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Lynn gave the crystal a light squeeze.
The ice shard in his palm exploded outward, dust and shards of frost swirling toward all ten Blood Guards at once.
CRACK. CRACK.
Ice spread across their dark red armor at a speed the eye could follow, racing along every seam of that grotesque human-skin plate.
In an instant, they were encased. Crystal-clear. Perfectly still.
The eerie black glow was sealed. The writhing tears in reality froze solid. Even those hollow, red-burning eyes were buried under a thin shell of pale blue ice.
They stood in their charging posture, frozen mid-stride, and did not move another inch.
It looked slow. It took no longer than a blink.
Roose Bolton stared. His heart hammered against his ribs.
In all his years using sorcerers to build his Blood Guards, he had never witnessed anything like this.
Lynn walked toward the frozen figures, curiosity flickering in his eyes.
These Blood Guards and White Walkers were cut from the same cloth , undead creatures, each with their own edge. White Walkers inherited the combat knowledge of their maker, shrugged off ordinary steel, and fell only to Dragonflame, Valyrian Steel, or Dragonglass. The Blood Guards were different. Fatal blows couldn't put them down, and their raw strength felt greater than any Walker Lynn had encountered.
But they had weaknesses. Their attacks were chaotic, undisciplined. Everything they did , offense, defense , ran through that black glow. They had no other means.
So what would happen if he pushed Ice Magic directly into their bodies?
Could he take ownership of the dead?
He decided to find out.
Lynn extended one finger and pressed it lightly against the chest of the nearest Blood Guard.
BOOM!
The ice shell exploded off.
Shards scattered in every direction.
Their skin turned bone white. Beneath it, the veins surfaced clearly, tinged a sickly blue-green. And the eyes , those dead, red-burning eyes , ignited.
Blue. Blazing. Alive.
The curved swords in their hands, already wrapped in black light, were now coated in frost as well. The blades glowed with a deep, cold luminescence.
They were moving again. But nothing like before. They stood taller. Every line of their bodies radiated a savage, undiluted killing intent. They seemed... sharper. More precise.
"This , what is this —"
"What just happened?"
Roose Bolton could not read the change. He didn't know yet whether it was good or bad.
Lynn didn't answer him.
He looked over his new creations, a quiet satisfaction settling behind his eyes.
Blood Guards. The name no longer fit. Winter Wights was closer to the truth.
That was exactly what they were now. Lynn had converted Roose Bolton's entire undead arsenal into something closer to White Walkers. The man's prized trump card. Lynn accepted it with something close to amusement.
It also confirmed what he'd suspected: his Ice Magic was simply stronger than whatever black sorcery those warlocks practiced. Whether because the magic itself was superior or because their mastery was lacking didn't particularly matter.
The Wights were his now.
He sent the command through will alone. No words needed.
THUD!
One Wight threw a right fist into the banquet hall's low stone wall. That wall was thick-cut stone, the kind that turned ordinary blades. Under the Wight's iron fist, it caved in an instant. Rubble flew. Dust bloomed. A gap opened in the wall and through it came the cold black of the night sky beyond.
The strength. The speed. The total indifference to pain.
Every Northern soldier in the room pulled a sharp breath.
On Roose Bolton's face, terror and elation collided.
He stared at the collapsed wall, and something blazed behind his eyes.
He thought Lynn's magic had made them stronger. He thought Lynn had simply unlocked a deeper layer of power within them.
"Lynn! You fool!"
Roose Bolton's laugh came out ugly. Twisted with triumph.
"What do you think you're doing? You think you control them?"
"All your little tricks did was make them stronger!"
"Now they'll tear you to pieces!"
He jabbed a finger toward Lynn and screamed.
"My Blood Hounds! Kill him! Tear him apart! Flay his skin and bring it to me!"
A small figure shot forward and threw her arms wide.
"Lord Lynn!"
Roslin.
Her face, already pale at the best of times, had gone completely bloodless. Her body shook so hard she could barely stand. Her eyes were squeezed shut, long lashes catching the glitter of tears she hadn't let fall.
The fear was real. It went all the way to the bone.
But she didn't run. She didn't scream.
She just stood there with her slight body between Lynn and the Wights, and she did not move.
She had seen what those things did to the Northern soldiers. Seen it herself, minutes ago, how easily they broke armed men apart. She knew exactly what she was doing. She knew it was hopeless.
But in her head was only Lynn's calm smile. Only those words: Well done, my little maid.
She couldn't let him get hurt. She couldn't let anything happen to him. He had given her life back when Edmure would have taken her head. She owed him more than she could ever repay.
The moment Roslin moved, another figure moved with her.
Miranda.
Something complicated crossed her face.
She had started at his side purely out of survival. She'd told herself that. At first, it was just calculation, just necessity.
But that night , his roughness, his strength, the way he'd claimed her without apology , it had unlocked something in her she hadn't known was there. He had taken her and, in doing so, torn open a hunger she'd spent years pretending didn't exist.
She had once believed Ramsay was her master. Her only equal, the one person who truly understood her.
But Ramsay had used her as a toy. A disposable gift he could offer and withdraw whenever it suited him.
Lynn was nothing like Ramsay.
She couldn't have explained the difference in words. She wasn't sure she needed to.
Miranda moved almost on instinct. She stepped up beside Roslin , one step ahead of her, actually , and planted herself facing the Wights.
She didn't close her eyes. She kept them open: those eyes that had once been purely vicious and now held something harder, something decided. She had no weapon. Her body was coiled tight, like a she-wolf cornered and past the point of retreating.
She could not let Lynn die.
If Lynn died, she had nothing. Less than nothing. Whatever came after would be worse than what came before.
She needed to prove what she was worth. Prove that his hound was loyal.
Roose Bolton's laughter cut off.
He looked at the two women. One fragile, one fierce. Both in front of Lynn without hesitation. A flicker of something , not quite respect, not quite confusion , passed through his eyes.
He'd never expected Lynn to have women like this at his side.
Were they trying to die?
On the ground, Reek felt the shift the moment Miranda moved. His whole body locked up.
Behind the curtain of greasy hair, something ancient and rotten woke in those hollow eyes.
Miranda.
Miranda, who had done everything he asked. Who had lived for him. Who had been his, entirely and only his, the most devoted hound a man could own.
She dared.
She dared to stand in front of monsters for another man.
She dared to put her life between Lynn and death.
Why?
Ramsay ground his teeth together until the cartilage creaked.
She had been his. She was supposed to be his.
And now she was doing this.
"Dead bitch," he snarled, silently, into the floor. His fingernails dragged against the cold stone. He wanted to tear her apart with his bare hands.
Lynn looked at the two women blocking his path, and something complicated moved behind his expression.
Roslin's terror was genuine. So was her courage. The little maid was harder than he'd given her credit for.
Miranda was a different matter. He could read her clearly: coercion, resentment, but underneath all of it, the settled loyalty of an animal that had finally chosen a new master. She was beginning to accept what she'd become.
That was fine.
He'd started this without much intention beyond amusement. But she was doing this, whatever the reason. He wasn't going to throw that away.
Lynn reached out and drew both of them gently back behind him.
"Stand down."
"I don't need to hide behind women just yet."
Roslin and Miranda both flinched slightly. They looked up at him. His expression was utterly untroubled. They exchanged a glance and stepped back without argument.
They both understood: he had this handled. A man who didn't have this handled wouldn't look like that.
Lynn's gaze returned to the ten Wights.
Their blue-flame eyes were still fixed on him. Patient. Waiting.
"Roose Bolton."
Lynn smiled.
"You really are charmingly naive."
Every trace of arrogance had drained from Roose Bolton's face. He stood there, staring at the ten figures that had once been his, now leaking cold blue light into the air around them.
No. They weren't his Blood Guards anymore.
They were something from a depth he couldn't name. Something he had no handle on.
"What did you do to them?"
"Why won't they obey me?"
His voice had gone strange. Hollow.
This had been his hidden blade. His overturning card. And this young man had simply... taken it.
Lynn said nothing.
He raised one hand and curled a single finger toward the ten Wights. One gesture. Unhurried.
SWISH , all ten turned in perfect unison.
Ten pairs of burning blue eyes swung to Roose Bolton.
Roose stumbled back a step. His face went the color of old ash. His lips moved and nothing came out.
Then the silence broke in a different direction entirely.
Reek , kneeling on the floor, humbled to dust, barely breathing , began to tremble.
He kept his head down. The greasy curtain of his hair hid his face completely.
But something was radiating off him. A fever of ecstasy and poison, slowly filling the air.
They don't answer to Roose. Which means... could I...?
In the instant Lynn had seized the Wights, only one thought had been roaring through the hatred-soaked ruin of Ramsay's mind.
Kill her. Kill Miranda.
He mouthed the words like a curse. Like a prayer. He aimed every ounce of it at the woman standing respectfully behind Lynn.
And then.
The Wight closest to Miranda , almost nothing, barely a movement , let its head tilt. A degree. Maybe less.
Those blue-burning eyes swept, just for a moment, in her direction.
Ramsay's blood turned to fire.
He could feel it.
There was a connection. Thin as thread, but real. Something between him and these creatures.
The thought detonated in his skull.
He could control them.
He could control them.
Once the idea was there, it was beyond stopping. It spread through him like flame through dry grass.
His heart hammered. He fought to keep his face still. To keep his breathing slow. Lynn was right there, watching.
He had to be careful.
His eyes moved quietly across the banquet hall. An overturned chair in the corner.
He sent the instruction: Break it. The Wight nearest the chair SNAPPED its head up with a SWISH.
It rose to its feet and strode across the hall in full view of everyone.
Raised its frost-covered fist.
Brought it down.
BOOM!
The oak chair exploded into splinters. Solid wood, thick and heavy , it simply ceased to exist.
The entire hall went silent.
Lord Lynn hadn't given that order.
Roose Bolton looked from the wreckage to Lynn. His brow furrowed. Confused.
And Ramsay ,
Ramsay couldn't hold it anymore.
No more hiding. Cards on the table.
I can use them too. These killing machines. They're mine.
Today, Ramsay rises.
"Heh..."
"Hehehe..."
The laugh crawled out of his throat before he could stop it. Low. Wrong. Unraveling at the edges.
He raised his head.
Slowly.
That face , the one that had been so perfectly arranged into humility and fear , was unrecognizable now. Replaced, completely, by a manic, bottomless joy.
His eyes were burning.
Yes.
All of it, yes.
He was Ramsay. Born hunter. Born king. Castrated, humiliated, ground into the floor , and still, still, destined to be above all of them.
These weapons of death were his to command. Always had been.
"Ramsay?"
Roose Bolton looked at his son's twisted face. An unthinkable suspicion rose in him.
He looked at the shattered chair. Looked at his son.
The absurd guess surfaced fully and he couldn't push it back down.
"Son!"
"My good son!"
Something ferocious lit behind Roose Bolton's eyes.
"It was you! That was you, wasn't it!"
He crossed the floor in four strides. Grabbed Ramsay by the shoulders, ignoring the smell, shaking him.
"Do it now — kill Lynn — kill him and you are a Bolton. The sole heir to the Dreadfort. I'll give you everything. Everything. You will be the new King in the North!"
Heir.
Bolton.
King in the North.
Words Ramsay had once craved beyond all reason. Words he would have done anything to hear.
He heard them now, and they sounded like a joke.
He looked at the man in front of him. The man who had said I have no son. Who had sat down and eaten that plate of meat with his own hands.
Father.
Ramsay started laughing.
He couldn't stop. He laughed until he bent double. Laughed until his eyes ran.
He reached up and pushed Roose Bolton's hands off him. Then he straightened, unhurried, and rose from the floor.
He brushed the dust from his filthy prisoner's rags. The gesture was almost elegant. Like a lord straightening his robes before court.
Reek was gone.
What stood there instead was the flayer who had made the whole North flinch at his name.
"Father."
His voice carried. That particular resonance , smooth, magnetic, faintly unhinged , filled the banquet hall completely.
"Now you remember I'm your son?"
"Now you're willing to give me the Bolton name?"
"Don't you think... it's a little late for that?"
"What I want, I don't ask your permission for. I say I'm a Bolton , I'm a Bolton. That was always true."
Roose Bolton's stomach dropped.
He hadn't expected this. He hadn't expected Ramsay to be sitting on this much hatred. Hadn't expected this worthless castoff to actually turn the board.
A mistake. A serious one.
He looked into those burning eyes and felt the foreboding close around him like a fist.
"What are you going to do?"
"Me?"
Ramsay ran his tongue across cracked lips. His smile was bright and guileless and terrible.
"I just want to take back what was always mine."
"You shouldn't have treated me that way, Father... you really shouldn't have... this is on you... hahaha..."
The laughter trailed off. His eyes drifted to the ten silent figures standing in a row.
"Right then. Time for all of this to end."
He breathed in slowly. Deeply. The way a man savors something extraordinary.
Then he gave his first command as master.
"My lovely hounds."
"Flay him."
"I want him to be my most perfect work of art."
"I want him smiling at me. Forever."
The words hit the floor.
The Wights moved.
Ten pairs of blue flames locked onto the Lord of the Dreadfort.
Their curved swords cut dark arcs through the air, trailing that cold luminescence, and they descended on their prey like sharks that had already tasted blood.
"No! Ramsay! Stop!"
"I am your father!!"
Roose Bolton's last voice in this world was filled with the specific horror of a man who has finally grasped exactly what he made.
What answered him was the wet sound of blades finding flesh, and Ramsay's laughter, climbing and climbing.
"Haha — hahahaha!"
"Father! Look at this! This is art!"
"Look how elastic your skin is! Listen to those screams — beautiful, aren't they?"
"This is what your finest son has to offer you, Father — your last gift!!"
The banquet hall had become something else entirely.
The Northern soldiers backed away in clusters, faces white. Some couldn't look.
Roslin pressed a hand over her mouth, her whole body lurching.
Only Miranda stood still. She watched the blood spreading across the floor. She watched Ramsay laughing in the middle of it.
Fear. Disgust.
And underneath both: the faintest trace of relief.
Ramsay had finally shown what he was.
He'd killed his own father.
Lord Lynn would have no choice now. He'd find a way to put Ramsay down , she was certain of it.
But Ramsay had the Wights. Ten of them.
Could Lord Lynn still manage this?
Lynn, throughout all of it, had not moved from his armchair.
He sat with a wine glass in hand, turning it slowly, watching. There was something on his face that might have been appreciation.
The spectacle before him , this horror of a father and son , was nothing more than an encore. The entertainment after the main event. Something he had arranged for himself.
He watched Ramsay.
He watched this mad dog that he had personally unchained work its jaws through the throat of its old master. Watched it happen exactly the way he'd expected.
This was the outcome he had wanted.
A Ramsay with no leash left. No family, no loyalty, nothing tethering him to anyone or anything. Just appetite and destruction and the willingness to use both without limit.
That kind of dog was the most useful weapon in the world.
Ramsay had served his purpose now.
Which meant Lynn could take the Dreadfort cleanly, with cause that no one in the North could argue with.
And just as Ramsay had said.
This farce was past due for an ending.
Roose Bolton's screaming gradually quieted.
What remained on the banquet hall floor could no longer be called a man. It was a ruin. Something Ramsay was already appraising with professional satisfaction.
Ramsay stood beside his work, chest heaving, breathing hard.
Blood on his face. Blood on his hands. Blood soaking through the prisoner's rags.
His pale eyes glowed with a sick, completed hunger.
He turned around.
"Who's next?!"
"Come on, then!"
"My most honored master... Lord Lynn..."
"Have you decided how you'd like to die?"
His gaze settled on Lynn, who had watched all of it from a slight remove, as though none of it quite touched him.
He looked at Lynn.
At the man who had worked him like a puppet. Who had made him into what he stood here as now.
There was no fear in his eyes. No hatred either.
Only pure, burning excitement.
He gave Lynn his brightest smile.
"Surprised, Lord Lynn?"
"Your most loyal Reek , and look at him now."
"Kneel."
"Call Myrcella and Miranda over here. And every other woman in this hall. I want entertainment."
"Or you can find out what happens when you don't."
Lynn looked at that gloating face , the particular radiance of a small man who has suddenly found himself holding something large , and he smiled right back.
He looked out at the assembled room.
"Gentlemen."
"You've all seen it for yourselves."
"The depths to which House Bolton has sunk."
"Ramsay, this animal, commanding dead men to murder his own father."
"In the name of the King-Beyond-the-Wall, and in the name of Lord Eddard's King in the North, I hereby pronounce judgment."
"Ramsay Bolton is sentenced to death."
He turned and looked at Ramsay with something almost like pity.
"Reek."
"Go ahead and grieve. Go ahead and cry, if you need to."
"But from this day forward, your house words will be forgotten."
"Your house will be forgotten."
"Your name will be forgotten."
"Every last trace of you will be forgotten."
"A thousand years from now, no one will remember whatever glory House Bolton claimed in ages past."
"And you, Ramsay — my Reek — you will be nailed to history's shame as a Snow. A bastard. The man the North curses in perpetuity."
"That is what you've earned."
Ramsay threw his head back and laughed.
"Lynn, have I actually frightened you into talking nonsense? Should I have someone bring you some poppy milk to steady yourself?"
He glanced at the Wights flanking him, grinning like a man who can't believe his own luck.
"All these magnificent dead things , every single one of them is mine now!"
His voice rose, stripped of all pretense.
"You're the one going to hell, Lynn , not me!!"
"Blood Guards! Kill him! Take his skin off him! Bring it to me!"
Lynn shook his head.
He began to applaud. Slow, deliberate, almost warm.
"Brilliant."
"Truly brilliant."
"One thing, though. A friendly warning."
"Would you like to take a look at your loyal Blood Guards?"
Ramsay cut his eyes sideways.
That single glance stopped his heart.
One by one, the Wights were turning their heads.
Stiffly. Slowly.
All of them rotating to face Ramsay.
And on those ruined, featureless faces , a smile was forming. Gradual. Wrong.
Aimed directly at him.
➤ Next: Sentenced to Death
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