~ Jon ~

After showing Sam to the Maester's Chamber in the Sea Dragon Tower, which had been cold but clean, I lead him back down the narrow turnpike stairs and through the gallery to the Stone Drum towards mine and Daenerys' chamber.

'There's a library too,' I tell him as we pass it. 'It won't be as grand as the one in the Citadel but it's yours as you need it.'

He nods, but his mind is preoccupied.

'We're not sure it's a fever. It may be that Daenerys is taken with something else,' I say. 'We can send for Gilly and little Sam as soon as we know.'

'Yes, it's for the best,' he nods. Perhaps his thoughts were not where I'd assumed.

'The journey from Oldtown was smooth?'

Sam nods. 'It was, though the Gods know I don't travel well by ship.' He turns to me. 'But how are you, Jon. Or rather, Your Grace.' He grins. 'King of The Seven Kingdoms: you know, it does not seem so strange to me. Not really, not after Lord Commander.'

King Consort of the Seven Kingdoms,' I correct. 

Ah yes, a distinct difference. You're the first you know, I had a look through histories at the Citadel. I couldn't find another. Not one they wrote about in any case.  Plenty of Queen Consort's...'

Mayhaps if there had been a few more of us kings without crowns we would have seen less wars...'

'Then she is done with war?'

'And there we have it. The source of his tight mouth and troubled eyes. I stop walking and turn to him.

'Unless he comes south of the wall, then aye, she is. This throne is hers by rights.'

'Well, that's not technically how usurping works but....' he trails

'This is her home, Sam.'  Just as she'd told me I was. From the moment I first looked at  you it felt like coming home. 'And she was torn from it. Now I'm not saying The Mad King didn't deserve to die, and I never lived under a Targaryen ruler, but Dany is different, I promise you that. Dany is what this realm needs right now, and it needs her.  She's the only one who can stop the Night King, and she's the only one who can rebuild these kingdoms.'

He stares at me a few moments before lowering his eyes and nodding. 'I heard almost the same speech from Jorah...' he smiles. 'Minus the Night King part of course.'

I stiffen, then turn to continue walking. 'Jorah Mormont. What do you know of him? Tyrion claimed he caught Greyscale saving his life...' My tone of voice makes it clear what I make of the claim.

'He did; I cured him of it.' He says. I stop walking again, turning to him in disbelief. He gives me an easy smile and shrugs slightly. 'A long and painful process - for Ser Jorah. It was the business which kept me in Oldtown I told you of. Not really that complex a disease afterall, Greyscale...' he continues walking, talking quite conversationally as though discussing the weather in Dorne and not his curing of one of the most feared diseases in the seven kingdoms and beyond.

    oOo

'Hard to imagine she took down the Iron fleet and the entire Lannister army,' Sam says with quiet awe. 'She looks like a girl.' She did look like a girl. Small and fragile, pale skin and paler hair dulled from feeding the fever raging through her. 'The Mother of Dragons...' he says with a slight shake of his head.

'I require to change the queen's nightdress,' the healer tells me, looking hesitantly at Sam, whose cheeks flush pink before he turns to face the wall.

Missandei crosses the chamber to the large chest and retrieves a swath of white fabric, then returns to Dany's side.  She and the healer work swiftly to raise her body and slide the damp nightdress from her and redress her in the clean one. 

It's all done within moments and her dirty nightgown is thrown into one corner with an instruction for it to be burnt. Before I've a chance to respond, the healer instructs me to lift Daenerys up out of the bed so she can strip away the soiled sheets and replace them too. Sliding my hands under her small body, I lift her into my arms, holding her as I would a babe.  Her breaths are slow and steady but her body is still hot - too hot - to the touch, a fire raging within.

The boy Elias moves quickly, stripping the sheets and carrying them from the chamber, the healer calling for him to remember the hot stone, before she and Missandei hurriedly remake the bed. Upon the fresh sheets, I lie her back down gently and look to the healer for further instruction who moves then to a leather bag sat on the desk, and retrieves from it a bundle bound in dark leather  which she carries to the bedside and rolls open. A silver bowl already sits on the small chest by the bed. Turning, she casts a furtive glance up to me.

'I need to let out the fever,' she says.  A range of sharp instruments glitter in the dim candle light as she waits for me. I bite the inside of my jaw hard then glance across at Sam. He gives a small nod of reassurance. Missandei looks helplessly at me having also eyed the small sharp blade the healer had produced from her leather-bound kit.

'Very well,' I nod.  My fingers clench to fists as she moves to slice open Daenerys pale skin. Diligent and careful, she cuts a small thin opening to allow a slow spill of blood into the bowl.  Missandei moves back to allow Sam and the healer to work and I watch them work upon her feet, wrapping them in lengths of thick cloth before Elias returns carrying a hot stone which they then settle between them. 

'You should get some rest, Jon' Sam says, flicking his gaze to mine. 'I'll stay with her.' I shake my head. 'And bathe. We don't know what carries the fever in.'

I do not want to leave her. I want to be by my wife's side until she wakes. But neither do I want to slow down her healing. Looking down at the clothes I'm wearing I wonder when I first put them on. One day? Two? I can't think. I feel heavy with exhaustion, my eyes burning from the hours I've spent awake.

'If she's to wake it will be with the sun, your grace,' the healer says gently. 'There's naught else to be done but wait.'

With a weary nod and a final look at Sam, I turn for the door. 

oOo

Aegon's Garden under the moonlight is a shadowy and eerie place. A low wispy fog hangs over the grass, the wind whistling over the walls, the sound of the sea a distant growl against the rocks below. I'd asked the Gods for many things over the years; in anger, envy, desperation, grief.  Always selfish in my appeals, always seeking things. Let me know my mother's name. Let her have loved me. Let me best Robb in this hunt. Let it be a lie, let my father be alive. Let me win this battle. Let her live.

I am selfish again now.

For it's this last I whisper again. More fervently than I had the first time.

This realm needs her.
You need her.

I can't do this without her.
You do not want to.

'Just please... let her live,' I whisper.

How could I lose her now? She was everything I'd waited for, everything I battled for, everything I dared not let myself dream of.  She was the hope that lived again inside me; the hope which had died the instant I looked into his blue dead eyes at Hardhome. She could defeat him. With her by my side I could defeat him. All of the prayers I'd sent to the Gods as a boy meant nothing, not truly, for she was what mattered most to me and these broken threatened kingdoms now. 

As I make my way through the garden to the door which leads out of the garden I have the sense of someone watching me, following me. I'd sensed it before but not fully acknowledged as such. Yet, when I look back over my shoulder the mist looks as though it has been disturbed but I see no one. 

The waves crash with a violence that frightens me somewhat, that makes me think this a rash and foolish idea. The moon catches the white of the beach foam so that it glitters like moondust as it courses over the black speckled sand.

Stripping down to only the loose white breeches I wear beneath the leather, I pile my garments neatly on the shore, boots on top of the doublet and sword, and wade slowly into the water. Ice sharp, it pricks like a thousand needles, and I grit my teeth against the onslaught. When the water reaches my thighs I raise my arms and dive under the icy depths. Pain and shock assaults every sense, but only for a few awful moments, then it is gone. Then I begin to warm.

Silky seawater caresses my body as the blood within cools to meet it. I swim against the current - which is not as violent as it had appeared from the shore - out into the cool depths of the sea before turning onto my back to stare up at the moon.

My breath slows and calms, my thoughts clearing and easing as I float aimlessly without an eye on land. How long had it been since I'd been in the water? We would swim in Long Lake as children, Arya would pull her knees up to her chin and jump from the highest point into the deepest depths without fear or hesitation. Sansa, refusing to get her hair wet, would watch from the shoreline laughing gaily at the rest of us while we played.

Two summers later King Robert had arrived.

If we had known what would happen to our family would we have lived more freely or less? Though it was true in every sense that Daenerys was my family now, I would make peace with Sansa. It was my duty to fix this thing between us, it was her who had lived through unimaginable torture at the hands of Joffrey, Cersei and then Bolton. I was the family she needed. And as soon as Daenerys was well again I would see it done.

And she would be well again.

She was The Mother of Dragons.  What hope did a fever of the blood have against one called such? Against she who was of fire itself? Against the Unburnt. The Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea. It had no hope. Her glory and majesty was too powerful to be overcome.

Invigorated by the sea as well as well as the fervency of this belief, I begin to swim back towards the shore.  Emerging from the water to the chill of the night air. My clothes lie where I left them on the sand, but I pull on only the leather breeches and boots, choosing instead to make the trip back to the castle carrying the rest. What the sea had begun, the nip and chill of the night air on my wet skin and hair does the rest. I am awake.

In the brazier of the stable where I'd met Sam, Gilly, and Ser Jorah Mormont, I throw the leather tunic and breeches into the small, thirsty fire. Then I remove my boots and do the same.  Again, that same feeling of being watched pricks at me and I turn to look over my shoulder only to be met with a misty silence. Every stablehand had been dismissed until the fever raging through the castle had cooled. The master would be asleep now. 

A soft breeze skirts past my cheek lifting my damp hair, a chill sweeping down my spine. The next moment, I am trembling. From cold surely, for the seawater had not entirely dried in the walk up from the beach,  but from something else too. I've felt the same sensation only twice before. When I met the eyes of the Night King across the distance at Hardhome, and again in the moments after the Red Woman woke me. It speaks of something unnatural, something... other.  With a last look around the abandoned stable I make my way back outside, surveying the yard; it's dark corners and thick shadows. The sound of the waves breach the walls, the sound of the fire crackles behind me, but I see nothing, no soul alive or other.

The sensation remains. 

Suddenly the caw of a crow - no, a raven - bursts through the terrible silence. My eyes lift skyward in time to see it rise up overhead, disappearing for a moment as it moves against the black night sky.  It flies towards the great belly of the castle, to the window of the chamber where Daenerys battles the fire in her blood which is not her own. Perching on the ledge for a few moments, peering into the lit chamber, it takes to the sky once more. Another loud cry before it swoops overhead, flying north in the direction of the sea.

I awake late into the morning, my body complaining loudly at the discomfort of the wooden chair I'd finally fallen asleep in. Glancing across the chamber toward the bed my heart lifts. 

Daenerys is propped up, awake, Missandei sitting by her side spooning broth into her mouth, Sam snoozing loudly on a chair close to the window, the healer carefully stirring a small stone bowl. My body rises swiftly from the chair, ignorant of the groaning of my bones, and Dany turns her head toward me.

When our eyes touch I am back in Winterfell, the snow falling around us as I look upon her for the first time. The lavender irises look paler than I remember, leeched of their colour by the fever. They shimmer with something unspoken as a soft, sad smile lifts her mouth.  I go to her, half-breathless from relief, dropping to my knee by her bedside to take her hand in mine. It is clammy still, hot still, but she's alive.

Glorious, defiant, and alive.

Pressing my mouth to the back of her hand, I kiss it tenderly, my mouth lingering there as it seems we search for something in each other's gaze.

'I dreamt of you,' she says at last, her voice a whispered song. I wonder, if like mine, her dreams too are formless and dark, like ink moving through water.

'Do you recall it?' I ask, desperate to hear her talk more, desperate to hear the delicate melody of her words. 

She nods, and then tears dance into the whites of her eyes. Lavender turning silver with sadness. 'Yes. Yes I remember it all.'

Outside I'm certain I hear a raven's caw. Or perhaps it is a dragon's cry.