Chapter Text
Winterfell was just over a league away now. It was the middle of the night, and ice clung to the branches of trees outside her window. Jeyne’s husband had ordered extra horses attached to their carriage, because the snow was so thick on the road. She was no longer accustomed to being outside.
Ramsay was smiling now, softly. All of his smiles were dangerous. His hand gripped the door handle of the carriage, leathered fingers taut against the wood. The tightness of his grip frightened her.
Fear was a constant for Jeyne now. It hummed softly in her gut. She studied Ramsay’s every word and action. She studied how fast he breathed. Vigilance only went so far against Ramsay, though, because he was a starved beast. There was no sensibility there, behind his eyes. Only hunger. So Jeyne tried to fade out when he hurt her; she tried to be nothing, just like Theon. There wasn’t anything else to do.
Theon had told her, softly, desperately, to make him happy. Theon was wed to the story that he caused Ramsay’s cruelty towards him, and tried to pass this lesson onto her. He did this sincerely, mutilated fingers trembling.
If Theon just would try harder, the logic went, he wouldn’t get hurt. Jeyne should try harder, then, too. This solution seemed simple, but it was useless. Jeyne knew it was all a lie that Ramsay had tucked into Theon’s head. Ramsay liked their pain too much to ever stop.
Jeyne was afraid she would catch Theon’s disease. She would catch his blank submission, that shuffling walk, and nothing would be left of Jeyne anymore. Maybe she’d even get a new name, a third name, one that Ramsay selected for her. The Lady Bolton shivered, and only partially from cold.
“Did you enjoy our outing, my Lady?” Ramsay’s voice brought her up out of her thoughts, where she had been drowning.
“Yes, my Lord,” she said. She had not.
“It did not seem like it.” Something said so mildly should not be a threat, but it was.
“My Lord?”
“You should be happier.” His voice was a low growl. “It is a grand feast, and I took you along. To eat whatever you wanted, and to drink.”
“I…I am very grateful.” Jeyne had been starved before the feast, and had had to force back tears when the bounty was brought out. She had struggled to eat like a lady. She had been too afraid to drink. What if she had been unable to stop?
“If you were grateful,” Ramsay told her, “you’d have said so before.”
It was all so unfair. She sat, silent. Anything she said might make him worse.
“Don’t you have anything to say to that?” Her husband cocked his head, and leaned closer to her. His breath was hot against her neck.
She felt like a mouse in a trap. She wasn't a wolf; she was little Jeyne Poole. A real wolf would have ripped out his throat by now. Surely, surely he had to know. She squeaked, wordless.
His hand ran over her neck, now openly threatening. The carriage lurched, and then—amazingly, horribly—Ramsay yelled: “Stop! Stop the carriage!”
They kept moving, and, snarling, Ramsay removed his hand from her neck to yank open the door. “Stop the carriage!” he repeated, louder and with a viciousness that Jeyne had learned to dread.
It stopped, more quickly than Jeyne would have thought possible. Despite her best efforts, she found herself recoiling away from him, pressing herself into the corner as if that offered some protection.
Ramsay Bolton grinned at that. His smiles were like knives. “Are you afraid?”
“Yes,” she said.
He threw back his head and laughed. Then he grabbed one of her hands, and pulled it towards him. He kissed it. “I am your husband,” he said sweetly, “Why would I want to do you harm?” Sarcasm clung to his words like honey to bread.
Jeyne wished she had had that wine. For a few moments, neither of them spoke. His fingers grasped hers so hard that it began to hurt, but she knew better than to pull away.
“I have always wondered,” he said, thoughtfully, “if my wife would make a good bitch.”
Jeyne knew about Ramsay’s bitches. She knew where their names had come from. “Please,” she managed. “I just want to be with you. I just want to bear your children.” It was such an obvious lie.
“Do you now?” he asked, gleefully. “Because I can arrange that.” Ramsay grabbed her leg, and jerked at her shoe until he managed to rip it off of her.
Swinging the door open wider, he hopped out of the carriage. Grunting, he grabbed her arms and tugged her, trying to get her out in the snow with him. “Come on,” he snapped.
Fear was a fire inside of her, and her mind was gone. She kicked him, panting, terrified he was going to take her in front of everyone else on the road. Why? She wondered. But there was no reason in her new world. Should she struggle? She did not know.
At first Ramsay could not get a good grip on her, and she refused to go without the tiniest hint of a fight. Then her husband yanked firmly on her cloak, and shoved her out of the carriage into the snow. It went well past her knees. Cold wetness seeped easily through her dress. “My lord?” she questioned, though she knew it would get her nowhere.
Instead of answering he grasped her cloak, and tore it from her. Winterfell’s house signal, which had held it against her neck, fell into the snow. Ramsay flung the cloak unceremoniously onto their seat. His men watched, but nobody said anything. Nobody moved.
“Across the Narrow sea,” Ramsay said, “the Dothraki make the lowest of the low walk behind the Khalasar. You have greatly displeased me today. I am disappointed.” His grin was too wide for genuine disappointment.
This had been planned, she realized, belatedly. This was some sick plot, because he was bored. He was always bored. “It’s so cold tonight,” she whispered. “The wind is hard.”
It was useless. “My little wolf will be fine,” he told her. “And it shall be ever so much fun, don’t you think?” Without warning he moved towards her, and grasped her pink dress with beastlike ferocity. It ripped from her shoulders as he tore it down the middle. It flopped, halfway discarded, around her hips and arms.
In terror she tried to move away, but tripped over her own silks. In an instant he was on top of her like an animal. One hand tight against her arm, holding her down, the other pulling at her sleeve.
He leaned closer towards her, his lips brushing against her ear. His body weight had pushed her deep into the snow. “If you don’t stop struggling right now,” he told her, “I will let half the men here take a turn at you.” He considered, thoughtfully. “They can all flip a coin, I suppose.”
Jeyne surrendered. The threat had dumbfounded her, and, in her defeat, she began help him undress her. All she had was her underdress and smallclothes now, and a single shoe. He was exposing her to the chill and for his men to see.
As Ramay returned to his feet, the pink rag clutched in his fist, she remained in the snow, teeth chattering uncontrollably. Jeyne put her arms around herself, not even because the cold was making her shake, but because she was ashamed.
“My Lord, please…” she whispered. He just might kill her with this game. Now, in the face of it, she clung to her life. When she cried in her tower, it was different. “My Lord, I might die.”
He leaned over her menacingly. “If you are gone too long,” he said, “I will send some men after you, love.” He cupped her chin, and his fingers were gentle against her face. “Men like my boys. I mean, what if you tried to run off? I can’t have that.”
The cold bit her, then, wild and deadly. She knew about Ramsay’s boys. Her body shook almost like Theon’s had, when Ramsay had gone too far, and a seizure had took him. “I am so sorry. Please. I am sorry.” Getting on her knees, she grasped his trousers, silently imploring him with her eyes.
Ramsay grinned at her, his eyes hellfire. Then he kissed her on the forehead, fingers smoothing out her hair. “You’re used to the cold,” he told her. “You shall be fine.”
“Please don’t leave me here.” She whimpered as he began to climb back into the carriage. Jeyne stumbled to her feet. “Please.” Clutching the edge his cloak, she tugged, desperately. Was this a begging game? The eyes of the entire party were on her, about twenty men in total. Nobody said or did anything.
“Please give me my shoe,” she pleaded, feeling bile crawling up her throat. “Please just let me have my shoe.”
Ramsay ripped his cloak from her grasp, irritated. “Move!” he snarled, “fast!” Then he slammed the door.
The door barely missed her fingers, and she clutched them, thinking of Theon’s lost fingers and toes. By the end of the night, would the cold be strong enough to get to her foot? Would she lose some toes? Oh gods, she realized, he wants that. Panic ripped through her gut.
Remembering her pin, she ran her hands over the snow to try to find it. It was the worst waste of energy and time, but when her hand tightened around the steel, it felt worth it. She clutched it in her hand like it was worth its weight in gold.
Miraculously, the carriage door opened, and for an instant, she hoped it would all be over. Instead her husband threw her shoe out, as if in afterthought, and shut the door again.
“Please,” she said to no one in particular as the horses started to move. “Please.” She caught the eye of a man who was hardly more than a boy. He dropped his gaze as quickly as possible.
Swallowing, Jeyne made her way to the fallen shoe. She was baffled by this twist, but could not find the energy to question it. It was impossible to get it on without sitting down, so she did, and more snow seeped through her garments. Her foot already felt unpleasant, painful. But at least she had protection now.
She tried to keep up with the horses, and at first she could, but over time she labored to breathe. Her foot itched and froze and stung. The wind felt heavier, and the night felt darker, but she wasn’t sure if she was imagining it in her terror. As the final man went past her, she just had to pause for breath. Leaning over, she retched half of her dinner out into the snow.
When she looked up, she saw something lying discarded up ahead of her, where the party had passed. Fearful but curious, she moved towards it. When she got close enough she realized it was a pair of gloves. They had been fashioned for hands twice as big as hers. One of the men must have dropped his out of kindness for her. As she put them on, Jeyne thought she might cry.
First, she followed the horses, still able to see them from a distance. Occasionally she stumbled over her frighteningly painless foot. Stomping a few times, she tried to revive it. She was soaked to the core, and she could not stop shaking. Was he going to come back with his dogs and his bow? She thought. Was he going to come back at all?
For a few delusional seconds, she considered running away, but she knew she wouldn’t get far. She also knew he might have somebody tracking her now. Surely the game wouldn’t be as fun without somebody to describe her suffering to him in all its glorious detail? Surely? The thought actually comforted her, because it meant she might live.
Jeyne had heard rumors about the way Ramsay’s first wife had died. She doubted they were rumors. Regardless, no rumor could do Ramsay Bolton justice. The thought made her stomach upset again, but she held down her food this time. She needed it.
The last horses began to disappear into the horizon, and the cold curled around her feet like a vice. Putting a hand up to her face, she realized that her tears were frozen on her cheeks. She hadn’t even known she was crying. Snow clung to her dry lips.
“A mild Fall snow,” Ned Stark would have called it, back when Winterfell wasn’t run by beasts. She remembered, now, Theon, living under the threat of death, even then. She hadn’t noticed him much at the time, except that he had laughed when he shouldn’t have. He did not laugh anymore.
This mild Fall snow might take one or two of her toes. She considered, desperately, the possibility of stopping for just a few minutes, but she restrained herself. She did, however, rip off part of her sleeve and wrap it over her mouth.
She realized with a dazed sense of inevitability that she was slowing down. If she hadn’t been starved for so long, if he hadn’t beaten her so frequently, she wouldn’t be as weak as she was now. She wouldn’t have had to worry about making it. For an instant she felt angry, and that propelled her forward.
Aa child Jeyne had been taught to not lay down and sleep because she would freeze to death. This had all seemed very silly in the summertime at Winterfell, when snow had been fun instead of frightening.
Ramsay's party wasn't visible anymore, and she began to rely on the hoof and wheel tracks in front of her. Snow was falling fast, and she feared that they might disappear if she took too long. She wondered hazily if that mattered, because Winterfell was visible to her, now. Nothing really mattered, because it was too far away.
Perhaps starving his old wife to death had been too dull, Jeyne thought, and laughed. Her breath came out in puffs of white. Her own laughter startled her, because it was alien to her now. In a final defiance, she laughed again. Then the cold bit too hard on her throat.
A tiny figure, underweight and underdressed, battled against the storm. From a safe distance, a rider watched her. He had only come closer after the laughter started, because the Lady sounded unwell. He was not surprised, really, but he had to be vigilant. He had been warned against letting her die. That had been his only warning.