Two Hundred Years in Slavery is all the people of Xathania have known. Toiling and dying for a kingdom that has only snarled at them. Not until hope surfaces as a story in the wind and the flames of a spirit long forgotten resurfaces to face the g...
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Freya had not regretted staying back on the boat with Callahan's guard. The King had assured Reid that he would be fine before he left with the rest. Cora had asked her to join them to the palace but she had declined five times. She needed space to think and collect her thoughts before she stepped onto Opir.
She had made that clear to Reid and his squire, Justin. The idiots did not let her breathe and neither did they leave her be. All her efforts to ward them off had failed woefully. Three other guards had joined them in their fussing, Zack of Zolt had been the most reasonable of the five, warding off his brothers in arms at her behest.
Reid ordered him to keep watch on the main deck and she followed him to avoid the rest. She still didn't regret her decision. She also didn't understand why they were kind. Welkamians had always been hostile to her and even though she was not truly Xathanian, she still believed that they would hate her all the same. The guards on that ship had been kind. They had brought her breakfast, lunch and supper.
Had checked on her. Grey, the guard who led the unit that guarded the supposed Queen Dyana, had brought her books on Helias and the spirits. Two books was all he could find. A hundred pages between them and nearly as old as Samael. Freya had asked him about Helias and he informed her that her potential father spoke to no one except his kin, Drasel and the Phoenix.
The books were not forth coming. They only spoke of The Pit and its horrors.
After their watch of the top deck, Zack escorted her to her cabin and left her to her devices. Freya went straight to bed, unable to think for second longer. It was in her sleep that she heard shuffling in her cabin. She suspected Reid and sat up with enough anger to turn a city to ruin.
'Control yourselves you little...' a man, red of hair, began to say when another cut in.
'Do not refer to my grandchildren with such cruelty,' another man, black of hair, warned.
Freya stared at them, she stared so much that she did not realize that her little boy and girl were in the room. She only noticed them when they trampled her to bed in a fit of squeals and giggles.
She had to be dreaming yet she was not. Four days without them and she was nearly mad, barely eating. Barely living.
'Your former husband,' the dark haired one started. 'Sought to behead them.'
'Not in front of them, you retard,' the red haired one said.
'Nix, I will give them free rein in your gardens if you don't shut up.'
Freya pressed her lips into a line as the dark haired one faced her. 'Children may I have a moment with your mother.'
Her children pouted but they obeyed without whining. They ran to the red haired one and began to torment him with wisps of darkness.
'You are as ferocious as your grandsire,' he snapped before putting out the darkness with fire, brighter than Cora's and Eleonor's.
'He will warm up to them eventually,' she took her eyes off her children and looked at him. 'My pride and joy, I can't even start to tell you how sorry I am.'
