Coming for your heart

Chapter 102

Eren POV

Zeke's eyes wandered across the room until they found their dad's ones. After a short nod in Eren's direction he stepped forward and said with his deep, vibrating voice: "When I contacted my brother, I was already sure that you would never change your mind about him."

"You are siding with this son of a bitch?"

"This bitch raised me until you decided that getting rid of her son would do the trick.", Zeke snarled. But apart from his voice no one would be able to tell that he was angry at all. His stance was relaxed, the bored look behind his glasses one Eren knew from childhood. 

Disinterested, unaffected.

"You are the heir to this throne, Zeke!", Grisha bellowed and stood up, ignoring the tips of swords touching his throat by now. "You can't seriously won't this abnormality to take over instead of you! Where have you been when he challenged me on the day of my ceremony?"

"I was gone on a mission.", Zeke replied and stayed unaffected by Grisha's mood. "Otherwise I would have supported my brother."

Eren felt warmth spread in his guts at his older brother's words. He threw him a glance but instead met Levi's eyes, a look of betrayal in them and full of questions that Eren couldn't answer right now. So he turned his head to Grisha again, savoring the sick satisfaction in his soul.

"But I do believe that my brother here wanted to tell us something of great importance."

Grisha snorted and remained standing, his eyes burning a hole into Eren's skull.

If looks could kill...

"It was a stormy night, as you can probably remember.", Eren spat and came to stand by his brother's side. "But sometime around midnight I mistook the knocks on my door for the wind whipping the windows. That's when you had your little minions come into my room."

Grisha was torn between looking angry and blanching. Eren smiled cruelly, aware that everyone present was listening to him. He suppressed the shame that had forced him to stay quiet about what had happened that night.

Not even his mother had known the whole extent of Grisha's gruesome deeds.

And he hadn't wanted her to.

"They came barging in, swords in hands and ready to bring me down to the dungeons. You were the one who wanted them to get me in the dead of the night, so my mother wouldn't notice." He tilted his head with narrowed eyes, hands clenched behind his back. "It would have been so easy to tell her that I had fallen from my tower. Everyone knew how much I loved sitting in that alcove. No one would have questioned my tragic death, least of all my mom."

Grisha didn't say a word. Zeke stood by Eren's side and he felt his silent support, his comforting presence. Just like back then, when they had taken their father's beatings for some mistake Eren had made.

"But you didn't think that I would fight them, did you? Because they sure as hell didn't expect it. I fought tooth and nail to get away from them. Tell me, Dad, did you officially order them to turn me inside out until my blood was smeared across every damn surface?" His voice was a quiet snarl. He couldn't allow his emotions to run free or he was sure he would bring the castle down on their heads. "Tell me!"

"I didn't care!", his father shouted. "I didn't fucking care if they killed you right then and there or left you to die in the dungeons!"

Zeke tensed next to Eren and Mikasa looked short of murdering that bastard. She would do it without a doubt if Eren gave her so much as a tiny signal.