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In the storeroom, candlelight flickered.
Roslin's voice dropped to barely a murmur, like she was sharing something that couldn't see daylight.
"My sisters told me — what men want to hear isn't sweet words. It's the sounds a woman makes in bed, because of them."
"That kind of sound needs to carry a sob. It has to make him feel like he's destroying something precious."
"The harder he pushes, the more miserably you cry out. The more helpless, the more desperate, the more yielding."
"It makes them feel powerful. Like a king who has conquered everything."
Miranda listened without a word.
Those dead-grey eyes held no shyness. Only focus.
She was like the most diligent apprentice, pressing every impossible piece of this knowledge into her memory, word by word.
So the highest form of the hunt wasn't letting prey die in fear.
It was making prey, in the extreme agony of being destroyed, cry out in ways that pleased the hunter.
Ramsay liked screams.
And Lynn... what did he like to hear?
"There's also... scent."
Roslin's voice dropped further. Her cheeks had gone so red they looked ready to bleed.
"They use a fragrant ointment from the Summer Isles. Applied behind the ears, on the wrists, and... and on the inner thighs."
"The scent is faint. But when a man draws close, it stirs something primal in him."
"Like a beast catching the scent of a female in heat."
"I happen to have some. I never got to use it. I can give it to you."
That was as far as Roslin could go.
Her face was burning. It felt like it might actually catch fire.
She was just a poor little maidservant. Why did she have to know all of this?
Enough. Truly enough.
Miranda felt none of it.
She simply nodded, filing each detail away.
Scent. Sound. Posture. Eyes.
She suddenly felt that all those years of her life had been wasted.
She'd thought she understood men. But now it seemed she didn't even know how to be proper prey.
"I understand."
Miranda stood.
She looked at Roslin, and for the first time, those eyes held no edge. Instead, there was something else , a trace of genuine warmth.
"Thank you."
She meant it.
...
Deep in the night, Winterfell slept.
Two silent soldiers dragged Ramsay Snow out of the dungeon and hauled him through the dark.
He didn't resist.
Since that day in the dungeon when he had completely broken, he'd been a walking corpse.
He assumed they were taking him to the execution grounds. Instead, the soldiers brought him to a guest room in one of the towers.
The room was small, but clean.
There was even a fireplace, burning strong.
The table was loaded with food and wine. It looked like a feast.
"Lord Lynn's orders. Stay here and behave yourself, or face the consequences."
The soldier dropped those words, locked the door, and left.
Ramsay stood in the center of the room and looked around.
What was this?
Lynn had pulled him out of the dungeon and put him in a comfortable guest room?
What was he after?
Then, from the room next door, came the faint sound of a door opening.
Followed by a man's voice.
Lynn.
Every muscle in Ramsay's body snapped tight.
He moved like a wary wolf, silent, pressing himself flat against the wall between the two rooms.
The wall was thick.
But in the stillness of the night, every sound from next door came through clearly.
"My lord, the water is ready."
Roslin. The Frey girl.
"Mhm. You can go."
Lynn's voice was flat.
Footsteps faded. The door clicked shut.
Then came the soft rustle of clothing being removed, and the sound of water being disturbed.
He was bathing.
Ramsay's heart climbed into his throat. He had no idea what Lynn was playing at.
He thought the night might just pass quietly like this.
Then , knock. Knock. Knock.
Three soft raps on a door.
"Come in."
Lynn's voice carried the lazy ease of a man fresh from a bath.
The door opened.
A woman's voice.
Husky, deliberately low, shaped into something soft and inviting.
"Lord Lynn."
Ramsay's pupils contracted the instant he heard it.
Miranda.
That was Miranda's voice.
What was she doing here?
His head rang like a struck bell, his mind going blank.
He couldn't make sense of any of this.
Miranda was his most loyal hound. She would never betray him.
Ramsay clenched his jaw and pressed his ear harder against the cold stone.
He needed to hear everything. He needed to find the lie in this.
Next door, silence.
"What are you doing here?"
Lynn's voice gave nothing away.
"Lord Ramsay... sent me to serve you."
There was a barely perceptible tremor in Miranda's voice.
But underneath it was something else. A resolve that had burned through hesitation and come out the other side.
Ramsay's heart seized. An invisible fist had closed around it and wouldn't let go.
No.
Impossible.
When did I ever say to send Miranda to serve Lynn?
"Oh?"
Lynn's quiet laugh was loaded with something unreadable.
"Your Lord Ramsay?"
"He is... no longer my master."
Miranda's voice was soft. But it didn't waver.
"From now on, you are my only master."
"Is that so?"
Lynn's tone turned playful.
"And how exactly do you plan to serve me?"
Silence.
A long silence.
"Serving you is my honor. I will do everything I can to please you..."
Then Ramsay heard it.
The soft, slow rustle of fabric.
Light. Unhurried.
Like a fine gown being peeled away, inch by inch, by hands he couldn't see.
His breathing went ragged.
His pale blue eyes filled with red.
No.
Stop.
You bitch.
He screamed it inside his head, his fingernails scraping at the cracks in the stone.
"My lord... do you think I'm... pretty?"
Miranda's voice came again, shaped into something deliberately fragile, deliberately shy.
Ramsay felt like he could see through the wall.
See that body that belonged to him alone, the body that held its own wild strength, now laid bare before another man.
"Very good. Didn't expect you to be so fair once you've cleaned up. Come here. Sit on this."
Magma surged through his chest, rage and jealousy and humiliation all boiling together.
It nearly burned his reason to ash.
"Not bad."
Lynn's assessment was offhand.
It hit Ramsay like a hammer.
"Then... do you... like it?"
Miranda's voice took on a note of eager pleasing.
Ramsay couldn't take any more.
He spun and drove his fist into the wall.
THUD!
The dull impact rolled through the silent room.
Next door went quiet.
"There's a sound from next door."
Miranda's voice.
"Ignore it."
Lynn's voice didn't change.
"Just a dog locked in a cage."
"No matter how unhappy it is, it lies there and listens. That's all it can do."
"Otherwise I'll cut off its head and throw the carcass to my dragon. Give her something fresh for a change."
Dog.
Cage.
Listens.
Those three words burned themselves into Ramsay's soul.
He understood now.
He understood everything.
This devil had planned it from the start. Every piece of it, arranged and set before him like a performance.
Lynn wasn't going to kill him.
He was going to use this to destroy everything Ramsay had ever taken pride in.
His dignity. His pride. His art. His one true confidante. Ground to nothing.
This was the real torment. The ultimate kind.
"AHHH——!!!"
A roar tore out of him, suppressed to a ragged scream, his eyes flooding red.
And then next door, sounds again.
A woman's sharp, startled cry.
Then the heavy impact of a body hitting a bed, and the creak of the frame taking the weight.
Ramsay went still.
He could picture it.
He could picture exactly how that bastard had shoved his Miranda down onto that bed.
"No... don't..."
Miranda's voice came through the wall, broken with sobs, laced with struggle and resistance.
But to Ramsay's ears, it rang false.
That wasn't her real voice.
She was performing. Running some script she'd learned from somewhere, playing a role she'd rehearsed.
All to please that man.
"You like screams, don't you?"
Lynn's voice, edged with mockery, came through the wall. Impossible to tell who it was meant for.
"Tonight, you'll hear all you want."
The words barely finished.
"AH,—!"
A shriek ripped out of Miranda, raw and wrenching, the kind that tears through walls.
It was soaked in agony. Drenched in despair.
Ramsay flinched like he'd been struck.
This sound.
This was supposed to be his favorite music.
This was supposed to be his most perfect art.
He had never touched Miranda. Never once.
And now another man was playing her like an instrument.
"NO! STOP! You filthy bastard! LET HER GO!"
He threw himself at the wall.
Fists. Skull. Shoulders. Everything he had.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
He felt no pain.
He just needed to get through. Tear that man apart with his bare hands. Flay the skin off the woman who had betrayed him.
But the wall held. Solid as his despair.
And next door, the symphony played on.
Sound upon sound, weaving together, each one a blade, flaying his reason strip by strip until there was nothing left but raw and bleeding ruin.
He heard Miranda crying out.
"...save me... save me..."
So wretched. So helpless.
But to Ramsay, that plea was the cruelest mockery of all.
Who's going to save you?
You bitch.
You climbed into his bed yourself.
You pleased him willingly.
You betrayed me.
The madness in his eyes slowly gave way to something deeper. Quieter. More venomous.
He stopped hitting the wall.
He slid down until he was sitting on the floor, back pressed against the stone that kept feeding him those sounds.
And he smiled.
Silent. Unhinged.
He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling, as if he could see straight through it to the scene playing out next door.
➤ Next: Physical Castration