That she needn't worry over it

Lady Stark’s flabbergasted admission scraped out of her, leaving her voice roughened as if the truth had cost skin. Her shoulders slackened by the smallest fraction—a slip she likely hadn’t intended—and the shift struck flint against thought.

Placing him among the royals would set tongues moving in every hall from the Rills to the Barrowlands. You could almost see the lords bent over their cups, mead sloshing as they traded glances, weighing the bastard’s nerve. Some would murmur about the move as though it were a riddle with a blade tucked inside, wondering what hidden bargain or quiet threat had cleared a place for him between Baratheon and Lannister gold.

Servants would pass each other narrow looks across the scullery tables, their hands busy while their eyes betrayed the gossip simmering beneath. In the winter town, smallfolk would draw closer around their fires, trading tales of favouritism and quiet treachery—wondering if Snow had slipped a venomous word into the Queen’s ear or bartered some northern truth for a place above his station.

Such doubts would creep through the keep like cold seeping under a door, settling into conversations and tightening old alliances until every corner held a new suspicion. Each step he took would leave behind a wake of murmurs—questions about what drove him, what he deserved, and whether he had any claim at all to the scraps of power laid out before the crown.

He couldn’t allow that to take root.

“Unless I will it,” Jon said, his voice even and unhurried. A quiet **** threaded through the words, steady as pressure building beneath frozen ground. “No one will question why I’m there.”

The room changed in the sentence’s wake—subtle, but unmistakable. A faint tension rippled along the walls, as though the air had tightened to hold the weight of what he’d released, his intent slipping outward and taking root.

Lady Stark blinked, the movement slight but enough to crack her composure. A flicker of irritation crossed her face, chased quickly by a moment of uncertainty—as though she were trying to grasp a thought that kept slipping from her reach. Acceptance settled in after it, quiet and uninvited, like something that had slipped past her guard.

“It… doesn’t feel out of place,” she said, the words dragging as though they’d been pressed out of her. Her brows drew together, unsettled by her own conclusion. “Everything in me says it ought to, but the sense won’t hold.”

His power pressed further, quiet but insistent, stripping away the resistance she’d tried to muster.

Her shoulders loosened, the rigid set of her spine easing by degrees. The strain that had tightened her features ebbed until her expression looked smoothed over, the earlier edge gone as if she'd misplaced it.

“And it makes no real difference anyway,” she said, her tone softening into something muted, almost inattentive. Whatever worry she’d held a moment before had thinned to nothing. “Let it be. There’s no sense in troubling ourselves over it.”

“M’lady Stark,” Della said, her voice even though a hint of steel rang beneath it, matching the small shift of her chainmail, “if that is all, I can escort Lord Stark’s natural-born son back to his chambers.”

Lady Stark’s eyes snapped toward her. Annoyance flashed across her face, quick and sharp, before she flicked a hand in dismissal and turned back to the scattered parchments waiting on the table behind her.

“Yes, that’s all,” Lady Stark said, her words trimmed short. “Take Snow. I have other matters to deal with.”

Della’s jaw tightened for a heartbeat, the only sign of what she swallowed back. She didn’t look to Lady Stark again. Instead, her gaze shifted to Jon, the slight tilt of her brow asking permission rather than seeking orders from the mistress of the room.

Jon answered with a single, decisive nod.

That was all she needed. Della turned sharply on her heel, the movement crisp and practiced, and guided him from the solar without offering Lady Stark another glance.

The corridors slipped past in streaks of torchlight and the rush of servants weaving through their own errands, bootsteps ringing against the stone as they made their way to his chamber.

Della pushed the door open and stepped aside, giving him the space to enter. Once he crossed the threshold, she followed, slid the bar into place, and let it drop with a low, final thud.

The latch had barely settled before Della’s control snapped.

She spun on her heel, boots scraping across the rushes as though Lady Stark still occupied the room. Her gloved hands clenched so tightly the leather creaked, knuckles whitening beneath the seams. A sharp breath tore out of her as she paced the narrow space, each stride clipped and restless, shoulders bunching with pent-up fury.

“How dare she speak to you like that?” The words came out in a rough, controlled snarl, the kind forged from restraint rather than volume. She raked a hand through her hair only to resume pacing, steps growing quicker, sharper. “Treating you like some mutt she can send off with a flick of her hand—spitting out ‘Snow’ like it’s filth.”

She stopped abruptly, jaw tight, chest rising and falling with the effort to keep herself contained. Her fist thudded once against her thigh, the strike muffled by leather.

“If she weren’t Lord Stark’s wife—Seven help me—if this weren’t her hall…” She hissed hard, teeth bared in a silent snarl. “I’d have shut that smug mouth of hers the moment she dared. No one addresses you that way. Not while I’m standing.”

Perched on the edge of the bed, Jon watched Della’s pacing carve restless lines through the small room. A tight pull gathered low in his gut as her fury snapped through the air—sharp enough that he half-expected it to scorch her before touching anyone else. Yet beneath the worry, a quiet warmth unfurled, steady and unfamiliar, drawn out by the fierce loyalty she tossed at his feet without a second thought.

The memory of how he’d earned that loyalty soured the feeling, a bitter thread running under the warmth, but it didn’t dim what stood before him.

Della halted mid-stride as if something had anchored her to the floor. The raw energy she carried narrowed to a single point when her gaze locked onto his, heat gathering rather than fading. She moved toward him with deliberate steps, shoulders setting into the unmistakable shape of a fighter making a promise.

“If you ever want it done,” she said, her voice dropping into something low and certain, “give the word. Consequences be damned—I'll plant my fist in Lady Stark’s face for your sake.”

Jon stood, the movement measured, a quiet charge gathering beneath his skin that made the air feel tighter around him. His expression stayed hard, controlled, as he held her stare.

“Lady Stark is mother to my trueborn siblings,” he said, each word chosen with care, the firmness in his voice leaving no room for argument.

The rest he kept behind his teeth. Normally he would have said that harming her would wound them as well, but with the power humming through him, he didn’t dare give it anything it could twist into action.