Chapter 12: The Kraken's Envy
Theon Greyjoy drank alone in his chamber, staring at a letter that had arrived three weeks ago and remained unanswered. The parchment bore his father's seal—the golden kraken of House Greyjoy pressed into black wax—and words that cut deeper than any blade.
Return to Pyke. Prove yourself worthy of your heritage. Or be forgotten as the wolf's pet you've become.
Through his window, the courtyard rang with sounds of Kole training new recruits. The Iron Wolf's voice carried clearly in the morning air—commanding, confident, magnetic in ways that drew loyalty like iron filings to a lodestone. Everything Theon should have been but wasn't.
The wine tasted bitter on his tongue. Three cups had given him courage; the fourth would give him stupidity. He pushed the bottle away and stood on unsteady legs, decision crystallizing in his mind like ice forming on still water.
Time to end this charade.
He found Kole in the armory, alone for once, checking the edge on a blade that gleamed with the impossible sharpness only the Iron Wolf could achieve. Theon's entrance echoed in the stone chamber, and Kole looked up with the wary alertness of someone who'd learned to expect trouble from unexpected sources.
"Theon." The greeting was neutral, carefully polite. "Something you need?"
"Answers." Theon closed the distance between them, wine making him bolder than wisdom would recommend. "About you. About what you really are."
"I'm Lord Stark's ward, same as you."
"No." The word came out sharper than intended. "Same situation, maybe. But not the same at all. You're not one of them, you know. Not really. You're a ward—a hostage with a prettier name. But they worship you while they tolerate me."
Kole set down his sword with deliberate care. "Theon, you've been drinking—"
"Of course I've been drinking! You think I could say this sober?" Theon's laugh had ugly edges. "Do you know what it's like? Watching someone waltz in with convenient memory loss and steal everything you worked for?"
"I didn't steal anything."
"Didn't you? Robb trusts you more than me. The guards follow your orders without question. Even Bran looks at you like you hung the moon and stars." Theon's hands shook with more than wine. "I was raised here. I bled for this family. You showed up two years ago and became the golden boy overnight."
Kole's grey eyes held something that might have been pity. "Theon—"
"Don't. Don't give me sympathy from the high ground you built on my back." Theon pulled the letter from his doublet, waving it like a weapon. "My father sent this. Orders to come home and prove myself worthy of bearing his name."
"And you're considering it."
"I'm going." The words fell like stones into still water. "Tomorrow. Before dawn. Before I have to explain myself to anyone who might try to stop me."
Kole's face went very still. For a moment, his composure cracked, and Theon glimpsed something desperate in those enhanced features.
"Don't go to Pyke," Kole said quietly. "Your father will never see you as anything but a tool. Stay here where you're—"
"Where I'm what? Second to you? The spare son nobody wants?" Theon laughed bitterly. "I'd rather be hated as a true Ironborn than pitied as a failed wolf."
"That's not what—"
"It's exactly what!" Theon's voice cracked like breaking ice. "Every day I stay here, I become less of what I was and more of what they want me to be. At least on Pyke, I'll know where I stand."
He turned toward the door, letter clutched in his fist like a lifeline to a drowning man. But Kole's voice stopped him before he could flee.
"If you go, you'll become something you hate. The Iron Islands won't welcome back the boy who left—they'll forge you into a weapon for their wars."
Theon looked back over his shoulder, meeting those strange grey eyes one final time. "Maybe that's what I need to become."
The conversation ended there, but its echoes followed Theon through the corridors of Winterfell as he made preparations for departure. He packed light—a few personal items, his bow, the clothes on his back. Everything else belonged to his time as a Stark ward, and he intended to leave that life behind completely.
From his window that night, he watched Kole emerge onto the battlements for his evening patrol. The Iron Wolf moved like liquid shadow, enhanced senses scanning for threats that normal eyes couldn't detect. Beautiful, deadly, impossible.
Everything Theon had wanted to be and never could.
The irony was exquisite. They were both hostages, both outsiders, both trying to prove themselves worthy of names and families that had never truly accepted them. But where Theon had spent years earning nothing more than grudging tolerance, Kole had achieved legendary status in months.
Because he had power. Real, undeniable, impossible power.
During their confrontation, when Theon had raised his voice in anger, every iron nail in the armory had shifted slightly toward Kole's position. The movement was subtle—anyone else might have dismissed it as imagination—but Theon had been watching for signs of the supernatural since the day Kole arrived.
He'd seen weapons move when the Iron Wolf was emotional. Watched blades cut through steel that should have turned them aside. Witnessed wounds heal at rates that defied every law of nature and medicine.
The stories were true. All of them. Kole wasn't just unusually skilled or remarkably lucky. He was something else entirely, something that belonged in children's tales rather than the real world.
And Theon would never be able to compete with that.
So he wouldn't try. He would go home to Pyke, reclaim his birthright, and prove himself worthy through conquest rather than servitude. The Iron Islands were stirring—he'd heard the whispers, read between the lines of his father's correspondence. War was coming to the Seven Kingdoms, and the Ironborn would take their share of glory.
Perhaps more than their share, if they were clever about it.
Dawn found Theon in the stables, saddling his horse while the castle still slept. No farewells, no explanations, no last-minute attempts at reconciliation. He would simply disappear like morning mist, leaving behind only questions and the fading echo of hoofbeats on stone.
But as he led his mount toward the gates, a figure stepped out of the shadows.
Kole stood silhouetted against the rising sun, already fully dressed despite the early hour. His enhanced senses had probably detected Theon's movements long before normal hearing would have registered anything unusual.
"So this is how it ends," Kole said quietly. "No goodbye to the family that raised you?"
"They'll understand. Eventually." Theon swung into his saddle, looking down at the Iron Wolf from horseback. "Take care of them. You're better suited for the role anyway."
"Theon—"
"Don't." Theon gathered his reins, horse dancing with eagerness to be moving. "We both know this was inevitable. I just wish it had happened sooner."
He rode through Winterfell's gates without looking back, carrying nothing but clothes, weapons, and the bitter knowledge that he would never be enough for the life he was leaving behind.
Behind him, Kole watched until horse and rider disappeared into the morning haze that clung to the road south. When they were gone, he whispered words that the wind carried away like smoke:
"I'm sorry, Robb. I tried."
The raven arrived that afternoon, carrying news that made Kole's enhanced senses scream warnings. Bran had been practicing his archery in the godswood when his arrow went wide, striking a tree with unusual force. When they'd gone to retrieve it, they'd found something that shouldn't have been there.
A cache of weapons hidden in a hollow trunk. Swords and axes marked with the flayed man sigil of House Bolton.
Kole stared at the letter until the words blurred together, his tactical mind working through implications that led to conclusions he didn't want to reach. The Boltons were positioning assets within Winterfell's walls, preparing for something that required local weapons stores.
Betrayal was coming from within. Not just from the Iron Islands, but from the North itself.
He found Maester Luwin in his tower, bent over ledgers that recorded the castle's daily business. The old man looked up as Kole entered, grey eyes sharp with the intelligence that had made him invaluable to three generations of Starks.
"The weapons cache," Kole said without preamble. "What's your assessment?"
"Troubling. Very troubling." Luwin set down his quill, giving the question his full attention. "House Bolton has always been... problematic. But open treachery? Storing weapons within Winterfell's walls suggests planning on a scale that frightens me."
"What kind of planning?"
"The kind that assumes Winterfell will change hands in the near future." Luwin's voice carried the weight of years spent reading political undercurrents. "Someone believes Lord Robb's campaign will fail. That the castle will need new management."
Kole felt a familiar chill between his shoulder blades. The cosmic curse prevented him from speaking directly about the Red Wedding, but he could feel its approach like a winter storm gathering on the horizon.
"Double the guard rotations," he said finally. "Quietly. And have Harwin conduct loyalty assessments of all castle staff. Anyone with connections to questionable houses gets watched."
"Including House Bolton?"
"Especially House Bolton."
That night, alone in his chamber, Kole stared out at stars that had guided navigators for millennia while his enhanced mind worked through scenarios and possibilities. Theon was gone, carrying resentment and knowledge back to the Iron Islands. The Boltons were positioning weapons for some future betrayal. War ground on in the South, bleeding the North dry while enemies gathered in the shadows.
And somewhere in the distance, growing closer each day, the true threat prepared to sweep down from beyond the Wall like winter given form and malice.
He had prevented nothing. Changed nothing. The great wheel of fate continued its inexorable turning, carrying everyone he cared about toward destruction despite his best efforts to alter their course.
But perhaps that was the point. Perhaps the cosmic force that had brought him to Westeros didn't want him to prevent catastrophe—it wanted him to survive it. To be the rock against which the waves broke, the shelter where the worthy could find refuge when everything else fell apart.
The Iron Wolf would endure. And in enduring, would ensure that something of worth survived the darkness ahead.
Winter was coming, carried on the wings of betrayal and the tide of ancient malice.
But this time, when the wolves howled, they would have steel in their teeth and fire in their hearts.
The North would remember.
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