Chapter 34: The Legend of the Bloody Boltons

I heard them. Not so much the words that they said but the ones that they didn't.

Monster.

Savior.

Creation of the Gods.

What it boiled down to was other. I wasn't so lost in my own grief to not understand how utterly I had separated myself from everyone else. That was a dangerous place to be. Humans didn't like things that they didn't fully understand. Gods walking among them? How terrifying. It was one thing to imagine a faceless, shadowy figure who judged you when you left this mortal coil but to see it so blatantly?

"We need to talk about this," one of Robb's older advisors snarled, snapping at him as if I wasn't sitting just a few feet away.

Torrhen and Theon shifted, elbows and knees bumping against the tiny war camp table that was overflowing with maps and correspondence and rations reports. They looked tired and drawn - all of them did. Sansa sat with a blank expression, her eyes fixed on a blank patch of table, her mind far off. No one had spoken more than a few words, all clipped and to the point.

"What she did - what she did to the Bolton's. Nothing of this world should have that much power, my lord," another man piped up before a vicious growl split the air, my husband's teeth flashing. He seemed to tower over the men in that moment, his blue eyes blazing with unholy promise. The men shrank a bit before him, gulping.

"What exactly are you trying to tell me, Norris?" I didn't miss how he had used the older man's first name. And neither did he, by his raised brows.

"I'm suggesting that you handle this matter-" the man started with venom, and a deep part of me flinched. Handle me. As if - as if I was nothing more than a problem to be cleaned up.

"She is not a piece of furniture to be replaced; she's your queen," he bit out, and a whisper of the harsh northern wind slipped through the folds in the tent to riffle the furs around his shoulders. "Get out of my fucking sight before I have you whipped and my sigils torn from your fucking houses."

"I-"

"You've forgotten your fucking place," Robb finished for him, voice cold as any wind in the North. "You'll be relieved to know that I remember it as well as the allegiance that you gave me in the war. That's the only reason I haven't cut out your tongue and fed it to my wolf. Now get the fuck out of this tent."

I didn't look up from where my fingers rested in my lap, chapped and broken from the wind… and from a debt that I had forgotten. My side and back pulsed with a million little wounds, something that had become increasingly more apparent as the evening wore on. How could I have let something so important slip my mind? How could I not have remembered that my magic came with a cost?

"I expect you to find your senses in the night," was Robb's deadly whisper at their backs. "Come on your knees to my wife or don't bother staying until dawn."

Silence sat thickly in the air as Robb turned with a soft snarl, hands clenching and unclenching at his side. His eyes immediately sought mine, his face softening a fraction as they fell on my drawn expression. I hadn't spoken a word since we had left, not since… not since we had found Daltis.

"My lord…" Torrhen started slowly, his eyes flicking up to glance at Robb and then me before quickly deciding that he would get more from a responsive person and turning back to the King of the North. "Although I don't agree with Lord Harren's phrasing… We do need to discuss what occurred."

A well of blood trickled from a cut that ran the length of my forearm, dripping past my sleeve. I tugged it down, toying with the edges. It felt - everything felt blurred - as if I was ten feet beneath this room, listening to a conversation meant for someone else. A cold part of me realized that this was bad, that I had shown myself in the worst way possible, a way that made me dangerous to the men of this party. And a dangerous woman was like a weed to most men, a nuisance to the eyes, something to be plucked out before it tainted the rest of the garden with it's toxicity.

"What is there to discuss?" Robb's voice was deadly, his eyes even more of a threat as he strode over to stand beside my chair. He waited there like a great beast guarding its home from intruders.

A humorless laugh escaped Lord Glover, his usually jolly expression sinking into pallid aversion. "The complete annihilation of a house of the North."

How simplistic. How sugar-coated. They no longer bore the responsibility of my brother and sister, and nephew's death. They were a house of the North. A dry, mirthless laugh died in my throat before it could escape. How easily history could be interpreted.

"A house that committed treason against me and refused peace," Robb bit out. Theon remained silent in his seat, his face deceptively blank.

Torrhen and Glover shared a concerned glance before Torrhen whispered softly, "There were innocents in those walls." His eyes flicked between Robb and I once more, an expression close to pleading on his face. "There were children. And women."

As if women couldn't slit a man's throat just as easily as men. As if docile goodness was ingrained in us until our dying breath. There were two people that I knew to be innocent in that keep, and both of them had been flayed and set on spikes.

"I have come to find that neither of those things equates to innocence, Lord Torrhen," came a soft, even voice. Sansa's eyes reflected the same coldness as her brothers, her head tipped to the side as she stared at the two lords. Her hands were folded delicately on the table. She radiated the composed regality of someone of her status. "Prince Joffrey was a child, and he would bring prostitutes to his bed to torture." Torrhen flinched, his face coloring. "I should know. He made me watch." Her eyes chilled even more, and I watched Lord Glover swallow thickly. "Or perhaps because he was a man that allowed him the constitute to be vile. Perhaps I should regale you of the time I spent with the Mad Queen instead?"

"That won't be necessary, My Lady," Lord Glover mentioned after a beat of awkward silence.

Unspoken words hung heavily in the air, so clear that I thought I could hear them. She's a monster, the lords' eyes said as they kept flicking up and away from my own. Just hours ago, they had been joking about my weak stomach, and now I could see the fine sheen of sweat on their brows.

Men did terrible things in war… but there was something particularly ghastly about seeing something pure commit heinous acts.

"You are dismissed for the night," Robb finally said, his voice tight and his lips stiff.

No one said anything as Lord Torrhen and Glover stood, bowing hurriedly before leaving the tent. What would they say, I wondered, to the men in their troop? I had the sinking feeling that it would be nothing good.

Robb growled, his fist slamming into the table, sending an ink well onto its side, the black liquid seeping into sheet after sheet, blotting out the well-documented pictures of the Bolten keep until there was nothing left. His curls hung in wild streams across his face as he hung his head, a deep breath leaving him.

"Although I whole-heartedly agree with purging the revolting blood of the Bolton's from this earthly coil," Theon finally drawled, his face drawn as he eyed Robb. "Perhaps there was a better way."

"I don't think that my wife was thinking of all the particulars in the moment, Theon," Robb stated slowly, his eyes slipping to me beneath the shade of his curls. They swirled with pain for a moment as he took in my blank expression. I went back to staring at the cuts along my fingers, too small for anyone but my own eyes to pick up on.

Sansa inhaled slowly, her brows furrowing as she seemed to calculate something. "You know what this could mean."

"I know," Robb gritted out.

"Once people start fearing you instead of admiring you as their ruler, it's only a matter of time before unrest begins."

"I know," Robb bit out once more.

Sansa's expression was cutting. "Then you also know that we're running on borrowed time." A tic in Robb's jaw started to pulse. "Already your soldiers are whispering about Willa's powers. They're making songs and stories - and some of those will be nightmares. Some of those will be fodder for revolts."

"They view Robb as a God," Theon objected. "He still has their admiration from the war."

Sansa snorted. "Admiration? Please don't be naive, Theon. His victories in the war allow him millimeters of grace. Do you know what most soldiers remember? The hunger. The days and nights spent in squalor in a war that some of them did not choose nor wanted. Most of those men were called away from their wives and children. They spent years under a banner that all but forced them to suffer and die at the whims of men whom they never even spoke to. Do you think they remember the glory half as much as the suffering? Now we have called them out of their homes again - forced them to march North in yet another act of vengeance."

Theon let out a low whistle. "How good you are with creating an image, Sansa."

Sansa rolled her eyes.

Robb didn't say anything, his eyes distant as he stared down at the ink that was slowly eating away at the pages in front of him.

My mind drifted, thinking suddenly of Daltis. Daltis, who was locked up in a cold pen right now. Daltis, my blood brother, who I couldn't help but resent. As if he had been the one to kill Coltin. As if it had been an option between my Corlin and him, and the Gods had chosen Daltis instead. My stomach turned sourly, mimicking something akin to guilt. But there was so little of myself left - the emotion was nothing more than a twinge and then gone.

"Willa." I blinked, coming back to the room with a start. They must have been discussing something more, but I hadn't heard, their eyes trained on me. Sansa's face pinched with earnest worry, her brows knit as if she were trying to force the words underneath my skin. "Willa, I know - I know how the world has just carved you up. I know that right now, the thoughts and feelings of others is the farthest thing from your mind." She leaned forward, her eyes holding mine. "But right now, you need to be a queen. You have been cast in a position that allows for little to no weakness - which is something that the men out there would likely rejoice in seeing, for that would mean there is somewhere to strike. They will not remember your brother or your sister. They will not remember what you lost since it is not what they lost. They will, however, remember your face when you destroyed the walls of the Bolton keep and killed the people hiding, the people fleeing. They will remember and they will fear you."

And they would fear them as well, I thought numbly, my eyes dragging between the two Stark siblings and Theon, who was the same as a brother. If I let the fear of the men in this party grow, it would infect everyone. It would spread when they returned to their keeps, festering until one day it boiled over and burned the Starks away, for they were connected to me now, irrevocably.

"What," my voice rasped from my lips, "do you suggest?"

Sansa blinked, her brow furrowing for a moment as she thought. "I… think that you would benefit from a bit of benevolence. Gratitude would be the best route for you to take."

Gratitude. I didn't say anything more, sitting with that for a moment longer before getting stiffly to my feet. I would do what I needed to. Tomorrow.

Bowing my head, I stood, giving them one final look before making my way slowly from the tent.

In a way, it felt good to have a plan so firmly in place - to be told what direction I must go in. I meditated on the word as I slipped into my tent, slipping out of my dress, wincing at the tug of the open wounds that crossed my torso and thighs in unforgiving slices. None were deep enough to need any sort of attention other than cleaning. How odd it felt to look upon them, each one made by someone's weapon as they tried to defend themselves. How small and insignificant they looked upon my skin.

Grey Wind came to me, slipping inside the tent as I slipped into another gown. He watched me with the attentiveness of someone viewing a natural disaster, wondering if the waves would take their home or simply batter the shore across from them.

Gratitude, I mused.

I slipped into the tiny tent that held my brother and sister, the air thick and stale with the foul stench of death. At another time, seeing the shrouded, lifeless forms would have made fresh terror paralyze me, the dark interior chilling in its own way. I slid to the ground next to my brother's pallet, staring into the darkness.

"Bird brain," his voice laughed to me, playing across the air like a ghost come to haunt my waking hours. Or perhaps it wasn't my waking hours.

I started, gasping as my body began to slump forward, nearly collapsing to the packed ground. I had started to dose, my body giving up after so many hours awake.

Outside, the night was silent; everyone already asleep. Grey Wind was still there, his body just visible through the slit in the tent and beside him… My heart ached. Robb. Robb was standing guard just outside the tent.

I blinked again, forcing a hand to my spinning head. Exhaustion made my body ache, seconds elongating and shortening until I wasn't sure how long I had been awake or if I had dozed off again.

"Let's run away," he whispered to me again and my shoulder slammed to the ground, air leaving my lunges in a rush, my head whirling.

I stayed where I was, flanked by my siblings, still and cold, wondering if soon I would join them.

It went on like that - nightmarish, a frightening play of ghosts whispering to me. I heard the cry of a baby, fresh into the world. My brother and sister's laughter as we played as children. I heard the screams of Corlin's final moments. As if my mind wanted me to break just as much as my heart.

When dawn came, I was nothing more than a shivering shell, the darkness of the night still pressed to me like a shroud.

"Willa," Robb whispered when I finally emerged from the tent, his eyes shadowed, in desperate need of sleep. His eyes moved over me with clear anguish.

"Will you call a meeting with your men?" I whispered, mind working dully.

His eyes shuttered. "You don't need to do this right now, Willa."

A brittle smile tugged at my lips. The truth was that I should have done it last night. I should have propped myself up and addressed his men while the wounds were still fresh - before they had a chance to speak to each other.

"Please, Robb," I whispered and something like shame darkened his brow as he stared down at me before finally nodding.

The woman that stood before the Stark army that day as the sun rose across the horizon behind her resembled the woman that Willa Stark had been only months earlier very little. Her eyes were sad, muted in the sunken planes of her face. Whatever fat that had been on her bones had melted away seemingly overnight, leaving her gaunt and worn-looking. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, the fatigue of a life filled with too much loss already heavy upon her.

But there was an unflappable quality to her - something that made the soldiers in front of her pause and listen to her words with intent. Perhaps it was the gentle blue of the dress that she wore which made her look pure, almost innocent. Perhaps it was the strength in her voice as she spoke, the directness of her gaze. Or perhaps it was the events of yesterday, still fresh in the minds of everyone gathered.

"I know that every man here has given something invaluable to my husband and I." Willa's voice rang across the clearing, rippling to the far reaches of the men gathered. "You have given years and days away from your own family and loved ones. You have left behind the comfort of your home to answer the call of your King, and I don't have the words to express my gratitude properly."

They stilled at the word, confusion marring some of their brows.

"Months ago, my sister was brought here in the hopes of a happy, fruitful marriage. Her name was Walda." Willa's voice quivered a bit as she said it. "She wanted to be a mother - it was all she spoke of when we were children. Ramsey Bolton ripped my sister's child from her arms and slaughtered them both while my sister was still bleeding from the birth." Willa's words sat heavily in the air, her voice drifting off as the men stirred. "My brother's name was Corlin. He was… gentle, so gentle." Her voice caught, lips quivering as she tried to regain her composure. "His only wish was to protect me. Ramsay Bolton imprisoned him in a time of peace, under the pretense of a union and flayed him alive when he knew of our approach."

A shiver went through some of the men, still more praying silently to whatever God they kept.

"The Gods have given me a gift," Willa said, her voice strong and sure even though her whole body quivered with shame. She was a fraud. She was no queen and certainly no saint. But she would make them believe. For Robb, she would make them believe her. "They saw the cruelty of the Boltons and the honesty of the men who stand before me and graced me with the power to end the bloodshed before a single Stark man was lost."

Willa could see it now. She could see the silent thread of fate grow taut in the men in front of them, the swaying of the scales from fear to faith. She blundered on, her voice growing stronger as she looked out at the men who were staring at her. Most of them wanted to believe. A woman graced with unimaginable powers was terrifying. But a God giving power to save them from the horrors of the Boltons? It was addictive, it was what they had wanted before Willa had even acquired her powers.

"Every one of you has children and siblings and parents who would mourn your loss. Every one of you has already given so much to make this world that we live in better. You have sacrificed enough." It sounded too good to be true, Willa recognized, her tired mind heaving. She let some of the exhaustion show, her shoulders wilting. "I am grateful to save your families from the loss of any more for every last one of you has already given enough. I am grateful - no matter how much it pains me - that my own grief is the only one that will be felt from this battle."

She turned, catching only a glimpse of her husband's shocked face before she sank to her knees in front of him. She was not a God. She was simply a tool - given to the favored. Given to those who deserved redemption.

Her head tipped back, accentuating the vulnerable column of her throat as she stared up at Robb. "To the Wolf King - favored by the Gods."

It was easy. Robb Stark was already revered; his legend was imposing even to those who hadn't been under his command. His victories were nothing short of a miracle and Willa had heard the whispers, the shock that came from each defeat. It wasn't that much of a leap - certainly, more of an acceptable one than some new queen upstart waging new wars and dying the ground in red. Robb the War King. Robb the Savior. Robb the God-touched.

"The King of the North," someone cried, and the sound of knees pressing to soil filled the air, a few more calling out.

They burned Corlin and Walda that evening. So simple. As if they had never even been there. As if they had never even existed. Willa inhaled the smoke until she grew dizzy, tears burning at her eyes but never falling.

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