Only my mates can pull me down, and even then, I only descend for a bit before I find myself drifting again. Listless.
I blow out a breath, as if that will help expel these dilemmas that plague me.
"What time is it?" I croak.
"Time for you to get dressed," Kylian counters, a mysterious edge to the excitement in his voice that I've never heard before.
But he doesn't explain, merely rips the covers from me, exposing my skin to the chill night air.
His hand comes to my arm, and he grips it, gently but determinedly pulling me toward him.
"What? What's going on?" I protest, because the last several days have unspooled and unraveled me to a fray. "I'm sleeping."
"You've got an esteemed visitor," my mate replies.
My brow furrows, and my fingernails dig violent crescents into my palms.
"He traveled quite a distance under the cover of night to get here," Kylian prods with one of those annoying, raised-brow expressions people make when they think they're giving you a clue about a secret, but really they're being obnoxiously obscure.
My pillow flies from my hand toward him, and he catches it.
"Either tell me or go away."
"Prince Stefan is here to see you," he states flatly, the fun ruined as he tosses the pillow onto his empty spot on the mattress.
It takes my sluggish brain a minute to swallow his words and really imbibe their meaning. My head tilts, and I study his expression. Though I know my mates tease me a bit, he wouldn't joke about something like this…
His hand comes out again, this time palm up, waiting for me to take it so he can help me out of bed. I reach out, and his warm grip steadies my body while my mind spins, as if all my thoughts have been tossed into a blender and shredded. The back of my neck prickles with cold and apprehension.
I can't quite process what Prince Stefan hopes to gain.
Why is he here? After that vile, abominable betrayal…why bother showing his face?
The only reason we've held off on renewing our attacks is the double murder of our king and queen. At least, that's what I've said when I pose as Ted, though internally, the thought of renewing the war makes me want to retch.
The massacre on the bus and the discovery of Project Harpax have shaped me differently than my prior personal traumas, particularly as I've replayed them on endless loops these past few days.
Reliving the harsh moments dipped in potent fear as I smashed a gas pedal to the floor or fled the lab has been preferable to thinking about what happened in the throne room. Or the turn Ted took for the worse, so much so that he's no longer in his own bed.
And I've learned something.
My kidnappings affected me.
The first broke me into cowardly fragments until I was nearly scared to breathe.
The second showed me that Eros had instilled enough cool-headed competence in me to fight despite the odds, and to beat them.
In contrast, the attack on the bus and the feral alpha chase loom differently. I watched other people's lives snuffed in an instant, potential gone in a blink, the ripple effects ripping through the fabric of society at the speed of light.
I'm still writing letters on Ted's behalf to grieving families whose boys will never come home again. Each word, each scratch of the pen, every dab of ink feels so incredibly heavy, so massive, that the letters hold gravity, coalesce into dense tragedies inside my head that have all the weight of a planet.
Senseless deaths. So many.
And what did we gain? Not territory or money or fame. Only more hatred.
We aren't meant to be this way.
But without trust…how can we be any other way?
