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.
The chatter of hundreds of voices joined with the sound of orchestral music to pour over her as she stepped into the reception. Brilliant light spilled from dozens of watery orbs that morphed slowly through geometric shapes as they moved lazily over the crowd. On the ground, people stood in clusters of threes and fours, laughing and drinking and eating food from trays carried by masked servants clad in flowing black gowns. Newsfeed drones swarmed like clouds of fist-sized insects around the orbs as they snapped holo images and vid footage of the party, and Freya could see the top of a tall MinNet node nearby.
Freya scowled at everyone before starting forward into the crowd, searching faces for anyone she knew, but saw nothing but strangers. Cursing a bit to herself, she drew out her comm and waved Etta. She had to be around here somewhere.
Freya had just tucked her comm back into her belt when someone bumped into her from behind hard enough to nearly knock her over. She turned, scowling, and found a broad-shouldered young man in the uniform of an Ascending Founder from one of the Core planets, surrounded by what she assumed must have been his friends. His heavily tanned face was pulled into a scowl, and he stared down at her with sharp green eyes.
"I'm waiting," he said.
Freya felt her scowl give way to a look of confusion. "Waiting for what?"
"An apology." He held out a half empty glass of whatever beverage was being served. "You made me spill my drink." He threw a malevolent smirk back toward his friends. "Though I suppose we could call it even if you scurried off and got me a refill."
"You want me to get you a refill?" Freya felt anger flare inside of her. "Who in the flaming hell do you think you are?"
The young Founder's smirk faltered for the briefest of moments, as though he hadn't been expecting her to do anything but cower under his gaze.
"Pavo Traytra." He tipped his chin up at her. "First Marshall Ascending of the Centaurian Confederacy."
"Impressive." Freya cocked an eyebrow. "Your parents must be so proud that you're still able to show your face in public with a name like that."
"You insolent scum." The young Founder's face flushed beneath his bronze tan. "I am an honored guest of the Noxian First Emissary. He personally invited me here to this reception for his homecoming."
"That makes both of us," Freya said, sounding unimpressed. "But I suppose with the First Emissary being my uncle, he sort of had to invite me. Family and all, you know?"
The flush vanished from the young Founder's face until his skin made him look as though he might be sick. He licked his lips, and took a short step back from Freya toward the safety of his gathered friends.
"I didn't realize," he said, his tone suddenly far less sharp. "Forgive my rudeness."
Freya narrowed her eyes at the young Founder. "For now," she said, "but do it again, and next time I'll let my uncle know how well his honored guest behaved toward his niece."
Freya kept her expression neutral as she spun away from the group of young Founders, though she couldn't dismiss the surprise she felt at the boy's reaction. He'd looked as though she'd just told him that she was going to have him murdered. What was more, she didn't want to give Pavo or his friends a chance to figure out that Freya might be related to Cruxious Averni, but after meeting him in person that day, she doubted her uncle would breathe a word in her defense.
With the distraction of Pavo and his friends gone, Freya felt her annoyance with being in this place all alone rising back into her chest. Who in the flaming hell were all these people? The Avernis had been gone from Nox for over a decade. It seemed less than likely that all of them could know her extended family enough to want to come to their welcome home party.
She'd reached halfway through the crowd, and was about to wave Etta for a second time, when she stopped in her tracks as her eyes fell on a face she recognized.
Xavier on the far side of the room beside a set of dark curtains. Beside Xavier stood a trio of youngish men wearing what looked like the uniforms of Founders, though they were completely black. The Founders looked slightly younger than Xavier. She could tell he was agitated, his eyes narrowed in a tight frown while his hands whipped and sliced at the air. The men–or boys, Freya thought–looked on as he spoke, their eyes stuck to him. As she watched, she saw masked servers slip between the curtains, each of them holding platters laden with empty glasses and scraps of half-eaten food.
Freya felt fresh anger bubble in her throat. She didn't know who this Xavier truly was, but the exchange between he and Father made his allegiance clear. How could Father have thought talking to a Separatist was a good idea? If the Ministry found out–if anyone found out–they'd throw him in prison. Or worse, Freya thought with a stab of panic up her back, they'd sentence him to death for collaboration with the enemy in a time of war.
Freya's hands clenched into fists at her sides. Whoever this Xavier was, whatever he thought he was doing, she wasn't going to let him risk her Father's life for it. He'd made no effort to disguise the threat he'd laid at Father's feet. And no one threatened her family. No one.
Freya felt like a coiled spring ready to leap the distance between them, when Xavier and the three other young men started toward the curtained entrance toward what Freya presumed was the kitchen. She moved quickly, intent on catching the rebel scum. She wasn't entirely sure what she planned to do when she caught up to him, but some part of her mind felt sure it was likely going to involve her fists smashing his face.
The light beyond the entrance to the kitchen turned dim as she shouldered through the heavy curtains, and it took Freya's eyes a moment to adjust. She knew there might be servers coming through the opposite way, carrying food for the party, but she didn't care. Everything that had happened that day–everything she'd heard from her aunt and her father–had left her feeling reckless and ready to lash out. It would take an army of armed Separatists to reign in how she felt at that moment.
Or, she thought as she laid eyes on the group of gowned women bearing plasma rifles just inside the curtained alcove, an army of armed waiters.