Coming for your heart

Chapter 57

Eren POV

He sat against the wall, legs crossed and his head resting on the cold stone. His eyes found the bed on the other end of the room, the blankets ripped and the pillow torn apart.

"Stop it...please!"

The cries of the past, the cries that had been his own...they echoed in his head and in every corner of the room did he see the gruesome things done to him. Levi wasn't the only one of them wondering how the hell he had survived.

Said man was leaning against the doorframe and his eyes never left Eren's face for even a single second. It made Eren's heart flutter in a way he wasn't used to and he closed his eyes, wishing for a small hole to crawl into.

Away from the burning gaze of the general in the uniforms that reminded him of the men that had broken into his room that night.

"I know the Second Prince.", he repeated the words with as much confidence as he could manage right then and there. "That's why I know his story. And that's why I know that the King has been lying to everyone. Including you and all the other generals."

Levi huffed.

Yet he didn't interrupt him and Eren found that he wished for the man to believe him.

He inhaled deeply, clenching and unclenching his fists as cold shivers ran down his spine.

"It was a stormy night, as I said.", he rasped and touched the ground with the tips of his fingers, knowing every centimeter of it by heart. "The King had two sons. His firstborn, Zeke. The son of the love of his life. A beauty named Dina. His first wife and Queen of Eldia."

It had taken his mom longer than he would have liked to tell him about the background of their family. That Zeke was only his half-brother. Only partly related to him. They only shared their monster of a father.

"But when Dina died, the King needed a new wife. Not because he wanted her. He needed her. Needed what her family offered him. They got married although both of them knew that it was a mistake. A grave one."

Eren faced Levi again, doing his best not to get lost in the lake of silver that was trained on him. His throat was dry and he cleared his throat, not ready to look away from the man who's presence was strangely grounding for him.

"They didn't love each other. But it was her...the Queen's duty to give birth to his children. That's why the Second Prince was born into this life of hatred, secrets and darkness." Eren laughed humorlessly. "An innocent child, not yet corrupted by the cruel world with an older, stronger brother and a mother who loved him more than anything in the world. One might think that it couldn't be so bad then that his father didn't care about him at all."

Eren expected Levi to intervene at every second.

To defend the King he served.

Or to tell him that he was sprouting nonsense.

But the man stayed quiet. Eerily so. With an unreadable expression on his face and his mouth only a thin line.

Eren sighed, the weight on his chest just as heavy as always when he thought about that night.

"The Queen must have gotten word of Grisha's plans to get rid of his unwanted, second son."

"Why would the King want to get rid of an heir to the throne?", Levi asked with a low voice and tilted his head in a way that made his dark strands fall on his forehead. Eren smiled bitterly at the question and shook his head softly.

"Grisha never wanted his second wife to bear him a son. It was expected of her to do so. Nothing more and nothing less. People would have started talking if she hadn't given birth to a son or a daughter."