Birthrights: Part 8 (AmericaxReader)

Your heart was the only thing you could hear for what felt like forever. One, two. One, two. You breathed in time, trying to keep your inhales and exhales even. Alfred’s entire body was tensed in front of you, ready to leap into action should he have to.

He shouldn’t.

Suddenly, your heart stopped and you felt a vice like grip around your entire body. There was no way this would’ve happened had Alfred never left his palace. Alfred’s fingers tightened around your hand, keeping you rooted in place even as your mind spun around frantically. You felt like a caged animal. You weren’t right for this-- there had to be another queen.

You wrenched your hand away from Alfred, pulling back with fear evident in your eyes. His head turned just enough to face you, brilliant and sharp eyes confused and hurt. Still trying to figure out how to breath again, you pressed further and further into the side of the carriage, hoping to God the distance would be enough.

But it wasn’t, and you found your hands scrabbling for the door handle like there was on the other side. A little knob or latch or hinge for you to push your way through and out, and back home. Home.

You couldn’t go home.

Nearly suffocating from the close confines of the carriage which had once felt so roomy, you finally found the little wooden knob and escaped.

You spilled from the stuffy warmth of the carriage into the silent chill of the world around. Cold, lonely, and you were able to breath. You could almost hear Alfred shouting your name as you rose to your feet, pulling your gown up and away from the forest floor so you could run, run far away from here. Arthur had just been climbing back up into the carriage when he heard Alfred shout, causing him to call after you as well.

You didn’t look back, you couldn’t. All you could afford to do was run and hope and pray that they wouldn’t find you;that they’d find another queen; that you’d find another home.

Gods didn’t offer much help to you usually, but just this once you were granted mercy.

The trees provided sufficient coverage and the burning of your lungs let you know you were alive, especially once you could no longer hear the men behind you or the frantic whinnying of their horses. You collapsed to the ground, having run yourself ragged, and gulped in desperate lungfuls of air. Your body felt hot, your gown sweaty and heavy, and your ears rang with the pounding of blood through your veins.

Swallowing in a half-hearted attempt to sooth your screaming throat, you stared at the trees around you. They were the same as the ones you had passed and the ones you were going to pass and you had no idea where you were.

You mother had always warned you about running off into the woods. There were witches and wolves and monsters. Winds shrieked between leaves and the half-lit world seemed so much darker. You thought the woods would be a better hiding place, a place to catch your breath and flee, but they were proving to be just as ensnaring and terrifying as the possibility of failing as a queen.

As a wife.

At least with you out, Alfred could move on. Actually fall in love, maybe. Maybe things would return to how they once were- with heirs and dynasties and families ruling the kingdom with peace and fairness for decades.

Family.

What would become of yours? What happened to the parents of the king and queen. What happened to the parents of the queen who ran away? What becomes of her town, her friends, her life?

Do they just get absorbed into the darkness?

Once again, you couldn’t breath. You weren’t ready to disappear.

You could almost laugh at yourself; scared to be seen, scared to be invisible.

Curling up against the large trunk of a tree and hoping no one would kill you or find you as you slept seemed to be your best option, but just as you were drifting off into the soothing tug of your unconscious, something pulled you back. Gasping, you awoke and saw a small wisp of white smoke hovering in front of you.

The smoke billowed up into the air above you, but it never seemed to get any smaller. The thing bobbed at you, as if confirming it held your attention, before dissolving. Your brow furrowed in confusion until you saw the large, white deer in front of you. Pressed further against the tree, you tried to make yourself seem small and held your breath, still as possible. The buck watched you with wide eyes that blinked once, twice, before he turned his head away from you, his attention caught by some noise in the forest.

He didn’t leave, though. Your breaths were shaky and small, especially when he looked at you again, his head bowed. You could see the grooves that wound their ways up and through his wide antlers. The prongs seemed dull enough, but you knew that if you were charged by the large buck, his antlers wouldn’t feel so smooth.

But the buck disregarded you and continued to pull up the grass that sparsely covered the roots of the great trees. He seemed so gentle in the quiet, green light that dappled over his pelt and spilled onto the dirt and fallen leaves from the smaller, younger trees. He wandered between the thick trunks, but stopped short when he arrived at yours. Startled, you recognized that you were keeping him from eating and shuffled away from the tree.

He bowed his head again and ripped up the grass.

You smiled, your skirts tangled around your legs and spilling over onto the dirty ground. Your mother would kill you. Arthur would kill you.

The smile only grew as you thought of the lean blond fussing over your soiled skirts and chiding you for not being more careful with them. Alfred would laugh and applaud your small adventure, then teasingly tell Arthur off for scolding the queen. Caught, the little advisor would flush red and sputter at the two of you, who would be laughing and clutching at each other to stay up.

Oh.

You suddenly felt very somber as you glanced back up to meet the dewy-eyed gaze of the buck. He was watching you cautiously, with as much sympathy as a deer could muster, and you wondered exactly why he was still so close.

But that seemed so very unimportant compared to how conflicted you felt.

“I don’t even know him,” you explained, feeling like the cliché princess of a fairy tale, “so why do I feel like I-” you cut yourself off, unwilling to say the first thing that came to mind. “Why do I feel so connected to him?”

The buck merely watched you, head rising to its full height.

The two of you blinked at each other, neither daring to move but both knowing eventually you would have to do so. Eventually, the buck shook his head, heavy ears flopping with each swing. With that, he left you, long legs taking him far without rushing. He glided across the terrain, then froze, once again hearing something in the distance. A moment later he broke out into a sprint, fleeing the place.

You stood, heart thundering in your chest as it had when the carriage had stopped.

“Please let it be Alfred, please let it be Alfred.” Chanting the quiet mantra, you watched the direction from which the buck had run, fear and adrenaline making you hear even the faintest of noises.

A twig snapped and you lurched forward, weight on the toes of your feet in case you needed to start running. Nothing came on the ground, but when you looked back up to the tree overhead, you were startled by a large owl blinking down at you from a thin branch. You backed away from the bird as it stared at you, its eyes so much more threatening than those of the deers, his talons so much sharper than the antlers, his feathers creating jagged spears of patterns opposed to the smooth pelt.

You felt your back hit against another tree when you heard a shout, and as your head turned in the direction of the noise the owl took off, its large wings disturbing the air over your head. Ducking, you covered your head with your hands and hoped that perhaps this time the animal or bird or person would just pass by without you living through some emotional turning point.

Again, unsurprisingly, it was not Alfred.

The person who did appear was a man, and he did have lovely golden hair, and beautiful blue eyes, but his skin was pale and his gaze was weighted with something so much different than how Alfred looked at you (once he got over the surprise, that was).

“Oh. And who might you be, dear one?” he called to you, voice lilting and smooth like a waltz. “A spirit of the forest perhaps?”

Bowing your head and instead staring at the golden engravings on his saddle and reins. He must be a lord, at the very least. “No, stranger, though I have seen my fair share.”

He laughed, a musical sound not dissimilar to the up down of his voice, and told you to raise your head. When you did, his eyes were soft, no longer as threatening as they had been.

“Where do you come from, if not these woods?”

You shook your head. “A small village.”

“In those skirts?”

“I suppose so.”

His smile was gentle and curious, urging you to speak actual answers without actually pressuring you to do so. You felt a desire to tell him, though, so you held your hands out in silent offering for him to dismount. With a fluid motion, he left the back of his copper brown steed in favor for standing before you, his own hand now reaching for you. He gently tucked your hand in the crook of his elbow, and the two of you walked as you told your tale.