The people aboard the fleet had begun disembarking, one after another.
But high in the air...
Rhaenyra, who simply could not swallow the insult, seethed with frustration. She stroked the scales along Syrax's neck again and again. They seemed to have risen slightly in her earlier fright, leaving them rough beneath her hand.
"It's all right, big girl. It's all right," she murmured over and over in High Valyrian, forcing her voice to remain steady.
Syrax's breathing slowly settled. The panic in her golden eyes faded, replaced by a low, aggrieved whine, almost as though she were pleading for affection.
She gave her body a gentle shake and nuzzled Rhaenyra's calf where it hung beside the saddle, like a puppy that had been bullied.
Rhaenyra bit her lip. Indignation surged through her like a tide, but she could find nowhere to vent it.
She raised her head and looked at Laenor, hovering nearby at the edge of the clouds, then at the pale silver dragon beneath him, a full two sizes larger than her own.
The gulf between them was not merely one of family power. Even the dragons they rode were in entirely different leagues.
After several years of fighting in the Stepstones, Seasmoke possessed a composure and ferocity honed by war that Syrax had never known.
Among the fourth-generation dragons, Seasmoke had hatched in Laenor's cradle and been tamed as a hatchling by the equally young Laenor. That was why his great-grandfather Jaehaerys, who felt guilty toward his aunt Rhaenys over the succession, had made an exception.
(Rhaenys's first rival for the succession had been her own uncle, Baelon, the "Prince of the Dawn."
Her father, Prince Aemon, had been unexpectedly assassinated, but Jaehaerys had passed her over outright and chosen Baelon.
Interestingly, though, the three cities, which