The slave's chains stripe weals on his ankles and wrists. The sun burns their anger into his skin in coiling snakes, red and glistening. Yet he makes them sing with every step, and their rattling is a bell-sweet melody. They disappear when he moves, and leave the echo of their song. The slave's sword sings, too, each note a piercing lure. In this rag-clothed golden dancer, the Warrior and the Stranger have come to Meereen.
He is not half as heavy as the words of the gods on the minds of men. His ribs jut from beneath his rags, and his feet whisper on the sand. Yet each fighter sacrifices their body to this ghost. Worships this starving god. Casts themselves after the siren-song of his sword.
In the blade-flash before blood, he is their king.
The last of his competitors falls, and Daenerys rises. The slave lifts his chin. His bones are sword-sharp and his muscles sword-still. The touch of his eyes on hers is the first sharp ray of sun after a night of wine. It softens to the green of a single palm leaf on the desert wind.
He means to speak of his life spent in slavery. He longs for his home. He dreams of a world without chains, and that is why his eyes are so.
He is a golden ghost without a tongue.
She lifts her hands; her applause for this man will be real. Bells for the silence in his eyes. A voice for the songless slave, this strange creature fashioned for the world in perfect flesh. A phantom of light, whose sword hand is of the sun. Drogo would've named him friend, after besting him-barely-in battle.
There is no applause.
Four guards seize the golden ghost.
The slave finds his voice, but not his words.
The sand reddens.
A hand cups sunlight and blood, dead fingers never again to dance.
"A gift for you, my Queen! From the Kingslayer!"
~o~
For a turn of the moon, the cool breath of Dany's will has damped down the pulses of flame licking at her heart. The Kingslayer is a coal for her to set alight, nestled in dry grass. She has resisted every urge to set her dragons on him, to taste the succulent mercy of revenge. She should have the Kingslayer stabbed in the back. His throat slit shallowly enough for breath. His blood steaming, and music in his screams.
"I will see him," Dany says. The better to learn his motives. She bids Jorah counsel her, if only in memory. He sought to win your favour. He may have allied with others against your cause.
Missandei's voice is the desert sky of evening. Cool, gentling. "Will you have your guards with you, Your Grace?"
The dagger's blade is painful ice on the hot skin beneath Dany's dress. The pommel presses cold bruises into her hip. "No." She laces her sandals to her knees. Bits of dust blaze red-gold in the sun, each a drop of the Kingslayer's blood. Her voice sets them to spinning. "If my children are hungry, I'll let them eat."
~o~
The door is warm as Dany pushes it open, the wood smooth and heavy on the bare skin of her shoulder. An acrid tang sweeps away the sun-warmed wind of the hall.
Dany pulls up a chair next to the Kingslayer's bed, her dress scratching coolly against the back of her thighs. She moves the platter of food from the bedside table to her lap.
The Kingslayer does not turn his head. He stares upward, and his eyes do not resist the stifling heat pressing down upon him. They sink into their hollows; every ray of sun dulls their green. Each puff of air from his cracked and bloody mouth rattles like sand on stone. Sweat runs down his face and neck, beading on the golden hair of his arms.
The bones of his body are swords without purpose, stabbing into the swell of blanket that covers him. His right arm hangs off the edge of the bed; the source of the smell is clear.
The gods have withdrawn their grace from him. The starving god has perished, and only the man breathes. He is a snuffed candle meeting dragonflame. Yet his skin is still warm, and in him dwells a warrior's blade and a stranger's question.
"Your Queen commands you to eat. And drink." Dany holds the platter out to him.
He turns to face her, his gaze as blank as the one he had cast upon the ceiling. His hair frames his face in grease-dark gold. A near-sunrise sent to poisoned sleep.
"You will not pledge allegiance to me?"
The Kingslayer raises an eyebrow.
"You are as much of a coward as when you slew my father. Ungrateful for the grace of your life."
Red flecks of dust float in the air. The flash of gold in his eyes should turn them to droplets of blood, but his weakness stays their transformation. They scintillate with Dany's yearning. She loathes him for his weakness, and yearns for his hatred.
The Kingslayer washes down the bread with water, the muscles in his throat pulsing.
His sweat and his silence trail behind her.
They are burning chains: a stranger's question, and a god's weight.
~o~
Every morning, she goes to him; every night, she does the same.
He does not speak.
~o~
A turn of the moon later, and the brightness in his skin vies for power with the sun. They must have cut his tongue away with his hand; he will not speak. Each mote of desert dune ripens sweet and red in the blaze of his eyes. The blade of the warrior who cannot fight, and the question of the stranger who does not speak.
In the moment before she turns to leave, his anger slips away.
Quick as his sword, a sharpness of shame.
The god before he named himself dead with his scream.
~o~
Dany sleeps.
His quiet and his scent wrap warm chains around her body
~o~
In the evening's stillness, his face is as grey as the moon, silvering. Warm light from the window bends her to him. His stump is hot in her hand; dried blood and puss crackle between her fingers and stain her skin. Such a god should not have such a wound, a death so unlike his dance. His bedding ripples as he convulses.
Her anger is a sharp hot knife cutting away her feeling: that he should die, not by her hand or by her dragon's breath. Not screaming, but silent. Before she kills him, he will speak of his purpose. For this, she rages for his life.
Daenerys is no witch, to sing his blood awake. She washes the puss from his cuts, and applies the sour-smelling cream. His gasps are the song of his healing; they turn to sighs as she applies the painkilling ointment. She wraps a strip of clean linen around his wound, tying it with a fierce pull. He winces. A dead man will tell her no stories, and allow her no vengeance. She works two fingers under the knot.
A soft chuckle pours out from him. Lannister is not a fool.
He takes a sip of water and clears his throat.
"Thank you."
A bandage tightens around Dany's chest.
~o~
Every morning, she goes to him; every night, she does the same.
Gratitude is all he offers.
~o~
Lannister is chewing on grapes and cheese when she enters the room. He tilts his head upwards to feel the touch of the sun, closing his eyes. In the hot morning light, his throat is a delicate line of gold. It threads through the bandage around her heart and pulls it tight. He turns to her, patting the bed beside him.
She rolls her eyes.
His stump is still red, though the cuts have stopped weeping. He will need to be tended to regularly to ensure the infection does not return.
"Thank you."
His hand is warm on hers, the fine hairs on his skin bits of flickering golden fire.
"Kingslayer." The dust in the air shimmers, now more gold than red.
Her heart has its own threads, and they are silver, her own moon. His blade cannot cut them, and they are not the answer to the stranger's question. She pulls her hand away and dips a cloth in the basin of warm water.
In his eyes is not swordlight, but shadow. Silent and animal. He follows the movement of her hand.
"Do you know why they took this from me?"
"You are the Kingslayer. I am their Queen."
His laugh is a bitter sound. "Princess." There in his eyes, a warrior's anger. "I gave your father the justice he deserved."
She rinses the cloth in the basin, and opens a pot of ointment. She applies it carefully with her fingertips, barely touching him.
"You would've given it yourself, had you been alive to see his rule."
And there, the shame that stills the slave.
"He would've burnt you, your men, your dragons, if you opposed him. I would not have been able to stop him. He was the King."
"Surely he would not have burnt his own child alive."
"He would burn a city to the ground, if that's what it took to preserve his power."
"His own daughter, the blood of Old Valyria, his bloodline-"
"Would've died screaming as the caches of wildfire underneath the city burst into flame. Just as any other man, woman and child."
"But you-"
"I did."
~o~
A week passes. Daenerys is as silent as Lannister once was, for his words have taken hers. Her face in the mirror is as pale as her hair, for the fierceness of his sun has burnt the colour from her flesh.
~o~
She sends a bath.
He sends a word.
Coward.
~o~
She makes of herself a silver ghost to counter him.
His is the ghost of the truth, green and gold and red. Valyrian steel and Valyrian blood.
She does not have a blade or a dance. She has her mind and her words.
It is not the sun that illuminates him, but the moon, soft.
His sword is his skin. He is still a golden dancer, and his dance is in the green of his eyes. He is a silent king, and says with the smallest upward turn of his mouth, You have come to help me bathe, Princess?
Daenerys turns away. "I will not help you." She sets down the tray of food, and the bandages and ointment beside it.
She is cool as the moon, and his eyes burn her all the same. A dragon, cowed by the new sun.
His sword, rising in his ghost hand, to strip her scales from her as the sun strips the moon of its light.
He has not pledged allegiance to her.
An icy rage flows over her, sudden and cold, drowning all the gold before her.
He seeks to seduce her, the traitor, to murder her as he did her father. He imagines she is her father's daughter, and she will seek to burn the world. His gentleness is a lie and he would kill her in their bed. There is nothing but the green sun of his eyes and the light of the moon to bear witness to her thoughts. She stands frozen in the doorway, her back to him.
Clothes rustle behind her. His voice is low and quiet. "I'll need your help with the bandages."
"Will you, Kingslayer?" Her fingers clutch at the doorway. She does not feel the press of the wood, only the light of the moon and the sun of his eyes on her back. "I can't help you."
"You help me every day, Daenerys." In his tone is the same quiet shame as was in his eyes when he would not speak.
But it is not the Common Tongue he speaks.
"You will not profane my mother tongue by speaking it!"
Her dagger is at the Kingslayer's throat. Blood wells bright against his skin. Her arms shake with the strain of reaching him.
Everything of his body is brighter. More real than the dragonfire immolating him in her imagination. The yellow-gold of his hair, the green of his eyes. His warmth pressed against her. The laughter in his eyes as his hand grasps her wrist.
He pulls the dagger from her hand. "If you were going to kill me," he continues, still in Valyrian, "you should've picked a better weapon. This," he tests the weight of the blade, "is so small. Even if you could apply enough pressure, it wouldn't be enough to slit my throat."
"If you were going to seduce me," Dany spits, now in the Common Tongue, "you should not have profaned the blood of Old Valyria with your words in the attempt."
"Is that what you thought this was!" He laughs, but his eyes burn. "That your men would take my hand, that I would lay my secret open for you, and for what?"
"I-"
"That I would kill an innocent woman." Her dagger is at her throat now, and the green of his eyes pierces her. "What am I, that you would believe such things of me?"
He presses it deeper into her throat. "I have shown you what I am."
She closes her eyes. His hair is ghostly-soft against her palm.
He withdraws the dagger, lifting her in his arms to sit her down on his bed beside him.
He plucks her hand from his hair, grasping it firmly in his, before holding it down in his lap with his maimed arm. He gathers the bandages and ointment in his lap. In his eyes is a strange softness, the rising of his sun. "There is a task I require of you. Will it repulse you so, Princess?"
"You will stay silent, Kingslayer."
In his eyes the sun has risen, full and gold. "I don't think a man has ever seduced you, Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen."
His bandages stick where they are still wet from his bath. Dany tears them savagely from his skin. He hisses in pain, grimacing, and his eyes squeeze shut.
"I asked for your silence."
"You asked for my silence," he says, hissing again as she chooses the salve made from burning spices to anoint him, digging her nails into his wound. "But it's not what you want." He grins. "The Kingslayer will have words with the Princess. Is that so terrible?"
"Yes."
"I loved your mother like she was my own." He should stutter and falter around the words. The syllables should not slip so easily from him. His mind a dancer, Valyrian his sword. Daenerys a slave to be cut down in sunlight. The moon a slave to her king.
A dragon burns through all who would seek to harm her. Let him be surprised by her fire.
She shoves at him, and he laughs. "Is that what would please you?" He falls back on the bed, and his mouth and throat are bare for her touch.
She turns away from him. She cannot burn the sun.
"I will tell you of your mother."
This is what it is to be hypnotised by a near-king, a slave with a golden sword.
"I had to listen to her every night, and I could do nothing. My father tried to teach me other languages. I found it was much easier to learn by talking. It was a secret between us, something that made our lives easier."
The Kingslayer picks up the knife. "This is not a good knife for slitting throats," he says, now in the Common Tongue. He presses his finger to the tip, and a drop of blood wells there. His hand is warm where he closes her fingers around the hilt. He moves her hand to press the knife against his chest. "It is, however, ideal for stabbing in the heart."
Dany swallows. "I didn't come here to kill you."
"I didn't come to the throne room of the Red Keep to kill your father."
He moves her hand to the small of his back, and presses her hand to the bare skin beneath his tunic. "But I did. I shoved my sword in his back, just there."
He meets her eyes and now she sees the slave's defiance and anger. The golden ghost. His sword that called the sun to be his queen. Last, soft, the slave's shame.
"My last great act was to slit the King's throat, but you'll not be able to do that here."
Her hand is limp when he opens it to take the dagger from her. His fingers are gentle around her wrist as he moves her hand to press against his throat. He closes his eyes. His lashes are pale gold, lit with the sun's last rays before the moon breathes again. He swallows softly, and the skin on his throat is warm against her hand, the hairs on his neck soft on her palm.
Would it be a greatness, then, to kill this man?
Viserion is gentle.
Her fingers unfurl against his throat, white on gold.
The moon is cool and soft in her hair as she presses her mouth to his.
His body warms her, and the sun warms the moon.