An Inconvenient Flame [Sandor Clegane]

Chapter 46 - The Dragonpit

Never had I expected to be back in King's landing this soon. The city hadn't changed at all. It was just as big and overwhelming as always, and the stench wasn't one I had missed particularly much. My face contrasted in disgust when the familiar disgusting smell reached my nose. Sandor raised an eyebrow at me when he noticed. Apparently, he had stopped to look back at me.

"Lyra, you're falling behind!" Sandor growled at me. I jumped at the use of my name. It was still foreign to me, hearing Sandor actually call me by my name and not one of the nicknames he had always been calling me.

From that night where I had found out he did feel something for me, it had changed a little between us. Sandor had grown more distant, colder even towards me. I feared that he had chosen to end this we shared, sooner rather than later. A large part of me wanted to ask him but the other part feared pushing him even further away.

I sighed and dared look at Sandor once again. He had been right unfortunately. I had fallen behind. I smiled at him when our eyes met but he only rolled his eyes and turned away.

I released a deep sigh when turning to look at the city again. It had been years since I left this shit city and here, I was, right back again. We were to go to the Dragon pit to meet the Queen. A neutral place. It laid just outside the city. It was a place I had never been before.

I jumped into a run, quicky catching up with Sandor who was walking in the back while guiding the horse pulling a wagon. We had loaded the box containing the creature into it, and now this was how we transported it. "Why did they build it?" Missandei asked from the front of the company. Her voice was as kind as always, I had already noticed from the few times I had spoken with her.

"Dragons don't understand the difference between what's theirs and what isn't." Ser Jorah explained. It made me look around. The ruins was sad to look at, it reminded people of another time where dragons where a common sight. "Land, livestock, children. Letting them roam free around the city was a problem." Ser Jorah continued. His word where reasonable and a good a guess as anything else. There hadn't been any dragons for more than 50 years.

"I imagine it was a sad joke at the end. An entire arena, for a few sickly creatures smaller than dogs." Tyrion joined in on the conversation. "But in the beginning, when it was home to Balerion the Dread, it must have been the most dangerous place in the world." Tyrion wondered out loud. I could only imagine how it would have looked, and it wasn't hard after I had seen the Queens two dragons.

"Maybe it still is." Ser Davos added when we all saw the large company of Lannister soldiers approaching us from the other end of the road. The entire party halted before the Lannister party did. There was a brief moment of silence before a man stepped forth to greet us. He wasn't wearing the traditionally red and gold Lannister army, which made me wonder who he was.

"Welcome, my lords." The man greeted. It wasn't until he spoke that I realized who he was. It was the man named Bronn. He had been following Tyrion around and dared threaten the kings guard on more than one occasion. "Your friends arrived before you did." Bronn gestured to the party behind him.