The Storm Crow (The Storm Crow, #1)(17)

She’d lost everything, and she’d moved forward. Why couldn’t I?

Someone knocked. I burrowed deeper into the blankets, blocking out the golden sunlight. Staying in bed was so much easier than getting up and facing everything waiting for me.

The knocking came again, more fervent, which narrowed it to Kiva or Caliza. The door banged open. Caliza then.

Loud footsteps preceded a flood of light as she tore back my blankets.

I glared up at her. “Don’t you have more important things to do besides force me out of bed?”

“You’re late for the tour.”

Damn it. Pushing my pillow behind me, I slid up to sit against the headboard. “I forgot.”

“You can’t keep fighting me every—”

“I forgot!”

She drew a sharp breath, nostrils flaring. Her words came out taut as a bowstring. “I understand you’re in pain, Anthia, but you’re not the only one, and you can’t keep wasting away your life wallowing in self-pity when—”

“It isn’t self-pity!” I screamed. “I’m depressed!”

My words echoed through the room, my chest rising and falling in quick bursts. The anger ebbed out of me, leaving behind a feeling I didn’t recognize. A beast inside me slowly uncoiled, releasing a tension so deeply ingrained, it had become a part of me.

I’d never said those words before.

I’d thought them. Kiva had hinted at them. But I’d never actually said them. Even now, repeating them in my head, they sounded ridiculous. I was sad and severely hurt, even angry, but depressed? I’d always told myself that it would pass. There had been good days.

Good days, but never easy ones. Even now, some days were more manageable than others. Some hours, some seconds, I could handle, and the next, I wanted to let the world swallow me up. There were days where I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think.

I’d been depressed. I still was.

The hard edge in Caliza’s eyes softened. How long had I yearned for that sympathy? Now that I had it, I wanted it to go away. It made me feel pathetic.

I threw back the covers and sprang out of bed, stalking to the far side of the room and back again. The air felt thick and charged, biting at my skin with implications. My defeat had burrowed under my skin and into my bones. It had carved out a space inside me and hooked in so deep that it smothered everything else I had been.

I couldn’t remember feeling anything other than pain and misery and fear, all of it overlaid by a layer of guilt thick and suffocating as smoke. I’d shown more emotion in the last two days than I had in the months before.

Illucia had destroyed my world, and now they’d come to take what I had left, and what had I really done? Snarl a few times at Ericen?

This wasn’t me. I was a ghost living in my own skin.

Caliza stood, and I faced her, jaw clenched as I waited for the inevitable lecture. The one where she told me to get over it and control myself. Her chest swelled, then suddenly, she deflated. “I’m sorry.”

I blinked. “What?”

“I know what you must think of me, but I don’t want this for you, Thia. I’d marry him myself if I could.”

The river of anxiety rushing through me slowed. Caliza had apologized twice now, and this wasn’t even her fault. Not really. It was an impossible situation. “I don’t want that either.”

She collapsed onto the edge of my bed, burying her face in her hands. “I know. And I know I’ve been horrible, and I know I’ve been—”

“Colder than a water crow’s ice?” I offered. She choked out a laugh. I reached out, then hesitated. I was used to seeing Caliza like steel, like our mother. Now she looked small and a little broken. I didn’t know how to comfort her.

I sat beside her and laid my hand on her shoulder. She leaned into it, the tension in her body melting. “My life changed too, you know,” she said. “When we lost the crows. I had to learn to be queen, to take care of the kingdom and of you. I forgot to be your sister.”

“I didn’t exactly make it easy.”

She shook her head. “No. This isn’t your fault. The way you feel isn’t your fault.” Her words pulled loose something inside me, like a coil of yarn unspooling. “I’m so sorry for the things I said, Thia. I thought, if I was like Mother, if I pushed you…” Her lips pressed firm, her throat bobbing. “It was wrong. I was wrong.”

A shudder racked my body, and I swallowed down a sob. I’d known she hadn’t meant to hurt me with the things she’d said, but it hadn’t stopped the pain.

She met my gaze. “I don’t want you to go, but I can’t see what other choice we have. Everything I’ve read, everything I’ve been told says this is the right decision. We can’t stand against Illucia. They have the Ambriels and Jindae. If they declared war, they would destroy us.”

“What about Trendell? Is Kuren trying to persuade them to fight?” My voice came out hoarse.

Caliza smiled faintly at the mention of her husband. “He’s trying, yes. But the Trendellans are a peaceful people; they want no part in this. I’m sure they don’t want to send their few soldiers to slaughter either.”

“So you’d surrender without a fight instead?”

“This kingdom has already lost so much. It couldn’t survive another war.”