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A maid slips her a knife as she’s getting dressed for the wedding.
The plan is in place. Only the most trusted servants know the details. The soldiers are ready. And she slips the knife into her sleeve.
The knife rests against her forearm. She can feel the blade, resting against her skin. Her desire to kill Ramsay has only increased twofold now.
Ramsay. She feels sick upon thinking about him. The Boltons themselves make her feel sick; what they’ve done to Theon - no, Reek - and her family and everything else inbetween -
And now they’re making her marry Lord Bolton’s bastard son.
She can’t wait for the wedding night.
*
Reek wants her to take his arm. She gives him a look, curls her lip in distaste, and says no.
“I don’t care,” she spits when he says that Ramsay will punish him.
It will not matter after tonight.
*
She gets through the wedding. She doesn’t know how. Her voice stays steady and strong; she doesn’t waver when she repeats the vows. And she forces herself to take Ramsay’s arm and walk back to Winterfell from the Godswood without shaking.
The celebration after is short-lived. She can feel Ramsay’s impatience; he grips her knee hard under the table, moves his hand further up her thigh.
She keeps an impassive face. The knife feels cold against her skin.
When Ramsay leads her away at the end of the night, she winks to her handmaiden. The maid nods, a small smirk playing on her lips. Neither Reek nor Ramsay see.
Her heart hammers in her chest with each step they take up the stairs to their chambers. The slips shut behind them, and, despite the fire roaring in the hearth, she feels cold.
The knife slides down her sleeve an inch.
Ramsay rips the back of her dress open when she takes too long. Air hits the bare skin of her back, and she flinches when his cold, disgusting hands touch her skin. Reek is still in the room.
The knife falls into her hand, she twists out of his grip, and buries the knife in his throat.
He wasn’t expecting it. He doesn’t even lift a hand to defend himself. Reek’s pale, eyes wide.
Ramsay gurgles. Blood gushes out of the wounds; it runs down her hands and arm, spills on her lovely dress and furs. His knees buckle; Sansa follows him down onto the floor, hand still wrapped around the hilt of the knife. His eyes are wide, and his hands clutch weakly at her dress.
“I am Sansa Stark,” she hisses in his voice. “The Blood of the Wolf, the Queen in the North. And you will never harm another person.”
Ramsay chokes once, twice, falls limp. She pushes his body away with disgust and wipes at her face with her shaking hands. Sticky blood is smeared on her cheeks.
She runs to the window, waves once to the maid in the courtyard, and the bells begin to ring a second later.
The gates to Winterfell fly open. Soldiers bearing the Stark standard fly through. The Boltons fall under their swords. At the front is Brienne of Tarth, her squire holding a standard by her side as she cuts down the Bolton’s men.
Sansa closes her eyes and listens to sweet sounds of metal on metal.
*
All that’s left of the Boltons in Winterfell is Lord Roose himself.
She steps over body after body as she approaches the fallen lord, who’s on his knees in the middle of the courtyard. He’s got a broken nose, a wound in his stomach; the tip of Brienne’s sword rests under his chin.
She steps over people she knows; a squire, a soldier or two, Myranda . Myranda’s bow lies next to her; there’s a hole in her chest where a sword had run her through.
Lady Walda is still alive. Sansa told them to spare her, at least. She would not kill a pregnant lady.
She would not be as cruel as Ramsay.
Brienne steps back from Bolton as she approaches. Soldiers around the courtyard are staring wide-eyed at Sansa; she wonders how she looks, with blood on her hands and face and ripped dress.
Reek follows behind her, shaking and whimpering. She does her best to ignore him.
Lord Bolton’s eyes narrow at her.
She nods to Brienne, and Lord Bolton’s head rolls to a step at her feet a moment later.
*
The Queen in the North, they chant when she stands on the battlements. Villagers, soldiers, Brienne, the staff; they call her name and raise their arms up to the sky.
Sansa closes her eyes as they chant her name and lifts her face up to the clouds.
*
She has a crown within the week. It’s nothing like the extravagant crown that Joffrey used to wear; it’s silver, styled to look like a wreath of holly.
Sansa wears it with pride; she stands taller, chin tilted up and shoulders set.
*
Brienne of Tarth becomes the first of her Queensguard.
She goes to ask Brienne personally, collars her the night after she receives her crown. The grounds of Winterfell have been cleared of Bolton corpses; they were piled into a pyre and burnt. Lord Bolton and Ramsay’s heads stand on pikes on the battlements. The people are rebuilding; bannermen who were and have always been loyal to the Starks flock to her, promising their allegiance in the war that’s to come.
Brienne is always by Sansa’s side, working as her bodyguard. So Sansa only thinks it is right.
She tells Sansa it would be honour. She smiles.
*
She feels sorry for Reek.
He cannot repair. He can’t. In fact, the best Sansa can offer is to send him home.
So she writes to Asha Greyjoy.
The Greyjoy standards are seen cresting the hills two weeks later, and she receives Asha and her contingent in the Hall.
In private, Asha tells her she can’t take Reek. He’s no longer Theon, she says. He’s not the brother she knew.
And he’s not the boy I knew , she thinks.
But she can’t keep Reek here. People would happily see him dead, and she thinks that she is one of those people.
So Asha takes him home. Sansa thinks that out of all the places in the world, the Iron Islands are the best place for him to at least try to heal, especially with his sister by his side.
When Reek leaves, he’s sat on the back of his sister’s horse. He turns back for a second, and Sansa, from her position on the battlements, raises her hand in farewell.
Maybe it’s a trick in the light, but she thinks he’s crying.
When he disappears over the hill, it’s the last she sees of him.
*
Arya is alive.
Where she is, Sansa does not know. But Brienne came across Arya, travelling with the Hound.
Despite Brienne telling her she fought the Hound and killed him, despite her telling her that Arya fled again, she holds hope.
Her sister is alive .
*
Stannis Baratheon is a problem she soon has to deal with.
And she deals with it by going to the Wall.
It’s a sight to behold, so tall and beautiful. It glistens in the sunlight, shines like crystals. Compared to it, Castle Black is a bleak and sad looking castle. It looks downtrodden, lonely and damp, nothing like the great Winterfell.
There’s a small spark in her chest when she realises that Jon is here.
They were never close, but they are siblings. She doesn’t have a lot of them left.
Jon waits for them beyond the gates of the castle, with Lord Stannis and the entirety of the Night’s Watch. By Jon’s side is Ghost, fully grown and standing on level with Jon’s waist. Sansa, for a moment, thinks of Lady and feels a twinge of sadness.
Jon’s face is unreadable as she dismounts her horse. She wonders what he thinks of her, wrapped in silver silks and furs with her crown on her head and the army of the Starks behind her.
She wants to keep impassive, keep up the facade of a queen, but she crumbles and hugs Jon, before the Night’s Watch, the Baratheons and her army. Jon stiffens at first, before he rests his hands on her back.
*
Stannis Baratheon asks for too much. He asks to be King of the Seven Kingdoms.
Sansa seeths. She is Queen in the North, and no Baratheon can take that from her.
So they come to a compromise. Sansa remains the Queen of Winter, in return for her help in taking the Southern kingdoms from the Lannisters.
Sansa smiles.
*
“The Queen in the North?”
She smiles to herself. She stands at the top of the Wall with Jon at her side, looking out over the Wildlands as the sun sets on the horizon.
“Sounds odd, doesn’t it?” she says, more to herself than to him.
“When you think about how you used to be, yes,” Jon says. She glances at him. “Lemon cakes, songs of knights and lords. Where did that go?”
“Where did ‘Eddard Stark’s bastard’ go, Lord Commander?” she asks, and it’s his turn to smile.
“He disappeared a long time ago.”
“So did the girl who liked lemon cakes and songs.”
*
Olenna Tyrell pledges her allegiance.
The Tyrells leave King’s Landing. The betrothal between Tommen and Margaery is dissolved, and the Tyrells retreat to Highgarden. Sansa receives the letter a week later, and accepts without question.
She remembers Olenna’s part in Joffrey’s death, Margaery’s kindness and companionship.
The next time she sees Margaery, swathed in furs and looking miserable, they call each other sister and kiss each other’s cheeks.
Loras joins her Queensguard.
Sansa smiles.
*
When they march upon the Twins, it’s a slaughter for the Freys. Sansa spares them no remorse as she steps through mud watered down with blood. These men murdered her family at her uncle’s wedding. They sowed a wolf’s head onto her brother’s body and threw her mother’s naked body into the river.
Lord Frey’s sons, grandsons, great-grandsons and soldiers die. The old man himself still sits upon his throne in the hall.
Sansa watches his execution; a weight is lifted from her chest.
*
When Jaime Lannister shows up at her camp, the night before they ride south, she is ready to order his death.
But Jaime Lannister instead does something she did not expect: he surrenders to her and offers his allegiance.
Brienne vouches for him, and Jaime becomes the next member of her Queensguard.
*
When they day to march south comes, Sansa does so eagerly.
She rides at the front of her army, her silver armour shining and her crown nestled in her red hair. She holds a banner in her hand, the direwolf of the Starks imprinted upon it.
Soldiers flock to her banner. The Queen of the North, they call. To the Queen in the North.
The south burns. Lannister soldiers are put to the sword, and the gold and red banners bearing the Lannister lion are burnt.
At long last, they stand ready to take King’s Landing, and Sansa Stark smiles to herself.
“Winter is coming, dear Lannisters,” she says. “And it will take you all.”