The first rays of morning sunlight passed through the colored glass of the arched window, casting dappled light and shadow across the Myrish carpet.
Daenerys woke.
She lay on an impossibly soft velvet mattress, staring at the domed ceiling painted with stars and sailing ships. For a long while, she remained dazed. Only then did she slowly turn her head and look around the room.
It was enormous.
Larger than any "guest room" she remembered, and... different.
An exquisite Myrish carpet stretched from the bed to the walls, its intricate colors sumptuous, its pile swallowing every footfall.
Dark red velvet covered the walls, which were hung with old paintings of hunts and sea battles. In one corner, a bookcase reached all the way to the ceiling, filled with leather-bound volumes.
In another stood ivory carvings from the Summer Isles. On the small table beside them, a ruby-studded golden goblet still held some of the sweet wine a maid had poured for her last night. She had taken only a small sip.
Fragments of memory surged up unbidden.
In the first years of their exile, when the Targaryen name still carried some weight across the Narrow Sea, the governors and wealthy merchants of the Free Cities had indeed been willing to welcome her and her brother generously and treat them well.
She had stayed in rooms like this, worn beautiful dresses, and eaten with silver cutlery.
But all of it had been wrapped in an invisible film... the fragile dignity of charity, liable to be withdrawn at any moment.
She could sense the disdain beneath the servants' deference, see the perfunctory warmth in the governors' wives' smiles, hear the whispers outside the door about the Beggar King and his sister.
Those supposedly dignified years had been as unreal as soap bubbles