Coming for your heart

Chapter 83

Eren POV

Smoke was rising from the hearth, gliding up to the stony ceiling. In the background he heard voices. Talking. Discussing. Fighting. He didn't pay them any attention and closed his eyes, breathing through his nose.

The smell of spices, the cozy heat in the kitchen underneath the castle and the cup of tea in front of him should be enough to wake him from this trance he was in. Mikasa had brought them back through the tunnel Kou had shown them without any guard there to notice their entrance.

Sasha and Connie had watched with surprise and worry how his sister had dragged him inside the kitchen, her fingers cold and hard around his upper arm as he followed her emotionless, all words gone from his mind.

Their friends hadn't wasted any time and gave them a place near the hearth to warm their freezing bodies, covered in snowflakes that soon ran down their bodies in form of small waterdrops.

Eren felt his brown locks sticking to his head, his cheeks, his neck.

He wanted to reach out, wanted to touch the hot cup standing in front of him. But when he tried to lift his hand, he found it to be far too heavy. He stared at nothing at all. His mind was empty. Without feelings. Without thoughts.

"It wasn't your fault."

He gritted his teeth.

"How would you know?", he rasped, not minding the strange looks he received from his friends. Eryn's shape came into view, her skin as dark as wet earth and her eyes as beautiful as those of his mother had once been. They shone with intellect and love, surrounded by hardness forged in the fires of betrayal.

"My dear boy, there was no way for you to know how all of this would go."

Her voice was full of forgiveness. Of understanding. Eren pressed his eyes shut and clenched his fists, his nails digging into his skin.

"My father never would have found them if-"

"Your father wasn't following you, my love.", Eryn replied and he felt the brush of her hand against his icy cheek. He leaned into the touch, sighing in defeat and closing his eyes. "He was there purely by accident. It was not your fault that he was there." He felt more than saw how she tilted her head.

"They trusted me.", Eren whispered. "For years I was there whole reason to continue. And now...I am the reason they are dead."

He blinked his eyes open and bit back the wetness gathering in his eyes. He saw Mikasa's eyes glancing over at him. She knew that he wasn't talking to himself and ushered Connie and Sasha away.

"I should have gone back."

"You would have died like your friend."

"But I wouldn't have been the sole survivor." He pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes, feeling the desperate need to sob as he remembered. Remembered the smell of blood and remembered the sound of shrieking, screaming, crying. Dying

"You weren't the only one to get out, Eren.", his grandmother reminded him and he felt her presence next to him, comforting him. "Your sister did too. Please don't be ashamed of being alive because that was the reason they fought."

"But what am I supposed to do now?", he asked her with a trembling voice, hating himself for showing such weakness. "How can I possibly overthrow my father when he already took everything I have from me?"

For a moment Eryn was quiet. The whispering of the flames by his side and the soft voices of his sister and his friends were all he could hear. He inhaled deeply, leaning against a body that wasn't really there but also hadn't left him.