298 AC — Qarth
(In the Straits of Qarth…)
Meereen had learned to live without its king.
The day Anakin left the Great Pyramid the markets still opened at dawn, and the freedmen crowded the plazas where their masters had once walked. It had transformed since he first claimed it—a city of scorching heat, teeming streets, and sickness gnawing at its people.
It didn't take long for him to grasp Meereen's greatest struggle. That being the wretched conditions that choked life from its citizens.
When Missandei brought the issue to him, he described his vision to improve sewers and create a clean water system. Most advisors dismissed such ideas as naïve, but Missandei listened, intrigued.
"How?" she had asked, and as he spoke, her gaze lingered on him. His passion for the plan bordered on childlike, yet his resolve was anything but.
Anakin's solution began simply: securing clean water. By first protecting wells, he mandated guarded sources, separated them from waste, and banned animal slaughter near drinking areas. He pioneered rudimentary sand-and-charcoal filters to curb disease and decreed that all water be boiled—a rule enforced even in bustling kitchens.
The political impact was slow, but by midyear, freedmen—the newly liberated—saw fewer sickened families. Their trust in the new king bloomed soon after.
Once, the sight of him had stirred only fear and trembling awe. Now, when Anakin rode through the streets, it was not silence that followed in his wake but cheers. The people of Meereen lifted their hands to him, not as subjects cowed by the dragon, but as men and women who had chosen to love the dragon who had broken their chains.
With their trust, he employed them to launch daily waste collection, routing refuse to dumpsites beyond the city walls. More ambitiously, he funded the construction of stone-lined drainage channels. Meereen's unique geography—its towering pyramids and terraced streets—made gravity-powered systems feasible. First, main sewers would snake downhill, then connect public bathhouses and latrines, funneling waste to evaporation fields outside the city.
Though Anakin hadn't completed this stage yet, his return from Qarth would reignite the effort.
Left to govern in his absence, his council of: Missandei, Grey Worm, Harry Strickland, Lysono Maar, Daario Naharis, and Rolly Duckfield—now faced no resistance as they pushed his plans forward.
Unlike his last departure into the Dothraki Sea, when rebellions threatened, the freedmen's trust ensured smoother sailing. Meereen's future, once uncertain, now pulsed with the promise of renewal.
Now, with the city shrinking behind them into haze and heat, Anakin stood at the prow of his longship and watched the open water.
He had built the ship himself, in stubborn fits between wars—black-hulled and lean, made to cut through sea like a knife through soft fruit. Her prow was carved into a three-headed dragon with open jaws, silver paint flaking where salt wind had gnawed it. Above, the red-and-black banner snapped and cracked like a whip.
To either side sailed two war galleys.
On one, two hundred Dothraki bloodriders crowded the deck, wind-made men born to grass and open sky, now reduced to spitting curses over the rail as the sea rolled beneath them. Some retched. Some laughed at the retching. Their bells jingled like mockery every time the ship dipped.
On the other, a hundred veterans of the Golden Company stood in ordered clusters, gold-scale armor polished, helms tucked under arms, hands resting on sword hilts with the calm of men who had bled enough to be patient about it.
Screamers and sellswords—savage arrogance beside drilled discipline. Both could not be more different. Both bent the knee to the same king.
Behind Anakin, on the quarterdeck, the circle of his life moved in their separate orbits.
Griff leaned on the rail, red cloak snapping, eyes hard as hammered iron. Ser Jorah Mormont hovered wherever Daenerys stood. Dany herself stood small at the rail, watching waves rise and fall with wary wonder, as if the water might speak if she listened hard enough. Viserys prowled like a caged animal, too nettled to sit.
Three hundred men only, all for show. Griff called them guards. An honor train, not an army. Anakin called them enough.
His thoughts drifted to the letter that had pulled him onto this road: the Pureborn's invitation wrapped in silk and civility and the faint stink of a trap. Many had been watching him since Astapor. He did not need ravens to know it. He did not need spies. He sensed it.
Far ahead, the haze thinned. The horizon rose into shape. Towers and spires like a fever dream—onion domes and slender columns crowned with jewels that caught the sun and threw it back brighter. The wind shifted, bringing the first breath of Qarth—spice and incense and something sweet enough to be cloying. It pricked Anakin's senses.
The Queen of Cities drew nearer, and with her came the feeling that they were sailing not toward a harbor, but into a mouth.
(In the Port of Qarth…)
The harbor was a riot made civilized by marble.
Docks gleamed beneath the sun, broad enough for processions, crowded with cranes and carts. Ships from half the world bobbed at anchor—fat-bellied spice cogs, sleek Myrish galleys, painted Ibbenese tubs. The air stank of pitch and fish beneath layers of perfume; incense curled from braziers.
When Anakin's longship slid in, the noise did not quiet. It shifted.
Heads turned. Voices broke and restarted in whispers. Fingers pointed—quickly, furtively, as if touching him with sight might burn. Even men who did not know his face recognized the sigil. The three-headed dragon did not belong in Qarth.
Gangplanks thumped down.
Anakin descended first, boots meeting foreign stone. Brown wool and dark leather wrapped him close, travel-stained and plain, a soldier's garb belted with steel and dust. No sigil marked him, no gold—only the look of a man made for roads and war.
Daenerys followed behind him, with Jorah close, her handmaids in a cluster. She felt the city's gaze like heat on her skin. Qarth watched her too. It watched her as it watched everything: weighing, appraising, deciding what it might be worth.
Three figures waited at the shore with practiced ease.
The first was a tall man in rich cloth, jewels at throat and wrist, smile wide enough to hide a knife. "Your Majesty," he said in the Common Tongue, voice smooth as oil as if to include the entire world in his politeness, "I am Xaro Xhoan Daxos of the Thirteen."
Anakin took his hand. His grip was just a touch too hard, as if measuring bone. "Ah," he replied, "so you're the one Pureborn Wendello spoke of in his letter."
Xaro's smile held, despite his wincing. "Qarth welcomes you, King of Meereen. Your name travels faster than wind. Whatever your heart desires is yours to command." A cluster of jewel-draped courtesans drifted nearer like brightly colored fish. "Even pleasure," Xaro added, "should you wish it."
Anakin's gaze slid over them and past. "Charming," he said flatly.
A second man drifted forward like a corpse trying to look alive—pale, lips faintly blue, his smile too thin to be kind. "Indeed. What is flesh beside wisdom?" he rasped. "Come to the House of the Undying, great king, and you shall drink of truth."
Anakin looked at him. "You are?" he asked.
"Pyat Pree," Xaro supplied smoothly, "of the Thirteen. It was custom we extend him an invitation."
Custom. A softer name for duty. Duty a softer name for obedience. Anakin had little love for any of them.
His attention slid to the third. She was smaller. Hooded. Masked in dark red lacquer, smooth and expressionless, with only her eyes visible—unreadable.
"{And you?}" he asked, in High Valyrian, because language was fencing and he wanted to see which blade she chose.
"{Quaithe of Asshai-by-the-Shadow,}" she said in the dark lilting tongue of Asshai.
Xaro's jeweled smile flickered, faltering for half a heartbeat as he believed his guest could not understand her. "Quaithe of the Shadow, Your Majesty," he amended smoothly. "A shadowbinder from Asshai. She speaks for Qarth."
Anakin studied her mask. It was not that he failed to understand her speech—he knew the tongue well enough. He tried to sense her intent.
From Xaro he felt a perfumed heat, a man ruled by appetites dressed in silk and jewels. From Pyat Pree there came a colder thing, a gnawing hunger that circled and circled. Both were plain enough to him. Their intentions lay close to the surface, naked as blades in the light.
But from her… nothing. A void.
The three seekers bowed, and led the Targaryens into Qarth's streets, where commerce and spectacle pressed together like bodies in a crush.
The waterfront never slept. Winesinks and gaming dens rubbed shoulders with warehouses. Temples rose between brothels like afterthoughts. Sellers cried wares in tongues that scraped the ear. Spellsellers muttered promises beside moneychangers counting coin with quick, clever fingers. Cutpurses slid through crowds like fish through reeds.
Anakin refused to be hurried.
He paused at a stall selling carved onyx lions because Daenerys's eyes lingered there, and he bought one for her without asking if she wanted it. He let Viserys sneer at a vendor hawking 'dragon eggs' that were clearly painted stones—and then Viserys bought one anyway, just to prove he could. Coins passed from Anakin's hand easily enough.
Xaro noted the generosity. Pyat noted the attention to kin. And who knew what Quaithe noted.
All the while Qarth watched from balconies, from curtains, from the mouths of alleys, deciding what to make of the dragons.
(That Evening, in Xaro's Home…)
Xaro offered hospitality in his manse for the duration of their stay. Anakin accepted, because refusal in Qarth was its own insult—and because he preferred a nest he could see to one hidden.
Xaro's 'manse' was a vast sprawl of stone and splendor that made Illyrio's in Pentos look like a merchant's shed. Gardens bloomed with flowers that did not belong in any honest place. Pools shimmered green-veined, and tiny golden fish darted through them like living coins.
Slaves moved through it all—beautiful, careful, quiet. Their eyes were downcast, but not dead. Their backs bent, but they were not broken. It still sat wrong in Anakin's gut.
Visitors came as soon as they were settled—merchant princes of the Thirteen, envoys of the Ancient Guild of Spicers, the Tourmaline Brotherhood. They brought gifts: silks, spices, jewels, curiosities.
Anakin accepted with courtesy. Then he gave nearly everything away to his Dothraki, who took treasure with the same indifference they took blood.
Xaro insisted on a feast. Lanterns hung like captured stars. Music drifted through warm air. Courtesans moved like flowing cloth, laughter bright as glass.
Anakin drank nothing. He watched everything.
Daenerys sat among noblewomen, a pale shape in white, listening more than speaking. Their questions came wrapped in honey: 'Was it true? Was her nephew a dragon made flesh? Was she promised to someone? Would she marry a Qartheen prince?'
Viserys sat nearer the wine, and the lickspittles. That was where he always drifted, like rot to sweetness. Jewels glittered at his throat. His laughter was too loud.
Then Pyat Pree drifted through the feast like a moth toward flame.
He stopped before Daenerys and bowed. "Your Grace," he said softly, "on behalf of the warlocks of Qarth, I bid you welcome. Might I offer a small demonstration?"
Daenerys hesitated. Every eye turned to her.
Viserys scoffed. "Tricks," he said, loud enough to carry. "A dragon is not some gullible thing to be dazzled by parlor sorcery."
The noblewomen laughed behind their hands. Daenerys's cheeks colored. She lowered her eyes.
Anakin felt something twist in his gut—an old memory of being laughed at by magisters, by hardened sellswords, by slavers, by anyone who thought him too weak to stand up for himself.
With a nearly imperceptible shift of his focus, he channeled the Force to send a sharp breeze rippling through the gardens.
The gathering of guests gasped, startled by the sudden gust—conversations halted mid-laugh, and murmurs of unease spread as the crowd instinctively sought the source of the unnatural wind. Those who had been laughing at Viserys's words now exchanged wary glances. Whispers of an omen warning against their mockery began to spread through the crowd as if the air itself carried a silent rebuke.
Pyat, seemingly understanding its source and pleased by it, proceeds anyways, extending a pale hand. After a heartbeat's pause, Daenerys placed her own in it. He pressed a gem into her palm.
"Take this," he murmured. "Look into it. So many facets. Look deep enough and you will see yourself… often more than once."
She looked, and the world narrowed into glittering depths and fractured reflections.
A second Pyat Pree stood behind the first, identical in every detail. Then a third, and a fourth, like reflections stepping free of glass.
A ripple ran through the garden. Daenerys's breath caught. Viserys paused his drink. Around them, some of the Dothraki gave low gasps of wonder at the warlocks' conjured illusion. They had seen greater terrors wrought by Anakin's hand, yet still they murmured as children might at a mummer's show.
Anakin lifted one brow, studying the spectacle with cool interest. Illusion or no, it was deftly done. Even false fire can burn, if a man believes in it strongly enough.
"Should you grow tired of merchant baubles," Pyat smiled, "it would be an honor to host you at the House of the Undying. You are always welcome, 'Mother of Dragons'."
The words struck Daenerys like a bell tolling inside her head. Mother of Dragons. A name, not borrowed from her brother. Not granted by a king. Not spoken with mockery. A name that sounded like 'hers'.
"They'll say anything to make a girl feel special," Viserys slurred bitterly into his goblet.
Daenerys's fingers tightened around the gem until it bit her skin. She looked down, then up.
Anakin met her eyes across the lantern-lit garden, and in that moment he sensed it from his aunt. That same hunger that lived inside the men of Qarth.
(The Next Day, with Daenerys…)
The city had a way of making a girl forget herself.
Everything was too jeweled, too perfumed, too bright. Even beggars wore beaten copper.
Daenerys lay awake in a silk-soft bed and listened to the manse breathe—water trickling somewhere, distant laughter dying into quiet, a slave's footsteps soft as guilt.
Her thoughts turned to Anakin. By now he would be seated among the Pureborn, beneath painted ceilings and perfumed lamps, trading words sharper than any sword. The men of Qarth wrapped their threats in silk and courtesy, but she did not fear for him. She was sure he had faced worse than silk-clad schemers.
No—her mind circled back instead to Viserys, and the quiet alteration she had witnessed in him. Whatever else Anakin might be—dragon, conqueror, king—he had done what exile, hunger, and years of bitter longing never could. He had changed her brother.
Dany was not so naïve as to think her brother's docileness had bloomed of its own accord. No—she was almost certain the truer cause wore a dragon's name.
Viserys would not dare raise a hand to her now, not with Anakin so near. There was a steel in him that suffered no cruelty lightly, least of all beneath his own roof. The king was young, yes, but there was a justice in him that burned clean and bright, and even Viserys, in all his pride, had felt its heat.
She felt it too, at times—felt it shaping her thoughts, tempering her fears. As if her sense of right and wrong were becoming whatever Anakin's were.
He frightened her sometimes. Not because he was cruel. Not because he raised his hand to her or snapped his temper like her brother did. He frightened her because he inspired her to be more.
'Mother of Dragons.' The warlock's words replayed in her head until they felt less like dreams and more like a dare.
Dany was tired of being carried like luggage. Tired of being spoken over. Tired of being told to wait, to be quiet, to be safe.
By dawn, she had decided. Irri and Jhiqui helped her dress. Doreah braided her hair.
The four dragon eggs Anakin had entrusted to her rested within their carved chest like four sleeping hearts waiting for a spark to wake them. Even shut away, she could feel their presence, heavy and warm as secrets.
Anakin himself had shown no interest in them. Dragons were no baubles to adorn his pride, nor promises he needed to clutch close. And Viserys—Viserys could not be trusted with such things. So the king had placed them in her keeping instead, as simply as another might pass a cloak against the cold.
Anakin had not understood what they meant to her. To him, perhaps, they were naught but stones, curiosities from a dead age. Toys, mayhaps, fit for a girl who had grown up with nothing. But when Daenerys laid her hand on their shells, she felt something stir deep within her, something older than exile, older than fear.
Ser Jorah refused at first, of course.
"No," he growled, "I will not take you to the House of the Undying. Not without His Grace's leave."
"You swore to protect me," Daenerys said softly, "not to cage me."
"I swore to protect you from harm."
"I am going with or without you," she said with conviction in her eyes. "Xaro has already agreed to take me."
Jorah's jaw worked. He knew what Xaro really wanted from the princess. He wanted to say no again. She could see it. Then she smiled—a small, gentle thing that was crueler than any shout.
"I am not asking you to disobey him," she told him. "I am asking you to obey me."
Jorah caved.
Xaro took them in his palanquin, because Qarth liked pageantry even for foolish errands. Bloodriders rode before and behind, bells chiming soft. Ser Jorah kept pace at her side, eyes searching the crowds for hands that reached too quickly.
As they moved, the city changed. The closer they came to the outskirts, the thinner the laughter grew. The air cooled beneath trees that did not belong in any honest place—black bark, leaves like inky blue glass. Their shade swallowed sunlight instead of softening it.
Then the palanquin stopped.
"This is it," Xaro announced, "the House of the Undying."
The building crouched before her like a dead beast. No towers. No windows. Black tiles broken and fallen. Mortar dry and crumbling.
"Princess," her Dothraki guard, Jhogo, said in rough Common, "this is an evil place."
Irri's fingers brushed her arm. "It is said many go in. Few come out."
"It is said," Jhiqui echoed.
Daenerys drew a slow breath. The air tasted faintly bitter, like burnt herbs.
Pyat Pree appeared beneath the black-barked trees as if the grove had birthed him. He bowed, moving wrong, bones not quite where they ought to be.
"The Mother of Dragons must enter alone," he said softly, "or not at all."
Jorah stepped forward. "She will do no such thing."
Pyat's pale eyes did not flicker. "If she turns away, the power to breathe life into her dragons will be closed to her forever."
Daenerys felt the eggs—stone by all reason, yet warm beneath her palms when she touched their chest. She thought of her brother's laughter. Thought of Anakin's quiet power. Thought of what it meant to be a dragon.
"It will be darker than you think," Pyat warned.
Dany took the chest from Irri and held it herself. "Then I will bring my own light," she said, and stepped forward.
They came at last to the door. A tall oval mouth set in a wall shaped like a human face, its lips carved from grey stone, its eyes closed as if in sleep. The sight of it made Daenerys's skin prickle. It looked like a thing that might wake if you breathed too loud.
The stone mouth yawned open.
Behind her, she felt Jorah's fear like a hand at her back. She felt the bloodriders shifting, uneasy. She felt Irri's fingers trembling on her shoulder.
And she felt something else too—something that had been growing in her since she first met Anakin. Not fear. Not anger. Resolve. Conviction.
Daenerys Targaryen stepped inside the House of the Undying. And the darkness swallowed her whole.
(Meanwhile, with Anakin…)
The audience with the Pureborn had ended in smiles and perfumed courtesies, yet Anakin left their hall with more questions than when he had entered.
He made his way back through the winding streets of Qarth toward Xaro's home, Black Balaq pacing at his right hand, Franklyn Flowers at his left, a knot of Company men fanned about them in disciplined silence. The sun hung high above the city's triple walls.
Anakin's thoughts were elsewhere.
He turned the meeting over in his mind as a cyvasse player studies the board after a move. The Pureborn had received him warmly enough. His compliments they had swallowed like sweetmeats, smiling their lacquered smiles, their eyes bright as polished brass. They had gleamed beneath flattery, preening as peacocks in a garden.
In Slaver's Bay, he had known masters who ruled with lash and chain, men whose power stank of fear. The Pureborn were different. Soft-handed. Silken. They cloistered themselves behind carved screens and cool fountains, guarded less by swords than by distance and the endless desolation of the Red Waste beyond their walls. Qarth was no city of warriors. Its fame rested on trade, on jewels and lies, on poisoned cups and appetites without bottom.
'If they saw me as a threat, why only compliance?' The question lingered like a sour taste. Perhaps they truly meant to honor him. Perhaps they saw advantage in alliance. Yet the thought sat uneasily. Because Anakin still sensed a trap.
Around him the market roared with life. Spice-sellers shouted of saffron and cinnamon; silk banners snapped in the wind like bright-winged birds; camels groaned beneath their burdens. The air was thick with cardamom, sweat, and the salt tang of the Summer Sea. Qartheen in gowns of impossible colors drifted past traders from distant ports, all beneath the watchful gaze of gilded statues that lined the avenues.
It was then he heard it. A faint ringing, thin as a silver bell.
Anakin slowed. The sound seemed to slip between the cries of merchants and the clatter of hooves, persistent as a whisper at the edge of hearing.
He glanced toward a spice-seller's stall, where brass scales swung gently in the breeze. The ringing came from there—no, from ahead, beyond a silk-hung archway where purple banners stirred. It shifted with every step he took.
He frowned. None of the others seemed to hear it. Black Balaq's face was impassive as carved ebony; Franklyn was muttering to one of the guards about quarters and watch rotations. No man looked alarmed.
Yet the sound tugged at him.
Almost without willing it, Anakin altered course. One step aside became two, then three. He slipped between a pair of traders arguing over bolts of Myrish lace, ducked beneath a pole laden with dangling lanterns. The ringing grew clearer, though no louder, as if it lived not in the air but somewhere behind his eyes.
"Your grace…" he heard Franklyn call, faint and distant.
A wall of bodies surged between them—Qartheen nobles in feathered cloaks, a train of slaves bearing carved chests, a line of camels snorting and stamping. Balaq's dark face vanished behind a forest of raised arms and banners.
Anakin pressed on.
The crowd seemed to part before him and close again behind, swallowing his escort whole. The ringing tightened, thin and insistent. He followed it without knowing why, drawn forward as if by an unseen hand.
Anakin came upon a firemage performing in a crowded square, pulling strands of flame from a brazier and weaving them into a ladder. Bare feet stepped through fire as if fire were stone. The crowd gasped.
He felt the firemage's concentration—thin, trembling. No. This was not the source. The pull that had seized him was familiar. Familiar in its absence. That void.
"Neat trick," Anakin said softly, and did not turn because he already knew who was standing behind him.
"No trick," someone said. Anakin turned to the sight of Quaithe. "Last year," she said, "that man could coax roses to burn backward and call it wonder. Now he walks the sky."
"Merchant princes in their silks," Anakin's mouth curved faintly as he regarded her masked face, "warlocks with their painted lips, cryptic witches veiled in shadow… and now 'sky-walkers' besides. Qarth overflows with wonders. Tell me, is there aught in this city that is not strange?" His tone walked the knife's edge between mockery and honest inquiry.
"Power grows in Qarth. Like ivy on a tomb," Quaithe replied. "And you are the root feeding it."
"'Me… Of course'." Anakin almost laughed.
"Not all power is born of you," she said. "But when you pass, sparks catch."
His eyes narrowed. "What do you want?"
"To show you the way," Quaithe replied.
His mouth curved faintly. "I require no guide," he said. "The current that moves through all things is guide enough for me." There was a touch of pride in the words—youthful, untempered.
"The light guides," Quaithe allowed, inclining her masked head. She paused then, as if weighing whether to speak further. "And it casts shadows as well."
The Force he wielded—unseen, unfelt by most—moved through all living things like a hidden current beneath the sea. Even the red priestess, with her sacred fires and whispered prayers, had shone within it like a torch in darkness, her presence impossible to conceal.
But Quaithe… Quaithe was not like that at all.
Where she stood, the current bent and blurred. Her presence did not flare nor gutter; it veiled itself. It was as if she stood half a step beyond the world he sensed, cloaked in some deeper shadow that even his strange gift could not wholly pierce. And that, more than any riddle she spoke, unsettled him.
"You are empty," Anakin said.
"I am hidden," she answered. "There is a difference."
She lifted one hand toward the sky. He followed the gesture. The sun hung fierce and white above the city, a burning coin hammered into the blue. He narrowed his eyes against its glare—and for the briefest instant, it seemed as though there were two. The light was blinding, searing. His eyes watered, and he looked away.
He spun, looking back toward the direction of Quaithe. "H–How—" he began, but Quaithe was gone. Not slipping into a crowd. Not retreating into shadow. Gone, as if she had never been.
Anakin felt his senses come crashing back into him all at once, like a man bursting from a stifling chamber into cold, clean wind. The world roared in. Heat pressed against his skin. The cries of merchants rose sharp and urgent. Bells chimed. Camels groaned. The market of Qarth throbbed with color and clamor, alive as any battlefield.
"My king!" Franklyn's voice cut through the din, strained and near to anger. The knight shoved his way around a pair of spice merchants, scattering saffron in his haste. He held Anakin lightly by the arm. "Where in the seven hells did you go?"
Anakin did not answer.
He stared past him, violet eyes unfocused, as the last of that strange, inward stillness drained away. The Force rushed back into place—threading through the crowd, brushing against a thousand flickering lives.
He reached for one in particular. Nothing. His breath caught.
He reached again, more urgently this time, sweeping outward with that invisible sense he had come to trust more than sight or sound. The city blazed around him—fear, greed, hunger, lust, anger, laughter. A thousand beating hearts.
But one was absent. Daenerys. He could not feel her. The space where her presence should have been lay hollow and cold, like a snuffed candle in a darkened room.
(Afterwards…)
Anakin reached the gates of Xaro's manse to find Griff crashing out of a side passage, Tristan Rivers and Rakharo hard on his heels, faces flushed with exertion.
Their eyes told him before their mouths did. More so did the sight of Viserys. The prince stumbled in Griff's wake, jewels clattering softly as he was dragged along, dignity forgotten in the iron grip that held him fast.
"The princess," Griff said, "she's gone."
Anakin's vision narrowed. "Where?"
"Lured," Tristan spat, "to the House of the Undying."
"What's his problem?" Anakin pointed at the swaying Viserys.
"Xaro plied him with wine until his wits were drowned, then shut him away with perfumed whores," Griff said, his mouth a hard line of distaste. "Then he led Jorah and a retinue with Daenerys," Griff said, forcing Viserys to stand up straight.
The prince offered nothing but shrugs and excuses for not telling anyone his sister slipped away.
Anger rose in Anakin, eager for somewhere to land. For a heartbeat it wanted to land on Griff, on Jorah, on Viserys, on anyone. Then it found its true home. Qarth. This city did not need conquering. It had already been conquered by its own decadence. What it needed now was correction.
"Rakharo," Anakin said, "assuming you and Tristan have done as I asked and mapped the city, and not just wallowed from brothel to brothel, the two of you can take us there."
The bloodrider nodded once, fierce and unquestioning.
"Tristan—docks. Bring the men."
Tristan vanished into the night.
Anakin mounted. Griff, Viserys, and Rakharo followed. Hooves thundered through Qarth's jeweled streets as they rode away from light into a grove of black-barked trees that drank starlight and gave nothing back.
(At the House of the Undying…)
The building crouched there—low, serpentine, ancient stone like a dead beast coiled in a grove. No windows. No towers. No honest shape. Black leaves above swallowed moonlight.
Jorah was there, face grim. Bloodriders paced, bells chiming soft as warning. And Xaro sat in his palanquin, attended to by slaves.
All turned as Anakin, Viserys, Rakharo, and Griff reined in.
Irri's eyes were wet. "Princess went inside," she cried. "Alone."
Anakin looked at the stone mouth set in the wall, and felt the Force recoil like a hand pulled from rot.
"And which one of you geniuses decided that was a good idea," he said, his voice making men flinch.
"She commanded it," Doreah said smallly.
"She would not be gainsaid, Your Grace," added Jorah.
Griff made a sound like a humorless laugh. "Sounds familiar."
Anakin ignored him, descending his horse and moving to studying the ruin closer.
"Have you tried going in after her?" He asked.
"This is the only way in," answered Jorah. "And it's sealed."
The doorway loomed—a vast oval mouth carved into a wall shaped like a human face.
Anakin stretched out a hand. The stone groaned. Cracks split the wall in jagged lines like lightning. The mouth widened against its will, stretching open until it yawned broad enough for men to pass. The doorway tried to close again immediately, resisting him like muscle.
Gasps rose behind him. Viserys stared like a boy seeing fire for the first time.
Anakin sensed the doorway tightening, the weight pressing down like a heavy boulder. It seemed on the verge of slamming shut, so in a heartbeat he thrust himself through the gap, disappearing inside.
Behind him, the onlookers froze, their faces a mix of shock and uncertainty as the doorway slammed close with their king inside.
"Did that just happen," Viserys said.
(Within the House of the Undying…)
The first chamber was a square room with walls of weeping stone. A faint damp clung to them, slick under his fingertips when he tested them. The air tasted of mildew under the sweet rot of shade-of-the-evening.
Four doors marked the walls, one on each side. Each was alike—plain stone slabs with iron handles, unmarked.
The Force whispered—not a command. A suggestion. Left. He went left.
Another room. Black worm-pitted wood. Floor dipped as if something heavy had sat there too long. Six doors arranged like spokes.
Right, the whisper said. He went right.
A corridor opened—long and high. Torches guttered along one wall. Doors lined the hall—too many. Some tall. Some squat. Some carved with beasts. Some ajar. Some with no handles at all. The House pressed around him, watching. Not alive, not like a man or tree. But 'remembering'. Knowing.
He moved. Behind one door came a steady thudding. 'Let me out,' it begged without words. 'Let me out.'
Anakin walked on. Music fluted from another—thin and shrill. It scraped his teeth.
Another door swung open as he passed. A little girl with copper skin chased a black kitten around a bed, laughing. "You're mine now," she told it, "Balerion."
Anakin's throat tightened. He did not know why. He did not linger long on that one.
The next door creaked open on a dim bedchamber. A woman pale as bone lay sweating, blood soaking sheets. A man with a long face clutched her hand.
"You're not going to die," he whispered.
Her fingers dug into his wrist. "Promise me, Ned," she rasped. "Promise me."
A babe wailed thinly in the man's arms. He looked down and met eyes so dark they were almost black.
Anakin felt something odd stir within him. He knew only one person who held the name Ned.
He stepped in wanting to get a closer look at the child in the man's arms when the chamber suddenly turned cold. A single snowflake drifted through the open doorway, melting on the stone. Then another. Soon the air beyond the threshold was thick with falling white.
Anakin frowned. What he had seen before was gone. Everything swallowed by the storm. Beyond the door there was nothing now but endless snow, swirling in a silent void. The wind rose. Snow began to spill across the threshold.
Anakin stepped back and slammed the door shut before the drift could reach him. Torches hissed and went out behind him one by one, plunging the corridor into deeper shadow.
At the far end loomed a bronze door. "There," Anakin snarled, and pushed out with the Force. The bronze doors burst open with a sound like thunder.
Beyond was darkness. No walls. No torches. No sense of space. A faint light blossomed ahead, thin as a vein. A circle of cracked stone was under his boots, lit by a narrow beam from nowhere. Beyond that circle was nothing but blackness and a maze of pillars fading into them.
At the circle's center knelt Daenerys, wrists chained to rings set onto a pillar, iron biting skin.
"Dany." Anakin's voice echoed as he stepped forward and noticed the four dragon eggs, each on their own dais, surrounding her.
"Anakin—no!" she screamed. "Your not supposed to—"
He felt the warning a heartbeat too late. Pain tore up his leg. Metal claws sunk into his calf, dropping him down to one knee.
A hooded figure lunged behind him—knife flashing toward his back.
Anakin twisted. With a single outstretched hand, he flung a man with Pyat's face into a stone pillar. The warlock shattered, dissolving into a wisp of black smoke.
From the shadows, another Pyat materialized on his left, one more on his right, a third slipping out from behind the same pillar, and then—again and again—more apparitions emerged, surrounding him on every side.
Anakin's sword sang a thin, eager note as he drove it into the nearest foe; the blade met only vapor, the figure vanishing before the point could bite. He spun, forearm catching a wild strike that drew blood, and swept his weapon in a wide arc, turning the next attacker into ash.
Each new warlock seemed both solid enough to wound and insubstantial enough to dissolve, leaving him to wonder whether they were truly alive or if this was merely some trick.
He tried to step back, but the circle tightened, the foes pressing in with relentless jabs, slashes, and thrusts that drew blood across his jerkin.
In the distance, Daenerys's desperate pleas rose and fell. "Stop! Leave him!" Tears had carved pale tracks through soot.
Still, Anakin stood firm, cutting down wave after wave of warlocks. Fatigue did not claim him—yet escape eluded him.
He strained for a whisper of the Force, for guidance, but the darkness offered none. The enemies multiplied, the wounds grew deeper, and his fury swelled with each blocked escape.
Dany's cries made him impatient. At last, he ceased waiting for a sign. Instead, he seized the Force himself, pulling its power toward him like a storm. Power flooded in, hot as fire, too much, far too much. Pain sharpened into something bright and distant. Anger swelled and became fuel.
Anakin let out a scream that did not sound human.
Lightning burst from his hands—white, blue and violet, jagged and blinding. It cracked through the dark like a god's wrath.
It struck warlocks and pillars around him. Their mouths opened wide in soundless shrieks as blue fire poured from their eyes and lips. Some exploded into ash in an instant. Others slammed into the walls and smeared across them like crushed insects before dissolving.
Daenerys pressed back, eyes wide. For a heartbeat she looked at him as if she did not know him at all. The sight was terrifying… and it was beautiful. This wasn't a warlock's illusions. This was real power. Unlimited power.
The last warlock—Pyat, or what wore his shape—crawled away in scorched tatters. "Mercy…" It choked.
Anakin's lightning answered. It wrapped Pyat in a cage of light. His scream did not last long.
There was nothing left but a misshapen heart hovering where his chest had been, beating slowly. Each pulse sent ripples of indigo light through the room. The heart shriveled, blackening inward until it popped into dust. The dust hung for a heartbeat and blew away without wind.
Lightning leapt uncontrolled now, clawing at walls and ceiling, tearing along outlines of rooms that had not been there a moment before. Little by little, he forced them in, and the bolts guttered and died.
The House did not like what Anakin had done. The dark around them shuddered. Stone groaned. Wood blackened. Fires bloomed. The circle's thin light flickered. The air thickened with smoke as if the building itself breathed it out in anger.
"Anakin," Daenerys cried, "the eggs—"
But Anakin staggered, physical weight crashing back into his limbs. Pain came rushing back in to fill the void power had left. The injuries he sustained earlier were finally catching up with him.
Daenerys pulled at her chains until skin tore. She did not stop until she was free. Blood ran down her wrists, bright and real.
She stumbled to the eggs, knocking them off their daises'. She raced over to the nearest one. Blood from her wrists splashed the green shell, then the pale, then black, then the blue one, and their scales drank it greedily.
Suddenly, a black column split with a crack like a snapped femur and toppled down. It crashed down between Anakin and Daenerys, kicking up a wall of dust and sparks.
On Anakin's side,he pressed himself against a sturdy pillar before collapsing to sit. Exhaustion pressed on him—not the wounds, but a heavy, mental fatigue that sapped his very will to go on.
This was a first for him. He saw his blood dripping onto the floor. He felt hot. Everything grew hot. Yet none of it felt real.
And then the thought answered, quiet and cold: 'Fire cannot kill a dragon.'
Anakin pushed himself to his knees, breath ragged, the heat of the flames licking at his face. He meant to rise.
But then he saw them. Just as the red priestess had shown him in the visions. In the flames, shells cracked. Fine lines spiderwebbed across them, deepening. Chips fell away. A thin, piercing sound rose—half breath, half scream.
Fire rushed in, and Anakin smiled, letting it swallow them whole.
(Outside the House of the Undying…)
The grove ignited.
Lightning shot out of the House's broken roof. Fire belched from gaps in stone, searing leaves from black-barked trees. The trunks caught seconds later, sap boiling, bark blistering.
"{Back!}" Jorah bellowed in the Dothraki tongue. "{Back from it!}"
Tristan and the Company men stumbled back with shields raised. Horses screamed and reared. Dothraki looked uneasy, bells chiming frantic. Xaro took cover behind his palanquin.
The House sagged, shuddered, and collapsed inward on itself. A heap of charred ruin lay where it had stood.
Then the sound changed. The roar of fire dropped into a low hum that vibrated in bone and teeth. Ash rose—not down, but up—spiraling toward the sky like angry stars. Tiles hung in the air. Dust stopped drifting. Flames pushed outward from a single point of the ruin's heart.
"Gods," someone from the Company whispered.
From the center of the rubble, through parted fire, two figures emerged.
Anakin Targaryen stepped out unscathed, one hand raised toward the sky. Debris hung above him, turning slowly in the air as though the world itself had forgotten gravity.
Below him another figure emerged from the ruin. Daenerys.
She wore only Anakin's cloak, drawn tight about her shoulders. Soot streaked her pale skin and her long silver-gold hair was gone, burned away to a pale stubble. Smoke curled lazily from her body, as if the fire had not yet decided to release her.
Clinging to her shoulder was a small black creature no larger than a half-grown cat. Its scales were dark as obsidian, veined with dull red like banked embers, and its eyes burned like living coals.
A dragon. Silence fell so suddenly it felt like a hand closing around every throat in the courtyard. Perhaps there truly was a hand there.
Three more shapes clung to her. One green and bronze. One pale gold. One blue and silver. They hissed softly, curling about her throat and wrist and cheek as if they had always belonged there.
More dragons. For a heartbeat no one moved. No one breathed.
Daenerys laughed once, shaky, near tears. "I–I'm sorry," she stammered. "I never meant—"
Anakin exhaled, a sound half laugh and half pain, and rubbed the top of her head with a soot-blackened hand. "You are sublime," he rasped.
The black dragon chirped, then leapt into Anakin's arms as if it had decided he was safer.
"Hello there," he said.
Viserys stood frozen, face pale, mouth slightly open. Hunger and terror warred in his eyes. For once, he had no words.
Griff's breath left him in a sharp, ragged exhale. His hand tightened on the pommel of his sword as if to anchor himself to something solid. "Gods…" he muttered, too low for most to hear.
Tristan Rivers let out a low whistle, slow and reverent, like a man staring at a storm rolling in from sea, nudging Rakharo with an elbow.
The Dothraki did not whisper. They felt. Some laughed, wild and fierce. Some shouted in awe. Others bowed their heads, bells ringing in a hundred small chimes like distant thunder.
Among the Golden Company, discipline held—but only just. Men who had marched beneath a hundred banners and broken a dozen cities found themselves shifting where they stood, hands tightening on spear and sword. One man made the sign of the Seven. Another spat, as if to ward off evil.
Jorah Mormont stood rooted where he was. Relief struck him first—sharp and fierce at the sight of Daenerys unbroken. Then came something else, something colder. His eyes moved from her face to the creatures coiled about her shoulders and arms.
He took a step forward, then stopped. There was a distance now. Not in the space between them, but in what she had become. He had sworn to protect a girl. What stood before him was no longer only that.
Xaro looked like a man watching his world crack. "It cannot be," he croaked. "Dragons have been dead for hundreds of years."
Anakin turned his violet gaze on him, bright in the firelight—not warm, not kind. Hard as hammered steel. "Xaro," he said, voice hoarse, "just the little worm I was looking for."
The merchant flinched like a whipped dog. "Your Majesty, I—"
"Tomorrow," Anakin cut in, "I want you to arrange another audience with the Pureborn."
Xaro blinked. "B–But I thought your arrangements were—"
Anakin stepped closer, blood drying on his skin, and the men around him—Dothraki, sellswords, even Xaro's own guards—found themselves backing away without meaning to.
"In light of recent events," he cut in, "I am changing my mind on certain… deals."
Somewhere beyond the burning trees, Qarth listened—already preparing to make any concessions the dragons would demand.