Chapter Thirty Two

  Crackdown

  Freya groaned as her mother shook her awake. “What the hell?” She was just getting into bed in the Harbor, she probably colpsed on the floor, her back was going to hurt like hell when she woke.

  “This is too much.” Her mother threw some clothes at her. “You go to bed before seven, sleep ‘til well after ten.”

  “And?”

  The covers flew from her bed. “You are not going to sleep fifteen hours a day until you go back to college.”

  What was wrong with her? Everything was fine, Freya was fencing again, she was signed up for college, even had a job lined up in the bookstore when she got done. Who cares if she slept a lot in the meantime?

  “Leave me alone!”

  Her mother grabbed her arm. “Get up!”

  Freya tried to pull away from her mother’s vice-like grip. “Mom, stop! You’re hurting me.”

  Quick moving footsteps that shook the whole house marked her father’s arrival. He looked between the two of them, his eyes focused on Freya’s arm. “What is going on?”

  Freya’s mother let go of her arm, Freya scrambled away, holding the fast forming bruise.

  “She needs to-” Her mother went white as she noticed the bruise. “I didn’t…”

  “What did you do?” His voice was like ice. He gently moved Freya’s hand away from the bruise. “Bedroom. Now.”

  Her mother simply walked out, her head hung low. Her father took a long breath, then clenched and unclenched his fists.

  “Dad, she didn’t mean to.” Freya said, suddenly worried for her mother.

  “Go to Ben’s, don’t come back until dinnertime.”

  “Dad-“

  “I wasn’t asking.”

  Freya threw on the clothes her mother had given her, then grabbed a pair of mismatching socks and ran out the door.

  #

  Ben held Freya as she cried. Her mother had never id a hand on her, her father never raised his voice, especially not at her mother. This was all her fault. She had thought she was bancing the Harbor and the Source well enough, but evidently not for her mother to fly off the handle as she did.

  In an effort to spend more time training for her work with the Unbound, she had been away too much. But why was that such a problem? She could understand her mother talking to her about it, but for her to get so aggressive so suddenly. It was beyond unlike her.

  “Mr. And Mrs. Reed have the most rock-solid marriage I’ve ever seen.”

  Freya had told him time after time he didn’t need to call them that. He always said he respects them too much not to. “They did until I started fucking everything up.”

  “You need to stop that. That bruise is bad. Mrs. Reed messed up, this isn’t your fault.”

  “She wouldn’t have messed up if her twenty-four year old daughter wasn’t being a leech.”

  “They’re supposed to be there when their kid needs help. And when things fell apart for you, you needed it. Doesn’t matter how old you are.”

  “You didn’t hear them, dad was getting loud.”

  “He should be after this.” Ben held Freya’s arm as if he were handling a baby bird. “I should get you some ice.”

  “I’ve had so much worse. A bruise is nothing.”

  In a way it felt like she was two different people. In the Harbor she was a figure to be feared and respected. But here she was crying because her mom and dad were arguing. It was insane.

  Ben narrowed his eyes. Freya internally smacked herself in the head, why would she say that?

  “You’ve had worse? When?”

  Freya was saved by a creak on the steps.

  “Alright, I’m sorry but I’m not hiding up there all day.” Leia Dumand, Freya’s oldest, and only friend outside of Ben walked down the stairs wearing one of his sweatshirts.

  Freya jumped from the couch. “What are you…” She looked at Ben’s reddening face, then again at his sweatshirt on Leia. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Don’t be mad,” Leia said.

  “How could I get mad at this? I’m so happy for you two.”

  Leia rounded the couch and sat next to Ben. “Told you.” She spped him in the arm.

  “Maybe should talk about this ter, Freya has some stuff going on.”

  “I wouldn’t know, I haven’t seen her in a while.”

  Freya ignored the thinly veiled compin about her absence. “No.” She held up a finger. “You are going to tell me everything.” A loud buzz signaled Freya’s phone going off. She slipped it out of her pocket. A message from her dad. “I’m sorry, do you mind if I take this?”

  “Take your time,” Ben said.

  She had to go sit in one of the bathrooms in order to get her privacy, damned open concept houses. She unlocked her phone and exchanged a few messages with her dad.

  Dad: How’s Ben’s?

  Freya: Eventful. Ben and Leia are dating, she waltzed downstairs wearing his clothes after spending the st three hours hiding from me in his room.

  Dad: Good for them, they’ve always been sweet on each other.

  Freya: Jesus dad, are you eighty?

  Dad: I’m an old soul.

  Freya: So…how’s Mom?

  Dad: She is okay, we talked it out. She will be apologizing to you when you get home.

  Freya: It isn’t all her fault.

  Dad: No. But we don’t y hands on people. Ever.

  Freya winced. He would not be thrilled to hear about her exploits in the Harbor.

  Freya: I was thinking of spending the night at Ben’s. Is that okay?

  Dad: You are Twenty-four, you don’t need to ask. But when you get home, we are going to have a family meeting. Could you make breakfast tomorrow?

  Freya: I’ll be there.

  Freya slumped against the toilet, family meeting, that wasn’t good. They didn’t have many of those over the years, but when they did, it wasn’t much more than a well structured lecture. Would it be Freya getting the lecture? Or her mother?

  It was hard to imagine the hard as nails Nani Reed getting dressed down like a child. The thought made her queasy. Freya hoped she would be the target of her father’s ire, seeing the two argue was far worse than a little scolding. She pushed tomorrow’s problems out of her head, right now she had something more fun to deal with.

  “Now,” Freya said, crossing Ben’s enormous house. “How long have you both been keeping secrets?”

  #

  Freya focused, several beads of sweat poured down her face. Serenity danced about in the air between the stone soldiers circling her. That part was easy enough now. Dozens of stone arrowheads and spearheads formed a kind of halo above her.

  This was what she was struggling with. She had the power now to keep all these items aloft. Reading The Hobbit had ended up giving her more like four times the power it should have, as opposed to the two or three times power she initially thought it might. That meant she had the equivalent of an additional twelve hundred pages worth of power. Half of that had gone into bolstering her existing abilities. Instead of straining to lift a couple piles of rocks, now she could throw boulders.

  The power wasn’t the issue anymore. It was focus. She still had to think about keeping the various items aloft. It was like rubbing her belly and patting her head at the same time. Thankfully the halo of arrowheads could be thought of as one thing. The individual arrowheads only needed attention when she was firing them at something. She could maintain this and fire out one arrow at a time. But she would need more than that.

  “Tired already?” Athena asked.

  The old woman smiled as Freya just focused on the muscle memory of keeping all these objects in the air. Athena had ten different fire tentacles arching out from her back, each snapped out at the suits of armor Lorin had animated to keep them occupied. Show off.

  Freya avoided Lorin’s gaze. They hadn’t spoken much since Molly. It was hard to bme him. He hadn’t shared her secret meetings with Sulivar, but he wasn’t too keen on getting close with her anymore. There had to be a way for her to fix this. In her life she hadn’t put too much emphasis on romance, this thing with Lorin felt like her first real chance at it. For it to end so quickly after it began hurt. Though that wasn’t all she had lost, it felt like he didn’t even want to be her friend anymore.

  A suit of seriously damaged armor charged at Freya. Two arrowheads whipped out of her halo and punched through the armor’s chest pte. One of her stone soldiers fell to the ground as she lost her hold on it.

  “Damnit!”

  Freya gritted her teeth and sent two more arrowheads through Lorin’s armor. This time she kept hold of everything. The armor colpsed upon the joints in the shoulders being severed.

  Zora stood up, evidently done with her break. “Freya, I need to take a walk.”

  “That’s nice?”

  Zora gave her a pointed look. “I need to take a walk.”

  Freya put away all of her stone equipment. Serenity in its sheath, the soldiers and spearheads in her bandolier, the arrowheads into the pouches on her belt. What was Zora’s issue? Things seemed alright with her and Roman, despite his sulking at losing Molly. It would be nice to talk with her though. It seemed like Zora was the only one who wasn’t heartbroken at the traitor’s death.

  Tightness consumed Freya’s chest. She tensed, and shoved the feeling away. Molly didn’t deserve her pity.

  The pair emerged out into the tower. The sun hadn’t quite reached its peak yet. She had a few hours before her next css. Combating the influence of Vilins. They walked in silence for a short while until they reached the rope bridge leading away from The Poet’s Tower.

  “Are you going to tell me what is going on with you two?” Zora asked.

  Panick fshed through her. Had Lorin told her? “Us two?”

  “You and the Padin.”

  “Oh.” Freya was both relieved, and even more anxious at the question. “I don’t know. It just…fizzled.”

  “It seems like someone flipped a light switch. The night before the raid it was all smoky looks and sexual tension. Now it’s been almost a week and you can hardly look at each other.”

  “I guess it just isn’t the first thing on my mind anymore, not after what happened.” Freya cringed at the lie, but what else could she say?

  Zora stopped midway across the rope bridge, her eyes full of heat. “You know I would tell you anything, that I trust you with anything.”

  “Of course I do.” Did Freya know that? Were they really that close?

  “I’m not saying you should do that same. But I need you not to lie to me.”

  “I-”

  “I’m not an idiot Freya. Something happened with you two. Something serious. If you don’t want to talk about it that’s fine. But I’m not blind, you two aren’t exactly trying to hide it.”

  As much as it drove Freya nuts sometimes, this was why she loved Zora. No beating around the bush for weeks, no pained looks and passive aggressive comments. Just pin questions and the blunt truth.

  “It has been that obvious?”

  “Yes.”

  Zora turned back around and continued down the rope bridge. Freya followed. She wasn’t too sure where they were going, or if they were going somewhere in particur. But that didn’t really matter, it was nice just to be close to someone she could trust.

  “I need you to tell me one thing, and I need a real answer, not some bullshit evasion.”

  Freya nodded. “What is it?”

  “Did he do something? Did he hurt you?”

  Freya remained quiet for a long moment. She took in a deep nasal breath, the salty air burned. “Yes, he hurt me. But I hurt him first.”

  Zora squeezed Freya’s hand, then blessedly changed the subject. “Come on. I found something I want to show you.”