The walk back through the city was quiet.
Not the operational quiet of people moving through a space they needed to move through without being seen. Something else. The quiet of people who had just come through something large and were carrying it differently now, the way weight distributed itself differently once the thing that had been anticipated for a long time had finally happened and the anticipation was no longer part of it.
Sela walked slightly ahead.
Not because she was leading. Because she understood, with the particular instinct she had always had for the geometry of people, that the space behind her belonged to something she was not part of, at least not in this moment, and that the most generous thing she could do was give it room.
Kael noticed.
