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

097▪️ VERMIN IN THE GODSWOOD

The Red Keep hummed with movement as dawn melted into morning. Courtiers, handmaids, and guards filled its winding corridors, their voices rising and falling like the sea against stone.

Carriages clattered outside in the courtyard, banners snapping against the wind as grooms and squires loaded them with supplies.

The nobles were preparing for the hunt in the King’s Wood, velvet sleeves, polished boots, and golden brooches flashing in the sunlight as they jostled for precedence.

The air was thick with the scent of horse, leather, and rosewater, carried through the open gates by the restless autumn breeze.

Within, Queen Alicent Hightower walked slowly, one hand pressing against her swelling belly. Her face was composed, but her eyes carried the weariness of a woman who had not rested. She sought her husband’s niece.

The matter was delicate, Maegor’s demand had made it so, but she was already irritated. First Charlotte with her endless schemes, now this chase through the Keep on a morning when she ought to be preparing her son’s name day feast.

She reached Princess Rhaenyra’s chambers, pushed open the door, and found only silence. The bed was neat, the fire low, no trace of the Princess within. With a small sigh of impatience, Alicent closed the door again.

Turning, she noticed two handmaids gliding down the passageway toward her, their arms burdened with fresh sheets. They curtsied low.

“Your Grace,” Anora and Elinda greeted in unison.

“Where is the Princess?” Alicent asked, her voice soft but edged with command.

Elinda, the bolder of the two, lifted her eyes. “She is in the godswood, Your Grace.”

Alicent inclined her head and moved past them. The handmaids whispered once she was gone, their voices flitting like sparrows, though neither dared linger long on the Queen’s mood.

The Queen’s steps carried her along corridors lined with painted shields and flickering sconces. She turned corners, descended a long stair, one she usually avoided in her state, and pressed on, her resolve tightening. Today was Aegon’s birthday. Nothing, least of all Rhaenyra’s defiance, would spoil it.

The bells of the sept tolled, their sound swelling over the Keep and spilling into the gardens.

The air outside was brighter, touched with the scent of pine and wet grass. The godswood waited ancient, hushed, a place older than the Red Keep itself. Its canopy swayed as if stirred by invisible hands. Shafts of light fell between the branches, breaking across the pale trunk of the weirwood oak.

From above, its carved face seemed to peer down with sightless red eyes upon a silver white haired girl seated at its roots.

Rhaenyra sat there, dressed not in silks but in a riding suit of dark leather, a book open across her lap.