The Last Stag • Game of Thrones

29.

Chapter Twenty-Nine.
Staghorn.

Jon,

I worry for you. I wish you would write me something, anything, if not you than one of your men. Five months apart now and I have heard nothing. Where are you?

She huffed, tearing the paper apart and casting it aside. Too desperate.

Jon,
Why have you not returned my letters? Have you forgotten me so easily? I should ride north today and ring your head like a-

Renfri groaned, ripping up that one as well. Too angry.

The pile of ripped parchment sat at her feet, along with two jars of wasted ink. In five months, Renfri had heard nothing from her supposed soulmate. Nothing from the man she loved. She had written him countless times, and not a peep from the North. Not even Davos had written her. 

Her eyes flickered to the basket by the door. She thought of the handmaid who had been washing her hair for months, had been dressing her, cleaning her chamberpots. Cersei's handmaid. The one who had locked her in the room two months prior when the Sept had been destroyed.

"Oh," Ren frowned. "You've got to be fucking joking."

The same handmaid was in charge of sending and receiving her mail.

Ren had to blame it on the pregnancy hormones. They had made her oblivious in other ways, like leaving the windows open during a rainstorm, or wearing her night shift down to breakfast. In normal circumstances, Ren would have known to hand-deliver each raven scroll herself from her first glance at the mail basket. 

Her heart dropped. 

Someone had been reading her letters. Those sent and those meant for her. 

There was only one person it could be. 

Cersei knew. 

Her door cracked open. Renfri looked up, straightening her skirts. 

"Milady." The short, older handmaid smiled at her sweetly. "The Queen requests your presence in the throne room."

Ren said nothing, trying to hide her distaste for the handmaid. She stood from her chair, making a point of gathering the ripped parchment and dropping it into the burning hearth, staring at the handmaid pointedly.

Her point was well received. The handmaid turned white, tripping over her own feet as she fled the room.

Renfri would pay for that once the maid inevitably told her mother, she was sure. But right now Ren did not care. Better to burn parchment than break a woman's spine.

As her pregnancy had progressed, Cersei had made a point of forcing Renfri into much grander, much more forgiving dresses that hid her growing stomach with an abundance of tulle and illusion design. Renfri fiddled with that tulle now, annoyed at how much larger it forced her to be, the green skirts billowing half a foot off of where Renfri's stomach actually ended. 

She exited the room, her guards wordlessly flanking her as she made her way to the throne room, black braids swishing against her back.

At the door, her uncle Jaime greeted her, releasing her guards from their duty. He took her arm, lowering his lips down to her ear.

"It's absurd, but go along with it." His voice buzzed with frustration. "I'll explain later."

They entered the throne room, Jaime struggling not to trip over Renfri's grand skirts.