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"There are empty rooms in the temple," Limpick said. "Terys won't turn you away."
Viserys looked at him, purple eyes narrowing. Limpick could see the thoughts turning behind them — Why is this red priest helping us? Is this a trap? Is someone setting us up? But an empty stomach outweighed suspicion. Viserys swallowed hard.
"Why?" he asked.
Limpick met his eyes, then looked at Daenerys. There was no suspicion in her gaze, no wariness — just that same quiet intensity. She was trying to understand again. She didn't know why he was helping them, but she didn't assume it was for anything bad. She simply wanted the reason.
"I saw you in the flames," Limpick said. It wasn't entirely true, but it wasn't entirely false either. He had seen things in the fire — blue passages, distant images of the sea, ships, silver hair and purple eyes. He wasn't sure they were Viserys and Daenerys, but Melisandre had always said the flames didn't lie. People just sometimes misread the signs. "The Lord of Light said you would come."
Something lit up in Viserys's eyes — not gratitude, but calculation. He had heard the words Lord of Light. His mind was already spinning. A red priest had seen him in the flames. That meant he mattered. That meant the god was watching him. That meant he could use this when he spoke to the temple again. His chin rose. His back straightened. His fingers stopped shaking. He was the Beggar King once more — even with not a single copper in his pocket, he still believed he was better than everyone else.
Daenerys didn't look at her brother. She kept her eyes on Limpick. Those deep purple eyes were like two pools of dark water — impossible to see the bottom. She knew he was lying. Not lying exactly, but not telling the full truth. He had seen something in the flames, but it wasn't necessarily Viserys. Maybe it was himself. Maybe it was her. Maybe something else. But when he said "The Lord of Light said you would come," his eyes didn't look away and his voice didn't waver. He believed what he was saying, even if it wasn't completely true.
"Fine," Viserys said. "We'll stay."
Limpick led them across the square, past the big tree, and into the Red Temple. Terys was out again — he wouldn't return until evening. Limpick took them to the back rooms and opened a door. The room was small but clean: two beds, a table, a chair, a wardrobe. The sheets were white and neatly folded. The window was open, looking out over the tree in the courtyard. Viserys stepped inside, stood in the middle, and looked around. Then he walked to the window and stared out, one hand resting on the sill, fingers spread like he was touching something he hadn't felt in a long time — wood, sunlight, something clean and his own.
Daenerys didn't come in. She stayed in the doorway, leaning against the frame, watching Limpick.
"Why are you helping us?" she asked. Her voice was soft, but not afraid. She had already asked once. Viserys had already asked. She had heard the answer. But she wanted to hear it again — in her own way, from him, in a different way.
"I grew up in Riverrun," Limpick said. "In the slums against the city wall. Lived in a shack made of rotten planks and old felt. When it rained, it came in harder outside than inside. When it didn't rain, rats ran across my face. I never had a full meal until I was eighteen. Every morning the first thing I did was check if there was still bread left from the day before."
Daenerys watched him and said nothing.
"One day I stepped on a rat," Limpick continued. "Just an ordinary gray rat. I almost crushed it. It dragged itself toward the wall with a broken back leg. I looked at it and thought — it's just like me. Skinny. Filthy. Half-dead. Nobody cares. But it kept moving. Kept dragging itself under the wall, looking for somewhere to hide. Somewhere to stay alive." He paused. He didn't know how to explain the rest. He couldn't tell her that the rat had become a dragon, that the dragon had been torn away by a storm, that he had stood on the docks in Pentos staring east for twenty days and seen nothing. So he gave her what she could understand. "That rat followed me for a long time. From Riverrun to Harrenhal. From Harrenhal to King's Landing. From King's Landing to Dragonstone. It stayed with me no matter where I went. Then it left. The wind took it. I don't know where it is now. But sometimes I feel like it's still out there somewhere… waiting for me."
Daenerys looked at him. Something moved in her purple eyes — not light, not tears. Understanding. She didn't fully grasp the words — the story jumped around, rats and wind and strange places — but she understood what he wasn't saying. He had come from nothing, just like her. He had crawled up from the mud one step at a time, holding onto a rat, a piece of bread, a single thought. She knew that feeling. She had been carried out of Dragonstone in a blanket as a baby and had spent every day since then moving from one city to the next, from one person's roof to another, always taking charity, always eating someone else's bread. She knew the feeling — not hunger, not cold, but the quiet knowledge that you might not last much longer, yet you still couldn't stop moving.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Limpick."
"Limpick," she repeated, rolling the r the way her brother did, but softer, gentler, like she was speaking to someone she had known a long time. "I'm Daenerys. Daenerys Targaryen."
"I know."
She looked at him and her purple eyes brightened for a second. Then she lowered her head, reached inside her robe, and pulled out the half-piece of black bread she had saved. She broke off a small piece, put it in her mouth, and chewed slowly for a long time before swallowing. When she looked up again, the corner of her mouth lifted — not quite a smile, something fainter, lighter, like a single crack across thin ice that hadn't quite broken yet.
"I can recite prayers," she said. "My nursemaid taught me when I was little. The prayers of the Seven. I've never said the ones for the Lord of Light, but I can learn."