Freya

"Hello?" My voice comes out weak and fragmented, much like I feel. I try again. "Who's there?"

"Freya?" Alaric emerges, his eyebrows drawn together as he emerges from the darkness. He notes the stick in my hand, brandished towards him, and raises his hands. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you."

"What're you doing here?" I ask, not lowering the branch. "Did you follow me?"

"No. I felt something resisting the forcefield so I came to check it out." I flush. If I'd known he could tell whenever I touched the forcefield, I never would've touched it. He takes a step closer, head tilting to the side as he takes me in. "Are you okay?"

I turn away from him, frantically wiping at my eyes. "I'm fine."

He doesn't point out the obvious signs that that isn't the case. But he doesn't leave, either. "You didn't show up for training."

"I'm here now, aren't I?"

He furrows his brows. "I don't think that's what you're here for."

"Then you don't know what you're talking about." I plaster on a mask, mortified that Alaric ran into me in that state and praying he wasn't there for long. "I want to train."

Please. Something, anything to distract me.

He watches me carefully. I put on a brave face, but I know the splotchy cheeks and damp cloak are a dead give away of what I truly came for.

Alaric does not point it out.

"Okay," he says eventually. "If you're sure."

"I am."

He lets out a long breath. "We'll start with anchoring. Close your eyes."

I take a slow breath in and turn away from him, the bitter air flooding my lungs like icy water. If it weren't for the light intake of breath from behind me, I could almost believe I was alone.

My eyes fall shut. The forest darkens all around me.

"Clear your mind of all distraction," Alaric instructs. "What do you hear?"

The night calls of the birds, the whistle of the wind, in the distance, the sound of running water. But it is not what I hear that calls to me. It is what I feel, the energy of the forest thrums through me like an addicting melody. The music of my memories.

It has been so long since I have listened to the forest. Back in Veymaw, when I was determined to find Samu, it was my refuge. The forest provided me with the peace I could not find in the village or the forge, it gave me the energy to keep going.

Now, it mocks me.

"The forest," I breathe.

"Clear your mind of it."

"It's all around..."

"And you must learn to block it out, to block everything out."

I hesitate, furrowing my brows.

In the eternal darkness of my mind, wind swirls specks around me. But only they rise to mind -- Killian and Casimir, flooding me with an emotion that threatens to overwhelm me. I try to resist thoughts, but they squirm through the cracks in the mental screen.

I scrunch my face in frustration.

A hand brushing my arm forces me to open my eyes. Alaric stands in front of me, eyes as blue as a summer's sky. "Freya, we don't have to do this now."

"I... I want to."

He doesn't bother to pretend he believes me this time, his eyebrows drawing together. "You are distracted. It's not going to do any good."

"Then just leave me alone."

I turn away from him, waiting for him to walk away, humiliated at having been caught in this state.

"Will you tell me about them?" he asks eventually. "Those that you grieve." I spin around to face him, anger rising within me as I prepare to list a whole lot of expletives in his direction. "It's Killian, right? And the other... I don't know his name."

"How... how do you--"

"I was there, Freya."

"In Torinne, I know."

"And the Saulun mountains. How else do you think Hana made it through Torrinne untouched by the cloud?"

It clicks into the place. His forcefield protected them.

"I saw your friends take shelter in the cave, I watched you run for Killian, I saw as you struggled to free him, to drag him away. You need not grieve," he says. "Not yet, anyway. When the cloud dissipated, and the coast was clear the next morning, we went back to the crater to check for survivors. There were none."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"There were many bodies scattered across the landscape. I knew many of them. But there was no one in the cave. And Killian?" He meets my eye. "His body was not among the fallen."

I take a shaky breath, hope igniting inside of me. Drawing my arms to my side, I analyse his expression, trying to detect signs of deceit. "Why are you telling me this?"

He meets my gaze, not responding for several moments as his eyes sweep across my face. "Some people think the Cloud Piecer will have the power to bring back those the cloud stole, to reverse the effects of evocian."

Killian told me the same, too. Back in the Saulun mountains, when we were shielding from the cloud. But I never forgot what he'd said after. He'd been talking about his parents. After all they'd done while infected, would they even want to come back? Or would death be a kinder alternative?

But in my selfishness, I don't consider this for Killian.

And if Casimir's body wasn't found either, where could he be?

"Do you believe that?" I ask Alaric.

The ghost of a smile crosses his face, but he doesn't answer the question. Instead, Alaric crosses the clearing towards me. "The point is, Freya, you cannot lose hope that you might be able to rescue those that you love."

"Because then I might not help you anymore?"

"Because I know what hopelessness turns you into."

His words hang in the air between us, his expression shadowed by the memories that cloud his words. A chill crawls along my spine. I do not want to imagine what Alaric has possibly been through, what all Torrinnians have been through. I do not want to empathise with Hana or start to understand her cause.

I do not want to become like them.

I think of Killian again. Of Lei, Sanaa and Juem. They have lost, too.

Closing my eyes again, I cling to the hope of Alaric's words as I try to clear my mind, ignoring the sounds of the forest, ignoring the sound of Alaric's breath until my mind becomes a vast, blank slate.

Casimir

The guard stands stoic at the door.

Since he dumped us down here after dragging us from the Kinjri prisons, he's barely moved an inch. I knew what that meant. The King didn't want us to talk, to scheme, I assume. But as the hours ticked by, so did my mind.

I didn't dare move, didn't mention a word to Killian sitting wordlessly in the cell opposite me. But my mind prickles with theories. With the words of the Kinjri, Rosemary, as she gripped me with her piercing gaze.

At the end of the day, there's a knock at the prison door. The guard hesitates before turning to pull it open, revealing the slither of light from outside. I try to strain my ears to listen into their conversation, but it's muffled by the distance.

The guard responds, pauses, before glancing back at us. After a few more words exchanged, he turns and leaves his stand, pulling the door shut behind him. It echoes in his absence.

I shove to my feet, meeting Killian's gaze from across the room. "Where'd he go?"

"There is a disturbance in the east quarter," Killian responds. He doesn't bother rising from where he's sitting. I glance at his wrists, rubbed raw, and try to mask my cringe.

"We have to get back down to the Kinjri."

My feet pat against the cold, metal ground as I pace back and forth, my mind running at a million miles a second.

"Nala," I say, glancing at Killian in the cell across from me. "That's Freya's mother, right?"

He nods. His legs are stretched out in front of him as he sits with his back to the wall, keeping far away from the silver bars separating the two of us.

"And the boy... she had to have been talking about Samu." I turn to look back at him. "Don't you see what this means?"

His brows pull together. "She knows what happened to him."

I nod, my heart hammering in my chest. "Maybe she knows how to wake him up."

The ground vibrates under my feet. I furrow my brows, glancing up at Killian. "Do you feel that--"

He cuts me off by rising to his feet, a frown etched onto his face as he raises his hand to stop me from talking. The vibration grows stronger, followed by a grumble of the earth.

"Killian--"

"Protect your head!"

I barely have a chance to crouch to my knees as an ear-splitting explosion tears through our cell.