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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THE AIR WAS stolen from her lungs, ripped out of her chest by the man standing before her. Freya imagined her reunion with her brother countless times before, but none of them compared to the horror, the consternation, the disbelievability of this. There was a hardness to Matthias' face as he looked down at her, the orange light from the lantern casting shadows over one side of his face. It was not hatred that coloured his eyes almost black, but Freya had looked in the faces of people who've despised her enough times to know it was close enough.
Her body felt so far away as she looked at him, at the wolf's head medallion hung around his neck, at the black and silver drüskelle uniform he wore. The drüskelle uniform. Freya felt sick.
"No." It was the only word she could say, drawn out and weak like a mother being told of her child's death. She knew if she uttered it again, it would be louder, stronger, laced with all the despair clawing at her insides. She pulled at the cuffs around her hands, but they held firm. The need to hug, punch, hold, and shove him was too great, but she was stuck chained to the ceiling with her body screaming in protest. Inside her mind, the form of the little girl she used to be cried.
Matthias' lips parted, but no words came out. His brows were furrowed, and for a moment it looked like he was experiencing as much pain as she was, but then he pressed his lips tightly together and the expression was wiped from his face.
"How could you." It wasn't even a question. Freya knew precisely why he'd donned the drüskelle uniform. It was the same reason she wore the Second Army kefta. Protection, a sense of stability, no matter how small. Still, it was impossible to think that all the images she'd conjured of how Matthias could look now were the farthest things from the truth. He wasn't a farmer, a blacksmith, or an ordinary soldier in the Fjerdan army. He was a drüskelle, trained and bred to hunt people like her. Hunt her.
Matthias' brows furrowed, as if confused, "You would've understood, once." Would she? Freya wasn't sure. She hadn't been even eight years old when she was taken. What understanding did she have then of the world? A few tales from an angry witch hunter? The words of old crones babbling about monsters across the border. She realised almost with a start that she was one of the monsters across the border now.
The Siren, a tale to keep young children from misbehaving, and also a horror to whisper into a soldier's ear to make him fight with all his might. Would she have been proud of her brother, if she hadn't been Grisha? Would she wave him off to battle and smile when he returned, congratulating him on his glory, on countless enemies put to the sword, burned on a pyre? She swallowed thickly around a lump in her throat.
"And do you understand me?" she asked, the Fjerdan rolling off her tongue, heavy as lead. Matthias' eyes wandered down to the haggard, dirty blue cloth hanging from her shoulders. It has lost all its colourful appeal, the cloth bled of its colour through salt water and dust. She didn't look like an exalted member of the Second Army, only months away from being trusted with an amplifier. She just looked like a girl, too young for the war she was thrust into, dressed in a soldier's uniform that didn't fit her.
