~ Dany ~
'From ice does the dragon's fire burn...' Tyrion recites. His gaze is thoughtful and heavy with contemplation.
The red priestess who had come to us at Dragonstone had asked for nothing in return for the message brought to me from her Lord of Light.
The message which told me that I would sit upon the Iron throne three days hence and that the bones of my enemies would be but ash in four. The message which told me I would find allies beneath the flowers, sand, and snow. The same message which told me that from ice did the dragon's fire burn.
'Strangely fortuitous now don't you think?' He casts me a sideways glance.
'I had not given it much thought...' I lie.
In truth, I had thought much about her words today. For since his kiss I had felt aflame, anticipation sparking through my blood like tiny bolts of fire. The memory of his mouth and hands upon me, hungry and wild, the heat of his desire pressed thick and hard against my own. I had played the memory of it over and over and had thought of little else since but what would happen this night, once the vows were spoken and the feasting was done.
As my maids bathed me in lilac water and massaged jasmine oil over my skin, I'd thought of him. As my hair had been combed and scented, brushed and braided, I'd thought of him. As my eyes had been decorated with the finest cornsilk dust and my lips tinted with the faintest smear of siren honey, I'd thought of him. As my gown had been hung and sewn with the most delicate of Yissaria beads and slipped over my head so it sat like a soft whisper against my skin, I'd thought of him.
It was senseless. Weak. Female. I knew this. To feel this softening, this need, this breathless longing after only a few brief meetings. To count away the moments until his eyes would look upon me again and his mouth would find my own again. To yearn for it — for him — like this should frighten me, I knew this too. But it did not. I felt neither frightened nor weak. I felt something else altogether... I felt strong. I felt afire.
Tyrion and I were alone, Missandei and Greyworm awaited him outside where he would join them to make their way to the castle, then to the Godswood.
'They tell me that my father or brother should present me to my betrothed,' I say, crossing the tent to where he sits. 'But since I no longer have either, I had hoped you would carry out the duty?'
Tyrion's gaze widens with surprise before turning misty with some unchecked emotion. 'It would be my greatest honour, your grace.'
'You told me becoming my hand was your greatest honour?' My mouth raises in a playful smile.
'It was. Until you surpassed it this moment,' he says.
I can't help but laugh, a strange, girlish laugh. It sounded nothing like the one I knew.
When his face turns serious I know he is about to offer me some learned wisdom. 'For what it is worth, I do think it is a good match.'
'Well, I trust you would not have advised it had you thought otherwise?'
'I advised it for the good of the realm,' he explains. 'But I do believe it is a good match for you. I believe he is a good match for you. He will be kind, honourable, and loyal. I am sure of it.'
I nod, glancing from him lest he see the depth of my own hope and feeling in my eyes.
'And you are permitted to love him, you know,' Tyrion adds a moment later.
'I am? I gape, feigning shock. My hand frowns, unamused. 'It is a marriage of alliance Tyrion, nothing more.' The words feel like a lie upon my tongue. The words are a lie upon my tongue.
'It is not unheard of for a marriage of alliance to also be one of love. Did not you come to love Drogo?'
A strange lick of guilt prickles over me. So consumed by Jon had I been this day and the last that I had given little thought to Drogo. To the man I had first been given to as a wife. As a prize. I had not wanted to be his queen it was true but that choice was not mine to make.
Had I mourned him when he was taken from me? Yes. But not as I had mourned for my child or my home, not as I had grieved for Jorah when I sent him from me.
Had I come to love him?
The truth of this is less clear. I often wonder whether it was only that I yearned so much to love and be loved that I had taken it in whatever form it was given to me.
Drogo had taught me a great many things, and I wonder too what I would be now had he lived. For was it not his death which had shown me that strength and power lived within me? Was it not his death which had awoken the dragon?
'I had not known love before him,' I say, gazing at some point beyond Tyrion, to someplace in the past. Someplace where love had been as mysterious to me as the place I knew as home. Viserys had been incapable of love. His rage and fear and helplessness had prevented it. It had moulded and twisted him into something dark and cruel. 'Yet on some days — brighter, warmer, hopeful days — Viserys would cling to me so hard and whisper to me so fervently of how I was all he had left in the world that I truly believed he loved me.'
It was on these days too he would talk of our marriage, of our glorious return home on the backs of our dragons to claim what was rightfully ours. He had been half-mad by then, of course. The dragon has three heads, do you see? Who is the other, Viserys? Who is the other? Rhaeghar was, but he is dead, Dany. We are all that is left. We are all that is left...
'You are loved, your grace,' Tyrion says, his smile tainted with sadness. 'You are loved.'
I blink myself back to the present and refocus my gaze on him. 'Not here, Tyrion. Not in Westeros. They do not love me here — they fear me still.' I hate how small my voice sounds then, how weak.
'But they will come to love you. When they see what you are - who you are - they will love you.' There is conviction in his words. 'As will he. If he does not already...'
***
Turning my head upward I send a silent greeting to the sky and call Drogon to me. Tonight they would see who and what I truly was. Tonight, for good or for ill, they would see Daenerys Targaryen wed their northern son. For some, their fear and mistrust would only grow, of that, I was sure, but tonight I would leave no one in any doubt of who and what I was.
Jon too would see, and a sliver of uncertainty rose within me at the notion. Would he question his decision when he saw me climb from the dragon's back? Would he fear me more or desire me less? In the end it mattered not, for I would not hide from them any longer.
I do not have to wait long.
Drogon seems to burst from the sky itself, charging silently through the black cloudless canopy above, the sound of his great wings growing louder as he nears me. He loops around me once before coming to land just beyond the boundary of the darkened forest, where the white stretch of snow meets the high needled trees.
The north was a rich and verdant land, and I imagine in summer it became a world of varying shades of green, pungent and piney to the nose. As it was now, however, snow-covered and bare, my dragons were not fond of it. Neither were my men. They longed to return south, perhaps some even longed to cross the narrow sea to return home. They had followed me to the ends of the earth but now that the war was won they grew restless. Soon though, I would tell them that another enemy lay waiting, one unseen and unknown, one which would be impossible to defeat if Jon's nightmarish vision of them proved true.
But all of this would come after. After our marriage. After this alliance had begun to smooth away the cracks of this broken land.
Word of it had spread quickly after Jon had called his lords to council. I'd been told that some had received it well, for some in the north had warmed to me it seemed. In others though — those same pockets that spoke of rebellion and independence — Jon was called a cuckold and worse: a fool. I'd sent ravens south so Varys could disperse the news there. Only time would tell how this marriage would be viewed by the people of these kingdoms, though in truth it had all become of less import to me. For surely whomever I married would offend some pocket or other, and those who longed to steal my crown and rid the world of the last Targaryen would still linger, would still lie in wait, would still come when they thought me weakest. Would Jon's presence by my side quieten the Northern rebels? Yes. But it guaranteed little else.
Lady Sansa's appointment had been received with varying degrees of approval from the Northern lords. How can a woman alone keep us safe? The wildlings will turn on us as soon as Snow goes south with his Dragon Queen. How can a woman rule without a man by her side? Sansa would have a similar battle to my own; she would need to prove her worth to the men who doubted her. For it was most often men who doubted our capabilities.
Drogon carries me up into the air and the familiar feeling of weightlessness rises from my toes to my stomach, into my chest. Beneath the cloak, my gown is thinner than I would like and so the chill slips under and wraps itself around my legs and thighs. But when I recall the memory of Jon's touch there, the feel of his warm fingers pushing against my need, the chill disperses. A small gasp of pleasure escapes my throat at the recollection, of the taste of his mouth, the deep male sounds from his throat, the feel of him hard beneath my fingers. Longing grips at my stomach and thighs, tightening them with desire. Against the rough scales of Drogon's back, I try to find some measure of release from it, tilting my hips inward, pressing my thighs against the throbbing warmth of him.
I take Drogon north, away from Winterfell, keen to see more of the place Jon loves so much, the place that bore him and raised him. I was eager to see more of it as I was eager to see what he had agreed to leave behind. I wonder then, vaguely, how he might appear in the south. His pale skin kissed brown from the hot sun, his chest damp from the noonday heat. Would he take the knife to the dark curls of his head and the thick hair of his face?
How much of his heart would he leave here in this cold place that had raised him to manhood and kingship? How much of it would he bring south to the place where his father had been killed and his sister abused? To the place where the Lannisters and their allies had plotted to wipe his father's name from this world. To the place where the same family had used treachery and barbarity to destroy mine. What happiness could truly be found there for either of us?
We had some time to prepare ourselves for a return to the capital, for Jon and I would reside on Dragonstone until the rebuilding of The Red Keep was complete. It had begun in earnest after my attack and I had commanded Lannister gold be used to do it. I would pay the men of the city handsomely to build me a palace which looked nothing like that which had stood before. It would take close to a year I had been told.
Dragonstone felt more like home in any case. Perhaps as it was here I had been brought forth into this world. Its cold old rocks far more welcoming than the treacherous red and gold brick of the Keep. Or perhaps it was — and I had told no other soul this — that there were times when I sat alone by the fire in the Chamber of The Painted Table, that I was certain I could hear the voices of my ancestors speak to me. My brother and mother. Rhaenyra and Daemon. Jaeherys and Alysanne. Even Aegon, Visenya, and Rhaenys. Or perhaps that was but my loneliness recounting Viserys' stories to comfort me. To remind me that though I was the last Targaryen, I was not so completely alone in the world after all.
The wind whistles and blows around my face, under the collar of my coat, through my hair. Then, as we rise higher I see it. Rising from the expanse of snow like an illusion of white. The outline of the great wall of ice that kept the dead from the living. I slow Drogon as we move toward it, slower and slower and slower still, halting him in mid-air just beneath the clouds and aimed towards the great shield that guards the realms of men. One hundred leagues long and seven hundred feet high, it has stood for more than eight thousand years. Could Drogon and his brothers destroy it with their fire?
I have the sudden urge to fly on towards it, over it, past it. To confront these dead men that Jon fears so — to destroy them with Drogon's fire. With his brothers' fire. Before they have a chance to breach it, before they have a chance to take my home from me again, before they have a chance to take him from me. Light flickers dimly on the east and west walls of its face, Eastwatch-by-the-Sea and The Shadow Tower. Castle Black glowed brightest in the centre; the place Jon had gone to become a man. Where he had risen to Lord Commander. Where he had joined Wildlings and Northmen. Where he had loved a Wildling woman.
Drogon's great wings beat slow and steady, his open mind perched upon my own, awaiting instruction, ready and eager for battle, ready and eager to unleash his fire. I do feel alone then. So very alone. For who else saw the world as I do? Who else could survey it from the vantage of a dragon's back?
I glance back over my shoulder in time to see the first glimmer of light begin to spread across the walled patch of white to the east of the small castle. Where he waited. An image of his face roars into my mind; dark eyes and darker hair, skin as pale as the snow itself. A flush of desire spreads across my body, warming me, pulling me toward him.
With a final glance toward The Wall, I whisper my promise to what lay beyond it.
'Soon. Soon you shall be destroyed, as all of my enemies before you have been destroyed. You will not take my home from me. No one shall take my home from me. Not again.'
Then, with a single thought, I urge Drogon turn and bid him fly straight for the light of Godswood to where he waits for me.