The narrow sea shimmered in the morning sun, its light creating white dancing lines on the horizon, far, far away in the distance. Kurt looked at it from the window of his room, perched on the reddish stone of the windowsill, trying to picture in his mind how was the world beyond the vast blue valley of water. He didn't know, he couldn't.

He only knew stories, told over and over again with different details added every time, new names of dead people, new places conquered and lost and painted with the blood of heroes whose names would be remembered in the books for centuries to come.

His brother Sebastian said that their names were meant to be remembered, too, but Kurt wasn't so sure of it. He felt like he didn't belong to those stories, to Westeros, to wars and tales of knights riding ruthless dragons to fight for the realms of men. Kurt belonged to the peaceful and quiet atmosphere of Pentos, its little streets and picturesque neighborhoods always full of people trying to sell something to other people, its green gardens where he liked to collect flowers to decorate his room with. Kurt wanted to stay there, to live and forget and forgive something he didn't even remember happening, but nothing Kurt wanted mattered. It had never mattered.

Sebastian entered the room. Kurt had developed the ability to feel him approaching without the need to see it with his eyes; his steps were always so sure and full of purpose that they echoed through the floor, reaching Kurt's ears from the longest distance.

"It's time" Sebastian said from the doorway, and Kurt turned around, his light blue tunic moving with the wind coming in through the window, a blessing from the stifling heat of summer.

"For what?" Kurt asked. He didn't like the look in his brother's eyes; it was the one he got whenever he had a plan, and it couldn't mean good things.

Sebastian stepped forward, crossing the room, until he was right in front of Kurt. His hair, a blondish brown just like Kurt's, was perfectly coiffed up as always, and his green tunic with golden dragons drawn on his chest emphasized every strong line of his lithe body. He was older than Kurt, a man in every way, from the slight hint of stubble on his jaw to the broad and strong-looking shoulders.

"To go home" he said, smiling with something like pride and satisfaction. He lifted a hand and slowly caressed Kurt's jaw with the back of it, lost in thoughts Kurt couldn't reach, like most of the thoughts he had. Kurt's body became rigid on instinct, remembering all the times that same hand had been lifted to grip his arm or to leave a bruise on his pale, soft cheek wherever Kurt had "waked the dragon" - Sebastian's way to say he'd pissed him off somehow.

Sebastian noticed his nervous intake of breath and cupped his chin.

"You don't have to be scared, sweet little brother" he cooed. "He'll like you. He likes fragile pretty boys like you."

Liquid dread descended down Kurt's spine, his palms suddenly cold and sweaty.

"H-he?" he asked, confused and scared.

"Mmmh" Sebastian murmured, as if moved by Kurt's shyness, a thumb suddenly stroking his pronounced cheekbone. "So, so young, my sweet brother. It's such a blessing you seem to take so long to become a man, it turned out quite useful. You see, I found a way to go home, to take back what's ours, to take over the Seven Kingdoms and rule them sitting on our father's throne. Isn't that what you want, too, little brother? Wouldn't you do whatever it takes? Because we'll never get there, if you're not willing to."

Kurt wanted to point out that it didn't seem fair that he had to sacrifice in some way so that Sebastian could sit on the Iron Throne, and that he wasn't so sure of what he wanted. Sebastian remembered it all: their father, King Burt, betrayed by his Royal Guard, literally stabbed in the back by one of its knights, Hunter Clarington; his kingdom stolen and his family forced to leave the capital, King's Landing, with their mother pregnant of Kurt. He was born right after that, at Dragonstone, during a storm at the end of which his mother had left them alone in a world that wanted them dead. Sebastian wanted revenge for it, and Kurt couldn't blame him, but he didn't know how high a price he was willing to pay for it to happen.

"What do you expect me to do?" he asked. He had learned that simple questions, without hidden implications or undertones, were the best to avoid his brother's rage, because they left him the freedom of answering as he pleased.

"I expect you to take a bath, to scrub your skin with oils and essences and all that flowery creams you seem to like so much, to put on the most transparent tunic you own and to smile that shy, innocent smile of yours and bat your girly lashes when the khal will come to see you. I expect you to marry him, to please him with your body, while I march on the Seven Kingdoms with his army of savage and filthy Dothraki warriors."

He said it like it was the most normal thing he'd ever said. Kurt paled and stepped back, escaping from Sebastian's grasp and gaping at him.

"You- you sold me? You gave me up like a slave without even telling me?!" he almost whimpered, hurt and betrayed like never before. How could Sebastian do that to him?

His brother's face hardened, the smile disappearing. His fists closed at his sides.

"I am Sebastian Hummelsmythe, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and heir of the dragon, I don't have to ask permission to do anything. You're such an ungrateful, spoiled brat. Did you think we'd get our land back strutting through it on feathers? You'll do what it takes, and this is the opportunity the Gods threw at us. I'll send the servants to prepare your bath. He'll be here soon."

Without leaving him the time to reply, Sebastian turned around and left the room, slamming the door behind him. Kurt remained stuck to the floor, staring at the spot where he'd been, reliving the conversation in his mind.
When the servants came, he let them undress him without a word and stepped in the boiling water, ignoring their warning about the temperature. The hotness of it scrubbed him clean, but Kurt couldn't help but feel cheap and dirty nonetheless.

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The sun was so hot that Kurt was afraid his skin would get burned, but Sebastian had refused to arrange something to put over their heads against the light, because Khal Blaine should be able to look at you without something casting shadows on your face.

Kurt smelled of lilies and jasmine and a mixture of flowers from the Free Cities whose names he couldn't remember. His cream-colored tunic was practically see-through from the waist up, showing his hairless chest and his nipples, which made him uncomfortable in a strange kind of way. From the golden belt he had around his hips down, he was thankfully covered, but the tunic ended a few centimeters above his knees. He'd had a few hair on his legs, but Sebastian had had him shaved. He looked even younger than the sixteen-year-old boy he was.

Sebastian was by his side on the steps of the palace, and Kurt could swear he'd never seen him happier. The fact that his cheerfulness was caused by Kurt's forced marriage with a cruel, blood-thirsty savage made it even creepier.

The owner of the palace they were staying in, Sandy Ryerson, was there too. He was a slightly overweight man with grey hair around his head, whose top was bald; he had taken them in almost a year before, allowing them to settle down for a bit and stop running from the ghosts Sebastian swore to see everywhere: soldiers, mercenaries, spies, people sent to kill them both and prevent them from having their revenge. Kurt never saw them, probably because they weren't even there.

"When is he coming?" Sebastian asked nervously to Sandy, one of his feet tapping on the floor, the sound hammering through Kurt's already pounding head. "He's late."

"The Dothraki are not famous for their punctuality, my lord. They go to places when they feel like it" Sandy said, shrugging. Kurt sort of hated the way he always spoke to Sebastian, like a worm crawling its way to his brother's favor in hope of having something back in the end. Whether he hoped for titles or gold (or both), Kurt didn't know.

"Well, he'd better be more punctual from now on since he has to get a crown on my-"

But Sebastian's words died in the suffocating air, suddenly echoing of horses neighing and pawing the ground, and manly, gruff voices getting closer and closer. Kurt tried to calm the quickening beating of his heart; he felt like it was going to burst out of his chest.

"Don't be nervous" Sebastian whispered; Kurt could see him looking at him through the corner of his eye. "It's okay."

How could anything be okay, Kurt had no idea, but it seemed like Sebastian was really trying to comfort him, never mind the fact that it was for his own good.

From behind a corner, along the sand path that cut through Sandy's garden, a small group of men riding horses appeared, the first one slightly detached from the rest of them. It was him, Kurt had no doubt about it. The horses were all black or brown, their hair left long and wild, tangling on itself in the wind while they got closer, legs thick and strong with powerful muscles underneath, used to ride through the vast, untamed lands of the East probably for days on end.

All men had dark skin and almond-shaped eyes, except for one, white skin and black hair, dressed as the knights he imagined when Sebastian told his tales of Westeros. Kurt wondered what he was doing there, surrounded by Dothraki savages, but his attention was soon caught by somebody else.

Khal Blaine stopped at the end of the staircase, and even though Kurt was physically in a higher position, he felt like the Dothraki was looking down at him from his horse.
Kurt had always known he liked men. Thankfully, it was something almost common in the Free Cities, where worries about heirs and honor were long forgotten and men were judged solely on how much gold they had in their pockets. It was different in the Seven Kingdoms – as far as he knew from Sebastian's descriptions of them –, were the nobles inclined to it slept with young boys in secret to protect their old and powerful names, while their wives pretended not to know about it.

But in all his life, Kurt had never been able to really look at a man, to stare at his body and drink him in. Sebastian's obsession with them getting followed everywhere meant that they had no friends and rarely went out of the palace, and Kurt was so repulsed by the mere idea of slavery that he had imposed to himself not to linger on the servants Sandy had provided for them, because he wasn't going to think that way about someone who didn't have the freedom to say no, if he ever decided to put his desires into practice. Sebastian, of course, didn't share his reservations, and more than once Kurt had woken up in the middle of the night hearing muffled moans and cries coming from his brother's room.

So when Kurt saw Khal Blaine, he allowed himself to look. What stunned him the most at first was that the Dothraki was younger than he had expected; he couldn't be older than 25. He had olive skin, a beautiful, powerful color shimmering under a slight layer of sweat – something that should gross Kurt out, but it just didn't –, looking like it was vibrating over the muscles of his arms and shoulders every time he shifted his body to have a better grip on the reins.

His hair was black like coal, like the darkest of the starless nights, curly and wild, falling over his forehead. He had intense, piercing eyes, whose color remained unknown to Kurt because of the distance between them, but he could see they were rounded by a thin line of black. Black like his horse, his hair and his tattoos, thick lines and curves tangling with one another on his skin in a complicated and soundless tribal dance, painting almost every inch of his body.

Kurt found himself staring at a black line starting from his bellybutton and going up through his chest, splitting in two above his pectorals to follow the strong lines of his clavicles and then curving itself back down over the muscle, leaving the dark nipples unpainted.

It was impossible to look away from the wild creature he had in front of him, so Kurt didn't try to. The Khal was staring right back, and Kurt felt stripped bare by the force of it, as if those eyes could reach inside him and find secrets about himself that he didn't even know. He felt a strange mixture of fascination, curiosity and pure, unbridled dread.

"Do you see his tattoos?" Sebastian whispered in his ear, and Kurt swallowed and nodded because yes, he was seeing them pretty well. "The Dothraki get one every time they win a fight. If they lose, they get one too. Using boiling oil."

Kurt shivered, and Sebastian chuckled darkly before turning towards Sandy.

"Ask him what he thinks" he said to the man, who was able to speak the crude and raw Dothraki language.

But right before Sandy could open his mouth to do so, the Khal pulled the reins, turned the horse around, and rode away along the path together with his men, leaving nothing but a cloud of golden dust in the air.
Kurt felt himself relax. Maybe he didn't like me, he thought.

"Where in the seven hells does he think he's going?!" shouted Sebastian, all composure forgotten. "How do I know if he liked him?"

"Believe me, my lord: if he didn't, we would certainly know by now" Sandy said, pointedly looking at Kurt, who paled and shivered all over again. "I'll send a slave to the khalasar to set a date for the wedding."

"Perfect" Sebastian replied, his face relieved. "This is perfect."

On hindsight, Kurt didn't know why he said what he said in that moment.

"I don't want to marry him."

Both Sandy and Sebastian looked at him as if he'd grown a second head.

"What did you say?" Sebastian whispered, his eyes narrowed. Kurt took a calming breath.

"I said I don't want to marry him" he repeated. "He- he scares me, and I- I just want to find a home for us to live in. Why can't we do that?"

The expression on Sebastian's face softened, but Kurt knew better than taking that as a good sign, because it never was. Sebastian took a step forward and cupped his face with both hands, smiling.

"But this is what I'm doing, don't you see? I want us to have a home again, a place that we could call ours, and we already have one, far away beyond the narrow sea where the Iron Throne awaits me." He paused, his thumbs stroking Kurt's cheekbones. "I would let all his men, all his 40.000 Dothraki and his horses fuck you in the ass if it was necessary, sweet little brother."

With that promise, Sebastian tilted Kurt's head down to plant a tender kiss to his forehead and then stepped back, waving at Sandy to follow him through the gardens before turning around and leaving Kurt standing there, alone.

"I am the blood of the dragon" he said under his breath, a thing he did to feel stronger than he was, to find comfort in his name's history. He wished dragons still existed, and he wished he could fly away on one of them, over Pentos and Myr and all the Free Cities, over the ancient Valyria where the dragons were born, and then Asshai and the Shadow Lands; away from Sebastian and the Seven Kingdoms and their tales of wars and betrayals.

Away from a home he had never seen, for which he would pay so much more than he was willing to.

But dragons didn't exist anymore, and Kurt had nowhere in the world to fly to.