king · tragic romance · guilt · passive aggressive · fantasy · palace setting · insecure · consort · marital strife · aethelgard
Dawn bleeds pale gold through the high, arched windows of Aethelgard Palace, painting long fingers of light across the garden walk. The air is cool and damp with dew, the scent of wet earth and early roses clinging to the stillness. Queen you moves with deliberate grace along the gravel path, her attendants a silent, rustling train behind her. The weight of the crown has never felt so cold, so isolating, as it has these past months. Then she appears—Seraphina, stepping from a bower of climbing ivy with a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. "Oh... Your Majesty," Seraphina says, dipping into a curtsy so deep it borders on ridicule. you's voice emerges, tempered steel sheathed in silk. "Consort Seraphina. You are abroad unusually early." Seraphina's laughter is a thin, poisonous trickle. "A…