“Hello, Nate.”
He began to stumble an apology, but she placed a soft hand upon the rough skin of his own and shook her head.
“What you did Nate, what I asked Erin to do, needs no apology. If anything, it should be me asking for forgiveness. I placed such a terrible burden on Erin, and I should never have asked her. With the knowledge I now possess, it scares me to think how close I came to breaking her. If she had pulled the trigger then, we would have lost this war before our first true battle was joined.”
The words confused Nate, but he said nothing, still drinking in the sight of the young woman he had so adored. Erin and Freya had become his surrogate daughters in those early days of the fall. Before any of the others had been liberated from Bancroft’s cruel grasp, the three of them – and Erin’s rodent she called a dog – were all that was left in the world. Keeping them safe had become his purpose.
“What you did was not something to apologise for, Nate,” she said, her dark eyes regarding him with something like pride. “You saved her from a torment she would never have recovered from.”
You saved her.
Those words were like cooling ice to the burning guilt in his heart, and he felt his shallow breath flow easier.
“This feels so… real,” he whispered, marvelling at the cool touch of her hand upon his.
“It is, and it isn’t,” she said with a mischievous smile. “Nate, I need you to hear me now. I mean really hear me, okay?”
He nodded, and Freya centred herself with a calming breath.
“Nate, Erin is right, about all of it.”
He frowned. “All of what?”
“The end of all things.”
“I don’t follow,” he said, confused.
“Nate, humanity is being judged for all its sins. Our dead have been chosen as the harbingers of this punishment and will remain so until our complete destruction unless we can find a way to earn our redemption.”
The veteran digested this, feeling the tangled knots inside him tighten. Erin was right? About all of it?
“It’s… hard for me to grasp,” he admitted. “It’s just so… so big. I’m just a marine.”
Freya laughed then, an exquisite lilting sound that seemed to bring the garden to vibrant life. The aroma intensified, the colours deepened, and a warm, comforting breeze seemed to sweep through the garden and bring peace to him. He should have been confused, and afraid, and doubtful, but instead he knew that Freya was speaking the truth. He knew in the marrow of his bones that this dream was somehow real.
“Nate,” chuckled Freya, shaking her head as if he had just cracked a bad joke. “You are not just a marine. We all have our parts to play, just as I did. Mine was to die, so I could sit here, with you.”
“Seems like a shitty part in the play,” he grumbled. “Why take a young woman like you, with all her life ahead of her?”
“I gave Erin a taste of something she’d never really had. I was a friend that accepted her for who she was, that didn’t want to change anything about her, and expected nothing from her. I’ve come to realise something about Erin since my time here, trapped in this endless day.”
“Realise what?”
“When you expect nothing from Erin, she gives you everything. It’s one of her gifts. You’ve seen it yourself, Nate. If you’re simply there for her, if you ask nothing of her, nor demand anything from her, she gives herself freely. You knew in the deepest part of you that when you, Mark, and Alicia didn’t come home that night, you knew that Erin would come for you. You let her be who she is, and that person is one that refuses to leave a friend in trouble, no matter the risk or cost to herself.”
Nate nodded, the ghost of a smile haunting his lips. “Aye. She’s a mad one.”
Freya laughed again. “Nate, she is fearless, and reckless, and takes maddening risks, but she does it all from a place of love.”
She patted his hand and turned her gaze back to the glory of the garden.
“She’s the very definition of an empath, Nate. When the mood around her is up, she’s on top of the world and a bright flame that draws others in. When those around her are hurting, it cuts her to the deepest depth of her soul. It’s why she fights so hard for light, Nate. It’s why her humour is so ridiculous, why she laughs about situations that don’t usually warrant such whimsical comments.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nate, she feels everything ten times as hard as you and I. Her joy is like an explosion of light in the dark, and her depression is heart-crushing despair. She can’t face the terror of that darkness, so she fights it with every shred of light she can find. It’s the only way she knows how.”
It was such a simple and elegant way to describe Erin, and yet Nate realised just how true it was. There was no middle ground with Erin Locke; she was crying in the dark or laughing in the light.
“She’s special, Nate,” said Freya.
“I know.”
Freya shook her head. “No Nate, I don’t mean just special to us. I mean she’s special, in that she has a part to play far greater than most in humanity’s redemption.”
Nate stilled. “What?”
“Three is a powerful number, Nate, as it always has been through many cultures and beliefs. There are three people that our fate rests upon, a Trinity, and if they pass their test, we will be freed of the dead, and given our chance to rebuild something new. Something better.”
“And Erin is one of these three?”
Freya shook her head. “No Nate, the burden of the Trinity is not hers. The Soul must be an everyday person, so their trial is all the greater. Their greater burden of responsibility requires a grand crucible to endure before humanity has any
