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A night passed.
The storage room door swung open again.
This time, only Roslin Frey came through.
She carried a wooden tray , a bowl of steaming meat broth, a chunk of black bread.
Miranda looked up at her with the same hostile eyes as before.
"Get out."
Roslin didn't answer. She set the tray on the ground, crouched down, and untied the ropes around Miranda's feet.
Miranda blinked.
She worked feeling back into her numbed feet, watching Roslin the whole time.
"Lord Lynn asked me to untie you." Roslin's voice was quiet, carrying something that almost sounded like sympathy. "He said you should eat. Get your strength back."
"Get my strength back?" Miranda let out a cold laugh. "So his men can torture me more easily?"
"No." Roslin shook her head. "Lord Lynn said he'll let you see Lord Ramsay with your own eyes. He wants you to know he wasn't lying."
Miranda's heart dropped.
Unease coiled around it, tight and cold.
But she held her chin up.
"Then I'll wait." Her voice was hard. "I want to see exactly what kind of tricks you people are playing."
She didn't refuse the food.
She grabbed the black bread and tore into it. She picked up the broth and drank in long, desperate gulps.
She needed strength. She needed a clear head , to expose that man's lies, to be ready when her Lord Ramsay came.
Roslin watched her eat and felt something complicated settle in her chest.
What a pitiful woman.
Even an outsider could see it plainly. Ramsay didn't love her. But Miranda, caught in the middle of it, believed with her whole heart that he did.
Truly pitiful.
Well. What Lord Lynn was doing , at least it would set her free.
Roslin understood it completely.
...
Winterfell's dungeon had never been so quiet.
Ramsay wasn't roaring anymore. He wasn't throwing himself against the walls.
He was curled in the corner of his cell, motionless, like a body with nothing left inside it.
The wound on his forehead had dried and clotted, the crusted blood making his handsome face look savage.
Then , faint footsteps, from the far end of the passage.
A flicker of alertness crossed Ramsay's dead eyes.
He slowly raised his head.
In the torchlight, a tall figure appeared at the cell door.
Ned Stark.
Two soldiers followed behind him, escorting someone whose head was covered by a burlap hood.
"Ramsay Snow."
Ned's voice was cold as northern ice.
"Your accomplice."
Ramsay's pupils shrank.
Ned gave the soldiers a short nod.
They ripped the hood off.
Miranda.
Her face was still pale with shock. Then she saw the familiar figure in the cell, and her eyes blazed with sudden, wild joy.
"Lord Ramsay!"
She cried out and lunged forward , but the soldiers held her fast.
Ramsay looked at her. Something moved across his face. He opened his mouth, seemed about to speak, then closed it and slowly lowered his head.
"Put her inside."
Ned's voice was flat.
The jailer unlocked the cell. The soldiers shoved Miranda through the door.
She stumbled, nearly fell, and didn't care. She scrambled across the floor to Ramsay and reached for his hand.
He pulled away.
Miranda's hand hung in the air.
"Lord Ramsay..." She stared at him, at the hollow, broken thing he'd become. The unease in her chest sharpened into something worse. "What's wrong with you?"
"Why did you come?"
His voice was low. Flat.
"I..." She didn't know what to say.
"You stupid woman."
Ramsay's head snapped up. His eyes were bloodshot, burning with venom.
"Who told you to come here! Who told you to kill that guard!"
"If you hadn't killed anyone, we might have gotten leniency. But you — you ruined everything!" His voice cracked. "You ruined everything for us!"
He lunged.
Both hands locked around Miranda's throat.
Miranda froze. She didn't even fight back. She just stared at the face in front of her, twisted, unrecognizable, contorted with rage.
This wasn't her Lord Ramsay.
Her Lord Ramsay was cruel. He was cold. But his eyes had always been elegant. Composed. Controlled.
The man choking her looked like a rabid dog.
"Ramsay! Enough!"
Ned Stark's voice cracked through the cell like a whip.
Ramsay released her as if he'd been burned.
Miranda crumpled to the floor, clutching her throat, coughing in ragged heaves. Air flooded back into her lungs , not relief, but a searing pain worse than the suffocation itself.
She looked up at him through blurring eyes.
"Why?"
"Why?" Ramsay laughed. It was worse than crying. He staggered back until the stone wall stopped him, and slumped against it. "Miranda... my Miranda..."
He muttered it like he was talking to himself. Something flickered in those pale blue eyes , struggle, pain.
"Do you know what he told me?" His voice dropped. "He said if I serve him, he'll spare my life. He even promised — once I help him take the Dreadfort — he'll let me pursue Sansa Stark."
Sansa Stark.
The name hit Miranda like a fist around her heart.
That noble, beautiful girl. The eldest daughter of House Stark, with a face like fine porcelain.
Ramsay had described it to her countless times, in that near-obsessive tone of his , exactly how he would break that proud little northern she-wolf and make her his most perfect prize.
"But you , you idiot!" His voice went sharp again. "Killing that guard gave them leverage over me. They made me choose. Between you and my future."
His eyes fixed on her.
Miranda's body began to shake.
Lynn's words came back to her, from the storage room.
Your Lord Ramsay wants to trade your body for his life.
No.
No, that was a lie.
It had to be a lie.
"Lord Ramsay..." Her voice came out small. Begging. "You'll save me. Won't you? We're together , we promised, we'd face anything together..."
"Save you?"
He cut her off.
A smile spread across his face. Cruel. Cold.
"You're adorably naive, Miranda."
"Why would I save you? You're just a dog I keep." He tilted his head. "A bitch with no use left."
He let that sit for a moment.
"All I have to do is convince you. Make you willing to serve him, please him , and Lynn will not only release me, he'll hand me the entire Dreadfort." He paused. "And you, my Miranda..."
Ramsay walked to her slowly and crouched down.
He reached out and stroked her cold cheek, the way you'd soothe a frightened animal.
"You are a small gift. For my new master."
"Go. Please him. Use that lowly body of yours to buy me a future."
His voice was soft. Tender, almost. Like a lover whispering in the dark.
"This is your last chance to serve me, my most loyal hound."
Every word landed like a blade.
Not cutting , carving. Slow and deliberate, slicing her apart piece by piece until there was nothing left but blood.
The world collapsed around her ears.
Everything she'd believed in. Everything she'd loved. Everything she'd held onto.
All of it , a joke. A colossal, pathetic joke.
Miranda stared at him.
At his handsome, unfamiliar face.
At those pale blue eyes, and the cold indifference in them that he didn't even bother to hide.
She finally understood.
Lynn hadn't lied.
She had lied. To herself. For years, she had woven her own lies and wrapped herself in them and called it love.
She was never his confidante. Never his lover.
She was a dog.
A dog to be sacrificed. To be gifted away. A dog.
A sound came out of her throat , something raw and broken, not quite human, wrung from a place deeper than words. Pure pain. Pure despair.
She felt her soul split in two.
One half screaming. One half laughing.
She laughed.
And kept laughing, until the tears came.
She looked at Ramsay.
Those eyes that had once been so fierce held nothing now. Just ash.
"Fine."
She forced the word out through her teeth.
"As you wish."
She stood. Slowly. She didn't look at him again.
She turned and walked toward the cell door, one step at a time.
Her footsteps were perfectly steady.
Her back was iron.
The dungeon's iron door swung shut behind her, cutting off the sound of Ramsay's low, muffled laughter , the laughter of a man celebrating a victory.
When her footsteps finally faded from the passage ,
The figure leaning against the wall, the one who had been laughing softly as Ramsay, went slack and slid to the ground.
A hand came up, trembling, and peeled away the mask. Thin as a cicada's wing.
Beneath it was Roslin's face. Pale. Shaking. Eyes still wide.
She gulped air in great heaving breaths, feeling like she might collapse entirely. Every line she'd delivered, every movement, every second of it had cost her everything she had.
But she'd done it.
She had played a cold, ruthless, treacherous monster , and she had played him perfectly.
Roslin looked up toward the cell door.
A figure stepped out of the shadows in the corner.
Lynn. Ned's mask already gone from his face.
He looked down at her where she'd crumpled on the floor, and smiled.
"Well done, my little handmaiden." His voice was warm with satisfaction. "Your acting was even better than I expected."
"It seems you have a real talent for this."
➤ Next: Roslin's Special Instruction