Third Person POV
Lysander smiled. It was not a pleasant thing to see. The skin pulled tight across his cheeks and his teeth showed, filed to fine points, white against the grey of everything else about him.
"Your wife," he said. "What is she, exactly?"
Kai went still.
Not the stillness of a man caught off guard. The stillness of a man who had just found the center of the thing and was deciding where to stand relative to it.
"How would you know anything about my wife, Your Majesty?"
Lysander's smile did not move. "Rumors travel, Kaelen. They find me whether I look for them or not. This particular one was too interesting to leave alone."
He rose from the throne.
His movements were slow, not weakness, deliberateness, the way a man moved when he had learned long ago that speed was less impressive than intention. He came down off the platform one step at a time, his grey eyes on Kai the entire way, and stopped a few feet in front of him.
Close enough to be a statement.
