It took several minutes for the room to find anything resembling calm.
Below them, they could hear the muffled sounds of Marcel and Sir Carwyn carrying Cian down the narrow stairs, his thin, pained whimpers mixing with the heavier tread of boots on old wood until a door closed somewhere on the ground floor and the tavern settled back into the heavy silence of a winter night.
When the last echo of his voice was gone, the quiet that remained felt less like peace and more like the hush that preceded the breaking of a dam.
Ashlynn stood in the middle of the room with her hands at her sides, and she couldn't quite make them stop trembling.
