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“Ready the unsullied. Tonight you sail to King’s Landing to join the Northern armies,” she commands Grey Worm. He nods his understanding. Her throat is constricting and her eyes are too dry. She hasn’t slept in days.
As she assumed he would, Tyrion speaks up to voice his concern.
“Cersei's followers will abandon her if they know the war is lost. Give them that chance. If the city surrenders they will ring the bells and raise the gates. Please, if you hear them ringing the bells call of the attack!” He begs.
Her eyes flick over to Grey Worm and she inclines her head towards him, answering his unasked question and ignoring the idiot blabber from her Hand. She suspects Tyrion thinks her nod of affirmation was directed towards his pleas. How very wrong he is.
“Wait for me outside the city. You'll know when it’s time.” Grey Worm takes his leave, and Tyrion turns to follow him. But Daenerys is not done with him yet. She clears her throat.
“I came to this godforsaken continent to rid it of tyrants, just as I did in Essos. The people cheered when they saw my armies coming to help liberate them. They clutched at the tassels of freedom I showed them they could have if they fought for it themselves. They helped me give them their own freedom because they wanted it that badly. You expect me to call off my invasion of King’s Landing simply because Cersei’s followers are disloyal? No. Disloyalty will not be rewarded,” she is exhausted by this foolish man. As soon as she takes the city, she is granting Hand of the Queen to someone else with an actual brain and a sense of loyalty. She does not know if there is anyone left of these qualities.
“They are scared. They are just trying to survive!” He sounds childish when he’s begging.
“Scared of what? The tyrant they serve? If they are so scared and simply trying to survive as you say they are, then when they see my armies and my dragon in the sky, they themselves should open the gates and help me take control of the city from Cersei. If they take up arms against me, they are still serving the Usurper. They must not value their lives after all. If I arrive and the city gates are open, and I do not see a Lannister soldier with a sword, and the Lannister banners are in the dirt, then there will be no attack. Just as in Essos, the people must fight for what they want. If they want freedom, I will gladly help them attain it. If it is servitude to the pretender queen, I will gladly give them death. There will be no room for slavery of the body or mind in this New World,” she sighs once she finishes and pinches the bridge of her nose. She is very close to just ripping the Hand pin off of him right now. She has already been pushed to the limit, and he seems determined to push her over the edge altogether.
He walks towards the throne room doors, but before he is out of sight, she calls to him one last time. He stops but doesn’t turn to look at her. Coward.
“My Unsullied caught your brother trying to sneak through our front lines. Perhaps he has not turned his back on your sister after all. I think this loyalty to her includes even you. The next time you fail me will be the last time you fail me.”
—-----------
Daenerys posts guards outside of Jamie’s tent with instructions to not let anyone in but her. Before she gets dressed for the coming war, an officer comes to her door and informs her that the Hand tried to get into the tent. She figured he would. That lying traitor has never fully been on her side. He still cares for his usurping tyrant filled family. Jamie is a traitor, and Tyrion was going to free him. That will not do. She tells the officer to quietly detain him, tie him up if need be, but he will no longer be free to roam about and commit more treasons while she is not watching. She loathes what she will have to do to him after she is Queen, but a traitor is a traitor, and he chose this path for himself. He chose to betray and lie to her.
Before she climbs atop her dear Drogon, she receives a final update on the status of the army and of the traitors. She puzzles that maybe Cersei will surrender if she threatens to cut off the head of her beloved brother, just like Cersei did to Missandei. But no, that would be too easy. Too merciful. Cersei is going to die today. But first she will witness everything she holds dear crumble and die before her eyes.
—-----
As she predicted, the gates were not open, and no Lannister soldier set down his sword. She feels anger towards them. They could have saved so many lives, prevented so much destruction, if they had simply chosen to take their own freedom. They will be freed today, just in the hardest way.
She had studied the scorpion bolts thoroughly after Euron had killed Rhaegal. They were fast to fire but slow to move around, position, and reload. She makes quick work of the fleet, and soon after destroys every last threat to her son. When she commands Drogon to land atop a small tower near the outskirts of the city, she waits for the bells to ring. Why she is allowing this she does not know. What does it matter now? Perhaps she just needs to rest for a minute to catch her breath and prepare for what is to come. Cersei, throughout this whole time of the city being sacked, has continued to usher and force the people to take shelter at the Red Keep. She is surrounding herself with her people as an obstacle, as a shield. She thinks Daenerys will be stopped by this pathetic attempt of self preservation, of cruelty.
She had gotten ahold of Grey Worm before he had sailed out last night, speaking to him with Tyrion not around to hear her true plans.
“The city will not surrender until Cersei has had every one of her followers slaughtered. I have no doubt Tyrion has already gotten the word out about the bells meaning surrender. Cersei will never give that order, it will be her followers or perhaps the people. It does not matter. They will fight first before they surrender, and that is what will kill them. She will surround herself with innocents, and I use that term very generally, to guard herself from my wrath. She truly thinks mercy is my weakness. She sealed her fate the second she ordered Missandei’s death. She does not deserve mercy. None of them do.”
“No, my Queen, they do not. Missandei’s last words were dragon fire, her last request to bathe her murderers with dragon fire. And that is what we shall do. The entire city will burn. For her. For Missandei,” his eyes betrayed the harshness of his voice, a thin coat of tears glistening in the light.
She had placed her hand on his shoulder and whispered with more surety than she has ever had in her life.
“Dracarys.”
—-------
Missandei. She died in chains. Treated like a slave for the last few hours of her life. Her best friend, her most trusted ally; slaughtered right before Daenerys’s eyes. She could not tear herself away from the image of her head falling from her body. The sound of her colliding with the earth below the gate. Jorah, dying, protecting her from an icy evil. Dying to save the people that had looked at her and her followers with such disdain and hatred. Rhaegal, her sweet son, shot out of the sky in front of her. His deathly screeches as he fell into the water below. The splash his body had made. Her blind rage, fury. Viserion. Killed to save Jon Snow. Jon Snow who said he loved her, and she will always be his Queen. What pretty words. She sacrificed so much for him because she loved him. But when he turned cold toward her after his parentage was revealed, she knew he was lost to her. He would betray her. He would break her heart. And it all came to pass. So, as Daenerys sits atop her dragon, looking out at the smoke filling the skies, the swarm of Lannister soldiers, and the scattering of the smallfolk, she thinks back to all she had lost.
If I look back I am lost.
She had gained so much, and yet it was never enough. The first dragon rider in 200 years, and they cheered for Jon. They congratulated Arya for protecting the North. Sansa called out for the independence of the North. The Northerners agreeing that they do not want to be ruled by a foreign whore. They called her a foreign whore. A Usurper. Her. Daenerys Targaryen.
If I look back I am lost.
The only thing she has left is the quest for the throne and her son. Everything else has been ripped from her grasp. Everything that filled her with joy, every person who genuinely cared for her, loved her, was stolen away.
If I look back I am lost.
As the bells chime out across the expanse of the city, anger explodes inside her chest, her arms, her legs, her heart. They truly think ringing bells is going to stop this? Are they so naive to think that she sacrificed almost everything sacred to her just to get right here, and let this end so soon?
She traveled across oceans, liberated entire cities, commanded her own armies, birthed and raised three dragons just to get here; to take back the throne and the city and the kingdom her ancestors built. And they think this war is done so easily? It has been half an hour since she began her attack. They truly think it is over. They think she will halt the sacking since her armies have won and gotten the soldiers to surrender.
No…. no…. Daenerys is not done.
Maybe she never will be. All she feels right now is rage, wrath, hatred, revenge. The call of revenge is so intense, it is like the body screaming out for oxygen. The desire must be sated, should the body continue to survive.
—-----
When the city is taken, she gives her thanks and appreciation to her loyal army, promoting her only friend Grey Worm, officially arresting and executing Tyrion, executing all remaining Cersei loyalists, and sits upon the Iron Throne for the first and only time. Jon Snow has interrupted the moment she has spent her whole life dreaming about. She could tell from his face that he had followed her for a reason. She knows ever since word of his treachery reached her that she would have to arrest and try him. Her lingering ghostly love for him held her off from doing it earlier, but now it is time. She tries her best to make him understand. Men loyal to this world will never accept the building of a new, more just one, as they have never seen it. It is hard to believe in something that has never been before, but this is her destiny. Her purpose. And just like she impossibly had brought dragons and magic back into the world, she would also accomplish this impossibility. The impossibility of a greater, safer, more merciful world. He does not understand. She had hoped that the Targaryen in him would be of the same greatness as is in her, but she is wrong. She had been wrong about so much, blinded by her love for this man. But that love evaporates from her breast when Jon Snow tries to plunge a dagger into it. She wears a thin sheet of Valyrian steel armor underneath her cloak, for situations just like this. She just never thought he would be the one to test it first. Taking advantage of his failure to murder her, she rips the blade from his grasp and plunges it into his breast instead in one fluid movement. There is no room for love and regret here, only what must be done. He drops to his knees, hands covering the open stab wound. Blood gushes from between his fingers, he looks over as Drogon crawls up the ruins and settles beside his mother, as he had sensed her momentary distress. He chirps at her, and she assures him that she is okay with a few pats to his snout. His great eye then turns to watch the man before him, growing weaker every second. Daenerys glares down at him in pity. Has he ever done something by thinking for himself? Or has he always let the actions and words of others influence his every thought and action? She is glad he showed her his true colors now, instead of later. She has been grieving his loss long before this day, so she will recover sooner now. Her Kingdom needs her strong, not heartbroken over the betrayal and death of her former lover. Her Destiny called to her now, its voice louder than it had ever been. And now she can finally answer it. Jon Snow dies at her feet, his final sight that of her emotionless face.
Later, she would hear the whispers that have been spread about her, and about the Last War; what went on that day. Because though her reign was long and prosperous, the tales that were born from that day never died. Some say the Queen went numb with rage, her eyes turning black, going into a trance like state as she burnt the city to the ground. Others would say she herself turned into a dragon, sprouting wings from her back, roaring, flying, and spitting fire through her teeth. Some would even say she incinerated King’s Landing with a smile on her face. What they did know was that the city burned that day. It burned for days afterward. Smoke hung in the air for weeks. Ashes dusted every remaining surface for months. It looked as if Aegon the Conqueror had never built anything upon this land at all. Daenerys did more than break the wheel. She turned the wheel, the one that had crushed so many under its weight for hundreds of years, punished so many undeserving, kept others in chains, gave rewards to evil, into ash. And so, the history texts would know her, this Targaryen girl who conquered Westeros, by that name.
Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains, Queen of the Rhoynar, Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Realm, the Mother of Dragons.
And Queen of the Ashes.