Chapter Text
Waking up on cold, damp cobblestones was not how I planned to start my day. Or night? Hell if I knew. My head pounded like the aftermath of an encore at a dive bar, and every inch of my body felt like I'd been steamrolled by a truck full of questionable life choices that I made in a bar full of guys while half drunk.
Groaning, I shifted, the rough stone pressing against my back. My acoustic guitar was still clutched to my chest like a lifeline, which, honestly, was a little comforting. At least I hadn't lost her. Unlike my dignity. Or my memory.
What the actual hell happened last night? One second, I was in Brooklyn, riding the high of whiskey and applause, and the next—I was here. Whereverherewas.
I forced my eyes open, blinking against the muted gray light that filtered through some kind of mist. Okay. Not Brooklyn. Not my apartment. And, judging by the distinct lack of honking cars, not even remotely close to civilization as I knew it.
I sat up with a groan, rubbing my temples as my dark hair—long, tangled, and currentlynotin its best rockstar form—fell over my shoulders. I patted my jacket. My notebook was still safe in my pocket. Small win. My phone, however, was another story. I pulled it from my jeans and hit the power button. Nothing.
"Great. Battery's toast." I sighed, then frowned. "Wait, no. Ichargedyou before the gig, you ungrateful piece of—"
No signal. No life. No Google Maps to tell me why I was in the middle of…
WherewasI?
Brushing some dirt from my ripped jeans, I took stock of my surroundings. Stone walls. Narrow alley. Ancient-looking buildings looming overhead, shrouded in mist. The air hit me all at once—sharp with salt, fish, and something metallic that made my stomach churn. This place smelledold.Not "old like grandma's attic" old, but "old like the world forgot about it" old.
And then came the sound.
Clink. Clink. Clash.
I froze. Was that—? No way. That wasswords.
The rhythmic clashing grew sharper, the unmistakable scrape of steel on steel sending a jolt of adrenaline through me. Slowly, carefully, I peeked around a splintered wooden crate, my heart hammering.
Two men. Fighting. With actual, honest-to-god swords.
One of them had a braided beard and a crimson sash. He moved like he was dancing, his blade weaving through the air in precise arcs. His opponent, bald and smirking, countered with lethal grace, his steps just as fluid.Water dancers,my brain supplied vaguely. The term floated up from some late-night book binge on some random site, though that information wasn't particularly helpful at the moment.
Because these guys? They werenotmessing around.
My first thought: This had to be a reenactment. Some kind of movie set. Maybe I was drunk enough last night to stumble onto a historical drama filming in some European-looking town? I mean, that made more sense than time travel. Right?
And then the bearded guy looked at me.
Like,reallylooked at me. Mid-parry, his gaze flicked to mine, locking onto my face like I'd just walked onto stage mid-performance. His blade hesitated.
Oh, no. Don't do that. Focus on the stabby guy, dude.
But no. He kept staring.
I don't know what he saw—my high cheekbones, my full lips, my generalout-of-place-ness—but whatever it was, itdistracted the hell out of him.
Baldy seized the opening. His blade flashed forward in a blur of silver.
The bearded guy gasped, his crimson sash darkening with something far morered.Blood sprayed across the alley in a horrifying arc, splattering onto the cobblestones with a sickening wet sound.
"Oh,shit!"
The words shot out of my mouth before I could stop them. But, honestly, what was I supposed to do? Stand theresilentlywhile a guy gotmurdered in front of me?
Beardy collapsed, clutching his chest, choking on something thick and wet.
And that's when my brain decided to catch up to the moment.
This wasnota reenactment.
This wasnota movie set.
This wasreal.
I clapped a hand over my mouth, but it was too late. Baldy turned his head, his smirk widening as henoticedme for the first time.
Oh. Oh, that wasnotthe look of someone who was about to call for a medic. That was the look of someone who'd just foundhis next problem to deal with.
I took a step back. Then another.
"I, uh—wow! That was—uh—amazing choreography, truly!" I blurted, forcing a shaky laugh. "You reallycommittedto that death scene, huh?"
Baldy cocked his head. "You should not be here."
Well, noshit,Sherlock. But I had a feeling that correcting him on that wasn't going to improve my chances of survival.
"Uh. Nope! Totally not! Just…lost, really. Wrong turn. Bad GPS. You know how it is."
I took another step back. He took one forward.
Shit. Shit. SHIT.
My brain scrambled. What were my options?
A: Run. (Bad idea. He had a sword. I had, uh…a guitar.)
B: Try to reason with him. (Also bad. He haddefinitelyjust killed a guy.)
C: Use the guitar as a weapon. (Now we were talking.)
I gripped my acoustic a little tighter, heart pounding.
"Listen, man, I don't want any trouble."
"That makes one of us."
Oh. Well. That wasominous.
He moved.
I screamed—because, honestly,what elsewas I supposed to do?!—and swung my guitar like my life depended on it.
CRACK!
The wood slammed against his forearm. He hissed in pain, but it didn't stop him. He recovered fast—
—and I did the only thing I could think of.
Iran like hell. And fell on my ass.
Valerio Sand strode forward, rolling his shoulders as the thrill of combat faded. He wiped his blade on his sleeve, the warm blood leaving a dark smear against the worn fabric. The other man had fought well, but hesitation had been his downfall—hesitation brought on by a pair of haunting, almond-shaped eyes watching from the shadows. Valerio tilted his head, studying the source of that distraction.
She was crouched against the alley wall near the open street, wide-eyed and wild, like a startled doe caught in a hunter's sights, and she had run like a doe indeed. But unlike any common woman, this one was dressed in strange garb—ripped trousers of thick material, a black leather jerkin with peculiar fastenings, and heavy boots that gleamed. And her hair—by the gods—thick and dark, cascading over her shoulders like silken ink, streaked with dust and sweat but no less mesmerizing.
Valerio had seen many women in his time—courtesans of Braavos, noble ladies wrapped in silks, salt wives with eyes like the sea—but none quite like this. She was exotic in a way that defied logic, her golden-olive skin kissed by distant suns, her features finely carved yet unfamiliar, as though the gods had taken their time in shaping her. Even the famed Black Pearl, whose beauty had launched duels of her own, seemed ordinary in comparison.
She had screamed, a raw, unpracticed sound, as though the sight of blood was a foreign thing to her. That intrigued him more than anything. A woman of such striking presence should have been accustomed to drawing steel from men, yet she cowered as though she had never seen a blade used in earnest.
Fascinating.
He flicked a copper coin toward her feet, watching the way her gaze flickered down in confusion. A simple bravo's wage, square-holed and well-worn from years of passage through Braavos' countless hands. "For the show, pretty one," he said, his voice carrying the lilting accent of the Free Cities. "Though you didn't need to attack me, I never wanted to harm you."
The words left his lips with an amused smirk. He knew full well she had done nothing that would cause him any more than some pain, but it amused him to tease, to see how she would react. Would she shrink further against the wall, trembling like a courtesan caught in the wrong bed? Or would she bare her teeth and snap at him, fire flashing behind those exotic eyes?
She did neither. Instead, she blinked at him, her chest heaving from the weight of her breath, and whispered, "What the actual fuck."
Now that was interesting.
He understood Common Tongue well enough, but her manner of speech was… odd. Clipped, unrefined, rolling off her tongue like she was chewing the words rather than speaking them.
Valerio crouched slightly, appraising her more closely. "You are far from home, aren't you?" he mused, sheathing his blade with a practiced motion.
"No shit," she muttered, still catching her breath. Her gaze darted between him and the fresh corpse at his feet, her fingers tightening around the neck of the instrument she clutched like a lifeline. A peculiar thing, that wooden contraption with strings stretched over its length. Was it some kind of weapon? She did try to use it on him just now after all.
"You're beautiful," he said simply, because it was true, and Valerio was not a man who wasted time with falsehoods.
She startled, her lips parting slightly, before she scowled. "Are you flirting with me right now? After—you just—" She gestured wildly at the dead man, her fingers shaking slightly. "You just murdered that dude, and now you're throwing compliments like it's happy hour?"
Valerio grinned. "He would have done the same to me. I simply moved faster."
Her expression twisted, as though she wanted to argue but lacked the words to do so.
"You are an odd one," he continued, straightening. "A foreign beauty in stranger's clothes, clutching some wooden relic, watching duels like a lost spirit."
"Yeah, well, you're a lunatic with a sword, so I guess we're even."
He chuckled, rolling the taste of her words over in his mind. He liked the way she spoke—sharp, unfiltered, different from the honeyed purrs of Braavosi courtesans or the stiff formalities of aristocratic ladies.
"What is your name, foreign one?" he asked, resting his palm on the hilt of his sword.
"Talia," she said cautiously, as if debating whether she should give him a false name instead.
Valerio nodded. "A lovely name. I am Valerio Sand."
She squinted at him. "That's a weird last name."
He laughed. "It means I was born a bastard."
Her brows furrowed. "Oof. That's rough, man."
He did not know what 'oof' meant, but her tone made it clear enough. "It is what it is. A name does not change a man's path—only his blade does." He nudged the dead man's boot with the toe of his shoe. "And sometimes, fate is crueler to others."
Talia swallowed hard, her eyes flickering back to the body. "Right. So, uh… is this normal?"
"In Braavos?" He shrugged. "Very."
Her jaw tightened. "Great. Super comforting. Love that for me."
Valerio found himself smirking again. He liked her. He liked the way she moved, the way she spoke, the way she clearly wanted to bolt but held herself still, as if sheer stubbornness kept her feet rooted to the ground. There was strength in that, a quiet kind of defiance.
"Where are you from?" he asked, tilting his head.
She hesitated. "Uh. Not here?"
"Astute."
She exhaled sharply. "Look, man, I—this is—I don't even know how I got here. One minute, I was playing a gig, then—" She stopped herself, inhaling through her nose. "Doesn't matter. What matters is figuring out where the hell I am."
Valerio studied her again, noting the tension in her shoulders, the way her fingers curled around her wooden relic. She was truly lost, in more ways than one.
An idea sparked in his mind.
"Well, then," he said, stepping back, gesturing down the alley. "Perhaps I should be your guide."
She blinked. "What?"
"You are a stranger in a strange land. It would be unkind of me to leave you wandering alone, where another bravo might be less… charming than myself." He winked.
She made a face. "Dude, you literally just killed someone."
"And you are still alive," he pointed out. "That must count for something."
She hesitated again, chewing on her lip. Then, with a deep breath, she sighed. "Alright, Valerio Sand. But if you try anything weird, I will—" She glanced at her guitar, clearly realizing it was not a weapon, then back at him. "I will… I don't know yet. But I'll think of something."
He chuckled, turning on his heel. "Then let us be off, my strange foreign beauty. Welcome to Braavos."
As she followed, still grumbling under her breath, Valerio smirked to himself.
Yes. He liked this one.
My boots hit the cobblestone streets with a dull thud as I followed Valerio, who, to his credit, wasn't even pretending not to be watching me.
"So," I said, stuffing my hands into my jacket pockets. "You're just gonna act like that whole murder thing back there wasn't a big deal?"
Valerio chuckled, the sound deep and rich. "It was not a murder. It was a duel. A dance, if you will."
I frowned. "Dude, the only thing dancing back there was that guy's intestines."
He seemed thoroughly amused by my assessment, shaking his head. "You have a strange tongue, strange girl."
"Talia," I corrected. "Strange Talia, then," he amended with a teasing smirk. "And as for that man—he knew the risks. Here in Braavos, honor is settled in steel." He gestured to the lively streets. "Besides, the city has bigger concerns than one dead bravo."
I arched a brow. "Like what?"
Valerio led me through a throng of merchants, expertly weaving past a fishmonger who was loudly insisting his eels were still alive and a woman selling spiced wine. He finally stopped at the edge of the docks, where ships bobbed on the water like lazy beasts at rest. The scent of brine thickened, and seagulls shrieked overhead.
"The change of a dynasty," he said, gesturing vaguely across the sea. "A Baratheon now sits the Iron Throne in Westeros."
I blinked. "Uh-huh. And that's…bad?"
"For many merchants, yes," he explained, crossing his arms. "The previous king—mad as he was—had stable trade relations with Braavos. The new king? Unpredictable. Many fear he will cut us out, favor others."
Okay, I was starting to piece this together. The words 'Baratheon' and 'Iron Throne' struck a very specific nerve in my brain, a nerve tangled up in years of binge-watching and debating fan theories. I slowly turned my gaze to the towering figure looming in the distance—a name came to mind, the Titan of Braavos, its massive stone face eternally roaring against the sea.
The Titan of Braavos.
Braavos.
Oh.
Oh no.
"Braavos…" The word slipped from my lips like a ghost, my mouth going dry. I swallowed hard, brain scrambling.
"Oh God, I'm screwed."
Valerio frowned. "What?"
I whipped around to face him, gripping his arm with both hands. "I need you to tell me exactly what year it is. Westerosi calendar."
He tilted his head, mildly alarmed by my sudden intensity. "It is the 283rd year since Aegon's Landing."
Aegon's Landing. Right. That meant I wasn't just hallucinating this. I was inA Song of Ice and Fire. The realization hit like a slap to the face, and I wobbled on my feet, feeling lightheaded.
Braavos. The Free Cities. Essos. Robert Baratheon's crowning. 283 AC.
The year. The setting. The details flooded in, unspooling in my mind like a disaster reel. Westeros was in the middle of its post-Robert's Rebellion shuffle. The Mad King was toast. Robert Baratheon was drinking and wenching his way through his new kingship. Ned Stark still had a head. Cersei was probably already plotting. And somewhere out there, a couple of Targaryen kids were about to have a really bad time.
And me? I was standing in the middle of it.
Okay. Okay, focus, Talia. Pros and cons.
Pro: I was in one of the most fascinating fantasy worlds ever written. Con: Said world was a nightmare factory where people got stabbed for looking at someone wrong. Pro: Braavos was relatively safe. Con: Winter was coming, and so were ice zombies, dragons, and an all-you-can-eat buffet of war and misery.
I let out a strangled laugh. "Ohhh, I am so dead."
