The Tide Beneath the Dragon

Prologue

Lureana's POV

Morning came softly in Old Valyria.

It did not arrive with birdsong the way it once had in the world I was born into. There were no cheerful little sparrows tapping at windows, no distant rumble of carts over stone roads, no neighbors calling to one another as the sun lifted itself above the roofs. Here, morning came through silver mist and red-black earth. It spilled over broken towers, over cracked dragonstone roads, over the bones of a city that had once believed itself eternal.

I woke to the sound of water.

A small stream ran beside my shelter, clear and cold despite the heat that still breathed from the ground in certain places. It curled through the black stone like a ribbon of glass, slipping past the roots of my garden and into a shallow pool where pale flowers grew. I had made my home beside it because water listened. Water remembered. And in this place of ash and old fire, it was the closest thing I had to a companion.

I pushed aside the thin linen blanket and sat up, letting my silver-blue hair fall over my shoulders in messy waves. In the dim morning light, the blue tint was stronger, almost like moonlight had been caught in each strand. I used to stare at it too much when I first arrived here. The same with my eyes - purple, but with a strange reddish glow when the light struck them. I had looked into the stream for hours, touching my face, trying to understand that this body was mine now.

Mine. Not borrowed. Not imagined. Not a dream.

Tessarion had been very clear about that.

I rose from my bed and stretched until my spine cracked. My shelter was simple, built from fallen stone, woven branches, and scraps of cloth I had taken from an abandoned Valyrian storehouse. It was not grand. It was not beautiful in the way palaces were beautiful. But it was mine.

That mattered more.

I rose from my small cottage, outside the air smelled of damp soil, salt, old smoke, and flowers. My garden waited for me in uneven rows, stubborn and alive against all reason. I had planted herbs first, then roots, then small vegetables I had learned to grow from the books beneath the earth. Some of them had silver veins through their leaves. Some glowed faintly at night. One vine had tried to bite me during its first week, but after I threatened to freeze it solid, we reached an understanding.

I took a clay bowl from the shelf beside the door and filled it with water from the stream. Then I walked to the flowers.

The blue ones had opened again.

They were small and star-shaped, with petals so pale they looked almost white at the edges. They grew near the pool and nowhere else, bending toward the water as if whispering secrets to it. I crouched and touched one gently.

"Good morning," I murmured.

The flower trembled beneath my fingertip.

I smiled. "Yes, yes, I know. I am late."

I picked three blossoms, careful not to take more than the plant could spare, and carried them back through the garden toward the altar.

It stood beneath the broken arch of what had once been a doorway. I had made it myself from smooth black stones, bits of pale shell, old coins, and a cracked piece of blue glass I had found in the ruins. At the center sat a rough figure shaped from clay and polished bone. It was not perfect. The face was uneven, the hands too long, the crown crooked. But it was the first thing I had ever made here with love instead of fear.

For Tessarion. I placed the flowers before her image and poured the water into a shallow stone dish.

Then I knelt. "My goddess," I said softly, bowing my head. "My strange, terrifying, impossible goddess. I bring you water, flowers, and my voice."