The Black Leather and Wolf-fur.

He chose the black leather and wolf-fur.

When the last lace was drawn tight and the final silver clasp fastened, Jon looked like Winter itself given human shape.

The jerkin was midnight leather, supple yet thick, worked so finely it drank the lantern-light. Across the chest ran subtle tooling (running wolves picked out in matte black thread, almost invisible until the light caught them). From the shoulders spilled a short mantle of direwolf fur, deep charcoal shading to silver at the tips, heavy enough to ward off the deepest northern frost. Beneath it he wore a sleeveless undertunic of smoke-coloured silk that clung to the lines of his arms and chest, the neck high but open just enough to reveal the strong column of his throat.

The trousers were the same black leather, laced at the sides with thin silver cord that flashed when he moved. They sat low on his hips and fitted close down long legs to disappear into high boots of butter-soft doeskin, the cuffs turned down once to show a lining of the same wolf-fur.

A broad belt of dark leather circled his waist, the buckle a simple oval of polished jet. No jewels, no gold, no southern ostentation; only the Stark colours in their purest, most dangerous form.

A slow smile curved Cersei’s lips as she stepped back, gaze sweeping over him like a painter admiring a finished masterpiece. “Gods,” she breathed, voice low with satisfaction. “You look like the North itself come to claim its due.”

Jaime prowled a lazy circle around him, predatory and unhurried, then paused at his shoulder. Her fingers brushed an invisible speck from the wolf-fur mantle before she leaned in, lips grazing the shell of his ear with a wicked smile.

Only then did Jon turn fully to the bronze mirror.

The breath left his lungs in a quiet rush.

The black leather and wolf-fur had turned him into something out of the oldest songs: tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, every line of him sharp enough to cut. The fur mantle framed the pale column of his throat and the hard set of his jaw; the silk beneath clung to the lean muscle of chest and arms like a lover’s hands. His hair fell in a dark spill against the midnight leather, and those storm-grey eyes (older than they had any right to be) looked back at him with a quiet, dangerous stillness.

He looked like the sort of man maidens sighed over in the dark.

The kind of man who could walk past a gaggle of giggling northern girls and leave them flushed and breathless without ever glancing their way. The kind who made southron ladies forget their betrotheds’ names with a single cool look. The kind whose very silhouette in a doorway would have Sansa’s heart racing and Arya’s mouth falling open and every serving girl from here to White Harbor pressing her thighs together under her skirts.

Beautiful the way winter is beautiful: cold, clean, and merciless.

Cersei’s smile was slow and satisfied as she adjusted the fall of the wolf-fur at his shoulder. “Seven save the poor girls in that hall,” she purred. “Half of them will faint dead away the moment you step through the doors.”

The laugh from Jaime was low, warm against the back of his neck. “The other half will be plotting how to sneak into his bed before the night is out,” she said. “Good luck to them.”

Jon said nothing.

He looked like the sort of vision that made young maidens press their thighs together in the dark and whisper forbidden names into their pillows.

Beautiful the way a drawn blade is beautiful: cold, perfect, and promising ruin.