Frey

Chapter 15

I refused to tell. The only gift I could give Noble was his safety. I laughed bitterly as I remembered that was how I'd convinced him to stay. I'd promised him protection, but it was a false promise.

Eventually, one of the servants slipped, revealing they had seen me following my sister. And just like that, she was to blame for the entire ordeal, even though she'd never known. She'd been still searching the empty camp for trinkets and trifles. At least I was off the hook.

I surprised myself by being so slow. Of course, her sister would have been Aunt Fannie. For a flash, I felt sympathy for Fannie, but it passed. Just because life had given her sour grapes didn't mean she had to stomp them into wine and get drunk.

I wondered whether Fannie had known all along, but that was hard to discern. I did know that she had been bound, as I was.

The elders were a different story altogether. My father had given them orders to protect me and the child, and even though they followed through with them, they persisted in chattering about their concerns. The humans frightened them unreasonably. They constantly fretted, wanting to keep her—and me—from contaminating anyone else.

I attempted to reason with them, but they turned on me. "You don't understand. You never will! They will consume you. The humans will consume us all." Their hands shook as they spat out the words.

I didn't argue after that. I wouldn't have been allowed to leave the castle, anyway. Besides, it kept her from being paraded in front of so many visitors.

I stopped again. I had been born in a castle. I sat with the journal for a long moment. There was no way to reconcile that information with my own thoughts, no way to fill in what the bonds had taken. It hurt to read the diary, but there was no not finishing it. I decided the only way to keep going was if I did it as I had before I'd known it was my mother. I had to be an uninvolved reader.

My Freya has grown into a stubborn and willful child. She's prone to fits of screaming or crying. The emotion frightens the elders. It comes from her father, yes, but I can't see how it will harm her. The humans seemed to live their lives fine, controlling it well enough.

I frowned, hating that I felt like crying or screaming and that I could not step away from the story because it truly had been written of me. By my own mother. Then I remembered the tales of elven grief, how it could become strong enough to overwhelm one enough to take one's life. I felt sick, but I continued.

I received a visit from my mother's sister today. News of the child had reached her, and she felt she needed to call on me, now that my mother is not here to guide me.

I was in my room when she arrived. I heard the two quick raps and then one loud knock from her visits during my childhood and instantly knew it was her.

I gushed as my Aunt Junnie came in, grateful for someone who actually felt like family. She wore a simple hooded cloak, seemingly unafraid as she passed the guards at my door. She walked as though she ruled the castle, not as if she were a light elf in the center of a dark lord's rule.

She confessed to me a secret her family held, a power I had not known from my mother. They had kept it from my father, though he had stolen her after hearing a rumor of it. She passed to me many details of her sister, of the family... my family. She'd risked so much by coming here to help me, to help my child. I would owe her.

I had to stop reading as betrayal ripped through me again. Junnie.

Ruby laid her hands on mine, which were trembling, but I would not take the dust again.