➰Jon➰

She was not in the Great Hall or the Chamber of the Painted Table above it. As I'd seen all three dragons come in to land on the south side of the rise on my return from the caves I knew she was not out riding either. Rhaegal had lifted his head to watch my progress up the stone stairway from the beach, that same intelligent acknowledgement in his eyes.

As I approach our chamber I half expect to hear her soft musical laughter and his low accented tones coming from behind the door, but it too is empty. However, as I come fully into the chamber the young steward stands up from his crouch by the fire and bows, apology in his pale eyes. He is a tall boy of about fifteen or so, a small nose and a full mouth that looks like a girl's.

'Forgive me, your grace, I am a little later to my duty; I was seeing to the queens' guests chambers first. As she bid me.'

I nod. 'Then you have just now spoken with the queen?'

'No, t'was before she left for the harbour, sire.'

I halt the removal of my gloves and look at him directly. 'The harbour?'

'She set off just before sunset, your grace. With the Meereenish Lord.'

'He is no Lord,' I state. 'And should not be addressed as such.'

The boy lowers his eyes to the floor.

'Yes, your grace.'

Throwing my gloves down on the trestle table I turn from him and charge from the chamber and down the corridor toward the Great Keep. More stewards mill about; carrying baskets of bread and barrels of wine, heaving buckets of water and lighting sconces on the wall, all of them stopping to bow to me as I pass.

I cross The Stone Drum and through the galley to the foot of The Wyndwyrm where I take the stairs three at a time until I arrive at the first landing. I don't stop to knock on his door before throwing it open.

Tyrion is seated at his desk; several candles, an array of ledgers, papers, letters, and pots of ink scattered across it. The fire blazes loudly in the corner but he still wears a dark fur cape about his shoulders.

He lifts his head as I enter and slowly sets down the sheaf of papers he holds and offers me a long look. There's no surprise or irritation on his face at my entrance. Sitting back in his seat, he waits for me to speak.

'You allowed her to go with him to the harbour?' I accuse, glaring at him. My breath feels hot in my lungs and my palms are sticky from cold rage and panic as I clench them by my side.

'She is the queen,' he explains with infuriating calm. 'I don't allow her to do anything.'

'Have you a hand in recalling him back from Meereen too?'

He sighs. 'Of course not. I had no word of his arrival and neither did she.'

'He writes to her frequently,' I challenge. 'Surely he would have written of his intention to visit her?

'He writes the queen regular reports as per her request. Nothing more.' He moves to the low table behind his desk and lifts a jug and pours some wine into a cup.

'In Valyrian?' I say. 'Why in the Gods would he do that? What could he possibly have to say to her that he would not risk another reading?'

'Valyrian is his mother tongue,' explains Tyrion, sliding down from his chair. 'He writes in Valyrian because that is his tongue.'

I give him a skeptical look. 'Have you read these reports?'

He crosses the chamber and hands me the cup of wine which I take from him moodily.

'No.'

'Then you have not the vaguest idea about what he writes to her.'

He sighs again. 'No, I suppose I don't. I suppose he could write to her of how he misses her. Of how no other woman compares to her. Of how he goes to sleep each night wishing she was next to him. Of how he longs to kiss her and tou-'

'I warn you not to say another word, Tyrion,' I growl, my fist curling tight around the cup. He makes a show of closing his mouth and locking it with a key. Furious, I drain the wine and move to where the jug sits to refill it. Tyrion settles in his chair by the fire with his own wine. He looks quite relaxed.

'What I was trying, albeit badly, to emphasise, is what does it matter what he writes to her? What do flowery words of professed love scribbled in Valyrian on parchment matter?'

I turn to him, scowling.

'She chose you,' he clarifies. 'She married you. Shares her rule with you.'

'And I will not share her with another man,' I reply. I imagine the grinning face of Daario Naharis and my fist pummeling it over and over again until it's a bloody mess of flesh and bone. 'I told you this before I agreed to this marriage that she will not share another man's bed. If that is what she wants then...' Then what? Was I really considering leaving her? Gods. Even they knew I couldn't do it. Couldn't bear the idea of being parted from her now.

As I settle down on a stool across from Tyrion, the realisation sinks in that I am utterly lost to her. That even if she told me she still desired Daario Naharis and that from this night forth she would share his bed, I would still be bound to her. Hopelessly, ferociously bound.

I shake my head and run a hand over my mouth while Tyrion watches me carefully.

'Have you told her you're in love with her?' He asks, soft, a few moments later.

I meet his stare directly before diverting it into the flames.

'She's a woman as much as she is a queen,' Tyrion informs me. 'She needs to hear from the man she loves that he feels just as she does.'

I turn my head back to him, frowning. 'Daenerys is not in love with me.'

'Gods, you really are blind, aren't you?' He scowls. 'In the time I have known her I have watched men fall terribly in love with Daenerys Targaryen. I have watched them swear their swords and their hearts and their lives for her, for the briefest vaguest chance that she might love them in return.' He sits forward in his chair a little. 'To have her look at them the way she looks at you.'

'What are you talking about, Tyrion?'

'I am talking about the way she speaks your name, as though it were a favourite poem. The way she looks at you when you are in the room or how she looks for you until you are. It more than any other man has ever been gifted, I assure you. It's quite clear to everyone, likely even Daario Naharis, that she is very much in love with you.'

The scar across my heart and the shattered broken thing beneath it burns bright and hot as I stare at him.

'How you see the world is oft different from how others see it,' I manage, a little breathless from his words. From the possibility that they might be true.

'Perhaps. But I see our queen quite well.' He takes a deep sip of his wine as he watches me. 'Tell her how you feel and you will hear it back from her, I am sure of it.'

'It does not solve the problem of Daario Naharis,' I say, standing to pour myself some more of his wine.

'Perhaps not. Or perhaps assured in the glory of our queen's love, you will no longer see him as a problem at all.'

'I shall still want him dead,' I admit.

He chuckles, raising his cup to allow me to refill it. 'As many before you have done, I assure you. Jorah was one of them.'

'Jorah?'

'Another man who was hopelessly in love with her...'

'Should I expect him to arrive on a ship too?'

He ponders this as he drinks his wine. 'I wouldn't think so. I'd imagine him dead by now.' A cut of sadness moves into his green eyes. 'He was struck down with Greyscale protecting me from stonemen. A good man, decent.'

'And Daario Naharis?' I ask. 'Is he a good and decent man?'

'Gods no. He is more indecent than I am, which is a great feat I assure you.'

'Perhaps I could slit his throat while he sleeps...' I muse as I sit again.

'You are far too honourable for that.'

'Then I'll challenge him to single combat and run a sword from his groin to his throat.'

'On what grounds?' Tyrion looks faintly amused now.

'Because he looks at his queen as though she is a pleasure slave paid for with another man's coin.'

'You mean he looks at your wife like a pleasure slave paid for with another man's coin?'

'It so happens that they are the same thing,' I point out. 'What on earth can they be doing at the harbour at this late an hour?' I grumble as I take a deep sip of wine.

'He spoke of a gift he wanted the queen to see alone,' Tyrion shrugs.

'If he thinks to dishonour her in any way I will see him dead.'

'Missandei and two of her Queensguard rode with her. Her honour is perfectly safe.'

We drink in silence a moment or two before a small knock sounds on Tyrion's chamber door.

'Come in,' calls the Hand before the door is opened by the same steward who'd lit the fire in our chamber. He's carrying a large tray piled high: a leg of meat, a chunk of bread, and a fresh jug of wine. He looks surprised to see me and stops, before drawing his eyes to Tyrion. 'Elias, place it on the desk, please.'

It shames me that I did not know the boy's name and I consider that in fact, I know very few of the names of the maids and stewards who keep the castle ordered and warm for us. A small number of the stablehands and kitchen staff had been here prior to my arrival, and the rest, like Elias, had been brought from the small harbour town to serve the queen and I in residence.

I smile somewhat guiltily at him, recalling too my harsh tones toward him earlier. After placing the tray on the desk he turns to us and stops, hesitant.

'Yes?' Asks Tyrion.

'It is only that... well,' he looks at me and lowers his eyes. 'The queen has returned, your grace.'

I drain my cup and stand immediately. 'She is in our chamber?'

The boy swallows, nervously, then nods. 'She went into the Great Keep, your grace.' When he glances again at Tyrion a strange look crosses his face. Frightened almost. Tyrion notices too for he turns his body fully on the chair to address him.

'What is it, Elias? Speak.'

'It is... well... they brought him from the ship, my lord. Your brother... The Kingslayer.'

There's a terrible moment of silence, a heartbeat, before Tyrion's cup falls from his hand with a solid clatter, wine spilling like blood across the stone floor.

'Where is he?' I ask Elias, noticing all colour has drained from Tyrion's cheeks.

'The dungeons, your grace, they say,' he glances at Tyrion then lowers his voice. 'They say he is to be given to the dragon at dawn.'

Tyrion makes a desperately small sound and brings his hand up to cover his mouth. I notice it shake as he does so.

'Leave us, Elias.,' I say quietly and the boy gives me a lingering look before slipping silently from the chamber.

Tyrion's shoulders slump as he turns to look into the fire. I've never seen him so, scattered, fragile. He closes his eyes and speaks quietly, in a voice I barely recognise.

'I failed him.'

I pull the stool closer to him and sit down again. 'What do you mean? How have you failed him? Your brother's choices have always been his own.'

Tyrion turns to me, a look in his eyes I don't understand. Yet an awful cold sensation creeps across my chest.

'It was I who helped him escape,' he admits, tears shining in his eyes. 'It was I who found a ship and forced him aboard it. For I knew she would kill him if she found him. And find him she did. I failed him...'

My heart sinks. 'She will see it as betrayal.'

A desperate cut of pain twists across Tyrion's face. 'I failed them both. But he is my brother, Jon.'

'As Cersei was your sister.' I frown, recalling how easily he had spoken of his sisters death. Yet here he was now, broken by the thought of his brother's.

He shakes his head. 'No. No, she was not. She never once claimed me as her brother and I was glad of it. She always blamed me for killing our mother, would have seen me dead me long ago if not for Jaime. She was not a sister to me, not once.'

'The Kingslayer killed her father,' I remind him, my voice heavy.

'Her father was a monster, Jon,' he flares. 'Jaime did what he did to protect a city of innocent people —just as he spent his life protecting me. From all the worst of my sister's and my father's cruelties, he protected me. So I did the same for him. I had no choice. I would do it all again for he is my brother. I love him.' There's a plea in his eyes now.

It was treason. A treachery. Yet, how completely I understood it.

I understood his love for his brother for it was as keen and as pure as my love for Robb. Tyrion had been born with all the status his name and birth afforded him yet was treated no better than a bastard. Yes, I understood it. Where I'd been fortunate to have the love of my father. Tyrion had had only The Kingslayer.

'Say nothing of this to her,' I say decisively as I stand up. 'Of your aiding him. Say nothing to the queen.'

Tyrion gazes up at me, confused, lost, frightened.

'I shall not utter a word of it,' I assure him. 'I will speak to her on Jaime's behalf, ask her to consider letting him take The Black. We require good soldiers at The Wall. More so than ever before.'

'Wh...why would you do this?'

'Because I wish someone had been there to speak for my brother.' Tyrion looks down, ashamed. He had not given the order of course but had been close to the one who had.

The Kingslayer was not Robb, but like him, he had fought the war he had believed in, as we all did.

'But mainly because if she did this, you and she would never recover from it. And she needs you, Tyrion. Just as I need you. Just as this realm needs you.'

oOo

She's sitting at her dressing table as I enter, her maid brushing out the bright lengths of her silver hair. It looks like moonlight in the low light of the chamber. The maid stops as I enter and lowers her head, waiting. Dany turns on her stool to face me, her expression inscrutable.

'Leave us,' she tells the maid, who nods and hurries past me and out of the chamber leaving us alone.

'Daario will leave for Meereen at dawn,' she tells me. 'His business here is done.'

I nod. 'And what business was it which brought him across the sea? He brought you a gift I hear?'

She looks faintly uncomfortable, shifting slightly on her stool. 'The Kingslayer. He was captured in an alehouse in Lys. Daario wished to bring him to me personally.'

I walk further into the room, closer to her.  'Yes, I'm sure he did.'

'Jon, he is... loose with his tongue,' she begins before realising with horror what she has just said. 'I mean, he is loose with his words. You must pay him no heed.'

'He looks at you as though you stand before him naked, writes to you with words I cannot read, and insults me before my queen and my wife, and I am merely to 'pay him no heed??'

She frowns, suspicious. 'He writes me reports from Dragons Bay. Reports I did not know were addressed to you.'

The accusation is clear and it both riles and shames me at the same time.

'Surely any reports sent to this throne are of interest to its king as well as its queen?'

'I have hidden nothing from you of any import, nor would I do so. He writes to me of the consul and it's dealings - nothing of which is of any interest, I assure you.'

'Men who have shared your bed are of an interest to me, Daenerys.'

A flush hits her cheeks as she tries a moment to regain her composure.

She rises from the stool and comes toward me. 'I am sorry if my conduct prior to our marriage offends your male pride, Jon, but I cannot change it. And neither shall I apologise for it.'

My tongue burns with the need to refute her claim, for it does concern me —how could it not? —when her gaze changes, hardening, her lavender eyes narrowing upon me.

'I also find it absurd that you should hold me to such account when I must compete with the wildling woman whose name you still utter in your sleep.'

My breath disappears from my lungs entirely. Heat spearing my chest and bleeding up to my throat and cheeks. I open my mouth to speak but my tongue feels like an illicit thing now and so I close it again.

'Ygritte,' she says quietly, all fire gone from her. The name spoken in her tongue sounds odd, like another language I don't speak. 'The first time you spoke it I did not know what it was. It sounded not like a name but like... like a prayer breathed in the dark.' Something like hurt bleeds into her eyes. 'The second time you spoke it I knew it for what it was. Love.'

She looks sad as she turns back to her dressing table and takes a seat again, picking up the silver comb.

I am not certain how much time passes between us then. I feel loss and shame and guilt all at once.

'I did love her,' I say finally. The words leave me like a release, like some heavy thing I had carried for far too long alone. 'I broke my vows and lay with her. Then I betrayed her.' I blink away the image of her blood pouring out across the snow. 'She died in my arms.'

She had been listening with her head turned slightly. I decide to go on. 'It's guilt you heard me speak, not love, for that's what haunts my dreams still. Guilt.'

'How did you betray her?' She turns on the stool to face me fully. 'With another woman?'

I shake my head. 'There's been no other. Not since her. Not until you.'

She considers this for many moments, her face unimaginably soft, her eyes warm as she looks up at me from where she sits.

'Love makes us do terrible and desperate things,' she says.

Yes, it did. Terrible, desperate, treacherous things.

'Spare the Kingslayer.'

She blinks in surprise as her entire body hardens. 'What?'

I cross the chamber and lower myself to my knee before her and take her hand.

'Spare him, Dany. For Tyrion; it will ruin him, you know it will.'

She slides back a little in her seat but allows me to keep hold of her hand in mine.

'Spare him?' She says, disbelieving. 'Spare the man who led armies against me? Spare the man who killed my father and helped the usurper onto his throne? Spare the man who helped kill my family and forced my brother and I from our home? Spare him?'

She shakes her head, incredulous.

'Daenerys I know how this must feel, but you must thin—.' She stands, pulling her hands from mine and pushing past me where I kneel.

'Yes, you do know,' she says in a tone so cold it sends a shiver down my spine. 'You know because your family too were destroyed by them. How can you ask this of me? You cannot!' I rise slowly to go towards her but she puts her hands out to stop me coming closer. 'Which of your enemies would you have spared, Jon? Tell me? The Frey who cut off your brothers head? If he had not been slaughtered by his daughter would you have pardoned him his crimes? Or the one who took your father's? Would you have spared him? How about the bastard who wed and raped your sister? Which one? Tell me?!' She demands, tears glimmering in her eyes.

'I don't know,' I admit, hanging my head.

'You would not have spared any of them! You know you would have seen them all pay!'

'Dany, please, this is Tyrion. Tyrion who has served you faithfully and well. Think of him now before you do this...'

'If he thinks ill of me for what I must do now then he is no faithful servant of mine,' she decrees. 'Daario offered to carry out the sentence upon the ship so that I would not have to face Tyrion, but why should I waver over such transgressions as those the Kingslayer has committed upon me? I had Drogon devour that Clegane monster alive for what he committed upon my niece and nephew and I bare no guilt for it. Think you I would bear any for delivering The Kingslayer the same fate?!'

'Yes,' I nod. 'I do.'

'Then you do not know me!'

I close the distance between us and take her face in my hands. 'Tyrion loves you; would do anything you asked of him and more. Hails you as the greatest queen who ever lived to rule any kingdom. How could he find it within his heart to see you as such if you kill the brother he loves?'

She shakes her head and moves it out of my hold. 'I must be strong,' she says, her lip quivering. 'I cannot let those who have sought to destroy me live to try and do so again. To take from me what I have fought so hard for.' She looks at me pleadingly as she says this.

'Let him take the black, Dany, please.'

She closes her eyes tight and shakes her head violently, as though the image her mind has just presented her is too difficult to accept. When she opens them again her violet gaze glimmers with tears and something akin to betrayal.

'Why is Tyrion not here to speak for his brother? Why has he sent you to me now?'

'He did not send me. I am asking you.'

She closes her eyes once more and nods, moving carefully toward the bed. 'You, who I can deny nothing? He is nothing if not clever...'

'Dany, I promise you, he did not send me. He sees it as hopeless and expects nothing. I am asking you this because I believe it is the right choice. Because I believe you will regret such an act against one you care for as deeply as you care for Tyrion.'

She closes her eyes again, her body appearing to weaken slightly before my eyes.

'Send him to The Wall, you say,' she swallows, touching her hand to her head. 'Send him where I sent those of his men who lowered their swords and bent their knee? Send him where he can build an army against me again?'

When she turns to me she looks pale, deathly so, her cheeks and lips leeched of colour. I'm already moving toward her when it happens; she reaches out to grip hold of the wooden post of the bed but it's too late.

She sinks to the floor in a delicate heap of silk and silver hair. I only just manage to slide my body under hers to break her fall, catching her small unconscious body in my arms.