The Last Stag • Game of Thrones

44.

Chapter Forty-Four.
The Kingswood

Renfri traveled separate from Jon's traveling party.

Things had been...awkward, to say the least. Painful. Plain weird.

She wondered how Jon would react. When Renfri was no longer the Princess, or the Lady of Storm's End, or even Commander Baratheon. When Daenerys leveled Ren, just Ren, in front of Drogon and burnt her to ash.

She supposed it did not matter. Not so long as she did to Cersei exactly what Cersei had done to her and worse.

Staghorn would do. Putting that longsword right in Cersei's belly, killing both her and the spawn she carried. Renfri could practically feel it.

The clattering of horses hooves alerted her. She looked over, eyebrows raising in surprise as her companion slowed to her pace beside her.

"I'd heard you were up here somewhere." Gendry breathed. "Ways away from the party."

"Can't stand to be back there." Renfri pursed her lips. "Too...awkward. Besides, nobody back there I really even like."

"Not even me?" Gendry laughed nervously. "Sorry. Rude. Erm, Jon broke off from the rest of us, so we can move back if you'd want. He's headed for Dragonstone."

"Of course he is. And don't apologize, not to me." Ren pursed her lips. "I've been meaning to speak with you."

Gendry looked over at her.

"Whatever for?"

Renfri looked around. They were nearing King's Landing. She knew this area well - her childhood whispered at her from the trees.

"Do you know where we are?" She looked around the heavy wood, something sad swirling in her eyes. "Have you been through here?"

Gendry nodded. "We're nearing the Kingswood. Outskirts of the Mad Gate."

"When I was a girl, our father used to take me for walks through this wood." She smiled, her eyes glazing over. "He called it our special place. The only place we didn't have to be the King and the Princess. Just a father and daughter going for a stroll. My earliest memories are within those very trees. He carved my name into one of them, though I've long since forgotten which."

"Sounds lovely." Gendry looked over to her. His sister had closed her eyes, feeling the wind blowing softly on her face. "I wish I had known him."

"He was a fat, old, whoremongering, drunk of a man." Renfri blew a sharp breath out of her nose. "But Gods. He was my dad. Had a laugh unlike anything you've ever heard. Rosy and full. When I was little, I wanted him to steal me away and take me to live on the countryside. Away from court, from all the staring. The handmaidens who would straighten my curls, tie my corsets too tight. I wanted us to live as commoners. Just the two of us."

"As someone who is a commoner, it's not all it's cracked up to be." Gendry cracked a smile. 

"I suppose not." Renfri looked up, meeting his gaze. Her frown deepened. "But he might still be alive if he wasn't the King. He died in these woods. My mother plotted to have him killed. I watched him bleed out in my arms."

"I'm sorry, Lady Renfri." Gendry bowed his head. "But you have come so far since then. Look at you now. Commander of the Stormlands, Lady of Storm's End."

"Call me Ren. Near everybody does anyways. Gods. Lady Renfri of House Baratheon, The Twice-Over; The Furious and The Unmother; Old blood of the End of Storms; Would-Be Stag Queen; Lady of the Stormlands." Renfri shook her head. "I will miss the titles. The grandiose of it all."