"It wasn't their fault! Your Highness, true dragon, it was me! I accidentally knocked into this lord while bringing my father his meal. It really had nothing to do with the knight with black hair and purple eyes or the others!"
A girl's voice, still trembling with tears, suddenly came from beside the overturned barrels.
Aegon froze. The fury about to erupt from him was abruptly forced back down by that unexpected voice.
He turned toward the sound and saw a girl crouching in the shipyard's shadows, carrying a child who looked not quite two on her back, with another baby who seemed less than a year old strapped to her chest.
The smaller child seemed to have just been crying. Tear tracks still marked the baby's face, but the sudden silence had frightened the little one into clutching the girl's clothes with both hands, not daring to cry again.
The tears on the girl's face had not dried either, yet her eyes were remarkably bright. Though her whole body trembled with fear, she had mustered her courage and shouted those words with all her strength.
Aegon's words caught in his throat, leaving him unable to swallow his anger or let it out.
He opened his mouth, fell silent for a moment, then helplessly turned toward Alyn, who stood beside Viry.
In all five years Aegon had known him, he had never seen Alyn's face flush so visibly, the red spreading all the way to his ears.
That face, usually so composed and stern, with its hints of gloom and restraint, was now scarlet in the morning light-even redder than when Sunfyre's breath had scorched his neck last night.
He lowered his head to avoid Aegon's gaze and unconsciously touched the cut the rapier had left in his sleeve, as