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Her eyes are accusing, even when she does not look at him. She does not voice her doubts, her fears, and most of all, her anger, but he only needs to meet her eyes to see all that and more.
It had been the right thing to do. With his cloak fastened around her shoulders, there was naught left to touch him. The kraken spread its eight arms wide around Winterfell, and in his mind's eye he saw it crumbling to its foundations, until none were left but he and his bride.
That day, the cold had flushed her cheeks a rosy red, but her lips were thin and colourless, and she had shivered underneath her thick cloak, unbecoming of a Stark. Her lips had not regained their colour after he had kissed her, and she had not smiled once during their feast. A pitiful excuse for one, but still a feast. She had grasped the knife in her right hand tightly, and he had wondered when she would turn to bury it deep within his chest. She never did, however, and instead he buried himself deep inside her that night, while she left behind scratches on his shoulders and the taste of salt in his mouth.
“Why?” she dares ask when the sun has risen, and cold air touches their skin, hers pale underneath his hands, breasts soft, mouth sweet.
“There was no other way,” he tells her, and that is final.
“There was,” she says, rising despite his protests. “You simply closed your eyes and pretended not to see.”
And he sees it in her eyes, from that day forth. Sees it when he breaks his fast, when he aims arrow after arrow, when he has bloodied his hands, when he has spent himself inside her and her eyes are so far away she might as well be across the Narrow Sea.
Snow falls; Winterfell is quiet. He watches her break off ice crystals near the window, her body only covered in a robe, but she doesn't look back, and simply lets the ice melt in her hands.
One day she will be his Queen, beautiful and strong, cold as ice, pure as freshly fallen snow. She will not yield, or bend, or break. That is what he sees when she brings her cold wet hands back to him, dripping onto the furs, and he shivers when she touches his face. A Queen she will be, he thinks when she traces a finger down his chest, her face impassive.
He brings her face closer to his, fingers wrapped around her auburn curls, and she is Ned Stark's daugher just as much as she is his wife. “Don't,” she says, and it is only when his fingers wrap around the hilt of his sword that he knows what she means.
He can't look around without noticing familiar faces carrying unfamiliar expressions; a face he recognises in his chambers, that he feels when he lowers his head into his hands. A face he doesn't wish to see, not today, or any day. Don't, she said. He does, because it's the only thing he knows how to do.
A raven arrives. And another. And yet another. From Karhold, from the Wall, from Riverrun, from Dragonstone, from anywhere ravens are likely to be sent, they appear.
He reads them. He burns them. He doesn't kill the ravens. He has no interest in the contents of the letters, but he might have use of the birds.
The faces of Winterfell's occupants are impassive now, and he attempts to scratch the growing itch inside his body with all he can find. There is wine a-plenty, and some days he cannot carry himself to bed, watches over the walls with weary eyes while snow flakes drift into his hair, and melt into his neck. Other days, he leans over his wife in bed, and her legs are wrapped around his waist, and he moves so, so slowly, until he feels like he can barely contain himself, as if he might split out of his own skin if he doesn't.
Her lips taste less of salt and more of ale, today, and the days that follow.
He is awoken by Wex one morning, quietly shaking him by the shoulder – but then his squire is always quiet, his lips stretching around his teeth in humourless grins whenever he glances at him. Wex points at the door, at him, his mouth shaping around a word he doesn't understand.
His wife lies asleep by his side, her mouth slightly parted, a bare shoulder just peeking out from underneath the furs. He needs to resist the temptation to reach out and touch; instead, he slips out of bed and pulls on a pair of breeches, and a tunic.
Compared to his sister's armour and boiled leather, however, he feels naked and underdressed. “I heard you took a bride,” she says, and he pretends not to notice the hand resting on her axe, because he can only imagine that blade buried in places it shouldn't be.
“I did,” he says, for the first time allowing some pride to bubble up. If he had done one thing right, it had been to marry her.
“Made a saltwife of a Stark, eh,” Asha says, grinning lazily. “Now I know what you really wanted when you came back to us, talking all those big words about Winterfell...”
Maybe he shouldn't have, but he had thought about it a hundred times over, and more, what it would be like, to have her at his side – but none of his fancies had been like this, none ended with her shaking shoulders, or her downturned mouth.
“Take her back with you, to the Islands,” Asha says, and it's not a request, but a command. He imagines Winterfell abandoned, gathering dust and snow, and he can't, just as he can't imagine her face in his home (or the place that was supposed to be). “Come with me,” Asha urges, the amused undertone gone from her voice.
When he strides back into his chambers later that morning, she looks at him wearily over her little brother's head; the little brother that will be an heir if Brandon Stark does not survive the war, and it is likely he will not. Crippled children make poor lord commanders, Theon knows, and it won't be long before he is taken in battle.
“I won't come,” she says, calm but firm.
“You must,” he replies, his eyes steady on the child who has his fingers curled in auburn hair, and sees another, smaller, with his eyes and her hair, and a yearning for the sea only those with salt in their blood can feel.
“Then not today.” He knows she would ask for another week, if they had the time for it, and if she had opened her mouth, he doubts if he would have been able to deny her. But he did not even have a day when he left Pyke, much less a week, so he considers his offer generous enough, and leaves the siblings alone to grieve for the home they'll leave on the morrow.
Robyn Stark is a child of winter and daughter of wolves, but she may yet rule the stormy seas and become a mother of krakens.