"She asked me for a month, Elaena, for a month. Why did she ask me for a month?" Arya was deep in her cups by any measure, and had another glass of wine well in hand. She was half slumped against Elaena, who was also drinking, though not nearly so much.

"I'm not sure that she has much longer," Elaena answered, looking dimly ahead. "It's… Perhaps the animating force that revived her is fading."

"And then you're going to be Empress."

"Yes. God help me." Elaena nodded convulsively, looking ahead, into the torches along the balcony, to the green of Dragonstone in the distance, obscured by the darkness.

"Do you not want it?"

"I want it very much; but it is a terrible burden. However, I would be nothing unless I had been locked into this course those years ago, so I must walk all of it, and endure the responsibilities with the powers," Elaena shrugged, and drained her glass of sour red, which she had taken a very great liking to.

"And Maekar?"

"He will be happy to hold my capital for me. But I will be an Empress-Regnant, and our relationship will mean no-one will doubt that. He's not ambitious like that."

"Luckier than I am. I don't know what sort of man I'll marry."

"You could refuse, and adopt;" Elaena answered. "Once it would have been unthinkable, but at least for a while, Daenerys changed everything. Look at me. Azor Ahai has broken the norms of the world, and I shall try to tilt them a bit in our favour, the weak and the innocent, the freedmen and the women, while the opportunity remains."

"That is part of why I still hold my blade, Ela. I think you really mean it."

Elaena laughed. "I am a practical woman. When your political power rests on a fundamental guiding policy, you don't turn against it! And, I do fear for my soul, if I ever think to dare to act against Her Majesty's policy. Real power stood behind us, that night in the North. I shall never forget it. I would be the worst monster in history to not devote myself to continuing her cause, when she did that for the whole world. Both the practical and the heart align in continuing her policies, and I know they're exactly why you hold your blade. You hate her as an enemy of your family, but love her as a friend of the poor and downtrodden and the slave. That's life, so often you end up loving and hating someone at the same time, God knows I know this in my experience..."

"With my brother," Arya finished softly, and squeezed Elaena tightly. "I understand. I believe you really came to love him, and I thank you for that. I respect that you never stopped hating him, too. We will always be friends; and though the world will not know it, I will remember, privately, that your first two children are also Jon Snow's. And I know you will not begrudge me this."

"Thank you, my friend. I will figure out what Her Majesty has planned. I pray to the Lord that it has nothing to do with me. But perhaps you should go away for a while."

"If it comes to pass, I would have to return, to do homage to you."

"If it comes to pass, your return would be a trifle," Elaena shrugged, feeling her heart roiling with discomfort. Despite the fact that Arya did, Elaena did not want Daenerys to die. She absolutely did not. She loved Daenerys, and Daenerys had given her everything. "If it doesn't, I will tell Her Majesty that I was the one who encouraged you to leave."

"Isn't she upset that you decamped to Lys, and eloped?"

"No, not in the slightest. I think she predicted it would happen, actually," Elaena grinned wryly. "She knew there would be a price to pay for getting me to give birth to Jon's children, and she paid it without hesitation, because of what she wanted out of this life. Daenerys is a woman like that, you must give her that even though you dislike her; she is clear-headed about what is around her, and fair. She knew she wounded me, so she didn't hold it against me that I was angry, and in the end, when I calmed down—well, you were there, you remember. It all just made sense to return."

"I was there," Arya hesitated, "and the only reason I came back was to try and save my sister… And I failed." Elaena took her hand.

""Poor, poor Sansa. She did dreadful things, but she was the victim of evil people. Her sufferings broke her inside. But you won't fail in making the North a better place for its common-folk," Elaena answered insistently, and rose on unsteady feet.

Dressed informally, in airy Mantaryan robes fit only for the height of a good summer on cool and misty Dragonstone, Elaena went to visit her Empress and Sovereign. She was not surprised, having requested this meeting, that Shiera was present.

Shiera Targaryen was one of those … Well, Elaena had become more comfortable with those who were not quite alive, than with those who were. One might say that in some way, Arya herself – lacked an essential quality of humanity after her time in the House.

One more friendship she had learned to negotiate in uncomfortable circumstances.

Elaena was offered a seat, and took it. "Your Majesty is kind to me, as ever, and I am pleased to see you with Shiera, I…"

"Let's be Daenerys and Elaena," Dany said informally. "I do not regret becoming a Queen, and I regret becoming an Empress even less, but for the sake of those around me, and merely that it ended my own subjugation. Come, you're not that much younger than I am. You could have been my sister, Elaena. I've adopted you as a daughter, but in truth, we're too close together in age for that to have been true by the womb. It's a matter of law, culture, custom and fate. And willingness. I want to apologise, Ela, for having you whipped. But it was a lesson you needed to learn."

"It was a lesson I needed to learn. I spent fifteen terrified minutes as a slave," Elaena answered. "Daenerys, that was nothing. And I'd already gained your dragon that day."

"Well, you've never precisely gained Drogon," Daenerys answered with a faint smile. "Drogon is his own dragon. But, he is loyal to me as his mother, and he's always followed my intent, to some extent."

Elaena paused for a moment, and looked very intently between the two. "Tell me something, then. Was it ever actually a contest, that day when I took flight in Volantis?"

"No." Daenerys shook her head. "Shiera recommended you to me," the Empress added. "Even before she revealed herself to me, Quaithe seemed very interested in a Targaryen Restoration!" A laugh seized her battered face, with a youthful intensity for at least a brief moment. "I chose you, on the recommendations made to me, and moulded you from the start. There was really only one choice, there was always really only one choice: A descendant of Saera Targaryen. And you met the mark the best of all in Volantis. I just had to cure you of the ills you had been raised with. And now, I am content that I have succeeded."

Elaena lowered her head for a minute, then looked up with a wry smile. "I would be a madwoman not to continue your policies, and I'm not mad. Also, I look back on the past years, and I am sincerely sickened by slavery now. I hope you believe that change."

"I wouldn't be so sanguine if I didn't. It will always be different for you than it was for me. It was always different for me than it was for… For Missandei, I suppose. I recommend you find your own Missandei, though the task will be nearly impossible. But the longer you sit the throne, the better to have an adviser whose sufferings are seared into her memory, someone you can be an intimate friend with … I would not have been nearly so deserving my three crowns without her. It would have been impossible. She should be the one remembered as an Empress. It was – her heart and soul were greater than mine. But instead, they will remember me as Azor Ahai, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. Once this all started … When it starts, Elaena, you are really quite helpless. In the end, I was undone by the forces which I unleashed, and it was still also those forces that brought me back to be the fulfilment, the culmination of what they represented. Here, at the end… I remember so little of the past, maybe that's it, but I can't help but feel like I've almost been a spectator to my own life."

"The end." Elaena froze. "Daenerys is… It's true, then."

"It's true," she agreed, but smiled. "I'll call you when it's time. But set yourself right. I can't be here to save you, when you have three thrones to sit. You will hold them with my loyalists, my Drogon, and your own right hand. And it will still be harder than you've ever imagined."

The Night is Dark and Full of Terrors. Elaena felt dreadful that night, though it was not because of the dark on the outside. It was because the appointed hour had come; Shiera had summoned her. She stepped up to the guards, unarmed, for she would not bring arms into the presence of the Empress for this. Not this night. Nothing would be left to chance and certainly nothing to whispers.

Grey Worm stood outside. She froze for a moment, to see that tears were threatening in his eyes. He looked at her—she at him.

"I took the Last Watch myself," he explained, hesitant, quiet, trembling faintly with emotion.

Wordlessly, Elaena reached out and brushed his shoulder. Then she forced her feet onwards, past him and through into the Empress' apartments. Daenerys was sitting alone in one of her chairs. Shiera had a cauldron bubbling, into which she was drizzling blood.

"Princess Elaena." Daenerys greeted her. "It is a warm night and not stormy at all."

"A dread one nonetheless."

"Not for me," she smiled. "I am very weary of this life, this facsimile of what I had before. Do not think that I regret in the slightest this night. If all goes well it will be the beginning and if not, I will at least meet my mother. And Rhaegar. And many others. I will not have Grey Worm to stand my guard then, but I will be content with Ser Barristan. And most of all, I would have my friends again, Ela, with no offence to you."

She closed her eyes and bowed her head. "What would you have me do?"

"They say that suicide is a sin, and being able to have a choice… I'll take no chances," Daenerys offered with a wry smile. "I cannot be given poison, and my blood would probably kill poor Shiera, with the light magic within. Would you do the deed?"

Elaena broke down. She dropped to her knees. "Please, it's – Your Majesty, no. I have come so far in your service, you have taught me so much. I do not wish to live, having it on my mind that I have put an end to you, even by your own will."

"I cannot eat, nor drink, nor sleep. I live by the power of the Lord of Light only. My days are filled with pain, and the endless memories of those who betrayed me, while of those I cared about, and who cared about me, I can barely remember anything at all, and had to re-learn their lives through the stories of others. Each day the pain of my death remains with me. It is more than a mercy but a favour and a blessing for you to draw the blade, Elaena."

Elaena outright grovelled. "Your Majesty, it would be impossible to keep secret, and it should make me, by rights, a kinslayer…"

"Oh nonsense." Daenerys waved her hand. "Nonsense. You are doing me a great favour. Shiera, show her the instructions."

Shiera stepped up, and presented a scroll. "We are ready, Daenerys," she said very softly, gesturing back to the cauldron.

That promoted more tears from Elaena, but she read the scroll, and then she read it again. She was shivering, shaking in the intensity of the powerful emotions of that hour.

"Consider this the last lesson," Daenerys offered, gently, and rose, got down to her own knees, and embraced the girl, of Saera's blood, that she had chosen for this purpose. "To be Empress, to be a really good Empress, you will sometimes have to kill what is precious to you, for the sake of those you rule. I have given you this prize, of three thrones, on the condition that you continue my policies, and that you keep well my people. Here, end my suffering, begin the ritual. It's time. I've lived long enough. None who love me would call it murder. I am going to roll the dice, and see if Shiera's plan works. I am going to go on a very great adventure either way-just follow the instructions, Elaena, and no guilt will attend you. I promise."

Yara carried her to King's Landing on her flagship. Elaena flew Drogon, who circled over the flagship throughout the whole journey up the Blackwater. They landed in the ruins of the Dragonpit, where the Catafalque was borne by a massive elephant-hauled wagon through streets decked in black, and the people of the city come out to mourn. The unsettled roars and chuffs of Drogon, when he was settled among the ruins, seemed to confirm to all that he was mourning, too.

Elaena went up to the Red Keep, and returned in robes of State, in which she knelt in the dirt before the Catafalque. Displayed in the ruins of the Dragonpit, the people of the city viewed Daenerys' body for seven days, which had been carefully preserved by the efforts of Shiera's magic. At night, Shiera stood vigil, and Elaena, by day, with Yara, Daario, Grey Worm, and others of the court. A levy was placed on the rich of the city, and a golden coffin was forged from it, with a crystal lid.

"Hail, hail, the Queen of Queens!"

They held services for her in the name of the Lord of Light, of the Seven, of the Old Gods, of the Drowned God. "Uncrown, the Lord of Emperors awaits you now," the Red Priest had said during his service. In death, Daenerys faced her judgement as one of the faithful, alongside so many of those slaves who had found comfort in the faith of the Lord of Light. It was over. Azor Ahai had lived and died.

But who could doubt that the Lord of Emperors awaited her, to welcome her as the foremost of his servants, the Liberator he had sent, and preserved against the powers of mortal treachery, to carry home His victory against the darkness?

The young heir had to have confidence that it was so. And she had to keep her promise, and execute the plan, exactingly. Elaena rose, on the seventh day, and removed her robes of State, and draped them across the coffin. She wore only sack-cloth, and took off her shoes. "Let us give some callouses to this Lady's feet," she declared before the coffin, to her assembled court.

It was a complicated matter. A funerary barge was waiting; this bore the Catafalque across the Blackwater, as the mourners wailed at the departure of the Empress from the city. The spears of the Unsullied beat the ground in a rhythm.

Only Shiera, to protect her from the sun, had the pleasure of riding a wagon among the Ladies; the servants, conversely, were ordered to ride, because the journey was long and hard, and because the instructions of the Empress were clear: "Let the Last be First, and the First Be Last."

Rubbing her hair and her face with ashes, Elaena led the procession, and Drogon circled overhead. The elephants hauling the wagon with the great Catafalque upon it headed hence south, along the border between the Stormlands and the Reach, where a thin and secondary road wended its way from village to village, croft to croft, holdfast to holdfast. The people did not understand, not completely, what had happened, but they turned out to mourn, weeping and kneeling at the sides of the road.

Elaena walked barefoot. Each night, it was true, the servants who rode in wagons, anointed her feet in oil and rubbed and washed them. She was still an Empress, and would soon enough be the second to be thrice-crowned, Empress of Westeros, Empress of Valyria, Empress of Ghis. So they anointed her feet with fine oil. But each day, for eight punishing hours, she walked barefoot in sackcloth, at the head of the funeral procession.

"Her Majesty, Daenerys the First of Her Name, Empress of Westeros, Empress of Valyria, Empress of Ghis! The Breaker of Chains, the Stormborn, the Unburnt! The Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea! Liberator of Astapor, of Yunkai, of Meereen, of New Ghis, of Tolos, of Elyria, of Mantarys, of Volantis, of Lys, of Tyrosh, of Myr and All Westeros. She Who Turneth Back the Dark! Azor Ahai, the Prince Who Was Promised! Mother of Dragons! Manifest Hand of the Will of God! The Shadow of God Upon the Earth!"

"The Lord Almighty has taken her home, and forth go we, to the appointed place of Her family."

A huge mass of peasants was soon following them. The Army and the army transport wagons had been arranged for this purpose, to be sure, and they were now well employed in simply feeding the mass of mourners who in an immense sea followed behind the procession.

The progress of a funeral procession of this magnitude, across three hundred miles of Westeros, from north to south, from the southern shore of the Blackwater to a point where the Dornish Marches began, and there, at the border of the Dornish Marches, halfway across this narrow strip of Stormlands territory roughly equidistant from the Reach and Dorne; now the place was a stump, for some had been given away by the Empress' command, but the House Selmy was still part of the Circle of the Stormlands, and Summerhall lay between their lands and the Stormlands proper.

It was there, in the wonderful sunny summer grass and oak and ash and thorn of a beautiful, splendid, long summer—it was there that the mouldering ruins of Summerhall slowly rose into view.

By then, Elaena was lean, and as weathered as a pilgrim. Some of the rags she wore were fashioned into a headscarf, but she allowed herself nothing more. She had gained the callouses on her feet that she had promised. It had taken an entire month to march from the Blackwater to Summerhall with the great funeral train, after all. And ahead of them, awaited the Dornish, Dornish by the tens of thousands, dressed in sack-cloth and rags and peasants' clothes for the best, all come in mourning of the one who had fought for their liberation, their revenge, their vindication, in honour of She, the Great Queen.

Ahead of her, Drogon landed with a bellowing roar, amidst the ruins. Elaena paused in stride for a moment, and raised a bony hand. "Grey Worm, he's landed in exactly the spot, hasn't he?"

"He has, Your Majesty."

"Coming to welcome his mother home," she mused, then waved her hand forward. They carried on. Just another day, with Summerhall in sight. Prince Mors came to meet her, and bowed deeply first before the Catafalque and then before Elaena.

"Your Majesty. Dorne has come," he said with simple dignity, "to lay our Empress to rest, whose blood was our blood, too."

"I confirm to you all the privileges of Dorne, as a suzerain of myself as Empress personally; thus did Her Majesty proclaim it, and thus do I promise to uphold forever."

"As long as you honour this promise, Your Majesty, Dorne will be at your side, even if we are the only ones. So it was for the Empress Daenerys, so it shall be to her line and heirs forever."

"Then together, good Prince, let us bury the greatest woman of our age." One more night, and then they hauled the Catafalque the last four miles.

The last four miles—up to the ruins, where the dragon nestled, waiting his mother. An Army of soldiers who had followed her in battle, an Army of peasants, mourning the woman who brought them freedom, the manifest Goddess who had turned back the Darkness.

Elaena was quite proud. She was following Daenerys' instructions—exactingly.

They laid her over the gently mouldering ruins of Summerhall, right over the great hall, where all agreed that it had been the spot, where Aegon the Fifth had prepared his star of seven dragon eggs. Right where the dynasty's fortunes had taken their mad, terrible fall.

The Dornish were there by the thousands and thousands, and with the immense number of mourners from the Reach and the Stormlands, they filled the fields, in masses and masses of people. The troops, formed up in massed bodies, presented their spears to keep the people back, for the sake of their own safety.

There would be fire.

Shiera was in her mask, to be Quaithe one more time, and she was laying lines of herbs and blood and placing offerings of small animals, in the form of a seven-pointed star. The great Catafalque stood in the middle.

Elaena had risen early, and quietly bathed in a running stream near Summerhall, in the pre-dawn, when the water was cold and black and ominous, like the passage onto death. The way down the Lich Road, though, was not Elaena's to take, or Daenerys'. They were dragons and their breed was the breed of fire.

She returned to her tent, and was dressed in her riding armour. Then she went to Drogon. It was from his back that her voice rang out, strong and clear with the dawn.

"The sun riseth over this world on account of Daenerys Targaryen," she called out, loudly. "Her story reaches its end in body, but not in purpose. Wherever her Army marched, it made people free. We will still march, and when our boots strike dust and stone, people will remember this Army of thousands, this Army of the Willing, carries liberation with them. Slavers will quake in their boots, and those in chains, will hold up their bonds to have them struck off!" She raised her fist heavenward. "This is the mandate given to us by she who gave us our lives, Azor Ahai, the Prince Who Was Promised!"

"They will want to burn her but she cannot be burned up!"

They will want to break her but she cannot be broken!"

They will want to kill her but death itself cannot conquer her!"

On the third day of her death, when it was believed all hope was lost, she screamed: FREEDOM! over the land must return. And death cannot conquer her!"

"She is in all of us now!" Elaena's armour glinted in the sun. "She will not let her dream of liberty die with her. Her meaning was plain to me, her charge clear, for this mandate that makes heroes assemble, that makes heroes of us all: Strike this evil from the globe! She will not let it be undone, she will not let our power wane. She is in all of us now, and death itself cannot conquer her!"

The sun was rising steadily now, burning the dew from the grass in the ruins. Elaena took one heady breath, waited for Shiera's nod that they were ready, and then began.

"History will remember her as the Prince Who Was Promised, but I ask you all, folk great and small, to hold these words in your heart – she was a woman who lived, she had friends. And she was good to her friends, and that was the testament of who she was. She was too generous, too generous even to me. Those who turned away an open hand, those who clasped a babe in fetters, they were the only ones who knew her wroth."

"They say the Dragon is ever-changing the flame, first one thing and then the other. THE DRAGON, light and life and fearlessness and bravery and contempt for danger, the hot-beating heart of life—the symbol of the sun and the day when crops rise from below the ground. And she was the strongest and finest of them all."

"On this day, on this day of days, we will see that Daenerys' promise is not dead with her body, but will rise anew, and take wing to bring liberty to the whole world. I promise it of you. Now, we will let her soul fly, may the Lord take her, and guide her, and give her peace and all delights at last – may she know forever the family she did seek. Dracarys!"

Drogon rose and blasted forth fire as he had never blasted it before. The sun itself seemed eclipsed by the hot waves of flame. The ground around the ruins of the Great Hall was turned to glass, and ploughed up in the midst of the blow of his flames, as he roared and burned and burned. The remaining columns melted and tumbled into the inferno, as people gasped and screamed and wailed, for all they had been ready for a pyre, for all they were kept safely away, they had expected nothing of this, the true power of a dragon.

The gold of the coffin slagged, an offering unto the pyre. The crystal cracked and fell away. The swirling mass of flames consumed Daenerys' body and she vanished into it, unseen, while an unsettling power shifted through the ground and seemed to charge the sky above. People gasped and flinched away from the flame, and turned their attention skyward, where it seemed for a moment that a giant burning wheel was visible, high above the world. And then it vanished, as if it had also been turned to cinders.

At last, Drogon let the fire fall away. Took a breath, metaphorically and literally. The fuel had all been annihilated, the rock molten, and it seemed nothing was left of Daenerys, nor of the entire old Great Hall. The fire quickly guttered away, with nothing to keep burning.

The wings of little dragonlets fluttered up: tiny dragons, newly hatched. Green, brown, blue, bronze, red, crimson, silver with a sharp gold striping, seven dragons… Seven eggs, in a seven-pointed star. Seven little dragons fluttering from the ground, stumbling, walking hesitantly across the freshly cooled surface, coaxed forth from beneath the ground by magic.

Then her pulse quickened, her breath grew. She saw Shiera join in, for it was only a very select group who understood the importance, who even knew there were only seven eggs below the Great Hall, or even that there were eggs at all, rather than pure and raw magic to bring them forth.

Eight. A tiny little thing; silver and gold of colouration, the only time she had ever seen a dragon look something similar to Targaryen colouration. Drogon, with a chuff of steam, sank down onto the hot ground, and with his snout guided them in to a protective circle of tail and snout and body, next to one standing stone from the outerworks of Summerhall. Elaena slipped down onto the hot earth, and in her boots, made her way to their side.

Eight.

But there were only seven eggs.

There had only been seven eggs buried at Summerhall.

But there were eight dragonlets.

Elaena raised her fist into the air, with hot tears stinging her cheeks inside of her helmet. "They will want to kill her, but death itself cannot conquer her!"

"Hail to the Breaker of Chains!" Echoed the massed mourners in a tremendous shout of ten thousand voices.

"They will want to kill her, but death itself cannot conquer her!"

"Hail to the Breaker of Chains!"

"They will want to kill her, but death itself cannot conquer her!"

Fly free, Daenerys Stormborn.

Notes:

1. "Uncrown, the Lord of Emperors awaits you now" is from Guy Gavriel Kaye's "Sarantine Mosaic".

2. We will conclude with a brief epilogue outlining some of the various subsequent fates and developments.

3. Tomyris wrote this while listening to Shostakovich's "The Execution of Stepan Razin" and Neruda's "Canto General" as set to music by Theodorakis.