Castle Black wasn't a welcoming place. Kurt supposed the name itself should have been a hint, but he didn't like judging a book by its cover. This cover, though, was old and wrinkled and falling in places, and so were the pages hidden underneath it. The poor numbers the Night's Watch could count on (six hundred men where once there had been five thousand) meant that only a part of the castle was inhabited and well-kept, the one necessary to actually host its occupants; the rest was left to rot and freeze under the snow and the hard spots of moss that were bold enough to peek out from the thick white blanket. Nineteen castles had been built along the Wall, but only three were currently occupied: Castle Black in the middle, the Shadow Tower at its western end, and Eastwatch-by-the-Sea at the eastern.

It wasn't all about the atmosphere, of course. The men weren't warm, either. They all went about their businesses with sad or scowling faces half-hidden behind their black scarves, granting Kurt the basic courtesy that was reserved to a king, of course, but it was clear they weren't used to show kindness, and it didn't look like they bothered enough to try. All except for the Lord Commander and his steward Trent, anyway. While in the first case the kindness was straight-backed and solemn and reverent, the treatment of a true Northern Lord (even though the man wasn't actually one), in the latter it was all a fumbling, stuttering attempt at exaggerated pleasantries, but Kurt didn't mind. At least it was funny, and nothing else about the place or the reason they were there was funny.

Blaine didn't like it either, but his was an entirely different reason.

"Too many men" he mumbled grumpily over their first breakfast, as they sat side by side on one of the benches of the high-vaulted, poorly lit Common Hall. "Too many sexually frustrated men."

Kurt rolled his eyes as he gulped down a piece of cheese. Of all the things he had told Blaine about how the Night's Watch worked, that seemed the one he couldn't wrap his head around, of course.

"For Gods' sake, Blaine, don't be ridiculous" he said under his breath, hoping no one was hearing their conversation.

"They're all staring at you" Blaine insisted, narrowing his eyes in the general direction of – well, of everyone really.

"I'm the king. People are bound to stare" Kurt explained him slowly. He knew he sounded kind of annoyed, but deep down Blaine's jealousy was... endearing. Saying it to Blaine, though, would have been the death of him. "I know you think every man in the world is obsessed with me, but-"

"All I know is that if I were to go without sex for, like, forever, I would want to stick it anywhere I could get the chance to."

"How very classy of you."

"Didn't think you loved me for my class" Blaine retorted, crossing his arms over his chest and raising his eyebrows mockingly.

Well. Fair point.

"Still" Kurt went on, avoiding the comment. "Stop worrying about it."

Blaine remained quiet for a while, his teeth grinding together.

"Fine" he conceded at last. "But if one of them looks at you in a way I don't like, I'll cut his dick off. Classy enough for you?"

"My hero" Kurt said in a fake dreamy sigh, lifting one hand to cover his heart.

He had just resumed eating his breakfast when he caught a glimpse of Blaine raising his arm in a blatant, exaggerated way before putting it around his waist, squeezing at his hipbone, Blaine's thumb kneading the flesh in obsessive, insistent little circles that never failed to make Kurt's breath stutter secretly in his chest. He smiled to himself and kept eating as if he hadn't noticed. It reminded him of the way Blaine would take him by the hips and sit him in his lap back in their early days, just to show off. To show Kurt off. It was nice to know some things never changed, especially since the rest of the world seemed in a hurry to do so.

Or at least the world Kurt knew.

On that same morning, in fact, Nick Snow led him and Blaine to the top of the Wall. The base was connected to it by a switchback stair and a winch elevator, which was the one they used. It shook and rattled loudly as it was pulled up, but it did its job. With them there was Ghost, the Lord Commander's enormous white direwolf – it was bigger than the one Ryder had owned, or at least it seemed like that to Kurt. The beast's eyes were red, just like Viserion's. And just like its dead butchered brother, thankfully the animal liked Kurt enough not to eat him.

The cold one could feel up there made him realize he had never known what real cold was like. It stung like a thousand needles piercing his skin down to his bones, even through the embarrassingly high number of layers he was wearing (which was still half of those Blaine was wearing). But that wasn't what took his breath away. It was that feeling, the sinking, helpless feeling you get when you look up at the sky and see the stars for the first time. The feeling of being so small, in a world that is just so big.

"It's- I- how far does it go?" he asked, staring at the expanse of land that stretched on north of the Wall, north of Westeros, north of everything else.

"Nobody knows, Your Grace" Nick Snow said in a wise tone that wasn't supposed to belong to someone so young, yet suited him. "It's only mapped until the end of the Haunted Forest."

Said forest covered most of the landscape Kurt was looking at, except for the land most adjacent to the Wall itself, which was bare and deserted; beyond, far away in the distance, he could see white mountain tops half-hidden by the clouds. They looked so eternal, somehow, as if they had been there since the world had been created and would forever stay there, unchanged, untouched by time as men's worthless little lives went on, so self-centered in their conviction of being important, of making a difference in the history of humanity with their twists and turns and choices and falls.

Nobody knows.

It was so unsettling that he couldn't help but shiver. It also filled him with such curiosity that for a moment he felt the need to climb on Drogon's back and fly until he reached the end of the world, if there was one.

"And where... where are they?" he heard Blaine say. His husband had his arms around himself and was trying to warm himself up by stroking his forearms over his fur cloak.

"Somewhere into the forest by now" Nick replied. "It makes for a terrible battlefield even on dragonback, because it's too thick. In fact, the only thing we can do is wait for them to come out of it."

"What's your plan?" Kurt asked him. Even though Nick had called him for help, he didn't seem like the kind of man who didn't have a plan already. Kurt was just the piece he had been missing.

"As soon as our watchers see them, you'll ride the dragons above them and kill them as they try to reach the Wall. Archers up here will slow them enough for you to get them all, while I will be down in the tunnel, in case they should try and break the Black Gate. Your Unsullied too, if you don't have a better use for them, Your Grace."

"They'll go where they're needed" Kurt reassured him. He looked back at the white immensity of the unmapped world. "It sounds like a good plan."

He knew enough of plans by now, though, to know that millions of things could go differently, no matter how good they sounded. Nothing in his life had ever gone according to the plan – if it had, he would be living in Braavos in a house with a red door and a jasmine-smelling garden trading sweet stolen kisses with some fisherboy who worked at the Harbor and brought him fresh fish every morning, a prince who had forgot and had been forgotten in return. A good life, a simple life – just not the life he was meant to have.

He looked at Blaine as the daydream faded away. The discovery of his own breath lingering in the air in little puffs of steam had left him awed and dumbfounded, his eyes blinking owlishly, and the red spreading over his cheeks and nose made him look just that much more like the boy he truly was.

For once, Kurt was glad a good plan had gone wrong.

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

The first couple of days went by smoothly and uneventfully, until one night Kurt found himself sitting up on the bed inside the King's Tower with his heart thumping madly against his ribcage, woken up by the unbearably loud blasting of a horn. When he turned around, he saw that Blaine was looking back at him with the same panicked expression, his hair a mess, his breath quick and ragged.

"You think...?" Kurt asked, but he knew he didn't need to finish the sentence for the other to understand.

"I don't know" Blaine whispered. "Let's find out."

They got out of bed – Blaine using the most colorful Dothraki curses he knew to complain about the temperature difference – and wrapped themselves in their cloaks to walk down the stair winding its way inside the tower and go look for the Lord Commander. They were just about to round the last corner when Blaine grabbed his arm and pulled him backwards, putting a finger on his lips to silence him.

"Look" he murmured, nodding toward the corridor they had almost stepped into. Slowly, Kurt pressed himself against the wall and peeked around the corner, Blaine's chest pressed to his back from behind as he assumed the same position.

Two men were kissing passionately, almost desperately. The one with his back against the wall seemed to have dark hair, but Kurt wasn't sure; the other instead had impossibly blonde hair, made almost silver by the moonlight streaming through a window. The (seemingly) dark-haired one was the first to interrupt the kiss, almost harshly, shoving at the other man's chest with both of his hands. Only then, when his face was revealed, Kurt realized it was Nick.

"Let me go now" the Lord Commander said coldly, straightening up his clothes. "I have to go see-"

"One blast means rangers returning from a patrol and we both know it" the blonde Sworn Brother cut him off, pinning Nick's body back against the wall to say his next words only a few inches from his lips. "Two blasts means wildlings, three blasts means Others. We learned our pretty little lesson, didn't we? Come on, let's go back to bed now. Want you so much."

He tried to dive back into the kiss, but Nick shoved at him again.

"Fuck, Jeff, just let me go!" he almost shouted, his usually neutral face twisted into a mask of anger and pain. "I told you, this was the last time!"

"Yeah, more like the fourth last time, wasn't it?" Jeff sneered, crossing his arms over his chest. "Why can't you just do like all the others and fuck me behind their backs, Nick?"

"It's Lord Commander to you."

Jeff gave a bitter laugh, but it was clear from the way his jaw was tensed that the blow had stung.

"Are you seriously going to pull this shit on me now?" he spat in a harsh, cruel tone, but his next words were softer and Kurt barely managed to hear them. "After... after everything?"

Nick huffed and looked up in exasperation. It seemed fake, though. At least to Kurt.

"There is no everything" he said, emphasizing the word, and Kurt cringed internally for a man he didn't even know because he couldn't imagine something more hurtful than that. "And we made a sacred oath. We kneeled in front of the heart tree and said-"

"Night gathers, and now my watch begins" Jeff intoned without letting him finish, his voice even and flat as if reciting a religious litany. "It shall not end until my death. I shall-"

"Just- just stop-"

"I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children" Jeff went on, ignoring him – his tone was transfixing in its sacred, ceremonious rhythm. "I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come."

"It wasn't like I didn't know it, you-"

"Do I look like a woman to you?" Jeff asked him, switching back to pleading, desperate anger. "Do I look like I could give you children?"

Nick stared at him for a moment. Maybe it was the moonlight, but his eyes were shining brighter than before.

"You can't- you're working your way around it" he said, his voice faltering a little. "It means we can't get attached to people, because it would distract us from our duty."

"No, it means exactly what it says" Jeff insisted, walking closer to the Lord Commander again, probably reading some sort of doubt in his eyes. He lay a hand on Nick's cheek, and the other man let him. "And I can't find a single line saying I can't love you."

The hand was smacked away.

"Stop saying that."

"I love you."

"Fuck, it's an order!"

"I love you."

Suddenly they were a tangle of struggling limbs, Nick trying to get away as Jeff pressed him against the wall, pinning his wrists on the black stone.

"And you love me too, don't you?" he said, trying to duck his head so Nick would look him in the eyes. "Don't you?"

"It doesn't matter" Nick said, looking away to avoid Jeff's gaze. Every time the blonde let go of one of his wrists to cup his chin and get him to look at him, Nick would try to flee again, thumping fists against the other man's chest.

"It fucking does."

"No, it doesn't!" Nick growled, shoving hard at Jeff all of a sudden – so unexpectedly that this time, it worked. The black brother stumbled back, barely managing not to fall, and stared at the other with a mixture of sadness and accusation. Nick held the gaze for a moment before running away along the corridor, his rushed footsteps echoing through the night.

When Jeff curled up in a ball on the floor, Kurt stepped back from his corner. It wasn't fair for him to see that. To be honest, he shouldn't have seen any of that, but somehow that drew the line for him. The privacy of a man crying over his broken heart.

He turned around to tell Blaine to go back to bed, but when he did, he found soft lips pressed to his and a strong, solid body pinning his to the wall, two hands cupping his face to angle it sideways as an insistent, warm tongue invaded his mouth. Surprised, he let Blaine kiss him as he wanted, have him as he wanted, and it was Blaine who leaned back first.

"I love you" his husband whispered.

"I- I know, my sun-and-stars" Kurt told him, smiling. "It's okay."

"I should tell you every day" Blaine went on, his eyes wild with something Kurt couldn't exactly place, his hands firm on Kurt's cheeks again. "Every day, moon of my life. I-"

The horn blasted again, silencing him. They stared and clutched at each other wordlessly.

There was a second blast.

And then, longer and deeper and sadder, the third one came.

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

Climbing on Drogon's back was more difficult than it had ever been. The three dragons were nervous, fidgety, anxious, their eyes wildly scanning the crowd of running and shouting men preparing for battle in the courtyard. But the confusion and the frenzy upsetting the otherwise still night couldn't be the only reason. Something was... off. Something ancestral they could feel under their scales, deep in their bones, something terrifying Kurt couldn't even come close to grasp, because he was just a man. And that, the fact that they seemed to be scared – his children born from dead eggs, who had done some amazing and horrible things, who had burned people to ashes – made him scared, too.

As he tried to shush and calm Drogon down so he would stop flap his wings in the freezing air and let him climb on top of him, the noises all around him seemed to become louder, making his heart beat quicker. His breath was coming in short bursts out of his mouth, and he found himself looking for Blaine, suddenly panicking with a thought that was ridiculously silly, he knew.

I didn't say it back.

"Blaine!" he shouted, dodging Drogon's head as the dragon shook it from side to side, his paws thumping against the snow and digging smoking holes in it. One of Rhaegal's wings blocked his way as he tried to walk toward where Viserion was supposed to be – his eyes still had to get used to darkness, and the only thing about the dragon standing out against the snow were his blood-red eyes, and supposedly Blaine on top of him.

"Rhaegal, shh, calm down" he cooed, petting his nose. "Just let me pass, please."

Rhaegal shifted slightly to the side, but as soon as Kurt tried to keep walking, he resumed trying to get his attention by screeching uncontrollably in his face. Through the space between his right wing and the earth, Kurt could see that farther ahead there was indeed a struggling, angry-looking Viserion trying to shoo Blaine away with his tale without actually hitting him – and the fact that he wasn't using fire said a great deal about the creatures' intelligence, because the reason could only be that he knew Blaine wasn't immune as Kurt was.

"Blaine!" he called again, trying to make himself be seen. He had to do it several times before Blaine actually turned his head, squinted in the night, and recognized him.

"I love you too!" Kurt shouted then, but the horns were blowing again, summoning the Night's Watch to battle, summoning him to meet his fate on a dragon cloaked in darkness.

"What?" he faintly heard Blaine scream back, as he too avoided Viserion's wings.

"I love you too!" he repeated, cupping his hands around his mouth, but Blaine just scrunched up his face in confusion and went back to coaxing Viserion into being ridden.

It took a great deal of convincing, especially with Rhaegal – who to his credit must have been quite confused about the fact that he didn't get a rider in the first place –, but eventually they both managed, and the green dragon agreed to follow meekly. And so they soared, Drogon's scales and Kurt's clothes merging with the pitch black sky, the dragon's body heat keeping the winter cold away even at such an altitude. They flew over and beyond the Wall into the unknown, the archers on the top looking up for a moment, interrupting their preparations, to stare mesmerized at something they had never thought they would see in their lives.

They flew until they saw them, the dead – quietly prowling out of the woods, walking with no hurry whatsoever. As Drogon started to descend upon them – slower, so much slower than he would have done had it been anybody else, muscles straining against the order, wings half-closed instead of wide open –, Kurt caught details he hadn't been able to see before: some of them were naked, which meant they had died earlier than others, and their flesh was a purplish grey instead of stark white; others were still clothed, and their complexion was almost the only thing that gave them away; some were afoot, but others were riding horses, too – dead horses with half their bellies or half their faces, rotting teeth showing inside their mouths, no breath coming out of their nostrils. There were men and women alike, probably dead wildlings risen from the graveyards of their small villages scattered here and there inside the Haunted Forest.

None of them seemed to notice what was about to happen, until it happened.

"DRACARYS!" Kurt shouted, soon echoed by Blaine – he had had to learn the basic commands in Valyrian, and that was his favorite word so far.

Fire warmed the chilly night and set Kurt's heart aflame with courage, because it appeared that the dead could die again, unnaturally so – screaming with no voice, as if someone had temporarily switched down the volume of the world, but trashing on the blackened snow like all the other men Kurt had seen his children kill. And Gods, Kurt hated himself for thinking it, but it was easy; nothing like the battle of King's Landing, to be sure. No worries about catapults or killing his own men. It was like planting a foot on top of an anthill. It might be that he had to do it several times to finish the job, but there was no questioning he would do it eventually. Were his dragons really scared of those? Those- those almost silly-looking dumb puppets walking with their eyes set straight ahead, unable to do so much as notice a fire-spitting dragon flying down onto them?

It went on for quite some time; they came out of the forest, they got burned, and the cycle repeated itself over and over so automatically that it got almost boring. Once in a while a small group of walking corpses would escape the flames, so they would send Rhaegal after them before they could reach the Wall to try and break the gate that gave access to Castle Black. The tunnel was packed with men, Nick Snow probably in the first row with his shiny Valyrian Longclaw in hand, but Kurt really wanted to spare them the fight, especially since the Lord Commander's was the only dragonsteel sword they had.

And then... then the Gods heard him. They snickered, Kurt was sure they did, and decided that yes, it was indeed quite a boring spectacle to look at. So they turned it up a notch, and something else appeared from behind the frozen leaves.

The color was different – an icy white, almost light blue under the moonlight – but the main contrast was in the way they moved; so posed, so regal. Their eyes shone of a blue so bright that Kurt could see them even from where he was, and their skin looked as if it had been frozen under a thick layer of ice, hiding all the ugly imperfections of the mortal flesh. Their mounts were dead mounts, too, but some rode huge bear corpses walking on all fours. They were the things Nick Snow had talked about – they were the real army, not the dead woken up by them. They were what the dragons were terrified of. The Others.

Drogon screeched so loud that Kurt had to cover his ears, and in doing so he almost risked losing his balance, because the dragon arched his back in the air in his haste to flee.

"Drogon!" he shouted, gripping the scales of his neck with his fingers. "No, Drogon, go back!"

When he turned around he saw that both Viserion and Rhaegal had withdrawn, giving the dead frozen army all the time and space to march forward, coming by the hundreds out of the trees, the firsts of them halfway to the Wall now.

"Fuck, Drogon, do as I say!" he said through gritted teeth, bent over as if he wanted to whisper it into the dragon's very skin.

But when a tentative flame finally managed to slither its way through Drogon's black teeth, it did nothing. They didn't even stop walking.

If you fail, the world fails with you.

"I- what do I- Blaine, what do we do?!"

From behind him, the sound of fighting filled the night. He turned around to see that the gate was being stormed, thumped against with a battering ram he hadn't noticed. From the top of the Wall arrows were being shot, but they seemed to be useless.

"Let's just- let's try again!" he heard Blaine shout back, and the hesitance in his voice made absolutely clear that they were doomed, if it wasn't clear before.
Before they could try, though, a drawn-out scream reached out for them from the sky above the Haunted Forest. It was a sound Kurt had never heard before; sort of like a knife trying to cut through a block of ice and failing, sliding noisily over the hard surface, only ten thousand times louder, so high-pitched that he was sure glass windows for miles and miles around were breaking.

It belonged to the most terrifying thing Kurt had ever seen in his life.

It landed just where the forest gave way to the snow, as if mindful of the precious lines of trees, and roared up again to send his children into a panicked frenzy of wildly flapping wings and scared pitiful whimpers, something Kurt had never heard them do. Thrice the size of Drogon, its tail was as long as the Red Keep's throne room and its jaws were wide enough to swallow a house. Its eyes shone of an unnatural blue like those of the Others, and its scales seemed to be made of thick light blue ice like their skins. And from its mouth came twirling bursts of frozen air and ice and snow, dissolving in the night like a human breath would have.

"Seven save us all" Kurt found himself whispering, staring at it for a moment that seemed to last forever, trying to come to terms with what was in front of him, feeling like a decadent hero staring into the eyes of the monster he was supposed to slay. "The world has gone mad."

"Kurt" Blaine simply said instead, for once out of clever remarks. "Oh God, Kurt."

The ice dragon looked up at them like a cat would have done with a mouse remained stuck in a corner, tilting its head to the side and opening its huge blue-white wings to fly up and toward them, and all the Valyrian praises in the world wouldn't have been enough to keep Drogon from whirling around and fleeing, twirling madly in the air to avoid the ice bursts directed at him and his brothers in turn. All Kurt could do was hold onto his scales as the chasing began and pray he would not fall or get caught by a burst of ice – pray Drogon didn't get caught, too; because it dawned on him that just as his children's fire was stronger than normal fire, that sort of ice must be stronger than normal ice, which meant that a frozen arm or leg or wing would probably remain frozen for a very long time.

But why couldn't they melt it, then? It and the Others as well? Why did the prophecy say he was the one that would defeat the darkness, when it was clear there was no way to?

He lost track of time, and sight of Blaine. Drogon's movements weren't stable enough for him to stare at one point in space for more than a second, so much so that he had to close his eyes from time to time to avoid throwing up or fainting. Drogon spat fire every now and then, but from what Kurt could tell – which wasn't much – it wasn't making any difference. At some point he realized they had moved the chasing above the Wall, and he managed to concentrate long enough to see men fighting at the Black Gate, now completely smashed. There were black brothers and Unsullied lying dead in the snow, and he couldn't help but wonder how much time the Others needed to wake them up and have them strangle their own companions.

Nick Snow was fighting among three frozen creatures; Kurt recognized his direwolf snarling at the creatures and then his sword, thanks to the way Valyrian steel shone brightly in the moonlight. The sword seemed to keep the things away, as if they were afraid of it, but its slashes were not killing them like Kurt had expected. After all, the hand he had been shown at the base of the Iron Throne had belonged to a corpse, not to them. Not to something inhuman and utterly incomprehensible.

All these laws about magic and sorcery, they're beyond us, Kurt, beautiful, obliviously wise Blaine had whispered with Kurt's face in his hands. They're not meant for us to understand.

And they weren't. But if Kurt didn't understand at least some of them, and soon, the world as he knew it was at an end. Beyond the Wall the Seven Kingdoms began, and from them the access to the Narrow Sea; beyond that, Essos, and beyond that only the Gods knew what.

Thinking was hard, up there in the cold and the fear, his heart loud in his ears but not as loud as the blood-curdling roar of a frozen dragon. But he did it, because he had to.

I am the prince that was promised. I am Azor Ahai reborn, the child of fire, the burning sword in the hand of the great R'hllor.

His heart stopped.

"Drogon!" he pleaded, clutching desperately at his neck. "Drogon, please, you have to do something for me! Please, I'm begging you!"

He could feel the dragon's attention turning to him, a small breach, but it was something and he took advantage of it.

"I want you to fly down now, for a moment, just a moment" he said, looking down at where Nick Snow was still fighting for his and his brothers' life. "Just long enough for me to grab something."

In the pause that followed, he finally heard Viserion and Rhaegal again, and saw the ice dragon direct its fury at them, gleaming as if it was made of diamonds. He saw Blaine gripping the white scales of his dragon and scream, and realized he had to hurry. He wasn't sure it would work, but he didn't know what else to do.

Drogon's loud and rather spacious landing stopped the fighting long enough for him to scream at Nick, "Give me your sword! I need your sword!"

The Lord Commander stared at him in surprise as he was blocking a blow directed at his head, and answered Kurt without looking at him, "I can't! Without it, I'm dead!"

"Go to the top of the Wall then! Please, it's important!" he shouted from Drogon's back, praying the dragon wouldn't get scared of the Others and take to the sky before he could convince the man.

"And leave my men here to die? Your Grace, I don't think-"

Up in the sky one of his children gave a heart-wrenching cry of something that sounded too much like pain.

I don't have time for this.

"Give me your sword, Lord Commander! It's an order!"

He didn't find it in himself to feel bad about it. He was sure he would eventually, if they survived. Nick grunted his disapproval, but nodded. Kurt knew he would; he cared too much about honor not to. So he took Drogon closer to the fight and waited for Nick to find the right time, which came when one of his men died next to him. The Lord Commander, so swiftly that Kurt nearly missed it, snatched the Sworn Brother's sword from the immobile grasp of his wrist and threw Longclaw in the air without even looking in Kurt's direction, resuming the fight.

Kurt hoped he hadn't just condemned the man to death. He liked him, liked his devotion to his order, liked his stern sense of duty, but most of all, someone out there loved him. And he was sure that person was loved in return. He had seen it in Nick's eyes. He was too much of a romantic, as much as he tried not to show it, not to wish them a happy ending.

He caught the sword by the hilt and almost fell from the saddle, dragged down by the weapon's heavy weight, but managed not to.

"Drogon, up!"

Back among the clouds, the night sky seemed alive with quick, swift lightening of ice and fire being shot back and forth as Viserion and the ice dragon zigzagged among them, but Rhaegal was nowhere to be found. Maybe he had fled to safety, without a rider to please or impress. Kurt didn't blame him. For what he needed, one dragon was enough.

He led Drogon up, higher than he had ever dared to, so he could descend on the fight from above without being seen. He had to grasp the sword with both of his hands to keep the wind from snatching it away from his grip, his teeth now chattering because of the terrible, almost unbearable cold that was up there, where no one should be allowed to go. But the world had gone mad, after all, hadn't it? It was dark, so dark away from the torches and the sharp contrast between night and snow, and for a moment he felt engulfed by it, lost with no escape, falling into a never-ending black hole of despair. But then they flew down, the clouds parting before them, and everything was so rushed that he didn't have time to think. He just did it.

When Drogon was close enough, he crawled up his neck as to avoid his wings and jumped. He landed with a painful thump on the ice dragon's back, the scales so cold that they numbed his body through the clothes. The creature sensed his presence and stopped chasing Viserion to try and get him off his body, writhing in the air like a snake.

"Kurt! Kurt, what are you doing?" Blaine was screaming over and over, his face distorted in anguish and horror.

Making a prophecy come true.

Before the ice dragon could manage to curl its neck around enough to freeze him to death, Kurt raised the Valyrian sword in the air and shouted, "Viserion, DRACARYS!"

Viserion roared in his direction, the flame setting both the sword and Kurt's clothes on fire. The steel remained intact underneath, turning the weapon into a long pointed torch in front of Kurt's stunned eyes – a burning sword. Only Valyrian steel, dragonsteel forged with ancient spells, could suffer dragonfire without melting, and only Kurt, of dragonblood, could hold a burning sword.

Only the two combined would defeat the darkness.

He pushed the sword down where the dragon's long neck began, where the scales at the juncture seemed to part slightly from the rest of the body to show the ice breeding somewhere in its belly. The dragon gave a whole-body shudder, its screams like thousands of glasses breaking at the same time. And then it started flying downward sort of tiredly, yet quick enough to be confusing and disorienting and terrifying.

"Kurt, jump on Drogon, jump!" he heard Blaine scream as Viserion followed the fall, and when he turned on the other side, he saw that his black dragon was indeed there, slightly off-center and lower in the sky.

This fall was less heroic, he must confess. He landed on one of Drogon's wings, making him cry out in pain, and rolled down onto his back almost to the other edge of his body. His clothes were still burning and shriveling and his skin was being exposed to the cold as they got peeled away from it, leaving him half-naked and shivering. He curled up in a ball once he managed to reach the saddle with one hand still gripping the sword tightly – it wasn't burning anymore, but it provided at least some additional heat. He closed his eyes, his teeth chattering wildly.

He only knew that someone got him down and wrapped him up in fur, where he buried himself to fight the growing numbness of his limbs. He felt him push locks away from his face and kiss his forehead. Then that someone hoisted him up like a baby and walked, walked, walked for a very long time in his mind, until it seemed like they weren't outside anymore and it was warmer, in his blood and in his lungs everything was warmer, and it was nice. He was the child of fire. He should always be warm.

He woke up to that thought, with a bowl of smoking hot soup being pressed to his chest.

"Drink it, Your Grace" a blurred version of Nick Snow said, his features distorted by Kurt's confusion and a nearby fireplace. He supposed they were in the Common Hall again, judging by the hardness of the bench he was precariously sitting on, his back pressed against... something that breathed.

"Do as he says, moon of my life" Blaine's voice echoed through the furs, drifting just from behind his ear, and only then Kurt realized Blaine's arms had been around his waist all along.

"Blaine" he exhaled, turning around slightly to look at him, to be sure. "You're okay. Everyone is okay."

And I can't believe it actually worked.

"Thanks to you" Nick Snow said, waving a spoon in the air in front of him. "What was that all about? Intuition?"

Kurt gave a chuckle, reveling in the heat coming from the fireplace and Blaine's body. Gods, he couldn't wait to go back to sunny King's Landing, now that he thought about it.

"It's a very long story" he said, accepting the spoon. It didn't taste very good, mostly of hot water with a little bit of something remotely vegetable, but it was so hot that it burned its way down his throat in a way that almost made him moan out loud.

"Doesn't matter" Nick shrugged, refilling the spoon. "You saved us all, Your Grace. I knew you would, but... I must admit, I was worried for a moment."

"You really are the prince that was promised" Blaine whispered into Kurt's hair, nuzzling at it with his nose. Kurt could feel him smile through his locks, and it was amazing. But then, he couldn't help but wonder.

"But how... how is everything over?" he asked.

"They died together with the dragon" Nick explained. "I don't know why. I honestly don't care."

Neither did Kurt. After all, he wasn't meant to understand everything. Only what he needed to.

"Do you think there will be... others of them?" he whispered.

Because there probably would be, when somebody else would find a dragon egg and a way to make it hatch, waking up long asleep magic and long asleep evil with it. But then again, that same someone would be able to do what Kurt had just done. Only then Kurt realized that somehow, in its twisted way, his mad world had some sort of balance. Good and evil. Love and hate. Light and darkness. Day and night. Ice and fire.

"I don't know" the Lord Commander said, after serving him another deliciously hot spoon of bland soup. "But in that case, I guess I'll just have to summon you back here, Your Grace."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that" Blaine mumbled. "I've had enough cold for ten lifetimes. A fucking ice dragon, God. Give me a break already."

They all laughed, and the words couldn't help but fill Kurt with a sudden certainty: He's staying. They also rang a bell in his mind, though.

"Is Rhaegal back?"

He felt Blaine stop laughing against his chest.

"He's... hurt, moon of my life" the khal said in a low, tentative tone.

"What?" Kurt jumped, turning back from inside the furs. "Is he going to be okay?"

Blaine hesitated.

"A burst of ice caught one of his wings and... he fell" he murmured. "The ice is melting away now, but I don't know if he'll still be able to fly."

Gods, please, no.

"No, no, no, my baby, my precious child, I have to see him" Kurt started babbling, trying to disentangle himself from Blaine's hold, but it was unyielding.

"Finish the soup and I'll take you to him, I promise" Blaine cooed, keeping him there inside his strong embrace. "Your skin is still cold, and you're so pale."

"I'm always pale, let me go" Kurt insisted weakly, but he knew Blaine was right.

"You call them your children, Your Grace?" Nick Snow asked tentatively, his head tilted to the side in curiosity. Kurt looked up at him, his eyes brimming with unshed tears.

"They are" he told him. "They hatched under my body in the Dothraki Sea, as a burning tent crumbled around us."

Nick seemed deeply fascinated. Half his face was glowing thanks to the fire, but the other half seemed just as fierce and alive with wonder.

"Another long story, I imagine" he mused. "I suppose I'll read it in a book someday. I hope they'll give me some credit for the sword, at least."

Kurt gave him a little smile.

"Oh, now that I think about it... where did you get it?" he asked, curious.

"My father gave it to me when I left for the Wall" Nick replied, his eyes clearly shining with pride at the memory. "It comes from a bigger Valyrian sword that was divided in two – Ryder had the other one. The original sword was a gift from your father to mine, Your Grace."

Kurt's smile got bigger.

He has been looking over me all along, he realized, basking in the comforting feeling. And now, Finn will do the same.

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

The ice did melt from Rhaegal's injured wing. It stayed cramped and bent at an odd angle, and in the beginning Kurt was sure he would never fly again. But in time, day after day, he moved it better and managed to spread it wider, until it went back to its original shape.

Watching him take flight for the first time after the battle, together with his brothers, was something he would never forget. It was over, the world was safe, and his children were happy.

He was happy, too. Blaine hadn't heard him say that he loved him too, but it was okay, because he would have a thousand other chances to do it. And that made him realize that something like that, a chance at saying the most precious thing there is to say, was too important to go wasted in a world that could just end at any moment, swallowed by the seas or burned down to nothingness or frozen for all eternity.

"I have one last order for you, Lord Commander" he said as he got on his horse, a smiling Blaine by his side, both ready to leave the North and not be back for a very long time. They had a marriage to arrange, a pregnancy to announce, and possibly the rest of their lives to plan.

"Anything, Your Grace" Nick said as he distractedly petted his direwolf in the courtyard. Kurt smiled knowingly at him and held his gaze for a moment.

"Tell him" he said, before whirling his horse around.