DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN GAME OF THRONES!

The Mer Khaleesi

Chapter 18 : Part 3

Syleria lay curled up on the bed in her new tent, her dragons tucked up against her chest. She smiled as they made small clicking and chirping sounds as she stroked their heads and backs, occasionally nuzzling and playfully nipping her fingers.

Someone entered the tent behind her, and the dragons hissed. She looked over her shoulder. It was Drogo, he looked perturbed.

"What is it?" She asked him, hushing the dragons to stop their hissing.

"Nothing." He replied quietly. She knew he was lying and something was obviously wrong – and she was quite certain she knew what it was – but she also knew him well enough not to push him if he didn't want to talk. She put her head back down and resumed comforting her newborns. She heard the usual sounds of Drogo disrobing behind her and then saw him approach the bed on his usual side. He seemed to pause.

"Come on," She said softly, "It's been a hard day."

He frowned. "Where will you put them? The…Creatures?"

The dragons in her arms took offence at his words, snarling and hissing at him louder than before. She quieted them with a firm but gentle word. "They will sleep here, with me."

He blanched. "On the bed?"

"Of course. Why not?"

"Won't they eat us?"

She wanted to laugh at the absurdity of such a question but she resisted when she saw that he actually seemed somewhat concerned. "No, Drogo, they won't eat us. But they will sleep here. It's their first night, I'm not putting them somewhere they can't be near me."

He was obviously still displeased, but sat down on the edge of the bed, his back to her and the dragons. "And Rhaego? Would he have slept here, with you?"

"Drogo," She started awkwardly, "I can't… I can't think of that anymore. Rhaego is gone, it was never meant to be." She paused. "I have three dragons now, three children I need to think about."

He turned his head to look at her. He was angry. "Children? Syleria, these… These creatures are not children!"

"I gave them life!" She shouted, sitting up on the bed, the dragons immediately crawling onto her body and up to her shoulders. "I may not have carried them within my body, or pushed them out, but I brought them into this world! I feed them from my body, their blood is my blood. That makes them my children." She explained seriously. "And if you can't accept that-"

"I can't." He said simply.

Syleria deflated. Nothing could have hurt her more in that moment. She understood that he was mourning the loss of his son – as was she – but why couldn't he understand why she loved her dragons as she did? She had lost one child and gained three. She stood up, her dragons clinging to her as not to be dislodged while she moved. "I'll sleep somewhere else tonight, seeing as you are so afraid of my children."

!"!

Jorah was seated on the wooden stool in his tent, sharpening his arakh. The sounds of life continued on outside his tent, but he was oblivious to them. His thoughts turned to his little Khaleesi, the last Targaryen, and her new baby dragons. It could only have been fate itself that had brought him into the life of that young soul.

"Sir Jorah?" The Knight looked up in disbelief. It was her, just outside his tent. He stood up and headed to the flap of his tent. He pulled it aside and looked down at the young woman, her dragons almost asleep in her arms. "Any room at the inn?"

Jorah smiled at the girl's joke and let her inside. "Is anything the matter, Khaleesi?"

"You know me too well." She said with a hint of sarcasm. Her face immediately saddened. "Drogo is struggling to…" She sighed. "Damn it all. He can't accept my dragons, nor my love for them. He sees them only as creatures, as beasts." She sniffled sadly and her dragons instantly nuzzled her soothingly. "I had to leave the tent."

Jorah had not been expecting that. "Would you like to sit down?" He looked around his tent, briefly stumped that he had nowhere comfortable for her to sit. She seemed to understand his problem, and sat down on the edge of his bed. She gestured to the stool he had sat on earlier. He lowered himself onto it, wondering what to say to her. "How are your…Children?"

She smiled. "They're well, and they're wonderful. They surprise me a little, though."

"How so?"

"The fact that they are dragons, and not Waterlings." Jorah paused. He'd almost forgotten that Magister Illyrio had said that the eggs were from Waterlings when he had gifted them to her at her wedding. "I tried to give them a bath in the water, but they kicked up the most enormous fuss." She smiled ruefully. "When it became clear that they didn't like water that much, I realised that they couldn't be Waterlings. So they must be dragons instead." She gave a small chuckle.

"Do you know if they're male, or female?"

Syleria nodded. "I tried to, uh, 'examine' them earlier but – again – they put up a fight. Then it was almost as if they…" She laughed and shook her head. "You'll think I'm mad."

"Never, Khaleesi."

The weight and sincerity of his words made Syleria stop and look at the Knight before her. His face and his eyes told her that he meant what he said, with everything that was in him. She was bowled over for a minute. Clearing her throat awkwardly, she tried again. "It was almost as if they told me. I would swear on everything I have that I heard three little voices in the back of my mind. Two said 'male' and one said 'female'." Syleria gently picked up the red dragon, who clung to her Mother's fingers like an agile climber. "This is the girl, and these," She ran her free hand over the spines of the brown and green dragons, "Are my boys."

Jorah smiled. "Have you thought of names?"

"No. Not yet. They'll come to me, when I get to know them."

A short time passed between them. Jorah asked, "Why didn't you go to Ossania's tent?"

She shook her head sadly. "It's…Dirty. I try to believe that she did truly love me. But she still spied on me and reported my actions. She kept the truth from me all those years. All those times I was bullied and mistreated, I never understood why, and she pretended that she didn't understand either. And yet, all along, she knew the truth. I feel betrayed, Jorah, completely. I now question every memory I have of her and of us together. Every hug, every laugh… How can someone do that? Keep such a secret for so long?"

"We don't know everything yet, Khaleesi." He explained calmly. "They could have threatened her, bribed her perhaps."

"All to keep me from discovering my true parentage. Why, though? What does it matter if I am one of those Targaryens?"

"It matters because you have a claim to the Iron Throne." Jorah explained simply. "Your father was the reigning King, and you are his only surviving child."

"If he was my father. My mother's letter never explicitly mentioned any man in particular. Only that she was raped and refused to leave the child because she hoped it would be a boy."

"Khaleesi, if you're really looking for proof, it's right there in your arms." He nodded his head to the drowsy dragons. "The only men and women to have and hatch dragons were Targaryens. It's in their blood. And if you have dragons, you must have strong Targaryen blood in you. It also explains your eyes. They're lilac now." Syleria touched her face, not having seen her new eye colour. "White hair, lilac eyes, impervious to fire, and now dragons? You're a Targaryen, my Lady. There's no other possibility."

Syleria looked down at her almost sleeping dragons, pondering them. "What happened to my… My family?"

Jorah's face darkened. "They were slaughtered. All of them, in the Rebellion of Robert Baratheon."

"The king who tried to have me killed?"

He nodded. "The same, my Lady. And I suppose now we know why."

"Because of my father? My real father."

"You're a Targaryen – the last Targaryen – which means you're the rightful heir to the Iron Throne and the Seven Kingdoms."

Syleria shook her head. "Rightful or not, I thought the Baratheons were the rulers of Westeros now."

"Indeed they are. But they are detested, Your Grace. Robert Baratheon was a common and irrational brute and a drunk; and many people believe that the current king, Joffrey, is the product of incest between his mother Cersei and his uncle Jaime. Coincidently, Jaime is the man who killed your father." Syleria looked up at Jorah, her heart clenching at the thought. "Stabbed him in the back, literally. He is a Kingslayer, and a vile snake."

Silence fell over the tent for several minutes. When Syleria eventually spoke, she asked, "What do you think we should do?"

The Knight stood from his stool and put another log on the firepit. "Well I believe Khal Drogo still intends for the khalasar to travel west, back across the Great Grass Sea, and take Worosa."

"And what if I don't want that?" She said quietly. "What if I told you I never wanted him to do that? That when he was giving that speech in Vaes Dothrak, the only things I felt were shock and disgust?" Jorah stared back at the Khaleesi, truly astonished. "Given our recent discoveries, I have no right to it. The line of succession runs through King Qaran, not my mother. And as Qaran was never my father, I have no rightful claim to Worosa. Also, I don't want Worosa; I never have wanted it. To me, Worosa has always been, and will always be, a place in which I never belonged, where I was never welcome. It is full of people who despise me and wish me dead badly enough to actually contract assassins." She shook her head sadly. "Worosa is not where my future lies."

Jorah sat back down on his stool. "Then where, Khaleesi?"

Syleria looked down at the dragons in her lap, gently stroking the wings of the green baby. She looked back up. "Westeros, of course."