AU IN WHICH THEON DOESN’T TAKE WINTERFELL.
There are whispers in the camps that the girl is the King’s lover.
Theon likes to think he would have been told if that were the case, really, though things have changed since Winterfell, he is told less and less (he is needed less). He hears stories about them, though, among the Northmen, foreign, they say, not to be trusted—Robb listens to her too often, she weakens him, they say.
Theon doesn’t think it would take much to weaken Robb Stark (though perhaps things have changed in that way, too).
“She’s a witch,” one of the men says and Theon’s laughter shakes the tent.
-
“She helped me,” Robb says simply, “I thought it best to pay her family back in kind. She cannot but consent.”
“So you think me a prize, Stark?” Theon shows his teeth when he laughs.
“She hasn’t much of a chance for a good marriage.” Robb smiles tightly. “A lord of the Iron Islands.”
“Now you’re mocking me.” There is a pause. “Is it true that you’ve bedded her?”
Robb’s head lifts suddenly. His jaw shifts and Theon wonders, for a moment, if he’ll draw his sword.
“No.”
Just wanted to, then, he thinks, Robb would have wed her himself, and damn the Freys.
“I wouldn’t want soiled goods, Stark.”
Robb laughs.
“Always so proud.”
-
The wedding is small, a transaction, a passing of goods (Theon wonders if the Westerling girl is what is being traded, or him). Robb stands with his bride, thin little Roslin Frey who shivers under her furs.
Jeyne Westerling is tall and black-haired and when he tries to read her, mouthing out words she doesn’t know, he sees nothing.
She seems almost shy, her words distant, but then she smirks, the expression pulling at her lips and he cannot read her at all.
Theon watches Robb throughout the ceremony. His jaw shifts, rather slightly, but his face doesn’t change.
You Starks, Theon thinks.