Chapter Six

A/N: Thank you to . 10 for reviewing the last chapter.

Ser Jorah Mormont tossed and turned from side to side, as he had done for the past few hours now, before finally deciding that it was doing no use, rising from his bed and exiting the tent, thinking to take a stroll around the camp.

He could not get the image of her out of his mind, his khaleesi lying, helpless, pale and dying, in the royal tent. Every time he tried to allow himself to sleep, the image haunted him, both in wakefulness and in sleeping, on the few occasions he had managed to drift into slumber.

'I failed her.' he thought, and he observed the fact that he could no longer count the number of times he had thought this on two hands. 'If I had not closed my eyes and fallen asleep, then she would have woken the next morning, safe and unharmed. Instead, she has not woken since, and now, she may not do. The assassin King Robert sent was my doing as well. If I had never informed on her, then this would never have happened. If she dies now, because of this, then I have murdered the true Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. The true queen of my heart.'

For all the heat that accompanied their desert location, Jorah seemed to be shivering with each step he took, the weight of what he had done catching up with him once again. As his legs trembled violently beneath him, he found himself collapsing to the ground, thanking all the gods that none of the Dothraki had been there to see it. He had made as much effort trying to build his reputation of strength with the warriors as Daenerys had, and to have it destroyed, even at such a drastic time as this, would do him no favours.

A little time passed, the man was not sure of the exact amount, before he was able to raise himself to his feet again, and far more before he chose to do so. There was no one around to see him, and he found that the ground, cracked and dry as it may be, was a comfortable place to rest his aching bones.

Jorah hung his head downwards, allowing it to hang near his chest. It eased the pounding in his skull, and soothed the endless buzz of thoughts in his mind, which had become like a swarm of furious bees as time had gone on. The position emphasised the strain on his shoulders, but he found himself glad of this. It reminded him of the crushing guilt he would have to live with, should the worst occur; if that pain would not diminish, then he decided that his physical pain should not do either.

A harsh wind blew past him, whistling quickly across the flat land and tousling his hair, causing him to shiver once more. The night was growing colder, he noted. 'Perhaps it's because of the fire fading from the world.' he sighed deeply, knowing that his cryptic thoughts would always return to the khaleesi.

He considered going to visit her, just to ensure that nothing had happened during the night, but he knew there was no need. Her bloodriders were bound to guard her day and night, and had taken their duties far more seriously since the queen had been poisoned. Besides, there was nothing worse that could have happened to her now.

However, as the man turned to make his way back to his own tent, he saw a figure shift in the distance. They were hooded, which hid their figure well. Ser Jorah could not tell whether they were male or female, whether they hailed from Westeros or the Free Cities, but he knew that they did not belong in the encampment. The Dothraki did not wear cloaks; they believed that hiding themselves was a weakness, and weakness was not tolerated by the horselords.

Placing a hand on the hilt of his sword, an instinctive reaction for the knight, Jorah began to sneak through the weaving fabrics of the tents, trying to get as close as he could to the intruder without being seen. If this was another assassin sent by Robert Baratheon, to finish the job he had started, or even the same one, if they had the audacity to return, then it was his duty to ensure that they did not cause any more damage than they had done already.

He was close enough now to be able to see the intruder was male, and clad in the full plate metal of a Westerosi knight, although the steel, even from this distance, was clearly cheap and badly made. 'It'll hardly protect him against Dothraki bloodriders, in any case, if they wake to find him an intruder in their camp.' he noted, and a smile tugged at one corner of his mouth, for just a second, before it faded again.

True to what he had suspected, the intruder was making his way at a steady pace towards Daenerys' tent, and as his instincts kicked in, the exiled knight abandoned his attempts to be stealthy and began to run. Not wearing armour had its advantages when relying on the element of surprise, and he managed to remain near silent the whole time.

By the time he came near the hooded figure, he had already entered the royal tent. Jorah tried to keep himself calm and collected, but when the gleam of a dagger caught the moonlight, he snapped. Immediately, he lunged forwards and wrestled the knife from the man's hand, which was easy enough, as the man seemed to still be in a state of shock. However, as his anger bubbled over, he swiped the knife through the air. Suddenly, the blade came into contact with the man's flesh, and his blood spilt across the floor, from where the blade had made a slit in his throat.

Jorah's stomach flipped with the realisation that he had just murdered, in cold blood. But it flipped once again when he saw the bottle, lying smashed in the pool of blood, and the label wrapped around it baring only one word, the one word he had most long to see since the khaleesi had been poisoned.

Antidote.

A/N: Please review!