The first thing Daenery felt was the silence. It was not the heavy, watchful silence of the shack, where every creak of the floorboards was a warning of an approaching shadow or a precursor to a blow. This was a soft, thick quiet that felt like a physical weight against her ears. She lay perfectly still, her eyes closed, waiting for the familiar, biting damp of the marsh to seep through her blanket and settle into her joints. She waited for the smell of rot and the sound of Tharic’s heavy boots on the porch.
But the cold never came. Instead, there was a steady, dry heat that smelled of obsidian and winter air. It was Kael's scent, an intoxicating blend of stone and frost that seemed to have woven itself into the very fabric of the room. The smell wrapped around her like a protective barri
