Aldric noticed without anyone saying anything. Seiya was running the calculation that people ran when they saw sothing that could have been different, and finding that the answer to "why wasn't it " was more complicated than the question had made it seem.
Not only Luna, three beautiful won. All three with the kind of presence they had, and all three here by choice at so level, because if they were only political pieces had the power to stop this, and if he wasn't to their liking they wouldn't be looking at Ren the way they were looking at him.
'So people have too much luck,' thought Seiya.
Then he corrected himself: it likely wasn't only luck. But he didn't have a good na for what the rest of it was.
Aldric put a hand on his shoulder, briefly.
The universal gesture for: let it go…
♢♢♢♢
So of Luna's uncles, detractors who had survived the dismantling of Orion's faction with enough left over to continue existing as a faction on paper, because they had not directly participated in the coup, had arrived at the ceremony with a specific intention. The betrothal announcent was the mont to do the only thing their current resources permitted: noise. Not much, but the kind of noise that in the right place at the right mont could create enough discomfort to at least slightly damage sothing they would have preferred didn't exist.
They opened their mouths when Julius was giving the announcent.
The sound went nowhere.
Liu had not stopped smiling at any point since Julius began speaking. The sound specialized beasts that made up his system had capabilities that nobody in this hall could approach, and the suppression field was positioned with an exactness that was not coincidence, corresponding precisely to the two sections where Luna's uncles and Liora's uncles were seated.
Liora's uncles, who had also arrived with the sa intention at the sa mont, discovered simultaneously that they had a problem in the vicinity of their trousers that had nothing to do with sound, much to do with wetness and that was urgent and uncontrollable enough to displace any other intention entirely.
Min, at so point between the start of Julius's announcent and the mont Liora's uncles beca aware of their situation with the urgency of people who urgently needed to find a way to cover their pants, had ceased to be visible. The full concealnt capacity of his beasts' combo was one of the things Min rarely needed to use, which ant that when he did, nobody without Ren's level of awareness in the imdiate area knew exactly what had happened or when, only that sothing had changed in their undergarnts unexpectedly and at the worst possible ti.
The sentint of the detractors remained at just that.
Without ruining anything.
♢♢♢♢
What did weigh a bit, and Ren noticed it in the second when the hall's attention redistributed itself toward the conversations and comntary that always followed an announcent of this nature, was what was absent.
Larissa's mother was not in the hall.
It wasn't a logistical absence... It was a posture. And a posture persisted beyond the ceremony, it didn't dissolve when the program ended, couldn't be silenced by Liu or dampened by Min, because it existed in a different space from noise and inconvenience.
Luna's parents couldn't be there for reasons that were circumstance rather than choice. Liora's parents either.
That was also sad, but it was different from choosing not to be there.
Yet Ren stored it.
And then he looked at the three of them.
Larissa, who had noticed the sa thing Ren had at exactly the sa mont and was wearing the face she put on when she was processing sothing she wasn't going to show, because showing it served nothing useful at this specific mont. The face that was doing its job again.
Liora, whose eyes had that particular quality they had when sothing had reached her at the place where things reached her for real, holding that back with the sa decision she had used to hold back the tears when she received the earrings. Present yet contained.
Luna, with the composure Ren knew well enough to read what was underneath it.
All three were standing in the right place.
All three were wearing the dresses he had made.
All three had the crystal earrings he had designed specifically for them, not for this announcent, but for what would co after the military service, when the formality would be real rather than just the beginning of becoming real. Objects that had been made with that future in mind.
Ren moved.
The Mantis held his posture. What was his did the rest.
He positioned himself in front of the three of them with the exactness of soone who had calculated the correct angle, and in the sight of hundreds of families, of the three Dravenholm brothers, of the master of ceremonies who had spent enough years in the profession to have seen nearly everything and who had not seen exactly this, he extended his hand toward all three.
Asking them to dance, a brief, light turn, the traditional signal of acceptance and comfort between betrothed parties. An acknowledgnt of closeness and ease.
The light turn was its own declaration: showing yourself complete, allowing nearness without reservation. Sothing like the kiss that sealed a contract at a wedding, but much lighter for being preliminary. But not only as protocol.
As what it was.
The three of them looked at him.
Larissa was the first to respond, which wasn't a surprise to Ren. She took his hand with the exactness of soone who had also calculated this gesture and was executing it with the precision of sothing verified. But her eyes had sothing in them that no calculation produced.
Liora arrived with the warmth and energy that was entirely hers, the way she entered monts without asuring the space she needed because the space always turned out to be exactly sufficient. Not stepping into the mont so much as already being in it.
Luna arrived last, with the composure she had for the world and without it at the sa ti, both things present simultaneously in the way the things that mattered most to her coexisted in her.
Chaotic as she was, held and unheld at once, controlled and not
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