Freya keeps staring at me, waiting for an answer.
The cup stays between her hands, though the tea no longer gives off much steam. The question about Duvilin has changed the air in the room. The small wooden pegasi on the shelf, the stars on the ceiling, and the cloth doll seem to belong somewhere else now, far from the woman sitting in front of me.
I could lie.
A rare skill. An ancient contract. A manifestation tied to my class. Any of those explanations would be hard to disprove and easy to accept for someone who just watched what Duvilin did.
But Freya wouldn’t believe it all the way.
Worse, I’d be asking her to trust me while I hid the one truth that could explain why I keep insisting on holding her close.
I set the cup down on the table.
"I’ll tell you."
Her posture loosens just enough to show she’s waiting for the rest.
"But first I want to propose a deal."
The suspicion comes back to her eyes.
"You just got rid of one contract and you already want to make another?"
"Not that kind."
Freya waits.
I look for the words with more care than I usually bother to use. Any slip would make the offer sound like a purchase, and she’s spent enough time being treated like property.
"I want you to be a real friend."
Her expression stays still, but her fingers press against the cup.
"Is that part of the deal?"
"It’s the most important part."
"You’re demanding friendship in exchange for an answer?"
"I’m saying I can’t tell this to someone who plans to disappear the moment she walks out that door."
Freya turns her eyes to the window.
"Maybe I have reasons to disappear."
"I know you do."
She looks at me again.
"You don’t know anything about my reasons."
"I know more than I should."
The answer bothers her, but it doesn’t make her back off. Freya sets the cup on her lap and waits for me to go on.
"You’re an ally I can’t afford to lose," I say. "At first I only thought about your strength and what I could do with Permafrost. That changed. I want you to stay close because I trust you. And because I’ve seen what happens when nobody holds out a hand before it’s too late."
"What kind of deal are you proposing?"
The question comes out low.
"I pay your debt."
Freya doesn’t react right away.
"All of it," I continue. "Whatever’s in Dean’s name, whatever was transferred, the interest, the penalties, any clause used to keep you trapped. I take on the amount and end the bond."
I notice her studying my face, searching for something hidden.
"And then?"
"You join my guild."
"You people are assholes... so I just change owners... pathetic..."
"No."
The word comes out harder than I meant it to.
Freya draws back a little in her chair.
I breathe and lower my voice.
"You join because I want you with us. You don’t come to belong to me. I won’t force you to take missions, fight anyone, or stay in a place you hate. If you say no, the answer is no. If one day you want to leave, you leave without making another debt and without anyone coming after you."
She takes a while to answer.
"That doesn’t sound like a deal."
"And what does it sound like to you?"
"You take on a debt that isn’t yours, you offer protection, work, and the freedom to walk away. You get no guarantee at all."
"I get you free."
Her eyes move, as if the sentence reached a place Freya kept protected.
"That’s enough for me," I finish.
The hand holding the cup trembles.
Freya notices and quickly carries it to the desk. The porcelain meets the wood harder than it should, spilling a small amount of tea.
She wipes the drop with her thumb, too focused on a problem that doesn’t matter.
"Why?"
The question nearly gets lost in the room.
"Why would you do all this for me?"
I let the air out slowly.
I had imagined this conversation before. In every version, Freya was a distant figure, someone whose story I knew from reports, broadcasts, and records left behind after her death. I never imagined I’d have to explain it looking at her, surrounded by the things she’d kept from her childhood.
"I know you far better than you think," I answer. "And for far longer than you could even imagine."
Freya stops wiping the table.
Her hand goes still on the wood.
She doesn’t ask right away. She just watches me, and for the first time since she walked into the room, there’s no strength in her posture now. There’s fear.
I look at the comfortable clothes, at the hair tied back without its usual care, and at the objects around her.
"You lost in the Oathring."
Her jaw tightens.
"I know."
"Dean knows too."
Freya takes her hand off the desk.
"Don’t talk about him in here."
"He expected you to kill me."
"I told you not to talk about him."
"And you didn’t go back to him."
She stands.
The movement is fast, but there’s no aggression in it. Freya takes two steps to the window and stays with her back to me.
"Don’t talk like you know my life. You don’t know where I’m supposed to go back to."
"I know you chose to bring an unconscious man into your room instead of returning to wherever Dean was waiting."
Her shoulders harden.
"The recovery rooms were full."
"You already explained that."
"Because that’s what happened."
"Maybe."
Freya turns her face just enough to see me from the side.
"What are you trying to do?"
"Understand why you’re here."
"I live here."
"That’s not what I meant."
She looks back at the window.
There’s no way to see the ocean sky through the half-closed curtains, only a strip of blue slipping between the fabric. The light reaches the small pegasi and throws long shadows across the wall.
"You lost a fight Dean expected you to win," I go on. "Permafrost was destroyed in front of a whole arena. You surrendered to me and, instead of going back to him, you took off your armor, put on the most comfortable clothes you could find, and brought me to the one place that still seems to be yours."
Freya crosses her arms.
"Don’t turn everything into a story."
"Then tell me you plan to walk out of here and go back to Dean."
The room falls silent.
Freya doesn’t answer.
"Tell me you don’t need help," I press. "That you’ll accept whatever he does when he hears about the loss. I’ll stop now and never touch the subject again."
She opens her mouth, but no words come.
The stiffness starts to leave her shoulders.
It’s a slow process. First, her head drops a few centimeters. Then her arms loosen at her sides. Freya passes a hand over her face and breathes deep, trying to recover the posture she wears in front of other people.
"You’re seeing things where they don’t exist," she says.
Her voice can’t hold the sentence up anymore.
"To me, this looks like a call for help."
Freya turns all the way around.
Her eyes are wet, though she’s still fighting to keep the tears from falling. There’s anger on her face, but not at me. She spent years building a wall, and she just realized another person can see straight through it. That’s what the anger is.
"I didn’t ask for anything."
"Maybe you don’t know how to ask anymore."
A tear runs down, but Freya wipes it away fast.
"Stop."
"I’m here to help."
"I said stop!!"
Another tear falls before she can stop it. Freya turns her face away, but her breathing has already lost its rhythm.
I get up from the bed.
My body is still heavy, but I cross the space between us without losing my balance.
"You don’t have to keep holding all of it alone."
"I always have."
"I know. That’s the problem."
She tries to breathe deep again. The attempt ends in a short, broken sound, and Freya closes her eyes.
"Big girls don’t cry."
For an instant, I think she’s scolding herself.
Then she finishes:
"That’s what my mother said before she handed me over to Dean."
The words change the room.
I look at the wooden pegasi, at the old stars, and at the doll with the crooked spear. Those objects weren’t made only out of affection. They were all that remained of the child who existed before that day.
Freya keeps her eyes closed.
"She fixed my hair," she says, with difficulty. "Put me in my best clothes and told me I had to behave. Said big girls didn’t cry and that Dean would take care of me until she came back."
Her voice breaks.
"But she never came back."
The tears fall without Freya trying to hide them this time.
I move closer and touch her chin carefully. She stiffens on reflex, but doesn’t push my arm away.
I lift her face until our eyes meet.
"Your mother was wrong."
Freya tries to look away.
"Look at me."
She obeys.
"Crying doesn’t make you small. And carrying everything in silence doesn’t make what they did to you all right."
"You can’t promise you’ll fix this."
"I can promise I’ll try until I do."
"Dean won’t just take money and let me go."
"Then we deal with the rest."
"You don’t even know what he can do."
I knew more than she imagined.
"He won’t touch you again without going through me, through my guild, and through every person standing with me."
Freya breathes through her nose, trying to hold back another tremor.
"And if you change your mind?"
"You leave."
She frowns.
"Just like that?"
"No new debt. No hidden contract. No hunters after you. If I turn into the kind of person you need to run from, I hope you won’t hesitate."
Freya stares at me for several seconds.
Her hand rises and takes my wrist, still resting against her chin. She doesn’t push it away. She just holds the contact, as if she needs to confirm I’m really there.
"Would your guild accept someone like me?"
"My guild isn’t going to tolerate you, Freya. It’s going to need you."
"That’s not what I asked."
"But it’s my answer."
A trace of strength returns to her eyes.
"What’s it called?"
I hesitate for a moment.
The answer was another secret, though a smaller one than what I was about to reveal.
"Safe Harbor."
Freya repeats the name in silence.
"I’ve never heard of it... but it feels like home just to think about."
"That’s the point."
She lets go of my wrist and wipes her face with her sleeve. There are still tears on her cheeks, but her breathing is starting to steady.
"If I accept, you’ll do your part?"
"All of it."
"The debt, Dean, and the freedom to refuse your orders?"
"Especially the last one."
Freya looks around the room. Her eyes pass over the bed, the shelf, and the objects that waited for her through so many years.
When she turns back to me, the decision is already made.
"Then I accept."
I don’t hold out my hand.
A formal grip would have turned that moment into one more contract. I just nod and take her word.
Freya pulls the chair back and sits. I return to the edge of the bed. For a few seconds, neither of us speaks.
She reaches for the cup, notices her hands are still trembling, and decides to leave it where it is.
"Now do your part."
"Which one?" I smile.
"Don’t do that."
The voice carries no real irritation, only tiredness.
Freya runs her thumb under one eye and looks at me.
"How do you know so much about me? About Dean, about my mother, about what’s going to happen when I go back? You talk about all of us as if you’d already watched our lives."
I hold her gaze.
There’s no more room for a partial version.
"You were my greatest idol."
Freya blinks three times.
"We met a short time ago."
"For you."
She goes still.
"In the world my memories come from, you became one of the greatest Divers who ever lived. I followed your battles, hunted down interviews, records, anything that mentioned you. When someone said a mission in the trenches was impossible, your name came up in the argument."
A faint color returns to her face, mixed now with confusion.
"That doesn’t make sense."
"I know."
"You talk as if it already happened."
"It did."
Freya stares at the cup on the desk. Then, slowly, she brings her eyes back to me.
"And what happened to me?"
The question weighs more than I expected.
For a long time, her death had been a closed story. A tragic end recorded by other people, repeated until it became part of the legend. Sitting in that room, in front of the woman who could still choose another path, there was nothing legendary about it.
"You came to a tragic end."
Her expression changes.
"I did?"
The past tense lands a second after the rest of the sentence.
"I lived in a world where you were already dead."
Freya can’t answer.
The light between the curtains touches the side of her face. Around her, the small objects that recalled her childhood stay where they always were, witnessing a truth that shouldn’t exist.
I breathe deep.
"I was reborn with memories of the future."
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