Freya

Samu floats through my dreams.

I'm walking through a dark, misty forest. He stands in the distance, just out of my reach, calling to me. I quicken my pace. He gets farther away. I jog, sprint, cry out, but Samu continues to drift from me, swirling in the mist till he's nothing more than a memory.

I wake with a jolt, Samu's name whispered on my lips and a sheen of sweat covering my forehead. At first, my mind can't place me. It takes me several seconds to orient myself in the small double room in Dadun. With the realisation of my whereabouts comes the heavy dread knotting in my stomach.

We are trapped.

I have no idea where Killian and Casimir are.

A new concern arises--Samu. It's been so long that I've dreamt of him. Is he still safe in Sanaa's army? Now that I am presumed dead, would they have discarded him to the side for lack of use? The thought twists my stomach.

A knock at the door forces me to rise, the covers falling to my waist as I swing my legs around. The usual guard, which according to Alaric is named Harris, opens the door after several seconds.

"Time to get up," he says, voice gruff. "Your shift starts soon."

With a nod, I wait till he closes the door and slip from the bed, taking note of Lei's empty bed while I dress in a simple, green dress. It feels strange to wear dresses again, but there's something comforting about it too, a familiarity that cannot be ignored despite their inconvenience.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the small mirror, hanging crooked on the back of the door. I barely recognise myself. Despite the feel of my hair brushing my shoulders, I still haven't gotten used to the way it frames my face.

Harris, like he does everyday, escorts me to the marketplace. I find myself wondering about him. Lei and Killian told me about the rebel Torinnians, how they disliked Sanaa's approach and went off on their own, Hana as their lead. But I find myself curious about each of their stories, what happened in their lives that made them decide to take this path.

They're not the only Torinnians who lost their families. So why are they different?

When we arrive at the marketplace, the stalls are still setting up. Hana waits impatiently by Lei's stall, which is meticulously placed while she stands behind straightening some of her books. My stall, however, is no longer there.

"Ah, there you are," Hana says, moving over to me. "You're going to work at Lei's stall today. The flowers weren't bringing in much revenue."

I meet Lei's eye. The rage from the previous evening has dissipated, replaced with something softer.

"Good morning," I greet as Hana drifts away, leaving Harris to watch over us from a few feet away, just out of ear shot. "You were up early."

"You were out late."

"I was with Alaric. Training." She nods, somewhat uninterested.

I grit my teeth together, moving out from under the shelter of the stall cover as the sun peeks over the trees. The bitter winter rarely allows the sun to shine through this early in the morning, and I bask in its rays of warmth, dreading the oncoming snow as we head further into winter.

"Did you know Alaric?" I ask. "Back in Torrinne, I mean?"

"I didn't, no."

Her answer is not the one I wanted.

"But you knew Hana?"

"I met her when I was 15, the same time I met Killian," she says. "We were in the same training camp, all three of us. We were almost friends, once, believe it or not."

And despite their opposing beliefs now, I can believe it. There's a roughness to Hana that reminds me of both Killian and Lei. For the first time in a while, I let him float through my mind, thinking of what crude remark he'd make if he heard me admit their similarities. It makes my heart burn. I never thought I would miss his sarcastic, witty remarks so dearly.

"Freya..." I turn to look at Lei. "I'm sorry about what I said last night."

I blink in surprise. "It's okay."

"It's not. I know... I know this is hard for you too. Casimir was like your brother and Killian..." she sighs, her eyes dry as a bone. "I know you wanted to hate him, but I also know that whatever was going on between you two was far from hatred."

I swallow, my eyes blurring at her words. The way she speaks of Killian and how I felt towards him feels like a tonne of bricks have fallen over me. I've never spoken aloud how I felt towards him; I didn't know it was so obvious to those around us. Was I that transparent, or does Lei know me more than she thinks she does?

"They could be alive, you know," I whisper.

"I know you've lost people in your life, Freya, but I have too. More than I can even count. I won't allow myself to rely on someone who is never going to come. I'll be trapped forever."

"Why don't you allow yourself to at least hope?"

She shakes her head. "I can't."

"Why?" I demand. "I hoped for years my brother was still alive, against all odds. And he was. If I believed he was dead, I never would have found him."

"And if you found him and he was dead, then what?"

The idea is horrifying. I spent a year pining over him, scheming, planning, training. If he'd been dead... "Then... then..."

"You got lucky. He was alive," she says. "Hope is a fragile thing, Freya. When you allow it to consume you, become your motivation, it takes over everything inside of you."

"Is that so bad?"

"Hope is merely denial in disguise. And when that hope is inevitably crushed, you won't know who you are anymore." Her eyes meet mine. "All of a sudden, everything you've lived for, worked towards, dreamt of, is gone."

My eyes burn as I stare at her. The vacant look at which she has stared at me these past few days has dissipated, replaced by a fiery determination. A desperation to make me understand, to make me see.

But I do not want to see what she does, I do not want to feel it. Because it is an ache that embeds deep in your bones, similar to the cold that seeps deep into the roots of the earth in the depths of winter.

I turn away from her, focusing intently on a stack of books sitting near the edge of the stall. Her gaze remains on the side of my face, desperate for my understanding. Glancing up at the marketplace, I watch the way Hana glides through the gathering crowd, conversing with passersby with a plastered smile.

The very people she intends to destroy.

I grit my teeth together. "I just... I want to get out of here."

"Freya." Lei catches my wrist, forcing me to look at her. "We will. Whether or not somebody comes to help. We will get out of here."

And though she has no hope of rescue, and certainly no hope of Killian and Casimir, her confidence in our escape is all the confirmation I need. But it doesn't keep my heart from sinking deep in my chest.

Hope is denial in disguise.

The disguise slips off a fraction more.

-

I do not show up to training.

After a day in the marketplace, I feign an excuse to Hana when she instructs us to The Rose for supper once more. Lei watches me knowingly, but does not disturb me as I tire early.

I half expect Harris to come knocking when the sun sinks deep beneath the mountains, inviting the night in, but my room remains undisturbed as I lie atop the bed staring at the ceiling. My bones ache but my eyes remain bone dry.

Though I am the only one in the room, the walls close in around me. The warm glow from the candle casts a muted glow across the floorboards, but it offers no solace to the raging flurry inside of me.

The room feels suffocatingly small.

I slip from the bed, lacing my boots with shaky hands. It is impossible to tell how much time has passed since the sun went down. It simultaneously feels like seconds and days.

From the wardrobe, I layer on a thick, winter coat and a black cloak overtop, tucking my hair back as I pull the door open a slither. Nobody guards the other side.

I slip down the stairs and outside.

Quiet rests over the village. In the distance, jovial music from The Rose wafts through the air. I turn in the opposite direction.

The forest embraces me with skinny, stretched out arms. I welcome its muted quiet as I move through, careful to keep my eye ahead of me in search of that shimmer in the air, warning me of a forcefield. I do not intend to go far. I cannot.

It is less than 5 minutes of walking when I notice the ripple in the air. I stop dead in my tracks, letting out a shaky breath.

Our prison.

I reach out to touch it, my finger pulsing against it as I rest it against the shimmery air, welcoming the shock that travels through my body. Away from the deathly silence of the village, the sounds of the forest flood all around me all at once, overwhelming me with emotion.

For days, I have clung to denial. The memory of the truth hung over me like a shadow I refused to acknowledge. But now, the weight of cannot go ignored, it suffocates me.

I take several steps backward, hand dropping as my back hits the trunk of a tree and I slide to the ground, the fabric of my skirt gathering at my knees.

Tears well up, blurring my vision. Memories flood my mind. Of training in the forest with Casimir, of his fierce determination to protect me, to never leave my side even as I allied with his sworn enemy. I think of my childhood, how even before my father died, Casimir was ever so present in my family.

An unexpected sob wracks through my body. In the depths of the forest, I do not stop it. Not even the moon can stretch through the thick layer of cloud as I sit facing its rich depths.

Killian finds me in the darkness, the warmth of his memory wrapping around me, shutting out the bitter cold. Memories of him surround me -- the suspicion I held for him as he encaptured the attention of every person in Veymaw, the way my suspicion melted away from his warmth, the way it turned warm, hot as we snuck through abandoned halls in the Palace. The ache of his betrayal. How it haunted me even in his last days up in the mountains, in the dark cave, when his lips pressed against mine, whispering promises that called to me in ways I could not ignore.

None of it matters now.

The betrayal, whether his feelings were true.

I bury my face in the fabric of my cloak, inhaling deeply as tears stain my cheeks. It only intensifies the ache in my chest, widening the hollowing void threatening to swallow me. The betrayal, the loss, the unbearable truth of my feelings -- everything suppressed crashes over me all at once.

Sobs shudder through me, each breath growing harder to take, the sharpness of the air stabbing at the back of my throat. I curl in on myself, as if holding my knees to my chest will keep my insides from falling out.

But even the screaming sound of my sorrow does not allow me to completely let my guard down. Behind me, I hear the crushing of sticks underfoot.

Shooting to my feet, I stumble backwards, eyeing the forest with blurry eyes and a pounding heart. The air shifts, I swing around.

Somebody is here.