TO LOVE A KING || Maegor II Targaryen [SLOW UPDATES]

061▪️ FICKLE IS THE FLAME

ONE MONTH LATER.....

The afternoon sun filtered weakly through the cellar's small, iron-grilled window, casting thin bars of light across the dusty stone floor. The air inside was cool and damp, untouched by the warm hush of summer beyond the Red Keep's high walls.

Alicent sat quietly on the edge of a cushioned bench, her fingers moving stiffly over her embroidery. She wasn't really sewing she was passing thread through fabric to keep her hands busy, to silence her mind.

Across the room, Charlotte lounged in a tall-backed chair, the pages of her book reflecting the last vestiges of daylight. A veil of silence hung between them, stretched so taut it could snap with a word.

It had been three weeks since Naiomi's wedding, and she was still at Storm's End, basking in the novelty of her new life as Lady Baratheon.

Her absence had left a strange stillness behind, like a missing note in a melody that neither Alicent nor Charlotte could find again. With Naiomi gone, it was just the two of them again now, left with their father's high expectations and the twisted, uncertain web of courtly intrigue.

But nothing felt the same.

Alicent paused mid-stitch, eyes flickering. The thread trembled between her hands as her thoughts wandered again to Storm's End. To the garden.

To him.

The King.

King Maegor.

She could still feel the warmth of his breath against her lips, the strange pull in her chest when his mouth had found hers beneath the weeping willows. His kiss had scorched through her unexpected, bold and now it haunted her.

He hadn't spoken of it since. Not a word.

Truly. He is fickle.

She remembered the scent of cedar, wine and steel on his breath, the way his hand had brushed her jaw gentle, almost reverent. And then... nothing. No words. No glances. Nothing but silence.

He'd restored her to her position as a royal painter, issued instructions through stewards, and treated her with a cool, indifferent courtesy. As though that kiss had been some passing madness, a trick of heat and longing. As though she had imagined it. As if she hadn't been the girl he kissed beneath the moonflowers.

Alicent's needle trembled in her fingers.

Toward Charlotte. He hadn't summoned her either. It should have been a relief, but it only deepened the pit in Alicent's chest.

Instead of her sister, it was the ever-present Selena Dayne who now seemed to haunt Maegor's chambers at DragonStone. His rumored mistress, the sand-silk beauty from Starfall.

Alicent knew the King still bedded her. Of course he did. But it wasn't jealousy that burned in her, it was humiliation. That kiss had meant something. To her, at least. But perhaps to Maegor, it was only a fleeting perversion. A whim already fading into the dust of court life.