A Feast for Dragons

Will and Maester Kedry to be alive again
. “Do
you think Daenerys would be pleased to hear that I had bedded some whore?”
    “She might be. Men may be fond of maidens, but women like a
man who knows what he’s about in the bedchamber. It’s another sort of
swordplay. Takes training to be good at it.”
    The gibe stung. Quentyn had never felt so much a boy as when
he’d stood before Daenerys Targaryen, pleading for her hand. The thought of
bedding her terrified him almost as much as her dragons had. What if he could
not please her? “Daenerys has a paramour,” he said defensively. “My father did
not send me here to amuse the queen in the bedchamber. You know why we have
come.”
    “You cannot marry her. She has a husband.”
    “She does not love Hizdahr zo Loraq.”
    “What has love to do with marriage? A prince should know
better. Your father married for love, it’s said. How much joy has he had of
that?”
    Little and less
. Doran Martell and his
Norvoshi wife had spent half their marriage apart and the other half arguing.
It was the only rash thing his father had ever done, to hear some tell it, the
only time he had followed his heart instead of his head, and he had lived to
rue it. “Not all risks lead to ruin,” he insisted. “This is my duty. My
destiny.”
You are supposed to be my friend, Gerris. Why must you mock my
hopes? I have doubts enough without your throwing oil on the fire of my fear
.
“This will be my grand adventure.”
    “Men die on grand adventures.”
    He was not wrong. That was in the stories too. The hero sets
out with his friends and companions, faces dangers, comes home triumphant. Only
some of his companions don’t return at all.
The hero never dies, though.
I must be the hero
. “All I need is courage. Would you have Dorne
remember me as a failure?”
    “Dorne is not like to remember any of us for long.”
    Quentyn sucked at the burned spot on his palm. “Dorne
remembers Aegon and his sisters. Dragons are not so easily forgotten. They will
remember Daenerys as well.”
    “Not if she’s died.”
    “She lives.”
She must
. “She is lost, but I
can find her.”
And when I do, she will look at me the way she looks at
her sellsword. Once I have proven myself worthy of her
.
    “From dragonback?”
    “I have been riding horses since I was six years old.”
    “And you’ve been thrown a time or three.”
    “That never stopped me from getting back into the saddle.”
    “You’ve never been thrown off a thousand feet above the
ground,” Gerris pointed out. “And horses seldom turn their riders into charred
bones and ashes.”
    I know the dangers
. “I’ll hear no more of
this. You have my leave to go. Find a ship and run home, Gerris.” The prince
rose, blew the candle out, and crept back to his bed and its sweat-soaked linen
sheets.
I should have kissed one of the Drinkwater twins, or maybe both
of them. I should have kissed them whilst I could. I should have gone to Norvos
to see my mother and the place that gave her birth, so she would know that I
had not forgotten her
. He could hear the rain falling outside,
drumming against the bricks.
    By the time the hour of the wolf crept upon them, the rain
was falling steadily, slashing down in a hard, cold torrent that would soon
turn the brick streets of Meereen into rivers. The three Dornishmen broke their
fast in the predawn chill—a simple meal of fruit and bread and cheese, washed
down with goat milk. When Gerris made to pour himself a cup of wine, Quentyn
stopped him. “No wine. There will be time enough for drink afterward.”
    “One hopes,” said Gerris.
    The big man looked out toward the terrace. “I knew it would
rain,” he said in a gloomy tone. “My bones were aching last night. They always
ache before it rains. The dragons won’t like this. Fire and water don’t mix,
and that’s a fact. You get a good cookfire lit, blazing away nice, then it
starts to piss down rain and next thing your wood is sodden and your flames are
dead.”
    Gerris chuckled. “Dragons are not made of wood, Arch.”
    “Some are. That old King Aegon, the randy one, he built
wooden dragons to conquer us. That ended bad, though.”
    So may this
, the prince thought. The follies
and failures of Aegon the Unworthy did not concern him, but he was full of
doubts and misgivings. The labored banter of his friends was only making his
head ache.
They do not understand. They may be Dornish, but I am Dorne.
Years from now, when I am