“You killed my father.”

Daenerys spoke calmly, regarding her prisoner with more interest than animosity. All her life, growing up in exile, she had heard the stories of the Lannisters who had slaughtered almost all of her family. She had heard of the tyrannical patriarch, Tywin, and his cold, cruel daughter Cersei, who now sat the Iron Throne…Dany’s throne. The youngest son, Tyrion, had been described as a depraved, drunken lecher. He did like his drink, but the rest had been proven false, and Dany had come to appreciate him as her trusted advisor. But no Lannister had loomed larger in her imagination than the disheveled, blond man who now sat before her in chains. Jaime. Knight of the Kingsguard. Kingslayer.

“And I would do it again,” Jaime said weakly but clearly, his deep blue eyes meeting her gaze.

He was still recovering from the trauma of the battle, undoubtedly the worst he had ever experienced in his storied career of combat. He had witnessed the hideous glory of dragonfire, something not seen in Westeros in a thousand years. He had watched his men, good men, burnt alive where they stood. He had smelled their scorched flesh. He had watched the great beast fall down from the sky but still live, its scales heaving, wings beating with enough force to crush twenty men at once.

In a moment of delirious insanity, even for him, he had ridden full tilt towards the dragon and its queen. Time had slowed in that instant and as he charged, Jaime’s world, his whole existence, telescoped to the slight woman in front of him, her bright silver hair laden with small bells falling down her back, and the solid roiling mass of black scales behind her. At the last moment, Daenerys had whipped around to face Jaime. He had met her violet eyes, full of shock and fury…her father’s eyes…just as the Mad King’s eyes had looked when Jaime drove his sword into his heart twenty years ago. Then a blinding, searing flash and then darkness…silence.

In the space of seconds, Jaime had cheated death first by fire, then by water. He was unconscious when he was fished out of the lake, but he had pieced together the details of his survival as he bounced along in the back of a wagon under heavy guard on his way to a fairly uncomfortable captivity at Dragonstone.

Now, in the rough rock-walled dungeon, slick with sea spray and smelling of salt, he shifted the chains keeping his left hand and his handless right wrist clamped together.

“I know what my father was. I know what he did. And I know what he was planning to do. I saw what I imagine was the same…madness…in Viserys.” Daenerys recalled the last chaotic moments of her sadistic brother’s life. Viserys raising his dagger to her, Drogo’s terrible wrath…and then watching her brother die in agony. Daenerys had felt nothing but relief.

The firelight of the torches danced over Jaime’s features as he squinted up at her. “And I suppose you do not see it in yourself?”

Daenerys stepped closer. “I could have burnt King’s Landing to the ground ten times over by now. Yet the capital stands. It stands despite the fact that within its walls, your sister sits the Iron Throne, to which she has no claim or right. And that monstrous pet of your father’s, who raped and murdered my sister-in-law and slaughtered my niece and nephew, still draws breath within the Red Keep.” She paused. “I do not lay waste to innocents. You saw what my father did to the Starks, didn’t you? You were there. If I were like my father, do you honestly think we would be having this conversation?”

Jaime tightened his jaw. He knew it was true. The Mad King would have killed him days ago. Probably in a highly creative and grotesque manner.

“You may be a sane Targaryen,” he conceded, “but that doesn’t make you the rightful queen.”

“Actually, it does.” Daenerys snapped. “And Cersei is a usurper.”

Jaime tensed at another mention of his sister. The surf pounded on the cliffs outside, echoing the blood pounding in his aching head. “You’re very sure of everything, aren’t you? What’s right, what’s wrong…who’s the queen, who’s the usurper…across the Narrow Seas you became famous for liberating peoples. Thus far, in Westeros, you are infamous for incinerating them. Of course, you wrought destruction abroad, too, but it was merely to defend the good and punish the wicked, wasn’t it? All very easy and satisfying…as long as you know which is which.” He laughed harshly. “If you are truly sane, then you must admit, at least to yourself…that no one knows.” He leaned forward and whispered, “Good and evil are mutable. Love and fear are our only certainties.”

Daenerys flinched slightly as his eyes bore into hers, and his words settled uncomfortably around her.

“I love my sister,” he continued softly, “as much as you love your people.

Daenerys smiled calmly. “And you fear Cersei becoming your father, as much as you fear me becoming mine.”

Now Jaime flinched.

“You killed my father,” she repeated. “But you could not kill me.”

Her receding steps echoed outside his cell. Lungs still aching from the lake, Jaime breathed as deeply as he could. He leaned his head against the wall behind him and closed his eyes.

A moment later, the grate in the floor scraped across the stone and Jaime heard his brother calling his name.