Freya Snow Pup Trilogy

by L. C. Mawson

  “What about Michael?”

  “What about him?”

  “Don’t you think he wants to know where you are. You and the child?”

  Lily paused her pacing at that. “Oh. Michael isn’t the father. And I won’t ask him to risk himself to free me only to tell him that I’m pregnant with someone else’s child. We were never that serious to start with...”

  “Wait, he isn’t the father?”

  “No... My soul was split in two in the Shadow Realm. One half found Michael, but it was the other half that got pregnant.”

  “So, what about the father then? Whoever he is.”

  Lily sighed, seemingly lost in thought for a few moments. “No,” she eventually said. “I’ll get out of this myself.”

  The scene faded as Hope turned back to Freya.

  “She was always stubborn and distrustful. She took after me too much.”

  “What’s the point of all this? You can’t change the past. At least, not without a sacrifice.”

  “The Energy in that housing is enough to offset the need for sacrifice. You could change the past. Just a nudge so that Lily would chance trusting your father.”

  Freya shook her head as she thought over what that would mean.

  Her mother would still be alive, and she would have grown up with both parents.

  Unless, of course, her mother had been right.

  What if they couldn’t trust her father?

  Gregor seemed to think highly of him, but there was definitely something he was still keeping to himself on the matter.

  Not to mention the fact that her mother never would have ended the War.

  No, Freya was smarter than to mess around with time.

  “Can we go yet?” Freya asked. “I need to get to the next chamber.”

  Hope nodded, disappearing as a door materialised in her place.

  AS SOON AS FREYA PASSED through the door, she found herself back at school.

  As soon as Freya passed through the door, she found herself back at school.

  She quickly sensed to see if it was an illusion, or if she had actually shifted, and she found no indication of glamours around her.

  She flattened herself to the wall, just behind a doorframe, as she heard the odd sound of synchronized boots. She pushed herself into the shadows just as a group of Uther’s men passed her by. Freya wondered if they were looking for her and Damon, and her blood ran cold at the thought. She could probably fight them if she had to, but there were other kids in the hallways, and she had no doubt that Uther’s men would use them as hostages.

  She focused on her glamours, doing her best to stay hidden from the troops, as she scoped out her surroundings, placing the crystal in a pouch on her belt so that her hands were free. She had arrived in the art corridor, and all of the classrooms were occupied by Demons.

  After a quick assessment of the surrounding area, she decided to head down to the music rooms. She figured the tiny practice rooms would be safe enough to hide out in.

  She, thankfully, managed to make it without being seen, quickly slipping into the room and letting her glamours fall just as she spotted a figure hunched over in the corner.

  “Jamie?” she asked, recognising her friend.

  “Freya? I thought you weren’t in. You’ve been off... I’d hoped you’d stayed away.”

  Freya frowned. “And what about you and the others? Why is everyone in school when there have been uniformed men with swords marching through the streets?”

  “I have no idea. None of this makes any sense. The news and the police have been saying that everything is fine and that they’re just unsubstantiated rumours.” She waved at her phone. “But we know that’s not true! There were pictures and a whole hashtag sprung up. But, I don’t know, it’s like the people who watched the news were no longer capable of seeing the truth.”

  Freya cursed under her breath, figuring that Uther had done something to make the Humans even more complacent than usual.

  “The school threatened those of us who didn’t show with truancy,” Jamie continued. “My parents forced me to come in.”

  Freya moved a little closer, unsure of how to comfort her clearly distressed friend.

  “Come on,” Freya said. “I think I can get you out of here.”

  “How? And why are you here? I didn’t see you at registration, before the sword-wielding weirdos showed up.”

  “It’s a long story,” Freya said, sighing as she saw Jamie about to protest. “Do you trust me?” she asked, cutting off any argument her friend might have had.

  Jamie looked slightly disgruntled for a moment before nodding. “Of course I do.”

  “Then stay close.”

  Before they had a chance to actually leave the room, the door was kicked down from the other side.

  Freya drew her sword, but the Demon caught her off guard and was too fast. He grabbed Jamie by the hair, dragging her in front of him and bringing his sword to her neck before Freya could attack.

  “Move and your friend dies, Angel.”

  Jamie whimpered as she struggled to find purchase, her feet just barely scraping the floor.

  “Kill her and I’ll kill you slowly. I’ll break all of your bones one by one before removing your skin in centimetres. I will make you beg for death long before I deign to grant it.”

  The Demon just grinned. “Careful. Your lover might think he has reason to be jealous.”

  Freya was overcome with fury. It overflowed from her so that her skin crackled with dark Energy.

  The Demon faltered just for a second at that, their sword dropping from Jamie’s neck to her chest.

  Freya took that as her opportunity, lashing out with enough force to blow a hole right through the Demon.

  They collapsed backwards as Jamie fell towards Freya, who quickly reached out to catch her.

  As Freya helped her friend, she noted blood on her hand. After a quick moment of inspection, she realised, to her horror, that the Demon had managed to slice through Jamie’s chest just before Freya had killed him. The cut was deep and blood was seeping from it rapidly, soaking her top.

  “Jamie? Jamie, stay with me,” Freya managed, focusing her magic into the only healing spell she knew.

  It was too rudimentary, only slowing the blood flow as much as would have been achieved by staunching it. Freya tried to pour more Energy into the spell, but it overloaded with a bang, singeing Freya’s hand.

  She could try to manipulate her raw Energy into augmenting Jamie’s own healing, but she didn’t think that it would be fast enough.

  The crystal felt heavy on her belt. All she had to do was break the casing and she could save Jamie.

  Her fingers moved over the pouch, ready to break it, but she took a deep breath before loosening her grip.

  She could save Jamie now, but what about everyone else?

  “I’m sorry,” Freya told her friend, trying her best not to feel as if she was betraying her. “Try to hold on. I promise I’ll fix this.”

  She stood up, seeing the chamber door reappear where the broken one had been.

  She sprinted towards it, launching herself into the next room.

  “WHAT IS THIS?” FREYA asked as she realised that the new room was a particularly extravagant bedroom, decorated with black and red silk everywhere.

  “Your future,” Hope said, reappearing next to her.

  “Your father spoils her,” Freya heard across the room, causing her to spin around and see a stranger.

  Only he wasn’t quite a stranger. He was taller and broader, with slightly shorter hair and stubble on his face. He was also dressed in unfamiliar garb, which looked like something royalty would wear to a formal occasion, with a black tunic and red sash.

  But it was very much Damon.

  Another stranger followed him in, and Freya would have sworn that it was Hope, if not for the lack of tattoos. She had a fuller figure than Freya currently had, and she was missing some of the muscle mass, but it was definitely her
. She was in a black ballgown with red lace, but Freya was mostly distracted by the baby future-her was holding in her arms.

  “Of course he does,” future-Freya replied with a smile, though her attention was mostly on the child. “He’s still upset about missing my childhood.”

  “And did you have to invite Peter?”

  “If we want these negotiations to go well, we can’t alienate anyone. Even the Fae. So, yes, Peter had to come. Plus, he’s family.”

  “He put you under a curse!”

  “That was over a decade ago. Plus, he had us re-enacting fairy tales, and wasn’t refusing to invite a Faerie when introducing the new royal baby the inciting incident in Sleeping Beauty?”

  Damon sighed, folding his arms. “You know, being married to someone who’s right all the time can get really annoying.”

  “I’m not right all of the time. Just most of it.” She moved over to him, handing him the baby, who made a little squeal of protest, though it was quickly silenced by Damon bouncing her gently.

  “Speaking of the negotiations,” Freya said as she checked herself over, presumably for baby mess, “I had better get going. Sarah and Mel have just returned from Atlantis. The Mer-people are the last magical faction to join us, and I doubt they’ll be easy to convince. They’re so split off from Earth that the Humans are no real threat to them.”

  “We’ll miss you,” Damon said in a silly voice from behind the baby’s little tuft of hair. The baby responded by looking confused as Freya laughed.

  “I’ll miss you too, Katherine,” Freya said to the baby with a grin that her younger self found uncharacteristically joyful and uninhibited. “Take care of Daddy for me.”

  The scene froze as Hope stepped forward, looking at them with a bittersweet smile.

  “This is what your future looks like right now.”

  “Right now?”

  “If this reset doesn’t work, you’ll return to the Underworld with Damon. And this will be your future.”

  “Okay, but surely that future will be better if we use the reset. At this rate, things on Earth are going to hell. Wouldn’t it be better if they, you know, didn’t? I mean, if Humans find out about us, then there will be another War. You lived through the first one, at least until the Angel Twilight forced a ceasefire. Or, well, you forced the ceasefire, I guess. You know how devastating it was.”

  “You’re right that it was bad, but I don’t think that it can be avoided. Reset or not, you’ve seen first-hand that some of the Enhanced have made it into this timeline. It’s just a matter of time.”

  “But surely it’s better to at least try and stop it.”

  “Just know what you would be giving up to do it,” Hope said, waving her hand over the frozen scene of Freya’s future. “If you reset everyone’s magic that used the excess, it will include Damon’s. You’ll both lose any memory of the other having magic.”

  Freya’s stomach churned at the thought. The only reason she and Damon were together was that they knew the truth now. If that went away, they would go back to hiding from each other.

  “And this future won’t happen?” Freya asked, examining the grin her future-self was wearing.

  She was happy and had a family.

  And Freya was about to throw it all away.

  “It will cease to be and a new future will replace it.”

  “A future where Damon and I aren’t together?”

  “You tell me. If you didn’t know the truth, would you ever chance it?”

  “We’re Soulbound,” she said, adamantly. “No matter what I do here, we’ll find each other again.”

  “Perhaps. Eventually. But you’ll lose your only connection to your father as well.”

  Freya gave the scene another wistful look, but the image of Jamie about to bleed out remained at the forefront of her mind.

  “I guess that’s just a chance I’ll have to take.”

  “Then I hope your faith is rewarded,” Hope said as the scene in front of them melted away, showing the final door.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Freya entered the last room to see Damon and quickly launched herself at him, hoping that his embrace would help to fuel her Energy back up to normal after her failed attempt to heal Jamie.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “No. But I will be once we’ve activated the reset and got everything back to normal.”

  Hope appeared, once more, next to them. “You just need one last thing.”

  “What?”

  She moved to the side, revealing the hilt of a sword poking out from the stone wall behind her.

  “You need to use this sword to channel your Energy and break the crystal. Your Energy, and the Energy from the crystal, will then move along the reset charms, activating them. They will annul any magic that was not yours from the past few days, including any that used the excess. It will also erase any trace of the magic, including memories.”

  Freya nodded, pulling the sword from the wall with ease before taking out the crystal.

  Damon halted her hand with his before she could activate it. “Wait. Freya, if you do this, it will annul and erase my magic as well.”

  “And?”

  “And my magic is the only reason we were truthful to each other about what we were. If you do this, we go back to not knowing. We go back to being too scared to tell each other the truth.”

  Freya felt her heart freeze at the reminder. The last thing she wanted to do was lose Damon. Not after they had finally managed to find each other.

  “We have to,” Freya said, her voice wavering a little. “If we don’t... You’ve seen what it’s like outside. This city is going to hell and the whole world is watching. At this rate, magic will be exposed. Twenty years ago, that almost wiped us out. What the hell do you think will happen now? We’ll be droned to hell and back before we can blink.”

  Her thoughts went back to Jamie. Activating the reset would erase all magic using the excess, including that of Jamie’s attacker. It might be the only way to save her.

  “Then let me do it. If I do it, my magic would be kept.”

  Freya’s grip tightened around the hilt of the sword at that. If her magic was erased instead, would that really be better?

  What would happen to her and Damon?

  Would they just ride off into the sunset? Find her father?

  And what about Amber’s concern about Fate’s plan for them?

  If it had just been Amber, Freya might have ignored it. Amber had been lying to her from day one, and her paranoia was exceptional at times. But Gregor... She had never heard Gregor anything even near scared until that conversation with Amber. The idea of Fate wanting Freya and Damon together had terrified them both.

  And now Freya could stop Fate’s plan in its tracks.

  But it would mean giving up Damon.

  Freya lowered the sword and stepped towards the boy she loved.

  If she did this, everything would go back to how it had been.

  They wouldn’t even remember.

  So why did her heart feel as if it was breaking?

  She grabbed the front of his armour, pulling him to her and capturing his lips in hers.

  He brought his hands to her hips, crushing her close against him, his grip desperate. As if he never wanted to let her go.

  Her eyes were streaming against her will as she pulled away.

  “Please don’t,” he whispered as she finally pulled away, his gaze both pleading and defeated.

  “We’re Soulbound, remember?” she said as she awkwardly failed to swipe away her tears. “It doesn’t matter what we do. We’ll find each other again eventually.”

  “Yeah... I guess we will...”

  He didn’t sound convinced, but Freya had already raised her sword once more.

  “I love you,” she said, firing her Energy at the crystal before he could respond.

  The resulting blast knocked her to the ground.

  FREYA COUGHED HERSELF awake, pieces of stone jut
ting into her back in the most uncomfortable way.

  Where am I? she thought to herself as she used her magic to blow the dust from her eyes. Oh, right. The reset.

  She frowned as most of the dust removed itself from her face, apart from two trails down her cheeks, originating from her eyes, which seemed to be caked on by water.

  Weird, she thought to herself as she wiped away what remained.

  She struggled to her feet as she examined the destruction caused by the crystal. Whether or not it worked, it certainly had released an incredible amount of Energy.

  She looked around for-

  For who? Who was she looking for?

  She shook herself, deciding that she had probably hit her head a little too hard. She should probably worry a little more about brain damage than she did, given how often she was knocked out.

  Regardless, she shouldn’t have been looking for anyone. She had come here alone.

  She used what little remained of her Energy to shift back home.

  SHE SPRINTED OUT OF her room and to the bathroom after taking off her armour, not wanting her foster parents to see her battle damage before she had showered and glamoured.

  As soon as she had gingerly extracted herself from the shower, however, someone knocked on the door.

  “Is that you, Freya?” Margaret asked through the door.

  Despite her exhaustion, Freya pushed herself to form a very quick glamour to cover her wounds before wrapping her towel around herself.

  “Yeah,” Freya said she opened the door. “Did you need anything?”

  Margaret frowned in confusion. “No, I just... I didn’t realise you were back from Damon’s.”

  Freya held back a sigh at that. She really didn’t want to think about Damon right now. Thinking about Damon would only remind her of the carnage of his room after they had slept together. How the hell she hadn’t killed him was beyond her. And how she had managed to get away without him suspecting anything...

  “Yeah, I just came back. I kind of felt like being in my own bed.”