Author's Note: No, it's not an early update of A Year from Now (which will still be posted Friday morning, as usual), but I hope you'll enjoy this bonus one-shot in the meantime. Many thanks to Just_a_Dram for catching my weird typos and helping me sort out some tricky bits of characterization…and for sharing my love of asshole!Viserys. ;)

Heart of the Dragon

It wasn't the light of a dozen candles that beckoned warmly to Jorah when he ducked under the door flap of Daenerys' tent, but a glow that emanated from the princess herself. He was, quite truthfully, relieved to see her smile; having been summoned to her by Rakharo almost immediately upon his arrival at the khalasar's encampment, he'd feared his purpose for riding to Qohor had somehow been found out. Obviously, his secret was still his own-and the Spider's, of course. Why, then, did he feel slightly out of breath?

"So it's true, Khaleesi?" Jorah asked, bowing to her. "I have reason to congratulate you?"

Daenerys' smile never wavered-indeed, it stretched even wider, beaming as brightly as he'd seen Khal Drogo's young bride smile-though her eyebrows did twitch together in bemusement.

"Why, yes, Ser Jorah, and thank you. But how did you know? Does Irri's tongue wag?" She glanced sideways to give her handmaid a mildly reproving look.

"Irri was the rumor's source, but I would have guessed the truth if I had not had it first from the girl. You are radiant, my princess."

To his surprise, Daenerys ducked her head almost shyly. "If you'd seen me this morning, ser, you'd have said the opposite."

A sneering laugh drew Jorah's attention to one corner of the tent, where he hadn't noticed Viserys skulking in the shadows.

"This morning she looked as one should who's had a savage put his whelp in her." Viserys pulled a face as he took a drink of the fermented mare's milk which the Dothraki had in abundance instead of wine. "Sick, and miserable."

"Viserys, please-" Daenerys sounded weary, as if she'd heard this a dozen times before, but she recoiled as Viserys tossed the contents of his goblet into a brazier hanging near her, which caused the flames to leap high in the copper bowl. She shrank even further back, into her mane of loose flowing hair, as Viserys bent so that his face was level with hers where she sat on her cushions on the floor.

"Save your radiance for when your husband puts a golden crown on my head," he hissed. Then, flicking a serpentine smile at Daenerys but not sparing so much as a glance for Jorah, he slunk from the tent.

"Shall I bring him back, Princess?"

Daenerys shook her head. "Let him be." Her voice was low and heavy now; even in the shifting glow of candlelight, Jorah could see that her face had gone pale. "These are trying days for him. The khalasar moves east instead of west, and I believe he suffers jealousy, as well."

"Jealousy?"

"He never expected to give me in marriage to another man. We always thought that I would be his queen and bear his sons, in the manner of House Targaryen. But he was desperate."

Jorah chose not to dwell on the incest of the Targaryen royal family which, during Robert's rebellion, had been bandied about not only as being displeasing to the gods, but having bred madness. Certainly the latter had been easy enough to believe in the case of King Aerys, and Jorah was beginning to suspect that the current heir was similarly afflicted. Though Rhaegar had seemed quite sane, despite what Robert and the Starks were so sure had transpired between him and Lyanna; and Daenerys seemed to have taken after her eldest brother despite being born after Robert slew him on the Trident.

"You have a most forgiving heart," Jorah said, "when your brother would tarnish your golden moment."

"I would not tarnish it further by quarreling with him."

Daenerys looked up at him with a sad smile which, to his delight, quickly brightened into the one that had greeted him like daylight when he'd first entered her tent. She stretched out her hand to him, and her slight fingers, callused now from the two moons she'd passed in the saddle, gripped his tightly.

"Where have you been, Jorah? I would have shared my joy with you sooner, my dearest friend, but Rakharo said you had ridden off from the khalasar."

"Alas, a personal matter required my attention in Qohor." The regret that tinged his words was unfeigned as he found himself unexpectedly touched by the princess' sweet words.

Of course Jorah had known that the princess valued him as a teacher and adviser as she acclimated to this strange new culture into which she'd married. But as a friend, as well? And dearest? He'd never considered that. Granted, Daenerys had few besides him with whom she could actually converse; even though Jhiqui had the Common Tongue, she was the khasleesi's slave, not a girl Daenerys could speak with as an equal. In light of that, along with what had just transpired with her own brother and the stoicism of her husband, Jorah easily imagined how the bright-eyed young bride, now mother-to-be would seek out someone with whom to celebrate.

If she had not wept in disappointment at having found him away, she surely would to know that the personal matter that had kept him from her was a betrayal. Though perhaps not before she proved she had a bit of her father in her, after all.

Perhaps worse than the betrayal was the fact that, even if Jorah had known how Daenerys thought of him, he still would have made his report to Varys. For when weighed against a king's pardon, a princess' friendship was found wanting.

"Is there anything I may do for you, Khaleesi?" he asked, feeling as though he owed her, though she knew nothing of his treachery.

"Sit." Her lovely smile bloomed again as she patted the cushion beside her. "Irri, pour Ser Jorah a goblet of mare's milk, and then join Jhiqui and Doreah in the camp. You have not supped, and I would have privacy."

When Irri had obeyed, Daenerys watched the tent flap for a moment, as if to ensure the girl truly was gone, before she fixed Jorah with her gaze.

"I hoped you might be able to tell me something of what awaits me in Vaes Dothrak. My maids say there is a ceremony."

Jorah gulped the acrid mare's milk. Yes, there was-but it was gruesome, and not one he particularly cared to explain to a young girl in as delicate a state as Daenerys was.

"They would be able to tell you better than I," came his noncommittal reply.

"I have no wish to trouble them."

"You are Khaleesi, they are your handmaids. They exist for no other purpose than to be troubled by you." He chuckled a little as he said this, but stopped when he noticed that she was the troubled one, her head bent and her lower lip caught between her teeth. He set down his goblet and touched her bare shoulder. "My princess?"

She looked up at him, her eyes round and rich with desperation. "There is so little I know already, that they must think me a fool or a child."

Jorah gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Again I say, you are Khaleesi. What your servants think is of no account to you, and if tongues wag, you may have them."

Daenerys shook her head, and averted her gaze. "No, ser. What I mean is…" Her pale cheeks flooded with color. "It…had not even occurred to me that I could be with child. I never had a mother, or a septa, to teach me about the ways of women…"

Jorah's hand slipped from her shoulder and his lips parted in a silent o as he understood Daenerys' trouble. Now he saw her as she was: a frightened girl, scarcely older than a child herself, soon to give birth to a child of her own. And the closest thing she'd ever known to a parent was Viserys. Who had mocked her…sold her. This was who Jorah had spied on; this was who he'd betrayed.

Gods help him, what had he done? Where a moment ago he'd reflected, so arrogantly, that he'd have done it again, he now thought that if only this conversation had occurred beforehe'd ridden to Qohor, he'd never have strayed from the khalasar. If he could ride back this instant and recall the raven, he would. If he spied it in flight, he would shoot it down from the sky quicker than he could blink.

But he could not, no more than he could recall the slavers to whom he'd sold the men who'd poached on his lands. He would have to find another way to make amends.

He took a fortifying drink of mare's milk and said, "You know, of course, that the wives of khals must be presented to the dosh khaleen-the widows of khals who have died, the most revered members of Dothraki society who reside together in Vaes Dothrak."

Daenerys nodded.

"Now that you are with child," Jorah went on, getting up to pour himself another drink at the sideboard, "you will not only be presented to the crones, but you will stand before them and eat the heart of a horse."

"The heart of a…" For an instant Daernerys' complexion took on a greenish shade and she slumped amid her cushions. But she threw her shoulders back and said, with the bravado he'd come to expect from her in recent days, "I eat horseflesh most every day. How different can the heart be?"

Jorah gave her a sympathetic smile; the poor girl had only recently developed a taste for the dried horse meat of which the Dothraki diet seemed almost solely to consist-and he'd learned of her pregnancy when Irri had demanded Rokharo find something else for the khaleesi to eat, because her tender stomach had revolted at her usual supper fare.

"The custom calls for the heart to be eaten raw," he told Daenerys as he resumed his place beside her on the cushions. "Fresh from the animal. To make your child grow strong. But only if you are able to stomach the entire heart."

He watched the khaleesi as she digested this information, and thought she looked much as she had when she'd ridden off with Khal Drogo on their wedding night.

"How will I be able to stomach the entire raw heart of a horse when I cannot even stomach a morsel of flatbread?" she asked, her quavering voice pitched high, helpless.

"Have you been very ill?"

He was almost grateful when her nod provided him a chance to offer a word of encouragement, as he had when the horde rode out the morning after her wedding when he'd told her that she would not always find her marital bed a place of pain. As had clearly been the case.

"They say sickness is a good sign," he told her. "My lady wife-my first wife-never felt ill. She miscarried each of our three babes."

Only after he'd said this did it occur to Jorah that it could hardly be bolstering to a woman newly with child to hear stories of babes who had been born too soon or taken the life of the mother. But he found himself surprised for the second time in the course of the conversation when Daenerys' fingers curled around his hand where it lay in his lap.

"I did not know," she said. "I'm sorry, Jorah."

"It was a long time ago," he said, but though his tone carried no wistfulness, he felt sad. Not about his own wife and babes, but about the very real possibility his future held that the Targaryen princess might be carried off in childbed-or by King Robert's assassins, should he deem her child a threat. Somehow, he suspected that if that occurred, he would mourn Daenerys as he had not mourned Elianor.

Because in Dany, Jorah thought he might also have found a friend. If he had, she would be the first he'd had since he Ned Stark condemned him a criminal and made him a fugitive.

Though perhaps betrayal was not the surest of foundations on which to build a lasting friendship.

Nevertheless, he clasped her hand in return, and said, "You had difficulty stomaching horse meat when you first rode with the Dothraki, and you carried no babe then. I will find a way to help you succeed in this, Khaleesi."

She smiled. "I know you will."

Nightfall in a Dothraki khalasar as large as Khal Drogo's horde could be quite as bright as day, with cook fires dotting the flat prairie where a hundred thousand men, women, and children bedded down. The smoky aroma of fresh roasting meat was mouth-watering at the end of a long day's ride-if one's stomach had not first been turned by the other dominant smell which was nothing short of a slaughterhouse mixed with an un-mucked stable.

Jorah had grown accustomed to it in the time he'd spent among the horse lords, but he considered it now from the perspective of a newly pregnant woman. He understood why Dany ensconced herself in her tent as soon as her servants erected it for her, the curtains pulled secure against the assault of smells from outside and sticks of incense burning to cover the odors that did waft through the walls of horsehair and animal skins.

He was most keenly aware of the thick, metallic tang that drifted up from the cloth-covered bowl he carried to the khaleesi's closed tent now. His own stomach, which he thought must be made of iron given its tolerance to all manner of strange or poor things he had eaten as a soldier and an exile, rolled nauseatingly. Dany had been desperately ill the past several days, the march to Vaes Dothrak slowed by her need for frequent stops to empty her stomach even though it contained next to nothing. Jorah wondered whether now really was the best time to carry out this plan of his.

Just as he'd rounded the corner of the row of increasingly large tents which housed Khal Drogo's bloodriders, his khaleesi, and the horse lord himself, Viserys staggered out of his shelter; apparently he'd come by some wine, or wished to be drunk badly enough that he'd swallowed his distaste for fermented mare's milk.

"'S'that for me, Mormont?" he slurred, pointing at the bowl Jorah carried.

"For the khaleesi."

"Khaleesi," Viserys scoffed. "She hasn't the stomach for supper. Give it here."

Jorah withheld the bowl, though part of him was gripped with the wild urge to dye the obnoxious king's silver hair red with its contents. Instead, he managed to be polite. "Trust me, Your Grace, you don't want this."

"Oh, I trust you all right," said Viserys, snatching the bowl from him, "to favor my little slut of a sister over m-ugh!"

He'd pulled back the cloth, and, seeing-and no doubt smelling, as well -what was within, recoiled; Jorah lunged forward and narrowly caught it, preventing a spill but not managing to avoid warm, clotted blood sloshing into his outstretched hands.

Viserys' disgusted expression twisted into a cruelly amused one. "Treating Dany to a Dothraki delicacy, are you? Well, it worked for Khal Drogo, so it might for you, as well, old man." He gave him a mocking pat on the shoulder.

Jorah bristled at the implied slur on himself and Dany, though not for the reasons Viserys likely imagined. He could not help but think of what theprincess had revealed to him the other night, about how she regarded his friendship. She needed a brother now more than ever, and though he doubted whether Viserys could rise to the occasion, Jorah felt he owed it to Dany to try and help her brother understand and sympathize with her plight.

"An important rite of passage awaits the khaleesi-" He pronounced the word deliberately, hoping to convey the weight of Dany's position within the khalsar. "The Dothraki believe that her success or failure will determine the health of her child-and I'm sure you can appreciate, my king, that a healthy child means a respected khaleesi with greater influence over her husband and the army he can give you."

For a moment, Viserys' eyes gleamed hungrily as he looked down into the bowl and Jorah's bloodied hands, but his lips curled once more in revulsion. "My army was promised to me in exchange for my little sister-nobody ever said anything about her little brats!"

He knocked shoulders with Jorah as he staggered away, sloshing more blood into Jorah's hands. Turning back, Viserys added, "I, for one, should be glad to hear my little sister cannot stomach that. Dragons prefer their meat cooked, you know. If the horse lord hasn't fucked all the dragon out of his little brood mare."

"Have you asked many dragons how they like their meat, then, Your Grace?"

"I'll have that insolent tongue, you northern cur!" Viserys had advanced on him, his hand going for his dagger, but a pile of fortuitously dropped horse shit prevented him from reaching Jorah spilling any more of the contents of the bowl. "Run along to your khaleesi, then," he said, shaking his boot. "I hope she vomits that all over you!"

Jorah hid his smirk by inclining his head a slight bow, then continued on his way to Dany's tent. As he walked, he remembered the chief reason-next to a royal pardon, of course-that he'd agreed to spy on the Targaryens in the first place:

If Aerys' fool of an heir somehow did manage to come to throne, it would surely spell the doom of the Seven Kingdoms.

Although, when Irri admitted Jorah into the khaleesi 's tent, he found himself most reluctantly inclined to agree with Viserys on one point. Lying almost exanimate upon her sleeping silks, her face pale even in the warm glow of candles and various braziers that had, a few nights ago, illuminated her maternal radiance and her eyes too large for her gaunt cheeks and ringed with dark circles, Dany resembled nothing like a dragon.

"Ser Jorah," she greeted, her voice thin and hoarse as if her throat were sore-which it likely was, from being repeatedly sick. The smile she gave him, however, was sweet-until her gaze dropped from his face.

"Dear gods, your hands!" she cried, sitting up with an energy he would not have imagined her to possess. "Irri, fetch bandages, he is injured!"

"A wash basin and a towel will do," Jorah said to the maid, and then smiled reassuringly at Dany. "It is not my blood. Forgive me for alarming you, khaleesi."

She relaxed, but eyed the bowl as Irri took it gingerly away. "Then whose is it?"

"A horse's," he replied, grateful for the occupation of washing and drying his hands as he felt suddenly foolish. "I thought cuts of the toughest, uncooked meat soaked in clotted blood might accustom you to the taste and texture of the heart you will have to consume when we reach Vaes Dothrak."

"Oh," said Dany. "As charming an offering as ever a knight made to his princess."

Jorah's neck prickled hotly, but Dany dispelled his embarrassment with another smile. "But a practical and well-thought one, to be sure. Thank you, my knight."

He nodded. Her knight. Not Viserys'.

Though not quite hers, either, he thought, his betrayal looming large.

"Perhaps not so well-thought," Jorah said, "considering the state of your stomach."

Dany crossed her legs on her cushion, and gestured for Irri to bring her the bowl. "Would you have the stomach for a horse heart, ser, even though you carry no babe?"

A wave of nausea rolled over him again as the odors of raw meat and blood pricked his nostrils and he contemplated eating it. He'd had raw meat before, of course, in desperation on a campaign when the rations had run out and cooking the small game they'd managed to snare posed greater peril to the troops' lives than being made sick-and he had been sick, and wished he'd braved the rumblings of his stomach, instead.

"No, khaleesi. I'm afraid the only inhabitants of Bear Island whose stomachs do not turn from blood are the creatures for whom our homeland is named."

"This babe will still be within me when we arrive at Vaes Dothrak. My time of illness may not yet have passed. I shall be best prepared if I practice under the most difficult of conditions."

"As you say," Jorah said, and he found himself less disgusted than impressed when Dany indelicately plunged a hand into the dish and drew out a chunk of glistening red meat to which clung dark, shivering, gelatinous clots, and stuffed it into her mouth.

Blood oozed between her white teeth, painting her lips, as she bit down, though she hardly managed to cut into the sinews, which were more like tightly woven cords of coarse fibers than meat. She chewed for several minutes, the furrow between her eyebrows deepening with frustration as she made no headway with the gristle. All the time, her pallor took on a shade more green, and Jorah, imagining the blood rolling down her throat and into her sensitive stomach, thought she must spit it out soon.

Instead, Daenerys Targaryen drew a deep breath through her nostrils, raised her chin, and swallowed.

She choked, of course, the meat being inadequately chewed, and Jorah leapt forward to help her dislodge it. Not, however, before Dany lurched toward him, her eyes bulging as she covered her mouth, dark red vomit spraying around the edges of her hand, spattering the front of Jorah's doublet. Just as Viserys had wished.

There was no time for any further thought, however, as the princess collapsed onto her hands and knees, gagging and retching onto the woven mats that covered the floor of her tent.

"A pot, girl!" Jorah barked at Irri, who stood like a statue in the corner of the tent, watching her mistress heave up what must have been everything she'd put into her stomach that day.

Dany's unkempt silver locks, which looked to have been neither brushed nor braided that day, hung in her face and dragged on the floor, clumps of bloody sick matting it further. As Irri crouched in front of her holding a copper chamber pot, Jorah swept the khaleesi's hair back and held it out of the way as the seemingly endless stream of vomit poured from her mouth. His own stomach roiled, though not now with nausea so much as guilt. He had brought this misery on her.

But, when she had stopped heaving, and she lay back, sweaty but trembling upon her sleeping silks as Jorah bathed her face with a cool, damp rag while Irri left them to empty the chamber pot and have the rugs cleaned, it was Dany who blurted out apologies.

"I'm sorry, ser, your clothes-"

"Have seen worse," he said gently over her. "It is I who should apologize. You are in no fit state for-"

Her fingers closed suddenly around his hand, clutching startlingly hard in light of how she'd hardly had the strength to crawl back to her sleeping mat. "I must be. You said yourself, every khaleesi must eat the heart of a horse. I cannot fail in this. I will try again tomorrow."

"As you say, Princess."

Much as he admired her determination, Jorah reflected later, as he lay abed in his own tent, Dany would need a deal more than that to succeed in the task that lay before her. Namely, not being with child-which would also negate the need for such a ceremony.

While many Dothraki customs were strange to him, he tried not to pass judgment. In this case, however, he found himself struggling not to, even though he understood the thinking behind the custom, that if a woman in the throes of pregnancy sickness was hardy enough to stomach a raw horse heart that had only moments before beaten within the beloved animal's great chest, she would surely pass great strength along to her child. But that a khaleesi was considered weak for not being able to hold down the heart when her stomach revolted at even plain bread and water, even if she went on to deliver a healthy child…There was no logic in that. Or fairness. Especially as it concerned Dany, who had worked so hard to make a place for herself in Drogo's khalasar. Jorah couldn't abide to see her status determined by the state of her delicate stomach.

When the question whispered through his mind of why he should be so concerned, when he had betrayed her, he told himself that it was because she had called him friend.

It was all Jorah could do not to audibly groan when Viserys wheeled his horse around from near the head of the khalasar, which he fancied was his place, to ride between him and Dany. In fact Jorah was fairly certain he emitted something like a growl in the back of his throat as he clenched his teeth, though Viserys was too occupied with sneering at his sister to notice the knight.

"Every time I see you, you're chewing something."

"Ser Jorah advised me to chew tough meat," Dany replied, her words slightly obstructed by the chunk in tucked into her cheek; her water skin was filled with mare's milk mixed with clotted blood to accustom her to the taste of the heart, and though Jorah had only seen her take a few small sips, she had not once, to his knowledge, so much as gagged on it. "To prepare myself for the texture of the heart I must eat."

The same explanation had earned a satisfied grunt from Khal Drogo earlier that day, when he'd seen his wife chewing and asked whether she felt better; he'd even nodded in Jorah's general direction, the nearest thing he'd ever had to a thank you from the man whose culture had no such concept as gratitude. They were but three days' ride from Vaes Dothrak, and the khal, naturally, would prefer to see his queen ensure the health of his child-provided it was a boy-by completing the ritual.

Viserys, by contrast, only became more scornful. "Well, I would advise you to stop," he said, "unless you want to look like you're chewing cud. You're no dragon, Dany. Not even a horse. Just a cow. Soon to be a fat cow, with teats to be milked."

Dany's arms curled protectively in on herself as Viserys reached out and tweaked her, hard, on one tender breast. While the Targaryen's words themselves had been enough to make Jorah want to beat the young man black and blue as his bullying, childish behavior deserved, it was Viserys' disrespect of his sister's person that made him steer his horse in front of the king he'd pledged to serve and protect-and, so thankfully, had betrayed-and cut him off so Dany could ride on ahead.

"Out of my way, Mormont," Viserys spat, flicking his rein to direct his mount around Jorah's; but the horse was no more inclined to obey him than was any other member of the khalasar.

"I'd mind what words fly from my tongue within the hearing of the princess' khas, Your Grace." Jorah jerked his head to indicate the three young Dothraki riders who flanked them.

"As if the savages can understand civilized speech. Speaking of tongues," Viserys went on, "I've just remembered I meant to have yours last night. Do you know what our exiled knight said to me, Dany?"

She reined in her silver and turned in her saddle to cast her brother a baleful look over her shoulder. "Nothing that would make me call for Rakharo to show him the lash, I am sure."

Viserys stood in his stirrups, one hand raised as if to strike the khaleesi, though any intimidation he'd hoped to achieve with his towering presence was rather lost by the way his wide eyes darted about, like the eyes of a snake on the lookout for a predator, clearly terrified of the whip that had unhorsed him once already. With a roar of anger, he spurred his horse and galloped down the column, no doubt to skulk among the less threatening members of the khalasar until his offenses had been forgotten.

At once Jorah rode up to Dany, who yet sat still while her silver grazed, her eyes trained on where Viserys had disappeared into the horde, a pained look on her face.

"Are you all right, khaleesi?" he asked, leaning out in his saddle to lay a hand on her shoulder. "Viserys spoke cruelly." Not to mention the pinch he'd given her breast, down to which Jorah's eyes flicked before he realized his gaze was lingering on the full swell beneath her painted horsehair vest.

"Does Viserys speak any other way?"

With a grimace, she stuck her fingers in her mouth and pulled out the meat she'd been working at for hours, since they'd broken camp at daybreak, which she'd scarcely worn down in that time.

"It's the meat," she said. "My jaw and cheeks ache."

Jorah squeezed her shoulder. "But look on the bright side, Princess. You've kept your breakfast in your belly today."

He was pleased to make her smile, and to see her resume chewing with renewed determination, but his light words belied the unease that gnawed in his gut about Viserys' growing hostility. No good would come of it. Unless Viserys' tongue dripped its venom within earshot of Khal Drogo-and a translator-and saved King Robert the trouble of sending his assassins after the Targaryen heir.

Unfortunately, Viserys survived the remainder of the journey to Vaes Dothrak. He had scarcely looked down upon it from the hilltop on the outskirts of the city when he declared it a pile of mud and shit and twigs. Jorah's fingers curled around the hilt of his sword, and he glanced about for Rakharo when Dany rebuked her brother for besmirching her people, which sent Viserys into another of his rages against Khal Drogo's apparent lack of interest in paying his promised bride price of an army.

It came as little surprise when Dany came to Jorah's tent later, her delicate cheek marred by a darkening bruise made by Viserys' own hand; less expected was the fire that blazed in her eyes as she confessed, almost giddily, that she had returned Viserys' abuse, blow for blow-which was, in a way, almost as satisfying to Jorah as if he'd bloodied the younger man's pretty Targaryen face himself-and realized that the elder brother under whose authority she had always cringed could not lead an army.

"Viserys will never take us home," she told Jorah, as if it were a fact she'd read in one of the volumes of history he'd given her for a wedding gift.

For some reason, his mind fixated not home and all the word normally stirred within him-had, indeed, evoked when he told her that he prayed for nothing else-but on us, which he sensed referred not to Dany and the brother she'd come to revile, but to Dany and him. Jorah Mormont, exiled knight-and her betrayer.

And he wondered when he'd begun to think of her as Dany.

"On the morrow I shall be presented to the dosh khaleen," her voice broke into his musings, a little softer now, less confident than when she'd spoken before.

"Are you ready, Khaleesi?"

"My jaw has certainly grown stronger these few days." A smile ghosted her lovely face, only to immediately vanish again, giving way to an insecurity that left her looking every day of her few years, but no more. "I have less confidence in my stomach."

Her eyes asked what her lips would not.

"You wish to try again with the meat and blood," said Jorah.

"If it's no trouble."

"You are Khaleesi. I am at your command. Though I would advise…That is to say, are you certain you would risk making yourself ill when you shall soon require all your strength?"

"I would know how much strength I shall have to muster when I face my test."

"Fair enough, my princess," said Jorah, making her a bow before ducking out of the tent to do her bidding.

To Dany's credit, she fared better with the thick, leathery cut of meat than on her previous attempt, but swallowing proved to be her undoing, as before, and Jorah once again found himself holding her hair out of the way as she retched bloody mare's milk and flat bread and chunks of meat into the chamber pot he'd thought to have on hand.

As the silken strands curled about his hand, a memory flitted through his mind of running his fingers through Lynesse's fair hair, loosening it from her elaborate coif and sending it cascading over her bare shoulders before he made love to her on their wedding night. He yanked the leather lacing from the neck of his doublet and bound Dany's hair with it, releasing her locks as though they'd been set aflame.

From her eyes, however, he saw when she finished vomiting, all her fire had been extinguished.

"You were right, ser," she said, her voice choked with a sob, as she bathed her face and neck and her chest above her painted horsehair vest with the dampened rag he gave her. "My brother Rhaegar was the last dragon."

Jorah regretted saying it, true though it may have been, and cast about for some encouragement to offer the girl.

"Viserys told me that dragons prefer their meet cooked, just as humans do."

He regretted that even more. Viserys was the very last person who could bolster Dany in this moment; indeed, she stared sadly down at her drawn-up knees, her shoulders slumping with her heavy sigh.

Jorah lay a cautious hand upon her knee. "If you can't manage to eat the heart, Princess, it won't affect the health of your child."

He was relieved when her head snapped up, even though her expression and tone were sharp.

"I know that, ser. But they believe it will. I am Khaleesi, as you keep reminding me. "I must succeed for my people."

Jorah felt his heart flicker to life, quickening as it had not beat before, kindling the sort of loyalty for a liege-lord he'd believed only existed in song. Not for herself, Dany said. Not even for Khal Drogo. But for her people.

Could she be a queen to whom Jorah would bend his knee, pledge his service, lay down his life?

Might she be a queen who could lead him home?

He grasped her hands and pulled her to her feet as he rose to his own.

"Then, Khaleesi, I believe you will."

"They love her," Viserys said, his disbelief and disgust greater as he watched the Dothraki chanted for their khaleesi and the khalakka she would bear than that which he'd expressed as he'd watched her devour the horse's heart.

Jorah, on the other hand, had been anything but disgusted by the strange, gory ceremony; instead, he'd found it thrilling, and wondered if this was how ladies felt when they watched the knights they favored in the lists. When Dany had keeled over, clasping a bloody hand over her bloody mouth, he'd waited in breathless anticipation of whether she would regurgitate the raw organ she'd fought so valiantly to swallow, or whether she would keep it down.

And as he'd watched the roll of her throat as she'd choked her own vomit into submission, he, too, had swallowed against a knot that had been tied in his own throat, which held him back from adding his own voice to the adoring chants of the Dothraki.

Her people.

Scarcely noticing that it was Dany's husband who lifted her high in his arms so that all in the khalasar might see the face of their triumphant queen, Jorah nodded his agreement with Viserys.

Yes. He did.

A/N: Jorah tells me he'll bring a little meal to share in thanks with those kind enough to review-and he'll even cook it for you. Even Dany doesn't have it that good. ;)