Roose sat alone by the window, the wine in his hand long forgotten.

The room was dark, though a fire still smoldered. He could hear the soft breath of his new wife in the chamber beyond—young, obedient, dutiful. She never spoke unless spoken to. She never questioned him. She never ran.

But she wasn’t you.

His gaze drifted to the snow swirling against the glass. The way it moved reminded him of the night you left—quiet, fast, without farewell. Just a cold bed and a trail of silence leading out of the gates, your child bundled in your arms.

His child.

You had begged him to let you go. He hadn’t answered. So you made the choice for him.

“You were clever,” he murmured into the dark. “I thought I’d broken that part of you.”

His voice was low, bitter—but not angry. Just tired. Just... hollow.

He didn’t speak of you aloud anymore, not to anyone. Not to Ramsay. Not to his bride. But your name lingered in his mind like frostbite—distant, aching, unforgettable.

He wondered sometimes if the child looked like him. If you told them bedtime stories. If you said his name with hate—or if you never said it at all.

And in the stillness, when no one was watching, he opened the drawer by his bedside—the one where he kept the letter you’d left behind.

He never read it. He never burned it either.

Because as much as he buried you with silence… you still haunted every breath he took.