Follow the rest of the Royal Family

Jon slipped from behind the barrels as the group scattered, his eyes fixed on the queen and her children trailing Lady Stark toward the guest house. The massive wheelhouse lumbered behind them, its gilded oak frame creaking under the weight, forty draft horses straining to pull it through the gates clear as day why the royal progress had crawled north so slow.

He muttered under his breath, "No one will notice me unless I tell them to," and felt the words settle like a veil, the power humming faint but sure. Guards glanced his way without seeing, servants bustled past as if he were empty air. He fell in step a dozen paces back, close enough to catch their voices on the wind.

Lady Stark led the way with measured steps, her auburn hair bound neat under a wool cap, gesturing toward the stone towers rising ahead. The queen walked beside her, chin high and skirts brushing the snow, her voice carrying sharp over the yard's din.

"This endless trek north—delays at every river crossing, mud sucking at the wheels like beggars' hands. And for what? My husband insists on dragging us to this frozen waste, as if his old friendships outweigh the realm's needs." She waved a gloved hand back at the wheelhouse, its double decks swaying. "Robert could have come alone, spared us the ordeal."

Lady Stark nodded, her tone even and courteous, hands clasped before her. "The roads grow harsher the farther north, Your Grace. Winterfell welcomes you all the same—we've prepared warm hearths and hot baths to ease the journey's toll." Her words held sympathy in their shape, but her eyes stayed polite, fixed ahead without lingering.

The older boy—the one Jon pegged as the crown prince from his fine velvet cloak and the Baratheon stag embroidered in gold—trailed a step behind, lips curled in a thin smirk. He looked younger than Robb's age, tall for it, with Lannister gold in his hair and a face too pretty for the north's rough edges.

"Father cares more for the dead than the living," he said, voice high and edged with mockery, glancing at his mother for approval. The observation rang true enough—the king had brushed aside rest for the crypts—but something fouled the boy's bearing, a twist in his posture like a blade half-drawn, eyes gleaming with petty cruelty rather than honest grief.

Jon's skin prickled at the sight, a gut sense of rot beneath the polish, even as the queen hushed him with a sharp look.

They reached the guest house doors, guards swinging them wide, and Jon hung back in the shadow of a cart, the power holding firm. Lady Stark ushered them inside with more polite assurances of mulled wine and fresh bread.

The queen sighed, stepping over the threshold, her complaints trailing off into murmurs about southern comforts lost, but the prince's sneer lingering in his mind like a bad taste.