Chapter Text
Boots on the earth, crunching autumn leaves and twigs. The snapping of underbrush against your legs. Your lungs on fire as you flee from the thing chasing you down on thunderous paws through the wood.
A slavering growl too close behind you sets every muscle in your body taut with fear.
She appears ahead of you, cloaked in black summer fox fur, hood up over her flowing ginger hair. Your sister, standing calmly as if a monster weren’t barreling her way, too.
“Run!” you shout to her. “RUN!”
“He’s faster than you. Quicker than any fox,” she says with a sly grin as you run past. “Better to join him in the hunt.”
“If I stop, he’ll kill me!” you call out without looking back. You can’t look at whatever it is. The monster who never tires, who never stops hungering for your flesh. A direwolf. A bear. A shadowcat. …Somehow you know it’s something far worse.
She appears ahead of you again, stepping out from behind another tree. “Running will get you nowhere, sister.”
“No!” You keep running and running until the red leaves and white bark of a weirwood tree looms ahead of you, inviting and familiar. Its branches stretch up and out, the thick trunk blocking your way ahead.
You stop before the weeping face of the heart tree. Alone in the godswood save for the hot, wet breath on your neck.
With a start, you woke in your bed, heart pounding and gasping for breath as if you really had just run all night through the Hornwood.
Early Winter.
“You will marry Ramsay Bolton, you will bear his heirs, and you will act a proper lady while you do it,” Lord Wayn Pallwood, had said to you. Your father’s tone was firm and cold, just like the North itself. No warmth, no coddling, no apologies for betrothing you to the mad dog of House Bolton.
The same mad dog that killed his cousin, Lady Donella Hornwood, when she’d wed the bastard as a widow. It had scarcely been a year since the lady’s death of neglect at her young husband’s hand.
“This marriage is a farce, just like his last one,” you insisted through grit teeth. “It benefits the Boltons more than us.”
“What do you know of benefits to this house, daughter?” He spat the words.
You knew the warning his voice wrought in the air between you. There would be consequences for not biting your tongue.
“You think you know what it takes to run a house? To sow alliances and inspire men to take up arms in your name?” He glared down at you, growing closer while you listened to the servants scuttling away from the Great Hall. They understood their lord’s righteous fury was not to be ignored nor taken lightly. “Let me remind you just how few prospects you have in this world. An unattractive second daughter of a minor house. Weak. Unruly. Unfocused on her duties to her family. A wild animal in lady’s clothes.” He nodded slowly, giving you a knowing, judging look. He wouldn’t say the whole truth, not here in a public space. But you knew what “wild animal” was code for when it came to you. “Don’t give me that petulant look.” His voice dropped in volume. “You think I was able to quash every hint of your misdeeds? That our other allies haven’t heard rumors of your savagery? You’re lucky none think you a witch.”
You waited, glowering at the bronze fox brooch pinning his cloak together, uncertain if his tirade had ended. You could see his schemes at last, the greatest benefit to House Pallwood: his grand plan to be rid of you. His only remaining child. His problematic daughter. The killer he was tired of protecting.
“Finally learning to keep quiet and listen, Myssa? It only took nineteen years. Your lord husband might approve.”
It had been too short a fortnight since you learned of your betrothal, since that terrible conversation. You’d had plenty of time to think on your father’s reasons for arranging your marriage, and you saw a little more reason when you learned in passing that Roose Bolton would be granting your father a holdfast and stewardship over Castle Hornwood. The Pallwoods had never held their own lands, though they’d once lived alongside the Hornwoods in their shared ancestral fortification. But now, with the Hornwood line dead save for a bastard, your winnowed family were all that remained of the former Lords of the Hornwood.
A title Ramsay Bolton had stolen from your father before he could wed his cousin Lady Hornwood.
There was nothing your father could do but play the long, quiet game. With a strong ally in the Boltons and a parcel of land tied to a holdfast, he was better set to remarry at last and produce more children. Hopefully heirs this time. Meanwhile you would be expected to do your duty as a Bolton carrying Pallwood blood.
You hated it.
Your sister, Jinevra, would have loved playing this game. The intrigue, the plotting, the social dance, the risks. As you rode with your father and a selection of his trusted bannermen to the Dreadfort, you could picture Jinevra’s bright, playful grin. The look of mischief in her deep golden eyes. The perfect way she’d have braided her auburn hair in anticipation of meeting her horrible husband-to-be.
You wished you could summon up any feelings other than resentment tinged with resignation.
“For the love of the old gods, at least smile at the man when you meet him,” your father called back to you as your party neared the Dreadfort’s yawning gates at last.
The fortress loomed above you, the merlons jutting up from the battlements like rows of pointed teeth. It was a foreboding structure, giving credence to its name with its dour gray walls and the proud display of Bolton banners bearing the house sigil of a flayed man.
Not the welcoming abode most young brides would want to greet as their new home. But you took cold comfort in the high walls as your horse passed under the open portcullis to the large courtyard beyond. There was something about the grim structure that called to you in its honesty. These walls had seen much. War. Strife. Suffering. And they stood tall and unaffected. Rooted in blood as much as earth.
You hoped you were half as strong.
It was likely, at least, that your new husband wouldn’t kill you until you’d borne him an heir or two. Perhaps he’d torture you - you’d heard enough rumors of his violent proclivities - but he’d be a fool to lock you up and forget about you like he’d done to his first wife. The idea of bearing his children wasn’t the least bit appealing. What sort of father he’d be, you hated to imagine. At least your own father had once been kinder in the summer of your youth. Before your mother had perished in the dead of winter after her horse had thrown her into the river. You scarce remembered any details of him being so different, but just like your memories of your mother, there was warmth and familiarity there. A hug, a pat on the head, a bedtime story about princes and dragons and magic that had set you and your twin sister to giggling. The vaguest of recollections of what felt like another life. Another family.
Now only the two of you remained - a cold hearted man who only cared to rebuild a foundation for his family name, and a cold hearted young woman who knew she was facing a prolonged death sentence.
*
You were surprised to see both Lord Roose and Ramsay Bolton awaiting your arrival in the courtyard along with Lord Bolton’s new wife Walda. The men’s demeanors were opposite one another: the father expressionless and unreadable, the son beaming boyishly like the cat that got the cream.
This was the mad dog of the North? This handsome young man with a playful smile, hair as dark as your own, and striking ice blue eyes?
The group of you dismounted and handed your horses off to stable hands ready to take the reins. The first light snows had turned the courtyard to squelching mud, but you weren’t worried about your hems nor the state of your boots as you followed alongside your father to your waiting overlords. You’d dressed in your finest riding clothes at your father’s insistence, in your house’s colors of grey and black with a fox fur collared cloak. The red-brown of the fox pelts felt as if it drew too much attention to you amidst the gathered company’s blacks and deep reds. At least the inside of Lord Bolton’s cloak was pink and provided a visual draw for the eye.
But your own gaze kept gravitating to your betrothed until you stood in front of him, curtseying as your father presented you.
“Lord Bolton, Lady Bolton, Lord Ramsay,” he said as he bowed. “My daughter, Lady Myssa Pallwood.”
You could feel his eyes boring into you, daring you to continue not smiling. Your teeth clenched as you pulled off your riding gloves and tucked them into your belt, needing something to distract you.
“A pleasure to meet you, Lady Myssa. May I introduce my son, Ramsay Bolton, Lord of the Hornwood.” Lord Bolton gestured to your betrothed, who stepped up beside him.
Ramsay bowed his head courteously and reached out for your hand. “My lady.”
“And my wife, Lady Walda,” Lord Bolton continued.
Your gaze met Ramsay’s and for a moment you froze. Or perhaps time itself did. There was nothing but a calculating crystalline coldness behind his eyes. He was playing his part, doing the dance, and asking you to join. Your heart leapt in your chest and you blinked before slipping your hand into his, feeling a few callouses on his skin but otherwise a subtle warmth and understated strength. His smile deepened as he dipped his head to press his lips to the back of your hand. His warm breath ghosted over your wrist, his eyes angling up to catch yours once more.
A chill raced up your spine.
“Is she mute?” Lord Bolton asked, his soft even voice sounding bored.
Lord Pallwood laughed, a light but tired bark. “No, my lord. I suspect it’s merely nerves. Though she isn’t given to idle prattle.”
You grit your teeth while they talked about you as if you weren’t present.
Ramsay gave your fingers a gentle squeeze before letting go your hand, his fingertips trailing along your palm as he continued smiling at you brightly. “Don’t worry, father. Soon enough my lady and I will have all manner of things to discuss.”
“I look forward to it, my lord,” you said curtly, with a nod. Likely he’d threaten you. Try to put you in your place. Intimidate you. And worse.
I hate this game.
I don’t want to play it.
I know how this is going to end.
Five days or five years hence, you’d die in this place. Maybe your future husband would have the wherewithal to make his wife’s demise look like an accident this time. But for now, you had to play the part of the dutiful young lady here to wed the young lord of the Dreadfort. At least until the wedding itself had commenced.
Glancing over at the assembled servants, you noted a slight young woman with long brown hair staring snidely at you. She turned her stare into a beautiful smile that didn’t reach her big blue eyes. Beside her stood a man in ragged clothing who looked at nothing, his body twitching nervously. The other servants looked less remarkable, but all carried an air of tension about them.
No one in the courtyard looked happy save for your future husband.
*
“You couldn’t even pretend to be pleased to meet your future husband? When Lord Bolton could have refused my offer of your hand to wait for a better bride for his only son? He’s just become Warden of the North and he’s set to style his son as head of a cadet branch of his house. He could choose any lady from any house greater than ours. Even a Stark, if they could bloody well be found.” Your father’s voice was harsh but hushed in the corridor outside the guest chamber he’d been provided. He ran a hand back through his balding auburn hair and shook his head. “You should be so bloody grateful. Your sister would have been grateful. She would have done her duty proudly, not with a sneer like some wildling cur.”
“I understand. I should be grateful I’ll be needed as breeding stock, so my lord husband won’t starve me to death within a fortnight,” you said, your jaw tight with anger and frustration threatening to bubble over at last.
“You’re a woman, Myssa. You should be grateful to be noble born at all so only one man might have you. And in the privacy of your own bed chamber.” He took you by the shoulders, his voice dropping to an even lower and more desperate timbre. “Our house may be lesser, but by the old gods our blood is sturdy and resilient and true.” His eyes met yours, his rich gold brown to your warm, pale amber. “Until you.” He took a deep breath, seeming to find a second wind in his rant when you didn’t respond other than to glare at his shoulder. “Do your duty. Do it well. For your own sake if not for the sake of our family, our dwindling House. No talk of the dead or your dreams. And for the love of the gods don’t mention his first wife again in this castle. This marriage builds a new bridge over the rot of the old.”
You grit your teeth and stood there, unwavering under his words. My dreams are more than dreams and he’s too afraid to admit it, you thought. You’d stopped sharing them with him after he berated you for your foolishness too severely.
“He’ll never believe you, Myssa. He thinks you mad. You have to make believe you’re a lady, even if you don’t want to be one. C’mon, it’s fun, I’ll show you.” Your sister’s words might have been a balm if they hadn’t come to you on the lips of her ghost in the night.
After a long uncomfortable silence, your gaze shifted back up to him, accusatory and bold. “Why haven’t you yet taken a second wife? It’s been thirteen years.”
“I’m in talks with Lord Frey.” He released your shoulders and straightened with a heavy breath.
You scoffed. “Only now? He’s had plenty of daughters and granddaughters for ages. Even Lord Bolton took one for a bride.”
“Only now that I’ve made enough of a move to warrant his interest in an alliance.” He shook his head. “All the lessons afforded you, the breath I’ve wasted, the battles I’ve fought… You still don’t understand how lowly House Pallwood has been the last three generations. How important your marriage is.”
“Important for everyone but me.”
You watched his hand twitch as if he wanted to slap you, but he curled his fingers into a fist at his side instead. Without waiting for further words, you hurried off toward the Great Hall, back down the way you’d come.
Maybe you’d be allowed by your husband to learn the layout of the Dreadfort in the coming days. For now, you only knew one place you wanted to go. Lord Bolton had shown the way to the godswood after introductions had concluded, given you’d be walking there for your wedding before the evening’s feast.
Without any spared glances for the servants you passed or any concern about the hateful expression on your face, you marched through the castle until you reached the muddy courtyard again. A light snow had begun to fall, the cold flakes melting as they touched your face. You paid no mind to the weather and carried on down the lantern lined path that wound behind one of the blocky towers of the castle. Your thoughts were on how much you hoped your father would leave early the next morning so you wouldn’t have to see him again. His tired words and his bone deep need for duty and family and the future weren’t something you could share. Not really.
A tiny terrible spark of hope burned inside you. It was a dangerous thing to grasp and you knew it.
The rumors about your betrothed were too robust to ignore, especially when connected with the truth you knew about his first wife. It would be genuinely foolish to hope your relationship with him would be anything but cruelty after cruelty until he had no more use for you.
Maybe if he can see me for what I am. A monster, not unlike him. Maybe that cold smile would warm.
Your eyes lifted as you drew closer to the heart tree, flayed man after flayed man guiding your way from the waving banners spaced neatly along either side of the path. The scent of tree sap and wet leaves filled the air as you walked up to the unfamiliar heart tree and sank to your knees in front of the face carved into it. You’d never been one to verbalize your prayers, even when you’d been naïve enough to ask the gods for things. To beg them.
You knew they didn’t work that way. They weren’t wish granters. Not to little humans playing their games with one another. If they were, you’d have your mother and your sister back.
Although thinking about what life would be like with them still in it… That would mean resigning Jinevra to this marriage more than likely since she’d been born first. And, of course, she’d have seen it as a challenge, a game to be played and won, but that wouldn’t change the nature of the mad dog she’d be attached to. The Bastard of Bolton.
The one you were hours away from calling husband.
There was nothing to pray for, really. No one would come to rescue you. No mystical forces would free you from your duty. The godswood was merely a comfort, and this one was much larger than the small one you’d known from visiting the Hornwood’s castle as a child. You knelt and listened, eyes closed.
Wind rustled the blood red leaves of the heart tree. Thicker icy flakes kissed your cheeks with chill. The distinct sound of a boot squelching in mud sounded from somewhere off to your left.
Your fingers crawled across the belt at your waist, the movement subtle, until you’d grasped your dagger’s cold leather-bound hilt.
“A little prayer before your wedding vows, m’lady?” A light, playful feminine voice spoke, followed by more boot steps.
“I’d like to be left alone,” you said in a measured tone, your shoulders stiffening beneath your cloak.
The woman laughed as she stepped into your view, walking up to trace her fingers over a gnarled knot on the heart tree’s white trunk. It was the leering servant girl. She couldn’t have been much older than you, possibly two and twenty at the most. For a common woman she was lovely in a plain sort of way, her features softer than your own, her manner of dress provocative in its low cut beneath her cloak. Though it looked as if she had a boy’s chest.
Her gentle caress of the tree’s smooth bark implied she didn’t lack for self-confidence.
“You may prefer it now, but soon enough you’ll be begging your lord husband to leave you in peace,” she said, turning her face to look at you with a cool smile.
“Is that a warning?” You tightened your grip on your dagger beneath the cover of your cloak. This woman was dangerous, whatever she wanted.
“A fact.”
An unbidden desire to drive your dagger into her and watch her smile fade as her blood flowed overwhelmed you for a moment. You wanted that smug look wiped from her face. You wanted to hurt her. You wondered if her blood ran hot enough to form mist in the frigid air.
Then you recalled your sister’s words from when she’d begun to mature ahead of you and your relationship had become strained for a time. You may have been twins, but you weren’t identical. It had never been more obvious.
“Jealousy lives in every heart, even yours, Myssa. You’re only acting like this because you wish you were me.”
A cruel imitation of a smile twisted your full lips as you glared up at her from the sodden leaf litter. Suddenly you understood this servant’s game. “Your kindness won’t be forgotten.” You paused, watching her falter in her haughtiness. “Your name?”
“Myranda.” She curtseyed, then eyed you with much more caution as the breeze picked up once again and shook the crimson leaves above her. “The kennelmaster’s daughter.”
“I’ll be certain to tell Lord Ramsay of your kindness to me on my arrival.”
She grinned, reaching down to swish her skirts as she walked lightly off towards the path back to the castle proper, as if she might start skipping with glee. “Oh, do. Lord Ramsay and I are quite close. He’ll be pleased to know of my kindness to his new bride.”
You turned your head to watch her go, ensuring she wasn’t going to double back. Once again you heard the sounds of shifting feet off to your left. Rustling plant debris. The scuff of a sole over a tree root. It wasn’t Myranda, but you were still being watched.
“What do you want?” you barked out as you whipped your head towards the sounds.
The ragged servant darted off with a hobbling run through the trees of the godswood, whimpering in surprise at having been caught.
Angry, you leapt to your feet and chased after him. You’d been at the Dreadfort a few hours, and already the people meant to be beneath you were testing you.
But you were no cowering maid.
Your lungs burned, your breath fogging the cold air as you ran through the sparse oaks and scrawny soldier pines. The godswood here might have been larger than the one you were used to, but it was far less dense. It was easy to catch up to the hobbling servant even in your dress.
He let out a fearful wail as he turned to see you nearly on top of him. You tackled him to the wet, mossy ground and rolled him over to face you as you sat on his stomach, pinning his arms to his sides with your thighs.
“Why are you spying on me?” you demanded, snarling, both of your hands holding his shoulders to the ground. “I’ve just arrived!”
“M-my master! My master c-commands me!” he blurted out, stammering. Tears welled in his eyes as he tried to squirm out from under you. “I can’t. I can’t. M-m’lady he’ll—”
“He who? Lord Bolton?”
The man merely whimpered and looked away from you.
You got a good look at him in the late afternoon light tempered by the grey clouds in the sky. His hair was mostly white stringy curls that looked like they’d once been some shade of gold. He was missing some teeth. Scars littered the parts of his neck and chest you could see through the ragged clothing he wore. And the man was clearly underweight, though he wasn’t much taller than you.
Perhaps he was a terrible servant who’d had to be punished severely many times to learn his place. Whatever it was, you didn’t like his cowering, his refusal to look at you now that he’d been captured.
“Did Lord Bolton put you up to this?” you asked again, your voice made of stone.
He tried to shift away from you again, to work his shoulders so he could get free. But you leaned over him, putting all your weight on his shoulders, the butts of your hands digging into his bony frame. He trembled beneath you, shaking like a scared pup in a summer storm. The waft of stink from him was decidedly canine, only adding to the awfulness of the man.
“Did he?” you shouted in his wretched, sniveling face.
Tears streaked down his dirty cheeks as his body became wracked with sobs beneath you. His eyes remained off into the trees, up into the sky through the towering pines, anywhere but on you. “P-please. Please, m’lady. M-m’lady if he sees…”
It struck you how terrible this could look to anyone who came to investigate the shouting. You scrambled to your feet and glared at him, half unsheathing your dagger as soon as he chanced a glance your way.
“This is to be my home. Next time speak to me. Have the courtesy to ask me what I’m doing and I won’t cut you where you stand.” You shoved your blade back into its home with a resounding thunk.
He half crawled, half stumbled to his feet and ran away without another word.
The wind blew again, ruffling the hem of your dress. You pulled your cloak more tightly around you and realized the snow had stopped falling.