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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TW! Mentions of past sexual assault
FREYA DREAMT THAT night. Of a fountain tinged red, of screams emanating from a hut. Of a boy with dirtied golden hair weeping over his friend's corpse, the smoke of a hundred grenades tainting the air grey. She walked through the ruins of a city she used to know. Streets that she had once walked with her brother. Now the buildings were nothing more than piles of rubble, and the gravel was painted crimson with blood.
Wherever she went, a voice she did not know echoed around her. This country gets you in the end, brother.
She woke gasping and covered in sweat. It was still dark out, and the people around her were sleeping, bundled in thin sleeping bags lined with old fur. She cupped her hands over her mouth to muffle as much sound as possible. Her nightmares were never scary in the sense that monsters lined the shadows. That had not happened since she was a child. Instead, her dreams were imbued with horrors she would rather forget. The glassy stares of the dead, the loud sounds of explosives and gunfire, a hand reaching out from beneath a pile of rocks, cold and dead.
As her breathing calmed and her heartbeat slowed, she could only stare at the blond-haired prince sleeping on the other side of the dying campfire. Freya had never seen him so peaceful. There was no furrow between his brows. No lines of worry marred his face. He was calm and relaxed, inhaling slow and long breaths.
Freya's sleep hadn't been calm since the first skirmish over a year ago when a drüskelle axe had hung precariously above her head. That day seemed so distant now. So mundane and unimportant. Freya had seen a dozen other bloody battles since then. A hundred different tragedies. Her hands were covered in the blood of so many people that she couldn't even remember them all.
Your hands, she scoffed at herself internally. As if her cruel and monstrous acts stopped at her wrists. As though by the end, there could be any part of her that wasn't covered and dripping.
Sleep would not come that night again. She knew it wouldn't. There was little more to do but keep staring. At the stars or Nikolai, it mattered little. Not for the first time, she wished there was someone to hold her and lull her back to sleep. But she was a soldier of the Second Army, and they did not get such comforts in life.
Tomorrow, they would reach Ulensk. That was where she would find comfort. In a room full of her friends, no matter how scarred beneath the surface they might all be. For now, she just had to grit her teeth and get through it. Heaving a heavy sigh, she twisted herself until she was facing the night sky.
Maybe if she counted enough stars, she would be able to pass the time quickly enough.
