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Calla dyed her hair on the morning of her wedding. Or rather, her mother dyed Calla's hair for her - any number of their servants could have handled the task, of course, but Rohanne of Tyrosh insisted on doing it herself. "Some things should be properly done," she said, her Tyroshi accent thickening the way it always did when she was especially happy or sad, and so Calla leaned back into her mother's hands, letting her comb fine shellfish oil into her hair and wrap the locks into towels.
Calla flinched only once, when Rohanne accidentally caught a knot in the comb. Her mother did not apologize. "A woman's life is bearing pain," Rohanne said sternly, continuing her task no more slowly or carefully than before. After that, Calla forced all her muscles to loosen. I am a woman, I am a dragon, I can bear a little pain, she told herself.
When the last of the towels came off, her hair dropped around her shoulders in a vivid purple, with a few silver streaks still shining through. She tossed her hair from side to side experimentally as Rohanne dipped her pen into the jars of shellfish ink and drew patterns on Calla. Careful not to let any ink drip onto Calla’s gown of cloth-of-silver overlaid with white Myrish lace, Rohanne traced a midnight-blue swoop up from Calla’s eyelids, yellow suns painted into the joints of her bared shoulders, red swirls that circled each of her fingers like rings. The brush tickled her and the cold ink tingled oddly as it sank into her skin, but Calla paid little attention to that. She focused on her reflection instead, watching a woman she had never seen before appear in the mirror. She had to become someone else today, she knew, but who was she?
"A true daughter of Tyrosh," Rohanne said with satisfaction, laying her brush aside. "Now you are a bride."
A bride. She had known since she was small that she would marry Bittersteel. Her mother had told her the story since she was old enough to remember - that Daeron Falseborn had stolen her father's crown and the traitor Bloodraven had stolen his life and the lives of her oldest brothers, that their hope lay in the loyal men who had come with them across the sea and joined Bittersteel, their one true protector, who would give his very blood and bone for their cause. It was only fair that Daemon Blackfyre give Bittersteel Calla in reward for such loyalty. What other man could he trust with his only daughter?
Calla remembered almost nothing of Daemon Blackfyre. She still had a brother with Daemon's name, but that brother proved little help whenever she asked him about their father. "What happened matters less than what is to come, Calla," he said, chucking her under the chin before he sauntered off after his new favorite. "So what is to come for me, then?" she'd called after him, but he'd ignored her. His dreams always came true, he'd told her once, but he'd never dreamed for her.
"It will be good, whatever comes next," she told her mother as Rohanne pinned the last of Calla's curls into place. "I'll make it good."
Rohanne raised her eyebrows, but then she slipped into a soft, private smile. "You will," she said, pressing a kiss to the side of Calla's temple before placing the tiara on Calla's head and fastening her maiden’s cloak around her shoulders.
Calla had lived her whole life in her mother's city, but she married under the sight of her father's gods. The Westerosi court-in-exile built a sept in the middle of Rohanne's father's courtyard, perhaps the grandest sept in Essos, with marble floors and golden statues with jeweled eyes and seventy-seven crystal windows throwing rainbows of light on the floor. Calla entered the sept on her brother's arm, and for a moment the brightness of the sept dazzled her so that she couldn't see her betrothed.
But then she blinked furiously, and there he was. She'd never met Bittersteel before today, but she'd heard stories of Bittersteel ever since she was a girl, so fierce and unyielding in battle, with a sharp sword and sharper words and a strong sense of what he was owed. Her mother gave her a basic description of his appearance - black hair, muscled, eyes almost Calla's own color, tall but only barely taller than Calla herself - and yet seeing him in person for the first time almost startled her. He'd put on his Bracken colors for the wedding and tied his hair back in a Westerosi style, and every muscle seemed full of tension as his violet eyes fixed on her. He didn't have the silver shine of her brothers or her one portrait of her father, but she couldn't take her eyes off of him all the same.
If her own appearance surprised him at all, he gave no sign. When Calla reached the Mother's and Father's altars, Bittersteel only took her hand with a rough steadiness and turned them both to face the septon.
Calla barely listened to the septon as he began the wedding rites. She'd been raised among so many gods in Tyrosh, even her father's gods had little meaning to her. Instead, she kept her eyes on her soon-to-be husband. He didn't appear to have more interest in the gods than she did. His eyes flicked from her, to the crowd around them, to the windows, and always back to her. She got the sense that he was looking for the dangers and the traps everywhere he went, even on his wedding day.
Despite the strength in his grip, his hand never crushed hers. But it also never let go until the last possible moment. He had never been married before either, she remembered. They were both becoming someone new today, the bride and the groom.
When the septon asked for her assent to her marriage, she agreed in as loud and clear a voice as she could. Her brother Daemon had told her once that no woman could be forced to say the words, that she could refuse even despite their father's promises - but why would she? She was curious now. Her husband agreed just as loudly, as if emboldened by her own boldness, and she reveled in that possibility as Bittersteel fastened the bride's cloak around her throat.
As the septon finished the ceremony, Bittersteel's eyes were all on her, as if he were still reckoning with whatever bargain he had just made. Let him wonder, then. She smiled at him, baring all her teeth, and as the court applauded she thought she saw Bittersteel's mouth quirk up into a smile.
They were in Tyrosh, but this was a Westerosi wedding, and a Westerosi wedding required a bedding. Calla had luck on her side; several brothers swooped around her to defend her against prying hands as they escorted her to the wedding chamber, but she still came off with a torn sleeve and bawdy jests still ringing in her ears as the revelers shut the door on her and her new husband.
Bittersteel had escaped the wedding crowd mostly unscathed, too - maybe his reputation went before him. She looked him over, head to toe, and had the strange tickling feeling of him doing the same to her. She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders - good, then. Let us see what we make of each other.
He started taking his clothes off quickly, like he was stripping off armor after a battle. He'd gotten down to his breeches before he'd looked at her and realized she hadn't taken anything off at all. "My princess," he said, "you must know what's expected now."
She had been wondering what his first words to her would be, besides their vows. They'd both been drawn aside by their men and their women, all the friends and subordinates and hangers-on rushing to congratulate them; they'd hardly had a chance to speak during their wedding feast, and no one had expected them to. Calla knew what was expected of her, yes - a bargain of swords, a marriage bed meant first and foremost to bring forth heirs, and a husband who spent his whole life in foreign lands fighting for the sake of her brothers. That was to be her lot in life.
Well, her father had never been content with his lot in life, and neither was she. And her husband's first words to her had been my princess. So many had called her a princess, but she never felt the reverence in the words until now.
"I know what they expect of us," she said, walking up to him slowly. What did he make of her now, she wondered? Looking into his violet eyes, she wasn't sure. But when she reached behind her and unpinned her violet hair, she caught him shift and look at her again, and it gave her the boldness to step one step closer and put her fingers on his broad chest. "But what do you want of me, my lord?"
When he pulled her tight against his chest, when he scooped her up and carries her to the bed, when she started to slip her gown down her body and he rushed to help, she asked again and again what she was to him. My princess, he always said, my own princess, my only princess, and when he helped her straddle and sink onto him, she felt like she was flying and falling all at once.
The next morning, she woke looking at her husband's back. She saw few scars there, but the ones that existed looked deep. A training bout gone wrong? A battle so fierce even his own armor hadn't held up to the task? She'd come up with so many stories of Bittersteel as a girl dreaming of her husband, she hardly knew which were true and which were only a girl's imaginings. Perhaps now she could find out.
Impulsively she kissed one of the scars, and Bittersteel immediately turned over and gripped her shoulder, holding her tight before he relaxed with a guilty look. "Forgive me, my princess," he said.
"'Tis already forgiven, my lord," she replied, popping up to kiss his lips instead. When he settled back onto the pillows, she added, "Which do you prefer? Bittersteel or Aegor?"
He looked at her a long moment before he sank back onto the bed, his face blank. "Bittersteel will do," he said. "You know little about me, princess."
"Then I suppose I'll learn," she said. "We have all the time we need." And when she presses her lips against his again, she can almost taste his satisfaction mingling with her own.