The scolding didn't start loudly.
That was almost worse. Mira leaned forward on her elbows and said, in a very reasonable voice: "So. You walked out onto the porch. Into a crowd with clubs. And casually invited them inside, as if knowing what would happen, and you just." She gestured with one hand. "Did all of that?"
"I handled it," Lys said calmly.
"You got engaged, Lys." Mira was a little angry while saying that.
"I handled it." Lys still played the cool card in front of them. Trying to look like he had everything in control from the get-go, which they weren't really buying.
Elara sat down on the other side of him, and when she spoke, her voice had that particular quality it got when she was trying to stay calm, and the effort of it was visible. "You could have been dragged out of this house tonight, Lys. You understand that, right? They had clubs. There were dogs with them, too. What if something happened to you?"
"It's okay, Mom."
"No, it's not okay. Not okay at all, Lys. Something horrible could have happened tonight. And we wouldn't be able to do anything to save you."
In his defence, Lys said, "Sara was losing ground, Mom. I had to do something."
"You could have stayed inside like she asked you to!"
"And then what? Let her give up the guild authority to John to buy my way out of trouble? I know she would have done that tonight for sure if I hadn't done something. Sara would have lost everything she worked for, and the whole village would have suffered for it. That wasn't happening. Not on my watch."
Elara opened her mouth. But then she closed it when she found no counterargument powerful enough. But she still spoke, "That's not the point, Lys. The point is you made a decision that affected all of us, and you didn't tell anyone what you were doing."
"Uhh, if you remember perfectly, there wasn't exactly any time to hold a family meeting, Mom."
Mira pointed at him. "Don't be clever right now."
"I'm not being clever."
"You have a face when you're being clever. You made that face when you were at the market doing that. And now you're making that face, too."
Lys instantly changed his facial expression by trying to calm himself, not letting her have the satisfaction of catching him red-handed this easily.
Elara reached over and put her hand over his on the table, and her voice shifted, the frustration still there, but something softer underneath it coming through. "I know you were trying to protect us. I know that's what you do. But when you walked out that door tonight, I didn't know if you were coming back in through it or being dragged out by your collar." Her hand tightened slightly. "You scared me, Lys."
He looked at her with an apologetic look. "I know. I'm sorry."
"What's saying sorry gonna change. Now you're engaged, Mira said, from his other side, still in that extremely reasonable tone that was much more unsettling than shouting would have been. "To that priest's daughter, who hates you."
"She doesn't hate me." Lys tried to correct her.
"She clearly said she hated you. I was standing right there, I heard her say it."
"She said she hated me a… little. That's different."
Mira stared at him. "That is not different. That's the same thing, just sounding different."
"Mira….."
"You're engaged to someone who hates you a little and has conditions and her own room, and you agreed to all of it in front of her father and two council members and then you announced it publicly on the porch." She sat back in her chair. "Lys. I need you to understand that this is a completely insane thing that happened tonight."
"I know."
"Do you really know?"
"Yes."
"And you're just." She gestured at him. "Sitting there."
"What do you want me to do, Mira? I'm very tired," he said.
Which was the truest thing he'd said in the last ten minutes, and also an understatement, too. The tiredness had been coming on since somewhere around the middle of the conversation with John, a slow, creeping heaviness that he'd been pushing back the way you push back at a door that's trying to close on you.
For the last hour, it had been at the edges of everything, pressing in on him. Now, with the crisis over and the room being too quiet and nobody left to hold himself steady for, it was sitting directly behind his eyes like something with weight.
His thoughts were coming slower than they should have been. He was aware of it, the way you're aware of fog when you're trying to see through it, and he knew what it was.
Elara was still talking. Something about responsibility, and about not making decisions unilaterally, and about how this was their family too, and they deserved to know things before they happened. All of which was correct, and all of which he fully intended to engage with properly, but not now, maybe tomorrow, when he could actually think properly with a clear focus.
He stood up suddenly, shocking both of the women. They stopped talking, seeing his sudden odd behaviour.
He looked at his mother, and then at his sister, and his voice came out genuine, if a little slower than usual. "You're both right. I should have told you. I'm sorry for scaring you." he took a short breath. "You can tell me everything else that's wrong with what I did. And I'll hear all of it. But I need to hear it tomorrow, because right now I genuinely cannot keep my eyes open."
Mira narrowed hers. "Huh, what are you talking about?!"
"Let's talk tomorrow," he said, not unkindly, already moving toward the hallway.
He made it to his room, pushed the door shut with his shoulder, and got approximately as far as sitting on the edge of the bed before the world went dark in the clean, immediate way of someone whose body has been waiting patiently for hours and has now simply decided the waiting is finished.
With a Thud sound, he just fell on the bed with his eyes closed. And the world shut down for him instantly.