No amount of rich food and wine could lead the masquerade guests to forget what had brought them all there. They faced a war on two fronts and neither could be covered up with silks or made pretty by even the most exquisite of masks. If some personal tensions were eased, other, newer ones were found amidst the dancing and feasting. But for the sake of the Armistice, none had led to violence. The masquerade remained a peaceful affair hours after it began.
Guests moved in and out of the Queen’s ballroom in that time. It was not an event open to the public - the rabble of King’s Landing would get that close to the leaders of the Seven Kingdoms - but the masks made it difficult to fully ensure those within the walls were always the ones meant to be there. Mixed in among the wolves, lions, dragons, and roses were those of lesser known origins.
A hooded grey figure, whose mask had the hooked beak of some massive bird, threaded their way between the tables. They lingered briefly near one of the bards who sang about the Dragon Queen, then another who had a song of green fire that could only be the day the Sept of Baelor had been consumed by it. The figure seemed to speak to no one, nor did they linger anywhere overlong. Should anyone grant them attention, they would see the cloaked guest moving closer and closer to the table reserved for the Queen and her family. Plenty of others had done the same over the course of the evening, just as they’d all donned strange masks, so the grey stranger (if they were indeed a stranger at all) was not alone.
This guest went largely unnoticed. They weren’t wearing a mask swearing them to any house, nor was there any other indication of their sympathies. It was a guest people might notice only in retrospect - and by the time it rose in conversation, the figure was gone.
