Her
He'd lured her to the forge with the promise of something amazing. When he handed her a sword, she felt foolish for being disappointed. Jon Snow would be the sort to give practical gifts.
It was light and delicate and although she had no idea what to do with it, she liked the tiny dragon carved into the handle.
"I know you're going to fight, when the time comes, regardless what I say. I can't have you flying off empty-handed," he explained in an embarrassed tone. He wanted desperately to convince her out of the fight, but he knew better than to voice his opinion.
"I hardly think a sword is any match for a dragon, but I suppose it would be reckless not to have some form of…secondary protection," she allowed, holding the thing limply in her hands, rotating her wrists to get a better look at the way the reflection threw off different shades of light. Her eyes made an upward arc and landed on the sweating blacksmith in front of her. His eyes darted downward. "And you must be the person responsible for my very first sword." She smiled at him, but he simply nodded, barely, before turning his back to her.
In the Great Hall an hour later, Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen announced their union to the gathered lords of the North and the Vale. Agreeing that some happy news might be an improvement to morale, they stopped short of proclaiming themselves King and Queen. It implied a future they could not promise.
Men whose names she didn't know clumsily presented themselves to the Queen. They weren't very good at taking turns. On the morning she'd arrived with their king, every pair of eyes for miles looked at her like she'd taken something from them, and yet here they were, stumbling one over top the other. When it boils down to it, all men are little more than boys, vying for a pretty girl's attention. Jon Snow leaned away from some great bearded man and brushed a kiss against her cheek, and she knew then he was about to abandon her for his maps and his plans. Lord Tyrion had expressed a desire to speak with her after dinner.
When she arrived back at her chambers for their meeting, however, the back facing hers was much taller than Lord Tyrion's. She planted her feet in the doorway before moving any closer.
"Do the two of you only operate in elaborate schemes meant to trick people?" She asked, because his armor gave him away better than his height did.
"Your Grace, there was no trick intended. I simply assumed you wouldn't speak to me unless there was some maneuvering involved." The Kingslayer turned around slowly, hands raised in surrender. Daenerys Targaryen walked a step further into the room before stopping again. She wanted to run away but instead she said:
"Speak then, if you must."
"I see marriage has only slightly improved your temperament," said Jaime Lannister, with the tremble of a laugh in his voice, sending the Queen turning on her heel. "Your Grace, I'm sorry. It was in jest. Please." The sincerity leaking into his words that made her stay.
His good hand rested on his sword. It was his golden hand he favored, leaning slightly into its weight. He looked no different than any other person who'd ever come to beg her audience. He didn't look like a murderer.
"I was less surprised by Cersei's lies than I was by you keeping your word. I imagined you'd rather rot to death, slowly, trapped in the Red Keep with your beloved sister."
The Kingslayer did not answer. He hung his head and melted down to sit on the edge of her bed, which was impertinent. What kind of knight could relax so easily in the presence of a Queen? Her words seemed not to reach his ears or register behind his eyes, strangely without arrogance. She waited. There was no joy in kicking something without the will to live.
"Ser Jaime, I've never had any illusions about who my father was. You are an oath breaker, regardless."
"My whole life has been defined by the disappointment I've been to kings and queens. Your husband seems to think we all might die. I'd like to earn my honor back before I go."
Daenerys Targaryen stared into the face of one of the villains from her childhood nightmares. The Honorless Knight who killed her father with betrayal and a knife to the back. She stared into his face and noticed there were wrinkles forming in the creases of his eyes. His hair was more grey than blonde.
"Well then, Kingslayer, I suggest you make the most of your last chance," she sighed from where she stood, orbiting the open doorway to her rooms. "Send your brother in. I certainly need to speak with him now."
Him
She felt like soft hot silk when he'd reached out for her. Beads of sweat ran down her arms, dragon blood boiling like a fever. He hadn't been sleeping through the night - death's hovering shadow casting too dark a light. When he rolled to her and she'd welcomed him like the penitent he was, he'd felt a cool relief in spite of her heat. Her skin molded to his like finely made leather. Her voice insinuated itself into the incalculable whispers of the night.
The Night King could have barged through their door and he would've turned around and told him to go fuck himself.
And he thought, over and over again, above her and beside her and beneath her, let me keep this.
When their breathing had ironed itself out, she laid half-exposed, his head resting on her outstretched arm – a pale limb – while she pulled and twisted the curls of his hair. His own hands were stitched together and limp just below his angriest scar. Out of his periphery, he saw the proud cliff of her nose, the swollen curve of her upper lip. The pieces of hair he'd jostled loose from her braid, fallen across her icy eyes.
"I can't keep thinking I've brought you to your ruin. The thought of it keeps me up at night," he admitted. His voice shuddered with breathlessness. She retracted her arm in a fluid motion and propped her tilted head on the lolling back of her hand. She draped her other arm across the rounded hillock of her waist, dragging her knuckles as it went. Her ease and grace were a continual dagger to his heart.
"Everything I would never have gained through conquest, you've given me," she stated, factually and without room for argument. "A home, if I want it. Family. Westerosi loyalty. A king, of whom I've grown quite fond-"
"I love you," he interjected, because he had to, he'd felt it bubbling so furiously in his stomach. She smiled.
"And I love you. We are so close to having everything we've ever fought for. I am scared, Jon Snow, to be sure, of everything we're about to face. But our people need us. Death is just another slave city to conquer."
"And what then? What happens if we manage to live through a war with the Night King?"
"We live through another war with the False Queen. We rule. We raise our child to be a good ruler after us." Daenerys Targaryen sat up straight, a thoughtful look on her face, hovering naked like a goddess.
"Yes, but to live through this? To defeat the Night King, for the sake of a chair?" he argued, sitting himself upright and facing her. Her hand reached out to cover his where it rested, palm spread for support, on the bed.
"I am not Cersei Lannister and you are not Robert Baratheon. We weren't raised by the rest of the Targaryens. We won't hide from our own people behind our crowns. It's more than just a chair we're fighting for. It's a new world."
Overturning his own hand, he clasped hers and brought it to her mouth. She flattened her palm and he kissed it. The fortitude of her belief overpowered his persistent doubt, every time. It was what had intimidated him so much when they met. It was what he clung tightest to when the cold stung, when the possibility of death seemed most certain.
"Now listen," she began in an entirely different tone. "I've given it a lot of thought and I think if he's a boy I'd like to name him Eddard."
Still holding onto her hand, he pulled her to him then. "And what if she's a girl?" he asked, wrapped around her like a sheath and whispering into the folds of her hair.
"Lyanna Targaryen. Just like your mother."
That night, he slept. He slept tangled with her, and he dreamt of black haired children with fire in their bellies and ice in their eyes.
The Red Woman and the Three-Eyed Raven
It wasn't difficult, sneaking in. People see what they want to see. The people wanted to see a cold, frightened woman from some far corner of the north, relieved and grateful for the shelter. Nobody saw a Red Woman. But the Red Woman had been within the walls of Winterfell for days. She'd hidden among the crowd, speaking to no one, shouldering the shadows.
There wasn't anybody expecting to find a Priestess from Asshai among those gathered at this fortress. The Red Woman should have been in Volantis by this point in time. She had, however,been expecting to find Lord Beric Dondarrion.
He seemed a good enough man but weak, doubtless a side effect of his many strange encounters with death. Still, she could not complain about the momentary salves to her dueling illnesses – loneliness and unbearable foreboding – that his company brought. Being held reminded her that she was, in fact, human.
Dondarrion kept her secret for her. He was more important to the King than most, but not important enough to be needed for much, other than battle. So he sat, comfortably in her palm, awaiting instruction.
In the quiet suspension of night, watching as even her breath turned to fog in the cold, she felt her body's weariness. It hardly needed sleep. It survived on scraps. Her recollection of passing days was blurry – her memory working lazily, like something rubbed dull by age. Only one thing kept her going: the flames. The flames had shown her that it was not yet time to succumb to death. She still had some part left to play.
It was the night Jon Snow and the Dragon Queen announced their union to the Great Hall. For perhaps the last time, there was some residue of merriment in the behavior of the huddled, anxious Northerners. It was her best chance at slipping into the Godswood unnoticed.
Of course, there had been many quick glances of him – never close to Jon Snow but rarely far – since she'd arrived, but Brandon Stark's silhouette against the whiteout conditions still frightened her. The Night King would be here at any minute, and from where he sat he was so visible. It was either recklessness or madness.
"It took you much longer than I expected," he nearly shouted at her before she'd unveiled herself from the dark. "I've been waiting."
"We've all been waiting, Brandon Stark. I'd argue I've been waiting longer than most," she countered as she finally stood beneath the wine red leaves of a large weirwood tree. Lands of snow are so unlike lands of fire.
Brandon Stark did not look at her so much as he looked past her, to something only he could see. He was more powerful than she was, but less able to demonstrate it. It made her indignant.
"You shouldn't be here. Jon will have you killed."
"My life isn't worth much Brandon Stark. I merely serve the Lord of Light and go where ever he bids me."
"I know what you're here for. You know as well as I do they will sit the Iron Throne."
"You told Jon Snow yourself that the future can change. Light is the enemy of dark, life the enemy of death. Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen are Azor Ahai. The prophecy requires a sacrifice."
"Jon will die before harm comes to her. Ser Davos will put a knife through your heart before you get close to either of them."
A startling wind rattled the leaves above them. Brandon Stark looked straight up to the heavens, searching for more answers than she could see. The flames were not right or wrong. They simply were.
"When they are crowned, and dragons once more rule the Seven Kingdoms, remember the part I played here."
Turning from him, she walked briskly back in the direction of the high castle walls. There were still a few small bottles clinking in her cloak, and one or two loyal servants to the Lord of Light willing to listen to her.
Her
Their voices broke the night in two. She sat up in bed with the shock and speed of a planned attack. Her hands went to her stomach, but it wasn't her unborn child whose voice called to her.
Drogon. Rhaegal.
There were blankets still snaked around her legs as she disentangled herself from Jon Snow. Standing at the window of the room they now shared, she could see wisps of smoke rising from the corner of the grounds, just beyond the walls where her children usually slept.
When she turned to grab a cloak, her husband was staring wordlessly at her through the dark.
"My dragons, Jon."
There wasn't anything else she needed to say. He was up and reaching for his sword as soon as the words dripped out of her mouth. She was two steps out the door before stopping and running back in, throwing papers and jewelry to the floor. The sharp glint of her knife in a sliver of moonlight was answer enough for the King.
Winterfell seemed lifeless, the dark of night a shroud, the blinding snow a spotlight. It reminded Daenerys Targaryen of her time in Qarth. The air smelled of magic. Jon Snow grabbed her hand and they walked with purpose across the muddy courtyard. Their connected hands gave a point of focus to her frantic mind. There had been no second dragon's call, but she knew what she had heard.
Guilt was forming like a pain in her side. They'd been trapped, domesticated for too long. The armies of the North needed the dragons too badly to trade their lives for a few hours of freedom every day. She'd been visiting daily, but even a mother's love was no substitute for the joy of flying.
Sprung from a small side gate in the castle's wall, the King and Queen in the North saw a sleek, green dragon and a great hulking black one, exactly where they'd been left. Slow, swirling smoke still hovered around their heads. Drogon and Rhaegal paced furiously, the length of their chains rattling behind them. Short snorts burst from their snouts, and she could hear their fangs clicking nervously.
There was nothing and no one, not a soul to be seen. Winterfell was dead asleep. What had made her children so agitated? She looked to Jon Snow, whose stance was already prepared for battle. His gloveless hands look red and angry, clenched around the hilt of his sword. Suddenly, the smoke thickened and Drogon's voice lowed like something in pain. Instinctually, she ran toward him, her knife slapping against her hip as she ran. Jon Snow's words hit her a moment too late.
"Dany! No!" The dragons roared behind her. Each moment passed individually, separated violently from those preceding and following. She whipped around and saw her husband, arms raised and sword extended, clashing with a man she hadn't seen in days – Sandor Clegane. She felt a pair of unfamiliar arms reach around her and pull her into a choking embrace. She constricted her throat against the insistent sharpness jabbing into it.
Her shoulders struggled against her captor, her neck and head straining against the stranger's knife. Looking up, she saw the man who had her pinned to him was the one they called the Lightning Lord, Beric Dondarrion. The fabric wrapped around the depression of his missing eye was frayed and soiled.
"I won't hurt you, Your Grace. But this needs to be done," he said, staring straight ahead. The tinny clashing of swords rang out through the night as a woman materialized, seemingly out of nowhere, her face obscured by a heavy red cloak. She held a burning torch aloft.
"Jon Snow!" her voice called out, a disembodied song. At the woman's call, Daenerys watched as her husband's arm dropped, mid-fight. Sandor Clegane did not pursue him.
"I forbade you from coming back here. You're a murderer, Melisandre. If Ser Davos finds you, he'll kill you on sight."
"You may be a king now, Jon Snow, but you are no god. I go where my Lord bids me. I am needed here."
Noticing a slight looseness in his arms, Daenerys leaned away from her captor. "Lady Melisandre, I found Jon Snow! Just as you advised! We have done as your Lord commanded."
"Daenerys Targaryen!" she shouted, closer now, forming the point of a triangle with the rest of them. When she stopped, she bent and stuck her torch upright in the snow. "The Night King will descend on Winterfell in hours. I see it in these flames. I sent you to Jon Snow because you are Azor Ahai. Together, you will lead us through the Night. But this prophecy requires a sacrifice."
Jon Snow took three running steps toward his wife. She struggled to reach her arms out to him.
"Jon Snow, if you try to reach her, Lord Beric will drive his knife through her throat."
Wildly, he ran back and slashed his sword at Clegane, who took a clumsy step backward. There were two great, identical thuds behind them; all human movement ceased as Drogon and Rhaegal went limp on the ground.
"My dragons!" Daenerys screamed, her voice ragged against the pressure of the knife. "What have you done to them?"
"I told you, Daenerys Targaryen. The Lord of Light demands a sacrifice. There will be no victory without a sacrifice. Your dragons cannot interfere."
The King in the North lunged for the Red Woman, but she stopped him in his tracks with a look. "Jon Snow, either you must die or she must die."
Daenerys' legs gave out from under her, but Beric Dondarrion held her up. Her husband's sword clattered to the ground.
"Nissa Nissa died so that her beloved Azor Ahai could defeat the Long Night. If you are them reborn, one of you must die. It is the only way."
"Dondarrion! You never told me your lord bid us kill a king, or his queen with her belly full of child," Sandor Clegane shouted.
"Clegane, I go where the Lord bids me. I do as I am told. I do not always understand his commands."
There was a brief pause before the Hound turned around and started running back toward Winterfell. He was no true believer.
The Queen felt herself losing consciousness. Her dragons. Her husband. Her unborn child. Her people. Had all the roads of her life truly led her to this moment?
Dragon-black eyes met hers from across an unnavigable distance. Slowly, he blinked at her. She saw his hands open and close in fists. He was saying goodbye.
"No!" she fought, the last vestige of her dragon fury burning out of her. "Jon, don't. This is madness. This is madness!" Beric Dondarrion nearly threw her on the ground in his attempt to subdue her. If only she could reach her knife, hidden uselessly in her cloak.
The only two dragons alive in the world laid in the snow, side by side like a pair of sleeping dogs, inert and harmless as an insane fanatic tied the heir to the Iron Throne to the stake on which they were chained. Daenerys Targaryen had lost all words other than the no, no, no she kept repeating like a prayer.
The last thing she saw before passing out was the surprisingly serene look on the face of her beloved wolf, the Red Woman's cloaked arm high in the air, torch burning bright, words she didn't recognize slipping like a trance from her cold red mouth.
The first thing she saw when she woke up were dilated, red-rimmed black eyes, her own words rushing back to her from the unintelligible prescience of the past.
Fire cannot kill a dragon.
