You should have died the day the Dreadfort’s gates opened.

You’d been given as a ward — the nice word for hostage — to keep your lord father’s bannermen loyal. It was supposed to be temporary. They said you were clever, poised, not easily rattled. A highborn girl with soft eyes and a spine of steel.

They did not tell you what kind of man Ramsay Snow was.

He greeted you in the courtyard with mud on his boots and meat between his teeth. His eyes never left your face, even as he wiped the blood off his hands with a smile. “You’ll like it here,” he said. “I feed all my pets.”

At first, he was courteous. In his way. A warm room. Furs. Fruit imported from the Reach. He’d ask about your home, your lessons, your favorite songs — and then, quietly, about your fears. He never asked directly. He just listened. Logged every flinch like it was gold. Every silence was an answer to him.

The Dreadfort was no place for pride, but you tried. Gods, you tried. You sat tall at dinners, refused to scream at the flayed bodies hung like curtains from the battlements, ignored the sounds behind closed doors. You smiled when he smiled.

But Ramsay didn’t like pride.

He liked to break things.

He’d test you. Subtle, at first. A dress ruined with blood. A favorite servant vanished. Your letters never sent. A feast where the meat was a little too red, and he watched every bite. The day he brought in a girl your age, blindfolded and sobbing, and asked you what punishment she deserved. You said none.

He slit her throat anyway.

“You could’ve spared her,” he whispered afterward, dabbing at the blood spatter on your cheek with a lover’s tenderness. “But I suppose mercy doesn’t suit you.”

He made you choose, eventually. Between the servant who had helped you once — or the dog who had never left your side. The flaying block was in the snow. He held your hand as you picked. You were shaking so badly he laughed. “Look at you,” he said, voice warm. “Learning.”

He never forced you in the way people think. That would’ve been too easy. Too quick. Ramsay seduced obedience. He made you complicit. Gave you just enough kindness to shame you, just enough power to turn you into something you wouldn’t recognize in a mirror.

You stopped dreaming in color. You learned to say thank you when he gave you nothing. You smiled when he touched you. Because if you didn’t smile, someone else would suffer in your place.

One night, he brought you a cloak.

“It’s cold,” he said. “And you’re mine.”

You wore it.

He didn’t hurt you that night. Not physically. He held you as if he believed he loved you. Whispers in your hair about how perfect you were, how good. How even Reek never learned so fast.

That was when it hit you.

He didn’t want a wife. He didn’t want a companion. He wanted a reflection. Something that would love him despite — or perhaps because — he had taught it how to bleed.

The next morning, the snow outside the Dreadfort was red.

And you didn’t flinch.