PART I:

"Wining an army or keeping its honour, that was the question."

Viserys could not remember facing such difficult decision since he was forced to sell his mother's crown to survive. Sometimes, remembering how low has he sunk by giving all that remained of his family and his rightful title for some coins, he told himself bitterly that starving to death in the streets would have been far better than live to become someone who people cruelly called "the Beggar King".

A beggar king... Not only that, but now he was going to be the lord of the horse-fucking savages' whore, because, as he had done years before, Viserys had given what little dignity he had left to ally himself with Khal Drogo and have his Dothraki warriors at his disposal. The reward, once food for him and his sister, now was an army and the promise of having the Iron Throne for him and the heads of the Usurper and his sons on stakes outside the Red Keep. But the bitterness of his dishonour was bigger that the though of him getting back what was his and become the king he had always meant to be.

Viserys stood in in a meadow on the outskirts of the populous Pentos, seated on an earthen rostrum beside Khal Drogo and facing an excited khalasar that was celebrating the nupcias with fornication and violence. Eleven men had died during the wedding, and after seeing the blood making short rivers in the land, he had no disgust left for those savages who where fucking in front of his plate.

Though the ceremony had been an accumulation of noises, movement and smells, Viserys felt as distant for what was happening around him as he was no there, as if he was an indolent, free bird, watching the festivities from the skies.

He wore a light tunic made of a lilac silk as pale as his eyes that fell a few inches below his knees, a dark purple cape held by silver brooches, wide bracers of solid silver with complicated Valyrian hieroglyphics, a torc that formed the body of a dragon, and golden sandals. Despite the richness of his garments, he felt like a vile slut, ashamed of how loose the clothes were and how thin the silky fabric of his tunic was, almost revealing the pale body below it.

If he knew days before he was going to end like that, the dragon inside him would have woken so angered that he would have open his jaws and let the dracarys burn to ashes all the Dothraki in Essos. But he was no dragon, as much as he wished he were in those momentos of spite. Nor a king, even. At that moment, he could say that he was even less than Doreah, the young lysene beauty that the magister Illyrio had brought from a pillow house in Lys. She had been forced into that job, but he... he had chosen his fate.

The dishes, deliver but the solicitous slaves of the magister, followed one another, and even though he saw in his plate thick blood sausages patties glistening with fat made by the Dothraki and the syrupy pastries more typical of the pentoshi cooking, steaming meat of horse and a delicate sweetgrass compote that even the most picky commensal would have found delicious, he hardly ate anything. He didn't drink either; he was too consumed by the events and the painfully uncertain future to get drunk.

Viserys looked down, where his sister sat, and he was surprised that she was as disinterested of dishes he discarded from above as him. At thirteen years old, Daenerys was a thin and petite girl, with a gesture of indecision and fear that made her look as vulnerable as a dandelion at the mercy of the winds of winter. Due to her weak appearance, magister Illyrio compared her to Aegon the Unworthy's sad queen, the pious and frail Naerys, from whose son, King Daeron II, they descended. Ser Jorah, on the other hand, said that she resembled his second wife, a blonde and graceful daughter of lord Leyton of House Hightower that left him in his exile to become the whore of a lysene prince. But for Viserys, Dany wasn't some tragic queen that he only knew trough the heartbreaking songs that the bards sing about her, nor the unknown beauty. For him, Daenerys was the last remaining memory of his mother, the long gone queen Rhaella, of that dynasty that was at the verge of extinction. Looking at her, Viserys looked a his sister, and the last hope of the house of the dragon.

"Eat more", he ordered roughly, before returning his attention to his table, "or else you will not grow healthy and strong"

His sister nodded energetically and made the effort of taking a bite of one of the syrupy pentoshi sweets that he hadn't eaten before; she knew that someday, she would need all her strength. Viserys looked at his plate, only to realise that the slaves had taken the last dish and the nuptial ceremony had finally ended. The realisation of what was coming next made him feel as if his guts had fallen to the floor.

'The consumation', he thought, anxiously. 

His now husband stood up and went to get his horse, a lean red stallion as menacing as his rider. But when he got back to the rostrum, he was also taking another one. Viserys saw a light grey mare, heavenly beautiful, whose leathery reins the Khal was holding out to him. 

"She is a steed worth for a king", he said when he took the mare's reins, "I am happy that you have gifted her to me".

Khal Drogo remained silent while a nervous ser Jorah translated the words from the Common Speech to the Dothraki Language. Then he stared at him intensely, with those piercing and serious black eyes now veiled with an emotion that Viserys recognised. 

'Desire'.

He felt how a shiver crossed his spine when he sat on the saddle of the mare, his guts burning like wildfire due to the anticipation. He knew what was coming next, and he felt unable to remain calmed.

He was said goodbye by a shy ser Jorah and a smily magister Illyrio. Suddenly, Daenerys run in his direction. 

"Brother", she said anxiously, but he silenced her with a hand gesture, "this is my fault. I..."

"When I got the crown, I assure you will never have to go through this", he assured sternly, "but I don't... Pray that what I am going to do is worth it".

He looked at her face pale with despair and doubts, as he rode alongside his husband to the horizon, where the sun was dying between golden skies and blood-clouds.

There was only a thought in his mind.

"I will do my duty and get back what is mine"