They Forgot My Rank, So the Lycan King Claimed Me novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Door She Looks At

Torin's POV

She came at nine, in a plain grey sweater, and she knocked.

She had a key to every door in the wing, and she knocked.

I opened it and could not think of a single thing to say.

"You said tomorrow night," Nessa said. "It's tomorrow night."

"Come in."

She walked past me into the study and stopped at the window.

She kept her back to me, and her hand rested on the cold glass.

I poured two glasses of water, because I did not trust myself with wine.

My hands had been unsteady since the ring.

"I told you I'd say the rest," I said.

"You did."

"It isn't about the law."

"All right."

"At the Court, there are three hundred people who bow when I come in," I said. "They look at the crown. They look at my father's chair. They look at the door behind me and wonder who will walk through it next."

"I know that look."

"Nobody has looked at me in ten years."

She turned around.

"Not the way a woman looks at a man," I said. "Not as someone she might want or fear or laugh at. Only as a post that holds up the roof."

"Torin."

"Let me finish."

She stopped.

"You came through my gate at dawn with a duffel and your chin up," I said. "And you looked at the guard behind me. You looked at the gatehouse. You looked at the road you had come in on."

"I was exhausted."

"You did the same thing in the throne hall. And in the ring, and in the registry, and in my yard. Every time I speak to you, you look at the door."

My voice had gone rough, and I let it.

"I answered in one minute because it was the first time in ten years anything had called me by name," I said. "Not by title. The seal smelled like you, and it asked for me, and I could not stand to let it ask twice."

"And then I walked in and looked at the exit."

"Yes."

I made myself say the rest.

"I have wanted you to look at me since the first morning," I said. "Just once. Not at the King. I did not know how to ask for it, so I made a rule."

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