Page 117 of The Throne's Undoing

Steps lightly rapped against the bathroom tile.

What number was she at? Her brows furrowed.

No matter. She started over.

One.

Exhale.

She could feel his approach, and something within her stirred. She quickly shook it away. But as she tried to count again, fingers brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, the pads of them rough.

Kallie didn't dare breathe as Graeson's hand remained on her face a moment longer, cupping her cheek. His thumb circled the space beneath her ear, but she didn't raise her gaze to meet the silvereyes she knew she would find.

"Kalisandre," he whispered.

Kallie took in a sharp inhale as the sound of her name repeated on his tongue. Her brows drew together, and her eyes cracked open slightly.

Graeson knelt beside the tub, an arm resting on the edge.

Staring at the top button of his black blouse, Kallie at last asked, "Why do you call me that?"

Graeson's fingers danced across the tub's ledge, the gold rings on them sparkling in the candlelight of the bathing chambers. "It is your name, is it not?"

Kallie could almost hear the smirk that was no doubt on his face.

"No one calls me that, though," she mumbled.

Besides Domitius,she thought.

She squeezed her arms tighter around her knees.

"Would you prefer that I call you something else?" he asked thoughtfully.

"I--" Kallie's mouth grew dry, and she tried to swallow. "I don't know. I just..."

Graeson sighed and shifted, getting more comfortable. "I call you Kalisandre not only because it is your name but because you asked me to when we were children."

"I did?" Kallie asked, taken aback. She recalled him calling herlittle mousebut not asking him to call her by her full name.

"You said it made you feel older." Graeson chuckled as if recalling the memory and scratched the back of his head, the fabric stretching across his arm. "You actually tried saying it made you feel respected, but back then S's and P's were kind of hard for you to say."

The corner of Kallie's lip twitched, but the smile quickly fell. Too much was on her mind.

Graeson sighed, his fingers tapping on the porcelain. "Will you please look at me, Kalisandre?" he murmured. He slippedhis hand beneath her chin, coaxing her to raise her head. "A queen does not bow her head."

Kallie wanted to laugh, but she refrained from doing so. "I am no queen," she said, the words sour on her lips.

"You are right," he agreed after a moment.

Despite the truth of the words, pain still pierced her heart. She never would be a queen, and perhaps that was for the best.

But did Graeson think those words would help her? That they would clear the troubles from her mind? They might have been the truth, but they were a truth she had yet to come to terms with.

Without Frenzia's crown, or any crown for that matter, what was there for her in this world? When her mind broke, so too did her desire for that hunk of metal. It was as if the two were tied together so inextricably they could not dare part.

Kallie didn't know what to make of that.

She didn't know if she wanted to.

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