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The gates of The Twins could no longer be called gates.
That door had been layers of oak wrapped in iron plate, a barrier solid enough to hold off a battering ram for days.
Now it hung at a broken angle, half dangling from the frame, half driven deep into the stone-paved road of the gatehouse tunnel.
A giant in full armor stood in the gap, his fists larger than millstones, methodically pounding what remained of the frame and wall into powder, blow after blow, widening the entrance for what was coming through.
The Wildling infantry hadn't been sent. They were still handling the aftermath in the valley.
Only the giants had been needed.
Now, behind them, the armies of the North, the forces of House Tully, and the allied lords of the Riverlands poured through the breach. Several rivers converging into one, silent and swift, flooding into a castle that an hour ago had seemed impregnable.
Edmure Tully and the Blackfish walked at the front.
Behind them came every lord of the Riverlands.
Every face wore the same complicated expression: shock, awe, and the cold sweat of relief that they hadn't been on the other side of those walls.
They pressed close behind Lynn's nine "guards," as if proximity to those silent, terrifying men was the only thing keeping the world from caving in.
Inside the castle, there was no resistance left.
The Frey bastards and their garrison had watched the siege. Whatever will they'd had was gone. They'd dropped their weapons and knelt along the road in rows, shaking badly, waiting to learn what the conquerors intended to do with them.
"Round up every male bastard of House Frey!"
Edmure's voice was flat with compressed hatred.
The Tully soldiers moved like wolves through a flock, hauling the kneeling Freys upright one by one, rough and efficient, dragging them toward the square.
The Blackfish took another company and began working through the castle building by building. Anyone sheltering a Frey would share their fate.
The purge had begun.
Lynn didn't take part.
He walked slowly up to the top of the western tower and looked down over the castle that was about to be erased from the world.
Roslin Frey followed him like a shadow, silent, her hands twisting the hem of her dress. She watched the familiar faces being hauled out below. There were no tears in her eyes. Only numbness, and beneath it, carefully hidden, a thin thread of satisfaction.
Lynn closed his eyes.
Green Sight opened.
An invisible net dropped over The Twins in an instant, vast and total. Every corner of the castle, every hidden passage, every heartbeat and every breath, all of it mapped itself clearly in his mind.
"Lord Edmure."
His voice carried down to the square without effort.
Edmure looked up sharply toward the tower.
"East stables. Third stall. Under the hay. Two men."
"The cellar. Largest wine barrel. Empty. Two more inside."
"The bakery. The fat man kneading dough. He's a bastard of Walder Frey. Goes by Walder Rivers."
Lynn's voice was calm and even, calling out locations one after another.
Green Sight as a scouting tool was absurdly effective.
It was also why he'd had no hesitation bringing the Frey women into Dragonstone. Under Green Sight, there was nothing he couldn't see. What they wore, what they carried, what they were thinking about doing. Take Roslin, for instance — he could tell you exactly what she had on underneath that dress right now.
As for arson. Poisoning. Any of the obvious moves.
The moment any of them tried something, he'd warg a city guard and walk the troublemaker through swallowing their own poison themselves.
He hadn't lost a moment's sleep over it.
At first, Edmure's men moved with a trace of skepticism.
Then they pulled the first Frey out of the haystack. Then the second from the wine barrel. Then the baker from behind his dough table.
The skepticism on Edmure's face collapsed into something else entirely.
Horror.
Not just Edmure. Every Riverlands lord in the courtyard was staring up at the tower like they'd seen something that shouldn't exist.
The giant had shown them Lynn's military power. Overwhelming, inarguable, final.
But this was different. This reached somewhere deeper.
This was omniscience.
What was this ability? Divine revelation? Some form of sorcery none of them had words for?
All they knew was that before this man, no conspiracy could hide. No disguise held. No secret stayed buried.
And the thought that followed was the one that truly chilled them: he might be looking into their minds right now. Seeing the darkest corners. Reading the thoughts they'd never spoken aloud.
Every lord lowered their head at the same moment.
None of them could meet the figure on the tower.
The ones who'd been nursing private reservations, quiet little schemes they hadn't quite abandoned, felt cold sweat crawl down their backs. What they felt now was relief. Pure, desperate relief that they hadn't chosen the wrong side at Riverrun.
Under Lynn's guidance, the purge became terrifyingly efficient.
Less than an hour. Every male Frey in The Twins, legitimate or bastard, highborn or low, was assembled in the square.
Then the Tully soldiers went down the line.
Heads rolled. Blood ran between the cobblestones.
The Twins, the castle that had been synonymous with the Frey name for generations, was purified.
When the last Frey was dead, the Blackfish found the main treasury.
The vault door had been built by Essosi dwarf craftsmen. Heavy iron, masterwork. A giant put his fist through it.
Everyone who saw what was inside stopped breathing.
Gold dragons piled to the ceiling. Silver stags heaped in chests. Jewels. Bolts of fine Essosi cloth. Rare artifacts and antiques crammed into every remaining space. The vault looked ready to burst.
This was what centuries of controlling the only bridge across the Green Fork had bought the Freys. Every toll, every tax, every traveler who'd had no choice but to pay their price.
The Riverlands lords breathed harder.
Their eyes said everything their mouths didn't.
They remembered Lynn's promise at Riverrun. This wealth, enough to send the entire Riverlands into a frenzy, was supposed to be shared among them.
Then Lynn came down from the tower, and their eyes met his.
The greed died instantly.
What replaced it went all the way to the bone.
Share? Split spoils that were never theirs to begin with, with a man who possessed something close to divine power?
Did they have the nerve?
Sometimes a man hears a promise and nods along. That's fine. That's politics.
Only a fool takes it literally.
Edmure Tully, pushed forward by the silent pressure of the assembled lords, steeled himself and walked up to Lynn.
His posture was as respectful as he could make it.
"Lord Lynn."
"Every Frey bastard in The Twins has been executed."
"This castle, and everything within it, are the spoils of your conquest."
"We would not presume to touch a single coin."
"We are all in agreement."
"Only you, the King-Beyond-the-Wall, the man who made all of this possible, is worthy of what stands before us."
The moment he finished, every Riverlands lord behind him dropped to one knee in unison.
"That's exactly right!"
"Everything belongs to Lord Lynn!"
The voices rang through the vault, layered with sincerity and respect that was entirely genuine, because the alternative was unthinkable.
Lynn looked at the men kneeling before him.
A troubled expression crossed his face.
He genuinely hadn't anticipated this. One unguarded display of his ability, and something had shifted in the room in a way he hadn't planned for.
He let the moment breathe, then furrowed his brow with careful timing.
"My lords. Please, rise."
"I am a man of my word. That has always been true."
"I made a promise at Riverrun to share the Frey wealth with you. I do not break promises."
"Are you asking me to become an oathbreaker?"
The lords on their knees looked like they'd been struck.
That was absolutely not what they were asking.
Edmure broke into a cold sweat and rushed to explain.
"No! Lord Lynn! You misunderstand us entirely!"
"It's only — only that your achievement here is so far beyond anything we contributed. We barely lifted a hand."
"Yes, exactly!" another lord chimed in, voice urgent.
"We have no right to accept any of this."
"My lord, that you led us here to punish the Freys at all is more than we could have hoped for. To ask for a share of the reward on top of that — what kind of men would that make us?"
They were scrambling now, all of them, desperate to be seen as anything other than men eyeing Lynn's gold.
Lynn watched them squirm. Inwardly, he was laughing. His face stayed serious.
"No."
Flat. Final.
"Honor is the thing I value above everything else."
"I will not let a pile of coins put a stain on my name."
He looked around the vault, his expression hardening.
"If you force my hand on this, I will have no choice."
"I would sooner put a torch to every last coin than keep it all for myself."
Burn it.
Every lord felt the words like a blade through the chest.
That was enough wealth to buy half the Reach.
"My lord!" Edmure's voice cracked. He was almost shouting. "This isn't oathbreaking — this is a gift! Freely given!"
"It is our respect for you! It belongs to you by right!"
"If you refuse it, you're saying you think nothing of us men of the Riverlands!"
Lynn watched them, one by one, faces twisted with an anxiety that was edging toward tears.
He let out a long, reluctant sigh.
"Well. Since you've all put it that way..."
He looked around the room. His expression said he was doing them an enormous personal favor.
"...Very well."
"I accept, so as not to disappoint the sincerity you've shown me. And know this: when the time comes and you've earned it, I will not be stingy with what's owed to you."
The relief that moved through the assembled lords was physical. Shoulders dropped. Breath came out in long, slow exhales. Faces that had been rigid with tension broke into smiles that were completely, genuinely heartfelt.
As if Lynn taking their gold was the greatest honor they'd ever been shown.
Damn. That actually worked.
Every lord was quietly congratulating himself for not having pushed back at Riverrun.
Lynn shook his head slightly.
He'd actually intended to split the treasury with them. That had been the plan. But they wouldn't take it. That wasn't his fault.
He turned to face the men who'd been watching all of this with wide eyes: his Northern soldiers and the Free Folk who'd followed him south.
He walked to the nearest chest, drew his foot back, and kicked it open.
CRASH!
Gold dragons poured out like a waterfall, coins ringing and bouncing across the stone floor, spreading into a gleaming carpet that caught the torchlight and threw it back at every face in the room.
"Brothers!"
Lynn's voice hit like a thunderclap.
"The lords of the Riverlands have shown their character today. They've stepped aside from the spoils they were owed."
"So everything in this vault , every last coin, every gem, every bolt of cloth —"
He spread his arms wide. His grin was broad and blazing and absolutely meant it.
"Is yours."
"Every man who bled with me on this campaign gets an equal share!"
Silence.
Three full seconds of it.
Then the vault exploded.
"YEAH!"
"LORD LYNN!"
"FOR THE NORTH!"
The soldiers lost their minds. Every one of them.
A Free Folk fighter with a thick beard and a face full of old scars stood holding a fistful of gold dragons, his whole body shaking. He dropped to his knees and pressed his lips to the cold metal, tears running freely down his face.
A young Northerner clutched a helmet packed full of coins to his chest and stared at nothing, grinning like a man who'd lost his mind.
"This is enough," he said, to no one in particular. "This is enough to buy back the land my family lost..."
"I'm going to Oldtown! I'm going to find the most beautiful woman in the city and pay her to stay with me for a whole month!"
"A month? You can barely climb the stairs, you lying bastard. Let me show you what real stamina looks like!"
The laughter and the shouting and the crying rang through every corner of The Twins.
These men had followed Lynn into war. They'd given him their loyalty. And in return, in a single afternoon, they'd received more wealth than most of them had ever imagined touching in their lives.
And they'd barely bled for it.
One battle. One morning. Gold dragons in their hands.
Whatever doubts any of them had ever carried about following Lynn north, those were gone now.
The Riverlands lords watched with expressions that were harder to read. They wanted that gold. Of course they did. But they'd given it up themselves, and they knew it.
What they also knew, in the quiet part of their minds, was something none of them said aloud: the Riverlands still had Edmure's name on it, technically. But in every way that mattered, it already belonged to Lynn.
Everyone in the room understood this. No one said it.
And then a different thought surfaced, one that hadn't been there before.
Perhaps following Lynn was the right move.
They'd just watched his soldiers receive real gold. Not promises. Not honors. Actual coins, pressed into actual hands, enough to change a man's life. Who else did that? What lord, what king, had ever handed his soldiers everything and kept nothing?
No one in living memory. No one in any history they'd been taught.
They'd always believed that serving a lord meant fighting for your house's interests. That was the way of things.
Lynn's way made no sense to them.
But it shook something loose in their chests that they couldn't quite name.
In that moment, Lynn's standing in their minds rose past lord, past king.
He was something else.
Lynn stood at the entrance to the vault and watched it all. The wild joy on his soldiers' faces. The quiet calculation working behind the eyes of the Riverlands nobility.
He smiled.
Buy the bones of a thousand-gold horse, and the world will bring you ten thousand horses.
Sincerity was always the killing blow.
His men would fight harder for him now. That had been the goal. Goal achieved.
Behind him, Roslin stood very still, watching the celebrating soldiers, then watching Lynn's back.
Something was settling into place in her mind, and it wasn't comfortable.
This man's danger wasn't only in his strength. It wasn't only in the Green Sight that had stripped every hiding place in the castle bare, or the giant that had turned the gates to rubble.
It was this.
He'd used Frey blood to put the fear of gods into the Riverlands.
Then he'd used Frey gold to bind the North and the Free Folk to him with something stronger than fear.
One move. Two results.
No. More than two.
She thought of herself. Her presence here. The role she was playing.
He never did anything without a reason. She'd understood that much from the beginning. Every piece on his board served a purpose. Even the small ones. Even the ones that seemed incidental.
Was that what she was?
A tool?
Roslin lowered her gaze and let her expression go smooth, hiding whatever was moving underneath it.
She didn't want to be just a tool.
Lynn didn't notice the quiet shift behind him.
His eyes had already moved past the celebration, past the vault, past the walls of The Twins, out toward the distance.
The Riverlands were settled.
Next: Lysa would be arriving at the Eyrie soon, brought there by "Petyr." She was too valuable to let die on schedule. Not yet. Not before she'd served her purpose.
He needed the Vale. And Lysa was the key to taking it cleanly.
After that, Bolton. And the Iron Islands.
Uniting the North.
It was close now.
➤ Next: Lysa Arrives at the Eyrie