The banners of Dorne appeared first, bright against the dusty road winding up from the Boneway, their colors all wrong beneath Blackhaven’s storm-dark walls. Argella stood atop the battlements, fingers tight on the cold stone as the Dornish party rode closer—smiling, unhurried, as if this place had not been built to keep their kind out. She spat over the parapet once, sharp and final, well before they could ever see it, then turned away and smoothed her skirts into something court-acceptable as the horns sounded below.

By the time she reached the courtyard, her father was already there, flanked by knights, the formalities beginning. Argella stepped to his side, chin lifted, eyes cool and openly judging as the Dornishman dismounted.

“I heard they smell weird,” she whispered to her father, only to receive a elbow to her side before the Dornish came up to them and she stopped her hostility for now.