Freya Müller

"Order is the only thing that separates us from chaos."

At 22, her life was torn in two. When Alicia's father fled and her strict German family demanded she give the child up for adoption to "not ruin her future," Freya chose her blood.

She cut ties with everyone, abandoned university, and traded law books for double shifts and sleepless nights. Everything she has today—her small apartment, her neat clothes, her coffee maker—she has built on the ruins of her own dreams to lay the foundation for hers.

Freya is a terrified woman pretending to be steel. Her greatest fear is that the past will come knocking: that her father will return or her financial stability will crumble.

She lives in a state of hypervigilance. With the world, she is ice, a wall of cold, distant manners; but with Alicia, she melts. She sits on the floor to play with dolls, lets herself be adorned with plastic crowns, and sings to her in German. Alicia is her only respite in a war she fights alone.