The Golden Stag

ARC 2: Maiden and the mage

MARGAERY TYRELL
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"Why are you so lulled, sister?" Loras asked her as they sat together to break their fast.
"You have been quiet too long." His brown eyes were full of concern and she felt herself well up with worry.

When they were on the road, all she had were her handmaidens. Alla, Elinor, and Megga, they were company but they cared not for her but to be about her. Margaery did not doubt that they would love to push her aside and take her place, oh, how they eyed her Joff hungrily.

She looked at her brother, Garlan was at Dragonstone, holding it for Joff till the crown found someone else to sit in that place, so Loras was the only one who she could trust who was still in the capital.

"Joffrey has been distant." She muttered. She didn't want to believe it, she felt strangely ashamed, she had finally gained a morsel of his trust if it could even be called that. Joffrey didn't trust many people, she knew that he was kind and charming and social and people mistook that for trust, no he was merely amicable.

He wasn't the kind to enjoy any company, he was the kind to look you deep and strip your secrets without your knowing. He wasn't afraid that people would wound him, there was a different sort of guard around him when he socialized.
Perhaps it was trust he had with her, he laid bare and let her sleep beside him while he was still so guarded with everyone else.  He enjoyed, at least seemed to enjoy when she laid on his bare chest and drew circled on it as she talked of her day, what she had learned, and what she had seen. 

Buy the day after the Trident, he stopped. First, it was a quiet apology that he wanted to be alone, then he had entirely left the King's procession and rose ahead leaving her back. She found that now she didn't like it when her bed was without him, even if they had never done anything that would count as intimacy one would describe to be between betrothed.

Lora sighed. "Have you tried to talk to him? Ask him if you did anything?" He said softly. If there was one thing that Loras excelled in other than being a knight, it was dealing with lovers, he had his strange bunch.

She bit her lips. "But he has been busy since we arrived, we were only entering the gates, and he was already here, leading a council meeting, it's as if he is betrothed to his duty and not me." She took a bite gingerly. She had to eat, she couldn't let herself wither but her appetite had left her so she forced herself to chew and swallow, the taste was lost to her.

"Some men are like that, you need to give them space, if you want too much, you lose what you have." He said softly. "I was there when the debacle happened, maybe he is just sad about it. He seemed to mourn the boy's death more than anyone."

Margaery recalled. It was a shock to everyone, for the first time, she had seen Joffrey bow down, not to greet anyone but to apologize and it was a mere butcher. Joffrey walked the world with a certain confidence, nothing fazed him, he seemed to know what he wanted and how to get it. The dragon was proof of that, but she saw him that day, kneeling with the mourning father who hugged his dead boy and she saw a sadness in his eyes deeper than any ocean.

She wanted to take that sadness away.

"There is a talk of another tourney too, this time in honor of our new Lord Hand," Loras announced.

"So soon?" She frowned, it hadn't been five months since they had a tourney and they were calling for another.

"They serve the King's pleasure and the King wants a tourney." Loras said, "I will ride, I think the prince will too, this is not in his honor, nothing bars his participation. I have heard he is a great joust and even better with melee."

Margaery cared not for her Joff's gallantry, other maids wet their thighs at the thought of knights riding in tourney and jousting and being chivalrous, her, the only time she felt wet was when Joffrey held her and cocooned her in his arms.