Dany
On the last night of her imprisonment in the Hightower, Dany had not been able to sleep. Each time she closed her eyes, her head had filled with forebodings and fantasies of what the next day might bring on. I will get out of here on the morrow, she had told herself each day that she had been held there. Tomorrow my brother would be coming to rescue me. And so will my nephew. They will take me away from this cursed dungeon made of oily stone. No one will be allowed to touch me after that.
Her rescue had come to her in the right time. And how relieved she had been when Ser Jorah had come for her, to know that her prayers had been answered after long. Only to have it all taken away from her in a single stroke. How wrong she had been to pray for her rescue from the Hightower. She had escaped from the fires of the forge only to get caught in the fires of hell.
Her new prison was much worse than the one she had in the Hightower, creepy as the oily black stone was that covered her. Here she was swallowed somewhere in the belly of the evil ship, drifting somewhere she did not know. Even that made her feel so unease, to be taken to some place that she did not know and by someone who was equally unknown to her.
Even still, the thing that made her the most afraid was the people whom she saw around the ship, cleaning the floors bringing her food and even the ones who manned the oars. All of them bore scars and marks on their skin that she had been afraid to ask how they'd even gotten them. It would not matter even if she had asked them anyhow, Dany never saw anyone muttering a word aboard the ship. Even the prisoners never made a sound, not of cry for help or a plea for mercy. She had seen some prisoners in the nearby cages who'd had their eyes gouged out and ears cut off. But none made a sound that they might have well been mute as well. She did not know. As far as she had been on this ship all that she ever heard was silence. Silence in such a sense that it unnerved her in ways that no chaotic echoes of battle had made her.
The mutes had robbed her of her of clothes and shoes and only given her a blanket to protect her with from the cold. She still counted herself fortunate however. The other captives were far worse than her, as they wore their and chains and scabs and silent cries. Saltwater sloshed about her legs whenever the tide came in, sometimes rising as high as her ankles only to ebb again when the tide receded. Her feet had been cut and it stung when the salt water got in and made her gasp. She knew that she was in some ship, but not where, or for how long.
There had been another dungeon before this one. In truth it had been far better than the ship she was in. The night they moved her, Dany had been shifting between sleeping and waking. She had vaguely seen the moon floating on a black wild sea with a leering face of a man with blue lips and a black eye, shining as the heart of night itself. When she woke she was in this place with rats moving around in the darkness. They would bite her sometimes as she slept until she woke and drove them off with shouts and curses.
The first day they had put her here, she'd searched for Ser Jorah earnestly. Dany had last seen him drown into the sea before she had been carried off and all she could do is to hope that her captors had saved the northern knight as well. Her sweet old bear, who loved her so much that he came into the dungeons of Hightower itself to save her. On the day Jorah had come for her, the day that she broke free of Hightower, she had been so overjoyed that she might have finally kissed him. Something that he so very much yearned from her. But he died before getting that from her.
Dany walked around her cell, restless as Drogon was when they would try to chain him in the bowels of the Dragonpit even when he was the size of a large dog. Of all her children, Drogon had been the most daring and the boldest of them. He did not like the chains, no more than Dany did, when she had to be confined within any rooms. If only Drogon was with her now, she would have broken free of this ship as well and made an end to all the creatures that inhabited this dreary place.
Barefoot and shivering she paced, a thin blanket draped about her shoulders. She was anxious for the day to come when she would be taken outside of this place. Anything would be better than this place. Even if she was brought before and dumped in front of Stark like a tavern wench. That was most like it. She must be the captive of some pirate who was so eager to win a hefty purse that he was stupid enough to steal her away from his King's own allies. In the first days of her captivity Dany kept telling herself that she was being taken to her brother. A little more and I'll be home, I'll be back with Rhaegar, in my own chambers inside Maegor's Holdfast. From there they would destroy their enemies and evil has been driven away from the realm. That was the only way to save herself. Was it, though? The longer she was housed in this filthy belly of the ship the lesser that hope became. She could not trust anyone anymore, no more than she trusted her own hopes now.
And she dare not let her hopes sit in judgment on her, lest they fail her once more. She had long since come upon the realisation that they were not going to set her free. It would be nice to see the sunlight once again, Dany thought. It was always midnight in the belly of the beast that had grasped her.
She found no respite even in sleep. When she slept, the darkness would rise up and swallow her and then the dream would come… and Jorah and the scream of a great beast beneath.
The only light in her quiet world came from the lanterns that the visitors brought with them, and it came so seldom that it began to hurt her eyes. A nameless sour-faced man brought her food, salt beef as hard as wooden shingles, bread crawling with weevils, slimy, stinking fish. Daenerys refused their offering entirely, swearing to die of hunger instead of taking a bite of anything that they brought to her and demanding that better food be brought for her that was befitting of a princess of her stature. She was a princess of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons, not a mere whore from Flea Bottom to sup on the leavings of dogs. Her resolve broke on the third day however as she gobbled the food down and hoped for more, though oft as not she retched the meal up after. Though the man who brought the food food to her was dark, dour, mute and gone. He was gone without even waiting to listen to her. And he was going to give nothing in response to her anyway, Dany did not doubt.
That was the way of this ship. She had come to learn that easily enough. The light would leave when the mutes did, and once again her world would become a damp darkness smelling of salt and grime and mold.
Sometimes later, days perhaps her captor himself came down to meet her. Dany would wake from sleep to find the one eyed, blue lipped man from her dreams standing over her, a lantern in hand. His left eyes was a endless black void that was full of malice. Silence hung between them for a moment followed by a smile that revealed white teeth behind the blue lips, dangerous and perfect. He hung up the lantern from a post and gestured to the slave behind him without uttering any sound who poured them cups of wine.
“Drink with me, my queen,” he said. She welcomed the voice of another man after being accustomed only to quietness and the squeaks of rats for a long time. Even then his voice unnerved her still.
He wore a shirt of iron scales and a cloak of blood red silk that was so dark and eerie in the lantern light. But it was the blue lips like those that of the warlocks from the east that scared her more. But she was the blood of the dragon and the blood of the dragon was never afraid. “Who are you?” Dany croaked at him. Her lips were crusty with scabs and her voice hard. “Why did you capture me? Why am I here? Where are we sailing?”
Her captor gave an evil smile. “East, West, North, South– Does it matter? The sea belongs to me and soon the lands on it as well.”
Madness. She could not imagine a pirate being this much ambitious. “Do you know who I am?” Dany stiffened, not cowering before him. “I am Daenerys Targaryen, the mother of dra-”
The pirate laughed. His blue lips twisted in excitement. “Dragons, yes,” he said. “That's what we are going after.”
For a moment Dany did not understand. “Are you going to take me back to my brother?” she asked. “My place is with him.”
“Your place is where I want you. I am your King now.”
“You are no King,” said Dany.
“Why not?” the pirate said. “The Seven Kingdoms has two Kings tearing it apart now. Surely it can tolerate one more."
He smiled and Dany looked away from his blue lips. “I am the King of the Iron Islands,” the pirate said. "And soon to be the King of the world beyond that.”
Iron Islands... Last she had known Balon Greyjoy had been the Lord Paramount of the Iron Isles. Could her captor be this Balon Greyjoy? Could he be mad enough to declare himself a King? It made her head spin just to think about something like that.
"You are Lord Balon Greyjoy?”
“That would be my late brother,” the man said. “My name is Euron Greyjoy.
“Eu-Euron." Dany did not know of this one. “What do you want of me?”
“What can you offer me that I have not had before?” Euron smiled. “Nothing. But something. Conquest, plunder and most importantly, dragons.”
Dragons, yes. She is the mother of dragons. And she has lost all three of her children. Thinking about them made her sad. “I don't have any with me,” said Dany. If I had I would not have been caught by the likes of you.
“Wine?” the pirate asked her.
Dany shook her head. She had no taste for anything this warlock might have for her. She preferred her stinking fish instead.
The Greyjoy never listened. “Drink with me. Your king commands it.”
He grabbed a handful of the princess's tangled silver hair, pulled her head back, and lifted the wine cup to her lips. But what flowed into her mouth was not wine. It was thick and viscous, with a taste that seemed to change with every swallow. Now bitter, now sour, now sweet. She knew what it was. When Dany tried to spit it out, the Greyjoy tightened his grip and forced more down her throat.
“That’s it, my love. Gulp it down. The wine of the warlocks, sweeter than your greenland grapewater, with more truth in it than all the gods of earth.”
“You will be damned for that,” Dany said, when the cup was empty. Liquor dripped from down her chin and into the space between her breasts.
“If I had the tongue of every man, woman and child who cursed me, I could make a cloak of them.”
“The truth will come for you tonight, princess,” Euron said. “Some thing that resembles it, at least.” Then he was gone
And when Dany slept, she heard the distant rumble of the great flying beast again.
“Drogon!” she cried. There is no Drogon here, no dragon, no Ser Jorah. Her sweet bear knight was long dead, or was made into one of these mutes most like. From the dark came a voice, cold and chilling. Dany it called her and she looked for it. And there he stood, this Euron Greyjoy as if he was half man half beast.
“You know what waits below the sea, mother of dragons?”
“Nothing,” Dany said, scared of him.
Euron shook his head. “Death … Death awaits the world, princess.”
When he laughed his face sloughed off and his face turned again, the smiling eye hidden. He showed the world a blood eye now, dark and terrible. Clad head to heel in scale as dark as onyx, he sat upon a mound of blackened skulls as dwarfs capered round his feet and a forest burned behind him.
“The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he said to Dany. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.” Then Euron lifted a great horn to his lips and blew, and dragons and krakens and sphinxes came at his command and bowed before him. “Kneel, my queen,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, submit to me and I will make you a queen and restore your family to their greatest glory.”
“Never. I am the blood of the dragon! I need not hear your lies. My brother is the King.”
“Your brother? Your brother's doom is here.” Euron laughed and licked his blue lips. “Doubt me. Look again and see where I am seated.”
Daenerys Targaryen looked. The mound of skulls was gone now. Now it was metal underneath the Crow’s Eye: a great, tall, twisted seat of razor sharp iron, barbs and blades and broken swords, all dripping blood. It was the Iron Throne. She knew the Iron Throne even in her dreams. Oft times she had marvelled at the glorious sight of her brother sitting upon the great seat of their ancestors to judge upon men.
Instead it was the Greyjoy who was seated there now. Impaled upon the longer spikes were the bodies of the gods. The Maiden was there and the Father and the Mother, the Warrior and Crone and Smith … even the Stranger. They hung side by side with all manner of queer foreign gods: the Great Shepherd and the Black Goat, three-headed Trios and the Pale Child Bakkalon, the Lord of Light and the butterfly god of Naath.
And there, swollen and impaled, of the steps of the throne were the Gods of Old Valyria fresh blood still dripping from their gaping wounds. Then, Euron Crow’s Eye laughed again and threw a spear at her that took her right in between her breasts, and the princess felt the pain sharp in her back. She woke screaming in the bowels of Silence. It was only a dream, a vision born of foul black wine.
She did not know how long she has been sleeping or dreaming. The last thing she remembered clearly was the taste of the wine of warlocks the Greyjoy had forced down her mouth. She woke up from sleep only to see him, slip back to her sleep to watch men and dead creatures alike lift Euron Greyjoy onto their shoulders to hail him as their king, while she was slipping off from a black void once again. The terrible sound echoed once again, like the rumble of a thunder, the roar of a dragon and finally a terrible horn that shook the very land upon which she stood and cracked open the moon.
Once when she was wake she heard the curses of a man in a cage beside her. “Your blasphemies will bring down the Drowned God's wrath upon you,” he roared. “There will be no place for you in the halls, Euron. You will forever be cursed for a kinslayer. Even hell will despise you with it's very being that you won't find any home there for you.”
But even his curses fell silent soon enough as he was taken away from the cell by the creatures even as he insisted stubbornly that the Drowned God will cast him down and all his evil followers. No God is going to act against him, Dany had realized then. When she had seen him put down gods like that and impale them there she couldn't help but feel that she must be next. Euron Crow’s Eye can call himself King and have his men proclaim him so, but men were weak and foolish things, too easily swayed by gold and lies. He will only find himself with a blade sticking out of his throat one day. Rhaegar had summoned his lords to rise up for their righteous king and half the realm had sinned in their treacherous foolery. Lord Hightower foremost among them who betrayed her trust and got her dragon and Ser Jorah killed.
It was for her to undo what they had done but this pirate spoke as if she was his wife and queen. Dany was never supposed to be a queen, not whilst her brothers and nephews lived. But half of them were dead now, killed by that rouge assassin from the North. Euron was a fool if he thought that he could defeat her brother. The Iron throne would only ever be Rhaegar's whilst her brother lived.
Once Rhaegar knows about this pretender he will tear him down and burn the captains and the lords who raised Euron Greyjoy to this godhood. He must, lest she will be left to live the rest of her life in the cages of his like another one of his creatures.
The Iron Throne did not belong to Dany. In her heart, Dany had always loved her family. Both her brothers and best of all her brother Rhaegar’s children. Once Rhaegar had told her that she was meant to be a Queen. That the gods had blessed her with their own grace and the wisdom of a king. That was why she had been able to bring back the dragons. But Dany knew that was not meant to be. Her nephews stood ahead of her in line and she had not been betrothed to either when the entire realm thought that she would be Aegon's queen when the time comes. She had always been a good sister, following her brother's command that has never failed her before. But this Euron Greyjoy promised to make her queen and restore her house back to glory. Even without her nephews that seemed off. The gods had cursed her with a woman’s body. No woman had ever ruled the Seven Kingdoms on her own. Rhaenyra Targaryen once made a claim and histories were never kind to her. She would have no choice at becoming a queen, except for becoming the wife of her nephew. If Rhaegar had wed them and Aegon had taken Daenerys for his wife, they could have ruled together, king and queen. Like it was in the ancient days of King Jaehaerys and his good queen Alysanne. They would have brought down Andrew Stark, with fire and blood and showing the true power of their dragons. It was too late for that now, as her brother and King had had decided for different weddings for them.
Yet in her dreams her husband was a different man, with eyes as black as night and blue lips. But he made her queen as he had promised. Daenerys struggled back from the dream. Her beautiful silver hair was plastered heavy and dank across her brow and cheeks, she stopped for a moment to push it back out of her eyes and clear the sleep from them.
She had hoped that the dreams would end there with that night. But no deliverance came, and no rescue. Only the mutes, to bring her some of their filthy food and some thick drink that tasted like seawater.
When they left Dany was once again in the bowels of the ship taken away to wherever the Silence floated on a cold black sea.
And a few days later, as her hull shuddered in the grip of some storm, the Crow’s Eye came below again, lantern in hand. This time his other hand held a dagger. “Have you seen the truth? Your gods have forsaken you but I have not. That's what the truth is.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I am hardly wrong, sweet thing. Have you forgotten? The crow has shown me the truth, which I have shared with you. The crow never lies.” Euron smirked. “I could kill you here and that would be the truth. My truth.”
“Not even you would dare,” said Dany, less amused and more scared now. “I am the King’s sister.”
“And yet I wear a crown and you rot in your cage.”
Daenerys could only gape at him.
“Well, I have killed sisters of Kings before. Wretched creatures and vile beings full of malice and sin. All they could do was cry and beg. Their eyes frantic as they would beg me to show mercy. When the life went out of them, I pissed on them, finding them no different than the whores that my creatures would strike down.”
The Crow’s Eye looked down at his belt and there was a dagger there. Dany could swore that she did not see it there before. How could I have missed that? He ran his hand along the smooth handle of it. “If it was the same half a dozen times before, why should it be different with you? Because you are the blood of the dragon?”
He stepped back and sheathed his dagger further in. “No, I’ll not kill you tonight. You might actually be different with that blood of yours. You have a powerful blood. I may have need of that that blood … later. For now, you are condemned to live.”
I may have need of that blood, Dany thought when Euron Greyjoy had climbed back onto the deck. She did not know in what he wanted to do with her blood.
That night she never slept afraid that the dreams would come again. Hours later in the second cage beside hers other holy men began to appear to witness their torments. Three wore the robes of septons of Westeros, and one the red raiment of a priest of R’hllor. The last was hardly recognizable as a man. Both his hands had been burned down to the bone, and his face was a charred and blackened horror where two blind eyes moved sightlessly above the cracked cheeks. He looked dead, burned to crisp by Drogon's fire. Dany knew it well. She had seen him doing it a thousand times before.
Last were two warlocks of the east, with flesh as white as mushrooms, and lips the purplish-blue of a bad bruise, all so gaunt and starved that only skin and bones remained. One had lost his legs. The mutes hung him from a rafter. “Pree,” he cried as he swung back and forth. “Pree, Pree!”
Only then did she remember him from a dream she once had much earlier. He is dead, Dany thought then. This must be a dream.
When all of them went silent, Dany wondered why the Greyjoy was collecting priests, but she did not think that she would like the answer. Jorah and Drogon were gone, and with them any hope for Daenerys. Her brother likely thought her dead and even if he didn't he would not know where she was. Not when she herself did not.
Her memories haunted her fever dreams. And that trouble her more.
Whenever some sort of sleep would come, the legless warlock made queer noises, and his companion babbled wildly in his queer eastern tongue, though whether they were cursing or pleading, Dany could not say. The septons made soft noises from time to time as well, but not in words that he could understand. Dany knew what it was. Their tongues had been cut out, just like the others'. She seemed to be the only one with a tongue here, on this ship. Her and Euron Greyjoy.
When the Greyjoy came again, his hair was swept straight back from his brow, and his lips were so blue that they were almost black. He had put aside his old crown. In its place, he wore an iron crown whose points were made from the teeth of sharks.
“You make a poor sort of King with that poor crown,” Dany said. “A King of nothingness.”
“I have not started my conquests yet still the shields have fallen to me. And you shall be there to witness it and share my triumphs. Victory is sweeter with a loved one by your side. We won't be ruling over nothingness after that.”
“Your victories are hollow. You cannot hope to get away with your attack on the Seven Kingdoms.”
“Why should I? I have already gotten away?” Euron's smiling eye glittered in the lantern light, blue and bold and full of malice. “Attacking Oldtown got me what I wanted. You should thank me for it. I took you away from the fool of the Hightower who'd have given you away to Stark. A great king is open-handed. I raised you from captivity and made you a queen. A simple gift from myself to you. All you would have to do is to accept my gifts.”
He moved closer. “Your brother is in no way to stop me, no more than that rouge from the North can. Hightower can search the Seven Seas but he will never find me. My longships are raiding up the Mander and all along the coast, even to the Arbor and the Redwyne Straits while they are busy watching the wolf and dragon battle each other. I promised my men that I will bring the Old Way back. I have brought it back”
He wouldn't dare. It was all the more madness just to think about it. “You can't-,” Dany started but could not find her voice anymore. “You cannot hope to hold the Shields.”
Euron laughed. “I hardly care about the Shields. The Shields have served my purpose. I took them with one hand, and gave them away with the other. A great king is open-handed. It is up to the new lords to hold them now. The glory of winning those rocks will be mine forever. When they are lost, the defeat will belong to the four fools who so eagerly accepted my gifts.” He produced a carved stone bottle and a wine cup. “You have a thirsty look about you,” he said as he poured. “You need a drink; a taste of evening’s shade.”
“No.” Dany turned his face away. “I don't want to.”
“I don't care.” The Greyjoy pulled her head back by the hair and forced the wine of the warlocks into her mouth again. Dany tried to clamp her mouth shut, twisting her head from his grasp and fought as best as she could, but he was much more stronger than her. In the end she had to choke or swallow.
The dreams were even worse the second time. She saw the longships of the Ironborn adrift and burning on a boiling blood-red sea. She saw Euron on the Iron Throne again, but he was no longer human. He seemed more squid than man, a monster fathered by a kraken of the deep, his face a mass of writhing tentacles. Beside him stood a shadow in woman’s form, long and tall and terrible, her hands alive with pale white fire. And when she gazed upon her face she trembled when the familiar violet eyes stared back at her, as if she was gazing back into a mirror. They laughed at her and laughed and laughed …
Three times Dany woke, and three times it proved no true waking, but only another chapter in a dream. But at last, there came a day when the door of the cages swung open, and a mute came splashing through with no food in his hands. Instead he had a lantern in his hand and a ring of keys in the other. The light was too bright to look upon, and Dany was afraid of what it meant. Bright and terrible. Something has changed. Something has happened.
“Bring them,” said a half-familiar voice from the hapless gloom. “Be quick about it, you know how he gets.”
One septon made a frightened noise as the mute undid his chains, a half-choked sound that might have been some attempt at speech. The legless warlock stared down at her, his lips moving silently in prayer. When the mute came for Dany, she lifted her chin and faced to resist him proudly. It was then she saw his face in the light of the lantern, just as she had back in the dungeons of Oldtown where she had released a sigh of relief. A gasp of horror passed her lips now as she looked upon his hollow cheeks and sunken eyes. He had lost half his weight and his clothes were marred with blood, mud and other filth. Even still she did not fail to recognize him. “Ser Jorah,” Dany gave a sad cry.
But when she tried to take a step towards him, her weakened legs folded under her but Ser Jorah picked her up. It would be sweet to hear his gruff voice once again, Dany thought caressing the wiry beard at his cheeks. But her bear knight simply gazed at her. His lips were trembling and he looked like he wanted to tell her something so badly but he could not. She knew it. Euron has cut off his tongue and turned him into another one of his creatures. When another stern shout came from the top her bear knight said nothing, pulled back and marched her off all in silence.
Not one of the other prisoners were fit enough to walk. In the end, more of the silent crew had to be summoned to get them out of the hell where they had been put. Ser Jorah still stayed by her side as she marched up the wooden steps. She could hear the warlocks just behind her but Jorah held her firmly not allowing her to look back. The septons brought up the rear, sobbing and gasping. With every turn of the stair, the steps grew brighter, until finally light appeared through the door high above. Dany marveled at the shaft of sunlight. So golden, and so beautiful.
When she walked up the steps through the light, she felt its warmth upon her face, and it was far sweeter than the warmth of the torch. And so, Dany returned back to the world and it's light once again. She was close to the sea still, Dany realised, but she did not know which sea or where.
A dozen longships were drawn up at the wharf below the castle, and twice as many beached along the strand.
Different banners streamed from their masts and Dany only knew some of them. She knew the Greyjoy kraken, but it was another banner which was the most prominent. From the sterns of the ship flew a flag Dany had never seen before: a red eye with a black pupil beneath an iron crown supported by two crows.
Beyond them, a host of merchant ships floated on a tranquil, turquoise sea. Cogs, carracks, fishing boats, even a great cog, a swollen sow of a ship as big as a whale. Prizes of war, Dany thought. Euron Greyjoy stood upon the deck of Silence, clad in a suit of black scale armor like nothing she had ever seen before. The plate was dark as smoke, but the pirate king wore it as easily as if it was the thinnest silk. The scales were edged in red gold, and gleamed and shimmered when they moved. She could see patterns within the metal, whorls and glyphs and arcane symbols folded into the steel.
Valyrian steel, Dany knew. His armor is Valyrian steel. In all the Seven Kingdoms, no man owned a suit of Valyrian steel. This can't be real. The secret to forge valyrian steel had died with the Doom of Valyria. Even before the Doom armours made of valyrian steel were rare things.
“Where are we?” Dany asked him then, wanting to know where she really was.
“Some rock, just off the Arbor. Could be the home of one Lord Hewitt or another of the shield islands. It makes no matter they ruled these islands. My men rule it now.”
The Arbor. Lord Redwyne had been loyal to Lord Tyrell and her brother. If she could get to the Arbor somehow... But there is little chance of that without a ship to take her there or a dragon to fly her there.
“Count yourself blessed,” said Euron. “We are going back to sea. The Hightower fleet creeps toward us, chasing after you most likely. The winds have been against them as they moved down the Whispering Sound, but they’re finally near enough to have emboldened the old women in these islands. And Leyton Hightower’s sons would soon turn their armies against us to knock me off these islands.”
“Where do you mean to take me to?”
“To my seat in Pyke,” Euron said and laughed at her frown. “Oh, don't be sad, sweetling. Count yourself blessed. I have spared you from the fate of your companions because you have been good to me.”
He turned her by grasping her shoulders. And there his men were binding his captives to the prows of his warships. The septons, the warlocks, the red priest and half a dozen other priests who served the gods she did not know.
“I have handed one to each of my ships,” Euron whispered venom in her ears laced with sweetness. “These men will feel the spray, the kiss of the Drowned God, wet and salty. My own brother has been bound tight to the prow of my ship. You should know I love you more than I do him.”
He laughed and turned back to the prow of his ship, standing behind her figurehead, a naked maiden slim and strong with outstretched arms and windblown hair … but no mouth below her nose.
Euron spoke a command; a black sail was raised, lines were cast off, and the Silence backed away from shore to the slow beat of the oarmaster’s drum, her oars rising and dipping and rising again, churning the water. Above them, the castle was burning, flames licking from the open windows.
Forlorn, Dany raised up her head to watch the sight one last time. Her home and her destiny. She would never return to the Seven Kingdoms ever again, she knew. And for the first time ever in her life she was afraid.
Author's Notes : A Christmas message and update from me. I want to extend a heartfelt message and thanks to all the readers and fans of this story out there for being a part of this book. Have a wonderful Christmas Eve and I wish you all a Merry Christmas.