A body shifted beside him on the bed. It was so slow and careful that anyone else wouldn't have noticed, but Kurt did. He was attuned to every movement of that body by now, accustomed to every little shift and drag and pull of it as much as he was accustomed to his own. The candle they had forgotten to blow out the night before had melted almost completely, reduced to a puddle of wax, a material, practical reminder of how fast time passed. Just a couple of hours before, it had been a tall white column, and now it was so ugly to look at.

Kurt looked away from it and turned toward the middle of the bed, blinking sleepily.

"Don't go, it's early" he mumbled, propping himself up on an elbow. "It's not even dawn yet."

Because at dawn, Blaine always left. They didn't talk about it, and maybe they didn't need to. Kurt didn't know about Blaine's reason for it, but if he had to speak for himself, it would have been too much to cuddle in the morning as they used to.

If he had to be completely honest, the truth was that they didn't talk much at all; instead, they fucked. Every night since that first night, Blaine sneaked inside Kurt's chambers to have him. It had been going on for ten days now.

In fact, Kurt wasn't married to Adam yet. Even though they had celebrated their fake engagement, apparently a Ghiscari wedding needed a very long time to be prepared; Galazza Galare had come to the pyramid to tell him about temples to be blessed, animal sacrifices to be made, and something about waiting for the rain as a sign of approval from the Gods. Kurt understood only half of it; the thing that mattered to him, basically, was that he had more time to say goodbye to Blaine.

Which, if anything, just made it harder.

They didn't talk, but to Kurt it felt as if every touch and kiss and scrape of nails was an apology, every moan and whimper and cry a promise of forgiveness. He liked to think they were good now, even after everything, and he knew he would keep those ten days secluded in his heart forever.

Blaine was sitting at the edge of the bed, almost ready to stand up, but he turned around at the sound of Kurt's voice to peer at him from his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you" he said, the muscles of his back shifting deliciously at the movement, tattoos almost dancing under the weak candlelight to create new patterns and designs Kurt had never seen before.

"It's fine" Kurt murmured, cotton sheet covering his lower body as he stared. "Come back to bed now."

Blaine turned around some more, half-sitting on the edge with a foot planted on the floor, and looked at Kurt in a sad, contemplative way that made him fully awake all of a sudden.

"It's raining, Kurt" he whispered, and only then Kurt noticed the tap-tap-tap of the rain against the bricks of the pyramid, muffled by his chambers' walls. He felt his heart drop to the pit of his stomach and sat up against the pillows.

It was too soon. He wasn't ready.

Will I ever be?

"Oh" was the only thing he managed to say. Blaine stared at him for a long moment as if expecting him to add something else, but when Kurt didn't, he nodded slowly to himself and stood up completely. He picked up his trousers from the floor and put them back on in one swift motion, giving Kurt only a glimpse of his perfect naked body.

"You're so beautiful" Kurt blurted before he could stop himself. His mind was always too slow in the morning, too foggy from sleep for him to have some kind of filter.

Blaine turned toward him as he was putting on his right boot, half-standing, half-kneeling. He gave Kurt an intimate, sardonic little smile.

"Is that a way to get me to come back to bed?" he asked, one eyebrow raised, and for a moment it felt as if nothing had ever changed – waking up together in the morning, having silly banters like that. Kurt swallowed down the bitterness that thought provoked in him.

"Maybe" he replied just as playfully, but to his ears it sounded almost choked. After that the mood suddenly shifted, as if they both realized they couldn't keep on ignoring what was right in front of them. The rain got stronger to remind them.

"Kurt" Blaine murmured as he put on the other boot. "There is something I need to tell you, before I... before I go."

He hesitated on the last sentence, and looked around nervously for a moment before he spoke again.

"I... I'm sorry, Kurt" he said, one hand pressed against his chest to cover his heart, and No, no, no, Kurt thought, don't do this to me now. "For the things I said, for the way I treated you, for leaving you alone, for- for everything. It made it easier for me, to blame you, but I've come to realize that... that I did it just so I could avoid blaming myself. You may have insisted on staying here, but I said yes. So in a way, this time spent apart has been about forgiving for me... but I had to forgive myself, too."

The long awaited apology, so heartfelt that Kurt couldn't have doubts about its honesty, was spoiled by that last sentence.

"This isn't the conclusion I wanted you to get to" Kurt replied, frowning. "It wasn't our fault, Blaine, of either of us."

"We don't necessarily have to agree on it. I guess we just see it in two different ways. It's fine."

"I just don't want you to hate yourself, too."

Blaine exhaled a nervous breath, his eyes pleading all of sudden.

"I don't- I don't hate you" he said, pausing for a moment before continuing. "I... there's no denying it: for a time, I did. But it's just... it's over, Kurt. And I know you can't forgive me, that it's too late, that these last few days have been a way for you to get it out of your system or something, but I just- I needed you to know. I can't leave without you knowing how sorry I am."

Stay, Kurt opened his mouth to say. I forgive you, it's not too late, let's leave this city and the dragons and the khalasar and run away where no one will ever find us.

But just as the words were clawing their way up his throat, he looked at Blaine and with a sudden, blinding clarity, another thought occurred to him.

Didn't you hurt him enough already?

And he was going to do it again, to save the city Blaine hated so much, the place where everything had fallen apart. And he couldn't say it. His heart crumbling, he realized he couldn't say it. Because Blaine had said that Kurt deserved better, but it turned out that maybe Blaine deserved better, too. He deserved someone who would always choose him over a greater cause, as painful and unfair as it could be.

"It's okay" he simply croaked instead, gathering up the sheet to cover himself a little more, feeling exposed and vulnerable all of a sudden as if Blaine could just look at him and know he was hiding something from him. "I- I'm not mad at you anymore."

Blaine's eyes flashed with something akin to hurt, disappointed by the short, somehow incomplete answer, but he recomposed himself quickly.

"I just want you to be happy" he said with a look of heartbreaking honesty. "It's all I have ever wanted."

"I know, my sun-and-stars" Kurt replied out of habit, because even though a long time had passed since the last time he had said it, it was something instinctual for him, something he had been suppressing up to that moment, catching himself at the last second more than once. He covered his mouth with his hand when he realized he hadn't been careful this time.

Blaine's face changed completely, his fa�ade of distant, private sadness shifting into something bare and open and raw, and the next thing Kurt knew, the sheet was being wrenched away from his body and Blaine was crouching on the bed over him, kissing him rough and deep, framing his face with both of his hands.

He didn't object when Kurt sneaked a hand down between them to unlace his trousers all over again and slide them down to mid-thigh, nor when Kurt shifted on the bed so they were lying down again and hooked his ankles over his lower back to press them close as their mouths devoured each other hungrily.

He did object, however, when Kurt grabbed one of his wrists and led it between his spread legs, wanting him to push the first finger inside of him again. He pulled off from the kiss, breathing hard, and stared down between them, his hand hovering in the air and trembling slightly.

"Kurt, I-"

"Don't you want to?" Kurt whispered against his lips, propping himself up on his elbows to get some leverage and bite playfully at his lower lip. "Don't you want me?"

One last time, he thought as he waited for the answer. Please, make me feel whole one last time.

Blaine's face scrunched up, almost outraged by the question.

"Of course I want you" he whispered back in a heated tone, moving his hand to settle it against Kurt's bare hip and stroke his side up and down, his eyes following the movement pensively. "Just... not like this, this time."

"Oh" Kurt replied, furrowing his brow. "I... I guess I could turn around if you-"

"No, not-" Blaine interrupted him, but he seemed to struggle with the words. He closed his eyes and heaved a nervous breath. "I meant... I just... want to do it the other way around."

Kurt's eyes got as wide as they had ever been. Words failed him for a moment, and the only thing he could do was stare at Blaine.

"I- I didn't think you'd ever want to" he managed to say at last, his voice hesitant. "I don't- you don't have to prove anything to me, Blaine."

He didn't want Blaine to do it in some sort of attempt at changing his mind, or gaining the forgiveness he already had. It wasn't fair.

"It's not about that" Blaine said, and he looked sincere enough. "I just... I realized it's something missing, something I have denied us in a way. Something I have denied myself, out of pride or whatever it was. But now that it's over I can't stand the thought of not having you like that, of not having you in any way I can. And I need it, Kurt, I need you like that, I've always wondered what it feels like for you, what I feel like inside of you. Wanna know it so bad, just- just do it for me, take me, fuck me, come on-"

Kurt interrupted his babbling plea by surging up and kissing him frantically, holding his head in place with one of his hands. He was torn between feeling selfish and horrible for taking that from Blaine just as he was about to leave him, and feeling giddy and excited and turned on out of his mind at the thought. At the thought of Blaine wanting it so badly, at the thought of taking him just as Blaine had always done with him, buried deep inside where no one else would ever go, touching him where he had never been touched.

In the end, his morals weren't strong enough to defeat the unbearable desire he felt. Blaine reached out a hand to search for the lotion abandoned on the bedside table as they kissed; when he got hold of it, he gave it to Kurt and stared straight into his eyes as he coated his fingers with the slippery cream.

They got rid of Blaine's boots and trousers completely and then Blaine was back on top of Kurt, straddling him this time. Kurt's hands were shaking as he looked up at him, feeling suddenly lost.

"Don't be nervous" Blaine whispered soothingly, taking his wrist gently to lead Kurt's hand to his hole. "Come on, it's alright."

"I don't want to hurt you" Kurt answered, his voice squeaky and somehow pleading.

Not more than I already have, anyway.

"You won't" Blaine promised, and Kurt knew there was no way for him to be sure of it, but he trusted him either way.

It felt surreal, to feel him from the inside for the first time. So warm and tight and intimate, so very intimate, as if there wasn't any closer for them to get. He could sense every ragged breath and twitching shift coming from Blaine's body, feel the way his thighs trembled as he eased the first finger all the way inside, searching and stroking until he found the spot that got Blaine to make the most beautiful sound Kurt had ever heard from him.

And as Blaine pleaded for more, more, yes, more, you, Kurt knew: it doesn't get any better than this. It was the sweetest, the highest, the deepest love would ever take him.

But then he eased his fingers out and Blaine kissed him sweetly, almost chastely, stroking his cock with just as much delicateness as if Kurt was something precious and fragile; he held it in his hand as he lowered himself onto it, his body welcoming the intrusion inch after inch, head thrown back and mouth open in a moan that never came. And that, that was really it for Kurt. Nothing would ever compare to how Blaine felt around him, hot and clenching and so sweetly, heartbreakingly tight, as if his body never wanted to let Kurt go.

"How does it feel?" he couldn't help but ask as Blaine started to move, his eyes half-lidded and glassed-over in that way he loved so much. "Do you like it?"

"Feels so good" Blaine said, voice hoarse and panting. "Feels amazing, moon of my life, amazing."

Kurt thrust his hips up at that, meeting Blaine as he pushed down, feeling his whole body shudder when he hit that spot again. He decided to plant his feet on the bed and prop himself up on his elbows to do it harder, which rewarded him with a deep moan from the other man.

After that, they didn't speak; there was just the rain falling harder and harder outside, their synchronized breaths getting quicker and more ragged as Blaine increased the pace, riding Kurt relentlessly hard into the mattress as he struggled to keep up. At one point he just lay there with his head against the pillow and watched Blaine as he fucked himself on his cock, gripping his hips as he moved or sneaking his hands up to stroke and circle Blaine's nipples with his thumbs.

It wasn't enough, though; so he sat up suddenly, trapping Blaine between his bent knees and his chest, and their mouths found each other again, meeting and separating rhythmically just like their bodies were doing as they got closer to the edge, staying entwined and wrapped up in each other to be sure to fall together.

As the light from the candle shivered and died, their moans dissolved into darkness, swallowed up by a clap of thunder.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was funny, how Kurt's mind seemed to work.

He didn't remember saying goodbye to Blaine, nor to anyone of the khalasar.

He didn't remember marrying Adam.

As the palanquin took them away from the Temple of the Graces, surrounded by the cheering crowd, he could only think about one thing.

I can't do this.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was hot inside Dazhnak's Pit, hotter than it was in the rest of the city. Kurt supposed it had to do with the fact that there were too many people crowded in the same limited space, and also with the shape of the pit itself, whose bleachers blocked the outside wind from reaching its occupants. He could feel the first drop of sweat sliding down his temple, and he didn't even want to imagine how it was in the higher seats, where people sat much closer to each other than in the lower ones. As Kings of Meereen, in fact, they had a box reserved for them along the first row, with a perfect view of the sand pit.

As they took their seats inside it, surrounded by servants, cupbearers and soldiers (both from Kurt's and Adam's guard), he heard the crowd erupting all around him, chanting Physa in a mismatched choir of voices.

"See how they love you, Magnificence?" Adam told him, almost shouting to be heard over the buzzing background noise. "They are so happy to have you here!"

Of course, Adam had had the brilliant idea of postponing the reopening of the fighting pits once he had been informed of their upcoming union, to use it as an ulterior celebration.

Just fucking great.

"They'd better be, because I'm not going to stay here for long" Kurt warned him coldly, smiling all the while to make them see everything was perfectly fine. It dawned on him, in that moment, how fake his life was going to be if he stayed there. It couldn't be what he was meant for, as Blaine had said. Ruling couldn't be just that.

"Oh come on, My Radiance, I'm sure you will like it!" Adam soothed, waving a hand to greet the crowd as he spoke. "Would you like some honeyed locusts to sweeten your waiting?"

One of his Meereenese cupbearers appeared at his side with a big round plate of the insects, but Kurt scrunched up his face in distaste and waved him away.

"Gods be good, I don't know how you can actually eat this stuff" he said, moving his hand up and down in front of his face to get some relief from the heat. So far he had accepted to eat the dog not to be offensive, but there was no way in the Seven Hells he was going to eat snakes, worms, locusts and spiders.

"Because it's good, that's how!" Adam replied cheerfully. "You'll never know if you never try!"

"Eat them yourself, if you like them so much" Kurt snapped, crossing his arms over his chest and looking away from the nobleman, staring hard at the middle of the pit. The wedding had just been the day before, but to him it felt like decades.

The Yunkai'i were gone. Blaine was, too.

I will never see him again, he seemed to realize only then, as if getting out of some sort of shock that had dulled the pain until that moment.

"I don't feel like it right now" he heard Adam say, but he was barely paying attention. "But seriously, Worship, you should-"

Kurt couldn't hear the end of the sentence, because a man appeared from behind the ragged curtain that separated the pit from where the fighters awaited their turn. The crowd went crazy, stomping feet against the wood of the bleachers and shouting for blood, blood, blood.

The pitmaster, a tall, muscular man with a big leather whip in his hand, gestured for the audience to be quiet, and the order was carried out almost immediately. An unnatural silence fell over the pit, filling the man with a silent yet palpable sense of proud superiority at the thought of being so influential.

I bet he's more respected than I am, Kurt thought. As repulsed as he was by what he was about to see, a part of him was actually curious about it, entranced by the atmosphere of growing expectation the pitmaster had been able to create. He just hoped he would feel something, even if it was disgust; it would still be better than the nothingness that seemed to have taken residence in his chest, a deep, consuming numbness that made him indifferent to everything.

"Today we grace the sands with blood once again!" the man with the whip shouted for everyone to hear, lifting it in the air. "Today we honor our Kings, to thank them for the opportunity they gave us! Today men will fight and die to please the Gods of Ghis and the good people of Meereen! May the fights begin!"

Every sentence had been followed by an explosion of excited screams and applause, but the one that greeted his last words was like nothing Kurt had ever heard. If he looked in the crowd, he could see there where men from every social class: former slavers, rich and poor freedmen, peasants, farmers. And to think he had gone through so much trouble to abolish that tradition. Were those really his children? Screaming to see blood and entrails spilling on the sand for the sake of their entertainment? Were those the people he had sacrificed his happiness for?

What if it wasn't worth it?, he asked himself, just as the first two fighters replaced the pitmaster. What if this is all a huge mistake?

Thankfully, Adam had respected his conditions, so they weren't children. They both looked to be twenty, though, and to Kurt that was too young all the same. Too young to die like that, surrounded by people who would laugh delightedly at the show of their violent defeat. They should have the chance to grow into adults, fall in love, have children. That wasn't what Kurt had freed them for.

The two young men slashed at each other with their weapons, and all around him Kurt could hear advices being thrown at them, as if they could make out what the audience shouted. In the box adjacent to his, two fat noblemen were making impossibly high bets over which of the fighters would win.

It ended some fifteen minutes later in the only way it could. The body of the loser hadn't even touched the ground when the applauses began. The winner grabbed the other man's corpse by the hair and cut his head, only to rotate it in the air for a bit and throw it in the general direction of the crowd as a gift.

"Can I go now?" Kurt hissed, looking away in disgust from where three men were actually fighting over the thing. On hindsight, maybe the numbness was better.

Adam gave him a sad, pleading stare, but to Kurt it looked almost petulant. He couldn't help but being exaggeratedly mean with the guy, even though nothing of the mess he had ended up into was his fault. To be honest, Kurt should have been grateful to him for finding the Sons of the Harpy. But every time he looked at him, he just saw what he had lost and all the things that made him different from the man he truly loved.

He saw skin too pale and similar to his own, hair too straight and blonde, eyes whose color didn't change according to the light. He saw pleasantries and false condescendence where raw passion and heated stares should have been, ridiculous mockeries of a love that came once in a lifetime.

"Just stay a little more, Magnificence, otherwise they will notice" Adam answered, looking at him out of the corner of his eye since most of his attention was on the next contestants. "Are you sure you're not hungry? You will be more inclined to reconsider your opinion on the pits with your stomach full."

"I'm sure, thank you" Kurt sighed, rolling his eyes. He felt the other man's stare directed at him.

"Don't worry, the next fights will be more interesting" he assured. "We always start with less experienced fighters whose deaths are quick and clean, but the most famous fighters can take hours before doing their killing. They're great, you'll see."

Hours?, was the only thing Kurt could think about, exasperated. Was that going to take all day?

If that was the case, maybe it wasn't such an awful idea to eat something in the meantime. When he looked around, though, he saw that the only "edible" thing in sight were the damned honeyed locusts Adam had insisted on. He opened his mouth to tell Rachel to fetch him something that wouldn't make him vomit, but the words died in his throat.

Suddenly the pit had been completely shadowed, as if a big fat cloud had just decided to settle over it and block the rays of the sun. When Kurt looked up, though, he realized it wasn't a cloud. He froze.

Drogon landed with a loud, almost unbearable thump on the circular pit, raising a cloud of sand and smoke that blinded them all for a moment. He flapped his wings in the air and roared up into the sky, flames dispersing just a little above where the audience was sitting. For a moment, the world stopped.

Then the madness began.

People screamed in terror and stood up from their seats to leave, tripping over each other, falling to the ground only to be stomped on by someone else; children cried as their mothers bundled them up in their dresses in their haste to flee, swallowed up by the mob before Kurt could be sure that they had been led to safety. The fighter inside the pit, who had killed his enemy mere instants before the dragon's arrival, threw his war hammer to the ground and ran away.

In the midst of chaos, Drogon turned nervous and uneasy; his tail slashed right and left, hitting people in its wake, and his eyes scanned the crowd hungrily as his nostrils flared with thick black smoke. Kurt looked at him from his seat, unable to do nothing but stare. The dragon had become a monstrous thing, huge and wild and utterly terrifying. In between his hard black scales, you could see the red of the fire boiling in his stomach, ready to explode from his mouth.

Part of Kurt was scared. The other part was in heaven.

He's perfect.

For the first time since Blaine had left, he felt alive.

"-alees, look at me, we have to go!" he heard someone say from his side, before a hand grabbed his arm to shake him. "Stand up! Stand up!"

Drogon looked around at the crowd some more, as if searching for something; when he didn't find it, whatever it was, he looked down at the corpse of the losing fighter lying a few feet from him. He covered the distance with outstanding speed and seized the body between his jaws, gracing the audience with the sight of long, impossibly sharp black teeth.

"Oh Gods, it's eating him!" someone screamed, followed by a string of shocked cries and curses. "Somebody do something, it's eating him!"

"Kill it!" were the next words Kurt heard, and when he turned around toward the sound he saw Adam's lips moving, his hands gesturing for his guards to go. "Kill it, kill the beast!"

"NO!" Kurt screamed as the first soldiers landed on the pit, swords and spears and crossbows in hand, helped by some of the winners from the previous fights. The men circled slowly around the dragon, inching closer and closer to him as he ignored them and kept on enjoying his meal. "No, don't hurt him, stop!"

He didn't even think about it. He used his hands as leverage to jump over the edge of the box, landing on his feet on the sand.

"Khalees, come back!" Finn shouted, but Kurt didn't turn around. He ran to Drogon, just as the first men were throwing their arrows at him. Only then the dragon realized he was being attacked.

The corpse now forgotten, he turned his full attention on the soldiers. Kurt managed to duck down when his first roar engulfed them all in a swirl of flames, reducing three men to screaming tangles of smoking and crumbling limbs. The survivors shot other arrows; most of them simply hit Drogon's scales and landed on the sand, but some got stuck in the spaces in between, causing him to roar at them – more out of anger than pain, it seemed to Kurt.

"Stop hitting him, stop!" he shouted again from behind them, but they ignored him.

Drogon didn't, though. His enormous black eyes lined with red found him, somehow, and stared at him so hard that Kurt wondered if he could spit fire from his eyes, too. The eye-contact got interrupted by someone throwing a spear at the dragon, who turned his full attention on the attacker; in one single movement, the man was tore open at the waist, the two parts of his body twitching weakly on the ground as the blood flowed away from the middle.

Kurt realized he had to stop them from hurting the dragon, but he had to stop the dragon from killing them, too. They weren't as innocent as Hazzea was, but they didn't deserve to die.

"Drogon!" he called, covering his eyes with his arm to protect them from the ashes floating in the scorching air. Even the breath coming out of his mouth seemed to burn as it came in contact with it. "Drogon, look at me, stop!"

Drogon turned from where he was devouring another man alive. He narrowed his eyes as if to study him, weigh how important his words were, then got back to what he was doing as if Kurt wasn't there at all.

"Drogon!" Kurt shouted at him again, receiving no answer. When he looked around, he realized they were alone in the pit now, surrounded by corpses. People still lingered on the bleachers, scattered here and there, too terrified to intervene yet too curious to see how that would end to just get up and leave.

As he searched the space around him, he saw the pitmaster's whip abandoned on the ground. He took it. The rest was pure instinct.

When he hit Drogon the first time, it was clearly too weak to have the effect he wanted. It was ridiculous given how big the dragon was, but Kurt was afraid to hurt him for real, in a way. He put the thought aside and hit again, harder this time. Annoyed, the black creature stopped feasting on the dead body and turned toward him, nostrils flaring and stomach grumbling as he got ready to spit fire in Kurt's face.

"Listen to me!" Kurt said, hitting him again with the whip. "You belong to me, to me!"

He roared in response, but without the fire, showing Kurt his teeth now covered in fresh blood. His breath was almost unbearably hot – it would have been too much, if Kurt was someone else, but he wasn't. Then the dragon closed his mouth and stared at him again in the same intense way as before, when they had been interrupted, and it felt as if Kurt could look at his own soul in his eyes.

And he saw it all.

What the Hells was he even doing there? When was the last time he had spoken or even thought about going back to Westeros? How had he managed to reduce himself to the pathetic mess he was, doing what people forced him to do, accepting compromises, sacrificing the things he wanted?

He was a Hummelsmythe, he was a dragon, and the world was his.

No wonder they turned against me, he realized when he thought about his dragons, his precious, betrayed children. I let them down. I haven't been worthy of them.

How many times, since taking Meereen, had he accepted things he didn't truly want? How many times had he made what was supposed to be the right decision, only to find out that it didn't satisfy him at all?

He had locked them away to do what was right. He had let Blaine, his husband, his Khal, his sun-and-stars go to do what was right.

He was done with it. He would never do it again.

He didn't know if Drogon could sense his resolution somehow, but either way the dragon moved, lowering his body so his belly could touch the blood-soaked sand. He closed his wings against his sides, too, and looked back at Kurt expectantly. When he understood, he couldn't help but smile.

He used the scales as leverage to climb, and once on top of the dragon's neck, he clang to them to be sure not to fall. He hit Drogon's side with the whip, and the ground was suddenly farther away than it was before, the air moved by the creature's wings causing Kurt's hair to fall in front of his eyes as they got higher, higher, higher in the sky, flying just like he had always dreamt to do, just like Sebastian used to promise they would one day.

As the pit got smaller and smaller down on Earth, as Drogon's wings parted the clouds to let them pass through them, he realized he could go anywhere, anywhere he wanted. He could go to Asshai-by-the-Shadows, the mysterious place the eggs had come from; he could fly over Valyria, to see what remained of his ancestors' destroyed motherland; he could find out how big the world was apart from Westeros, Essos and Sothoryos; he could fly all the way to the North of Westeros and beyond the Wall to explore the Lands of Always Winter and see for himself if giants and mammoths still existed.

It should have been disorienting, to have all that freedom so suddenly where minutes before he had felt trapped and stuck and useless, but it wasn't. It gave him an unusual clarity of mind about things, and about what he really wanted, because he could have it all and he was going to.

And when he had to think about one place to go, it was easy.

Yes, fly, take me away, take me to him, FLY!