TWO MONTHS FREYA spent on that ship. Eight weeks of boredom and melancholy, interrupted only by the occasional visits Matthias made. The numbness in her mind long spread to her heart and the rest of her body, and she rarely even bothered to eat or drink the water brought to them unless Henrik bade her to. He was the only person there she ever talked to, save for Matthias. His beard and hair had grown longer, but Freya convinced him to at least attempt to braid the scruffy brown locks so they wouldn't tangle more than they already were.

He'd let the young Suli boy do it for him, happy to have gotten even a tiny smile out of the child. Even the braids didn't help him now. They were rarely allowed to wash, and when they were there was no bath prepared, and they only wiped themselves down with a wet rag. Freya's hair was as oily and tangled as Henrik's, but it had a finer texture, so she could at least comb it out with her fingers if she tried enough. Sometimes she wondered why she bothered. What good did it do to look neat and well-groomed when she stood trial for the crime of existing?

You've done horrible things, she told herself, you're not like the rest of them, you deserve to be punished. But could it be considered a crime to want to live in a safe space? Was taking the life of a man truly a sin when he was aiming down his scopes at you? She wasn't ashamed of all she'd done, but she was aware that nothing would wash away the blood sticking like tar to her hands.

She didn't bother to tell Matthias of her thoughts. He wouldn't understand, and they would only argue again. Or maybe he would, but he would still stand firm in his belief that Grisha were abominations. That they were not meant to exist. At the start of her captivity, the knowledge that her brother thought that about her would've rendered her a useless, weeping girl curled up in a ball in the corner of her cell, burying her face in her knees so the other prisoners wouldn't see. Now it only left a strange feeling of emptiness inside her, like an unfinished map with a blank space in the centre.

It was a feeling that came whenever she saw him strutting around in front of his drüskelle brothers, acting like he didn't care one bit for her, sometimes even sneering an insult she pretended not to hear. It was rooted in dismay and frustration but bled away to a grim acceptance. Whenever she looked at him in those moments, a Fjerdan saying played at the edge of her mind, begging for her to speak it out loud.

The water hears and understands. She did understand him and the way he acted despite the way it made her teeth grind and her heart clench. She would ignore it and hide the pain it caused her if it meant he felt better about the hours he spent beside her, only so she would see him in the long and lonely days spent in the cell. That didn't mean it didn't hurt. Those same feelings always reminded her of the second part of the saying. The water hears and understands. The ice does not forgive.

Could she ever forgive him for what he was doing? For what he actively participated in? She thought of the rain battering down on the corpses in Mosava, of the way the earth soaked up the blood and turned soft and red. The blinding pain of Harshaw digging through her abdomen to fish out the bullet was permanently engraved in her mind. The fear that followed after, as she waited and drifted and Harshaw inched closer to death, was an even deeper wound. Who had been the cause of it all? Drüskelle soldiers that kidnapped Grisha children.

She drifted the same way now. Except this time it wasn't a little girl accompanying her, helping her. Only people like her, chained and as helpless as her. And there would be no Nikolai to save her from this. The only thing that awaited at the end of this journey was the executioner's axe. Or the firing squad, perhaps even the pyre. Freya couldn't even be sure what the drüskelle used nowadays.

"It is horribly hot," Henrik complained, squirming for the millionth time that hour. She'd tried teaching him some Ravkan in the many hours they spent there, and he'd tried teaching her some Kerch. It was difficult when they could barely communicate, but they both took to it fairly well. They could hold a normal conversation better than when Freya first woke. "I thought Fjerda was supposed to be cold."

"It is." Freya rolled her eyes. "We aren't going north. Not yet at least. They want to round up as many Grisha as they can so they can flaunt their prize before their brothers when they return." For honour, Matthias would've argued with her, that same pinch between his brows whenever she dared question the drüskelle methods and motivations.

"Well, that's grim," Henrik sighed, frowning. He'd look much younger if he had the chance to cut his hair and shave, but the overgrowth and the oily grime on his skin made him look at least ten years older than he was. She'd been surprised when he said he was only twenty-four, a blacksmith just out of his apprenticeship. He wasn't under an indenture but worked in his uncle's shop. Good, Freya couldn't help but think when he'd told her. How many young boys and girls were brought in as slaves to Kerch – who prided themselves on being against slavery – and sold into 'willing' indentures? They never paid off that debt. It either never got smaller or it only grew. Grisha were in high demand, and Freya had no doubt Henrik would get a much fairer indenture than the slaves, but it was still not a predicament she would wish upon anyone.

"Would you prefer for me to lie?"

"I would prefer to be eating waffles back in Ketterdam, spending a night in a gambling den to relax, but we can't all get what we want." Freya snorted, shifting so she was more slumped against the wall. Her spine ached, but there were only so many positions she could move into. She just wanted to get out of here already.

"I've never had waffles," Freya admitted, grinning lightly at the way Henrik looked absolutely appalled by that. "The General likes to keep us humble, so most of the time we eat herring or other common foods. The only time I ate anything different was when the King held some celebration I was invited to."

"Waffles are a common food!"

"Not in Ravka!" A fist clanked hard onto the cell's iron bars and Freya jumped. A brute of a man stood on the other side, neck we thick as a barrel. He glowered down at them.

"Silence," he hissed in Fjerdan. Freya bit down on her tongue, annoyance spiking. She set her glare on him, arrogantly tilting her head.

"Why, scared I'll curse you with my devilish drüsje ways?" The man's nostrils flared. He gritted his teeth, grinding out another silence before he stalked over to the stairs and resumed his watch. Freya lingered in the satisfaction of riling one of them up, huffing a short laugh before turning back to Henrik. "So, waffles?"

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

A week later, they docked somewhere in what Freya assumed had to be Novyi Zem. The people at the docks were all tall and dark-skinned – some had a similar shade to Zoya's skin, others were much darker – and they all wore brightly coloured clothes. A flurry of crimson, saffron, emerald and cerulean fabric expanded before her, ran through with beads of violet and pink and silver. Some people wore Zemeni revolvers slung around their waists.

Freya didn't think she'd ever seen such an array of colours in her life. She inhaled the hot air, letting it burn her airways as it inflated her lungs. The sun beat down on them the instant they were lead from the hold. It was better than the dimness they'd been forced into for the past few months, so she enjoyed the way it kissed her skin.

Unlike the Kaelish at the Wandering Isle, the Zemeni didn't look at them with contempt. Some dockworkers – probably much too used to this – even turned their gazes away. When all the Grisha were herded together on the docks, a tall Zemeni man approached, his hand laid on his revolver in a warning.

Freya didn't speak Zemeni, but the exchange between Jarl Brum and the man with the revolver appeared heated. Beside her, Henrik scoffed, turning his eyes to the sky. Freya raised a questioning brow at him.

"He's saying we're not slaves, but political prisoners," Henrik said. "We're all spies, you see. Even you with the uniform clearly on and that boy who's barely ten." Freya curled her nose but didn't say anything. It wouldn't help anyway, the Zemeni wouldn't want to cause a diplomatic incident with Fjerda, and stopping every drüskelle regiment that came through their docks would be too expensive.

The man with the revolver frowned but stepped out of Brum's way. With that, they were being led again. Another storage house awaited them, tall and smelling distinctly of jurda blossoms. The ground was hard and cool, fighting off the gruelling heat filtering in through the windows. At least it was dry and isolated from most weather, unlike the previous warehouse they'd been kept in.

They'd wait here longer than the Wandering Isle. Freya could tell by the bed roles set up – thin, ragged things, but better than sleeping on the bare ground – and the jug of water with the small cup in the corner. They didn't have that before. The drüskelle would hunt here.

That was confirmed when they dragged in a weeping, snivelling young man the next day. He was begging them in Zemeni, so Freya couldn't understand what he was saying, but she would know that desperate look anywhere. They all wore it the same way. When the man wouldn't stop begging, the drüskelle beat him. For a long few moments, Freya could only stare.

The punches and kicks coming down on the poor man – her age, maybe even a few years younger, a boy really – were in slow motion. Her chest tightened as the man cried out, clutching his knees to his chest as best he could with the chains and pole holding his hands apart. The drüskelle wouldn't stop, and then something tore open inside her, and she was forcing herself to her feet.

"Leave him be," she commanded in a riptide-under-ice tone. The drüskelle stopped, shocked that one of the prisoners had dared speak. There were three of them – it was ridiculous that they needed three men to handle one boy – and the tallest of them stepped threateningly towards her. She huffed a laugh. She couldn't believe she'd stayed so silent, so penitent and compliant. These men were the only thugs. Evil creatures that wrought only despair and terror. Why should she hide from them? Why should she ever bow her head before them and beg for forgiveness?

Djel had made her what she was, as had every other god her country worshipped. It was through his will alone that she walked the earth. And it was by her own will that she stayed alive for so long. These men should be the ones bowing before her and asking for her mercy, for her forgiveness. For the war, for the thousands put through sham trials and murdered, for Mosava and everything in between.

"And how are you going to stop me, drüsje?" the big one asked, spreading his arms as if welcoming the challenge. Her mouth twisted up into a sneer. "I can flatten you before you so much as blink an eye." At that, Freya laughed. Loudly, genuinely amused.

"I am the Siren, trained at the Little Palace to end the lives of cravens like you. I've felled men thrice your value, and one day, I will wet my blade with your blood as well." It was a promise, a deep-rooted tree of hatred that curled around her lungs and heart, digging deeper with every new experience she had with the drüskelle. The snivelling boy squirmed on the ground, trying to get away, only to have a foot be brought down on his chest to keep him still.

When the tall one swung, Freya already knew it was coming. She stepped to the side with surprising swiftness, letting the man's fist hurtle through the empty air. Her body was weak and tired, but it responded to her commands with ease, the ours of training with Botkin paying off. She hoped he'd be proud of what she was doing. Protecting those who couldn't protect themselves was something that had been injected into her very veins from the moment she stepped foot in the Little Palace.

The tall drüskelle sneered and swung again. Freya dodged his strike, pivoting on her heels and kicking down hard on the soft spot at the back of his knee. His leg bent forward on instinct and he crumbled, but he rightened himself up quickly. She didn't expect this to be an easy fight. The drüskelle were trained killing machines, made to hunt people like herself.

They continued the same dance for a few more exchanges. Punch, dodge, strike, punch, dodge, strike. She could see the tall drüskelle become increasingly more irritated with each pass. He launched his fist forward and she spun away from him, ending up with her back to the other two men. That was her mistake. One of them rushed at her and grabbed her from behind. Without the use of her hands, she could barely fight back against the man's grip. She snarled in frustration, wriggling in his grip. But there was nothing she could do. His arms were locked tightly around her own, and the metal pole pressed into her chest as her elbows were tugged behind her caged her in.

The tall drüskelle walked up to her now, teeth proudly on display as he grinned. "You never stood a chance, drüsje." And then his fist collided with her stomach, and everything in her lurched. The air was forced out of her and she ground her teeth together to stop herself from crying out. When he raised his fist again, she clenched the muscles in her stomach, letting them absorb the blow in a less painful manner. Another punch landed, and then another, until finally, Freya had enough.

Her mind ran through a hundred different scenarios and memories from Botkin's training, searching for something that could help her, until... there. She could vividly see Luca's striking quartz eyes shining with determination, arms held back as another student attacked from the front. It was one of the days in training he'd proven to be more dangerous than anyone assumed.

Freya inhaled and reared back with her head until it collided with the man's face behind her. She heard a crunch as something cracked, and she felt a sick sort of satisfaction, a faint memory of her nose aching resurfacing. The man leaned back, taking her body with her. She used the momentum to lift her legs off the ground and thrust them forward. They collided with the tall drüskelle's chest so hard he was sent a few feet back. And the man who held her tilted and fell to the ground. He took her with him, but his grip on her loosed and she rolled away from him.

She was on her back still by the time he lifted himself off the ground. And then he pulled the axe from its sheath at his waist, and Freya's eyes widened. She should've expected it, but some part of her had hoped they wouldn't want to kill her without the trial. Of course, they wouldn't want to wait, they believe you're guilty no matter what you do.

The man raised the axe high above his head, the steel glinting in the sunlight filtering in through the windows. Freya sucked in a final breath. And then she heard the voice whispering in her head. A familiar voice, one she craved to hear so often while stuck in the dark hold of the ship. She saw her old training rooms spread before her eyes and turned to the golden-haired young man standing beside her, his hazel eyes quizzical as he asked a hundred different questions.

I've heard people say you use sound waves to break things sometimes. If you can hear the sound of your heartbeat, could you not use the sound of other people's heartbeats for such a thing as well? She'd almost forgotten about the conversation. It was lost beneath a hundred more moments they'd spent together. She swallowed thickly now, looking up at the axe as it began to arch down.

At the last possible second, Freya shoved her hands forward. The axe collided with the metal pole between her arms. The steel deformed inwards, bending from the force into a dull arrow. Freya let out a breathless laugh. The drüskelle's eyes widened as her hands grazed each other. It happened in a split second, faster than a bullet firing.

She sensed the pitter-patter of the man's heart and grabbed ahold of the barest waves of sound. And then she pulled her hands apart.

The drüskelle's chest tore open.

A/N

The conversation mentioned in this chapter between Nikolai and Freya occurred in chapter 6 btw. It's been so long since I wrote that chapter but I always intended for Freya to use that little bit of information.

I also want to say how insanely grateful I am to all of those who've taken the time to read this book, especially those who leave encouraging comments and make me actually want to write. I have books for a fandom where the readers are very often silent and sometimes even very rude and disrespectful, so writing for this book has been very refreshing for me!

This book has reached 40k reads and I'm so thankful to all of you!