Missandei finished untying her toe shoes in the hall outside the managerial offices.
The ten-year-old was still shy about doing so in front of the other girls. She was still shy about spending too much time with people in general.
Mossador's words as he left her at the docks drifted through her mind. "Beyond the Narrow Sea in Westeros you will face hardship and prejudice as well, but at least you will be Missandei – never 'that one'."
Mossador. Marselen. Did they escape as well? Would she ever see them again…?
She leapt to her feet and hid around the corner as the manager's door opened. She hadn't known anyone was in there. It was early evening now; however, ever since Mr. Lannister took over as owner of the opera house shortly before Missandei's arrival, he stayed later than she heard he used to.
The small man was escorting out Madame Olenna and the most beautiful girl Missandei had ever seen.
The three were apparently unaware of Missandei's quiet presence. The stranger spoke to Mr. Lannister. "Thank you so much for meeting with us this late," she said.
"Of course," Tyrion bowed his head. He was very proud of himself. He'd barely leered at the girl at all.
He felt the self-imposed pressure of his new professional commitments always. With Baelish's death and Varys's disappearance, Tyrion found himself in charge of this theatrical asylum.
His father – well, his father hadn't wanted Tyrion in charge. He assumed Tyrion would make a drunken debauched mess of the whole thing.
Tywin Lannister fully intended to take over as temporary director after the various funerals, at least until someone could be found as replacement.
However, at Westeros's train station, Tywin was mugged by a gang of young ruffians. By the time the authorities reached him, the old lion had bled out from his wounds.
Three of the gang were apprehended. Two killed themselves in their holding cells. When Tyrion saw the young boy that remained at the trial, shaking and crying on the stand, Tyrion swore he looked familiar…some mite from the theater? Running errands for –
Varys.
Tyrion shuddered as he looked at what he felt sure was one of Varys's little birds, following his master's words from wherever the bald, deceptively obsequious man now watched from. Tyrion pitied the child his death sentence.
At least Tommen and Myrcella were spared Tywin Lannister as an option for their guardian.
The thought of the children reminded Tyrion he should be hurrying along. They would worry for him if he tarried much longer.
Worry for me. Tyrion's heart warmed at the thought.
All his life Tyrion had longed for love. He'd groomed countless whores and courtesans over the years, trying to bend their will into loving him for himself. Ever since his young, lower-class wife left him years ago after constant pressure and threats from Tywin and his goons, he was obsessed with replicating the romantic love he'd felt there, even though he knew deep down it would always be an artificial simulation.
But now Tyrion had found love, true love – paternal love for his niece and nephew.
Jaime's wife Brienne had at last convinced her husband to come to King's Landing after the funerals. Tyrion looked into his brother's eyes and saw everything: the guilt, the heartbreak, and most of all his desire to stay far away from everything that reminded him of his overbearing father and his sister-lover.
Jaime might have changed for the better thanks in large part to the Tarth woman, but as for taking in Tommen and Myrcella….
"You're the one they really love, Tyrion," he'd said. "They barely know me. There is too much pain in me when I look at them. I could never be the" – he searched for the right words. He doesn't want to say father, Tyrion realized.
" - the right protector for them. Please don't try to force me. And don't let them fall into Stannis's cold hands, either. You, you are the only one who can look after them and love them."
Tyrion saw the pain and pleading written in his handsome brother's features, and saw the fatal weakness there. Tyrion knew what he must do.
And so the frivolous Lannister Imp had become a domesticated man. He, the unruly drunk bachelor playboy, looked forward to nothing more than arriving home to Tommen (the color having returned to the little boy's cheeks two years after his brother and mother's death) bounding up to him with drawings of Mr. Pounce and Boots. Myrcella playing the piano and singing in the background were what made their comfortable town house seem truly home to Tyrion now.
She'd changed her mind about wanting to go abroad. She very nervously but resolutely approached Tyrion one evening about a year after her mother's death and said, "I want to follow in Mama's footsteps, Uncle," she said very seriously. "I want to sing on the stage."
And for the first time in his life, a parental fear crushed his heart. Sansa of all people talked him round.
"Here, let me instruct her a little, sponsor her. Later she can go to the conservatory when she's ready. Don't stop her, Mr. Lannister, you'll only encourage her. Let her do it on her own terms so she doesn't make a mess of things like I did."
Myrcella was improving every day, and was becoming every bit as beautiful and willful as her mother, but softer, kinder. Soon would come the day when she'd leave home, and how proud and mournful her uncle would be.
He returned to the present, shaking the new girl's hand again. His predecessor would never have bothered showing up in person for one more random ballet girl signing a contract, but Tyrion learned at least one valuable thing from Littlefinger: always do the opposite of what that late snake did. Besides, the circumstances were a bit unusual and he wanted to see the girl himself. She'd shown up to the dance studio quite out of the blue and very gravely and quietly asked Olenna to just watch her dance, once. No, she didn't have references. No, she was never at any sort of dance conservatory.
Olenna was about to dismiss her then and there but all on her own, the girl started to dance for her.
Olenna changed her mind on the spot and insisted Tyrion draw up a contract immediately.
Tyrion spoke to the girl now. "I do believe you'll thrive here, Miss Darry."
She curtseyed demurely. "Oh, yes, I hope so, sir."
She really was a dish. Petite and slender, with big violet eyes staring luminously out of a fine-boned face. Her hair was also beautiful, but the shade was a bit off; obviously dyed, which vaguely surprised Tyrion on a girl as meek and timid as this. The strawberry blonde tint was just a little too garishly vibrant to be convincing, and strangely clashed with her delicate looks.
Still, overall she was almost unnerving in her ethereal beauty. She looked like some sort of sprite from another planet.
"Good night," he said at last, and turned back to the office after bowing once more to her and Madame Olenna.
Olenna sized the girl up again. "Well, I suppose you think yourself very triumphant, Miss Darry."
From where she poked her head around the corner, Missandei saw the girl blush with a combination of pride and embarrassment. "I hope you didn't think me too forward, ma'am."
"Indeed I did." A jesting spark danced in Olenna's eyes. "And that's why I like you. I think you'll rise in the ranks quicker than you'll think. Missandei!" She suddenly barked, not looking away from Miss Darry.
Missandei blushed as well, jumping. The old woman was kind to her, but she also had eyes on not only the back of her head, but on the sides of her face.
Missandei quickly stepped forward.
Olenna addressed the new girl. "This is Missandei, one of the leading dancers from the children's chorus. She hails all the way from Naath or some such place, but don't worry, she speaks the Common Tongue eerily well." The old woman turned to the child. "This is Miss Ella Darry, Missandei. She's new here. You're a clever thing, could you escort her to the dormitories and introduce her to her fellow dancers? I ordinarily wouldn't leave this to a child, but, well, you're here, aren't you? And I'm needed elsewhere."
Without waiting for Missandei's response, Olenna turned and bid Ella Darry good night.
Missandei was left alone with the newcomer.
And this newcomer smiled at her with far more openness and warmth than the fragile shy way she'd been acting before. The sight was breathtaking.
She actually curtseyed to her. "Hello, Missandei! It's so very nice to meet you."
She daintily but vigorously shook Missandei's small hand.
And Missandei couldn't help smiling in return. "It's nice to meet you too, miss. Come this way!"
The young woman plied Missandei with kind questions: how long had Missandei been here, did she like the opera house, were the other little girls in the children's ballet nice to her?
These good-natured inquiries put Missandei so much at ease she found herself more talkative than she'd been since leaving home.
She answered each question promptly. She'd been here almost a year. Yes, the opera house was a wonderful place, and Missandei loved dancing in front of an audience. The other girls were sort of nice to her, but Missandei had the darkest skin of any there, and she could feel their curious eyes on her. It made Missandei feel too much like some exotic display for her liking.
Soon she was narrating what she knew about the opera house: a few rough details about the Second Scandal involving Rhaegar Targaryen and the understudy soprano, the long hiatus following, and how Missandei was hired just after the reopening.
Ella Darry stayed quiet and attentive.
"Here are the dormitories," Missandei said at last. She put her ear to the door. "Hm, everyone sounds excited. I wonder if…."
She opened the door and grinned shyly. "Yes. Ygritte's visiting."
Ella looked over Missandei's head into the room.
A group of girls in white tutus with their hair up in buns was shrieking and giggling happily as they sat in a disorganized circle around a skinny redhead with a round freckled face and toothy grin. The girl was dressed a little better than her cohorts, but she still sat with casual bonhomie, her legs crossed inelegantly on her cushioned seat.
"That's Ygritte, our prima ballerina," Missandei explained in a whisper. "Even though she has her own flat now, she still comes visit us a lot." She took Ella's hand. "Come! She'll be sure to fill you in on any gossip I missed."
Something about this kind stranger emboldened Missandei. The little girl led Ella by her hand to the group, which turned quiet at the sight of the child and the newcomer.
"Well, well! What have we here?" Ygritte broke the silence with a hearty, friendly smile.
Missandei was suddenly shy again but she still found her voice. "This is Ella Darry. She's joining the ballet."
All eyes were on the strawberry blonde with the big violet eyes.
Blushing scarlet, the girl curtseyed once again.
Ygritte slapped her knee, guffawing. "Oh, lord! Not another lady! I'm just joking, dearie, I love it. Come, sit down! Tell us about yourself."
Pulling up a chair, the girl blushed again and said hastily, "Oh, not much to tell, really. I grew up in King's Landing, near the edge of town. I trained privately. I don't really have any family to speak of, and I need to make my living, so…."
Ygritte nodded sympathetically. "Aye, I know how it is, doll."
Ella warmed at the kindly murmurs all around her. A few girls pat her knee in commiseration.
Yet Ella must know more. The sweet child who led her here told her some, but this Ygritte person…she must know more….
Ella wasn't used to girlish, carefree gossiping, but she could take a stab at it.
"So! Enough about me. Missandei here says you're the one to ask, miss, about all the gossip!"
"I'll say!" A girl said in assent.
Another one poked Ygritte jokingly with her elbow.
"Guilty as charged!" Ygritte agreed happily. "But lord, there's so much gossip around these parts I don't know where to begin! Ask away, old man."
Ella tried to sound casually unconcerned as she asked, "I hear there was some sort of scandal two years ago. I didn't read many papers back then, so I don't know the details…."
That was all she needed to say. All at once a chorus of voices started jabbering over each other, contradicting and confirming each other's tales as they narrated in choppy phrases and exclamations.
"Quiet! Quiet!" Ygritte announced with mock austerity, employing that affected authority she light-heartedly enjoyed in her promotion to principal dancer. "She asked for me to tell her. Let me."
Succinctly but with plenty of ghoulish flourish, Ygritte told her all about the Phantom, Sansa Stark, his obsession with her, her kidnapping and eventual rescue, and Rhaegar the Phantom's death. He was buried privately in the coffin he'd slept in, buried in a private ceremony in the catacombs of the opera house. Only Jon and Sansa had been present: none of Targaryen's remaining family had answered the inquiries. Since then, Tyrion Lannister had run the opera house relatively smoothly. Varys was never heard from again, and there was all sorts of speculation about where he might be. Abroad, still here in the city, who knows.
Ella listened silently.
"Well, anyway, I'm a bit involved in everything, too, you know." Ygritte's eyes sparkled as she straightened mock-grandly. "I got myself engaged to that same Jon Snow!" There was a look of genuine smug joy on her freckled face. "Took a while, but I talked him 'round. Once his tour of service ends later this month, we're getting ourselves hitched!" She giggled as Ella politely murmured her congratulations. The new girl's face went white at the mention of Jon Snow, though no one noticed.
"Thanks!" Ygritte replied. "Ooh, but that reminds me! My soon to be cousin-in-law Sansa got herself in a Scandal almost to rival that whole Phantom business! About six months after everything was finished and done with, she upped and eloped with the bloke what tried to save her – the chief stagehand, Sandor Clegane!" She whispered. "Not too sure what she saw in him at first. Big ugly scary bloke, but eh, once you get to know him…well, he's still ugly and scary, but at least he's nuts about her. Anyway, a Stark girl marrying a stagehand – Gregor Clegane's younger brother, no less! – caused a bit of a row, you know. Her parents have only just come 'round to the idea."
"That's probably because of the baby," Another ballet girl put in.
"Oh aye, that'll do it. They're very fond grandparents. But what a pair Sansa and Sandor are! She's on a tour of Westeros, an internationally famous singer now!" Again Ygritte mock-puffed up her chest. She laughed again. "Ah, but she's a sweet girl, my dear cap'n. And he! He tags along as her security. I was at dinner with them the other day, and good lord! You never saw a chap so overprotective. Lookin' over anybody who entered the restaurant, even as he sat with Sansa. Never seen a man so over the moon for his wife. Or a wife so devoted to her husband, for that matter, for all she bosses him! Ah, but he loves her bossing him."
Yet another ballet girl piped in. "But you haven't told her the best part!" She giggled. "Not only is he her security, but when she's busy at rehearsal and performances, he looks after the baby backstage! Can you imagine?"
"Well, why not?" Ygritte asked. "About time the menfolk see what we females have been putting up with all this time."
She scooted forward some more. "Anyway, poor old Lord and Lady Stark not only have Clegane to contend with as a son-in-law and the likes of me entering their family, but now our own contralto, Margaery Tyrell! Margaery visited Winterfell with Sansa and Sandor after little Elia Lyanna was born to introduce the baby to the proud grandparents. Old Marg was there to provide moral support for the cap'n and all of that, apparently, since Sansa still wasn't sure how her parents would react. So what should happen but that Margaery and Sansa's eldest brother Robb should hit it off! I hear there's a secret engagement!"
"But tell her about Sansa's younger sister!"
"I'm getting to that, I'm getting to that! On top of everything else, the latest scuttlebutt is that the youngest Stark girl, Arya, has been a courtin' that boy what worked with her in the stables here, Gendry Waters! She got him a spot as blacksmith apprentice up in Winterfell, and has been pursuing him like crazy, they say!"
Ygritte cackled. "Them Starks don't know what hit 'em! So far not a one of their whelps has picked a mate of their class! Oh, well. Do the lot some good, I say. Fresh working-class blood. Anyway, the cap'n will be back at the end of her tour to star in the new opera season. She claims she'll retire when young Myrcella Baratheon is old enough to take her place. A very different sort the cap'n is to Cersei, the gods rest the miserable woman's soul. As for me, I can't wait to see little Elia again. Cute wee monkey. She's a peach. Only a little over six months old, and already she knows me as Auntie Ygritte. Well, she babbled something once that sort of sounded like it, so that's the story I'm sticking to."
She shrugged, grinning. "That pretty much brings us up to speed, bright eyes!" She hopped up on her feet. "And I hate to leave you lasses, but it's getting late, and I've got a rehearsal tomorrow that starts early as balls. Ta-ta!" She winked at Ella. "Welcome aboard!"
Everyone bid Ygritte good night and then flurried around, realizing they too were expected up early tomorrow.
Ella stood a bit disoriented.
She felt a small tug on her hand and turned to see Missandei smiling gently at her. "We all sleep in the same room, but I don't think Madame Olenna has a separate bed for you yet. You can take mine and I can sleep with one of the other girls."
Ella's shrewd eyes caught the paralyzed hint of shyness in Missandei's eyes at the thought of asking one of the other girls.
Ella smiled again. "How about you and I share the bed?"
Missandei felt such crushing relief.
Missandei's bed was at the end of the row near the door. "Here, you don't need to sleep so far away. There's room," Ella said to her softly, scooting away a little herself.
That sweet, direct way of this new girl's made Missandei feel closer to her than she had to anyone since her lost brothers. As the girls around her whispered and giggled as always, Missandei soon found herself narrating her own tale to Ella, which she hadn't revealed to anyone: the village she grew up in was raided by slavers, and to save her, her two brothers snuck her out during the chaos. When they reached the docks, the brothers pooled their resources to stow away to Westeros, but the stern ship's mate helping them insisted there was only room for one.
The brothers didn't have to think about it. Missandei would go.
Missandei panicked, not wanting to leave her brothers behind. They'd smiled and laughed at her, saying she wasn't half as mature as she thought she was, obviously.
She'd cried and hit them. "Yes, I am!"
"Then prove it," Mossador told her. "Go on. You'll be safe, my darling."
When she arrived in Westeros, she'd had nothing. She wandered the streets dirty and starving, until she fainted not far from the opera house.
When she woke up, she was in Dr. Tarly's office at the opera. Madame Olenna was there. The old woman poked at her limbs and said, "You look flexible enough. Can you dance at all? Never mind, I'll train it into you. You're young."
And so here she was. She didn't know how to reach her brothers. She didn't know if they were captured or if they'd escaped, or if they were even alive.
When Missandei finished speaking, she realized there were tears on her cheeks.
She hadn't cried since that day on the docks.
She also noticed that she was somehow in Ella's arms.
"Your brothers were right, Missandei," she said. "You are safe. And I'll look after you now, as they did."
Missandei couldn't help feeling skeptical at first. She didn't want to end up some do-gooder white lady's pet project – she'd had to dodge such attentions from a few condescending opera patrons already, well-meaning as they might have been.
What finally moved Missandei was the tears she saw in Ella's own magnificent eyes.
Ella kissed her on the forehead. "Let's sleep now."
She blew out their candle. The other girls were finally asleep.
The soothing feeling of Ella's hand through her hair soon lulled Missandei into a sweet dreamless sleep.
Ella stared silently into the darkness for an hour. She glanced down at the young girl in her arms. Slavery. That something like slavery still thrives in this day and age.
She was consumed by a scorching hatred.
Confident everyone in the long narrow room was fast asleep, she gently disentangled herself from Missandei and crept to her bag of belongings.
She hastened to the dressing room and changed into breeches.
She stared at herself briefly in the mirror.
She'd never get used to this odd dye job. It was necessary, though. Anyone who saw her natural silver-white hair would peg her at once as Targaryen. Dany couldn't risk anyone discovering her identity yet.
Daenerys chose the name Ella for Rhaella, the mother she never knew. She chose Darry for kindly old Willem Darry, the butler who had shielded her from the mad father who died before the little girl could fully remember him. Unfortunately, the faithful servant likewise died while Dany was young, before her brother Viserys truly revealed his own mad temper.
And Viserys's madness was growing.
Her first beating at his hands was when he learned that she was teaching herself ballet.
"I won't have any sister of mine dancing like an opera whore! What happened to our older brother is lesson enough for both of us!"
And yet with a sullen stubbornness she still didn't fully realize she possessed, she kept on her self-training in secret, pouring over the dance books Rhaegar had left behind when he moved away to the opera.
Viserys's madness reached a fevered pitch once he learned of his brother's true fate two years ago. "The animals! Burying him in some secret location without our consent! I'll make them pay. I'll show them a true dragon."
When she'd quietly pointed out that not only had their nephew reached out to them through respectful inquiring letters which Viserys ignored, but that policemen had tried informing them in person before Viserys demanded the servants dismiss them, Viserys lashed out again and slapped her.
He'd raged and ranted, pacing the house like he was demon-possessed.
This is why the world ignores us. This is why we're all alone, Dany had thought as she watched her brother descend deeper and deeper into incoherence, like their father before him.
All they had was the big empty house, remote from the center of town. All they had was Illyrio Mopatis, their tutor who insinuated himself into a position of guardianship and practical ownership of the estate over the years.
Many were the nights Dany would sneak to her bedroom door and listen outside as Illyrio quite respectfully and courteously talked her brother into signing away this or that property, to approving this sale or that acquisition. A few weeks back, she even heard him supply Viserys with a list of potential suitors for Daenerys – rich suitors that would help re-supply the Targaryens with the fortune that was rapidly dwindling.
Daenerys's throat tightened and eyes burned as she listened. Viserys was surprisingly receptive. Dany had come to believe Viserys would never let Dany out of his sight. Lately his eyes followed her just a little too closely around the house. He'd even taken to grabbing her arm as she passed, asking in a light voice if she ever heard the funny story that back in the Middle Ages, the Targaryens used to wed brother and sister together.
Frank and terrifying lust stared out of his eyes.
The combination of this and the possibility of marrying against her will made Dany shut the door and dive into bed, clutching the blankets around her like a child. She was close to hyperventilating.
That night she had her first dream about dancing with dragons.
She was alone on a stage of some sort. She'd emerged from a fire, and was now facing blackness before her.
She heard a hiss and smelled smoky breath.
From the blackness crawled three gigantic dragons.
Instead of fear, Dany felt a maternal twist in her heart as she reached out to them –
They flew a few feet into the air.
They flew in graceful circles, intertwined with each other.
They were dancing.
Dany looked down at her own feet. She wore toe shoes.
She began to mimic their movements. They flew closer to her, above her.
She was dancing with the three dragons.
Soon the dreams changed, altered. She saw catacombs and a black lake, a fortress and a ruined home hidden behind a portcullis.
She saw a library, overbrimming with books. She saw a trapdoor beneath a rug….
Illyrio and Viserys continued their low private chats during the day, sure Dany at her piano or at her needlework couldn't notice or hear.
About two weeks after the dreams started, the letter came.
She was watering the garden when a small solemn-looking child in street clothes slipped through the bars of the gate and ran up to her.
Expression unchanging, he handed her a letter in a blank envelope.
Dany stared at the boy dumbly. He merely put a finger to his lips and then disappeared from whence he came.
Inside the envelope, the letter was florid but to the point. Her heart stopped. Here were directions to the catacombs she had seen in her dream, to the lake, to the lair….
There was no signature except a seal in the shape of a spider.
All at once her blood was on fire. Something was growing inside her, and if it were to burst, it couldn't be here, in front of her brother, in front of Illyrio's watchful eyes.
She ran away that night, taking all the silver and fine collectibles she could force into her bag. With these she bought lodgings at an inn and hair dye.
Viserys would be too embarrassed to publish notices of her disappearance, but she must be careful of any private investigators he and Illyrio might set on her heels.
She wasted no time, then, to introduce herself here at the opera house. Her dancing won over the Tyrell woman. She had a contract now. She'd been successful so far.
She removed from the bottom of her belongings the letter with the spider stamp. The letter in one hand, a lantern in the other, she began her descent to the underground, mind whirling.
Ygritte's words hummed in the back of her head. This Northern dancer would soon be Daenerys's niece by marriage.
Jon Snow, Daenerys's nephew.
All her life she'd been the baby, petted and stamped down in turns by her older brother.
Now she discovered she was the aunt of a grown man.
She didn't know how to feel about this. She didn't know how to feel about Sansa Stark, Sandor Clegane, Elia Martell, Lyanna Stark, Gregor Clegane.
She didn't know how to feel about her older brother's madness, he whose memory she'd always been taught by Viserys to admire and revere.
Yet the thought of Rhaegar brought back the flames tickling inside her veins. She could see in her mind's eye his death's head, morphing slowly into a dragon's skull.
But he was no true dragon. Fire cannot mar a dragon.
She was unsure why she thought this with such finality, but she knew it to be true.
Daenerys found the route the spider writer outlined for her down below the stables. Why she should trust this anonymous stranger's words, she wasn't sure. This could be an enemy, an imposter, someone out for a practical joke at her family's expense.
Yet here was the tunnel from the letter, here the spiraling staircase.
Here were the steps that led to a black lake.
She froze when she saw the water.
Daenerys Targaryen was never so exulted in her life.
She adjusted the flame in her lantern to better see along the bank's edge. And there, there it was – a newly polished boat, just waiting for her.
With her graceful dancer's training, she daintily stepped into the boat, barely rocking it.
A letter waited for her on the boat's seat.
"Well done." – Again, the spider seal.
Dany put aside the letter. She felt momentary doubt. She'd never even been in a boat before. To row a boat for the first time alone, in the dark underground, to a destination she wasn't even sure of? Truly this was madness.
She closed her eyes and breathed in.
She took the oar in her hands.
A great calm descended her. An ancient confidence.
She could see as if she were asleep every detail of her dreams, which placed her where she was now. She knew exactly where to go, how to row.
She cast off.
She smiled in grim triumph once she saw the portcullis. It had apparently never come down after the police raised it to make a thorough investigation of her brother's final home.
She secured her boat to one of the gargoyles still guarding the entrance, having miraculously suvived the looters.
Dany refused to take in the destruction of her brother's sad dwelling, the broken remains of stolen furniture, the art ripped from the frames.
It was as if her dream had taken invisible human form and was leading her by hand to the wide wall opposite from where she felt sure the organ used to sit.
She nudged softly at the long crease in the wall.
Miraculously, it opened.
Unlike in her dream, the library was empty of all books. She'd read not long after Rhaegar's death was announced that Sansa and Jon had pooled their resources to make sure half the books were preserved in a storage room that Jon would inherit and give to his offspring, and the other half gifted to charities. Hopefully that's where the pipe organ, the Targaryen weaponry, and the majority of art went as well, before the looters had the chance to make off with the rest.
Oddly enough, the rug remained over the trap door.
Dany pulled it away, ignoring the dust now coating her hands and clothes.
Using every ounce of strength she possessed in her slender arms, she at last succeeded in opening the trap door. The air from below was cool and smelled richly of dirt.
She took another breath and climbed down the long ladder.
She relit her lantern. She shivered.
The area she was in was so immense it was humbling. This spacious vault made the cellars she'd just climbed down look like a peasant's cramped basement.
All she could see was a foggy mist past countless columns reaching upward into carved archways. The ground was damp and muddy.
The dream came back to her through her shock and she turned to the right.
She saw a long stretch of ground that protruded slightly above the rest.
This. This is where the Phantom – my brother – is buried.
She knelt down and lowered her lantern.
Yes.
There was the neat silver plague with Rhaegar's name and the years he'd lived engraved.
Below the plaque was his long black mask.
Dany tried to picture her nephew and his cousin standing here, mourning the lost madman. The lost genius. They must have either bribed or used their influence to convince the police, the undertakers, and the gravediggers never to reveal his resting place.
She tried to picture the once brother and sister, now cousins, holding hands silently as they stared at the mound that now held their father and teacher.
Her mind was too full, however, to fully picture it.
She frowned as she noticed a much smaller grave to the left. On the plaque was the name 'Balerion' accompanied by a paw print.
Dragons.
She looked again at her brother's resting place.
She picked up his mask and held it to her own face.
She closed her eyes and a strange sweet warmth filled her.
Brother.
But her work was not yet done. She knew with such certainty what else was hidden here. Something neither Rhaegar's son nor his pupil knew.
Only Daenerys from her dreams and the spider – the spider might know.
She placed the mask back below the plaque.
She knew, somehow, that what was hidden was hidden in the blackest darkness. And so she headed off in the direction where no light came through, where even behind one's lids in the middle of the night it was never so dark.
She walked for what seemed like hours, but she never tired. She was so consumed by her purpose that she buried any fear she felt in this isolated darkness in a deep place that could not touch her now.
At last the vast labyrinth narrowed into a single hall, ending at a rock wall.
She lowered her lantern again.
Another protuberance in the ground, much smaller now.
She wondered briefly if she needed to go all the way back above to find a shovel, but the dream was back taking her hand and leading her to the soft ground.
She tore away the dirt and rocks herself.
The trunk was not buried very deeply, for whomever had buried it centuries ago did not reckon the ground shifting upward.
The locks were rusted and weak, and so she was able to lift the lid quite easily.
She smiled dreamily, sparkling eyes taking in the treasure. Practically fossilized, but she could sense the searing warmth radiating from within.
Three dragon eggs.
END
A/N: I have a nasty habit of ending my stories with seeming cliffhangers without any inclination to continue the story. Still, I'm always open to people picking up where I left off, so just credit me! I really don't have any strong preference for what happens next, except I'm quite firm on one thing: Sandor and Sansa have three more children, all girls. Other than Elia Lyanna, their names are Rhaenys Arya, Jonquil Catelyn, and Wylla Edwina. They're pretty much the March sisters combined with the Schuyler sisters, and I just love the idea of the big ol' Hound surrounded on all sides by little chirping girl-birds.
Also, Sansa accidentally got drunk on their honeymoon, and Sandor still teases her mercilessly about it.
Thank you so much to all you guys, your comments and kudos and general support have made this a delightful fun time! I hope the conclusion satisfies all of you. In case you're wondering, no, Tysha was not gang-raped in this version, but she was still harassed by that asshole father-in-law of hers and his goons. As for Varys, well...he's about. Somewhere. Watching and scheming. Was he really as sympathetic as he presented himself in his narrative, or was it all an act? Or a little bit of both? Hmmm...
Thank you again for reading, everyone!