Freda: Volume III in the New Eden series Read Online Free

doesn’t add up. He says, “But that’s still only about 28 hours.”
    Tom points at the snow clouds now obscuring the peaks. “How much light does that thing need to make electricity?”
    “No idea,” Dane replies. “I only had it a few minutes before we were captured.”
    “Hmm. Well, let’s hope this blizzard keeps the sun away. Let’s go. Where is that barn?”

CHAPTER 3
    The barn used to be a vibrant red, but the late hour, the gray day, and its faded, peeling paint give it a sickly pallor. Any joy I might have gotten from memories of autumn harvests and spring seedings drains away when I see it. It hunches against the winter, larger than I remember but threadbare and leaning against the wind. I suppose when a whole people rush off to war, things that should be kept up fall into disrepair.
    The snow around the barn, particularly in front of the giant sliding doors at the western end, has been churned a mud-brown and frozen into a dry, lumpy wasteland. Farther away, tall, brown grass pokes up through the snow in shivering tufts to announce that even there, where the children played and the fire pits cooked the festival feasts, even those places lay neglected while the faithful were away at war.
    The silence of a cemetery covers us, extending up onto the southern hillside and down into the scattered houses to the north between the barn and the lake. Certainly there is no sound from the “hunnert or so” people supposedly locked up inside. As we approach the barn, each of the others wears an expression as grim as the feeling in my heart.
    The giant doors are shut. A chain hangs loose through the latch, connected by a large padlock that dangles open.
    “Anyone walking up could unlatch these doors,” I mumble, my words falling to the snow almost unheard. “They were so sure no one would come that they didn’t even bother to secure the lock.”
    Patrick replies, “Or so unsure of their own righteousness that they couldn’t bring themselves to take that one final step.”
    I watch him for a moment, but he doesn’t look at me. Patrick knows such doubts perhaps better than anyone here. All through the war with Tawtrukk, he struggled with his conviction. As with Dane, his doubts took over when he met a Tawtrukker face to face for the first time. Patrick clung to his old beliefs for months, though, until he met Lupay in the field and realized, eye to eye, that she was not his enemy.
    Perhaps it was a mistake to have Lupay stay behind. If it took meeting Lupay to extinguish Dane’s faith and turn Patrick’s allegiance—
    With a clunk and a rattle, Dane knocks the lock away and lets the chain slip through its rings and run to the ground in a heap. He hauls back the giant latch and then heaves the door with his whole weight, pushing it on its track until a tall, narrow gap opens.
    An indistinct murmur of voices lurks in the darkness. Patrick rushes to Dane’s side and pushes along with him, widening the gap with a screech of wood sliding along its iron track. The afternoon sun dips behind the cloudy western peaks, but its twilight reaches through the gap into the darkness to illuminate a solitary figure. It is a man, rigid and tall.
    “Freda!” It is my father, and his stiffness melts as he lurches forward and wraps me in a tight hug. His warmth and strength feel so good after more than a month apart. “I thought we’d never see you again.”
    I hug him and rest my chin on his shoulder. “Daddy,” I say, and somehow the word seems right even though he should be calling me First Wife. “So did I.”
    He keeps holding me tight, longer than really I want him to, even though his embrace comforts me. Over his shoulder, I see my mother waiting her turn. She smiles as she shuffles closer, joy and tears filling her eyes as she lifts her hand to my father’s shoulder.
    Dane and Patrick watch, but they do not smile.
    I push away from my father. “Do you know Darius’ intent?”
    The light that filled him moments