Chapter Text
After the Great Council, or whatever that had been, Yara was more than ready to leave the smouldering hellhole they called King's Landing and everything that had transpired in it. All Hail Bran the Broken. The words had tasted like bile in her mouth.
She was the first to leave the Dragonpit, taking long strides towards the harbour, her uncle Rodrick in tow. Neither of them spoke; there were no words for what had just happened. In her head, however, Yara was already formulating the speech she'd give when they got back to the Iron Islands. Bran the Broken. The ironborn would never accept this.
She heard steps behind her, and not just Rodrick's, but she didn't bother to check who was following them. If they wanted to talk to her, they would have to speak up.
“Your Grace.” There. She slowed her steps before finally coming to a halt, turning around. She was facing Anders Yronwood, Prince of Dorne.
“I'm not a queen.”
He shrugged. “You could be. Should be. Was that not the agreement you had come to with Queen Daenerys?”
Rodrick shot her a nervous glance, probably expecting that this was some kind of trap; a test of loyalty from the new king. Yara didn't want to discount the possibility, but she didn't think it likely. “Queen Daenerys is dead”, she said, “and now there is a wholly new Crown. Why are you so concerned with the Iron Islands' independence?”
Not that she really needed to ask. Their interests were aligned, and she wasn't surprised that he had approached her, nor was she as he now asked if she would join him for a walk. Yara dismissed Rodrick, who did not seem happy with the situation, then followed the prince along the harbour.
“There's nothing in the world more powerful than a good story”, he mused, sounding vaguely disdainful. “Such pretty words.”
“Perhaps Tyrion should try telling a story to my axe”, she said. Yronwood nodded.
“So I was right in assuming that you are as unhappy with this farce as I am?”
Yara snorted. “Unhappy doesn't cover it. I can't say I understand why that traitor got to decide the future of the Seven Kingdoms. Or six, rather.”
The prince halted and looked straight at her. “And I do not understand why the Starks had three votes in this Council. Nor why the North should be independent, but not Dorne and the Iron Islands.”
As she'd thought: aligned interests. Yara arched a brow. “And yet you didn't say anything.”
“Neither did you.” They both knew where this was going. “It seemed more prudent to keep quiet for now and take the necessary steps later”, he said. “If the Iron Islands would like to join Dorne in taking these steps, we would welcome your support.”
Yara had decided that the Iron Islands wouldn't stand for this as soon as it had become clear that Jon Snow was not going to die. She'd been confident enough that this strange new system would tear itself apart sooner rather than later, and that she would be queen again before long.
Dorne was the only Kingdom left that remained untouched by war. The Dornish had no interest in her islands; they were too far away, and even the ironborn raiders had rarely made it all the way down there. Dorne was one of the few parts of Westeros the Iron Islands had barely any links to – which, in their case, meant that the Dornish did not hate them quite as much as the rest. “So what do you want, then?”, she asked the prince. “Independence? Just that?”
His dark eyes looked over the harbour. “Independence, yes”, he said. “But not just that. We had sworn ourselves to the queen, as had you. As we had sworn ourselves to every other Targaryen since Maron Martell wed another Daenerys.” He met her eyes. Even though she knew they weren't related, he reminded her quite a bit of Ellaria Sand in this moment. “We want vengeance. It is as you said – Daenerys freed us from a tyrant. This was yet another treason. It cannot go unpunished.”
Yara could get behind that. She stretched out her arm and he took it, shaking hands like she had once had with Daenerys, a lifetime ago in Meereen. “Then we have an agreement”, she said. With Dorne by her side, this would be easier than she had anticipated.