I WILL PROTECT YOU

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟔𝟎

3rd POV

  Peering past her shoulder, she watched Grisha and Eren converse. What they talked about was none of her concern. She wasn't here for the same reason he was kept alive. —In front of her, Felix sat down, brushing his fingers into his hair as he discarded his hat. Cameron turned her head, looking at him instead.

"You said there was more you had to tell me." She said, recalling what he had told her back inside the boat. Felix nodded his head.

"There's a lot I haven't told Eren. Secrets about the Fate Titan only my predecessors know, and ones my family has kept for nearly a century. Even if he manipulated me to give him your location, my mouth was kept shut from sharing more." He rested his arm on his knee. His eyes lingered over the ocean.

"The Fate Titan has been passed on to women of the Fritz name, as our Founder, and your ancestor, was a woman herself. It was a woman who protected the King for two thousand years..." Felix began, he knew he could explain this over Limbo shortly, but he wanted to do it in person. In the flesh. "Because of this, the power was passed onto men of my family, to keep it well hidden. Though it seemed that the power gained a liking to women, only us men had these side effects."

He laughed, already feeling blood dripping from his nose. What Cameron thought to be anemia, was the side effect of Felix having an ancient power. It explained why he blocked her view every time he bled around her, to prevent her from seeing the steam emerge from it evaporating.

Wiping his nose, Cameron watched the blood on his sleeve disappear.

"By giving it to you, the Fate Titan returns to its original bloodline. However, it returns to the place it shouldn't be." Cameron parted her lips, about to ask what he meant until he continued. "Since the Founder Ymir, it has become the perfect tool to protect the King. Being the perfect archivist, receiving visions of the future, having a gut feeling for danger, and being of royal blood themselves were reasons why they stayed by the King's side. During war especially. Any danger to the King by the other Titans was danger to them."

"Then...what happened between the last Fritz and the King? Why did my family stay? Why did the Fate Titan entrust itself with your family? Surely it wasn't only to avoid being found." Cameron finally asked. Why would the Fate Titan separate from the King when at some point Marley would wish to recover the Founding Titan? Or was it that there was no use for it with the threat the King had made against the world?

No, what Felix said earlier debunked her questions.

"However, it returns to the place it shouldn't be."

Ignoring the voices in his head, Felix frowned. "King Karl Fritz tasked her to stay here along with her immediate family. To find a family of her trust to protect them and hide this power." He looked down at his open hand, balling it to a fist a second later. "And to sound the trumpets when judgment day arrives."

"Karl Fritz warned the world, 'Interfere with us, the millions upon millions of titans in the walls will flatten the entire world.' This of course was nothing but a bluff to have a time of peace. Having told your family, 'If once again Eldia is driven to sin, we will perish as it's meant to be. I have made a vow renouncing war with the Founding Titan.'" Felix repeated as he saw into someone's memory. "Of course, that peace won't last forever."

He glanced back onto the ocean before looking at Cameron in the eye. "There is something I must warn you on. It's a curse only a few in my family developed since inheriting the Fate Titan. It's unlikely you will considering your circumstances.—" Noticing her worried expression, he reassured her before continuing. "We were given this task of what if. Knowing when judgment day would happen took its toll. Fearing that at any moment they would receive a vision of it. Becoming the only thing they thought of. And to stop thinking of it they became addicts. My grandfather was a nasty drunk, I see into his memories and understand he only drank himself half-dead to prevent going insane. If he wasn't already.—"