A Need to Suffer

Bitter Cold

Chapter Seventeen

Bitter Cold

It had taken hours of just staring off into the dimming light of the torches for sleep to finally take Ramsay. His mind would not quiet of the many jarring thoughts that flooded through him. Jon’s recent offer to take him out and about was its own pleasant surprise, and although it gave Ramsay a lot to think about, it wasn’t keeping him from his slumber. His curiosity and concern lay in pondering where Sansa had felt the need to rush off to. Ramsay would not have fretted so if Sansa had given him something in regards to what would cause such a sudden dire need of attendance; (his mind turned to Petyr Baelish and the Vale thinking them to be her current most powerful allies and the ones who would most likely wish an immediate audience. They had helped her to defeat his armies, and perhaps now they called on her by crow to return the favor through lands or some other means shortly after the deed had met with success.)

The awful dread cropped within him that they might wish for Sansa to marry and unite bloodlines with another family of their choosing to politically strengthen bonds between all of their houses which was an often called upon diplomatic favor once wars were won and peace was reestablished. (Petyr Baelish was the leading dominion over the Vale until his stepson, the young Robin Arryn, would come of age, and Ramsay could imagine that snake in the grass pushing such an offer on Sansa just to be spiteful due to their last shared encounter that left him slinking out of the Stark dungeon after a failed attempt on Ramsay’s life. She was not interested in him as a suitor she’d made plain, but perhaps Petyr would think to control Sansa and the Stark dynasty through other means since marrying her off to the Bolton family had not panned out the way he had hoped.

Sansa was still his wife though, and as much as Ramsay wanted to be comforted by that assumption of sacred vows, in the odd case that the two of them were now seen in (with he being a defeated enemy of the Starks), Ramsay was unsure just how recognized their marriage still was. Sansa had reverted to being called Lady Stark by many of the servants and guards foregoing her Bolton title entirely. Ramsay never made mention of it the few times he’d heard the guards speak of her as ‘Lady Stark’ in his presence. The peasants of Winterfell were not Ramsay’s concern in this regard but what the aristocracy of the North might declare certainly was troubling to him. Since that first afternoon in the dungeon, Sansa had been sure to tell Ramsay that she was a Stark before she was anything, and his family name was but a fading memory. He hadn’t taken that news lightly, and at the time Sansa had said it as a barb to hurt Ramsay; she had succeeded. His name was really the only thing Ramsay had left, and it was a bitterly hard earned yet brief victory for Ramsay to have gained it at all.

Thoughts on Petyr usurping the lands of Winterfell were fleeting thoughts as Ramsay remembered Sansa speaking of her venture only being a few days’ journey to reach; the Eyrie was a much further distance than a few days from Winterfell; not to say that Petyr and his forces were not holed up with one of the many surrounding houses in the North especially with the winter coming into full force soon. The mountains of the Vale were quite treacherous; it was honestly a miracle at all that their cavalry managed to make it down to the battle in any sort of timing. More bad luck for him Ramsay thought resentfully.

Either way, it vexed Ramsay to have absolutely no clue to the goings on around him where his curiosity on the matter was of no consequence (and this was the real reason that Ramsay stayed riled and unable to sleep.) Loth as he was to admit it to himself, Ramsay missed Sansa, and he worried for her; being left behind made him feel powerless to ensure that she was safe even more so without even knowing where she’d went. Ramsay despised being kept in the dark, but it wasn’t like he could demand an explanation from her or anybody for that matter. Maybe he could get Jon to give him answers to the questions plaguing him Ramsay ruminated. This line of thought was soothing and gave Ramsay the peace of mind he needed to finally drift off to sleep.