It felt strange changing in front of someone else. Sansa sat up in bed and watched her fasten the black cloak at her neck, pull on her gloves and lace up her shoes. "I won't stay down long," she said, rolling the rug back to reveal the trap door, "I'll probably be back up before you're asleep."

"You're going to be careful, aren't you?" Sansa asked.

"Of course I will," she smiled at Sansa to put her at ease. "Don't worry. I won't be leaving the tunnels."

"You're still looking for that witness?"

Her smile thinned to a line. "Yes."

Sansa crawled over to the end of the bed and pulled Dany into a tight hug. "Just come back safely."

Dany rubbed Sansa's back gently. "I will. I promise." She lit her lantern, lifted the stone and descended into the tunnels.

She still hadn't found any hint of whoever it had been that had seen her in the tunnels when she came back from the stables. Before that day she'd thought that the tunnels had been her own, but someone had been there, seen the light from her lantern. But despite all her searching, she hadn't found anything. It didn't help that she had no idea what she was looking for. Viserys had never taken her hunting. She'd lived her life in cities; manses, apartments and slums, at no point did she have to learn how to track someone in stone tunnels in the middle of the night.

But she had to try. The tunnels had been the vessel for her revenge, her shield of impossibility. If someone else was in there and saw her, saw where she came from, they might come for her and Sansa. Sansa had suffered enough in this place.

The knife was waiting for her at the bottom of the ladder. She ran her fingers over it gently before sliding it into her belt. She opened the door of her lantern and headed into the tunnels.

She was expecting to have another night of silence and darkness, but three bends and a small descent later and she heard something. Quickly, she shut the door of the lantern and crouched low, listening intently.

"... say he'll be here soon, we only have to wait a little longer."

"Finally, I can't stand wai…" The voices faded. She frowned. That was a strange thing to say while sneaking through a tunnel. She followed the voices but soon lost them entirely. What was this? She walked onwards, opening the door of her lantern just enough to let her see the way forward.

She padded onwards, making as little sound as possible, keeping her hand on the door of the lantern, ready to close it in a heartbeat. Her ears strained, desperate to hear something, anything.

"... ow much longer do you think we have to go around pretending that he's legitimate?" Another voice, a different one, she was sure of it. She padded closer, and turned a corner, freezing suddenly and closing the lantern. The voice was coming from one of the small grates in the floor that looked into the corridors of the castle.

"If he wins, then until he dies."

The reply that came was whispered so quietly she barely made it out. "Do you think he will die?"

"How long do you think everyone will put up with him?"

"They've stuck with him this long, haven't they. As long as they get power from him being king, they'll keep Joffrey on the throne and damn the consequences."

"Consequences for us, you mean, once he starts opposing them and what they want, they'll get rid of him, using one of the hundreds of reasons they've ignored so far."

She lay down and peered out of the grate. But she could only see faint outlines of pillars and walls in the darkness below. "I'm not planning on staying that long."

"You're not?"

Did this man have a way out? She strained to listen, if there was a way out of the city, she had to hear it. She could get Sansa away from this hell. "I'm volunteering with the army, next time it marches, I'm going with it."

"You're going to fight the Young Wolf, or Stannis Baratheon? That's madness."

"No more mad than staying here. Or have you forgotten about the murders."

"How could I, my wife reminds me every time I leave our rooms. Don't leave our girls without a father, she says. Like this ghost would be interested in me."

The other man scoffed. "Last I checked you bow to Joffrey, much as the others, he'd be interested in you."

"And if the spider heard us right now, they'd string us up by our necks."

"You think he's listening?"

"If he was going to listen to everyone asking these questions he'd need half a million ears."

"You joke, but Joffrey would still try to kill them all if he knew."

The other man laughed. "Perhaps then someone would finally kill him."

"Just don't ask Lord Tywin or his family."

Dany knew she couldn't wait to keep listening, she wasn't down here to listen in to some disgruntled men in a corridor, she was here to look for whoever had seen her before. She gently got back to her feet and picked up the lantern. She moved away as quietly as she could, the sounds of the conversation getting more and more quiet until it faded completely. How many others thought as they did? They implied it was a lot, but was that true, or were they just hopeful? If it was true, it only made her angry. Those two men were no better, standing there, just talking about how evil Joffrey was, how terrible his counsellors were for letting it happen. She was the only person actually doing anything about it, she was removing them, one by one, and as long as there were people who did this, she would be there. Sansa may want her to stop, but how could she, if no one else was going to remove them, then she would, and she would do it gladly.

Taking a route she hadn't been in for a while, she kept her breathing slow, her ears pricked and her knife held tightly in her hand.

With her feet padded, and the voices far behind her, all she could see was red stone lit in a slim shimmer of light. And all she could hear was the blood pounding in her ears. She turned, went along another corridor, crouched near another small grate in the floor, listening intently. Nothing. She moved on. Another grate. Nothing, a nothingness so powerful it was crushing. She moved on, stepping deeper into darkness.

She turned the corner and walked into someone coming the other way. She cried out, her lantern skittering away, spinning light away. "No!" Something grabbed her leg and clambered up her. "Get off me!" Something hissed, she drew her dagger, a hand clutched at her front. She stabbed, once, twice, three times. Hot blood spilled over her gloved hand and down her sleeve. The hand retracted and she scrabbled away.

Her lantern had come to a rest shining up at the ceiling, she grabbed it and opened the door turning the light on her attacker. Her blood ran cold.

It was a boy. Perhaps ten or eleven, with a muddy face, dirty hair, a thin grey shirt staining red from three cuts in his chest. "Oh gods," she whispered, rushing over and pressing her hands to the boy, trying to staunch the bleeding. He hissed in pain. "I'm sorry," she breathed, her hand clammy and cold as they pushed against the openings she'd made in his little body. She looked in the boy's face, he was terrified, going more pale with every second. His mouth opened and he moaned in pain. Dany gasped at the sight. The ruin of a severed tongue poked out to the line of his yellow teeth. "Don't die, don't die, don't die," she whispered. The blood had coated her leather gloves, matting the fur lining, it pooled on the floor around them, leaking from the holes in his body. So much blood. A child, how had he… how had she… no… "She pressed harder, but that only made the blood squeeze between her fingers faster. The boy wheezed, coughed, spluttered, spat blood, and died.

She pulled her shaking hands back from the body, staring down at them in horror. In the pale light of the lantern they looked to be dripping black gore.

She looked again over his pale, terrified face, the grey shirt turned red, the glint in his still hand, the pooling blood around his body propped against the side of the tunnel. She didn't know how long she stood there, staring at the body, but she stared and stared until she came to her senses.

She ran. She ran until she was lost and again until she found her way again. She ran so hard and so fast that by the time she'd made it back to the ladder that led down from her chambers she was panting and her chest burned. She dropped dagger at the bottom of the ladder. Her gloves were covered in blood so she fumbled them off with shaking fingers and cast them aside. Her fingers felt like lead as she gripped the ladder and started hauling her way up, one rung at a time. A boy. It had only been a boy. Another rung, then another.

At the top rung Dany heaved on the stone and pushed it up, grunting as she pulled herself up.

"Dany!" Sansa caught her in a crushing hug. "You're alright. I thought when you hadn't come up…" she squeezed Dany tightly. Dany looked around in a daze. Light was beginning to poke through the curtains. How long had she…?

Sansa pulled back, looked her up and down, and gasped."What happened?" She looked down. Blood coated her wrists and arms, dripping down onto her hands.

"I… was found," she whispered back. "The boy, found me. I killed him. A boy," she trailed off.

"Dany, look at me." She looked into Sansa's beautiful blue eyes and saw a strength and hardness there that she hadn't seen before. "Get out of the clothes, quickly, the servants will be here soon, they can't see you like this." Sansa helped her strip out of her black clothes, wiping herself clean of as much of the blood as possible. "Get into your shift, now," Sansa said, bundling up the clothes and chucking them down the shaft and closing the stone behind her. "The next time one of us bleeds we'll get that out and claim it was part of the mess, until then, this stays shut."

"Sansa I-"

"Later, in bed now," Sansa pointed at the bed as she rolled the rug back over the stone. Dany walked over and slipped into bed, where Sansa joined her shortly after. "Come here," Sansa said, opening her arms. Daenerys leant in, feeling the warmth of her friend. "Lie down with me," Sansa said, pulling her down into the soft pillows. "It'll be okay Dany," Sansa said. "It will be okay."