Chapter 117 Dinner

Chapter 117 Dinner
POV: Carly
Seven o'clock arrived faster than she was ready for.
She had spent the afternoon in her room reading through the notes she had taken during Niko's two hour briefing, which she had written in the back of her grimoire in the shorthand she used for things she needed to actually retain. Names. Relationships. Dynamics. The things to watch for and the things to stay out of.
She had memorized them.
She had put her grimoire in the desk drawer and looked at herself in the wardrobe mirror and told herself she was ready.
She was not ready.
She was going anyway.
She changed into a dark burgundy dress that was not as formal as the navy but was more deliberate than casual and had been the third thing she had pulled from the wardrobe before landing on it. Her hair was down. Small gold earrings. The bracelet she always wore. She looked like herself and that was the point.
She knocked on the adjoining door at five to seven.
He opened it and she watched him look at her with the expression that she had stopped trying to be unaffected by because being unaffected by it was no longer possible.
"You look beautiful." He said.
"Thank you." She said. "You look terrified."
"I am not terrified." He said.
"Your jaw is doing the thing." She said.
He touched his jaw. "It's not doing a thing."
"It absolutely is." She said. She stepped forward and straightened his collar, which did not need straightening, because she needed something to do with her hands and because touching him in small unnecessary ways had become a habit she had no intention of breaking. "We're going to be fine."
He looked at her.
"You don't know that." He said.
"I know." She said. "But I'm saying it anyway." She stepped back. "Ready?"
He looked at her for one more second.
"Yes." He said.
They walked out together.

The dining room was on the ground floor in the east wing and it was, like everything else in this house, significantly more than she had braced herself for.
A long table. Dark wood. Sixteen chairs, eight on each side, the kind of formal arrangement that assumed everyone at it knew their place before they sat down. Candelabras running the length of it with actual candles already lit. The walls paneled in dark wood that matched the table and the floor and made the whole room feel deliberately enclosed, like it was meant to be separate from the rest of the house. A room for specific occasions.
The family was already assembling.
She tracked them as she and Niko came in.
Reba first, at the far end near the window, already in conversation with a girl Carly did not know who had the specific quality of someone who had been around this family long enough to move through the space without thinking about it. Not a Monroeson. A guest, or a partner, of one of the others.
Deacon, predictably, was already positioned near the drinks.
A woman she had not yet met was speaking to Deacon with the relaxed ease of a sibling, which meant Freida. She was taller than Carly had expected, dark-haired, with an expression that was doing several things simultaneously and landing on something that looked like genuine warmth. The man beside her, Lucien, was broad-shouldered and dark-eyed and watching the room with the particular quiet of someone who had married into a large family and learned that watching was the most efficient way to get oriented.
And at the head of the table, already seated, Victor Monroeson.
She had been preparing for this and it still required a moment.
He looked exactly like what Niko had described in the specific factual way of something that was being accurately reported rather than interpreted. The architectural quality of the face, the controlled stillness, the specific absence of warmth that was not hostility but was its own kind of cold. His eyes moved to Niko the second they walked in and then, a half second later, to Carly.
She met his gaze directly.
He looked at her for exactly as long as it took to form an impression and then looked back at Niko.
"Nicholas." He said. Just the name. Nothing attached to it.
"Victor." Niko said. Just the name back.
She noted that both of them had used full names and that neither of them had moved toward the other and that the room had registered this exchange without appearing to, everyone's attention technically elsewhere while actually tracking it.
Then Isabel appeared from the kitchen wing doorway.
She had a smile on her face that Carly had not seen at the banquet, or had seen the surface of without seeing the real version. This one was genuine and complicated and aimed directly at Niko, and for just a moment the composure of it dropped into something simply glad.
He was here.
That was what her face said. Whatever else she felt and whatever she had done and not done, her son was here and she was simply glad.
Niko looked at her.
He did not smile back.
But he did not look away.
"Nik." She said. She crossed the room and put her hands on either side of his face the way that mothers did and he stood there and let her. "I'm so glad you came."
"Don't." He said quietly. Not unkindly. Just clearly.
She dropped her hands and nodded once.
She turned to Carly.
"Carly." She said. Like she had been expecting her. Like the name was already familiar. "Welcome to our home."
"Thank you." Carly said. "For having me."
Isabel looked at her with the specific quality of attention she had noted at the banquet. Inventory, but not unkind. More like someone who was deciding something and taking the time to do it properly.
"Dinner in five minutes." She said to the room and moved toward the kitchen wing again.
A hand appeared at Carly's elbow.
She looked.
Freida.
Up close she was warmer than the initial impression, something behind her eyes that was genuinely curious rather than evaluating.
"I've been wanting to meet you since Deacon sent a very chaotic text about a witch at Niko's door." She said.
Carly blinked. "He texted you about that?"
"He texts everyone about everything." Freida said. "It's both his worst quality and his most useful one." She extended her hand. "Freida. This is Lucien."
Lucien nodded. "Good to meet you."
"You too." Carly said.
Freida glanced at Niko beside her and something passed between the siblings that was not words and did not need to be. A whole conversation in one look that Carly could read the shape of even without knowing the specific contents.
She had missed him.
He had missed her.
Neither of them was ready to say that out loud yet.
"Sit with me at dinner." Freida said to Carly. Not a question. A request that had already decided its own answer. "Lucien can manage Deacon, which is a full time occupation, and I want to actually hear something true tonight instead of whatever everyone else is going to perform."
Carly looked at Niko.
He gave her the smallest nod.
"Okay." She said to Freida.

POV: Niko
He sat between Reba and a chair that had been empty for four years and was now occupied by Carly talking to Freida across the table.
He had not expected that.
He had braced for Freida to be cautious. She was the eldest, the one who had spent the most time maintaining relationships with everyone in the family and had therefore the most to lose from any disruption. He had expected her to be pleasant and measured and reserve judgment in the specific way she did when she was not yet sure of something.
She had pulled Carly aside within two minutes of them arriving and had been talking to her ever since.
He watched them.
Carly was listening to something Freida was saying with that focused attention she brought to things that interested her, her eyes bright, leaning slightly forward. Freida was talking with her hands, which was what she did when she was actually comfortable rather than performing comfort. Lucien was watching Deacon demonstrate something with a bread roll that seemed to have gotten away from him.
He felt something in his chest that he was going to need a moment to identify.
He looked at the head of the table.
Victor had not spoken since they sat down. He was eating with the specific economy of someone who did not need food but maintained the appearance of it at formal occasions, his attention moving around the table with the systematic quality of someone conducting an evaluation.
His eyes landed on Carly.
They stayed there for a moment.
Niko went very still.
Then Victor looked away.
He looked at Niko instead.
Niko held it.
Victor looked at his plate.
Reba leaned slightly toward Niko from his left. "Breathe." She said, very quietly, in a tone that indicated she was talking to herself as much as to him.
He exhaled.
Across the table Carly said something to Freida that made Freida laugh. The real laugh. The one that Niko had heard approximately four times in his entire life because Freida did not produce it for general consumption.
He looked at Carly.
She glanced up from the conversation and found him and gave him the specific expression she used when she was checking on him without making it a production. Just eyes. Just the question.
He gave her the smallest nod.
She nodded back and returned to Freida.
He picked up his fork.
Isabel spoke from the other end of the table.
"Carly." She said, in the carrying tone of someone who was used to holding rooms. "Nik tells us you lead your coven."
The table adjusted its attention.
Niko put his fork down.
"I do." Carly said. Completely level. "Supreme witch, cheer captain, student council." She paused. "Keeping busy."
Something moved through Isabel's expression. "A McPherson through and through." She said. "Your mother was the same. Always running three things at once."
Carly smiled. It was the smooth version, the one she produced for situations that required navigation. "I've heard that."
"You've met Leona?" Deacon said, with the specific curiosity of someone who had not yet had this information.
"At the banquet." Niko said. Preemptively.
"What was that like." Deacon said. To no one in particular. Largely rhetorically.
"Educational." Niko said.
Carly pressed her lips together.
Freida caught it and bit her own smile and looked at her plate.
Victor looked up from his plate for the first time in four minutes.
"Miss McPherson." He said. The same quiet voice Niko had been describing to her all afternoon. It landed exactly as she had been told it would, not loud, not aggressive, simply certain. "What is your interest in my son?"
The table went very still.
Niko opened his mouth.
Carly put her hand on his wrist under the table.
He closed his mouth.
She looked at Victor directly.
"He's the most interesting person I've ever met." She said simply. "I've been trying to figure that out since September and I haven't managed to yet, which probably means I should keep trying."
The room was very quiet.
Victor looked at her.
She looked back.
Then he looked down at his plate.
He picked up his fork.
Niko felt Reba exhale beside him.
He felt Carly's hand still on his wrist under the table and he turned his arm and held it.
Freida looked at him from across the table and her expression said something he understood completely.
She liked her.
He looked at Carly.
She was already back in conversation with Freida, as though the exchange with Victor had been a thing she had handled and set aside rather than survived, and something in her posture was completely steady.
He picked his fork back up.
He thought that this week was going to be the most complicated thing he had navigated in a very long time.
He also thought that he was glad, genuinely and completely glad, that he was not navigating it alone.