As Daenerys’s belly grew, the tension in Drogo’s chest wound tighter with every passing day.
He knew the fated moment was drawing closer.
Every step he took was on the edge of a blade — one misstep and everything would come apart.
He’d grown careful.
Deliberate.
Terrified of the wrong move pushing things somewhere he couldn’t pull them back from.
He’d lived among these people long enough to genuinely admire them.
These horse-lords lived completely free, sky for a blanket, earth for a bed, fighting whoever they felt like, taking whatever caught their eye.
He admired their loyalty.
He admired the ferocity bred into their bones.
He was truly proud of these tough, battle-hardened people he now called clansmen.
He just couldn’t stand their feasts.
Loud, rowdy, crude.
Women dancing half-dressed, writhing like snakes.
Every time, it hurt to watch.
But tonight he had no choice.
Tonight he was holding a feast for Daenerys in the bedchamber.
Because tonight, something was going to happen.
He wasn’t willing to gamble.
The best move was to let everything follow the path it was already set to take.
Drogo’s palace in Vaes Dothrak was crude by any standard, but it was the size of two basketball courts.
The roof curtains had been drawn, though moonlight still leaked through the gaps, shaft after shaft, like silver whips cutting across the dark.
Inside: completely open.
No rooms.
Not even a screen to divide the space.
Built, it seemed, for exactly this.
Right now it was deafening.
Three stone fire pits held whole horses turning on spits.
Fat dripped into the flames with a steady hiss and crackle.
The smell of roasting meat soaked the entire hall.
The Dothraki sat around the pits, drinking, shouting.
Drogo sat at the high seat, expression sour.
He still hadn’t worked out whether Khal Jommo and Khal Ogo had been invited by his bloodriders, or whether they’d just helped themselves to seats.
Especially Ogo.
That coward had attacked his khalasar, gotten three bloodriders killed, and fled faster than a rabbit.
Days ago the man was bowing on the Godsway, begging for mercy.
Now he was sprawled in Drogo’s feast like he owned the place?
Drogo smothered the anger and swept a glance at them both.
He was on decent terms with Jommo, but he hadn’t wanted to invite him either.
Conquering the grasslands meant fighting Jommo eventually.
Hard to draw a blade on someone you’d been drinking with.
He wanted as little to do with the other khals as possible.
But they’d arrived, and he couldn’t throw them out.
In the sacred city, every Dothraki had to treat every other Dothraki as a blood brother.
So he did what etiquette demanded and seated them on either side of him.
Their bloodriders sat below.
Drogo had arranged his nine captains of a thousand at the very front, their tables piled with grapes, dates, pomegranates, massive cuts of roasted meat, and bowls of wine that kept getting refilled.
The whole hall could see it.
That was the point.
He wanted everyone to see.
Daenerys sat at his right hand.
Her four handmaidens hovered around her.
Her table looked nothing like anyone else’s.
Just a small brass pot set on a specially made brazier, bubbling steadily, steam curling up from the surface.
Beside it, eight platters of sliced lamb, red and white, thin as paper, fanned out neatly.
Daenerys didn’t like horsemeat.
Drogo had arranged the sheep specifically for her.
Getting lamb in the Dothraki Sea was no small thing.
The Dothraki believed sheep had no right to graze this grassland.
The grass was for horses.
He’d heard from one captain that the men under his ten-rider had ridden five days there and back just for these few animals.
But that, Drogo supposed, was exactly why this place could be called the Dothraki Sea.
Let the sheep eat the grass, and there’d be no sea of green left.
Just dust.
Which made him think, the way it always did, of the northern neighbor in the world he’d come from.
Unchecked grazing.
Grasslands turning to sand.
Dust storms howling in every winter.
He’d eaten more than his share of that sand.
Daenerys picked up her chopsticks.
She’d gotten good at them, two thin wooden sticks held steady in her fingers without a thought.
She reached into the pot, lifted out a thin slice of lamb, dipped it in the sauce bowl, and brought it to her lips.
Half the room was watching her.
Chopsticks.
None of them had ever seen such a thing.
The Dothraki sat with meat in their fists, talking with their mouths full, eyes sliding sideways toward her table.
Watching her lift meat with those two tiny sticks.
Watching her dip it in the dark sauce.
Watching her eat in small, careful bites.
Nobody said a word.
They only looked.
Daenerys didn’t care.
She lifted another slice, dipped it, ate slowly.
After a moment she glanced around the room.
“Lale,” she said.
“Where is my brother?”
Lale did a quick sweep of the hall.
“He should be with Ser Jorah, Khaleesi.”
Doreah pointed toward the central fire pit.
“Ser Jorah is over there.”
Daenerys looked.
Jorah sat alone.
Viserys was nowhere near him.
“Lale.
Go ask him to come here.”
Drogo sat wedged between the two khals, thoroughly uncomfortable.
The two of them were going at it: which village to raid, how many girls to take, how many horses to demand from the losers.
Talking over each other, spit flying, eyes alight with naked greed.
No ambition whatsoever.
A thought surfaced in Drogo’s head, quiet and certain: You two are going to fall to me.
Sooner or later.
He had no interest in joining their conversation.
His eyes drifted to Daenerys.
She was talking with Jorah Mormont, a smile on her face.
Whatever Jorah had said, the corner of her mouth had lifted, her eyes crinkling at the edges.
Everything normal.
Just waiting for Viserys to walk himself to his end.
Qotho turned to him.
“Khal — did the Khaleesi teach you to eat this way too?”
Drogo looked at him.
“What’s the alternative?
Stick my hand into a boiling pot and grab the meat?”
Cohollo cut in beside him: “Qotho, when meat is cooking, have you never sneaked a bite?
The Khaleesi is simply eating while it cooks.”
Khal Jommo leaned forward with genuine curiosity, craning to see Daenerys’s table.
“What do you call this way of eating?”
“Hot pot,” Drogo said.
He caught movement in the corner of his eye.
Jorah Mormont, threading through the crowd.
Following the direction Jorah was heading, the evening’s true guest of honor finally made his entrance.
Viserys lurched into the hall, feet unsteady, face flushed deep red from drink.
He shoved through the crowd, pushing aside anyone in his path, voice carrying over the noise:
“Where is my sister?
I’ve come for her wedding feast!
You had the nerve to start without me?”
He spun around and nearly went down.
“Where is she?
Little bitch — come greet your king!”
Jorah was already there, moving to intercept him.
The two collided in the crowd, shoving back and forth, Viserys cursing the whole time.
Drogo, from his high seat, lifted his cup and drank.
Khal Jommo studied the lurching figure with open contempt.
“That’s the Beggar King?” A thin note of mockery.
“I heard he shares a carriage with eunuchs.”
“The Sorefoot King,” Drogo said.
The khals laughed.
The bloodriders laughed.
Viserys heard it.
He turned toward the high seat, saw Drogo, saw the other two khals, saw every face smiling at him.
“Khal Drogo.” He tried to walk steadily.
Failed.
“I have come to attend the feast.”
He made straight for the high seat.
Drogo stood.
He watched Viserys approach step by step, and spoke in the Common Tongue, deliberately, to cut:
“Your place is by the door.
Go sit with the eunuchs.”
Viserys stopped.
He followed Drogo’s eyes toward the entrance, where several eunuchs sat along the wall.
His face went dark red, nearly purple.
His hand found his sword hilt.
Jorah stepped forward immediately, moving to block him.
Viserys drew.
The blade came out fast, the point swinging up toward Jorah’s face.
“Stay back.”
Jorah went still.
Took one step backward.
The rasp of steel leaving its scabbard cut clean through the noise.
The laughter, the shouting, the drunken conversations, they fell quiet, one layer at a time, until the hall held almost nothing at all.
➤ Next: The Unsullied — Viserys
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