A Feast for Dragons

father’s strength
is failing, but his devotion to your cause is as strong as ever. If my manner
or my person have displeased you, that is my sorrow, but—”
    “If you would please me, ser, be happy for me,” Daenerys
said. “This is my wedding day. They will be dancing in the Yellow City, I do
not doubt.” She sighed. “Rise, my prince, and smile. One day I shall return to
Westeros to claim my father’s throne, and look to Dorne for help. But on this
day the Yunkai’i have my city ringed in steel. I may die before I see my Seven
Kingdoms. Hizdahr may die. Westeros may be swallowed by the waves.” Dany kissed
his cheek. “Come. It’s time I wed.”
    Ser Barristan helped her up onto her sedan chair. Quentyn
rejoined his fellow Dornishmen. Strong Belwas bellowed for the gates to be
opened, and Daenerys Targaryen was carried forth into the sun. Selmy fell in
beside her on his dapple grey.
    “Tell me,” Dany said, as the procession turned toward the
Temple of the Graces, “if my father and my mother had been free to follow their
own hearts, whom would they have wed?”
    “It was long ago. Your Grace would not know them.”
    “You know, though. Tell me.”
    The old knight inclined his head. “The queen your mother was
always mindful of her duty.” He was handsome in his gold-and-silver armor, his
white cloak streaming from his shoulders, but he sounded like a man in pain, as
if every word were a stone he had to pass. “As a girl, though … she
was once smitten with a young knight from the stormlands who wore her favor at
a tourney and named her queen of love and beauty. A brief thing.”
    “What happened to this knight?”
    “He put away his lance the day your lady mother wed your
father. Afterward he became most pious, and was heard to say that only the
Maiden could replace Queen Rhaella in his heart. His passion was impossible, of
course. A landed knight is no fit consort for a princess of royal blood.”
    And Daario Naharis is only a sellsword, not fit to
buckle on the golden spurs of even a landed knight
. “And my father?
Was there some woman he loved better than his queen?”
    Ser Barristan shifted in the saddle. “Not … not
loved. Mayhaps
wanted
is a better word, but … it was
only kitchen gossip, the whispers of washerwomen and stableboys …”
    “I want to know. I never knew my father. I want to know
everything about him. The good and … the rest.”
    “As you command.” The white knight chose his words with
care. “Prince Aerys … as a youth, he was taken with a certain lady of
Casterly Rock, a cousin of Tywin Lannister. When she and Tywin wed, your father
drank too much wine at the wedding feast and was heard to say that it was a
great pity that the lord’s right to the first night had been abolished. A
drunken jape, no more, but Tywin Lannister was not a man to forget such words,
or the … the liberties your father took during the bedding.” His face
reddened. “I have said too much, Your Grace. I—”
    “Gracious queen, well met!”
Another
procession had come up beside her own, and Hizdahr zo Loraq was smiling at her
from his own sedan chair.
My king
. Dany wondered where Daario
Naharis was, what he was doing.
If this were a story, he would gallop up
just as we reached the temple, to challenge Hizdahr for my hand
.
    Side by side the queen’s procession and Hizdahr zo Loraq’s
made their slow way across Meereen, until finally the Temple of the Graces
loomed up before them, its golden domes flashing in the sun.
How
beautiful
, the queen tried to tell herself, but inside her was some
foolish little girl who could not help but look about for Daario.
If he
loved you, he would come and carry you off at swordpoint, as Rhaegar carried
off his northern girl
, the girl in her insisted, but the queen knew
that was folly. Even if her captain was mad enough to attempt it, the Brazen
Beasts would cut him down before he got within a hundred yards of her.
    Galazza Galare awaited them outside the temple doors,
surrounded by her sisters in white and pink and red, blue and gold and purple.
There
are fewer than there were
. Dany looked for Ezzara and did not see her.
Has the
bloody flux taken even her?
Though the
queen had let the Astapori starve outside her walls to keep the bloody flux
from spreading, it was spreading nonetheless. Many had been stricken: freedmen,
sellswords, Brazen Beasts, even Dothraki, though as yet none of the Unsullied
had been touched. She prayed