Jorah's heart began to pound away on the inside of his chest as if it were trying to escape the confines of its prison as he awaited to hear what his Queen would do with him now that he had returned when she had told him not to. Would she do as she had threatened to do and behead him or would she only turn him away once more? The heat, the small crowd, all of the people who surrounded him, none of that mattered except for her. It was almost as though everyone had disappeared and it was only Jorah and his Queen standing there with their eyes locked on one another. He could still see the pain in her eyes, the undeniable mark that his betrayal had left upon her delicate features, but there was something else there, too, something that only those closest to her could possibly decipher and that was a certain longing. Had she missed him too?

That thought had given him only a brief amount of comfort. If his Queen had missed him, then certainly she wouldn't behead him, would she? It would be a permanent act on her behalf and one that could never be undone once the sword was swung and he was gone from this earth forever. It wasn't something that could be as easily erased as sending him away would have been if she should ever want to see his ageing face again.

When Dany began to speak, her loyal knight nearly froze in his place, as he continued to watch her eyes and lips for any clues that might give away how she felt and what she might do with him before her mouth even spoke the words. Even his heart that had been so frantically beating away in his chest moments earlier seemed to stop beating so he could hear her every word.

"Get him out of my sight and throw him into one of the dark cells." She ordered her guards without any hint of emotion to her words.

"Khaleesi, please…" he managed to call out to her before two guards grabbed him by his arms and began to escort him back to the great pyramid, but he was already too late to get his Queen's attention now. The guards were uncaring to his pleas to let him go and they were already pulling him further and further away by her command. The dungeon could almost be seen as being a worse punishment for him than that of being an exile, but in truth, this way he would be nearer to her and perhaps she would eventually change her mind in time, but that was only just wishful thinking. Would she even come to visit him there in his dark cell? Or would he be there to live alone for the rest of his days while he slowly turned to stone from the grey scale that was slowly creeping up his arm as if it were a vine?

The guards kept pulling and tugging away at his arms and Jorah finally gave in and let them lead him the rest of the way to his cell without another protest or struggle. Jorah knew that it would be much easier on him if he only cooperated with the Unsullied guards. The dungeons that the silent soldiers were taking him to were extremely dark, reminding him of the tales of the Black Cells beneath the Red Keep that he had often heard of in his youth, although he had never seen them first hand and he never really wanted to try his luck at it either. The Black Cells had only just been tales to him, something to be feared and a place that you never wanted to find yourself locked away in and now he found himself standing in a place that was similar to all of those stories.

When the nameless guards came to an empty cell, they tossed the knight into it with no great care, causing him to fall face first onto the cold and damp stone. Jorah then heard the sound of the heavy wooden door being slammed shut behind him before he had a chance to bring himself back to his feet. Jorah instead pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and began to crawl around in the darkness as if he were a blind man, looking for the back wall of his cell, while silently praying that his eyes would adjust to the darkness that surrounded him sooner rather than later. His fingers could feel vast amounts of old straw that littered the floor, knowing that it hadn't been replaced in ages, and he could hear the vague sound of what could have only been mice or rats somewhere off in the distance. The sound of the creatures scratching around echoed off of the stone walls, making them seem closer to him than they actually were and yet the thought of them being near him at all still made him uneasy.

After several long moments of feeling around the floor, Jorah managed to find the stone wall and he positioned himself in a way that he could lean against it and tried to get as comfortable as he possibly could as he awaited for whatever might come next. Would he be there for a few hours? Days? Weeks? Or even months before Daenerys would come to a decision on what she should do with him? He wouldn't believe that she cared so little about him that she would leave him in the dungeon on his own for months without coming to see him for some reason or another.


Several hours had passed (or what Jorah could only assume to be hours), when his eyelids grew heavy with sleep, and he finally allowed himself to rest and to put his troubled thoughts away. Drifting in and out of sleep, Jorah would try to move around and get as comfortable as he possibly could in what little straw that had been provided for him in the cell. He would lay with his eyes on the ceiling during his waking hours, but there was nothing up there but darkness and the squeaking of rats to keep his weary mind company.

Jorah was starting to grow hungry and thirsty and weak after a time of being inside of the dark room, how long it had been now, he could not say, and yet he found himself growing so weak that it was starting to become more and more difficult for him to move around in his cell.

"Jorah…" his Queen's voice suddenly called out for him from the doorway. Jorah gathered what little energy that he had to turn himself around to look up at her, but he quickly covered both of his eyes to shield them from the light flooding into his cell from one of the many torches that were surrounding her, presumably held by her guards. "Take him up to my chambers. I should like to speak with him alone."

Yet again, Jorah saw Dany's guards rush over to grab him by the arms to force him up onto his feet to make him walk up to her chambers. His legs gave way a few too many times, but the guards were vigilant and pulled him back up to his feet again with ease. Jorah knew that his Queen must be following along behind them, watching her once great knight now struggling to walk on his own and for that he felt ashamed that she would see him this way.

Once they were up in her chambers, the Unsullied sat him down at the great table in the center of the room, where her council often met for their meetings and then left the two of them alone just as she had requested.

"How long have I been there?" He asked, but he didn't dare look at her. Whether it was from the shame that he felt from being carried away by the guards in front of her, or from the pain that he felt from looking at her after what she had done to him, or if it were both, he couldn't say.

"A little over a week." She replied rather unapologetically. "I told you that if I saw you here again that I would behead you and yet you came back… why?"

Jorah lifted his head a little but still he didn't meet Daenerys' gaze. "I'm sworn to protect you, to kill for you and to die for you if need be, my Queen. I meant every word of it."

"If you truly meant it then why did you hide your own secrets from me, Ser Jorah?"

It was a fair enough question and it was a rather tough one for him to answer at that. "You were safe… so I didn't think it mattered at the time. I know now that I was wrong to keep it hidden from you as long as I did… but I thought that I could leave it all behind me and I did not want to think of it any further."

"Did you not trust me with your secrets as I so easily trusted you with mine?" She asked, walking over to him and placed her hand underneath his chin to tilt his head upwards to force him to look up to her. "I trusted you with everything that I had in me and you couldn't return the favor?"

Jorah felt his eyes beginning to well up with tears at those words. "Daenerys, I have made many mistakes in my lifetime, but there isn't one that I will regret more than not telling you when I should have." A tear slid down his cheek and he could have sworn that he saw tears starting to well up in her own eyes as the two continued to look at one another. "I never meant to hurt you."

"How can I believe you after everything that you have kept from me? How can I take you back if I cannot trust you?"

Jorah shook his head 'no' in response. "I don't know..." His voice was hushed as he spoke and she let go of his chin and then backed away from him. "You have good reason not to trust me."

"Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to do that to you? To just send you away after everything that we have been through? You were my dearest friend…"

Daenerys seemed to be fighting back the tears that were streaming down her own cheeks and they only seemed to be growing heavier the more that she was able to get everything off of her chest that she must have been holding in ever since he had left her side. "I missed you and I know that I shouldn't and that's the worst part of all of it."

"That you missed me?" He asked, standing up from the table, but he quickly grabbed onto the side of it to steady himself and to keep from falling.

"I—I realized, after I sent you away, that I needed you here by my side. I hated that I did." She crossed her arms defensively over her chest, giving in and allowing herself to cry now. "I shouldn't have become so attached… and I don't want to send you away again… But how can I keep you here? Please give me a reason to trust you again so I don't have to send you away." Her voice was pleading with him as she took a step closer to him and peered up into his blue eyes.

Jorah reached out with his good arm and gently began wiping her tears away with his calloused thumb and to his surprise, she didn't pull away from him. "I came back to you, even after you told me that you meant to behead me if I should step foot back into Meereen. It was foolish of me not to heed your warning. But the truth of the matter is that I cannot live without you, Daenerys." He admitted to her, letting his hand fall back down to his side.

"Why?" She asked.

Jorah bit his lip, wanting more than anything to tell her the truth behind his own convictions now. "Because I love you. I will always love you." He muttered and looked into her eyes. "I have loved you for a long time now, Daenerys… from the moment I met you… and I won't keep anymore secrets from you… you deserved to know. As you deserve to know this..." Jorah loosened some of the bracelets on his arm and began rolling up his sleeves to reveal the greyscale to her. "You won't get it unless it touches you." He told her as Dany grew closer to him with a look of disbelief plainly written all over her face as she inspected the greyscale.

"How long does it take?"

"I don't know…"

"Is there a cure?" She asked and Jorah gave his Queen a light shrug. There was no way of knowing as he had never seen it done before in his lifetime.

"I won't let it take you from me." His Queen had stopped crying now and was looking up at him with a certain determination on her face. "Not now after I have just gotten you back… we will find a cure."