"Wonderful! That 'heartless' Rhaenyra is finally coming back. My days of suffering are finally coming to an end!"
Once again, Aegon flung the quill onto the desk, this time "for good." Ignoring the splattered ink, he jumped off his stool, grabbed Erryk by the wrist, and dashed for the door.
His silver-gold hair lay in a disheveled mess against his forehead after days of late nights, and the dark circles beneath his eyes were worse than ever. Yet his purple eyes shone with a brightness they had not held in the past month and a half.
"Your Highness, you really ought not say things like that." A cool, lightly teasing voice came from the corridor. "Not only would His Grace, who boasts about you to us every day, be very angry, but if the princess who dotes on you heard you speaking of her that way, she would certainly be angry too."
Aegon knew who it was without turning around.
It was not Erryk's familiar twin, Ser Alek Cargyll.
It was another of Erryk's "brothers in white."
Clad in silver armor and a white cloak, Ser Criston Cole-the future "Kingmaker" of the original Aegon II in the source story-stood by the window at the turn of the stairs, straight and tall as a spear freshly forged in a furnace.
Sunlight streamed through the stained-glass window, casting colorful patterns across his snowy cloak and making him look all the more handsome and martial.
"Ser, it isn't as though you don't know how miserable I've been lately." Aegon stopped, pretending to puff up with indignation. He deliberately planted his hands on his hips and spoke with the petulance appropriate to his body's age. "Don't you feel even a little sorry for me?"
It seemed to be because of Erich Dondarrion. Cole had