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“Are you ready?” Jorah asked the woman by his side as they stood in the stables.
Daenerys Targaryen nodded her head, smiling at him.
Now that the tyrannical rule of Cersei Lannister had been overthrown and the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros were once again living in relative peace, Daenerys wanted to take the time to repay her loyal knight for his steadfast support of her quest to ascend to the Iron Throne.
Jorah, more than any of the people around her, had sacrificed everything he held dear to make her dreams a reality. There had been no one who had sacrificed so much for her cause, he had even put his life on the line to see her reach her goal.
It was not until the Long Night and the grievous wounds Jorah sustained that Daenerys realised just what her faithful old bear meant to her. She sat by his side each day of his convalescence as the wounds that would have killed many lesser men healed slowly. He had sworn to never leave her, something that she had doubted in the several days when he lay unconscious in her bed in her quarters at Winterfell, until that joyful day when he finally opened his eyes and called for her.
His voice was croaky from disuse, but she had never been so happy to hear it as she had right then. Weak and feverish, he had tried his best to pull himself from his sickbed to comfort her. Despite coming so close to dying, his first conscious thought would always be of his queen and her needs.
Despite the protestations of Sansa Stark and the other Houses of the North, Daenerys refused to march south to King’s Landing until Jorah was fit enough to be at her side. Just as he had kept his promise to never abandon her, she would only take her rightful position as Queen of Westeros if Jorah was by her side.
The extra time had allowed the alliance of Daenerys’ armies and the North to replenish their numbers after thousands died during the Long Night. Rested and recovered, those who had survived the battle against the dead stood a much better chance of overthrowing Cersei Lannister, who had all but exhausted both her riches and her allies and who in the end had surrendered meekly rather than burning out in the hail of brimstone and fire she had once promised.
With the throne secured, Daenerys insisted on accompanying Jorah back to the home that meant so much to him, the home he had given up for her.
From the moment their ship pulled up to the island’s shore, Daenerys felt the breath leave her body. Tall pine trees and lush green hills spread across the vista for as far as the eye could see and the sound of the myriad of waterfalls was music to her ears.
The scenery was truly breath-taking. No wonder Jorah had wanted to return to this place so desperately.
Throughout their first few days on the island, Daenerys grew increasingly irritated for the way Jorah apologised for the lack of wealth in these lands. The keep was built mainly of wood and stone and was nowhere near as grand or opulent as King’s Landing, or as towering and resplendent as Winterfell. The Mormont’s were a small and humble House, something that Jorah constantly mentioned as he apologised for the hundredth time.
What Bear Island lacked in riches and pearls, it more than made up for with its natural beauty. The sound of the birds squawking in the trees...the growls and rumbles of the bears that hid surreptitiously in the dense forests… the tinkling of the rivers as crystal blue waters ran through them…all of it was worth so much more than any gold coin could buy.
Their first few days were spent mainly in the keep and its surrounding areas, but Jorah had shyly asked his queen the night before if he could show her further around the island on the morrow.
Stood in the stables and dressed in sturdy boots and a thick woollen coat, Daenerys looked at her companion expectantly.
“I trust that I have dressed suitably for our excursion?” She asked him playfully, watching him pull himself gracefully upon his horse.
“Aye, Khaleesi,” he replied, “Bear Island is not made for skirts and heeled shoes.” He kicked gently at the beast’s sides and set off from the stables at a trot.
Daenerys followed behind, allowing Jorah to lead the way while silently hoping that he would tell her more about their surroundings as they travelled the island by horseback. Never one to be particularly verbose, Jorah was adept at saying little while conveying much with his posture.
Said posture currently indicated that he was brooding if the slump of his shoulders were anything to go by.
Daenerys motioned her horse to move faster until she was alongside Jorah.
“Talk to me, Ser,” she said, looking upon his defeated posture.
Jorah shook his head. “It is not something I should trouble you with, Khaleesi. You are a queen.”
“But I am also your friend.”
Her words were meant to be encouraging, but they only served to make him seem even sadder than before as they continued to trot along the grassy path in silence for several minutes.
“When I was a boy…my mother and I would walk these paths…she would show me each of the creatures who inhabit these parts and tell me that we were merely guests in their home and that we should always treat them with respect.”
“She sounds like a wise woman.”
Jorah glanced at her and she could see the pain written clearly in his features.
“Aye, she was. Much wiser than I.”
“And what kinds of things did she show you on these walks of yours?” Daenerys asked, wanting to know more about the woman Jorah so clearly adored.
“Bears…foxes…rabbits,” Jorah replied after a while. “I learned from a young age that a female bear will always fiercely protect her young, especially from humans.”
“There are still bears here?” Daenerys asked. She had heard their growls but had yet to see one clearly with her own eyes.
Jorah chuckled softly. “There are more bears on this island than there are men. As long as each keeps to their own, we live together in relative peace.”
“Relative?” She questioned.
Jorah risked a quick glance at his queen, a look of embarrassment crossing his features.
“My cousins and I….when we were children, we stumbled across a female bear who had just given birth to young. We had no idea they were there, and we tried to beat a hasty and silent retreat. The girls managed to get away, but the mother caught me with her claws.” Jorah rolled up the sleeve of his coat, exposing a group of deep scars on his right inner forearm. “My cousins ran back to the keep and brought my father and my aunt Maege. They found me in the bushes whimpering and bleeding and covered in my own…”
Jorah trailed off, realising that finishing that particular sentence would be unseemly in front of his queen.
“I was lucky I still had my arm. I managed to run away far enough that the mother no longer saw me as a threat, otherwise she would have torn me to pieces. My father gave me a fearful dressing down once the maester had stitched me back up when we returned to the keep though,” Jorah finished with a rueful smile.
They continued along the grassy path that was becoming increasingly hilly as the horses made their way along a track they seemed to know by instinct.
“You were an only child?” Daenerys asked. It was a question she already knew the answer to, but Jorah was opening up to her in a way he never had before, and she wanted to know more about the man who gave up everything he loved for a woman he had barely known at the time.
Jorah nodded. “I had three cousins at the time, all girls.”
“It’s wonder that you didn’t end up a shy little princess,” she teased.
Jorah scoffed. “The women of Bear Island are even fiercer than the men.”
Daenerys had heard the rumours that the late Lyanna Mormont, Jorah’s youngest cousin, had taken down a giant during the battle at Winterfell. Although small in stature, the young girl had more mettle in her than many of the men Daenerys had come across.
“You have been used to serving under women for an eternity it would seem,” Daenerys remarked with a sly grin.
If she had meant her words to be humorous, it was lost on Jorah who looked at her in all seriousness.
“Men are fools if they think all it takes is a cock to rule over a kingdom,” he replied, forgetting the company he was in for a moment before blushing and averting his eyes from his queen. “Apologies, Khaleesi. That was not talk fit for a queen’s ears.”
Daenerys smiled at her bear.
“Have you forgotten that we travelled with the Dothraki for months on end? I am not some shy maiden.”
Jorah brushed the comment aside, determined to punish himself. “Regardless, it shows a lack of respect for a knight to say such a thing in front of his queen. It is not my place to speak to you in such tones.”
She stopped her horse in its tracks.
“Do you really think that is all you mean to me?” She said with a sigh. “That you are just my knight and that I am just your queen?”
Jorah kept his gaze on the reigns of his horse.
“You have made it quite clear that I have been overfamiliar with you in the past,” he said quietly. “You once told me never to touch you nor say your name again. I know I have wronged you, Khaleesi, my only wish now is to serve you.”
“I was angry.”
He glanced at her briefly, the sorrow written clearly on his face.
“You had every right to be. I betrayed you.”
“I forgave you long ago, Jorah. What has happened is in the past.”
“Aye, but I wish I could change it,” Jorah replied, his voice barely a whisper. “More than you know.”
“You only wanted to go home.”
Jorah shook his head, admonishing himself for the stupid mistakes he seemed to make, over and over again.
It felt as if they had travelled for miles, the path becoming increasingly rocky and treacherous, until they came to a point where the horses would no longer be able to ascend the rocky landscape.
Daenerys followed Jorah’s lead in tethering her horse to a nearby tree, watching her knight intently as he threw two packs onto his back.
“We will need to travel on foot for a while, Khaleesi,” he told her, still not meeting her gaze.
Daenerys was fully aware that she had brought the pensive mood upon her bear and so did her best to raise his spirits.
“I assume you climbed some of these paths as a young boy?”
Jorah snorted. “My cousins and I…we would try to race each other. The girls would gang up on me…tying my bootlaces together and then laughing as I fell flat on my face.”
“They sound like fun,” Daenerys observed.
“They were,” Jorah replied sadly. “I never thought I would see the day when I outlived them.”
“I can just imagine you as a boy,” Daenerys said, trying to change the subject to something less painful for Jorah.
“I was all limbs and unruly hair. I grew into my limbs and out of my hair,” he remarked, with something close to a rueful grin on his face.
Her bear was powerfully built, all lean muscle and strength - he had to be in order to survive the wounds he sustained at Winterfell, wounds that would have killed lesser men. He was also more than pleasing on the eye, something that she had denied to herself for far too long while she concentrated solely on taking her rightful place on the Iron Throne. Her bear was a handsome man, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
She followed him along the circuitous route as they climbed higher, both of them careful to check their footing as the path became increasingly rocky and treacherous. Daenerys found herself breathing heavily by the time they had made it to the summit. Already out of breath, the sight before her stole what little air remained in her lungs.
She gasped as she stood atop a cliff with the water beneath her falling toward the ground below for as far as the eye could see.
“Jorah,” she gasped, watching as he placed the two packs he’d been carrying to the ground.
“I found this place as a young man,” he said as he made himself comfortable on the rocky ground. “When my father told me that I was to be married off to a young girl from another small House from the North, I was furious and stormed out of the keep with no idea where I was going. I must have walked for hours until I found this.”
“It is beautiful,” Daenerys replied, careful not to get too close to the edge for fear of falling.
“I’ve never brought anyone here before,” Jorah said quietly. “It was the last place I came before I fled Ned Stark’s justice. When you asked me what I dreamed of all those years ago…it was this. Home.”
She had been so angry at the time, furious and hurt that Jorah had spied on her and sent word of her to Robert Baratheon and she banished him for it twice, but still he returned to her side, even when he’d received a pardon from King’s Landing, he had never abandoned her, just as he promised he wouldn’t.
He had given up everything, even his dreams of home, for her.
Always for her.
“I have wronged you, Jorah, and for that I am sorrier than you will ever know.”
Jorah looked at his queen. “You could never wrong me, Khaleesi, never,” he insisted.
She turned to look at him, her eyes full of pain.
“I have hurt you so many times, my sweet bear, and yet still you stay by my side. I should have allowed you to return home long ago.”
Jorah climbed slowly to his feet, unsure if he should close the gap between them. She had told him in Mereen to never touch her again.
“All I ever wanted was to serve you,” he said quietly.
It was enough to make her sob. He had said the exact same words in Vaes Dothrak as she commanded him to find a cure for his greyscale, fearing that she would lose him forever.
Jorah stood before her; the indecision written clearly across his features as he watched his queen cry silent tears. She looked at him with eyes full of sorrow and he threw caution to the wind, closing the space between them and taking her into his arms as the sobs shook her small body.
“Forgive me, Khaleesi,” he said, holding her close. “I did not mean to upset you.”
She buried her head in his woollen coat, breathing in the scent of him as the water continued to crash to the riverbed far below them.
“I have been so blind,” she said, looking into his eyes. “I have been so blind for so long to never see what has been right there in front of me all along.”
Jorah shook his head. “You have been a queen. You have been ascending to that which is your birth right.”
She reached a hand to his face to tenderly cup his cheek.
“I have been blind, but finally I see,” she said, leaning forward, trying to close the gap between them, her eyes darting to his lips until they were almost touching…
Almost.
He moved back several steps, placing distance between them. She could not hide the hurt from her face as he moved closer to the edge of the waterfall.
What was he doing?
He had loved her for years and she had spurned him at every opportunity.
Did he think she would do so again?
She watched silently as Jorah knelt to the ground, dangerously close to the edge of the rocky ledge, scanning the area with his hands until he found two small stones. Pulling himself to his feet, he made his way back to her side, placing one of the stones in her palm. He beckoned her closer to the waterfall.
“Legend has it that if a person closes their eyes and drops a stone into the waterfall that whatever they wish for will come true.”
Despite being so close to the edge of the cliff, Daenerys felt no fear in closing her eyes and holding her hand out to drop the stone into the water below, she knew that her bear would always keep her safe.
“Should we do it together?” She asked.
Jorah smiled at her. Not just any smile, but the one he reserved solely for her.
“On three.”
Several seconds after releasing the stone, Daenerys opened her eyes. The sound of the water crashing to the ground below was far too loud to allow her to tell whether her stone had reached the bottom.
She turned to look at the man beside her as he slowly opened his eyes.
“Should I tell you what I wished for?”
Jorah gave her another shy smile, his eyes crinkling in amusement. He shook his head.
“There is something I didn’t mention…the legend also says that in order for your wish to come true you must kiss the first person you see upon opening your eyes.”
Was this a new, playful side to a man whose dour demeanour preceded him?
She closed the gap between them, jumping into his arms as she kissed him with everything she had, their kiss becoming deeper as he wrapped his arms around her tightly, moving them away from the ledge and back toward safer ground.
Jorah placed her feet gently back onto the solid ground beneath them, their foreheads still touching.
“Do you think your wish will come true?” He asked.
She beamed at him, seeking his lips once more.
“It just did.”