Page 185 of Season Warriors & Wolves

Maybe I forced my smile a bit too much because he looked away, searching the whole room only so he wouldn’t look at me. “Am I that bad to talk to?”

I’d always been told to not speak, to say what I wanted to say, express what frustration I had, not to even think. By my father. Mother, too, had asked me to be quiet, talking would only bring me trouble. Alaric and Lysander as well, they feared I would say the wrong thing, so they had asked me to say nothing at all. Somewhere between those lines, I’d forgotten how to.

Maybe I shouldn’t do so still. Maybe I really was bad to talk to.

It was alright, though. I didn’t have to talk back. He could talk to me.

But he didn't even want to do that.

He rubbed his eyes, tired again—always so tired. “Eren—”

“You can go, Cai. Don’t feel like you have to stay because you don’t,” I said, picking up some fresh clothes and heading towards my bathroom.

His arms wrapped around my middle, forcing me to stop. My eyes drew shut when his lips trailed kisses on my shoulder. But the soft sensation soon disappeared behind some foreign feeling that made my whole body shake, sickness stirring my stomach.

Always needed, never wanted.

He went still, too, moving a little bit away from me. “Hey, what happened?”

“If I wanted to talk to someone, I’d find someone who does want to listen.” I turned, giving him a smile and a light kiss that stirred my insides in a way no kiss should. “Go, I will see you tonight.”

And he did.

He did leave.

As always.

And I could finally heave all that I held back. If I could only wretch what I felt, not only how I felt. If it could empty my heart. Or my head.

A soft knock rasped on the bathroom door and Nia peeked her head in. One look at me and she rushed to my side, digging through a pouch. “Take this,” she said, lifting a small vial of a greenish liquid that smelled like rosemary to my lips. She helped me sit on the ground for a moment. “Cai didn’t say it was your stomach.”

“Cai?”

“He came and got me from my quarters, said you were feeling unwell. A headache. But he got that wrong.” She gathered her knees to her chest, her voice was small when she said, “Doesn’t seem like a stomach-ache either though.”

“No?”

“Seems like a Skygard sibling sort of sickness. Silas induced type of sickness,” she said, wiping a cloth over my forehead and down my temples.

That made me smile. “What is my cure, young Nia?”

“I’ve yet to make one,” she said regretfully. “Tried for almost ten years and my specimen was never very cooperative. My treatments made her fussy.”

I chuckled. “Sounds just like my little sister.” I patted her cheek. “She must have given you loads of trouble.”

“No trouble. But…but I worried a lot—Cai did, too. And he’s become the same again. Same as he was back when she was in the thick of her rage. Distant. Only waking, eating, sleeping. I’m not sure if he even realises that the world has not stopped. That he is not the only one walking it. That it is just him—that he has stopped. Stopped trying, too.” She looked up at me. “You like him.”

“I’ve never been known for my taste in men.”

She snorted. “Neither have I.”

That made me laugh, but coming out of the high was a little painful.

“I know how you feel,” she said quietly. “I’ve felt like that once.”

“Do I wear my heart on my sleeve?”

“No, not really, but I’ve learned to not rely on seeing shadows to know how one feels. Snow has no shadows at all. Cai’s are always so confusing.”