CHAPTER THREE.
━━━━━━━━━
Who in his mind has not probed
the dark water?

JOHN STEINBECK, EAST OF EDEN
━━━━━━━━━

THERE ARE TIMES WHEN MARIAH MARTELL dreams in red.

     When she is ten-and-three, she dreams of her mother, Princess Loreza, dancing in the hall of Sunspear in a fine red gown. Mariah has always loved to watch her parents dance together at feasts, the perfect Prince and Princess presiding over their Dornish court, but in her dream, her mother dances alone. Mother's gown swirls about her ankles, and the hem dribbles over her feet like liquid. She is beautiful but oblivious to her daughter's presence, and there is a certainty in Mariah's stomach that she shall never reach her mother, even if she were to open her mouth and shout for her.

     When Mariah wakes, the sheets are tangled all about her legs, and her belly cramps so that she cries out from the pain of it. She vaguely becomes aware of a dampness beneath her, and she dips her shaking fingers between her legs to find them dark with blood. Surprised, she cries out until a maid comes running to see what would cause her to make such an uncharacteristic fuss. After she lights a candle, the girl gives her a knowing smile and tells her that it is nothing to fear, that she has merely flowered, that now she is a woman grown. And finally, finally, the servants whisper, for most girl's moonblood come sooner.

     "I had a dream," She tells the maid, but she pays Mariah no mind—she is too busy changing the bedding, pulling her soiled shift from her clammy body and helping her change into a clean, dry nightgown.

     She repeats herself after the maid has made her drink tea with a drop of milk of the poppy, even as she drowsily puts her head down upon her pillow. "I had a dream."

     This time, the girl listens, but she dismisses her worries, smoothing Mariah's hair off her face. "Many girls do when they first bleed. It is no matter." There is a touch of pride in her voice, as though this were another accomplishment due to her tutelage, like Mariah's tiny embroidery stitches. "Your mother will start looking for a fine match for you now."

     The idea of a match is enough to distract Mariah, and she pushes the residual dread in her gut aside. It is only pain from my moonblood, she tells herself.

     They bury her mother on that day exactly one year later. Mariah will never forget the way the maids had rushed from her mother's bedchamber, the blood-soaked linens dragging from their arms to brush the floor, leaving a sickly trail of red in their wake.

     At four-and-ten, a young lady just on the cusp of womanhood, with marriage offers quickly rushing toward her. Summer turns the leaves to a rich green, and Doran likes to hold them to her eyes and compare the shades until she laughs and bats both his hand and the foliage away.

     She dreams of those same trees and its ripe, red apples falling from it, rendering them barren and foreboding as they stretch towards the winter sky with thin, long fingers. The apples tumble through the air, catch on the breeze, and land in the dry desert. When they touch the sand, the colour runs from them as though it were paint, winding along the currents until the entire dunes turn a sickly shade of red. Mariah stands and watches as it laps at the pools of the Water Gardens, like a hungry predator come to swallow the palace, and it stains the hem of her gown even as she tries to draw it away.

     This dream she does not mention to her maid; she mentions it instead to Elia, as they sit in the gardens working on their embroidery.

     "Don't fret," Elia tells her, with all the matter-of-factness of a woman of eight-and-ten, so certain that she knows the way of the world. "The water is always blue, even for the Martells." She frowns down at her work, eyeing Mariah's own stitches with envy.

     "I know," Mariah answers distractedly, turning the last red dream over in her head. She does not tell Elia about the first one, the one with their mother, for it would do no good to dredge up old heartaches. Besides, Mariah has always been the one prone to strange fancies, to daydreams and fantastical imagining. Elia is far more practical, and if her sister brushes these strange images aside, Mariah should do so as well. Yet somehow, the memory of the first dream makes her feel strangely culpable, though she knows very well the true reason for their mother's death had been the peril of a sickness. The odd guilt that plagues her is all the more reason to keep her troubles to herself.

     Instead of arguing further, she bends her head over her work, snapping the thread at the end of the orange flower she has embroidered on the edge of her red handkerchief. Red is a Martell color, Mariah reminds herself, and she runs her finger over the emblem, pleased with the fine work.

     It is the kerchief she gives to Elia as her gift when she is married to the dragon prince.

      Mariah does not have a red dream for so many moons that she nearly forgets of them all together, nearly convinces herself that they had not been different from normal dreams at all. Certainly, she decides, they were mere coincidences that she, with a child's rashness, had attributed more to than was warranted.

     The next one does not come until she is ten-and-seven. War is ravaging the Seven Kingdoms and Mariah's sleep is often disturbed with half-formed images and quickly forgotten nightmares. But it is not until Prince Rhaegar dies on the Trident that the red dreams come, leaving her breathless and full of dread night after night.

     She dreams of King's Landing aflames, fires licking at the stone walls, igniting the towers, reducing what has stood for centuries to nothing more than ash and rubble. Her ears fill with the chilling melody of mortar and stone hissing and cracking. Beneath that, she can hear the long, mournful screaming of voices. The sound seems to come from everywhere, as she spins in a dizzy circle to find the source, while the flames encase her in a halo of yellow and red. She opens her mouth to cry back in response to the howls, but as she does so, smoke and soot fills her lungs, leaving her coughing and gasping for air, utterly alone.

     Mariah always awakens then with a startled cry, sitting up in bed. Each night that the dream comes, she pulls herself from the warmth and comfort of her feather mattress, hurrying down the long halls of the palace to her brother's chambers.

     "Mariah?" Doran murmurs the first time it happens, voice thick with sleep, rolling to his side to face her. "Are you well?"

     "I had a dream," She whispers, and shivers at the memory of the other times she has said those words, at how often her premonitions have gone unheeded. "I had a dream that the capitol burned to the ground."

     He tugs her close with a murmured chuckle from deep in his chest, nuzzling his face against her hair with sleepy affection. "It is naught more than a bad dream," He replies, his voice already fading as sleep begins to claim him once more. His attempts at soothing her only agitate her further. It is real, she thinks fiercely, with hot tears burning beneath her closed eyelids. But Doran is a man of practicality, and he would never believe in the danger that she is so certain lurks ahead.

     As always, the knowledge that she is utterly alone in her conviction is nearly as heavy of a burden to bear as the dreams themselves.

     She does not tell anyone about the last red dream, the one of Elia and the faceless man. In Mariah's dream, she carries a cloak made out of blood, and screams.

     I had a dream, she thinks wearily, but she bites the words back. There is little use in sharing them—they have never done her any good, and have never spared her from heartbreak.

     There is little use in warning when those she tells never listen.

     And when Doran informs her of the sack of King's Landing, of Elia's murder, of her children's butchering, she cannot help but wonder—in a haze of unspeakable grief and fury at the gods who would leave her alive to bear this pain alone—whether they too saw red in the scant few moments before their deaths.

     Lannister red. Targaryen red.

In the end Elia was Bowed, she was Broken, she was Bent, Mariah knows.