#roose x reader

The rain had not stopped since they slaughtered your brother.

It came down over the Twins in thin, cold sheets, washing blood from the stones in pink ribbons that ran through the cracks of the courtyard and disappeared beneath the gates as if the castle itself had opened its mouth and swallowed what remained of House Stark. The sound of it was everywhere, soft and endless, pattering against shuttered windows, sliding off slate roofs, dripping from banners that had been raised too quickly over halls that still smelled of smoke, spilled wine, wet wool, and opened men. Frey servants moved like frightened ghosts along the corridors, their eyes low, their mouths shut, carrying buckets and cloths and bundles they did not look at. Somewhere below, dogs barked and were hushed. Somewhere farther away, men laughed too loudly because they were drunk or afraid, and in Westeros there was often no difference.

You sat on the edge of a narrow bed in a guest chamber that had been stripped of every possible weapon. No knife. No pin. No hearth poker. No broken cup. Even the pitcher had been taken from you after you had smashed the first one against the wall and tried to use the jagged handle on the throat of the Frey boy who brought water. They had not beaten you for it. That was worse. They had simply dragged him away bleeding, sent in two older women with gray faces and shaking hands, and left four Bolton men outside your door.

Bolton men. Not Frey.

That was the first answer to a question you had not wanted to ask.

Your gown was ruined beyond cleaning. It had been blue once, dark as the winter sky before dawn, trimmed with silver thread at the sleeves because your mother had said Riverrun colors would be proper for the feast, and your brother had laughed when you told him you would rather wear Stark gray. Robb had touched the braid over your shoulder, boyish for one rare second beneath the crown and war maps and grief that had made him older than he should ever have been, and told you, “Wear blue, then. Mother will be pleased, and I need at least one person in this family who can keep the peace without threatening to bite someone.”

“I make no promises,” you had said.

He had smiled.

That smile came back to you now with such cruelty that you pressed your fist against your mouth until your teeth cut into the skin. Robb smiling in a candlelit chamber. Robb holding a cup at the feast. Robb turning his head when the music changed. Robb trying to rise when the first quarrel struck him. Robb falling. Robb crawling, blood wet over leather, his face full of disbelief, not for himself, never for himself, but for your mother, for you, for the men who had followed him south because he had been brave enough and young enough to make them believe justice could survive outside a song.

Your mother had screamed once. Only once. That sound had torn through the hall more cleanly than steel. You had heard it even after a hand clamped over your mouth and arms locked around your waist, dragging you backward while the feast became a pit of murder and overturned tables. You had bitten until you tasted blood. You had kicked, scratched, twisted, reached for Robb, for Grey Wind, for your mother’s red hair flashing under torchlight, but the man holding you had known his work. Bolton mail beneath a servant’s cloak. A gloved hand like iron over your face. A voice at your ear, low and steady.

“Do not waste yourself.”

You had known that voice.

Every lord had a way of standing in a room. Greatjon filled it, Edmure tried to command it, Frey infested it. Roose Bolton emptied it. He never needed to raise his voice. He did not stride or roar or flash anger like lesser men trying to convince themselves they were dangerous. He simply existed in a place until all warmth retreated from him. He had been your brother’s bannerman. He had sat at Robb’s councils with his pale eyes half-lidded, courteous and bloodless, offering careful words while the rest of them argued. You had never liked him. You had told Robb that once in his tent near Riverrun, while he bent over maps and pretended exhaustion was something kings could refuse.

“Lord Bolton watches people like a maester watches a dead rat,” you had said.

Robb had snorted despite himself. “That is specific.”

“It is true.”

“He is useful.”

“So is poison, if you are careful.”

Robb had looked up then, fondness softening the strain around his mouth. “You are too much like Mother.”

“No,” you had said. “Mother gives warnings first.”

Now Robb was dead, your mother was dead, your guards were dead, and Roose Bolton’s men stood beyond your door as if they had always belonged there.

You had not cried where they could see. You had bitten the inside of your cheek until your mouth filled with copper. You had stared at the opposite wall and refused the food brought to you. Once, near dawn, someone had dragged a body along the passage outside. You had heard a boot scrape wood, then a low curse, then the wet pull of cloth against stone. You had closed your eyes and thought of Winterfell’s godswood under snow, of Bran climbing where he should not, of Arya with mud on her hem, of Sansa singing under her breath, of Rickon asleep with one fist caught in Shaggydog’s fur. Every memory was a knife. Every face came with the same answer now.

Dead. Gone. Lost. Taken.

The door opened without a knock.

You rose so quickly the bedframe struck the wall behind you. A foolish instinct, perhaps, but the Starks had been breeding foolish instincts into their blood for thousands of years. Stand when danger enters. Look it in the eye. Pretend your hands are not empty.

Roose Bolton stepped into the room in a dark doublet that made his skin look even paler. The rain had dampened his cloak at the shoulders, and a few drops clung to the fine gray fur at his collar. He wore no armor now. He did not need it. There was a bruise-colored shadow beneath one eye, not from injury, only sleeplessness, or perhaps the lack of any decent soul behind the flesh trying to operate the face like a lantern with no candle.

Two guards entered behind him. Roose lifted one hand, barely more than a flick of the fingers, and they withdrew. The door closed. The bolt slid into place from outside.

You looked at him for a long moment. Then you spat at his feet.

It landed on the stone between you. The sound was small. Shamefully small. You wished you had blood left in your mouth to make it red.

Roose glanced down at it, then back at you. “A restrained greeting, all things considered.”

Your laugh scraped out of you before you could stop it. It sounded wrong, thin and ugly, but it was yours. “Did you come expecting courtesy?”

“No.”

“Then we both survive disappointment.”

Something almost moved at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. Roose Bolton did not smile unless another man had already begun bleeding and did not know it yet. “I came to see whether you had injured yourself.”

“I was busy trying to injure your men.”

“You failed.”

“Yes,” you said. “A tragedy. There have been so few tonight.”

His pale eyes stayed on your face, unblinking, patient in a way that made your skin crawl. He looked at the blood dried along your jaw, the torn sleeve, the bruises blooming dark around your wrists where someone had gripped too tightly during the struggle. If he felt guilt, it did not show. If he felt triumph, that did not show either. With Roose, every feeling was locked beneath ice so old it had forgotten the sun existed.

“You should eat,” he said.

“You should hang.”

“Many have said so.”

“Not enough, apparently.”

“No,” he replied. “Not enough.”

The calmness of it nearly broke you. Rage was supposed to meet rage. Hatred was supposed to strike something solid. You wanted him to shout, to justify himself, to reveal one ugly human crack you could shove your grief into and tear wider. Instead he stood there as if the world had not changed, as if the hall below had not become a butcher’s room, as if your mother’s body was not cooling somewhere under Frey roof and your brother’s crown had not rolled in blood.

“You betrayed him,” you said, and your voice trembled despite everything you did to stop it. “He trusted you.”

“Robb Stark trusted his cause,” Roose said. “That is not the same thing.”

“He trusted his bannermen.”

“He trusted loyalty as if it were a natural law. It is not.”

“You took bread and salt.”

“I did.”

“You sat beside us.”

“I did.”

“You watched my mother speak to you. You watched my brother drink with you. You watched them all lower their guard.”

“Yes.”

For one wild second, you lunged at him.

There was no plan in it. No cunning Stark daughter, no northern dignity, no clever political move worth preserving for the songs. You simply snapped. You crossed the room before thought could catch you, hands raised for his face, his throat, his dead white eyes. Roose moved only when he had to. He caught your wrist, turned with your momentum, and trapped your arm behind your back with such controlled ease that humiliation burned hotter than fear. Your shoulder strained. You hissed through your teeth and tried to drive your heel into his foot, but he shifted again, pinning you against the wall without enough force to injure, only enough to make escape impossible.

His body was colder than you expected. Not truly cold, not like a corpse, but restrained, lean, held so tightly inside itself that even warmth seemed rationed. You could feel the damp wool of his sleeve against your torn gown. His breath touched your temple. His hand around your wrist was firm, careful, impersonal, which somehow made it more obscene.

“Do not make me bind you,” he said.

“Do it,” you snapped. “Let them see how brave the new Lord of Winterfell is, tying up a woman after murdering her family.”

“Lord of Winterfell,” he repeated quietly, as if tasting a title already poured for him. “Not yet.”

You went still.

Roose felt it. You knew he did because his hand eased slightly, though he did not release you. The chamber seemed to shrink around both of you. Outside, rain tapped steadily against the shutters.

“What did you say?” you whispered.

“Not yet,” he said again. “Winterfell is not mine while you remain unmarried.”

The words reached you slowly. Perhaps because your mind refused them at first, recognizing the shape of another horror and trying, out of some last merciful instinct, to turn away before it could become clear. You stared at the wall inches from your face. The plaster there had cracked near the corner. Someone had tried to cover it with limewash, badly.

“No.”

“It has already been agreed.”

“No.”

“You are Eddard Stark’s eldest living daughter.”

“No.”

“Your brothers are dead. Your younger sisters are presumed dead or lost beyond usefulness. Your mother’s line cannot protect you. Your uncle is a captive embarrassment, and your grandfather is ash. In the eyes of the realm, the north passes through you.”

You twisted against him so violently pain flashed up your arm. “No!”

This time he turned you around and caught both your wrists, holding them between your bodies. His grip tightened enough to warn, not enough to bruise further. His eyes were level with yours. Pale gray. Colorless as a winter lake under cloud.

“Listen carefully,” he said. “This is not a proposal.”

You tried to wrench free. “I would rather die.”

“Most people say that before death is placed close enough to touch.”

“You think I’m afraid of dying tonight?”

“I think you are young, bereaved, angry, and exhausted. I think you believe hatred will keep you alive because grief has not yet shown you how heavy it becomes. I think you are Ned Stark’s daughter, which means you were raised to imagine death as an honorable door one may walk through cleanly if the cause is worthy. It is not. It is dirt, blood, rot, and the disposal of bodies by men who complain about the weight.”

You shook your head, breathing hard. “Do not speak of my father.”

“Your father understood duty.”

“My father would have cut your head from your shoulders.”

“Your father is dead because he mistook the world for a colder version of himself.”

The slap landed before he stopped you.

For once, you saw his head turn with the impact. Not far. Not dramatically. This was not a song. Your palm stung. A red mark rose slowly across his cheek, obscene in its life against his bloodless face. He did not strike you back. He only looked at you again, and there was something there now, not anger, not quite. Interest, perhaps. That was worse. Of all the reactions you might have dragged from him, interest felt the most dangerous.

“Good,” he said softly.

Your stomach twisted. “Good?”

“You still have spine.”

“You murdering bastard.”

“Yes.”

“You skinless coward.”

“Not skinless.”

“You will never have Winterfell through me.”

“I will.”

“You will have a corpse.”

His gaze moved over your face, not lustfully in the simple way of drunken Frey men with their flushed cheeks and wet mouths, but with a more unsettling attention, as if he were reading the structure of your defiance and deciding where it could be cut without destroying what he wanted to preserve. “No,” he said. “A corpse gives me less than a wife.”

The word wife made your throat close. You had imagined marriage once, like a fool, though perhaps all girls imagined it until the world corrected them. You had imagined a northern lord, maybe, someone steady and kind enough, with weathered hands and a laugh that did not ask permission. You had imagined children with gray eyes running through Winterfell’s halls, your mother correcting their manners, Robb teaching them sword forms he would pretend were only games, Jon visiting from the Wall if the gods were merciful, Arya climbing the kitchen roof to prove she still could. Small hopes. Ordinary ones. The sort that got butchered first because they could not defend themselves.

“You were promised me?” you asked, forcing the words through numb lips.

“Yes.”

“By whom?”

“Lord Walder gave consent. Lord Tywin gave assurance. Your brother’s cause was already failing. The Red Wedding merely hastened what had become inevitable.”

You stared at him. “You speak as though this were weather.”

“Would it comfort you if I lied?”

“It would comfort me if you choked on your own blood.”

“That may yet happen. Men are fragile.”

“Not fragile enough.”

He released you then and stepped back, giving you room as if room meant anything with a locked door and his soldiers outside. You rubbed your wrists, hating yourself for the instinct. Hating him for seeing it.

Roose looked toward the small table near the window, where untouched bread and broth had gone cold. “Eat. You will need strength.”

“For the wedding?”

“For surviving what comes before it.”

A chill moved through you that had nothing to do with the rain. “What comes before it?”

“The Freys are drunk on victory. Some believe promises made to me can be renegotiated. Some believe a Stark girl in a locked chamber is a prize that ought to be inspected, threatened, or used as leverage before she leaves the Twins.”

Your skin crawled. “And you are here to protect your property.”

“Yes.”

At least he did not pretend otherwise. That honesty was another blade, thin and clean, sliding where armor had already been removed.

“You disgust me,” you said.

“I know.”

“No, you do not. You think you do because men like you think knowing a thing is the same as feeling its weight. You have no idea. You stood under my brother’s roof. You spoke his name. You watched him try to avenge my father, and all the while you were counting how much his death would buy you.”

Roose tilted his head slightly. “I counted what his life was costing us.”

“Us?”

“The north.”

“The north followed him.”

“The north bled for him.”

“The north loved him.”

“Love fills graves quickly.”

Your vision blurred. You hated that too. You turned away before the tears could fall where he could watch them properly. “Get out.”

“No.”

You laughed again, but this time it broke halfway. “You have what you came for. You told me. You threatened me. You looked at your prize. Go crawl back to whatever pit raised you.”

“My father raised me at the Dreadfort.”

“That explains the smell.”

Another almost-smile, colder than the first. “You have Catelyn Tully’s tongue when cornered.”

“Do not speak her name either.”

“She died bravely.”

The tears stopped as if frozen.

You turned back to him. “What?”

“Your mother,” Roose said. “She died bravely.”

You searched his face for mockery and found none. That was worse than if he had laughed. “You watched?”

“I saw enough.”

You stepped toward him, slowly this time. “Tell me.”

“No.”

“Tell me.”

“It will not help you.”

“I did not ask for help.”

For the first time since he entered, Roose was silent long enough that the rain filled the space between you. His eyes lowered briefly to your bloodstained sleeve. “She knew before the end. She understood betrayal before your brother did. She saw the mail beneath my coat. She warned him.”

Your breath shook. You could see it. Gods help you, you could see her hand catching the sleeve, her eyes widening, the mind that had raised you and Robb both realizing too late that the world had already turned inside out.

“She took Lord Walder’s grandson hostage,” Roose continued. “Threatened to cut his throat if they spared your brother.”

“She would,” you whispered.

“She did. Lord Walder did not care.”

No sound came from you then. Something inside you simply fell. Not shattered. Not broke. Fell, like a stone dropped down a well so deep there was no noise when it reached the bottom.

Roose watched you with that awful stillness. “Your brother was already dead by then.”

“You killed him.”

“Yes.”

The simplicity of the answer struck harder than cruelty. You had heard rumors in the chaos. Men shouting that Bolton had given the final wound. Men laughing about the words. The Lannisters send their regards. A neat little message from a lion too cowardly to swing the blade himself. You had not known whether to believe it because belief required space, and you had been drowning in one horror after another.

“You put a knife in his heart,” you said.

“I did.”

“Did he know?”

Roose’s face remained unchanged. “Yes.”

You pressed your hand to your stomach because sickness rose so hard you feared you would be ill on the floor. Robb had known. Robb had looked into the face of one of his own bannermen and known that the north itself had opened beneath him.

“I will kill you,” you said.

“Perhaps.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“No,” you whispered. “You do not. You do not know anything about me if you think I will stand beside you, say vows, give you sons, wear your colors, let the north call you lord because you chained me to your name.”

“I do not require your affection.”

“You will not have my obedience either.”

“I require your presence. Obedience can be negotiated later.”

“You speak as if marriage is a treaty.”

“In your case, it is.”

“My father would never have allowed this.”

“Your father is dead. So is your mother. So is your king. You may keep summoning them into the room, but they cannot answer.”

That was when the tears finally escaped. You hated them, but there they were, hot and silent, cutting clean tracks down the grime on your face. You did not sob. You would not give him that. You stood in the candlelight with your ruined gown and your empty hands and let grief show itself like a wound no one had been able to bandage in time.

Roose did not move closer.

That, too, was unbearable.

A monster should have enjoyed it. A monster should have leaned in, stroked your cheek, called you beautiful in your misery, made some vulgar proof of wanting you. Instead he stayed where he was, remote and precise, and you understood with dawning horror that he did want you, but not in any ordinary way. He wanted the living Stark blood, yes. He wanted Winterfell, certainly. He wanted the line, the claim, the future children who would carry wolf and flayed man together because politics had always been a butcher pretending to be a priest. But beneath that, under the cold arithmetic, there was another hunger. Not hot. Not clumsy. A pale, disciplined thing that had watched you in Robb’s camp and remembered every time you had held your tongue before lords twice your age, every time you had stepped between quarrels, every time you had looked at him as if you already suspected the rot behind his courtesy.

“You wanted this before tonight,” you said, and the realization made your voice go quiet.

His expression did not change.

You swallowed. “Didn’t you?”

Roose looked at you for a long moment. “I considered many outcomes.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one you will get tonight.”

“You watched me.”

“Yes.”

The room tilted slightly. “At Riverrun?”

“Yes.”

“In my brother’s war tent?”

“When you argued with Lord Karstark over the prisoners. When you told your brother mercy without control was only a prettier kind of weakness. When you convinced the Blackfish to send scouts east before the ravens confirmed Lannister movement. When you stood beside your mother after news of Bran and Rickon came and did not faint, did not scream, did not ask for comfort until the room had emptied.”

Each memory came back stained by his gaze. Private moments you had thought belonged to your family, your grief, your duty, now touched by the knowledge that Roose Bolton had been noticing you with the patience of a man choosing a blade.

“You are vile,” you breathed.

“I am thorough.”

“You are old enough to have known better.”

That did draw something from him, not amusement exactly, but the faintest crease beside one eye. “Knowing better rarely changes what men want.”

“Men. Always such tragic victims of their cocks and ambitions. How terribly difficult for you all.”

“There is your mother again.”

“I hope she haunts you.”

“I suspect she has better targets.”

For a second, despite yourself, despite the bodies below, despite everything, you almost laughed. It came as a small, broken exhale that you smothered at once because it felt like betrayal. Roose heard it anyway. Nothing decent ever escaped unnoticed.

“You should hate me,” he said.

“I do.”

“Good.”

“Do not say that to me.”

“Hate is cleaner than despair.”

“And you care about my despair now?”

“I care about what despair makes people do. They refuse food. They leap from windows. They bite through their own tongues. They mistake dying for victory because they cannot bear waking.”

You stared at him. “Would that trouble you?”

“It would inconvenience me.”

“Honest again.”

“You prefer it.”

“I prefer my family alive.”

“Yes,” he said. “But we are past preferred things.”

A knock came at the door.

Roose did not look away from you. “Enter.”

The bolt shifted. One of his men opened the door enough to bow his head. “My lord. Ser Aenys Frey asks if the girl is fit to be brought down. Lord Walder wants the matter settled before the riverlords are sent off.”

“The girl,” you repeated softly.

The guard’s eyes flicked to you, then away.

Roose’s voice remained mild. “Lady Stark will be brought down when I decide she is ready. Tell Ser Aenys that if another Frey comes to this chamber without my leave, I will return him to Lord Walder in pieces small enough for ravens.”

The guard bowed lower. “Yes, my lord.”

The door closed.

You looked at Roose. “Lady Stark now?”

“You have always been Lady Stark.”

“They called me girl.”

“The Freys have poor instincts.”

“They helped you.”

“I did not say they had no uses.”

“You despise them.”

“Yes.”

“And still you let them murder my family.”

“I did not let them,” Roose said. “I joined them.”

You flinched. He watched the movement, and you cursed yourself for giving him even that small victory.

“Why?” you asked. “Not the politics. Not your cold little lecture about Robb losing the war. Why did you do it?”

“Because Robb Stark could win battles and still lose kingdoms. Because he broke oaths in public and expected private loyalty to remain untouched. Because he married for desire while other men buried sons for his crown. Because he trusted outrage to keep the north united, and outrage burns hot but not long. Because Tywin Lannister understood power better than your brother did.”

“My brother understood honor.”

“Yes.”

“And that means nothing to you?”

“It means enough that I knew it would destroy him.”

Your hand rose before you could think better of it, but this time Roose caught your wrist in midair. His grip was faster than it should have been, almost lazy in its precision. You glared at him, breath uneven.

“You do not learn quickly when angry,” he said.

“And you do not bleed quickly enough.”

His thumb rested against your pulse. You felt the pressure there, light but undeniable. His eyes lowered to that place, as if the proof of your life interested him more than your threat.

“There is Stark in you,” he said. “But Tully too. Your brother burned. Your mother endured until endurance became teeth. You are more like her.”

“Do not turn my dead into compliments.”

“I was making an assessment.”

“Then assess this. If you put your hands on me after this wedding, I will make every night of your life a war.”

Something in the air changed. Not much. Enough.

Roose looked back to your face. His voice dropped, almost gentle, which made it colder. “When I put my hands on you, it will not be in a Frey hall while your family’s blood is still wet beneath us. I have no taste for haste.”

Your body went rigid.

“I did not say that to comfort you,” he added.

“No,” you said, throat tight. “You said it because you think restraint makes you civilized.”

“No. I said it because I want you listening.”

“I am listening.”

“Good. You will be dressed. You will come downstairs. You will stand before witnesses. You will say the words required. You may hate me while doing it. You may tremble, weep, glare, or imagine every method by which I might die. You may even try one eventually, though I recommend patience. But you will not throw yourself from the battlements, starve yourself, or force me to drag you half-conscious before the realm. Your life is the last useful piece of House Stark.”

“Useful,” you echoed.

“Yes.”

“Not sacred. Not mourned. Not protected. Useful.”

His gaze held yours. “Protected things are often useful.”

“And when I have given you Winterfell?”

“Then you remain my wife.”

“You say that as if it means shelter.”

“In time, it may.”

You stared at him, stunned by the audacity of it. “You think I could ever come to you willingly?”

“No.”

“At least there is one living brain in this castle, moldy as it is.”

Another faint movement near his mouth. You hated that you could recognize it now. “I think willingness is a word singers use when no one is paying them for accuracy. Most marriages in Westeros begin with bargains, pressure, fear, land, coin, bloodlines, or a father’s command. Affection comes later if the gods are bored and generous.”

“You compare this to a marriage pact?”

“I compare it to power.”

“My father loved my mother.”

“After time.”

“My mother loved him.”

“After time.”

“You are not my father.”

“No,” Roose said. “And you are not your mother.”

The words struck deep, though you could not have said why. Perhaps because you had spent your whole life trying to be enough of Catelyn to honor her and enough of Ned to belong to the north. Perhaps because now both were gone, and Roose had named the terrible truth left behind, that no imitation of them would save you.

“Do you know what she told me once?” you asked. Your voice had gone hoarse. “My mother?”

Roose waited.

“She told me a woman’s duty could become a cage if she mistook silence for strength. She said there would be times I would have to bow my head because the world gives men too many keys, but I must never let them convince me the cage was my shape.”

For once, his gaze seemed to settle more heavily on you.

You stepped closer, ignoring the warning in his stillness. “So put me in your cage, Lord Bolton. Dress it in vows. Line it with furs. Call it Winterfell if it helps you sleep. I will know what it is. And so will you.”

He released your wrist slowly. “Yes,” he said. “I will.”

That answer unsettled you more than denial would have. Roose Bolton did not need illusions. He did not need you grateful, softened, fooled, or seduced by pretty lies. He could live with the cage being a cage. Perhaps that was why the horror of him felt so complete. He had no dream of being loved by the thing he trapped.

The door opened again later, not by his command this time, but after his signal. Women entered carrying a basin of hot water, cloths, a comb, and a gown of dark gray wool trimmed in black. Stark colors, almost. A cruelty or a calculation. With Roose, those were often twins.

You looked at the gown and felt your mouth twist. “How considerate.”

“It was found among your chests,” he said.

Your chests. Your things, packed for a wedding feast and now repurposed for a funeral procession of the self. You remembered your maid folding that gown three days ago. You remembered thinking it too plain for the hall, too northern for a Frey celebration. You wanted to sit down on the floor and laugh until your lungs failed.

“I will not undress in front of you.”

“I do not expect you to.”

“You expect many things.”

“Yes. Not that.”

He turned and moved toward the door. Before he left, you spoke.

“Lord Bolton.”

He paused.

You almost did not ask. Pride clung to your throat, stubborn and useless, but grief forced its hand through.

“My mother,” you said. “Where is she?”

His back remained to you. “Taken with the others.”

“That is not an answer.”

“No.”

“Will they return her to Winterfell?”

“No.”

Your nails dug into your palms. “Robb?”

“No.”

“Grey Wind?”

Roose was silent.

Your stomach turned. “What did they do?”

“Do not ask me that.”

“What did they do?”

He turned his head slightly, not enough for you to see his full face. “Do not ask questions whose answers will only give you new shapes for nightmares.”

A sound left you then, wounded and small, gone before you could stop it. The women near the basin froze. Roose did not. He opened the door.

“I will send men to find what remains worth burning,” he said. “If anything can be done discreetly, it will be.”

You wanted to thank him. The impulse came from some pathetic drilled place of courtesy and horror, and you strangled it before it reached your tongue. “You do not get to be merciful.”

“No,” he said. “I get to be practical.”

Then he left.

The women washed you in silence. One of them cried without sound while cleaning blood from beneath your fingernails. She had a daughter’s face, too round, too soft for the work she had been given. Frey, perhaps, or a servant married into the household, it hardly mattered. Her hands trembled so badly she spilled water over your lap. You looked at her, this stranger who had likely carried platters past your family hours before they died, and for one exhausted second you hated her because she was alive. Then you hated yourself for it, because grief had made you crueler than you wished to be, and there were already enough cruel things breathing.

“Leave it,” you said when she tried to scrub at a dark stain near your collarbone.

“My lady, it will not come out if I do not.”

“Then let it stay.”

She looked at you, eyes shining. “He said you must be made presentable.”

You met her gaze in the small mirror propped against the table. Your own face looked back hollow and older than it had that morning. “I am presentable enough for a house of murderers.”

The older woman behind you made the sign of the Seven beneath her breath.

You almost told her the gods were not here. The old gods had not come when Robb fell. The Seven had not stopped Lord Walder from staining his hall. No god had reached down to close your mother’s eyes. Gods were like kings, perhaps. Much invoked, rarely useful, always demanding something from the people already bleeding.

They braided your hair because loose hair made you look too wild, apparently, and murderers did prefer proper aesthetics during forced dynastic transfer. The younger woman reached for a silver pin shaped like a trout, then stopped as if realizing the insult too late. You took it from her and set it on the table.

“No.”

“There is a wolf pin, my lady.”

You swallowed. “Use that.”

It was small. Smaller than the one your father had given you when you first left Winterfell with the royal party years ago, before everything went wrong in the slow, stupid way of politics. This pin had been made for travel, not ceremony, a simple direwolf in darkened silver, its head raised. You watched the woman fasten it near your shoulder, and the sight of it almost undid you.

When the door opened again, Roose stood outside with a cloak over one arm.

You turned from the mirror. He looked at you in gray and black, with your bruised wrists half-hidden by sleeves and your face too pale beneath the fresh braid. His gaze rested on the wolf pin. He noticed everything. You wished, pettily and viciously, that he would one day notice poison too late.

“The hall is ready,” he said.

“How lovely. Did they clean the blood first, or are we keeping the ambiance?”

One of the guards shifted. Roose did not. “The smaller sept.”

“So the gods can be insulted privately.”

“The gods have endured worse.”

“Not from me.”

He held out the cloak.

You looked at it, then at him. “No.”

“It is raining.”

“Then I will get wet.”

“The passage crosses an outer walk.”

“Then I will get very wet. Civilization may collapse.”

The guard behind him made the mistake of breathing too close to a laugh. Roose’s eyes moved sideways, and the sound died unborn.

“You will wear the cloak,” Roose said.

“You will put it on my corpse.”

“That remains an inefficient solution.”

“Maybe efficiency is overrated.”

His gaze returned to you. “You are shaking.”

You looked down. Your hands were trembling. Not much, but enough. Fury rose again, saving you from shame. “I watched my family die.”

“Yes.”

“If I shake, Lord Bolton, it is because there is a war inside me and no blade in my hand.”

He stepped into the room, close enough now that the women retreated without being told. “Then let the war keep you standing.”

You hated him for the line. Hated him more because some part of you seized it greedily. Let the war keep you standing. Fine. If hatred was all he would leave you, you would use it better than he expected.

You snatched the cloak from his arm and fastened it yourself. “Walk, then.”

The passage outside smelled of damp stone and tallow. Four Bolton men fell in behind you. Two more walked ahead. No Freys came near. That was Roose’s doing, and you resented needing the protection of the man who had helped create the danger. It was like being saved from wolves by a colder wolf with legal documents.

As you walked, the castle watched.

Servants lowered their eyes. Men turned away too quickly. A few Freys stared with open curiosity, those slack-mouthed little heirs of treachery, dressed in rich cloth and moral sewage. One older Frey knight looked you up and down with a grin that made your skin prickle. Roose stopped.

The corridor stopped with him.

The knight’s grin faltered. “Lord Bolton?”

Roose spoke mildly. “You are in our way.”

The Frey man glanced at the open space wide enough for three men to pass. “Am I?”

“Yes.”

You could hear the rain outside, harder now, blown against the walls.

The Frey looked at you again, perhaps trying to salvage pride from stupidity. “Pretty enough, for a wolf. Shame about the circumstances.”

Roose’s face did not alter. “Give me your dagger.”

The Frey blinked. “What?”

“Your dagger.”

“My lord, I meant no offense.”

“You meant a small one. Men often do when they lack the courage for large offenses.” Roose extended his hand. “The dagger.”

The knight hesitated, then drew it and offered it hilt-first with a laugh meant to make the moment harmless. Roose took it, examined the edge briefly, then passed it to one of his men.

“You will apologize to Lady Stark,” Roose said.

The Frey flushed. “For what?”

Roose turned his pale eyes fully on him. “For making me pause.”

The apology came quickly after that, muttered and ugly. You did not acknowledge it. As you passed, you looked at the knight and smiled with every bit of dead Stark courtesy you had left.

“Careful,” you said softly. “He likes his halls tidy.”

Behind you, one of the Bolton men coughed. Roose said nothing, but when you glanced sideways, there was that faint almost-smile again, gone before anyone else could have recognized it.

The sept was small and mean, tucked into a lower part of the castle where the air smelled of old incense and wet rushes. Candles burned before the Seven in wavering rows, their flames trembling whenever the door opened. Lord Walder Frey sat near the front in his carved chair, bundled in furs, his ruined face stretched with satisfaction. He looked less like a lord than something dug from beneath a bridge and taught to demand grandchildren. Beside him stood several of his sons, all with the same cowardly hunger worn in different shapes. A septon waited near the altar, pale and sweating through his robes.

There were no songs. No feast. No cloak of white and gray from your father’s hands. No mother standing behind you with tears she would deny later. No Robb pretending not to cry. No sisters whispering, no brothers restless in polished boots. Only enemies and candles and rain and Roose Bolton at your side.

Lord Walder’s eyes crawled over you. “There she is. The she-wolf. Thought you’d bite through your leash by now.”

You looked at him. “I am saving my teeth for better meat.”

A hush.

Walder wheezed, then cackled. “Hear that? Still proud. Good. Good. Put a pup in her before the pride fades, Bolton. Starks breed stubborn. Might be useful.”

Your face burned cold. You took one step toward him before Roose caught your arm. Not painfully. Publicly. A reminder and a claim in the same gesture.

“Lord Frey,” Roose said, voice soft.

Walder’s grin thinned. “What? She’s yours, isn’t she?”

“She is mine,” Roose said. “Which means the manner in which she is spoken of is no longer your concern.”

You went still beside him.

Walder stared, then barked a laugh. “You always were a chilly bastard. Fine, fine. Marry her. Take your wolf. Take your castle. Take all the north, if you can keep it from biting your arse off.”

“I intend to.”

His hand remained around your arm as the septon began. You heard only pieces at first. Names. Houses. Vows. The Father, the Mother, the Warrior, the Maiden, the Smith, the Crone, the Stranger. The words moved around you like water around stone. Marriage was supposed to transform. Girl to wife. Daughter to lady. One house into another. But you felt no transformation. You felt only theft with witnesses.

The septon’s voice wavered when he came to your name.

You lifted your chin.

He said it again, clearer. Stark. Daughter of Lord Eddard Stark and Lady Catelyn Stark. Eldest living issue of Winterfell.

Living issue. What a hideous phrase. As if your mother had delivered estate documents instead of children.

Roose spoke his vows evenly. No hesitation. No triumph. He sounded as he might have sounded ordering scouts through a pass or discussing grain stores before winter. You wanted to hate him more for that, but part of you, the part too tired for theatrics, was almost relieved he did not mock the words by pretending tenderness.

Then it was your turn.

The septon looked at you with open pity, the fool. Pity was useless unless it came with a knife.

You said nothing.

The silence stretched.

A Frey shifted. Someone whispered. Rain beat against the stones beyond the narrow windows.

Roose turned his head slightly. “Speak.”

You looked at him. “Or?”

The septon nearly dropped his book.

Roose studied you in the candlelight. “Or they will say you were forced.”

“I am forced.”

“Yes,” he said. “But there is power in making them hear you choose the shape of your survival.”

You almost laughed in his face. “Is that what this is?”

“That is what remains.”

Your throat tightened. You looked past him to Lord Walder, to the Freys, to the Bolton guards, to the sweating septon and the trembling candles. If you refused, they would make it happen anyway. If you screamed, they would say grief had unbalanced you. If you fainted, they would drag you upright. If you died, Winterfell would become a carcass fought over by men who had already proven they could stomach any feast.

Your mother’s voice came back to you. The cage is not your shape.

No. It was not. But sometimes a wolf survived a trap by chewing slowly, not wildly.

You turned back to the septon.

“I take him,” you said, and every word tasted of ash, “as the gods and men have arranged.”

The septon swallowed. “As your husband, my lady.”

You looked at Roose while you said it. “As my husband.”

Roose’s gaze did not leave yours.

The cloak ceremony was worse. You had worn Stark colors into the sept, and now Roose removed the cloak from your shoulders while the room watched. Beneath it you felt suddenly exposed, though your gown covered you from throat to wrist. He handed your cloak to one of his men, then lifted another.

Bolton colors.

Pink and red, muted by candlelight but unmistakable. Flayed man hidden in the folds like a wound pretending to be fabric.

Your breath caught.

Roose saw. For one second, the cloak hovered between you.

“Do it,” you said.

Something in his eyes changed, not softness, never that, but acknowledgment. He set the Bolton cloak over your shoulders and fastened it himself. His fingers brushed the wolf pin beneath it. He did not remove the pin.

That, somehow, nearly broke you.

The septon declared you wed. Lord Walder clapped his shriveled hands. The Freys followed, some laughing, some bored, some already turning their minds toward wine and whatever songs men sang after betraying guests. Roose took your hand. His palm was dry and cool. You wanted to claw the skin from it.

He leaned close enough that only you could hear him. “Do not stumble.”

“Afraid I will shame you?”

“No,” he said. “Afraid they will enjoy it.”

So you did not stumble.

You walked from the sept as Lady Bolton, the eldest living Stark daughter, with your family’s blood still beneath the floors and your enemy’s cloak heavy on your shoulders. Men bowed. Not deeply. Not yet. But they bowed, because the world loved power more than decency and always had. You kept your face still. That was your first victory. Small, bitter, nearly meaningless. Naturally, it had to do for now.

The chamber they gave you afterward was larger than the first. Warmer. Worse, because someone had tried to make it suitable. A fire burned in the hearth. A tray of food waited on the table, fresh this time. Wine. Bread. Stewed apples. Roasted fowl. A basin for washing. A bed dressed in heavy linens.

You stopped at the threshold.

Roose entered behind you and closed the door.

For several heartbeats neither of you spoke.

Then you reached for the Bolton cloak and tore at the clasp. Your fingers fumbled once, twice, then got it loose. You dragged it from your shoulders and flung it into the fire.

The flames caught the edge quickly.

Roose watched it burn.

“There,” you said, breath shaking. “That is my first act as your wife.”

“The cloak was expensive.”

“You can skin someone and make another.”

His eyes moved from the fire to you. “Do you feel better?”

“No.”

“Few gestures survive contact with reality.”

You turned on him. “Do you ever tire of being unbearable?”

“No.”

“Convenient.”

“Very.”

You paced to the table and grabbed the wine cup, then stopped before drinking. Roose noticed. You set it down untouched.

“You think I poisoned it?” he asked.

“I think everyone in this castle has earned suspicion.”

“A fair assessment.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“As though I should believe you.”

“If I wanted you dead, you would be.”

“You truly say these things and wonder why people want you murdered.”

“I have never wondered that.”

You almost smiled again, and that infuriated you so much that you picked up the cup and threw it at him. He moved aside. It struck the door and spilled wine down the wood like dark blood.

“Better?” he asked.

“You are determined to die tonight.”

“I am determining the boundaries of your grief.”

“You do not get to touch my grief.”

“I already have.”

The room went silent.

That one landed. You saw he knew it by the way his face stilled further, as if even he recognized he had stepped onto thinner ice than intended.

You moved toward the fire, watching the Bolton cloak blacken and curl. “You have touched everything. My family. My name. My home. My future. My body, when it suits you. My grief is not another province for you to occupy.”

“No,” he said after a moment. “It is not.”

You looked back, startled despite yourself.

Roose stood near the door, the wine slowly reaching his boot. In the firelight, the slap mark on his cheek had faded to a faint flush. He looked tired now, though not in any way that invited sympathy. More like a blade looked tired after being used too many times without cleaning.

“You will sleep alone tonight,” he said.

Your fingers tightened around your own sleeves. “How noble.”

“Not noble. Strategic.”

“Everything is strategy with you.”

“Yes.”

“And tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow we leave the Twins.”

“For the Dreadfort?”

“For now.”

“Not Winterfell?”

“Winterfell is burned. Broken. Infested with ironmen, rumors, ghosts, and inconvenient memories.”

“My home is not inconvenient.”

“No,” he said. “It is dangerous.”

“Good.”

He looked at you, and for once the silence between you did not feel empty. It felt like two armies watching across a field.

“You love it,” he said.

“Winterfell?”

“Yes.”

“It is mine.”

“That is not the same answer.”

“It is the only one you deserve.”

“Perhaps.”

You folded your arms to hide the trembling again. “What will you do with me at the Dreadfort?”

“Keep you alive.”

“How romantic.”

“You asked.”

“You will parade me.”

“When necessary.”

“You will use me to make lords bend.”

“Yes.”

“You will put your child in me when you decide the timing is useful.”

His gaze did not move. “Yes.”

The honesty hit like a slap, colder than any threat. You looked away first, because if you kept staring at him, you would either attack him again or start crying, and neither would change the room.

“I hate you,” you said.

“I know.”

“I will hate any child you force into me.”

“No,” he said.

You turned back, fury rising. “Do not tell me what I will feel.”

“You may hate me through the child. You may hate the getting of it. You may hate the name it carries. But you are Ned Stark’s daughter and Catelyn Tully’s as well. You will not hate a child for being born.”

You wanted to deny it. Gods, you wanted to spit denial so fiercely he would step back from the heat of it. But the words lodged in your chest, because he was right, and being known by him even in that small way felt like another violation.

“Do not speak to me as if you know my heart.”

“I know enough.”

“You know nothing.”

“I know you kept your youngest brother from crying during storms by telling him the old gods were only moving furniture in the sky. I know you gave your lemon cakes to your sister when she was homesick on the Kingsroad and pretended not to want them. I know you argued with your mother because she wanted you safe and you wanted to be useful. I know Robb listened when you spoke quietly, which means he valued your thoughts more than most men valued their sworn swords.”

Your eyes burned. “Stop.”

“I know you are alone now.”

“Stop.”

“And I know alone is when people become easiest to break.”

You crossed the room and struck him again, harder this time. The sound cracked through the chamber.

Roose let it happen.

Then he caught your wrist before you could do it a third time.

You were breathing hard. So was he, though barely. His cheek reddened beneath your handprint. You were close enough to see the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes, the faint silver in his hair, the unnatural restraint that made him seem less like a man than a winter that had learned to wear skin.

“You do not get to call me alone,” you whispered.

His hand remained around your wrist. “Then who is left?”

You could not answer.

That was the cruelty of it. Not because there was no one in the world. Somewhere, perhaps, Jon breathed at the Wall, if the gods had not taken him too. Sansa might still live in Lannister hands, though news had made her more rumor than sister. Arya had vanished into war. Bran and Rickon were ashes in every raven’s telling. But here, tonight, in this room, under this roof, after that hall, there was no one who could come through the door and take you home.

Your knees nearly weakened. You refused them.

Roose released your wrist.

“You will not be alone forever,” he said.

The words were quiet. More dangerous for it.

You looked at him with hatred so deep it felt almost calm now. “If you mean yourself, I would rather remain alone until my bones freeze.”

“I know.”

“Then why say it?”

“Because hatred is not prophecy.”

“No. But it is honest.”

“Yes,” he said. “It is.”

He moved toward the door.

You watched him, wary. “Where are you going?”

“To arrange departure.”

“You leave me unguarded?”

“You are guarded.”

“Inside.”

His eyes flicked to the shattered cup near the door, then the burning cloak, then your face. “There is little left in here you can turn into a weapon.”

“Do not underestimate me.”

“I married you. I have not.”

He opened the door, then paused as cold corridor air slipped in around him.

“Eat,” he said again.

You laughed softly. “Still giving orders.”

“Still alive to give them.”

“For now.”

He looked back at you. “For now.”

Then he left, and the door closed between you.

For a long time, you stood in the center of the chamber and listened to his footsteps fade. Only when they were gone did you move. You crossed to the fire and watched the last of the Bolton cloak collapse into ember and ash. The flayed man disappeared first. The red threads curled, blackened, vanished. Smoke rose up the chimney, taking with it nothing important and everything symbolic, because symbols were cheap unless someone was willing to die for them, and too many had already died tonight.

You sank slowly to the floor before the hearth.

The grief came then.

Not prettily. Not like a lady with a handkerchief and lowered eyes. It came like drowning. You bent forward with both hands pressed to your mouth to keep the sound inside, but some of it escaped anyway, raw and broken, dragged from places no one had touched before. You cried for Robb’s smile and your mother’s hands. For your father’s solemn eyes and the way Winterfell smelled of pine smoke after snow. For Bran’s laugh, Rickon’s wildness, Arya’s scowls, Sansa’s songs. For Jon, far away and perhaps unknowingly orphaned all over again. For the men who had called your brother king and died with cups in their hands. For the wolf you could not save. For the girl you had been that morning, annoyed by Frey music and bad wine, still living in a world where tomorrow might contain regret but not annihilation.

When the storm passed, it did not leave peace behind. Only emptiness. You wiped your face with the heel of your hand, rose unsteadily, and went to the table.

You ate.

Not much. Bread first, because it required no trust beyond hunger. Then a little broth. Then water, after smelling it like some half-feral creature. The food sat in your stomach like stone, but it stayed there. That mattered. Survival was suddenly a vulgar little act. Chewing. Swallowing. Breathing. Enduring. The songs never mentioned how much rebellion began with not letting yourself collapse before the bastards were finished with you.

Near dawn, you found the wolf pin under the edge of the Bolton cloak where it had fallen before the fabric burned completely. The metal was hot enough to sting when you picked it up. Blackened at one edge, but intact.

You held it in your palm until it cooled.

Then you pinned it inside your gown, beneath the outer layer where no one would see unless they came close enough to earn the teeth you still had.

When the first gray light entered the chamber, the rain finally softened. You had not slept. Your eyes ached. Your body hurt in places you had not noticed during the night. Outside, men began shouting orders for horses, wagons, departure. The Twins stirred like a satisfied beast after feeding.

A knock came.

You stood.

Roose entered without waiting, dressed for travel in dark leathers and fur. His cheek still bore a faint mark from your hand. Good. Let him carry something of you too.

His gaze swept the room. The burned cloak. The broken cup. The half-eaten food. You, upright before the hearth in gray wool, hair coming loose from its braid, face pale but dry-eyed.

“You ate,” he said.

“You sound pleased. Careful. Someone might mistake you for human.”

“I will risk it.”

“Brave.”

“Rarely.”

He stepped farther inside. “We leave within the hour.”

You lifted your chin. “Then I should pack my mourning gown.”

“No.”

“No?”

“You will travel as you are.”

“In a stained dress?”

“In Stark colors.”

Your eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“Because men need to see what they helped make.”

You studied him, trying to understand whether this was cruelty, strategy, or some worse combination. “You want them ashamed.”

“I want them reminded.”

“Of what?”

“That the north does not forget faces.”

It was the first thing he had said that sounded almost like something your father might have believed, if stripped of warmth and fed through a grave.

“You are not the north,” you said.

“No.”

“You never will be.”

“I do not need to be. I need to rule it.”

“You think those are different things?”

“I know they are.”

You walked toward him slowly. “Then know this too. They may bow. They may call you lord. They may send men, coin, grain, daughters, whatever scraps you squeeze from them. But in their hearts, every true northern house will remember what happened here.”

“Yes.”

“And when winter comes, Lord Bolton, memories grow teeth.”

Roose looked at you for a long time. Then he offered his arm.

You stared at it.

“Appearances,” he said.

“Lies.”

“Yes.”

You wanted to refuse. You wanted to walk alone. You wanted to make every man in that courtyard see that no part of you chose him. But then you thought of stumbling. Of Freys watching. Of pity. Of Walder’s rotten grin. Of Roose’s words in the sept, irritating because they were not entirely wrong. There is power in making them hear you choose the shape of your survival.

So you placed your hand on his arm.

Not gently. Not as a wife. As a warning.

His arm was steady beneath your fingers.

You walked beside him through the corridors of the Twins while servants bowed and killers looked away. No one laughed now. Perhaps it was Roose. Perhaps it was you. Perhaps grief, when carried upright, made its own kind of crown.

In the courtyard, the rain had left the stones slick. Men had scrubbed, but not well enough. Blood remained in the seams, dark where water could not reach. Your boots passed over it. You did not look down for long.

Lord Walder watched from a covered balcony, wrapped in furs, his mouth twisted in pleasure. “There goes the wolf bride!” he called. “Try not to bite too deep, girl. Boltons like that too much.”

Roose stopped.

You felt every man near you tense.

Then you looked up before Roose could answer.

“Lord Frey,” you called, voice carrying through the wet morning air with a clarity that surprised even you. “When I return north, I will pray before my father’s godswood that the old gods remember your hospitality.”

A hush fell.

Walder’s grin faltered.

You smiled then. Not because anything was funny. Because your mother had known how to smile at men who mistook courtesy for weakness, and you were her daughter too.

“And they remember longer than men do,” you said.

Roose said nothing. He simply guided you toward the waiting horses.

But as he helped you mount, his hand at your waist for one brief, controlled moment, he looked up at you with those pale eyes and said quietly, “There she is.”

You leaned down just enough that only he could hear.

“Enjoy it while you can,” you said. “One day you will wish I had broken.”

His gaze did not waver. “No,” he replied. “I chose you because you would not.”

Then he stepped back, mounted his own horse, and gave the order to ride.

The gates of the Twins opened.

You did not look back when you passed through them. Not at the towers. Not at the balcony. Not at the river running swollen and gray beneath the bridge. Not at the place where your family had been butchered under guest right while music played.

You looked north.

The road ahead was long, soaked, and full of enemies. You rode with your husband’s men around you and your husband’s name forced over yours like a second skin. Somewhere behind you, your dead waited for justice. Somewhere before you, Winterfell lay broken beneath a sky that had not yet finished with any of you.

Roose Bolton rode at your side in silence.

You kept one hand hidden beneath your cloak, pressed against the small wolf pin over your heart.

Soon you weren’t alone anymore. Jon and Robb came to the family, and you loved them both very much. Finally, siblings to play with. All of them are siblings to you, even though you are cousins. What didn’t pass by you was the hatred Catelyn had for Jon. Jon always wanted Catelyn to love him, but she never did. She couldn’t look at him without thinking about the fact that Ned had fucked someone else. There only was one time where she showed Jon some kind of love and that was when he had gotten the pox.  

That was the only time when you found her sitting on his bed and praying to the seven for him to make it. When he was back on his feet, she went to treat him like she did before.

You felt bad and always tried to cheer Jon up to make it easier for him. He always pushed himself way to hard just to please everyone around him.

Your wedding dress is fitting perfectly on you. You love what you are looking at. The long sleeves are your favorite and you like the feeling of the fabric on your body. Now gazing in the mirror some part of you wished that your hole family would still be together. No war.

There would be no need for it. No need because Robb wouldn’t need an army to save Ned, Sansa and back then you. Now Ned is dead, Sansa is still in Kingslanding and you are here. Soon to be Lady Bolton.

“I am ready” Cat nods and helps you stand up. You both share a hug and she wipes away her tears. She is like the mother that you never had, and you are glad that she is here right now. “Come, I am sure they are already waiting eagerly for you” She leads you outside your tent, leading you to the Septon. You see many Lords standing around the Septon. They will all witness your wedding. Robb smiles proudly at you. You return it. Catelyn still holds your arm, and you are glad she does.

Soon your eyes settle onto Roose. He is already gazing at you, when your eyes settle on him. An intensity is in his gaze that makes a shiver run down your spine. He rarely shows any emotions, but when he does then it is intense.

His eyes slowly move up and down your body, taking in every detail of your dress. He himself is wearing his regular attire. Black ringmail and a red-spotted pale pink cloak, trimmed with white fur. He looks familiar and it suits him. When you reach Roose you feel Cat squeeze your arm for one final time before she let’s go. She takes her place next to Robb, gazing at Roose and you. He takes your hands in his and the Septon binds your hands in one. “I take this man” Roose and you speak your vows, gazing into each other’s eyes. “I take this woman” His hands feel warm in yours. Only now you notice how short his fingers are.

“One flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever”, you both speak in unison.  When the vows are over you lean closer, Roose following you. His lips pressing onto yours for a short moment. A warm feeling spreads through your chest and you cannot hide how happy you are in this moment. Rooses lips feel soft against yours. The kiss is over way to soon, and you open your eyes again.

Now you are husband and wife.

The feast is small. Normally there would be a great feast and many drunk man. Well, there are still many drunk man. Laughing and congratulating you and Roose. “Lady Bolton, you look lovely… Don’t go to rough on our Roose. I have heard that you have quite the temper”, Lord Karstark says. You smile at Lord Karstark knowing well that he is only half serious. Luna resting beside you. “Don’t worry. I am sure my dear husband likes my temper and roughness”, you joke. Lord Karstark laughs at your words. Roose nipping from his wine. You don't notice the flicker of emotions behind his eyes.

Roose requested to get hippocras for your wedding. Robb fulfilled that request, even though it wasn’t easy. Your dear cousin, as well as you, were still struggling with the fact that Theon had betrayed you. The life of Rickon and Bran still on the line. That’s also one of the reasons why the wedding feast isn’t that big. There are plenty of more reasons, but they don’t matter. Not to you.

You are a Bolton now. Lady Bolton. It feels strange. Deep down you will always be a Stark, the wolf inside of you will never die. No matter who your husband is.

A duty you still must fulfil is consummating the marriage.

It makes you worried if you are honest. You never did anything like this. Never saw others doing it. You touched yourself and you really enjoyed it but that was it. Nothing more ever happened. Roose is quiet, only sometimes when he believes you aren’t looking, he gazes at you. His ghost grey eyes taking in every inch of your body. You lift your wine glass to your lips, and you take a small sip. “My dear lady wife, your dress is gorgeous. It flatters you”, Roose says softly. Your eyes widen in surprise at his words. You didn’t expect him to compliment you. Out of nowhere you feel your cheeks getting warm. Even you aren’t immune to compliments. “Thank you, husband.” You give him a warm and honest smile.

Roose returns your smile, it is smaller however you see the warmth reaching his eyes. Never did you believe that he had warmth inside him. He always seemed so expressionless and hard to red. It feels kind of addicting to get short glances into his emotions.

Your stomach growls softly and you chuckle. The food on your plate screaming at you to eat it. Roose can’t hide his amusement and watches you eat for a while before he continues eating himself.

Luna still rests at your side. Protecting you and watching out for you. Robb approaches you and smiles. “Lord Bolton, Cousin, I hope you are enjoying yourself? I know it isn’t much, still I hope you are happy” Your wolf comes to Robb and greets him, he scratches her ear. “Robb, I enjoy myself very much and don’t worry about the feast not being big enough. It is alright. You did everything you could, and I am grateful for that”, you tell him. Robb looks relieved and then looks to Roose. “Lord Bolton, I wish to discuss something important with you on the morrow. And please enjoy your night. Both of you.” Roose face tilts to the side and he nods. “Your grace” Robb gives you one last smile and then leaves.

Laughter continues to fill the air around you. Your plate before you empty now. The wine glass empty. Just like Roose you only had one glass of wine. He is an enjoyer. You saw how he nipped on his wine, letting the taste reach all his tastebuds before he swallows it.

When you place your hand on the table, Roose takes the opportunity and places his hand on yours.

Your eyes go to Rooses, who is gazing at you with calmness. “It is time” You bite your lips and nod. There is no escaping this now. It was easy not to think about it. Easy to distract yourself while eating and watching the others. Now however it was time. Time for your wedding night. Roose doesn’t let go of your hand and helps you get up. Your wolf following the two of you. He and you walk past the wedding guests, some smile some cheer.

About one thing you are glad off right now and that is that there is no bedding ceremony. You asked Robb to make sure there is none and he agreed. Lucky for you Roose, doesn’t seem to like the idea of a bedding ceremony either.

Luna is behind you, like a guardian. Protecting you.

Rooses hand is still in yours, his hold surprisingly gentle. His gaze ahead, his tent coming slowly in sight. Inside your chest you could feel your heart starting to race. You are no longer able to hide the fact that you are nervous. The way your body starts to heat up uncomfortably and how your wedding dress seems to suffocate you tell you enough. “You are nervous”, he points out calmly. You are in front of his tent now. “There is no need to be” Licking your lips you avoid his gaze. His hold on your hand suddenly tightening.

“Your wolf should stay outside. It is for the better”, he says calmy. You nod, your lips flattening. It will be alright. Everything will be alright.

“Luna be a good girl and stay outside. If I call for you, you can come”, you tell her. Stroking her fur and cuddling her softly. She licks your cheek and gazes into your eyes. It is like she is gazing into your soul. Seeing all you are. You get up again, Roose gazing at you. He opens the tent for you and lets you get in first, following close after you. Your eyes falling onto his bed. It looks…comfortable. Rooses hands place on your shoulders. “You are aware that you must fulfil your duty now. We both must”, he says softly.

You nod, you understand.

In your heart rested a wish. A wish you had since you read your first romance story about a knight and a noble woman. To marry for love. Here you were, married to a man you did not yet love but maybe you could. You couldn’t deny that you found him attractive, but you still wished there was more.

Roose removes the coat around your shoulders, the coat he had put on you after you had spoken your vows. His hands placing on your back now. Loosening your dress with skilled fingers. This is his third time marrying after all. This isn’t new to him. Third times is the charm, right? “When Lord Karstark told you that you look lovely, he meant it. The way he gazed at you told me he enjoyed what he was seeing”, Roose says calmy. You don’t miss that there is a subtle change in his tone. His hands stop what they are doing for a second and you feel his warm breath on your neck now. “Did you like what you were seeing?”, you ask him.

Roose warm breath brushes over your neck again. He doesn’t answer for a while and doesn’t move. You swallow, waiting for his answer. While you wait you start to play with your fingers. “I already told you-” “My dress, you said my dress looks gorgeous. Yet you didn’t say if you liked what you were seeing as a whole”, you cut him off.

His finger slides over the bare skin of your neck and then towards your shoulders. A surprised sound leaving your lips when you feel teeth sink into your neck. A soft bite, that still leaves your skin burning. Roose lips pressing against the spot he just had bitten into. His other hand starting to continue to loosen your dress, not stopping it when it glides down your body and onto the ground. His hand gliding over your bare skin, sending shocks of electricity through your body.

“I liked what I was seeing and I like it now”, he whispers softly.

His hand goes under your armpit and then towards your throat. Pressing softly, not to hurt you but enough to show you that he could if he wanted to. He bites you again, harder this time. Your body automatically pressing against his. He is still fully clothed, and it bothers you. Now that your body is pressed against his you can feel his bone pressing against you. He is hard.  

Pressing against his breeches. The hand that isn’t wrapped around your throat slides between your legs, his fingers sliding through your fold before he sinks two of his fingers inside your hole. Your breathing turns faster and whimpers leave your mouth when his teeth sink into your flesh repeatedly. “What I didn’t like…was them starring at you like they had the right to do so. The only one who has this right is me. Do you understand?”, he whispers against your neck. His voice turning lower. More dangerous, his hold on your throat tightening shortly, causing your airflow to get cut of for a short second.

His fingers curl inside of you, and you feel your legs starting to shake. He is in full control over you, and you hate to admit that you quite like it.

His thumb starts to rub your clit, and he bites into your shoulder. Another whimper escaping your mouth. He applies more pressure on your clit, his teeth removing from your flesh. “Do you understand?” His warm breath now on your ear. A soft rut of his hips against yours makes pleasure shot down between your legs. “Yes, I understand”, you answer hoarsely.

His fingers push deeper, touching a spot inside of you that you never knew was there. Even though his fingers were not that long he really knew how to use them.

Your walls flutter around his fingers and you feel yourself getting close and closer to the edge. His fingers thrusting in and out of you faster. “Good”, he whispers pleased. Roose bites into your earlobe and if he is not biting then he nips at your flesh. The knot inside your lower belly gets tighter. Your head falling onto his shoulder, your eyes gazing at him. His hand on your throat moves a litter higher towards your jaw, tilting your head the way he needs it. Rooses lips pressing against your neck, leaving gentle kisses there.

“Come for me, come around my fingers” Rooses tone a command. His rubbing on your clit gets rougher, making you see stars. Your legs tremble and you try to hold onto something, your back arching and your eyes falling half closed.  He pulls his fingers out of you and lifts his coated fingers towards his mouth. Licking them clean. A low rumble resonating through his throat.

His eyes burning into yours. Intense and filled with heat. “Bend over” It is a command not an ask. Rooses eyes going to the bed for a short second before settling back onto you. You do as he says, excitement rushing through your veins. Roose opens his breeches and pulls them down to his hips while you bend over the bed. Your arms resting on the soft fabric, your mind racing. Roose settles his hand on your hips and uses the other to hold his cock. His cock sliding through your folds, coating with your arousal. He doesn’t waste more time and thrusts into you. Your hands gripping the sheets tightly when he starts to pick up the pace, his thrusts getting rougher.

His nails dig into your flesh, leaving bruises there. “You…will…take my seed…and give me an heir”, he breathes hoarsely. His normal calm and gentle voice are gone and all that is left is heavy breathing and grunts.  “You…will do…as I say…bare me…many heirs…”, he grunts. His upper body lowering onto your back, his hands placing on top of yours. Rooses warm breath brushing over your ears.

“You listen to me…only me. Your duty…is…to…listen to me. Do you…understand?” He punctures each word with a thrust, making you see stars. Your mind is clouded with pleasure. Not able to form a single thought.

The way his hips move against yours and how his cock glides through your walls make it hard to form a single thought. Heavy breathing and skin slapping against skin fills the air around you. If you still could think probably, you would probably die of embarrassment knowing everyone is able to hear what the two of you are doing.

A sharp bite into your ear, shots you out of your daze. “Answer me” His tone is sharper than a knife, his thrust getting rougher. You bite into your tongue due to his rough pounds and whimper. “Yes…yes I do!”, you answer hoarsely. A pleased rumble resonates in his throat sending shivers down your spine. His lips nipping at your earlobe now. “Good.”

Roose grunts into your ear with each thrust he makes and his body tenses above yours. A moan spills past your lips, your walls clenching around him. His cock twitches inside of you. “Fuck…” His hips snap harsher against yours causing the bed beneath the two of you to creak. Hard and deep, causing your body to jolt forward. His hands immediately going to your hips to hold you still. He bites down hardly into your neck, a whimper leaving your mouth. His hips stilling deep inside of you, sweet, delicious warmth filling you up. His cum flowing deep inside of you. Rooses teeth leave your skin and he presses a kiss on the bite mark he left.

He stays inside of you as long as he can. His heavy breathing calming down with yours. “I expect you to lay with me every night. Till it is known that you have my heir inside of you”, he says calmy. He pulls out of you, pulling his breeches back up. You still shiver, exhausted because of your encounter.

Roose helps you stand up and offers you a pink nightgown. “This is yours now. You will get more; I will want to see you more in the colour of our house” You take the nightgown and pull it over your aching body. The bite marks he left on your skin burn and when you look yourself in the mirror you see that they are on obvious places. Everyone will see them. Roose sits in front of a small table now, writing something. “Whom are you writing to?”, you ask curious. Walking up behind him. He continues writing, not looking up at you. “To people that help us, to win the war.”, he answers softly. The man mere minutes before gone. He is now calm and collected, not a grunting mess.

You want to catch a glimpse of the paper, curious on whom he is writing to but Roose folds the paper and puts his seal on it.  

He stands up and walks past you, outside to the ravens. You pout and sigh. The tent filling suffocating now. You put on a coat, wrap it tightly around you and walk outside. Your wolf sitting up and rushing towards you. You laugh and hug her tightly. Letting her lick your cheek.

Many thoughts run through your head. Clouding it. You are worried and more than anything confused. The hounds’ words rushing through your mind. You don’t know who Roose is. What he has done. “You enjoyed letting him fuck you I assume?”, a familiar voice asks you. You turn around to find Sandor standing in the shadows. Just when you think about the devil he comes. Your cheeks turn bright red when the meaning of his words sunk in. “You listened?” He scoffs and rolls his eyes. “How loud the two of you were it was nearly impossible not to fucking hear”, he spits.

You shake your head trying to shake of the feeling of embarrassment. There isn’t a thing to be embarrassed about, you fulfilled your duty. Biting your lips you look at the hound. “Why are you here?” Sandor looks at Luna who stares at him and then looks back at you. His hand resting on his swords. “Don’t trust Roose. He isn’t the man you think he is. You may be a Bolton by name now, but I still see the wolf in you. Stay loyal to the wolfs or you might find yourself in a troublesome situation”, Sandor warns you. You chew on the insides of your cheek. He wouldn’t warn you without any reasons. Something here is terribly wrong and you don’t like that. “You know something” The hound doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. You see it in his eyes. The noise of footsteps and the light of a torch come closer. The hound disappearing into the darkness again. “Wait”  

You curse and turn around just in time to see Roose approaching you. He doesn’t look like he saw the hound. His eyes calmy settled on you. Your eyes go to his hand, a letter in his hands. “News my wife, from Winterfell.”

“Winterfell is yours once again your grace, Theon Greyjoy got taken prisoner and is on his way here. Bran and Rickon are well, however half of Winterfell was burned down. My son died during the battle”, Roose informs Robb. You stand by his side, gazing at Robb. Cat isn’t here; she is sleeping. Robb is relieved, some of the weight he carries falling of his shoulders.

Roose gazes at you for a short second, pride shimmering in them. “I am honoured your grace. Thank you”, he answers calmy. Robb nods and then looks down at the map in front of him again. Roose turns around ready to leave, when you don’t move and still gaze at Robb, he calls out to you. “Come”

Robb lifts his head to look at you. You smile happily at him. Bran and Rickon are save, they are alright. The gods are in your favour. Your eyes speaking more than words ever could. “Goodnight cousin” You turn around and walk towards Roose, his eyes gazing at you. He opens the tent and follows you outside. Side by side you walk back to his tent. Roose glancing at you from time to time. There are so many things you don’t know, and you must be careful around Roose. Careful that you don’t fall fully under his control. Now that he is the hand of the king, many things will change.

That was all several weeks ago and the long trek to winterfell had long since begun, your mother not wanting to give you enough time to flee after telling you the news. 

“Princess.” You heard one of the knights cough, causing you to look regretfully up at the keep. “We are here, princess.” He continued, encouraging your horse forwards as your eyes dropped back down to your hands. “Stepmother!” You heard a disgustingly slimy voice coo as you entered the keep. You did not grace the voice with either reply or glance, instead simply dismounting and remaining by your steed until your knight spoke again. “Ramsay Bolton, and his father, Lord Bolton.” He muttered, taking a step back from where he was whispering into your ear. Slowly, you moved your gaze upwards, staring blankly at both men before speaking, “Where will I stay?” You asked, voice raw from crying most of the journey North. 

There was an oddly familiar man who showed you to your room, only for you to realise you would be sharing with another. “Get out.” The woman snarled, her eyes holding nothing but hatred for you. “Who are you?” You asked softly, backing up into the now closed door. “Your family killed my father and you do not know me? Your brother tormented me for years and you do not know me?” She hissed, storming towards you. “Sansa…” You whispered before a harsh slap came to your cheek. “Wait please! I had no part in it!” You sobbed, now on the floor, where you had been thrown. “You stood by and watched as your family killed my own.” She continued, her own tears falling down her cheeks. “I had no choice! You think my brother would have spared me, because we share blood?” You screamed, crawling away from the woman. “I… I loved your brother. I wanted no part in what happened to your family.” You continued to mutter, now sobbing into your hands. “I did not know.” The red-head (now raven haired) cried, moving towards you as the two of you sobbed together. 

“I see you have already made a friend!” The same voice who greeted you earlier announced as you and Sansa walked into the dining hall. “Ramsay?” You whispered into her ear, trying to puzzle out the lunatic’s identity. Sansa nodded in reply before the two of you sat down, her opposite her betrothed and you opposite your own. When the food was brought out by the same man who escorted you to your new room, you felt Sansa stiffen beside you. Glancing slightly over at the stark, you reached your hand out for her own, squeezing it slightly as your fingers laced together. “I thought you might recognise him.” Ramsay grinned, his eyes wild with glee as he saw Sansa’s discomfort. “He killed your brothers did he not?” He continued, much to your horror as you watched the tears swell in your friend’s eyes. “Fear not, he is no longer Theon Greyjoy, he is Reek now. Isn’t that right Reek?” He rambled, his smirk growing only wider. Ramsay continued like this until he turned to face you, “I am surprised to see the two of you so close, after all her brother, mother, and unborn niece did die at the command of your grandfather.” He muttered, eyes narrowing as he spoke. “I’ve heard rumours that the two of you even loved each other.” He continued, revelling in the atmosphere he was creating with every word. He opened his mouth to continue but was quickly silenced by a loud slam of a fist onto the table. 

“That is quite enough. You forget it was her brother who made you my son.” Roose countered, only sparing his child a quick glance before continuing, “And she is soon to be your stepmother when we are wed within the month.” It was as if the world came crashing down in that second. “Within the month, my lord?” You gasped, the hand not in Sansa’s beginning to shake as the reality hit you. “Is there a problem my lady?” The man responded, staring at you with his blue eyes. “Not at all my lord…” You quickly corrected, your face paling as you spoke, “I seem to have lost my appetite, if you will excuse me, my lord. “You whispered, standing from the table and curtseying before making your exit back to your shared chambers. 

“Are you alright?” You heard a familiar voice ask as the door closed. You were sobbing over a pile of letters, the seal unbroken on all of them. “I wrote these to the man I was to love.” You sobbed, the letter in your fingers falling to the floor, “I had hoped to give them to your brother.” You continued, Sansa letting you speak until you chose not to. “I am truly sorry, I know I cannot atone for my brother’s doings, but I truly loved you and your family with my whole heart. I am so sorry, lady stark.” You finished, tears still running down your cheeks. 

When you next awoke, it was with Sansa’s arms around you, the two of you lying on the cold, stone floor. Carefully, you removed her arms and quietly left the room, in hoped of exploring the castle before others awoke, since you were to be it’s lady within the month- a thought that still made you shudder. 

As you crept further around the castle, the more anxious you grew. ‘What if you got caught?’ ‘What if someone alerted Roose, or worse Ramsay, of you having left your room?’ ‘What if Ramsay’s hunting dogs caught you?’ The endless possibilities of horrific events occurring led you to not realise you were being followed until it was much too late. 

A loud cough drew your attention from the tapestry you were admiring and towards the all-too-familiar figure stood behind you, cornering you against the wall. “My lord!” You squeaked, terrified that you had been caught, although the fact that it was not Ramsay brought a semblance of peace to you. “My lady?” He responded, clearly awaiting an explanation. “Apologies my lord, sleep evaded me and I only wished to explore the keep.” You explained, praying to all the gods that he would believe the truth. He hummed in reply, silently offering you his arm. Hesitantly, you took it and the two of you began to walk. 

“My chambers.” He finished, positioning himself in front of the door. “Your chambers?” You asked, your mother having explained very little of married life to you. “You shall reside elsewhere, I shall visit you then retire here.” He explained, causing you to deflate slightly. “Yes my lord.” You forced a smile onto your face as you were escorted back to your own chambers. 

It was only two days after your exploration that you were to be married, you suspected your inferred attempted escape caused your betrothed to hasten the ceremony. “I am afraid Sansa.” You whispered hoarsely as you fastened your hair. “I know.” She murmured, pressing a kiss to your forehead, the two of you having grown exponentially closer in your shared captivity. “Do you think there will be a bedding ceremony?” You choked out, fear in your eyes at the thought. “I do not believe Lord Bolton is the sharing kind.” Sansa grimaced, her words giving you little comfort. The door opened quickly afterwards to reveal your husband-to-be. 

“Leave us.” He ordered Sansa, who shot you a worried glance before doing so knowing it would only end badly for the both of you if she were to refuse. “My lord?” You asked, taking a deep breath as your hands began to shake slightly. “You look divine, my lady.” He murmured, his eyes running up and down your figure shamelessly. “My lord?” You questioned, taken aback at his words. “Just because I am cruel does not mean I do not know how to compliment a beautiful woman when I see one, let alone when that woman is to be my wife.” He whispered, taking several steps into your personal space. Much to your disgust, you flushed slightly at his words, causing a grin to spread across his face. “Will there be a bedding ceremony my lord?” You asked, absolutely terrified at the prospect. “I shall let no man but me see my wife tonight or any other.” He replied, taking your hand in his and bringing it to his lips almost tenderly. 

You do not know why your stomach was doing flips, or why your heart was pounding, nor why you were excited as you made your way down the aisle towards your betrothed. You should have been scared, trying to run, and yet there was a strange pleasure that filled you as you locked eyes with Roose Bolton. 

“I do.” Your soon-to-be husband announced as the two of you stood before the weirwood tree, his cloak resting on your shoulders. “I do.” You repeated, trying to suppress the smile that was threatening to cover your lips. “Then you may kiss the bride.” The officiant announced, taking a step to the side as you nervously turned to face your husband. He had to bend slightly to reach your lips but as the kiss continued you soon found yourself loving every moment of it, Roose Bolton being so clearly more experienced than you took control easily. He seemed almost reluctant to break away from you but as the onlookers stared at the two of you, you understood why- he was excited. 

You were sat beside Lord Bolton, nervously fiddling with the skin by your nails, picking until they bled slightly- a nervous trait you got from your mother. Suddenly, you felt one of your hands being taken in another. Silently, your husband held your hand in his lap, stroking the back of it with his thumb as he stared forwards at the feast. Flushing slightly, you pulled the cloak closer around your shoulders, enjoying the vague smell of him that stuck to the fabric. 

At some point in the evening, your husband left the room, having been called to seemingly urgent business. Suddenly, the sound of a very drunk northern lord met your ears as he climbed atop one of the tables closest to yours and bellowed about the impending bedding ceremony. Immediately there was a storm of men that ran towards you, their hands pulling at your dress in an attempt to rip the fabric from your body. You refused to cry at first, not wanting anyone to see you in such a vulnerable state, yet when you felt a hand reach under your skirts and attempt to remove your clothing undergarments first you couldn’t help the tears from falling down your cheeks. Still you remained strong, resisting the urge to scream for help until you watched the man whose hand was still pulling at your skirts begin to lift them up and slide himself underneath them for a better viewpoint. “Roose!” You shouted, stumbling away from the man attempting to get between your legs only for him to grab onto the fabric of your skirt. Horrified, you froze as a loud ripping noise met your ears and a cold breeze met your thighs. Your eyes suddenly fell upon Sansa’s own as she stared at you, her hands shaking and her eyes tearing up as she watched, helpless to do anything. ‘Find my husband’ you quickly mouthed at her before your attention was taken by even more hands pulling at your neckline this time. It must have only been seconds before you were screaming for your husband again, this time actually fleeing the men as you did so. As you heard yet another rip in the fabric, you suddenly bolted to the other side of the hall, cowering behind one of the tables as the swarm of now angry men chased after you. “Roose!” You screamed, begging the gods to save you from the same torment your mother endured and sent you here to save you from. “Stop!” A familiar voice sounded as the doors to the hall flew open with a resounding smash. “Anyone touching my wife shall have their hands removed and any man looking upon her shall have his eyes removed and fed to him.” Your husband bellowed, speeding towards you as every single man surrounding you quickly backed away and turned their backs. You remained on the floor, pulling your knees to your chin as your body continued to shake as sobs left your lips. “You are safe now.” You heard Roose murmur, his arms wrapping under your legs and back before he lifted you in his arms and quickly left the hall. 

The walk to his room was quick, in your slightly delirious state you mused he must be running down the corridors but those thoughts were interrupted as he opened the doors and slipped inside, cradling you to his chest. “How are you feeling?” He asked after a few moments of silence, the two of you sat on the edge of his bed. You couldn’t look him in the eyes, favouring the stone floor, as you continued to silently cry, still shaking. “I apologise for leaving you alone, there was an incident that required my attention. I did not believe any of them foolish enough to attempt what they did.” He continued, moving slowly to stand in front of you. Gently, he brought both his hands to your face, cupping your cheeks and carefully tilting your face to look at him. “Forgive me.” He spoke, pressing an uncharacteristically gentle kiss to your forehead before moving to leave, “I shall leave you tonight, I don’t think it right to-” He began before his speech was halted by your hand grabbing his wrist, frantic eyes meeting his own. “Stay, please.” You whispered, voice shaky and unstable from the tears still streaming down your cheeks, “I am scared they’ll come back.” You whispered, hesitantly removing your shaking hand from your husband’s arm. “None would dare, but if it is what you wish.” Roose replied, taking your hands firmly in his own. “It is.” You returned, the hints of a smile spreading onto your lips.

Harrenhal was rife with strange power, a vast and brooding ruin that seemed to breathe with its own will. You had grown up within its cavernous halls, beneath towers that clawed at the sky and shadows that seemed to whisper your name. It had always been your world, your cradle and your prison alike. As a bastard of her House, you bore no place in the line of blood or legacy, yet Lady Shella had taken you into her service from childhood, and so you belonged to Harrenhal as surely as the stones belonged to the earth. You lived not only among her household, but also among the phantoms that prowled the corridors, ghosts of men burned alive in blackened towers, ghosts of women who had wept beneath banners long since torn to shreds.

Crumbling walls wept with rainwater, their veins splitting open in the winter frost. Trembling foundations shifted beneath your feet when the wind howled too sharply through the courtyard. Windows shattered with no hand upon them, shards scattering like broken teeth across the flagstones. Harrenhal was never a sturdy home, never a fortress that sheltered; it wounded those who lingered too long within its belly, cutting them open in body, mind, or soul. From the first days of your youth, you had learned to stitch those wounds shut, to mix poultices for broken flesh and tonics for minds unravelling in the dark. What began as instinct, the fumbling work of a child desperate to mend what Harrenhal shattered, grew with time into an art, a skill refined in silence.

The castle seldom kept a maester for long. Men of logic and books found no peace here, their science unravelling against walls steeped in curse and memory. One by one they left, or wasted away, or simply vanished from their chambers as if swallowed whole by the keep. In their absence, the burden fell to you. You brewed draughts thick enough to smother the nightmares that clawed at sleep, herbs steeped in fire to soothe aching joints, balms to quiet the madness that the weirwood’s dreaming seemed to stitch into the minds of men. You became healer, apothecary, and confidante, carrying the weight of Harrenhal’s sickness upon your shoulders.

When war split the Riverlands, it came not like a storm but like fire, sudden, consuming, and cruel. The clash of steel and the shudder of banners painted the horizon red, and you stood at Lady Whent’s side as Tywin Lannister’s host descended. The lion devoured the bat, and Harrenhal changed masters as it always had, one bloody hand to the next. You remained, bound by oaths and necessity, your place secured only so long as you bent to the new lord’s will.

It was not Tywin himself who required your tending, though you kept herbs and cordials ready should his temper or his body waver. No, he was of a strong constitution, a man too tightly wound to give sickness purchase in his flesh. Yet even he could not escape the curse of the castle’s nights. His sleep was restless, his dreams poisoned. More than once, you were woken in the black hours, summoned by a nervous servant to the chambers of the Lion of Casterly Rock. There you would find him, the great lord who had bent kingdoms to his will, tossing upon sweat-soaked sheets, his jaw clenched against murmured names. You knew some of them, plucked from the histories of Westeros—lords and ladies long dead, men who had perished screaming as their legacies burned around them. They haunted him as they haunted all who slept beneath this roof.

Still, his ailment was a simple one. You would press the rim of a cup to his lips, strong dreamwine dark as blood sliding down his throat, heavy enough to silence the whispers clawing at his mind. He would fall then into a deeper slumber, as soft and vulnerable as an infant. The mornings found him restored, his sharpness returned, his patience thin as ever. Tywin Lannister was not a man to linger in weakness, and so your service to him was rare, fleeting, almost intimate in its secrecy. For all his strength, all his ruthlessness, you alone had seen him trembling in the night, undone by shadows older than his line.

Lords blew through the halls like restless wind, and Tywin Lannister departed with the swiftness of a shadow fleeing the dawn. The echoes of his presence did not linger long; in his place, the banners of the flayed man slithered into Harrenhal like a creeping plague, red on pink, obscene in their quiet proclamation. They draped themselves over ruined stone and blackened hearth, smothering what little warmth or dignity had survived the Lannister host. The change was not abrupt but insidious, like rot working into the marrow. Serving girls and whores, women whose laughter you had once known in girlhood, faces softened by candlelight and summer memories, were seized and made objects of mockery. Those who had not been under Lady Whent’s frail shield, as you had, were stripped again, this time not only of clothing but of their small pretences of humanity. Punishments were meted out for transgressions that were not sins but necessities, gestures of survival recast as degradation in the hands of crueller masters. Harrenhal groaned under it, the very air heavy with shame and the faint, metallic tang of fear.

Roose Bolton had taken the castle now, and his demands sank deeper than those of the Lannisters, like a blade that entered without pain but lingered until the body froze. He brought with him not the roaring cruelty of lions but a stillness far more dangerous, as though the silence itself conspired with him. His men carried their lord’s mark in their very manner, pale, joyless, and watchful, every gesture deliberate, their presence more suffocating than a garrison twice their number.

The first words you heard from Roose Bolton himself, not wrapped in rumour or dripping from the lips of his men, came in the hushed stillness of your first meeting. He spoke with the dispassion of one reciting scripture, his pale eyes never straying, his voice low and measured, as though each syllable had been pressed thin before release. What he revealed was no ordinary lord’s appetite, no greedy lust or brutish hunger, but an obsession as cold as his gaze: medicine, he called it, though what he sought belonged to a lore maesters had long since abandoned. He told you, calmly, without vanity, that he was acutely conscious of his own body, of its vulnerabilities, of the fragility of flesh that so easily decayed. If you wished to continue in Harrenhal, if you wished for his protection, or merely to be ignored, you would see to his needs.

You had bowed your head in assent, your lips forming words of assurance before you could measure them. It was no matter, you told him, though you had not studied in Oldtown, though your methods were an inheritance of scraps and half-remembered texts, tinctures and leechcraft whispered from tongue to tongue. They were effective, or at least they had been enough to comfort the dying, enough to ease the pains of those no lord troubled to notice. He had listened without change in expression, then let a smile creep across his mouth, thin as a blade’s edge, the kind of smile that left the room colder for having seen it.

And then he had gone, leaving the chamber silent save for the faint tremor of the torchlight, as though the walls themselves shrank from the shadow he cast. In the emptiness he left behind, you felt not relief, but a curious tightening, the sense that you had been marked, your fate written in the stillness of his pale regard.

He came to you a few nights later, entering your chambers with the silence of smoke drifting through a crack, so noiselessly that when you turned and found him there, the sight of him nearly tore a cry from your throat, it caused you to nearly jump from your skin, rendered like the man on his sigil. His presence was a shadow that had taken flesh, pale and unhurried, his eyes fixed upon you with that same unblinking regard that always seemed to strip away the trappings of speech and leave only the raw truth beneath. He spoke without flourish, without hesitation, as though sharing with you some small, clinical detail of his life. He told you he had taken one of the Frey girls to wife before riding to Harrenhal, a timid creature he found tolerable in bed, more so than the last two wives who had already vanished into memory, but still, she was distant, irrelevant, he confessed, with neither warmth nor cruelty in his voice. His words drifted in the dimness like a scalpel passing through soft flesh: detached, inevitable.

Then came the confession, delivered as plainly as one might prescribe a tonic. He required more of you than leeches and tinctures, more than poultices and whispered remedies. He required sweetness amidst the bitterness of Harrenhal’s haunted stones, a balm not only for the body but for the hunger that lingered in him like a slow fever. He spoke of needing a lover in the same tone with which he might have requested a bleeding, a chilling mingling of necessity and desire, as if both were indistinguishable to him.

He did not ask. He did not wait for your reply. He merely told you that when the time came, you would be brought to him, summoned like a draught of medicine to soothe his health or his appetites. Then, with a grace too quiet to be human, he turned and left, leaving behind only the faintest stir of air and the dim flicker of your torches.

You stood there, your pulse drumming beneath your skin, your cheeks aflame with a warmth you had not expected. And though you knew what he had demanded, though you could already feel the weight of his claim curling around you like smoke, you found that you could not bring yourself to tremble. Fear should have filled you, but instead something stranger lingered, an unnameable anticipation, as though some part of you had been waiting for the moment his shadow touched yours.

However, you discovered soon enough that you much preferred tending Lord Bolton’s ailments to yielding to his bed. In the flesh, he was a cold and deliberate man, and when he summoned you to his chamber for the fulfilment of that other duty, it was never passion he sought, but release. He approached the act as though it were a regimen prescribed to him: swift, efficient, and performed with a detached purpose. His hands roved not in hunger but in calculation, never fully undressing you, never wasting time with the tenderness of kisses, never lingering longer than necessity dictated. When it was finished, he would dismiss you with the same calm indifference with which he had called you, leaving you standing in silence, your body still warm while his seemed untouched by heat.

And yet, when it was his health that brought you near him, leeches pressed against his pale flesh, tinctures dripped past his lips, salves spread over the delicate veins of his skin, the air between you shifted entirely. In those moments, something unspoken unfolded, more intimate than any hurried coupling. His composure would falter; his breath would grow uneven, his lashes heavy as his eyes clung to yours. You felt the tremor that ran beneath his skin when your fingers brushed his wrist, the quiet gasp when you pressed a poultice too firmly, the way his hand would rise, almost unconsciously, to catch and steady your own.

He would speak to you then, not with the brief, clipped commands of a lord, but with the hesitant flow of a man reaching for words to tether himself. Questions, musings, fragments of his thoughts would spill into the darkened chamber as you worked upon him, his voice low, almost confessional. At times he seemed desperate for the sound of another voice answering him, desperate for the closeness your presence implied. There was no necessity in the touch you shared then; it was not demanded, not forced, but something that seemed to occur between you, inevitable as breath.

When the treatments were done, he did not send you away. Instead, he let you linger under the guise of patient care, his eyes heavy but unwilling to see you go. Hours bled into one another like candlewax, the night deepening beyond the arrow-slit windows, and still you remained at his side. It was not in the act of being his lover, but in the soft, haunting intimacy of those evenings, that you found yourself bound to him, drawn into the quiet gravity of his stillness, where his weakness became more seductive than his strength.

One quiet night, when the torches in the halls burned low and the vast stones of Harrenhal seemed to sigh with the weight of old ghosts, Lord Roose’s cupbearer came tapping at your door. She slipped inside with the wariness of a cat, her eyes sharp and restless, catching on everything at once. Nan, she called herself, though the name always left her lips with a faint pause, as though it were borrowed. She was a strange, watchful little creature, too curious for her own good. More than once you had found her perched at the edge of your workbench, legs swinging idly while she observed you brewing tinctures, grinding dried roots to powder beneath your pestle, or steeping bitter leaves in steaming bowls. Her gaze would follow every motion with the solemnity of a priestess, though you suspected the truth of her fascination was far simpler: she lingered because you gave her sweets stolen from the kitchens, the sugared figs and candied almonds she devoured with secret delight.

“My brother is a bastard. Like you,” she had once announced without warning, her voice carrying the blunt edge of a child’s honesty.

“Is he? And you’re not?” you’d asked, tilting your head, your brow lifting in curiosity.

Her face had shuttered then, her lips pressing tight. She had fallen silent, unwilling to reveal more, and from that day she grew secretive when the subject of her kin arose, drawing her cloak of mysteries tighter around her thin shoulders.

Now, she leaned against your doorway, her hair wild about her face, her tone as casual as if she were summoning you to supper. “Lord Bolton would see you,” she said, and then, after a pause, added with deliberate clarity, “For medicine.”

You gave her a small smile, unable to help yourself, and inclined your head. “For medicine,” you echoed softly, gathering the contents of your craft, a cotton bag filled with tools, tinctures, and salves, before brushing your fingers lightly through her tangled hair. She tolerated the touch with a huff, then turned and padded down the hall at your side.

“You’re not a maester,” she declared suddenly, her voice rising against the quiet like a thrown pebble in still water.

“No,” you agreed, “I’m not.”

She considered you with narrowed eyes. “Are you a whore? Like Pia?”

You stifled a laugh, biting back the sound with difficulty. “No, I’m not. I’m not paid for what I do with your lord.”

“Oh,” she said after a moment, her tone almost pitying. “You should be. I bet it’s awful.”

A scoff escaped you, half amusement, half weariness. “Don’t dwell on it, for your own sanity.”

She walked in silence for a while, her little brows furrowed, her mouth twisting in deep thought. Then, with the persistence only children possess, she pressed again: “If you’re not a maester, and you’re not a whore…” She slowed her steps, her eyes glittering in the torchlight. “Are you a witch? I heard Harrenhal is all sorts of magical. Are you magical? Like Alys Rivers was? Can you see the future like she could?”

Her words hung in the air, heavy with superstition, echoing against the blackened stones. You could not help but laugh softly, shaking your head. “No. I can’t see the future, nor creep into your dreams. I am only a healer, little one. Like a midwife or a nurse—but with wider skills, and stranger remedies.”

Nan’s mouth fell in disappointment, her shoulders sinking. “Oh. I was hoping you could put some hexes on people.”

Your smile curved slyly as you asked, “Like who?”

“The Queen, maybe,” she muttered glumly, her gaze falling to the flagstones.

“I’m afraid not,” you replied gently, though your tone carried a trace of mischief. “But there are witches in the Crag who are said to weave such charms. If you ever leave Harrenhal, you might seek them out.”

At that, she nodded, her lips pressed thin, and the two of you walked on in silence. The castle loomed around you, its vast corridors hushed but never still, the stones alive with whispers of fires long extinguished. Nan trailed beside you, unusually subdued, her small figure dwarfed by the oppressive walls, until at last you reached the heavy door of Roose Bolton’s chambers, where her watchful eyes once more flicked up to you before she rapped lightly on the wood.

You were beckoned inside and found him waiting in the hush of his chambers, the air thick with the mingled scents of tallow, damp stone, and iron. Roose reclined upon a low chaise, half-draped in shadow, his bare chest aglow in the wavering candlelight, pale as polished marble. His gaze was upon you at once, steady and consuming, so intent it seemed to fasten you in place.

“You may leave, Nan,” he said, his voice low, clipped, and absolute. The girl did not linger to argue, she dipped her head quickly and scampered off, her small figure vanishing down the endless black hallways.

You closed the heavy door behind her, the bolt sliding into place with a hollow scrape that sealed you in. For a moment you stood still, the silence crowding around you, before taking cautious steps toward him. There, beside his seat, rested a shallow bowl of glassy water, its surface trembling faintly with movement: a swarm of dark, writhing leeches, slick and hungry, their bodies casting faint ripples in the candlelight.

“Good evening, my lord,” you said softly, your voice kept low, though it seemed to echo unnaturally in the vaulted chamber.

He grumbled in response. He tapped a long finger against his knee. “Sit.”

Your brow rose at the order. It was customary to sit near him when you tended his leechings, but this—this insistence—was new. Still, you gave a slow nod and lowered yourself onto his lap. The weight of his gaze did not shift, did not soften. When you reached for the clean leather gloves you always wore for treatments, his hand caught yours with startling swiftness, arresting the motion. “No,” he said simply.

You stilled, the moment stretching between you. “Leeches, then, my lord?” you murmured, your words meant only for the small space that existed between your mouths.

He inclined his head in a quiet nod, his pale eyes fixed unwaveringly on your face.

You let your hand rest lightly upon the cold plane of his chest, feeling the faint, steady pulse beneath the skin. With the other, you took the iron clamp and drew a leech from the bowl, its slick body writhing as you guided it toward his flesh. It latched with a faint pull, and he gasped, in something close to relief, or surrender. The sound shivered through you as his cool breath fanned across your throat.

One by one, you set them upon him, the little mouths fastening to his shoulders, his arms, the pale expanse of his torso. Each time, his body answered with a shudder, a drawn breath, or a flicker of his lashes. His arm circled your waist suddenly, pulling you closer, until your spine curved against him.

“My pretty nurse,” he murmured, the words slipping from his lips like smoke, curling around your ear.

Your hand faltered for an instant, your composure trembling, and before thought could catch you, you bent and pressed a fleeting kiss to his temple. “Hold still for me,” you coaxed, your tone soft, a lullaby disguised as instruction.

He grunted in answer, then let his face sink into the crook of your neck, where his breath spilt hot and damp against your skin.

You continued your work as though nothing had changed, though the weight of his arm held you fast, and the brush of his hair against your throat threatened your composure. The leeches squirmed, their slick bodies flicking against your skin as they latched and swelled. They clung to him like living jewels, dark and glistening, feeding from the lord who held you close as though you were the remedy he craved more than the treatment itself.

Roose’s lips found your neck with a softness that startled you, the touch almost reverent at first, as though he were tasting the very air upon your skin. “Stay, while they drain me,” he murmured, the words brushing warm and damp against your flesh, broken between feather-light kisses that carried more intimacy than any he had given you in bed.

“Of course,” you breathed, your hand rising instinctively to stroke through his pale hair. Your fingers combed gently against his scalp, and for that small comfort, he gave a low, guttural sound, a groan that vibrated against your throat. It was not the groan of a man in pain, but of one savouring a private hunger he scarcely allowed himself to voice.

The tenderness did not last long. His mouth shifted, his kisses deepening into nips, then into sharp, lingering bites, the scrape of his teeth sending shivers along your spine. His tongue followed, laving over the sore places, leaving your neck damp and stung, the skin blossoming beneath his mouth into bruises that would mark you for days. He suckled at you with startling insistence, with the same inexorable pull as the creatures clinging to his chest, until you felt as though he too were feeding from you, leaving you hollowed, claimed.

A sound escaped you, half gasp, half moan, and you found your fingers tangling in his hair, grasping tightly as though to anchor yourself. The other hand, trembling only slightly, slid down the plane of his chest. One leech, swollen and obscene, had already drawn enough and let a thin trickle of blood slide down the slope of his ribs. You caught it with your fingertips, the warmth slick against your skin, a ruby streak in the candlelight. Without thought, you raised it to your lips and licked it clean, tasting iron and salt, strange and intoxicating on your tongue.

He shifted against you, his lashes lowering, though his eyes cut to you sidelong, watching with something darker than curiosity. The corners of his mouth curved, not quite a smile but something crueller, hungrier. He pulled you closer still, your body pressed to his, until the wet squirm of leeches grazed your skin where they clung to him. His breath came ragged against your ear.

“Have you ever leeched yourself?” he murmured, his voice low and silken against the curve of your neck. The question, hushed and intimate, carried with it both danger and promise. Breath trembling, you shook your head, unable to form words as his mouth trailed lower, leaving heat in its wake. His lips brushed across your collarbone before descending to the rise of your chest, stopping where your bodice barred his view. With a groan that rumbled from deep within him, he set his pale hands to the laces at your front, tugging them loose one by one until the fabric slackened.

The candlelight flickered as your breasts spilt free in the dim glow, and his mouth was upon them at once. He claimed you with a hunger that belied his usual restraint, lips sealing to your skin as though he could drink from you directly. Purple bruises bloomed beneath his kisses, each one a brand, each one deliberate. His teeth grazed, his tongue soothed, until the marks burned and tingled with aching sweetness.

Then, without a word, he reached for the iron clamp, his movements practised, reverent, almost ceremonial. From the bowl he plucked one of the slick, writhing creatures, its body twisting in the metal grasp, glistening wetly in the light. He brought it to the swell of your breast, holding it poised for a breathless moment, before setting it against your flesh.

The leech fastened with a sharp sting, and you gasped, a moan spilling unbidden from your lips. The bite flared hot for a heartbeat, then dulled into an intoxicating numbness as you felt your blood pulled, drawn from you in steady pulses. Your heart quickened, not only from the strange sensation, but from the mirrored intimacy of it, you were being drained as he was, tethered to him by this grotesque, unholy bond. It was a communion, a joining, more intimate than any coupling had ever been. The creature fed, and through it, so too did your lover, as though he were taking from you something that went beyond the flesh.

He smirked against your breast, his teeth scraping lightly before biting again, playful, cruel, and tender all at once. “You like it,” he whispered, the words sinking into you as surely as the leech’s mouth.

You arched against him, your breath breaking, and felt the insistent hardness beneath you pressing against your thighs, undeniable, heavy with want. A shiver rippled through you, and your lips curved into a trembling smile.

“And you,” you whispered back, your voice soft but certain, “like seeing it.”

His answering chuckle was low, dark, a sound that reverberated through your bones. It was a laugh of possession, of satisfaction, as though he had uncovered some hidden truth within you and would never let you forget it.

“I want you like this,” he declared, his voice hushed but commanding, as his pale hands gathered your skirts and bunched them roughly around your hips. The fabric whispered and tangled in his grip, exposing you to the chill of the chamber air and to his unrelenting gaze. “Don’t deny me.”

You might have laughed at his solemnity, if laughter had not already dissolved into breathless moans. “I would never,” you whispered instead, a promise falling from your lips as easily as prayer. And gods, it was true, there was no denial left in you, only surrender.

His fingers found the ties of your smallclothes and wrenched them aside with ruthless precision. The sound of loosened breeches followed, fabric rustling and parting until the stillness was filled only by the frantic cadence of breath between you. Then, gripping your hips with an iron steadiness, he guided his hard cock into you, slow but unyielding, slipping into the clutching heat that awaited him.

The groan that left him was low and guttural, born from somewhere deep within. He buried his face in the hollow of your throat, his nose brushing against your skin as he inhaled you like incense. The first thrusts were shallow, testing, as though savouring each inch of your yielding flesh, his composure stretched tight as a bowstring. Then he slowed, deliberately, drawing out the tension, until his palm struck your thigh in a sharp command that startled and thrilled you all at once.

You obeyed instantly. Your body rose and fell in tentative bounces upon his lap, the friction exquisite, unbearable in its measured pace. His grip steadied you, guiding your movements while you rode him as if he owned not just your flesh, but the rhythm of your very breath. He leaned back to admire, his pale eyes drinking in the sight of you with a hunger more profound than lust alone, as though he wished to memorise every line, every shudder.

From the bowl at his side, his hand moved with eerie calm, plucking another leech between the clamp’s jaws. With deliberate care, he pressed the writhing creature to your skin, just above the swell of your breast. You gasped as it latched, the sting blooming into dizzying numbness. He set another soon after, each one fastening to you as though sealing you further into his possession.

Your body was his altar, bared, marked, feeding him in ways both carnal and grotesque, and you could feel in his shuddering breaths that he relished it all: the sight of you writhing, the leeches drawing from your flesh, and the sacred, sinful rhythm of your body rising and falling upon him in the haunted glow of Harrenhal’s candlelight.

“Faster,” he commanded, the word strained through clenched teeth, his composure unravelling even as his head tipped back against the chaise. His pale throat was bared to the candlelight, taut with tension, and his breath came in shuddering waves. One hand remained firm upon your hip, guiding you, while the other slid down with chilling precision, parting your thighs wider. His thumb found the tender peak of your clit between them, pressing and circling until your body betrayed you, writhing, trembling, utterly undone beneath his touch.

A broken whine escaped your lips as you quickened your pace, your hips meeting his with wet, eager sounds. Each rise and fall drove him deeper into you, the sharp pleasure mingling with the dizzying pull of the leeches still feeding from your skin. Blood left your body in slow, pulsing waves, and yet your lust only burned hotter, a delirious fire stoked by loss and need alike. You felt faint and fevered, as though he were consuming more than your flesh, drawing out your very soul.

“My pretty nurse,” he breathed, his voice a tremor against the shadows, “bouncing on my lap like a well-trained whore.” The words struck you like a lash, cruel and tender at once, praise wrapped in degradation. Heat surged through you, shame and desire twined so tightly you could not tell one from the other. You moaned his name, your body answering before thought could intervene, grinding down against him with desperate abandon.

His hands roved higher, pale fingers kneading your breasts as though they belonged to him as wholly as the breath in your lungs. He toyed with you, squeezing, rolling, pinching at your nipples, until your whimpers became gasps and your spine arched helplessly against him. Now and then he thrust upward to meet your movements, the sudden force startling cries from you, shivers racing down your limbs.

“I should bring you with me,” he murmured, his lips brushing hot against the bruises he had left on your throat. His voice was almost thoughtful, almost tender, yet edged with hunger. “When the North is mine… keep you like this. In the Dreadfort. In Winterfell. Always.” His words coiled around you like a vow, a promise and a threat entwined, as though he imagined you already locked away in those frozen halls, his nurse, his whore, his possession, forever bound to his shadow.