Chapter Text
The common room of the inn was thick with pipe smoke and the smell of roasted meat. There were some merchants crowded around a bench, their voices rising in boasts and wagers about the tourney to come. Daeron sat apart from them, hunched over a table in the corner where the firelight barely reached. Two empty flagons of wine sat before him. He was working on the third.
He'd stopped thinking leagues ago; how far from King's Landing, how close to Ashford he was, where Egg was, what Aerion was doing. The point was not to think. The doublet he wore was fine work, red and black silk embroidered with the three-headed dragon, but wine had darkened the front of it to the color of old blood. His dull hair hung limp and unwashed. Still, there was no mistaking what he was. Even drunk and disheveled, a prince remained a prince.
The inn had filled as evening fell, swelling with minor lords and hedge knights, merchants hoping to profit from the tourney crowds, and those hangers-on who always gathered where power and coin congregated. Daeron had chosen his corner far from the hearth, away from the boisterous clusters of men. He wanted to drink in peace. Or at least in solitude.
But, it was not peace he’d found tonight. Something better.
She sat across the room, perched on the edge of her seat. Her gown was Myrish silk the color of midnight, cut low enough to hint at promises but high enough to withhold them. Rings glinted on her slim fingers where they curved around a chalice of summer wine—the good sort, gold as sunlight. Her hair was stark white and her skin had that warm bronze cast that spoke of distant shores.
Lyseni, Daeron thought. The pillow-houses of Lys were famous throughout the Seven Kingdoms for their beauties. The blood of old Valyria ran strong there. Bastard children of the Freehold made into slaves for the dragonriders of old, bred for little more than pleasure. But this girl wasn't working the room.
A whore of great beauty not selling her wares was part of the game. Who would approach her first? Who would win her favor? Whose purse was deep enough, whose name grand enough? The men around him were already stealing glances. No hedge knight could afford such an evening. Even most lords would balk at the price she'd command.
Daeron had coin enough to buy twenty nights with her. A hundred.
Daeron wished for all the world that he had neither coin or lineage. That he was some fool farmer's son who could only dream of Lyseni girls in silk. What he would have given to have such a dream. To sleep and find only perfumed skin waiting for him. No reality to ruin it. No coin to make it sordid.
But he wasn't a farmer's son and the wine had run dry again.
Daeron pushed himself to his feet, the room tilting before it steadied. He crossed with his cup in hand, weaving between tables. Men glanced up as he passed, recognition flickering across their faces, but no one stopped him.
He dropped into the chair across from her without invitation.
Up close, she was even more striking. Her eyes were the color of the wildflowers that pocked the fields outside of King’s Landing cutting the green with their violet blubs, but they dimmed when they met his. The look that settled over her face was somber. Ill-fitting for a whore trying to entice a customer. What man could get his cock up with a woman looking at him like he'd already disappointed her?
But Daeron knew men who preferred it that way. His brother, Aerion, liked his whores crying, begging, ruined.
He set his empty cup on the table between them with a soft thud, then reached for his purse. Coins spilled from his fingers in a careless stream, clinking and rolling until they formed a small mountain of gold. Dragons, every one. The sigil of his house caught the firelight.
The cloud of her perfume passed through his nose, entering his lungs until he was dizzy with yearning. How long could she chase away the dragons and make him a mere man?
Her painted fingers reached out, selecting a single coin from the pile. She turned it over slowly, studying the three-headed dragon stamped into the gold. Then she pocketed it, leaving the rest untouched.
When she looked up at him again, her eyes flickered downward briefly before meeting his. “Your hands are shaking.”
The words came in High Valyrian. Not the bastard tongues of the Free Cities, diluted and changed by distance and their own ancient histories, but the pure tongue of dragonlords.
Daeron's wine-fogged mind stuttered. Had he mistaken a lady for a whore? His own fate was never known to him, but perhaps this is it: he mistakes a lady of Lys for whore and plunges the realm into war. Perhaps, someone will spare him the agony of life and cut his belly open at this table for the error. But, the sweet relief of death was always just out of reach. Valar Morghulis. All men must die. Except him, who has been chasing death in the bottom of his cups and still cannot find him. Only the gods knew why he clung to life.
He gave her a wry smile. “If truth be told, I cannot say whether I've drunk too much or too little.”
She set down her chalice and reached across the table. Her hand covered his. Her skin was warm bronze against his sickly pallor, and heat rushed beneath the surface where they touched.
This was why he clung to life. This fleeting warmth. Whatever hell awaited him would have no wine and no women. “Will you breathe some life into this fool of a prince, my lady?” The words came out softer than he'd intended.
“I am no lady.”
“I am a prince of the realm,” he said. “You are what I say you are.”
A ghost of a smile touched her lips, there and gone. “Then I am whatever your Grace wishes me to be.”
All men had, at one point or another, believed in the love of a whore. Daeron fell for every one of them that crossed his path. The old wench with pretty bosom he’d fucked in the stables behind her inn. He remembered the straw was the same color as her hair. A simple life to come home to. The maid on Silk Street, who’d been his first, and claimed that he was hers, but he’d been too busy searching for breath to see the lie in her words. The whore he’d snuck into Red Keep’s and loved while she breathlessly asked if she could see the Iron Throne. He’d shown her all of it—the throne, the eggs, the dragon skulls which was all the magic left in the world.
He would love this girl more than the others, he knew, for her beauty was worthy of songs and stories.
“Your name.”
“Sasza.”
Not a name belonging to the Lyseni, but one of the Free Cities that had its roots in the Old Empire of Ghis. Perhaps, Yunkai or Meereen. But, that too was wrong. Volantis, Sasza said, touching the starburst scar below her right eye. It was the only imperfection on her face, though it did little to mar her.
What did he know of Volantis beyond its Grand Black Walls forged from dragonfire centuries ago? Slaves sold for less than bread in Volantis.
He had no stomach to ask any more questions.
“Come,” he said instead, standing and offering his hand. “Let us find somewhere quieter than this.”
Her expression shifted, something that might have been resignation. But she took his hand and rose, and together they left.
His room was modest by the standards of the Red Keep. a bed, a chest for his belongings, a basin for washing. But the innkeeper had at least provided a small wooden tub, and servants had filled it with hot water from the kitchens. Steam rose in pale wisps, and Daeron found himself suddenly desperate to be clean.
In King's Landing, they would have poured oils into the bath until the room smelled like a garden: lavender and mint and lemon. Here he had only rough, homespun soap, the kind that smelled of lye and not much else. But it would do.
Sasza stood near the door, watching him. The firelight from the small hearth painted her in warm tones, softening the angles of her face.
Daeron began unlacing his doublet, fingers clumsy with the ties. “You needn't stand so far away.”
She moved closer, but carefully, approaching a wild animal. When she was near enough, she reached out and began helping with the laces.
The doublet came away, then his shirt. The cool air raised gooseflesh on his skin. He could feel her gaze on him waiting for instruction. When he opened his eyes, she was looking at the scars. Three of them. Thin white lines across his ribs where a training sword had caught him years ago. A gift from Aerion.
“The bath,” he said, gesturing toward the tub. He stepped out of his boots, unlaced his breeches, and let them fall.
The water was hot enough to pink his skin, and he sank into it with a groan. The heat soaked into his muscles, easing aches he'd been carrying along the road. Steam rose in clouds, opening his clogged lungs, clearing some of the wine-fog from his head.
Sober was too strong a word, but this memory would hold come morning.
Sasza stood at the edge of the tub, her expression uncertain. “Do you wish me to join—”
“No.”
She blinked. “Did you not want to—”
“You are not a very good whore,” Daeron said, and found himself smiling despite everything. “Or perhaps you've come to realize quickly that the blood of dragons has been soaked in too much wine tonight. Do not trouble yourself with it.”
He shut his eyes and let his head fall back against the tub's rim. The wood was hard against his skull, grounding him.
“Wash my hair.”
A pause. Then the soft sound of fabric rustling as she moved. She circled behind him and knelt where his head hung at the rim. He sat up straighter to give her room to work.
She stood, circling around behind him, and then knelt where his head hung at the rim. He sat up straighter to give her room. She was slim, more so than tall, with small hands that disappeared into his hair as she lathered the soap through it. Her touch was gentle, working with care rather than haste.
He found himself wondering, distantly, how other men managed it. How they could take a girl like this to bed and not feel as though they were breaking something already broken. Perhaps men like Aerion preferred it that way. His brother had always liked his pleasures cruel. And perhaps other men enjoyed that wounded look she wore. The thought turned his stomach.
“This a strange dream,” Sasza said quietly, pouring water over his head to rinse the soap away.
He opened his eyes, tracing the curve of her jaw. A dream? Was it a dream to wash a prince’s hair? Quaint were the dreams of the smallfolk. “If you knew the sorts of things I dreamed of, you would weep. Dragons and mountains of ash, red stars falling from the sky, and wildfire eating men alive.”
“I wouldn’t weep over such things.”
“Why not?”
“I have lives to weep for, not dreams.”
The words hung in the air between them. Daeron turned in the tub, water sloshing against the sides, so he could see her face properly.
“I am sorry,” he said, and meant it.
She laughed as though he'd said something absurd. Her fingers resumed their work, gentle against his scalp. “You are a very strange prince.”
“Daeron,” he corrected.
“Daeron,” she repeated.
He closed his eyes again and let her finish. The warmth of the water and her careful touch quieted the noise in his head. The steam thickened. The room blurred at its edges. Daeron the Dreamer, drunk as he was, drifted away.
And when he awoke, Daeron found himself still downstairs, his wine-cup empty and overturned beside him. A gold dragon lay pressed against his palm, warming the skin there. His face imprinted with woodgrain, the sour scent of wine in his nose, and tears mixed with the bile that rose.
He raised his head with a groan.
Only a dream.
He called for more wine and drank until his belly burned.