Three days with the nomads taught Angelus several things.
First: the language wasn't as foreign as she'd initially thought. The root structure bore similarities to old Valyrian trade-tongue she'd encountered in a dying world centuries ago—different enough that direct translation was impossible, but close enough that patterns emerged if she listened carefully. The nomads called themselves Dothraki, their leader bore the title Ko, and the massive horde they were traveling to rejoin was a khalasar.
Dothraki.
The word hit her like a physical blow.
She'd been letting the syllables wash over her for days, focused on healing and pattern recognition, but now—now—she actually heard what they were saying. Dothraki. Khalasar. Khal.
No fucking way.
Angelus kept her expression neutral, which was easier in dragon form than it had ever been as a human. But her mind was racing, pulling up memories she hadn't touched in millennia. Memories from her first life, from lazy Sunday afternoons spent binge-watching a show about political intrigue and dragons and a wheel that needed breaking.
Game of Thrones. I'm in fucking Game of Thrones.
The realization should have been absurd. Would have been, if she hadn't already lived through one impossible reincarnation and spent ten thousand years in a nightmare dimension. At this point, landing in a fictional universe barely registered on her scale of cosmic bullshit.
But it did change things.
Dothraki, she thought, watching the riders with new eyes. Horse lords of the eastern continent. Raiders and slavers and some of the most skilled cavalry in this world. The show had painted them as savages—beautiful, dangerous, ultimately disposable savages whose primary purpose was to give Daenerys Targaryen an army and a husband.
Daenerys.
If she was with the Dothraki, if they were traveling to join a khalasar led by a Khal...
What's the timeline? When did Drogo marry her? Before the show started—that was the pilot episode. Which means if this is happening now, then the eggs haven't hatched yet, Viserys is still alive, and Dany is still—
Still a scared girl being sold by her brother to a warlord.
Angelus felt something stir in her chest that she hadn't felt in a very long time. Not quite anger—she'd burned through most of her capacity for rage centuries ago—but something close to it. Protectiveness, maybe. Or recognition.
She'd watched that show in her first life. Had loved the early seasons, the complex characters and brutal politics and dragons that actually felt like dragons. Had hated the final season with a passion that surprised even her—the rushed plot, the character assassinations, the way they'd taken Daenerys from a compelling, morally complex figure to a mad queen in the span of two episodes because the writers wanted to subvert expectations.
Lazy writing, she'd thought at the time. They had eight seasons to build to that moment and they fumbled it in the worst possible way.
And now she was here. In that world. With a chance to... what? Change things? Save Daenerys from the fate the showrunners had written for her?
Don't get ahead of yourself, she cautioned. You don't know for certain this is the show timeline. Could be the books. Could be some alternate version. And even if it is exactly what you think—you're a crippled dragon who can barely walk, let alone fight. What are you going to do, lecture Benioff and Weiss on narrative structure?
But the thought wouldn't leave her alone.
Daenerys Targaryen. Mother of Dragons. Breaker of Chains.
And according to the story, a woman with dragonblood in her veins.
Second thing she learned: she was being taken as a gift.
The Ko—Jhogo, she'd learned his name was—had apparently stumbled upon the find of a lifetime, and he intended to present her to someone important. His riders spoke the word Khal with a mixture of reverence and fear that confirmed her suspicions.
Drogo, she thought. Has to be. The great Khal who never lost a battle, who commanded forty thousand screamers, who was brought down by an infected wound and a witch's curse.
The irony wasn't lost on her. In the show, Drogo had been Daenerys's ticket to power—and ultimately, her first great loss. His death had broken something in her, set her on the path that would eventually lead to King's Landing and fire and madness.
Or maybe it was always in her, a cynical part of her suggested. Maybe the show just revealed what was there all along.
No. The response was immediate and fierce. That's bullshit and you know it. Eight seasons of character development don't get erased by two episodes of bad writing. Daenerys wasn't mad—she was badly written.
And now Angelus was in a position to do something about it.
If she could recover her strength. If she could figure out the rules of this world. If she could find a way to connect with a girl who had every reason to distrust anything that looked like a monster.
A lot of ifs.
But she'd worked with worse odds before.
---
The khalasar they joined on the fourth day was larger than she'd expected.
Forty thousand riders, give or take, with twice that number in slaves, women, and children trailing behind. The column stretched across the grasslands like a river of humanity, raising a dust cloud visible for miles in every direction.
Drogo's horde, Angelus confirmed, watching the organized chaos with professional appreciation. The largest khalasar in a generation. At least until it falls apart after his death.
That was another thing she remembered from the show—the way the Dothraki had scattered after Drogo died, each ko taking his riders and going his own way. It had left Daenerys with nothing but a handful of loyalists and three baby dragons.
Different this time, she decided. If I can get strong enough, fast enough, I can change that outcome.
The Khal himself came to inspect her that evening.
She'd known what to expect—the show had cast Jason Momoa, and while this world's Drogo wasn't exactly the same, the essence was there. Massive build, warrior's grace, that predator's intelligence lurking behind eyes that had seen a thousand battles.
What she hadn't expected was how present he felt. The show had made him a character, a plot device in Daenerys's story. But standing before him now, feeling the weight of his attention, Angelus understood why forty thousand men followed him without question.
This is a king, she thought. Not by birth or title, but by sheer force of will. The Dothraki follow strength, and he radiates it like heat from a forge.
Drogo stopped at the edge of her wagon, close enough that she could have lunged for his throat if she'd been stupid enough to try. He studied her in silence, his expression revealing nothing, while his bloodriders fanned out behind him with hands on their weapons.
Then he spoke.
The Dothraki language flowed differently from his tongue than from Jhogo's—more commanding, each word weighted with authority. Angelus caught fragments: zalat (want), hrazef (horse), zhavorsa—
She kept her reaction internal, but her mind was already racing.
Zhavorsa. Dragon. They had a word for dragon, which meant this world remembered them. The show's history, then—Valyria and the Doom, the Targaryen conquest, the Dance of Dragons. All of it real and recorded, all of it leading to this moment where a horse-lord stared at a creature his people had only known through stories.
Drogo was still speaking, but Angelus had heard enough.
"I understand you," she said, interrupting whatever he'd been saying. Her Dothraki was terrible—broken syllables strung together more through instinct than knowledge—but the meaning was clear enough. "Dragon. Yes. I am zhavorsa."
The reaction was immediate. Drogo's bloodriders tensed, several reaching for weapons, but the Khal himself went utterly still. His eyes—dark, calculating—fixed on her with new intensity.
When he spoke again, the words came slower, more deliberate. Testing her.
"Zhavorsa vakka." Dead dragon. "Zhavorsa drivo." Dying dragon. He gestured at her damaged form, at the still-healing scales and the wings she couldn't yet use. "Kisha vos zali zhavorsae." We do not need dragons.
Angelus felt her lips pull back from her teeth in something that wasn't quite a smile.
"Anha vos drivo," she replied, the words rough but comprehensible. I am not dying. Then, because she was tired and injured and this jumped-up horse-lord was starting to annoy her: "Anha Angelus. Anha ochelat virzethaan."
I am Angelus. I have eaten kings.
The translation was probably wrong. Her grammar was definitely wrong. But the intent carried through, and she watched Drogo's expression shift from dismissive to something more complex.
Respect, maybe. Or the beginning of it.
"Hash yer ray char?" he asked. What do you want?
It was the first intelligent question anyone in this world had asked her.
"Anha zalat assilat," she said. I want to heal. Then she let the fire kindle in her throat—just a spark, barely a flicker of the inferno she'd once commanded, but enough to cast dancing shadows across her scales. "Anha zalat alegra."
I want to hunt.
Drogo watched the flames die with an expression she couldn't quite read. Then he turned to Jhogo and spoke rapidly—too fast for her to follow, though she caught her own name and what sounded like orders.
When he looked back at her, something had changed in his bearing. Not friendliness—this was not a man who dealt in friendship—but acknowledgment. Recognition of one predator by another.
"Vos khaleesi," he said. Not a queen. "Vos lajak." Not a warrior. He paused, searching for the right word, then settled on one that made his bloodriders shift uncomfortably. "Athdrivar."
Hunter.
Close enough, Angelus thought.
"Sek," she agreed. Yes. "Athdrivar."
Drogo nodded once, then turned and walked away, his bloodriders falling in behind him. Jhogo remained, looking at her with an expression that mixed vindication with something approaching awe.
"Khal," he said, gesturing after Drogo's retreating form. Then, with obvious pride: "Anha assilak zhavorsae."
I found a dragon.
Angelus let out a breath that might have been amusement in another life.
You found something, she thought, watching the khalasar settle into its evening routine around her. Fires sparked to life across the grassland, the smell of cooking meat drifting on the wind, and somewhere in the distance, she heard drums begin to beat. But I don't think you understand what it is yet.
Neither did I, until about an hour ago. But I'm starting to get an idea.
---
The wedding was in three days.
Angelus learned this through careful listening, her grasp of Dothraki improving hour by hour as she absorbed vocabulary and grammar with the same efficiency she'd applied to every other skill in two lifetimes. The Khal was taking a bride—a foreign woman, pale-skinned and silver-haired, purchased from her brother in exchange for an army.
Daenerys, she thought. Right on schedule. Which means I have three days to figure out how to approach this.
She knew the broad strokes from the show. Daenerys would be terrified, would be given dragon eggs as a wedding gift, would be raped by Drogo on her wedding night in a scene that the showrunners had controversially changed from the books—
Angelus's claws dug into the wood of her wagon, leaving deep furrows in the timber.
No!
The word echoed through her mind with a force that surprised her. She'd seen worse things in ten thousand years. Had done worse things, when survival demanded it. But something about the image of that silver-haired girl—the one she'd watched grow from a frightened bride into a queen, before bad writing tore it all away—something about that image being hurt in that particular way made her scales itch with the need to burn something.
You don't even know her, she reminded herself. She's a character from a TV show. A fictional person who happens to be real in this dimension. You have no obligation to—
Bullshit!
The counter-thought was instant and absolute. You know exactly what's going to happen to her if you don't intervene. You know the path she's on, the trauma she'll suffer, the way it'll shape her into someone capable of burning a city. And you have the power to change it.
Do you? the cynical part of her asked. You can barely walk. Your magic is almost gone. What are you going to do, strongly disapprove at Drogo while he consummates his marriage?
Angelus closed her eyes, thinking.
In the show, the wedding night had been... complicated. The books had portrayed it differently—still problematic, but with Daenerys having more agency. The show had stripped that away, made it purely victimization, and then expected audiences to believe Dany fell in love with her rapist.
Bad writing, she thought again. But I'm not in a story anymore. I'm in a world where that girl is real, where her pain will be real, where the consequences will shape everything that comes after.*
And I have information. I know things about this world that no one else does—the threats that are coming, the players who matter, the moves that need to be made. That knowledge is power, even if my magic isn't.
So use it.
The plan began to form in her mind. Not a complete solution—she didn't have the strength for that yet—but a first step. A way to change the trajectory before it could settle into the grooves the story had carved for it.
Daenerys Targaryen, she thought. Let's see if we can give you a better beginning than the one you got in the show.
---
The night before the wedding, Angelus made her move.
She'd been tracking the camp's layout for days, mapping guard rotations and identifying the tent where they were keeping the Targaryen siblings. Viserys had his own space—smaller, meaner, positioned to remind everyone that he was a guest and not a lord. Daenerys was housed closer to Drogo's tent, already being treated as the Khal's property even before the ceremony.
Getting there undetected was easier than it should have been. The Dothraki weren't used to threats that could move silently on two legs, and her wounds had healed enough that walking no longer left her trembling. She slipped through the shadows between tents, keeping low and moving with a predator's patience.
The girl's tent was guarded by two warriors who were more interested in a nearby dice game than in their actual duties. Angelus waited until their attention was fully diverted, then circled around to the back of the tent and pressed her snout against the leather wall.
"Daenerys Targaryen."
She pitched her voice low, barely above a whisper. The words were High Valyrian—a calculated choice. If the girl had any education at all, she'd recognize her ancestral tongue.
Silence from inside the tent. Then, soft and frightened: "Who's there?"
"Come outside. Quietly. I mean you no harm, but we need to speak before tomorrow."
A long pause. Angelus could hear the girl's breathing, rapid and shallow with fear. She waited, giving Daenerys time to make her choice.
The tent flap moved.
Daenerys Targaryen emerged into the moonlight, and Angelus felt something shift in her chest.
The show had cast Emilia Clarke—beautiful, expressive, capable of conveying volumes with a single look. This girl was different. Younger, thinner, with the fragile appearance of someone who'd spent her whole life being told she was worthless except as a bargaining chip. But those eyes—purple and deep and far too old for the face they were set in—those eyes held something that no amount of abuse had been able to extinguish.
Fire, Angelus thought. She's got fire in her, even if she doesn't know it yet.
Daenerys saw her and went still.
"Zhavorsa," she breathed. Dragon. Then, switching to High Valyrian: "You're the dragon the riders found. I thought they were delusional or mistaken. Dragons weren't seen in centuries and when they said that they not only found one, but one who could speak, I thought—"
"You thought they were exaggerating." Angelus settled onto her haunches, trying to make herself as non-threatening as a dragon could be. "They weren't. I am Angelus, and I've been waiting for a chance to speak with you privately."
"Why?"
It was a reasonable question. Angelus had spent the past three days considering how to answer it.
"Because you have dragonblood," she said. "I can sense it in you—the fire that runs through your veins, the legacy of old Valyria. It calls to me in ways that nothing else in this world has."
Daenerys's eyes widened. "My family—"
"Rode dragons, yes. Conquered Westeros on their backs, ruled for three hundred years, fell to rebellion and betrayal. I know the history." Angelus let a thin stream of smoke curl from her nostrils. "What I don't know is what you want to do with the fire inside you. Are you content to be your brother's pawn? Drogo's broodmare? Or is there something more burning underneath all that fear?"
The girl's hands clenched at her sides. For a moment, Angelus saw a flash of something fierce cross her features—there and gone, suppressed by years of conditioning.
"I don't have a choice," Daenerys whispered. "Viserys says—"
"Viserys is a fool who mistakes cruelty for strength." Angelus didn't bother softening the words. "He's sold you for an army he'll never command, to a man who respects nothing but power. Tomorrow, you'll be given to Khal Drogo, and your brother will watch and congratulate himself on his cleverness."
Daenerys flinched. "You don't understand. He's all I have. Without him—"
"You'd be alone?" Angelus tilted her head. "You already are, little dragoness. You've been alone your whole life, surrounded by a brother who uses you and strangers who see you as a commodity. The only difference is that tomorrow, you'll have a husband who sees you the same way."
"Then why are you here?" The words came out sharp, edged with something that might have been anger. "To tell me how hopeless my situation is? I already know that. I've known it since I was old enough to understand what Viserys wanted from me."
There it is, Angelus thought, watching that flash of fire surface again. There's the woman who'll free slaves and burn cities. She's already in there, waiting to be unleashed.
"I'm here," Angelus said slowly, "because I've spent a very long time alone myself. Because I know what it's like to be treated as a thing instead of a person. And because I can see something in you that your brother can't—a strength that goes beyond bloodlines and birthrights."
She let that sink in before continuing.
"Tomorrow night, Drogo will expect to consummate the marriage. It's Dothraki custom—the Khal takes what is his, and the khaleesi submits. That's what the stories say, at least."
Daenerys's face went pale.
"But here's what the stories don't tell you: Drogo respects strength. He follows Dothraki custom because it's never been challenged, but he's not a mindless brute. He's a king who built his power through cunning as much as violence." Angelus leaned closer. "If someone were to offer him something more valuable than a wedding night—something that appealed to his ambition rather than his appetites—he might be willing to wait."
"What could possibly be more valuable than—" Daenerys stopped, realization dawning. "You. You're offering yourself."
"I'm offering a partnership," Angelus corrected. "One that benefits everyone. Drogo gets a dragon who will fight beside him, hunt for his khalasar, and prove that his new bride comes from stock worthy of respect. You get time—time to learn Dothraki ways, to earn the riders' loyalty on your own terms, to become a khaleesi in truth rather than just in name."
"And what do you get?"
Angelus met those purple eyes—so young, so wary, so desperately hungry for something to believe in.
"I get a partner with fire in her blood," she said. "Someone who might one day be worthy of a true bond. Someone I can protect while I recover my strength, and who might choose to stand beside me when I'm whole again."
Daenerys stared at her for a long moment. Angelus could see the calculations happening behind her eyes—the assessment of risks and rewards, the desperate hope warring with ingrained caution.
"You're asking me to trust you," she said finally. "I don't even know what you are. You're not like the dragons I've ever heard of."
"No," Angelus agreed. "You don't. I'm not like the other dragons, I'm something better. And I'm not asking for trust—not yet. I'm asking for a chance. Come to me after the wedding feast, before Drogo takes you to his tent. Let me speak to him first. If I can't convince him to wait, you'll be no worse off than you are now."
"And if you can?"
Angelus let herself smile—a dragon's smile, full of teeth and ancient patience.
"Then we'll have time. And in my experience, time is the most valuable currency there is."
---
The wedding was everything Angelus had expected and nothing she was prepared for.
The Dothraki celebrated with a ferocity that made her military training seem gentle by comparison. Warriors killed each other over insults both real and imagined, their blood soaking into the grass while the survivors cheered. Women were taken openly, slaves served whoever demanded them, and the whole affair had the feeling of controlled chaos—a pressure valve for a culture built on violence.
Angelus watched from her position near the feast, cataloging faces and assessing threats. The Dothraki had grown used to her presence over the past few days; most of them treated her as an exotic curiosity, a prize that added to Drogo's legend. None of them seemed to realize that she was watching them with the same evaluative intensity.
Daenerys sat beside Drogo on the raised platform, her face a careful mask of composure that couldn't quite hide the terror underneath. She'd been dressed in Dothraki style—leather and bells and precious little else—and she looked like a sacrificial lamb adorned for slaughter.
But every few minutes, her eyes would flick toward Angelus. And each time, Angelus would meet her gaze and hold it, projecting confidence she wasn't entirely sure she felt.
I made a promise, she thought. Time to see if I can keep it.
Viserys was there too, of course. The pathetic little bug. Watching the proceedings with barely concealed greed, probably already counting the soldiers Drogo would give him. Angelus studied him with cold assessment—the weak chin, the petulant mouth, the way he kept touching Daenerys's arm as if to remind everyone that he was the one who'd made this match.
That one's going to be a problem, she thought. But not for long. Men like that dig their own graves eventually.
In Drakengard, pacts required sacrifice. The human partner gave up something precious—their voice, their sight, their youth—in exchange for the dragon's power. Caim in the canon plot of Drakengard had surrendered his ability to speak. Angelus never met the human but now she think that maybe it was for the best since she met Daenerys. Angelus had seen dozens of pacts formed over the millennia, each one sealed with something vital torn from the human's soul.
If she was going to form a pact with Daenerys—a real pact, not just an alliance of convenience—then something would need to be sacrificed. And looking at Viserys Targaryen, watching him preen and posture while his sister trembled beside a warlord, Angelus thought she knew exactly what that sacrifice might be.
Not yet, she told herself. First things first. Get through tonight. Prove you can deliver on your promises. Then we can talk about the future.
The feast continued into the darkness, and Angelus waited with a predator's patience.
---
The moment came just as the moon reached its peak.
Drogo stood, pulling Daenerys up with him, and the khalasar erupted in cheers and crude suggestions. The implication was clear—the Khal was taking his bride to bed, and the celebration would continue without them.
Daenerys's face had gone white. She looked toward Angelus with something approaching desperation, and Angelus pushed herself to her feet.
"Khal Drogo."
Her voice cut through the revelry like a blade through silk. The cheering died away as forty thousand Dothraki turned to stare at the dragon who had just addressed their leader.
Drogo stopped. His eyes found hers, and Angelus saw the calculation there—weighing the interruption against the spectacle, deciding how to respond.
"Fin hash yer zin?" he demanded. What do you want?
Angelus padded forward, ignoring the warriors who reached for weapons. She stopped a few feet from the platform, close enough that Drogo had to look down at her.
"A word," she said. "Before you claim your bride. A proposition that may interest you."
The murmuring from the crowd was immediate and hostile. Drogo's bloodriders looked ready to draw steel, and even Jhogo—who'd brought her to the khalasar—seemed uncertain.
But Drogo himself just stared at her, that calculating intelligence working behind his eyes.
"Fin?" What?
"Your khaleesi comes from the blood of old Valyria," Angelus said, pitching her voice to carry. "The dragonlords who once ruled half the world. Her family rode beasts like me into battle—creatures that could burn cities and break armies."
She let fire kindle in her throat, just enough to cast dancing shadows across the grass.
"I am weak now. Injured. But I will heal, and when I do, I will need someone to fight beside. Someone with fire in their blood." She looked at Daenerys, then back at Drogo. "Your bride has that fire. I can sense it. And I am... interested... in seeing what she might become."
Drogo's expression hadn't changed, but Angelus could see she had his attention.
"What do you propose?" he asked.
"Time," Angelus said. "Give me a moon's turn to recover my strength. During that time, I will hunt for your khalasar—bring down prey that would feed your riders for weeks. And your khaleesi..." She paused, choosing her words carefully. "She will learn your ways. Your language. Your customs. When the moon turns, she will come to your bed not as a trembling girl, but as a woman who understands what it means to be Dothraki."
The silence that followed was absolute.
Angelus could see the calculations happening in Drogo's mind. A dragon hunting for his khalasar—that was a prize beyond measure, worth far more than a single night with a frightened bride. And the prestige of waiting, of showing that he was patient enough to let his investment mature...
"Vos," someone said. No.
Viserys pushed forward, his face flushed with wine and outrage. "This is not your decision to make, beast. My sister belongs to Khal Drogo. I gave her to him, and I will not have some lizard—"
Angelus moved.
She wasn't at full strength—wasn't even at half strength—but she was still a dragon. Her tail swept around faster than the eye could track, catching Viserys across the chest and sending him sprawling into the dirt. Before he could rise, she was standing over him, one clawed foot pressing down just hard enough to keep him in place.
"You," she said, "gave nothing. You sold your sister for soldiers you'll never command, to buy a throne you'll never sit. And you interrupt a conversation between predators to defend your... what, exactly? Your pride?"
She leaned down until her snout was inches from his face. Viserys had gone pale, all his bluster evaporating in the face of actual danger.
"In my experience, little worm, pride is only valuable if you have the strength to back it up. You don't. So perhaps you should stay quiet while the adults are talking."
She lifted her foot and stepped back, leaving Viserys gasping in the dirt.
When she looked at Drogo again, she saw something new in his expression. Approval, maybe. Or amusement. The Dothraki around them were muttering, some shocked, others—she noted with interest—openly pleased to see Viserys humiliated.
"Anha tikh," Drogo said finally. I will consider it.
He looked at Daenerys, and something passed between them—a moment of assessment that had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with calculation.
"One moon," he said. "You hunt for my khalasar. She learns our ways. When the moon turns..." A hint of something that might have been humor crossed his face. "We will see if she has fire in her blood."
He turned and walked away, leaving Daenerys standing alone on the platform.
She looked at Angelus with an expression of relief and gratitude and the first fragile stirrings of hope.
"You did it," she whispered in Valyrian.
"I bought us time," Angelus corrected. "What we do with it is up to you."
She turned to leave, then paused and looked back.
"Come find me tomorrow. We have much to discuss—including what you're willing to sacrifice for real power."
She padded away into the darkness, leaving Daenerys to process what had just happened.
And if her thoughts lingered on the silver-haired girl—on the vulnerability she'd shown, the strength she was trying to hide, the way firelight had caught in those purple eyes—well.
One step at a time, Angelus told herself. First, we survive. Then, we grow stronger. And then...
She glanced back one more time, watching Daenerys being led to her own tent instead of Drogo's.
Then we'll see what kind of future we can build together.
---
End of Chapter One