POV: Aphrodite
Power cannot intimidate what does not kneel.
We come back through the chamber door and into the throne room and the court receives us exactly as we left it — silent, bound, watchful, everyone in their positions as if the positions are the only thing they know how to occupy. The King is on his throne. The chains are at rest. His dark eyes find us immediately and they stay, and I watch him take in the fact that we walked out of the chamber without the chamber breaking us.
The last illusion is still with me. The King chained and bleeding and reaching, the one that didn't dissolve with the rest. I hold it in the back of my mind and I don't look at it directly yet because this is not the moment for it. This moment requires all my attention forward.
The King lets the silence sit for long enough that the throne room feels it.
Then he looks at Kai.
