Huge thanks to DrHolland for selfless beta work on this chapter in a busy period of RL. Thanks to TopShelfCrazy from preventing me from deleting my profile and my presence from this site. Thank you to everyone who reviewed, favourited or followed the story.
Reviews especially feed the author))
Parts of this were most definitely inspired by the song "Cold Arms" by Mumford And Sons
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Daenerys
She had never undone her tokar faster, and that without any help from her maids.
The truth be told, she shouldn't have put it on at all. But somehow the girl in her imagined Jon would love to see her pretty and then call her the most beautiful woman in the world.
Swifter than lightning in the stormy sky above her ship, Daenerys was back in her dirty white wools from travel, spending only one precious moment to feel the faint odour of sweat, hers and… his.
From being dragon-flown home by my handsome nephew…
She reemerged on the deck after the forceful effort of changing. Her ship was swerving with the motion of men readying for battle. Ser Barristan and Grey Worm were choosing the first companies to land in Hardhome. She nodded at them with encouragement, for they didn't seem to require her approval. They are following Rhaegar's son, she realised, and she found it pleasing that her people took Jon immediately for who he was.
The dragons have returned, she thought with satisfaction. As did the wolves, she added for good measure of justice. Jon had a wolf in him, no one could deny it.
In the deep, narrow bay near the old ruined human settlement of Hardhome, on the craggy beach under the high, cavernous cliff, hundreds, no, thousands of wildlings were now being attacked by the great army of wights, driven forward in frenzy by one of their cold masters. The Other rode a giant ice spider on top of the cliff, just above the caves hollowed in its stony entrails. The scene appeared unreal; a tale of terror come to life.
Dany looked for Jon. Her nephew paced the deck alone, always looking up. She pushed herself forward through the crowd of people to go to him. Before she could reach him, he ran to the prow of the ship, and gazed further up, now much closer to the mass of clouds in the dark-grey sky above.
The sea and the sky had the same colour this far north and Daenerys suddenly found it beautiful. When have I ever loved grey?
Jon must have been trying to call Rhaegal to him, which was by no means an easy task in the first days of riding a dragon. Dany had learned that lesson very well when she was alone with Drogon in the hills behind Meereen. Back then, she had paced in the wilderness, fasting and drinking water from the streams, followed from afar by a dazed dragon who wouldn't let her ride him again, nor abandon her to her fate.
Now she sometimes thought she would have never become Drogon's rider if he hadn't flown to her aid when her life was in peril in the fighting pit of Meereen. There at least was a pattern one could trust the living dragon with, when all knowledge and experience failed.
Dragons would not let their chosen riders perish and they could and would cross great distances in order to do so, whenever they sensed their rider was in great trouble and danger for his life.
Drogon had done just this for Dany and for Rhaegar, Viserion for Ser Jaime, and Rhaegal had nearly died to save Jon. How the dragons knew when to act was a different question, one that not even Daenerys, their mother, could answer with authority.
Or maybe her trust was misplaced and the dragons did not always come to rescue their riders. Dany had just had a close brush with death in the Lands of Always Winter. She had known this to be truth in her bones, and yet Drogon did not return to her… unless he somehow knew Rhaegal and Jon were up to the task. But that would mean attributing too much cleverness to a beast, and though the dragons were rather special animals, Dany didn't dare hope they were that reliable…
But Jon, Jon… He not only picked her up when she felt her body turn into jelly, he somehow mastered his disbelief and perhaps even anger about having the blood of the dragon, and brought them both safely to her flagship. As a result, her young girl's heart had been stuck in her throat ever since she was stirred back to the waking state on her silks, alone among her trusted Dothraki maids and blood riders.
Rhaenys, the ship was called, for Rhaegar's dead girl. Since the first three vessels she sacrificed to conquer Meereen, Daenerys never named another ship for the dead dragons. The living dragons will frighten my enemies now, and not the names of the ones long gone.
A drum started rumbling lazily under her feet. The beat was slow at first, and then it increased in speed. The fighting men won't go anywhere without oarsmen. Dany realised there was one more thing she could and should do before following Jon. She hurried below deck and climbed on a barrel next to the drummer to look taller.
"These people, these creatures riding ice spiders in this land," she proclaimed with passion to the former slaves who called her mother and rowed willingly for her, in both the bastard Valyrian of the Free Cities and that of the Slaver's Bay. "They enslave those they kill, in a twice evil fate. You have it in your hands to spare thousands from it."
She started backward as soon as she finished speaking. It won't do if I let Jon fly away by himself.
The Rhaenys rolled steadily forward. The oars sliced the waves faster than the beat of the drum could follow; the joint human intent to conquer proving itself stronger than the sea and the adverse winds. Dany felt a knot in her tummy from the devotion of her people. I hope and I pray to all the gods who listen that I didn't lead you to a destiny worse than what awaited you as slaves.
She was behind Jon in almost no time. All his attention was still on the skies and he didn't see her. Which was alright, because she suspected he might disapprove of what she intended to do.
The Mother of Dragons will not be left behind to wait for her husband. I am no longer Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea who has worth only as long as her khal lives and has to join the widows of dosh khaleen when he dies to live like a shadow until her own death.
It struck her that she just thought of Jon as her husband, which was uncalled for. Nothing was ever spoken between them; there was only the current of unmistakable desire and her sudden confession of love.
Daenerys bit her tongue and bit her soul and waited, more quiet and withdrawn than was her wont. Jon had reacted to her admission with shame.
When Rhaegal finally reappeared from the clouds, Rhaenys came as close to land as she could without becoming stranded. The boats were being lowered to the water. Ser Barristan and Grey Worm were the first ones to board them, each commanding twenty of the best fighters in a separate boat. The tiny vessels could not hold more armed men. And there were about thirty such boats on various ships of Dany's fleet scattered over the wild seas, calling to Hardhome behind Rhaenys with uneven speed. It would take time before sufficient numbers of fighting men could reach the shore, and this could be the undoing of those who went first.
Jon looked into Rhaegal's bronze eye, his brow wrinkled from the effort to convince him into something. But if he thought he would be going up there all alone, with that strange, unreliable sword as a weapon, he couldn't be more wrong. Daenerys could not hold a sword straight in a fight, but she had seen her share of bloodshed and was more acquainted with dragons. This has to count for something.
Rhaegal lowered one leg to the deck, allowing Jon up. As soon as he began climbing, before Dany could follow, much faster than she expected, the dragon lifted its talon and flapped the wings, once, twice, about to leave. She was too late!
Looking desperately around she noticed for the first time that the tokar was trailing on the floor behind her. The edge of the baby pearl fringes adorning the garment became stuck into the laces of the white wool trousers she wore and she never saw it in her hurry.
Dany grabbed the yellow rope of silk and rushed forward. She barely got hold of Rhaegal's tail, still hitting the deck in irregular strokes as the dragon was taking flight. Faster than she ever thought possible, she tied one end of the tokar around it and tightened the other around herself. Then she grasped the warm, spiked, green and bronze snake and feared for dear life. The dragon almost hit a mast with his tail before clearing the ship, but Dany was able to rock forward with it and avoid it.
She wished she could talk to Rhaegal as she could to Drogon, but she only vaguely sensed the presence of the dragon's enormous, green being. He will reveal himself more freely only to Jon.
Drogon, where are you? Will you ever come back to me? Now, in the sky, out of the cursed northern lands and above the open sea, Daenerys thought she could feel the enormous black sadness of her dragon reverberate leagues and leagues away from her. That she could feel anything at all about him gave her hope. Just look after my brother, will you? she asked of Drogon. Until we all meet one day.
Flying on a dragon's tail would have been a dizzying experience if she hadn't been riding one so often in the past. This way, it was formidable, but she was able to handle it. The dates and lemon water she ingested threatened to leave her body through her mouth. She allowed her muscles to relax, no matter what the dragon did with his tail. Giving into the bouncing and slashing movement in the air made her feel much better.
Rhaegal was facing the top of the cliff in no time, before the first boats were even halfway to the shore. Daenerys expected him to land, but he didn't. Instead, he kept his distance. She craned her neck to see what Jon was doing. To her utmost surprise, her nephew slid down the dragon's neck and horned head, past the puffing nostrils, and crept straight into the dragon's maw, crouching between his sharp, black teeth. Rhaegal moved his snout closer to the rocks. The dragon's entire body spasmed as he did that, as if in tremendous pain.
Don't be ill again, please, she thought. Viserion is not back yet, and Drogon is with Rhaegar. We have need of you. Her pleading was in vain. Rhaegal could never hear her the way Drogon could, be he her child or not.
And then, just like that, Rhaegal spat Jon out on the cliff, without adding any smoke or fire to his effort. This is one way to arrive and surprise your enemy, Dany thought, amazed with her nephew's thinking. Jon scrambled to his feet as soon as he touched the ground and freed the magic sword from the scarf which held it, in place of a proper scabbard. Then, he ripped a piece of it to wrap it around the hilt. To be able to hold it, Dany realised. The blade was glowing red.
Rhaegal immediately distanced himself from the shore. So you can't land, Dany understood. Or you will harm yourself again.
The vast lands beyond the Wall must have been cursed to dragons, just like the Wall itself, protected by old magic which did not allow them to pass. She felt guilty realising Drogon might have suffered as well for his short incursion into the northern territories when he had brought her to Jon, obeying her command.
She was now hanging almost on the tip of Rhaegal's tail, enjoying a perfect view of Jon and the Other and of the bay below where the wights were killing the wildlings who dared resist them, while the weakest among them crowded in the middle of the beach.
A mother with child wanted to walk into water to drown, but another old woman with long, grey hair shaped into ice spikes framing her head like sun rays pulled her back.
"They are coming," the woman announced in a visionary tone, "the great ships!"
The boats did not look great at all. Those carrying Ser Barristan and Grey Worm just sailed into the bay, followed by two more.
If she said Dracaerys, maybe Rhaegal would listen to his mother's voice and burn the wights, if spitting fire to the shore was not harmful to him. Or maybe even if it were.
Be that as it may, the wights were too many. The risk was not all of them would burn, and many wildlings would perish in the same jet of dragonflame. In a close fight of friend and foe, dragonfire was a very volatile and imprecise weapon and Dany did not wish to be the judge of who lived and who died. She pondered what else she could do to help when the coldest voice she had ever heard thundered from the cliff.
"You have taken something that belongs to me," the enemy of ice accused Jon from his spider steed in an unnatural deep voice, slowing the blood flow in Dany's veins. She could repeat to herself all she wanted how she was the blood of the dragon and would not be afraid.
She was afraid.
Just as Rhaegal was, she realised, shocked, albeit not of the same. The dragon feared the land cursed against him and his kind, and she the white walker. She wanted to cower, scream and surrender. Ashamed, Dany closed her eyes and thought only about breathing.
When Euron Greyjoy, himself a wight, enslaved Viserion and Rhaegal by abusing the sorcerous horn of dragonlords which was not his to take, he had also attempted to take Daenerys to wife by force. Then all dragons, human and animal, felt loathing, but never fear.
The dragon's tail shook nervously, left and right, with Dany hanging from it as a doll of rags. She was slow to open her eyes. Baby pearls from the tokar glittered in the heavy, dark-grey air, appearing completely out of place. She looked at their play in the wind to better ignore being frightened. The dragon felt powerless as well, and was angry about it.
Unlike Rhaegal, Daenerys did not feel helpless. Only mortally afraid, for her life, and for Jon's… selfishly disregarding in that moment the wildlings fighting for survival below and her people risking their lives to save them…
The spider stomped with four of its eight ice legs, covering Jon with snowflakes from the tips of the hair to toe.
Jon stood his ground, unflinching. Minuscule shards of ice and snow were on him now, and he must have been cold without a cloak. In black wools of the Night's Watch, he held the magic blade forward in his right hand, his burned hand.
"What did I take from you? A mermaid wife?" Jon mocked his opponent, standing attentively in a fighting stance, observing the enemy and not making the first move.
His voice echoed from the stone surface of the cliff, so sharp and jagged and full of tiny crevices that snow and ice did not catch on it very well. Dany hoped this was good. Slippery ground would be more difficult to fight on, wouldn't it? She didn't know, not truly, but she found herself desperately searching for any point of advantage Jon might have.
The rider and his spider dwarfed him. They were smaller than Rhaegal, but together they were at least three times larger than her beloved nephew and his glowing sword. And somehow, Dany did not trust that blade, not fully. She was the first one to have it in her hands, and it seemed to her that the magic sword had a life and a will of its own.
Jon, come back, please, you can fight him some other time, Dany thought. We have the Unsullied. We can rescue the wildlings and leave. The image of Khal Drogo cut lightly in a fight he had won and dying from wound poisoning afterwards flashed in her mind. The crystal blade in the spider rider's hand looked sharp and as deadly as Jon's.
Yet even as she wallowed in cowardly thoughts of a woman unwilling to lose a man she had just fallen in love it, Dany was consumed by certainty that Jon would not back down on the challenge in his hopelessly stubborn nature.
Kill the spider first, then you might have a chance, she thought, wishing he could hear her, but she was just too far in the air. While she could listen to Jon and the Other speaking, they would not be able to hear her tiny voice through the whistle of the northern wind and the insistent, nervous flapping of Rhaegal's wings.
Daenerys had a dragon voice as well, a monster voice, ever since she purposefully swallowed a jet of dragonfire, but it seemed to be gone for good with Drogon's prolonged absence.
"How do you know about my wife?" the rider appeared perplexed by Jon's taunting, or maybe he just feigned his bewilderment.
He has a wife? Daenerys wondered absurdly.
To Dany's knowing, loving eye, Jon appeared even more confused by the Other's answer, but, unlike his opponent, he did his best to hide it and stay utterly calm, as a sea devoid of breeze.
Calm and cold as ice… Dany thought, enthralled. He is everything that I am not, and maybe some things that I am and that he doesn't know himself.
"You are the Night's King," Jon stated firmly and when he said that, Dany thought she saw a glimpse of a crystal crown glimmering on the monster's forehead, on top of the mass of ice scars he called face, between strands of long, white, straight hair falling to his waist.
"And you are just a bastard," the Night's King said with disdain.
Clearly provoked, Jon launched an attack. Red blade sliced at the spider's head and was blocked by the crystal one. The swords kissed and went apart again. The Other wore tatters of cloth, just like most of his soldiers. Hanging loose, they hid the real shape of his large sinewy body when he moved.
Jon made a step back. Dany could not say whether he did it from the force of his enemy counterattack or from the sudden return of prudence. They began circling each other as two men duelling.
"Well done, bastard," the Night's King tried with goading her nephew again, but to no avail. The same trick would not work twice.
"If your wife is as pretty as yourself," Jon retorted in kind, "I don't see why anyone would want her. You can keep her for yourself."
"I see," the Other said, "so you found a prettier one? How clever! Where is she?"
His cold, dead eyes, buried deep in the crevices of his face, examined the surroundings. Soon they found Rhaegal and Daenerys in the air. She kicked and thrashed, attempting to make the bony, spiked tail bend away. If she could only hide behind Rhaegal's body, then they wouldn't notice her! Her effort proved fruitless. They did see her and they both stared at her now. The gaze of the Night's King filled her soul with dread surpassing any fear she had ever felt before. Her heart was pounding in her chest; a caged, roaring, three-headed dragon. She felt stupid and useless. I should have never come here.
Jon waved the idea away. "You don't mean her? She's just some lost Southron princess who thinks she can fly a dragon," he said carelessly. "See how she can't do it properly."
As he said that, the monster returned all his attention and malice to Jon. Dany felt relieved and the lump of fear which had risen to her throat when the Other looked at her sank back to the pit of her stomach where it was nested from the beginning.
Just some princess? She replayed Jon's unkind words in her head. After our walk under the ground? Her temper flared. She felt betrayed until her reason struck back. It could be a ruse. It has to. She hoped she was right.
The Other waved as well, not to dismiss Dany, but to urge on the hosts of the dead he had brought to Hardhome.
Dany looked down. Four boats bursting with wildlings were rowing haphazardly back to the ships. Ser Barristan was firmly holding his ground on one front, hacking and sending the corpses to the side where other men would burn them.
Grey Worm, Grey Worm…
Grey Worm rose from the ground as a wight and started attacking his fellow Unsullied with unnatural force… They were trying to strike back at him, but he was too fast, and the torch bearers could not quite catch up with him either. Ser Barristan noticed the development and ran from one side of the bay to another to fend him off himself, leaving the command where he had been previously fighting to Brown Ben Plumm. Ben acquitted himself admirably on that place despite his treacherous nature. The Second Sons hadve changed sides one too many time for Daenerys to ever trust them fully. But on their side, Dany saw no known wight faces. Yet.
Steel clashed with crystal again, and Daenerys only had eyes for Jon once more. How could I ever look away? The Other was trying out an attacking manoeuvre of his own. He ran at her nephew astride his ice spider as if Jon were a quintain Ser Barristan used to train knights in Meereen.
The Night's Knight bore down a strike made to kill. Jon was quick enough to block it and pivot to the other side so that the spider just ran past him, almost carrying both itself and its master over the edge of the cliff and into Rhaegal's waiting maw. The dragon eagerly exhaled a jet of flame which never quite reached the shore he was so afraid of.
The white walker wheeled to make another pass at Jon, as a cursed knight in a cursed tourney, determined to use the advantage of being mounted and ride down his opponent. Jon stood calm and composed. Only his pale cheeks were slightly flushed from the cold or the excitement of the fight.
More handsome than ever.
When the ice spider broke into a run, Dany hoped that Jon would deflect the attack. But instead of defending himself, at the last moment he ducked, cut off two legs of the spider from underneath and swiftly moved away. The animal stumbled and uttered a strident ear-piercing shriek. The white walker was thrown forward and off his steed. The spider strived to get up on the remaining six legs, but it could not achieve balance, sinking again every time as soon as it managed to stand.
Its rider rose from the jagged rocks where he had been thrown, tall and imposing. Had he not been the image of death itself and cold beyond measure, Dany imagined he would be seething with anger. Under the tatters, his body was armoured; in mail and plate not of Westerosi design. It seemed as if foreign metalwork had turned into the second skin of the Other by some magic or unknown smith's skill.
An armour wrought of ice…
The Night's King advanced and aimed a savage right-hand slash toward Jon's unprotected head. Jon, who had been waiting again, parried and struck back, cutting a few strands of the long white hair of the Other. The cut hair melted and turned into mist, into pretty snow petals falling slowly to the rocky ground.
The man and the Other danced around one another, each of them unable to land a decisive blow or find an opening to achieve advantage. Jon seemed quicker and the Other stronger.
Daenerys watched in awe. She had seen Ser Barristan fight with art and the old man was very fast. She had seen Drogo swinging his arakh back and forth. But this was beyond magnificent; Jon's magic blade swung up and down, and left and right, and up again, effortlessly, drawing beautiful patterns in the air, more perfect than printed silk.
Please don't become tired. She remembered they were exhausted and she wasn't sure if her nephew regained enough body heat from flying with Rhaegal or if he was at all able to predate on dragon's warmth as she was, given his burned hand and stronger sensitivity to fire than was to be expected in Rhaegar's son.
And then, suddenly, it was as if this Night's King could read Dany's thoughts. When Jon almost hit the shoulder of his sword arm, the Other swatted the magic blade away with much more force than necessary and moved in the direction of the forest, just outside Jon's reach, in order to gain time and to launch another onslaught of words.
Words cut my nephew deeper than swords, Dany realised, instantly more afraid of poison the Night's King would spit through his repulsive mouth than of his crystal blade.
"So the bastard thinks himself a dragon now," he said mockingly, "and yet your sword arm is turning into a living blister under that black rag. You are not a true dragon and you are not meant to hold this blade or your hand would not suffer. It is mine! You stole it from me. Give it back and I will let you be!"
"I wouldn't give it to you even if I believed you and I see no reasons why I should do that," Jon said, closing on the enemy, determined to continue talking with his sword.
He is more confident that way and few men must be his match. Dany was conflicted. She prayed for the combat to stop, and yet she also wanted to continue watching.
The spider whinnied in pain near the two men duelling. His cries of pain were so high-pitched that even some wights from below looked up and earned themselves a kiss of a burning torch. The spider then started spinning a thread around two stumps where his legs used to be. Spider web had been holding the cursed sword in place, Dany remembered. Could it have been his?
"If you want it, come and take it!" Jon bellowed and attacked again, in unbound fury. Snow crystals sparkled white in his long black hair and in that moment with his red sword held high he was king.
The King of Winter…
The creature who styled himself the Night's King accepted the challenge and nearly kicked the sword out of her nephew's arms. Jon somehow avoided this and then pressed his enemy toward the first line of trees behind the cliff in a storm of slash and parry. Dany could almost not see the blades anymore, only the swirl of red and blue sparks in the thickening fog. She had never seen anyone fight that fast. It seemed… impossible.
The day was running short. Soon only night will remain.
With a savage cry, Jon landed a blow on his enemy's sword hand and severed it from the body. The crystal blade was dropped and as soon as it touched the ground it melted into the mist just like the Other's hair. The cut hand on the contrary twitched, hopped and rejoined its master's body. The Night's King sat down, leaned on a tree and laughed, accomplished.
Daenerys felt ill. How can one vanquish what cannot be killed? What is this thing? If Jon cuts his head off, will it grow again?
"You have spent the power of your blade without killing me, bastard," the Other announced with joy. "Do you have the strength it takes to reforge it before you face me for the second time?"
Jon struck squarely on the Other's head, but the cursed steel bounced, forcing him to make several steps backward. The enemy was not hurt. The magic sword had no effect on him any longer, losing its glow and cooling down. Her nephew tossed it away, undeterred by the loss of his weapon.
Frantically, Jon searched his other hip for the wildling obsidian knife he had since Dany first met him, when they were sleeping on the platform made in the trees with Davos and Pyke, with Old Garth and Ghost… The enemy was helpless, and Jon would reach him and slay him if that was at all possible.
But the tree behind the defeated Other was a white weirwood. A sad face was carved on it, with a blood-red mouth that had never smiled.
And in place of showing any fear from dragonglass which was supposed to kill the white walkers, the enemy laughed raucously. His laughter echoed all over Hardhome and gave new force to the hordes of the dead he mastered. Dany looked down and saw Ser Barristan barely avoiding the corpse which tried to pluck his head off his shoulders. The wight was biting his ear instead…
Brown Ben Plumm was buried under two corpses and he struggled to get up while the corpses strived to quarter him. From the air, Dany could not discern the likelihood of success of either effort.
Grey Worm led a charge of dead Unsullied he used to command as a living man against his and their former brothers. Those being slain screamed and wailed, and the northern wind carried their cries to the dark-grey sky…
Dany felt hot tears burning her eyes.
The Other finished laughing and spoke with mirth. "Only a living man can kill me. And you, bastard, you are as dead as the soldiers in my army."
Jon froze in his steps, listening.
"In the deep of the night you know it as well as I do," the Night's King continued without mercy. "Or elsewise your hand would not burn from the blade you stole from me. They sacrificed you to me! I drank your blood and you were to be my slave. And then the dragon came and stole you away before I could take you as my own. You dragons are all thieves! But the beast couldn't give you back the human blood you lost, could he? He merely patched your injuries so that you can walk and talk and seem alive. Heed my words! The next time we meet I will be your lord and you my most cherished bannerman."
The Other fell back on the trunk of the weirwood tree and whispered softly to it. The roots began to open. Jon came to his senses when he saw that. He leapt at the enemy to finish him off with dragonglass faster than Ghost would. Dany thought she could glimpse the red colour of weirwood leaves reflected in Jon's dark pupils before his eyes turned black again, and dull, and lifeless, and flickered blue.
Jon crashed into the smooth white bark which closed over his enemy, and furiously stabbed at it with dragonglass, unable to follow. Red sap started running from the wounded tree.
Daenerys looked down.
The wights suddenly lost direction. Grey Worm led a company of the dead Unsullied away from the wildlings in a most disciplined fashion; they left the beach and climbed into the wood. Corpses walked aimlessly here and there and stopped attacking anyone. Brown Ben Plumm wrenched free and nursed several cuts and bites on his body, but all his limbs seemed to be accounted for. The giant spider limped on six legs, with two stumps bandaged with spiderweb soft as bird feathers. Without any grace to its movements, the monster sauntered forward and disappeared among the trees.
It was over. Rhaegal roared and screeched in sign of victory.
Yet Jon, who had won the day with both his strategy and swordplay, looked as reserved as ever. He meticulously collected the sword he had thrown away and tied it back to his hip, walked to the edge of the cliff and… jumped off it in cold blood, as if it was only one more step to make.
Daenerys screamed, but Rhaegal instantly stuck out his tail in a move that seemed practised, coiling it around her unthoughtful nephew. And as Dany was already attached to it, they ended up in a tangle of human limbs; just as Drogon and Viserion once twisted their heads and necks together on the river banks of the Trident. Two heads of the dragon.
"It's alright," he said, staring attentively into her eyes, "the dragon has caught me before. I mean, us."
So that's how we ran away from the Lands of Always Winter; by jumping off the mountain.
Both her nephew and the magic blade on his hip felt freezing cold, almost corpse-like, but not quite. It must be because he didn't wear a cloak. Yet she remembered vaguely how even Drogo had been warmer before Dany smothered him, so as not to shame the horselord with the life of a flower.
And she read in Jon's eyes that he believed he might not be alive after all; just another monster as the ones he was fighting…
Dany disregarded the cold feeling and all reason. She recalled her memories of Euron Greyjoy and his dead, and of Aegon's lady love who had been a wight before she miraculously returned to life. There was one thing none of the living dead had ever been able to show and Jon had clearly been capable of it in the caves, so the horrible thing this Night's King said could not be true. Could it?
And even if it were true, for her it did not matter. At that moment, Daenerys knew her heart to be well and truly lost, to a man or monster it mattered little.
"Tell him to put us down on one of the boats," she told Jon, brushing the frozen snowflakes from his face and hair with her fingers.
Her voice and touch woke some semblance of life in him. "You can't?"
Dany shook her head. "My dragon is away and yours is not talking to me."
"Have you heard?" he asked.
She nodded, not having the strength to lie to him that she did not. Though perhaps she should have denied it because Jon's handsome face turned impossibly long again. "Land us, will you?" she encouraged him. "We need to get down."
Jon frowned in concentration. Rhaegal let his tail drop in the direction of the sea, careful never to approach his body mass more to the northern lands than was safe for him.
"Up here!" Dany shouted to those in the boat. "Make room!" The boat carried twenty delayed Second Sons who didn't even make it to the beach before the battle ended. The dragon's tail uncoiled. Almost touching the small vessel, Rhaegal unrolled his tail completely, allowing his two charges to go on board.
Dany untied the tokar from her waist and left the entire garment to the dragon who immediately took off again. The yellow, pearlescent ribbon stretched over the vast grey sky and made Dany recall the customs and the tales of chivalry.
"See, I have given you my favour," she told Jon, immensely pleased with the notion. "And you accepted it and let your mount wear it. That makes me your lady love."
I have given you my floppy ears. Dany always remembered fondly Brown Ben Plumm's quip about what the proper queen of rabbits in Meereen should wear. Immediately, she realised something else. White tokar with baby pearls on the fringes was the wedding gown of the nobility in Meereen. And yellow was not that far from white.
Embarrassed for thinking of Jon as her husband for the second time that day Daenerys did something she had not done at least since they married her to Khal Drogo, or maybe since she was a child, the beggar princess. She blushed. Seeing her embarrassment, Jon's lips finally curved into a slightest beginning of a future smile, and to Dany, this felt like true victory.
"If you're my lady love, will I be your lord?" he provoked her, leaving her speechless.
Have you been thinking the same? Would you have us wed?
"I just thought we should witness the aftermath on land," she told him, very seriously. "Wouldn't you agree that it is expected of us?"
Jon acquiesced with a nod, and gazed forward as the boat was rowed to the shore. On the beach, that old woman with strange frozen hair, who had stopped a mother with her child from drowning, beamed when she saw him.
"Welcome back, son," she said, "What have I told you? Wasn't I right to bring my people here? The great ships have come! I've never had a vision of you on them, but I am no less happy to see you."
"Mother Mole," Jon acknowledged her before an unfamiliar little girl ran from behind into Jon's cold arms.
"How have you been?" he asked her in a friendly voice. "Who was feeding you oats porridge while I was gone?"
"Old Garth did," the girl answered, unconcerned. Daenerys and Jon both gaped as fish, mouths going wide.
The man who died in pain, writhing in flames, climbed down the leather leading from the lowest level of the caves to the sea shore, carrying a very familiar bag with food over his shoulder.
"The girl's lying," he said, winking at the child. "In the last days we had only acorn paste."
"But you can't be here, you went to the Wall with me!" Jon blurted out the least uncomfortable part of the truth.
You died, Dany thought, and Jon must have thought the same but none of them dared say it.
"Aye, and I went back after the first day of walking, lad, me old legs would never carry me further with life… I'm so old and you're so young and yet you forget what I can still remember."
"I am pleased to see you then," her nephew muttered, taking his distance from the old man.
"As am I," Garth said.
Dany though she saw a faint glimmer of approval in his ageless eyes when Jon treated him with suspicion. And for as much as it was impossible she thought this Garth might have been the same man who let himself burn so that she and Jon could run away from the woken flames of the earth.
"We are here to take you all to the ships," Daenerys addressed the remaining wildlings.
"The free folk go where it pleases them," Garth observed, "as the gods do." Yet he sloshed through the shallow water to another boat eagerly enough, dragging the little girl who hugged Jon with him, so apparently the ships did please him some.
Dany was disoriented. How much more mystery shall we encounter?
Dragons could do no magic. They could only fly and spit fire and crystals, which were probably only another form of dragonflame, a solid one, the point of origin of dragonglass. And they could slay their enemies with tooth and claw.
Yet somehow all magic existing in the world was drawn to them, gathered around them and became stronger in their presence. With her head full of questions stored away for later, the Mother of Dragons returned her eyes to her people, the survivors. Brown Ben Plumm limped to her encounter.
"How many lost?" she asked.
"Thirty or forty," he said, "maybe more. There would be more if the monster was not defeated," he finished, bowing slightly to Jon who stood next to Dany calm as a stone. Dany realised they were holding hands without knowing if it was she who took his or he who had taken hers.
Ser Barristan approached with his damaged ear. The top was missing but the bleeding stopped. Maybe the unearthly cold helped. "The balance was worse on my side," he said, "I must be too old for this. At least a hundred new wights are now following the Grey Worm."
"No," Daenerys refuted him, "I've seen you fight. If it weren't for you it would be much more of them."
Jon didn't speak or let go of her hand.
"The day is won," he announced in the end, doing his best to ignore gazes of admiration and fear coming his way. Daenerys was not the only one who had seen him fight. "There is nothing left for anyone here. It is time to go," he finished, managing to find that decisive voice people would listen to and follow.
The short day was gone in duties before she could rest. She never managed to take that bath Jon spoke of before they arrived to Hardhome, scalding hot as she would have liked it.
When the pale moon rose in the sky, she was again alone in her tent. Jon was out, talking in his mind to Rhaegal who glided over the ship, which was now heading south on a surprisingly calm sea. When the Night's King ran away, he seemed to have taken the storm with him. Small mercies, Dany thought and walked diligently to the prow, refusing to sleep by herself, now that she was finally done with everything a princess should do.
"Won't you come?" she told her nephew.
"Why would you want me to?" he asked dryly.
Dany would not take no for an answer. Not tonight. Maybe some other night, Jon Snow. She squatted behind him and wrapped her slender arms around his broad shoulders.
"You have seen the extent of my injuries," Jon murmured quietly. "Could even a dragon truly have cured them all before it was too late and I lost too much blood? I tried to ask, but Rhaegal doesn't answer. Maybe he can't or I don't understand him. You know that it may be true. I may be a wight as he said, no matter how hard I wish not to be, no matter how much I want…" He cut his speech in half, unable to continue.
"You want me?" she whispered into his ear, almost kissing it. She wouldn't dare approach Drogo so very forwardly, mindful of his role as khal, and with Daario it was mostly never necessary because his appetite for love was stronger than hers. Or bigger than hers with him after a time, she had just never realised it before now.
Jon nodded, wordlessly, with eyes manse and dark at the same time.
"Come," she said and took his hand. This has worked before. Jon followed, not blindly as a wight would obey his master, but as a man might his wife. Some warmth returned to his body though it was still so much colder to touch than hers.
Her tent on the Rhaenys gaped empty. Her maids already whispered that Dany and Jon were lovers and took good care to leave them alone, knowing their queen. Fresh coals were put into two burning braziers and two bowls of leviathan stew were left next to the jar of lemon water on the floor. It wasn't much, but it smelled good, on fish, salt and spices.
Dany had recently learned, while performing her duties, that the food they had would have to be rationed before they anchored at some place which still had provisions in winter. At least the port scum Ser Barristan took on board in Gulltown proved they can fish in the Shivering Sea if they can't navigate it... It was, curiously, some of the wildlings who had set the fleet on course for Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.
The stew tasted even better than it smelled. And some of the false sailors can cook.
There were no proper doors on the ship. Anyone could walk in on them though Daenerys was confident that no one ever would. The incessant sounds of the sea, the chattering and the goings of the passengers and the crew were always there, muffled and diverse, as a queer sort of company.
When they finished eating, Jon sat gingerly on the edge of her silk cushions as he had done before. Only this time he watched her every move. As an afterthought, he removed the spent magic blade and the dragonglass dagger from his belt, leaving them on the wooden ship floor, away from the fabric and the smouldering ashes.
The magic sword looked like battered, ordinary steel. Not at all like the beautiful Valyrian steel sword Aegon got from his real father Arthur Dayne. That should be the true sword of heroes! Even the heavy two-handed one, Ice, which rightfully belongs to the Starks, looks better than this one.
"For all his bleating, you did defeat him today, you know," she observed. It was the truth as Dany saw it, and as she had experienced it when she burned Mirri Maz Duur on a stake, despite all her foul threats and curses.
"And for a man who is so incredulous," she said, part hurt by her memories of Jon refusing to believe her, and part joking, "you are suddenly so eager to believe him. Why didn't you call him a liar?"
Jon chuckled darkly. "It's just that what he said is what I've been thinking, he was right about that. I know that it doesn't make any sense to you, but that's why I believe him… no, I know that what he said is true. My sworn brothers killed me and the dragon… he made me live as something else entirely. I am myself and I am not myself any more."
"Death has not been so final of late in many places," Dany affirmed with conviction. "Especially in our family. Who is to say what has happened to you?"
And she spilled it all out, fast and with more words than she had ever intended to use.
"One day I walked into the fire and I was completely swallowed by it," she said, "and I came out of it alive with three newly-hatched dragons. Only my hair was burned. And my scaled children fed from my bare breasts, from the milk which should have been for the babe… for my unborn son who had just died in my womb before I could ever nurse him. And I might never be able to bear a living child again."
Jon listened attentively, never interrupting.
"And Rhaegar, your father," she lacked strength to continue, but she still did. She still owed him that part of the truth. "They made him believe your mother betrayed him just before the battle. Jealousy made him weak so he rode to the Trident with the mind to lose. Robert Baratheon crushed his chest with a warhammer and ordered his men to burn him. So first they robbed him and then they set him aflame. They didn't linger to see the fire burn to ashes. The flooded river swallowed my brother's body and his funeral pyre. He woke in a septry without any memory of his former life and self and lived a solitary life in the service of the poor for twenty years. He has a bigger scar on his chest than you ever had."
"Did she?" Jon asked, timidly.
"What?" Dany was a bit lost.
"Betray him?"
"Of course she didn't," Dany dismissed the ridiculous idea straight away. "She loves him. And even if she didn't, she's a Stark. You should know better than I how the Starks are."
The rumours of the ship were the only sound left for a very long while.
"And yet, yet," Dany finally thought of a good way to convey what she was trying to say from the beginning, "the Targaryens always burned their dead and no one had ever come back to life despite the old saying that fire could not kill the dragon. It surely did kill my other trueborn brother, Viserys. So it's perhaps a miracle that Rhaegar and I survived. Why can't it be the same with you?"
Jon looked as a man who didn't dare hope, but was nevertheless applying his reason to process everything he had heard that day. It was not what she wanted. Cold reason was the last thing she needed from him at that moment.
"I forgot to say that I also had a dead suitor, a wight suitor, I mean," she steered the conversation into different waters and smiled wickedly. "Trust me, he wasn't as you, not at all."
"How not?"
He didn't make my blood simmer and boil, she thought. But aloud she said, "Well, his shoulders were not as broad."
Bold, she pulled Jon's black wools over his head and placed a kiss on his chest above his heart where the most grievous wound healed by Rhaegal used to be.
"And his heart did not beat in his chest," she said, content to hear the sound she was waiting for.
"And I never let him touch me," she added for good measure in case Jon was jealous, like Rhaegar.
Somehow, they were kissing again at will, not pressured to go anywhere. He tasted like danger, like loss, like home. And for the first time since she arrived North, Daenerys was looking forward to short days and long nights.
"The wights do not feel desire," she stated with confidence, unlacing and removing his breeches. The gesture caught him by surprise but he neither resisted, nor helped. He just let her do. They both ended up staring at his smallclothes with evidence of life in them.
The ship became alive at that moment as well, and not only noisy. The passengers and the crew burst into song. The wildling voices rose coarse and melodious to the salty air, mingling with drunk chants of former slaves from Volantis who rested after their shift at the oars… Dany's understanding of Old Tongue was very limited, and the Volantene dialect of bastard Valyrian was the variety she understood the least, being more fluent in Pentoshi and Braavosi… Yet they all seemed to sing about life.
"I don't want to hide under the furs," Jon whispered, searching her face for some sort of confirmation. His hands finally went up to her white, dirty tunic, and she sighed with pleasure as she stretched to let him guide it over her head. Cold palms caressed her sides with feverishly insistent touch, setting her on edge in a most pleasing way.
She backed from where they had supped to the higher part of her bed of silks, not feeling cold at all despite the freshness of the night, which the braziers could not take away entirely. One more night in the North… She could get used to them.
"There are no furs here," she said, looking suspiciously around, not quite understanding what he wanted to say. She had purposefully put away the hrakar's pelt, Drogo's gift, before she went to Jon. It was part of her past now. "And I want to see you as well if that is what you were saying."
"This is what I want," he said and was with her in a moment. The uncertainty was gone from him. He went after her as assuredly as a wolf goes after his prey. Unburdening her from everything she still wore, he kissed his way up and between her thighs to her sex, occasionally inhaling her smell. It was the last thing she expected him to do first. She couldn't tell what she did expect, but it was not that.
His mouth was not cold like his body; it was hot as Drogon's maw and the way he kissed her there was better than anything. She pulled his hair, not to guide him because he didn't need it, but to keep herself in place, to hold herself from screaming too loud in pleasure, which came to her sudden and strong after so much talk of death.
She burned, and wanted to continue burning.
"No dead man could do that", Dany said when she came down from the cloud of her bliss and her memories, and hoped Jon would believe her, wondering how she tasted to him and if she was to his liking.
He left her shaking as he withdrew from her and lay next to her on the silks, eyes black and more clouded than the northern skies. She never had a lover with such a warm, dark gaze. He didn't make another move to have her or to help himself in any way, just caressed her naked form from her chin and neck, across her breasts, and to the curve of her hip, over and over again. Only then did she notice a fresh crust of green crystals on his sword hand. The burns must have been very large and painful before Rhaegal breathed on them.
Daenerys turned on her side and rolled to nest against him, to feel his body as much as she could with her own, before disposing of the now offensive presence of his smallclothes.
"Don't you feel alive?" she asked in all innocence, never losing his eyes out of sight as they finally faced each other not as strangers or long lost relatives, but as lost lovers…
Lost and found...
"More than just alive," he confessed, "I feel like I could live forever." He gave her a mesmerized look and a genuine smile as their bodies joined in a very different dance of dragons than the famous war between their ancestors in the past.
She could hear vaguely how the wildlings started singing about someone called Bael the Bard in common tongue. The Volantene sailors responded launching a lament for the slaves wasting their lives in the mines of Valyria, a very old song calling for the end of their suffering. The two songs met at odd intervals and harmonies just like Dany's and Jon's body met and went apart only to meet again.
"Daenerys," Jon begged of her, his voice deep and sorrowful once more, "Say that you'll have me even if I am as he said. Say that you won't have anyone else. Say it, please."
She didn't have to think twice of what to say, remembering the wonderful promise he had made to her in the caves and kept it. You are not like the others, Jon, she thought, filled with blind trust, you will not betray me,
"No matter what you are," she said, drowning in the pleading look of his vivid, black eyes, "no matter what I am," she had to add, in case they were both monsters. "I'll never let you go…"
Her words drove him over all his limits, into frantic motion. When he was well and truly lost in her, she nearly found her pleasure for the second time herself, remaining in a state of euphoric yearning, trembling dangerously at the beginning of something completely new and maddening. She longed for more days together, for more nights together, the war and the winter be damned.
Yet she never stopped being a mother to her people from across the narrow sea, and she now knew Jon well enough to believe he'd always put his duty before himself and their bedchamber. There was only one way to keep him there, alive, for she, Daenerys Targaryen, refused to believe a single word of what the Other had said.
The Night's King is a lying bastard.
He can't prevail.