The Blooming Flower?

  Naella hoped that with the sorcerer's departure that all would return to normal in King's Landing and she could complete her final year of service in relative peace. The gods saw fit to make a mockery of her hopes instead.

  When she heard that Pentos had been sacked, she tried to gather the courage to sneak aboard the next ship to sail there and find the baby brother she had given her tongue to keep safe. The spider found them all first.

  Gone were the smiles and occasional treats, replaced by a face that could be cut from stone behind a red cloak's helmet and a whispered threat. Hers was that her brother would be sold to a pillow house.

  They were to stay in the city and wait for further instructions. The spider did not linger long after.

  They all knew now that they were to be used as pawns in the game between the spider and the sorcerer, and many of them fled despite the whispered threats they received.

  Naella did not blame them. What hope did any of them have against a sorcerer that had already put the spider to flight?

  She still could not bring herself to do the same. It might all be a lie and her brother was already gone, perished in the sack, but fleeing would be giving up on him completely. It would put to doubt everything she's done.

  So she stayed. Lady Margaery offered them a new beginning, but all of them that stayed had their past as a collar around their necks.

  Then the sorcerer returned to King's Landing, and more of them had fled for it.

  Even those that stayed whispered that he would soon find them all and use their blood to work horrors upon the city. Instead he had spilled his own blood to turn the Lady Margaery into one.

  He had smiled at her when they all left. He knew. He had always known.

  The spider did not care. They were bid to take his life.

  They knew where he slept and when he slept. They knew he only carried with him a dagger and had no taste for the sword. They knew all this and yet they still were terrified.

  There were only seven of them left to see it through, led by the bravest of them, a boy near to her in years and with more Valyrian in him than most, his eyes bearing a touch of purple in the right light. Three of them would come in through the tunnels and the rest through the doors, and it was soon decided that she would be among the latter.

  And so it was. Naella saw the moon was a crescent tonight as she quietly followed the others under its shadow. Once they were outside his rooms, she clutched her blade tight as one of the Red Keep's many rats ran past her feet.

  She whispered a quiet prayer to any god that might listen that if she died tonight that her brother would be safe. And if he had already gone before her, that they would be reunited in what came after with their parents whose faces she could barely remember.

  Then it was time, and they poured into the rooms as quickly as their feet could carry them.

  Except her courage left her as soon as she spied he was awake, his left hand a bloody ruin with pieces of black glass falling upon the floor along with his blood… too much blood for one man. And for once he had not even the shadow of a smile.

  The others leapt at him, most aiming for his heart or neck, but her feet felt as if they were rooted to the stones. She could only watch as his eyes turned upon them, and one after another they collapsed as if an invisible hand had snuffed the life from them.

  Naella's heart beat like a drum as his eyes turned upon her, something slimy crawling across her skull as he neared. His eyes. They weren't as dark as she remembered but a sickly green.

  "I had hoped the show would have made him hesitate," he admitted to her. Those eyes turned to his ruin of a hand, something silver among all the black and red. "All of it gone in a breath. What a waste."

  Her eyes found the others again, her mouth parched. Not a one of them stirred.

  She saw his eyes had found her again. "No, not a waste. Sit with me, Naella. The others are only asleep."

  There was naught else that she could do, and so she joined him on the stone floor, his eyes still a frightful green as he stared through her.

  "I need you to remember every place you were ever brought to in Pentos. You remained here for a reason. Perhaps we might find the leash Varys holds around your neck."

  Naella could hardly breathe she was so scared, but she nodded her head anyway. With her eyes closed, she thought back to one of the houses, the one near the slums they had lived in, its sandy bricks and its cobblestone—

  The slimy thing touched upon her skull again and it plucked the memory like a bard plucked a string, taking her along across the Narrow Sea to Pentos. All they found was a burnt out husk standing under a sunrise where the house once stood.

  "Again," she heard whispered in her ear.

  Naella remembered the manse in the countryside where she had spent a year, orchards of peaches and apricots and fields of leeks.This time it seemed much unchanged when they arrived.

  There were a few children there but not nearly as many as she remembered. The next moment it seemed as if she was seeing from someone else's eyes and soon she was screaming through someone else's lips. It all happened in the spam of moments, men and women left as glassy-eyed dolls. A few tried to escape, but they never got far, and she felt all their terror as the slimy thing slithered into their skulls and pulled them apart.

  None of the similarly terrified children she saw were her brother either.

  "I am sorry that it is unpleasant," he whispered. "They would have seen the same happen to them as happened to you."

  Naella wiped the tears from her sightless eyes as she remembered a house by the docks that always stank of fish. It was where the fat cheesemonger had taken her tongue.

  As she witnessed it all happen again, her heart had already hardened. But her brother was not there either. Was she truly alone now?

  "Are there any others you remember?"

  She shook her head no, and just as suddenly she found herself staring at those eyes again. They were so green now that they no longer looked human, and he seemed so much more tired as he smiled.

  "For all the horrors visited upon you, you have learned much from them. Return to Pentos. Use what you have learned to find your brother."

  Her brows furrowed. He would just let her go?

  Her eyes turned to his hand again, but the bloody ruin had been replaced by a mirror she had seen once, except it seemed duller, the glass no longer drinking in the candlelight.

  "Convince the others of the same once they wake," he told her as he stood. "There is nothing waiting for them here but the black cells."

  Naella stood as well on unsteady feet, the stones threatening to swallow her up again. He looked just slightly impatient when she looked at him again.

  "I still have some borrowed might to spare," he answered as if he saw her thoughts, a mischievous smile dancing on his lips now. "Perhaps I can also help you once you reach Pentos," he continued more softly. "You need only spill some of your blood upon the mirror and you will never be far from my sight."

  Her eyes caught upon the mirror in his hand again. She had already been the servant of a spider, so why not a sorcerer? Though it was more than that. If she never found her brother in Pentos, the thought of being alone in this cruel world terrified her more than she would care to admit.

  Using the sharper of her teeth to draw some blood, she watched as the drops vanished into the mirror, growing slightly darker for it.

  He tucked a lock of her hair behind an ear like a father might. "Then go and know that I will be watching."

  The green in his eyes had faded somewhat as he swept into the night, his shadow dragging itself after him. Thought not before he had dropped a fat pouch of coin in her nervous hand.

  Naella let her thoughts take her until she saw the others begin to stir. She tried to get her story in before they were set on any other. They would be invaluable if this was to work.

  Some were skeptical, but the sorcerer was gone and they had not even been able to leave a scratch on him. Nor did any of them have any reason to love the spider after his threats.

  The sun would soon rise upon King's Landing as well, and the first ships would set off from the docks soon after. They all followed her lead now, even the bravest among them with his Valyrian eyes.

  She was coming home.

  Daenerys?

  Dany spurred the creamy sand steed beneath her quicker as she tried to keep pace with Elia Sand, her own steed black as sin. The girl was almost two years younger than her and yet she rode a horse as if she were one of the Dothraki.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  Prince Trystane and Elia's younger sister struggled as well, but they were the youngest of them, three years her younger. It shamed her to be such a poor rider, and her dreams of a dragon under her instead of a horse only soothed her so much.

  Still, she was much better than when she had first come to Dorne, and that must count for something.

  Elia ahead of them soon came to a stop, hopping off her steed that she soon led to a stream that Dany assumed connected to the Greenblood. They did the same as they stopped, and so did the Martell knights with them.

  "Not half bad, princess, but I think it will be a few years yet before you're riding as well as a Dornishwoman." With the smirk on her lips, she looked like Prince Oberyn writ small in that moment.

  Prince Trystane came to her defense, but he was shorter even than her. "Targaryens are meant to ride dragons, not horses." He gave the sleek mane of his reddish steed a pat as she drank from the stream.

  "It's a shame I don't see any dragon then!" Elia shouted back as she stalked into the lemon orchard nearby. Obella quickly followed after her older sister after glancing at them playfully.

  The prince caught her eyes. "Will you join me under the shade, princess?" A blind man could tell he was smitten with her, but it only made her feel more awkward, though she hid it as best she could. "We can partake of the candied lemons we brought."

  She smiled down at him. "I shall be delighted to."

  There was something to be said about snacking on candied lemons beneath the lemon trees that spawned them, and they had seemingly found the thickest and the oldest of them, the heat of the sun vanishing as they ventured deeper into the orchard.

  "I heard my father had found the manticore knight wandering in the Red Mountains," Elia said, though she seemed sullen for some reason. "Obara and Tyene and Nym had all been there, and yet we had been forbidden to. Don't you think it's unfair?"

  Obella nodded just as quickly, putting on a petulant frown.

  Dany thought it was more unfair to her than them, for she was a woman flowered now and they were not.

  "Let us talk about other things instead," Prince Trystane broached, an earnest smile striking his lips.

  "I don't want to talk about the history of the Dornish Marches or cyvasse," Elia snarked, her viper's eyes flashing. "We are Sand Snakes just like our older sisters. We should have been there."

  "Viserys admitted that he was a frightful sight and rolled around much like a pig in the mud," she softly said.

  "Then I would have much liked to stick Ser Piggy with my spear!" Elia boasted.

  Prince Trystane seemed to have found his tongue again. "I didn't want to talk about the Dornish Marches or cyvasse. We could share stories." He turned to her earnestly. "You must have some stories to tell from your time in the Free Cities, princess."

  Dany hid another frown. It was true that they had went to all the Free Cities except for Norvos on the river Noyne and Lorath in the Shivering Sea, but there weren't many happy memories there. The Usurper's knives digging into their backs made certain they could never be comfortable.

  Still, they all stared at her now, so she would try.

  Dany spoke to them of the mighty Titan of Braavos that welcomed ships to the Secret City, the black walls of Tyrosh and Volantis that sheltered the oldest families, the white sands and pure waters of Lys. She also spoke of the great glass sculptures of Myr, the great markets of Pentos, and the vast foundries of Qohor surrounded by thick forests.

  What she did not mention was the fear she had seen on every street, slaves whipped in broad daylight at their master's pleasure. The Free Cities were mighty and beautiful, each of them dwarfing Sunspear and the shadow city, but it was a beauty that was tarnished by its uglier sights.

  More than once she worried that they would overstay their welcome too long and a collar would be put around her neck as well. Even now she could not help but worry that Prince Doran might tire of them and deliver them to the Usurper.

  She did not mention that to them either.

  "Perhaps when I am older," Prince Trystane began, "Father will grant me leave to take a ship and travel the Free Cities myself. I would much like it if you would join me, princess."

  Elia and Obella snickered at his words, driving a hard-to-see blush to his dusky cheeks, but she gave him a smile in spite of her disinterest. "Mayhaps I shall, my prince."

  He sent a smile back despite those two snickering even louder. Then Elia announced that she would be telling them some stories from her older sisters, leading Dany to rest her head back against the bark. Her thoughts soon drifted away beneath the lemons that reminded her of their house in Braavos with the red door.

  It wasn't long until she had drifted away completely under its lull and Elia Sand's boisterous words. In her dreams she again sat upon a dragon with scales like milk and honey, free to fly where she saw fit, no husband to call upon her but the clouds in the sky.

  It was bliss, she thought, and yet with that thought the dream changed. Like it had been grasped by something, and for a moment she felt something slimy dragging across her thoughts.

  The next moment she was looking down upon Volantis from high atop the black walls, a smile on her lips as she took in the masses that murmured her name with rapturous delight. At their feet were splintered chains.

  The scene repeated itself in Lys, her dragon's scales shimmering under the noonday sun as beautiful men and women and children threw off their chains and sung her praises.

  Then she was in Qohor beside the Black Goat, but the ugly statue had melted like wax before a flame. The slaves screamed her name this time, many of them marked by whips and brands.

  "You will be a liberator," she heard someone whisper sweetly in her ear.

  Dany had known dreams that left her heart hammering in her breast when she woke. Viserys had called them dragon dreams and told her that only those with the blood of the dragon had them. But this seemed different. She felt as if she could not wake even if she tried.

  The sights changed, each of the Free Cities made free in more than name. Though it hadn't stopped there. Even cities she had never seen basked beneath her, from the pyramids of Slaver's Bay to the sprawling city of the horselords in Vaes Dothrak.

  There was another there that she saw as well, seated upon a dragon as monstrous as it was magnificent, with scales like the darkest jade and great yellow eyes.

  She struggled to make out the features of their rider, so she drew nearer to them, just barely making out a man whose mane of black hair whipped behind him and who was smothered in cloth so yellow it almost blinded her under the sun.

  Yellow…

  Soon they were elsewhere, soaring over beautiful fields and rivers and hills. All the men and women that worked the land had no collars around their neck.

  "Princess?"

  The whisper was stranger this time, further and in a higher voice.

  "Princess, it is almost sunset." She felt a gentle shake, her eyes opening to find Prince Trystane looking down at her with worry. "We should return to Sunspear."

  The dream still echoed in her thoughts as she nodded thankfully. "I am sorry to have made you wait. My sleep has been troubled this past week."

  "It is no trouble!" he quickly rushed to soothe, a blush taking him again. "I'm certain my father will understand if we are slightly delayed."

  Dany heard some more snickers from his cousins as she offered him her hand to help her stand. Soon they were riding back to Sunspear across the dusky Dornish sands, though her thoughts were somewhere far away.

  By the time they reached close enough to the seat of House Martell to see its spires, her heart had set.

  She had wondered and waited for the purpose she was meant for, and now it seemed to her as clear as a summer sky. She knew it ever since they had been chased from Braavos and she had laid her eyes upon the first slave.

  She had seen boys and girls not even flowered dressed in silks to entice the eyes of men as their masters and matrons watched with cool eyes, and she had seen babes ripped from their mother's arms to be sold like chattel to whoever paid the most coin. It stirred a part of her to fury then and it stirred a part of her to fury now.

  Dany herself had almost been a victim of that same cruelty, married to a man she was more frightened of than loved. Until she had been saved.

  It was only right she did the same for others.

  While her brother was set on becoming a king they would whisper of for a thousand years, she would be a liberator, not of hundreds or even thousands, but of millions.

  And they would not whisper her name. They would scream it.