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Chapter Two: A City That Does Not Sleep

They had been at sea for three days when the ship finally lurched and then slowed. Rhaenysse grips the wooden rail, her knuckles turning pale as the water beneath them changes color. The deep black blue of the open sea she had remembered faded into something more green, clouded, the waves moving back and forth constantly as smaller boats started past them like fish, their sails painted and colors that she had been so surprised to see on a boat.

“Is that it?” Baela asks, already leaning over the side, her arm brushing Rhaenysse.

Rhaenysse squints. “That’s not Dragonstone.”

Rhaena huffs softly. “Obviously,” she joined her twin and younger sister on the railing, looking at the scenery in front of them.

“It doesn’t look like King’s Landing either,” Baela adds, tilting her head. “Where are all the towers?”

Meria steps closer, one hand settling firmly between Rhaenysse’s shoulders. “Pentos does not build upward the way Westeros does,” she says. “They spread outward. Like roots.”

Rhaenysse doesn’t know what that means, but she nods anyway. She learned that seems to get adults to leave you alone most of the time, or to stop using words that don’t make sense.

The harbor is loud. Louder than Dragonstone. Louder than anything she remembers. Voices shout in a language she doesn’t understand, words rolling together too fast, too sharp. Bells ring. Wood knocks against wood. Something smells sweet—and rotten—and hot all at once.

She wrinkles her nose. “It smells… disgusting.” Meria was quick about her hand over Rhaenysse's mouth

Baela laughs. “You smell disgusting.”

“It does,” Rhaenysse insists. “Like… like old fruit.” She tried to speak around Merie’s hand

“And spices,” Rhaena says. “And fish.”

Meria smiles faintly. “You’ll grow used to it.” She spoke, smoothing out the girl's hair, “However, you have to be mindful of other people‘s customs; it is not polite to say that their smells are disgusting.”

Rhaenysse isn’t sure she wants to grow used to this smell, and she wants to argue back about having to be mindful of other people’s customs; they never had to, but she knew better than to argue.

When the ship docks, the ground feels strange beneath her feet. It doesn’t rock like Dragonstone’s stone docks. It feels warmer. Rougher. The boards creak differently, and she keeps expecting the ground to move again.

“Stay close,” Meria says, sharper now. “All of you.” She added, ushering the three girls directly in front of her, heavens be damned if she lost Prince Daemon and Lady Laenas children the first day they arrived.

“I am close,” Baela says, though she’s already craning her neck to look at everything.

Men pass them wearing loose, bright fabrics instead of heavy cloaks. Women wear gold in their hair, around their wrists, even across their foreheads. Their skin tones are darker, lighter, sun-kissed, bronze—different. Everyone looks at them.

Rhaenysse presses closer to Rhaena.

“They’re staring,” she whispers.

“Because you’re staring,” Rhaena whispers back.

“They’re talking about us,” Baela says, grinning. “I heard ‘dragon’.”

Meria’s hand tightens just slightly. “Eyes forward.” She said her face was clear of any of the fear she felt. Any one of the girls could go for a lot in the wrong hands.

They walk through streets that feel too narrow and too wide at the same time. Buildings lean inward, painted in pale reds and sandy yellows instead of grey stone. Banners hang from windows, stitched with symbols Rhaenysse doesn’t recognize.

She stops walking.

Meria notices immediately. “What is it?”

Rhaenysse points. “Why is that house round?”

Baela snorts. “Houses aren’t round.”

“That one is.” She piped up in a matter-of-fact tone as she looked at her older sister. 

The house was indeed round—no sharp edges. No towers. Just smooth curves and open balconies draped in cloth that flutters in the breeze.

“That’s stupid,” Rhaena says, her head tilting as she tries to make sense of what good a round house was.

“It’s different,” Rhaenysse says quietly.

Meria crouches beside her. “Different is not wrong.”

They pass a fountain where children splash barefoot, laughing loudly, water spilling everywhere. None of them bows. None of them stops. A boy about Baela’s age meets Rhaenysse’s eyes and sticks his tongue out.

Baela does it back immediately.

Rhaena sighs. “We are going to get in trouble.”

“We’re not,” Baela says. “Mama isn’t here.”

Rhaenysse feels something twist in her chest at that. Would they see their mother and father this evening? It had been three days since they had departed from Dragonstone.

Their new home is large but not tall. It smells like stone warmed by the sun and something floral she can’t name. The ceilings are painted, not carved, and the floors are tiled in patterns instead of bare rock.

“This isn’t a castle,” Rhaenysse says.

“No,” Meria agrees. “It is a manse.”

Rhaena looks around skeptically. “I don’t like it.”

Baela spins in a slow circle. “I do. It feels like a maze.”

Rhaenysse walks to the nearest open window and peers out. The city stretches wide, rooftops layered like waves. In the distance, far, far away, she thinks she sees shadows moving across the sky.

Her breath catches.

“Meria?” she asks without turning. “Are there dragons here?” She asked, her gaze hopeful as she finally looked back.

Meria pauses, just for a moment. “There are stories,” she says carefully. That catches Rhaeynesse's attention fully. She sits down on her hands, trying to bite her tongue, but her curiosity won.

“Stories where?” She asked quietly; it was hard to tell from Merie’s tone that she probably shouldn’t be asking the questions anyway.

“In Pentos. In Essos. Everywhere.” Merie finally told the girls that she had the twins' attention, too.

“But not here,” Rhaena says flatly, before Rhaenysse could get her next question out.

“Not here,” Meria confirms. “Only your mother and father’s dragons will actually live here.”

Rhaenysse looks back out the window anyway. Hoping to catch a glimpse of what she had thought was a dragon.

Baela nudges her. “You’re thinking about Papa’s dragon.”

“And Mama’s,” Rhaenysse says.

“They’ll come visit,” Baela says, confident.

Rhaenysse nods, but she doesn’t answer. Even in Dragonstone, she would see Mama, but Papa was always off somewhere.

Outside, the city hums; it feels alive, foreign, unbothered by dragons or daughters of dragonlords. For the first time, Rhaenysse feels very small. Not completely in a frightening way, but like the world is bigger than the stories she’s been told, she watches the city anyway, listening to voices she doesn’t understand, breathing air that doesn’t belong to home, and wonders, just for a moment, if dragons ever miss the sky they leave behind.

Time in Pentos does not move the way it does on Dragonstone.

On Dragonstone, days are measured by tides and bells, by the shadow of the mountain and the smell of smoke carried on the wind. In Pentos, the sun feels closer. It climbs higher, lingers longer, and warms the stone until it hums beneath bare feet.

Rhaenysse learns this first when she steps into the courtyard one morning, and the ground is already hot beneath her bare feet. 

Laena comes and goes. Some mornings she’s there, sitting beside Rhaenysse while Meria braids her hair. She smells like oil and sun, her voice low and warm as she speaks of nothing important at all.

“You’ll like it here,” Laena says once, brushing a thumb across Rhaenysse’s cheek. “There’s so much to see.”

Rhaenysse nods because that seems right; her mother and sisters seem to like it there, so she thinks it’s only right that she should like it here, too. It’s not like anyone had been mean to her; sometimes she was allowed to play with the maids' children, but never the children outside. She wasn’t so sure about that; she didn’t argue. It wasn’t as if she was playing with kids outside when they lived in Dragonstone or when she visited her grandma or grandfather.

Daemon comes less often, but when he does, he brings noise with him. His boots echo louder. His laughter fills the space and then vanishes just as quickly.

“They’re flying again,” Baela announces one afternoon, pressing her face to the balcony rail.

Rhaenysse joins her slowly. The sky is too bright to see them clearly, but she knows they’re there. She always knows.

“Why?” she asks.

Baela shrugs. “Because they can.”

“One day, I want to fly too…with mama and papa,” Rhaenysse says, her voice does not lack conviction.

When Rhaenysse is allowed outside, it feels like being let into another world for just a moment before the door closes again.

Meria insists on slower steps, on staying to the sides of the street, and on stopping when carts pass too close. The sounds crash into Rhaenysse all at once, voices layered over one another, laughter sharp and sudden, the clatter of hooves and wheels.

She clings to Meria’s hand.

“Look at that,” Baela says, pointing at a stall draped in shimmering cloth.

Rhaenysse looks. The fabric moves even when there’s no wind, catching the light like water.

“It looks like dragon wings,” she says without thinking.

The man behind the stall grins. “Silk,” he says, in a thick accent. “From the east.”

Rhaenysse doesn’t answer. She stares until Meria gently steers her away.

“They don’t talk like us,” Rhaenysse whispers. She tries to mimic the accent she hears, but to no avail; it doesn’t sound anything like what was just spoken to them.

“No,” Meria agrees; she does not hide her grin from the little ones' antics. “But they understand smiles.” Rhaenysse isn’t sure she wants to smile at strangers.

They pass children playing in the dirt, their laughter loud and careless. One of them tripped and skinned his knee. He cries, then stops when another child pulls him back into the game.

“They don’t have nursemaids?” Rhaenysse asks.

Meria glances down. “Some do. Some don’t.”

“Who watches them?” She continued, slightly confused

“They watch each other.”

That seems impossible, she couldn’t imagine possibly trying to watch her sisters, they were always running off by themselves, 

At night, Pentos sounds different.

No waves are crashing against cliffs. No wind howling through stone corridors. Instead, there is music somewhere far away, drifting through open windows. Some voices do not quieten when the sun sets.

Rhaenysse lies awake on silken sheets that slide beneath her fingers.

Baela sleeps easily. Rhaena turns pages long after she should be asleep.

“Do you think the dragons sleep?” Rhaenysse asks softly.

Rhaena pauses. “They have to.”

“Where?”

Rhaena frowns. “I don’t know.”

Rhaenysse stares at the ceiling, imagining wings folding, great bodies settling somewhere she cannot see.

She doesn’t understand why her parents fly so often. She doesn’t understand why Pentos seems not to know her name. She doesn’t understand why everything here feels temporary, even the sun.

“Why is everyone awake?” she whispers.

Baela doesn’t stir. She sleeps like she always has, heavy and unafraid, one arm flung over the edge of the bed.

Rhaena turns a page. The sound is quiet as she tries to stay concentrated on the texts in the history book she’s going through.

“They don’t sleep early here,” Rhaena murmurs.

“But it’s dark.”

“So?”

Rhaenysse pushes herself up onto her elbows. “What if they don’t know it’s night?”

Rhaena sighs, long-suffering even in the dark. “They know.”

“Then why don’t they stop?”

Rhaena finally looks over. “Because they want to stay awake.”

She swings her legs over the side of the bed, feet brushing the cool tile. The floor has finally lost the sun’s warmth. She pats on the window.

The city stretches out before her, glowing. Lights dot the streets below like fallen stars. Torches flicker along balconies. Shadows move constantly; people cross, pause, gather. She listens harder, trying to separate the sounds. A man arguing. A woman laughing. Footsteps on stone. Somewhere, something clatters and breaks, followed by cheers instead of gasps.

“They’re too loud,” she whispers.

A soft rustle behind her.

Meria stands in the doorway, shawl wrapped around her shoulders, eyes kind but alert. “You should be sleeping.”

“They’re still awake,” Rhaenysse says, not turning. “Do dragons sleep at night?” Rhaenysse asks.

Meria’s hand settles gently between her shoulders. “Dragons sleep when they choose.”

“Do Mama and Papa sleep?”

Meria’s thumb stills for just a moment. “Sometimes.”

Rhaenysse nods, though she isn’t sure she believes it; she’s sure, just like the people outside her parents' house, that they'll stay up all through the night.

A shadow passes overhead.

It’s fast. Almost imagined. The air shifts just enough that the torchlight flickers.

Rhaenysse’s breath catches. “Did you see that?”

Meria looks up. Listens. The night swallows whatever sound might have followed.

“I saw nothing,” she says.

Rhaenysse presses closer to the window anyway, heart pounding. For half a heartbeat, she imagines wings against the stars, great and black, circling a city that does not belong to them.

“They’re flying again,” she says softly.

Meria does not correct her.

When Rhaenysse finally crawls back into bed, the noise doesn’t stop. It never fully fades. She pulls the blanket up to her chin, staring at the ceiling painted with strange shapes instead of carved stone.

The year does not announce itself when it ends. There is no bell. No feast. No marker carved into stone. Rhaenysse only realizes it has been a year because one morning, she wakes and Pentos feels almost like home. 

She knows which tiles in the courtyard warm fastest beneath the sun. She knows which market days are loudest and which ones smell of spice instead of fish. She knows that the city never truly sleeps and that the nights belong to voices, not wind.

She has grown, not enough for anyone to comment on, but enough that she is certain she can reach the top of a dresser she wasn’t able to when they first arrived, only a little, but in her tiny mind, it was a big difference. 

Her parents are still here, and still often flying in the skies. Still, they promise her something extremely special on her nameday that is coming up soon, she remembers this exactly because Laena smelled like sun and dragonfire when she returned to tell her, and Daemon, the little flick he gave to her forehead this time had more love in it than she remembered. It wasn’t that her papa didn’t love her; he had been distant since she could remember, but he still made her feel loved, even in the weird affection he showed her. 

She had remembered a few moons ago when he carried her on his shoulder through the market as her mother held her sister's hand. They had gotten so many sweets that day that she was sure all of their teeth would fall out. They had played and talked about dragons, about home, scout her uncle Laenor, and when they could see him again. That night, when Laena tucked them in and promised more adventures to come, she remembered Daemon coming to kiss her forehead and bid her sweet dreams, and that the dragons would fly around in her dreams as an omen of protection.

Rhaenysse has stopped asking where they go. She still watches the sky, but she knows that her mama and papa would come home as promised.

Vendors nod now instead of staring; some even remember her name. There is a nice, older lady named Talira who saves pretty purple gems just for Rhaenysse after Rhaenysse told her the purple ones were her favorite. Children glance at her hair and then look away, some smile instead of sticking their tongues out as they did in the beginning. She is no longer a spectacle, just a strange little girl with pale eyes and a careful step, always walking beside her nursemaid.

At night, she sleeps longer than she used to.

The music no longer startles her awake. The laughter blends into the dark like waves she cannot see but knows are there. Pentos hums, and she hums with it, quiet and small beneath the ceiling painted with things that still mean nothing to her.

Chapter Two: A City That Does Not Sleep

They had been at sea for three days when the ship finally lurched and then slowed. Rhaenysse grips the wooden rail, her knuckles turning pale as the water beneath them changes color. The deep black blue of the open sea she had remembered faded into something more green, clouded, the waves moving back and forth constantly as smaller boats started past them like fish, their sails painted and colors that she had been so surprised to see on a boat.

“Is that it?” Baela asks, already leaning over the side, her arm brushing Rhaenysse.

Rhaenysse squints. “That’s not Dragonstone.”

Rhaena huffs softly. “Obviously,” she joined her twin and younger sister on the railing, looking at the scenery in front of them.

“It doesn’t look like King’s Landing either,” Baela adds, tilting her head. “Where are all the towers?”

Meria steps closer, one hand settling firmly between Rhaenysse’s shoulders. “Pentos does not build upward the way Westeros does,” she says. “They spread outward. Like roots.”

Rhaenysse doesn’t know what that means, but she nods anyway. She learned that seems to get adults to leave you alone most of the time, or to stop using words that don’t make sense.

The harbor is loud. Louder than Dragonstone. Louder than anything she remembers. Voices shout in a language she doesn’t understand, words rolling together too fast, too sharp. Bells ring. Wood knocks against wood. Something smells sweet—and rotten—and hot all at once.

She wrinkles her nose. “It smells… disgusting.” Meria was quick about her hand over Rhaenysse's mouth

Baela laughs. “You smell disgusting.”

“It does,” Rhaenysse insists. “Like… like old fruit.” She tried to speak around Merie’s hand

“And spices,” Rhaena says. “And fish.”

Meria smiles faintly. “You’ll grow used to it.” She spoke, smoothing out the girl's hair, “However, you have to be mindful of other people‘s customs; it is not polite to say that their smells are disgusting.”

Rhaenysse isn’t sure she wants to grow used to this smell, and she wants to argue back about having to be mindful of other people’s customs; they never had to, but she knew better than to argue.

When the ship docks, the ground feels strange beneath her feet. It doesn’t rock like Dragonstone’s stone docks. It feels warmer. Rougher. The boards creak differently, and she keeps expecting the ground to move again.

“Stay close,” Meria says, sharper now. “All of you.” She added, ushering the three girls directly in front of her, heavens be damned if she lost Prince Daemon and Lady Laenas children the first day they arrived.

“I am close,” Baela says, though she’s already craning her neck to look at everything.

Men pass them wearing loose, bright fabrics instead of heavy cloaks. Women wear gold in their hair, around their wrists, even across their foreheads. Their skin tones are darker, lighter, sun-kissed, bronze—different. Everyone looks at them.

Rhaenysse presses closer to Rhaena.

“They’re staring,” she whispers.

“Because you’re staring,” Rhaena whispers back.

“They’re talking about us,” Baela says, grinning. “I heard ‘dragon’.”

Meria’s hand tightens just slightly. “Eyes forward.” She said her face was clear of any of the fear she felt. Any one of the girls could go for a lot in the wrong hands.

They walk through streets that feel too narrow and too wide at the same time. Buildings lean inward, painted in pale reds and sandy yellows instead of grey stone. Banners hang from windows, stitched with symbols Rhaenysse doesn’t recognize.

She stops walking.

Meria notices immediately. “What is it?”

Rhaenysse points. “Why is that house round?”

Baela snorts. “Houses aren’t round.”

“That one is.” She piped up in a matter-of-fact tone as she looked at her older sister. 

The house was indeed round—no sharp edges. No towers. Just smooth curves and open balconies draped in cloth that flutters in the breeze.

“That’s stupid,” Rhaena says, her head tilting as she tries to make sense of what good a round house was.

“It’s different,” Rhaenysse says quietly.

Meria crouches beside her. “Different is not wrong.”

They pass a fountain where children splash barefoot, laughing loudly, water spilling everywhere. None of them bows. None of them stops. A boy about Baela’s age meets Rhaenysse’s eyes and sticks his tongue out.

Baela does it back immediately.

Rhaena sighs. “We are going to get in trouble.”

“We’re not,” Baela says. “Mama isn’t here.”

Rhaenysse feels something twist in her chest at that. Would they see their mother and father this evening? It had been three days since they had departed from Dragonstone.

Their new home is large but not tall. It smells like stone warmed by the sun and something floral she can’t name. The ceilings are painted, not carved, and the floors are tiled in patterns instead of bare rock.

“This isn’t a castle,” Rhaenysse says.

“No,” Meria agrees. “It is a manse.”

Rhaena looks around skeptically. “I don’t like it.”

Baela spins in a slow circle. “I do. It feels like a maze.”

Rhaenysse walks to the nearest open window and peers out. The city stretches wide, rooftops layered like waves. In the distance, far, far away, she thinks she sees shadows moving across the sky.

Her breath catches.

“Meria?” she asks without turning. “Are there dragons here?” She asked, her gaze hopeful as she finally looked back.

Meria pauses, just for a moment. “There are stories,” she says carefully. That catches Rhaeynesse's attention fully. She sits down on her hands, trying to bite her tongue, but her curiosity won.

“Stories where?” She asked quietly; it was hard to tell from Merie’s tone that she probably shouldn’t be asking the questions anyway.

“In Pentos. In Essos. Everywhere.” Merie finally told the girls that she had the twins' attention, too.

“But not here,” Rhaena says flatly, before Rhaenysse could get her next question out.

“Not here,” Meria confirms. “Only your mother and father’s dragons will actually live here.”

Rhaenysse looks back out the window anyway. Hoping to catch a glimpse of what she had thought was a dragon.

Baela nudges her. “You’re thinking about Papa’s dragon.”

“And Mama’s,” Rhaenysse says.

“They’ll come visit,” Baela says, confident.

Rhaenysse nods, but she doesn’t answer. Even in Dragonstone, she would see Mama, but Papa was always off somewhere.

Outside, the city hums; it feels alive, foreign, unbothered by dragons or daughters of dragonlords. For the first time, Rhaenysse feels very small. Not completely in a frightening way, but like the world is bigger than the stories she’s been told, she watches the city anyway, listening to voices she doesn’t understand, breathing air that doesn’t belong to home, and wonders, just for a moment, if dragons ever miss the sky they leave behind.

Time in Pentos does not move the way it does on Dragonstone.

On Dragonstone, days are measured by tides and bells, by the shadow of the mountain and the smell of smoke carried on the wind. In Pentos, the sun feels closer. It climbs higher, lingers longer, and warms the stone until it hums beneath bare feet.

Rhaenysse learns this first when she steps into the courtyard one morning, and the ground is already hot beneath her bare feet. 

Laena comes and goes. Some mornings she’s there, sitting beside Rhaenysse while Meria braids her hair. She smells like oil and sun, her voice low and warm as she speaks of nothing important at all.

“You’ll like it here,” Laena says once, brushing a thumb across Rhaenysse’s cheek. “There’s so much to see.”

Rhaenysse nods because that seems right; her mother and sisters seem to like it there, so she thinks it’s only right that she should like it here, too. It’s not like anyone had been mean to her; sometimes she was allowed to play with the maids' children, but never the children outside. She wasn’t so sure about that; she didn’t argue. It wasn’t as if she was playing with kids outside when they lived in Dragonstone or when she visited her grandma or grandfather.

Daemon comes less often, but when he does, he brings noise with him. His boots echo louder. His laughter fills the space and then vanishes just as quickly.

“They’re flying again,” Baela announces one afternoon, pressing her face to the balcony rail.

Rhaenysse joins her slowly. The sky is too bright to see them clearly, but she knows they’re there. She always knows.

“Why?” she asks.

Baela shrugs. “Because they can.”

“One day, I want to fly too…with mama and papa,” Rhaenysse says, her voice does not lack conviction.

When Rhaenysse is allowed outside, it feels like being let into another world for just a moment before the door closes again.

Meria insists on slower steps, on staying to the sides of the street, and on stopping when carts pass too close. The sounds crash into Rhaenysse all at once, voices layered over one another, laughter sharp and sudden, the clatter of hooves and wheels.

She clings to Meria’s hand.

“Look at that,” Baela says, pointing at a stall draped in shimmering cloth.

Rhaenysse looks. The fabric moves even when there’s no wind, catching the light like water.

“It looks like dragon wings,” she says without thinking.

The man behind the stall grins. “Silk,” he says, in a thick accent. “From the east.”

Rhaenysse doesn’t answer. She stares until Meria gently steers her away.

“They don’t talk like us,” Rhaenysse whispers. She tries to mimic the accent she hears, but to no avail; it doesn’t sound anything like what was just spoken to them.

“No,” Meria agrees; she does not hide her grin from the little ones' antics. “But they understand smiles.” Rhaenysse isn’t sure she wants to smile at strangers.

They pass children playing in the dirt, their laughter loud and careless. One of them tripped and skinned his knee. He cries, then stops when another child pulls him back into the game.

“They don’t have nursemaids?” Rhaenysse asks.

Meria glances down. “Some do. Some don’t.”

“Who watches them?” She continued, slightly confused

“They watch each other.”

That seems impossible, she couldn’t imagine possibly trying to watch her sisters, they were always running off by themselves, 

At night, Pentos sounds different.

No waves are crashing against cliffs. No wind howling through stone corridors. Instead, there is music somewhere far away, drifting through open windows. Some voices do not quieten when the sun sets.

Rhaenysse lies awake on silken sheets that slide beneath her fingers.

Baela sleeps easily. Rhaena turns pages long after she should be asleep.

“Do you think the dragons sleep?” Rhaenysse asks softly.

Rhaena pauses. “They have to.”

“Where?”

Rhaena frowns. “I don’t know.”

Rhaenysse stares at the ceiling, imagining wings folding, great bodies settling somewhere she cannot see.

She doesn’t understand why her parents fly so often. She doesn’t understand why Pentos seems not to know her name. She doesn’t understand why everything here feels temporary, even the sun.

“Why is everyone awake?” she whispers.

Baela doesn’t stir. She sleeps like she always has, heavy and unafraid, one arm flung over the edge of the bed.

Rhaena turns a page. The sound is quiet as she tries to stay concentrated on the texts in the history book she’s going through.

“They don’t sleep early here,” Rhaena murmurs.

“But it’s dark.”

“So?”

Rhaenysse pushes herself up onto her elbows. “What if they don’t know it’s night?”

Rhaena sighs, long-suffering even in the dark. “They know.”

“Then why don’t they stop?”

Rhaena finally looks over. “Because they want to stay awake.”

She swings her legs over the side of the bed, feet brushing the cool tile. The floor has finally lost the sun’s warmth. She pats on the window.

The city stretches out before her, glowing. Lights dot the streets below like fallen stars. Torches flicker along balconies. Shadows move constantly; people cross, pause, gather. She listens harder, trying to separate the sounds. A man arguing. A woman laughing. Footsteps on stone. Somewhere, something clatters and breaks, followed by cheers instead of gasps.

“They’re too loud,” she whispers.

A soft rustle behind her.

Meria stands in the doorway, shawl wrapped around her shoulders, eyes kind but alert. “You should be sleeping.”

“They’re still awake,” Rhaenysse says, not turning. “Do dragons sleep at night?” Rhaenysse asks.

Meria’s hand settles gently between her shoulders. “Dragons sleep when they choose.”

“Do Mama and Papa sleep?”

Meria’s thumb stills for just a moment. “Sometimes.”

Rhaenysse nods, though she isn’t sure she believes it; she’s sure, just like the people outside her parents' house, that they'll stay up all through the night.

A shadow passes overhead.

It’s fast. Almost imagined. The air shifts just enough that the torchlight flickers.

Rhaenysse’s breath catches. “Did you see that?”

Meria looks up. Listens. The night swallows whatever sound might have followed.

“I saw nothing,” she says.

Rhaenysse presses closer to the window anyway, heart pounding. For half a heartbeat, she imagines wings against the stars, great and black, circling a city that does not belong to them.

“They’re flying again,” she says softly.

Meria does not correct her.

When Rhaenysse finally crawls back into bed, the noise doesn’t stop. It never fully fades. She pulls the blanket up to her chin, staring at the ceiling painted with strange shapes instead of carved stone.

The year does not announce itself when it ends. There is no bell. No feast. No marker carved into stone. Rhaenysse only realizes it has been a year because one morning, she wakes and Pentos feels almost like home. 

She knows which tiles in the courtyard warm fastest beneath the sun. She knows which market days are loudest and which ones smell of spice instead of fish. She knows that the city never truly sleeps and that the nights belong to voices, not wind.

She has grown, not enough for anyone to comment on, but enough that she is certain she can reach the top of a dresser she wasn’t able to when they first arrived, only a little, but in her tiny mind, it was a big difference. 

Her parents are still here, and still often flying in the skies. Still, they promise her something extremely special on her nameday that is coming up soon, she remembers this exactly because Laena smelled like sun and dragonfire when she returned to tell her, and Daemon, the little flick he gave to her forehead this time had more love in it than she remembered. It wasn’t that her papa didn’t love her; he had been distant since she could remember, but he still made her feel loved, even in the weird affection he showed her. 

She had remembered a few moons ago when he carried her on his shoulder through the market as her mother held her sister's hand. They had gotten so many sweets that day that she was sure all of their teeth would fall out. They had played and talked about dragons, about home, scout her uncle Laenor, and when they could see him again. That night, when Laena tucked them in and promised more adventures to come, she remembered Daemon coming to kiss her forehead and bid her sweet dreams, and that the dragons would fly around in her dreams as an omen of protection.

Rhaenysse has stopped asking where they go. She still watches the sky, but she knows that her mama and papa would come home as promised.

Vendors nod now instead of staring; some even remember her name. There is a nice, older lady named Talira who saves pretty purple gems just for Rhaenysse after Rhaenysse told her the purple ones were her favorite. Children glance at her hair and then look away, some smile instead of sticking their tongues out as they did in the beginning. She is no longer a spectacle, just a strange little girl with pale eyes and a careful step, always walking beside her nursemaid.

At night, she sleeps longer than she used to.

The music no longer startles her awake. The laughter blends into the dark like waves she cannot see but knows are there. Pentos hums, and she hums with it, quiet and small beneath the ceiling painted with things that still mean nothing to her.

Chapter Two: A City That Does Not Sleep

They had been at sea for three days when the ship finally lurched and then slowed. Rhaenysse grips the wooden rail, her knuckles turning pale as the water beneath them changes color. The deep black blue of the open sea she had remembered faded into something more green, clouded, the waves moving back and forth constantly as smaller boats started past them like fish, their sails painted and colors that she had been so surprised to see on a boat.

“Is that it?” Baela asks, already leaning over the side, her arm brushing Rhaenysse.

Rhaenysse squints. “That’s not Dragonstone.”

Rhaena huffs softly. “Obviously,” she joined her twin and younger sister on the railing, looking at the scenery in front of them.

“It doesn’t look like King’s Landing either,” Baela adds, tilting her head. “Where are all the towers?”

Meria steps closer, one hand settling firmly between Rhaenysse’s shoulders. “Pentos does not build upward the way Westeros does,” she says. “They spread outward. Like roots.”

Rhaenysse doesn’t know what that means, but she nods anyway. She learned that seems to get adults to leave you alone most of the time, or to stop using words that don’t make sense.

The harbor is loud. Louder than Dragonstone. Louder than anything she remembers. Voices shout in a language she doesn’t understand, words rolling together too fast, too sharp. Bells ring. Wood knocks against wood. Something smells sweet—and rotten—and hot all at once.

She wrinkles her nose. “It smells… disgusting.” Meria was quick about her hand over Rhaenysse's mouth

Baela laughs. “You smell disgusting.”

“It does,” Rhaenysse insists. “Like… like old fruit.” She tried to speak around Merie’s hand

“And spices,” Rhaena says. “And fish.”

Meria smiles faintly. “You’ll grow used to it.” She spoke, smoothing out the girl's hair, “However, you have to be mindful of other people‘s customs; it is not polite to say that their smells are disgusting.”

Rhaenysse isn’t sure she wants to grow used to this smell, and she wants to argue back about having to be mindful of other people’s customs; they never had to, but she knew better than to argue.

When the ship docks, the ground feels strange beneath her feet. It doesn’t rock like Dragonstone’s stone docks. It feels warmer. Rougher. The boards creak differently, and she keeps expecting the ground to move again.

“Stay close,” Meria says, sharper now. “All of you.” She added, ushering the three girls directly in front of her, heavens be damned if she lost Prince Daemon and Lady Laenas children the first day they arrived.

“I am close,” Baela says, though she’s already craning her neck to look at everything.

Men pass them wearing loose, bright fabrics instead of heavy cloaks. Women wear gold in their hair, around their wrists, even across their foreheads. Their skin tones are darker, lighter, sun-kissed, bronze—different. Everyone looks at them.

Rhaenysse presses closer to Rhaena.

“They’re staring,” she whispers.

“Because you’re staring,” Rhaena whispers back.

“They’re talking about us,” Baela says, grinning. “I heard ‘dragon’.”

Meria’s hand tightens just slightly. “Eyes forward.” She said her face was clear of any of the fear she felt. Any one of the girls could go for a lot in the wrong hands.

They walk through streets that feel too narrow and too wide at the same time. Buildings lean inward, painted in pale reds and sandy yellows instead of grey stone. Banners hang from windows, stitched with symbols Rhaenysse doesn’t recognize.

She stops walking.

Meria notices immediately. “What is it?”

Rhaenysse points. “Why is that house round?”

Baela snorts. “Houses aren’t round.”

“That one is.” She piped up in a matter-of-fact tone as she looked at her older sister. 

The house was indeed round—no sharp edges. No towers. Just smooth curves and open balconies draped in cloth that flutters in the breeze.

“That’s stupid,” Rhaena says, her head tilting as she tries to make sense of what good a round house was.

“It’s different,” Rhaenysse says quietly.

Meria crouches beside her. “Different is not wrong.”

They pass a fountain where children splash barefoot, laughing loudly, water spilling everywhere. None of them bows. None of them stops. A boy about Baela’s age meets Rhaenysse’s eyes and sticks his tongue out.

Baela does it back immediately.

Rhaena sighs. “We are going to get in trouble.”

“We’re not,” Baela says. “Mama isn’t here.”

Rhaenysse feels something twist in her chest at that. Would they see their mother and father this evening? It had been three days since they had departed from Dragonstone.

Their new home is large but not tall. It smells like stone warmed by the sun and something floral she can’t name. The ceilings are painted, not carved, and the floors are tiled in patterns instead of bare rock.

“This isn’t a castle,” Rhaenysse says.

“No,” Meria agrees. “It is a manse.”

Rhaena looks around skeptically. “I don’t like it.”

Baela spins in a slow circle. “I do. It feels like a maze.”

Rhaenysse walks to the nearest open window and peers out. The city stretches wide, rooftops layered like waves. In the distance, far, far away, she thinks she sees shadows moving across the sky.

Her breath catches.

“Meria?” she asks without turning. “Are there dragons here?” She asked, her gaze hopeful as she finally looked back.

Meria pauses, just for a moment. “There are stories,” she says carefully. That catches Rhaeynesse's attention fully. She sits down on her hands, trying to bite her tongue, but her curiosity won.

“Stories where?” She asked quietly; it was hard to tell from Merie’s tone that she probably shouldn’t be asking the questions anyway.

“In Pentos. In Essos. Everywhere.” Merie finally told the girls that she had the twins' attention, too.

“But not here,” Rhaena says flatly, before Rhaenysse could get her next question out.

“Not here,” Meria confirms. “Only your mother and father’s dragons will actually live here.”

Rhaenysse looks back out the window anyway. Hoping to catch a glimpse of what she had thought was a dragon.

Baela nudges her. “You’re thinking about Papa’s dragon.”

“And Mama’s,” Rhaenysse says.

“They’ll come visit,” Baela says, confident.

Rhaenysse nods, but she doesn’t answer. Even in Dragonstone, she would see Mama, but Papa was always off somewhere.

Outside, the city hums; it feels alive, foreign, unbothered by dragons or daughters of dragonlords. For the first time, Rhaenysse feels very small. Not completely in a frightening way, but like the world is bigger than the stories she’s been told, she watches the city anyway, listening to voices she doesn’t understand, breathing air that doesn’t belong to home, and wonders, just for a moment, if dragons ever miss the sky they leave behind.

Time in Pentos does not move the way it does on Dragonstone.

On Dragonstone, days are measured by tides and bells, by the shadow of the mountain and the smell of smoke carried on the wind. In Pentos, the sun feels closer. It climbs higher, lingers longer, and warms the stone until it hums beneath bare feet.

Rhaenysse learns this first when she steps into the courtyard one morning, and the ground is already hot beneath her bare feet. 

Laena comes and goes. Some mornings she’s there, sitting beside Rhaenysse while Meria braids her hair. She smells like oil and sun, her voice low and warm as she speaks of nothing important at all.

“You’ll like it here,” Laena says once, brushing a thumb across Rhaenysse’s cheek. “There’s so much to see.”

Rhaenysse nods because that seems right; her mother and sisters seem to like it there, so she thinks it’s only right that she should like it here, too. It’s not like anyone had been mean to her; sometimes she was allowed to play with the maids' children, but never the children outside. She wasn’t so sure about that; she didn’t argue. It wasn’t as if she was playing with kids outside when they lived in Dragonstone or when she visited her grandma or grandfather.

Daemon comes less often, but when he does, he brings noise with him. His boots echo louder. His laughter fills the space and then vanishes just as quickly.

“They’re flying again,” Baela announces one afternoon, pressing her face to the balcony rail.

Rhaenysse joins her slowly. The sky is too bright to see them clearly, but she knows they’re there. She always knows.

“Why?” she asks.

Baela shrugs. “Because they can.”

“One day, I want to fly too…with mama and papa,” Rhaenysse says, her voice does not lack conviction.

When Rhaenysse is allowed outside, it feels like being let into another world for just a moment before the door closes again.

Meria insists on slower steps, on staying to the sides of the street, and on stopping when carts pass too close. The sounds crash into Rhaenysse all at once, voices layered over one another, laughter sharp and sudden, the clatter of hooves and wheels.

She clings to Meria’s hand.

“Look at that,” Baela says, pointing at a stall draped in shimmering cloth.

Rhaenysse looks. The fabric moves even when there’s no wind, catching the light like water.

“It looks like dragon wings,” she says without thinking.

The man behind the stall grins. “Silk,” he says, in a thick accent. “From the east.”

Rhaenysse doesn’t answer. She stares until Meria gently steers her away.

“They don’t talk like us,” Rhaenysse whispers. She tries to mimic the accent she hears, but to no avail; it doesn’t sound anything like what was just spoken to them.

“No,” Meria agrees; she does not hide her grin from the little ones' antics. “But they understand smiles.” Rhaenysse isn’t sure she wants to smile at strangers.

They pass children playing in the dirt, their laughter loud and careless. One of them tripped and skinned his knee. He cries, then stops when another child pulls him back into the game.

“They don’t have nursemaids?” Rhaenysse asks.

Meria glances down. “Some do. Some don’t.”

“Who watches them?” She continued, slightly confused

“They watch each other.”

That seems impossible, she couldn’t imagine possibly trying to watch her sisters, they were always running off by themselves, 

At night, Pentos sounds different.

No waves are crashing against cliffs. No wind howling through stone corridors. Instead, there is music somewhere far away, drifting through open windows. Some voices do not quieten when the sun sets.

Rhaenysse lies awake on silken sheets that slide beneath her fingers.

Baela sleeps easily. Rhaena turns pages long after she should be asleep.

“Do you think the dragons sleep?” Rhaenysse asks softly.

Rhaena pauses. “They have to.”

“Where?”

Rhaena frowns. “I don’t know.”

Rhaenysse stares at the ceiling, imagining wings folding, great bodies settling somewhere she cannot see.

She doesn’t understand why her parents fly so often. She doesn’t understand why Pentos seems not to know her name. She doesn’t understand why everything here feels temporary, even the sun.

“Why is everyone awake?” she whispers.

Baela doesn’t stir. She sleeps like she always has, heavy and unafraid, one arm flung over the edge of the bed.

Rhaena turns a page. The sound is quiet as she tries to stay concentrated on the texts in the history book she’s going through.

“They don’t sleep early here,” Rhaena murmurs.

“But it’s dark.”

“So?”

Rhaenysse pushes herself up onto her elbows. “What if they don’t know it’s night?”

Rhaena sighs, long-suffering even in the dark. “They know.”

“Then why don’t they stop?”

Rhaena finally looks over. “Because they want to stay awake.”

She swings her legs over the side of the bed, feet brushing the cool tile. The floor has finally lost the sun’s warmth. She pats on the window.

The city stretches out before her, glowing. Lights dot the streets below like fallen stars. Torches flicker along balconies. Shadows move constantly; people cross, pause, gather. She listens harder, trying to separate the sounds. A man arguing. A woman laughing. Footsteps on stone. Somewhere, something clatters and breaks, followed by cheers instead of gasps.

“They’re too loud,” she whispers.

A soft rustle behind her.

Meria stands in the doorway, shawl wrapped around her shoulders, eyes kind but alert. “You should be sleeping.”

“They’re still awake,” Rhaenysse says, not turning. “Do dragons sleep at night?” Rhaenysse asks.

Meria’s hand settles gently between her shoulders. “Dragons sleep when they choose.”

“Do Mama and Papa sleep?”

Meria’s thumb stills for just a moment. “Sometimes.”

Rhaenysse nods, though she isn’t sure she believes it; she’s sure, just like the people outside her parents' house, that they'll stay up all through the night.

A shadow passes overhead.

It’s fast. Almost imagined. The air shifts just enough that the torchlight flickers.

Rhaenysse’s breath catches. “Did you see that?”

Meria looks up. Listens. The night swallows whatever sound might have followed.

“I saw nothing,” she says.

Rhaenysse presses closer to the window anyway, heart pounding. For half a heartbeat, she imagines wings against the stars, great and black, circling a city that does not belong to them.

“They’re flying again,” she says softly.

Meria does not correct her.

When Rhaenysse finally crawls back into bed, the noise doesn’t stop. It never fully fades. She pulls the blanket up to her chin, staring at the ceiling painted with strange shapes instead of carved stone.

The year does not announce itself when it ends. There is no bell. No feast. No marker carved into stone. Rhaenysse only realizes it has been a year because one morning, she wakes and Pentos feels almost like home. 

She knows which tiles in the courtyard warm fastest beneath the sun. She knows which market days are loudest and which ones smell of spice instead of fish. She knows that the city never truly sleeps and that the nights belong to voices, not wind.

She has grown, not enough for anyone to comment on, but enough that she is certain she can reach the top of a dresser she wasn’t able to when they first arrived, only a little, but in her tiny mind, it was a big difference. 

Her parents are still here, and still often flying in the skies. Still, they promise her something extremely special on her nameday that is coming up soon, she remembers this exactly because Laena smelled like sun and dragonfire when she returned to tell her, and Daemon, the little flick he gave to her forehead this time had more love in it than she remembered. It wasn’t that her papa didn’t love her; he had been distant since she could remember, but he still made her feel loved, even in the weird affection he showed her. 

She had remembered a few moons ago when he carried her on his shoulder through the market as her mother held her sister's hand. They had gotten so many sweets that day that she was sure all of their teeth would fall out. They had played and talked about dragons, about home, scout her uncle Laenor, and when they could see him again. That night, when Laena tucked them in and promised more adventures to come, she remembered Daemon coming to kiss her forehead and bid her sweet dreams, and that the dragons would fly around in her dreams as an omen of protection.

Rhaenysse has stopped asking where they go. She still watches the sky, but she knows that her mama and papa would come home as promised.

Vendors nod now instead of staring; some even remember her name. There is a nice, older lady named Talira who saves pretty purple gems just for Rhaenysse after Rhaenysse told her the purple ones were her favorite. Children glance at her hair and then look away, some smile instead of sticking their tongues out as they did in the beginning. She is no longer a spectacle, just a strange little girl with pale eyes and a careful step, always walking beside her nursemaid.

At night, she sleeps longer than she used to.

The music no longer startles her awake. The laughter blends into the dark like waves she cannot see but knows are there. Pentos hums, and she hums with it, quiet and small beneath the ceiling painted with things that still mean nothing to her.

Chapter Two: A City That Does Not Sleep

They had been at sea for three days when the ship finally lurched and then slowed. Rhaenysse grips the wooden rail, her knuckles turning pale as the water beneath them changes color. The deep black blue of the open sea she had remembered faded into something more green, clouded, the waves moving back and forth constantly as smaller boats started past them like fish, their sails painted and colors that she had been so surprised to see on a boat.

“Is that it?” Baela asks, already leaning over the side, her arm brushing Rhaenysse.

Rhaenysse squints. “That’s not Dragonstone.”

Rhaena huffs softly. “Obviously,” she joined her twin and younger sister on the railing, looking at the scenery in front of them.

“It doesn’t look like King’s Landing either,” Baela adds, tilting her head. “Where are all the towers?”

Meria steps closer, one hand settling firmly between Rhaenysse’s shoulders. “Pentos does not build upward the way Westeros does,” she says. “They spread outward. Like roots.”

Rhaenysse doesn’t know what that means, but she nods anyway. She learned that seems to get adults to leave you alone most of the time, or to stop using words that don’t make sense.

The harbor is loud. Louder than Dragonstone. Louder than anything she remembers. Voices shout in a language she doesn’t understand, words rolling together too fast, too sharp. Bells ring. Wood knocks against wood. Something smells sweet—and rotten—and hot all at once.

She wrinkles her nose. “It smells… disgusting.” Meria was quick about her hand over Rhaenysse's mouth

Baela laughs. “You smell disgusting.”

“It does,” Rhaenysse insists. “Like… like old fruit.” She tried to speak around Merie’s hand

“And spices,” Rhaena says. “And fish.”

Meria smiles faintly. “You’ll grow used to it.” She spoke, smoothing out the girl's hair, “However, you have to be mindful of other people‘s customs; it is not polite to say that their smells are disgusting.”

Rhaenysse isn’t sure she wants to grow used to this smell, and she wants to argue back about having to be mindful of other people’s customs; they never had to, but she knew better than to argue.

When the ship docks, the ground feels strange beneath her feet. It doesn’t rock like Dragonstone’s stone docks. It feels warmer. Rougher. The boards creak differently, and she keeps expecting the ground to move again.

“Stay close,” Meria says, sharper now. “All of you.” She added, ushering the three girls directly in front of her, heavens be damned if she lost Prince Daemon and Lady Laenas children the first day they arrived.

“I am close,” Baela says, though she’s already craning her neck to look at everything.

Men pass them wearing loose, bright fabrics instead of heavy cloaks. Women wear gold in their hair, around their wrists, even across their foreheads. Their skin tones are darker, lighter, sun-kissed, bronze—different. Everyone looks at them.

Rhaenysse presses closer to Rhaena.

“They’re staring,” she whispers.

“Because you’re staring,” Rhaena whispers back.

“They’re talking about us,” Baela says, grinning. “I heard ‘dragon’.”

Meria’s hand tightens just slightly. “Eyes forward.” She said her face was clear of any of the fear she felt. Any one of the girls could go for a lot in the wrong hands.

They walk through streets that feel too narrow and too wide at the same time. Buildings lean inward, painted in pale reds and sandy yellows instead of grey stone. Banners hang from windows, stitched with symbols Rhaenysse doesn’t recognize.

She stops walking.

Meria notices immediately. “What is it?”

Rhaenysse points. “Why is that house round?”

Baela snorts. “Houses aren’t round.”

“That one is.” She piped up in a matter-of-fact tone as she looked at her older sister. 

The house was indeed round—no sharp edges. No towers. Just smooth curves and open balconies draped in cloth that flutters in the breeze.

“That’s stupid,” Rhaena says, her head tilting as she tries to make sense of what good a round house was.

“It’s different,” Rhaenysse says quietly.

Meria crouches beside her. “Different is not wrong.”

They pass a fountain where children splash barefoot, laughing loudly, water spilling everywhere. None of them bows. None of them stops. A boy about Baela’s age meets Rhaenysse’s eyes and sticks his tongue out.

Baela does it back immediately.

Rhaena sighs. “We are going to get in trouble.”

“We’re not,” Baela says. “Mama isn’t here.”

Rhaenysse feels something twist in her chest at that. Would they see their mother and father this evening? It had been three days since they had departed from Dragonstone.

Their new home is large but not tall. It smells like stone warmed by the sun and something floral she can’t name. The ceilings are painted, not carved, and the floors are tiled in patterns instead of bare rock.

“This isn’t a castle,” Rhaenysse says.

“No,” Meria agrees. “It is a manse.”

Rhaena looks around skeptically. “I don’t like it.”

Baela spins in a slow circle. “I do. It feels like a maze.”

Rhaenysse walks to the nearest open window and peers out. The city stretches wide, rooftops layered like waves. In the distance, far, far away, she thinks she sees shadows moving across the sky.

Her breath catches.

“Meria?” she asks without turning. “Are there dragons here?” She asked, her gaze hopeful as she finally looked back.

Meria pauses, just for a moment. “There are stories,” she says carefully. That catches Rhaeynesse's attention fully. She sits down on her hands, trying to bite her tongue, but her curiosity won.

“Stories where?” She asked quietly; it was hard to tell from Merie’s tone that she probably shouldn’t be asking the questions anyway.

“In Pentos. In Essos. Everywhere.” Merie finally told the girls that she had the twins' attention, too.

“But not here,” Rhaena says flatly, before Rhaenysse could get her next question out.

“Not here,” Meria confirms. “Only your mother and father’s dragons will actually live here.”

Rhaenysse looks back out the window anyway. Hoping to catch a glimpse of what she had thought was a dragon.

Baela nudges her. “You’re thinking about Papa’s dragon.”

“And Mama’s,” Rhaenysse says.

“They’ll come visit,” Baela says, confident.

Rhaenysse nods, but she doesn’t answer. Even in Dragonstone, she would see Mama, but Papa was always off somewhere.

Outside, the city hums; it feels alive, foreign, unbothered by dragons or daughters of dragonlords. For the first time, Rhaenysse feels very small. Not completely in a frightening way, but like the world is bigger than the stories she’s been told, she watches the city anyway, listening to voices she doesn’t understand, breathing air that doesn’t belong to home, and wonders, just for a moment, if dragons ever miss the sky they leave behind.

Time in Pentos does not move the way it does on Dragonstone.

On Dragonstone, days are measured by tides and bells, by the shadow of the mountain and the smell of smoke carried on the wind. In Pentos, the sun feels closer. It climbs higher, lingers longer, and warms the stone until it hums beneath bare feet.

Rhaenysse learns this first when she steps into the courtyard one morning, and the ground is already hot beneath her bare feet. 

Laena comes and goes. Some mornings she’s there, sitting beside Rhaenysse while Meria braids her hair. She smells like oil and sun, her voice low and warm as she speaks of nothing important at all.

“You’ll like it here,” Laena says once, brushing a thumb across Rhaenysse’s cheek. “There’s so much to see.”

Rhaenysse nods because that seems right; her mother and sisters seem to like it there, so she thinks it’s only right that she should like it here, too. It’s not like anyone had been mean to her; sometimes she was allowed to play with the maids' children, but never the children outside. She wasn’t so sure about that; she didn’t argue. It wasn’t as if she was playing with kids outside when they lived in Dragonstone or when she visited her grandma or grandfather.

Daemon comes less often, but when he does, he brings noise with him. His boots echo louder. His laughter fills the space and then vanishes just as quickly.

“They’re flying again,” Baela announces one afternoon, pressing her face to the balcony rail.

Rhaenysse joins her slowly. The sky is too bright to see them clearly, but she knows they’re there. She always knows.

“Why?” she asks.

Baela shrugs. “Because they can.”

“One day, I want to fly too…with mama and papa,” Rhaenysse says, her voice does not lack conviction.

When Rhaenysse is allowed outside, it feels like being let into another world for just a moment before the door closes again.

Meria insists on slower steps, on staying to the sides of the street, and on stopping when carts pass too close. The sounds crash into Rhaenysse all at once, voices layered over one another, laughter sharp and sudden, the clatter of hooves and wheels.

She clings to Meria’s hand.

“Look at that,” Baela says, pointing at a stall draped in shimmering cloth.

Rhaenysse looks. The fabric moves even when there’s no wind, catching the light like water.

“It looks like dragon wings,” she says without thinking.

The man behind the stall grins. “Silk,” he says, in a thick accent. “From the east.”

Rhaenysse doesn’t answer. She stares until Meria gently steers her away.

“They don’t talk like us,” Rhaenysse whispers. She tries to mimic the accent she hears, but to no avail; it doesn’t sound anything like what was just spoken to them.

“No,” Meria agrees; she does not hide her grin from the little ones' antics. “But they understand smiles.” Rhaenysse isn’t sure she wants to smile at strangers.

They pass children playing in the dirt, their laughter loud and careless. One of them tripped and skinned his knee. He cries, then stops when another child pulls him back into the game.

“They don’t have nursemaids?” Rhaenysse asks.

Meria glances down. “Some do. Some don’t.”

“Who watches them?” She continued, slightly confused

“They watch each other.”

That seems impossible, she couldn’t imagine possibly trying to watch her sisters, they were always running off by themselves, 

At night, Pentos sounds different.

No waves are crashing against cliffs. No wind howling through stone corridors. Instead, there is music somewhere far away, drifting through open windows. Some voices do not quieten when the sun sets.

Rhaenysse lies awake on silken sheets that slide beneath her fingers.

Baela sleeps easily. Rhaena turns pages long after she should be asleep.

“Do you think the dragons sleep?” Rhaenysse asks softly.

Rhaena pauses. “They have to.”

“Where?”

Rhaena frowns. “I don’t know.”

Rhaenysse stares at the ceiling, imagining wings folding, great bodies settling somewhere she cannot see.

She doesn’t understand why her parents fly so often. She doesn’t understand why Pentos seems not to know her name. She doesn’t understand why everything here feels temporary, even the sun.

“Why is everyone awake?” she whispers.

Baela doesn’t stir. She sleeps like she always has, heavy and unafraid, one arm flung over the edge of the bed.

Rhaena turns a page. The sound is quiet as she tries to stay concentrated on the texts in the history book she’s going through.

“They don’t sleep early here,” Rhaena murmurs.

“But it’s dark.”

“So?”

Rhaenysse pushes herself up onto her elbows. “What if they don’t know it’s night?”

Rhaena sighs, long-suffering even in the dark. “They know.”

“Then why don’t they stop?”

Rhaena finally looks over. “Because they want to stay awake.”

She swings her legs over the side of the bed, feet brushing the cool tile. The floor has finally lost the sun’s warmth. She pats on the window.

The city stretches out before her, glowing. Lights dot the streets below like fallen stars. Torches flicker along balconies. Shadows move constantly; people cross, pause, gather. She listens harder, trying to separate the sounds. A man arguing. A woman laughing. Footsteps on stone. Somewhere, something clatters and breaks, followed by cheers instead of gasps.

“They’re too loud,” she whispers.

A soft rustle behind her.

Meria stands in the doorway, shawl wrapped around her shoulders, eyes kind but alert. “You should be sleeping.”

“They’re still awake,” Rhaenysse says, not turning. “Do dragons sleep at night?” Rhaenysse asks.

Meria’s hand settles gently between her shoulders. “Dragons sleep when they choose.”

“Do Mama and Papa sleep?”

Meria’s thumb stills for just a moment. “Sometimes.”

Rhaenysse nods, though she isn’t sure she believes it; she’s sure, just like the people outside her parents' house, that they'll stay up all through the night.

A shadow passes overhead.

It’s fast. Almost imagined. The air shifts just enough that the torchlight flickers.

Rhaenysse’s breath catches. “Did you see that?”

Meria looks up. Listens. The night swallows whatever sound might have followed.

“I saw nothing,” she says.

Rhaenysse presses closer to the window anyway, heart pounding. For half a heartbeat, she imagines wings against the stars, great and black, circling a city that does not belong to them.

“They’re flying again,” she says softly.

Meria does not correct her.

When Rhaenysse finally crawls back into bed, the noise doesn’t stop. It never fully fades. She pulls the blanket up to her chin, staring at the ceiling painted with strange shapes instead of carved stone.

The year does not announce itself when it ends. There is no bell. No feast. No marker carved into stone. Rhaenysse only realizes it has been a year because one morning, she wakes and Pentos feels almost like home. 

She knows which tiles in the courtyard warm fastest beneath the sun. She knows which market days are loudest and which ones smell of spice instead of fish. She knows that the city never truly sleeps and that the nights belong to voices, not wind.

She has grown, not enough for anyone to comment on, but enough that she is certain she can reach the top of a dresser she wasn’t able to when they first arrived, only a little, but in her tiny mind, it was a big difference. 

Her parents are still here, and still often flying in the skies. Still, they promise her something extremely special on her nameday that is coming up soon, she remembers this exactly because Laena smelled like sun and dragonfire when she returned to tell her, and Daemon, the little flick he gave to her forehead this time had more love in it than she remembered. It wasn’t that her papa didn’t love her; he had been distant since she could remember, but he still made her feel loved, even in the weird affection he showed her. 

She had remembered a few moons ago when he carried her on his shoulder through the market as her mother held her sister's hand. They had gotten so many sweets that day that she was sure all of their teeth would fall out. They had played and talked about dragons, about home, scout her uncle Laenor, and when they could see him again. That night, when Laena tucked them in and promised more adventures to come, she remembered Daemon coming to kiss her forehead and bid her sweet dreams, and that the dragons would fly around in her dreams as an omen of protection.

Rhaenysse has stopped asking where they go. She still watches the sky, but she knows that her mama and papa would come home as promised.

Vendors nod now instead of staring; some even remember her name. There is a nice, older lady named Talira who saves pretty purple gems just for Rhaenysse after Rhaenysse told her the purple ones were her favorite. Children glance at her hair and then look away, some smile instead of sticking their tongues out as they did in the beginning. She is no longer a spectacle, just a strange little girl with pale eyes and a careful step, always walking beside her nursemaid.

At night, she sleeps longer than she used to.

The music no longer startles her awake. The laughter blends into the dark like waves she cannot see but knows are there. Pentos hums, and she hums with it, quiet and small beneath the ceiling painted with things that still mean nothing to her.

Chapter Two: A City That Does Not Sleep

They had been at sea for three days when the ship finally lurched and then slowed. Rhaenysse grips the wooden rail, her knuckles turning pale as the water beneath them changes color. The deep black blue of the open sea she had remembered faded into something more green, clouded, the waves moving back and forth constantly as smaller boats started past them like fish, their sails painted and colors that she had been so surprised to see on a boat.

“Is that it?” Baela asks, already leaning over the side, her arm brushing Rhaenysse.

Rhaenysse squints. “That’s not Dragonstone.”

Rhaena huffs softly. “Obviously,” she joined her twin and younger sister on the railing, looking at the scenery in front of them.

“It doesn’t look like King’s Landing either,” Baela adds, tilting her head. “Where are all the towers?”

Meria steps closer, one hand settling firmly between Rhaenysse’s shoulders. “Pentos does not build upward the way Westeros does,” she says. “They spread outward. Like roots.”

Rhaenysse doesn’t know what that means, but she nods anyway. She learned that seems to get adults to leave you alone most of the time, or to stop using words that don’t make sense.

The harbor is loud. Louder than Dragonstone. Louder than anything she remembers. Voices shout in a language she doesn’t understand, words rolling together too fast, too sharp. Bells ring. Wood knocks against wood. Something smells sweet—and rotten—and hot all at once.

She wrinkles her nose. “It smells… disgusting.” Meria was quick about her hand over Rhaenysse's mouth

Baela laughs. “You smell disgusting.”

“It does,” Rhaenysse insists. “Like… like old fruit.” She tried to speak around Merie’s hand

“And spices,” Rhaena says. “And fish.”

Meria smiles faintly. “You’ll grow used to it.” She spoke, smoothing out the girl's hair, “However, you have to be mindful of other people‘s customs; it is not polite to say that their smells are disgusting.”

Rhaenysse isn’t sure she wants to grow used to this smell, and she wants to argue back about having to be mindful of other people’s customs; they never had to, but she knew better than to argue.

When the ship docks, the ground feels strange beneath her feet. It doesn’t rock like Dragonstone’s stone docks. It feels warmer. Rougher. The boards creak differently, and she keeps expecting the ground to move again.

“Stay close,” Meria says, sharper now. “All of you.” She added, ushering the three girls directly in front of her, heavens be damned if she lost Prince Daemon and Lady Laenas children the first day they arrived.

“I am close,” Baela says, though she’s already craning her neck to look at everything.

Men pass them wearing loose, bright fabrics instead of heavy cloaks. Women wear gold in their hair, around their wrists, even across their foreheads. Their skin tones are darker, lighter, sun-kissed, bronze—different. Everyone looks at them.

Rhaenysse presses closer to Rhaena.

“They’re staring,” she whispers.

“Because you’re staring,” Rhaena whispers back.

“They’re talking about us,” Baela says, grinning. “I heard ‘dragon’.”

Meria’s hand tightens just slightly. “Eyes forward.” She said her face was clear of any of the fear she felt. Any one of the girls could go for a lot in the wrong hands.

They walk through streets that feel too narrow and too wide at the same time. Buildings lean inward, painted in pale reds and sandy yellows instead of grey stone. Banners hang from windows, stitched with symbols Rhaenysse doesn’t recognize.

She stops walking.

Meria notices immediately. “What is it?”

Rhaenysse points. “Why is that house round?”

Baela snorts. “Houses aren’t round.”

“That one is.” She piped up in a matter-of-fact tone as she looked at her older sister. 

The house was indeed round—no sharp edges. No towers. Just smooth curves and open balconies draped in cloth that flutters in the breeze.

“That’s stupid,” Rhaena says, her head tilting as she tries to make sense of what good a round house was.

“It’s different,” Rhaenysse says quietly.

Meria crouches beside her. “Different is not wrong.”

They pass a fountain where children splash barefoot, laughing loudly, water spilling everywhere. None of them bows. None of them stops. A boy about Baela’s age meets Rhaenysse’s eyes and sticks his tongue out.

Baela does it back immediately.

Rhaena sighs. “We are going to get in trouble.”

“We’re not,” Baela says. “Mama isn’t here.”

Rhaenysse feels something twist in her chest at that. Would they see their mother and father this evening? It had been three days since they had departed from Dragonstone.

Their new home is large but not tall. It smells like stone warmed by the sun and something floral she can’t name. The ceilings are painted, not carved, and the floors are tiled in patterns instead of bare rock.

“This isn’t a castle,” Rhaenysse says.

“No,” Meria agrees. “It is a manse.”

Rhaena looks around skeptically. “I don’t like it.”

Baela spins in a slow circle. “I do. It feels like a maze.”

Rhaenysse walks to the nearest open window and peers out. The city stretches wide, rooftops layered like waves. In the distance, far, far away, she thinks she sees shadows moving across the sky.

Her breath catches.

“Meria?” she asks without turning. “Are there dragons here?” She asked, her gaze hopeful as she finally looked back.

Meria pauses, just for a moment. “There are stories,” she says carefully. That catches Rhaeynesse's attention fully. She sits down on her hands, trying to bite her tongue, but her curiosity won.

“Stories where?” She asked quietly; it was hard to tell from Merie’s tone that she probably shouldn’t be asking the questions anyway.

“In Pentos. In Essos. Everywhere.” Merie finally told the girls that she had the twins' attention, too.

“But not here,” Rhaena says flatly, before Rhaenysse could get her next question out.

“Not here,” Meria confirms. “Only your mother and father’s dragons will actually live here.”

Rhaenysse looks back out the window anyway. Hoping to catch a glimpse of what she had thought was a dragon.

Baela nudges her. “You’re thinking about Papa’s dragon.”

“And Mama’s,” Rhaenysse says.

“They’ll come visit,” Baela says, confident.

Rhaenysse nods, but she doesn’t answer. Even in Dragonstone, she would see Mama, but Papa was always off somewhere.

Outside, the city hums; it feels alive, foreign, unbothered by dragons or daughters of dragonlords. For the first time, Rhaenysse feels very small. Not completely in a frightening way, but like the world is bigger than the stories she’s been told, she watches the city anyway, listening to voices she doesn’t understand, breathing air that doesn’t belong to home, and wonders, just for a moment, if dragons ever miss the sky they leave behind.

Time in Pentos does not move the way it does on Dragonstone.

On Dragonstone, days are measured by tides and bells, by the shadow of the mountain and the smell of smoke carried on the wind. In Pentos, the sun feels closer. It climbs higher, lingers longer, and warms the stone until it hums beneath bare feet.

Rhaenysse learns this first when she steps into the courtyard one morning, and the ground is already hot beneath her bare feet. 

Laena comes and goes. Some mornings she’s there, sitting beside Rhaenysse while Meria braids her hair. She smells like oil and sun, her voice low and warm as she speaks of nothing important at all.

“You’ll like it here,” Laena says once, brushing a thumb across Rhaenysse’s cheek. “There’s so much to see.”

Rhaenysse nods because that seems right; her mother and sisters seem to like it there, so she thinks it’s only right that she should like it here, too. It’s not like anyone had been mean to her; sometimes she was allowed to play with the maids' children, but never the children outside. She wasn’t so sure about that; she didn’t argue. It wasn’t as if she was playing with kids outside when they lived in Dragonstone or when she visited her grandma or grandfather.

Daemon comes less often, but when he does, he brings noise with him. His boots echo louder. His laughter fills the space and then vanishes just as quickly.

“They’re flying again,” Baela announces one afternoon, pressing her face to the balcony rail.

Rhaenysse joins her slowly. The sky is too bright to see them clearly, but she knows they’re there. She always knows.

“Why?” she asks.

Baela shrugs. “Because they can.”

“One day, I want to fly too…with mama and papa,” Rhaenysse says, her voice does not lack conviction.

When Rhaenysse is allowed outside, it feels like being let into another world for just a moment before the door closes again.

Meria insists on slower steps, on staying to the sides of the street, and on stopping when carts pass too close. The sounds crash into Rhaenysse all at once, voices layered over one another, laughter sharp and sudden, the clatter of hooves and wheels.

She clings to Meria’s hand.

“Look at that,” Baela says, pointing at a stall draped in shimmering cloth.

Rhaenysse looks. The fabric moves even when there’s no wind, catching the light like water.

“It looks like dragon wings,” she says without thinking.

The man behind the stall grins. “Silk,” he says, in a thick accent. “From the east.”

Rhaenysse doesn’t answer. She stares until Meria gently steers her away.

“They don’t talk like us,” Rhaenysse whispers. She tries to mimic the accent she hears, but to no avail; it doesn’t sound anything like what was just spoken to them.

“No,” Meria agrees; she does not hide her grin from the little ones' antics. “But they understand smiles.” Rhaenysse isn’t sure she wants to smile at strangers.

They pass children playing in the dirt, their laughter loud and careless. One of them tripped and skinned his knee. He cries, then stops when another child pulls him back into the game.

“They don’t have nursemaids?” Rhaenysse asks.

Meria glances down. “Some do. Some don’t.”

“Who watches them?” She continued, slightly confused

“They watch each other.”

That seems impossible, she couldn’t imagine possibly trying to watch her sisters, they were always running off by themselves, 

At night, Pentos sounds different.

No waves are crashing against cliffs. No wind howling through stone corridors. Instead, there is music somewhere far away, drifting through open windows. Some voices do not quieten when the sun sets.

Rhaenysse lies awake on silken sheets that slide beneath her fingers.

Baela sleeps easily. Rhaena turns pages long after she should be asleep.

“Do you think the dragons sleep?” Rhaenysse asks softly.

Rhaena pauses. “They have to.”

“Where?”

Rhaena frowns. “I don’t know.”

Rhaenysse stares at the ceiling, imagining wings folding, great bodies settling somewhere she cannot see.

She doesn’t understand why her parents fly so often. She doesn’t understand why Pentos seems not to know her name. She doesn’t understand why everything here feels temporary, even the sun.

“Why is everyone awake?” she whispers.

Baela doesn’t stir. She sleeps like she always has, heavy and unafraid, one arm flung over the edge of the bed.

Rhaena turns a page. The sound is quiet as she tries to stay concentrated on the texts in the history book she’s going through.

“They don’t sleep early here,” Rhaena murmurs.

“But it’s dark.”

“So?”

Rhaenysse pushes herself up onto her elbows. “What if they don’t know it’s night?”

Rhaena sighs, long-suffering even in the dark. “They know.”

“Then why don’t they stop?”

Rhaena finally looks over. “Because they want to stay awake.”

She swings her legs over the side of the bed, feet brushing the cool tile. The floor has finally lost the sun’s warmth. She pats on the window.

The city stretches out before her, glowing. Lights dot the streets below like fallen stars. Torches flicker along balconies. Shadows move constantly; people cross, pause, gather. She listens harder, trying to separate the sounds. A man arguing. A woman laughing. Footsteps on stone. Somewhere, something clatters and breaks, followed by cheers instead of gasps.

“They’re too loud,” she whispers.

A soft rustle behind her.

Meria stands in the doorway, shawl wrapped around her shoulders, eyes kind but alert. “You should be sleeping.”

“They’re still awake,” Rhaenysse says, not turning. “Do dragons sleep at night?” Rhaenysse asks.

Meria’s hand settles gently between her shoulders. “Dragons sleep when they choose.”

“Do Mama and Papa sleep?”

Meria’s thumb stills for just a moment. “Sometimes.”

Rhaenysse nods, though she isn’t sure she believes it; she’s sure, just like the people outside her parents' house, that they'll stay up all through the night.

A shadow passes overhead.

It’s fast. Almost imagined. The air shifts just enough that the torchlight flickers.

Rhaenysse’s breath catches. “Did you see that?”

Meria looks up. Listens. The night swallows whatever sound might have followed.

“I saw nothing,” she says.

Rhaenysse presses closer to the window anyway, heart pounding. For half a heartbeat, she imagines wings against the stars, great and black, circling a city that does not belong to them.

“They’re flying again,” she says softly.

Meria does not correct her.

When Rhaenysse finally crawls back into bed, the noise doesn’t stop. It never fully fades. She pulls the blanket up to her chin, staring at the ceiling painted with strange shapes instead of carved stone.

The year does not announce itself when it ends. There is no bell. No feast. No marker carved into stone. Rhaenysse only realizes it has been a year because one morning, she wakes and Pentos feels almost like home. 

She knows which tiles in the courtyard warm fastest beneath the sun. She knows which market days are loudest and which ones smell of spice instead of fish. She knows that the city never truly sleeps and that the nights belong to voices, not wind.

She has grown, not enough for anyone to comment on, but enough that she is certain she can reach the top of a dresser she wasn’t able to when they first arrived, only a little, but in her tiny mind, it was a big difference. 

Her parents are still here, and still often flying in the skies. Still, they promise her something extremely special on her nameday that is coming up soon, she remembers this exactly because Laena smelled like sun and dragonfire when she returned to tell her, and Daemon, the little flick he gave to her forehead this time had more love in it than she remembered. It wasn’t that her papa didn’t love her; he had been distant since she could remember, but he still made her feel loved, even in the weird affection he showed her. 

She had remembered a few moons ago when he carried her on his shoulder through the market as her mother held her sister's hand. They had gotten so many sweets that day that she was sure all of their teeth would fall out. They had played and talked about dragons, about home, scout her uncle Laenor, and when they could see him again. That night, when Laena tucked them in and promised more adventures to come, she remembered Daemon coming to kiss her forehead and bid her sweet dreams, and that the dragons would fly around in her dreams as an omen of protection.

Rhaenysse has stopped asking where they go. She still watches the sky, but she knows that her mama and papa would come home as promised.

Vendors nod now instead of staring; some even remember her name. There is a nice, older lady named Talira who saves pretty purple gems just for Rhaenysse after Rhaenysse told her the purple ones were her favorite. Children glance at her hair and then look away, some smile instead of sticking their tongues out as they did in the beginning. She is no longer a spectacle, just a strange little girl with pale eyes and a careful step, always walking beside her nursemaid.

At night, she sleeps longer than she used to.

The music no longer startles her awake. The laughter blends into the dark like waves she cannot see but knows are there. Pentos hums, and she hums with it, quiet and small beneath the ceiling painted with things that still mean nothing to her.