Drums were beating as some of the women danced for the khal. The sun was only a quarter of the way up the sky when she saw her first man die. I am Daenerys Stormborn, Princess of Dragonstone, of the blood and seed of Aegon the Conqueror. I am blood of the dragon, she told herself. So she sat in her wedding silks, nursing a cup of honeyed wine, afraid to eat, talking silently to herself. She would even have welcomed the conversation of Illyrio and her brother, but they were too far below to hear her.
Dothraki was incomprehensible to her, and the khal knew only a few words of the bastard Valyrian of the Free Cities, and none at all of the Common Tongue of the Seven Kingdoms. Khal Drogo shouted commands and jests down to his bloodriders, and laughed at their replies, but he scarcely glanced at Dany beside him. Her stomach was a roil, and she knew she could keep none of it down. Food wasbrought to her, steaming joints of meat and thick black sausages and Dothraki blood pies, and later fruits and sweetgrass stews and delicate pastries from the kitchens of Pentos, but she waved it all away. She did her best to hide them, knowing how angry Viserys would be if he saw her crying, terrified of how Khal Drogo might react. Her brother had told her to smile, and so she smiled until her face ached and the tears came unbidden to her eyes. He could do nothing but nurse his resentment, so nurse it he did, his mood growing blacker by the hour at each insult to his person.ĭany had never felt so alone as she did seated in the midst of that vast horde.
He did not like sitting beneath her, and he fumed when the slaves offered each dish first to the khal and his bride, and served him from the portions they refused. Theirs was a place of high honor, just below the khal’s own bloodriders, but Dany could see the anger in her brother’s lilac eyes.
Viserys was seated just below her, splendid in a new black wool tunic with a scarlet dragon on the chest.