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Sansa had been here before: on her knees before the Iron Throne, begging a mad monarch for a loved one's life. King Joffrey had not spared Ned Stark, and Queen Daenerys seemed disinclined to spare Jon Snow.
The roof of the Red Keep had collapsed, and Sansa's black skirts were streaked grey where she knelt in the ash; the city had burned for days, and the last of the fires had only been lately extinguished.
"You could exile him, Your Grace." Once upon a time it had taken all of Sansa's courage to look Cersei Lannister in the eye, now it took everything she had to keep her gaze deferentially averted from Daenerys Targaryen.
"To the North, I suppose." The queen's voice was as cold as the Night King. "I am not in the habit of granting failed assassins their heart's desire."
"Far from Westeros." It was Sansa's last roll of the dice, and Jon Snow's last hope; that the cruelty of taking Winterfell from him, of taking his family and brothers in arms, and all that he had fought for and held dear would appeal to Daenerys more than taking Jon's head.
Sansa risked a quick glance up. The queen looked largely unmoved, but Sansa noted a twitch in her cheek where she was chewing on it. She was considering it, at least.
"Yes. Exile. With one condition." At that Sansa stared baldy up at the throne. "You will stay here with me in his stead."
"I'd be your–" Jon would have served as the queen's consort; as well as her general, advisor, and perhaps Hand "–hostage?"
"Against my nephew returning to take my throne, against your brother Brandon raising the North against me, against your sister Arya attempting to finish what Jon Snow started."
No. Everything in Sansa rebelled at the idea. She was no longer the caged bird of King's Landing; she was Lady Sansa Stark of Winterfell, true ruler of the North, and she would be no-one's hostage. And yet... she thought of Robb, who had been a good brother but a poor king, and of little Rickon, who she had hardened her heart against as soon as word had come that he was in Ramsey's clutches. She would not, could not, see another brother die while it was in her power to prevent it.
"Agreed."
Daenerys rose from the Iron Throne and descended the steps until she was level with Sansa. Cersei would have said something condescending here, Joffrey would have threatened her, and Ramsey need only have looked at her with those cold, dead eyes of his. Daenerys Targaryen nodded curtly, once, and strode past her.
*
"The Queen is–" Jon Snow was a poor actor and could not pretend to be truly sorry that Daenerys had survived, but nor could he bring himself to defend her aloud.
Sansa stopped him from trying by pulling him into a hug.
She had been permitted to journey to the docks to see off her brother and sister. A phalanx of Unsullied stood nearby to make sure that Sansa returned to the Red Keep as promised.
"Be safe," she whispered to Jon Snow.
"You too," he replied into her hair.
Sansa pulled back from Jon and turned her attention to Arya, who looked no happier than she had when Sansa had first told her of the deal she'd struck with Daenerys. Arya disliked the idea of leaving Sansa undefended in King's Landing, even though Sansa had assured her that she'd survived in a hostile court before and doubtless would again, and even though they both agreed that Jon Snow needed Arya more.
The queen had not just exiled Jon from Westeros, but was sending him to the Doom of Valyria; one way or the other she did not mean for her nephew to survive.
Arya frowned, fiddled with the hilt of her sword, and threw herself against Sansa in a tight, almost embarrassed hug.
"Look after each other," said Sansa. She said it into Arya's hair, but she was speaking to Jon too.
Arya stood on her tiptoes, whispered, "Valar Morghulis," and Sansa felt the dagger being slid up the heavy sleeve of her gown, the hilt falling neatly into the palm of her hand.
Sansa kept her face buried against the top of Arya's head until she was certain she had schooled her face into an expression of neutrality that would betray nothing to the Unsullied, or to Jon Snow.
*
The terrible thing was that living with Daenerys Targaryen was not that bad. Cersei had taunted her, Joffrey had tormented her, and later Ramsey had tortured her. The dragon queen mostly let her be.
Daenerys' cruelties burned cities and toppled kingdoms, but she had no interest in pulling the wings off flies.
She did insist on sharing one meal a day with her unwilling guest; often those meals passed in heavy, sullen silence, sometimes they were interrupted by something that required the queen's immediate attention, and occasionally Daenerys wanted to talk.
On this evening the queen wished to talk about the firing of King's Landing.
"If I had accepted the city's surrender it would have only encouraged further rebellion. What was to stop every petty lord in Westeros from trying to shoot my last dragon out of the sky if they believed that should they fail they could surrender without fear of consequence or retribution?"
Sansa's grip tightened on her dining knife, she felt Grey Worm's eyes bore into the back of her head, and she set the knife down on the table, and slowly and carefully withdrew her hand into her lap.
What would be worse, Sansa wondered, if the queen were as mad as people whispered or if she were so cold-hearted as to burn a city of a million people just to send a message?
Sansa took heart from the dull weight of Arya's dragonglass dagger against her thigh, stitched into a secret pocket of her skirts. "Tell me, is that what you thought when you heard the bells, or is something the mistress of ships has told you to say in the months since?"
There was a long silence while the air in the room thickened and the Unsullied on duty grew tense. Then the queen's mouth curled and the atmosphere cracked with her smirk. "You don't much like Lady Greyjoy, do you?"
"No."
Sansa had tried to like Yara Greyjoy, for her brother's sake. But in truth Yara was too like the Theon of Sansa's girlhood at Winterfell for her to like: glib and arrogant and skirt-chasing. And while Theon had been a young lordling who had known nothing but endless summer, Yara was the right-hand of the dragon queen in a city of ashes and had no such excuses for being so insufferable.
The queen popped a morsel of food into her mouth. "Why not?"
"Isn't it obvious? She's helping you subdue the rest of Westeros on the promise of a crown for herself and independence for her own people."
"Proof if any were needed that Yara Greyjoy is a shrewder negotiator than Jon Snow." The queen cocked her head, curiously. "I wonder, Lady Sansa, how things might have been different if Jon Snow had acted the part of a king and sent you to meet with me on Dragonstone in his stead?"
Sansa opened her mouth to say that she was not so easily swayed by a pretty face and Tyrion Lannister's clever sounding assurances, but a newly arrived Dothraki rider, dusty from the road, was remonstrating with Grey Worm and demanding entry.
Daenerys pushed back her chair and rose. "I look forward to continuing this conversation at a later time."
*
Once upon a time the people of King's Landing had thrown dung at King Joffrey; they would not dare do the same to Queen Daenerys, too many of them remembered the last time Drogon's shadow had fallen over their homes.
Sansa had been commanded to join the rest of the court as they rode out. She had been surprised to find the queen on horseback while Drogon glided low overhead, but looking at the sullen, cowed faces in the crowd Sansa saw that Daenerys had nothing to fear, the people where too frightened of Drogon's flames to act on their discontent.
Scared though they were, the people of King's Landing still came out in numbers; a queen was always a sight, the dragon queen was a sight to behold.
After Daenerys had inspected the scaffolds holding up the city walls, and the head of the guild of stonemason's had been brought before her, pale and sweating, to tell of how the rebuilding was progressing the court turned back to the Red Keep.
If the people were too afraid to look at their queen with open loathing, the same could not be said of Sansa. She did not have a dragon to protect or avenge her, and Northmen had been in the streets looting and raping on the day that the city had burned.
The hatred in their eyes made Sansa recall those men who had dragged her away, tearing at her clothes when Joffrey's progress through the city had turned into a riot. The men that the Hound had butchered to save her innocence - for as long as that had lasted.
It was with a guilty heart that Sansa hewed her horse closer to the queen's.
"In Meereen," said Daenerys, not having to raise her voice to be heard over the eerily silent crowd, "my people would try to touch my boots as I rode among them, they would hold their children up for me to bless, and call out my name."
"Perhaps you should go back there." Sansa had meant to keep her tone carefully neutral, but she was no horsewoman, the crowds were making both her and her mount nervous, and her words came out with a bitter bite.
"Perhaps I will," said the queen. "Someday when Westeros is brought to heel I would like to make a progress through all my kingdoms. Maybe I'll take you with me and you can see that not all my subjects are so ungrateful."
"Ungrateful–!" Thankfully the rest of what Sansa said was drowned out by the clanking of heavy chains as the gates of the Red Keep opened to admit them.
*
The queen, advised by Yara Greyjoy and Grey Worm not to overextend herself militarily, granted Winterfell and the North to Bran.
"I was surprised not to hear you too arguing that Winterfell was your brother's by right," Daenerys said as they breakfasted together.
Sansa was conflicted by the news about Winterfell, and irritable at having been woken in the pre-dawn hours only to bear witness to the queen's good mood.
"I am your prisoner not your councillor, if you've forgotten," said Sansa coldly. "In any case–"
Sansa bit her tongue, and Daenerys' eyes lit up in victory. "In any case?"
"I would have been hard pressed to argue for the extinction of my own house. Bran can never have children."
"He'll survive," the queen shrugged with practiced, not-fooling-anyone carelessness, "I do."
By moonlight Sansa stitched secret pockets into the skirts of each and every one of her gowns. She carried Arya's dragonglass dagger like a talisman; it gave her heart, but that was all.
Daenerys' infertility was one of the comforting lies she told herself to justify why she hadn't tried to finish what Jon Snow had started. Maybe Jon was alive somewhere, and maybe the Seven Kingdoms would accept his claim and rally behind him; but if he wasn't, or if they didn't, then the queen's sudden demise could lead to another decade of the famine, rape, and strife that civil war brought.
"If I–"
"If you were Lady of Winterfell you'd raise your banners against me and have no time to lie beneath some grunting, rutting Northman trying to get with child."
Sansa was grateful not to have eaten anything because bile was clawing its way up her throat. Her palms grew clammy and her vision swam. She saw Ramsey's face. He's dead, she told herself, he's dead.
"–I'm sorry." By the time Sansa came back to herself the queen was next to her, crouched by her chair.
Sansa must have misheard. "What?"
"Jon told me about Ramsey Bolton." Sansa laughed, bitterly, and in that moment she hated Jon Snow. "I understand."
"You couldn't possibly –!" Sansa spat.
"I've been raped. The Dothraki Khals– I'm sorry it happened to you. I'm sorry it happened to both of us."
"I am nothing like you. This…thing that's in both of us, it doesn't make us the same."
It didn't. But Daenerys stayed where she was, crouched by Sansa's chair, holding her hand. And in that moment Sansa hated her a little bit, a tiny little bit, less.
*
The Riverlands and the Vale refused to submit to Targaryen rule. Yara Greyjoy was dispatched to lay siege to Riverrun, while the queen herself flew to the Eyrie on dragonback. Sansa was part of the royal train that followed, and upon her arrival she was sent to negotiate her cousin's surrender.
Sansa found herself making those same arguments that she had scoffed at when Daenerys had made them to her.
"Sweetrobin–"
"Lord Arryn!"
"Of course," Sansa corrected smoothly, "Lord Arryn, if you yield now no one needs be hurt, but if you wait until Drogon takes wing Queen Daenerys will burn you out of this mountain. She will not stop, not when you lay down arms, and not when you plead for mercy. Just as she did not stop when they rang the bells of King's Landing. I will not be able to stop her. I will not be able to protect you."
"I don't need the protection of a treacherous whore!"
Sansa fought the urge to roll her eyes. "Cousin, I have no wish to see you burn."
Sweetrobin had been a frail, sickly child and now Robert Arryn was a young lord with a deathly terror of being seen to be weak, but his lords paramount, arrayed behind him, had houses and spies and mistresses in King's Landing and Sansa could see that her words were getting through to them.
Sansa turned on heel and made to leave the high hall of the Arryns.
"I didn't want to believe what they said about you, Sansa!" Sweetrobin shouted after her as she walked away. "They say you're in bed with the dragon queen! They say–" he inhaled deeply, then bellowed "–they say that you're fucking her!"
*
Drogon, thank the old gods and the new, was still on the ground when Sansa descended the mountain; he was curled up outside the queen's grand red pavilion and he hissed steam as Sansa passed.
Sansa held her spine straight and her chin high; she would not flinch, she would not.
Daenerys looked up as Sansa entered. "What did he say?"
"He thinks we're fucking," Sansa said flatly.
The queen raised an eyebrow. "Anything else?"
The messenger from the lords paramount had caught up with Sansa halfway down the mountain; they valued their skins, as well as their lands and titles, and would see to it that their young lord bent the knee. "He'll yield."
Sansa turned to take her leave, but Daenerys caught the heavy sleeve of her gown and pulled her back. "Thank you."
The queen's other hand came up to touch Sansa's cheek. Daenerys' touch wasn't warm - warmth was Jon Snow's rare smiles, Arya's fleeting hugs, and her memories of Bran from before his fall - but it was hot, and Sansa had been cold for a long time now; despite herself, she leaned into the touch.
"Believe me or don't," said Daenerys, "but I don't revel in unnecessary bloodshed."
Sansa stepped back, and the queen's hand fell away. "Even so. We differ strongly on what counts as necessary."
*
Sansa was ready for bed when she was summoned to the queen's chambers. There were no guards present, and Daenerys Targaryen was sunk up to her collarbones in a luxurious looking tub.
Sansa could feel the heat coming off the tub; she felt naked, not just because she was in her nightdress rather than the heavy Northern gowns she favoured, but because for the first time since Jon Snow's exile she was facing the queen without Arya's dagger secreted about her person.
"I've been thinking about what Lord Arryn said," said Daenerys, "about us."
"That you've taken me to your bed," said Sansa. "Men always say such things about the women they wish to bring down."
"Oh, I know," said the queen, sketching a circle in the surface of the water with her big toe. "You are far from the most distasteful person I have been accused of bedding."
"Not the most distasteful," said Sansa flatly. "You flatter me."
"I had not planned to take a lover on this side of the Narrow Sea. But I miss–" the queen looked away and huffed unhappily. "I sometimes find it difficult to sleep in an empty bed."
Sansa began to suspect what was on offer; she waited patiently for a wave of revulsion that stubbornly failed to appear. "Has Lady Greyjoy being telling you about salt wives again?"
"This is not a demand. It is a–" the queen rose; Sansa's eyes took in skin flushed red from the scalding bathwater, small breasts marked by a ragged, white scar that ought to have killed her, rounded hips, and a patch of Targaryen silver hair between her legs "–proposition."
"And if I say no?"
"We will never speak of it again. I will not force you, Sansa. I am not a rapist."
"Just a mass murderer." But even as she spoke Sansa's hands were reaching for the top button of her nightdress.
"A conqueror," Daenerys corrected her as Sansa stepped out of her shift. "You really are very beautiful." When the queen had called Sansa beautiful at Winterfell she had sounded disingenuous, now her voice was low and hungry and tinged with desperation.
Sansa took the queen's offered hands and stepped into the tub. The water burned her skin and warmed her bones, and Daenerys drew her down into a kiss that was hotter still.
They sank to their knees, pressed together, and Sansa thought that her soul was perhaps a price worth paying to finally be warm again.
*
"My husband was a monster," the queen said, afterwards. They lay in bed, tangled in damp sheets, the bath long since grown tepid.
"Which husband?"
"My first," Daenerys answered. "Kahl Drogo haunted the nightmares of innocents throughout the Dothraki Sea, but he was kind to me, and I loved him for it."
"My husband was a monster. Ramsey cared for no-one but his hounds, and in the end –" Sansa thought of Arya's dragonglass dagger, still hidden, still secret "–they ate his heart."