending each other, the way brothers-in-arms do."
"But it wasn't Voldemort," Padma said softly.
"No." Oberyn set down his cup, his hands clenching. "It was a child. A babe, perhaps hours old, still red and wrinkled and crying with the outrage of new life. He was wrapped in blankets—fine blankets, rich—embroidered with a golden stag. Thread-of-gold, the kind only highborn cunts can afford. And there was no explanation. No spell, no ritual, no magic we could identify. No signature, no residue, no trace of anything. He was simply there, as though reality itself had opened like a woman's legs and birthed him into our world."
He turned to face Padma fully, and she saw the anguish naked on his face.
"James saw the stag and claimed it as a sign. His Patronus. His symbol. He said the gods had heard Lily's grief and answered. That magic itself had given them the son they could not have." Oberyn's voice cracked slightly. "And Lily—Lily took that babe in her arms, and the way she looked at him, Padma. The way she held him. It was over. He was hers. Nothing short of death itself could have pried him from her arms."
"So they performed the ritual," Padma said.
"Sanguis Fidelis," Oberyn confirmed. "Blood of faith. Old magic. Older than Hogwarts, older than Rome, older than anything except perhaps the first mother who looked at another woman's child and claimed it as her own. The ritual rewrites bloodlines at the deepest level—not just name and inheritance, but the magic itself. It binds a child to new parents as thoroughly as if they had been born of their flesh, grown in their womb, fed on their blood."
He moved closer to her, his dark eyes intense.
"After the ritual, any test would show Hadrian as a Potter. Any spell, any charm, any blood magic in the world. The wards at Hogwarts would recognize him as James's son. The family vault at Gringotts would open to his blood. Even a Horcrux—" He stopped, pain flickering across his face. "Even Voldemort's Horcrux saw him as Potter blood, or it would never have attached to him the way it did."
"And you never told him," Padma said quietly.
Oberyn's laugh was bitter as ashes. "What would I have said? 'Oh, by the way, Hadrian, you were found like Moses in the bulrushes. We have no idea where you came from, who your real parents were, or why magic decided to drop you in our laps like a gift from the gods. But don't worry, you're a Potter now, so it's all fine!' " He shook his head. "He was happy. Loved. Safe. He had parents who would have died for him—and did die for him. Why burden him with questions that had no answers? Why make him feel less than what he was?"
"And now the questions have answers," Padma said.
"Yes." The word came out flat, dead. "Robert's lost son. The child who vanished from the Red Keep seventeen years ago, spirited away by magic no one understood then and no one understands now. It fits, Padma. The timing, the age, the embroidered stag on blankets fine enough for a prince. It all fits like pieces of a puzzle I never wanted to solve."
He turned away, moving toward the window where the night wind carried the scent of the sea. When he spoke again, his voice was barely audible.
"And his mother is Cersei Lannister."
The name fell into the silence like poison into wine.
Padma watched as Oberyn's shoulders tightened, as his hands curled into fists against the stone windowsill. She could see the rage coiling in him like a snake preparing to strike—old rage, carried across lives and bodies, nursed through years of helplessness.
"You hate her," she said softly.
"Hate?" Oberyn turned back to her, and his eyes were black pits in the torchlight. "Hate is too small a word for what I feel. Hate is what you feel toward a rival, an enemy, someone who has merely wronged you. What I feel for Cersei Lannister is older and deeper and so vast it could drown the world."
He began to pace, restless as a caged wolf.
"In this life, as Oberyn, she is the woman who smiled when my sister was murdered. Who called it justice. Who stood by while Gregor Clegane—the Mountain That Rides—raped Elia with our nephew's blood still wet on his hands and then crushed her skull like an overripe fruit. Cersei celebrated that. Called it the price of treason. As though my sister, the gentlest woman who ever drew breath, had committed some crime worthy of being raped to death in front of her children."
His voice rose, fury bleeding through every word.
"And in my first life—in my true life—the name Lannister meant something else but equally foul. Bellatrix Lestrange was born a Black. My cousin. My blood. She tortured Frank and Alice Longbottom into madness for sport, because she enjoyed their screams, because it pleased her master. She destroyed two good people so thoroughly that their son grew up with parents who couldn't remember his name. The same cruelty. The same pleasure in causing pain. The same certainty that power grants the right to destroy anyone weaker."
He stopped pacing, standing very still in the center of the terrace. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet, controlled, and somehow more terrible for it.
"And now I learn that Hadrian—my godson, the child I would have died for in two lives, the last piece of James and Lily that survived—shares blood with her. That he grew in her womb. That he is made of her flesh and Robert's seed and gods know what other sins."
"Oberyn—"
"How am I meant to look at him?" The question came out raw, desperate. "How do I separate the boy I love from the blood of the woman I have sworn to kill? How do I not see her face in his? Her cruelty in every choice he makes? Her poison in every word he speaks?"
"Because you know him," Padma said firmly. She moved to stand in front of him, forcing him to meet her eyes. "You know who he is, Oberyn. You taught him to fly. You watched him grow. You saw him choose mercy over vengeance again and again, even when cruelty would have been easier. You know he is not her."
"Blood will tell," Oberyn said bitterly. "That's what they say, isn't it? Blood will tell."
"Then let it tell," Padma shot back. "Let his blood speak of who he chose to be, not who he was born as. He carries Lannister blood, yes. And Baratheon blood besides. But he also carries the love James and Lily poured into him. The lessons you taught him. The courage he learned from watching good people die for what they believed in. That's what defines him, not some accident of birth."
Oberyn stared at her for a long moment. Then, slowly, something in his expression shifted. Softened.
"You truly believe that," he said.
"I know it," Padma corrected. "I've known him since we were children. I've seen him make impossible choices and always—always—choose to be better than what the world expected. He's not Cersei's son, Oberyn. He's James and Lily's son. And he's your godson. That's what matters."
Silence stretched between them, filled only by the whisper of water and wind.
---
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