I'm Elowen Grieve, and I walked into that council dinner with twelve small cups on a tray and a bruise under my cuff.
The pack hall smelled like roast meat and beeswax, and every man at that table had watched me pour his coffee for a year.
Tonight I was not sitting at the end of the table. Tonight I was the one who carried things.
Hesper: Small cups for the council table. And keep your eyes off them while they drink. You look like a dog begging.
Elowen: Yes, ma'am.
Yes ma'am came out of me before I even decided to say it. That is what a year in her house does to a person.
Maddox: You see that? Slow as a Sunday, but she gets there.
Maddox: My Luna, serving the council. Some men pay good money for a maid. I got mine for free.
The laugh went around the table and hit me from every side, and I stood there and held the tray and smiled.
Smiling is the cheapest thing I own. It costs me nothing and it buys me one more night.
My fingers stayed steady the whole way, and that steadiness had cost me a year of learning.
That is the truth nobody puts on a card. I practiced. I got good at it. Being quiet is a skill and I have it.
Hesper: Leave it. Someone will get it. Sit at the side table, Elowen, and don't speak unless you're spoken to.
I picked it up anyway, because my hands needed something to do.
Hesper watched me fold it neat, and her mouth did that little turn it does when she is pleased and does not want to show it.
Maddox: Come here. Closer.
He squeezed right where the wrist bones sit together, hard enough that my hand went dead.
Maddox: You hear them laughing? That's because they know their place and so do you. Say it.
Elowen: I know my place.
I stood in the hallway with my back to the wall and told myself it did not matter, because it was only a joke.
It mattered. It was my whole life, and every man in that room had just heard what it was worth.
Eamon: How long are you going to let them do that to you.
My brother came out of the hall with his jaw set and his hands shaking, and I knew that shake. He got it from our father.
Eamon: My truck's outside. Right now, before the plates are cleared. You don't even have to pack.
Eamon: Come on, El. I'll drive. You don't have to say anything. Just get in.
Elowen: Then what? He'd find me. He always finds me.
Eamon: Let him come. He can find you at the sheriff's house with a badge on the door and me on the porch.
Eamon: El, look at me. The man made you serve his friends tonight. He laughed at you and you said thank you.
Elowen: I can fix it. I know how to make it better. I've always known how.
Elowen: Why does everybody think I'm something to be saved? I'm not a broken thing.
Elowen: He chose me. Do you know what that is, to be chosen when nobody else ever looked twice?
Eamon: He picked you so he could own you. That's not the same thing, and you know it.
Eamon: Then I'll say it plain. I'll be outside in that truck until they clear the last plate.
Eamon: And if you choose him again tonight, El, I won't stop loving you.
Eamon: That's the worst part. I'll just have to watch it happen.
He left first, so I could not see his face, and that was the only kindness either of us could afford.
Hesper: There you are. Stop flouncing about and pour for the empty seat at the end.
I poured. My hand was steady and the wine went in neat, and I smiled like a good mate should.
Maddox: Your brother was out in the hall with you. What did he want?
He did not shout it. He smiled while he asked, and that smile has always been worse than his hands.
Elowen: Nothing. He wanted to know if I was eating enough. You know Eamon.
Maddox: Mm. Then tomorrow you can tell him yourself, because I'm taking his Sunday off you.
Maddox: You don't go to that house anymore. Not unless I'm standing next to you. Nod if you understand.
I nodded, and his hand stayed warm on my shoulder, and from the window I heard a truck engine turn over out on the road.
The headlights came past the window once and did not stop, and then they turned around and came back slow.
He was still out there. My brother was still out there, waiting, because I had asked him to love me and then told him not to.