"It's okay," she whispered into the mane of auburn hair that was shaking in her arms. "You'll be fine, it's okay." She stroked Sansa Stark and held her close, whispering calming words into her ear so that she might better bear the pain of torment. The Usurper"' son, Joffrey Baratheon... no... not the Usurper's son, that would get her beaten worse... King Joffrey had sent men to them again. She wasn't sure of the reason this time, but whenever something bad happened, Joffrey proved his power over them. She knew the type... he was just like her brother, and her brother was rotting at the bottom of Pentos' harbour. She would never have wished that on her brother, he was a victim of his circumstance, but Joffrey... how she wished the same man who had come to seize her from Pentos would come again. She had had many sweet dreams of Lyonel"s arrow punching right through the middle of Joffrey's smug, arrogant face, as he sat on the Iron Throne.
She had arrived in the city just as the Usurper breathed his last, and had hoped that would be the end of it, that his heirs wouldn't hate her with such brutality. But perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps the Usurper would have been better than this. He couldn't be much worse.
They kept their tears for each other. No other needed to see them. It was a victory, of sorts that they were able to keep themselves strong for each other no one else knew, not Joffrey, not the Queen, not anyone. Sansa hiccupped the last of her tears away as she wiped her eyes. "What happened?" she asked. "What happened this time?"
Daenerys shook her head. "I don't know," she confessed. They rarely knew; the only time they had known his uncle, the man who had murdered her father, had been captured by Sansa's brother. She had made Sansa look at her dead father's head, and she had not been left off. "You should feel grateful, my lady," he said to her, "had my father been here, he would have caved in your chest with his warhammer, like he did your brother's. It is my mercy that lets you live, and don't you forget it."
They remained that way for a while, just until Sansa had recovered. Then they continued their stitches from the day before, and the day before that and the day before that. She had been on the run for most of her life. She had never learned the arts that women so prized here, not once. Ser Willem Darry had let her play and run around in the house with the Red Door in Braavos, but stitches, singing, prayers, these were things she had never learned. Then she was to be sold to a Dothraki Horselord who would ride and breed her like a mare. But now she was here she had to learn other things. She could help Sansa to bear the pain of Joffrey's cruel torments, and Sansa could teach her how to be a woman of Westeros.
It did not come naturally to her. Her stitches were crooked and uneven. Sansa told her that her sister's stitches were the same and she had been doing them for as long as she had been forced to. These things took time.
The door shook with three heavy knocks. "Who is it?" She asked, wary. Joffrey had already had them beaten today, had he decided he hadn't had enough yet? She touched at the bruises on her arms as the reply came through the wood. "It's Lord Tyrion Lannister, my ladies." Relief flooded her. She'd seen many dwarfs in menageries in the east, but Lord Tyrion was kind and decent, at least he supposed to be, Sansa had warned her that his sister had been the same. She couldn't trust these Lannisters, they were still the family that murdered her nephew and niece in cold blood; not this dwarf, not his aloof and distant brother and certainly not the Queen Regent. But at least Lord Tyrion didn't seem to want to hurt them. "Are you decent my ladies?"
"We... we are," Dany replied. The door opened and the dwarf lord with his misshapen head and mismatched eyes waddled through, a rough looking sellsword at one shoulder and a hideous woman with ears hanging around her neck on a string at the other. "My ladies," Lord Tyrion said graciously matching his tone with his respectful bow. "I apologise for the behaviour of my nephew, he disgraces the very throne he sits upon. Unfortunately there is little I can do to stop him, or my sister."
"Th-the Queen, what would her grace have of us?" Sansa asked, bowing to Lord Tyrion. She hastily followed Sansa's example, the girl knew more about surviving here than she did.
Lord Tyrion smiled sadly. "Not the Lady Daenerys, only you, my lady," he said. "The Queen has invited you to meet with her, and this is not an invitation that is easily refused. I tried but..." He shook his head. "I am to take you to her at once."
"What about me?" Dany blurted out. "My lord," she added hastily.
"My sister would have you remain here and be done, but I have arranged for you to walk the grounds with Ser Aron. He will keep you safe, under order of the Hand of the King, no man under the lion is to harm you, but he will be certain."
"Ser Aron?"
"Me, my lady." Another man entered the room. He was tall and lithe, with a leopard on his surcoat, slicked brown hair and olive skin. A dornishman. "Ser Aron Santagar, master at arms of the Red Keep."
"Ser Aron will walk with you," Lord Tyrion repeated. "Now, Lady Sansa, we must come at once."
She let Sansa's fingers slip through her own as she was escorted away by Lord Tyrion.
"Come, my lady," Ser Aron said with a welcoming smile, stepping aside and gesturing through the door. There is much of the castle you have yet to see and that you should see."
Not seeing any way of refusing, Dany nodded and stepped out of the safe walls of her and Sansa's chambers and into the hellpit of red stone built by Maegor the Cruel and occupied by lion men.
Ser Aron led her through the keep, neither of them speaking so much as a word. What should she say to this man. All she knew was his name and possibly where he was from, that was it, if he wanted to speak to her, no doubt he would. But where was he leading her? She'd thought he'd take her outside, to the grounds, as Lord Tyrion had said, but instead they were going deep into the bowels of the keep, down winding staircases, past stoic lionmen guards and fluttering banners bearing the sigil of Lannister lion and Baratheon Stag intertwined. As they got lower they passed flaring torches that cast their crooked and cackling shadows on the walls.
Shortly they reached a stiff iron door. "Where are we going?" She asked tentatively.
"To see your history, everyone should know where they came from," Ser Aron said. He pulled out a heavy key and unlocked the door, which swung open with a heavy creak. "Come," he said.
She followed him down one last staircase into a wide, cavernous room. Along one wall were heavy wooden casks and with them the smell of wine heavy and thick in the air. Some kind of wine cellar? What did her ancestors have to do with wine. Her heart dropped. This was some kind of sick jest, perhaps her father had been drunk when he fathered her, that was no doubt it. Had they not jested enough at her expense?
But they moved past the wine casks and through a second door and her eyes opened wide.
Dragon skulls lined the walls, half hidden in alcoves, the black bones still gleaming sharp and fierce, the fangs curved and deadly in a grimacing vindictive smile. "Dragons," she breathed.
"Indeed," Ser Aron said. "They used to hang on the walls of the throne room in your father's day, looking down on the petitioners. King Robert couldn't stand the sight of them, had them taken down here, out of sight and mind."
She couldn't help but approach the nearest of them, a large black mass of fang and jaw and empty eye sockets. She brushed her fingers over the iron hard bone and she could feel the heat of a thousand gouts of dragonflame, almost hear the screams of those who had dared stand against it.
"That's Sunfyre," Ser Aron told her. "The dragon of Aegon the second, said to be the most beautiful of all dragons seen over Westeros. He fed his sister, the rebel Queen Rhaenyra to Sunfyre near the end of the Dance of the Dragons." She recoiled her hand sharply at the thought. Her brother may have gotten angry with her, but he would never have fed her to a dragon. "Come," Aron commanded. "There is another skull you must see."
He led her along to the end of the cellar to find a skull large enough to swallow a horse as she might swallow a grape, the fangs were as long as swords and gleamed with a sharpness and danger. She didn't need to ask who's skull this was, there was only one possible dragon it could be. "Balerion the Black," she breathed.
"Aegon the Conqueror's steed," Ser Aron confirmed. "In his fire was the Iron Throne forged and the kingdoms bent."
She ran her hands along the bone and felt something wrong. "Somethings wrong with his jaw," she said.
"That's where Lord Stannis" son took the material for the bows he forged for himself and his sister." Ser Aron told her. She suppressed a gasp, she knew well enough that mentioning Lord Stannis might bring her more attention, and any more attention than she already had could be the death of her. But Lord Stannis" son had killed her brother. Had he done it with the bow made from Balerion's jaw?
She shook herself, there was more here than dragon skulls, there had to be, that surely couldn't be the only reason that she had been brought down here.
"Why did you bring me here?" She asked.
Ser Aron flashed her a smile. "Do not fear, princess," he said. "I am not trying to deceive or harm you, you have a right to know and find your past should you ever need to return here."
"Why would I need to return here?" Dany asked, confused.
"I cannot say, but anything can happen in these walls, I learned that a long time ago." After a pause, the knight spoke up again. "Shall we go now, princess?" He said. "There is much of the castle that you have left to see."
They returned to the winding stairs, Dany casting her eyes back at the beasts of her ancestors before following him up to the light of her prison.
