Qarth was beautiful. It was that simple, without a doubt to be had. It was as if all the colors of the world had vanished from the desert only to pool together inside of it, blues and reds and shades of green Kurt had never seen before. The walls themselves were covered in gold and gems with marble manticores, lizards and griffins on the top, their eyes made of rubies, diamonds, sapphires glistening under the sun.

Chandler's house was beautiful, too. It was huge, larger than Sandy's house in Pentos, with water gardens full of exotic parrots and rare white camels, strange horses striped black and white, big yellow cats with black dots on their fur – leopards, Chandler called them – closed in enormous cages made of steel. They came from the Summer Isles, he said, and were very dangerous if left free. Even so, they shrank back when Kurt passed in front of their cages with his dragons perched on his shoulders.

After months spent covered in sand and dirt and dust, Kurt felt overwhelmed by all that wealth, but not in a threatening way. Chandler had instructed his slaves to treat him as if he was their master, too, and he had to admit that it was nice. They fussed around him constantly to ask if he needed something, and there was always at least one of them at his heels if he did. It didn't take very long for him to realize that they were all boys of thirteen or fourteen years, no more; all androgynous in appearance, with slender waists and swaying hips and slightly feminine manners.

Blaine hated them, but not as much as he hated Chandler. Kurt could see it in the way Blaine's expression shifted every time the merchant prince entered a room. He stiffened, every muscle of his body straining as if he was stopping himself from bursting in a million pieces. Kurt figured that Chandler had noticed it as well, because he had stopped showering him with compliments in Blaine's presence, which was surely for the best. He still behaved as if the khal did not exist, but Blaine didn't seem to mind.

They were having lunch together in the room Chandler had given them, a large bedchamber with a bed so big it could host four people, when his husband decided to voice his opinion.

"I hate him" he stated out of the blue, chewing on a rabbit leg. Kurt raised an eyebrow.

"I would never have guessed" he mused, trying to look unimpressed. Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion were playing together on the window seat of a beautiful arched window, the central one of the three that gave them a perfect view of the luxuriant gardens below. They rolled on top of one another playfully, trying to bite at each other's necks and puffing smoke out of their nostrils in what was supposed to be a threatening gesture.

Blaine didn't get the sarcasm.

"That's why I'm telling you" he said sullenly. "I hate him and his house and his stupid slutty slaves."

Even though he was speaking in Dothraki, the way he lifted his eyes from the table to glare at the slave guarding their bedroom door was unmistakable. The boy gasped and shrank back a bit, but he didn't leave the room. Kurt knew they were all terrified of Blaine, with his intimidating tattoos and his barely restrained temper. He had been terrified of him too, back when he didn't know him, so he couldn't exactly blame them.

"I know" Kurt said in a soothing whisper, covering Blaine's hand with his own across the table. "You just have to be patient, my sun-and-stars. Chandler has granted me permission to speak with the Thirteen of Qarth, to ask for gold and ships to sail."

He had tried to ask Chandler directly, but somehow he always managed to change the subject or said that there was still time, and Kurt was starting to think that his promises had just been an excuse to drag him into his house. The Thirteen of Qarth were the most powerful men in the city, and Chandler was one of them, since he was the richest man in Qarth; Pyat Pree too, being the most important warlock of the Undying. Thinking of him still gave Kurt chills, but he wasn't going to let it show. He would make them see a king, a khalees, a Hummelsmythe. He would make them see the blood of the dragon.

Chandler's initial proposal had been to stay in his house while Kurt's dragons grew up, but after barely a week, Kurt knew it couldn't work out. Blaine was driving himself insane, fighting with his bloodriders or Finn in the gardens to escape the walls of the house more often than not. Sometimes he slept in a tent outside, leaving Kurt alone in the bedchamber; Kurt would have followed, but he didn't want to look ungrateful to Chandler's hospitality.

He would have to find a place where his dragons could be safe while they grew up and where Blaine would not feel like choking on air. Or he could just take Westeros without them, but that needed men he didn't have.

"To beg for gold and ships, you mean" Blaine pointed out, frowning. Kurt sighed tiredly and retreated his hand, leaning back in his chair.

"If you think I'm looking forward to it, you're wrong. But I won't beg. I will make them promises, lands and lordships to give them when all this is over."

Blaine seemed to consider that for a bit, propping his chin on his hands over the table, but then he frowned again.

"We should do it the Dothraki way" he said in a steady voice. "Burn this house and this city and take all they have."

Kurt shook his head.

"You know we are too few for that. Qarth has an army of its own" he replied, slightly exasperated. It wasn't the first time Blaine had suggested it, and Kurt had thought about it, but he knew they had no chance. And Chandler knew that too, otherwise he would have never allowed them to stay into his house while their little, yet still dangerous khalasar camped in his gardens.

Still, Blaine craved blood, and Kurt didn't know for how long he would be able to deny him. He hated to have to deny Blaine anything.

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Kurt stormed into the bedchamber, slamming the door behind him. Rachel and Mercedes flinched from where they were standing near the bed, dropping something to the floor with a gasp. From the window seat, his dragons hissed angrily and screeched, sensing his mood immediately.

"What did they say, khalees?" Rachel whispered in a thin voice, wriggling her hands together. Mercedes was looking at him with her big brown eyes in apprehension.

"They said no" Kurt snapped, entirely conscious of the fact that they didn't deserve his anger thrown at them, but too furious to care. "In a very long and courteous way, but it was still a no."

He had tried to be humble yet proud, gentle yet fierce, and he had agreed not to take Blaine with him when Chandler had pointed out that bringing a khal to a council of the Thirteen could be perceived as an offense or an unspoken threat, settling on having Finn accompany him. Only Chandler and Pyat Pree had agreed to his request, but he needed the majority of them to be on the same page to get what he wanted, so the vote had been against him. Some of them had suggested that he could give them one of his dragons in return for their kindness, but Kurt had dismissed the proposal immediately. There was no way he was going to leave one of his children to a fat, bald man with golden earrings and three chins. Dragons were meant to fly and burn, not to be pets.

When the girls didn't answer and glanced down at their feet, Kurt did, too.

"What is that?" he asked. He must have sounded too demanding, because the slaves crouched down immediately, scrambling the pull the thing they had dropped back up in their arms.

"We're sorry, very sorry, khalees" Mercedes mumbled, laying it on the bed in front of him and trying to smooth it nervously with her palms.

"No, no, it's okay" Kurt reassured them, walking toward them to have a better look. He blinked.

"Is that a dress?" he asked, tilting his head to the side.

"A tunic" Rachel answered, a hopeful smile blooming on her face. "The prince's slaves brought it here for you while you were away. It's a gift."

She looked excited, eyeing him from head to toe with a little smile, and Kurt realized that she wanted him to try it on. Despite the anger, he smiled back at her. The tunic was made of silk and of a light shade of purple that reminded him of lavender, with intricate golden vines embroidered along the sleeves.

"Help me put it on" Kurt told them, and the slaves barely stopped themselves from clapping their hands together, he could see. They got him rid of his Dothraki clothes, too accustomed to his nakedness to be embarrassed by it anymore, and then slid the tunic over his head. The silk was so soft that it slid down his body like a lover's caress, and so light that it felt as if he wasn't wearing anything at all.

He turned to look at the full-length mirror placed in a corner of the room, between the bed and the windows. The tunic was cut so as to show the center of his chest down to his bellybutton, but one side was slightly larger and the silk flapped down to show his right pectoral and nipple, in the Qartheen fashion. He had seen it in the streets, both on men and women of high rank half-hidden inside their litters.

"Oh, you look like a prince!" Mercedes cooed, one hand on her breasts. That annoyed him in a strange kind of way.

I'm no prince, he thought. I'm a khalees.

Suddenly, he wanted to take it off. Just as he was lowering his hands to grip its end and lift it, a voice startled him from behind.

"You're so beautiful."

When he whirled around, Chandler was standing in the doorway with an awed expression, his eyes shining but somehow clouded too, his cheeks flushed.

He wants me, Kurt couldn't help but think.

"Thank you" he said politely. "And thank you for the gift, but... I can't keep it."

Chandler gasped, a hand coming up to cover his heart. Kurt had soon discovered that it wasn't the merchant prince who was melodramatic and exaggerated in the way he spoke and behaved; it was a Qartheen thing. People of high rank showed their emotions with abandon: they laughed too hard when they were happy and cried too easily when they were displeased, since tears were considered a sign of their being sensible and having gentle, pure hearts. Kurt thought it was just funny and a bit awkward, and Blaine found it outright ridiculous.

"Could you tell your slaves to leave us?" the merchant prince asked Kurt. "I would like to speak to you alone."

Kurt eyed him suspiciously, but since he wanted to talk about what had happened with the Thirteen, he figured it was better to do it in private. After all, Chandler was nothing but innocuous; he couldn't weigh more than Kurt, and he looked like someone who would weep if he stomped on an ant by accident. He nodded.

"Rachel, Mercedes, you can retreat to your chambers" he told the girls, who bowed hurriedly and left the room. Chandler closed the door behind them, and for the first time there wasn't one of his slaves following him. The merchant prince glanced briefly at Kurt's dragons, who had gone back to their business, then back at Kurt.

"Where is the khal?" he asked in a hushed voice. He never added Blaine's name after the word, and he never called him "your husband", either.

"In the gardens, training at arakh-fighting" Kurt answered, waiting for a reply that did not come. "I wanted to talk to you, too."

"I know" Chandler said, walking slowly toward the mirror. "About the Thirteen."

"Why did they say no?" Kurt burst, raising his voice suddenly. "I figured the Qartheen had a taste for gold and titles."

"They do" Chandler agreed, still approaching, a leisurely pace that made Kurt want to grab him and shake him. "But they prefer gold and titles they can have here. Westeros is such a dreadful place."

Kurt rolled his eyes at his melodramatic remark, crossing his arms over his chest. Somehow, he had the feeling Chandler had known all along that they were going to say no. The merchant prince stopped in front of him and studied him once again.

"It really looks amazing on you. Your skin is so pale and soft, as if you bathed in milk, and your eyes change color according to the light, like diamonds reflecting sunlight."

Gods, it was so cheesy, but flattering nonetheless. A silly, childish part of him blushed at the compliment, and apparently it was the part Chandler was seeing, because he went on.

"You deserve so much more than what you have, gorgeous." Kurt flinched at the nickname. "You deserve to dress everyday in Myrish lace and satin and velvet, to be cherished and worshipped and loved. You deserve more than him."

Kurt took a step back and narrowed his eyes.

"Don't talk about him" he warned. Chandler didn't listen.

"He is a brute. He kills people. How could such a precious little flower like you want to have him touching you? Oh, just the thought of his blood-stained hands wrinkling your petals... It makes me want to cry."

Kurt gaped at him in disbelief, stopping himself from raising a hand to slap him in the face. After all, Chandler was their host, and he tried to be as polite as possible when he answered him.

"Don't presume to know him, because you don't. He is so much more than he looks, and so am I. I'm no precious little flower."

I have blood on my hands, too, he wanted to say. I ate a heart raw and I watched my brother die under a pot of molten gold.

"Of course you're not!" Chandler corrected himself immediately. "I didn't mean it like that. You're so brave, I know you are. But what you want..."

"...is mine by rights" Kurt finished for him. "The Iron Throne belongs to me."

Chandler shook his head and sighed dramatically, flopping down on the bed behind him. Kurt didn't know if he meant for him to follow, but he stayed where he was, standing and scowling.

"I never understood what men see in that hideous chair" the merchant prince complained. "They say the swords of Aegon's enemies didn't melt completely, so their points can cut you if you don't sit carefully. You'd rather sit that sad jagged thing than live as a prince in the greatest city that ever was and ever will be?"

Kurt ignored his question.

"If you don't want to help me, I'll found someone who does. Pyat Pree said I could go to the House of the Undying with him, to try and convince them."

Chandler gasped in shock.

"You can't go in there!" he exclaimed, almost frightened. "You will never come out if you do. Warlocks are treacherous people. They drink shade-of-the-evening to live forever, but it turns their lips blue and their hearts black and withering. Stay here, with me."

Kurt huffed in exasperation.

"I'm sorry, but I told you-"

Before he could finish, Chandler stood up from the bed and kneeled in front of him, taking Kurt's hand between his own. Kurt stared down at him in shock.

"What-"

"Marry me" the merchant prince pleaded abruptly, unshed tears glistening in his eyes. "Marry me and I will buy you all the ships and men you need, and together we shall rule the Seven Kingdoms and the Free Cities. Marry me, and I will give you the world in return."

Kurt could not believe it. Blaine had been right all along: Chandler did want something in return for his help.

"I have a husband" he whispered in shock, wrenching his hand free from Chandler's grasp. "How could you even think to ask me that?"

"I thought-" Chandler stammered, standing up once again. "I thought your brother forced you. Everyone says he did. I thought you were with him because you had to."

"It was like that, at the beginning" Kurt admitted in a low voice, because it hurt to say it too loud, to remember. "But things change."

"You can't love him" Chandler pleaded. "You just can't."

Kurt gave a bitter laugh.

"Is that so hard to believe?"

Suddenly, Chandler became worryingly serious.

"You know he is not fit to be a king. He's not meant to attend councils and organize feasts. Even if you changed the laws of Westeros to acknowledge him as your consort, your people will always see him as a savage beast and question your judgment for it. You think you need him now, but in the end he will just cause you trouble. Deep down, you know I'm right."

His words hit so close to home, where Kurt's hidden fears and worries were, that he couldn't stand to look at Chandler anymore after hearing them.

"Leave me" he said, turning around to look back at his reflection in the mirror and hide his eyes, suddenly damp.

I'm a khalees, he repeated to himself, and he is my khal. I belong to him, and he belongs to me.

He watched from the mirror as Chandler lowered his head and walked sadly toward the door, his feet scraping lightly against the marble floor. When he reached the door, the merchant prince turned around one last time.

"What will you do, then?" he asked in a resigned tone.
Kurt met his gaze in the mirror.

"Go to the House of the Undying" he said. Chandler nodded wordlessly, and left the room.

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Blaine didn't come back until dusk. He was drenched in sweat and covered in dust, slightly out of breath, looking so out of place against the luxury of the furniture that Kurt felt as if he was looking at the caged leopards Chandler kept in the gardens.

This is not his place, a voice inside his head whispered. Which means it's not mine, either.

"Did you have fun?" Kurt asked from the window seat, where he was teasing his dragons with a piece of raw meat, waving it in the air above them to see if they could spit at least a little flame and roast it. They were trying, no one could deny.

"Yes" Blaine said, dropping his dirty arakh on the table between them and brushing the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. Kurt felt his eyes on him, studying him.

"It didn't go well, did it?" Blaine asked after a brief pause. Kurt shook his head and kept his eyes on the dragons.

"I see" Blaine said simply, while Rhaegal puffed black smoke directly in Kurt's face.

"Oh, come on" Kurt mumbled in exasperation, dropping the piece of meat on the window seat and raising his arms in surrender. "You're dragons, for Gods' sake."

Blaine reached him and took hold of his legs, rotating his body so he could stand between Kurt's parted legs.

"What's wrong?" he asked, stroking Kurt's cheekbones, smearing his cheeks with sand.

"I want them to spit fire" Kurt said, sounding like a silly child to his own ears. "I want them to be grown up already. I want..."

I want you to be happy, he stopped himself from saying.

Blaine pursed his lips and looked down at the dragons, who were idly playing with the meat without that much interest, since they could not eat it.

"Did you try to tell them?" he asked suddenly. Kurt frowned at him.

"I don't think they would understand, Blaine."

"Yes they would. I can see the way they change mood according to yours" Blaine pointed out, a smile grazing his lips.

"I know, but they don't listen to me when I tell them things" Kurt replied, his legs framing Blaine's hips and tightening a little bit more. "If I want them to go somewhere, I just point to it with a finger or make them follow me."

Blaine thought some more, than beamed suddenly. Gods, he was just so beautiful when he did that. How could someone think he wasn't enough for anyone?

"Why do you look so happy all of a sudden?" Kurt teased, winding his arms around Blaine's neck.

"Because..." - Blaine said slowly, as if savoring the moment - "...you speak to them in the Common Tongue. Or in Dothraki, when I'm here too."

Kurt blinked a couple of times.

"...and?"

"And they are not from the Dothraki Sea. Nor Westeros."

Kurt stared at him, and when he finally got it, he couldn't believe he had been so stupid.

"Blaine, you're a genius!" he exclaimed, kissing his husband on the mouth. Blaine smiled into it, and Kurt decided he had just fallen in love with him again.

He turned around in Blaine's embrace and said: "Drogon, Rhaegal, Viserion... Dracarys."

The dragons looked at him for a moment in surprise, as if they couldn't believe it had taken him so long, and then they turned to the piece of meat, forgotten on the sand-colored stone. As if they had rehearsed it a thousand times, they opened their jaws at the same time and thin strips of orange burst from their mouths, blackening the meat immediately. It lasted barely three seconds, but it was beautiful.

"What did you say?" Blaine asked in wonder, staring as the dragons devoured the roast meat. They didn't frighten him anymore, Kurt was pleased to realize.

"I said fire in High Valyrian."

Blaine nodded silently. When the dragons finished their meal, he turned back toward Kurt, petting at the small of his back.

"So... what are we going to do now?"

Kurt steeled himself for his reaction when he opened his mouth to speak. He wasn't going to talk about Chandler's marriage proposal, because Blaine would kill him before Kurt could stop him, and then the Thirteen of Qarth would send an entire army after them. Still, what he wanted to do was just as terrifying.

"I want to go see the Undying. The warlock said I could convince the others somehow."

Surprisingly, Blaine didn't burst out screaming as he'd expected. He really had to learn to trust him more, he realized.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" the khal asked instead, considering. "It could be a trap or something."

"It could" Kurt agreed. "But there's nothing else we can do."

Blaine chewed on his lip for a moment.

"We could... stay here" he suggested, but Kurt could feel him flinching as he did. "And wait, like you said at the beginning."

The simple fact that Blaine was trying convinced Kurt once and for all of the fact that they had to go. He couldn't do that to Blaine, to them. It would kill what they had, in the end.

"Blaine" he whispered, carding his fingers through the Dothraki's curls and smiling sadly. "I miss you. Everyday I see you slipping that much more away from me. If we stay here... you will come to hate me."

"I- I could never hate you, moon of my life" Blaine said, and Kurt felt like crying, because he barely said it anymore these days. When he felt like a Qartheen for thinking that, he stopped himself.

"You will" he insisted, cupping Blaine's face with one of his hands and lowering his gaze, ashamed of how small his voice sounded. "You don't even sleep in our bed."

Blaine's expression turned pained against Kurt's hand, his features shifting.

"I know, it's just-" he choked on the words, and it was so unlike him. "Kurt, I- I feel like I can't breathe in here. We slept in a house too in Vaes Tolorro, but it was different. It's like everything I touch here is not mine, but I can't take it, either. That bed is not our bed, it's his."

Kurt stroked his cheek soothingly.

"I get it, I do" he reassured Blaine. "Just... sleep with me tonight?"

Blaine smiled and nodded. Kurt wasn't surprised when he found himself being lifted off the window seat like he weighed nothing, his legs wrapping around Blaine's waist automatically as his husband turned around and walked toward the bed. They fell on top of it together, and Blaine started to kiss him as soon as they did. Then, suddenly, he stopped.

"Why did you stop?" Kurt asked, lips kiss-swollen and red. Blaine was looking to the side, where his hand was gripping...

Oh, fuck.

He wrenched the tunic from under them and peered at it.

"Where does this come from?"

Kurt closed his eyes and sighed internally. Blaine knew he didn't wear that sort of garments anymore.

Cockblocked by a tunic.

"It's... a gift. But I was going to give it back" he said. Blaine narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

"Who would give you-" he started, then stopped. Kurt saw mixed feelings flashing through his hazel eyes, until Blaine decided to settle on anger. He kneeled on the bed between Kurt's parted legs, grabbed the tunic with both hands, and tore it apart in one single motion, parting it in two perfect halves under Kurt's shocked gaze.

"Blaine! I was going to give it back, there was no need-"

"There was" Blaine almost growled, tossing the shredded pieces to the ground behind him. "He wants you for himself. He wants to take you away from me."

Before Kurt could even think about replying, Blaine lowered his body back down over his and kissed him, hard and possessive and somehow it was just what Kurt needed. After being compared to a precious little flower, he needed to be reminded that he wasn't.

"You think I don't know" - Blaine whispered heatedly, trailing kisses down Kurt's neck – "that you could have more?"

Kurt gasped.

"Blaine, you-"

"You think I don't know that you could have dresses and perfumes and jewels?" Blaine kept mumbling against his skin, his kisses and bites trailing lower and lower still, past his leather jerkin and under his bellybutton now, while his hands scraped aimlessly at every part of his body as if he didn't know where to put them, where to find a place to hold on to.

"You think I don't know that he can give them to you?" Blaine concluded, lifting Kurt's hips and sliding his trousers down his legs, leaving him naked and panting and wordless, his cock half-hard from anticipation. "That he would give them to you?"

"It's you I want" Kurt managed to gasp, as Blaine resumed his frantic kissing, this time upward along the inside of his trembling thighs. "You, only you, I swear."

Blaine kept talking as if he wasn't listening, lost in his own haze of taking, marking, claiming.

"But I won't let him have you" he said, as his lips got closer to where Kurt desperately wanted them, even if he knew it was unlikely, because it had never happened. "I won't let anyone have you, because you're mine, and no one steals from me, no one."

When Blaine's lips touched his cock, Kurt felt like hyperventilating. It couldn't be. Blaine always topped and always took, and Kurt had always been okay with that. Dully, as if from underwater, he realized what was happening.

Blaine was proving himself to him in the only way he knew. Sex. He was trying to give him something more to make him stay.

Kurt thought about stopping him, but when Blaine closed his lips over the tip and slid down inch after inch and swallowed, words failed him, and the only thing he could do was grip the sheets under him with his hands and moan shamelessly at the way it felt, hot and wet and tight and perfect.

Blaine bobbed up and down a few times, then he lifted his head, lapping at the tip. Kurt could have come just from the way he looked, cheeks flushed and curls sticking up and lips red and shiny.

"No one else can do this to you" Blaine said, kissing and licking. "No one."

He lowered his head again and sucked around Kurt, cheeks hollowed, until Kurt was shaking and moaning again.

"C-close" he said at one point, one hand coming down to pet at Blaine's curls and grip them lightly. Blaine scratched at the inside of his thighs with his nails and sucked harder, until Kurt shuddered and came with a broken gasp on his lips, fingers suddenly tight in Blaine's hair.

When Blaine scrambled back up, they kissed and curled into one another, until Kurt gave a yawn in the middle of a kiss.

"Your turn now" he mumbled sleepily, but before he could move downward Blaine gave a laugh and held him tight against his body. Kurt could feel he was hard.

"Go to sleep, you're tired" he said, kissing his forehead. Kurt nodded dumbly and closed his eyes against Blaine's sweat-covered neck.

"Ok... later, then" he said under his breath. He could wake Blaine up with his mouth, after all. It was one of his favorite things to do.

"Yes, later" Blaine agreed, stroking his back. Kurt was almost drifting into unconsciousness when he spoke again.

"Kurt?"

"Mhmh?"

"When you go there, to the warlocks... I'll come with you."

It felt like an important statement, like something they should discuss, but Kurt wanted to sleep.

"'kay" he mumbled.

They could talk about it on the morrow.