299 AC — Meereen
The sea had gone mild, as if it too had decided to forget Qarth. The longships cut a smooth path westward. Ropes creaked. Sails snapped.
Anakin stood beneath an awning of sailcloth on the quarterdeck, one boot braced against a beam as he watched the water unroll in slow blue folds.
Ahead of him, Daenerys ran laughing between coils of rope and stacked casks, and four dragons came scrambling after her.
They were little things still. Too little for true flight, too light to cast much shadow, all sharp claws and snapping jaws and wings like damp leather. Yet the deck belonged to them as surely as if they had been Balerion, Vhagar, Meraxes, and all the dragons of old returned in one clutch.
The cream one waddled with offended dignity after Daenerys's heels, hissing every time a gull dipped too low. She had named that one Viserion, and not even Anakin could say whether the name had been given in love or mockery of her brother.
The green one—Rhaegal—kept trying to scale the mast, climbing half a yard before sliding down in a tangle of claws and wings.
The blue hatchling—Stormfyre—had discovered that ropes could be bitten, shaken, and fought.
The black dragon—dark as a moonless pit, with red fissures running under the shell of his scales—was quietest of the four, and the one Anakin liked least for that. Daenerys insisted he be the one to name it, but he had no name that felt right.
Dany scooped Rhaegal up before it could tumble over a cleat. "No," she laughed, breathless. "No, you wicked thing, not there." The little dragon twisted round and sank tiny teeth into the loose sleeve of her gown.
Her brother stood a few paces off in sea-worn wool, arms folded tight, the wind plucking at his long hair. He took a step forward when she called, then stopped when the green hatchling hissed at him. Viserys flinched. Anakin saw it. Daenerys saw it. So did the sailors. And for the first time, Viserys saw that they saw. The color rose hot in his cheeks.
"Damnit," Viserys snapped, "why does that one keep biting at me!"
"They all bite," Anakin said. "It's what they do."
"How comforting." The prince's violet eyes flashed toward him.
"They can smell fear," Anakin went on, his tone mild as winter rain. "Try not to reek of it."
That landed where he meant it to. Of late, Anakin had begun to detect a tremor in his uncle—a sour, creeping dread that clung to the man whenever they spoke. Whether it was Anakin himself or the shadows of the dragons that stoked such terror, he could not say.
Viserys looked away first.
Dany freed her sleeve and cradled the green hatchling against her chest. At once it settled, peering out with bright bronze eyes. She rubbed a thumb under its jaw and looked toward Anakin, smiling in that soft, cautious way she smiled when she wanted to share delight.
"Can you imagine what they'll be like? When they're grown," she said. "When they can fly."
Anakin looked at them. Fire made flesh. The oldest terror in the world, reduced to things small enough to fit in a girl's hands… For now.
"They may simply fly off," he answered. "Nothing keeps a dragon where it does not wish to be."
Daenerys studied him. Child still, but no fool. Not anymore. "You've been… different," she said at last. "Since the House. Heavy."
He gave a short laugh that was not laughter. "'Heavy'?"
"Yes." Her voice dropped. "Like something followed you back."
It had. He knew that well enough.
For half a heartbeat the deck was gone, and he was back within that dark place, walking the halls while doors breathed and shadows watched.
He saw again, a girl chasing a kitten, a bed soaked in blood, a man holding a babe, a woman whispering through death. 'Promise me, Ned.'
That name. Ned. Ned. Not a riddle, not truly. There were not so many Neds in the world who mattered. Eddard Stark. Robert Baratheon's friend. The wolf of Winterfell. Lord of the North. Anakin had turned the name over in his mind a hundred times since Qarth and found no answers in it. Only questions. Questions that had made a victory taste of ash. He would have to look further into it when he returned to Meereen.
Daenerys came nearer. The cream hatchling waddled after her, peeping furiously until it tripped over its own feet.
"They showed me things too," she said quietly. "Terrible things. Beautiful things. Lies, perhaps. I do not know. Did they…" She hesitated, "show you something too?"
"They show you what you chase," Anakin said. "And what you fear. Sometimes those are the same thing."
She said nothing to that.
Below them sailors moved about their tasks, pretending not to stare. These were men who had seen Anakin break stone with an open hand, men who had watched Meereen's gates groan and split beneath a force with no name. Yet even they watched the dragons more than they watched him. Dragons at least were an old terror. Familiar. A man who could cast thunder from his hands was something that still hadn't quite sunk in.
Anakin watched Daenerys, and Viserys beyond her, and felt… a lot.
Daenerys had grown on him quietly. He had not meant it. Heat does not ask leave before it gets into a man's bones. It had been easier when she was a distant name in Pentos, a girl on the run under a magister's roof. Harder now. Harder when he could hear the excitement in her voice, feel the quick beating of her heart when one of the dragons climbed into her lap, watch the way she was becoming more in her own mind every day.
Viserys was different. Viserys had not grown on him. Not exactly. But something had changed. His uncle looked at him differently since Qarth. Not only with envy now. Not only with that old hunger crownless princes carried like a wasting sickness. There was awe in him too. Fear. And beneath both, a dangerous thing stirring. The very thing Anakin valued above all else. Loyalty.
The black hatchling uncoiled and came toward Anakin at last, slow and silent. It stopped beside his boot and fixed him with its dark-red eyes.
Daenerys laughed softly. "He likes you."
Anakin said nothing, his gaze descending to meet the piercing, crimson stare of the dragon.
(In the Harbors of Meereen…)
There was a forest of masts. On the quay a crowd had gathered thick as flies on fruit. Freedmen mostly. Men in roughspun, women with scarred wrists, children perched on shoulders, all craning for a glimpse of the dragon king.
Grey-Worm stood at the front of the quay with a handful of Unsullied ranked behind him, shields bright, and spearpoints a field of stars. Harry Strickland lingered near a stack of pay chests with his pinched mouth and sweating brow, looking less like a lord than a man counting what this welcome might cost. Rolly Duckfield planted his feet, lifted his chin, and assumed the unmistakable pose he always wore like a second skin. Daario lounged near a bollard in bright rags and sword braids.
Missandei stood apart from the others. She wore black and red. The wind lifted the edge of her robe.
Anakin felt her before he reached the gangplank. Felt the warmth of her. Felt the steadying of his own breath at the sight of her, and realized how much it meant to him.
He descended first. Cheers rolled over like surf.
Daenerys came down after him with dragons clinging to her like living jewels, and the harbor went quiet. Not silence entirely. The cheering died as if cut by a knife, replaced by whispers. A baby began to wail somewhere. A gull screamed overhead. Ropes slapped wood.
The hatchlings hissed. Smoke curled from their tiny nostrils. The smell of scorched meat and hot scale drifted over the quay.
Men recoiled without meaning to. Women clutched children closer. Even the Unsullied turned their heads by a fraction, and that slight movement from them was as good as open wonder.
The princess's head was bare now, the pale smoothness of her scalp catching the light where the flames had taken her silver hair. Yet the loss seemed not to trouble her. She walked with a quiet grace, a faint smile lingering at the corners of her mouth, as though fire itself had only sharpened whatever gentle strength lay within her.
Missandei let out the breath she had been holding. The girl who approached was still the same—small, soft-voiced, her steps light. Not some creature reborn of fire and legend, not the dragon-wrought apparition the whispers of the court had begun to shape. Just Daenerys.
Grey-Worm watched the hatchlings with a soldier's stillness and something deeper beneath it. Reverence, perhaps. Or the wary respect a man gives a blade sharper than any he has held.
Anakin approached Missandei first. Her bow was brief and careful, as befitted a king's councilor before half the city.
"New," she said softly, her gaze shifting to the dragons.
"Qarth had its amusements."
"And its dangers?"
His mouth curved. "That too."
He should have left it there. He knew he should. Instead he tipped her chin up and kissed her where all could see.
The harbor stilled further. Anakin felt Daenerys's attention snap toward them. Felt Viserys's quick, mean delight at his suspicions being proven true. Felt Griff's disapproval already forming somewhere behind his eyes, heavy and old. Felt the court's immediate calculations. Felt the ripple through the crowd as they tried to decide whether they had just seen love, madness, insolence, or all three.
Missandei did not draw away. She had wondered, in that instant, what game he meant to play. When he drew back she lifted her eyes to his. She searched his face, expecting to find the shadow of some hidden thought there—the quick glimmer of mischief, or calculation, or the quiet satisfaction of a man who had just bent another piece upon his board. There was none. There had been no scheme in the kiss, no lesson, no test. Only genuine passion.
The freedmen began to cheer again, uncertainly at first, then louder, as if song might box questions up and set it aside.
Anakin turned then to Daenerys. She looked caught halfway between pride and uncertainty, most the harbor staring at her, despite his antics, as if she had hatched the sun itself.
He saw in their eyes what they saw in hers—
The Mother of Dragons.
(One Month Later, in the Great Pyramid…)
Evening bled orange across the terraces. From the high balcony the city below looked almost gentle.
Lanterns winked to life along the streets. The Skahazadhan caught the last of the sun in copper streaks. Market cries rose faint and small, as though from another world entirely.
Daenerys stood at the balustrade with the sunset on her short silver hair.
What fire had taken was returning in soft pale fuzz. Every fool in the pyramid had expected that loss to wound her pride. Instead the weeks since Qarth had set her alight in some inward way. She seemed more alive now than before. Lighter. More certain.
"Everyone looks happy from up here," she said.
Griff's low chuckle came beside her. "From up here," he replied, "even King's Landing looked clean."
Daenerys glanced at him. "You knew it well?"
"I knew it too well." Jon's voice had gone distant. Not cold. Distant. There was a difference. She had learned to pick up on it. "Your brother made me walk the streets with him sometimes."
"Walk?" Daenerys repeated, brows lifting. "Why?"
"He liked to stand among them. The people." Griff's mouth twitched into something almost like a smile, strange on him. "He'd take his harp and play like any common minstrel. Sing. For hours. He said it helped him remember what kind of world he meant to rule."
Daenerys laughed softly. "Viserys never told me that."
"Viserys… is not what I'd call a… 'reliable narrator'."
Her laughter came easier then, and Griff's with it, low and worn thin by years yet warmer than it had been in a long time.
From the doorway behind them, Anakin watched.
He had not meant to stop. He had only meant to cross the terrace on his way to the audience chamber. But their words about his father grated against him, a sudden, sharp hitch in his nerves that he couldn't quite school away.
On the marble floor at Anakin's feet, the hatchlings clicked and hissed. The black one lay beneath a bench with his head between his foreclaws, watching everything in silence.
Rolly Duckfield entered through the arch behind Anakin. He took one look at the king's face and cleared his throat carefully.
"Your Grace," he rumbled, "Hizdahr zo Loraq is below. Again."
Anakin's gaze snapped round. "How many men?"
"Fifty. Maybe a hundred."
"That makes three petitions this moon alone."
Duck scratched at his jaw. "Persistent sort."
Anakin looked back once toward the terrace where Griff still stood with Daenerys, speaking of a dead man. His feelings on the matter were childish. He knew it. Petty even. He knew that too. It did not make them any less real.
"Let's get this over with," he said.
(In the Audience Chamber…)
Hizdahr zo Loraq stood at the foot of the dais, all smooth words.
He had brought his little pageant with him again: freedmen in plain cloth, merchants in respectable silks, two or three former masters with humble faces arranged just so. The future, they were meant to seem. A tidy future. One you could set upon a table and sell by the pound.
Missandei stood beside the throne, hands folded. Daario lounged by a pillar, bright as spilled paint. Duck loomed near the steps, and Grey-Worm stood at the far doors, still as carved black stone.
Hizdahr bowed. "All men must die," he began, smooth as oil. "But not all can die in glory."
"Spare me your sermons," Anakin said. "Speak."
The polish of the man's manner thinned. "The fighting pits, Your Grace. The city needs them open."
"What this city 'needs'," Anakin retorted, "is fewer men with knives and more with shovels. The aqueducts I ordered constructed are behind schedule and we still lack the sufficient workers to operate the distillation plants. I've heard no one cry out for mummers with axes."
Hizdahr smiled the smile of a patient tutor. Anakin wanted to break his teeth for it.
"The pits are not merely sport," the Meereenese said. "They are custom. Release. A language the city understands. Masters and freedmen alike gather there. They cheer together. Grieve together. Bleed together, if you like. Without such outlets, anger festers."
"You mean it distracts them," Anakin said.
"If distraction preserves peace…"
"'I' preserve peace," said Anakin. His voice did not rise, yet it carried all the same, hard as a drawn blade.
"Yet in your absence, Your Grace, violence rises," Hizdahr replied. "One man cannot be everywhere at once."
A soft laugh echoed from the pillar where Daario lounged like some indolent cat, gold tooth flashing. "He speaks true. The city remembers its old habits the moment you turn your back."
The king's gaze shifted, slow and heavy, until it found Grey-Worm. No words were needed. The Unsullied gave a single nod. It was confirmation enough.
"What are you suggesting?" the king questioned.
Daario obliged, as men like him always did when given leave to speak. He spoke of his experience in the pits—of blood and sand, of men who had nothing and clawed their way into something. A ladder built from bones, perhaps, but a ladder all the same.
Hizdahr seized upon it eagerly, as a merchant seizes a bargain. "For many, Your Grace, the pits are the only honor they will ever know. You deny them that, and they will seek other ways to prove themselves. Less… orderly ways."
Anakin's gaze flicked, unbidden, to Missandei. She stood quiet as always, hands folded, her face a calm mask.
A shadow of guilt hung over Anakin. It wasn't merely that he had paraded their intimacy before the court without her leave; it was the realization of how heavily he had leaned upon her.
While he had indulged his passions for stone and mortar, redesigning the city's bones and fretting over its aqueducts, it was Missandei who had tended to its soul. He had allowed the crown to rest upon her brow in all but name, leaving her to navigate the treacherous currents of civil strife while he played the architect. If Meereen knew even a guttering candle's worth of peace, it was her doing.
Now, her silence sat between them like a drawn sword. It was not some mood, he realized, but a wordless rebuke—a reminder that he was the king, and it was long past time he felt the weight of his own crown. Nearly a million souls, and all of them restless. All of them waiting. Waiting for strength. Waiting for him.
The pits would give them something. Blood, yes—but also purpose. Order. A leash disguised as spectacle. A compromise. He hated the word.
"Fine," Anakin said at last, "open them."
The words fell from his lips too swiftly. That was what unsettled him most. Not the looks exchanged in the chamber, not the faint curl of satisfaction at Hizdahr's mouth, nor the quiet approval in Daario's eyes, not even the disapproval in Missandei's. No—what troubled him was how easy the decision had come.
It was quicker than turning down a hundred petitions, easier than going around the city trying to prohibit it, and… more tempting to repeat again.
(That Night…)
The Great Pyramid grew quiet after dark. Quiet made room for thoughts, and thoughts multiplied in darkness.
On another night Anakin would have been with Missandei. But he felt a cold shoulder coming from her and avoided it, which was enough to answer how she felt about his ruling today, even if she had wanted him to make the choice. For the first time in a while she slept in her own chambers.
Anakin wandered the halls of the pyramid until he came across Viserys's door and across from it Daenerys's. Once again he felt like he was back in the House of the Undying staring at doors that told different stories.
His uncle had been quieter since Qarth, though only a fool would have called him changed. Something had gone inward in him. As if he had just discovered power is not given. It is taken—and more importantly: held. And when he looked at the dragons, it was not with his old wounded spite alone. There was yearning in him. A desire for power.
Perhaps, Anakin had thought more than once, dragon's blood lived in him after all. If Daenerys could wake stone and he could bend the world to his will, why should Aerys's last living son be all pride and no power?
He knocked. Viserys opened, wearing a plain tunic, hair loose, one brow lifting.
"Get dressed," Anakin said, tossing a cloak at him. "We're going out."
"At this hour?" Viserys stared. "Should I be concerned?"
"…"
They slipped from the pyramid in dark cloaks, no escorts or guards.
Meereen by night smelled of river mud and roasting meat. Lanterns hung in alley mouths like low red moons. Somewhere a drunk was singing off key in Ghiscari, and elsewhere someone was being beaten for it.
"There's a winesink near the western quays," Anakin said as they walked. "Merchants lose casks there every so often. Grey-Worm watches the alleys. Still…" He let the word hang. "Tonight feels… off."
Viserys gave a sharp little laugh. "And your feelings are never wrong, are they?"
"No."
A tavern crouched blind and sagging near the docks, its shutters closed, its sign broken off.
They entered by a side stair and climbed to a second-floor landing where the shutters looked out over the piers.
Below, men were at work. Casks rolled from a moored ship that flew no colors. A cart waited in the shadows. Two bodies lay near the end of the quay, still enough to be dead. Unsullied, by the look of them.
"We should fetch more men," Viserys whispered. "Someone t—"
Anakin drew Blackfyre. The Valyrian steel came free with a soft whisper.
Viserys looked at the sword, then at him. "What are you—"
"Take it."
"You think I'm your sellsword now?" the prince's face hardened.
"You will take this sword." Anakin's voice suddenly went darker. "And you will do exactly what I say."
For a moment his uncle did not move. Pride warred with caution in him. Viserys snatched the sword hilt-first, and when his fingers closed round it some change came over him. Old stories lived in that blade. Old kings. Blackfyre had belonged to conquerors and pretenders and dragonlords whose bones were dust now, yet the steel remembered. So did Viserys. He looked down at the sword in his hand and smiled a little, a thin bitter smile, but truer than many expressions Anakin had seen on him.
"Seven save us," Viserys muttered. "You're going to regret this."
"Likely," Anakin replied. He laid a hand on his shoulder once, almost companionable.
They went down.
Two thieves rushed them near the mouth of an alley, knives out, teeth bared.
Anakin lifted a hand. The Force closed round both their throats at once. There was a wet snapping sound. The men dropped where they stood.
Viserys froze. He had seen his nephew use the Force in Qarth. Everyone had. But seeing it done close enough to hear cartilage crack and breath stop, left him with his mouth half open and no words behind it.
"Keep up," Anakin said, already walking ahead.
At the gangplank of a ship two more men rushed them, knives bare.
Anakin wrenched one blade free with the Force and sent it back into the man's chest. The thief rolled down the plank like a sack of grain.
The other lunged for Viserys. Viserys swung Blackfyre clumsily, far too high. The thief ducked under it and slashed his sleeve open, grazing the flesh beneath. The prince cursed and stumbled.
Even as the two men wrestled on the floor, each straining for the knife, Anakin ignored his uncle's frantic struggle. He stooped over the first man he took down and pulled the scarf from his face. A faded slave brand marked his cheek. Volantene. Anakin's eyes narrowed at this.
Back with Viserys, he was on the verge of being stabbed by his own weapon. However the blow never landed. Anakin's invisible push sent the thief sprawling backward off the plank into black water.
Viserys wiped blood from his arm. "You could have just killed them all yourself." His breath came quick.
"Yes."
"Then why am I here? Why hand me the sword?"
Anakin approached slowly. The harbor lights flashed dull along Blackfyre's rippled steel where Viserys still held it.
Why indeed? Because he had wanted his uncle to do something special? Because talk of dragons bored him when it came from men who had never gotten blood on their hand? Because he had wanted to see whether Viserys would recoil from violence or lean toward it?
He gave no answer.
Viserys let out a tight laugh and cracked open one of the casks with a dagger. He drank straight from the spigot. Wine ran dark and sweet.
"Ha, Dornish red," he said, wiping his mouth. "At least the thieves had taste."
They walked back through the alleys with the sword between them and dockside blood drying on Viserys's sleeve.
After a time his uncle spoke again, softer now. "Your… 'magic', nephew. You should teach it to me sometime," he said. "Certainly two would be better than one."
"It isn't magic," Anakin said. "And it's not for me to teach. But for you to find."
"Is that what this was? A test? Was I supposed to 'find' something?" Viserys asked. "Gods, you're as callous as your father."
Anakin stopped walking. "My father…" he repeated. "Never heard anyone call him callous."
Viserys kept on a few paces, then turned. Moonlight cut his face into blades. "Aye, Rhaegar," he said. "The realm sings of him because songs forgive what men should not. But he was blind, nephew. Blind enough to throw away crown and kingdom for that stupid Stark wench." He spat to one side. "A foolish dragon is still a fool."
No one had ever spoken to Anakin of Rhaegar that way. Dreamer, yes. Tragic prince, yes. Harpist. Warrior. But never fool.
The name Viserys said echoed in his mind. Stark. It seemed to follow him of late, like a wolf pacing just beyond the firelight.
Anakin understood the heavy, discordant legacy left by his father. To Griff, Rhaegar was a paragon of wisdom and strength, a prince of tragedy and song; to the rest of the realm, he was merely the man who had raped Lyanna Stark, a callous architect of ruin.
Anakin knew the truth was a jagged thing, carved from the same sharp contradictions that defined his uncle Viserys.
Viserys spoke of the Mad King as a misunderstood martyr, a king wronged by his own subjects, yet for all his devotion, even the exiled prince could not mask the shadows that clung to Aerys's name. Even Griff, who served the Targaryen cause with a zealot's heart, could never bring himself to sing the praises of the late king. Instead, he spoke of Aerys only in the past tense, often murmuring that the most sagacious act the Mad King ever performed was the frantic, desperate decision to spirit a young Anakin away from King's Landing.
Anakin had made an effort to understand more. He knew all the history of Westeros, but none of the present.
When he had returned from Qarth, when the dust of the voyage had settled and the smell of smoke from the ruined House of the Undying had faded from his clothes, he summoned Lysono Maar to the high chamber of the Great Pyramid. The Lyseni spymaster arrived as he always did—perfumed, composed, and smiling a little too easily for a man who trafficked in whispers.
They had spoken long into the night.
Lysono had brought parchments and quiet tidings gathered from a hundred ports and courts: merchant talk from Volantis, mutterings from Pentos, letters intercepted on the Summer Sea. More curious still were the reports carried across the Narrow Sea, from the realm of Westeros.
When at last the Lyseni had given his report, Anakin leaned back in his chair and said nothing for a long while. Some of what he had heard was expected. But one piece of news lingered with him. Interesting, Lysono had called it, with that soft little smile of his. Interesting indeed.
Anakin had dismissed the spymaster soon after, sending him back into the city with new instructions whispered too quietly for the guards to hear.
Yet the knowledge Lysono had brought did not follow him out the door. It stayed. This particular matter Anakin kept to himself.
Walking through Meereen night streets, Viserys saw the effect of his words and mistook it for agreement. That made him bolder. "You," he said, gripping Blackfyre tighter, "have unfortunately inherited your father's worst habits, nephew. Always dancing to the tune of that whore you keep."
Anakin went deathly still. The shadows seemed to lengthen across his features, but Viserys, drunk on his own indignation, pressed on. "Everyone in the city knows it. That bed-slave of yours practically wears the crown in your na—"
The insult died in a wet rasp. Anakin's hand had shot out, his fingers locking around Viserys's throat with the force of a vice. With a single, fluid motion, he hoisted his uncle into the air, feet dangling uselessly above the stone.
"Say that again," Anakin hissed, his voice low and dangerous.
Viserys did not struggle. Instead, he forced a jagged grin, his eyes alight with a frantic, silver-haired madness. "D–Don't give me that. You know it's true. Why else are we skulking the streets at night murdering thieves," he said. "G–Go on then. Do it. Show me the dragon."
Anakin's gaze narrowed. His uncle had hit a nerve. He could feel a sliver of truth in Viserys's warning.
Ever since he'd stepped foot back from Qarth, a restless spark has lingered inside him. Events cascade faster than he can keep up with, and he finds himself waiting—almost pleading—for someone to give him the cue that this chaos is acceptable, that it's all part of the design.
Viserys read the hesitation in his nephew's eyes and let out a strangled laugh. "L–Look at you. All this power… all this strength. It's… magnificent."
Anakin's breath hitched, and he shoved his uncle away, the violence leaving him as swiftly as it had come. He smoothed his doublet, his jaw tight. "Watch your tongue, Uncle. Unless you've conveniently forgotten our first conversation regarding Daenerys."
Viserys stumbled back, clawing at his throat to reclaim his rhythm. He straightened his tunic with trembling fingers, his composure returning with the chilling speed of a man who dealt only in delusions.
"I only say such things because…it pains me, Anakin, to see you squander such potential," Viserys wheezed, his tone shifting to one of wounded mentorship. "For the gods' sake, you haven't even laid a public claim to the Iron Throne."
"My time will come," Anakin replied, his voice flat. "When I am older. Perhaps even wiser."
Viserys shook his head, a thin, jagged smile playing on his lips. "Age is a poor yardstick for greatness, Anakin. I think the truth is far simpler. I think you see something inside yourself… you fear."
There was no kindness in the words. No tenderness. Only certainty. Anakin should have hated that. Instead some hard part of him respected it. Truth, even ugly truth, had more use than songs.
(Days Later, in the Great Pit of Daznak…)
The arena roared like an animal being flayed alive.
From the royal box high above the sands, Anakin looked down on a sea of faces. Masters in silks. Freedmen in rough cloth. Merchants, sellswords, priests, thieves, harlots, children who had snuck in to watch strangers die. Ten thousand mouths open and hungry.
Viserys sat at his right with bright eyes and too much wine in him. Griff stood to his left, rigid as a drawn bow. Tristan Rivers, Rolly Duckfield, and Franklyn Flowers stood guard behind the king. Strickland sweated into his collar. Daario leaned forward with wicked amusement on his face. Hizdahr sat upright and smooth, trying not to look pleased.
The first deaths came quickly.
A boar ripped Barsena Blackhair from groin to breast before half the crowd had settled. Her guts slithered red and pale across the sand. The spectators gasped, then screamed their delight. Below, another pair of fighters entered, and another death followed. Sand darkened. Men cheered.
Anakin felt not nausea, but a harsh restless energy rising in him. He had allowed this. That was the part that sat ill with him. Not because it was cruel—but because it was easy. Was he… a bad king?
Viserys leaned near. "Where's my sister?"
"Not here."
"And your… counselor?"
Anakin did not answer.
Viserys smiled, sharp and mean. "Women…" he scoffed. "No doubt they wrinkled their noses at this."
"They did."
"Those dragons cling to my sister more every day," Viserys said. "Strange, that. Considering who broke the House."
Anakin turned his head slowly. "I did not hatch them," he said. "She did. If it weren't for her I'd never have set foot in that damned House." That should have ended it.
But Viserys never knew when to stop. "Dragons choose as they please," his uncle went on lightly. "Though some men spend all their lives discovering that the world chooses otherwise."
"Meaning?" Anakin asked.
Viserys gave a thin smile and spread his hands as though the answer were obvious. "Meaning," his uncle replied, "that if you never wished the fighting pits reopened, you should never have opened them." His violet eyes gleamed with a hard, unpleasant light. "For all your power, nephew, why do you still listen to the council of men who are so clearly beneath you?"
The words hung between them like a blade waiting to fall. Anakin did not answer at once. The noise of the pit rolled around them—shouts, wagers, the clang of bronze bells. It pressed on him.
Before he could speak, the ironbound gates groaned open once more. The crowd surged to its feet with a hungry roar as the next combatants were driven into the light.
One man entered in green scaled armor with an axe. The other wore a copper serpent mask and carried a spear.
Anakin felt the rhythm of the second fighter before the bout began. Stillness inside motion. Precision. A man who had been close to death enough times to stop fearing its smell.
They fought beautifully. The spearman won. He slid inside the axeman's reach and opened his throat in one elegant motion. The man fell choking. The pit howled.
The victor did not salute the crowd. He pointed his spear straight up at the royal box. At the king. The noise shifted. Surprise. Delight. Fear. It was… intoxicating.
Hizdahr half rose. "Your Grace, you are under no oblig—"
"Sit down," Anakin said, cold.
Griff's voice cut across his, harsher. "Anakin—don't even think about it."
"Oh, let him." Viserys laughed openly. "Let the people see what their king is made of."
That did it. Not Viserys alone. Not the challenge alone. Not the crowd. All of it together. The heat. The blood. The city's hunger. His own anger already sharp from Qarth and the pits and the black little ache his father's ghost had left in him.
He stepped to the front of the royal box and leapt down. The sand met him like a breath, soundless. Dust barely stirred. The crowd lost its mind.
Blackfyre came to his hand as if the sword had floated there of its own accord. Sun struck the Valyrian steel and turned it bright.
The spearman retreated a step without meaning to, unnerved. Some part of him was wondering if he had fully thought this through.
He lunged anyway. Fast. Better than fast. 'Impressive.' Anakin turned the thrust aside. The butt-end whipped toward his head. He ducked. The spear spun. The man knew what he was doing. 'Most impressive,' Anakin thought.
They exchanged six blows. Eight. Ten. The crowd screamed with every ring of steel.
Then Anakin closed the distance and with three heavy strikes knocked his opponent down. Blackfyre sheared the spear clean in half.
Stunned by the sheer violence of the king's assault, the spearman crashed to the floor. The loss of his weapon left him exposed, and he began to shuffle backward, his heart hammering as he fought for a moment of breathing room.
The copper mask came loose and spun aside over the sand. The face beneath was lean and lined with a smile that should not have been smiling in that moment.
Anakin raised Blackfyre, ready to end it.
But suddenly, a shout came from above. "Wait!" Griff's voice broke.
Then another from the far gate. Not a shout—more a desperate crack in a young man's voice. A boy ran into the sand—short-legged, stocky, earnest-faced, sword in hand. He looked like the spearman on the floor, but without the smile.
"Quentyn!" the man Anakin kicked rasped.
For half a heartbeat Anakin almost let the boy approach. Almost let him speak.
Instead, his hand flicked. The Force caught the boy mid-stride and hurled him hard into the sand. He struck and rolled limp.
Unsullied flooded the arena at once.
"Easy," the spearman coughed, Anakin standing over him with the sword's point hovering inches from his chest. "I can explain…"
(Moments Later, in the Cells Beneath the Great Pit of Daznak…)
Under the arena, it smelled of piss, damp stone, and old fear. Above, the roar of the crowd seeped down through the arches like far thunder.
Oberyn Martell leaned against the bars as though he had chosen the place for comfort. Quentyn paced like a caged mastiff, face pale under his sun-brown skin.
"You'll wear a trench in the floor," Oberyn said, amused.
"You nearly got yourself killed."
"Nearly is a long road from actually."
"You nearly got 'me' killed."
"Yet look at you. Alive. Whole. Unlovelier than ever, but alive."
"I still don't understand why we couldn't just 'ask' for an audience with the Targaryens!"
"And wait moons," Oberyn said mildly, "while his counselors weighed our worth like coins? No, I prefer a more direct introduction. A man remembers the one who faced him blade to blade. It builds… intimacy."
"Hardly enough time to build intimacy, was it? Ten seconds, if that," the younger Martell quipped.
Oberyn's retort was instantaneous, his voice sharp with mockery. "Coming from the boy who tripped over his own shadow?"
"I didn't—" Quentyn began, ready to protest that something inexplicable had caused his stumble, but the rhythmic crunch of approaching footsteps cut him short.
Torchlight spilled down the stairs. Anakin entered first, silver hair bright in the gloom, eyes too bright for such a place. Jon Connington came behind him, face carved of duty and dread.
"Oberyn Martell," Griff said, flat.
"Lord Connington." The Red Viper smiled wider. "I thought that was you in the stands. You've aged."
"Not nearly enough," he replied.
Oberyn turned his attention to Anakin. "And there he is. My nephew." His gaze ran over him, bright with a serpent's curiosity. "The one I've heard… so much about."
Anakin did not smile. "If you wanted an audience, a formal request would have sufficed."
Quentyn could not hold back the faintest smirk.
"Formal requests are forgettable," Oberyn said. "Men remember the ones who cross swords with them."
"Had Griff not called out, you'd be dead now."
"Then praise be to your Hand."
"He is not my Hand," Anakin replied so quickly that Griff instantly caught the nuance.
"No?" Oberyn glanced sidelong at Connington. "A shame. He has the look of one who has spent his whole life acting the part."
Before Jon could answer, more steps sounded behind them. Viserys descended with Duck in tow.
Oberyn's gaze lit at once. "Well. Another dragon."
Viserys drew himself up. "And you are?"
"This is Oberyn Martell of Dorne, my prince," said Griff. The word Martell hit the air like flint on steel.
Viserys blinked once. Twice. "Martell…" he repeated, the name tasting familiar to him.
Anakin's gaze shifted to Quentyn. "And you?"
"Quentyn Martell. Son of Doran, Prince of Dorne."
"A cousin, then."
Quentyn inclined his head. "Your Grace."
"How old?"
"Eight and ten."
"You're kidding." A short laugh escaped Anakin. "So am I."
The moment hung awkwardly. Two boys of the same age, and no likeness between them but blood history had mangled.
Oberyn broke it. "We did not come for sport alone," he said. "Dorne remembers."
Griff's shoulders tightened, and Anakin felt it.
Political weight settled into the cell. Suddenly the reek of piss and damp stone seemed too small a room to hold what had walked into it. Dorne. Not some merchant prince from Qarth. Not another Ghiscari noble. Dorne was Westeros. Dorne was his mother's blood. Dorne was vengeance, legitimacy, alliance, home.
Viserys felt it too. His eyes sharpened with naked hunger.
"There was once a betrothal," Oberyn said lightly, and if he enjoyed the moment, he hid it poorly. "Between the prince, Viserys, and my niece Arianne. Signed by Ser Willem Darry for House Targaryen. By me for Dorne."
Viserys stared at him. "Arianne?"
"My brother Doran's eldest daughter. A princess of Dorne," Oberyn said. "Quite lovely."
Viserys opened and shut his mouth like a fish brought up too quickly from deep water.
Anakin spoke before his uncle could recover. "I doubt you've crossed half the world just to barter brides."
"No," Oberyn said. His smile thinned. "I came to see whether the tales were true. To look you in the eye. To see whether my sister still lived in you, and whether house Targaryen was… 'whole' again." His gaze flicked past Anakin as if seeking someone else.
Viserys caught it first. "My sister is not here."
Oberyn's brow arched. "No?"
"She had better sense than to attend a blood circus," Anakin responded.
That earned him a look from Oberyn. Not mockery. Assessment. "And yet your city has blood circuses."
Anakin merely glared at the prince. Oberyn's smile faded entirely then. He had not expected his words to offend Anakin so.
"Yes, well," Viserys interjected, and there was mockery in his mouth like bile, "the 'Mother of Dragons' decided she was too holy to set foot in blood and sand."
Quentyn's frown deepened. "Mother of…"
Anakin said nothing. Viserys smiled. Griff's face went tight. Duck looked suddenly uneasy, as if sensing a storm building.
Oberyn Martell noticed the look that passed between them. His dark eyes flicked from one man to the other, quick and sharp as a dagger's edge, and the corner of his mouth curled upward. There was curiosity in that smile, and something else besides.
"Dragons, you say?"
(Elsewhere, with Daenerys…)
Daenerys sat on the cool marble floor while dragons tore at meat like little wolves. Their wings fluttered. Their teeth snapped.
Then the door creaked. Ser Jorah entered, urgent. He whispered something to Missandei. Missandei rose at once.
Daenerys stood and approached, dragons writhing up her arms. "What is it?"
Missandei's voice was calm, but her eyes were sharp. "Your brother and nephew have returned," she said. "And they are not alone."
Arriving outside, the sun hung low in the courtyard, staining the brick walls red. Heat still rose from the stones, even at dusk.
Anakin stood with Viserys, Griff, Strickland, Duck, and a handful of men. Before them waited two strangers—one tall, lean, smiling; the other younger, earnest, trying not to show fear.
When Daenerys entered, the air seemed to still.
Four dragons clung to her—green, white, blue, and black—hissing and peeping and curling their tails around her throat and shoulders. Smoke drifted from them in thin threads.
Oberyn laughed softly, amazement and hunger mingled. "By the Seven," he said. "So it's true."
Daenerys looked from the Dornishmen to Anakin and back, question in her face.
"Dany," Anakin introduced, "this is Prince Oberyn Martell of Dorne. And his nephew Quentyn."
"Oh," she said, and curtsied because politeness had become a shield for her and she wore it well. The dragons chirped and hissed. The blue one showed Oberyn its teeth.
Oberyn bowed low. Not mocking this time. Not wholly.
When he straightened he looked at Daenerys a long while, taking in the dragons clinging to her, the way they quieted beneath her touch, the way she did not flinch from them at all.
Oberyn Martell was not a man easily surprised. Yet when his gaze settled on Daenerys, he found himself studying her more closely than he had intended.
The first thing he noticed was her hair—or rather, the absence of it. Nothing to conceal the loss, no jeweled veil softened it. Most noblewomen would have hidden such a sight behind silk and artifice. She did not. Daenerys stood before them with a quiet smile, as if the matter were of no consequence at all. There was a gentleness in her, a warmth that seemed at odds with the tales men told of dragonfire and blood.
Oberyn had expected something different. Curious, he thought. Very curious indeed.
Quentyn stood awkward and earnest, staring at the dragons with all the awe he had kept hidden in the cells suddenly plain upon his face. He looked his age indeed, terribly young.
"I took the tales of her graces' exploits in Qarth as exaggerations," he spoke up at last. "Yet I see now the tales were meager things."
Anakin's mouth quirked. "She prefers not to be worshiped."
"Does she?" Oberyn asked. "How disappointing."
Daenerys glanced sidelong at Anakin, and despite everything the corner of her mouth twitched.
Viserys, by contrast, had gone quiet. Not sullen quiet. Not drunk quiet. Something else. His gaze moved between the dragons, Daenerys, Oberyn, Quentyn, and Anakin, and Anakin felt it happen as clearly as if he had heard a lock click shut. Viserys was counting. Measuring. Reordering the world. Dorne. Dragons. A princess betrothed to him. A chance to sail them west.
Oberyn was still watching Daenerys when he said, conversationally: "We bring tidings too. From Westeros."
The court stilled. Even the dragons seemed to sense it. Viserion stopped, peeping. Rhaegal lifted its head.
Anakin felt something tighten in Griff before the words came. Felt Missandei's attention sharpen. Felt Jorah's old loyalties stir like snakes in a basket.
Anakin knew. He had known since the day he returned from Qarth, though he had spoken of it to no one, except Lysono. Not to his council, not to his captains, not even his own blood. Some truths were like coals buried in ash—dangerous things best left undisturbed. But ashes have a way of stirring.
For a time he had been able to pretend the matter lay far away, across leagues of sea and silence. A whisper in a distant court. A rumor carried by merchants and spymasters with too much wine in their bellies.
Not anymore. Now the truth had crossed the Narrow Sea. Now the truth had found them.
Oberyn let the silence lengthen. He was a cruel man in some ways. He liked a blade to do its work slowly. Then, he said…
"Robert Baratheon is dead."