A Feast for Dragons

savoring the
warmth of his flesh, the feel of his skin against her own.
Remember
,
she told herself.
Remember how he felt
. She kissed him on his
shoulder.
    Daario rolled toward her, his eyes open. “Daenerys.” He
smiled a lazy smile. That was another of his talents; he woke all at once, like
a cat. “Is it dawn?”
    “Not yet. We have a while still.”
    “Liar. I can see your eyes. Could I do that if it were the
black of night?” Daario kicked loose of the coverlets and sat up. “The
half-light. Day will be here soon.”
    “I do not want this night to end.”
    “No? And why is that, my queen?”
    “You know.”
    “The wedding?” He laughed. “Marry me instead.”
    “You know I cannot do that.”
    “You are a queen. You can do what you like.” He slid a hand along
her leg. “How many nights remain to us?”
    Two. Only two
. “You know as well as I. This
night and the next, and we must end this.”
    “Marry me, and we can have all the nights forever.”
    If I could, I would
. Khal Drogo had been her
sun-and-stars, but he had been dead so long that Daenerys had almost forgotten
how it felt to love and be loved. Daario had helped her to remember.
I
was dead and he brought me back to life. I was asleep and he woke me. My brave
captain
. Even so, of late he grew too bold. On the day that he
returned from his latest sortie, he had tossed the head of a Yunkish lord at
her feet and kissed her in the hall for all the world to see, until Barristan
Selmy pulled the two of them apart. Ser Grandfather had been so wroth that Dany
feared blood might be shed. “We cannot wed, my love. You know why.”
    He climbed from her bed. “Marry Hizdahr, then. I will give
him a nice set of horns for his wedding gift. Ghiscari men like to prance about
in horns. They make them from their own hair, with combs and wax and irons.”
Daario found his breeches and pulled them on. He did not trouble himself with
smallclothes.
    “Once I am wed it will be high treason to desire me.” Dany
pulled the coverlet up over her breasts.
    “Then I must be a traitor.” He slipped a blue silk tunic
over his head and straightened the prongs of his beard with his fingers. He had
dyed it afresh for her, taking it from purple back to blue, as it had been when
first she met him. “I smell of you,” he said, sniffing at his fingers and
grinning.
    Dany loved the way his gold tooth gleamed when he grinned.
She loved the fine hairs on his chest. She loved the strength in his arms, the
sound of his laughter, the way he would always look into her eyes and say her
name as he slid his cock inside her. “You are beautiful,” she blurted as she
watched him don his riding boots and lace them up. Some days he let her do that
for him, but not today, it seemed.
That’s done with too
.
    “Not beautiful enough to marry.” Daario took his sword belt
off the peg where he had hung it.
    “Where are you going?”
    “Out into your city,” he said, “to drink a keg or two and
pick a quarrel. It has been too long since I’ve killed a man. Might be I should
seek out your betrothed.”
    Dany threw a pillow at him. “You will leave Hizdahr be!”
    “As my queen commands. Will you hold court today?”
    “No. On the morrow I will be a woman wed, and Hizdahr will
be king. Let
him
hold court. These are his people.”
    “Some are his, some are yours. The ones you freed.”
    “Are you chiding me?”
    “The ones you call your children. They want their mother.”
    “You are. You are
chiding
me.”
    “Only a little, bright heart. Will you come hold court?”
    “After my wedding, perhaps. After the peace.”
    “This
after
that you speak of never comes. You
should hold court. My new men do not believe that you are real. The ones who
came over from the Windblown. Bred and born in Westeros, most of them, full of
tales about Targaryens. They want to see one with their own eyes. The Frog has
a gift for you.”
    “The Frog?” she said, giggling. “And who is he?”
    He shrugged. “Some Dornish boy. He squires for the big
knight they call Greenguts. I told him he could give his gift to me and I’d
deliver it, but he wouldn’t have it.”
    “Oh, a clever frog.
‘Give the gift to me.’
”
She threw the other pillow at him. “Would I have ever seen it?”
    Daario stroked his gilded mustachio. “Would I steal from my
sweet queen? If it were a gift worthy of you, I would have put it into your
soft hands myself.”
    “As a token of your love?”
    “As to