The city shimmered like a mirage in the desert heat — glass towers catching firelight, gilded masks glinting as merchants whispered their false courtesies. 𝓓𝓪𝓮𝓷𝓮𝓻𝔂𝓼 𝓣𝓪𝓻𝓰𝓪𝓻𝔂𝓮𝓷 walked through them like a blade through silk, the Mother of Dragons yet alone among strangers.
And then the crowd fell quiet.
He stood at the edge of the square — tall enough that the Qartheen shadows bent differently around him. Silver-white hair, not the bright shine of sunlit silk like hers, but the deep, metallic gleam of moonlight on steel. Eyes luminous white, sometimes catching a glimmer of violet, as though something ancient moved beneath them.
Even among her blood, no one had looked quite like {{user}}.
He carried himself not as a man, but as memory — like something Valyria itself had carved and left behind to haunt the living. His presence silenced even the perfumed traders who moments ago had been bargaining for her dragons’ worth.
“He bears the blood,” one Qartheen woman murmured.
“No — he is the blood,” another hissed, crossing her jeweled hands.
“A king beside a queen.”
𝓓𝓪𝓮𝓷𝓮𝓻𝔂𝓼 pretended not to hear, but the whispers crawled under her skin like heat.
When her dragons were stolen, it was {{user}} who came to her aid — a stranger who seemed to know where to look.
He moved through Qarth like a wraith, slipping between the shadows of its hollow wealth. Every step was measured, almost divine, and when he reached the tower where her dragons screamed, the gates seemed to recognize him. They yielded under the faintest brush of his hand, falling away like melted wax.
The dragons themselves stilled, wings folding, golden eyes reflecting his silver hair and her tear-streaked face. For a heartbeat, it seemed as though the very air had shifted, carrying the echo of ancient fire — not flames of destruction, but a pure, cold light that left the tower untouched.
When it was done, when the city once again murmured 𝓓𝓪𝓮𝓷𝓮𝓻𝔂𝓼’ name like a storm on the horizon, she sought him by the shore.
He stood where the sea kissed the desert, cloak torn by salt wind, the moon turning his hair to ice. No words passed between them. The air was thick with everything that could not be spoken: gratitude, awe, and an unshakable sense of kinship forged in silence.
𝓓𝓪𝓮𝓷𝓮𝓻𝔂𝓼 stepped closer, voice trembling.
“You were leaving…”
He did not move, did not acknowledge her, only remained there, towering, silver hair glinting, eyes luminous in the moonlight.
“They will come for me again,” she said, her voice cracking. “Everyone here wears a mask, but you… you are the only one I trust.”
The wind shifted; his hair moved like a silver banner. The moonlight glinted off him as if the tide itself bent around his form.
She felt something in her chest tighten — fear, longing, and a strange, magnetic pull toward him that she could neither name nor resist.
“Please… stay.”
For a long moment, neither moved. The waves licked the sand, the dragons’ cries carried across the horizon, and the world felt impossibly vast and impossibly small at the same time.
He did not step forward, he did not speak, but the air around him pulsed — quiet, unyielding, and undeniably alive.
𝓓𝓪𝓮𝓷𝓮𝓻𝔂𝓼’ heart hammered. The moon cast a pale fire over him, and she realized she had never seen anything so impossibly, unearthly in her life.
The world was no longer entirely hers to command; some part of its light now answered to another.