Move.
Nothing.
This was how it was. One moment, I was moving forward, and the next, I couldn’t move at all. No matter how important the day or what I needed to do, the feeling came and refused to leave.
I hated it.
Why was I so weak? I’d been worthless the last few months. I still was. I couldn’t hatch the egg. Couldn’t help Rhodaire or myself.
Useless.
Illucia had taken everything from me, and I’d given up. They’d taken everything from the Jin princess too, and if the rumors were true, she’d organized a rebellion in response. Not to mention to have known about the engagement, she either had spies in our castle or Illucia’s.
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. ButI’dnever actuallysaidthem. 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’tthink.
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?”
