Third Person POV
The room had gone quiet in the way that rooms went quiet when everyone in them was waiting for something to happen and nobody wanted to be the one who caused it.
Helen stood just inside the doorway. The twins had gone still, caught mid-step, their eyes moving between Kai and their mother and back again like they were watching something they could not look away from. The man on the throne had not shifted once since she walked in.
And Kai's mother had not taken her eyes off her son from the moment Helen stepped through that door.
She was the one who moved first.
"See me," she said. "My chamber."
Two words and a direction. No room for questions, no space for anything else.
She turned before the last word had finished landing and walked out, her footsteps hitting the stone floor in a sharp, even rhythm that said everything her face was too composed to show.
