A Feast for Dragons

from his finger.
    “You could have had your crown,” Dany told him. “My
sun-and-stars would have won it for you if only you had waited.”
    I waited long enough. I waited my whole life. I was
their king, their rightful king. They laughed at me
.
    “You should have stayed in Pentos with Magister Illyrio.
Khal Drogo had to present me to the
dosh khaleen
, but you did
not have to ride with us. That was your choice. Your mistake.”
    Do you want to wake the dragon, you stupid little
whore? Drogo’s
khalasar
was mine. I bought them from him, a
hundred thousand screamers. I paid for them with your maidenhead
.
    “You never understood. Dothraki do not buy and sell. They
give gifts and receive them. If you had waited …”
    I did wait. For my crown, for my throne, for you. All
those years, and all I ever got was a pot of molten gold. Why did they give the
dragon’s eggs to you? They should have been mine. If I’d had a dragon, I would
have taught the world the meaning of our words
. Viserys began to
laugh, until his jaw fell away from his face, smoking, and blood and molten
gold ran from his mouth.
    When she woke, gasping, her thighs were slick with blood.
    For a moment she did not realize what it was. The world had
just begun to lighten, and the tall grass rustled softly in the wind.
No,
please, let me sleep some more. I’m so tired
. She tried to burrow back
beneath the pile of grass she had torn up when she went to sleep. Some of the
stalks felt wet. Had it rained again? She sat up, afraid that she had soiled
herself as she slept. When she brought her fingers to her face, she could smell
the blood on them.
Am I dying?
Then she saw the pale crescent
moon, floating high above the grass, and it came to her that this was no more
than her moon blood.
    If she had not been so sick and scared, that might have come
as a relief. Instead she began to shiver violently. She rubbed her fingers
through the dirt, and grabbed a handful of grass to wipe between her legs.
The
dragon does not weep
. She was bleeding, but it was only woman’s blood.
The moon is still a crescent, though. How can that be?
She
tried to remember the last time she had bled. The last full moon? The one
before? The one before that?
No, it cannot have been so long as that
.
“I am the blood of the dragon,” she told the grass, aloud.
    Once
, the grass whispered back,
until
you chained your dragons in the dark
.
    “Drogon killed a little girl. Her name was … her
name …” Dany could not recall the child’s name. That made her so sad that
she would have cried if all her tears had not been burned away. “I will never
have a little girl. I was the Mother of Dragons.”
    Aye
, the grass said,
but you turned
against your children
.
    Her belly was empty, her feet sore and blistered, and it
seemed to her that the cramping had grown worse. Her guts were full of writhing
snakes biting at her bowels. She scooped up a handful of mud and water in
trembling hands. By midday the water would be tepid, but in the chill of dawn
it was almost cool and helped her keep her eyes open. As she splashed her face,
she saw fresh blood on her thighs. The ragged hem of her undertunic was stained
with it. The sight of so much red frightened her.
Moon blood, it’s only
my moon blood
, but she did not remember ever having such a heavy flow.
Could it be the water?
If it was the water, she was doomed. She
had to drink or die of thirst.
    “Walk,” Dany commanded herself. “Follow the stream and it
will take you to the Skahazadhan. That’s where Daario will find you.” But it
took all her strength just to get back to her feet, and when she did all she
could do was stand there, fevered and bleeding. She raised her eyes to the
empty blue sky, squinting at the sun.
Half the morning gone already
,
she realized, dismayed. She made herself take a step, and then another, and
then she was walking once again, following the little stream.
    The day grew warmer, and the sun beat down upon her head and
the burnt remnants of her hair. Water splashed against the soles of her feet.
She was walking in the stream. How long had she been doing that? The soft brown
mud felt good between her toes and helped to soothe her blisters.
In the
stream or out of it, I must keep walking. Water flows downhill. The stream will
take me to the river, and the river will take me home
.
    Except it wouldn’t, not truly.
    Meereen was not her home, and never would be. It was a city
of strange men with strange