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 WAS ONLY a week later that Freya saw Prince Nikolai again. The King was hosting a royal hunt in his youngest son's honour, meant to commemorate his soon leaving to join the army. Freya did not see much honour in the vast amount of money that was spent on the hunt and she thought that Nikolai wouldn't either.
To her surprise, she had received an invitation. The King's seal was pressed into the dark blue wax that had been poured over the letter. Djel, even the paper was bezelled in gold. Freya ran her finger over the edge of the letter, wondering why she had been invited to such an event.
Her answer came later that day when she went to ask the General. She was not the only Grisha invited – Freya would never admit to the small disappointment she felt at that discovery – and the General was going to use the event to try and charm the King's cabinet into providing more funds to the Second Army.
We have half as many soldiers and half as many funds as the First Army, but we are expected the do twice as much. Freya would never forget the words Fedyor had told her once when he had returned from the Fjerdan front. It was cruel and unjust, but so was the way Grisha were handled everywhere else. The distrust towards their kind would never lessen, it seemed.
The task at hand was simple; charm the members of the King's cabinet and make it easier for the General to receive the funds the Second Army needs. That was how Freya found herself being dragged out of bed by Genya and other servants at the break of dawn, dumped into a tub of hot water and scrubbed clean until her skin reddened.
Her hair was washed and then dried. When she was pulled towards the vanity and forced to sit down in front of it, the servants came and tugged on the strands of her pale blonde hair until her scalp burned. In the end, her hair was simply pulled into a half-up-do with a bun at the back of her skull and the rest of her hair was left to fall down her back at its will.
Genya worked on her face, making sure the dark circles beneath her eyes were wiped away and only her pale skin – flawless with a few freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose – was left. She added a soft blush to her cheeks, making it look entirely natural. Finally, she lined her eyes were a coal liner. The dark line was subtle and thin, accentuating the shape of her eyes.
The only thing left now was for her to be dressed in the dark blue kefta embroidered with violet. Genya shooed the other servants away, claiming that she could finish up by herself. When the door closed behind the other servants, Genya heaved a heavy sigh and slowly turned around. There was a look of dread on her face that caused Freya's breath to hitch. It felt like a bucket of cold water had been dumped over her.
"Freya," Genya began but paused as if what she wanted to say was too difficult to get past her lips. "I want... I want you to be careful out there." Freya would have smiled and uttered a joke about how she was always careful had she not sensed there was something far more sinister and worrying that Genya was referring to. It was not a simple 'be careful, don't be trampled by an elk'.
