A day or two passed in Qarth, and still no ships had been secured. The city gleamed as beautifully as ever beneath the sun, all marble towers and painted gates, but beauty did not loosen coin purses nor conjure fleets from the harbor.
So Daenerys went out again, cloaked in pale silk, Xaro Xhoan Daxos at her side, seeking merchants, captains, any man with sails to sell and courage to spare.
The Dothraki remained behind at the villa, posted outside like silent bronze statues, curved blades at their hips.
Within, it was quieter.
Irri sat upon the edge of the bed, wrestling gently with the small, wriggling body of the dragon prince.
Rhaego squirmed fiercely as she attempted to change his clothes. He kicked with surprising strength, his small limbs thrashing as though he were a colt resisting his first saddle.
Irri laughed, a soft musical sound.
"Sek, sek, vezhven," she murmured in Dothraki, trying to hold him. "It is cold. You must wear it. A khal does not shiver."
But inside the child's mind, another voice protested entirely.
I'll keep the little shorts, Elena thought irritably, twisting as Irri tried to guide his arm through a sleeve.
But I cannot wear that top. It's uncomfortable. Is it because of my wings? Or the scales along my back?
The fabric brushed awkwardly against sensitive ridges beneath his skin.
I feel like a cat being forced into clothes.
He twisted again in rebellion, nearly slipping from Irri's grasp.
"Ah! You are strong already," Irri laughed, pressing him gently back against the cushions. "Like your father."
If only she knew. How uncomfortable it is.
Rhaego stilled at that thought not because of Drogo, but because of the truth hidden beneath his skin. The faint itch between his shoulders pulsed again, that strange awareness of something folded, waiting.
Irri finally managed to pull the small tunic down over him, smoothing the fabric carefully across his chest.
"There," she said proudly, sitting back on her heels to admire her work. "Vezhven jin azhinta. So handsome. So fierce."
The dragon prince blinked up at her, violet eyes wide and deceptively innocent.
Handsome? Maybe.
Fierce? Nah.
He flexed his tiny fingers experimentally, feeling the stretch of cloth across his back.
Uncomfortable… but tolerable.
For now.
Beyond the latticework windows, the distant sounds of Qarth drifted in, merchant calls, the creak of wagon wheels, the cry of gulls from the harbor. Somewhere beyond those walls, his mother was bargaining with men who smiled too easily and promised too much.
And somewhere in this city, Elena knew, danger was already circling. She just didn't know from which direction it would strike first.
Then suddenly, something shifted.
An eerie sensation crept through him not sound, not sight, but instinct. A tightening in the air. A pressure behind his ribs.
Danger.
Rhaego's head turned toward the open balcony where sunlight spilled in, warm and golden across the marble floor. But the light felt… wrong.
"What was that?" Elena wondered.
A faint prickling crept along his back, beneath skin too soft and small to hide what slumbered there. It was not pain. Not quite fear. It was recognition the way a predator senses a hunter before the arrow flies.
"I feel… strange. Is this it? The warlocks, right? But how do I know? What if I'm wrong?"
The thought tangled uselessly in her mind. The feeling did not fade. Rhaego began to squirm in Irri's lap, his small hands flexing, his gaze fixed unblinking upon the balcony doors. A low sound rose from him, half whimper, half warning.
From the woven basket near the cushions came a sudden hiss.
Drogon's small black head lifted first, nostrils flaring. Rhaegal followed, then Viserion, their wings rustling restlessly against wicker.
Irri's smile faded, frowned in confusion.
"Vezhven," she murmured in Dothraki, trying to soothe him. "Hush, little stallion."
But Rhaego's cry sharpened, urgent now, insistent. He twisted toward the balcony, straining against her hold as though he would crawl toward the danger rather than from it.
The dragons shrieked together, a sound far too fierce for creatures so small.
Irri felt it then… not knowledge, but unease, like a chill that seeps through silk. The garden had gone too quiet. She could not hear the murmur of Dothraki voices beyond the walls. No boots upon gravel. No low laughter.
Only the fountain.
Carefully, she set Rhaego upon the cushions and rose, her bare feet silent against the floor. She crossed to the balcony and leaned forward just enough to see the garden below.
For a heartbeat she saw nothing amiss.
Then she saw them. Robed men moving among the guards.
They did not shout. They did not run. They walked as if through their own courtyard, pale hands emerging from wide sleeves, steel glinting briefly before vanishing again.
A Dothraki staggered. His throat opened in a sudden red smile.
Another fell to his knees, fingers clutching at blood that would not stay inside him.
No alarm was raised. The men died with more confusion than sound, collapsing among the flowering vines as dark pools spread beneath them, staining stone and earth alike.
Irri's breath caught.
One of the robed figures lifted his face toward the balcony. Their eyes met across the sunlit distance. His lips were dark. Blue.
The faintest smile touched them.
Terror broke her stillness.
She turned and ran, skirts whispering around her legs as she snatched Rhaego up from the cushions. The dragons shrieked wildly as she guarded beside their basket, close against her body. Her arms wrapped around Rhaego while she shielded the hatchings behind her as though she might make a wall of her own flesh.
One of the robed men broke from the garden and mounted the balcony steps with unhurried grace. His movements were smooth, almost languid, the hem of his pale robe whispering against stone.
Irri tightened her hold upon Rhaego and drew back a step.
The man crossed the threshold.
He did not hurry. He simply entered the chamber as if he had always belonged within it.
Irri's free hand slid beneath the folds of her dress, fingers finding the dagger she kept strapped high against her thigh. Steel flashed as she drew it. She placed herself between the intruder and the basket of dragons, her body curved protectively around both child and hatchlings.
She shouted at him in Dothraki, her voice sharp with fury and fear.
The robed man did not answer.
His lips were stained a deep, unnatural blue. His eyes, pale and fixed, regarded them with something colder than anger.
Shit, shit, shit— what do I do?! Elena screamed inside the confines of her own mind.
Her heart hammered wildly in her small chest. She could feel Irri's pulse racing where their bodies touched.
I can't let her die. Not after she's taken care of me. I won't.
The man took another step forward. Irri lunged half a pace, dagger raised.
Wait— the fire. The spitting fire. Can I even do it? I'm still a baby. What if nothing happens? The thought nearly froze her.
But the warlock's gaze had shifted.
He was no longer watching Irri.
He was watching the child.
Something in his expression changed not surprise, not fear. Recognition.
Rhaego stilled.
A strange calm stole over him, deeper than thought. The prickling along his spine flared, hot and urgent. His small tail, scarcely more than a subtle extension beneath soft cloth flicked once, then again.
The air grew warmer.
Irri felt it first against her arms, a low, rising heat that had nothing to do with the afternoon sun. She glanced down in confusion.
Rhaego's violet eyes were fixed upon the robed man now, unblinking, ancient in a face too small for such a look.
A faint shimmer rippled in the air between them.
The warlock stopped mid-step.
For the first time, he hesitated. Heat gathered in Rhaego's chest sharp, coiling, alive.
He did not know whether it would become flame, but he would not let it become nothing.
Before Rhaego could even open his mouth, the heat of his fury building, the small ember of flame flickering in his throat, another figure appeared from the shadows from behind.
Swift as a viper, the man was upon Irri, dagger flashing. A single, clean stroke from her neck, and her life was torn from her in an instant.
The world seemed to tilt. Blood sprayed the floor, warm and coppery, and Irri's gurgling, strangled cries filled the chamber, reaching toward Rhaego even as her hands stretched futilely.
But before she could collapse entirely, the robed man behind her was already there, catching the small, struggling child before she could fall, his grip firm and unyielding.
"No!" Elena thought, her mind a storm of terror and helplessness.
She felt it all the heat of Rhaego's unspent fire, Irri's last struggles, the horror of what was happening but her body was still, frozen in helpless watchfulness.
Irri's fingers twitched weakly, reaching for him once more, before falling limply to the floor. The life that had nurtured him, shielded him, vanished in a crimson pool that shimmered in the dying light of the villa.
The man holding Rhaego tilted his head, gray eyes curious beneath the hood. "Interesting little one, aren't you?" he murmured, voice low and almost amused.
"I thought there'd be only dragons… but it seems there is more to admire than I expected."
Then, before Elena could rise, before fury could ignite and burn through her chest, he produced a small packet of powder. A gust of it blew toward her, a silver haze drifting through the chamber.
She inhaled it, the taste bitter and metallic, and immediately, her limbs grew heavy, her chest tight, her vision blurring at the edges.
Every thought, every scream of outrage and grief, was swallowed in the creeping fog.
Her eyes flickered, wide and frantic, before finally closing. In the arms of the robed man, Elena slipped into helpless unconsciousness, the world reduced to shadows, the cries of the dying and the hiss of the dragons fading into an unbearable silence.