***
The Weeping Water ran cold and clear beside the column, its voice a constant murmur beneath the creak of wagon wheels and the steady rhythm of hooves on hard-packed earth. Two days from Winterfell, and Castor Bolton felt the satisfaction of a campaign well executed settling into his bones like the warmth of good wine.
Fifty men rode with him, veterans all, their faces weathered and hard beneath steel helms. They'd witnessed things in Winterfell's halls—things that would never be spoken of, not if they valued the skin on their backs. Lord Eddard Stark thought his daughter courted by a reformed young Bolton. Lady Catelyn thought her shame buried in darkness and wine. Both lived in their comfortable delusions while Castor carried away the prizes he'd claimed.
The wagon creaked particularly loud over a rough patch of road. Inside, hidden behind leather curtains, Kyra huddled among the supply casks. The serving girl from Winterfell had climbed into that wagon at his command after he'd taken her maidenhead in a shadowed alcove, her blood still wet on her thighs. She'd said nothing when he'd whispered his instructions. She'd only nodded, eyes wide and frightened, and disappeared into the transport bound for the Dreadfort. Another possession acquired, another piece moved on the board.
"My lord." Jeren guided his mount closer, the lieutenant's scarred face impassive as always. "We'll make the eastern ford by nightfall if we maintain pace."
"No." Castor's gaze had fixed on the river, on something that had caught his attention leagues back and grown more pronounced with each passing mile. "We're changing course."
Jeren's eyes narrowed fractionally—the only sign of surprise the veteran ever showed. "My lord?"
Castor dismounted in one fluid motion, boots splashing into the shallow edge where the Weeping Water spread across smooth stones. The water ran clear over gravel bars, white stones worn smooth by countless years of current. But there, catching the afternoon light—that faint yellowish tint that didn't belong.
He knelt, the cold water soaking through his breeches, and picked up a stone. Turned it in his palm. Flecks of gold caught the sun, tiny but unmistakable. His heart hammered against his ribs even as his face remained perfectly calm. In his previous life, he'd read about this—placer deposits, gold worn from source veins and carried downstream. The books never mentioned the Lonely Hills held wealth, but then, the books never mentioned most of what made men truly rich.
"Hareth." He called to the scarred veteran without looking up. "Where does this river begin?"
The grizzled soldier urged his horse closer to the bank. "The Lonely Hills, my lord. Two, maybe three days north. Barren lands. No holdfasts, no villages. Just rock and wind."
"And why does no one settle there?"
Hareth shifted in his saddle. "Old stories say they're cursed. Men who venture deep don't come back. Animals avoid the heart of them. It's dead land, my lord."
Castor smiled, though his back was turned so none could see. Fear kept people away better than walls. If the hills were truly empty, truly avoided... "We're going north."
"My lord?" Jeren had dismounted as well, standing at respectful distance. "The Dreadfort—"
"Will still be there in a week." Castor straightened, the gold-flecked stone clutched in his fist. "I'm surveying these lands. For iron deposits." The lie came smooth as silk. "The North will need more steel if winter comes hard as the maesters predict. If these hills hold ore, House Bolton will be the one to exploit it."
He could see them processing this—Jeren, Hareth, the others close enough to hear. It made sense. It was prudent. It was exactly what a reformed young lord thinking of his house's future would do. None of them knew what gold looked like in raw form. None of them would question.
"Walton." The senior man-at-arms rode forward. "Take ten men ahead. Scout the terrain. We follow the river north into the hills. Anyone who speaks of this journey to anyone outside our company will be flayed. Slowly. Make sure the men understand."
"Aye, my lord." Walton's voice carried no emotion. He'd served House Bolton long enough to know that threats were never idle.
The column turned north, leaving the road for rougher ground that paralleled the Weeping Water upstream. Castor remounted, his mind racing behind calm eyes. If the source vein was rich enough, if he could extract it in secret, if he could convert it to usable wealth without questions... The possibilities stretched before him like an unrolled map.
In the wagon, Kyra remained silent. She'd learned quickly that silence was survival. That suited Castor perfectly.
The afternoon wore on. The terrain grew rougher—gentle hills giving way to steeper slopes, sparse grass thinning to bare rock. The Weeping Water narrowed from river to stream, its voice growing higher-pitched as it tumbled over stones. And in every gravel bar, every place where the current had deposited sediment, Castor saw more gold. Flecks at first, then larger pieces. Nuggets the size of his fingernail glinting among white quartz pebbles.
By the time they made camp that first night, the concentration had increased tenfold. Castor walked the streambed alone while his men raised tents and started cooking fires, collecting samples he tucked into a leather pouch. The gold was real. The source was close. And tomorrow they'd find it.
He returned to camp as full dark settled, stars emerging in the clear northern sky. The men had erected his tent near the largest fire. Luton, a grizzled soldier who'd survived more battles than most men saw in nightmares, was telling stories to the younger troops—tales of the old days, of Brandon the Burner and the Winter Kings.
"They say the Lonely Hills were different once," Luton rasped, his weathered face half-shadowed by firelight. "Before the Long Night. But when the Others came, something died here. The land itself. And it never healed."
"Old wives' tales," Steelshanks scoffed. The sergeant was busy sharpening his blade with methodical strokes. "Empty lands stay empty because there's nothing worth having."
Castor said nothing, settling onto a camp stool near the fire. Let them think that. Let everyone think that. The best treasures were the ones men believed didn't exist.
Grunt, the former wildling who'd bent knee and taken service with House Bolton rather than die beyond the Wall, crouched nearby cleaning his weapons. His face was all hard angles and old scars. "Free folk have stories too," he said quietly. "About places where the old magic lingers. Where the land remembers things men have forgotten." His eyes flicked to Castor. "The hills feel like that, my lord. Wrong."
"Then we'll be careful." Castor met his gaze steadily. "But we don't turn back."
Damon, young and eager, barely nineteen and desperate to prove himself, leaned forward. "My lord, what exactly are we looking for? You said iron, but—"
The look Castor gave him could have frozen the Weeping Water solid. Damon's words died in his throat.
"I said what we're looking for," Castor said softly. "Iron. Mining prospects. Resources for House Bolton. That's all anyone needs to know. Are we clear?"
"Yes, my lord." Damon looked at his boots. "Clear."
"Good." Castor stood, stretching. "We move at first light. I want three leagues covered by midday tomorrow." He paused, looking around the circle of firelight at his men. "You're all sworn to me. What we find in these hills is Bolton business. Private. Anyone who forgets that will wish the Others had taken them instead of me. Sleep on that."
He retired to his tent, leaving the men to their nervous muttering. Inside, the space was spartan—a bedroll, his weapons, a small chest of personal effects. He sat cross-legged on the bedroll and opened the leather pouch, spreading the samples across the blanket.
Gold. Undeniable. And getting richer the further upstream they traveled.
In his previous life, he'd read extensively about mineral wealth. The North was depicted as iron-rich but relatively poor in precious metals. Yet here it was, gleaming in the candlelight of his tent. The books weren't omniscient. They were incomplete, written by men with limited knowledge. This gold had lain here for thousands of years, hidden because no one thought to look, because fear kept people away, because sometimes reality held secrets that stories never captured.
Tomorrow they'd find the source. Tomorrow he'd secure wealth that would make House Bolton independent of Stark charity. And no one would know until he chose to reveal it.
He lay back, hands behind his head, and smiled at the tent ceiling. Everything was proceeding perfectly.
Outside, the Weeping Water whispered over stones, carrying gold dust downstream into obscurity. Above, stars wheeled in their ancient patterns, cold and distant.
And in the Lonely Hills ahead, something waited.
***
Three days into the Lonely Hills, and the wrongness Grunt had spoken of settled over the column like morning frost—invisible but inescapable.
The terrain had transformed from rolling grassland to jagged rock faces that thrust from the earth like broken teeth. Wind howled through narrow passages between stone walls, carrying no scent of life. No birds sang. No rabbits darted through scrub brush. Even the hardy northern vegetation thinned to nothing, leaving only bare stone and the narrow thread of water they followed upstream.
The Weeping Water had dwindled to a creek, barely two feet across, but its voice had grown louder—a constant rushing that echoed off the rocks. And in every pool, every place where current had carved a depression in stone, gold gleamed like scattered stars in daylight.
Castor rode at the column's head, his posture easy but his senses screaming warnings he couldn't quite articulate. Something about the quality of light here felt wrong. The shadows fell at odd angles. The wind never seemed to blow from the same direction twice. And always, at the edge of hearing, he caught sounds that might have been voices or might have been stone grinding against stone.
"My lord." Grunt had been ranging ahead, and now he dropped back to ride alongside. The former wildling's face was tight. "No tracks. Not for leagues. No deer, no wolves, no foxes. Nothing lives here."
"I can see that." Castor's eyes scanned the barren slopes. "Good for our purposes. Fewer witnesses."
"Respectfully, my lord, nothing lives here for a reason." Grunt's hand rested on his sword hilt, unconscious defense against invisible threat. "Free folk say when the land rejects life, wise men don't argue."
"The free folk also freeze and starve beyond the Wall while we live in stone castles." Castor's voice held amusement but no warmth. "We continue."
Behind them, the column stretched in a long line—fifty soldiers, the wagon with Kyra hidden inside, pack animals laden with supplies. The men rode in silence now, conversations dying as the oppressive atmosphere of the hills pressed down. Even Damon, usually chattering with nervous energy, kept his mouth shut and his eyes on the rocks above.
By midday, they'd covered another three leagues. The creek had narrowed further, now barely a trickle emerging from a cleft in the hillside ahead. Castor called a halt and dismounted, his boots crunching on gravel that glittered yellow-white in the sun.
"Jeren, Hareth, with me. The rest stay with the column." He strode toward the cleft, hand on his sword hilt.
The opening was narrow—barely wide enough for a man to squeeze through sideways—but beyond it the passage widened. Castor pushed through, his lieutenants following. The rock walls rose twenty feet on either side, creating a natural corridor that curved away out of sight. The trickle of water ran along the bottom, and the stone...
The stone was shot through with white veins.
Castor's heart hammered as he moved forward, following the corridor around a bend. The passage opened into a small canyon, perhaps fifty paces across and twice that in length. Vertical walls rose on all sides, and there, exposed along the eastern face like a scar across pale skin, ran a vein of white quartz four feet wide and stretching up the cliff face as high as Castor could see.
And through that quartz, like veins of blood through flesh, gold ran in thick ribbons.
"Gods be good," Hareth whispered.
Castor walked forward as if in a dream, though his mind raced with perfect clarity. He'd hoped for a decent deposit—enough to supplement House Bolton's income, maybe fund some improvements. This... this was generational wealth. Kingdom-buying wealth. This was enough gold to field armies, to bribe kings, to remake the North in whatever image he chose.
He reached out and touched the exposed vein. The quartz was cool under his palm. The gold was warm somehow, as if it held the sun's heat. Nuggets the size of his thumb nestled in the rock matrix. Wires of pure metal twisted through the stone like frozen lightning. And the vein ran deep—he could see where it disappeared into the hillside, probably continuing for hundreds of feet underground.
"How much, do you think?" Jeren's voice was carefully neutral, but his eyes showed calculation. The lieutenant understood immediately what this meant.
"Enough." Castor turned to face them both. "More than enough. This canyon stays secret. No maps. No written records. Nothing leaves our lips except to men I personally approve."
"The men will see it," Hareth pointed out. "Fifty men. Fifty mouths."
"Fifty men who've sworn to me. Fifty men who'll share in the wealth if they stay loyal, and fifty men who'll die screaming if they don't." Castor's voice dropped to something colder than the stone walls around them. "Go back. Bring the column through. Everyone sees what we've found. Everyone understands the stakes. And everyone makes their choice—wealth and silence, or the flaying room."
The two men nodded and slipped back through the narrow passage. Castor remained, staring up at the gold vein that would change everything. In his previous life, he'd read about fortunes built on luck and timing. This was both. The Long Night was coming, the Game of Thrones would begin within years, and he'd just secured the resources to not merely play but dominate.
The sound of horses and men echoing through the passage announced the column's arrival. Castor positioned himself at the center of the small canyon, hands clasped behind his back, as his men filed through the narrow cleft and stopped dead at the sight before them.
Silence stretched for ten heartbeats. Twenty. Then Damon breathed, "Seven hells."
"No." Castor's voice cut through the shocked quiet. "Bolton gold. My gold. Your gold, if you're smart."
He let them stare. Let the magnitude sink in. Watched their faces—avarice, fear, calculation, wonder. All useful emotions if properly directed.
"This is what we came to find," he continued. "Not iron. This. And this is what stays secret. I'm not a man who shares easily, but I'm not stupid either. Fifty men can't keep a secret if they have nothing to gain from keeping it."
He began to pace, his boots crunching on gold-flecked gravel. "Every man here will receive a share. Not equal to mine—this is Bolton land, Bolton discovery. But enough to buy land, to settle families comfortably, to live well. That's your reward for silence."
Castor stopped, turning to face them. "The alternative is simple. Anyone who speaks of this to anyone outside this company—family, friends, whores in taverns—will be found. Will be brought to the Dreadfort. And will spend days dying in the flaying room while their families watch. I don't make idle threats. Ask anyone who knows House Bolton."
Steelshanks stepped forward, his weathered face thoughtful. "The men understand loyalty, my lord. But this..." He gestured at the vein. "This kind of wealth makes men stupid. Makes them think they can run, can hide, can sell the information for enough to disappear."
"They can't." Castor smiled, and it was not a pleasant expression. "Because I'll be watching. Always. Through means you can't imagine. And because anyone who tries will serve as an example so memorable that the others will carve loyalty into their own bones rather than risk similar fate."
He could see them processing this, weighing the gold against the threat. Fear and greed warring in fifty different hearts. Good. Fear kept men honest when greed made them foolish.
"Walton." The senior man-at-arms straightened. "You're in command of the mining operation. Pick ten men to stay here permanently. Build fortifications around this canyon—walls, gates, defenses. Keep fires burning day and night. This place..." Castor paused, remembering the wrongness in the air, the unnatural silence. "This place is dangerous in ways beyond bandits. Stay alert."
"Aye, my lord."
"Jeren, Hareth—survey the vein. I want to know depth, estimated yield, extraction difficulty. Grunt, scout the surrounding territory within five leagues. Map everything. I want to know every approach, every sightline, every place someone could spy from."
Orders given, men moved to obey. Castor stood at the center of controlled chaos, watching his plans take physical form. The gold would be extracted in secret, processed at the Dreadfort in hidden chambers, converted to usable wealth gradually enough to avoid suspicion. Within a year, House Bolton would be the wealthiest house in the North. Within two, wealthy enough to rival any house in Westeros. And no one would know until it was far too late to matter.
The sun began its descent toward the western peaks, casting long shadows across the canyon. Castor noticed then what he'd been too focused to see before—ravens. Dozens of them, perched on the cliff edges high above. Silent. Watching.
His skin prickled. Ravens were common in the North, but these... they were too still, too focused. As if they possessed intelligence beyond bird cunning. As if something looked through their eyes.
"My lord." Luton approached, his weathered face troubled. "The men are nervous. Too many ravens. And the way they're watching us... it's not natural."
"I see them." Castor's jaw tightened. "Double the watch tonight. Keep fires large and bright. If the birds attack, we kill them with steel and flame."
"Attack?" Luton's hand dropped to his sword. "You think they'll—"
"I think we're in a dead place that rejected life, and we've just claimed its wealth." Castor's voice was grim. "If something resents that, tonight's when it'll make its feelings known. Prepare the men."
As darkness gathered in the canyon like pooling water, Castor moved through the camp watching preparations. Tents raised in a defensive circle. Fire pits dug and stocked with enough wood to burn till dawn. Men checking weapons, sharpening blades, testing bowstrings. Good. They sensed it too—the wrongness, the waiting threat.
He reached the wagon where Kyra huddled among supply casks. She peered out at him through the gap in the leather curtains, her face pale and frightened.
"Stay inside," he told her quietly. "Don't come out tonight, no matter what you hear. Understand?"
She nodded mutely. He'd taken her maidenhead in Winterfell's shadows, claimed her as property, and brought her here to this cursed place. She had every reason to fear him. But tonight, there were worse things than Castor Bolton in these hills.
He turned away and moved toward the central fire where his senior men gathered. Above, the ravens settled in for the night, their dark forms barely visible against darkening sky. Watching. Always watching.
"Full alert," Castor ordered. "No one sleeps except in shifts. If anything moves in those shadows, I want it killed immediately. Questions later."
The men nodded, spreading out to their positions. Castor settled near the largest fire, sword across his knees, and waited for whatever the night would bring.
The last light died. Stars emerged, cold and distant. And in the darkness beyond the firelight, something stirred.
***
The silence came first.
Castor noticed it around midnight—that sudden absence of sound that made the ear strain for something, anything, to fill the void. The wind had died. The crackling of fires seemed muffled, as if heard through thick cloth. Even the men's breathing became quiet, each exhale swallowed by the oppressive stillness that pressed down on the canyon like a physical weight.
Luton stood from his position near the eastern perimeter, head cocked, listening. "My lord," he called softly. "Where are the birds?"
Castor was on his feet before the question finished, sword sliding from its sheath with a whisper of steel on leather. His eyes scanned the cliff edges where dozens of ravens had roosted at sunset. Empty. Every perch abandoned. Every shadow vacant.
"WEAPONS!" His voice shattered the silence like breaking glass. "SHIELDS UP! NOW!"
The men responded with veteran speed—years of discipline overriding confusion. Swords cleared scabbards. Shields came off backs. The camp transformed from resting to ready in heartbeats. But they didn't understand. Not yet. They scanned the darkness for enemies on the ground, for raiders or wildlings or wolves.
They weren't looking up.
The sound came from everywhere at once—a rushing like wind through winter trees, but faster, sharper, wrong in every way that mattered. Castor's head snapped back just as the sky fell on them.
Ravens. Hundreds of them. Thousands. A black tide that poured over the canyon rim like water over a falls, blotting out the stars. Their cries were deafening—not the normal cawing of birds but something higher-pitched, almost human in its fury. And they moved with unnatural coordination, flowing as one organism, a living weapon directed by intelligence that had nothing to do with animal instinct.
"COVER YOUR—" Castor's warning died as the first wave hit.
It was chaos given wings and talons. Ravens slammed into men with impacts that knocked them staggering. Beaks that should have been fragile pecked with force that drove through leather and into flesh. Talons raked across exposed faces, seeking eyes with terrifying precision. The air filled with screams—human and avian mixing into a sound that belonged in the seven hells.
Castor swung his sword in a wide arc and felt it connect with half a dozen bodies. Ravens exploded in bursts of blood and feathers. But for every one he killed, ten more took its place. They were on his arms, his shoulders, tangling in his hair. Talons scored across his scalp, his neck, drawing hot lines of pain.
"FIRE!" Steelshanks roared from somewhere in the chaos. "GET TO THE FIRES!"
The men tried. Gods, they tried. But the ravens were everywhere, a suffocating mass that turned the world black. Castor caught glimpses through the swarm—Hareth with his face streaming blood, hacking blindly with his sword. Jeren trying to reach a torch, ravens covering his arms so completely his flesh disappeared beneath feathers. Grunt fighting with knife and teeth, biting through bird necks even as they tore at his face.
A scream cut through the cacophony—young, terrified, ending in a wet gurgle. Castor spun toward the sound and saw Damon on his knees, hands clawing at his throat where three ravens had latched on. Blood poured between his fingers, black in the firelight. His eyes found Castor's—wide, pleading, already fading. Then he pitched forward and didn't move again.
"SHIELDS OVER YOUR HEADS!" Castor bellowed. "PROTECT YOUR FACES!"
Some heard. Some managed. Walton got his shield up just as a raven the size of a cat dove at his eyes, and the bird smashed into steel with a crack like breaking wood. The creature fell stunned, and Walton crushed it under his boot.
But there were too many. Far too many.
A soldier Castor didn't know by name went down shrieking, ravens covering him like a blanket of beating wings. They tore at his throat, his eyes, the soft flesh of his belly where his jerkin had ridden up. By the time other men dragged them off, he was already dead, his face nothing but raw meat.
"THE OIL!" Castor fought his way toward the supply wagon, sword singing as it cut through the swarm. "THROW THE LAMP OIL ON THE FIRES!"
Luton heard him. The veteran soldier grabbed a cask from the wagon—ravens landing on his back, his head, his arms—and staggered toward the central fire pit. He heaved the cask into the flames and dove aside.
The explosion of heat and light drove the ravens back in a shrieking wave. Fire roared twenty feet into the air, casting harsh orange light across the canyon. In that sudden illumination, Castor saw the full horror of it.
Bodies on the ground—at least five men down, maybe more. The living were covered in blood, their own and the ravens'. Feathers and entrails carpeted the earth. And still the birds came, diving from the darkness beyond the firelight, an endless assault that defied nature and sanity both.
"MORE OIL!" Castor grabbed another cask himself, ravens tearing at his arms as he lifted it. Pain lanced through his shoulders where talons hooked into muscle. He ignored it, hurling the cask toward the eastern fire pit. It smashed against the stones and the fire roared higher.
One by one, the other fires swelled as men threw oil and wood into the flames. The canyon filled with smoke and light and heat. The ravens screamed their fury but pulled back from the blazing barriers. Men pressed together in the circles of firelight, shields raised, weapons ready for the next assault.
It didn't come.
The birds circled just beyond the reach of light and heat, a seething black mass that filled the sky. Watching. Waiting. Their cries had changed—no longer attack shrieks but something else. Communication, perhaps. Or preparation for a second wave.
Castor stood in the center of the largest ring of fire, chest heaving, blood streaming from a dozen wounds. His sword was slick with gore, feathers stuck to the blade. He did a quick count of the men still standing. Forty-three. Maybe forty-four if the figure slumped by the wagon was still breathing.
Seven dead or dying. In less than five minutes.
"Check the wounded," he ordered, his voice rough. "Anyone who can't fight, get them in the center. The rest of you, watch the sky. They're not done."
Luton staggered over, his left eye a ruin of blood and shredded flesh. A talon had caught him there, driven deep before he'd crushed the bird's skull. "My lord," he gasped. "What in the frozen hells are they?"
"I don't know." The lie came easily. But Castor knew. Or suspected. Ravens that moved with one mind, that attacked with purpose and intelligence. Greenseer magic. The old powers of the North, ancient and terrible. Someone—something—wanted them out of these hills. Wanted them dead.
*Too bad,* he thought grimly. *This gold is mine now.*
"Keep the fires burning," he told Luton. "Use every drop of oil if you have to. We hold until dawn."
But the ravens weren't waiting for dawn.
They came again an hour later, diving from different angles this time—some high, some low, some skimming the ground beneath the smoke. Men died. More wounds were taken. The fires blazed higher as defenders threw everything combustible into the flames. And still the assault continued.
Castor fought in the center of it, his world narrowed to the next strike, the next kill, the next breath. Blood ran into his eyes. His arms burned with exhaustion. Ravens covered his body like a second skin of beating wings and tearing talons. He killed them by the dozens but they kept coming.
A massive raven—larger than any natural bird, its wingspan easily four feet across—dove from directly above. Castor saw it at the last instant, tried to bring his sword up, but the bird was faster. Talons like iron hooks caught him across the face, four deep furrows that ran from his left temple down to his jaw.
Pain exploded white-hot behind his eyes. He felt flesh part, felt blood pour in a hot rush down his neck. The raven's momentum drove him backward. His boot caught on something—a body, maybe Damon's corpse—and he went down hard.
His head cracked against stone with a sound like a splitting melon. Stars burst across his vision. The world tilted sickeningly. More ravens landed on him immediately, a dozen or more, tearing at his exposed flesh with savage fury.
He tried to rise. Couldn't. His limbs wouldn't obey. Blood filled his mouth—his own, coppery and warm. Talons tore at his throat, his chest, his arms. He was dying. He understood that with perfect clarity even as his vision dimmed. He'd survived death once, transmigrated from one world to another, and now he was dying again in a forgotten canyon torn apart by birds that shouldn't exist.
No, he thought weakly. Not like this. I didn't come this far to—
Darkness swallowed him whole.
But it wasn't the darkness of death.
It was something else entirely.
***
Castor opened his eyes to nothing.
Not blackness—absence. A void so complete it hurt to perceive, as if his mind couldn't process what it meant to exist in a space without light, without color, without any reference point that made sense. He tried to move and found he had no body. Or perhaps he did, but without ground to stand on or air to breathe through, the distinction became meaningless.
I'm dead, he thought.
Or dying. Brain starved of oxygen, hallucinating as it shuts down.
But the void answered him, and dead men's hallucinations didn't answer back.
"No." The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, old beyond measure, carrying weight that pressed against Castor's consciousness like a physical hand. "You're not dead. Not yet. Though perhaps you should be."
Light bloomed in the nothing—pale, cold, wrong. It came from a tree that grew where no tree should grow, in earth that didn't exist. A weirwood, massive beyond reason, its white bark luminous with borrowed moonlight. The carved face in its trunk was ancient and knowing, and red sap wept from its eyes like tears of blood.
Ravens covered every branch. Hundreds of them, thousands, their eyes all fixed on Castor with unblinking focus.
And before the tree stood a man.
Old. Gaunt to the point of skeletal. A red birthmark covered the left side of his face, spreading across pale skin like a wine stain. One eye was white as milk, the other dark as a moonless night. He wore black—leathers and wool that might have been fine once but now hung on his frame like burial shrouds. Ravens perched on his shoulders, his arms, his head. They were part of him somehow, extensions of his will given feathers and beaks.
Castor knew him immediately. How could he not? He'd read about this man, this creature, this legend made flesh. Brynden Rivers. Bloodraven. The Last Greenseer. The Three-Eyed Crow. The bastard son of a king who'd served as Hand and spymaster before taking the black and disappearing beyond the Wall, where he'd woven himself into a weirwood's roots and become something more—and less—than human.
But Castor said none of that. Showed nothing on his face. Because revealing that knowledge would be revealing everything—that he wasn't truly of this world, that he carried memories of a life where all of this was fiction, that he knew the future and the secrets no living person should know.
So instead he asked, "Who the fuck are you?"
The ancient man circled him, moving without seeming to walk, as if space itself bent to accommodate his motion. "An interesting question from an interesting creature. I might ask you the same. What are you, Castor Bolton?"
"A lord of the North. A man traveling his own lands." Castor's voice was steady despite the unreality of his surroundings. "A man whose soldiers you attacked. Answer my question—who are you, and why did you try to kill us?"
"I am a watcher. A guardian of the realm's memory and future." Bloodraven's white eye fixed on Castor with terrible intensity. "And you... you are wrong. Your presence in this world is discordant. Like a string on a lute tuned a half-step flat, ruining the harmony of the song."
Castor felt the probing then—tendrils of consciousness that weren't quite thought, pressing against his mind, seeking entry. The sensation was violating, invasive, like cold fingers pushing past skin into the meat beneath.
Instinct overrode thought. He'd spent weeks at Winterfell controlling every reaction, every word, every expression. But here, in this place between places, stripped down to nothing but consciousness and will, he couldn't maintain that control.
His soul fought back.
And his soul was wrong for this world—foreign, alien, shaped by a reality that operated on different rules. That wrongness was jagged where it should be smooth, hard where it should yield, cold where it should warm. It didn't fit. Would never fit. Was fundamentally incompatible with the fabric of this existence.
That incompatibility became a weapon.
Castor struck back with pure will, his consciousness lashing out like a blade forged from everything he shouldn't be. The alien nature of his soul cut, and Bloodraven—who'd been probing, pushing, seeking to understand and perhaps control this anomaly—screamed.
Not with his mouth. With his entire being. The sound reverberated through the void, through the weirwood, through the thousands of ravens that exploded from the branches in a cloud of panicked wings.
You're in my head, Castor thought savagely, pressing his advantage. You attacked my men. You tried to kill me. Now you get to learn what a mistake feels like.
He drove deeper, his wrongness cutting like broken glass through silk. Bloodraven's presence in his mind was vast—a network of consciousness that stretched across leagues, that looked through countless eyes, that wove through the roots of weirwoods and the minds of ravens and the dreams of greenseers yet unborn. But that vastness made him vulnerable. He was spread too thin, too extended, and the alien poison of Castor's soul flooded through him like venom in veins.
"WHAT ARE YOU?" Bloodraven's voice cracked with something Castor had never heard from the legendary spymaster in any story—fear. Pure, animal terror. "You shouldn't exist! You CAN'T exist!"
"And yet." Castor's consciousness twisted, digging deeper. He didn't know what he was doing, operating on pure instinct and rage, but he could feel Bloodraven's power fracturing under the assault. "Here I am. Your mistake to make. Your consequences to suffer."
The weirwood shuddered. The void rippled like disturbed water. Bloodraven tried to retreat, to sever the connection he'd initiated, but Castor held on with the desperate strength of a drowning man clutching at flotsam. If this ancient thing had killed him, if those ravens in the canyon had torn him apart, he wasn't going quietly.
"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" Castor roared, and poured everything he had into one final assault—all his foreign-ness, all his wrongness, all the incompatible reality of his existence.
Something broke.
The connection shattered like dropping glass on stone. Bloodraven's scream cut off abruptly. The weirwood, the ravens, the ancient man—all of it dissolved into fragments that scattered across the void. And Castor felt himself falling, tumbling through darkness that had weight and texture now, rushing past him at impossible speed.
The last thing he heard was Bloodraven's voice, distant and damaged:
"What have you done? What have you DONE?"
Then pain crashed back into him like a tsunami—his body, his wounds, his flesh—and Castor screamed himself awake into firelight and chaos.
***
Pain dragged Castor back to consciousness like fishhooks through flesh.
His face was fire. Pure, searing agony that pulsed with each heartbeat, radiating from four deep furrows that ran from temple to jaw on his left side. His head throbbed where it had cracked against stone. Every breath brought fresh waves of hurt from a dozen smaller wounds—talons that had pierced his arms, his shoulders, his scalp.
"My lord!" Jeren's voice, sharp with relief. "He's awake!"
Castor forced his eyes open. The world swam into focus slowly—the interior of his tent, dim candlelight, faces hovering above him. Jeren. Hareth with bandages covering half his face. Steelshanks. All of them looked like they'd been dragged through the seven hells backwards.
"How long?" His voice came out as a rasp, his throat raw.
"Three days, my lord." Jeren's scarred face was grim. "The wounds... they festered despite our efforts. You had fever. Kept thrashing, speaking words we couldn't understand. We thought—" He stopped, jaw tight.
Three days. Castor tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. Pain lanced through his skull and he fell back with a groan. "The men?"
"Ten dead." Hareth's voice was flat. "Damon went first. Then Royce, Benfred, Marten, and six others. Another dozen wounded—Luton lost his left eye, Grunt's face is scarred to ruin, Walton has a hand that might never grip a sword properly again."
Ten dead from a flock of birds. It should have been impossible. Would have been, in any world that made sense. But Castor knew better now. He'd seen what moved behind those ravens, what intelligence had guided their attack. And he'd hurt it. Hurt it badly enough that it had fled screaming.
"The birds?" he asked.
"Gone. They left the moment you went down—just scattered into the night and didn't come back." Jeren leaned closer. "My lord, what were they? That wasn't natural. The way they moved, the way they knew exactly where to strike..."
"Old magic." Castor forced himself to sit up despite the protests from every part of his body. "The kind that lingers in forgotten places. The kind that doesn't want to be disturbed." He met each man's eyes in turn. "But we disturbed it anyway, and we're still here. Which means we won. The gold is ours."
Steelshanks nodded slowly. "The men you ordered to stay—Walton picked his ten. They've been building defenses around the canyon. Stone walls, sharpened stakes facing out, fire pits at each corner. If those birds come back, they'll have a harder time of it."
"Good." Castor touched his face carefully, felt the thickness of bandages covering the left side. "How bad?"
Silence answered him. Then Jeren said quietly, "The maester we brought from Last Hearth did what he could. Cleaned the wounds, stitched what would hold. But, my lord... you'll carry scars. Deep ones. The talons cut to bone in places."
Of course they did. Castor had felt them tear through his face, had felt his cheek split open like rotten fruit. He'd be marked for life—a visible reminder of what lurked in the Lonely Hills, of what he'd faced and survived. Let them stare. Let them wonder. Scars were just another form of armor.
"Help me stand."
"My lord, you should rest—"
"Help me. Stand."
Jeren and Hareth moved to either side, supporting him as he rose on unsteady legs. The world tilted for a moment, then settled. Castor took a breath, then another, forcing strength back into muscles that wanted to collapse.
"Take me outside. I want to see the men."
They emerged from the tent into afternoon light that stabbed at Castor's eyes like knives. He squinted against the glare and saw the camp transformed. The canyon that had been chaos and carnage now showed the marks of industry—men working to haul stone for the defensive walls, others processing the first loads of gold-bearing quartz, still more tending to the wounded or standing watch on the high edges.
And everywhere, eyes turned to him. Fifty men—forty now—who'd followed him into cursed lands and paid in blood. They needed to see him standing. Needed to know their lord wasn't broken by what had attacked them in the dark.
Castor walked through the camp, Jeren and Hareth flanking him like honor guards. He stopped at each work site, spoke briefly to the men there. Praised their efforts. Noted their wounds with the proper mixture of concern and respect. Every word calculated, every gesture measured to reinforce the image he needed them to hold: their lord, scarred but unbroken, determined to see this through.
He found Luton near the eastern wall, supervising the placement of sharpened stakes. The veteran soldier's left eye was gone, the socket covered by bandages stained brown with old blood. But he still moved with purpose, still barked orders with authority.
"Luton." Castor clasped the man's shoulder. "Your eye. I'm sorry."
The grizzled soldier shook his head. "I've got another, my lord. And I'm breathing, which is more than can be said for some. We knew the risks when we followed you into these hills."
"You'll be compensated. All the wounded will. Gold for blood—that's the bargain."
"We'll hold you to that, my lord." Luton's remaining eye gleamed with dark humor. "Though I'll spend mine on whores who don't mind a one-eyed man in their beds."
Castor managed a smile despite the pain it caused his torn face. "Find me the madam who turns down Bolton gold, and I'll have her thrown from the walls."
He moved on, speaking to Grunt next—the former wildling's face a ruin of scars now, three long furrows similar to Castor's own marking him from brow to chin. Then Walton, whose mangled hand was splinted and useless. Each man received words of acknowledgment, promises of reward, assurances that their sacrifice mattered.
And with each conversation, Castor felt something settle into place. Loyalty bought with shared trauma. Brotherhood forged in blood and horror. These men had faced death beside him and survived. They wouldn't break now. Wouldn't betray what they'd found. Not when they'd paid so dearly for it.
By the time he'd completed his circuit, exhaustion dragged at him like anchor chains. But he'd done what needed doing. The men had seen him strong. Had heard him confirm their value. The wounded had been honored, the dead memorialized. Now he could rest.
Back in his tent, he dismissed Jeren and Hareth and collapsed onto his bedroll. Sleep should have claimed him immediately—his body screamed for it. But something nagged at his awareness, something that had changed during the three days he'd been unconscious.
He felt... different. Connected somehow to the world around him in ways he hadn't been before. As if his senses extended beyond his skin, reaching out to touch other minds, other consciousnesses that flickered at the edges of perception.
Curious, Castor let his awareness drift. Felt for those flickers. Found one nearby—small, quick, moving in jerky patterns. A rat, perhaps, or—
His consciousness touched it and *slipped inside*.
The world exploded into sensory chaos. Vision shifted to monochrome, everything rendered in shades of gray and dim shapes. Sounds amplified a hundredfold—his own breathing like thunder, the rustle of fabric like windstorms. Smells overwhelmed him—leather, sweat, blood, the musty scent of canvas, all of it rich and complex beyond human comprehension.
And hunger. Gods, such hunger. The need to feed driving every thought, every movement.
Castor pulled back with a gasp, his consciousness snapping back into his own body like a released bowstring. He lay on his bedroll breathing hard, heart hammering against his ribs. That had been... he'd just been inside a rat. Looking through its eyes. Experiencing its thoughts and sensations as if they were his own.
Warging. Skinchanging. The gift of the First Men, the old magic that ran in certain bloodlines, that let a human consciousness slip into animal minds and control them like puppets. He'd read about it extensively in his previous life—the Stark children's direwolves, the wildlings' skinchangers, Varamyr Sixskins and his pack. But knowing about it and experiencing it were entirely different things.
The confrontation with Bloodraven, he realized. When I fought back, when our minds touched and my wrongness hurt him... something changed. Like a door opened that had been closed. Or maybe it was always there, dormant, and the trauma awakened it.
He sat up slowly, ignoring the protests from his wounds. If he could warg—truly warg, not just stumble into it accidentally—the applications were staggering. Perfect espionage through rats and birds. Control over guard dogs and war horses. The ability to see and hear anywhere within his range.
But he needed to practice. Needed to learn control before he tried anything more ambitious than slipping into a rat's mind for a few heartbeats.
Over the next two days, Castor experimented in secret. During the day he maintained his public role—overseeing the gold extraction, planning logistics for transport, directing the construction of permanent defenses. But at night, alone in his tent, he reached out.
Rats were easiest. Their minds were simple, driven by basic needs and instincts. He could slip into them with increasing ease, ride behind their eyes as they scurried through the camp. Through them he saw his own tent from the outside, watched men at their fires, even ventured into other tents to observe conversations he shouldn't hear.
Birds were harder. Their minds moved faster, thought in patterns that didn't translate well to human consciousness. The first time he successfully warged a raven, the sensation of flight was so overwhelming he nearly lost himself in it—the freedom, the speed, the absolute rightness of cutting through air on wings. He had to wrench himself back forcefully, and spent an hour afterward remembering how to think like a man rather than a bird.
But he got better. Each attempt lasted longer, gave him finer control. By the third night he could send a raven flying over the canyon, seeing the camp from above, identifying guard positions and approach routes. Perfect reconnaissance. Perfect security.
He tried once to warg into one of the camp dogs. Found a wall of consciousness there—thicker, more complex than rats or ravens. The dog's mind pushed back, confused and frightened by his presence. He could have forced it, he sensed that, but doing so would have been obvious. The animal would have acted strangely, drawn attention. So he withdrew and made a note: practice more before attempting larger, more intelligent creatures.
And humans? He didn't dare try. Not yet. But late at night, lying awake with pain and ambition warring in his skull, he wondered. If he could slip into a rat's mind, a raven's, a dog's... what was to stop him from riding inside a human's thoughts? From seeing through their eyes, speaking with their tongue, moving their limbs like a puppet on strings?
The possibilities made him smile despite the pain it caused his ravaged face.
On the fifth day after the attack, Castor declared they were returning to the Dreadfort. The ten men he'd assigned to guard the canyon had their orders and their defenses. The first load of ore—gold-bearing quartz disguised as iron samples—had been carefully loaded into wagons. The wounded were as stable as they'd get without proper facilities. Time to go home.
The column assembled with far less energy than when they'd arrived. Ten men lay buried beneath cairns at the canyon's entrance, stones piled high to keep scavengers from the bodies. The living bore wounds that would mark them forever—missing eyes, ruined hands, faces carved by talons. They'd come seeking opportunity and found horror. But they'd also found wealth beyond imagination, and that made the difference between retreat and return.
Castor rode at the column's head, his face half-hidden behind bandages that wouldn't come off for another week at least. Behind him, the wagon creaked—Kyra still hidden among the supplies, silent as a ghost. She'd survived the attack untouched, hadn't even emerged during the chaos. Smart girl. Or terrified enough to know that staying hidden was survival.
The journey back took four days. Four days of steady travel through increasingly familiar terrain as the Lonely Hills gave way to rolling country, then to the lands properly claimed by House Bolton. Four days during which Castor practiced his new gift whenever they made camp, sending rats and ravens ranging ahead to scout the route, to watch for travelers who might ask uncomfortable questions, to ensure they returned to the Dreadfort without incident.
***
The column made camp on the third evening with the Dreadfort less than a day's ride ahead. Castor waited until full dark had settled and the men had retreated to their fires before approaching the supply wagon where Kyra had hidden for nearly two weeks.
He pulled back the leather curtain. She was curled among the casks and supply sacks, her dress filthy from the journey, her red hair matted and tangled. When she saw him, she tried to make herself smaller, pressing back against the wagon's side.
"Come out." His voice was quiet, almost gentle.
She didn't move. Just stared at him with wide, terrified eyes.
"Kyra." He let an edge enter his tone. "I won't ask twice."
She crawled forward slowly, like an animal expecting to be struck. When she emerged into the moonlight, he saw how the journey had marked her—thinner, dirty, smelling of fear and unwashed flesh. She'd pissed herself at some point, the stain dark on her dress. She'd been living like an animal in that wagon, too terrified to even ask for basic care.
Perfect.
"Walk with me." He turned and moved away from the camp, toward a copse of trees at the clearing's edge. After a moment, he heard her following—hesitant footsteps on dry grass.
When they were far enough from the fires that the men's voices became murmurs, Castor stopped and turned to face her. Kyra stood a few paces away, arms wrapped around herself, shivering despite the mild evening.
"Do you understand why you're here?" he asked.
"You... you took me from Winterfell, my lord." Her voice was barely a whisper.
"I took your maidenhead in Winterfell. In a shadowed alcove where anyone might have found us. Where your lady Catelyn might have seen what her serving girl was doing with Lord Bolton's son." He stepped closer. "Do you remember what I told you?"
"That I was yours now." Tears tracked through the dirt on her cheeks. "That I belonged to you."
"Yes." He reached out and caught her chin, tilting her face up to the moonlight. She was pretty beneath the filth—young, soft, unmarked by hardship until he'd marked her himself with his cock and his claim. "And what happens to things that belong to me?"
"I don't know, my lord."
"They serve. Or they suffer." His thumb brushed across her lower lip. "Tomorrow we reach the Dreadfort. You'll be brought inside quietly—no one announces a new serving girl's arrival. You'll be bathed, given clean clothes, assigned duties. And when I want you, you'll come to my chambers. Do you understand?"
"Yes, my lord."
"Do you know what I'll do to you there?"
She shook her head mutely, but her eyes said she could imagine. That she'd spent two weeks in that wagon imagining, remembering the pain and violation of losing her maidenhead, extrapolating what worse things awaited.
Good. Fear kept women obedient.
"Everything." He released her chin and stepped back. "I'll use every part of you until you forget you were ever anything but mine. Until serving me becomes the only thing you know how to do. Until the thought of displeasing me terrifies you more than anything I might actually do to you."
Kyra was crying openly now, silent tears that dripped from her jaw to dampen her filthy dress.
"But," Castor continued, his voice almost kind, "if you serve well, if you please me, you'll be fed and clothed and kept safe. The Dreadfort's walls are thick. Winter is coming, and inside those walls you'll be warm while others freeze. That's the bargain—your body, your obedience, your complete submission, in exchange for survival. Do you accept?"
What choice did she have? She was hundreds of leagues from Winterfell, alone, with no coin and no protector. Even if she ran, where would she go? How would she survive?
"I accept, my lord," she whispered.
Castor's hand shot out and gripped her throat—not choking, but possessive, his fingers pressing into the soft flesh where her pulse hammered like a trapped bird. The warmth of her skin beneath his palm, the desperate flutter of life beneath his thumb, sent satisfaction pooling in his gut.
"Then we seal the bargain now."
"My lord, I—" Her protest died as he pushed her backward, his grip on her throat guiding her like livestock until her spine hit the trunk of an old oak. The bark scraped through the thin, filthy fabric of her dress, and she gasped—a sound that was half pain, half fear, and entirely delicious.
"You're mine," he said quietly, his face close enough that his breath ghosted across her lips. "That means when I want you, where I want you, how I want you. Do you understand?"
"Yes, but—"
He silenced her with his mouth, the kiss brutal and claiming. His tongue forced past her lips, tasting the salt of her tears, the sweetness of her youth beneath the filth of two weeks' terror. She made a small, frightened sound against his mouth—a whimper that vibrated against his tongue—but didn't fight. Couldn't fight. His hand on her throat was a constant reminder of exactly how powerless she was, how easily he could squeeze, could crush, could end her.
When he pulled back, a string of saliva connected their mouths for a moment before breaking. Her lips were swollen, reddened, her breathing coming in short, panicked gasps that made her small breasts rise and fall beneath her bodice.
"Please, my lord, not here. The men might—"
"Let them." His free hand gathered her filthy skirts, bunching the rough fabric up around her waist. The night air hit her bare thighs and she trembled—he felt it through every point of contact, felt her body's instinctive recoil from exposure. "Let them hear you. Let them know what you are now. What you'll always be."
"Please—" But his fingers were already between her legs, roughly parting the soft folds of her sex. Her inner thighs were warm, the skin there still soft despite the journey. And her cunt—gods, still virginal-tight, the flesh reluctant and dry as his fingers probed her entrance.
When he pushed two fingers inside her, she cried out—a sharp sound of pain that echoed off the trees and surely carried back to camp. Her inner walls clenched around the intrusion, muscles trying instinctively to expel him. But he pushed deeper, forcing her body to accept what it didn't want, feeling the hot, tight grip of her resistance.
"Still so tight," he murmured against her ear, his lips brushing the delicate shell. "Like your cunt remembers being torn open in Winterfell. Remembers my cock breaking you in."
He finger-fucked her without gentleness, working his fingers in and out of her protesting channel. His thumb found the small bud of her pearl and pressed hard—not the gentle circling that brought pleasure, but cruel pressure designed to overwhelm. She squirmed against the tree, and he felt the bark scraping her back through the thin fabric, adding sensation to sensation, pain to humiliation.
"My lord, it hurts—"
"Good." He twisted his fingers insid ine her, feeling the texture of her inner walls, the way they rippled and clenched. "Pain reminds you what you are. What you're for."
But something was changing. Beneath his fingers, he felt her body beginning to respond despite her mind's terror. The dry resistance was giving way to the first hints of slickness—not arousal exactly, but her body's desperate attempt to protect itself, to ease the violation with its own moisture. And more than that—her pearl was swelling beneath his thumb, the small nub of flesh engorging with blood whether she willed it or not.
Castor smiled against her throat. "Your body knows, even if you don't want to admit it. Feel that? You're getting wet for me."
"No, I'm not, I don't—" But her protest broke on a gasp as he curled his fingers inside her, finding that spot along her front wall that made her hips jerk involuntarily.
"Liar." He stroked that spot again, feeling her body's betrayal. "Your cunt's weeping for my cock. Feel how you're clenching on my fingers? How your little pearl is hard under my thumb? That's arousal, Kyra. That's your body begging to be fucked even while your mind cries."
"It's not—I don't—" Tears streamed down her face, but there was something else in her expression now. Confusion. Shame. And beneath both, the first flickers of unwilling pleasure as her body responded to sustained stimulation.
He withdrew his fingers—they gleamed wet in the moonlight, coated with her reluctant arousal—and brought them to her mouth. "Taste yourself. Taste what a whore you are."
When she clamped her lips shut, he squeezed her throat until she gasped for air, then shoved his fingers into her mouth. She gagged on them, tasting her own musk, the bitter-salt flavor of her body's betrayal coating her tongue. He fucked her mouth with his fingers the way he'd fucked her cunt—rough, degrading, thorough.
"Suck them clean."
She did, her tongue moving clumsily around his fingers, her eyes squeezed shut against the humiliation. When he withdrew them, she was panting, her face flushed with shame and something else—something that made her thighs press together instinctively, seeking friction, seeking relief from the ache building between her legs.
Castor fumbled with his breeches, freeing his cock. It stood rigid, flushed dark with blood, the head already glistening with anticipation. He pressed it against her entrance and felt her tense, felt her try to pull away, but the tree was at her back and his hand was on her throat and she had nowhere to go.
"No, please, I'm not ready, you'll tear—"
He thrust inside in one brutal stroke, his hand clamping over her mouth to muffle her scream. The sound vibrated against his palm—pure pain, pure violation—and her cunt clamped down on him like a vice. She was tight and hot and still not wet enough, her body fighting the intrusion even as her arousal began to build. The friction burned them both—her from the tearing stretch, him from the resistance of her unwilling flesh.
But gods, she felt perfect. Tight as a fist, her inner walls rippling around him, trying to push him out but only succeeding in massaging his length. He could feel every ridge, every texture inside her, the way her body gripped him like it never wanted to let go.
Castor set a punishing rhythm, his hips slamming against hers, driving her back against the rough bark with each thrust. Her muffled cries vibrated against his palm. Tears streamed down her face, tracking through the dirt. But her body—her treacherous body—was responding.
He felt it in the way her cunt grew wetter with each stroke, slickening around him until the friction eased and the sound of flesh slapping flesh grew obscene and wet. Felt it in the way her inner walls began to flutter, began to grip him in rhythmic pulses that had nothing to do with resistance. Felt it in the way her hips began to move—tiny, unconscious movements that met his thrusts, that sought deeper penetration even as she sobbed against his hand.
"That's it," he growled, moving his hand from her mouth to her hip so he could grip hard enough to bruise. "Feel how your cunt's sucking at me? How wet you are? You can cry all you want, but your body knows what it needs. Knows what it's for."
Her head fell back against the tree and she sobbed openly now—broken, humiliated sounds that mixed with gasps of unwilling pleasure. Because there was pleasure now, he could see it in the way her pupils dilated, in the flush spreading down her neck to her chest, in the way her nipples had hardened into visible points beneath her bodice.
"Touch yourself," he commanded. "Your pearl. Rub it while I fuck you."
"I can't, I won't—"
He stopped moving, buried deep inside her, and squeezed her hip hard enough to make her whimper. "You will. Or I'll stop right now and leave you like this—aching and empty and desperate. Is that what you want?"
The war on her face was exquisite—shame battling need, dignity fighting arousal. But her body had already made its choice. Slowly, trembling, her hand moved between their bodies. Her fingers found her pearl, swollen and slick, and she began to circle it with hesitant, shaking movements.
"Harder." Castor resumed his thrusts, watching her face. "Rub it like you mean it. Like the desperate little whore you are."
She obeyed, her fingers moving faster, pressing harder. And the effect was immediate—her back arched, her mouth fell open in a silent gasp, her inner walls clenched down on him so hard he nearly spent then and there. She was close. Her body was racing toward climax despite everything—despite the pain, the fear, the degradation.
"That's it. You're going to come on my cock, aren't you? Going to prove exactly what you are."
"No, I won't, I can't—" But her voice was breaking, her hips bucking against him frantically now, seeking friction, seeking release.
Castor leaned in close, his lips brushing her ear. "Beg me. Beg me to let you come."
"Please," she gasped, the word torn from her throat. "Please, my lord—"
"Please what?"
"Please let me—" She choked on the words, shame and need warring in her voice. "Please let me come. Please use me. Please—"
He thrust hard and deep, his hand moving to her throat again, squeezing just enough to make her gasp for air. "Come then. Come on your master's cock like the good little whore you are."
Her climax hit her like a breaking wave. Her whole body went rigid, her back arching, her mouth opening in a silent scream as pleasure crashed through her unwilling flesh. Her cunt clenched down on him in rhythmic pulses, rippling along his length, milking him. Fluids gushed around his cock—her release so intense it soaked them both, dripping down her thighs in the moonlight.
And the sounds she made—gods, those broken, humiliated sobs of pleasure were better than any willing woman's cries. Because she hadn't wanted this. Had fought it. But her body had betrayed her so completely that she'd come harder than she probably ever had in her short life, her virgin cunt learning what it was made for while her mind shattered under the lesson.
Castor felt his own climax building, drawn out by the tight, rippling grip of her orgasming channel. He drove into her harder, chasing his release, using her pleasure against her. She was limp now, destroyed, tears streaming down her face even as her body continued to spasm around him.
He buried himself as deep as he could go and let go, his cock pulsing as he emptied himself inside her. His seed flooded her, pumping into her womb in hot spurts, marking her internally as thoroughly as the bruises on her throat and hips marked her outside. She whimpered—a broken, defeated sound—as she felt him claiming her deepest places.
When he finally pulled out, his spend leaked from her well-used cunt, mixing with her own release and dripping down her thighs in thick, pale ropes. Kyra's legs gave out and she slid down the tree to sit in the dirt, her skirts still bunched around her waist, her sex exposed and gaping slightly from the use. She was shaking, crying silently, her whole body a map of devastation.
But what broke her most, Castor knew, wasn't the violation. It was that her body had responded. That she'd gotten wet. That she'd touched herself. That she'd come so hard she'd nearly screamed. That some part of her—the part that lived in flesh and nerve and instinct—had welcomed what he'd done to her.
That knowledge would haunt her. Would reshape her. Would make her into exactly what he needed.
"Good girl." He touched her hair briefly—almost affectionate, though the gesture was as calculated as everything else. "Get back in the wagon. Tomorrow you begin your new life."
She stumbled back toward the supply wagon, climbing inside and disappearing behind the leather curtain. Castor watched her go, satisfaction settling in his chest. Four women now at the Dreadfort—Greta, Myranda, Violet, and Kyra. Each one broken or breaking in different ways. Each one useful for different purposes.
He returned to his tent and lay in the darkness, sending his consciousness out into a rat that scurried through the camp. Through its eyes he watched the supply wagon, saw Kyra's silhouette curled among the casks, saw her shoulders shake with silent sobs.
She'd learn. They all learned eventually.
Tomorrow he'd be home, and the real work could begin.
***
On the evening of the fourth day, the fortress appeared on the horizon.
The Dreadfort squatted on its hill like a great beast of stone and iron, its walls thick and windowless, its towers rising in stark lines against the darkening sky. No banners flew—House Bolton didn't announce itself. The flayed man was known by reputation, not display. As Castor rode closer, he felt something settle in his chest. Pride, perhaps. Or possession. This was his. All of it. And soon he'd have the wealth to make it truly powerful.
The gates opened at their approach, guards recognizing their lord and his company. The column filed through into the outer yard, and Castor saw the household assembled to greet them—servants, soldiers, craftsmen, all lined up in the way of things when the lord returned from travels.
And there, at the front, three young women who shouldn't have been standing together but were because someone—Bethany, probably—had decided they should welcome him properly.
Greta stood on the left—dark hair falling past her shoulders, hollow eyes that tracked his every movement with the desperate awareness of puppy watching it's master. She'd learned quickly in her time at the Dreadfort that pleasing him meant surviving him, and that lesson had stripped away whatever defiance she'd once possessed. Now she was hollow-eyed obedience wrapped in flesh, her skills honed by necessity.
In the center stood Myranda—the kennel master's daughter, lean and lithe with dark curls that framed a face promising violence. She was wild and vicious as the dogs she tended, and unlike Greta, Myranda loved what Castor offered. She thrived on the depravity, on the cruelty, on the power that came from being close to him. Her eyes gleamed as she studied his bandaged face, already calculating what new opportunities his wounds might present.
On the right was Violet—pale and delicate, her eyes like bruised flowers, watching him with an expression that mixed worship and fear in equal measure. He'd found her near White Harbor, soft and breakable, and she'd proven exactly that. Broken now, she lived for his touch, interpreted his degradation as affection, clung to the scraps of attention he offered like a drowning woman clutching driftwood.
All three wore their best dresses—simple but clean, cut to flatter figures that were still young and firm. And all three stared at him with variations on the same expression: curiosity about his wounds, calculation about what his return meant for them, awareness that standing in the front of the welcome meant someone had given them status, at least for this moment.
Castor dismounted, his movements careful to hide how much his wounds still pained him. Jeren moved to take his horse's reins, and Castor walked forward to where his mother waited just behind the three young women.
Bethany Bolton's face went pale as she saw him up close—the bandages covering half his face, the visible edges of the wounds that showed around the dressings, the way he moved like every step cost him.
"Castor..." Her voice broke slightly. "What happened? Your face—"
"Raiders attacked us in the Lonely Hills." The lie came smooth as oiled leather. "Wildlings, or brigands, we couldn't tell in the chaos. We drove them off but at cost. Ten good men dead, others wounded. I took my scars leading the defense."
He'd practiced this story during the journey home, refined it until it sounded completely plausible. Raiders made sense. The Lonely Hills were remote enough that brigands could hide there. And a lord defending his men from attack was heroic, not suspicious.
Bethany reached out as if to touch his bandages, then stopped. "The maester needs to look at this immediately. Those wounds could fester, could—"
"They've been treated. I'll have Maester Tybald examine them, but I'm not in danger." Castor glanced past her to the assembled household. "Let the men stable their horses and find their barracks. They've earned rest. The wounded need the maester's attention first."
"Of course." Bethany turned, giving rapid orders to servants who scattered to obey. The efficiency of a great house moving to care for its people.
Which left Castor standing before the three young women, who hadn't moved. Who were still watching him with those calculating eyes.
"Greta," he said quietly. "See that hot water is brought to my chambers. Enough for a bath. And food—meat, bread, something substantial."
"Yes, my lord." She curtsied and hurried off.
"Violet, have my chambers aired and fresh linens prepared. I've been sleeping in a tent for two weeks and I'm done with it."
"At once, my lord." Another curtsy, and she was gone.
That left Myranda, who tilted her head slightly as she studied his bandaged face. "What would you have me do, my lord?"
Castor held her gaze for a long moment. Saw the intelligence there, the cruelty carefully masked behind proper deference. Myranda was dangerous—the kind of woman who understood power and wanted to be close to it, who'd do terrible things if it meant elevation. In another life she'd been Ramsay's creature. Here, she could be his. But that required careful handling.
"Help Greta with the water," he said finally. "And then wait. I may have use for you later."
Something flickered in her eyes—satisfaction, perhaps, at being singled out. "As my lord commands." Her curtsy was deeper than the others', held a fraction longer. Then she turned and followed Greta toward the kitchens.
Castor climbed the steps to the Dreadfort's main entrance, Bethany hovering at his elbow like a worried hen. Behind him, the column dispersed—men to the barracks, wounded to the maester's chambers, wagons to the storage yards where their precious cargo would be unloaded under guard.
And in one of those wagons, hidden beneath canvas and casks, Kyra waited to be brought to whatever fate Castor had planned for her. Another piece on the board. Another possession claimed.
The Dreadfort swallowed him into its familiar shadows, and Castor allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. He'd gone into the Lonely Hills seeking gold and found it. He'd faced an ancient power and survived—more than survived, wounded it and gained abilities in the process. He'd lost men but secured loyalty from those who remained.
And now he was home, with wealth, magic, and knowledge no one else possessed.
The Game was his to win.
He just had to play it right.
***
CHAPTER END