Daughter of Nox

Chapter Ten

Hela stopped by her mother's side, winding her arm around the older woman's. "I'd hoped to meet you here, Cousin. I didn't get a chance to thank you for your hospitality today."

"You didn't thank her?" Freya's aunt looked scandalized. "Hela, what horrible manners you have." She gave her daughter's hand a playful slap. "I hope you don't let that happen when you call on anyone else. You'll have the Noxian Founders whispering that I've failed to bring you up with a shred of common courtesy."

"It's nothing, Aunt Sigyn," Freya said as she backed away, though she kept her eyes locked on her cousin. "The First Emissary left abruptly, so she didn't have much of a chance to say anything."

"I expect that had something to do with you, Uncle." Hela let out a girlish giggle and squeezed her mother's arm against her side. "You should have heard the things Father said about Uncle Rúnda after we left their house."

"The First Emissary and I were enthusiastic in our disagreement," her father said in a way that told Freya he was here as First Marshall of Nox, not as anyone's uncle. "Though that's not surprising. We both have opinions which we feel strongly about."

Sigyn let out an exasperated sound. "My dearest Rúnda, must you always speak as though you're leading troops into battle?" She looked to Freya. "What he means to say is that my husband is desperately jealous of your father. Though I suppose it's understandable to some extent. I doubt any man would want his wife keeping in touch with a former lover."

Freya nearly choked on her tongue at that. She turned a look of shock on her father. "Is that true?"

Her father's lined face went hard. He opened his mouth to answer, but Sigyn cut over him.

"Of course! You father and I were madly in love!" Sigyn almost shouted the words as though to announce it to anyone within earshot. "And he was such a romantic then, bringing me flowers and gifts every chance he had." She raised a hand to her forehead as though she might swoon. "I nearly took him up on his offer to whisk me away to elope."

Freya felt her stomach reach into her chest and bite into her heart. She wanted to say something, to ask how any of this could be, but her voice felt as though it had dissolved in her throat.

"That's enough, Sigyn." Father's voice was a razor blade against bare skin. "The girls don't need to hear anymore."

Freya's aunt rolled her eyes at him. "Will you stop being such a prude? It's not as though I'm telling them anything they don't already know."

"I didn't know," Freya said with what was left of her voice. "None of it."

Sigyn's dark brown eyes went wide as she looked at Freya's father.

"You never told her about us?" Disbelief wrapped itself around her voice, but there was something else there too. A hint of glee, Freya thought. "I wonder what other nuggets of our history you've kept from her as well."

"I said, that's enough." Her father put a hand on Freya's shoulder and drew her back toward him, as though to pull her away from anything else her aunt might say. "I won't have you telling my daughter things she'll have no way to interpret."

Freya felt anger surge into her chest. She shrugged Father's hand from her shoulder and spun toward him.

Freya's voice was taut. "Why didn't you tell me you wanted to elope with her?"

"Because it's in the past," her father's eyes went hard, flashing like gems caught in a beam of sunshine, "and because you aren't anywhere near old enough to have any business knowing about it anyway."

Freya's face felt scorched as anger rose in her cheeks. Before her father could say anything more, Freya turned and marched toward the entrance to the reception. Her father called out from behind her, but she ignored it. She didn't want to hear what he, or her aunt, or Hela had to say about anything. All she wanted was to be as far away from them as she could manage.