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Chapter 31: Afterlife
We didn't sleep that night.
During the day, I had wondered why so few soldiers were milling about and now I had my answer. Robb had put most of the men to their quarters for the day so that they would be awake for the dusk.
Ramsay Bolton would have done well to attack us in the dead of night. His men knew the layout of the fields around his keep far better than we did. Without sight, they might have done far better in a night ambush. That is what Robb would have done, he told me later. But…
"Ramsay likes an audience far too much," Robb mused after he had sent half of the men back to their own tents. His brows dipped low as he sent a sharp look into the darkness surrounding our camp. Somewhere out there, Grey Wind still stalked, watching our flanks and the walls of the Dreadfort dutifully. "He didn't need to bring your brother with him but he did. Because he wanted to see what his appearance would do to us. He didn't need to kill Walda and her babe the way he did but he wanted to. Because he enjoys making a scene."
My stomach twisted painfully at the thought, bile burning my throat. I gulped it down. The emotions swirling inside me frightened me in that moment. I felt it - like a bottomless pit that I was circling, my foot slipping along the edge every once and a while as I tried to keep myself upright. I forced my breath to even out, forced my mind away from my sister and her child and my brothers and their suffering. "He'll want to be even more flamboyant tomorrow."
Robbs's brows creased, his lips thinning in the first sign of worry that he had shown all night as he looked back at the Dreadfort, it's hulking shadow like a slumbering beast in the distance. This fact should have made us less wary - an attack at night would be atrocious and the prospect of keeping everyone awake for the next hours with nothing more than the potential of a battle was just as unsavory.
My stomach knotted one more time, dreading whatever thoughts were darkening my husband's brow.
Finally, with a sigh, he turned toward me fully. I had never traveled far enough to see more than the murky waters of the Twins but I imagined that his eyes were the closest I would get to the sea. They swirled like happy waves, the whitish-silver dappling the waters of his irises like froth at the tip of a wave. A small smile tugged at his lips, and it felt like the sun was coming out.
"You've made quite the impression on my men, little wife," he murmured suddenly and I felt a prickle of unease skate along my abdomen.
"What do you mean?" I asked cautiously.
That smirk curled up even more, one of his hands slipping, whisper-soft along my ribs and up to the curve of my throat. He looked like he had secrets and he wasn't sure if he wanted to tell me about them quite yet. Finally, he conceded with a bat of his eyes, his fingers curling through mine to drag my hand up to his lips. Through the soft leather of my gloves, I felt his breath ghost along my fingertips, his lips a mischievous curl. My heart gave a hard jerk, the action making every cell in my body sing. Did everyone enjoy human contact so much? I stared up at the way his lashes dipped, sweeping across his high cheekbones like a curtain being toyed with. Perhaps this was why so many people had killed over lovers.
"Something about being kissed by the gods," he murmured absently. I gasped, gaping up at him. He seemed far to interested in my hand still clutched to his lips, his brow furrowing as he pressed a soft kiss to my open palm.
"Well, that seems a bit too close to the mark," I gulped, frowning when he didn't respond immediately, his free hand splaying wide across my lower back. His thumb inched its way beneath my glove, sending a shiver racing up my spine. This infernal man. "Robb…" He didn't so much as blink, his focus narrowed down to those slivers of bare flesh that he was revealing. "Lord Stark."
A strange look crossed his face as his lashes swept up, blue eyes clashing with my own as his teeth nipped at the inside of my wrist in silent reprimand. "I never thought I'd hate the sound of a name so much."
I blinked, taken aback. "Pardon?"
He was back to studying my hand, turning it this way and that. "I like it far better when you call me husband. Or My Lord with that huffy edge to your voice." his smile was wicked, one of sin and debauchery as he grinned. He could have brought all the stars down to dance with us at that moment, I thought, dazed. He seemed so powerful, so unbearably in control even on a night like this. My heart ached looking at him. "Remind me of my place."
I felt a flush heat my skin, a gasp working its way up my throat.
"That's why I do it, you know." My attention narrowed on the light press of his lips along my wrist, a shiver tingling up my skin as his eyes fluttered shut once more. His fingers spread, pushing back more of my glove, diving under my long sleeve until a bit more of my arm was revealed. My whole body tingled, catching fire, as his lips parted and I felt the lightest scrape of his teeth along my vulnerable skin. It felt - I gulped back a startled squeak, trying to draw myself back away from his touch and only finding his other hand as he kept me where I was. That hand tightened, clenching the material at the base of my spine until I was flush against him.
I was breathing hard, I realized belatedly, my breasts crashing against his chest as I tried to draw in more than a sip of air.
"Wh-what?" He had said something about… I had absolutely no clue what he had said to me.
"My queen," he breathed against the pulse at my wrist before he pressed his lips to the wild pounding in my veins. "My wife." Another kiss to the sliver of flesh at my palm that he had wrestled from my gloves. Those blue eyes of his flashed open, bright and cunning in the moonlight. "I call you these things so that you'll always know who you are."
All the air left me in one swoop, my heart swelling as his words hit me squarely in my chest. I was never one to put much stock in someone's words. Or really their actions. Emotions, I had come to find, were such fickle things. They changed within seconds, undetectable shifts in the tide that usually left me baffled. I knew I didn't trust. It was one of the reasons I had remained unmarried. Because I looked at everyone like I was two seconds away from walking away. Cold, they whispered. Pompous with airs above my looks and wit. I knew my worth as a Frey. I knew my worth as a woman. I knew how much gold or cattle a man would give to be able to bed me until I was with child.
That's why it baffled me whenever Robb spoke to me like this. Whenever he looked at me like this. As if I was made of moonlight and fallen stars as if I was a wish that had lost its way and stumbled to the space in front of him. He spoke about me and to me like I was - as if I was - worth something.
"You are the best thing that happened to me," I blurted out, forcing back tears. My fingers curled around his, my feet drawing me closer as my whole body trembled with my own conviction. His eyes widened, shock stilling his actions as he stared down at me. "I want you to know that I would not have chosen anyone else. I would go through this again and again if my path intersected with yours. I-"
I love you. My tongue stilled, a hand reaching out from some dark part of my mind to clamp over my mouth. I stared up at him helplessly, hoping whatever he saw in my face told him of the depths of my emotions. It felt like too little and too much all at once - those words so filled with past memories of watching others give them to people that they later swindled, cheated and toss to the side. Robb wasn't any of the women that my father had groped in front of us while we ate dinner. He wasn't the man who took my sisters and then beat them. He was so much more. He deserved so much more.
A small smile tilted his lips after a moment, his eyes softening. His hand slowly slid away from my waist, skimming along my hip and ribs before coming up to cup my cheek. "I know, my love." My breath trembled from my lips in a short huff, a million strings tightening along all of the organs in my chest. I wanted to cry and laugh and hug him hard enough where our bodies became one. His lips pressed to my temple softly, almost reverently. "I know."
I had always thought that war would look…different. Maybe the earth would break apart; perhaps the sky would slit itself apart and weep tears of blood instead of rain. I wasn't expecting the silence. The dampness of morning air mixing with the blistering winds to freeze the wet tips of my hair.
We gathered right when the doors of the Dreadfort opened, a whine piercing the oppressive stillness. I felt an odd pressure in my chest releases like steam leaving a kettle in a rush. Somewhere inside of my small, Frey mind, I had thought - I had hoped that this day wouldn't be one filled with death and gore and blood. I had never fully voiced it to myself - never allowed that small wish to flutter through my mind and up to the Gods - but here I was. Disappointed and terrified as the fields filled with men in dark armor and shields.
A rippled went through the men in front of us, all of the house heads shoved to the very back of the formation. Robb told me that it wasn't like in all the tales where leaders held up a spear and charged the enemy. He would go in. He would fight. But later, after the first wave had been hit and dispensed with. After our men had died and their men had died.
Cold chills skated up my spine. I was being weak. I felt a gust of air leaves me, the feeling like the very air was trying to suck out every last organ in my body with each exhale. I shouldn't be terrified. I should be brave. For the soldiers who would surely die today. For the ones in front who knew that they were more than likely a token willing to be lost in this battle unless they were good enough to hold out until our second wave converged.
"This field us good for side maneuvers," Robb was whispering to one of the lords as I sat rigidly on my horse, pale and shivering probably looking like a scared, drowned animal. "If he's smart, he'll situate some soldiers to our flank and try to herd us."
"We're one a hill," one lord hedged, his lips tipping down in deliberation.
"I'd call my mom a whore before I called this a hill, Torrhen," drawled a man who could only be a few years older than Robb, a scar marring half of his face from jaw to temple. A fist sheathed in a silver gauntlet was seared into the metal of his armor, crude and cutting. House Glover, I remembered sluggishly.
"We have a bit of of an up-slope," the first lord muttered, completely unfazed. He was handsome in his own right, his golden brown hair shorn close to the scalp, his eyes circled with a fatigue that didn't show in his eyes. A plain white circle with a dozens of spikes making up the edge was embroidered on his tunic, the fabric already dirtied by the activities of this morning. Karstark, I clocked.
"Oh stuff a globe between your teeth, Torrhen," the first one snarled, rolling his eyes. "Fucking up-slope. What the fuck is that?"
Torrhen's eyes slipped lazily toward Lord Glover before he drawled out slowly as if speaking to a small child, "It's being at the top of a piece of land that goes up."
"You're a fucking fish-loving idio-"
"The only fish I've had recently is your sister's cu-"
"Will both of your kindly shut your fucking mouths," Robb snapped suddenly, his voice filled with enough bite that both of them fell silent even though their eyes stayed adamantly locked on the other.
Theon's horse shook out its main, his face deceptively indifferent as he eyed the whole affair. "I would have thought you two would be better after the war."
"There's always a war, Theon," Lord Glover snapped, still glaring at Torrhen even as the other man drew out a dagger from his belt and idly picked at his nails. "Just a different little shit to deal with." His eyes flicked back to the walls of the Dreadfort, a slight line marring his brow. "With different ways of making us pay for having a difference of opinions."
He was talking about the flaying, I realized dizzily. I flaying and the beating and - I shut my eyes, drawing in a tight breath. Last night it had seemed like something I could handle. Like something I could bear but - but what if we lost? What would they do to my brother? What would they do to him in front of me before they did it to me? My stomach revolted.
"Oh shit," someone muttered to my side as I gagged, instinctive tears burning my eyes. "We got a puker."
Water and the crackers that Robb had all but forced down my throat this morning burned along my throat, spewing from my lips. It was a miracle that I didn't puke all over myself. I gagged, retching again. I wanted to die. Tears and snot mixed with the foul vomit as I spat. Another wave hit me as I leaned farther to the side, my stomach heaving. I didn't have any more to give.
"If I hear anyone say another fucking word, you'll not have to wait for the trumpets to get a beating," Robb was snarling, the whole camp falling silent except for the sound of me coughing and spitting.
Someone had tugged my hair away from my face, I realized dizzily as I finally forced my shaking limbs to straighten. A cup with water was guided to my lips, the scent of jasmine barely there as I took a gulp and spit it out. Going into battle with puke fresh on my tongue hadn't been my plan. I had wanted to seem… more.
"Feel better?" I wiped away the last bit of tears as the gentle question. Of course, Sansa was there, patting back my hair and looking at me with a tenderness that I hadn't expected. The truth was that she looked at me like an animal assessing her opponent most days. A reaction I didn't blame her for at all.
I forced a wobbly smile. "No. But my stomach is empty so there's that bit of relief."
She gave me a soft smile, patting back my hair once more.
"MY LORD!" I had never felt so glad to see a messenger boy, his stead drawing up clumps of glass and frosty mud as he wheeled to a stop. "Ramsay Bolton has asked for an audience."
Robb's face held little to no emotion, his eyes flicking to the side in obvious annoyance. "He's used up his one discussion. I don't believe there's anything more to discuss."
THe boy didn't leave, his eyes flicking nervously around before he dipped his head in difference. "If you don't mind my forwardness…"
Robb's eyes sharpened, his gaze slipping to the front of his army where I could see a ripple like a flag catching a bit of wind. I couldn't see the Bolton army from our position back here. It was still too early, Robb had told me, for us to move closer. Just over the sea of our men, I could see the steam from torches, the winter morning cold and surreal like a world cast in grays and whites.
"Something has occurred that…" The boy's throat bobbed, his eyes darting to me quickly before he was staring at the ground again. I felt my heart stumble, its frantic beat faltering for a moment to let in pure, unadulterated terror.
Robb's eyes had gone a startling shade of blue, his lips thinning. "I'll go to the front."
"I will as well." I had spoken without even thinking. My whole body buzzed with a tingling adrenaline like the wings of a dragonfly, beating, beating, beating-
"Willa-" Robb started, looking slightly uncomfortable. Theon was staring at me with growing unease.
"With all do respect, my queen-" the boy whispered hurriedly, paling.
"My lady," Lord Grover started unsurely.
I could barely hear them. Something was wrong. Something inside of me - something in the air - something - Metal coated my tongue, dipping my throat in coins and shackles. My mind knew that only one thing could be wrong. Only one thing had occurred beyond those walls in the weeks before we came here.
But my mind wouldn't go there. My mind couldn't name it.
"I will go with you," I said again, more slowly. I didn't know why I sounded so sure. I didn't know why my words didn't chatter and shake like the rest of my body. I could see how my whole body trembled, my hands on the reigns so white and quivering so badly that the bridle was making a soft clinking.
I don't know what Robb saw on my face in that moment. All I knew was that his jaw hardened, his eyes shuttering and he gave one sharp, distinct nod.
He caught my reigns as I rode forward, stopping my horse so that he could lean in and whisper to me, his eyes boring into mine. "You stay beside me. Whatever game this is, you don't move a muscle. Promise me."
I blinked up at him. "I promise."
He let go of my reigns after a long moment, his shoulders set in clear anxiety. This was normal. This had to be a normal occurrence. One last shot at a peaceful resolution.
"The Witch Queen," I heard more than one soldier breathe as they parted around us, their eyes hooded by the great helms atop their head.
"The Wolf King," I heard more still whisper with reverence, their eyes tracking my husband as worshippers brought to an altar. They looked at him as only someone would a savior, as only someone would look at another who had dragged them from the edge of death.
The field lay before us in harsh slopes, the ground unforgiving. More than one horse would likely be crippled by those fields today. The Ramsay army looked… like men. I almost wanted to laugh. My imagination has somehow turned them into giants, slavering and bloodthirsty. But here at the front, they were simply men, dirty and scared. I could see a few just beyond the front line looking at Robb's army like they were already impaled on one of our swords.
Ramsay was as he always was, grinning, half mad with the morning light, his black hair dishoveled, his hands - My muscles locked up. What was -? Brown. His hands were caked with brown…muck? My head spun numbly. Why were his hands covered in muck like he had been digging in the dirt?
"Fuck," Robb whispered, his horse turned suddenly, blocking mine so abruptly that my mare spooked, her reigns slipping from my grip as she whined. The line of men beside me let out gasps and yells as she shied away, cantering to the side.
Robb's eyes locked on mine, something wild and - and scared - He was scared. Robb was never scared. My eyes instinctively darted in the direction he had been staring. "WILLA, NO!"
"A FAMILY REUNION!" I couldn't breathe. Ramsay's voice was booming, his words twisted and curved. I would remember that voice for the rest of my life. Til my very last breath. The torches - I had thought that they had been torches - "WELCOME TO THE DREADFORT, DEAR SISTER!"
Two crude wooden Xs were spiked into the ground, torches secured around them like a little wreath. And staked like hogs, their hands and feet nailed, were the bodies of a man and a woman. Their skin - my whole body crawled, whatever was left in my stomach burning along my tongue - Tendons and muscles shone in stark red hues, their skin plucked free from every single surface of their body.
It was the man's body that my eyes couldn't leave. They had taken everything from him, had even cut his lips away so that his gums and teeth were brutally bare. But they had left - they had left his hair. His wild, woolly mess of curls, a deep mahogany. They had been so careful - so careful it seemed not to cut a strand, to keep it clean while they desecrated the rest of him.
Nothing.
Nothing.
My jaw wouldn't unlock. My lips wouldn't open. I felt the scream build inside of me like a wave that was threatening to rip me open.
Nothing.
My whole body was… nothing.
Burn, the quietest voice inside of my whispered. BURN.
Fire scorched along my spine. I felt it - I felt the depths of my rage and despair like a wave that I had fallen in to. I felt it swallow me whole, wiping away whatever was left of the little girl who had almost been killed, who had begged for life. At that moment, I wanted to die.
I would have gladly given up my own life if I could just watch them burn.
Vines ripped from the ground, turning rock and dirt into mulch. There was a moment - a moment where I felt a sudden, wild sense of glee as whatever smugness in Ramsay's face turned to pure horror. As realization mixed with the overwhelming certainty of his fate.
It was short-lived. Pathetic. I felt all of those men beneath my vines like ants beneath a thumb, small grain beneath my feet. There and gone within the next breath. It wasn't enough. Watch them cower and try to run while their fellow soldier was ripped in two, blood dying the very ground until thier stride was sucked away like quicksand - it wasn't enough.
I turned my attention to the walls of the Dreadfort.
The Goddess of Chaos had watched many mortals before. She had watched them cry and weep while they begged for forgiveness or salvation or death. She had watched them for so long that they had turned in to her very own book, her addiction becoming one of reading along. Some may call her cruel. But then what were all the best readers of this world but callous dictators, bent on collecting story after story, tossing away the ones that didn't meet their expectations in indignant rage?
Yes, Chaos was an avid reader. So she had seen this part all too many times. The part where her mortal lost everything that had ever meant anything to them.
Her head tipped the side slightly, a cascade of brutal crimson strands cascading down her cheek. She watched from the very edge of the battlefield, in a place not quite there but not quite here either.
She watched as the Bolton's had dragged Corlin and Walda Frey out from their keep in the back of a shit cart, the men jeering as they had tried to lift Walda. Apparently, as well as being rancorous meat sacks they were also physically weak. How pathetic. While Chaos did enjoy the brutal, there was nothing particularly clever about any of this.
The thing's the Bolton boy, while vicious, were subpar in terms of cunning. He employed no real bravery to capture and torture the Freys. He had stayed inside his walls and let his band of dimwits do most of the heavy lifting.
And besides all that… Chaos didn't enjoy it when someone played with toys that were already hers.
Speaking of which…
Vines crawled along the Dreadfort walls, squirming into the tiniest crack, ripping through mortar and stone. Withering masses of ropes of green and purple clustered around the exterior walls, dripping red. She could hear the screams, the last desperate few who could see death coming and were trying one last time to beg for their Gods. A leap of sick satisfaction tingled up her spine as Willa's vines honed in on those poor unfortunate few, converging on the sad soul like a pack of wild dogs, grabbing on to limbs and pulling until…
BOOM!
The gate came crashing down, followed closely by half of the stone walls. Chaos' eyes slipped lazily over the display, moving back to her charge. Interesting… Willa had always reminded her of her grandmother - the healer, gentle, soft-spoken and patient. But as she watched another section of the Dreadfort come crashing down, she couldn't help but see her mother. The bloodletter. The bone breaker.
A cold smile curled Chaos' lips as the first citizen of the Dreadfort began to wail.
Her Wolf boy was trying to speak to her even now, dragging Willa's body onto his horse as he whispered something in her ear, his eyes wild as he took in the destruction of the Bolton's. But Willa's eyes were still on those torches that circled her brother and sisters bodies like silent tributes, burning hot in the Northern cold. She hadn't said a word - but when a woman is really mad, do they ever speak? Or do they watch as the world burns around them, silent, head down like a bull walking slowly through a collapsing building. That was why Chaos had chosen a woman's body - for these moment. For when a woman's rage is silent and hot. For when the world shakes from her bloodlust.
Another shiver of pure delight coursed up Chaos' spine as Robb swore violently, his voice booming over the carnage in front of him. "RETREAT! GET BACK, YOU FOOLS!"
A contented sigh slipped from her lips as she turned away. It was time to pay Lord Bolton a visit in the afterlife. It only took a short word to the Masters of Death to make sure a soul got the afterlife he deserved.
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