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It was before Reek. Before the Greyjoy boy fled his skull and the dead-eyed, nervous creature surfaced from the wreckage of the one-time prince like a noxious gas. Before his presence haunted the Dreadfort, a ghostly shadow sewn to the feet of the bastard.
It was before all that, Roose remembered. Before Reek, but after Robb. The wedding, and all that it entailed.
Theon had not yet been informed. Nor had Ramsay, by Roose’s own design; he did not need the boy gloating, not until it was all settled. A week had not yet passed, but already word was spreading. It would reach the Dreadfort of its own accord soon enough.
But some men deserved to be told.
“I bring good tidings,” Roose murmured, his quiet voice a clap of thunder in the infinite silence of Theon’s cell. The boy was manacled to a wall, a thick metal collar, ancient and rusty, circled around the white of his throat. He tried to lean forward, but the chain was too short; Roose could see his skin stretch and pull taut.
“Robb,” Theon breathed.
Roose smiled, a rigor mortis twist of his lips. “The king was not eager for word of you.”
Theon watched Roose with large eyes, silent as the grave. Despair hovered at the edge of him, kept at bay by whatever strength of character was left. But his walls were cracking.
“But as I said, I bring good tidings.”
Something like hope shone through Theon’s eyes. Roose swallowed it down.
“His grace is no longer after your head,” Roose continued. “Have you any idea why that is?”
“Perhaps...you spoke to him?” Theon’s voice was a cleaver scraped on a boulder, rough and jagged. He swallowed. “Word of your...son’s punishment reached him, and he thought it enough?”
“He heard a bit of what Ramsay has done to you,” Roose answered. “Or rather, saw a bit of it. But that is not why.”
“I cannot imagine why he would forgive me, then. My lord.”
“It’s very simple, actually. He has no need of your head,” Roose explained, and here he reached beside him, to the rough-hewn sack that had, so far, escaped Theon’s notice. With a gloved hand he gripped it, pulling it out with a swift and careless grasp, and as it rose Roose could not help himself, could not stop the baring of teeth, the death-rattle laugh that escaped his throat at Greyjoy’s bulging eyes. And in the darkness they were twinned, he and the Young Wolf, two floating heads with stark white teeth shining through the gloom.
Theon’s jaw contorted into a silent scream of horror, his limbs curling in like the dead appendages of a beetle. He was mouthing something, but Roose could not make out what. It did not matter.
“I’ll leave you with your king,” he murmured. He pressed forward, toward the darkened corner, toward the huddled shape of Theon Greyjoy. He left the head on the ground, just out of reach—too far for Theon to stretch the chain and move it, but close enough that the hollow eyes and mottled skin could be seen in startling clarity, a specter to watch over the boy in the darkness.
When Roose shut the dungeon door, he could hear the beginnings of a high and unearthly scream. A maelstrom of despair, bone-wracking and blood-chilling. Roose felt his pulse quicken; he could do with a leeching.