It was not quite a question.

“He thought it was a joke.”

Julian was quiet for a moment.

He did not curse, or shout, or make a single dramatic gesture — Julian never did; that was never how his kind of strength worked.

He simply reached out, and gently tucked a damp strand of hair behind my ear, and took my hand firmly in his.

“Then let’s go,” he said, “and show your father how the joke ends.”

I want to note something about that moment, and about Julian, because it is easy to read this as a story where a powerful man arrives to rescue a helpless woman, and that is not what happened, and the difference matters to me.