A/N: As always, thank you everyone who left a review.

GERION

Gerion's eyes snapped open. It was still half dark outside. Only a faint glow was coming through his window. He lay in his bed for a moment, struggling to control his breathing and remember that it was no longer full of ash. Every so often, when exhaustion came over him, he would forget himself and his mind would drift back to the charred lands of Valyria, a nightmare so vivid it took his breath.

He heard a faint thumping from his door. Who comes belting at the door at this hour? Good news comes in daylight…

There was another thump. "Yes, yes!" he called. "I can damn well hear you!"

"Then open the door!" the voice was muffled from the other chamber, but there was no mistaking the haughty Tyroshi note. Daario Naharis, just what one needs in the middle of the night. Gerion suppressed a groan and disentangled his body from the sweaty blanket, and padded over to the door and pulled it open. Daario stood outside in the corridor, draped against the wall, a darker shape in the shadows.

"You," he grunted to the sellsword. "What brings you to my chambers so bloody late?"

Daario strolled through the door, peering around scornfully at the miserable room. "Queen Daenerys wants you."

"Now?"

Naharis rolled his eyes. "Oh no, next fucking year."

Gerion gave a protracted sigh. "Alright, lead on."

It's a bizarre thing, to see a palace at night. All the servants are hidden away, sluggishly working at their nightly tasks, avoiding highborns like mice avoid men. Gerion and his sellsword walked through a maze of darkened paths, hearing the scurrying movements of servants and vermin alike and soon he lost the ability to differentiate the two.

"I really must thank you for yesterday's song and dance," said Daario as he casually looked ahead into the gloom. "After that wonderful set up the Queen was quite…ravenous in her appetites."

Gerion shrugged. "I should give up a life of politics and become a matchmaker."

As they went deeper the heat seemed to grow. It seemed every bit as hot as outside in the deserts, without the mercy of slightest breeze. The corridor was silent, dead, and stuffy as a tomb. Daario's torch cast flickering shadows into the corners, and the darkness closed in fast behind them.

Daario paused beside an iron-bound door, mopped beads of sweat from his face. He set his torch down in one of the holders attached to the wall. "We have black work ahead of us," he smiled as if he was announcing some delicious treat that was going to be served at a feast.

Gerion shrugged again, uncaring. "Where is the Queen?"

"I am here."

The Lannister spun about and saw her slender form move from the darkness, the glimmering silver of her hair a vision of the maiden herself. Behind her stood an imposing figure, that had to be Rhaego. If she is the Maiden, does that make him the Stranger? It occurred to Gerion that if the Dothraki were to believed, then he was in fact.

Daenerys' purple eyes flickered from Gerion to Daario and back again. "Let's get this over with."

DAENERYS

Daario pushed the door creaking open. The cell was tiny, windowless and the heat was crushing. Galazza Galare, the Green Grace, the Harpy herself, sat in a chair, hands in her lap, and did her best to maintain her dignity. Her skin was pale and oily, there were dark rings under her eyes. Her garments were stained with dirt from the cell, her hair hung lank and matted across her face. She looked like a sick old grandmother, and it was all Dany could do to remind herself why she was here in the first place. She is a traitor, Dany told herself. She would have gladly seen me dead and my freedmen back in chains.

She stared up at Daario, then Gerion and then Rhaego. No three men to give a prisoner hope. Her eyes met Dany's. "You look tired."

Dany raised her brows. "It's been a trying few days."

The Green Grace nodded. "I can imagine. The children will not give up until your tyranny has been driven out. It makes no matter if I am caged or not, you will be defeated."

She felt a fire rise in her chest then, her nostrils flared. "My tyranny? You and your people have been trying to enslave thousands!"

"And how many did you kill?" Galare's green eyes shone with defiance. "How many homes no longer have children because you thought to come along and change thousands of years of history? How many children will never see their fathers and brothers because of your vanity?"

Dany shook her head, her gaze firm. "There was no vanity involved my lady, I have known what it is to live as a slave and I have the power to spare others from that fate. How can you not see that a human life is worth more than all the gold in the world, the cruelty you and your people inflict upon others is evil."

She was feeling flushed now, her hands trembling. It was as if the world had gone mad and she was the only one at least attempting sanity. How does she not see what I am trying to do? How can she willing defend the practices of Meereen?

Yet the Green Grace did not bat an eye at Dany's words. "You burn your enemies alive and the Dothraki people you seem so fond of are known for taking slaves and even selling them to our Wise Masters." Her contempt was palpable. "You denounce one people yet embrace another, what gives you the right to impose your hypocrisy?"

"What of the freedmen and women your followers butchered? They had done nothing to you!" Dany struggled to keep her tears in. "They had done nothing to you, some of them were children and your men had them butchered and raped, all just to get back at me?"

A single tear rolled down the old woman's cheek, her voice little more than a whisper. "My children were innocent, and so were their children. They all lay dead because of you and your dragons. I have done what I can to help the remainder of my children…my people." She took a shuddering breath and looked back up at them. "I die with my conscience clean and am strengthened with the knowledge that there will be others to take up my cause. Do what you have to."

The room was close, stale. Gerion's face was a sad frown. Rhaego leaned back against the wall beside her, arms folded, grinning. Daario came up to her side, his warm hand a reassurance on her shoulder giving what strength he could. He held out his dagger to her. "I'll do it," he whispered into her ear. "Better to get it over with now, in secret, than risk making her a martyr to others."

Dany glanced down at her own distorted reflection in the shiny, polished blade. Her stomach churned, bile burning at her throat and washing up into her watering mouth. Do it, she told herself. The woman before her was a monster, a criminal, the worst kind of traitor and dragons do not suffer the likes of them. Did I not promise to make those who would harm my children die screaming? Do it.

She took the blade from Daario's hands, held it in a tight grasp. Even Rhaegar killed his enemies, do it now and banish this woman from your mind forever. But her arm seemed to weigh a thousand tons. She stared at Galazza Galare's ashen face, unable to see her as anything other than a grieving old woman.

The point of the blade wobbled, dropped, tapped against the floor.

Galare took a long, shuddering breath, closed her eyes, then opened them again, wet glistening in the corners. "I…I don't understand….why would you-"

Rhaego's big fist crunched into her face and knocked her on her back, blood bubbling from her broken nose. She got out a shocked splutter before he had his hands closing tight around her throat and lifting her high off the ground.

"You want to see your children again, eh?" hissed Rhaego, teeth bared in a snarling grin, the sinews squirming in his forearms as he squeezed tight and tighter. Galare kicked helplessly, struggled silently, twisted around, face turning pink, then red, then purple. Rhaego dragged over Galare's head forward, almost close enough to kiss, almost, then rammed it back against the wall of the cell with a sharp crack. Galare's feet jerked, the chains between them rattling. Rhaego worked his head to one side then the other as he shifted his hands around Galare's neck for a better grip, tendons standing stark against his waxy pale skin. He pulled her forwards again, slowly, then rammed her head back with a dull crunch. Galare's tongue rolled out, one eyelid flickering, black blood creeping down her face.

Rhaego growled something unintelligible, lifted Galare's head, smashed it against the wall with all the care of a stonemason getting the details right, again, and again. Dany watched, her mouth half-open, grasping hold of Daario's hand, doing nothing. She wasn't sure what she could do, or should do. It was like watching a feral dog tearing about its prey. Blood dashed the rendered walls and the stone floor in spots and spatters. Over the pop and crackle of shattering bone she could hear a voice. Viserys, she thought for a minute before realising it was Daario calmly trying to tell her to look away, much like her bear knight had once told her to when Drogo killed her brother. She didn't look away then and she would not look away now.

Rhaego lifted the Green Grace's head once more; hair matted glistening black, then blinked, and let it drop to the floor like a bundle of rags.

"That should fix it." He loomed down over his work, one boot planted on either side of Galare's crushed corpse. He looked at his hands, looked around for something to wipe them on, ended up rubbing them together, smearing black streaks of blood dry brown to his elbows. "One less Harpy in the world." He looked sideways at Dany with his one eye, corner of his mouth curled up in a sick smile. "One less threat to your children, isn't that right, Mother?"

"I'd say there's little threat from a smear in the wall," Gerion grunted to himself.

Dany stared down at Galare, flattened head twisted sideways, crossed eyes goggling up at the wall, blood spreading out across the stone floor in a black puddle from her shattered skull. Dany's voice seemed to come from a long way off, reedy thin. It took all her effort not to cry. "Why did you-"

"Why not?" whispered Rhaego, coming close. His face looked feverish, his silver mane sticky with blood and the bandaged side of his face soaked with sweat, a red bloom where the remnant of his eye was. She remembered how much she used to fuss over that face when he was little, remembered how it felt when his tiny body fell asleep in her arms. My little boy, my shining star, what have you become?

"It's what you wanted, wasn't it? What me and my men fought and died for these last few weeks here in this dusty dung heap? What I lost my eye for? Protecting your new people, keeping them safe? I thought you wanted to be a real Targaryen and burn your enemies to the ground, hear them scream, fire and blood and all that talk you gave me since I was old enough to understand. By the gods, Mother." He grinned and his bandages shifted uneasily, revealing a mass of scar across his face, red and angry looking, and his good cheek all dotted with blood. "I could almost swear you aren't half the dragon you pretend to be."