They resumed their travelling toward Pentos. The wedding gifts they were carrying along with them would buy the ships they needed, and if that wasn't enough, Kurt was determined to ask Sandy one last favor. After all, if he was to be the new king of Westeros, repaying a debt wouldn't be something that difficult to do.

Blaine was recovering smoothly and looked stronger everyday, but Kurt knew that it wasn't entirely due to Brittany's abilities; every time someone approached to congratulate him on his victory, he seemed to glow with pride and happiness. Everyone seemed to respect him more, or fear him, or probably a mixture of both, and no one could deny that Blaine loved it. Kurt felt relieved, mostly: Blaine was alive, he was still a khal, and his khalasar was so awed by his mere presence that it would follow him down to the Seven Hells if Blaine asked, which was exactly what Kurt needed. He still feared that the sight of the sea would scare them to the point of refusing, but he knew they'd never say no to a Dothraki who had been Khal twice now.

Blaine was also spending more and more time with Brittany, something Kurt was grateful for, since he was starting to grow fond of the girl. And he wasn't the only one: Santana, who used to disappear for days when she wasn't needed – and they didn't need her that much anymore, to be honest – suddenly walked behind Kurt and Blaine all the time, always close to the blonde Lamb girl. When he saw them holding hands one day, he knew that his suspicions had been right.

He also discovered that, when she wasn't occupied with herbs and healing potions, Brittany wasn't exactly the sharpest blade in the scabbard.

"The Lamb God has a man's body and a lamb's head" she said to Santana one morning, while they were exchanging information about their respective cultures. "So his mom was a lamb, and his dad was a man, but I never understood how they managed to have a baby. Lambs make eggs, not babies."

"I think it's just a legend, Britt" Santana said with a little smile, their pinkies intertwined between them as they walked. Kurt glanced back at her and stifled a laugh; if Brittany had been anyone else, Santana would have laughed in her face and called her an idiot.

"I guess that's so..." Brittany reflected out loud. "Is that why you think we make love with lambs? My mom always said you do, and that you make love with horses, so you are all a bunch of hyspo-... hypro-... hypocrite! That's the word!"

Kurt almost lost his grip on the reins at that. He chanced a worried look at Blaine, but the khal only had an eyebrow raised in amusement.

"We don't make love with horses, Brittany" he said in a stern voice; only his expression betrayed him, and the slaves weren't able to see it from behind.

"Of course you don't!" Brittany exclaimed in a high-pitched voice. "I- I was just saying what my mom used to say. It's not like we make love with lambs, either. Which is perfectly fine if you do it! I just meant that we don't. That's all."

Kurt burst out laughing, and Santana as well. Blaine was stifling a laugh, Kurt could see, and that only made him laugh harder.

"Oh, I like to make people laugh!" Brittany said, clapping her hands together. "It's like that one time when I buried lamb's poop to make a lamb-tree grow and everyone laughed when I told them. That was weird, though. It wasn't that funny."

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After his usual evening bath, Kurt decided to take a walk among the tents instead of waiting inside for Blaine to join him for dinner. Blaine had to be busy somewhere, talking with his bloodriders, checking the weapons' sharpness, helping someone with braziers and tents, tending to his horse, bossing someone around or parading his new tattoo for everyone to see, even though Kurt didn't know how he could manage to do it subtly since it was wrapped around his ankle.

As he walked through the khalasar, Kurt realized that he didn't know these people. They were so many, that was true, but he was always so busy trying to figure out Blaine or himself or what to do that he had never just stopped and looked. He had never realized until then how many children there were. Their laughter filled the night as they ran among the tents, riding little stuffed horses with sticks for legs and brandishing fake arakhs made of wood and hay, and one of them had red stripes on his cheeks and black messy drawings on his body, blurred lines and fingerprints betraying their falseness, and Kurt realized with a chuckle that the boy was playing at being Blaine.

The little khal bumped into him as he was shouting orders at his followers and looked up, dark bangs sticking to his forehead and a scared expression on his face. He stepped back awkwardly on his stuffed horse and lowered his gaze to the ground.

"'m sorry, khalees" the boy muttered, shuffling his feet. Kurt kneeled in front of him and lifted his chin.

"I am sorry, Great Khal" he said cheekily, and the boy bit his lip and gave him a smile. When he started to turn around to go back to his friends, Kurt made to stand, but the boy turned back around and spoke up again.

"When I grow up, I wanna be like him. I wanna marry a pretty boy and call him khalees and give him a pretty horse, too."

Kurt beamed.

"That's- that's great" he said, ruffling the boy's tangled mess of hair. "I'm sure you will."

"I hope daddy won't be upset, though" the kid went on, frowning slightly.

"Why should he be?" Kurt asked, tilting his head. He remembered Sandy saying that Dothraki were quite open-minded when it came to sexuality, and he had seen it, too. Blaine had married him, for Gods' sake.

"Khal Blaine's daddy was upset. I heard mommy say so" the boy answered, nodding solemnly at the mention of his mother. "She said Khal Blaine's daddy was angry because he wanted him to marry a girl."

Kurt paled.

Did Blaine kill him for it?

He wasn't going to ask that to a child, though.

"I'm sure your daddy will be happy whoever you decide to marry" he said instead. The boy smiled at him and went back to his game.

Kurt kept walking, losing himself in the noises of all the people around him. Many of them stopped what they were doing to bow slightly or acknowledge him with a nod, but many others were too busy to care; women yelling to their children to come back for dinner, men sharpening their blades while sitting by the fire to share stories of old wars, young boys feeding their fathers' horses and girls fetching water for their mothers to cook with. They didn't look like the bloodthirsty savages the world believed them to be; they looked like parents, daughters, sons. Families. His family, now.

He found Santana, Wes and David gathered outside the same tent, but Blaine was nowhere to be seen. When they saw him, the bloodriders on either side of the entrance straightened their backs as if he was a threat to be faced, and Santana cleared her throat awkwardly.

"What are you doing here, khalees?" she said with too much courtesy for her usual manners. Kurt's curiosity was officially piqued at that.

"I was just having a walk" he said, raising an eyebrow. "What are you doing here, Santana?"

The sex slave shrugged and crossed her arms over her chest, but Kurt knew she was conjuring an excuse in her head in that very moment. Before she could say it out loud, though, a moan came out from the tent behind her, and Kurt froze. He knew that voice. And there was no way he wasn't going to recognize it when it sang with pleasure.

Without giving anyone the time to anticipate him, Kurt strode forward and stepped forcefully inside the tent, ignoring the protests coming from outside. What he found inside left his throat dry.

Blaine had a woman shoved face down on a mat, her cheek pressed against it while he held her down with a hand between her shoulderblades, and he was pounding mercilessly into her from behind with his eyes closed, mouth open and panting. They were stark naked and covered in sweat and the color of their skins matched so well that their bodies looked like two pieces of one single beautiful sculpture.

At first, the thought made Kurt so jealous that his first instinct was to grab something, anything, and throw it at them in a fit of blind rage, but as he kept looking, he realized how mechanical it was, just as it had been between him and Blaine at the start. He knew that Blaine had to, it was his duty and nothing more. He had probably been doing it for months now, sparing Kurt the details, because it was supposed to hurt, wasn't it? To see the man he loved fucking someone else?

But hurt was the last thing Kurt was feeling, if the heat coiling low in his stomach was anything to go by. The way Blaine forced himself into her, giving Kurt only brief glimpses of his cock every now and then, made him hard in seconds, and just as he was sneaking a hand down his body to cup himself, Blaine looked up and gasped.

"Fuck, K-Kurt, what are you doing here?" he panted, stopping his thrusts and impaling the girl on his cock in the process. She whimpered and tried to squeeze around him and make him move, but he was holding her waist tightly now. She looked up at Kurt, too, as if pleading him with her eyes to make Blaine do something, and only then it dawned on Kurt how much she was enjoying it. Dothraki girls liked to be taken from behind just as much as Dothraki boys loved to be the ones doing it, after all.

When Kurt failed to find an adequate response and simply gaped like a fish out of the water, Blaine looked down and started to ease himself out of the slave.

"No, don't- don't stop" Kurt whispered, taking a step toward them. He felt like he was underwater, and the words coming out of his mouth echoed in his ears as if from far away.

"You- you want to see?" Blaine stammered, his eyes hooded with lust, and when Kurt nodded silently he cursed and thrust back in, the girl moaning in relief and clutching the mat underneath her with her nails. She had long black hair, smooth and silky, and her eyes had a narrower shape than most of those Kurt had seen in the khalasar. Her body wasn't perfectly curved like Santana's, but she seemed fair enough to look at, and she had full breasts that bounced heavily whenever Blaine thrust inside her.

Without even realizing it, Kurt kept walking until he was right in front of them, a couple of feet away from their intertwined bodies. He sat on a chair and shoved a hand down his riding pants to touch himself lightly, with delicate teasing strokes that were nowhere close enough to what he really needed, but he knew that if he gripped and twisted it would be over too soon.

"Kurt, you- oh God" Blaine panted when he saw him, his hips stammering and shaking.

"Don't stop, please, don't stop" Kurt heard himself say, squeezing himself now, his left hand coming down to join the other but travelling lower, lower inside his pants and past his balls until it came in contact with his hole. His mind clouded with desire, Kurt eased the tip of his finger inside himself and moaned, his head thrown back over the back of the chair he was sitting in.

"Are you fingering yourself?" Blaine asked, his skin slapping against the girl's with a wet, shamelessly erotic noise that made Kurt fuck himself down on his finger.

"Wish that was me, Blaine" he said, looking into Blaine's eyes and panting. "Wish you were fucking me."

"Come here" Blaine said through gritted teeth. "Please, come here."

Reluctant at the prospect of interrupting what he was doing, Kurt eased his hands out of his pants and stood up. When he was in reaching distance from Blaine, his husband removed a hand from the girl's hips and reached out for his face, cupping his chin in a death grip to force their lips together in a rough, demanding kiss. He thrust his tongue into Kurt's mouth and Kurt opened up for him without a fight, moaning against him and shoving his hips forward to rut against Blaine's hipbone as he kept moving. The slave was screaming in pleasure, but Kurt barely heard her.

"How do you do it?" he asked against Blaine's mouth, before kissing his way down his sharp jaw. "Isn't it hard to fuck a girl? Or do you like them, too?"

He didn't know where all that boldness was coming from, since their sex life didn't include that much dirty-talking, but it was like a dam breaking, destroying the connection between his brain and his mouth. It had probably started when he had seen Blaine winning the fight, looking so strong and unstoppable that for the first time Kurt had felt the need to be taken hard and fast.

"I- I don't" Blaine said, whimpering when Kurt started sucking on his pulse-point. "I close my eyes and pretend I'm fucking you instead."

Kurt looked up at that.

"Me?"

Blaine looked at him helplessly, as if he couldn't believe Kurt could doubt about that.

"You, Kurt, it's you, every time, always" he whispered, and Kurt had to kiss him, he just had to.

The friction against Blaine's sweaty skin was delicious, but it was Blaine shaking and coming that did it, his moans muffled by Kurt's mouth in one last kiss as they came together. Blaine held the girl tight against himself until he was spent, then he eased himself out of her and turned toward Kurt, clutching him against himself without giving her so much as a second glance.

Kurt heard her crawling away from them, then dressing and leaving the tent silently, but it was distant and unimportant.

"I thought you would get upset" Blaine whispered against his neck, planting a kiss to where it met his shoulder.

"I thought so, too" Kurt agreed. "That was before knowing how hot you would look."

Blaine chuckled at that.

"I hope she gets pregnant this time" he said after a brief pause. "I don't want anyone but you."

When they walked out of the tent, Santana was still there, one arm draped around the girl's shoulders and a satisfied grin on her face.

"I see Tina suited your needs just right, my khal" she told Blaine solemnly, before turning toward Kurt and smiling with amusement. "And yours too, khalees. I always thought she was the best among my apprentices."

"Apprentices?" Kurt asked.

"Santana trains the sex slaves of the khalasar" Blaine spoke up, one arm around Kurt's waist. "And chooses the best to send them to me from time to time."

"It was a pleasure" the girl – Tina – said, casting a dreamy look at Blaine before making a little bow, her cheeks flushed. "You can send for me whenever you like, my khal."

She likes him, Kurt thought with amusement.

Blaine just nodded and led Kurt away, but he could see Tina smiling happily out of the corner of his eye.

"I hope she gets pregnant, too" Kurt said. "I like her."

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It was starting to get ridiculous, how everything seemed to happen at night while he was sleeping. This time, though, it wasn't about sounds, being them moans or cries or blades clashing; it was about smell. Blaine was shaking him by the shoulder, and as Kurt's mind slowly came back from the world of dreams, he could sense the sharp, unmistakable smell of things burning. It was hot inside the tent, too hot even for an eastern summer night, and unsettling shadows were dancing outside, running in one direction and then another. In the distance, someone screamed.

"Stay here" Blaine whispered, his eyes looking at the entrance. "I'll be back."

Kurt nodded dully, fear clawing at his insides while he sat up on the furs. He grabbed his riding pants and put them on; Blaine stood up and did the same, before grabbing his arakh from the table and slowly making his way toward the entrance of the tent. Kurt could see ashes swirling in the air toward Blaine's face as he walked.

Just as Blaine was taking the first step out, Kurt saw a shadow throwing something red and bright at their tent, and the next thing he knew was that Blaine was on the ground, one of the wooden rafters crashed down from above to hit him on the head while the tent itself took fire.

"BLAINE!" Kurt cried, standing up to run to him, but the fire crept up so fast that another rafter fell from above, missing him of mere inches. He stumbled on the ground until he managed to reach Blaine, who was shoving the rafter away from himself and coughing, black soot covering his forehead and temples together with a thin rivulet of blood.

"Are you okay?" Kurt yelled to be heard over the sound of the flames. He didn't know they could be so loud, like a giant beast roaring constantly and swallowing up everything, tables and chairs and the furs they slept on. It felt like the ground itself was on fire, scorching hot underneath his palms, but it wasn't bothering him that much. It was the sound, the scary roar.

"Yes" Blaine yelled back, covering his mouth with one hand and coughing. Kurt realized numbly that he wasn't.

"Let's get out of here!" he said, helping Blaine up from the ground. He looked around helplessly and saw nothing but red and black, red and black, the colors of his House, of the three-headed dragon on its banner. Fire and Blood, the Hummelsmythe words.

They stumbled together, clutching at each other, looking from side to side like mad men in search of a way out, and Blaine's coughing fit was growing worse by the second, the air clouded with thick black smoke and burning ashes. The tent was huge, but the fire was burning it down, and Kurt knew that the main rafter that was keeping them momentarily safe would soon collapse, too.

He squinted his eyes against the smoke and saw a gap in the circle of flames.

"There!" he shouted at Blaine, whose throat was too constricted to answer, but he nodded sharply and let Kurt lead him toward their escape, his movements slow and stumbling because of how difficult it was to breathe.

Together they ran out of the tent, ducking under falling woods as they went, and suddenly they were out in the open, falling on the ground in exhaustion. Blaine rolled away from him and kept coughing on all fours until his throat seemed to relax, then collapsed on his stomach, clutching at his neck and breathing harshly, his body covered in ash and sweat.

Kurt sat on the sand and stared numbly at the burning tent.

Red and black. Fire and blood. The three-headed dragon.

He stood up and took a step forward.

"Kurt, what are you doing?" he heard Blaine say from behind, but barely. It wasn't loud enough to reach his thoughts.

He ran back inside, Blaine screaming after him before his voice got lost behind, swallowed by the never-ending roar. It was hotter than before, stifling, and the tent was barely standing now, leaving little space for him to walk among the debris. He kept walking, crawling when it was the only thing he could do to go on, and he could feel the flames stroking almost gently at his ankles, his waist, his wrists, trying to hug him fiercely like a mother would have done, the mother he had never known.

I have to find them, he thought, ignoring the gentle, inviting heat. I can't leave them here.

When he found them in the end, he didn't need to turn around to know that there was no way back. They were scattered on the ground, blackened by the fire, but whole and unscarred, their scales hard and perfect under his fingers when he sprawled on top of them to cover them with his chest. They burned, but in a good way, and Kurt felt like he was burning, too. It was nice.

As he closed his eyes and waited for it to end, hugging the eggs closer to himself while the world crumbled down around him, he hoped Blaine would forgive him.

His eyes remained closed for a long, long time, but Kurt couldn't say how long exactly. At one point, the heat around him seemed to lessen, and a gust of fresh night air blew through his hair, which meant that the tent had burned down and the sky was now the only roof above his head. Or it could mean that he was dead, and that was another place entirely, but he thought that dying would feel different. He thought that he would notice, but he hadn't.

He opened his eyes slowly, but just as he was starting to sit up and look around, he heard a cracking sound from under him, and something moving. He glanced down.

The eggs were shaking, thin but unmistakable lines forming over them, until the first one broke and a little black head with shades of red came up from the newly-created hole. The dragon made a high-pitched scream and broke the rest of the egg with his scaled black wings, thrusting them outwards on either side of his lithe body. It looked like a lizard, but scarier, nostrils flaring and black, threatening, beautiful eyes.

The dragon made his way up from Kurt's leg to his shoulder, perching up on it like a trained parrot, and when Kurt looked down again he saw that two others had born, one green with shades of bronze, the other cream-colored with shimmering shades of gold. They gathered around him as if he was the one who had brought them into the world, and Kurt realized suddenly that he was.

I am the blood of the dragon. I am Kurt Hummelsmythe, Khalees of the Dothraki Sea, King of the Seven Kingdoms, Father of Dragons, the Unburnt.

As the green-and-bronze dragon settled himself on his thigh, almost waiting to be petted, Kurt looked up to find Blaine, Finn, Wes, David and his personal slaves gaping at him with awe and wonder in their eyes, and behind them was a small group of mesmerized people. Behind them still, nothingness.

What happened? Kurt thought. Did the entire khalasar burn?

He stood up, realizing only then that he was naked, his pants shredded and burned at his feet. His pale skin was covered in black smudges, but he couldn't feel any part of his body hurting. As he straightened his back, the two creatures crawled up until they reached their brother on Kurt's shoulders.

And for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.