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.