Convincing Blaine that killing Sebastian wasn't a good idea proved to be quite difficult, since Kurt himself struggled to remember why it wasn't. Sebastian was his brother, his own blood, but it was almost impossible to love him at this point. Right after his discovery, Blaine had declared solemnly that he'd cut his body to pieces and scatter them all across the Dothraki sea to feed the white lions that lived in it, but Kurt had managed to talk him out of it with pleas and promises and kisses, many, many kisses.

The morning after, riding close to his khal, Kurt found out that Blaine had taken measures anyway. His bloodriders, Wes and David, who always rode behind him, were snickering about something and speaking too fast for Kurt to understand, but Sebastian's name was being said way too many times.

"What are they laughing at?" he asked Blaine, worried that his husband had ignored his will. Blaine looked at him with an amused, satisfied expression.

"Since the moon of my life didn't want me to kill Sebassian, I didn't, but I took his horse away from him so he has to walk."

It was a great shame for a man to travel by foot for the Dothraki, Kurt had been told. It meant he had no power and no honor, and when a khal was too old or ill to ride, he stopped being a khal altogether. But something else had captured his attention, and he felt the need to ask.

"Moon of my life?"

Blaine's mouth twitched upwards, his own way of smiling, and his eyes of melted gold sparkled in the sunlight.

"The moon guides the man in the dark when he has to ride at night and he can't see. When it's day, I ride and you follow, but when night comes, it's you who guides me."

It was so simple and logical, yet so poetic, that Kurt felt his eyes burning. He stared at the barbarian he had been forced to marry, and saw the sweetest man he had ever met.

Later that morning, Finn reached him and started riding at his side after a nod of approval from Blaine.

"Sebastian was too tired to walk, so they let him climb on a cart" he said to Kurt. "He thought it was a courtesy; he doesn't know they'll mock him even more now."

Kurt shook his head, a distant sadness settling over him when he spoke.

"He will never conquer the Seven Kingdoms" he heard himself say. Deep down, he had always known.

"He will never reach them" Finn replied from his horse. He had abandoned his armor at last, defeated by the heat, and was dressed in the Dothraki fashion like Kurt. "What he fails to realize is that the khal sees you as a gift, not a purchase, and intends to make Sebastian another gift in return, as promised. But gifts can't be forced. They are spontaneous, and their time unpredictable. And frankly, I don't think the khal is in the mood for gifts after what Sebastian did."

Finn lowered his gaze to stare at Kurt's wrists, purple-blue marks impossible to miss under the light of day. Kurt pretended not to notice.

"He could be in the mood for gifts to me. Sebastian may never reach the Seven Kingdoms" Kurt agreed. He paused. "But maybe I will."

Finn's lips quirked into a smile, creating a hollow in one of his puffy cheeks.

"I never took you for a conqueror" he said, amusement clear in his voice.

"Neither did I" Kurt replied, shrugging. "Just as I never pictured myself as the husband of a khal, but here I am. I didn't want to leave Pentos when we did, and I never shared Sebastian's desire for vengeance, but now... I feel like I should have. Westeros was my father's, and Sebastian would make an awful king. If he fails... then I will have to be one."

"You'd be a much better king, that is for sure" Finn said, smiling openly now. "People would love you. Just like they loved your father."

Kurt turned around at that, eager for details.

"They did?"

"Yes. I was thirteen when he was murdered. When the news reached the Bear Island, my mother ran into the godswood of our castle and wept before the heart tree." The godswood was a garden where the lords who still believed in the old gods prayed, and the heart tree was supposed to hear and answer them. Kurt knew from Sebastian's stories. "She used to tell me of how they'd grown up together at King's Landing – her father was one of your grandfather's lords, so they lived at court. Then he set her up with Lord Hudson of the Bear Island, and she had to leave the capital. I- I think she loved your father, but never told him."

Kurt smiled sadly at that. It was upsetting to think that most of the people now inhabiting Westeros knew more of his father then he did, but at least he'd found someone apart from Sebastian who could describe him.

"Why was he killed, if he was so loved?" he asked.

Finn looked older when he answered, wiser.

"He was killed because of that, khalees. Once a week, he opened the gates of the Red Keep, the royal castle of King's Landing, to let the hungry and the poor come in and get the food and clothes they needed, and wanted the other Lords to do the same in every kingdom. When they proposed to sail for war against the Free Cities from time to time, to enlarge the kingdom, he refused them and said there was still so much to do to make his people happy without the need to add more people. The poor grew fond of him, while the rich and the powerful began to dislike him, the Claringtons most of all. They called him the Charitable King. So they betrayed him, and after they took the power, they bought the loyalty of all the other Lords. My father had recently died, so I was the Lord of the Bear Island, and I refused. The night we sent the message with a raven, my mother woke me and led me to the harbor. She said I'm so proud of you, sweet boy, and kissed me on the cheek and put me on a ship to go far, far away. It was the last time I saw her."

Kurt didn't know. He realized that he had never even wondered, and felt slightly guilty for it. There was so much he wasn't aware of, so much pain and sacrifice and longing in the world, and so many people who had their own stories and secrets to tell. He already liked Finn, but knowing that he was there because of the loyalty he had showed for his dead father made him feel as if he'd found another brother.

"I'm so sorry, Finn. I- thank you. I'm sure my father would be proud of you, too."

Finn looked down and smiled bashfully.

"I like to think he would" he said quietly. "I'm here to protect you, to make sure he is."

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"I am, you are, he are-"

"He is" Kurt corrected, giggling like a little girl, sprawled naked and giddy on sex and food.

He had convinced Blaine to learn the Common Tongue, and every night he would teach him something, feeding his khal a piece of fruit for every right answer. That particular night, Kurt was eating most of them.

"This stupid" Blaine said, folding his arms over his chest and looking up at the roof of the tent, his wild black curls difficult to made out among the dark furs. It was times like this when Kurt found himself staring at him and seeing no more than a stubborn, childish boy grown up too fast, and such a beautiful boy. It hurt to look at him sometimes.

"Come on, you will get better" Kurt said, setting the fruit tray aside and pillowing his head on Blaine's arm, his hand coming up to stroke it sweetly, fingertips following thick black lines all along the dark skin.

"I no like" Blaine insisted, and Kurt giggled again, planting a feather-like kiss on his shoulder. He didn't dare touch him in front of other people, when Blaine was in full khal-mode, but it was another story in their bed, when it was just them and Blaine had learned to take him gently with fingers intertwined and eyes locked and kisses to muffle his moans of pleasure.

"Don't laugh at me" the khal said in his language. Kurt knew he wasn't angry for real, he could see it in the playful light of his eyes.

"I would never laugh at you, my sun-and-stars" he said. It was a thing he'd come up with, to match Blaine's nickname, and when Blaine had heard it the first time at dinner, he had propped Kurt up on the table and rutted against him until they both came, panting and sticky and holding each other tight.

When no answer came, Kurt decided to ask something he had been wondering about Blaine from the start, just to fill the silence.

"How old are you?" he asked in a literal Dothraki translation, propping his chin on his folded hands. Blaine's brow furrowed in confusion.

"What does it mean?" he asked, blinking.

Kurt chewed at his lip for a moment; maybe they said it in another way.

"It means... for how long have you been living?"

But Blaine still didn't understand, and when Kurt opened his mouth again to try and explain it, he asked: "How can you know? Time is no sheep, you can't count it."

Kurt's mouth formed a little 'O' of surprise.

"So you... you don't know?" he said, feeling intrigued by the notion of someone not knowing his age. It was weird, and maybe a little sad. Blaine shook his head.

"Do you?" he asked, and he was intrigued, too, by the exact opposite notion.

"I'm sixteen" Kurt said, smiling. "It means I've been living for sixteen years."

"Is that many or few?" Blaine asked. Kurt realized that he couldn't know how long a year was.

"A year is made of 365 days. They are many, but not that much. Would you consider me old?" he said, a smirk on his lips.

"My khalees is not old" Blaine said, more serious and solemn than he would have expected. "He is young and beautiful and puts the moon to shame."

Kurt blushed and ducked his head underneath Blaine's arm. How did he say things like that?

When a hand tangled in his chestnut locks to pull him back up, Kurt shifted closer and draped himself half over his husband's body, one of his legs tangling with one of Blaine's, calves lazily stroking against one another. He pressed his cheek on Blaine's bicep and sighed, then lowered his lips to kiss his nipple.

Blaine shivered, his hand tightening in Kurt's hair, keeping him pressed against his skin. Kurt did it again and then licked it, swirling his tongue around the bud. When Blaine's first moan escaped his mouth, Kurt felt himself stir and pressed his cock against the other man's jutting hipbone to rut against it while continuing his sweet assault.

He let a hand travel along Blaine's taut stomach, muscles and ink lines fluttering and shifting, but before he could reach between his legs, where Blaine's cock was already hard and flushed, he felt the hand in his hair tighten and pull him upwards. He lifted his head.

"Mouth" Blaine said simply, shamelessly staring at Kurt's full lips, before pushing him down his body with his hand. He was a Dothraki after all, and always would be, and Dothraki didn't ask for things. Kurt didn't mind. He wanted it. Wanted to pleasure his husband in any way he could and take him inside and taste him.

When he lowered his head tentatively, taking only the tip inside, Blaine groaned and pushed down a bit, another hand coming down to stroke his cheek, the perfect picture of how demanding and gentle he could be at the same time. When Kurt felt like he couldn't go any lower, he began to bob his head up and down, swirling his tongue in circles, lapping, trying everything he could think of and pressing his hips down desperately every time Blaine moaned particularly loud, his grip on Kurt's hair tightening.

It was giving, but it was taking, too; taking the pleasure and ecstasy out of Blaine to let them seep into his body, and Kurt loved it, just as he knew he would. When Blaine began to pump his hips up, fucking his mouth with long, drawn-out thrusts, Kurt was almost glad to be relieved of the effort and let him, sneaking a hand down to stroke himself hard and fast.

They came together, Kurt on his hand and Blaine in his mouth, groaning his name. Blaine tugged him back up and kissed him deep and dirty, his hands cupping and kneading his ass, and Kurt let him chase the taste of himself in his mouth until it was too hard to keep himself up on his elbows and he collapsed on Blaine's chest, his head under the khal's chin.

Blaine circled his waist with his arms and let him fall asleep on top of him, a delicate kiss on his hair the last thing Kurt remembered.

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The holy city of the Lords of the Horses, Vaes Dothrak, was not as Kurt had expected it to be. The Dothraki weren't builders, after all, so maybe he had been wrong to think he would find city walls; but houses, that should have been obvious. Instead, there was nothing.

Nothing indicated where the Dothraki sea ended and the city began, apart from two enormous stone horses perched on columns thick as castle towers, their raised hooves linking in the air to form an arch underneath which twelve men could pass without having to walk one behind the other. They looked like Blaine's stallion, fierce and strong-muscled, their eyes emotionless and cold. Kurt wondered if they were painted once, and the color had faded with the centuries, but maybe it was just stone and nothing more.

The tall, green grass of the Dothraki sea gave way to sand and stones under their horses' hooves, and after passing under the arch the path they were following disappeared in a wasteland with shades of brown and gold, a big, open field at the foot of a towering reddish mountain. The Mother of Mountains, at the top of which the Stallion God resided.

As they kept marching under the sun, Kurt could feel an atmosphere of stillness and reverence, of something ancient and sacred, and he realized why when the first ruin came before them. It was a sort of altar, grey and crumbling – white once, Kurt was sure. Marble. It had carvings of leaves and flowers all around it, and he could imagine some priest laying a goat on it to offer it to some unknown God of the East.

They passed more ruins, columns, enormous statues, what was left of the Gods of men and the temples built to quiet their rage. They came from sackings, Kurt knew. The Dothraki spent their time collecting treasures from other cultures, but they weren't interested in keeping stone and marble, so they carried them there to Vaes Dothrak as an offering to their god.

Kurt glanced at his king and found him silent and pensive, looking around with a reverent expression, and he couldn't help but wonder how many treasures Blaine had brought there himself, and how many people had died defending them. Sometimes he wondered things like that, then he told himself not to. It was the way of the Dothraki, and Blaine was one, and that was it. Only the thought of Blaine's father's death still gnawed at him, but he didn't think he could muster the courage to ask about that.

Where the path of ruins ended, tents and wooden huts punctuated the earth like mushrooms, Dothraki men and women crowding the wind-swept desert. Finn had explained to him that they were likely to meet other khalasars in the city, come there to rest after a particularly harsh sacking or with the intention of celebrating with Blaine the news of his marriage.

The thought had unsettled him, but Finn had been reassuring: blood couldn't be spilled in Vaes Dothrak. The khals were at war against each other almost constantly, but there they were like old friends, eating and drinking and laughing together, and men and women from different khalasars met in the middle of the night among the tents and graced the darkness with their cries of pleasure.

That night after they set the camp, Kurt could hear it all, the drinking and laughing and fucking, but it was mingled with a different kind of music, that of drums beating and feet following their rhythm, while the women of the Dosh Kaleen intoned a sacred litany he couldn't understand a word of. They were old khaleesis, former queens to khals long passed away, their dark skin wrinkled and withering and their hair made silver by the years.

All around him, Dothraki cheered and clapped and drank, but as he sank his mouth for the first time into the horse's heart he had in his hands, Kurt had eyes for one man only.

Blaine was looking at him from the other side of the wood and mud pavilion they were in, Wes to his right and David to his left, cup of wine forgotten in his hand as he stared at Kurt like he was the most amazing thing he had ever seen in his life. Even from that far, Kurt could see his hand tightening on the cup and feel his eyes burning with desire and pride, the black make up making them wilder and unbearable to look at.

Kurt had to prove himself to his khal and his people, because they were his now, and even though the rite was usually performed by Dothraki queens heavy with child, to prove that the son yet to be born was worthy of the father and give him the strength of the horses, Blaine had required that he did it, too. He may have been the first khal to ever marry a man, but apparently he was very fond of traditions. Or maybe he just wanted to parade Kurt around so the other khals could see him and respect him.

The heart tasted horrible, all soft and slippery flesh and iron-tasting blood, the sloppy liquid trickling down his chin as Kurt bit, and bit, and bit, concentrating on the beating of the drums and the look on Blaine's face to anchor himself to reality and keep the nausea at bay. I'm so proud of you, his eyes were saying. Look at him, he's mine.

And Kurt ate it all, swallowing flesh and blood and tissue, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand when he was done, smearing dark red all over it and not caring one bit. He knew he had to be a mess.

One of the old women helped him climb down the raised stage he was on, and cleaned his stained face with a wet cloth. The others kept singing and swaying to the music like grass in the wind, and the men kept drinking and laughing all around him, but they looked at him differently, Kurt could tell. They respected him, and some of them even looked attracted to him.

When he reached his husband's leather chair, Blaine grabbed him by the hips and made him sit in his lap, twisting his face to the side to kiss him roughly, holding his head still with his hands for everyone to see. He had noticed the stares, too. Someone whistled, and everyone laughed, amused.

"Everyone wants my khalees now" Blaine said, his lips sucking on Kurt's neck. "Khals will begin to marry pretty boys to make up for it, but no one will be beautiful like him."

The feast went on for hours, and after refusing Blaine's proposal to have sex on his chair in front of hundreds of people, Kurt took a seat next to it, sipping from a cup of wine and losing himself in the music and the voices. There was someone he should be worried about, someone who wasn't there, someone who he hadn't seen for days, but the thought drifted in the back of his mind until it dissolved in a mist of alcohol and joy.

When he saw him, it was too late to remember.

Sebastian stepped out stumbling from the crowd of Dothraki, his hair a tangled mess and red stains on his cheeks, one of them lined with an ugly scar. He was drunk. And he had a sword in his hand.

The Dothraki were all unarmed, but they didn't look scared when they saw it; they were offended, to say the least, and angry expressions blossomed on their faces. The music still played on, but it was dulled to Kurt's ears.

"I want my crown!" Sebastian shouted, slurring the words and waving the sword in the air clumsily. "I want the crown he promised me!"

He made his way toward Kurt and Blaine, the Dothraki still as he passed, and the air seemed still as well. Kurt stood up just as Sebastian stopped in front of him, the sword raised and pointing at his chest, mere inches from it. The music stopped.

"Tell him what I said" Sebastian ordered to Finn, who had rushed toward Blaine as Sebastian walked. "Tell him."

Kurt heard Finn whisper the words in Dothraki in Blaine's ears, but he didn't look away from Sebastian, searching for a brother he had never had.

Who are you? How did you reduce yourself to this?

He heard Blaine say his answer, but before Finn could translate it to Sebastian, he decided to do it for him.

"The khal says you shall have it. A crown of gold and gems, the most beautiful men's eyes could ever see."

Sebastian smiled and trembled with joy, a mad look in his eyes.

"It was all I asked for" he said tremulously, lowering the sword and letting it fall to the ground. "All I wanted."

Kurt hadn't understood right away what Blaine had meant, but he began to understand when Wes and David seized Sebastian by his arms and twisted them backwards, snapping them at odd angles. Sebastian made a heart-wrenching cry of pain and fell to his knees, Blaine's bloodriders keeping him still as Blaine stood up from his chair, eyes wild yet unmoving, jaw tensed and muscles straining. He was angry, angrier than Kurt had ever seen him.

In a corner, all the gifts from the other khals had been collected, creating a pile of iron and steel, but gold was there, too. A beautiful golden belt had been offered to Kurt, punctuated with green and red gems, surely a stolen treasure from one of the rich cities on the Jade Sea.

Kurt saw Blaine summoning someone, and suddenly a pot was carried in front of him and a fire rapidly lit under it. A slave handed Blaine the belt and he threw it into the pot, waiting for it to melt. Understanding dawned on Kurt and Sebastian alike.

"No, no, please, no!" his brother shouted, the bloodriders twisting his arms around his back even more, and Kurt pitied him for the first time. Yet, he knew there was nothing he could do, and nothing he would have done even if he could. It was over. It had to be.

When the belt was reduced to liquid gold, Blaine took the pot and walked in front of Sebastian, who had started to sob uncontrollably. Nothing was left of the brave dragon he claimed to be, descendant of those proud Hummelsmythes who had ridden on dragon backs over the Seven Kingdoms with dragon blood in their veins, keeping them from being burnt by the heat seeping from the beasts' hard scales and the fire coming out of their mouths.

"A golden crown for the king!" Blaine shouted in Dothraki, and all the other men howled in approval.

The melted gold crackled and bristled as it descended on Sebastian's face, carrying pieces of his skin with it as it flowed down his shoulders and back, and he kept screaming, and screaming, and screaming, even as the liquid reached his nose and lips. Kurt knew he would hear him screaming in his nightmares.

In the end, he died without a single drop of blood being spilled on the soil of Vaes Dothrak, the holy city of the horses. The gold dried on his skin, creating a weird, horribly shaped helm over it.

Kurt stared at him.

"He was no dragon" he said to everyone and no one, mainly to himself. "Fire cannot kill a dragon."