Helsa didn’t run.
When Vael arrived at her quarters on the eastern edge of the kingdom with three warriors at her back, Helsa was already sitting on the edge of her narrow bed. Hands folded in her lap. A small leather bag on the mattress beside her, packed in a hurry the flap not quite closed, like she’d run out of time or nerve.
She looked up when the door opened.
“I knew,” she said. Quiet. No dramatics. “When you asked about the eastern road, I knew it was over.”
Vael said nothing.
She stepped aside.
I walked in.
Helsa got to her feet when she saw me. She didn’t bow. Her face was paper-white and her hands trembled slightly at her sides, but she stood the way Lycans stand spine straight, chin up, like the body still knew how even when everything else was falling apart.
“My queen.”
