Chapter Text
PROLOGUE - THE FLAYED LORD
Silence hanged in the Dreadfort like a corpse. The subtle clanging of scrubbing pots in the scullery as the mids worked their hands raw, the scraping of the washing boards as the washing women beat soap into the linens of the Lord and his Lady Wife and the whimpering pups down in the Kennels were all drowned under the deep stillness of the Castle’s walls. Not that the Dreadfort was known for the lively music that filled the halls of the South or the raucous feasting of the Umbers further North. Peace was the way of Lord Bolton’s domain. Even when the Lord's little children had roamed the halls, childish screams as the boy had chased the girl down into the Godswood, there had been an eerie quietness to them.
Some say it was ghosts haunting the stone, wandering through aimlessly, their wrists still shackled with steel, the skinned muscles beating and mouths wordlessly crying in agony at their eternal torment. Others say it is so that all staff can hear the screams of those locked down into the dungeons far below the inhabited chambers. Wooden crosses and knives jammed into a bloody carving table as if to cut up a leg of mutton or ribs of beef. The pinned skins of enemies long dead staring at their reflection in the bloody carving knife. Not that anyone would know what happened in those rooms. Those that snaked down the halls to get a closer look, little hallboys proving they weren’t too scared dared by those barely on the cusp of adulthood or new maids that took the wrong turns under the winding staircases never appeared again.
Disappearances haunted the Dreadfort’s walls as much death did. Walking out into the snow during the depths of Winter, snow clouding their figure as if a trance was pulling them to the icy domain. Roose’s nursemaid said it had been the Others calling to them, dragging them out to dance in the blizzard that engulfed the barren lands around them. He believed that it was madness, a madness his own mother had been afflicted by when she had removed her furs and gown, remaining in just a linen smock, and plunged into the banks of the Weeping Water, lips blue and curved up in a smile.
She needed leeching, the bad blood had affected her brain and her humours were imbalanced. A good leeching usually helped in most situations, clearing up his mind for any task at hand that could easily be impeded by frivolous follies of loose thoughts. Apart from the one he was currently surrounded by.
Blood was still dripping onto the stone of the floor. The linens of the sheets were soaked through, the white soiled into a dark brown after hours of leaching into the fabric but the saturated fabric continued to bleed out as if it had a beating heart. The Maester should have called a maid to come clear it, the metallic scent infecting the air they breathed. Yet the old man was nowhere to be found as he was tending his own wounds, deep claw marks carved into both his cheeks, a twisted rendition of a heart tree down in the weirwood.
The stench as the liquid stagnated did not bother him, neither did it his wife. She wouldn’t have survived if it had.
Bethany hadn’t bothered to clean her hands, her fingers stained and dark while her palms were splattered with dark splotches that could have resembled ink in the dark light. Her nails were clutching to the skirts of her ruined gown, most broken and chewed down raw, even without the contact with the Maester’s skin. Her hair free of any coif or hood, dishevelled as her braids collapsed down from her crown. Heavy and the laces undone and tangled.
“I knew my sister was right about all of you! What have you done to my son!”
It was the only time that she had removed herself from her seat in the last sixteen hours, catatonic as she looked across at the wall. Every half an hour or so her tears would well in the corners of her eyes before they were swallowed back down into her dark eyelashes. Roose doubted she had anything left to cry out of her. His eyes remained dry as bones.
His wife was refusing food or water, a maid had come in to suggest she change and have a meal but Bethany had continued to stare at the wall before asking if the silly maid wanted her tongue removed for her words. The little thing shaked her pale head before running for the door. Roose would have her removed from the staff by the next morning, banished to wander the hills beyond the Dreadfort to find work before the night crawled in. Roose promised Bethany such, she nodded before her brown eyes glazed back over.He was merciful to not do it during the Wolf’s hour, who knew what monsters lingered out in the expanse.
He should have flayed her fingers, peeled back her delicate skin, but with Lord Stark looming ever closer on his shoulder, he couldn’t risk the news reaching his Liege.
Especially not now.
Roose settled down into the seat next to his wife, the plush cushion, hard and stiff underneath him as if it was made of steel. It too was beating out blood onto the floor. He had removed his finest cloak and changed into old linens before joining her vigil, it would not be prudent to be wasteful. Blood didn’t come out easily, if at all, the stains persistently ate at the weft of the fabric.
Tiredness clung to his muscles and the familiar pangs of hunger were eminent but he had also refused anything to eat or to rest. The latter felt egregious and the second not possible, he had too many tasks to complete before he would be plagued with sleep.
“He will have to be removed soon,” His voice was a whisper above silence yet it still echoed.
Bethany didn’t turn her head, as if she hadn’t heard him at all. Maybe she hadn’t, maybe the trance she had placed herself in didn’t allow interruption through words.
Then she will have to be removed from it , Roose thought. A mad wife will not do well for the months to come.
“Any you will need to be removed with him, you will change into appropriate mourning attire and we will address the Castle together in the morn,” The threat was unsaid but understood. Roose had never been one to enjoy threatening his wife, to see the fear settling into her eyes like a stagnant pool, but that didn’t mean he was above it. Wars were brewing, the first blood had already been spilt over his own castle’s chambers. Ever so softly it was whispering its way through the halls before it would blow into the halls of other Lords.
Roose was no fool, not like his father and certainly not like either of his brothers entombed below him. His legacy would not collapse because his wife mimicked the mad Queen Helaena in grief, after all it wouldn’t be the first time Bethany had tried to meet the Old Gods sooner than they intended. He intended.
“He was still a child,” Her voice was strangled, struggling to break through from her dry and cracked throat. Her hands continued to claw at her dress, the flesh flushing white.
Domeric had not been a child. He had been three and twenty names days before the end of the moon’s turn. A man grown for seven years, not some pitiful child that had its life snuffed out before it even began. Roose had already been to war at that age, crushed open a Crownlands soldier's armour with a mace as if it was a shattered nut. The flesh had squelched under the steel plate and the bones clattered inside their cage as they broke free of tight skin. Both his brother’s were already rotting in the crypt by twenty.
His son was far removed from boyhood and had been for quite some time. He had first removed a man’s head at four and ten, a clean cut with an axe, before riding south to Vale for the remaining years of his youth. Harp playing, jousting in tournaments and racing other young men. All follies of boys that would soon be worn away once he returned to the North. And returned he had, forever.
Dom had been a dutiful heir, rather loud for Roose’s own liking and not always the quickest with strategy, but certainly dutiful. He learned and learned well, citing his histories and his mathematics, drawing out borders by memory and easily navigating his way with the stars. Rather poor with a sword compared to others his age, never quite quick enough with his dodges and his strokes never having the full strength to overpower an opponent.
But all that paled to when he had a bow in his hands.It was if his hands were carved to hold it, the soft curves held between his long, delicate fingers in a perfected grip, not too tight but neither loose. His stance was without fault, legs wide enough to distribute his weight but not far enough apart to unbalance him. He didn’t miss. Eyes were a favourite target, then necks.
Many years past, at one of Lord Stark’s pups' names day, one of the fat fingered Karstark boys had laughed at Domeric’s lack of shots towards the large stags that passed through the hunting party. Big and oafish, steel plate that was no doubt choking his poor steed and pinkish cheeks of a court jester. Lord Stark had kept the same grim expression as always and even the little hostage squidling kept his eyes down.
The piggish snorting had ended when the thud had hit the snow. Dom had slipped from his stallion Driven Snow with ease before picking the furry creature in his glove. A hare, arrow plunged through its right eye and out through the left. A perfect shot.
“It keeps the most meat, not that you’d know that my Lord considering you aim for flanks.”
Domeric was always as practical as he was smug. Pride, that was what Roose had felt when looking through identical eyes. The hunting party had been swallowed by silence after that.
Those capable hands now limp by his sides, they were drowned in dark red, the stains needing to be washed out before he was placed in his final resting place. His nails were shredded to pieces, skin ripped back to expose the flesh underneath. He’d started clawing at it in his final hours, in an attempt to distract from the blood he continued to violently vomit over himself, ruining his already sweat soaked smock. He’d be changed into finer clothes before he was interred in the crypt, something befitting an heir for the Dreadfort.
He wouldn’t be the first to die an heir. Roose already knew the cloak that the tailors would have already started in the last hours, a rich lambswool dyed a soft pale pink and lined in sable fur, garnets and rubies displaying a bloody pattern appropriate for their great House. The tannery would take the finest calf leather to be fashioned into the straps with embossed flayed men and bronze clasps forged on the end. His hair and skin would be washed of the impurities, one last leeching so the bad blood would not stay with him to the grave.
Roose was no Godly man but even he knew Dom’s next journey would not be a kind one, the Gods way never was one, and he wanted to give him the best chance. Bark from the Dreadfort’s Godswood would be harvested and skinned from the Weirwood, bleeding flesh mashed into a paste that was then wiped down Domeric’s cheeks mimicking the tree’s mournful tears. His brothers’ faces had been marked the same, pallid flesh lit up with a red glow. A strange tradition but most traditions of the North could be considered such, the Starks had their statues and the Umbers draped their dead in fresh furs, the Reeds washed their dead in water from their mashes and the Bear Islanders placed gravels from their shores in the coffin.
“He will have to be moved before the rot sets in.” Roose said, looking down at his son’s already stiff corpse. Rigid and unyielding, soon it would begin to bloat and the flesh would turn into putrid bruises. His hair was still clung to his forehead, the small braids now ratty and tangled into his ears.
Bethany sighed. Defeated, she leaned over and placed her head into his stomach as if he was still a little boy. She took in a great inhale, breathing in the smell of the linen over his belly, unbothered by the metallic scent of the blood. Her hands continued to twist inside the folds of her gown, as if stopping herself from reaching to cling to Dom’s body. She feared if she held too tight, then she’d never let go.
It would be the last time that she would be able to hold him, feel him under her hands like when he was a babe.
Roose rose from his chair, placing slender fingers over his wife’s slim shoulder before making his way out the room. He needed to speak with the Maester before much more time passed. Once again, Bethany did not respond, tears now leaking onto Domeric’s still chest.
The halls were dead. The smokiness of the old torches, the leached out colour of the walls making them sickly. Roose had walked the halls for near forty years, its Lord for over twenty, yet they never became more welcoming to him. His ancestors stared through the mortar of the stone, staring as if he was an intruder in the castle.
Maybe he was, the first Lord Bolton, Royce Bolton, had been forever labelled a traitor for bending to the Starks will. His son rebelled before his father’s corpse was cold, declaring himself a Red King yet again. He’d lasted all but seven moons before he had lost his head and his brother the new Lord Bolton, Ranar, also bent to the wolves.
The Maester had finished dressing his wounds when Roose entered, the aromas of tinctures and herbs filling the chambers. The leeches sat in their vial, wriggling through the glass.
“Ulthor, I hope my wife’s…indelicate state did not cause you too much harm,” Roose spoke, watching as the old man scrambled to stand. He was a loyal advisor, Ulthor, and he had a habit of never asking too many questions and kept his business to himself. Much like his mad good sister, Roose did not trust him. Far too foolish to trust a man whose higher power was not himself, threat of flaying or not.
“Not at all my Lord, I know that women can well be, rather unwell, at the sight of death. Especially in the state poor young Domeric had been in the last few hours before his soul departed.” There was a sadness in Ulthor’s tone as he stood on weary legs.
`’Yes, it was not the kindest way for my son to go,” Roose could still hear the screaming, the leather tied around Dom’s mouth not enough to stop the sound crawling its way out his throat, “Do you know what it was that ailed him?”
Ulthor shuffled on the floor and licked his bottom lip, “I have an idea my Lord,”
“Spit it out then,”
The silence broke.
“It was something in his stomach I am sure. The coughing of the red blood rather than a darker shade shows that it wasn’t anything further down-” The Maester stroked his white beard “-which is strange for any kind of humour related illness and there has been no bad air of recent.”
“Are you suggesting that my son did not die naturally?”
“In my opinion-”
“Which must be close enough to the truth for you to dare to speak it, Ulthor, you know how I deal with liars,”
“I do not believe that young Domeric died naturally at all, my Lord. Every ailment that I have treated and all those I have read in my books do not match with the symptoms of his death. The bright red blood he vomited, the violent fits that lasted for minutes at a time and a headache so bad that he felt like banging his head against walls. No, my Lord, that is not natural.”
Domeric had been sitting in the Great Hall, jovially chatting away with one of the guardsmen, when it had happened. Violent specks splattered across the roasted turkeys, mashed potatoes and flavoured carrots. One could first pretend that it was just spilt wine before less than a minute later another round of blood followed. Bethany had shrieked when Dom’s body had fallen limp, hand still gripped tightly around his goblet.
“Poison then?”
He’d been moved to his room, long legs hitting the stone as he was dragged onto his bed. They hadn’t been able to undress him before the fitting started. Between strangled and warped words, his head and neck would lock tightly before shaking erratically.
“Mother! Mother! Help me!”
“Yes my Lord.”
By the seventh hour, Domeric’s body was closer to that of a corpse, the Gods prowled around his bed side like stalking wolves. His body was fully limp, tired and worn down, with his chest shallowly rising before collapsing down. His eyes were open but unseeing, irises rolling but never finding a spot to focus on. Every so often a cough would escape alongside a mix of blood and flesh; Bethany pulled the pieces from his teeth. The fitting was also quieter, less erratic as if even his own body knew that death was upon him.
Roose had met death many times before. He had fallen through a crack in the ice of the Weeping Water as a child and perhaps it had been the Ironmen’s Drowned God that had stood before him. He had been missed by an arrow at three and ten on a hunt by bandits and maybe the Stranger was watching under his hood. The Battle of the Bells had taken both his younger brothers yet he remained the victor and Balerion’s wings had taken to the sky. Yet Roose was no Godly man but even he knew Death had never felt closer.
“Please father, I just want it to end now.”
The last words of Domeric Bolton were less than a whisper, begging for the great darkness to take hold.
“An expensive one?”
“I would say so my Lord. This is a man made tincture I am sure, any of the poisonous nuts or fruit are nowhere to be found on the Dreadfort’s lands and Domeric would not have been stupid enough to consume any of those,” The I taught him to never be that stupid was left unsaid.
It must be the boy , Roose thought. Domeric wouldn’t be stupid enough to eat berries but he always wanted to know his brother.
“Then it must have been put in his drink.”
“Yes my Lord. Sometime before he entered the hall as well for the poison to make its way to his stomach,”
He’d been to the mill. He said he’d been looking at the grain production but that had never been the reason. He’d been wanting to see that monstrous little creature that he should have drowned at birth, watches as identical eyes to his own should have been snuffed out like an old candle.
Nobody is accursed as a kinslayer but what is one to do when one son slays the other.
You save what is left of your blood.
“Ulthor, I need you to prepare ravens to send to all our Vassals and to houses Stark, Umber, Karstark, Manderly, Ryswell, Dustin, Mormont and the rest,”
“Yes my Lor-”
“Now.” Ulthor stumbled back at the urgency in Roose’s voice, not risen but far firmer than his regular whisper.
“Yes my Lord, what is to be written in these letters?” He quickly composed himself, shuffling towards the pile of parchment and abandoned ink. He must have been writing before Dom splattered the castle’s walls with his organs.
“Tell them that my heir Domeric Bolton is dead after a short illness,” If Ulthor questioned the decision to leave out the details of the poisoning he didn’t voice it, “which is not contagious and is not a worry for the greater North.They are invited to witness his internment in this mourning period in just over two weeks' time.”
“Is that all my Lord?”
“No. Tell them that as I have no other true born sons, I name my heir my sole true born daughter, Rana, who is currently being warded by Lord Stark in Winterfell. They are to come to the Dreadfort and swear before the Godswood that they will uphold this succession upon my death against any pretenders.”
Roose was no Godly man yet he for the first time in a long time felt like praying. Death’s air smothered the castle. He had not seen his only daughter in over three years and only for a passing visit, she had not resided in the Dreadfort’s halls since she was eleven, barely past girlhood. Now she would return forever, not to be wrapped inside Winterfell’s walls whelping pups for the Little Lord Stark.
She was clever and shrewd, skeptical and witty. Capable but no fool. The Half-Year Queen had been all those things too. The Dreadfort had no history of female Lords, only past Red Queens from centuries prior. But Rana had the blood of the Dreadfort in her veins, far more than Dom or that creature had.
“Do you want me to write a letter to Lady Rana informing her my Lord?” Ulthor looked like he had swallowed something sour, words ready to jump from his mouth at any moment.
It is good he keeps his thoughts to himself , Roose thought, it would be a shame to lose his clever tongue.
“No, Lord Stark will inform her. I’m sure he will do it…most delicately,” Eddard Stark had quite the habit of speaking of breaking the news of death.
“Yes my Lord. I will have the ravens sent by sunrise,”
“Good. Then Domeric will need to be embalmed. He is already stiff and I will not have a rotten corpse at his burial.”
Ulthor nodded before picking up his quill and starting to write away in ink Roose’s words. The Leech Lord would have them checked before they were sent, less the Maester misconstrued his words. Roose never had taken well to liars.
But that was the morning’s duty, for now, he needed to remove his wife from their son’s corpse.
Less the crows feast on the rotten flesh and old blood.