Chapter Text
Dany comes to engulfed in a heat so intense, she fears that maybe, just maybe, this will be the time that she finally burns. Her eyes open and she’s surrounded by flames on every side, clothes burned to ash and hair free of her usual intricate braids. Her mouth opens in a gasp. The heat is too much. This is more than ordinary fire.
She pushes up slowly, bracing herself against the scorched earth beneath her. The stream of fire halts as she moves, and she looks up, directly into the distressed gaze of her last remaining son. Despite her confusion, Daenerys draws her knees beneath her body and reaches a hand up to Drogon. His head drops low, offering his snout to her to stroke. She winces as she moves, feeling a tight pull in her chest. She glances down at her body, a sickening feeling settling in her stomach at the sight of the raw wound above her breast, stark red against her pale skin.
So it had happened.
King’s Landing had fallen. She had killed thousands of innocents. Tyrion had betrayed her. Jon Snow had betrayed her.
“He’s a smart creature, your dragon.”
Dany’s head whips around. Drogon’s fire still burns in a circle around her, the flames as tall as any man. A woman steps out of the darkness, illuminated by the blaze. She looks familiar despite the shadows dancing across her face. Her hands are folded in front of her, holding something dark against her stomach.
“Who are you?”
“High Priestess Kinvara, Your Grace.” Dany finally notices her dress, blood-red silk brushing the stony ground, and the large crimson gem that hangs around her neck.
“I know you?”
The woman shakes her head. “We almost met once, a long time ago. In Meereen.”
A memory comes to Dany, Tyrion speaking of a Red Priestess who came to them in the Great Pyramid. Daenerys takes in her surroundings, They’re high on the side of a rocky mountain. Down below, the lights of a city twinkle in the distance.
“What happened?”
“Your Grace, it may be better if we find a more private place to speak.” Kinvara shoots a furtive look over her shoulder. “There are many who could be listening to us. It isn’t safe to talk here.” The priestess steps forward and the flames part for her as she approaches Dany. Kinvara extends a slender hand for Daenerys to take. “Please come with me.”
Dany hesitates for a moment, but at the woman’s encouraging smile, she reaches up to clasp the proffered hand, allowing the priestess to help her stand on shaky feet. Kinvara takes most of Dany’s weight as she staggers. Drogon make a noise above them, chirruping sweetly and Dany can’t help but smile at her son. She squints at the distant landscape.
“We’re in Essos?” Dany gasps. The city spreads across the desert below them, and Dany is shocked at how far her son has brought her.
“Just outside of Volantis, My Queen. It seems your son knew exactly where to bring you.”
Her muddled thoughts suddenly right themselves and Dany is slammed with the weight of her memories. She drops her eyes to her hands in her lap, focussing intently on them, in part to avoid the priestess’ gaze, and also to remind herself that she’s here. She’s alive.
“You know about what happened in Westeros?” Dany looks
Kinvara only nods.
“How long has it been since…” Dany trails off.
“News of King’s Landing’s fall reached us here just a few days ago. I’ve been preparing for your arrival since, Your Grace.”
“You knew that Drogon would bring me here?”
Again, Kinvara looks around nervously. “We need to discuss all of these things, but this is not the place for it, Your Grace.”
A chill runs down Dany’s spine and she realises with a jolt that she’s still naked.
“I don’t suppose you brought any clothes with you?”
Kinvara smiles and draws Dany from the now smouldering patch of land, letting her go so as to unfurl the dark fabric in her hand. It’s a cloak, dark, thick and long enough to brush the ground. Dany steps in close and Kinvara drapes the heavy fabric across her shoulders.
The uneven landscape proves a greater struggle for Dany in her weakened state and with nothing between the rough ground and her bare feet. Her knees buckle almost as soon as she takes an unaided step towards Kinvara.
“If I may, Your Grace?” the priestess inclines her head. “Perhaps your dragon could provide us some transport? In your…condition, it may prove easier and faster than walking.”
Dany turns to look at her last remaining child, whose eyes are fixed firmly on her. She extends her arm, reaching for him, and with thundering footfalls, Drogon ambles closer to them, lowering his shoulder at Dany’s feet. Kinvara helps her up onto his back, settling behind Daenerys once she's situated.
“Sōvēs,” Dany calls, and Drogon takes off in a run, flapping his wings to lift his body into flight.
Dany always appreciates the marvel of flying on the back of a dragon. Not many get to see the world from the sky, and it’s always exhilarating to watch the land below speed quickly by. However, in her current state, she’s almost too drained to even keep a solid hold on the dragon’s back.
Drogon stays high enough in the sky to remain unseen from the ground as they pass over Volantis. Kinvara squeezes Dany’s arm from behind, nodding silently after just a few minutes in flight. Dany assumes that she wants to land and, despite her weak grip, tries her best to direct her son. Drogon clearly picks up on her weakened state and is much more pliable to her will, dropping down to the ground in wide circles. As they descend, Dany realises that the lights of the city don’t really extend here. In fact, she doesn’t see the building beneath them until Drogon lands atop it, digging his claws into the stone walls.
“We kept the temple dark tonight so that we wouldn’t alert anyone when you arrived, My Queen.”
Dany barely hears Kinvara over the roaring in her ears. She feels strange, like she’s been stuffed back into her body wrong.
Kinvara slides off Drogon’s back first; the dragon has landed beside a balcony and she drops onto it with ease. The priestess reaches up to help Dany down. She’s barely able to remain on her feet, leaning heavily against Kinvara and relying on her to guide them into the building. Every step feels like she’s wading through water, and her skin prickles as if Drogon is still blowing a stream of flame at her.
Where the outside is dark and seems almost abandoned, the inside of the building is a marvel, ceilings almost as high as in the Great Pyramid. Dany is too faint to feel awed, however, stumbling over her own feet. The halls are lined with torches, and the dancing flames create eerie shifting shadows. Maybe she isn’t dead, but Dany certainly feels like she’s entered into some form of hell.
Dany is barely standing by this point, weakened legs trembling as they struggle to hold her up. Her chest burns where Jon plunged his knife into her heart. Her head is spinning. She needs to sit, just for a moment. She’ll be able to think straight if she can just sit down.
“If it pleases Your Grace to remain here in our temple, there are rooms where you can rest.”
It’s as if Kinvara can read her mind. Dany nods and the woman helps guide her deeper into the belly of the building, past shadowy walls, lit by more flickering torchlight. The hallways are long, stretching so far that Dany can’t see where they end, and the women’s footfalls echo in the cavernous temple, even the more muted slaps of Dany’s naked feet.
Just as Daenerys is sure that she can’t go further, that she’s about to collapse onto the hard ground, they come to a set of rooms. One of the doors is open and light spills out into the hall. The women enter, and Dany exhales a rough breath at the sight of the large bed in the corner of an otherwise rather plain room. There are no unique carvings in here, just plain stone walls. Across the room from the bed is a lit fireplace, but otherwise the space is empty.
Kinvara leads her over, finally letting her go when Dany is close enough to the flat surface of the mattress. Dany drops onto the bed in an almost undignified manner, legs screaming for her to get off them. She sinks into the plush material, the first soft thing that she’s encountered since she awoke.
“Wait here, Your Grace. I’ll return soon.” Kinvara melts into the shadows and is gone.
Jon doesn’t sleep anymore.
When he closes his eyes, he sees corpses lining the streets of Kings Landing, blackened and twisted, smells burnt flesh and hair, feels blood coating his hands.
When he closes his eyes, he sees pillars of fire turning stone to dust.
When he closes his eyes, he sees hair as white as snow, creamy skin, blue eyes that stare into his soul. Except he’s pretty sure he doesn’t have one of those anymore.
The wildlings have set up camp in a forest clearing, and he hears movement outside his tent. The smell of food wafts inside and his stomach clenches painfully. It’s been days since he ate and kept something down. His punishment. If she can’t eat, why should he be able to?
Jon digs the heels of his palms into his eyes, rubbing away the gritty feel of exhaustion. His head throbs and he can’t think straight. He just wants to be alone, to mourn and cry for the love that he’s lost. Again.
The flap of his tent is pulled back suddenly and someone steps into the space.
“You need to eat something, Little Crow.”
Tormund’s gruff rasp, usually a comfort, grinds against his frayed nerves.
“I’m not hungry.”
“I’m not your mother, and I’m not going to make you eat, but what good are you if you collapse in the snow from starvation?”
Jon rubs harder at his eyes, trying to alleviate the pain that smarts behind them.
“You can’t starve in two days.”
“There’s food. Why not eat?”
Jon finally looks up, glaring at his friend whose wide body seems to take up all the space in the tent. “I thought you said you weren’t my mother?”
Tormund’s grin is wide, unrestrained, as he walks to Jon’s bed and drops onto the end of it.
“Thinking about your dragon queen?”
Jon stiffens.
“Don’t.” His voice is low, quivering with rage and sorrow and heartbreak. Tormund holds his hands up in surrender. They sit in silence for a moment before Tormund pipes up again.
“So you’re just going to roll over and die?” No response. “A fucking Crow ‘til the end, hm?”
Jon almost loses his cool, feeling his hands clenched into a fist. Longclaw is on the other side of the room, otherwise he might be tempted to run his friend through with it. His dagger is–
–still buried in Dany’s chest. Jon feels the simmering rage drain from his body as he remembers the trail of blood running from her nose and mouth, or the deep red stain left on the floor of the throne room even after Drogon had carried Daenerys away from him.
“I’m not in the mood, Tormund.”
His friend kicks out at Jon’s leg, knocking the toe of his boot into Jon’s ankle.
“Be a man, Snow. You killed her. Your dragon queen is dead. There’s no use crying over—” Tormund never finishes, sentence cut short when Jon stands and, in a single agile move, turns, grabs the leather straps holding Tormund’s heavy winter garb together, and pulls him in close, inches from his face.
“I’ve warned you once. I won’t say it again.” Their silence is tense, and Jon feels his headache worsen where his teeth are clenched tightly. Tormund reaches up, grasping Jon’s wrists, and pulls them forcefully from his person.
“I’ll give you that one, Snow.” He gets to his feet and makes for the opening of the tent. “Eat or don’t, but if you’re going to lie down and die, go into the woods or something so I don’t have to fucking watch.”
Dany feels empty, like someone’s taken a spoon to her insides and hollowed her out. The wound in her chest burns, and she’s acutely aware of it, but she wouldn’t say that it hurts. In fact, now that she’s sitting down, she feels no physical pain at all.
But where her physical senses seem to be muted, her emotions have only heightened. Her stomach churns as she recalls her last moments. Jon, calling her his queen, kissing her, stabbing her. Killing her.
She wonders if this is how he felt when he was brought back.
She had thought that his declaration was just another way of proclaiming his love for her. She was wrong.
Just like Tyrion, Varys and any number of men before him, he saw her as nothing more than a game piece to be played. She wasn’t a woman to him, nor a person at all. He used her for her military capabilities in taking back the country, and then executed her when he was done.
Tears rise in her eyes. She died. At the hands of a man she loved. The only man she had ever truly, completely loved, of her own volition and without restraint. She barely swallows the urge to vomit, stumbling from her place on the plush bed to throw up into a chamber pot across the room. She hadn’t eaten for days before she travelled to King’s Landing, so all that comes up is acidic bile.
She’s lost everything, two of her sons, her closest friends and advisors, her crown. She can still see Missandei’s head fly from her body, or the light in Ser Jorah’s eyes dim until there is none left. All for a man who used her up and spat her out. She supposes she can’t blame him. He protected his family and his home, as any king should.
The way she did not.
She wonders, as she retches violently into the bowl housing the contents of her stomach, whether he sits comfortably on the throne. Her throne. Whether the crown fits over his unruly curls.
Queen of Nothing. Queen of the Ashes.
She wishes she had stayed dead.
After what feels an age, her stomach finally settles. She takes a few more minutes, until she sure that it won’t revolt again, Dany covers the pot and pushes it away from herself, nearly crawling across the cold marble floor and back to her previous position. She has no strength to pull herself back up, and instead remains on the ground and leans her head against the side of the bedframe.
It could be mere minutes or hours later when she jolts awake at the sound of footsteps entering the room. Kinvara appears in the doorway first, mysterious smirk still on her lips and a small stack of clothes in her hands. She’s followed by three more figures clad in red, two priests and another priestess. Kinvara drops to her knees beside Dany, stroking a gentle hand against her hair.
“Your Grace, I’ve brought you some fresh clothes. Do you feel well enough to dress?”
Dany nods weakly, reaching for the pile and placing it in her lap. She grips the front of the cloak, holding it closed as she glances suspiciously at the new faces in the room.
“Will you explain what’s going on now?” She turns her gaze to Kinvara, blinking away the rapidly building tears. “I was dead.”
The priestess’ lips quirk up in that same infuriating smirk. “Yes, you were.”
“And now I’m not. How?”
“A ritual. Fire and blood. The Lord of Light was not yet done with you.”
“Why? What does your lord want from me?”
“He directed your dragon here, to deliver to us the Prince that was Promised.”
Dany frowns. “Melisandre of Ashai said that I was the Prince that was Promised. That I would fulfil the prophesy.”
Kinvara glances at the other priests.
“You are not Azor Ahai, Daenerys of House Targaryen. Melisandre spoke falsely.”
Dany slumps.
“It’s Jon Snow, isn’t it? He’s the true Prince?”
Again, Kinvara shakes her head. “Of course not, My Queen. Azor Ahai is with you now.”
“I don’t understand. I am not the Prince that was Promised, but I have him with me? Where?” Dany is trying not to get irritated with the cryptic way this woman speaks. Isn’t it easier to just say what you mean?
“Your child, My Queen. Azor Ahai is the child inside your womb.”
Dany’s pale skin blanches at least two shades whiter. Her mouth drops open and all she can do is gape at Kinvara.
“My…child?”
“The blood of the Wolf and the Dragon. You carry Azor Ahai in your womb.”
“Jon Snow is the blood of the Wolf and the Dragon. His parents are Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark. I can’t have children.”
Kinvara finally gets up, moving away from Daenerys and draws her fellow priests into a tight circle where they speak in hushed tones. Dany, meanwhile, presses her hand to her stomach, not daring to hope.
The witch’s prophecy was impossible to achieve. Of course she isn’t pregnant.
“Your Grace, who told you that you may not conceive?”
Dany grits her teeth against the painful memory. “A witch, many moons ago, who took my husband and son from me. She placed a curse that ensured that I would not have another child.”
Kinvara nods curtly, turning back to confer with the small group once again. Dany shifts uncomfortably, watching them. She supposes there’s a slight swell to her stomach, but that’s of no consequence. She doesn’t feel pregnant – shouldn’t her child be moving? And what about—
“If I were pregnant, surely the child would be dead by now?”
Kinvara turns and all four priests and priestesses look up at Dany.
“An unborn baby cannot possibly survive when the mother is dead.” Dany’s voice sounds strange to her, thick and a little bit shrill. Her newly beating heart slams against her ribs and there’s a ringing in her ears that muffles all other sound in the room.
One of the male priests responds this time, stepping out from behind Kinvara. “The Lord of Light wills it, and so it is done. Your curse was broken upon your death. The sacrifice made by you and your dragons has paid for the life of the babe.”
Dany shakes her head, doing her best to quash the hope rising in her chest.
“Leave me. Please.”
The priests and priestesses hesitate, but with a fierce glare from Daenerys, they file from the room almost as silently as they came. Kinvara turns to look at Dany before she exits.
“Rest well, Your Grace. We still have much to discuss.”
Outside, somewhere in the west, the sun begins to rise.
“Riders!”
Jon emerges from his tent, squinting against the weak sunlight. In the distance, horses approach flying the Stark sigil. A sick feeling settles in his stomach and he hangs back when the riders dismount and enter the camp.
“Where is Jon Snow?”
Tormund steps up, his bulky size dwarfing the Stark bannerman who shrinks back against his horse. From somewhere behind his, Ghost appears, lips curled back in a snarl as he crouches low, ready to defend.
“What do you want with Snow?”
“His—his king demands an audience. We expected to find him at Castle Black, but it’s deserted.”
Jon finally steps into the clearing, dark eyes fixed on the scroll in the man’s hand.
“My king.” It’s more of a statement than a question, spoken with an air of exhaustion.
“King Bran requires you return to the capital to treaty at once.”
Jon reaches out a hand for the scroll, unrolling it when the messenger drops it into his gloved palm. He recognises Tyrion’s handwriting immediately, remembers seeing it on that first message inviting him to Dragonstone so long ago.
His hand clenches into a fist and he crumples the paper within it.
“Tell Lord Tyrion that I won’t be returning to King’s Landing. Ever.”
“Lord Snow—”
“I am no Lord.”
The man swallows roughly. “Jon Snow, it’s what your king demands of you.”
“I cannot return to that city, Ser.” He lets the message drop from his fingers onto the snowy ground. “I will not.”
Dany stands naked beside her bed, hand pressed to her stomach as she stares down the line of her body.
There’s certainly a slight roundness to her belly, but that could be from anything. It’s hardly conclusive evidence. She can’t possibly be pregnant. Her womb is dead, barren, and the only children she’ll ever have are her dragons.
Dragon. Singular.
She swallows the sting of tears again, crossing into the adjoining room where a tub of steaming water waits for her. Dany sinks into the bath, holding back a moan as the heat sinks into her bones. For the first time since her resurrection, Daenerys Targaryen feels warm.
She leans her head back, nothing but the distant sounds of an awakening city to keep her company.
Missandei used to fill the room with conversation as she bathed.
Dany’s eyes fly open. The wave of grief floods over her, stealing her breath away.
My friend. My last true friend.
She wishes she could go back in time and remove Cersei’s head from her shoulders just as she had done to her dearest friend from Naath. Dany feels the darkness creeping into her veins again, the numbness from each one of her losses. She wants to rage at the thought that all of those who believed in her and died for her, Jorah, Barristan, Missandei, were all proven wrong by her actions in King’s Landing. They all died for nothing. She turned out to be worse than all the monsters who came before her.
Her stab wound throbs. Dany looks down and notices that the once puckered skin has opened up, blood running in a single thin rivulet into the bath water.
It’s only fitting that her heart should bleed.