The sun beat down, redder and hotter than ever, as Daenerys Targaryen sat in a wooden chair next to her future husband, watching 'free' men slaughter each other in the sand below. Dark red liquid splashed onto the gritty sand as they grunted, and one lost his head, sliding off his shoulders and rolling across the ground until it stopped, the vacant eyes staring hopefully up at the pale blue sky.
Dany watched every man, sickened but determined. If she, the Mother of Dragons, has recommissioned the fighting pits of Mereen, then she was going to watch every man die. She was not a helpless girl, or a naïve princess, or a Westerosi whore but a Queen, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons and if her people were to die slaughtering each other in the freedom and tradition of the fighting pits, she would not sit back, passive, while the Golden Harpy mocked her with cruel wings- she would watch their final moments with respect. She would compensate their families- had they any- with dignity and empathy. And she would carry the horror and injustice of their murders- for that was what they were- with her in her heart.
Murder. Her blood boiled as she saw a brothel stained red with a eunuch's blood, bodies slumped in sunny alleyways, surrounded by buzzing flies and a pair of dark, shadowy eyes behind a golden mask of the harpy, glinting in the dying sun.
Older memories stirred at the word to show her Drogo and their little boy Rhaego. Drogo lay at the edge of the world, his eyes as lifeless as the eyes in the severed head before her that dripped gently on the sand. His uncut braid seemed to fray in the sun's heat, blowing gently in the breeze. He stared out, far into the horizon, past her, past the great grass sea, past Westeros and past life, dead to her pleas and caresses. And Rhaego… Dany had never seen her son, but she saw a small boy with her violet Targeryen eyes and bronzed skin of her husband. Lying peacefully, as if asleep, in a pool of his own blood.
Filled with murderous rage, she tried to focus her thoughts elsewhere.
So she spared a glance at her future husband, Hizdahr zo Loraq, sitting next to her. He was leaning forward with his fingers laced together, his small, beady eyes greedily watching the bloodshed below. No more, she thought.
She rose from her chair and opened her mouth to command an end when one more slave entered the arena, armed in a curiously familiar manner. His sword drove through the heart of the cutthroat; a backward strike with his elbow left a man with thick red blood pouring out his nose; a third graceful movement decapitated the final attacker. The sudden victor approached the platform and knelt in the sand, his sword trembling.
And then he lifted the helmet.
The dragon woke.