Henriik Delamater | Air | Arah, Edward, Freyja, lun, Sala, Máxime

Henriik entered the scene at a quarter to eleven, far later than he had intended. Warmly-hued lights flickered in rhythmic movements with the heavy bass that seemed to be shaking the ancient wooden boathouse. It had been there since the beginning of time, or so it felt. For as long as he’d lived there–his entire life–Henriik had been entranced by the building, and how it always and never seemed to age. Probably some kind of magic spell, and probably not even one with any kind of valid reasoning behind it. He’d always thought the spell was cast by some drunk academicians from years prior who were worried about the floor caving in and dumping all of the fire elements in the lake it sat on. That would explain why they had done such a sloppy job–the boathouse itself was sturdy for its age, and held an air of consistency–however, the docks were decaying all around, and nobody seemed able to restore them through magic or mortal means. Either that, or the school’s administration just didn’t give a damn. That sounded just as likely.

Speaking of drunk academicians, Henriik was hardly surprised to enter the scene to find at least a hundred of them bouncing around the boathouse to the heavy, piercing music. He was handed a cup of a purple liquid immediately, some kind of elixir someone had concocted no doubt. He wasn’t sure exactly what it did, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. Unlike the majority of the people here, he felt the aching pressure of always needing to be in control. One wrong move, and his father would have him banished to the westlands beyond the mountains where darker and stronger magic would destroy him before he even had a chance to breathe the air of freedom. Nowhere was safe, really, and it had been that way for hundreds of years. The only place no one had come for yet was the academy, the key word being yet. Henriik had a hunch something stronger was at play–why else would the darker powers of this realm allow the continual training of some of the strongest individuals in the realm? He knew too much to fall into the facade of safety that the administration put up, but not nearly enough to take them down. Things were getting worse by the day, and he felt like he was the only one being suffocated by this knowledge. He’d mentioned it to his girlfriend on countless occasions, and she didn’t seem to care. She never seemed to care about anything, other than out-performing and otherwise showing up her rival, lun. It consumed her day and night. And, unsurprisingly, when he entered the busy room, he found the pair of them right in the center of all the action, trying to out-drink each other at two kegs beside each other. The crowd was circled around them, cheering as they stared each other down, dangerous glints in each pair of eyes.

“Time out,” Freyja said, slurring her words as if she’d been at the keg for hours. She would die before she would let lun win anything. Again, she was consumed by the idea of being better than him. It was even annoying to Henriik at times, his endless patience and all. Still, he stayed by her side. It wasn’t even really for love, it was for her safety. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders, and she didn’t even know a fraction of it. Sometimes he felt like the only person in the world.

She came up and wrapped her arms around his neck, clinging to his frame and kissing him sloppily. He tensed, but played along. This was every day for them. He wasn’t surprised when instead of meeting his eyes, her gaze trailed back through the crowd to lun, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. Even her relationship with him was a way to prove something to him. He wondered if the man even cared, he seemed more than comfortable with his casual hookups and the hundreds of girls at the academy who met him with scorn for breaking their hearts in one way or another. Surely he did care, considering the fact that he cared just as much about showing Freyja up as she did him. Not long after, he’d pulled a girl with platinum blonde hair out of the crowd and started making out with her. She seemed confused, and a little more drunk than she was able to handle. Definitely one of the new kids. Probably a scholarship kid, by the looks of the way she was handling her alcohol.

“Stop,” Henriik sighed, “you’re so drunk you can’t even stand.” He said it softly, putting on a charming smile for the crowd. They wouldn’t remember any of this tomorrow anyway, but he had a reputation to keep up. He had an image he needed to preserve, and that involved being madly in love with the most popular girl at the school. They were the couple everyone wanted to be, and even if they weren’t, he didn’t have a choice. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. The pressure and the anxiety of everything that was going on in the background was choking him. He couldn’t handle any of this, not even one breath at a time. The walls were slowly caving in around him. “Where’s Arah, have you seen her?”

“Not recently,” she slurred again, sloshing liquid around in a cup he didn’t remember seeing her acquire. “Don’t be such a buzzkill, love. You’re killing the vibe.”

“I’ll be back. You’re sure you haven’t seen her?”

“No. You don’t trust me?” Her eyes got dark, and for a brief second, the tips of her fingers began to flame. They danced in her eyes, which were a million miles away from here. She seemed to snap out of it quickly, and coldly brushed past him back to the party. He heard her demanding that lun stop making out with the new girl, and get back to their drinking competition. He never felt more lonely than he did seeing the two of them together, and the worst part was that neither one of them seemed to realize it.

Making his way around the party, he asked a few people if they’d seen Arah. At the end of last semester, she’d been involved in something with the administration that he feared would cost her greatly. They never addressed it, which made him believe more sinister actions would be taken in the following weeks. Like Freyja, he felt the need to protect her. Combined with lun, the four of them were the only ones who’d been at the school for more than a few years. They were the only ones who hadn’t been cast off by the administration for one menial reason or another. It seemed like every year the tension between the administration and the four of them grew stronger, or maybe he was the only one who noticed.

“Edward, have you seen Arah?” The loner was outside on the dock, smoking a cigarette. His hair was ruffled in the breeze, and his eyes reflected the color of the moon and the tide. He barely looked up to see what Henriik was doing as he replied, taking a long drag as he did.

“Yeah, she went off with some girl about an hour ago. She was fine.” Then, with a knowing look upwards, he said, “I would be careful if I were you.” He didn’t need to explain himself. They both knew, and Henriik didn’t realize that Edward had any clue what was going on. However, he was the fifth and final individual who’d been allowed to stay. It had to count for something, and he was certainly not too proud to blackmail someone. Henriik didn’t trust Edward in the slightest, but he had to rely on him from time to time. Everything Edward did–every favor, every word he spoke, every piece of information he distributed–it all came with a price.

“So,” Edward continued, “you seen the new kids? The kid is killing my vibe here.” His Scottish accent was dripping with something. Maybe sarcasm, maybe cynicism, maybe something more. “There can’t be two of me in this hell hole.”

“I haven’t met him yet,” Henriik admitted, “but the girl is inside with lun.”

“Making your girlfriend jealous?”

“Something like that.”

“Care to smoke?”

“Sure,” he sat down at the dock beside the man, studying his face intently to determine his motives. “What do you want from me?”

“Nothing,” he replied cooly, smirking. “Just this once.”

Freyja Eloquijm | Fire | Arah, Edward, Henriik, lun, Máxime

Freyja’s fiery eyes danced around that of her rival’s, seemingly even more angered by the fact that there was little evidence of intoxication when she was stumbling around the place with little concept of time or space. She should have learned by now that challenging him to drinking competitions was a futile concept, and that if she wanted to drink herself to death she could do it without facing losing her dignity by letting someone with water magic and gills show her up. Truly, these little games were just a way for her to lose control for a moment, and to forget herself in the heat of the moment. They were cathartic in all the wrong ways. Everything about her relationship with lun was cathartic in all the wrong ways, and still, she was the flame to his moth. And likewise. They couldn’t stand each other, but they couldn’t stand to be away from each other, either.

He inched closer to her, smirking. “Everyone’s watching, Princess. Are you gonna honor our bet?” Smug bastard. “Or are you gonna wimp out on me?” She slowly let her fingers trace up his arm, smirking just as arrogantly when she felt his body tense under her touch. Her right hand traveled upward until it reached his neck, her thumb stroking his cheek. For just a moment she let her eyes soften, the amber color reducing to their vulnerable shade of bright green. She looked deep into his eyes, stunning him for just long enough to trace her other hand up his other arm and find its way to the other side of his neck. Somehow, she’d been lucky enough to get him to buy it thus far. His expression had softened, his light blue eyes infuriatingly sober but now with an added element of softness, and perhaps surprise. He was an imbecile, but she wasn’t complaining.

“A bet is a bet,” she whispered seductively, just between the two of them. Even she couldn’t deny that they felt like the only two people in the room. In the world, even. Bet or no bet. She wasn’t shy about letting her eyes flicker between his eyes and his lips, close enough that she could count the little freckles on his nose that she’d never noticed before. She’d never been this close to his face before. She leaned in more until she could feel his hot breath on her face, and when she glanced up to ensure his eyes were closed, she used the position of her hands to cup the gills on his neck, suffocating him. She watched him choke for a second or two, blue eyes big and bright with bewilderment. The left side of her painted lips curled upward once more in a smug smirk, and she leaned in again. In the same soft, seductive whisper, she added, “but we don’t ever play fair.”

Releasing him from her grip, she splashed a cup of whatever was in the keg he’d emptied into his face. “You looked like you could use a drink, love. Maybe if you’d emptied your keg the honorable way, you wouldn’t have that look on your face.” She turned on her heel and walked out into the night, ignoring the group of guys on the dock as she passed. She never looked back, nor at any of the faces of the partygoers who watched the scene go down in bewilderment. Surely, this was the closest anyone had ever seen them in physical proximity of each other. In classes, they always sat at opposite ends of the room. Typically, Freyja sat in the front, delivering the best answers and staying laser-focused on the tasks at hand. lun was generally always somewhere in the back, flirting with some girl or discussing something irrelevant with one of the other kids who hardly cared about his or her position in the academy. What was more frustrating was that any time he was called on, he nearly always gave the right answer no matter how little it appeared he was paying attention to the class. That drove her even more insane. And to make matters worse, Henriik seemed as if he just didn’t care, and always made Freyja feel like she was the problem. It was unbelievable. What should she do, just simply not care? Not give him the power, or the time of day? Preposterous.

Still, he protected her. In his own way. Even now, he had gotten up from his position on the dock, swiftly transporting himself to her side in no time. “Frey, Freyja, wait. Are you okay?”

“Get off me,” she shoved him, but he was much bigger and stronger than her. He grunted but hardly moved, and gently took her hands and held them in his.

“Freyja, look at me. Look into my eyes. See me,” he pleaded. When was the last time she had actually looked at him and seen him, not looked through him? Years, probably.

“What do you want from me,” Freyja’s eyes were filled with flames once more, and she was tempted to burn him. Just to make him feel something, just to get a reaction out of him. It was unbelievable that she felt more connected to her arch-rival. She was disgusted at the sight of him, but disgust was a stronger emotion than indifference, than emptiness, than loneliness. “I mean, really? I’ve followed your family’s stupid little plans and their stupid little rules for years. Years. When am I going to get to make decisions for myself? Go places on my own? Live my life for me?”

“This is about lun.”

“Fuck no, this isn’t about lun! This is about me. And you. You can’t tell me you’re happy. It’s obvious you’re not.”

“At least let me walk you home.”

“Fine.”

In silence, the pair made their way back to the women’s dormitories at the opposite end of the campus. The men’s were adjacent, but Henriik lived in a big study above the head administrator’s library. It’d be another twenty minute walk back for him, but he wanted to clear his head. Still, something didn’t feel right when he left Freyja, and he didn’t know exactly what it was. He wanted to respect her wishes, so he left her alone, but couldn’t ignore the nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach. His father’s light was on in the study when he returned home, but he felt uneasy. He paced in his room for the remaining few hours until the morning. When he arrived to his first class, he noticed immediately a missing seat in the back. He looked at Freyja, who immediately grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the room. He’d arrived early, so there was no professor yet to chastise them.

“Henriik, I think something happened to Arah. She wasn’t in her dorm last night, and her roommates said she never made it back. I’m worried.”

Though it didn’t feel like the time to mention it, Henriik couldn’t help noticing that, somehow, Freyja could soften and worry for anyone other than him. “I felt like something was off. How can I help you?”

“I…I don’t know. I don’t want to involve you, but somehow, I fear I’m next.”

Freyja | Fire | Henriik, lun

On any other day, Freyja would have been in the mood to fight back and taunt her longtime foe. However, Henriik was taking matters entirely too lightly and Freyja had not made it this far on her own to not trust her instincts. She needed an ally, even if it came from the most unusual of places. Despite the way Freyja absolutely loathed lun, this was an instance where she needed him. She could count on one hand the number of students the academy hadn’t cast off after a handful of years, and one was missing, one was suspiciously ignorant given the circumstances, one was untrustworthy in ways she could not begin to comprehend, and then there was lun. Even if she hated him, he was the better option compared to Edward. For one, he was plain stupid. He wouldn’t lie to her or deceive her in the way the latter did so naturally. She didn’t trust him in the slightest, and though she didn’t like the idea of trusting lun, she at least knew she could depend on him. She knew she could depend on him because it would be him next. She didn’t know how she knew, but she could tell the administration was trying to pick them off one by one. What she didn’t know was for what reason, or why they were doing it now.

Unsurprisingly, she felt his lingering presence behind her as she exited the classroom. His voice was annoyingly smug, when wasn’t it? “Hey Princess, I think you’re missing part of your posse, eh? What gives?” Without faltering or spinning around, she grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him out of the large mass of students wandering the halls towards the next set of classes and into an empty classroom. She did it with enough force that he ended up falling back into the wall, and of course, he was him: he dragged her with him, taking the opportunity to grab her by the arms and cause her to lose her balance enough that they ended up crashing into the wall together. His back was against it, catching her as she fell into him on the tips of her toes, their faces close. Given the events of the past evening, she couldn’t help the way her eyes flickered down to his lips again for only a moment before she jolted backwards, rolling her eyes and yanking her arm away. His smirk was infuriating. “What the hell,” she snapped, “is this some weird kink for you? Here’s a tip, darling: don’t.”

Brushing the imaginary grime that felt left over from his touch off the arms of her school uniform, she studied him for a moment, waiting for the annoying comeback she knew would follow. Then, with a sudden seriousness, her eyes faded from a bright, flaming amber to hazel, then green. “I need your help. It involves you, so I’m confident you’ll meet me at the docks by the lakehouse after curfew. It’s important, lun.” She met his eyes with a solemn expression that was unmistakable. Freyja was afraid, she was genuinely upset over something. And it definitely had to do with Arah, and Henriik, and the future of this school.

…

The rest of the afternoon passed rather quickly. Her classes were a breeze, even with a few exams here and there. She tried to ignore the way lun’s icy gaze burned into her back during their last class, and the way Henriik seemed distant and cold. He was always a little aloof, preoccupied with the matters of his mind, but something was different. She couldn’t place it, but he seemed two seconds from lashing out at her at any given moment. When she said something, he gave a half-hearted apology and gave some excuse about being stressed about the team they were playing that evening. She didn’t believe it for a moment.

Still, she showed up to the game as the image of the perfect girlfriend that she knew she needed to be. It was the expectation, it was apart of the agreement she had with Henriik and his father. She wasn’t surprised when their team lost, and when Henriik stormed off after without so much as a word to her. It was normal for them, it was a loveless relationship. It was contractual, transactional, nothing more. Sometimes she didn’t even feel like his friend, let alone his girlfriend. The only time he smiled at her or with her was for the cameras. Still, she needed their protection. She needed that alliance. It kept her going when she wanted to listen to her instincts and let her free spirit lead. She couldn’t afford that, despite every fiber of her being telling her to fight for her own freedom and independence. If ever there was a time she needed his protection, it was now.

After the monitors came through and did their checks, Freyja snuck out of her room towards the lakehouse. One of the monitors, an older witch named Lucije, caught her in her tracks. “Where are you going at this time of night?” With a snap of her fingers, the witch’s magic forced her to reveal the truth.

“I’m sneaking out to talk to lun at the docks about something that’s troubling me.” Damn witches. Her eyes filled with flames, then they started at the tips of her fingers, traveling up her hands, then the rest of her arms. She despised the truth spell.

Lucije smiled knowingly. Well, she thought she knew. “It’s about time you two, you know…” She didn’t. What did she know that she wasn’t saying? And how long had she been withholding it? “I’ll allow it, just this once. Go on.”

Guided by the moonlight, Freyja drew a cloak over her head and made her way down to the docks before the old woman could change her mind. She found lun there, much to her relief. She feared he wouldn’t come, or worse, he would set her up. In order to keep the words spoken between them, she beckoned for him to come closer. “Come here,” she instructed, building a forcefield of flames around them. That kind of magic created a sound barrier, protecting their conversation from anyone who may have been watching. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was. “How much do you know? About Arah, the administration, Henriik, all of it. How much do you know?”

Freyja | Fire | Edward, lun

Freyja’s eyes softened but maintained their fiery amber color, keeping the flames lit around them. Surely he had a point, she’d thought about it prior to meeting him. But he didn’t have a better alternative, and she would rather draw every attention to their secret meeting than have someone overhear it privately. Her eyes flickered around, refusing to look him in the eye. They burned brighter with fury and emotion but stayed scanning the ring around them and the dark waters below. The flames danced inches above the water and the dock, not burning a single thing. Freyja’s magic was very advanced, and very controlled. Until something set her off, anyway.

“Don’t think I don’t know that,” she swallowed, eyes downcast. She met his eyes for just a moment, flames dancing in them, before averting them again. Her body was rigid. “But we can’t risk being heard, and unless you magically discovered how to mute sound with your magic,” her eyes narrowed, demonstrating the slightest return of the normal Freyja. “If anyone comes, they’ll just assume we’re doing what we always do: try to kill each other.”

Before she could continue, which she had been attempting to, her eyes widened in realization, and slight fear. The waves lun had made were frozen in place, and when she looked up, she realized her flames were too. “You didn’t do that, I’m assuming.” Her eyes flashed green and the flames fell. She took a step towards lun, studying him with concern and mistrust, but when his face held the concern she was feeling internally, she decided he wasn’t to blame, and just this once, she would have to be unified with him.

“Of course he didn’t, I did,” Edward stepped out of the shadows, walking arrogantly across the docks. A wicked smirk grew on his face. “Do you really think he’s that much stronger than you, that he could freeze two magics at the same time with just a snap of his fingers?” He snapped again, and time unfroze itself, but because the pair of them were not working at maintaining it, both magic sources dissipated immediately. He snapped again, and time froze again. “It’s about time you got curious about the administration, I never thought I’d see the day that what happened to you…” He paused, toying with her. “Both of you…” He watched their faces light up, both equally curious and willing to do whatever it took to receive information he’d been hiding for years despite all of the curiosity and pain that not knowing had caused them both. Or, at minimum, Freyja. There were gaps in her mind and memories that she couldn’t place that had been bringing her terror and grief for years. She’d been searching for the truth since she’d been at the academy, or so it seemed. Still, he loved a good trick. “Well, nevermind. I suppose I shouldn’t just divulge such precious information. For free anyway.”

“What do you want, Edward?”

“No, darling,” he crossed his arms, looking her dead in the eye. “Not what I want. What do you want, and what are you willing to do for it?”

“Nothing to do with you,” she spat, and he scoffed. He was amused.

“Brave girl. Trapped in time, and still being combative at the only person willing to tell you what you most desire to know? You know your little boyfriend–if we can even call him that–would never go against his father and the administration. He’s the heir, his loyalty will never be to you.”

“And what is it to you, what my business is?”

“Well, your business isn’t what I’m interested in. It’s you, my dear. Whether all of us live or die rests on your shoulders, not mine.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The same thing you are,” he gestured between the pair of them, “your measly little light tricks have no effect on me, Freyja. It’s actually concerning how incapable you are of fulfilling the things you are meant to.”

“Edward, I’m not going to play these games with you. Either you start talking, or you let us go. I know the prices you put on information, on assistance, on anything you can. I’m not involving myself in that. Not for something I know nothing about.”

Edward widened his hands, summoning a purple mist between them that sparked like it had some sort of electric charge. Without giving lun a chance to protect her or retaliate, he pressed his hands to her head. She convulsed, eyes rolling to the back of her head as she grew limp in his arms, the purple electricity seeming to pulse through her and give her body a purple glow. He lowered her body to the ground, taking his hands off her and putting two fingers to her wrist, now emitting a blue charge. She seemed to come back to life as quickly as she’d dropped. Her eyes were wide as she watched Edward as if she was experiencing life for the first time. He crossed his arms, watching her with an unfeeling expression and waiting for some sort of verbal response. He didn’t bother trying to gauge lun’s reaction, or even acknowledge the man’s presence. That wasn’t pertinent to this, not yet. “Do you trust me now?”

Iun||Water|Freyja, Edward

Iun rolled his eyes at Freyja "No but I could have gotten us off campus." He retorted putting a hand on his chest and sighing in a dramatic manor " Tsk tsk tsk...It hurts that after all this time especially after last night you underestimate me Freyja... That hurts... Right here." He teased patting his chest in a dramatic manor over his heart and shaking his head. Before he gave a small sigh and nodded for her to continue though he kept a close eye on the flames... He was extremely vulnerable here quite literally in the ring of fire... He could be a fish fillet in a matter of moments if she chose to... Despite being the stronger elemental out of the two in a vulnerable place like he was in now it would be easy for her to kill him on the spot... He still had a slight bit of doubt about this meeting but A she hadn't tried him yet... And B she never would have come to him willingly without being challenged if it wasn't serious so he stopped his jokes and paid attention to what she had to say. After a few heartbeats he realized the waves weren't thrashing beneath them anymore and his heart dropped into his stomach as he slowly shook his head "F*ck no I didn't do that!" He retorted looking around.

"Someone's here..."

He met her gaze with his own briefly before his eyes darted around the room trying desperately to reach the waves that were just underneath them as his eyes darted quickly around the room but he couldn't it was like his powers had gotten knocked out. He didn't like the idea of teaming up with Freyja much but he didn't exactly have many options. When the voice came he perked up much like a dog and looked toward it when he saw Edward come out of the shadows he raised a brow "Who the hell are you?" He asked his blue eyes furious as he looked Edward over... How had he not seen him before? Where'd he come from? He wondered. When Freyja said his name his brows raised and he glanced at her she knew him? Since when?! And how? He wondered he felt the waves lapping underneath him again and tried hard to pull at them to give himself a weapon to use but he'd let off using his powers so it was damn near impossible after the waves had crashed down and he stopped the world around them again.

When Edward mentioned something happening to both of them admittedly he was curious but he was clearly still skeptical what the hell did he mean by that? He wondered... Unlike Freyja his memories were all a blur... He remembered them but it was like they blurred past him like trying to take a picture in a moving car... Images that were there but hard to pick out... But it wasn't enough to concern him... until now that is. He raised a brow at Edward he was trying to be intimidating? Please... Even without his powers Iun could take him down if he wished... The only thing keeping him here was his curiosity as he listened to the exchange "Stop speaking in your damn riddles and talk instead of beating around the bush..." He said rolling his eyes "I doubt you have any information at all... If you did you would have shared something to make us believe you and not trapped us here." Iun said rolling his eyes again "You heard her...she said no... Now piss off." He snapped clearly annoyed with this riddle speaking fool.

After that he intended to take Freyja away but was stopped when he saw the mist... It happened so fast his brain didn't have time to process before he saw Freyja on the ground he looked between the two of them his blue eyes flashing from one to the other... Honestly he wasn't sure what to do... Seeing Freyja was alright gave him pause and he found himself to be... Relieved? Wow... He never thought he'd feel that way toward her that's for sure. Reeling from this newfound relief for his enemy he whipped around to Edward "What the hell did you just do?!" He asked balling his fists... "Hell fu*king NO I don't trust you!" he hissed. He may not have had his powers but damn it he had his fists and he was gonna use them he took two swift steps toward Edward before he drove his fist into his gut knocking the wind out of him and dropping him to his knees "No more magic tricks..." He growled out his human teeth receding into his mouth to reveal a row of shark-like teeth behind them grabbing Edward by the hair and pulling his head back exposing his windpipe "Tell me what the hell is going on or I swear to the gods you will NEVER see another sunrise..." He hissed tightening his grip on Edwards hair to make his point even clearer (as if the shark teeth were enough already.) Iun hardly ever made threats like this... But when he did they were no idle threats. Though the emotion he was feeling was unclear... Even to him... Was he jealous someone had gotten under Freyja's skin besides him? Was he pissed that Edward had hurt his... Whatever Freyja was to him...? Or was he simply annoyed? Even Iun wasn't entirely sure.

Freyja | Fire | Edward, lun

“It hurts that, after all this time, especially after last night…” Despite the blatant sarcasm in his voice, she couldn’t help looking up and studying his bright blue eyes for significance. Any hint of genuinity was quickly wiped off his face at the presence of Edward. Freyja was under the impression that he’d been lurking in the shadows for a while, which didn’t make her feel any less uneasy. She was certain he wouldn’t kill them, but that didn’t mean his intentions weren’t malicious in some capacity.

The only thing stranger than the fact that Edward had been stalking the two of them when there was perfectly good havoc to wreak elsewhere was the fact that lun didn’t seem to recognize him at all. Though they ran in different circles and the former certainly had a habit of doing his precarious business in the ominous obscurity of the shadows, Freyja was certain they knew each other. Due to her own drama with Henriik, she couldn’t recall whether they’d spoken to one another at the party the night prior, but surely they had in the last year. Naturally, she assumed they’d spoken since school had been back in session, but she wasn’t entirely sure. Her mind began to fill with theories on this matter, though she had far too many more questions for the both of them to even begin to narrow it down. The look on lun’s face said he wasn’t lying, and if anyone had the ability to read him, it was Freyja. Being sworn enemies with him year after year had ironically caused her to know him better than anyone else in the world.

She grabbed lun’s arm with careless haste, though there was nothing nurturing about it. She nearly ripped it out of its socket trying to get his attention. She fought the urge to singe his forearm just a little, if only to get him to stop gaping at the man across the dock and look directly at her. She wasn’t sure she even possessed the power. Even if they couldn’t tell by the look in her eye, she was afraid, and fear drained her of the strength of her power. At this rate, she could likely barely light a candle. “lun…”

Before she could say anything more, or question his newfound amnesia, Edward began speaking in his riddles, and she found herself with more important things to deal with. She barely remembered falling, or any of what had caused it. When she looked back up, she saw Edward, and she saw lun. Somehow, the blond had taken the other male down, though she imagined it was because he had let him. Freyja knew them both well, and she was certain Edward was stronger than everyone in this school, including the administration. Not to mention all of the rumors about him…

It didn’t take long for it all to come rushing back. Still, she sat with a glazed over look for a moment or two before crawling back a few lengths from both men. Though she had invited lun, she didn’t trust him. Maybe this was all apart of some elaborate scheme. She didn’t think so, given the fact that he was too damn honest and had far too many tells to be hiding anything. She’d learned basically all of his tells by now, and that if she pushed him just slightly over the edge, any words rolling around that empty brain of his came spilling out like marbles. Edward had pushed him far over the edge, and he didn’t seem to have much to say.

Despite all of the challenges Freyja wanted to verbalize to her rival, she was still stunned by what she’d just seen. As far as she knew, Edward didn’t have the power to create new visions with his mind control, he only had the power to lift memories out of an individual’s subconscious. She couldn’t think of one single way that would result in him being able to harness someone else’s magic to create that effect, not to mention the fact that the memories he had shown her had evoked some kind of emotion in her. Smoke was rising off her arms, her hands, her legs, her hair. Because the emotion had been faced inward, she was somehow burning herself. Typically her emotions were only faced outward, such as rage, annoyance, and vengeance. She never felt much of her own emotions. This was the first time she’d discovered what feeling something inwardly could do to her. Yet, the flames didn’t hurt. There was something about them that made her glow, that gave her an aura of power she didn’t typically possess.

“What did you do to me,” she whispered gently, studying her arms. She hadn’t come to terms with exactly what was happening and why. “Why did you show me that specifically, out of everything?” Her eyes were threatening to well up with tears, something no one had ever seen before, surely. A tear rolled out of her eyes and onto her cheek, and immediately dissolved into steam with a sizzling sound. “What’s your angle?”

“Not what I did, what you did to yourself.” He paused, looking up and down her figure in a way that wasn’t innately sensual, but somehow became that. “You know more than you realize, Freyja. Somehow, you just need me to help you realize it. Maybe it’s that you want me to help you realize it. Surely a woman like you is capable of doing everything on her own, so why’d you let me slip into your subconscious?” He smirked, his eyes disregarding the other man on the dock completely. “It seems you have a lot to think about. I know we’ll meet again, very, very soon. Whenever you like, my dear. You know where to find me.”

Without so much as a second look, Edward turned to leave, snapping his fingers and allowing time to resume. Freyja was still sitting on the dock, too stunned to speak. Her words to Edward had barely been croaked out, and she couldn’t manage to find any to clear the air between her and lun. Knowing him, he’d have plenty himself to keep the air thin. Breathless, and still with that glazed over look, Freyja made no effort to chase the other man, who’d seemed to vanish as quickly as he’d come. She just sat, deep in her thoughts, unwilling to comprehend any of what she’d seen. There was just too much to understand, and so much of it had been just beneath the surface, right under her nose. How had she missed it? If that was just scratching the surface, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go any further. Yet, she felt helpless in her fate, and in the destiny that awaited her and everyone else at this school.