***
The raven from the Dreadfort reached Winterfell just after dawn.
It came out of a low grey sky, wings beating hard against the wind, and landed on the rookery ledge with the tired, irritated air of a bird that had flown through bad weather and poor news both. Maester Luwin was there to meet it, fingers already stiffening in the cold as he unfastened the little leather tube from its leg.
Pink wax. A flayed man pressed into the seal.
He didn't sigh. He had been at Winterfell long enough to know that the Boltons rarely sent messages anyone enjoyed reading.
Inside, the handwriting was small and neat. Not Roose's—Luwin had seen that hand often enough—but similar in its precision.
To Lord Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell, Warden of the North,
My father, Lord Roose Bolton, is dead.
The maester judges his heart failed him, weakened by years of treatment and this winter's cold. He passed in his solar on the third day of the second moon, 296 AC.
The lords and landed men sworn to House Bolton have renewed their oaths. By their consent and my birthright, I have taken my father's seat as Lord of the Dreadfort. Our duties to Winterfell and to the North remain as before.
When the roads allow safe passage, I will ride to Winterfell to pay my respects and renew our vows in person.
Castor Bolton, Lord of the Dreadfort
Courteous. Correct. No wasted ink. The sort of letter a cautious man would write.
Luwin folded it once and took the long, familiar way down from the rookery. The wind on the outer stairs cut through his robes; the warmth of Winterfell's great hall hit him like a wall when he stepped inside. Steam from the hot springs softened the air. The smell of bread and bacon hung under the smoke.
Lord Eddard Stark was at the high table with his family. Robb and Jon sat on either side of him, murmuring about the practice yard. Sansa and Arya were shoulder to shoulder, one sitting straight-backed with her spoon held just so, the other hunched over her bowl, already flecked with porridge. Little Rickon leaned against Catelyn's arm, still half asleep.
Luwin waited until a servant moved away, then came closer and bowed his head.
"My lord. A message from the Dreadfort."
Ned's grey eyes sharpened. He wiped his fingers, took the parchment, and read it without changing expression. When he had finished, he passed it to Catelyn.
"Roose Bolton is dead," he said quietly.
That was enough to pull the older children's attention. Robb sat up straighter. Jon's hand stilled on his cup. Even Sansa's eyes flicked from her bowl to her father's face.
Catelyn read the letter as carefully as Ned had. "Heart," she said.
"That, at least, fits the man's habits." Everyone knew Roose and his leeches.
"His son writes well."
"How old is he now?" Ned asked.
"Sixteen," Luwin answered.
"Near enough. Old enough to sit as lord."
Robb frowned. "I've never met him."
"Few have," Ned said.
"Roose didn't much like letting the boy out of his sight."
Jon spoke before he'd quite thought it through. "Is that good or bad?" He caught himself too late and went still, Catelyn glared him with disgust,
but Ned only glanced at him and answered.
"Depends what Roose was shaping," he said.
"He was no fool. He wouldn't spend years on a useless heir."
Catelyn's mouth pressed thin. "We should send proper condolences," she said.
"And an invitation. Better you see him in Winterfell than let him sit and think on his own what place the Dreadfort holds."
"We will," Ned agreed.
"Luwin, draft something. Plain and courteous. Ask him to come when the roads improve. I'd like to lay eyes on the boy before this winter is out."
"Aye, my lord." Luwin tucked the letter away.
Arya leaned toward Sansa as the adults turned back to their food. "Do you think he really flays people?" she whispered.
Sansa made a face. "Don't be disgusting."
Jon didn't say anything. He was thinking of a flayed man on pink, hanging slack and red. Of a boy made lord in a place like that. At fourteen, it was hard not to imagine what you might have done with land and men of your own.
Then the talk turned to the day's lessons, Ser Rodrik's plans for the training yard, and the business of living pushed the Dreadfort back into the edges of their minds.
For now.
***
Snow fell in thin veils over the Weeping Water. It softened the banks and stuck to the black rocks, but the water in the middle kept moving, dark and fast. Even in the deepest winters, it rarely froze solid. The current was too strong.
Castor stood on the southern wall and watched the way the river curved, the places it narrowed, the lazy bend where the current slowed before dropping again. Flow rates. Potential landing points. How many flat-bottomed boats he'd need to move a levy downstream twice as fast as a march.
Vikram's mind supplied half the details without effort. The other half came from the boy whose body he wore—four years of walking these walls, hearing men speak of when the river ran high enough to cut off smaller holdings, when an ice jam took a bridge.
Two lives of memory sat neatly on top of each other now. He barely felt the seam anymore.
"My lord?"
He didn't start. He turned.
Jeren stood a few paces back, cloak pulled tight, face reddened by the wind. Once a servant in his father's household, now the closest thing Castor had to a steward he trusted fully.
"They're waiting in the hall," Jeren said. "The men you sent for."
Castor took one more look at the Weeping Water. A road of its own. That could come later.
"For now," he said, "we deal with the ones already pulling our carts."
***
The Dreadfort's great hall was not as large as Winterfell's, but it carried a different kind of weight. No hot spring softened the stone. The warmth here came from three big hearths and heavy furs. The banners were fewer and more alarming—flayed men on pink, screaming silently from every shadow.
Castor sat in his father's seat and let the room look at him.
He'd chosen his clothes carefully. Not rich silk—this was the North—but well-cut black wool and leather that fit his height and frame perfectly. The Bolton sigil was plain on his chest. His sword hung at his side, not across the table. His silver-gold hair was tied back simply. Nothing ostentatious. Just clean, cold presence.
The men below the dais didn't quite know where to put their eyes.
They were his father's lords and landed knights: hard men from the river villages and the low hills, used to answering to a soft-spoken bastard of a lord whose temper they never managed to read. They had ridden here through bad roads and worse weather because they had to. They were watching now to see what kind of Bolton sat the chair.
Castor let the quiet stretch a moment, then spoke.
"You rode in bad weather for a short notice summons," he said. "I thank you. I hope the ale is at least not watered."
That got a small, wary chuckle. Good. Better they loosened a little.
"You all knew my father," he went on. "You swore your oaths to him. You know what House Bolton expects."
That drew a few more nods. They knew what House Bolton did to men who forgot their oaths too.
"I won't waste your time pretending to be him," Castor said. "He had his ways. I have mine. But this much is the same: we hold this land together. If we do it badly, our people suffer. If we do it well, we all have more when the snows come."
He could have said "I." He said "we" instead. It cost nothing and made the men listening feel included.
"I've been through the ledgers," he said, and a few men shifted at the word. "I know what you send here. I see what you keep. I've compared it to the old years." He let that sit. Anyone who'd been shaving more than his share would be feeling the weight of the words.
"I won't accuse any man of cheating his lord without proof," he added, mild. "I haven't seen proof. What I have seen is this: we survive winters by habit, not by thought. We trust that if we do what our fathers did, we'll see the other side. That's worked so far. It won't always."
A murmur, quickly swallowed. Northern men did not love hearing that their fathers might have lacked imagination.
"My changes are simple," Castor said. "Annoying, perhaps. Not complicated."
He raised one hand, ticking them off like ordinary business.
"First: grain. I want to know exactly how much we have. Not roughly, not 'enough.' Exactly. From now on, every harvest will be counted. Some stays where it is. Some comes here. I'll be building stone granaries to hold it so it doesn't rot or burn the first time a drunk knocks a lantern over."
Lord Ryswell's man cleared his throat. "The villages have kept themselves through winters for generations, my lord. It… has always been left to them."
"And they will keep doing so," Castor said. "I'm not sending carts to strip them bare. I'm making sure that when one village's stores fail, there's another's to draw from. If we pool enough, no one starves unless we all do. If we leave it scattered and one holding has bad luck, they die alone." He shrugged. "I don't like losing people I might use later."
A few men snorted at that. There was something reassuringly Bolton about the bluntness.
"Second," he said, "I want names."
They didn't like that. He saw the tightening of jaws, the way gazes flicked toward their neighbors.
"Not to squeeze more from them," he said, before someone risked saying it. "To know what strength we actually have. How many men can carry a spear. How many boys will be old enough in two, five, ten years. Which villages have more mouths than hands. Which have hands with no land to work. Right now, you guess. Then you come here and give me your best guess. I have no patience for guessing."
He let that land for a breath.
"If your stewards can't write it down," he added, "I'll lend you men who can. Once a season, I expect a copy in this hall."
"And if we… fall behind?" a lesser knight asked. His tone was careful. He didn't say *refuse*.
"Then that tells me something about your holding," Castor said, voice still light. "If it's trouble, I'll send help. If it's laziness, we'll have another sort of talk."
He didn't smile. He didn't need to. The image of "another sort of talk" with a Bolton lord was vivid enough for all of them.
"The last thing," he said, "is the roads."
That at least was a complaint they all recognized. Men grunted, shook their heads.
"You've all broken wheels a day's ride from home," he said. "You've all watched a cart sink to its axles in spring thaw. I'm tired of it. I want a proper stone road from the Dreadfort to the Lonely Road. Not tomorrow. Not in a year. But started now."
"Stone is dear," someone muttered.
"Not if you already sit on it," Castor replied. "The Lonely Hills are full of rock. We'll burn lime, set it with gravel. It holds better, lasts longer. We'll lay it once and patch it after, not rebuild it every year when the frost and rain tear it up again."
A few of the older men looked interested despite themselves. Everyone liked a road that didn't destroy wagons.
"I'll take men in rotation," he said. "No one village loses its whole strength for a season. Those that meet their quotas get a lighter levy that year. Those that drag their feet will find I can be very interested in why."
That was all. He didn't thunder. He didn't threaten flaying. He simply laid out what would be, with no sense that their agreement mattered much.
"Questions?" he asked.
Two or three asked practical things: how often reports should come, what counts as a "man fit for a spear," who would measure land boundaries when disputes arose. Castor answered in the same calm, plain style. He'd thought most of it through already. Where he hadn't, he said so and promised an answer after he'd seen the next set of ledgers.
That, more than anything, soothed them. A lord who admitted he needed to see a book before deciding felt more like a man and less like a mad god.
When they filed out, cloaks tight against the cold, more than one glanced back at the young man on the high seat. Taller than his father. Quieter, in some ways, and in others not quiet at all.
"He's not Roose," one muttered to another outside, where their words steamed in the air. "But he's a Bolton."
"That's bad enough," the other replied.
Neither of them realized the men gathering their horses in the yard were already noting which lord had looked uneasy, which intrigued, and carrying that information back to their master.
***
By the time true winter settled its weight across the North, the Dreadfort's new habits had begun to bite.
A boy from the Dreadfort arrived in one village with a ledger and a Bolton guard at his back. He sat in the longhouse and asked, "How many sleep under your roof?" and wrote carefully as the headman muttered names. He passed a blanket, good wool, to a grandmother whose hands shook with age. He left a small jar of salve for the midwife who'd delivered half the village and had nothing but dirty cloths to clean with.
In another, Mira—sharp-tongued and old enough not to flinch at glares—sat by a smoky hearth and asked,
"How many sons? How many daughters? Who can pull a bow? Who's lost someone this year and how?"
and didn't look away when she wrote "beaten" instead of "fever" in the margin. That line, and the name of the man responsible, would have a thin red mark beside it when Castor saw it.
The first round of work was clumsy. Some villages lied. Some forgot. Some tried to hide grown sons out of fear that writing their names down meant losing them to levies.
Castor expected that. He had Jeren compare the numbers to whatever scraps his father had left and to gossip from men who rode those roads. When a village that had previously sent ten men to a levy suddenly claimed to have only four of spear-bearing age, a note went beside their name as well.
He didn't ride out himself to shout at them. He just made a list.
That list narrowed into a handful of places where someone was either sloppy or testing him. He chose one—a small holding along the edge of the Lonely Hills—and went.
He arrived with twenty riders and no warning. No banners trailing behind, no trumpets, just the quiet thunder of hooves.
The village lined up fast. People who lived under a flayed man knew how to hurry when a Bolton came in person.
Castor listened to the steward's flustered explanations about bad winters and boys gone south. He nodded, once, and then said, "Mira. How many young men did you see here last time?"
She gave the number without hesitation. It was higher than the steward had dared write.
"Here's what happens now," Castor said, voice as flat as the winter sky.
"You'll give me the real counts. If the numbers match your excuse, we're done. If they don't…" He let it hang. No threats spelled out. The steward went paler with each word.
By the time he left that village, the steward had new bruises on his pride rather than his skin, and the next ledgers to come in from the region were much closer to reality.
He didn't enjoy the fear. He used it. There was a difference.
In his solar, the master ledger grew thicker. Births. Deaths. Yields from each village's fields. It was slow, imperfect, and still better than anything his father had ever bothered with.
Numbers were habits. Once men got used to sending them, they rarely stopped. That was what Castor was counting on.
***
The village had no real name. The locals called it Crow's Rest because crows gathered thick in the skeletal trees on the ridge above, and because it sat at the end of a hard climb from the lowlands. A dozen mud-and-timber houses. Sheep pens built against the hillside. A longhouse with a sagging roof and smoke staining the thatch black.
Castor had sent riders here twice already. Both times, the headman had given numbers too low to be credible and promises too vague to be useful. The second rider had come back with a bruised face and a story about "an accident with a horse."
No one at the Dreadfort believed in accidents.
So Castor went himself.
He rode out on a cold morning with twenty men-at-arms in Bolton colors, their horses stepping carefully on the frozen mud of the track. The sky was low and grey, promising snow that wouldn't fall for hours yet. His breath steamed. His hands, gloved in black leather, rested easy on the reins.
Jeren rode beside him, nervous in the way men got when they knew violence was a possibility but didn't know what shape it would take. "My lord, if they resist—"
"They won't," Castor said. "Not once they see I'm serious."
"And if they do?"
Castor's violet-grey eyes slid toward him, calm and cold. "Then we make an example that travels farther than this hill."
They didn't announce themselves. The village saw the column of riders coming up the ridge and went still the way prey animals did when a predator moved through tall grass. By the time Castor's horse stopped in the open space between the longhouse and the largest pen, faces had appeared in doorways—wary, sullen, afraid.
The headman came out last. He was a thick man in his fifties, grey-bearded, with hands scarred from work and a face that had learned to hide fear behind bluster. He bowed, but not quickly, and his eyes tracked the armed men spreading out around the village square.
"My lord," he said. His voice was rough, the kind that came from shouting orders at sheep and men for thirty years. "We weren't expecting—"
"I know," Castor said. He didn't dismount. He stayed on horseback, looking down, letting the height difference say what words didn't need to. "I sent two riders. You gave them lies both times. So here I am."
The headman's jaw tightened. "We gave what we could count, my lord. It's hard, in winter, to know—"
"Don't." Castor's voice didn't rise, but it cut clean through the older man's explanation. "I have the numbers from five years ago. I have the tallies from your neighbors. Your village hasn't shrunk by half unless plague took you, and no one's mentioned bodies."
Silence. A few of the villagers edged back into their doorways.
The headman shifted his weight. "We've had men leave, my lord. Go south, or—"
"Then I'll want their names and where they went," Castor interrupted. "If they're dead, I'll want to know how. If they're alive and you're hiding them to dodge levies, I'll want them found." He tilted his head slightly, pale hair catching what little light there was. "Which is it?"
The headman said nothing.
Castor dismounted. His boots hit the frozen ground with a dull thud. He handed his reins to one of his men and walked forward slowly, deliberately, until he was standing close enough that the headman had to look up slightly to meet his eyes.
"I didn't ride up this godforsaken hill to argue," Castor said quietly. "I came to find out if you're too stupid to understand what I want, or if you think I'm too young to make you regret lying to me."
The headman's face flushed, but fear was winning over pride. "My lord, we meant no—"
"Then prove it." Castor gestured toward the longhouse. "Everyone who can stand, out here. Now. I'll count them myself."
It took ten minutes for the village to gather. Old men and young boys. Women with babies on hips and toddlers clinging to skirts. A handful of men in their prime—fewer than there should have been, but more than the headman had claimed.
Castor walked among them slowly, Jeren at his side with a ledger and quill. He pointed. Jeren wrote. Name, age, whether they could hold a spear or pull a plow or nothing at all.
The villagers answered in mutters. Some wouldn't meet his eyes. Others stared with the dull resentment of people who'd been squeezed before and knew they'd be squeezed again.
Then Castor saw her.
She stood near the back, half-hidden behind an older woman, but the movement of her turning her head caught his attention. Dark hair, long and tangled, framing a face that would have been plain if not for the eyes—large, brown, and burning with something sharper than fear. Young. Maybe twenty. A rough wool dress that hung loose over a body that promised curves beneath.
And beside her, a man. Thirty, perhaps. Broad-shouldered, with the kind of frame that came from years of hard work. His hand rested possessively on her arm, and when Castor's gaze lingered on her, the man's jaw tightened.
Husband, then.
Castor walked closer. "Name?" he asked, looking at the woman.
She hesitated. The man beside her spoke instead, voice low and tight. "Greta. My wife. She's not strong, my lord. Can't work much."
Castor ignored him entirely. He kept his eyes on her. "Can you speak for yourself?"
Her chin lifted slightly, that spark in her eyes flaring. "I can."
"Good." He let his gaze drop, slow and deliberate, tracing the line of her throat, the way the rough fabric clung where it shouldn't be loose. She wasn't frail. She was hiding something—probably pregnancy, or the headman was using her to shave another body off the count. "What work do you do?"
"Weaving," she said. "Mending. Tending the—"
"She's my wife," the man interrupted, stepping forward now, voice rising. "She's not part of any levy, and I'll not have—"
Castor turned his head and looked at the man for the first time. Really looked. Let the silence stretch until the husband's words died in his throat.
"I didn't ask you," Castor said. His voice was still quiet. Still calm. And somehow, that made it worse. "I asked her."
The man's face went red. His fists clenched. "My lord, with respect—"
"You don't have my respect," Castor said. "And you're not going to get it by raising your voice in front of armed men." He glanced past the husband toward Jeren. "Write her name down. Greta. Weaver. Married to—" He looked back at the man. "What's your name?"
"Derran," the man bit out.
"Derran." Castor nodded once, as if filing it away. Then he stepped closer to Greta, ignoring the way her husband shifted like he wanted to block the path but didn't quite dare.
"You're a weaver," Castor said to her. "Do you have a loom?"
She nodded, throat working as she swallowed. "A small one. In the house."
"Good work?"
"Good enough." Her voice was steadier now, though her pulse beat visibly at her throat.
Castor smiled. It was a small, cold thing. "I'll want to see it before I leave," he said. "Make sure the quality is worth noting."
Her eyes widened slightly. She understood. So did her husband.
Derran stepped between them, shoulders squared, fists still clenched. "My lord, she's done nothing wrong. If there's a complaint about the count, that's on me and the headman, not—"
"You're right," Castor said. "It is on you."
He didn't raise his hand. Didn't give an order aloud. He just glanced toward two of his men-at-arms and tilted his head slightly toward Derran.
They moved.
Derran barely had time to shout before they were on him—one catching his arm, the other hooking a leg. He went down hard into the frozen mud, and before he could roll or swing, a mailed boot came down on the back of his knee.
The crack was sharp and wet.
Derran screamed.
Greta lunged forward, but Castor caught her wrist, fingers closing like iron. She struggled, mouth open, but he pulled her back against his chest and held her there, one arm across her waist, his other hand still gripping her wrist.
"Don't," he said quietly, lips near her ear. "It's already done."
On the ground, Derran writhed, clutching his leg. The men-at-arms stepped back, calm and professional, as if they'd done nothing more than move a piece of furniture. The break was clean—leg bent wrong at the knee, bone visible through torn trousers.
The headman started forward, mouth open to protest or beg, but one of Castor's knights shifted his hand to his sword hilt and the old man froze.
"He'll live," Castor said, loud enough for the village to hear. "The leg will heal crooked, but he'll live. That's more than he'd get if I thought he'd actually tried to swing at me."
He looked down at Derran, who was sobbing now, face white with shock. "You wanted to protect your wife," Castor continued, voice still even. "I understand that. But you forgot who you were speaking to. So now you'll remember. Every time you limp. Every winter when that knee aches."
He released Greta and stepped back. She dropped to her knees beside her husband, hands hovering uselessly over his ruined leg, tears streaming down her face.
Castor turned to Jeren. "Finish the count. When you're done, bring the ledger to me."
Then he looked at the headman. "I'll be inspecting the weaver's house. Make sure no one disturbs me."
The old man's face was grey. He nodded once, jerkily.
Castor walked toward the largest of the mud-and-timber houses—Greta and Derran's, judging by the way she'd glanced at it when he'd asked about the loom. One of his men moved to follow, but Castor waved him off.
"Stay here. Make sure the villagers stay calm."
He stepped inside.
***
The interior was dim, lit only by a small hearth and the grey light leaking through gaps in the walls. It smelled of smoke and damp wool and the sour tang of a house that had seen too many winters without enough repairs. A low bed against one wall, furs piled on top. A table. A loom in the corner, half-finished work still stretched across it.
Castor closed the door behind him and barred it.
Outside, he could hear Greta's voice, high and desperate, begging someone to help Derran. No one would. They were too afraid. He'd made sure of that.
He crossed to the loom, ran his fingers over the fabric. The work was competent. Not exceptional, but steady. She hadn't lied about that, at least.
The door rattled. "My lord—please—"
He unbarred it.
Greta stumbled inside, hair wild, face streaked with tears and dirt. She looked at him with something between fury and terror. "What do you *want*?" she hissed. "You've crippled him, taken our names, what more—"
"You," Castor said simply.
She froze.
He stepped closer, and she backed up until her spine hit the wall beside the loom. He kept coming until he was close enough that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.
"You're beautiful," he said. "I noticed the moment I saw you. Your husband noticed me noticing. That's why he got brave."
"I'm married," she whispered.
"I know." His hand came up, fingers brushing her jaw, tilting her face toward the thin light. "I don't care."
"He's bleeding outside—"
"He'll keep bleeding whether you fight me or not." Castor's thumb traced her lower lip, and she flinched. "But if you're smart, you'll make this easy. If you scream, if you claw, if you make me work for it, I'll have them break the other leg before I leave. Do you understand?"
Her breath hitched. Tears welled fresh in her eyes. "You're a monster."
"Yes," he agreed. "And you're going to let me fuck you anyway."
He kissed her.
She tried to twist her head away, but his hand was already in her hair, holding her still. His mouth was hard, claiming, tongue forcing past her lips. She whimpered into it, hands coming up to shove at his chest, but he caught her wrists and pinned them above her head with one hand.
His other hand moved down, rough and sure, tugging at the laces of her dress. The fabric was coarse, tied clumsily. It gave easily under his fingers. He dragged it down her shoulders, baring her to the waist.
She wasn't wearing anything beneath.
Her breasts were full, nipples already pebbled from cold and fear. He palmed one, squeezed hard enough to make her gasp, then bent his head and bit the other.
She cried out—half pain, half something she didn't want to name.
"Please," she sobbed. "Please don't—"
"Shh." He straightened, looked into her eyes. "You'll live through this. You'll go back to your husband, and you'll tell him you fought. You'll tell him I forced you. And he'll believe you, because it's easier than admitting his wife got wet for the man who broke him."
"I'm not—" She choked on the denial.
Castor's hand slid lower, bunching her skirts, dragging them up. His fingers found the heat between her thighs, and she whimpered when he pressed against her through the thin fabric of her smallclothes.
"Liar," he murmured.
He tore the smallclothes away, fabric ripping. His fingers slid through slick folds, and she shuddered, hating herself, hating him, hating the way her body responded when her mind screamed.
He worked her with his hand—two fingers pushing inside, curling, thumb circling the sensitive pearl above. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, trying not to moan, but her hips jerked forward against her will.
"That's it," he said softly. "Your body knows what it wants, even if you don't."
When she was trembling, thighs slick, breath coming in ragged gasps, he pulled his hand away and began unlacing his breeches.
His cock sprang free—thick, hard, already weeping. He gripped her hip with one hand, lined himself up, and thrust in without warning.
She screamed.
He didn't stop. Didn't slow. He buried himself to the hilt in one brutal stroke, and the sound she made was somewhere between a sob and a moan. Her walls clenched around him, tight and hot and wet, and he groaned at the feel of it.
He fucked her against the wall, hard and rhythmic, one hand still pinning her wrists, the other gripping her thigh and hitching it higher to get deeper. The angle made her gasp, made her body arch despite herself.
"Tell me you hate this," he breathed against her ear.
"I—I hate you—"
"Louder."
"I *hate* you—" Her voice broke on a moan as he ground against her, hitting something deep that made her see stars.
"Good." He bit her neck, sucked a bruise into her skin. "Hold onto that. Remember it. When you're lying beside your crippled husband tonight, remember how much you hated the way I made you come."
"No—I won't—"
But he knew bodies better than most people knew their own minds. He angled his hips, changed rhythm, circled her clit with his thumb, and felt the exact moment her resistance shattered.
She came with a wail, body convulsing, walls clamping down on him like a vice. He fucked her through it, relentless, chasing his own edge.
When he felt his balls tighten, he pulled out and spun her around, shoving her forward over the loom. She caught herself on her hands, gasping, and he kicked her legs wider and slammed back in from behind.
This angle was deeper, filthier. He could see where they joined, see his cock disappearing into her again and again, slick and obscene. He gripped her hips hard enough to bruise and pounded into her, the wet slap of flesh on flesh loud in the small room.
She was crying again, but her hips pushed back to meet him.
"That's right," he panted. "Take it. Take all of it."
He reached around, found her clit again, rubbed hard and fast. She shattered a second time, sobbing his title—"*my lord*"—like a prayer or a curse.
That pushed him over. With a groan, he buried himself as deep as he could and came, cock pulsing, flooding her with thick ropes of seed. He ground into her, making sure every drop stayed inside, marking her in the most primal way.
When he finally pulled out, cum leaked down her thighs, white against skin reddened from his grip.
He tucked himself back into his breeches, laced them calmly. She stayed bent over the loom, shaking, unable or unwilling to move.
"Clean yourself up," he said. "Go back to your husband. Tell him whatever you need to."
She turned her head, looked at him with eyes that burned. "I hope you die screaming."
"You and half the North," he replied evenly. He reached out, almost gently, and wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. "But I won't. And you'll remember this every time you see my colors."
He unbarred the door and stepped out into the cold.
***
The village was silent.
Derran was still on the ground, pale and sweating, his leg splinted with rough wood and cloth. The headman knelt beside him, hands shaking. The rest of the villagers stood in a loose half-circle, faces carefully blank.
Castor's men were mounted and ready. Jeren held the completed ledger, ink still wet in places.
Castor swung into his saddle without looking back at the house. He flipped through the ledger Jeren handed him, noted the names, the numbers that finally matched reality. He closed it with a soft thump.
"Headman," he said.
The old man looked up, fear naked on his face.
"You'll send your counts on time from now on," Castor said. "If I have to come back here, I won't be as pleasant."
He let that settle, then turned his gaze toward the mud house. "And I'm taking the weaver."
The words dropped like stones into still water.
Derran's head snapped up, eyes widening despite the pain glazing them. "No—my lord, please, she's my *wife*—"
"Was your wife," Castor corrected, tone indifferent. "Now she's coming to the Dreadfort. Her hands are skilled. I have use for skilled hands." His eyes flicked to the headman. "Fetch her. Now."
The old man hesitated only a heartbeat before scrambling to his feet and hurrying toward the house. Derran tried to rise, got his good leg under him, but one of Castor's men-at-arms stepped forward and put a boot on his chest, shoving him back down into the mud.
"Stay," the guard said flatly.
"*No*—" Derran's voice cracked, raw and desperate. "You can't—she's done nothing—"
"She's a resource," Castor said, looking down at him with the same expression he might use for a broken cart. "And you've already proven you can't protect her. So I will. In my hall. In my bed. Wherever I decide she's useful."
Derran's face contorted—grief, rage, helplessness all twisting together. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out except a choked sob.
The door to the house opened.
Greta stumbled out, the headman's hand on her elbow, half-guiding, half-dragging. Her dress was retied, but poorly—laces crooked, fabric rumpled. Her hair hung loose and wild around her face. Her eyes were red, swollen, but the tears had stopped. Now there was just emptiness.
She saw her husband on the ground and stopped, pulling against the headman's grip. "Derran—"
"Keep moving," the old man muttered, voice low and urgent. "Don't make it worse."
"*Worse?*" Her voice broke on the word. She looked at Castor, mounted and still, backlit by the grey sky. "What more can you take?"
"Anything I want," Castor said simply.
He dismounted in one fluid motion, boots hitting the frozen ground with barely a sound. He crossed the space between them in a few long strides, and the headman released Greta's arm immediately, stepping back as if she'd caught fire.
Castor stopped in front of her, looking down. Even disheveled and broken, she held his gaze—hate burning in those dark eyes, the only resistance she had left.
"Come," he said, and reached for her.
She jerked back. "Don't touch me."
"I already have," he reminded her quietly. His hand shot out, catching her wrist before she could retreat further. His grip was iron, fingers wrapping completely around the delicate bones. "And I will again. As many times as I please."
He pulled her toward his horse. She dragged her feet, tried to twist free, but he was stronger and she was still weak-kneed from what he'd done to her inside that house. When they reached his mount, he put both hands on her waist and lifted her into the saddle as easily as if she weighed nothing.
She immediately tried to slide
***
Lime burned hotter than most men trusted.
It spit and hissed in the kilns dug into the hill, white smoke rolling out of rough brick chimneys. The men working nearest wore cloths over their faces and muttered that their lord had taken leave of his senses, burning rocks while snow still lay in the ditches.
Then the mason showed them what the white powder did when mixed with sand and water and set between two stones.
They tested it with hammer blows. It held.
"Will it last?" one asked.
"Longer than you," the mason said, half in awe. "If we mix it right."
The first stone granary went up that spring at a village that had seen its wooden barn flood out twice in ten years. Castor rode out to see it when the last stone went in.
It was not beautiful. Thick walls. Small high vents. A heavy door barred from the outside.
"Dry?" he asked the men who'd shoveled the last of the season's grain into it.
"Dry enough," they admitted. "Doesn't stink of mold. Rats haven't gotten in yet."
"Good," Castor said. "Next winter, when you're not scraping the bottom of rotten bins, remember why."
He didn't say what he was really thinking: that when another village's barn went up in flames, as they always did somewhere, he'd have spare grain to send. Or to sell. Or to withhold.
The road crews cursed his name with every rock they hauled. Then, on market days, the carters started choosing the half-finished new route rather than the old one, even if it meant a small detour, because their wheels didn't vanish into knee-deep mud.
"You'll thank me in five years," he told one complaining lord plainly. "Or your son will."
The man grumbled, but didn't argue. No one liked their lord to sound that sure of something and then be proven right.
***
Bethany began wearing looser gowns.
It was subtle at first. A different cut at the waist. An extra layer of fabric where once she'd worn her dresses close to her figure. The servants noticed. Servants always did. They said nothing where it could be heard, but the looks passed from one to another.
By the time the first whispers reached the outer hall—that the Lady of the Dreadfort had not bled in some time, that she had taken to touching her stomach without realizing it—Castor already had his explanation ready, if anyone forced him to voice one: grief, late fruit from an old marriage, the gods' odd timing.
No one forced him.
Old men in the yard watched Bethany walk past with her hand resting lightly on a belly that was only just beginning to show, and chose not to do the math out loud. They'd seen what happened to those who asked the wrong questions under Roose. They saw enough of Roose in Castor's eyes to keep their calculations to themselves.
At night, behind barred doors and hidden panels, Bethany lay with her head on Castor's chest and listened while he talked about roads and ledgers and boats on the Weeping Water.
"You sound more like a maester than a lord," she said once, not unkindly.
"Maesters advise," he replied. "I decide."
She traced idle circles on his skin. "And when you've finished all this deciding? When the roads are laid and the sheds are built?"
"Then," he said, "we'll see who's still standing when the realm starts to shake."
She didn't ask how he knew the realm would. She'd learned, in the last four years, that her son often spoke as though he'd already seen the pieces move.
In the morning, she straightened her dress, smoothed her hair, and stepped back into the role of Lady Bolton—colder and more self-contained than most, but visibly steadier than she'd been in Roose's last years. A woman with something to protect.
Castor went back to his numbers. To his roads. To his river.
Lords in other keeps poured over their own concerns and only occasionally spared a thought for what was happening in the Dreadfort. They would have time to regret that later.
***
CHAPTER END