The sound of rustling and shifting woke Kurt in the middle of the night.

"Finn, shhh, you'll wake everyone up" a high-pitched voice whispered in the darkness. Then a giggle. "You can't be here, if they-"

Someone muffled the sound, and Rachel giggled again and sighed. The tent of Kurt's slaves was practically attached to his, like a little arm protruding from the main body, a thin layer of cloth separating them. The other "arm" was the tent in which Blaine's bloodriders slept, and the three tents resembled a little bunch of grapes if looked at from above.

A smack of lips on lips. A quiet, almost reverent moan. Kurt blushed and turned around on the furs, as if giving his back to where the sound was coming from could simply make it go away. He felt as if he was intruding on something private, but then again, the slaves surely heard him and Blaine every night, loud as they were. The thought had never occurred to him until that moment, though.

As he turned around, he found Blaine awake as well. His long black eyelashes cast two thin shadows over his cheekbones, and the light from the single oil-lamp they left for the night shone in the almond-shaped golden pools he had for eyes. They slept naked, but Kurt had stopped being embarrassed about it. It felt almost safe, somehow, to know that he could be so vulnerable to the outside world and at the same time feel so protected.

"It's been happening for a while now" Blaine said out of the blue, smirking slightly. Another moan made his point, as if they had heard him.

"Really?" Kurt asked, oblivious. "I never noticed."

"They're usually quieter than this" Blaine replied. He raised a hand and let it skim over Kurt's side, from his shoulder down to his hipbone and thigh. "And you're quite difficult to wake, moon of my life."

"Am I?" Kurt asked, Blaine's hand moving up and down again, making him shiver. "So you mean you wake up every time instead?"

"Most of them" Blaine shrugged, propping himself up on an elbow over the furs. The damp bandage shifted over his muscles. "I don't mind. I just... look at my khalees until I fall asleep again."

Blaine never blushed – Kurt wasn't even sure he could, with how dark his skin was – but he looked almost shy as he said it. Kurt stared at him for a moment.

"Can I ask you something, my sun-and-stars?" he heard himself say. Blaine nodded absentmindedly, too caught up in the movement of his hand to look into Kurt's eyes and see how worried he was about asking. But it was out there now.

"When we... did it the first time..." – Blaine's hand halted abruptly, but it was too late – "...why were you so kind at the beginning? Why were you... like this? Why didn't you just take me like you did all the other times after that?"

He had always wondered. He had had to show Blaine how to be gentle, because he had never been after the first time. And Kurt understood that, he knew it was how Dothraki behaved. But the sweet touches, his eyes, the way he'd been so careful, and the way he had changed suddenly in the blink of an eye... it was beyond him. Maybe he had just been trying, and had failed.

Blaine removed his hand and shifted uncomfortably, his expression unreadable.

"You are mad at me for it" he stated simply. Kurt frowned at that. Quiet moans still echoed in the air, but he was ignoring them now.

"I- no, I... I just felt deceived, after. As if... as if you just wanted to make me believe I was safe, and then..." He looked down, his eyes burning. It still hurt sometimes.

"Kurt" he heard Blaine whisper brokenly. Blaine almost never addressed him by name, unless it was during sex, so Kurt looked up again to stare at him and found his face as pained as it had been that night, when a betraying tear had escaped down his cheek while the sun disappeared under the liquid horizon.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"It wasn't like that" Blaine blurted before he could finish, cupping his face between his hands. Kurt loved how passionate he was in everything he did, speaking and killing and making love to him, it didn't matter anymore. "It wasn't like that, I swear it wasn't. You believe me, don't you, moon of my life?"

"Of course I do" Kurt said, draping an arm over Blaine's waist to pull him closer. The moans had stopped, and their mingled breaths were the only things alive in the darkness. "But... I want to understand."

Blaine disentangled himself from him and lay on his back, looking up at the roof of the tent, still as the night. Kurt let his hand linger on Blaine's stomach, caressing it lightly as he waited for the khal to search for the words. He found himself following the thick black lines with his fingertips, and lost track of time as he did. He just knew that when his forefinger was almost reaching the end of a beautiful vine swirling a couple of inches under Blaine's armpit, Blaine spoke up.

"When I saw you the first time, on the staircase, I... I wanted you. I wanted someone different from me, someone I could control. Someone... fragile."

He glanced briefly at Kurt, to see if he was offended, but Kurt urged him to go on with a silent gesture. He knew that much already.

"When we got down from the horse after the wedding, I still felt that way. I just wanted to have you, to push you down and take you. To make you be mine. But then you... you started crying. And for the first time in my life, I felt the need to protect someone. You. And it scared me. Nothing in this world has ever scared me so much."

Kurt's hand stilled. Blaine chuckled, lost in his own memories.

"All these lines you see, I faced death as many times as they are. But it's not difficult, it's what I was born for, it's in my veins. I'm not scared of death. I'm not scared of blood. But that night I was scared of what you made me feel. I still am, sometimes. So I turned you around and pushed you down so I couldn't see your face and I took you like Dothraki take each other, because that was how it was supposed to be."

Kurt was shocked. He didn't think there was so much behind it. He thought back to that night and felt like crying again. Right before entering him, Blaine had been so gentle, opening him up sweetly with his fingers, and what once had burned of cruel deceiving in his memories had simply been Blaine slipping before putting on his fa�ade again.

Blaine kept talking. It looked like he wanted to free himself of the burden, and Kurt wasn't going to stop him. It was probably the longest Blaine had ever spoken in one go, Kurt realized; luckily, he could understand him perfectly now. They still spoke in Dothraki with one another, because as much as Blaine tried, Kurt was still a quicker learner: Dothraki never bothered to learn other languages – why should they? – while Kurt was used to it, with all the cities he had been forced to live in over the years.

"The following days, I stayed away from you and forced myself to be rough at night. And I would have kept doing it, but then you... you rode me, that night. You showed me you could take control, too, and it felt right and I let go because the truth was... I was ashamed, before. Not ashamed of feeling tenderness, but of feeling it for someone like you."

Kurt sat up a bit at that, his hand sliding away from Blaine's body.

"You mean someone weak like me" he said too sharply. Why did it sound so bad in his ears all of a sudden?

Blaine sat up too, wincing slightly at the movement. For a moment, Kurt had forgotten about the wound.

"You are not weak" Blaine said, but he didn't sound convincing. "You are just... you're not a Dothraki. But in that moment, I think I accepted that you could be strong even if you are not one. Does this make sense at all?"

"It does" Kurt agreed, even if a glint of sadness still lingered in his voice and his heart. A tiny, mean voice was creeping up inside his head.

But am I strong enough?

"I made my khalees sad" Blaine whispered, and when his hand caressed Kurt's cheek, it came back slightly damp. Kurt blinked the unexpected tears away. "I don't want him to be sad."

"I'm not. I'm just... overwhelmed."

I am the blood of the dragon. I am strong enough for everything. I am strong enough for you.

His mind raced to the dragon eggs, neglected treasures safely tucked inside their chest somewhere in the tent. He could have sold them to buy a thousand ships, but he liked them too much to get rid of them. He felt the need to hug them again, just like how he'd done when he hurt Sebastian with a knife. Thinking about him made him even sadder. He missed him, sometimes. Rare times, but they happened nonetheless. And when they did, he felt guilty, too. He wondered if Blaine missed his father, and if he felt guilty for whatever he had done to him. He wondered where Blaine's mother was. He wondered if he would ever know.

"Come here" Blaine said, opening his arms so Kurt could tuck himself against his broad chest. Kurt did and they curled up against each other, Kurt's head under Blaine's chin. Blaine began to stroke his hair lazily, and silence fell over them for a while.

"If I killed a man, would I be stronger in your eyes?" Kurt asked when he felt his eyelids begin to flutter shut. He felt Blaine sliding down to lie again, taking Kurt with him.

"Yes" Blaine said truthfully. "But I would never want you to do that."

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"So, did you sleep well?" Kurt asked Finn with a pleased smirk on his face. Blaine seemed to be grumpy for Gods knew what reason, answering his questions with uninterested shrugs or unidentified gruff noises, so he decided to let him be and busy himself with embarrassing Finn while they slowly rode through the desert. He was a knight, yes, but underneath the title and the armor Kurt could see he was a clumsy boy who blushed too often. And Kurt was bored, so.

"I- I did, khalees, thank you for asking" Finn said with exaggerated courtesy, his cheeks reddening. Behind them, Rachel and Mercedes giggled while they walked. There were Brittany and Santana, too, but they seemed to be engaged in some private whispered conversation and didn't hear the jape.

"Sure you did" Kurt went on, glancing back at the two slaves and raising his eyebrows at Rachel, who blushed and covered his face with her hands, peering between her fingers like a little girl. "We heard you sleeping well enough."

The girls burst laughing while Finn gaped at him and then tried to stutter something unintelligible, stroking the nape of his neck bashfully and then looking down at the ground. Kurt laughed and turned toward Blaine, who was silently leading his horse forward.

"Didn't we, my-sun-and-stars?" he addressed him, trying to cheer him up and out of whatever mood he was in. Blaine didn't answer. He didn't even turn to look at him.

"Blaine?" Kurt said angrily, forgetting for a moment about titles and names in front of other people. He led his horse to go left so he could get closer to his husband, but before he could lean over him Blaine's hands left the reins suddenly and his body swayed on the horse like the grass of the Dothraki sea moving in the wind, before tipping over and crashing unceremoniously to the ground below them.

"BLAINE!" Kurt shouted in horror, bringing the horse to a halt and hopping from it as fast as he could without risking a leg. Finn did too, as well as Blaine's bloodriders.

Blaine was on his side, one cheek pressed against the scorching hot sand, his eyelids half-closed and heavy. When Kurt crouched down beside him and put a hand on his forehead, he found him hot with fever, and realized suddenly how sickly pale his usually olive skin was.

The wound.

It struck him like a punch. He had forgotten. After the conversation they had had, and the unexpected things Blaine had said, he had fallen asleep and forgotten to speak about Brittany. And Blaine of course was too damn proud to say something about it. He swallowed, guilt making its way down his throat instead of saliva.

Blaine feebly turned to lie on his back, finding solace from the sun in Kurt's shadow. People were starting to gather around them to see what was happening, and another thought struck Kurt like a blow.

When a khal was too old or ill to ride, he stopped being a khal altogether.

Blaine had fallen from his horse.

"We'll stop here for today!" he shouted out loud, gesturing for his slaves to come to him and help him cover Blaine from the stares. "I don't feel well, I'm tired. This is what your khalees commands!"

Slowly but without questioning, the rest of the khalasar settled down around them, and the voice passed from mouth to mouth to make the caravan stop riding.

"No, ride, ride" Blaine began to mutter under his breath, trashing weakly from side to side. "I have to ride, let me ride."

"You can't" Kurt whispered brokenly to him, stroking his sweating temple with his palm and pushing his curls out from his forehead. Blaine looked so small and vulnerable that Kurt felt like crying. He cradled Blaine's head in his lap and glanced at the bandage, which was too damp and soaked with blood and probably pus.

"Rachel, Mercedes, Santana, set the tent as fast as you can" he whispered heatedly. The girls nodded solemnly and went. "Brittany, go take whatever you need to-"

"No, no, no Lamb girl!" Blaine complained, trying to stand up and failing. He trashed in Kurt's grip, trying to cover his wound with his arms, but it was so easy for Kurt to force them down his sides that he couldn't help but feel terrified all of a sudden.

"Finn, Wes, David, help me take him inside" he said just to focus on something practical to do, looking up at them from the ground. Finn nodded and crouched down beside Blaine, while the bloodriders stared at Kurt with their mouths set in hard thin lines.

"He can't ride" Wes pointed out, frowning. David was looking around with a worried expression, and Kurt knew exactly why. If the rest of the khalasar discovered that Blaine had fallen, warriors would start to fight against each other to take his place as Khal, since he had no heirs. Kurt didn't know if he had tried to, like Sandy had once said he would, but what mattered was that there was no pregnant girl to be seen. And even if there was one, an unborn child was no khal either. And Kurt was a khalees, a companion, a partner. They would count him out, or worse, challenge him to fight for the title.

But Blaine wasn't dead. And he wasn't going to die.

Was he?

"He is still your khal" he glared at them while saying it. "And you will serve him as long as you live. Help me. Now."

Before it's too late.

Wes and David were strong enough to carry Blaine's weight and more on their own, but he was a dead weight, and Kurt wanted to get to the tent before someone could see, so the four of them carried him inside it.

Brittany walked closer to them, carrying a tray covered in little bottles and herbs wrapped in white pieces of cloth. Blaine moaned and shook his head in disapproval, and Kurt crouched down beside him and gripped his hand.

"She can't touch him" Wes said, taking out his curved and sharp arakh. "No lamb can touch the king of the horses!"

"He will die if she doesn't!"

It was Santana who had spoken up, arms crossed over her breasts and a scornful expression on her face.

"What do you know?" David piped up, hand ready to take out his weapon as well. "Did you lay with her just like you do with every fucking thing that walks?"

"How dare you?! I will stuck your arakh up your fucking-"

"Enough!" Kurt yelled from the ground, looking at every one of them in turn. "He is my khal, he is my husband, I won't let him die just because you don't like lambs or whatever this is about!"

The bloodriders lowered their heads grimly, Wes putting his weapon back at his hip without saying another word. Kurt looked back at Brittany.

"Save him, please" he begged her. "I- I saved you."

Brittany smiled at him and crouched at the other side of Blaine's body, closer to where the wound was.

"I know. I'll do my best" she said.

Blaine had begun to murmur things Kurt couldn't understand – or maybe they just didn't make any sense – but at least he stopped resisting the notion of Brittany touching him, since he was barely noticing what was going on around him. His head was turned toward Kurt, but his eyes were unfocused and foreign and empty; Kurt stared at them intently all the same because he couldn't dare to look at the wound itself, scared to discover that it was too late.

"How bad is it?" he asked, one hand drying sweat from Blaine's forehead with a wet cloth. No sound was coming from Finn, the bloodriders and the slaves, and it seemed as if they weren't even there. There was just Blaine, and the grip of his hand getting weaker over Kurt's.

"It's infected" Brittany said, and he could hear her taking things from the tray and smell a terrible stench in the air. "I have to clean it first."

"But will he be okay?" Kurt asked, feeling childish and petulant and helpless. Silence stretched too long after that.

"I hope so" was the tremulous answer. Then she did something, and Blaine clenched his teeth and jerked so hard that Kurt had to look down at what was going on.

The wound was red with blood and green with pus and brown with dirt and black with rotten flesh, a mismatched patch of broken skin from his clavicle down to his armpit, and silly as it may seem, Kurt felt sad thinking about how the remaining scar would ruin the perfect tangle of Blaine's tattooed victories. But he would still be invincible in his eyes, and maybe they could get him a new tattoo, because surviving this would be a victory, too.

Brittany started to clean the gash with a cloth wet with something Kurt didn't know, but he knew it had to burn, because Blaine was wincing and moaning in pain and shaking.

"Shh, it will be over soon, my-sun-and-stars, soon" he whispered in his ear, kissing the tattoo on his damp temple. "It's going to be okay, just look at me."

Blaine turned his head, his hand gripping Kurt's tightly, but it was the pain, not his strength.

"Father" he said, and Kurt's breath got stuck in his throat. "Father, I'm sorry."

Kurt looked up at Finn and the others in search of help, but he found them staring in shock, even Santana. Her eyes were huge and her mouth was open slightly, while Rachel and Mercedes had their hands over their mouths. The bloodriders lingered for a moment before taking a step back and walk silently beyond the entrance.

"Blaine, it's- it's Kurt, your khalees, it's me" he whispered, his eyes filling with tears. They had gone away because they thought it was over.

"Father, I didn't want you to die" Blaine went on, biting his lip hard when Brittany started to pour an amber liquid over the wound. "I- I had to, and I'm sorry, so sorry."

"I- I forgive you" Kurt blurted without even thinking, the first tear sliding down his cheek. "I understand, you don't have to be sorry."

"And- and mother, too?" Blaine asked, Kurt's heart shuttering. Was she dead as well?

"Yes" he choked out, forcing himself to smile.

Blaine smiled back at him, or at his father, or at both of them at the same time. He was drenched in sweat and paler than before.

"Then I can go to sleep now" he said feebly, his eyes drifting shut and a peaceful smile on his face. Kurt's shuttered heart glued itself back in one piece and jumped up into his throat.

"No, stay with me, don't sleep, don't-"

"It's okay" Brittany spoke up, and he felt a gentle hand on his shaking shoulder. He realized dully that he was sobbing openly. "I'm done, he needs to rest."

Kurt turned to look at her, feeling hysterical and terrified and hopeful at the same time when he asked, "How did it go?"

"Time will tell. If he survives today and tonight, I think he will be alright."

Kurt had hoped for something more reassuring, but he supposed it could have been worse. Blaine was still alive.

"Finn, go find Wes and David. I want you three to guard the entrance. No one can come in without my consent" he said, his voice sure and distant to his own ears. Finn nodded shakily and went.

"Go to your tent now" he said to the slaves. "I want to be alone with him."

After they were gone, he lay down beside his khal and circled his waist with his arm, his head resting on Blaine's chest. Brittany hadn't covered the wound with another bandage – probably to let it breathe, Kurt thought distantly – but coated it with a sweet-smelling poultice.

"Come back to me, my-sun-and-stars" he whispered into his skin, hoping it would reach his heart somehow.

He didn't know how long he lay there, Blaine's steady breath the only thing that mattered while the light changed outside the tent, shifting over their bodies until they were covered in nothing but darkness. At some point, Mercedes had come in to leave a tray of food beside him, but the only thing he had taken from it had been the jar of water to pour some between Blaine's dry lips.

Santana came too, to check in on him. She was carrying an oil-lamp, since Kurt hadn't bothered to light one inside the tent.

"You didn't eat, khalees" she said, crouching down and eyeing the tray of food critically. Even while worried, she managed to still be judgmental.

"I wasn't hungry" Kurt said, lost in the movement of his fingertips over the tattoos. He could do it for hours. He had been doing it for hours.

"It's that one" she said at one point, the light of the lamp illuminating Kurt's hand.

"What?"

"The one he got for his father's death. You are touching it now."

Kurt's hand stopped. He was following a rib when she said that, the first one below the pectoral. His throat felt dry.

"Were you there?" he asked, sitting up a bit. He didn't know if he really wanted to know.

"Yes" Santana said, sadness clear in her voice for the first time. "But we don't talk about it."

"What do you mean?"

"He forbade it. Anyone caught even hinting at it would be punished with death."

Kurt gaped in surprise. That was the sort of thing that never failed to remind him who Blaine was despite how sweet he could be. He preferred not to ask how many people had died because of it.

"He's asleep. You can tell me" he said instead, feeling guilty the moment he said it. It was Blaine's call to talk about it. But what if he never got the chance to? The thought made him sick.

"No, I can't" Santana said, shaking her head. "It's a sad, sad story. No slave should ever make her master sad, khalees."

Before Kurt could reply, he heard Blaine mumble something in his sleep, lips smacking and words blurring together. It seemed to be one sentence, repeated over and over again, with Kurt's name here and there.

"Anha zhilak yera" he recognized after a while, but he didn't know what it meant. He heard Santana gasp.

"What does it mean?" he asked her, worried. But it had to be something good, because the slave's eyes shone wetly in the semi-darkness.

"I'm sorry I didn't teach you. I didn't think you would ever need it" she said, looking down at Blaine with a little smile. "No one says it anymore."

"What is it?" Kurt repeated, impatient. "What does it mean?"

"It means I love you."

Kurt looked down at Blaine and laughed and cried at the same time, a strange sound between a sob and a chuckle. Dothraki language was harsh and rough, but as Blaine said it again, the sentence sounded like the sweetest song ever existed in all the world.