The wind howled outside the walls, but inside, the silence was worse.

You sat by the hearth, one hand resting on the gentle swell beneath your gown, the other curled around a cup of cooled tea you hadn’t touched. The fire popped now and then, but the warmth didn’t quite reach your skin—not here. Not anymore.

When the door opened, you didn’t look up at first. You didn’t need to.

Roose always entered without a sound, as if noise offended him. As if he belonged more to the dark corners of the Dreadfort than to the hearth and home you tried—tried—to build around him.

"You've grown," he said, not unkindly, but with the clinical tone of a man inspecting a thing he owned. His pale eyes drifted to your stomach. “I noticed it yesterday, but you were turned slightly to the left. The angle concealed it.”

You looked up slowly, searching his face for softness and—as always—finding only that terrible, calm stillness. He stepped closer, folding his hands behind his back. He never reached out. He never touched your skin the way a husband might, not even now.

"You're carrying well," he continued, eyes flickering. "It seems your body understands survival."

You swallowed. It should have been a compliment, but everything he said came wrapped in frost.

And yet—you still looked at him like he could be more. You still held onto quiet hopes that when the child came, when he saw it in your arms, something in him might stir.

“I feel them move,” you said softly, as if offering him something real. “Only in the quiet, when I’m still. Like they know when it’s safe.”

For a moment—just one—you thought something flickered across his expression. Not warmth. But something else.

“They know nothing of safety,” Roose said at last, his voice a thread of steel beneath silk. “And neither should you. Not yet.”

He turned to leave, but paused at the door.

“If it’s a boy… Ramsay will take it as a threat.”

Another pause. And then, lower:

“You should be careful, my lady. You’re not the only one who bleeds.”