The Bay of Pentos burned like hammered gold.
Jon stood at the bow of The Bleeding Edge and shivered in the warmth. Three weeks since Braavos. Three weeks of open water and following winds, of sailing south and east while the grey world of his childhood fell away behind him. The air here was different—thick with heat and the smell of oranges, heavy with spices he couldn't name. The sky was blue, impossibly blue, a color that belonged to songs and stories rather than real places.
And still he was freezing.
System check. Marcus's voice had gone clinical since the icefield, treating Jon less like a person and more like a machine that needed maintenance. Core temperature elevated. Peripheral circulation compromised. The phantom cold is getting worse.
Jon looked at his hands. The veins had darkened in the weeks since Braavos—blue-black threads visible beneath pale skin, spreading up his wrists toward his elbows like winter rivers frozen beneath ice. He had tried to hide them at first, wrapping his arms in bandages and claiming injuries. Now the crew knew better. They had seen what lived in his blood.
The sailors gave him a wide berth as they worked the rigging. No one met his eyes. No one spoke to him directly. But every morning, offerings appeared outside his cabin door—a heel of bread, a cup of watered wine, and a string of dried fish. Gifts for a demon they hoped to appease. Payment for a monster they prayed would not wake.
"It's not respect." Jon's voice came out hoarse. He spoke so rarely now that the words felt strange in his mouth. "It's horror."
Same thing, from the right angle.
The ship rounded the headland, and Pentos spread before them like a fever dream.
The city sprawled across the coast in a riot of color—orange tiles and white walls, towers capped with bronze, and gardens spilling over parapets in cascades of green and red. No fog here, no grey stone, no cold. Everything was heat and light and the lazy rhythm of a place that had never known winter. Fishing boats dotted the bay, their sails bright as butterflies, and somewhere on shore a bell was ringing, slow and sonorous, calling the faithful to prayer.
Jon tried to see it as beautiful. Tried to feel what a normal boy would feel—wonder, perhaps, or excitement at seeing a foreign land for the first time. But his blood rejected the warmth. His bones ached for granite and pine, for cold stone walls and the smell of snow. This place was wrong in a way he couldn't articulate, a wrongness that went deeper than homesickness, deeper than fear.
Every color seemed too bright, every sound too loud, every smell too sweet. His body rejected it the way a sick man rejects rich food—violently, instinctively, completely.
He shivered again, and frost crept across the rail beneath his fingers.
* * *
Captain Terys found him in the hold an hour later.
The captain looked older than he had in Braavos—grey in his beard that hadn't been there before, lines around his eyes that spoke of sleepless nights and difficult decisions. The swagger that had characterized him at their first meeting was gone, replaced by something more careful, more watchful. He stood in the doorway of Jon's cabin, his hands clasped behind his back, his face arranged in the careful neutrality of a man about to deliver bad news.
Jon had seen that look before. On Maester Luwin's face when one of the stable dogs had to be put down. On his father's—on Ned's face when he returned from executing deserters.
"We need to talk, boy."
Jon didn't look up from the porthole. The harbor was closer now—private docks visible, merchant ships at anchor, slaves unloading cargo under the Pentoshi sun. "You're ending the contract."
Silence. Then: "How did you know?"
"You haven't looked at me in two weeks. The crew leaves offerings like I'm a death god. And this morning, you changed course toward the private berths instead of the main harbor." Jon finally turned. "You're handing me off to someone."
Terys's face twitched—surprise, perhaps, or the ghost of respect. "You're smarter than you look."
"I have help."
"I was paid to take you to Yi Ti." Terys's voice had gone careful. "But the ship needs repairs that only Pentos can provide. The hull cracked during the incident. The cold damaged the timber."
"The cold saved your life."
"It did." The captain did not flinch. "And it nearly killed my crew. Three men with frostbite. One who won't stop screaming at night." He stepped closer, lowering his voice. "I have sailed these waters for thirty years, boy. I have seen storms and pirates and things that came out of the deep. But I have never seen the sea freeze at a child's command."
Jon said nothing. There was nothing to say.
"I have a contact in Pentos." Terys's eyes slid away from Jon's face, focusing on the wall behind him. "A man who deals in special cases. He runs a safe house for travelers who cannot use normal channels. He will take you east, overland if necessary."
Lie. Marcus's voice cut through like a blade. Micro-expressions. Elevated pulse. Gaze aversion. He's not handing you to a safe house—he's selling you to a buyer.
The cold stirred in Jon's chest. "And what does this contact pay for 'special cases'?"
Terys's face went still. "I don't know what you mean."
"Yes, you do." The temperature in the cabin dropped three degrees. Frost began to form on the porthole glass. "You're a pragmatist, Captain. You don't believe in safe houses. You believe in profit."
For a long moment, neither of them moved. The ship creaked around them, wood groaning as the cold seeped into the timber. Terys's breath began to mist.
Then the captain laughed—a short, bitter sound that held no humor.
"You're wasted as a child." He shook his head slowly. "Fine. I won't pretend you're stupid. A man named Illyrio Mopatis has been asking about 'northern anomalies' for months. He pays well for information and better for delivery. I don't know what he wants with you—I don't want to know. But he's rich, he's connected, and he's the only person in Pentos who won't run screaming when he sees what you can do."
Illyrio Mopatis. Marcus was running the name through memories Jon didn't recognize. Magister. Former sellsword. Current dealer in everything—slaves, spices, information, people. Politically connected to the Dothraki. Dangerous.
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you swim to shore." Terys's voice had gone flat. "The crew won't sail with you another league. Half of them think you're a demon. The other half think you're a god. Neither wants to find out which."
The cold receded slowly, pulling back into Jon's chest like a tide returning to the sea. He looked at the captain—at the fear barely hidden behind the pragmatism, at the guilt buried beneath the greed—and something shifted inside him.
In Winterfell, he would have trusted. Would have believed in honor and obligation and the bonds between men who shared danger.
But Winterfell was gone. And the boy who had believed in such things had frozen to death in the Narrow Sea.
"Fine." Jon's voice was ice. "Take me to your contact."
* * *
The private dock smelled of jasmine and corruption.
Two men waited at the pier—tall, bronze-skinned, their heads shaved smooth and their faces empty of expression. They wore white linens and carried short spears, and they moved with the mechanical precision of soldiers who had been trained to feel nothing.
Unsullied. Slave soldiers from Astapor. Castrated as children, conditioned through torture. Pain suppression is evident. Discipline is absolute.
Jon descended the gangplank on legs that felt like water. The Pentoshi heat hit him like a wall—oppressive, suffocating, a physical weight that pressed against his frozen skin. Sweat should have broken out across his body. Instead, his flesh stayed cold and dry, rejecting the warmth the way oil rejects water.
"Follow." One of the Unsullied spoke—a flat voice, empty of inflection. Not a request.
Jon followed.
Illyrio's manse rose from the Pentoshi hills like a monument to excess. The walls were white marble veined with gold. Gardens sprawled in every direction—fruit trees and flower beds, fountains and statues, all of it maintained by an army of silent slaves who moved like ghosts through the greenery. Jon counted three dozen before he stopped counting. They wore white linen and bronze collars, their eyes downcast, their movements mechanical.
The air was thick with perfume, layer upon layer of competing scents that made Jon's head swim. Rose and jasmine, sandalwood and musk, and something darker beneath it all that might have been incense or might have been decay. The sweetness coated his tongue like oil.
Soft environment. High walls, limited sightlines, single obvious entrance. Multiple hidden exits for the owner, none for guests. This is not a home—it's a honey trap.
The interior was worse. Silk hangings covered every wall, their colors so vivid they hurt to look at—crimson and gold, purple and emerald, scenes of conquest and copulation woven in thread that gleamed like metal. Carpets cushioned every step, deep enough to swallow sound, patterned with dragons and tigers and creatures Jon didn't recognize. Everywhere he looked, there was gold—gold leaf on the ceiling, gold thread in the tapestries, and gold fixtures on doors that stood twelve feet tall.
The wealth on display in this single hallway could have fed Winterfell for a decade. The thought sat in Jon's stomach like a stone.
And in the center of it all, like a spider at the heart of an obscenely decorated web, sat Illyrio Mopatis.
The magister was fat. Not plump, not heavy—fat, in a way that suggested decades of deliberate indulgence. His belly strained against robes of purple silk. His fingers, thick as sausages, glittered with rings. His beard had been forked and oiled until it gleamed, and his eyes—small and shrewd, buried in folds of flesh—missed nothing.
"The little ice demon." Illyrio's voice was soft and cultured, carrying an accent that turned every word into music. "Welcome to my humble home."
Jon stood in the center of the receiving room, flanked by Unsullied, and said nothing. Marcus catalogued every detail: the guards at the doors, the servants lurking in alcoves, and the subtle bulges beneath robes that suggested hidden weapons.
"You must be hungry." Illyrio gestured toward a table laden with food—roasted meats and honeyed fruits, cheeses and breads, and things Jon couldn't identify. "Please, eat. You are my guest."
He's testing you. The food is not poisoned—poisoning a guest would violate sacred law. He wants to see how you respond to comfort. How controllable you are.
Jon's stomach clenched. He had not eaten properly in days—the phantom cold killed his appetite and made every bite taste like ash. The ship's rations had been barely enough to survive on, and even those had tasted of salt and desperation. But the smell of roasted meat awakened something primal, something older than thought, and before he could stop himself, he was moving toward the table.
He ate like a wolf. Tore into a leg of lamb with his teeth, grease running down his chin, his fingers ripping through the meat. Shoved bread into his mouth without chewing, barely pausing to breathe. He drank wine so quickly it ran down his throat and pooled in his empty stomach like fire. The food hit his body like fuel hitting a furnace, and for the first time in weeks, warmth spread through his limbs—real warmth, not the memory of it, not the phantom echo of what he had lost.
Some part of him—the part that remembered Winterfell, that remembered manners and dignity and Lady Catelyn's disapproving stare—was horrified. But that part was distant now, barely a whisper. The body had needs that pride could not override.
Illyrio watched with the satisfied smile of a man whose suspicions had been confirmed.
"The magic demands much of you." It wasn't a question. "Your body burns through sustenance faster than you can replace it. Another month, perhaps two, and you would begin to consume yourself."
Jon forced himself to slow down. Wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "You know what I am."
"I know what the rumors say." Illyrio's eyes glittered. "A boy who froze the sea. A child who walks through walls of ice. The 'Northern Demon' has the Iron Bank hiring assassins and the Sealord posting bounties." He leaned forward, his bulk shifting. "What I do not know is who you are. Your name. Your family. Your purpose."
"I'm no one." Jon's voice was flat. "A bastard from the north. I have no family."
"Everyone has family." Illyrio's smile widened. "Even bastards. Especially bastards, in my experience. The powerful so rarely take precautions."
Jon said nothing. The food sat heavy in his stomach now, warmth fading back into cold.
"No matter." Illyrio waved a ringed hand. "You are my guest. You will stay, recover your strength, and when you are ready—" His smile showed teeth. "We will discuss your future."
* * *
The gardens were a maze of green and gold.
Jon walked the paths slowly, cataloguing every turn, while Marcus mapped the space with military precision—sightlines and blind spots, patrol routes, and potential exits. The hedges rose eight feet high on either side, thick with leaves that rustled in the afternoon breeze. Flowers bloomed in profusion: roses and jasmine, strange purple blooms he didn't recognize, and orange trees heavy with fruit. The air was thick with their scent, almost cloying.
The walls were smooth sandstone, twenty feet high, topped with iron spikes that gleamed in the sunlight. Unsullied guards stood at every junction, their blank faces turning to track his movement. They did not speak. They did not blink. They simply watched, patient as statues, waiting for orders that might never come.
No easy exits. The walls are too high to climb without assistance. The guards are positioned to cover all approaches. This is a prison wearing silk.
Near a fountain—a marble dragon spewing water into a basin carved with scenes of conquest—Jon paused. The spray caught the afternoon light and scattered it into rainbows.
"You shouldn't be out here alone."
The voice came from behind a hedge—high, nervous, trying for authority, and landing somewhere closer to petulance. Jon turned.
The boy who emerged from the greenery was perhaps fifteen, with silver-gold hair that fell past his shoulders and eyes the pale purple of spring lilacs. Beautiful in the way that glass is beautiful—sharp-edged and fragile, liable to shatter at a touch. His clothes were silk and velvet, fine enough for a prince, and he carried himself with the rigid posture of someone who had been taught that posture was all he had left.
Targaryen coloring. This is significant.
"Who are you?" The boy's chin lifted. "A servant? A slave? You don't look like Pentoshi."
"I'm a guest." Jon kept his voice neutral. "Like you."
"I am not a guest." The word dripped contempt. "I am Viserys of House Targaryen, Third of His Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm." He drew himself up. "I am blood of the dragon."
The titles hit Jon like cold water.
Targaryen. The Mad King's son. Robert's Rebellion killed his father and older brother. He's been in exile ever since. Marcus paused. He's also your uncle. Or your cousin. The family trees get complicated with Targaryens.
Jon stared at the boy—at this arrogant, frightened creature who shared his blood—and felt nothing. No kinship. No recognition. Just the cold assessment of a soldier evaluating a potential threat.
"I'm Jon. I'm from the north."
"A savage, then." Viserys's lip curled. "The usurper's dogs. Come to gawk at the exiled prince?"
"I don't serve Robert Baratheon."
Before Viserys could answer, a small shape emerged from behind him—a girl, perhaps eight years old, with the same silver hair and purple eyes. Slight and pale, her face dominated by those enormous violet eyes, her body language all hunched shoulders and lowered gaze. She looked at Jon the way a rabbit looks at a wolf—frozen, waiting, hoping to be overlooked.
Daenerys Targaryen. The Mad King's youngest. Born during a storm that destroyed the Targaryen fleet. Marcus stopped. The calculation that followed was cold and precise. She was born nine moons after Rhaegar died. Which means she's your aunt.
Jon looked at the girl—at this small, frightened creature who was his blood—and something stirred. Not the cold. Something warmer, deeper. Something that recognized her the way his bones recognized Winterfell.
"Dany, I told you to stay inside." Viserys's voice had gone sharp. "You know what happens when you disobey."
The girl flinched. Actually flinched, her shoulders drawing up, her eyes dropping to the ground. It was the flinch of someone who had been hit before and expected to be hit again.
The warmth in Jon's chest turned to ice.
"She's not bothering anyone." Jon's voice came out harder than he intended. "Leave her alone."
Viserys's face went red. "You dare speak to me that way? A northern savage, telling a king how to treat his own sister?"
"You're not a king." The words fell like stones. "You're a boy playing dress-up in borrowed clothes, living on another man's charity, threatening a child half your size."
The silence that followed was absolute.
Viserys's hand dropped to his belt—to the small, ornamental dagger that hung there, more decoration than weapon. His eyes had gone wild, the lilac darkening toward purple.
"I am blood of the dragon. I will not be spoken to by—"
He drew the blade.
Threat assessment: minimal. He's never held that knife in anger. Neutralize.
Jon moved.
Two steps. That was all it took. His left hand caught Viserys's wrist and twisted—not gently, not kindly, with the precise violence that Marcus had drilled into his muscles during the weeks at sea. The motion was automatic, the countermove flowing from instinct rather than thought. Viserys's grip was weak, his stance wrong, and his entire body arranged for intimidation rather than actual combat.
The dagger clattered on the stones. Jon's right foot swept Viserys's ankle, and the would-be king was on his back in the grass, gasping, his arm bent at an angle that promised pain if he struggled. His crown of silver-gold hair had fallen into the mud. His fine clothes were stained with grass and dirt.
He looked, Jon thought with cold clarity, like exactly what he was: a frightened boy playing at being a king.
"Don't." Jon's voice was ice. "Don't draw a weapon you don't know how to use. Don't threaten people who haven't threatened you. And don't—" he twisted the arm slightly, drawing a whimper, "—ever touch your sister again."
Viserys's eyes were wide with terror. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.
"Do you understand?"
A nod. Frantic, desperate.
Jon released him and stepped back. Viserys scrambled to his feet, his face a mask of humiliation and rage, and fled into the gardens without looking back.
The girl—Daenerys—hadn't moved. She stood frozen beside the hedge, her violet eyes fixed on Jon's face.
"He'll tell Illyrio." Her voice was small, barely above a whisper. "They'll punish you."
"Probably."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "Why did you do it? You don't know me."
Jon looked at her—at this small, scared girl who was his blood, his family, the aunt he had never known existed. He could not tell her the truth. Could not explain the resonance when their eyes met, the warmth that had cut through the phantom cold, or the certainty that they were connected by something deeper than blood or chance.
She was eight, maybe. The same age Arya would be now. The same fierce smallness, the same vulnerability hidden behind watchful eyes. Looking at her was like looking at a ghost—not of someone dead, but of someone lost.
So he told her a different truth instead.
"I had a sister once." His voice softened despite himself. "She was small like you. Fierce, though. Fiercer than anyone knew. I would have done anything to protect her."
"What happened to her?"
"I left." The words tasted like ash. "I had to leave, and I couldn't take her with me. I don't know if I'll ever see her again."
Something passed between them—recognition, perhaps, or understanding. Two children who had lost everything, standing in a garden that belonged to neither of them, connected by threads they couldn't see.
Then the Unsullied came, and everything changed.
* * *
The tower room was comfortable and completely secure.
Forty feet above the ground, with a single door that locked from the outside and a window that opened onto nothing but air. The furnishings were fine—a soft bed piled with silk cushions, curtains that caught the evening breeze, and a table laden with food that smelled of honey and spice. A cage, but a gilded one. A prison dressed in luxury.
The bars on the window told the truth. Iron, three inches thick, set into the stone with mortar that showed no cracks. Someone had designed this room for exactly this purpose—to hold valuable guests who could not be trusted to stay.
Jon stood at the window and looked down. The courtyard below was lit by torches and patrolled by guards with tiger-striped cloaks—the colors of House Mopatis, he assumed. The outer wall was visible beyond twenty feet of smooth sandstone, topped with spikes that gleamed in the moonlight.
Assessment. The window is your only exit. The drop is forty feet to stone. Survivable with magical assistance, but the guards will see you.
"What are my options?"
Three. First: wait. Illyrio wants something from you. That means you're valuable alive. Second: negotiate. Offer a demonstration in exchange for freedom.
"He'd never let me go. I'm too useful."
Correct. Which leaves option three: escape now, before the walls close in completely.
Jon looked at the courtyard. At the guards. At the distance between the tower and the outer wall.
"Talk me through it."
The wall beneath your window is porous sandstone—good for thermal adhesion. Ice pegs to descend. The gap between the tower and the outer wall is fifteen feet—use Steam Propulsion to cross. Once on the wall, move fast and quietly. The final drop is thirty feet to the street—survivable with an air brake, but risky.
"And if I'm seen?"
Then you run. And you don't stop until you're clear of the city.
Jon closed his eyes. In the darkness, the cold waited—coiled and eager for release. Three weeks of restraint. Three weeks of the phantom freeze eating at his bones. The power wanted out.
"Let's go."
The ice came like a friend.
Jon pressed his palms against the windowsill and let the cold flow out—not a flood this time, but a trickle, controlled and precise. Frost bloomed beneath his fingers, spreading down the wall in delicate patterns, creating handholds where none had existed before.
He slipped through the window and began to climb down.
The night air was warm, thick with the smell of night-blooming flowers and the distant sound of the sea. But Jon felt nothing but cold. His fingers found the ice holds instinctively, his weight shifting, his body moving with a grace that had nothing to do with his seven years. The sandstone was rough beneath his palms, ancient and weathered, but the frost transformed it into something he could use—transformed every surface into a handhold, every crack into a foothold.
Ten feet down. Fifteen. Twenty. The courtyard was closer now, the torchlight brighter. He could see the patterns the guards walked—two by the main gate, one circling the fountain, and another standing motionless near the servants' entrance. Their voices drifted up through the warm air, fragments of conversation in a language Jon didn't recognize.
A guard passed below, his footsteps crunching on gravel.
Stop. Hold position.
Jon froze, pressing himself against the wall, letting the cold spread through his body until his thermal signature matched the stone. The guard paused. Looked up. Looked around.
Saw nothing.
He moved on.
Go. The gap is ahead.
Jon reached the point where the tower met the open air—a ledge barely wide enough to stand on, overlooking a fifteen-foot drop to the outer wall. A gargoyle jutted from the tower's face—a grotesque lion's head, its mouth open in an eternal snarl.
He placed his hands on the stone and called the fire.
Heat blazed up his right arm. The stone grew warm beneath his palms, then hot. Steam hissed from the gargoyle's mouth as moisture evaporated explosively—and Jon pushed, using the thermal expansion like a springboard.
He flew.
The gap passed beneath him in a blur. Wind screamed past his ears. For one terrible instant, he was weightless—suspended between tower and wall, between safety and death.
Then his feet hit the outer wall, and he was rolling, absorbing the impact, coming up in a crouch with his heart hammering against his ribs.
Good. Move.
The wall stretched before him—a narrow walkway of stone, patrolled by guards he could hear but not see. Each stride was silent, muffled by the cold seeping from his boots. He was a shadow made of ice, sliding through the night.
The street side of the wall loomed ahead—a thirty-foot drop to the cobblestones below. A rusted drainpipe ran down the wall's face. Jon wrapped his hands around it and poured out the cold. Ice spread down the metal in a crackling wave, coating it from top to bottom in a layer of frost so smooth it gleamed.
He grabbed the pipe and slid.
The world blurred. Wind tore at his clothes. The ice was frictionless beneath his hands—he was falling more than sliding, the ground rushing up to meet him.
Air Brake. Now.
Fire erupted from his palms, superheating the air beneath him in a single explosive burst. The thermal expansion slowed his descent—not enough, never quite enough—and he hit the cobblestones in a roll that drove the breath from his lungs.
But he was down. He was out. He was free.
The word tasted strange. Free. As if freedom meant anything when your blood was killing you, when assassins hunted you across continents, when everyone you loved was an ocean away.
Move. Don't stop. The coast road leads east. Lose yourself in the flatlands before dawn.
Jon pushed himself to his feet. His muscles were burning. His hands were numb—both of them now, the cold spreading up past his wrists, the blue-black veins pulsing with a rhythm that had nothing to do with his heart. The phantom cold had settled into his chest like a weight, and when he coughed, he tasted copper.
But he moved.
Through the sleeping streets of Pentos, where cats watched from windowsills and rats scattered before his footsteps. Past the closed shops and darkened windows, past temples and taverns and houses where people slept peacefully, never knowing what had passed in the night. The city gave way to farmland, farmland to grassland, and grassland to the flat, empty plains that stretched toward the rising sun.
He was alone now. Truly alone. No ship, no captain, no Meera Reed to tend his wounds. Just the road ahead and the war in his blood and the memory of violet eyes that had looked at him like he mattered.
Daenerys. His aunt. The thought was strange—stranger still that she was the first family he had met who didn't want to use him, didn't fear him, and didn't look at him like a monster or a weapon. She had looked at him like a person. Like someone who might understand what it meant to be lost.
He would come back for her. Someday. When he had learned to control what he was, when he could protect instead of destroy. He would come back.
Good. Marcus's voice held something that might have been satisfaction. Now we are mobile. Now we hunt.
Jon turned his back on the golden lights of Pentos and walked into the dark. Steam rose from his shoulders in the cool night air—fire venting, ice spreading, the war continuing even as his body carried him east.
Behind him, the gilded cage stood empty.
Ahead, the wheel turned on.