Page 44 of The Throne's Undoing

Tears burned her eyes and rushed down her face as she shook her head. But even as her head pounded, as she pressed her palms harder against her ears, her father's words kept coming.

"You are pitiful. Yet you want a crown? Ha!"

This was wrong.

All wrong.

Whatever her brothers were trying to show her was a lie--a facade, a charade. A fabricated story to get her to believe them and convince her to betray her father.

"This isn't real. This isn't real!" Kallie shouted.

"Just because you refuse to remember does not make it false," Fynn said, his voice a faint whisper in her ear as if he were yards away. "You cannot keep running from your past, Kalisandre."

"You're wrong!" she cried. "You're lying! He wouldn't--he loves me!"

She tried to hold onto the truth, to the father she knew, the man who raised her, cared for her, and trained her.

Her brother's tone was sad, distant now. "A true parent does not need you to prove your worth to them. You have to know that."

Kallie shook her head. Agony ripped at her lungs as she screamed, a blood-curdling noise pouring from her throat. Still, her father's voice seeped out and wrapped around her limbs, strangling her.

"You want power? You desire a throne? What kind of ruler falls to their knees? What kind of ruler crumbles at the sight of blood? Sacrifices must be made, Kalisandre!" he roared.

Her cheeks were damp, and her screams became mangled as her father's words surrounded her broken body.

They squeezed, twisted, and pierced her heart.

"You are weak," he spat.

Her mind felt as if it was being torn apart as past assignments from her father resurfaced: various names written in elegant handwriting on slim envelopes, a vial of poison given to a lord who had disagreed with a ruling; another poison given to a man who had spoken aloud a name which should have stayed forgotten; a dagger pressed into the hand of a guard who had seen too much.

"No, no, no," Kallie repeated, gripping her hair.

Her brothers didn't understand.

"Sacrifices must be made for the--" Kallie groaned in pain as she tried and failed to repeat the words she had been trained to say.

"You are unworthy."

"No!" Even though she knew he could not hear her, she shouted anyway.

"You arenothing."

Pain seared through her head as if her very mind was on fire.

What were her brothers doing to her?

"Stop it! Stop!" But no one listened, and the pain continued as her brothers rifled through her mind.

With her arms wrapped around her knees, her body shook, and her lip quivered as tears ran down her face and the screams continued to pour from her lungs.

Someone tried to reach out.

Fynn? Terin? Her father?

She couldn't tell. Either way, they tried to cut through the noise, beckoning her.

But her name was no more than a whisper on their lips. They tried to shake her, to stir her, but she threw them off as panic overtook her body.

---