The library books were much too complicated, Frey concluded after skimming through the assortment with decreasing optimism. He'd held out hope that some books from when he was a child would still be around, but so far his search had been unsuccessful.

So he did the next best thing by picking out a book about common horse breeds with fairly simple sentences and brought it with him to the kitchen. He then went to fetch some writing supplies to get to work with copying the text while simplifying the letters as best he could.

It proved to be enjoyable, he had to admit, and much like many times when he got stuck on something, he completely forgot about the time.

"I see you've turned the kitchen into a study." Marius cocked his head to the side as Frey looked up, not having noticed the man entering the room at all.

"Well..." Frey averted his eyes. "... This house is hauntingly empty, especially when you're not here, so I'd rather sit in the place you're most likely to be rather than a cold study somewhere on the upper floor."

Marius uttered a low 'aw' before walking up to him.

"I'm sorry I can't spend time with you right now." He kissed Frey's head before picking a dandelion out of a small bouquet he was holding to tuck it behind Frey's ear. "I promise I'll be back as soon as possible."

"No, I understand." Frey shrugged it off, feeling terribly vulnerable as someone who'd spent most of his life claiming he didn't need company. "I'll be busy with this, anyway."

He chewed on his lip as he watched Marius pour water into a glass to put the small bundle of flowers into it, fighting the urge to remove the one he had stuck behind his ear. He'd had enough of clothes stained with yellow after Annarósa had insisted on bringing them inside constantly throughout their childhood, if not longer, either to decorate every single room she could access or to sneak up on Frey to flick dandelion heads into his face.

Marius noticed his stare at the flowers, and he smiled.

"Would have been coltsfoot, but I don't think they're in bloom anymore."

"No, just early spring." Frey watched as Marius placed the glass on the table, trying to disregard his discomfort about the one intruding on his head. "But... Dandelions are nice too."

"They're not that different, at least."

"So, what did Vidar say?" Frey dried his hands on a towel. "About the stable?"

"Oh, he's on his way already." Marius went up to the cupboard. "I'm just grabbing something to eat, then I'll head outside to assist him."

Frey nodded slowly, looking out the window.

"And... How's the rest of the family?"

Marius looked smug.

"I think Eivind was hoping for you to have followed me, if that's what you're wondering."

Frey gave his expression a frown.

"I was just asking in general, and I doubt he said that."

"Oh he doesn't speak to me at all." Marius shook his head. "But he was not very discreet when looking around as he spotted me... Actually not acknowledging me further than that."

"I see..." Frey stifled a smile. He knew Marius would tease him, affectionately intended as it may be, if he admitted to having bonded with the child, but the fact that he found some comfort in their shared traits was undeniable. Finding out there were more like him, who he could give the affirmation and understanding few had managed in his own childhood, and realising there's actual value in the part of him that he'd been forced to hide for so long, the main source of his self doubt, had been... Well, nice.

"Mind if I grab some bread?" Marius snapped him out of his thoughts, holding up a loaf wrapped in a kitchen towel. "Better eat it while it's fresh."

Frey scrunched up his face.

"That one's burnt in places though."

"Eh, I don't mind." Marius shrugged, tucking it under his arm while rummaging through the cupboard again. "Can't waste the first loaf we made together, not to mention we'll want to save the other ones in case we have company."

"I don't think our bread is good enough for the Fjærhaugs," Frey said, grimacing again. "With Revna's skill, they're better off with their own."

Marius grinned in return.

"Look at you being all modest."

"Just factual, really."

They proceeded to go through their newly found ritual of Marius preparing the food and Frey religiously cleaning up after him, leading to the kitchen being near spotless even before Marius headed out again.

It was a pleasant habit though, and Frey could enjoy a clean workspace when sitting down to be immersed in his writing again.

About halfway in, however, he heard the door open, and he wrinkled his eyebrows while looking down at the book. How long had he been sitting there? Writing that amount of letters could not have taken as much time as it would take Marius to be done at the stable.

"Hello?" a voice called out, and Frey shot up from the chair, recognizing the voice without issue.

"Mother." He beamed as he reached the entrance hall to greet Valdís. "This is a pleasant surprise."

"I was unsure whether I was supposed to knock or not," Valdís began, but Frey dismissed it with a hand wave.

"Of course not. This is still our family house, no matter who owns it." He nodded towards the kitchen. "I'll put on some tea, but I'm afraid our bread isn't quite up to standard."

Valdís' smile was weak.

"Is that so?"

"We baked it ourselves." Frey nodded. "And it was a poor first try right from the start. We tried picking the rolled out dough up with our hands to place it on the oven peel and it did not go well." Frey shook his head. "Did you know that you need to use a thinner peel first to place it onto the wider one?"

"I did not," Valdís replied, unsurprisingly given her own unlikeliness to have baked bread in the past.

"Well, I should be able to make tea, at the very least." Frey kept smiling despite his mother's short replies. She usually attempted small talk despite her reluctance to it, but he supposed she allowed herself to relax a little when it was just the two of them. "Marius is better at making proper fires, but he went to the stable just a while ago."

"Yes..." Valdís nodded, twisting the ring around her finger mindlessly before clasping her hands tight again. "... I suppose that's fitting."

Frey blinked, suddenly noticing a tension in the room.

"Is... Something wrong?"

"How could you think I wouldn't find out?" Valdís looked down at her hands while her eyes narrowed. "You know better than that. You know you're not the only one in the family who can dig up information."

Frey's body wanted to freeze, but he fought through it in favour of looking unphased.

"Find out?" He raised an eyebrow, knowing the futility of playing dumb with his mother, but he still had to try. "About what?"

"Don't give me that," Valdís said, as expected. "You should have expected me to look into Marius' background, yet your lies were so easy to shatter."

Frey remained steadfast, resisting the urge to chew on his lip.

"I suppose I was hoping you'd find no reason to look for 'information' on your son's lover."

"It was not my intention." Valdís scrunched her nose. "I trusted that you of all people would be careful with who you were seen with, and that you would have done such digging before letting someone that close, but when you left South Kerilia I had to question your choices, and so I acted accordingly."

Her tone was, as always, more gentle than Frey suspected her thoughts were, but he refused to let his guard down.

"Mother, I'm... Sorry. Of course I never wanted to lie to you, but I wanted you to get to know him first so you wouldn't judge him before giving him a chance."

"It's nothing against him as a person." Valdís attempted a comforting smile that made no difference. "But this is the worst possible time for slip-ups, and—"

"Don't call him that," Frey snapped before he could stifle it. "He's a person. He's my person, and I will not have anyone refer to him as a slip-up. Certainly not my own mother."

Despite a slight wrinkle of discontent on her forehead, Valdís chose to ignore the harshness of his voice.

"An unfortunate wording," she acknowledged. "But words aside, the fact of the matter is that he's simply not the right fit for you, and especially not right now. Not only are you risking your already fragile reputation, but the moment you find out about the threat on our town— your hometown, you pack your things and disappear with him to the countryside?"

"I didn't disappear," Frey objected. "I'm doing—"

"Nothing," Valdís interrupted him. "You're doing nothing from here. Your expertise lies in talking to people and finding out what they know, which is the last thing you're doing right now."

"Mother—"

"Our town is in danger, Frey." Valdís wouldn't let him speak, shoulders tensing as she wrung her hands. "You told me so yourself in your letter, and Lord Hargreaves confirmed it as well."

Frey's expression darkened, a gnawing sensation of betrayal building in his guts.

"... Damien's the one who told you about all this?"

"While I don't understand how you can stand him after all that he's done, I'll still admit he tried to hide Marius' background from me." Another dismayed wrinkle formed on Valdís' nose. "And he asked me not to interfere, because you're happier this way."

Frey drew a deep breath through his nose, balling his hands to keep them still before continuing in as calm of a voice as he could manage.

"How... Nice," he said coldly. "To think this man you consider to be a horrible person would care more about my happiness than my own mother."

"Frey—"

"Because that's why you're here, right?" It was Frey's turn to not be interrupted. "You want me to go back to South Kerilia and clean up this whole mess while forgetting about Marius, who could only hurt my chances of succeeding?"

"Of course I want you to be happy, but it's not that simple for people like us." Valdís shifted her hands' grip around one another. "And why wouldn't Lord Hargreaves be thrilled for you to leave? He will also profit from breaking West Kerilia, so why wouldn't he get rid of the biggest threat to that deal?"

"And, what?" Frey struggled to keep his hands still. He'd fought so hard to prove to his parents that he could control it. "He manipulated me into going away? If he was trying to get rid of me I would have known it, and I would not have fallen for it."

"I don't know how he convinced you to leave, but as you say there would have had to be a good reason..." Valdís' voice was strained. "... Because I'd hate to think you're simply running away."

"It's—" Frey was aghast. "I wouldn't do that, and Damien didn't send me away, he just supported my decision to leave, and..." He swallowed, far from tempted to bring up Carrigan. "... I have my reasons, but I don't wish to elaborate and Damien promised me he would stall the whole thing while I was here, and I trust him on that because I know he's on our side."

An uncharacteristic scoff escaped Valdís' lips.

"Like he was on our side when the nightmare blight attacked?"

Frey instantly grew cold, and the tension in the room suffocated him.

"Mother... Let's not—"

"He didn't lift a finger to help us," Valdís pressed on. "If South Kerilia hadn't pressured Claus so much and forced him into that condition, it could have been avoided. Lord Hargreaves had every opportunity to help us back then, to make sure our town didn't suffer the way it did, but nothing."

Frey's heart squeezed hard in his chest. He'd known there was a slight resentment between his family and the Hargreaveses, but the fact that Valdís was blaming it on Damien that much was news to him.

And with that, other implications grew in Frey's head.

"So... Doesn't that mean you're blaming me for what happened, as well?" he asked, words unusually low. "I was working with Damien at the time, after all, so you think I should have done better and seen the signs before it was too late. Is that it?"

"That is not what I was saying," Valdís protested. "I'm saying you shouldn't trust Lord Hargreaves when it concerns West Kerilia, because no matter what it seems like, he cares more about his town than he does about you."

"And you don't?" Frey finally snapped. "Unlike you, Damien has supported me all along, and you're literally here right now to tell me I can't be with the man I love because I need to uphold my dumb position. You want me to throw away my happiness in favour of getting our wealth and power back, just like always. Just like I had to change everything about myself to be good enough, because I've always been worth less than our family's reputation."

"This..." Valdís admittedly looked taken aback, but she hurriedly regained her composure. "... Is not about anything like that. It's about West Kerilia. Our town is in danger—"

"You know, you weren't much help last time when that blight attacked either," Frey hissed as an unexpected, suppressed resentment suddenly broke through its barrier. "You ran away from Father to claim to help others evacuate instead of staying to reason with him. As his wife, shouldn't you have been with him to the end? With how much he loved you, don't you think he would have listened? But you ran away instead because helping the people in town would make you look better when everything collapsed, but that might not even have happened if you'd just stayed with him."

"Of course I tried—"

"I don't think you did." Frey was too upset to listen. "With the way you've always been acting oh so perfect around people and forced us to do so as well, it stands to reason that you would prioritise people's opinions of you before your husband's health? Your own family's health? Or maybe you didn't even love—"

"How can you say that!?" Valdís' voice finally broke, louder than Frey had ever heard her. "How can you accuse me of not loving him? How— How can you stand there and think I didn't do everything I could to help him? Do you think I don't miss him every waking moment, despairing every time I wake up at night to remember he's not there by my side anymore?"

Frey wasn't listening though. Perhaps he would have regretted his words if so, but his focus had lowered to his mother's hands as she'd lost her calm.

"What..." he whispered as he watched the now unclasped hands, having just recently torn themselves free to flick in an all too familiar way. "... What was that?"

Valdís drew a quiet breath, pursing her lips as tight as she once again clutched her hands.

"That's not—"

"Why the fuck did you just do that?" Frey's voice trembled, anger and confusion numbing his chest as the revelation dawned on him, but Valdís didn't interrupt her sentence either.

"— important." Despite her once again calm exterior, she looked undoubtedly uncomfortable. "And you need to calm down."

"Are you like me?" Frey wanted to know, failing to hide the contempt in his voice as memories flooded his head. His mother's reluctance to small talk, her back pains stemming from constantly tense shoulders, her insistence on making him endure being still. "Have you been like me all along?"

"It's not... Something I want to talk abo—"

"You told me there was something wrong!" Frey's voice cracked. "You— You made me hate myself for it and made me hide it, but you're the same? You know what it's like and you still treated me that way?"

"You need to calm down," Valdís repeated, hands trembling again enough to make her shoulders tense up. "And there is no need to talk about it. Of course I don't want you to feel bad, but in our position—"

"I can't believe I listened to you," Frey growled, nails burrowing into his palms. "I can't believe I let you feed me those values and make me feel like I was alone. That I was the only one who was wrong, just so we wouldn't look bad in front of others."

Valdís opened her mouth only to close it again, gaze falling to the floor as she gathered her composure again.

"I had no choice," she uttered, barely so Frey could hear. "If other people see it—"

"Now I understand Marius' frustration." Frey almost laughed. "How ridiculous it sounds when we go on and on about what other people of our class think, as if it's the only thing that matters."

Valdís didn't respond, possibly having given up after being interrupted so many times, so Frey continued.

"And I'm done with it. I don't care what anyone thinks anymore. I've promised Marius I'll be with him no matter what, and I'm going to keep that promise."

As if summoned by his name, Marius opened the door just as Valdís readied herself to reply, and his face brightened up with a broad smile.

"Lady Magnusdottír! I thought that was your carriage outside. What a pleasant surprise..." He trailed off as the crushing tension in the room became apparent, and he sucked air through his teeth. "... Or... Not?"

"Far from it." Frey's glare was as cold as his voice, and he turned around. "And she's said what she wanted, so there's no reason for her to stay."

He glanced over his shoulder at the two of them.

"It's my house, after all, so you may throw her out if you'd like."

Then he walked away.