The crowd didn’t leave all at once.
It thinned the way crowds always do after the main thing has happened, a few people at a ti, peeling off toward the lanes with their lanterns and their opinions, voices carrying back in fragnts through the dark. Soone near the gate was telling their neighbor the whole story with dramatic hand gestures, clearly improving several parts, which didn’t actually happen. A woman from two houses down had finally gotten close enough to hear and was now standing with her arms crossed and her mouth slightly open, deciding what she thought about Lys marrying Selene.
John’s servants drifted away without being told. The clubs had been at their sides for a while now, and by the ti they left, they were just carrying them while grumbling about not being able to use them at all.
Bezos ca past Lys on the porch steps and stopped. He stood there for a mont, working his jaw slightly, like a man composing sothing in his mind he’s not sure how to deliver. Then he put one heavy hand on Lys’s shoulder, squeezed once, and said, "Good luck, boy," in a voice that contained, sowhere underneath the gruffness, a reluctant acknowledgnt that sothing tonight had gone in a direction he hadn’t expected and wasn’t entirely unhappy about. So, in other he was letting Lys know that he had changed his mind about him. Now, he’s not just so random village boy to him anymore. He has earned his respect.
Then he went down the steps and across the yard without looking back.
Vivian paused in front of Selene. She looked at her for a long mont and gave her the evaluating look she used for everything, and Selene also looked back at her without flinching. Neither of them said anything while staring at each other awkwardly. Soone might say that both of them were telepathic or sothing.
But then Vivian nodded, once, with the careful respect of one woman recognizing another who has just done sothing difficult. After that, she also left.
The yard was emptied just like that.
-----
Inside, the kitchen felt different with the night winding down around it. The lantern was burning lower, the last of the oil going. The hearth was cold. The mugs on the table had been cold for half an hour at least, but nobody noticed. Nobody was in the mood for drinking tea anymore.
Elara moved on autopilot, picking up things and putting them in slightly different places, refilling cups that nobody drank from, her hands needing sothing to do because the rest of her hadn’t quite landed yet. Her eyes were still slightly red at the edges from her earlier crying.
Mira sat in her chair at the table and looked at her brother the way you look at soone after they’ve done sothing that you still can’t fully account for, not with admiration exactly, not with anger, just with the deep, slightly dazed attention of soone who has watched a thing happen and is still waiting for it to make sense.
Selene was at the window. She was standing sideways to the glass, not quite looking out, not quite looking in, her arms loose at her sides now instead of folded. The lantern light caught the side of her face. She was looking at the last two lanterns still visible in the lane, moving away, getting smaller.
Lys ca to stand a few feet from her.
He didn’t say anything right away. He just stopped there, and the silence between them was different from all the silences of earlier. Those had been deliberate, strategic, filled with things being carefully not-said. But this one was just the quiet of two people at the end of a very long night with nothing left to say to each other.
"You okay?" he said.
Selene’s eyes moved from the window to him. She looked at him for a mont. "No," she said. Then, after a breath: "But I’m not, not okay either." She took a short silence before saying, "I just don’t know if I really made the decision, or if the decision took ."
Lys thought about that. "Probably sowhere between the two."
She turned back to the window. "Maybe."
He thought for a while before saying again, "For what it’s worth, what you said in there. About your father. That took sothing to say, for a woman like you. So, good job back there. For standing up to him."
Selene was quiet for a mont, thinking if there was a hidden aning behind his saying this. Then she said, without looking at him: "You might have humiliated once." Her voice was even, not threatening, just stating terms she needed to state. "But don’t think for one second that I’m going to let you order around. I’m not going to be anyone’s pet. Not his. Not yours. Not anymore."
"I know," Lys said.
"I an it."
"I know you an it."
She looked at him again, checking for a particular expression in his face; she thought she might find it now. But whatever she found in his face, she held it for a mont and then let it go.
Sara appeared from the doorway. She had her coat back on, which ant she’d already made a decision about what happened next. She looked at Selene and said, without preamble: "You should stay at my house tonight, Miss Selene."
Selene turned toward her.
"Your father left in a mood," Sara said, her voice practical and even. "And you know him better than anyone in this room. If you go ho tonight, it might not go well."
There was a short silence. Selene’s jaw shifted slightly. She knew Sara was right. The knowing was visible in the way she didn’t argue it.
So, she gave one small nod.
Sara looked at Lys and raised her eyebrow in the way that ant: we are going to talk about all of this, at length, very soon. Making Lys give an apologetic glance to her. Then she opened the door and let the cold night air in, and she and Selene went out together, with the door closed behind them.
The kitchen beca real quiet this ti.
Lys turned around.
He found Elara and Mira both looking at him.
Elara had set down whatever she’d been holding, and Mira had her elbows on the table, her chin propped in her hands, her eyes very steady.
The look on their faces was one he recognized. It was the look that ant the night was over, the crisis had passed, and now it was ti for the other conversation. Now was the ti for explaining himself to them.
He sat down at the table.
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