Chapter 280

DIANA POV

13 year old Diana bit her lip and finished the last touches on the ritual on the ground.

Once it was finally completed, it glowed like how it was supposed to glow when she had completed it right. If not then the circle won't grow and she would have to draw it all over again.

Seeing that it was glowing, she let out a sigh and plopped back on her butt.

She looked ahead and saw her triplet sisters Lyanna and Sara Snow. They were also on their last ritual circle for the day. A duty given to them by Lord Bolton himself.

She still remembered four months ago when Lord Bolton visited their class and asked for the students with the best hand writing who also have a good shoulder in their head, are not shy to do some hard work for a decent pay.

She almost scoffed at that.

Decent pay from Lord Bolton earned her thrice as much as her own mother did in the brothel in Wintertown. Not to mention that her sisters were earning just a much as her.

Their mother had also stopped working at the Brothel and has settled for working in that large shop where the women made woolen clothes from raw material even if it didn't pay as much.

She could understand why her mother did that.

Being a whore was not a respectful profession, even if she was no longer hurt by her customers thanks to all the laws and regulations put into place by Lord Bolton.

If she didn't knew better then she would have thought that Lord Bolton owned those Brothels himself.

Not only that, they themselves were also coming of age, which meant that being from a respectable family will get them better marriage prospects.

What their mother didn't know was that both her sisters already have a boyfriend from the military and she herself has an eye on a young teacher who teaches in the Village.

Still, it was good to know that their mother cared for them if nothing else.

Of course, Lord Bolton has increase the age of marriage consent from 12 to 15 for girls. Mostly because a lot of young girls around that age die during childbirth because of narrow hips so she and her sister didn't need to worry about marriage for two more years.

She walked up to her sisters and noticed that they were gossiping about Lord Bolton and Lady Ygritte once again.

"The maids say that they saw Lady Ygritte being carried off by Lord Bolton as if she was some sort of prize." Lyanna said with a faraway look. Probably because of her crush on Lord Bolton.

Then again, both Sara, her and half the girls in the School also have a crush on Lord Bolton and the girls that claim they don't just hide it better.

"That is soo romantic." Sara said and she coughed to get their attention.

"If we're done here then we should go to hill house." She said and both her sisters sighed and got up from their place.

After half an hour of walk, accompanied by the Bolton men guarding them, they finally reached the tavern which was just one of the hundreds that Lord Bolton had built in his domain in the past decade.

"Hey Grandpa Hallis. Where's grandma" She said to the old man who ran the tavern on Lord Bolton's behalf.

"Gone to bring hay for the horses in the stable." Grandpa Hallis said, pointing to the Bolton guards whom the horses belonged to.

Lord Bolton had really gone overboard with their security and making sure that they were comfortable. And she was thankful for that. She just hoped that she and her sisters won't get a big head from all the luxuries they were getting.

She nodded at him and they quickly went up to the room which had been rented out for free to them.

They had been living here for a week already and would continue to live for yet another week before moving on to yet another place where they would continue their work of drawing ritual circles on the ground for the Werewood trees.

Their room was large, filled with three beds and three tables and chair and even had a large glass window in it.

A tavern having a glass window of it's own might seem impossible to some people. And it was. Until Lord Bolton found how to create it and now… well she won't say that Glass was common as it was still expensive but it was within the means of the richer of the small folk like that.

It was already evening and hard to see things so she burned the lamp which ran on whale oil.

She and her sisters sat down on the opposite one of their own tables and took out one of the chest plate armor kept at the corner of the room.

"You sure we'll get a nice bonus from this?" Sara asked as she dipped the feather quill in the magical ink and started to carefully draw runes on the armor.

Lyanna nodded "You remember Bethany from the other class." They nodded "Well, she works in a shop with four other kids who are supposed to draw these runes on weapons like swords and halbards. She told him that one of them once worked extra hard and drew some runes on more weapons than he was supposed to. And Lord Bolton doubled his pay at the end of the month. Called it a bonus for hard working employees.���

"I think I once heard the teachers talk about bonus pay as well." She nodded "That if they do their best work then they might get bonus."

"Let's not talk about boring stuff anymore." Sara said with a small frown as she concentrated on her own work "Mark told me that Lord Bolton is going on yet another expedition North of the wall."

They went silent at that, knowing that all their pay came to them thanks to Lord Bolton and if something happened to them…

"Is Mark going as well?" Lyanna asked and Sara scoffed.

"As if… Lord Bolton is only takes the best of the best this time. He won't qualify even if he wanted to go."

"Why do you think they're going beyond the wall so often?" she asked.

Her sisters shrugged "No one truly knows." Sara said "What we do know is that all the lordlings were called up North by our Lord after the last expedition and…"

"And they have been sending more and more workers to the Wall since then." She said and her words brought a grim silence to the room.

"You think there's some King beyond the wall like the History teacher told us about?" Lyanna asked and Sara shrugged.

"Mayheps. Though I doubt that anything could hurt Lord Bolton." Sara said.

"Let's not talk about this any more." She said and both her sisters nodded and went back to their work.

In the silence, she continued to work on drawing the runes and continued to think about why Lord Bolton would go to the North so much and the bad feeling she had in her heart continued to grow.

They were called a few minutes later by Grandpa Hallis for food.

Once dinner was over, they came back to their rooms and went back work for one more hour before they finally got too tired and had to go back to sleep.

And as she laid in her bed, she thought of Lord Bolton and hoped that he'll be safe in this expedition.

Not because she had a crush on him but because she had a feeling that all their lives were riding on his shoulder. And if he fell, then things won't end well for any of them.