Chapter Twenty

  Caught

  “Hold!” Freya’s father held up his hands, breathless.

  Nani stood to the side, chewing on a beef stick, having already been eliminated. Freya knew she had to take out her mother first or she wouldn’t last long against the two of them. That wasn’t to say her father was an easy mark.

  What he lacked in skill, he made up for in pure ferocity. That is precisely why she liked going up against the two of them. Their strengths perfectly complemented each other. It made for a spectacular challenge.

  Freya took off her fencing mask and wiped her damp face. “That was a quick one, let’s go again.”

  “You are going to kill me kid.”

  “Why don’t you get started on lunch love. I’ll keep her occupied.” Nani pushed her husband out of the garage, he gave her a thankful peck on the lips before disappearing inside.

  Disappointing. Going against just one of her parents wasn’t nearly as good. One new lesson learned from being on the backfoot could save her life again. But it wouldn’t do to complain. Most weren’t so lucky. How many Fable-Walkers could dream of emerging with the level of skill she did? It wasn’t a perfect skill transfer, but focusing on these handicap bouts would fix that. Freya wiped out the inside of her mask, then donned it again.

  “Ready?” Freya asked.

  “Come.”

  Mother and daughter danced. Nani began with testing strikes, Freya didn’t need to test. After their first few heated exchanges Freya drove in, she was stopped just short of a touch when she felt something on her chest. Nani’s blade pressed into her with enough pressure to bend it sharply. That would have been a kill. Freya shook it off, a fluke. It wasn’t like her mother to meet aggression with aggression. Nani stood back with a smile on her face. Assumptions could lose the better fighter the contest, or their life. It was stupid to let herself get caught out like that.

  Freya clenched her fists. Shake it off. “Again.”

  This time the bout began slower. Freya reigned herself in. A jab here, another there. Slow. Methodical. Wait for an opening and seize it. Just as she was silently criticizing her mother’s footwork Nani drove in and landed another touch. What the hell? This was not at all how it normally went. Freya was better, far better.

  “Again.” The word heated the cold garage.

  They lunged at each other, Nani parried and nearly landed another touch. Anger built in Freya’s chest, not at her mother, but at herself. This was her life she was fighting for. Slacking off was not an option. Again she felt ashamed for letting things go so much these last months. Taking advantage of Freya’s distraction, Nani lunged, she had to dive out of the way to avoid another touch.

  Come on Reed, breathe. A calm head was all she needed to win, the skills were there. Hell, she had killed plenty of people already. That was proof enough she was no slouch.

  Nani was favoring her right side. That was Freya’s chance. A lunge had her perfectly lined up to take Nani’s left thigh. Infuriatingly, she spun away at the last moment. I don’t think so! Freya caught her mother’s wrist and drove her sword into her side, the blade bent so much she thought it might break. They both froze. A heartbeat later she backed away from her mother and put down the epee.

  “I don’t know what that was.”

  Nani took off her mask and set it on Francis’ workbench. “I’m not sure either, but you certainly aren’t practicing fencing. What is going on with you?”

  “I’m just…angry.” It wasn’t a complete lie. She was angry. It wasn’t some all consuming anger that was driving her to madness, but it was present. How could she talk about her second life in the Harbor? There was no feasible way to prove it. A small lie was the best option.

  That same look Freya had been getting for months crept onto her mother’s face. The look that made her want to crawl into bed and hide. The look that said ‘Oh you poor baby, do you need someone to take care of you? You obviously can’t hack it in the real world. Let me do everything for you.’

  It was sickening. They meant well, and it wasn’t something to get angry about. Another set of parents might have taken to berating her instead of trying to help. But it still drove her mad. That made her feel even more guilty. Her parents tried so hard for her.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “I want to talk about this with you, but if you need space please tell me.”

  More guilt. Great. Freya needed to throw her a bone, maybe it would actually help. Disguise the talk about her other life with imagined stories somehow? That could work.

  “Do you think we could take a ride to Milwaukee tomorrow? I don’t really know what your work schedule is like right now. We can-“

  “Yes. Would you like your father to come with?”

  Now Freya knew for a fact her father worked. “Well, yes. But he doesn’t need to take vacation for me.”

  “He would much rather spend time with you than work. We can talk then as a family.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, now you should get inside and lend your father a hand. I’ll take care of all this.” Nani picked up Freya’s epee and discarded mask.

  Freya stripped off the rest of her gear until she was just in her underclothes and handed them to her mother. She made for the door. “Thanks Mom.”

  #

  A familiar face stared at Freya through the computer screen. His short black hair cut back into a sharply receding hairline. It was hard not to get drawn into his annoyingly captivating eyes. Lorin Castro’s LinkedIn profile looked as if it hadn’t been updated in years, that was if his hair was any indication.

  His profile picture had probably been taken at his college. He sat in front of a simple JC Penny reminiscent background and wore a suit just a hair too big. For the third time since she opened her computer she wondered if this was creepy. The answer was probably yes, but who would know anyway?

  Lorin had a Bachelor’s Degree in English with a minor in Journalism. An interesting, if common combination. From there he worked at a small publishing house out of Minnesota before moving into freelance editing. A straightforward enough path.

  Freya found herself coming back to his profile picture. There was something different about him, he was younger, but it was something more than that. His jaw wasn’t so tight, and his eyes didn’t have any heat behind them. What had happened to him since this picture was taken?

  Freya clicked away from his page before she could gawk anymore. She did a few housekeeping items, clearing notifications, updating her profile. Then she cleared out her messages, most of which were ‘special offers’ trying to get her to sign up for LinkedIn Premium. There was one she kept getting that was from some nebulous character raving about some network he was creating. She deleted it all.

  The sun hadn’t quite set yet, so she would feel bad about jumping into bed already. But she found herself unsure of what to do next. Time had been spent with her parents, it was a good day outside of the incident with her mother. She had gone to see Ben who loved that she loved A Fire in the Sky. His disappointment in her reception to Sulivar seemed to be softened in her new taste for Romantasy.

  Freya legitimately did love it, there was a whole sub-genre she had been avoiding thinking that it wouldn’t be for her. Looking at Ben’s shelves she felt like a kid in a candy shop. Though she didn’t have to look for long. Ben dragged every Romantasy book off his shelf and laid them out on his table. The man had a presence much like a toddler hopped up on Skittles and Monster energy drinks. Few things could make her smile more. She left his house with another box of books. She hoped to bring this one back to him with a better review too.

  The first book she took was some little known new release she didn’t fall in love with, but she didn’t have the energy to read another. It was a short book, but still to burn through one in just a couple hours would just leave her feeling drained.

  Freya clicked around aimlessly on her computer when she realized she had two other names to dig into. The first of which was Athena Stall. She should be easy to find given her popularity. Freya typed her name in and hit pay dirt with the first result.

  Her heart dropped.

  A grainy black and white picture showed a woman with long white hair smiling at something off-picture. The woman looked as if she could be the grandmother of the Athena she had met in Esselem’s Crown. But the rest of the page didn’t leave much to the imagination.

  The Obituary notice of Athena Stall

  Manchester|Published in: funeral-notices.co.uk.

  Athena STALL

  The family and friends of Athena Stall mournfully share the news of her passing. Athena went in her sleep on Thursday 3rd of December 2026 at sixty-eight years of age.

  Athena was a no-nonsense woman who was just as likely to give a hug, as she was to give one of her world-famous glares. She spent her life producing art for others-

  Freya stopped reading. People living past their death in the Source was something she learned early on. George MacDonald was long dead, and she had spoken with him. As strange is it sounded, it was hard to see him as a real person. Real meaning someone she could have feasibly met and interacted with. But Athena was alive just a few months ago. What would that feel like? To die in this world and continue to live on elsewhere?

  This was not going anywhere good, Freya closed the page, bringing her back to her LinkedIn tab. It was tempting to look up Roman and Molly, but now she was afraid of what she might find. It was ridiculous to be so unsettled at this.

  Comfort was just an arm’s reach away. The Hobbit which had been laying on her desk half finished for a few days called to her. The fatigue from reading through another book today was still there, but there was some books that she could read anytime, anywhere. She leaned back and cracked open the book.

  A notification pulled her out of it twenty minutes later. It was her LinkedIn profile, she had a message. For a moment laziness threatened to close out the page and deal with it later. But it was just a few seconds of work to handle it. Better to work out her self-discipline anyway. She opened her messages to clear out whatever spam was there. But it wasn’t spam at all.

  Lorin Castro: Are you stalking me Freya?

  Freya Reed: Says the man who looked me up and messaged me out of the blue.

  Lorin followed with a screenshot of a a page title ‘Who’s viewed your profile’ The first name on the list made Freya want to scramble up a tree and live with the squirrels for the rest of her life.

  Freya Reed - 3rd Connection

  Delivery Driver at Domino’s Pizza

  Viewed 30 minutes ago.

  Lorin Castro: Sorry to interrupt, keep on with the yarn you were spinning.

  Well, that was just fucking fantastic.