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Essos, Vaes Dothrak
1st Moon of 58 AC
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The air in the upper halls of the Palace of Vaes Dothrak did not smell of the Great Sea's dry grass, nor of the distant sulfur that still seemed to linger in the sky after the king's departure. Caspian had just risen into the clouds aboard Endaxia. His silhouette had barely faded into the southern horizon, leaving behind a dense, echoing silence charged with the invisible omen that the great city of Qarth would burn to the ground before nightfall.
In the palace's north tower, however, the world seemed to have halted in a cold, indifferent space.
There, in the highest chamber furnished with the sober opulence that the Great Khal and monarch reserved for those under his direct protection, time chose not to advance on the backs of dragons nor at the gallop of thirty thousand riders. Exactly seven days had passed since the attack in Caspian's chamber had cleared; seven days since the blades of the Sorrowful Men had attempted to claim the Great Khal's life and blood had stained the marble walkways. The entire Palace was teeming with servants, guards, and warriors, but in this room in particular, only twilight reigned.
And in the midst of that twilight lay Amanda.
Not on the wide canopy bed, whose fine linen sheets remained stretched and intact as if no one had ever touched them, but below, on the bare stone floor, cornered beside the arched window that overlooked the majestic city growing beneath the palace.
She sat with her knees pulled tight against her chest, wrapping her arms around pale, slender legs that trembled faintly from lack of nourishment. Her gaze was fixed on nothingness, lost through the glass toward the rooftops and thoroughfares of the city below. It was a dull, gray look, devoid of the slightest spark of life; a look that sought nothing, expected nothing, and seemed to have surrendered the very effort of blinking. She was trapped in a deep apathy, lacking both the spirit and the strength to exist.
On the oak table, a few paces away from her, rested a tray that the servant girls had replaced twice during the day. A bowl of lamb broth that had already formed a film of whitish fat on its surface, two slices of bread that had hardened, and a pitcher of untouched water. Amanda had not taken a single bite. She had not even turned her head when the women entered to clean.
The witches of the order had warned Valka that very afternoon in the lower corridors: "She has gone two whole days without eating or drinking. If she continues like this, she will die on the floor before the king returns from his hunt."
It was just at sunset when the chamber's heavy oak and iron door glided open on its hinges. There was no sharp knock nor creak from the door; Queen Valka never announced her arrival, a trait that defined her.
The sovereign moved into the room with that almost unnatural lightness that characterized her. She did not walk with the heaviness of the Dothraki guards nor with the somewhat nervous haste of the palace servants. She wore her usual dark, royal robes, fitted to her body with straps of tanned leather, and the scent of beeswax and pine that always accompanied her seemed to seep into the room, drowning out the stench of confinement and stale food.
She stopped a few paces from the threshold. Her dark eyes, usually cold, distant, and inaccessible to any inhabitant of the palace who was not Caspian, swept across every corner. They took in the untouched tray, the unused bed, and the girl's hunched posture.
As a rule, Valka treated the rest of the world with the relentless distance of a monarch and the detachment of her condition as a witch. To her, men were fleeting shadows born to bleed and rot in the earth while the realm and magic marched on. However, Amanda was not just another soldier nor a diplomat from the Free Cities. Amanda was someone Caspian truly cared for. Valka knew this. And for that reason alone, despite her rank as queen and her reserved nature, Valka was willing to extend a patience and closeness she would never have granted to any other subject or soul.
She walked slowly toward the window. The dry click of her boots on the marble broke the room's silence. Amanda, noticing the royal presence, blinked slowly and bowed her head, lowering her gaze with the automatic deference she owed the Great Khal's wife, even in the midst of her misery.
Valka came to a halt right beside her. She leaned a shoulder against the window's stone frame, crossed her arms over her chest, and directed her gaze toward the city.
"That broth doesn't even smell like meat anymore," Valka said. Her voice was not that of a queen passing sentence, but unhurried, slipping out with an almost casual frankness. "It's just fat clinging to the clayware. And the fruit on the tray will end up breeding worms before you even think to lift a finger."
Amanda kept her head bowed, her brows furrowed with exhaustion. Her lips, dry and cracked from dehydration, trembled as she answered.
"Forgive me, Your Majesty..." the girl whispered. Her voice came out raspy and weak, yet laden with proper deference toward the queen. "But I beg of you... leave me alone. I have no strength left."
"I could do that," Valka replied calmly, without moving from the wall. "I could turn around, close the door, and let you wither here like rotten fruit. No one in this Palace will care enough to force you. Except Caspian, of course. And the king isn't here. He just flew toward Qarth. You know why he went, don't you? He went to burn every miserable soul who had anything to do with what happened days ago."
Amanda closed her eyes tightly. Tears, pooled behind her eyelids for hours, threatened to spill over.
"I don't understand how you can keep going..." Amanda whispered, pressing her knees tighter against her chest without daring to raise her voice before the sovereign. "I don't have your strength, my Queen. You are different... you are invulnerable. A queen, a witch... someone whom none of this seems to break."
Valka did not uncross her arms. She let out a dry, quiet laugh—a brief sound that seemed to get lost in the vastness of the tower.
"Invulnerable," Valka repeated slowly, savoring the word. "That's the easiest word to use when looking at a queen or a creature like me from afar. But you're wrong about something, Amanda. No one is born invulnerable. This condition of mine isn't a gift from the gods or a royal privilege. It's a rotten scar that never stops bleeding, no matter how many years pass or how many crowns they put on my head."
Valka slid slowly down the window frame until she sat on the floor, less than three feet from the girl. She bent one leg, rested her elbow on her knee, and settled in, shedding for a moment the formal distance of the throne to speak to her as an equal.
"Until I was nine years old," Valka began, fixing her dark eyes on the ceiling beams, "my world was nothing more than a peasant's miserable hut. My family wasn't poor, Amanda. My father was the village chief, a respected, strong man with lands and authority over all the villagers in the valley. In my home, there was never a lack of bread or wine, and my mother wore fine fabrics brought by traveling merchants. We were a prosperous and deeply united family. I had my twin brother... we were identical, you know? Except he spent his time smiling at any little thing while I preferred to stay and listen to the wind through the trees. We had everything for a good life."
Amanda kept her gaze lowered, but her breathing quickened slightly. She listened to every word from the queen with absolute devotion and attention.
"But misfortune in this world doesn't care whether you are the village chief's daughter or a beggar on the street," Valka continued, her voice dropping an octave, becoming as dense as the shadow beginning to drape over the room. "Tragedy struck my family in a single day. My father had taken his men and part of the family toward the edges of the forest to fell trees. Hardwood was needed for winter buildings. The axe echoed throughout the valley. I was there, sitting by a campfire with my family... when suddenly, the forest fell dead silent."
Valka paused for a long moment. She ran a hand along the fabric of her sleeve, clenching her fist tightly.
"The wolves," Valka said. "As large as the ones the Khal keeps as pets, they burst from the thicket like hungry shadows—monstrous, ferocious—ambushing the men amid the crunch of fallen timber. Within minutes, everything turned into a slaughterhouse. I could hear the hunters' screams, the snapping of bones, and blood splashing upon the snow. My father fought with his axe, but they dragged him down. I watched my family fall one by one beneath the beasts' fangs."
Amanda let out a faint gasp of air and raised her eyes to the queen, shaken by the confession.
"I hid by falling down a ravine, terrified, listening to the growls of the beasts devouring everything," Valka continued. "When the wolves finally left and silence returned to the forest, I crawled out. The smell of iron and torn flesh made my stomach turn. I searched frantically for my brother in the darkness... and when I found him, the shock shattered what was left of my mind. My twin brother was dead. His eyes were wide open, fixed on the treetops—cold, destroyed. And at that exact moment, clinging to his lifeless body, something inside me snapped."
Valka looked Amanda straight in the eye.
"It wasn't a long process, Amanda. Magic didn't wait for years. The mind of a nine-year-old girl broke before such horror, and when I emerged from that trance of agony, I woke up already a witch. Magic erupted from my death and trauma. The reality around me altered right then and there; my blood changed, and I ceased to be an ordinary human before I could even understand it. It was right there, as I lay freezing among my family's corpses, surrounded by the darkness that was beginning to seep from my own hands, that Micaela found me."
"The old witch... found you right there?" Amanda asked in a respectful thread of a voice. She knew whom Valka meant: Micaela, the most powerful witch of all, even more powerful than the queen herself.
"Micaela was roaming those woods," Valka nodded. "She felt the burst of power from a child who had just awakened to witchcraft in the middle of a slaughterhouse. She picked me up from the snow, pulled me out from the ruins of my life, and taught me to control the rot and the power that had awoken in me that morning. My family had died under the wolves, my people would have feared me like a demon, and I was already a witch before I even learned to defend myself."
Valka stood up in a slow, fluid motion, placing herself directly between Amanda and the window's light.
"Do you want to know what lies beneath the skin of this woman who wears the crown, Amanda?" Valka asked with absolute coldness. "Do you want to see the true face of the queen you are asking to let you die? Look at me."
Before Amanda could avert her eyes, Valka's face began to contort.
It was no trick of shadows nor a subtle shift. It was a grotesque, hideous transformation. The queen's smooth, pale skin twisted, turning yellowish, dry, and leathery like rotten hide. Dark warts and black veins sprouted, pulsing visibly beneath her epidermis. Her cheekbones caved in with a dull crunch, sinking her eyes deep into two cavernous, dark sockets. Her nose elongated and hooked downward into a misshapen beak, while her lips pulled violently back, exposing jagged, rotten, and razor-sharp teeth.
Amanda gasped in terror. She scrambled backward with her feet, dragging herself across the floor until her back hit the wall beneath the window frame. She covered her mouth with both hands, hyperventilating, her eyes wide with shock. The tears she had been holding back for two days finally burst across her face, streaming down her cheeks in torrents, yet without losing the composure to remain respectful toward the imposing figure before her.
Valka held that monstrous appearance for a few agonizing seconds. Then, with the same unyielding slowness, the bones crunched back into place, the dark veins reabsorbed, her skin tightened, and the queen's pale, expressionless majesty returned, as serene as though nothing had occurred.
Amanda's weeping echoed through the chamber. She curled up on the floor, trembling from head to toe as she wiped her tears away.
Valka sat beside her once more, maintaining her composure.
"Grief could have killed me," Valka said, breaking the silence. "In the years following the tragedy, I threw myself from a cliff into a frozen river. I wanted the rocks to shatter my head. I wanted the cold to dry up my heart. But life wouldn't let me die. A witch does not die easily. We are doomed to watch kingdoms rise and turn to ash. But one day, I grew tired of crying. I decided that if I was going to stay in this world, I was going to fight to live well. I decided I wouldn't let myself be carried away by the horrors of the past, but by what I had always wanted to be."
Amanda dragged her hand across her face, wiping her nose, listening to every word with profound reverence.
"And what was it... that you desired, my Queen?" the girl asked, her voice broken yet submissive.
Valka looked through the window toward the horizon, an unusual softness softening her dark eyes.
"Bees," Valka said. "Keeping bees and growing oranges. I wanted a home where the earth smelled sweet in the mornings, where I could watch the trees blossom and eat fresh honey without anyone bothering me. And now, thanks to Caspian, I have it. He built a space for me in the fortress himself. I harvest my own honey, tend to my orange trees, and spend my afternoons listening to the hum of the hives. Caspian gave me that peace. He gave me the crown and the place where I can simply be Valka."
The queen's voice turned as hard as steel.
"But I will tell you something, Amanda. I am willing to become the most ruthless and bloody creature on this continent to make sure no one shatters that peace. If anyone tries to touch Caspian, or if anyone tries to destroy what we've built, I will tear them all apart. The ones responsible for the treason in this palace are burning this very instant. That is how the world works. If you don't learn to stand on your own two feet, no one will do it for you."
Silence settled back over the chamber. The sovereign's words struck Amanda's chest like a spear. She looked at Valka: she saw the queen of Xandar, a woman who had awakened as a witch over the corpses of her own family slaughtered by wolves, and who had nevertheless taken control of her life and realm.
Something shifted in the young woman's eyes. The emptiness and weakness dissolved, replaced by a spark of resolve.
Amanda slowly pushed herself up. Her legs wobbled, but she forced herself to stand tall before her queen. She walked with unsteady steps toward the oak table. She took the water pitcher in both hands and drank in deep gulps. Then, she took one of the hardened slices of bread and began to eat it fiercely, chewing hard, swallowing every bite to reclaim her lost strength.
Valka watched her, silently approving of the girl's determination.
When she finished swallowing, Amanda wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and bowed slightly to Valka with absolute respect.
"I don't ever want to be weak again, Your Majesty," Amanda said, her voice steady and filled with deference. "I don't want to be the fool who stays collapsed in a corner waiting to be saved."
She looked the queen dead in the eye. "I ask for your help," Amanda said. "I beg you to teach me how to be strong like you. Teach me... turn me into a witch, my Queen. If I have to become a monster to protect my life, do it."
Valka looked at her with understanding, but shook her head slowly.
"That is not possible, Amanda," Valka answered plainly. "Witchcraft is not a lesson to be learned nor a favor I can bestow upon you. As I told you: I awoke as a witch through a fracture in my soul that nearly destroyed me. If I tried to force magic into your blood, you would go mad and die in the attempt. Your blood is clean, and you should thank the gods for it."
Amanda clenched her fists at her sides, keeping her tone respectful. "There must be a way, Your Majesty..." the girl pleaded. "I cannot remain a helpless burden."
Valka studied her for a few moments. Seeing that resolve in Amanda led the queen to make a decision. "I cannot make you a witch," Valka said, standing up. "But I will take you to someone who can teach you how to defend yourself against any threat."
"To whom, my Queen?"
"Micaela," Valka said. "The same old witch who found me in the woods when I was nothing more than a terrified child after my family's slaughter. She lives in Xandar, in the sacred shadows of the Red Temple. Micaela will not grant you magic, Amanda. She cannot. But she will teach you the use of poisons that kill without a trace, the alchemy of herbs, the handling of a blade in the shadows, and the cunning to smell out treason. She will teach you to be so dangerous that no man in this palace will ever lay a hand on you again."
Amanda took a deep breath and bowed her head. "When do we leave for Xandar?" she asked without hesitation.
"As soon as you fully regain your strength," Valka replied, heading toward the doorway. "She is not a kind woman, and the vaults of the Red Temple are not for the faint of heart. She will make you bleed sweat and tears. If you come with me to find her, you will leave all comforts behind. But when you are done with her... you will never bow your head to anyone who tries to harm you again."
Amanda looked at the tray, looked out at the horizon, and then fixed her gaze on the queen. "I will go with you to the Red Temple, Your Majesty," Amanda said with absolute conviction. "I am ready for whatever comes."
Valka paused at the doorframe. She turned slightly and gave the young woman a subtle, respectful nod.
"Good," Valka said. "Finish eating and drink all the water. Tomorrow we begin the journey. And brace yourself, Amanda, because the path you have chosen will show no mercy, but you will emerge stronger than ever."