297 AC — Vaes Dothrak
Anakin Targaryen's campaign in Slaver's Bay had been called reckless by some, mad by others. In the wine-shops of Yunkai and the shadowed halls of Meereen, men whispered that the young dragon meant to set the whole Ghiscari coast aflame. Perhaps he had.
After the fall of Astapor came the battle near Yunkai. From afar the city seemed a sister to Astapor—pyramids rising, bricks sun-baked to yellow instead of red, and above the gate the same grim harpy spreading its wings.
The Yunkish fell all the same. When their banners dipped, the city yielded to Anakin's terms: every slave was to be freed, yet the Wise Masters, unlike the Good Masters of Astapor, might keep their city if they bent the knee, which they had.
So the chains were struck off, and the freedmen swelled Anakin's ranks, hailing him as liberator and deliverer. A hero.
Next came Meereen. Forewarned by the fates of Astapor and Yunkai, the Meereenese had shuttered themselves behind their high walls.
Ahead of Yunkai, the lands had been laid to ruin. Fields were burned to blackened ash, wells fouled with carrion and filth. And at every milepost along the coast road a slave child hung disemboweled, one small arm stretched out, pointing the way toward Meereen—a message meant for the new king.
With each grisly marker Anakin's fury deepened. By the time his host, which had grown to more than eighty thousand souls, though about half could bear arms, neared the city, there was no hiding the storm within him. All who rode at his side could see it plain as day: the young dragon was on the warpath.
Anakin remembered the Siege of Meereen differently than his captains did.
They spoke of ladders and fire, of men dying on the walls, of the moment the Unsullied took the parapets and the gates were thrown wide. They spoke of the masters' champion, Oznak zo Pahl's challenge and the young dragon's cold reply.
He remembered none of that. He remembered only what he felt.
He stood before the eastern gates of Meereen, bronze-bound and ancient, their harpy faces leering down as if to mock him. The air had been thick with heat and ash, the cries of men distant, as though the world itself had drawn a breath and held it.
He raised his hand. And the world answered.
He felt it then—that unseen force bending, yielding, as if all things had been waiting for his command. The bronze groaned like a wounded beast. Stone shuddered and split, hairline cracks racing outward like veins beneath the surface.
Then came the breaking. The gates burst inward with a thunder that seemed to shake the sky itself. Men fled before him, scattering like leaves before a storm, their courage gone in an instant.
And in that moment, as ruin opened at his command and a city bent its knee without ever speaking the words— Anakin felt strong. He felt pride. And somewhere deep within him, quiet as a whisper and twice as dangerous, something answered back.
Unlike Astapor and Yunkai, Meereen he chose to keep. Word had come that Astapor had been swept aside by Cleon the Butcher, who now styled himself king amidst ruin and famine. Anakin would not see Meereen suffer the same fate. He mounted his banner atop the Great Pyramid and across the city, proclaimed himself king, and set his Unsullied to restore order.
They did, though the city groaned beneath the weight of the sack, and its wounds festered into new dangers.
A shadow war rose first: masked killers calling themselves the Sons of the Harpy struck from alleys and rooftops, shedding blood in the streets in the name of chains long broken.
More dire still, in Anakin's mind, was the storm massing beyond Slaver's Bay.
The Dothraki, whom even seasoned sellswords feared to provoke, paid his rule no heed. They swept down upon the Lhazareen—the 'Lamb Men', as they called them, under Meereen's protection—seizing captives to sell to Yunkai and to Astapor, whose masters desperately sought to replenish their losses.
And so the young dragon rode to war once more, taking with him the Second Sons and Stormcrows, hardened sellswords won over in Yunkai. Steel met arakh beneath a burning sky, and the plains drank their fill.
Only when the Dothraki learned the sharp edge of the new king's resolve—only when their dead lay scattered across the grass—did they turn their eyes to him in a more serious manner.
With their pride bloodied and their khals shaken, Anakin allowed for Ser Jorah Mormont, an exiled Westerosi knight he'd met in the Dothraki Sea who possessed good relations with the khals, to treat with one of them. For by then the horselords knew well the cost of defying the new King of Meereen.
Outside Vaes Dothrak, the ground chosen for the meeting was a bare scar amidst the grass. No trees, no walls, only packed earth and the open sky. It was the closest thing the Dothraki had to a court.
Anakin sat his horse at the edge of the ring. The men of the Second Sons waited in a line behind him. To his right lay Daario Naharis and his Stormcrows; to his left, Jorah.
Before them, the khalasar, made up of warriors and dwellers alike, circled. Sunlight flashed on dark braids and copper skin.
At its heart rode Khal Drogo. He was as the stories said him: taller than most men, broad in the shoulder. His braid, adorned with bells, hung to his thighs—mark of a khal who had never known defeat.
He reined in at the edge of the circle, black eyes sweeping the foreigners. When his gaze fell on Anakin it did not move again.
"{You wished to supplicate,}" Drogo said in the Dothraki tongue.
Anakin nudged his horse forward until their mounts stood nearly nose to nose.
"{Not the word I'd use,}" he replied. "{But I've been told I could use some… 'brushing up' on my negotiation skills.}" It was a small lie. {I have known of your people longer than you might think,}" he said, voice edged with ice. "{Long before all this. And truth be told, your ways never meant much to me. But I do not care for the men you sell to… nor for those you choose to sell.}"
A low rumble built in Drogo's chest—not quite laughter. "{A man owns what he can take. The weak are claimed by the strong. This is the way of the world.}"
"{Wise words,}" Anakin replied. "{Can you prove them?}"
The murmurs that followed were like distant thunder. Drogo's bloodriders shifted, hands tightening on arakhs. Even his own men stirred at that.
They circled each other with words first, as men oft did when they sought to test one's pride.
From behind them, Ser Jorah watched grim and silent. Once Lord of Bear Island, Mormont was driven into exile for selling men into slavery. Stripped of land and honor, he took up the life of a sellsword in the Free Cities. Now the exiled knight watched the young dragon, eyes fixed, as though he dared not miss a single breath Anakin took.
Next to him, Daario stood.
Men like Daario Naharis and his Stormcrows did not serve thrones or banners—they served power. And in Anakin, they followed power incarnate.
Daario had once scoffed at the tales whispered from Astapor—of a boy-king who shattered chains and summoned fire. He had heard the rumors, tales of sorcery and gods reborn, of some unseen power no blade could match. He'd thought them tavern talk, the embellishments of drunk captains and silver-tongued scribes.
Until he saw: Anakin Targaryen—sword in hand, gold armor scorched black by fire—standing before the gates of Yunkai with the corpses of Prendahl and Sallor suspended in mid-air like broken marionettes.
Daario's fellow sellsword captains never had the chance to draw steel. They had simply ceased to live. The power that struck them was unquestionable. Daario, who had danced in a hundred duels, knew true strength when it showed its face. And he respected it.
He did not pretend to understand the strange flick of Anakin's hands, the way gates yawned open before him, or how foes were cast down by winds that had no source. Magic, some could call it. Sorcery from the old blood. The will of gods, perhaps. Daario did not care what name it bore. Only that it was real. Yet still, beneath the respect, beneath the swagger and sharp smile, lay a truth unspoken: the king frightened him.
It was not gold that won Anakin this audience with Khal Drogo, who commanded the largest khalasar in the Dothraki Sea, nor lineage, nor the sweet-mouthed promises of some silver-haired prince. It was fear.
Anakin swung down from his horse. Murmurs rose.
Drogo watched him with a predator's focus. The khal dismounted in one fluid motion, arakh in his hand before his braids had settled against his back.
The ring widened. Riders backed their horses away, forming a rough circle of flesh and iron.
"Your Grace, you don't have to do this," Jorah said quietly in the Common Tongue.
"Yes… Yes I do," replied Anakin.
'You cannot speak reason to these people,' he thought quietly to himself. 'You must speak in their language. Strength. Fire and Blood.' He felt the truth of his House words now, heavy as the sword at his hip.
Anakin stepped into the circle.
The ground was packed hard, marked by old hoofprints. The sky above was a bare blue bowl. The Dothraki watched without sound.
"His Grace has courage," Jorah muttered to Daario beside him.
"He has more than courage. Watch closely, old bear. You may learn something."
No horn blew. There was no call to begin.
Drogo lunged. He moved faster than any man that size had a right to, arakh cutting a shining arc through the air.
Anakin swayed aside, letting the first blow pass like wind. The second he met with Blackfyre, steel ringing as Valyrian metal caught the arakhs curve. The impact surprisingly jarred his arm.
They circled. Anakin's breath came slow, steady. Drogo's nostrils flared like a stallion scenting blood.
"{I know the masters have promised you something for my head. You had the power to say no. But you didn't. Why?}" the Targaryen asked, blades sliding and striking, feet sure on the hard earth.
"{Because this is the way,}" Drogo spat, driving him back with a flurry of blows. "{The strong take. The weak serve.}" The words were the world as Drogo understood it. The same creed, in different tongues, had come from masters and magisters.
"{You are no different from the men you put in chains,}" said Anakin
Blackfyre slid under the arakh, knocking it wide, but Drogo came on relentlessly. Anakin yielded ground when he must, gave way to the bigger man's rushes, danced aside from lunges that would have gutted him. Yet little by little, he moved Drogo further from the circle's center.
The khal, now on the edge of the ring, made a final reckless charge. Anakin stepped aside and let his instincts take over. The air shuddered.
In the same breath, Blackfyre cut Drogo's chest in a deep diagonal slash. Blood sprayed in a red fan across the packed earth. A roar went up from the rings of riders—shock, outrage, fear.
Drogo stared down at the line of crimson across his skin, then back at Anakin. Despite being severely wounded, he refused to yield. He lunged, fists smashing across cheek, the other swinging his arakh up towards Anakin's face.
The Targaryen tasted blood, sharp as copper on his tongue. His breath caught as the arakh's crescent edge swept toward him. Instinct seized him and he turned his face slightly, the blade carving a burning line next to his right eye. Pain blossomed, hot and immediate—but it was anger that truly flared in him, fiercer than the wound.
Anakin had been at war with the horselords for near a moon's turn, and the fighting had come like the tide—again and again, without pause or mercy. They came at night most often, screaming out of the dark with their bells and painted faces, arrows falling like rain before the charge. And by day they circled just beyond reach, ghosts upon the horizon, waiting for weakness. Waiting for him.
He had given them none. He had not slept more than a handful of hours at a time, nor eaten without one hand upon his sword. He had fought beneath sun and star alike, until the hours blurred together and the world became nothing but dust, blood, and the sound of hooves.
Anakin Targaryen did not tire. He had told himself as much. Told his men the same. A dragon did not falter. A dragon did not yield.
Yet the proof lay plain as the new wound. His limbs felt heavier than they ought. His breath came just a shade shorter after each clash. There were moments—small, fleeting, treacherous—when his thoughts lagged behind the world, when steel seemed slower in his hand than it had the day before.
Fatigue. He tasted the word like something bitter. It angered him more than any Dothraki blade. That such a thing could touch him at all—that the body might betray the will—felt like an insult he did not know how to answer.
His vision narrowed to the Khal's face. 'This is taking too long,' Anakin thought, frustrated. And now, given this blow, he would need a lot more to convince the Dothraki to submit. Certainly, up until now, Khal Drogo has been the most skilled, if not resilient, fighter he has ever faced.
Anakin reached again. This time he did raise his hand.
Drogo rose with it. His throat muscles bunched, teeth bared, boots kicking at empty air as he clawed at his own neck.
The onlookers had gone utterly silent. They had seen men disemboweled, seen hearts ripped from chests, eyes gouged, faces flayed. Death as spectacle was nothing new. This was something else. Something… unnatural.
Anakin's heart hammered against his ribs. He could feel Drogo's heartbeat too, in some strange echo: the frantic, stuttering thud of it. A khal, beaten and broken, lifted like a doll by nothing, eyes bulging in a face that had never known fear until this moment.
"{No more,}" Anakin said quietly in the Dothraki tongue. "{Not in my lands. No more lambs for your riders. No more slaves. Not here. Not ever.}"
Drogo choked as the invisible pressure around his windpipe—plain to him as an iron collar—tightened.
"{You will not rule like this,}" Anakin went on, and now his voice carried. "{No one will.}"
He closed his fist. There was a crack, sharp and obscene. The khal's body went limp all at once, as if his strings had been cut. When Anakin let go, the corpse fell like a bag of grain, braid, bells, and all.
For a moment no one moved. Then one of Drogo's bloodriders screamed and charged. He did not reach Anakin. Nor did the second, nor the third.
Winds plucked them from their saddles, hurling them aside. One spun through the air like a cast spear; another slammed into the earth hard enough that his neck broke with a sound like Drogo's had. Arakhs flew from nerveless fingers. Horses squealed and reared.
Anakin stood in the center of the storm, Blackfyre in one hand, the other casting winds. He turned in a slow circle, taking in the eyes watching him: round, wide, some bright with awe, others bleak with terror.
"{I am Anakin of House Targaryen,}" he called. "{I am the blood of the dragon. I have slain your khal as surely as he would've slain me. His strength is mine, and mine is greater still.}" His voice rolled across the plain. "{I will not take your ways from you. You will still ride. You will still fight. You will still shout and sing and die beneath the open sky,}" he said. "{But hear this: you will not take slaves from the Lhazareen, nor from Meereen, nor from any city that flies my banner. Those days are done.}"
A rider somewhere spat into the dust. Another stared fixedly at Drogo's corpse, lips moving in some muttered prayer. The khalasar around him shifted like a field of grass in uncertain wind.
"{And,}" Anakin added, tasting each word, "{if any man wishes to ride against me, let him step into this circle now.}"
The silence deepened. The only sound was the breathing of thousands of horses and the faint clink of metal. No one moved.
Then, one knee hit the ground, a noncombatant, shoulders bowed, forehead touching earth. Another followed. Then another. Knees bent in a rustling wave until the circle was ringed by kneeling men who would have called it shame once.
Fear had brought them to their knees. Fear, and the knowledge of what they had seen. 'It would have to be enough,' Anakin reasoned.
From beside Jorah, Daario gave a low, incredulous whistle. "Well, old bear?" he said. "What did we learn?"
The old knight did not answer. His throat had gone dry. Tales he had heard as a boy came back to him—stories of Valyrians who had spoken with fire of dragonlords who had ruled the earth and the air. He had never believed them. Men told such things to make sense of monsters.
Slowly, almost reverently, Jorah too, knelt.
Anakin let out the breath he had been holding and the wind stirred the dead khal's braid, making its bells chime softly against the dust. A sound like chains breaking echoed in his mind.
297 AC — Meereen
(Months Later…)
Meereen's night sky was on fire.
Flaming casks arced out over the bay from the slavers' fleet, trailing smoke like black comets. They burst against the city's harbors, pyramids, and lower walls in blooms of orange and red, flinging stone and splinters.
From the thirty-second balcony of the Great Pyramid, Anakin watched in silence.
The wind off the bay tugged at his cloak, carried screams faintly from the docks: men shouting, ships breaking, the deeper roar of collapsing masonry. Each impact sent a tremor through the stone beneath his boots.
In the bay, the harbors crawled with movement. Small boats darted between burning ships. Soldiers in his colors rushed along the quays. Fires marked where Sons of the Harpy had come forth from hiding to exploit the city's chaos.
The air smelled of pitch and burning wood. Another flaming cask slammed into the lower terraces, bursting in a shower of sparks. Stone chips rattled off the balcony's edge.
"Your Grace," came Griff's voice from behind him, "if we must die, might we at least die somewhere less exposed?" The jest was dry.
Anakin turned and followed him back into the council chamber. The room was half chaos. Filled with Company captains, maps lay scattered where a blast had tossed them and dust drifted constantly down from the ceiling.
"I knew it would be bad, but this…" Anakin said, clearly not expecting things to get this out of hand in his absence.
Rolly Duckfield brushed grit from his beard and smirked. "Despite appearances—" he said, as another distant boom shook dust from the rafters, "I'd say the city's prospects are improving."
"Forgive him, Your Grace," commented Black Balaq. "He was dropped on his head as a boy."
On the far side of the table, Harry Strickland dabbed his brow with a square of linen.
Beside him, the Golden Company's new spymaster, Lysono Maar, watched the maps with hooded eyes.
"The masters have overreached," Marq Mandrake rumbled. "They emptied Astapor and Yunkai to make this fleet. They think if they burn you out, their world goes back the way it was."
The door opened then, and the Unsullied commander, Grey-Worm, entered—silent and straight as carved obsidian in his new armor, his presence filling the chamber without a sound.
The new armor Anakin had commissioned for the Unsullied was wrought for war, not pageantry—though in time it became both. Each man was clad in a close-fitting body stocking of quilted cloth, over which were fastened plates of hardened steel: a crested helm to guard the head, broad shoulder pauldrons, vambraces to shield the forearms, and a solid breastplate chased with the three-headed dragon. A codpiece and kneepads were fixed in place, with thigh and shin guards strapped tight, so that little flesh lay exposed to spear or blade.
It was heavier than the simple garb they had worn before, yet the Unsullied bore it without complaint. Discipline had long ago taught them to endure discomfort as easily as pain.
In the days that followed, some among them took to painting their armor—subtle lines of red or black along the edges, sigils worked in careful strokes upon shield or helm. Small marks of identity in lives long stripped of such things.
Others did not. Grey-Worm, for one, kept his steel plain and unadorned, as unyielding and austere as the man himself.
At the sight of the stoic soldier, Anakin understood at once why the Unsullied had chosen him to lead them. Some men commanded not by voice or gesture, but by the quiet certainty they carried.
Missandei came beside him, lighter of step, and at the sight of Anakin she crossed the space at once, offering him a brief embrace in welcome, swift and warm before duty reclaimed her.
Anakin turned to Grey-Worm. "How many?" he asked.
"Thirty war galleys," the Unsullied replied at once, his voice flat. "Perhaps more."
Lysono Maar spoke up from his place, his tone smooth and assured. "Volantene coin bought many of them. Others came from New Ghis and Tolos. They have the Great Masters' gold behind them and their fear ahead."
"Fear of what you've done," muttered Strickland.
Anakin's gaze tightened on Harry. He took no pleasure in the man's presence; Strickland had held back half the company when Meereen was won, offering neither man nor ship until the city's fate was certain. Now, with Meereen's coffers under Targaryen seal, the paymaster had come swiftly enough—drawn not by any loyalty, but by the scent of gold.
It irked Anakin, though he let it go. For all his timidity, Strickland commanded the ships—ships from Myr that they would need, not just to one day sail west, but to free the bay currently under siege.
"Good." Anakin's mouth twisted. "Recently, I've found fear to be quite effective."
Griff's gaze flicked from the fires outside to the young man's face, eyes narrowing.
Anakin turned to the table, flattening his palm on the map of Slaver's Bay. "With Strickland's fleet arriving from Myr, we can seize their ships," he said. "Sink the ones we can't take. Every galley that survives flies our banner by dusk. I'll have Daario bring the Dothraki through the beach gates. The Unsullied will focus on the Sons of the Harpy in the streets. We crucify the masters who funded this. Every lordling with a harpy on his signet ring goes on a cross, like they should've from the start. And then…" His hand moved inland, to the other circled cities. "We go back to Astapor and Yunkai and make sure no one forgets what happens when they raise their hands against us."
"Sounds an awful lot like revenge," Griff said.
"Call it what you like," replied Anakin. "We tried it your way. They had their chance. They didn't take it."
"You cannot fight all the Free Cities," Harry said, shaky.
"Perhaps, Your Grace," Lysono murmured, "we should consider that not all of Volantis is our enemy."
Anakin lifted a brow. "Meaning?"
"The Red Temple has many eyes," Lysono said. "Many tongues. Their priests preach of a deliverer who will break the night and the chains. In Volantis, the slaves whisper your name as they go to their work. The Triarchs may curse you. Not all who walk their streets will."
"Wonderful," Tristan Rivers grumbled, "the fanatics love us."
Anakin straightened, he put his fingers on the scar along his eye where Drogo's blade had cut him. He had almost forgotten he could bleed at all. In some bitter, twisted way he supposed he owed the khal thanks for the reminder—though it was a lesson he had no wish to repeat.
"Let them come," he said, "I will consider not killing the Volantene Triarch, but either way, we take all of Slaver's Bay. For good." He looked at Griff.
Jon studied him a long moment. He had sought to teach Anakin mercy and restraint, virtues fit for a king. Though, perhaps, Slaver's Bay was not the place to apply such lessons.
The council chamber slowly emptied, boots and voices fading until only the soft hush of the high ceiling remained.
When the doors closed at last, Anakin found himself alone with Missandei. The stiffness she had worn throughout the meeting eased then, her shoulders lowering as she crossed the chamber toward him.
"I am glad you did not die in the Dothraki Sea," she said. It was spoken plainly, yet the words carried a weight that told of sleepless nights and quiet dread.
Anakin's lips curved. "Did you think I had? I admit the rumors were… persistent."
"I knew them for lies," Missandei replied. Her gaze did not waver. "They did not feel like truth."
His smile sharpened, something sly flickering behind his eyes. "That is because I spun them myself," he said. "A ghost frightens men less than a living king. While our enemies believed me gone, they grew careless. Bold enough to attack us. They would never treat with me, not after what happened the first time—but with you, with Griff, with this council ruling in my 'death', they will come willingly enough. I will confess," Anakin trailed off, "that though I do not count myself some master of whispers, I can—" He broke off.
Missandei had stopped listening and came closer, her golden eyes fixed upon him with an intensity that drew him up short. Without asking leave, she reached out. Her fingers brushed the scar across his eye, then down to the braid that hung against his neck, longer and heavier than the rest of his hair.
"What is this?" she asked, a small smile playing on her lips.
"Oh, that…" Anakin said lightly. "When I took Khal Drogo's khalasar. I was required to go to Vaes Dothrak. To receive the blessing of the Dosh Khaleen—whatever blessing those old crones granted—and to claim his riders as my own. By their laws, that made me a khal."
Her fingers lingered on the braid.
"The other khals did not care for it," he added, his tone darkening.
"And what did you do?" Missandei asked, still not looking up.
"The same thing I'm going to do here."
"You mean to kill them?" There was no judgment in her voice.
Anakin studied her for a long moment, then gently turned the question back upon her. "Do you think I should?" He expected doubt, perhaps a plea.
Instead her face lifted to meet his gaze and her answer came firm and sure. "You gave them the chance to change. They chose to remain what they have always been. They squandered your mercy."
The certainty of her words struck him harder than he expected. It shouldn't have surprised him really since they seem to have such a similar moral compass, but it did put him at ease.
Missandei shook her head as if suddenly remembering she was speaking to the king. She smoothed the dark blue folds of her gown, color rising to her cheeks.
"I… I must take my leave, Your Grace," she said, the title sounding awkward after such candor.
Anakin only smiled, a small and private thing. He found her fluster endearing—the clash between her sharp mind and the feelings she kept so carefully bridled. It was familiar.
(The Next Morning…)
The former masters stood on a sun-baked terrace at the foot of the Great Pyramid.
Razdal mo Eraz of Yunkai sweated in his gilded armor, the gems on his breastplate flashing weakly. Beside him, Yezzan zo Qaggaz clenched and unclenched his hands, as if he would rather be anywhere but where he was. Belicho Paenymion of Volantis had the pinched look of a man who had not slept, gray hair plastered to his temples.
They had come under the flag of parley with a handful of guards, under the promise of safe conduct, as men always did when they thought words could save them.
Duck, Balaq, Laswell Peake, Lysono Maar, and Missandei waited to receive them, with a retinue of Company men. Griff stood at their head, shoulders squared, face as blank as marble.
"Our king is gracious to grant you this audience," Missandei said. "There are those who counsel that your ships be burned and your heads taken without so much as this."
"Your 'king' was a monster," Razdal snapped. "Once before I offered him peace. He spat on my terms. Now he lies beneath the Dothraki Sea."
"Once before you offered him chains wrapped in silk," Duck spoke up. "And behind them, daggers. Save your breath. You will need it."
"The Unsullied stolen from Kraznys mo Nakloz must be returned," Yezzan said. "The slaves freed in Yunkai will be… rehoused. And Meereen will—"
"Will what," came a new voice, cutting through his words like a blade.
The slavers turned as one. Anakin ascended the steps from the pyramid plateau, pace measured. With Blackfyre at his hip, he wore only a dark leather tunic and the gold cuirass scarred by battle over it. He stopped a few paces away.
"Last we met, you talked a great deal," he said to them, voice mild. "Of terms. Of my arrogance. Of the odds. How odd they look now."
Razdal blanched, then flushed. "Y–Y…You should be dead," he spat. "D–Drogo should have—"
"Killed me?" Anakin finished. "He certainly tried. Almost as if he was promised something for it."
"G–Guards! Kill him!"
The masters' guards surged. Anakin raised one hand. The air answered. An unseen storm burst forth, flinging men through the air, their screams cut short as they plummeted from the plateau.
"All too easy," he remarked coldly, turning a merciless gaze upon the trembling masters.
Elsewhere, throughout the city, chaos bloomed like fire through dry grass.
The Sons of the Harpy struck in golden masks, spilling blood through alleys and markets. Grey-Worm led the Unsullied in the streets, their phalanx holding firm. Then came the thunder of hooves. Daario Naharis and Jorah Mormont swept through the beach gates at the head of a khalasar, riders crying out as arakhs flashed. They carved the Harpies down, blood painting sand and streets.
Back on the plateau, smoke coiled in the distance. Anakin advanced, each step silent judgment.
"The fleets still hold the bay," Razdal said desperately. "Our soldiers number—"
"You mean that fleet." Anakin pointed past them, toward the faint glitter of masts in the far harbor.
In the bay, Golden Company ships wheeled and struck. Strickland's ships loosed scorpions and fire, tearing into the slaver fleet. Galleys cracked and blazed, their screams lost beneath the roar of flame and sea. Smoke still rose from some, but the banners that climbed the spars now were not theirs anymore.
"A fine armada indeed. You have a handful of galleys we were kind enough not to sink outright, because I decided we could use more ships."
"I–I—" Razdal began.
"You broke our pact," Anakin went on. His tone had cooled. "You backed rebels in my streets. You armed masked cowards. You burned my ports. All under a truce."
He looked them over. Yezzan's jowls quivered. Razdal's jaw worked. Belicho's lips moved soundlessly, as if he were praying.
"Under our laws," Missandei spoke for him, crisply, "such treachery is punishable by death. Our king insists that one of you must die."
Panic bloomed among the slavers.
"Razdal," Yezzan blurted, thrusting a finger at the big man. "He is the richest of us. He—"
"Belicho," Razdal said over him, desperate. "It was his fleet, not mine, that—"
Belicho stared at them both, aghast. "I–I am a man of peace," he stammered. "I—"
Anakin watched them with the same expression he had worn facing Drogo: that strange mix of distance and focus, as if he were measuring not just the men but the shape of the thing they stood for.
He drew Blackfyre. The Valyrian steel whispered out of its scabbard
Yezzan's hands pressed together. "Mercy," he gasped. "Have mercy, Your Grace, pleas—"
Suddenly, Razdal flinched away, hands half-raised as if to ward off a blow. The sword took him first, from left shoulder to right hip, cleaving silk and flesh in a single stroke. He folded upon himself like a slashed banner.
Before Yezzan could do more than cry out, Anakin reversed his grip and drove the point through his heart. The slaver stared down at the blade with foolish surprise, then sagged against it. Blood pooled on the terrace, dark and growing as the Targaryen withdrew the blade and the body collapsed.
Belicho's eyes jumped from one corpse to the other, then up to the man who had chosen. He collapsed to his knees, breath hitching.
"You should be grateful," Anakin told him, wiping the blade on Yezzan's cloak before sheathing it. "Whatever god you pray to has saved you today."
He stepped away, leaving the slaver on his knees.
Griff came forward and laid a hand on Belicho's shoulder. His grip was not gentle. "You will go back," he said, "to Volantis. To New Ghis. To the others who sent you. You will tell them what you saw. Tell them we broke your fleets. Tell them their finest died on their knees. Tell them you breathe only because His Majesty willed it so. When they come forward with notions of retribution or ideas about returning the slave cities to their former glory, remind them of this day."
Belicho nodded, head jerking like a puppet on strings.
"Go," said Griff.
As they led the shaken man away, Anakin walked to the terrace's edge. The city spooled out below him: pyramids and lesser towers, smoke and banners, streets stained with blood.
In the harbor, slaver ships burned or were seized. In the streets, Unsullied patrolled, Dothraki riders mowed down any stragglers, and dragon banners snapped on the winds.
It was his. For good now. Perhaps now, at last, he might begin the slower, harder work; improving the life of his citizens.
Though still, a chain, he thought, was not always made of iron. Some were made of oaths. Some were made of fear. Some of love. And some of blood.
He could feel them all tightening around him.
297 AC — Pentos
(One Month Later…)
The city gleamed beneath the setting sun.
Its marble towers blushed pink and gold. Perfume hung in the air—orange blossom and cinnamon, roasting meat and spiced wine—almost strong enough to cover the stinks beneath. Pentos was a city that lied with its own scent.
In the high manse of Illyrio Mopatis, the portly magister sat amidst silks and lamps and gilded screens, listening to a prince talk of dragons.
"They whisper our name in Westeros, magister. Do not doubt it," Viserys Targaryen said, slurring the edges of his words with wine. "The realm is sick for dragons. The usurper's line will never hold. Even now, they hunger for true blood—Targaryen blood…"
The prince waved vaguely toward the sealed letter on the table, its crimson wax freshly stamped.
Illyrio steepled his fingers atop his belly. "Your nephew has done… impressive things," he said. "Three cities, by latest count. A fleet. An army. Wealth."
Viserys's pale hair slipped free of its ties, spilling around his flushed face in disordered waves. "We should never have been kept apart. My father would never have allowed it. The king's blood belongs together."
"I'm afraid King Aerys's commands are ash on the wind, my prince," Illyrio said gently. "This is a new world."
Viserys slammed his cup down hard enough to splash wine across the carpets. "He must know," he said. "He must know what the usurper has been up to. That he sends knives for us still. For me. For Daenerys. Anakin needs to remember who he is. What we are owed. House Targaryen needs to stand together, not skulking in separate corners of the world like thieves."
Illyrio regarded the prince through heavy-lidded eyes. Viserys, to the magister's mind, was like a buzzing fly—tiresome, frantic, and forever hovering where he was least wanted. A creature easily crushed, should anyone grow weary enough of the noise he made.
It just so happened that in the magister's case, he needed the noise.
"You are safest apart, that much remains true," Illyrio said, because it was true. "Yet even so… " He paused, weighing the words in his mouth. "Perhaps the time has come. You should meet your brother's son."
"Past time," Viserys spat. "A dragon raised amongst exiled sellswords. He should never have been kept from kin."
"Indeed, it would appear your nephew is… slipping the nets that were laid for him. Lord Connington's hand does not guide his every step. He has turned east when I'm certain the old knight would have turned west. He has made war for his own goals."
"His goal," Viserys sneered, "should be to reclaim our family's throne."
Illyrio rose with care and waddled to the table, where the sealed letter lay.
"A raven will be sent," he said. "My fastest ship will be ready to sail for Meereen as soon as we have word. Anakin will read your names beneath the sigil of House Targaryen. He will know you live. He will understand the danger the usurper poses to you both. Blood calls to blood, my prince. Perhaps he will answer. Perhaps he will send ships for you. Perhaps you will stand beside him beneath the Red Keep's shadow someday."
Viserys's eyes shone. "He will answer," he said. "He must."
(Elsewhere…)
Daenerys Targaryen stood on a balcony overlooking the bay, watching the light die.
The sea beyond Pentos stretched out in ripples of purple and black, broken here and there by the pale shapes of ships' sails. The wind toyed with her hair, lifting silver-gold strands to flutter around her face.
Dany let her gaze fall to the stone beneath her feet. Faded drawings still lingered there—dragons coiled in flight, strange beasts half-remembered from old tales, their lines worn thin by years and passing feet.
Illyrio had told her this had been Anakin's chamber as a boy, before Lord Connington carried him off to the Golden Company. The boy had drawn wherever he pleased, walls and floors alike, to the servants' endless vexation. She smiled faintly at the thought.
It was a small thing, those careless sketches, yet they softened him in her eyes more than any rumor of battles won or cities taken.
In truth, the idea of such a dragon frightened her.
"You'll take chill," Irri broke her reverie from the doorway in careful Common. The other two handmaids, Jhiqui and Doreah, lingered close behind her.
"I never do," Daenerys murmured. It was not entirely true, but she did not feel the cold as keenly as she once had.
Since word of their nephew's triumphs in Meereen had reached them, Daenerys had felt herself slipping to the edges of her brother's thoughts, as if she were no more than an afterthought now. The sharp words and sudden rages had dulled, replaced by a distracted coolness. She told herself she should not mind. She was grateful enough that Viserys had not been cruel of late.
Doreah slipped beside her, wrapped in a thin gown the color of cream. "Your brother is not pleased," she said softly. "Magister Illyrio says they will only make for Meereen when they receive word from your nephew."
"Viserys does not like anything he cannot shout at," Daenerys replied. She leaned forward, palms against the carved stone rail. "Lately he speaks only of him. It used to be father. Or Rhaegar. Or the Usurper. Now it is our brother's son."
"Have you ever seen him?" Doreah asked. "The King of Meereen."
"No." The word was smaller than she meant it to be. "He was stolen from mother before I was born. To be kept safe, they said."
She had been told about him in bits and snatches—first as a child by Ser Willem, then as a weapon Viserys wielded against the world. 'If our nephew lives, he will help us take back what is ours. If he is dead, then all the more need for me,' her brother would say.
"They say he is like Rhaegar," said Doreah, arranging her hair in the breeze. "In the songs."
"They say many things," Dany replied. "That he breaks chains. That he burns cities. That the Dothraki kneel to him. That he cannot be killed by fire."
"A sorcerer?"
"A dragon," Daenerys corrected, sharply.
Irri and Jhiqui slipped back inside, leaving her alone with the Lysene handmaid.
"What do you think, Princess?" Doreah asked.
"I don't know him," she answered honestly. "He is a stranger with my blood. He has an army. That is a thing Viserys has only ever dreamed of. For that alone, my brother is afraid, I think."
"And you?" Doreah's eyes were too shrewd by half.
Daenerys looked out over the dark water. Somewhere beyond it lay Westeros—a place she had never seen, yet which filled more of her mind than Pentos or any other Free City ever had.
She saw it in her dreams: the red of the Red Keep, the white of winter snows, the green of summer fields. All colored by her brother's stories.
From Viserys she had learned all she knew of their family—and from him, she had inherited that longing for home.
"I…" She hesitated. "I just want to go home," she whispered. The sea answered only with its restless sigh.
That night, in her bedchamber, Daenerys dreamed.
She walked through a city of black stone, lit by a red star that hung too low in the sky. Dragons coiled around the towers like living shadows. In the far distance, a throne of twisted swords waited, its edges gleaming like teeth.
A figure stood before it, cloaked and dark. When it lifted its gaze to meet hers, his eyes burned red.
297 AC — Meereen
(Weeks Later…)
The council chamber had been cleaned since the siege. The cracked pillar was banded in iron now, its wounds hidden. The windows still looked out over the city, but the view was quieter: smoke thinned to spirals, the harbor a slow forest of masts flying his colors.
On the stone table lay two letters, their seals broken. One bore the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen. The other was marked with the black tiger of Volantis.
Anakin stood over them, hands braced on the table's edge.
"They live," he said. "Viserys and Daenerys Targaryen. They're in Pentos. Under Illyrio's roof. He writes of Robert's knives and bounties. Of the injustice of being hunted. He calls me 'nephew' ten times in half a page."
"Better than calling you pretender," comments Duck.
Harry's mouth twisted. "How convenient," he said, "The mad prince and his sister crawl out of hiding just as you sit a throne."
"You should be wary," Griff said. "Blood makes demands that would be laughed from any other mouth. Prince Viserys will not come to bow. He will come to be bowed to."
"He speaks true," Strickland said. "Your uncle has been calling banners since well before you ever set foot in the Company."
"They are my kin. My father's brother and sister. Should I not… know them, at least?" The word felt strange on his tongue. Kin.
Anakin had known tutors and magisters, sellswords and slaves. Griff was loyal, aye, but ever distance. Myles Toyne had worn a father's smile, though there was madness glinting beneath it.
Never once had Anakin looked upon a face and felt his own blood staring back. The notion unsettled him, stirring some hollow place he hadn't known existed.
"If I may, Your Grace," Ser Jorah said, breaking the council's murmurs.
A few heads turned; the others had yet to grow accustomed to his presence.
It had been Anakin who insisted the knight be granted a place, for he had leaned heavily upon Jorah's knowledge in the Dothraki Sea and come to like him despite his history.
Griff had urged caution, as had Lysono Maar, warning of an exile's divided loyalties.
"I was there, in King's Landing," Jorah began, "when Robert first talked of sending knives for them. His hatred for your house has only grown with time. So has his fear. If he sees you joined, he will lash out. Hard."
'I should hate him,' Jorah thought. 'He's everything I was taught to hate. Targaryen. Dragon. The blood that tore the realm apart.' But hate would not come.
He remembered the Dothraki Sea, the way Anakin had moved against Drogo—not with a sellsword's desperation, but with a king's certainty. He remembered the boy's laugh at the irony when Jorah told the story of his exile—rare and surprised. And he remembered what happened in Vaes Dothrak.
"He hates us already," Anakin replied. "He wants us dead already. Meereen does not change that. Nor do my kin. If being king has taught me anything, it's that we are often more occupied with the matter in front of us rather than ahead of us. I'm sure it's much the same there. Westerosi matters occupy him. My banners here? A problem for another day."
"And if this makes that day come sooner?" pressed Griff. "Open the gates to your kin, and word will fly faster than any raven. There are men in this city who would sell that information for a pouch of gold."
Anakin's gaze slid to Lysono Maar. The Lyseni shrugged delicately.
"I have heard no whisper of treachery from Illyrio Mopatis, your grace," he said. "He prospers on your victories, not your fall. For now."
The Golden Company spymaster was still new to Griff, a Lyseni, with lips that would have been the envy of a whore. At first glance, he had almost taken him for a woman.
"Illyrio is connected to the Spider in King's Landing," Griff said. "We've no way of knowing where this will land."
Anakin exhaled slowly. In his mind, he already knew what he would do.
He picked up the second letter, turning it between his fingers, before presenting it to the council. The black tiger of Volantis stared back.
"Belicho says Volantis wants peace." He changed the subject. "Or some of Volantis does. A Red Priestess is coming. Kinvara…something-or-other, of the Temple of the Lord of Light. She brings a… gift. And words, I suppose. Promises. Threats. Flames. Blah, blah, blah…"
"This should be a matter dealt with carefully," Harry said quickly.
"Volantis is already waking," adds Lysono. "Some to war. Some to something else. The red priests preach rebellion in the shadows. They speak of a promised one. Azor Ahai reborn. In the flames, they say, your name is spoken."
Anakin snorted. "That wouldn't surprise me," he said. "I still remember how zealous the Graces were when I took Meereen."
Daario sat up straight in his chair. "Refugees flood to the city from half the world. From Qarth, even. Your name carries far, whether you bid it or not."
Missandei spoke then, her voice soft but clear. "Stories move men more than swords… sometimes."
Anakin looked at her, and something in his face relaxed. "Very well," he said. "We will receive this red priestess when she comes. We will answer Illyrio. I will bring my kin here, under my protection, not his. We will watch Robert and his knives, and Volantis and the Triarchs. And we will keep Meereen standing."
"And if it all comes down on us in one great storm?" Griff questioned.
"Then we will weather it… Or drown together," Anakin replied, wryly.
After the council had emptied, Jorah found Anakin alone. The young king didn't stand from his seat as he approached.
"Ser Jorah."
"Your Grace." Jorah stood beside him. "I wanted to say…" He stopped.
Anakin glanced at him. "You wanted to say…?"
"I wanted to say that… I have served many men. Some worthy. Most not. You are the first I have served who makes me want to be worthy."
"'Inspiring'…" Anakin drawled.
'Tell him,' Jorah thought. 'Tell him about the letters. Tell him about Varys. Tell him before it's too late.' But the words would not come.
Instead, he said, "Whatever comes, your grace—whatever enemies gather beyond these walls—I am with you."
Anakin nodded, accepting the lie as truth.
He knew Jorah wasn't being honest but he sensed something else in the man—a hunger not for coin or favor, but for absolution. Whatever sins clung to the exiled knight, it was redemption he seemed to seek most fiercely.
But Anakin sensed more than he knew.
(Days Later…)
King Anakin Targaryen received the Red Priestess from Volantis in the great audience chamber, a vast and echoing hall set a level below his own apartments at the Great Pyramid's apex.
Purple marble gleamed along floors and walls alike. Tall tapers guttered between towering pillars, their flames throwing long, wavering shadows. The chamber opened onto its own terrace, while a lower gardened terrace served for feasts and councils with Meereen's highborn.
But here, at the room's heart, stood the throne—a monstrous thing of carved and gilded wood, wrought in the likeness of a snarling harpy, though the harpy remained covered beneath a Targaryen banner.
Upon it Anakin sat, high above the chamber.
He watched as the Red Priestess ascended beneath the throne's steps, her followers and guards fanning out behind her. She climbed toward him with the measured grace of one certain of her purpose.
Without thinking, Anakin rose to greet her. It felt wrong the moment he did it—unbidden, unintended. An omen, he thought, of things to come.
"You stand in the presence of Kinvara, High Priestess of the Red Temple of Volantis, the Flame of Truth, the Light of Wisdom, the First Servant of the Lord of Light," announced the gaunt man who walked behind her.
Her gown was a deep red, and at her throat a ruby pulsed in the torchlight, as if the stone itself drew breath. Her hair, a darker shade of red, fell in soft waves that framed eyes of cool, misted blue-grey. She was slight of stature—Anakin judged—yet there was nothing small about the presence she carried into the hall.
When she looked up at him, it felt like being weighed on a scale that cared nothing for crowns or banners.
"Are you the one?" she asked in the Common Tongue.
The question slid through him like a knife. He had heard it in his own head, in a dozen different tongues, since he was old enough to know he was more than just another exile.
Anakin held her gaze. "You'll have to be more specific," he responded.
Her lips curved. "You are Anakin Targaryen," she said, as if confirming something she'd seen in a dream. "Of the blood of the dragon. Breaker of Chains. Scourge of Slaver's Bay. The Hero With No Fear. The Invader…"
"Sometimes I am also 'Your Grace'," he said dryly, "but the rest is near enough."
"Titles," she murmured. "All ash. What matters is what lies beneath. The Lord of Light has shown you to us in the flames. Born amidst salt and smoke. With a sword of fire in your hand, if you would but see it."
At her gesture, her acolyte came forward bearing a velvet-draped bundle. He knelt and she drew back the cloth. A dragons egg sat in his hands. It was the size of a man's head, scales dull gray shot through with threads of blue and white. It looked like stone.
"A gift," Kinvara said. "From those in Volantis who know your name. From the Lord of Light, who knows your purpose."
"From Volantis," Anakin echoed. "From the same city whose ships burned my harbors? Whose coin paid some of the blades now rotting outside these walls?"
She inclined her head. "Volantis is not one thing," she said. "It is a swarm of vipers biting one another in the dark. The tigers call for war. The elephants count their coins and fret. The slaves listen. The priests watch. We are not all of one mind. Not yet…" Her smile thinned.
"And you are?" he asked. "Of one mind?"
"I serve only R'hllor, the Lord of Light," she said. "Not the Triarchs. Not your enemies. Not even you. Yet he sent me here, to stand before you. That is answer enough."
Taking the egg, Anakin weighed it in his hand. It was heavy.
"Everyone is what they are and where they are for a reason," continued Kinvara. "Even terrible things happen for a reason."
"No such thing as accidents, huh?"
"Indeed." Her eyes kindled. "You have seen them too, haven't you?" she said. "The visions. The days yet to come. The fire in the distance."
Anakin's eyes narrowed to slits. The priestess's words were straying too near the man beneath the crown, and he felt the ground of the exchange shift—growing altogether too personal for his liking.
"Thank you for coming all this way," he said abruptly. "My advisor, Missandei, will see to your accommodations. We will speak further when my time permits."
It was dismissal wrapped in courtesy. Kinvara accepted it with a shallow bow, though her gaze lingered on him until the last possible moment.
After she left with Missandei and a knot of Unsullied, the hall felt emptier than it had any right to.
(Late That Evening…)
Kinvara had found her way into the king's private chambers silently.
The royal apartments at the pyramid's apex were a world of their own—green courts and fragrant pools encircled by low brick parapets, a hanging garden perched above Meereen. From the terrace one could survey the whole of the city: the domes of the Temple of the Graces, the curve of the Skahazadhan, the brown, thirsty hills beyond, and the orchards and tilled fields that fed the city.
Anakin often sought refuge here. The garden opened straight into his bedchamber, its terrace doors left unlatched so he might step out at any hour. Tonight he had taken his usual place beside the pool, savoring the rare quiet that came with solitude.
But beneath the broad persimmon tree, he caught a flicker of red. Kinvara stood there, half in shadow.
Anakin exhaled and rolled his eyes skyward, more weary than startled. Of course she had found him—not the first time a woman snuck into his chambers, though she was perhaps the first he did not throw out on sight.
"Are you lost?" he asked.
"No guards," Kinvara observed. "Your 'advisor' in the next room with half a dozen spears… yet here the king stands, his doors… open."
"I know who walks my halls," Anakin said, his voice quiet but edged with iron. "I can feel the breath of each living soul within this pyramid—their hearts beating, their intentions…" His pale eyes settled upon the Red Priestess, unblinking. "Yours as well," he continued softly. "Though it clings to the air like smoke… and tastes of something fouler still."
"What a curious man you are," Kinvara murmured, studying him with odd familiarity. "So connected to the world around you. Far more than you know."
Anakin got up and walked past her and the shadowed tree, striding for the terrace doors that opened into his bedchamber. Behind him he heard the soft rustle of silk, saw her smile as she moved to follow in his wake.
He crouched by the hearth, striking flint to kindling. Behind him, Kinvara settled herself on his bed as though it were a seat prepared for her alone.
"Make yourself at home, why don't you," Anakin said dryly.
"Forgive me," she replied, amusement curling in her voice, "you did seem most eager to receive me—kindling a fire and all."
He paused, realizing he had acted without thought. He rarely ever lit the hearth. A prickle ran up his spine. Slowly he turned, studying her with narrowed eyes. Had she nudged him somehow? Twisted his will? The notion soured his tongue.
"What is this?" Anakin questioned. "What are you doing?"
Kinvara tilted her head, the ruby at her throat catching the firelight. "That you can feel anything at all tells me you have been touched by the lord's light." A pause followed, her eyes searching his face. "Though… in the end, you are but a man." She rose and drifted toward him, her shadow long in the firelight.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked. For an instant her presence darkened—sharp, malevolent—only to vanish as swiftly as it came, as if she felt him sensing it.
"Look," she said softly, pointing toward the flames.
And despite himself, he found his gaze drawn.
At first there was only fire. It writhed and whirled upon itself, alive and hungry. Then the flames began to shift, their shapes melting into others.
Fields spread out before him, green and endless, and he found himself walking in a garden. Roses brushed his hand as he passed, their thorns pricking skin and drawing thin red lines. He did not flinch. The blood seeped into the petals and was gone, as if the flowers drank it thirstily.
He felt a fire, like a dragon coiling in his chest, restless, offended by the taking of his blood.
Then, the sky shifted and his vision slid.
He saw a hall with a high, vaulted ceiling. A throne of swords, taller than any man, sitting in a shaft of gray light. A figure cloaked and dark seated upon it. When it lifted its head, his eyes glowed red.
Then fire again. So much fire. His vision was stunned blind. For a moment he saw nothing but white until his surroundings finally came back to him.
"W–What was that?" Anakin demanded. His heart pounded. Sweat dampened his palms.
"You tell me," said Kinvara. "What may be. What has been. What is. The flames show possibilities. Paths. They do not force your feet."
"It felt like…" He groped for words. "Like it was pulling me in."
She watched him with something like satisfaction. "Because part of you wants it," she said. "Tell me, what is it you want, Anakin Targaryen…"
Anakin thought of the boy in Pentos, playing at war with wooden swords while tutors spoke of far-away kings and broken crowns. He thought of the Iron Throne, an ugly thing of twisted blades in a hall that smelled of dust and old vows. He thought of Westeros, green and cold and distant.
He wanted it. Like he wanted so many things.
"If this is where I am needed," he said, "I will stay."
"Yet, you want more," she replied softly. "So much more…"
"What I want is of no matter."
"But a man must feel… something," Kinvara said.
She drew nearer as she spoke, her steps soundless upon the stone. The ruby at her throat caught the firelight and seemed to throb with it, deep and alive. The brazier hissed and crackled between them.
"So why not feel invincible?" Kinvara murmured.
She stood close enough now that he could feel the warmth of her skin, a living heat that pressed against him.
"Why not feel beyond all reach?"
Her hand rose, gentle, to cradle his cheek. The touch was warm, comfortable, and for all his wariness he found himself wanting it.
"Why not feel," she whispered at last, her breath stirring the air between them, "like the king you were always meant to be?"
(XXX…)
The fire snapped softly, and Anakin did not pull away. Kinvara's fingertips traced his chest, feather-light over the frantic pulse hammering beneath his ribs. He stiffened—a flicker of distrust warring with the raw ache pooling low in his gut. A slow, predatory smile curved her lips.
Without breaking eye contact, she reached behind her neck, loosening the crimson sash of her robe. Silk slithered off her shoulders, pooling like spilled wine against her bare thighs as the garment fell away, leaving her naked and gleaming under the dim light.
Her jeweled fingers—gold bands studded with rubies—dipped in his breeches. In one fluid motion, she freed his cock, her warm palm wrapping tight around the stiffening length.
A choked gasp escaped him; his hips jerked, but her grip held firm, milking a bead of precum from the slit. He was trapped by the hunger in her eyes. His cock swelled fully in her hand, heavy and straining against her rings as her thumb swiped over the sensitive tip. When her dark hair brushed his jaw, he took in her scent.
Just as the pressure in his groin grew she pulled away. Her mouth crashed against his—cool lips parting his, tongue demanding surrender. She tore at his tunic, yanking the fabric over his head before shoving his breeches down his legs.
Bare now, exposed to the room's chill and her unwavering stare, he sank onto the bed's edge. Kinvara stepped closer, guiding his hand between her thighs. Her pussy was scalding, slick with arousal, her inner walls clenching around his fingers as she pushed them deep inside her.
A low moan ripped from her throat before she shoved him flat, mounting him in one fluid motion. Her hips rolled, grinding her clit against his base as she sank down, swallowing his entire cock in one hot, wet stroke.
She set a ruthless pace—slow circles that tightened his balls, then sudden bounces that dragged maddening friction up his shaft. Her cunt pulsed around him, hot velvet gripping every inch. The pressure built like a vice, threatening to split him open. His cock throbbed, stretched plump and aching, veins throbbing against her relentless grip. It felt like she was drinking him dry, pulling his very essence through the desperate throb of his shaft.
With a guttural snarl, Anakin seized her throat, hand clasping the pulse fluttering beneath her jaw. Her choked gasp fused with his hearty sigh as he erupted, jets of scalding cum flooding her insides.
(…)
For one shattered second, the world dissolved: the weight of crowns, the ghosts of dead princes, all his inhibitions—all gone. He could breathe.
When sleep finally claimed him that night, his dragon dreams came.
Anakin awoke to pale morning light and found Kinvara already risen, sitting before a bronze mirror as she drew her robes about her bare skin.
A flicker of irritation pricked at him—unexpected, unwelcome. He had half imagined she would be gone before first light, vanished like a dream. The longer she lingered, the more tongues would wag. The servants of the Great Pyramid were quick with their whispers, and he had no wish to be painted as some gullible boy ensnared by a priestess's wiles. Even if that's exactly what happened.
"You do not seem pleased to see me," Kinvara said lightly, still tending to her reflection in the bronze mirror, fastening ruby and silk as though they were parts of some ritual.
Anakin moved to stand at the window, violet eyes on the horizon. The wind off the bay was cool on his face.
"I get enough scoldings about having women enter my chambers. Having one stay the night…" He scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Seven hells, Griffs not going to let this one go."
"So there have been others?" Kinvara's voice curled warm and teasing.
"Not in the way you're thinking," he muttered.
A sly smile ghosted across her lips. "Then I am your first?"
That one found its mark. "Will you shut up for a moment and let me think?" Anakin rubbed his eyes, still heavy with sleep. He drew a slow breath. "Last night you said the flames showed me what I wanted to see. But the visions I've known… they show what will be, good or bad, not what I wish to be."
"And you know this with certainty?" Kinvara asked, turning from the mirror at last. "Perhaps the things that came to pass did so because you saw them. The Lord of Light moves subtly, in ways beyond mortal ken."
Anakin shook his head. "That's just it. I do not think it is your fire god. What I've felt—what speaks to me—it isn't divine. It feels… natural."
She rose from her seat, fully dressed now. "And what are you in all this, Anakin Targaryen? I know what I am—a servant of the Lord of Light. But you? Do you serve this thing you sense… or does it serve you?"
"I don't know," he admitted, the words low and rough.
Kinvara inclined her head, as if the answer pleased her. "Then the choice is still yours to make. What to do with it. What to make of what you see. And what name to give this… 'force' that lives within you."
Force, Anakin mused. The word settled in his mind, as if it had merely been waiting for him to speak it aloud. A hard, clean name—fitting for the power that stirred beneath his skin.
In his early years, its influence was understated: quick flashes of intuition, a 'slow-motion' clarity in moments of crisis, and unnervingly fast reflexes.
Now, as he progressed from merely sensing the intentions of others to actively manipulating the world around him, Anakin understood that this connection to the Force was only the threshold of his true power.
But, perhaps more importantly, he understood this…
The Force shall free him.