Just stared at her, blankly. The kind of look a father gives a child who just touched something they were told not to.
The kind of stare that said: You really shouldn't have done that.
A long, cold silence followed.
Even the readers were watching now, probably shaking their heads in collective disappointment.
They all knew what came next.
Daenerys.... Was fucked.
Thud
Daenerys, who just moments ago looked like a brave knight with a budget shining sword, also known as a half-drunk wine bottle, now looked like a scared little cat caught in the wrong alley by dogs.
Her posture stiffened the second Viserys took a step forward.
THUD
The sound of his boot hitting the marble floor echoed louder than it should have. Her entire body jerked because of the echoed noise.
She was already sweating so much that the bottle would've slipped out of her tiny barbarian-looking hands if she didn't grip it like her life depended on it.
And in this case, my noble senators.....
It did.
It most certainly did.
"You…" Viserys said, locking eyes with her, face colder than a corpse left in the snow.
His tone wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. Every syllable carried an aura so high it made Daenerys feel weak in her knees.
"You remind me of a saying I heard once."
He took another slow, deliberate step forward.
The silence in the room grew heavier with each movement. Daenerys looked like she was frozen in time, stuck between fight and flight, her eyes wide, her lips trembling, her chest rising and falling way too fast now.
From the outside, she might have looked like someone trying to be brave, but anyone with a working brain could see what she actually was.....
She was scared.
And in short, put plainly for all to understand…
She was just like a bratty, cowardly child who, in a moment of bold stupidity and anger, dared to yell back at her father in a burst of fake courage, and now stood shaking, waiting for the consequences.
A child who couldn't even raise her voice normally, now regretting every second of that loud outburst.
Terrifying, isn't it?
Step
Step
Viserys was now only five steps away. He stopped. His gaze didn't waver. Not a blink. Just a solid, dead stare into her soul.
"There is a limit to this world…" he said, his voice as still as a pond just before a storm.
"…but not a limit to stupidity."
Those words hit harder than any slap. And he didn't even raise his tone. It was calm. Flat. Disappointed, even.
The kind of disappointment that said "I've got entire civilizations to rebuild and here I am, wasting time with you, barbarus."
Daenerys' grip on the bottle shook harder now. Her lips parted like she might speak, but no sound came out.
Because deep down…
All that fake courage was...
GONE!
"Put some pressure on your knees, Dany." Viserys' voice came out soft. Too soft. Suspiciously soft.
His expression shifted as well, gone was the cold mockery, replaced now by something that almost looked… kind. Maybe even brotherly.
The sort of look a parent gives when they're this close to snapping but still trying to act like a decent human for the sake of appearances.
"Why do you think these people were dancing here, naked, with good wine, with whores, listening to good music?"
Another step forward.
His voice was slow and controlled, laced with the sort of calm that only makes people more terrified. The way he said it, like it was the most obvious question in the world, turned the whole situation into a twisted little classroom.
He wasn't threatening her.
Not right now.
He was teaching her.
Like an elder brother who had spent the last four hours trying to teach his idiot sister the table of 2, now asking for the 20th time, "What's 2 multiplied by 2?"With that look in his eyes that screamed:
"Please, for the love of all gods, get it right this time."
Daenerys' blank eyes flickered.A short circuit.
Like her brain, which had been actively dying in her kneecaps for the past few minutes, suddenly sparked back to life for just a second.
Even the dumbest creature alive would've gotten it by now.And she wasn't the dumbest… right?
Slaves.
Dancing.
Naked.
With wine.
With whores.
In their master's house.
And oh look, hose same masters just so happened to suffer assassination attempts a few hours later. What a "coincidence," huh?
Daenerys didn't even need to connect the dots. The damn dots were already connected, lit up with neon signs, and screaming, "CONSPIRACY!"
Even if she were the stupidest human in existence, and that was still up for debate at the moment, she would've figured it out.Because it wasn't a mystery. It was a stage play.
This wasn't about the slaves. This wasn't about the wine, or the whores, or the music.It was about treachery, planned down to the last orgasm.
And for Daenerys, standing there like a bratty child who just realized she slapped her strict father in front of the whole family… it was utterly terrifying.
"B-Broth—" Daenerys' voice trembled, fragile and uneven, like a small tree bending in a fierce wind.
The weight of her mistake hit her hard, and her whole body shook with fear, as if every thought was crashing down on her — what would happen now, what punishment awaited.
"ACH!"
Before she could finish, Viserys' strong hand snapped around her wrist, yanking her close with a sudden, sharp pull. Her heart slammed wildly against her ribs, fast and panicked like a rabbit caught in a trap.
She was so close to him now, just inches from his cold, sharp features. Her eyes locked onto his, searching for something, but then she realized he wasn't looking at her at all.
His gaze was fixed, hard and alert, toward the entrance of the hall.
WHOSSH!
Without warning, a massive, burning rock soared through the air, crashing down where Daenerys had just stood. The impact sent a deep crack spreading across the stone wall, chunks falling loose while the fiery ball remained lodged, glowing hot and fierce, smoke curling from its edges.
"W-Wh…" Daenerys' voice faltered, barely a whisper as her mind struggled to catch up to the sudden explosion that had shattered the tense silence.
Soon...
Someone didn't walk in. Someone stormed through the hall's entrance like a creature loosed from some cursed pit.
Easily over six and a half feet tall, his frame was thick with muscle, the kind earned from dragging bodies and breaking bones, not training. His skin was a raw, leathery brown, slick with sweat that ran down his chest in rivulets.
No armor. No shirt. Just a pair of torn, dirt-crusted trousers hanging off his hips. His torso was bare, veins bulging, twitching under the surface like worms beneath taut leather.
His face... a grotesque blend of man and beast. Flattened nose, flared nostrils, wide-set eyes bloodshot and unblinking. His jaw jutted forward unnaturally, teeth clenched tight and yellow. He looked like something that had been born wrong and then trained to kill.
In his right hand, he held a sword—if it could still be called that. The blade was engulfed in flame, fire crawling along the steel like it was hungry for blood. The heat warped the air around it, casting flickering shadows that danced across the stone walls.
He stopped just inside the hall, shoulders rising and falling with labored breaths, sweat dripping to the floor like rain.
His eyes locked with Viserys, and in that instant, the hall fell silent.
He spared Daenerys a single glance, brief, impersonal, more like a butcher judging a lamb, before his gaze snapped back to her brother, fixing on him with the intensity of a starving animal that had just scented meat.
Viserys moved first. Slow, cautious, like a man reaching for a dagger while staring down a bear. His hand darted toward Daenerys, fingers wrapping around the neck of the wine bottle she'd been holding.
She didn't even flinch.
Her hand had gone slack, nerves fried, body paralyzed by the presence of the thing standing before them. She didn't notice the bottle was no longer hers. She didn't notice much of anything.
The beast-man's lips curled.
"HERETIC!"
The word exploded from his chest like a catapult shot, echoing off the stone, louder than the eunuch's scream when his fingers had been shattered earlier that day. Spittle flew from his mouth. Rage twisted his features until he looked less like a man and more like a demon given shape.
Viserys didn't flinch, but his grip loosened.
He turned to Daenerys, barely more than a whisper in his voice. "Grab something."
Then he shoved her, hard.
She stumbled back, nearly falling over her own feet. At the same moment, the wild pig charged, flame trailing behind his sword like a comet's tail.