Page 161 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

Rain ran past me and jumped on my bed while Sam stood there on the doorstep, staring at me, his eyes narrowed on me with confusion.

“You can just ask me, Sammy. I will tell you,” I said, and my nephew’s hard expression softened.

“You would?”

“You know how much I love you?”

“I do.”

“I wouldn’t hide anything from you by lying.”

“You usually do.”

“I don’t have the strength to pretend or lie anymore.”

“Who do you miss this much?”

“Your uncle Mal.”

“Figured,” he said, slipping inside the room.

Rain and Sam laid in my bed between Snow and I, huddled close to each other. “We don’t mind sharing, auntie,” my little niece said. “If you want our ma for a night or two, you can have her. Sam and I will be alright.”

“You know she was mine before she was yours?” I asked, stroking Rain’s soft hair away from her little face.

Both Sam and her turned on their sides to face me, intently concentrating on my words. They loved stories. They loved all the stories about her. Who could blame them, my sister was incredible. “She was?” they both asked.

I nodded. “She was. She got me dressed, she got me to eat, she did my hair, never let me miss a meal cause she wanted me to grow strong and big like you two, she stayed with me until I fell asleep, she rubbed my tummy when it ached, she blew on my scratches when I tripped or fell, she held me when I had nightmares. Eren said that she taught me to walk, too. You know that her name was my first word? Snow was my first word. Eren said that your grandmother used to insist I said it because I liked the snow outside or because I saw snow all the time, but I did like snow, I liked watching snow. Just not the snow outside, but my sister. So, she was mine first.”

I looked to where she was laying, her eyes filled with tears. “Rora,” she choked out, bringing a hand to my face.

Reaching over Sam and Rain, I hugged my sister tightly. “You don’t have to do it anymore. You don’t have to blow on my wounds anymore. I’m all grown now.”

“You are, but you’re still mine to look after. And I don’t know, Rora, I don’t know how to fix this. I’m sorry.”

Cries welled on my throat, making it hard to breathe and speak. “Someone else does. He figured it out.”

“Tell him to stay. He was miserable, Rora. He’s always been miserable until you.”

“I can’t. He told me none of the secrets he confessed to me held anything over his head anymore, that he’d moved past them all. All except one. All except me. I don’t know how we tangled along like this, if we meant to at all. I want him to be free, so I set him free. All I ever wanted was for him to be free, unburdened, unchained. Even if it means leaving me behind.”

“I don’t think he wants that, Rora.”

“He’s never been good at choosing what is right for him, so I'm doing it for him.”

I kissed my little niece’s cheek, and she stirred in her sleep. There was something I needed to know, something that would hurt younger me, but something I needed to hear. I needed to hear it to grow beyond my past, to stop wondering of what ifs, to stop doubting my denied childhood being my fault. I needed this for my younger self to stop blaming herself. “Do you...do you ever wonder if they loved us? I’ve always wondered.” It was tiring to live with that question as an adult. As a child, it had given me hope.

Steel returned to my sister’s eyes, hardening them again. “Sometimes,” she said, running her fingers through her daughter’s hair. “When I can’t sleep at night, I go to their room and just stare at them. And then I try to think so hard that I get a headache because I can't get answers to my damn questions. How…how did anyone think of hurting us when I cannot bear to even see them cold or miss their meals. How would anyone hurt us? How did our parents hurt us the way they did? Then it makes me angry. So angry, Rora. Because even if I had to walk through fires and torture, even if there was no more blood for me to bleed, I would never, ever let anyone hurt them. I would never put anything before them. Kingdoms and realms be damned.” She looked up at me. “Truth is, I don’t know. I don’t know if they did. Or at least not nearly enough as they should have.”

“Even ma?” I forced myself to ask, feeling my younger self wither on the inside.

A single tear dropped from my sister’s eye. “Even her.”

Lilith was there and so was my brother when I entered the meeting room the next morning. Part of me wanted to heave a sigh at the familiar presence, but my heart had spent ten years hardening and it was taking it a bit to shed its cement walls.

He spoke first, “She insisted, Rora, I'm really sorr—”

Lilith stepped before Eren, interrupting him. “I had to. For some reason my visions guide me to you over and over again and I will not choose to ignore them despite your dislike of me.”