Jon Connington stood frozen, his gaze unfocused.
It was as though those few short sentences had torn out his soul, leaving only a shell filled with the ashes of nearly twenty years of conviction.
His mouth hung open, but no sound came out. The hand resting on his sword hilt fell limply to his side, his fingertips cold.
Aegon watched him teeter on the edge of collapse, his face still expressionless.
He pressed no further. Instead, he stepped back and raised his head slightly, looking toward the sky above the garden, fragmented by vines and treetops.
In a soft voice, almost speaking to himself yet clear enough for Jon Connington to hear, he said:
"Then let me show you what it means to be a Targaryen."
The instant his words fell silent.
A deep, resonant hum came from high above, like an echo from ancient times.
It sounded neither like a beast's roar nor thunder, but like countless thin sheets of metal vibrating at a low frequency, heavy and majestic, making the very air tremble.
Then the shadow descended.
Without warning, the sunlight bathing the garden was swiftly blotted out.
Not by storm clouds, but by a solid shape of inconceivable size stretching beneath the heavens.
The light abruptly dimmed, and the afternoon garden sank into a gloom that bordered on dusk.
Dazed, almost instinctively, Jon Connington raised his head and looked toward the sky.
In the next instant, his pupils widened as far as they could.
An unseen force churned the clouds and pushed them aside as an immense, pale-gold silhouette, obscuring nearly half the sky, slowly descended.
There was none of the speed of a diving bird of prey. It was as though a mountain had moved down from the high heavens, descending irresistibly into the world with