Chapter 139: The Unfolding Truth XIX

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.

The door did not slam. It just closed. Quietly, finally, the sound of it settling into the frame somehow carrying more weight than a slam would have.

Kai exhaled.

It came out slow and long, the kind of breath a person lets go after holding it for longer than they realized. He stood there for a moment with his eyes on the door she had walked through. Then he turned.

The twins were watching him with the combined energy of two people who had just witnessed something they would be discussing for weeks.

"Take her to a room," he said. Low. Even. "And don’t do anything stupid."

Ellisa snorted. "Go deal with Mom and stop lecturing us on how to treat a guest." She was already grinning, already moving toward Helen like the whole conversation had been resolved.

Alisa nodded beside her. "She’s right. We actually know what we’re doing."

Kai looked at both of them for a moment. The kind of look that said he had serious doubts about that specific claim. Then he turned toward Helen.

The twins stepped out of his way without being asked.

He stopped in front of her. Not far. Close enough that she had to tilt her head slightly to look at him properly. His green eyes moved over her face, checking something, reading whatever he found there.

"The girls will take you to where you will be staying," he said. His voice had dropped, just for her, the room noise fading around it. "I won’t be long. I just need to sort a few things out."

Helen looked up at him. Her grey eyes were still wide, still taking everything in, still trying to catch up with the fact that she was standing in a building that had a throne in it and the man she had been feeding apples and arguing with for weeks was apparently the reason for it. But she nodded.

"Okay," she said. Soft and simple.

Kai bent slightly. His lips pressed to her forehead. Brief and warm, the kind of contact that was not trying to be anything grand, just honest. Just saying something that did not have words yet.

From behind him, very loudly for a whisper, "Ooh."

And then Alisa, matching her sister’s volume exactly, said, "I never knew big brother could be so romantic."

Ellisa’s grin had gone enormous. "He never dated. I genuinely thought he was gay."

Kai turned his head. Slowly. The way something turned when it had heard something it was going to address properly.

"Did either of you ever actually see me as one?" he said.

The twins looked at each other. The look lasted maybe half a second and carried an entire conversation. Then they both looked back at him and nodded. Same speed. Same angle.

"We’ve never seen you with a girl," Alisa said, the picture of reason.

"So we just assumed," Ellisa added, shrugging like this was the most logical conclusion anyone had ever reached.

Kai raised his hand. Before Ellisa had time to process what was happening, his finger flicked against her forehead. Quick and sharp, not hard enough to hurt, exactly hard enough to land.

"Ow." She flinched back, her hand going up to the spot, her face pulling into pure offense. "Don’t do that. I’m a lady. You do not flick a lady on the head."

Kai looked at her. At the trousers. At the tunic. At the hands that had been shoved into her pockets since she walked in.

"Are you sure about that?" he said.

He turned and walked toward the door before she could answer.

Ellisa stared after him with her mouth open, rubbing her forehead.

"Did he just..." she started.

"Come on." Alisa grabbed her arm and steered her toward Helen, already moving on, already done with it. "Let’s go."

They turned to Helen together. And whatever twin-energy had been aimed at their brother redirected itself entirely in her direction, warm and immediate and slightly overwhelming.

Ellisa gestured toward the hallway with both hands, like she was welcoming Helen onto something. "Come on. We’ll show you everything."

Alisa smiled. Actual and genuine, nothing was done about it. "Don’t worry about him. Mom’s not that scary. He’ll be fine."

Helen looked at the door Kai had walked through. Just for a second. Then she looked back at the two identical faces in front of her, one grinning, one smiling, both watching her like she was the most interesting thing they had seen in a while.

She followed them out.

****

His mother’s chamber was warmer than the great hall.

A fire burned steadily in the hearth on the far wall, low and even, the kind that had been going for hours and would keep going without being touched.

The windows looked out over the gardens, grey sky above them, the tree line dark in the distance. It was a room that had been lived in for a long time. Books stacked on the table by the bed. A chair near the window that had a particular worn look to it in one specific spot, on the left armrest, where a hand had rested in the same position too many times to count.

His mother was in that chair.

Her back was straight. Her hands were folded in her lap. She was looking out the window at the grey sky and the garden and the trees, and she did not turn when the door opened.

Kai stepped inside and closed it behind him.

"You wanted to see me," he said.

She did not turn. "Who is that girl?"

He did not hesitate. "She is the woman I have chosen to be with."

His mother turned then. Her eyes came to his face and settled there and the expression on her own face was not what he had expected. Not cold. Not angry. Not the sharp thing he had braced himself for in the hallway.

It was something older and more careful than that, something that had concern running all the way through it.

"Are you serious about this?"

"Yes."

"Do you know who she is?" She stood up from the chair. "Do you know what she is, Kai? Do you understand what you are bringing into this house?"

He said nothing.

She walked toward him. Slowly, the way she moved when she was thinking while she moved, working through something with each step. She stopped in front of him and looked up at his face.

"That type of person is not ordinary. You know that. Bringing her here as the woman you want to be with, do you understand what that could start? What will people say? What your father will..."

"I don’t care what people think." His voice stayed even. Flat and decided. "I don’t care what consequences come with it. This is my life. I decide how I will live it."

His mother looked at him. The concern in her eyes did not move.

"I am not against you choosing whom you want," she said. Quieter now. "I am not saying she is a bad person. I could see from the way she stood in that room that she is not a bad person." She reached out and touched his arm. "I am just asking you to be sure. To know who you are choosing before you choose her."

"There is nothing wrong with her." He held her eyes. "And as far as I am concerned, she is the one meant for me. I don’t have a mate. I have never found one. That has never been in the cards for me the way it was for other people."

"You don’t know that." His mother shook her head. "Your mate could be out there somewhere. What happens the day she appears? What do you do then? What does Helen do then?"

The question sat in the room.

Kai looked at his mother for a long moment. "When that time comes, I will handle it. But for now, Helen stays. And no one in this house will treat her badly. Not one person."

His mother’s shoulders dropped. Not in defeat. In something gentler.

"You know I would never do that," she said. "That is not who I am."

She reached up and touched his face. Her palm against his jaw, the way she had touched his face since he was small. He did not pull away.

"I just hope you know what you are doing, son," she said quietly.

He moved around her and sat on the edge of the bed near the window. The mattress gave under his weight. He looked at his hands for a moment, at the floor between his feet, then back at her.

"Have I ever done anything wrong in my life?"

His mother’s eyebrow went up. "You left without telling me. So yes. You have done one thing that I am still not fully over."

The corner of his mouth moved. "Apart from that."

She did not answer. She just looked at him with that look she had been using on him his entire life, the one that said she saw him completely, every part, even the parts he did not show to anyone else.

He reached out and took her hand. Both of his are around hers.

"I want what is best for this family," he said. His voice was quiet. "For all of us. But that will not happen if I am living my life for everyone else and not for myself." He looked at her properly. "I am not happy without her. That is the simplest way I can say it."

His mother looked at their joined hands. Her thumb moved over his knuckles slowly, the same way she had done when he was a boy and something was wrong and she was trying to figure out how to fix it.

"She looked sweet," she said finally. Soft. Almost to herself. "She looked kind."

Kai looked at her. "She is more than that."

Something in his mother’s face shifted. The last of the tension left it, slow and reluctant, like it had been holding on and had finally run out of reasons. What was underneath it was tired and sad and very much in love with her difficult son.

Then she exhaled.

"Your father," she said.

Kai’s expression changed. The warmth went out of it like a light being turned off. What replaced it was not anger exactly, but something close to it, something with a harder edge.

"I don’t care what the old man thinks."

"Kai."

"Your accepting her is enough for me." He said it simply. Finally, "That is all I need."

His mother looked at his face. She had known him every day of his life and she knew exactly what that expression meant and she knew better than to push past it when it was sitting on him like that.

She reached up and touched his cheek.

He leaned into it without thinking, the way he had leaned into it since he was small enough to fit in her arms completely.

"I hope that is enough," she whispered.

He covered her hand with his and held it against his face and did not say anything.

The fire crackled in the hearth. Outside, the wind moved through the garden, bending the tops of the plants toward the tree line.

Somewhere on the other side of the building, his sisters were probably already talking Helen’s ear off and trying to convince her to let them touch her hair.

He held his mother’s hand.

The man in the great hall had not spoken yet.

He had been silent since Kai walked in, since Kai stood in front of him and looked him in the eye and neither of them flinched. He had sat on his throne and said nothing and watched everything and let the silence be whatever it was going to be.

That silence would not last.

Kai knew that. He had known it from the moment he walked through the front door. His mother knew it too, which was why her eyes had gone sad when she said his name. Which was why her hand was still pressed against his cheek even now, warm and steady, like she was trying to hold something in place before it shifted.

He thought about Helen in a room somewhere in this building, surrounded by his sisters, trying to figure out where she was and what was happening and whether she had made the right decision.

He thought about what his father’s silence was going to cost.

The wind moved outside.

He kept his mother’s hand against his face and sat with it all.