Chapter 1036: Chapter 1036 - Taming Contentment - 4

Not a long song.

Not elaborate either... Just one verse, four lines in the register of the ceremonial songs the Dravenholm family had used at military events since before most people present were born, the register of things meant to be said once and remembered.

His voice was low, with the resonance of voices that filled a space differently from how they filled it in conversation. The kind of voice that suggested the speaker had been given something and had chosen not to use it, until now. It was unexpectedly good.

What was left unfinished belongs to those who walk ahead. What was given by destiny was wholeheartedly donated to the city that birthed a Diamond Stead. Courage that has nothing to gain from honesty is the only honest kind. Welcome is not given by blood; it is earned by the worthy stud who proves they’re self-defined.

Four lines.

It was about the future built on what others left behind.

About the debt a city owed to someone who had arrived without a name and yet did more than those who had big ones.

About the honesty of courage when it had nothing to gain from being honest.

And about the welcome owed to someone who had demonstrated that deserving it didn’t require having been born to it.

The silence that followed lasted long enough to digest the unexpected good quality and meaning before the applause arrived, it started in the sections closest to the stage and spread outward as the people further back understood what they had just heard.

Several people in the prominent family sections looked at Victor with the expression of someone who had heard something readable in multiple ways and had understood the reading that carried the most weight.

The one that said the eldest Dravenholm prince had just publicly described someone as the natural continuation of what his father had left unfinished. In ceremony language. In front of witnesses. With the weight of the Dravenholm military tradition behind every word.

Victor had the face of someone who had done what needed to be done and needed to change the attention somewhere else immediately.

Selphira was smiling with the unhurried satisfaction of someone who had made a bet, won it, and found the winning price more enjoyable than expected.

♢♢♢♢

The three Dravenholm brothers moved together after the small performance.

Julius first, carrying the 3 small gift boxes Ren had asked him to hold, which several people in the hall had already noticed him carrying without commenting, because Julius Dravenholm carrying something without announcing it meant there was a moment for the announcement already calculated to give those to someone, and asking early would only make the moment arrive before it was perfect.

Arturo beside him with a posture that showed he knew this was one of the moments that people came back to years later when they tried to explain something big or the start of a new era, and who was therefore holding it with more attention than any normal program required.

Victor completed the group, the red mostly gone from his cheeks now, replaced by the composed dignity of someone who had survived his embarrassing part and could be a different presence for the rest of the evening.

The master of ceremonies let them take their position without needing anyone to tell him to yield the space. Some things communicated their own protocol.

Julius spoke.

Not with the official tone he had used for the year’s formal announcements. With the tone of something thought about long enough that the words arrived carrying the weight of their own sincerity, the unprepared speech that had not many grandiloquent words and was said with warmth so stopped sounding prepared.

"Our city has a debt."

He let that sit.

"Not the kind settled with territory, with crystals, or with extra rights, though all of that exists and has been delivered as it should be." He looked at the hall with the full seriousnes he deployed when he wanted what he was saying to reach each person specifically, not the average of the room. "The kind that is acknowledged out loud. In the right place and in front of the right people."

The hall was very quiet.

"The new generations now produce tamers who in previous years would have been exceptions. This year, they were the standard again." A breath. "And within those exceptional tamers, four deserve to be seen more and standing together, so that this chamber understands what they represent, and so that they understand it too."

Julius called the four of them.

The hall watched them arrive.

Larissa with the posture Ren had practiced with her across weeks, which in her arrived without any of the work it would cost him, natural in the way that things were natural when they had been lived rather than learned, the bearing of someone who had always known where her weight was supposed to be and had simply been standing there.

The light in the hall caught the fabric of her dress, Ren’s work, the structure that reflected her light and the brightness that came to her eyes when something pleased her, and held it differently than it held ordinary cloth.

Liora with the combination of energy and lightness that was entirely hers, as though the gravity of the occasion was real and present and also not quite sufficient reason to release the particular way she occupied spaces.

The color in her dress shifted as she moved, the spiritual fire translated into something that appeared when the light was low and wasn’t obvious when it was bright, the kind of detail that rewarded attention without demanding it.

Luna with the exterior composure that Ren had known long enough to be able to read what was underneath it.

The shadows in the fabric moved with her in a way that fabric didn’t, the dark beast’s element woven in functionally as well as aesthetically, something that belonged to her expertise rather than something just placed for the looks.

And Ren.

Who arrived at his place with the posture the Mantis held impeccably and with the expression he had when he was being what he was without thinking about whether he was being it correctly, the unguarded version that Larissa had calculated would produce exactly this effect, in exactly this room, on exactly this occasion.