[ Dothraki Sea ]
[ 298 AC ]
In the grasslands east of Vaes Dothraki. The sun beat down mercilessly on the red earth.
Heat shimmered in the distance, and the air buzzed with flies.
Khal Drogo lay motionless beneath the sky, his bronzed skin dulled, a dozen flies crawling across his chest as if he were already carrion. He did not stir.
Daenerys Targaryen brushed the insects away with trembling fingers and knelt beside him. His eyes were open, staring at the sun, but there was no light within them. No spark. Only emptiness.
[IMAGE ➕]
Ser Jorah's voice came quietly behind her. "He follows the warmth, Princess. He can walk, after a fashion. He will go where you lead him, but no farther. He will eat if you place food in his mouth. He will drink if you trickle water on his lips."
Her throat tightened. She bent low and kissed her sun-and-stars on the brow, feeling only heat, not life. When she rose, her gaze found Mirri Maz Duur standing close by, calm, her face unreadable.
"Your spells are costly, maegi," Daenerys said, her voice trembling.
"He lives," Mirri answered. "You asked for life. You paid for life."
"This is not life for one such as Drogo," Dany cried, anguish breaking through. "His life was laughter, and a horse between his legs, and the bells in his hair ringing as he rode to war. His life was me, and the son I was to give him!"
Her voice cracked, but she forced the words. "When will he be as he was?"
Mirri's lips curved in bitter mockery.
"When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.
When the seas go dry and the mountains blow in the wind like leaves.
When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child.
Then he will return, and not before."
The words struck like a curse. Daenerys's breath hitched, her tears blurring the world. "You tricked me," she whispered. "You killed him. You killed my son."
Mirri Maz Duur's heavy-lidded eyes glittered in the sunlight. She did not flinch beneath the accusation.
"You knew," Dany forced out, her fury giving her strength even as her body ached from labor and grief. "You knew what I was buying. You knew the price, and yet you let me pay it."
"It was wrong of them to burn my temple," the older woman said, as though the devastation she had wrought were merely a matter of her trade. "That angered my god."
"This was no god's work," Daenerys hissed, her voice raw with cold fury.
She would not let herself break here, not before this woman. "You cheated me. You murdered my child within me."
Mirri's lips curved into a shadow of a smile, cruel and weary all at once. "The stallion who mounts the world will burn no cities now. His khalasar shall trample no nations into dust."
The words stabbed deeper than any blade.
Dany's grief spilled into her tone, sharp and anguished. "I spoke for you. I saved you."
The woman's laughter was short, bitter, but cutting. "Saved me?"
Her eyes narrowed with venom. "There were three riders who had taken me, not as a man takes a woman but as dogs rutting in the dust. Another was inside me when you rode past. Tell me, Khaleesi, how did you really save me?"
Her voice grew harsher, laden with memory and hate. "I saw my god's house burn, where I had healed good men beyond counting. I saw my home set to aflame. In the street I found piles of bodies.The children I healed crying as your riders drove them off with whips."
Her lips curled back, and she spat into the earth between them.
"Tell me again what you saved me from."
Daenerys trembled, each word burning a flame within her. Her hands clenched around Drogo's broad chest, feeling the steady, empty rhythm of his heart. The warmth of his skin mocked her, the body alive but the soul absent.
"You have stolen everything," she said softly, her tears falling like beads onto the dust. "My son. My khal. My hope."
Mirri Maz Duur only watched her, placid and pitiless, as though the Khaleesi's grief were the sweetest justice she could ever savor.
—
Daenerys pressed her forehead to his chest, listening to the hollow rhythm of his heart. Warmth lingered in his skin, but it mocked her—an echo without a soul. The words she had once spoken with love slipped now from her lips as a broken prayer. My sun-and-stars…
And then—
A sound.
It was low at first, almost lost beneath the buzz of flies–a guttural grunt, torn raw from his throat. His chest shuddered with the effort, ribs straining against flesh, as though some force deep within had clawed its way to the surface.
Daenerys did not lift her head. She did not see the shift, blinded by her own tears. But Mirri Maz Duur saw.
The witch's eyes widened, her composure shattering like glass. She staggered back a step, lips parting in wordless denial.
Drogo's glassy stare flickered. Vacant darkness gave way to something new—an ember, faint but alive, sparking to life in the depths of his eyes.
The witch's breath caught in her throat. "No… this is not possible."
Daenerys wept against his chest, unknowing.
And beneath the blazing sun, as the world seemed to hold its breath—
Khal Drogo was reborn again.