21. A Year Ago

"What a pair we are." Dany glanced from the dying embers in the fireplace as her husband shuffled out of their bedchamber.

Jorah was lacing up his breeches, a bedrobe thrown loosely about his shoulders, and made directly for the sideboard, where he took a goblet down from the cupboard and poured himself a drink. Returning her gaze to the fire, Dany drew up her knees in her chair, pulling her blanket more snuggly around her, and sipped at her own wine which she'd been nursing for some time.

"You cannot sleep for dreaming," she murmured, "and I cannot sleep because I don't."

Jorah grunted by way of reply, draining his goblet and filling it again before he padded across the red and black tiled floor to stoke the fire. Replacing the poker, he stepped back to stand beside Dany's chair to warm himself, though she noticed that he continued to shiver long after the blaze had crackled up high enough in the grate to cast the black dragons carved about the hearth in silhouette. Experience had taught her to reach out from the folds of her blanket and slip her hand into his, but tonight his icy fingers did not close around hers and cease their trembling. He resisted her touch, the soles of his feet scuffing on the marble the only sound he made as he withdrew once from the room.

Though perplexed by his behavior, Dany did not uncurl herself from her chair before the fire to go after him and inquire about his troubles; she was occupied enough with her own.

The house with the red door had been the subject of her dreams for as far back as she could remember, but it had not once tormented her sleep since she'd found it in Valyria. Strangely, the absence of the recurring hadn't brought her sounder sleep. Like Jorah, she'd always presumed that the place plagued her because it had been the only home where she'd known something like the care of a father, and both had been cruelly torn from her when she was but a little girl. Now, though, she didn't know whether her dreams had been of Ser Willem Darry's house, after all, or instead the one in which she now resided.

And if the latter, what did it mean? Had she fulfilled some course that had been ordained for her? Was she meant to settle permanently in Valyria? What, then, of the Iron Throne? What about the crones' prophesy that Rhaego was the stallion who mounts the world? How could he do that, if his mother hid herself away without making her rightful claim?

A burning log cracked in two and fell, scattering ash and sparks like a swarm of fireflies, drawing Dany's gaze to the altar where her lone dragon's egg presided in place of a statue of the Asshai'I god-or perhaps, before him, one of the old gods of Valyria-which had formerly stood there to receive praise and petitions from those who had lived here before her. It wasn't just the sacred position, here or upon the altar where she'd placed it in the ruined temple in Vaes Tolorro, that impressed Dany with a feeling that her dragon's egg held some great import, and as she beheld the one that remained to her, she felt more spiritually bereft of the other two than ever she had felt by the gods' deaf ears to her prayers. She uncurled her legs, her blanket puddling on the floor as she stood, and padded across the fire-warmed mosaic to the altar.

She ran her hands across the scaly petrified shell of the egg and gazed up at the darkened stained glass window above. The dragon had three heads, but like her, this dragon had been deprived of its brothers.

But the dragon also had the body of a black bear, and right now Dany's bear had need of her. Her fingers blessed the egg with one final caress, then she turned from the altar and followed the flickering glow of candlelight into the corridor down which her and Jorah's private chambers lay.

She found him hunched, quill in hand, over the big oak desk where he conducted the business of the house when it was required of him but otherwise avoided like the bloody flux. Jorah was an active man, preferring duties that called for him to walk or ride about the grounds or in the city. He never came in here when he woke in the night-which was as frequent occurrence these days as Dany not being able to sleep.

Though unlike her, Jorah did dream. Terrible dreams, about the nightmarish visions he'd seen in the House of the Undying, from which he awakened drenched in a cold sweat, crying out for his father, or for forgiveness, or something wholly incoherent about crows. Most nights he took comfort easily enough by loving Dany, holding himself over her on arms whose muscles coiled tight as rope beneath his skin, moving in and out of her until his trembling focused into the steady rhythm of his thrusts; then he would slip into Rhaego's nursery, pluck the babe from his cradle and hold him for a long time, to return to bed and lie down as peaceful as a sleeping babe himself.

Dany wondered if giving Jorah a child of his own would cure the ills that stemmed from his troubles with his own father. She'd not forgotten the hope that had lit his eyes that night, months ago now, when he'd spoken of her absent moon's blood. If she'd realized her reply would extinguish it entirely, she never would have told him that nursing Rhaego would prevent her from conceiving again.

In truth, she felt a little saddened that she would not have a child with Jorah as quickly as she'd had one with Drogo. Pregnancy had strengthened the bond of a marriage that did not even have the foundation of friendship and trust and survival upon which she and Jorah had built their house. She remembered how Jorah's face had looked that first night when they'd escaped the Dothraki, when he'd placed his hands on her belly and felt Rhaego move inside her, and when she'd delivered her child naked in his arms; she wanted to see him wear that expression of awe and love and joy again, which would be all the greater for it being his child this time and not another man's. Not only for his sake, but for her own, as well, as Mirri Maz Duur had denied her the experience of sharing Rhaego's birth with his sire.

Ahe couldn't help but wonder, as well, if more children might fill the empty places in her heart left by her dragon's eggs.

So, she had begun to feed Rhaego bits of soft meat and bread and cheese and even give him sips of warm goat's milk from a cup, in the hope that he might become interested in proper food and wean soon. He did enjoy them-but only as additions to his usual meals; the ravenous little dragon showed no intention of giving up the breast. "A wise lad," Jorah had joked, but to Dany this was a matter of healing wounds she couldn't help but feel she had, at least in part, inflicted upon her husband by sending him into the warlocks' den, and she saw no humor in the situation.

"Won't you come back to bed, Jorah?"

He lifted his head, slowly, regarding her through bleary eyes. Clearly, he had not heard her approach.

She stepped farther into the room; it seemed smaller than it was, due to the dark paneled walls of mostly empty bookshelves which were only broken by one window of dark tinted glass and a desk which could have sat an entire small council around it.

"Surely this is no business that cannot be attended to on the morrow," she said.

As she approached, Jorah drew the parchment closer to him, curling one arm around it, as though to conceal what he had been writing.

"It cannot," he said. "I ought to have attended to it long before now."

Dany kept her eyes on his as she covered his hand with her own. "What is it?"

"A letter." She watched the roll of Jorah's throat as he swallowed hard. "To my father."

Dany's gaze darted down to the parchment, as if to have her husband's words confirmed in writing even though she knew them to be true. But he had not written a single word.

"Good," she told him. "Then he will write to you in turn, and it will ease your mind to know that he's alive and well."

"Unless he's not."

Her grip on his hand tightened. "Surely in either case, knowing for certain is better than dreaming the worst."

"Aye."

"And if he does live, it may be that his sleep is plagued with similar fears about his only son. It will hearten him to know that you are well."

Jorah made a growling sort of sound as he leaned back in his chair and scuffed his fingers over his stubbled chin and cheeks. "If I know the Old Bear, it will only prompt him to resume badgering me to go to the Wall and take the Black."

"News of your marriage will put a stop to that," said Dany with a smile, pushing herself up so that she sat at the edge of the desk. She rubbed her foot along his well-muscled calf. "What will he think, when he learns that you've married the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms?"

"I couldn't begin to guess."

Dany's foot stilled. It was not like him to mince words with her. "You could. You know exactly."

He met her eyes, though the lines about his face deepened as if it pained him to do so. "He wasn't best pleased to learn of my marriage to Lynesse Hightower."

"He thought her an unsuitable wife for you?"

That was surprising, for the Hightowers, Dany knew, were fine old stock; she would have thought that in marrying Lynesse, Jorah would have elevated his poor house. Somehow, she found it strangely heartening that her good father had not liked Jorah's previous wife -which was ridiculous, because if Dany reminded Jorah of Lynesse, then Jeor Mormont wouldn't like her, either.

But could shebe like Lynesse? Viserys might have raised Dany to believe that as a princess she was entitled to a certain style of living, but they'd never had the means for her to really take it to heart and grow spoiled; she'd learned to be thankful for the smallest kindness. Lynesse, on the other hand, had left Jorah while they yet lived in the city of Lys, which, though a poor sort of living, would have seemed luxurious compared to the nomadic life Jorah adopted when he took up with the Dothraki. She would never have suffered herself to grow accustomed to that, as Dany had. Nor could she have weathered the Red Waste for weeks. Or birthed a babe in the courtyard of a dead city with no midwives to help her. If Lynesse was no she-bear, neither was she a dragon.

Dany studied Jorah, who looked far away as he contemplated his answer. He'd described himself as drunk on victory and wine when he'd asked for Lynesse's hand, but Dany couldn't believe that was all there was to the story, that the watchful man who'd prevented so much harm from befalling her could have done something as reckless as marry a woman simply because she was beautiful. He must have seen some quality in Lynesse that made him think her, above all other ladies, the right one to be Lady Mormont of Bear Island. And whatever that was, it must be a quality he recognized in Dany, too.

At length, Jorah answered her. "Lynesse was so young. And I was a younger man then."

"And I am younger still." At the catch in Dany's voice, Jorah seemed to rejoin her in the present moment.

"Forgive my bluntness. Have I offended you, my love?"

She shook her head, unable at first to answer audibly. "No. I mean, you do not. The idea…"

Love knew no age-that she had given Jorah her heart proved that-but if his own father thought her too young to make him a suitable wife, other men would, too. And if she was too young to make a suitable wife for a lord of a minor house, then how could she expect anyone to bend the knee to her as queen?

She was older than Joffrey Baratheon, though-or Lannister, as the case seemed to be. And the same age as Robb Stark, to whom the northmen, Jorah's people included, pledged their fealty as King in the North. And she had produced an heir to the Iron Throne already; had either of them even bedded a maid? No, her age need not preclude her. And if her sex did, she would show them all that a she-dragon was more fearsome than any man who bore the sigil of lion or wolf.

Or bear.

Which meant she need not be afraid to come out with the question that had long troubled her.

"Why do you love me, Jorah? Is it because I am like your Lady Lynesse?"

They had been at the brink of this discussion, she remembered suddenly, before she sent him to the House of the Undying. How had not thought of it again until now?

She was equally surprised that Jorah was so long in answering her, though she liked that he gave his reply due consideration rather than trotting out some pretty words he had rehearsed in the event that she put the question to him. All the time he thought, his gaze never wavered from Dany's, as if to reassure her that he hid no lie from her; and his eyes continued to hold her as he pushed his chair back from the desk, stood, and drew her hands out of her lap, his long fingers closing almost completely around them.

"I loved Lynesse because I thought she was you."

As Dany's brow crinkled in confusion, Jorah raised one of his hands to cup her cheek; the roughened tips of his fingers tickled the base of her scalp where tendrils of her hair had come loose from her braid as she'd tossed and turned in bed.

"You are the great lady I imagined her to be," he went on, his voice husky. "My true queen of love and beauty."

They were pretty words, and after a lifetime with a brother who never uttered any but that were ugly, and a year of marriage to a man who used none at all, Dany could not but react favorably to being spoken to in this manner by a man whom she knew worshiped her as a goddess, and in whom she had never found falsehood.

She raised her own hand to his cheek, mirroring his touch, and drew him down to her so that she might express to him with lips and tongue just what his words meant to her, and the love that swelled in her breast at the sound of them. Jorah had to bend to meet her on her low perch atop the desk; his tongue swept into her mouth in a breathless rush that gave Dany a sensation that the world had tilted, only for her to realize that he was leaning her back, cradling her in one muscular arm as he braced himself on the paper strewn desk with the other. He made a soft sound rather like a whimper when she briefly broke their kiss, which changed to an almost-growl of pleasure low in his throat when she shifted so that she lay back completely. Her silken bedrobe fell open as she sprawled across the desk, arms and legs open, inviting him to work not on parchment and ink but instead on her full, firm breasts and her warm, wet sex.

This being the sort of indoor work he enjoyed, Jorah did not hesitate to shrug out of his own robe and unlace his breeches, freeing his already hardened manhood as he climbed up with her. But though the desk dominated the room in size, it groaned rather loudly beneath Jorah's weight, belying its age. He gave Dany a wary look.

Grinning up at him she said, "Come, my valiant knight. We've braved greater dangers than creaky old desks."

He could not, of course, resist a challenge of that sort, and he dipped his head to nip at Dany's neck, raking his teeth lightly across her collarbones. His tongue just darted out to taste the hollow where they met beneath her throat, then worked its way down her chest to lick the valley between her breasts as the tip of his cock teased her between her parted thighs. The contact sent a jolt of sensation through her, and her hand knocked against some object on the desk which, the next instant, shattered on the floor.

"We only just finished restoring this house," Jorah muttered, pushing himself back off the desk, pulling Dany upright with him. "Don't let's destroy it again."

She had just time enough to glimpse green shards of pottery glistening up from jet black ink spilled over the tiles and make a joke about how at least he had an excuse not to do the loathsome business at his desk, since he no longer had the necessary tools to write, before Jorah claimed her lips again, swallowing her giggle. As he kissed her, his hands slipped beneath her to cup her arse, drawing her to the utmost edge of the desk so that he could press into her.

Dany gasped as he filled her, and as he began to move within her, serving her the sweetest pleasure with each thrust and retreat, her head fell back and her eyes fluttered shut. She saw herself, a queen enthroned. Surely no king, of House Targaryen or the Usurper's line, had such satisfaction while sitting upon the Iron Throne. Not even her father King Aerys, who'd been the recipient of constant pricks of those conquered swords, she thought, choking back a perverse laugh.

After Jorah spilled into her, he gathered Dany into his arms and collapsed into the chair with her, a tangle of sweat-slicked skin and pounding hearts and ragged breaths. Dany pressed soft kisses the side of his throat, and felt the wild fluttering of his pulse and the rumble of his voice against her lips.

"Don't sell yourself short, love. You are not only my queen, but the queen."

Shivering as the chill of the room touched her damp skin, Dany tucked her head beneath his chin and tugged his discarded bedrobe up over them.

"You crown me with love, husband, but to those I would rule I am the exiled daughter of the Mad King, with no throne and but one knight to help me win it. Sometimes I fear that anything more would be rather overselling."

Jorah's lips brushed her hair, and then his fingers touched her chin, tilting her face up so that he could kiss her brow. "The sweet daughter of the Mad King…"

He kissed her eyelids. "…and wise…and brave…"

The tip of her nose. "…determined…"

Tiny kisses trailed across first one cheekbone… "…strong…" …and then the other. "…fierce…"

He lightly bit her lower lip before his mouth seared hers for a too-brief moment. He leaned his forehead against hers. "…and a dragon…"

A fire kindled in Dany's belly, and she sat up to look Jorah in the eyes, lifting her fingers to push an errant lock of hair off his forehead.

"You are honorable and courageous and loyal and kind," she said, "and a tender father to another man's son. And you've done it all without once asking me for anything in return. So you mustn't sell yourself short, either, Jorah. Your father will see that you're a changed man."

His lips smiled, faintly, but his eyes darkened. "I am not a changed man, Daenerys. I never askedanyone for anything-save love."

Beneath her, his leg moved, as if to indicate he wished her to get up from his lap. Dany did, a little dazed, his answer reminding her of the time she'd asked whether he truly saw the error in the crime that had brought his exile. She was vaguely aware of him rising from the chair, too, lacing up his trousers and pulling her bedrobe over her shoulders and belting it closed around her, and guiding her out of the office and down the dim corridor.

They had scarcely set foot inside their bedchamber when she turned to him and blurted, "Do you remember what you said to me once? About us being the same in that I would never go to the dosh khaleen, and you would never go to the Wall?"

"That was a fair while ago," he replied through a yawn.

He stripped off his breeches and stretched himself out on the voluminous feather mattress, then reached out his hand for Dany to join him in their bed. She shed her bedrobe and crawled in beside him as he drew the coverlet up over them.

"I've thought about it often," she said, "but I can't work out what you meant by it. I know you would be free, but that's not the whole of it. Is it?"

"Even if we've got nothing, you and I," Jorah said, his voice thick and drowsy, "so long as we have our lives, we will live them."

The question loomed in the darkness like the grinning maw of a predator, so that Dany hardly dared ask. But she was the blood of the dragon, so she did not tuck tail and run, though her heart hung in her chest.

"But are we truly living, here?"

Jorah's only reply was his soft snore.

At some point, Dany new she must have slept, because she awoke. The yellow light of morning slanted through the slats of the window shades like translucent bars of gold, and Jorah's beard pricked her skin as he nuzzled her ear.

"I dreamed of home," he murmured.

"A good dream?"

He nodded and hugged her close to him, cupping her milk-swollen breast in his hand and pressing his arousal against her backside. "You were with me, wearing a cloak of white bear fur-only a cloak, mind-and you ran down the gangplank to frolic in the snow. You packed balls of ice together and threw them at me, and then I made love to you."

"In the snow?" Dany shifted to allow him entrance.

He half-grunted his words as she ground her hips back into him. "In your bearskin cloak."

"Perhaps it was no dream, but a vision of the future," Dany said. "Perhaps when I conquer Westeros, I shall have the Iron Throne moved to Bear Island and make it my seat instead of King's Landing. Or I shall winter there."

"Winters on Bear Island are harsh; better to summer there."

"But you dreamed me in the snow. I have never seen it, you know. I should like to. And afterward, you could warm me up."

"There is that."

And as they made love slowly in the morning light, Dany had her answer.

"I have an errand for you in the city," she told Jorah as they dressed, meeting his gaze in the looking glass as her lady arranged her hair. "To tell Captain Groleo to make ready to sail. First to Pentos, and then to Westeros."

Jorah's fingers froze in the middle of doing the fastenings on his green doublet. "You've had enough of rest?"

"I could rest here forever," Dany replied. "But so could I with the dosh khaleen. So could you on the Wall. Only when we are home will we live."

To her surprise, Jorah's eyes did not so much as flash in argument, but he bowed his head and said, "As my queen commands."

"It was a year ago to the day that Drogo died," said Dany, the wind unfurling her silver mane of hair like the green and black banners that topped the mainmast as The Bear and the Maiden Fair put out into the Summer Sea. "Weep for him tomorrow, or a year from now, you told me."

"And you did not shed a tear," said Jorah at her side, his cloak billowing around them. She felt his wary gaze upon her as he asked, "Will you now?"

Daenerys Targaryen did not weep.