Illyrio Mopatis was fatter than Aelya remembered, and exactly as dangerous.

They returned to Pentos in the spring of their fifteenth year, and the magister received them in his garden beneath a fig tree, with honeyed figs on a silver plate and a smile that did not reach his small bright eyes. Viserys stood behind him, thinner than before, his hair grown long and lank.

"The princesses return," Illyrio said, spreading his ringed hands. "And grown so beautiful. Like your mother, both of you. Like the silver queens of old."

Aelya smiled at him the way she had practiced in a dozen polished mirrors. "You are too kind, Magister."

"Sit, sit. Eat. Your brother and I have such news."

The news, of course, was the khal. Aelya had known it was coming — had prepared for it, had lain awake in the galley home turning the problem over in her hands like a puzzle box — and still, hearing Viserys say his name aloud, hearing him speak of Dany as though she were a mare to be sold, something cold and bright lit up inside her chest.

She waited until Illyrio had withdrawn. She waited until the servants had gone. She waited until Viserys was alone in his chamber with a cup of Pentoshi wine, and then she closed the door behind her very quietly and turned the key.

"Brother," she said. "We need to speak."

She had thought, for years, about how to do this.

She had thought about poison. She had the knowledge; she knew which of the apothecaries in the lower city sold tears of Lys and which sold only counterfeits. She had thought about an accident — a fall from a horse, a slip on a stair. She had thought about simply paying a bravo, of which Pentos had no shortage.

In the end she did it herself. It felt important to do it herself.

"You mean to sell her," Aelya said.

Viserys laughed, already deep in his cup. "Sell her. What a word. I mean to wed her, sister, to a man with forty thousand screamers at his back, and when he has given me my crown I shall —"

"You shall do nothing. Because she will not go."

Viserys looked up. His eyes narrowed. "What did you say to me?"

"I said she will not go." Aelya stepped closer. Her voice was very level. "And neither will I. And neither, brother, will you. Not to the Dothraki. Not to Westeros. Not anywhere. Your part in this is finished."

He rose. He was taller than her by a head and he was already swinging as he came, a backhand that would have split her lip had it landed — but Aelya had been waiting for it for a decade, and she stepped inside the blow the way the Braavosi water-dancer in Volantis had shown her for three stolen coppers a lesson, and she drove the little knife Willem had given her up under his ribs with both hands.

Viserys's eyes went very wide.

"Aelya," he said. He sounded, for the first time in years, like a boy. "Aelya, I —"

"I know," she said. She did not look away. She had promised herself she would not look away. "I know, brother. Shh. It's all right. Go to sleep."

She held him as he went down. He was lighter than she had expected. His hair smelled, faintly, of the lemon soap Willem had used to wash them both when they were small, and for one shocking instant Aelya almost broke — almost sobbed into the crown of her brother's head for the boy he had been before Westeros and exile and madness had hollowed him out.

She did not break.

She lowered him to the carpet. She cleaned the knife on his sleeve. She arranged him on his side, as though he had fallen asleep drunk, and she left the wine cup tipped beside his hand.

Then she walked out into the garden and found her sister under the fig tree, and said: "Dany. We need to leave tonight."

Dany did not ask, at first, what had happened. She looked at Aelya's face and she simply stood and went to pack.

It was only later, on the road south toward the coast with Illyrio's best pair of horses stolen from his own stables and the three eggs wrapped in a saddlebag between them, that Daenerys said, very quietly:

"Is he dead?"

"Yes."

"Did he suffer?"

"No. I don't think so. It was quick."

Dany rode in silence for a long time. The moon was up. The road was white.

"Good," she said at last. Her voice did not shake. "He hit you, Aelya. For years. I saw. I saw and I could not stop him and I hated him for it. I have hated him for it every day. I — I am glad. I should not say it, but I am glad."

Aelya reached across the space between their horses and found her sister's hand.

"Say it," she said. "Say it where only I can hear. You never have to hide from me, Dany. Not ever. Not in anything."

Dany's fingers tightened around hers.

"I am glad he is dead," Daenerys Targaryen said into the Pentoshi night. "And I love you. And I am not afraid anymore."

Aelya's throat closed up. She could not, for a moment, answer.

The three eggs rode between them in the saddlebag, warm against the leather, and somewhere far to the east the stars were turning, and she was fifteen years old and a kinslayer and free.

They reached the coast by dawn. Aelya had booked passage, under false names, three weeks before.

The ship was called Lemonwood, and it was bound for Dragonstone.