The hot air balloon climbed higher.
The land below spread open, wide beyond sight, flat and unbroken all the way to the edge of the world.
Wind came rolling in from the distance, pushing waves of grass forward in long, sweeping ripples.
This really is a green ocean, Drogo thought.
The Dothraki Sea.
He finally understood the name.
The column snaking across the grassland below looked exactly like a serpent, body swaying as it swam forward through the waves.
A falcon appeared beside them.
It flew level with the basket, wings fully spread, gliding without a single stroke.
It turned its head.
Bright black eyes flicked over them, calm and unhurried.
Dany held her breath and slowly extended her hand.
Closer.
Closer.
The falcon banked, one wing dipping slightly, and slipped past her fingertips.
Then it was gone, shrinking into the distance.
She turned to Drogo, her face lit up.
“It’s so green.
I’ve never seen anything this beautiful.” She looked back over the edge.
“Flying in the air like this, it’s incredible.”
Drogo reached over and tucked her wind-tangled hair behind her ear, his hand lingering to brush her cheek.
“This is just the green season.
You should see it when things bloom.
The whole world goes dark red, like a sea of blood spreading to the horizon.”
“Then the dry season hits, and everything turns grayish-brown.”
Dany frowned.
“Then I don’t like the dry season,” she said.
“Grayish-brown is the color of withering.
It’s the color of death.”
Drogo looked at her.
“I don’t either.”
She kept watching below as the balloon drifted on the wind, carrying them further and further out.
After a long while, the fuel in the burner ran out.
The balloon began its slow descent.
A crowd had been waiting below the whole time.
The bloodriders and several dozen riders had trailed behind at a distance, following the balloon’s shadow across the grass.
When they saw it coming down, they reined in their horses and looked up, waiting.
The basket gave a gentle shudder as it touched the ground.
Drogo didn’t let the balloon sit idle.
Over the next few days, the bloodriders and all six of his commanders of thousands took turns going up to see for themselves.
Two people per flight, twice a day, to keep the weight manageable.
They came down with wobbly legs and mouths hanging open.
“Khal.” Qotho planted his feet and stared at him.
“That…
how does that work?”
The others crowded around, all wearing the same look, the look of men who’d just seen something they had no words for.
They wouldn’t stop talking.
Then the foreigners lost their composure too.
They were captive slaves: Lyseni, Myrish, Tyroshi.
Merchants among them who had traveled every road worth traveling; craftsmen who’d built houses, ships, and wagons, men with calluses ground deep into their palms from years of working fine and intricate things.
And still.
They all stood there with their necks craned back, watching the balloon rise.
“The Horse Lord of the grasslands,” an old craftsman murmured, head tilted up, “actually put something like this together…”
Drogo kept looking for ways to put a smile on Dany’s face.
He made her a pinwheel.
She took it, and the wind caught it immediately, the blades spinning with a soft whirring sound.
She stared at it for a long moment.
“Thank you,” she said.
Then she raised it in her left hand and kicked her horse into a gallop.
The pinwheel spun and whirred in the wind, and she laughed like she’d found buried treasure.
Back in the modern world, she’d still be the age for candied hawthorn sticks.
Of course she loved a little thing like this.
Dany had taken to staying close to Drogo’s side.
It made her feel comfortable.
Happy.
Safe.
He knew that.
And he knew what else it meant.
With him there, Viserys didn’t dare come near her.
Viserys couldn’t bully her, so her dislike of him stayed where it was, not growing any deeper.
But Drogo needed her to see exactly how unhinged her brother was.
He needed her to see, clearly, what Viserys was willing to do to her.
So he began to deliberately pull away.
“I’m going to keep selecting commanders.” He dropped the words and rode off.
He knew Viserys would go find her.
Dany nodded and didn’t follow.
She mounted her silver mare and rode out into the open grassland.
The hooves pressed the grass flat on either side, and it sprang back up again behind her.
Wind rushed past her ears and streamed her hair out behind her.
Green waves rolled toward her in long swells, swallowing her whole.
The air was thick with the smell of grass and wet earth.
She breathed it in and felt her lungs go clean.
She reined in the mare, swung down, and stood with both feet in the grass.
It reached past her ankles, soft beneath her.
She took a long breath.
Then another.
Viserys came at her on horseback.
His ear was still wrapped in cloth.
He stumbled coming off his horse, caught himself, then lurched forward and grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.
“Have you forgotten your task?” His face was inches from hers, eyes bulging nearly out of his skull.
“Have you been working on that savage for me or not?”
Dany was shaken until her hair came loose.
She couldn’t find a single word.
These past days had been so good, so full, that she’d genuinely forgotten he existed.
Now he was right in front of her, and she remembered.
Right.
She had a brother.
“You little whore of a Horse Lord, making the true dragon wallow with these barbarians day after day!”
“Get Drogo to give me troops, do you hear me?” He yanked her hair with his left hand, and his right thumb and forefinger found her nipple and pinched, hard.
“Do you hear me?”
Dany raised her hand and slapped him across the face.
Viserys released her.
He stared at her like she’d grown a second head.
“I am Khaleesi.” Her chest heaved.
“You do not get to treat me like that.”
She was terrified.
Her whole life, she had never once defied him.
Viserys’s face twisted.
His hand went to the dagger at his belt.
He drew it, teeth clenched.
“I’m going to shave every hair off your worthless little body.”
He grabbed her hair.
The blade came up against her.
A crack split the air.
A whip snapped around Viserys’s throat.
He didn’t even have time to react.
He was wrenched backward like a dog on a leash and hit the ground hard, both hands clawing at the coils around his neck, face going dark red.
“I can’t breathe—” He kicked his legs.
Tears ran down his face.
From a distance, Drogo watched.
He’d seen this moment before.
Or something like it.
Dany spun toward Jhogo, who still held the whip.
“No — don’t hurt him.”
Her Dothraki was fluent now.
No hesitation in it.
Qhollo was already saying, “We should at least take his other ear.
Teach him something.”
“Let him go, Jhogo.
I don’t want him hurt.” She said it again, sharper.
Jhogo flicked his wrist.
The whip fell loose.
Viserys lay in the dirt, hauling in ragged breaths, his face still crimson.
Rakharo quietly took Viserys’s horse by the reins and led it away.
“Let him walk, Khaleesi.
To the Dothraki, a man who cannot ride is less than a man, the lowest thing there is.
He won’t be harmed, but he will be punished.”
Dany looked at him.
Nodded.
She turned around and switched to the Common Tongue, making sure every word was clear:
“Fine.
My brother walks.
He follows behind us.”
“No!” Viserys dropped to his knees, reaching for her.
“My dear sister, I raised you.
I raised you from nothing.
Even if you won’t call me king, you can’t make me walk, you can’t, ”
Dany looked at him.
Dirt all over him, tear streaks from the whip still wet on his face.
Wretched.
Something in her softened, just for a moment.
“Making my status lower than these Dothraki savages—”
Then she caught his eyes as they lifted to meet hers.
The self-pity was right there on the surface.
But underneath it, deeper, was venom.
She put the softness away.
“Walk.”
Viserys’s mouth hung open as she mounted her horse.
The corner of Drogo’s mouth moved, just slightly.
Dany’s loathing for her brother had just grown a little deeper.
He was sure of it.
He rode over and fell in beside her.
“I just hit him.” She said it to him quietly, something unsettled in her voice.
He looked at her.
Her hands weren’t quite steady.
“Should I hate him?” Her voice trembled.
“If I hate him…
will that make me less afraid of him?”
“Hate him or don’t hate him,” Drogo said.
“Either one is fine.
You’re Khaleesi.
You have the right to hate anyone you want, and the right to forgive anyone you want.”
Dany said nothing.
Wind moved across the grassland, and dried the faint wet shine from her eyes.
➤ Next: Vaes Dothrak
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