Chapter One
Geneva’s eyes blurred with tears as she watched Oberyn Martell drive his thin blade through the neck of the last Synthian. His strike was quick, merciless, and almost beautiful — an end that came too late for so many.
For years, her people had bent beneath the Synthians’ yoke. They gave up their choicest harvests, their finest livestock, even their women.
It was never enough.
The Synthians bled them dry until nothing was left to surrender. Then they took more. They descended on the outer villages like carrion, burning and slaughtering. One boy had escaped, stumbling into her father’s hall with sand in his hair and terror in his eyes. He had gasped out the tale of massacre before collapsing at Geneva’s feet.
Her father, chief of their people, had wasted no time. With trembling hands he scrawled desperate pleas onto scraps of parchment and tied them to the legs of hawks. One by one, the birds vanished into the burning horizon.
“He won’t come,” Geneva had said bitterly, her spear clenched at her side. “Dorne does not care about us. They care about their wine and about fucking anything with a hole.”
Her father’s hand stilled on the final bird. When he looked up, his eyes were bloodshot with exhaustion, but burning with the last ember of faith. “He will come.”
Geneva had gathered the boy into her lap, stroking his sweat-damp hair until he slept. Then she had risen, taken up her spear and shield, and followed her father into the blood-soaked fields.
The soil was already darkening with corpses when the Synthians came upon her. She fought until her arms ached, until her knees buckled. A brute had her pinned, grinding her face into the sand. His blade pressed to her throat.
Then she heard it—shouts of alarm, screams swallowed by dust, the thunder of hooves.
Geneva turned her head and saw the storm rolling toward them: a wall of sand churned up by dromedary cavalry. At its center was a figure impossible to mistake.
Sunlight caught on his armor, but it was his eyes that stole her breath—dark and sharp, lit with both fire and mockery. The slender blade in his hand gleamed like a fang. He rode as if war itself bent around him, his smile curved like a viper’s.
Oberyn Martell had come.
He moved like a man in a dance, every strike flowing into the next. His body swayed with lethal grace, matching step for step with the strangled cries of his enemies, her enemies, as they fell beneath his blade.
By the time the sky blazed orange with the setting sun, the last Synthian had collapsed into the sand. Geneva’s people were free.
She watched as Oberyn Martell clasped her father’s shoulders, his smile flashing white against skin darkened by the sun. Behind him, his men emptied heavy chests of silver and gold at her father’s feet, the coins spilling like a second sunrise across the bloodstained earth.
“Rebuild your village, my friend,” Oberyn said, his voice rich, easy, yet edged with command. “And next time the sands call for blood, do not wait for the feast to begin before you send for me.”
Her father bowed his head, words tumbling in reply. But Geneva heard nothing. Something within her had already unraveled, pulling her forward before her mind could catch up. Her knees struck the ground beside him, a gesture born of instinct rather than thought.
“Let me serve you,” she said, her voice trembling with a resolve she hadn’t known she possessed.
Both men looked down at her in startled silence. Her father recovered first. His expression shifted, realization flooding his gaze, followed by acceptance, and finally, pride.
“This is my first daughter, Geneva,” he said, his hand tightening on Oberyn’s arm. “We have nothing else to offer for the lives you saved today. Accept her as our gratitude.”
Oberyn laughed, loud and unrestrained, shaking his head as if he had been offered a jest. But when he saw her father’s face was solemn, the amusement drained into something sharper.
“What would I do with her?” he asked, voice lower now, silk wrapping steel. “You know well the Dornish do not trade in human tribute. In Dorne, even the lowliest servant is paid their due. We are not slavers.”
His eyes flicked to Geneva then, narrowing as though to measure what exactly she was offering, or daring.
