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The iron door swung shut behind Miranda.
The torchlight in the passage burned low, stretching shadows long across the mottled stone walls, twisting and flickering like something alive.
Miranda's footsteps were steady.
She didn't cry. She didn't scream.
Her face, caked with dust and dried blood, held no expression at all.
Like parchment soaked in water, every emotion smoothed away, leaving nothing behind but a blank, dead silence.
In her mind, the scene played over and over.
Ramsay's face, twisted with madness.
The cold indifference in his eyes. The complete absence of anything like care.
And those words, light as air, heavy enough to crush her world flat.
"You're just a dog I raised."
A dog.
Heh.
Just a dog.
All those years of love. All those years of following him. All that madness, all that devotion...
In his eyes, it had been nothing more than the loyalty of a hound.
She had thought they were kindred spirits. Two of a kind, moving through the darkness together, the only ones who truly understood each other, soulmates who could share the deepest, ugliest parts of themselves.
But she had been his most obedient hunting dog. Nothing more.
And now, for the sake of his own future, the master had handed this useless hound over as a gift, without hesitation, without a second thought, to a stronger man.
How laughable.
How pathetic.
A hatred like volcanic fire should have erupted from her chest.
But Miranda felt nothing.
No anger. No grief.
Her heart felt as though it had been sealed behind that iron door, left behind in the dungeon. Along with the foolish, pathetic, self-deluding girl she used to be, locked away forever.
What walked this corridor now was just a shell with her name.
A shell that had to learn new tricks if it wanted to survive.
She thought of Lynn.
That man in the storeroom, speaking the cruelest truths in a voice that was almost gentle. Like a god watching from above, cold-eyed, observing the sad little one-woman show she and Ramsay had been performing. And then, without any particular effort, he had pulled down the final curtain.
He hadn't lied.
Not once, from beginning to end.
He had simply stated a fact. A fact she had been lying to herself about for years, a fact she had already half-sensed was wrong, and still refused to admit.
Resist?
The corner of Miranda's mouth curved in a silent, humorless smile.
How? Bite through his throat with her teeth? Claw out his eyes with her nails?
She knew exactly what she was. In front of Lynn, every archery skill she'd ever prided herself on, every ounce of that beast-like ferocity, it was all as fragile as wet paper.
She had heard he was the tournament champion. She knew he had won two trials by combat. The title that the Kingslayer couldn't claim, that the Mountain couldn't claim, that the Knight of Flowers couldn't claim, Lynn had taken it.
That said enough.
What chance did she have of killing him? He wouldn't even need to raise a hand. One look from him was enough to send her spiraling into fear she couldn't name.
So she couldn't fight. Which meant she could only submit.
No. Not just submit.
Please him.
The way Ramsay had always expected her to. Please this new master, in Ramsay's stead.
It was the last thing she could do for that pathetic love of hers.
Call it repaying a debt.
Once the debt was cleared, she would owe Ramsay nothing. Not a single thing.
After that, she would live only for herself.
Whatever had existed between her and Ramsay, it was over.
The thought rose quietly from the dead-still surface of her heart, and quickly hardened into something clear and immovable.
She would survive.
Whatever it cost.
...
Miranda walked alone through Winterfell.
No guards followed her. She didn't want to run anyway.
She had no home to run to.
She didn't even know where she would go.
Resign yourself.
The storeroom door opened. Roslin was inside, holding a basin of hot water. Miranda had taken her time, lost in thought the whole walk over, and Roslin had been waiting.
When she saw Miranda's hollow, drifting expression, something flickered in Roslin's eyes. Pity, quickly suppressed.
She didn't say anything. She just wrung out a clean cloth and held it out.
"Wipe your face. Lord Lynn likes clean women. He won't like the way you look right now."
Miranda took it without a word and wiped mechanically at the grime on her face.
The cloth against her skin cut through some of the fog in her head.
She looked up. Her gaze settled on Roslin.
Lord Lynn's personal maid. She had to know something.
"You."
Miranda's voice came out rough, scraped raw.
"How long have you served him?"
The question caught Roslin off guard. She answered before she could think.
"N-not long."
"What kind of women does he like?"
Miranda's eyes stayed fixed on Roslin's face, watching for anything, the smallest flicker, the faintest tell.
The question was blunt. Indecently so.
Roslin's cheeks went crimson. She shook her head quickly, hands waving.
"I — I don't know... Lord Lynn, he..."
"Don't play dumb with me."
Miranda's voice went sharp.
Something reignited in those dead-grey eyes. A cold, hard light.
"I am a gift from Lord Ramsay to him."
"My task is to please him."
"My life , and Lord Ramsay's life — depends on it."
"Tell me what he likes. Tell me how to satisfy him."
Roslin looked at her. This woman, barely older than herself, radiating violence from every pore. That look in her eyes, desperation and obsession wound together into something that looked almost like madness.
The pity in Roslin's chest dissolved. Something deeper took its place.
She remembered her own despair in the great hall at Riverrun. She remembered kneeling in front of Lynn, trembling, her fingers fumbling with the ties of her own dress.
They were the same. Both of them.
Playthings in the hands of powerful men, struggling desperately just to stay alive.
But they were lucky. Both of them had ended up with Lynn, and not someone else. Falling into another man's hands, that would have been something truly worse than death.
"I... I really don't know what Lord Lynn likes."
Roslin's voice dropped.
But she stopped looking away.
"Lord Lynn... he isn't like other lords."
"But... my sisters at the Twins, before they married, they used to gather together and talk about... ways to please men."
Miranda's eyes sharpened.
Like a predator that had been waiting in the dark for too long, finally catching the first trace of its quarry.
"Tell me."
No room for argument in her voice.
"Every word. Leave nothing out."
Roslin hesitated for a moment. Then she nodded.
She drew a slow breath, reaching back into memory for those long-buried things, the private, whispered knowledge that had passed between girls who thought they were preparing for marriage.
The air in the room shifted.
Outside, the northern wind howled. Inside, the candle flame swayed.
Two girls, one standing, one sitting, began a strange and absurd kind of lesson.
"My sister always said men are beasts who think with their eyes."
Roslin's voice was barely above a whisper. Her cheeks stayed flushed.
"To capture a man's heart, you have to capture his eyes first."
She tilted her head down slightly, the way she remembered her older sisters doing, those women who had always seemed to know exactly how to fill a room. Then she slowly lifted her gaze.
Her lashes fluttered, long and soft as the edges of a fan.
Her eyes held just the right measure of timidity and need.
"Look at him like this. Make him feel that you're afraid of him, but that you're leaning on him too. Make him feel like he's the only one who can protect you."
Miranda tried to copy her.
But her eyes were flat and cold. No matter how she arranged her face, she couldn't summon that fragile, yielding quality.
"No. Your gaze is too hard."
Roslin shook her head.
"Imagine you're a wounded fawn. And he is the only hunter who can save you."
Hunter.
Miranda's body went still, just for a beat.
She was the hunter.
And now she was being taught how to play the prey.
"And posture."
Roslin stood and took a few steps through the narrow room. Her spine was straight, but her shoulders curved inward, just slightly. Each step was careful, deliberate, her skirt rippling out behind her in soft, unhurried waves.
"When you walk, drive from your waist. But keep your steps small. Slow. Make him feel like you're something delicate, something that needs to be held carefully, protected."
Miranda's frown deepened.
She was built for long strides and open ground. For running through the trees, tracking prey across miles of forest. This careful, mincing way of moving felt wrong in every muscle.
But she stood up and tried anyway.
At first she lurched from side to side like a duck that had only just discovered it had legs. Roslin nearly laughed.
"Not like that..."
She stepped forward quickly, catching Miranda's arm, and began patiently adjusting her posture.
"Relax. Tuck in here — yes, right there, a little more..."
Their bodies made contact, unavoidably.
Roslin's hands were soft and warm.
Miranda's body was hard, years of hunting packed into muscle that didn't yield easily, like pressing against stone.
The contrast made them both go quiet.
"And your voice..."
Roslin's face had gone a deeper shade of red. Her voice dropped to almost nothing.
"It needs to be softer. Slower. A little nasal, like you're coaxing someone... like you're sulking just a little..."
"When you pour wine, let your wrist show."
"When you hand him something, let your fingertips graze his hand. Like it wasn't on purpose."
Roslin gave her everything, all the knowledge she had absorbed from her sisters at the Twins, that blend of hard-won practical wisdom and closely guarded bedroom secrets, passed between girls who were preparing to work through the world through the only tools they'd been given.
She taught it seriously. Carefully.
Miranda listened the same way.
She locked every detail into memory. These small feminine tricks she had always dismissed as beneath her, the little ploys and performances she had never had any use for, had become her only lifeline.
And somewhere in the middle of it, she realized: this was hunting too.
A more sophisticated kind of hunting.
The prey wasn't a beast in the forest. It was a man's desire. His hunger to conquer.
The weapons weren't a bow or a hunting knife. They were a glance. A gesture. A single word placed exactly right.
She was Miranda. The finest hunter the Dreadfort had ever produced.
She had no reason not to learn this.
"Last thing," Roslin said. "The most important one."
Her voice had developed a faint tremor. She couldn't quite bring herself to meet Miranda's eyes.
"I heard them say... in bed, you have to be like a dying fish."
"You have to struggle. But you can't truly resist."
"Make him feel like he's conquering something. Not taking it by force."
"Make him feel... like it's what you wanted."
When she finished, the strength seemed to go out of her all at once.
She looked down. Said nothing more.
The storeroom fell into silence.
It stretched for a long time.
Then Miranda slowly rose.
She crossed to the wooden basin in the corner, bent over it, and looked at her own reflection blurring in the water below.
The eyes that looked back at her were still cold.
But the coldness was changing. Deepening. Pulling inward, becoming something more controlled, more contained.
Like a deep well sealed under ice, still on the surface, and churning underneath.
She reached up slowly and pulled the leather cord from her hair.
Brown hair spilled down in a cascade, falling across half her face.
She tilted her head the way Roslin had shown her, and peered at her reflection through the curtain of her own hair.
In that instant, something shifted.
The predator's edge, that wild, aggressive quality that had always lived just under her skin, disappeared beneath something deliberately fragile. Something hazy and soft and beckoning.
A wolf wearing the face of a lamb. Dangerous. And lethally inviting.
She had done it.
With sheer force of will and the same precision she had always applied to tracking prey, she had mastered the technique completely.
Miranda straightened. She turned and looked at Roslin, who stood exactly where she had been, staring.
"I need to learn more."
➤ Next: Eavesdropping Through the Wall