Chapter Text
"Betrothal," Lyarra repeated numbly, more focused on the flaws in the skin of her own hands than on her father speaking in front of her.
Roose Bolton gave her half a glance before returning his focus to his meal. "Yes," he said, forking another piece of venison. "War is coming. I would be mad not to move the pawns I have."
Hearing it put that simply – that she was just a pawn to her father – was strangely comforting. She knew it, he knew it, and at least he wasn't pretending she was anything more. Of course, though, Lyarra would be a liar if she said it didn't still burn her skin. Most things in House Bolton were like that – comfortingly painful. Even their sigil – the sign of their house, the emblem of what home and safety meant for Lyarra, was a flayed man.
"But you are sworn to the Starks," Lyarra dropped her hands back in her lap and refocused her gaze to the meal in front of her. "You would raise your banners for them."
"I would," her father confirmed. "But the north does not have to be our only allegiance. Placing you with the Hightowers might offer us relief from the south, should the worst come to pass."
The dinner hall was empty besides the two of them. The walls were tall, the ceiling far above their heads, and the dim light of candles accompanied them in the wake of the setting sun. Most of the Dreadfort was dark in demeanor, accredited to the near-black furniture and dull stone walls. It was a darkness Lyarra had grown accustomed to, though, for she had never known anything but.
"Us," Lyarra repeated, though she could tell her father was growing tired of her responses.
"House Bolton," Roose confirmed. Not the north. Not the Starks. Just House Bolton.
Lyarra's mother had died years past -- so long ago that Lyarra hardly remembered her at all, besides a faint recollection of the softness of her skin and the way she smelled. Roose and Lyarra were the only two legitimate Boltons left. They both had dark hair and fair skin, a common complexion among the north. This, however, was where their similarities ended. Lyarra assumed she took after her mother -- Bethany Ryswell. Rather than a round face, bent nose, and downturned eyes, Lyarra had a rather sharp face. She had a straight nose, almond eyes, and a type of beauty that, apparently, awarded her a betrothal to a horrible (albeit important) family.
Lyarra looked up at her father, this time holding his gaze. "I'm your only heir," she pointed out. "Marrying me to the Hightowers would leave you—"
"You are my child, but you were never my heir," Roose said stiffly. "You are a girl. And sixteen, at that."
It was fall, now. Cooler weather marked by cool winds that seeped through the cracks in the walls and the windows of the room. Both Lyarra and Roose wore their furs now outdoors, but indoors they were comfortable to dress down to their regular attire. House Bolton's colors were pale pink and red - the colors of a flayed man. Lyarra's dress was meticulously sewn in accordance to these colors. She quite liked it, barring its association to the disgusting colors of savagery.
"And if you die at war?" Lyarra pressed. "Who would you leave as Lord of House Bolton?"
Roose had an answer. He must have had an answer, because he always did, but he would not share it with Lyarra. She knew, of course, that he hoped to take another woman to wife. That was the logical step for any Lord with no heir, and her father wasn't yet past the age where he might hope to have more children. But besides that...
"No," the scoff ripped past her lips before she could control it. "You can't mean to..."
"He is a son," Roose Bolton spoke through a mouthful of venison. The juice of the blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth.
"He's a bastard," Lyarra pointed out. She found it hard to fault bastards for the sins of their fathers, but Ramsey's illegitimacy was still crucial to the debate, and Ramsey had enough sins of his own.
"And still more of a Bolton than you." Roose said firmly. "Do not attempt to concern yourself with the affairs of my House. You will play your part to me elsewhere."
"By warming Baelor Hightower's bed," Lyarra put plainly. "How old is he now?"
"Three and fourty," Roose answered easily.
"Older than you," Lyarra noted, bile rising in her throat. Suddenly the dinner venison was less of a distraction and more of a nauseating threat.
"A man of high distinction," Roose Bolton pointed out. "Baelor Brightsmile, they call him."
"Yes, I imagine the kindness of his smile will distract well from his wrinkly old—"
Lyarra's father slammed his fork to the table and the words died in her mouth. "Go to your chambers," he commanded, no longer interested in entertaining her derision.
Lyarra stood from her chair at the table, but could not yet let the argument die. "Surely there are better matches for me," she protested, fisting her pale pink skirts in her hands. "Robb Stark is near my age!" She had only ever met the Stark heir once or twice, and neither occasion had left a lasting impression, but she was becoming desperate for any sort of alternative. Besides, rumor was that Robb Stark was quite handsome.
"Lord Stark has not approached me with a proposal," Roose explained, patience ever waning and voice steadily rising. "And I am already sworn to the Starks. It would serve me nothing to betrothe you to them."
"I would be closer to home!" Lyarra almost shouted. "I would be in the north, in lands I know and–"
"You should find yourself flattered that I shared my intentions with you at all." Roose snapped, then picked up his fork again, returning to his dinner with no care for his daughter's fuming, increasingly desperate state.
Lyarra tried to still herself despite her bubbling blood. "Will I even marry in the faith of the old gods?"
"I expect you'll marry in the faith of the seven," Roose said. "The Hightowers are not known for their negligence of their own religion."
"Of course," Lyarra scoffed. "I will be the ever-pious maiden decorating myself with symbols of gods I do not believe in and suffering and laboring for a man I will never be able to love." She paced towards the windowed walls staring out across the yard of the Dreadfort. She closed her eyes mockingly, though she doubted her father would even cast his gaze to her performance. "I can see it clearly now," she whispered, the menacing bite slipping through her words and weaving poorly into her performance. "Yes, the Mother is guiding me. I am to be of no use to the world besides to spread my legs and tear my body birthing sons created in the image of the Father. Oh! The maiden is guiding my vision – she shows me that they will have the brightest of smiles! Just like their father! When they denounce me and my word in favor of the traditions of wrinkled septons and woman-hating southrons they will smile so beautifully it will render me completely, unabashedly pliant to their disrespect."
"Are you quite done?"
Lyarra shook her head. "No, I'm getting a vision from the Crone now. I will die birthing my eighth child – the eighth product of my rape. It's a girl! I may die happy, I suppose, knowing that I won't have to deal with a ninth. This part is blurry – the Stranger – do you think I'll die of fever days later or do you think the child will be in breach and Baelor Hightower will demand the maesters split me open like a melon and harvest the child from my corpse? I suppose it'll be the latter – the Seven will punish me in the end for my non-belief. They'll want to see the seven-pointed collar around my neck splattered with blood."
There was a loud clattering behind her, and before Lyarra could fully turn around, a clay dinnerplate shattered against the wall beside her head. The shards flew, several scratching Lyarra's face, but she'd long ago become numb to violence from her father.
When she did fully turn around, Lyarra saw that Roose had knocked over most of the dinner ornaments in his outburst, and he was standing and glaring at her with an expression that suggested he might seriously considering disobeying Ed Stark's ruling against flaying to finally put an end to her.
There go her eight children, she thought to herself drily. She'd die in the eye of the Old Gods after all.
"Have I given the impression of a man who tolerates disobedience?" Roose Bolton thundered, bracing his fists against the table in what Lyarra suspected was an attempt to restrain himself. "Do you find humor in pushing against me at every possible turn?!"
"They will see me as a savage!" Lyarra shouted. "I will be mistreated, raped, abused! I will be nothing to them!"
"You are nothing here!"
"I am a pawn here!" Lyarra corrected. "I am something, no matter how little of something it is! I see, father, that I am nothing but an object to move across the board, but you could at least do me the favor of not sacrificing me for the vaguest possibility!"
Lyarra's father had always been an angry man, but she admittedly hadn't seen his anger directed at her in several years. A different girl would have had to steel herself against it, prepare herself for an onslaught, but even if time had passed, Lyarra was born from this anger. She, like her bastard brother, had always felt a strange comfort at watching the storm brew above her head. "I could disinherit you in the blink of an eye," Roose Bolton threatened. "Few, if any marriages are made out of love. I am placing you with a wealthy house. Your life should be comfortable there and your duty was never a mystery to you. Would you prefer to starve in the streets of a nameless town? To sell your body for a loaf of bread?"
While it may have been wiser to step away, Lyarra stepped towards her father. "I suppose it is the rapist that would consider being raped a womanly duty," she spat. "At least working in a brothel I might choose who I sell my body to."
She wasn't supposed to know about her father's sins, but he'd also never exactly made an effort to hide them. Ramsey was a product of rape, she knew. Roose had raped his mother beneath a tree. Her own mother...well, she couldn't be certain, but she assumed a similar thing had happened. She sometimes wondered if it was a curse. To be conceived not only by a lack of true love, but by something as abhorrent and violent as rape. To be disgusting to the mother and accidental to the father. Was it somehow in her blood? In her heart? Could she ever be pure and kind when from the very start of her existence she'd been dripped in blood and violence?
If it was true -- if this was a curse -- Ramsey proved it. Lyarra had never had confirmation of her own conception, only the knowledge that her father was a cruel man and was capable of such acts and her mother had been a woman. But she had confirmation on Ramsey's conception, and she was well and clearly aware of how foul of a person he was.
"Only a pitiful man would buy with coin what he could instead take with strength," Roose spat out, dark eyes trained on his daughter with the glint of a hunter reading his crossbow at a deer. "I can never be certain when in your upbringing I gave you the impression you were worth anything. Pawn is a generous term, Lyarra. You are cattle that has learned to speak."
"That's what you are, then." Lyarra managed to spit out, heart pounding in her throat. "Father to cattle and bastards. A man 'strong enough to take' and still only with that to his name. The only thing northern about you, father, is the location of your castle."
"And the only thing northern about you is the name I gave you. I suppose your act in seeing visions from the Crone might come true to pass. At least the Hightowers desire your presence."
"The Bolton name will die with you, father," Lyarra squared her shoulders. "The last Lord Bolton. I hope you have no aspiration for legacy, because I will not pass yours on."
*
Even if her father took her abrupt departure as defeat, it was the furthest thing from it. Lyarra was conditioned to have a high tolerance for abuse and mistreatment, but for the first time in her life she felt it had truly and surely been crossed.
She considered sneaking out of the Dreadfort to the weirwood tree beyond their walls to pray for guidance. It might help, she thought, to collect herself in a calm place and decide what, if anything, was to be done of her situation. If the old gods were true, though – if they were listening – how could they let this happen? How could they allow her father to remove her from them?
A thousand questions subsequent of this one raced through her mind, all varying slightly but leading her to one simple conclusion: if anything was to be done, if she was to be saved, she would have to save herself.
Death was the release from life, and Lyarra considered skipping a few steps and getting the last chapter over with, but was ultimately swayed from this answer by an overwhelming, bone-woven desire to live.
As well as she could, Lyarra relaxed into the bath her handmaiden had drawn for her. She watched the water ripple against her body with each breath. She dismissed her handmaiden, electing instead to bathe herself (or rather sit and stew by herself). She ignored the passing of time and the cooling of the water against her skin, and she thought.
She tried to consider every possibility of what her life could be without traversing backwards – without getting lost in dreams of what it could already be had she not been born a Bolton.
She could accept the betrothal and live out the life she had described in jest. She could anger her father to the point of disinheritance and do as he suggested – starve in the streets and likely die before the upcoming winter was over. She could escape on her own, try to find passage to the free cities in the south – but she would still be leaving her home, and she hadn't expressed her dissatisfaction with that possibility on a whim. Lyarra belonged in the north, she decided. Leaving the north became comparable to death – at least, the death of who she truly was.
Had she been born a man, she supposed she could have run away to join the Night's Watch. Take the black, renounce her titles and inheritance and promise never to marry, but live freely away from her father and family. Quickly, she dissolved into a fit of misery from how unfair it was that she couldn't do that.
She distracted her gaze from her own naked body and laid her eyes on the book at her bedside and, perhaps prematurely, her heart leapt back to life.
Songs and Hymns, was the title of the book. She knew it by heart, as well as most of the songs within.
The Rains of Castamere, The Bear and the Fair Maiden, The Mermaid's Lament, and many more. But the reason for her sudden onset of hope – an emotion quite foreign to Lyarra, truth be told – was the song of Brave Danny Flint.
"Oh Danny Flint, a wild and wily beauty
Born Dyanna of the proud mountain clans.
She loved to ride and fight but loathed her duties
She heard a call from 'top the Wall and so she ran.
On gelding-back she raced along the kingsroad
Dressed head-to-heel in her dear twin brother's clothes.
She cut her braid and hung it 'pon the heart tree,
Whose crying eyes in the moonrise did watch her go."
The rest of the song was tragic, Lyarra knew. Brave Danny Flint had been found out as a woman by the brothers of the Night's Watch, raped, and then killed.
But wasn't that her destiny anyways? It seemed to Lyarra that the plight of a woman in this world was unavoidable to her. She could listen to her father, go south, be raped and then die. She could escape to the streets, live in squalor, likely be raped and then die. Or...
Lyarra wondered what freedom tasted like. She wondered what it felt like to be seen and respected as any man was. She wondered if, just maybe, she could actually get away with it.
She'd been trained with weapons. Not really by choice, more as a means to avoid constant onslaught from her bastard brother. But trained nonetheless. And as far as 'womanly shape', as Ramsey so kindly put it, she was somewhat lacking. She was rather thin with small breasts that could easily be hidden under armour and thick cloaks. As for her facial features – she'd been often mistaken for a boy in her youth. She didn't have the plump rosy cheeks that might betray her as a woman. Her hair...she was willing to part with it.
Perhaps if she'd been older or wiser she would have thought more carefully of the matter. As it was, Lyarra was full to the brim with a youthful drive to act first and think later.
You needn't bother with disinheritance. I renounce my name and my titles and any claim I might have been born to. You will not hear of my life or my death and I pray I never have to hear of yours.
I prefer bread to venison anyway.
-Lyarra
She left the note to her father on her dresser, assuming when her handmaiden discovered her absence she’d find it instead and deliver it. Lyarra brought as little as she could with her, fitting all in just one bag she could throw over her shoulder. She stole some bread and fruits from the kitchens, sneaking to avoid the house attendants, and stole clothes from the washing rooms beside that. Boys clothes – something she’d have to get used to if she really intended on pulling this whole thing off.
The last thing Lyarra did (after packing and changing into the boy’s clothes) was cut her hair. She’d like to say she had no qualms parting with it – or with the ladylike beauty she’d been comfortable in her whole life – but she’d be lying. Each dark brown lock that she severed from her head made her want to cry. Still, at the end of it all, she couldn’t help but look at herself and feel freer than she ever had before.
Passing as a boy would be difficult and she would have to be attentive to the persona, but it wouldn’t be impossible. A girlish boy, perhaps. A scrawny boy. But a boy nonetheless. She’d have a generous amount of time while travelling to Castle Black to fashion for herself a boy’s name, but now she had a boy’s appearance.
It was risky to disguise herself in her own room. If anybody had walked in they would have discovered her plan and intentions immediately. But sneaking out of the Dreadfort would be much easier. Nobody would look twice to a scrawny boy leaving the castle. They would look twice at a young lady – a Bolton – making past the gates in the dead of night.
The whole while, Lyarra felt as if her heart might beat straight out of her chest and splatter against the floor. She had been so nervous only a few times in her life – and in those times the stakes still hadn’t been quite so high. It was rash of her. So incredibly rash, but she persevered because she was entirely convinced that this was her only choice. She wanted to live and live freely and this was her only chance at it.
She had almost made it, almost to the west end of the castle through the smaller gates, when she met trouble in the form of an amused laugh.
Lyarra spun on her heel, almost misplacing her balance and falling over entirely. There, but a few paces away, stood her bastard brother.
Ramsey Bolton leaned against the brick wall with an all-together pleased expression gracing his features. He didn’t look much like Lyarra thanks to the fact that they only shared one parent and each child had taken after their mothers, but they’d grown up as siblings. Ramsey was a few years older than Lyarra – a full-grown man by now, fully capable of stopping her if he desired to.
Lyarra’s skin crawled at the sight of him. Brother – yes. But their relationship was not one to be taken positively. Ramsey was hardly human – so violent it bordered on monstrous. Growing up, he used to chase Lyarra through the woods and try to strike her down with bow and arrow. Only when he’d once shot through her arm did Roose Bolton tell him off, and Ramsey took his humorous pursuits in the direction of the stable attendants. This, however, did not mean he stopped torturing Lyarra entirely.
When she was ten years old he’d let his hounds eat her pet cat in front of her. When she was eleven, he’d set her favorite book on fire in her bed – almost accidentally burning through the whole room. When she was thirteen and she’d had her first romantic endeavor (that of a child – nothing but hand holding and friendship and childish dreams of the future) Ramsey had tricked the boy – Cregan – into following him into the woods and had taken up his usual hobby. Cregan had been found with three hours in his chest and one of his legs part-way chewed off by hounds three days later. All this to say, Lyarra was not fond of the man.
Ramsey looked her up and down, eyebrows knitting together for half a second, in which time he seemed to have figured out precisely what her plan was. “Oh,” he said, terrifyingly amused by the whole scenario. “I see.”
Lyarra drew a knife from her pocket – a small hunting one that she was well and prepared to use if it came to it. Her plans had been spoiled, she figured, but she far more feared right now what Ramsey might do to her because he’d found her out.
“Don’t come nearer,” she said quickly, stealing her voice.
Ramsey grinned – shrewd and cruel. “Brave Lyarra Bolton,” he mocked, because of course he knew her inspiration. “Or I suppose that name won’t work quite so well.”
Lyarra tried to hide the tremor of her body, betraying her fear to him. “Fine,” she said. “Tell father, thwart my plans. But that is torture enough.”
Ramsey stepped forward, slowly starting to circle his sister. “Why would I do that?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious (though, of course, it was an act).
“To get me in trouble?” Lyarra offered. “I don’t pretend to entirely understand the reasoning behind half the things you do.”
“Or I could let you leave,” Ramsey said. “And keep your secret close to my chest.”
She couldn’t tell if he was toying with her or not. “To what end?”
“To what end indeed,” Ramsey said. “I suppose you’ll never find out.”
Lyarra narrowed her eyes at him, trying to read in the blacks of his pupils what his true intentions were.
“Go,” Ramsey repeated, waving a dismissive hand. “Enjoy the wall, Loren. Or Lucan, or whatever name the maidens will sing in a few years.”
Lyarra didn’t know whether to trust him. Well, actually she knew not to. But she, for whatever reason, felt he was being genuine. He wanted her to go. Maybe…
It was entirely possible that Ramsey had the same thought Roose had earlier that night. That with Lyarra out of the way, Ramsey was the last possible heir to the name Bolton. To the Dreadfort. With Lyarra dead, or gone by the wall, Roose was forced to put Ramsey in his own line of succession.
He thought he was being clever, maybe. He thought she was giving up her own title not knowing it would pass to him. He didn’t know what Lyarra knew – that it would pass to him anyway. That if he held her back, he could keep his plaything for a few months longer and inherit the title anyway.
It didn’t matter what he thought. It worked to Lyarra's benefit that he was underestimating her again, now.
“Will you tell father?” she asked quickly, still holding tight to the knife at her side.
Ramsey rolled his eyes. “I said I wouldn’t.” He looked her up and down, then once more. “For what it’s worth, I truly did think you were a boy. I imagine it’s the face. And the build.”
An insult disguised as confirmation, but confirmation nonetheless. With one final glare, Lyarra slipped away from Ramsey and out of the Dreadfort. His taunting voice followed her, but only for a few seconds. A verse from the song, hummed not in the sad way it was supposed to be, but rather joyously: "A maid in black is still a maid, and men are men."