The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood and..

The line of his jaw hardened. “If so, that is a
misconception I will quickly rectify.”
I lifted my chin. “As will I.”
Casteel’s smile brimmed with approval. “We will both
rectify that quickly,” he amended. “But most will see you for
who you are. Which is the next Queen of Atlantia.”
The breath I took went nowhere.
His steady gaze met and held mine. “Just like I see you
for who you are. My Queen.”
Shock flooded my senses. That was only the second
time he’d called me that, and I realized then that since his
mother had taken off her crown, he’d only called me
Princess a handful of times. “But you don’t want to be King,”
I exclaimed.
“This isn’t about what I want.”
“How can it not be? If I’m the Queen, you are the King—
something you don’t want to be,” I reminded him.
“It was something I never believed I would need to be,”
he said, and so quietly, every part of my being focused on
him. “It was something I needed to believe because it
always felt like if I accepted my future, I was also accepting
Malik’s fate. That he was lost to us.” He drew his fingers
over the curve of his jaw as his gaze shifted to his empty
glass. “But at some point, I began to realize the truth. I just
didn’t want to accept it.”
My heart skipped a beat. “You…you don’t believe he still
lives?”
“No, I believe he does. I still believe we will free him,”
he stated, his brows lowering. “But I know—gods, I’ve
known for longer than I care to admit to myself, that he
won’t be in the…right frame of mind to take the throne. The
gods know I wasn’t exactly all there when I was freed.”
An ache pierced me once more. Kieran had already
accepted that, too, and a part of me was relieved to know
that Casteel understood the reality of what he’d face upon