"If Vermon was brutal and reckless, then Weywood was sinister and ruthless. Without his provocation and fanning the flames, Vermon might never have committed such a vicious act. His guilt is hardly slight!"
Danyla's words plunged Alysanne Blackwood into an icy abyss. She no longer felt any pleasure in watching someone else's misfortune from a safe distance.
The atmosphere in Dragonstone Castle's Painted Table chamber grew heavy once more. Danyla sat upright on the Iron Throne. Nine months pregnant, she had to lean back slightly, but the posture only lent her an even more inviolable majesty.
Looking at the woman he still longed for day and night, Daemon suddenly realized that she had become as distant and unreachable as the moon in the sky.
Weywood knelt in the center of the hall, his thick black hair soaked with sweat and plastered to his rather pale forehead.
Compared with Vermon's ostentatious manner, the clever Weywood was more like a venomous snake lurking in the shadows. Yet he was still young, and at that moment, the little snake could do nothing but tremble.
"Weywood Targaryen!"
Danyla did not raise her voice, yet everyone in the hall held their breath.
"Do you admit your guilt?"
Weywood raised his head, his dark green eyes, inherited from House Blackwood, swiftly sweeping over everyone in the hall.
He saw his father, King Daemon, standing beside the throne with a livid face and no intention of intervening. Queen Margaery had regained her noble composure, but her tightly clasped hands betrayed her unease.
His own birth mother, Alysanne Blackwood, remained expressionless, as though the boy kneeling in the center of the hall were not her flesh and blood.
"Your Majesty, I did try to provoke Vermon..."
Although Weywood's voice trembled with nerves, his mind continued to race.
"But