The name Siren followed Freya Helvar around like a curse from the moment her powers first manifested in a raid on her village. With the image of her father's charred corpse and her brother's disgusted face on her mind, she is hauled to the Little Pa...
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IT TOOK HOURS for the sticky feeling to be washed from Freya's skin – hours of scrubbing herself with a sponge and dunking herself in water that was tainted red. And yet, she still felt like there was tar coating every inch of her, even if the initial dirtiness was gone. By the time her hair was brushed and dried and her clothing was fresh and clean, the feeling was almost completely gone. But it still ate away at her mind.
As she tossed and turned, she couldn't get rid of the feeling of despair clawing at her insides. There was no sleep to be found that night, no matter how hard she tried. How could she sleep when all that she saw when she closed her eyes was Luca's glassy eyes, empty of all things that he was made up of? It didn't feel real that he was alive. His heart was beating and his lungs were expanding, but Freya felt as though they weren't. As though the boy sleeping in a room a few feet away from her was just a rotting corpse that everyone dressed up and lied to themselves about.
In the morning, when she looked in the mirror, there were vivid black marks beneath her reddened eyes. Zoya came to see her, and Freya expected some form of reprieve from the horrible thoughts and feelings inside her head, but even Zoya couldn't jest about what happened. She stood behind Freya at her vanity, running a brush through her silky pale hair without a word.
"Are you feeling better?" she asked eventually when Freya's hair was braided and she was dressed in an Etherealki blue blouse. No kefta for her that day. She didn't think she could take it. Freya didn't answer, couldn't answer. Her eyes strayed to the wilting blooms of crimson clover on her table. There was little comfort to be found in them now.
"Throw those away, please," she said instead of answering, then turned to the door. She didn't see Zoya for the rest of the day. Hiding in the library with a book in her lap was more manageable than speaking to anyone. No one cared to approach her there, having the decency to not interrupt her reading – she wasn't reading, her eyes only stared at the words. The hours passed, breakfast and lunch were forgotten, and then the sun was setting.
Freya lurked in the halls like a shadow until her mind latched onto something to do. This time it was a door she was all too familiar with. She pushed it open without another thought. The walls of the room were padded with soundproof foam that the Durasts. Silence, pure silence. Freya relished in it, inhaling the stiff air of the training room made specifically for her.
She didn't spend much time there either. The lack of food caught up to her eventually, so she stole away towards the dining hall. It was late and very few people sat at the tables. There was only one person that Freya cared to talk to. She took the food from the Etherealki table, ignoring the questioning looks from those sitting there, and walked over to the one Materialki still in the hall.
"How are you, David," she asked as she sat down. The Durast looked up at her, shocked at the approach. His eyes flitted from her to the Etherealki table behind her, but he didn't say anything. Freya cared little for decorum then and cared even less for the strange separation of Grisha orders. Especially after what happened the night before. She needed to be with someone then, and the Summoners she rarely talked to wouldn't be enough.
