"She was murdered by Reapers."
Rachel winced. "Oh. I'm so sorry."
I nodded, accepting her sympathy. "What was . . . what was my dad like? Did you know him?"
Rachel shifted on the rock she was sitting on. "No, I didn't know Tyr all that well. Not as well as I knew Tyson. Then again, I never dreamed that he was a Reaper or that my sister, Rebecca, had followed him down that path. So maybe I didn't know him at all - or her."
She laughed, but it was far from a happy sound. She fell silent for a moment, then looked at me again. "From what I remember, Tyr seemed like a nice guy. He was always making a joke, always trying to get everyone to laugh, even Tyson, who wasn't much for smiling or any sort of humor."
"What happened?" I asked. "My Grandma Frost told me that my dad had a falling-out with Tyson. Do you know anything about that?"
Rachel shook her head. "No, I'm sorry, but I don't. One day, Tyr left, and he never came back. That was when I started to notice how angry Tyson was all the time - and how angry Rebecca seemed to be, as well. But then Rebecca found out that she was pregnant with Rory, and things were better for a long time after that. Rebecca and Tyson . . . they really did love Rory, despite what they did."
She choked on the last few words. Memories darkened her eyes, and I knew she was thinking about her sister, the fact that she'd become a Reaper, and all the people she'd hurt and killed.
"Just because you love someone doesn't mean they'll never hurt or betray you," I said. "Trust me. I know that better than anyone."
Once more, I thought of Logan and that horrible, awful moment when he'd turned around at the Aoide Auditorium and I realized that his eyes were Reaper red. That Vivian and Agrona had done something terrible to him. That I might be too late to save him. It had been one of the worst moments of my life. And now, Logan was gone, and that hurt too. Because this time, he'd left of his own free will, and not because of some Reaper magic mumbo jumbo. He'd gone because he'd wanted to, leaving me with nothing but nightmares.
Rachel gave me a wan smile. "Sad, isn't it? How true that is. That love can hurt so much sometimes."
I didn't say anything else. There was nothing else to say. We'd all been wounded by the Reapers, some of us more than others, and we all had to deal with it in our own way. Still, I scooted a little closer to Rachel, and I stayed by her side until the others finished their sparring and joined us.
It grew darker and colder as the sun set and the hours slowly passed. Everyone else snuggled down in their sleeping bags, but unlike the others, I was too on edge to sleep. So I sat by the fire, hunched over as close to the flickering flames as I could get. I'd offered to keep a lookout while the others got some shut-eye. We hadn't seen any sign of the Reapers, but that didn't mean they weren't there somewhere, waiting for the right time to strike. I also kept an eye out for the baby gryphon and the mysterious shadow. But if they were around, they were as invisible as the Reapers were.
Finally, my phone beeped at eleven forty-five, telling me it was time to wake the others. Everyone moaned and groaned a little, but they all got up. We fished some flashlights out of our bags, clicked them on, and headed to the back corner of the courtyard.
The ambrosia looked the same as before - a tiny patch of white flowers somehow blossoming in the middle of the rock wall.
"Are you sure that we have to pick it at midnight?" I asked. "Because it looks the same to me as it did this afternoon. Small and kind of puny."
"That's what Metis said," Ajax replied. "That it has to be picked at midnight, preferably in the middle of a hard frost."
"Well, at least we have the frost," I muttered.
The temperature had been steadily dropping all night long. The lower it went, the more the frost gathered on the rocks and crumbled walls. Now, the entire courtyard looked like a sheet of silver ice - cold and beautiful - although the flowers remained strangely untouched by the gathering frost, as though this were a summer night instead of the dead of winter.
We waited as the minutes slowly ticked by, our breath steaming in the air and then falling away to the ground in clouds of ice crystals. For the longest time, the ambrosia flowers didn't do anything but shiver in the cold like the rest of us.
"One minute until midnight," Oliver announced, peering at his phone, the white glow lighting up his face like a ghost's.
We all stared at the flowers, watching for any change, for any sign that they would do whatever they were supposed to, what Nickamedes needed them to do.
And slowly - very, very slowly - the flowers began to grow.
At first, I thought it was just my imagination. But I blinked and then blinked again, and I realized that they were actually . . . moving.
Three small, individual flowers seemed to stretch toward each other, as though the petals were somehow being pulled together by the silvery glow of the full moon so very high above.
"Is everyone else seeing this?" I asked.
"Sshh," Oliver said. "You're spoiling the moment."
I elbowed him in the side, and he grinned. Then, we both fixed our gazes on the flowers once more.
As soon as the petals of the three flowers touched each other, they all seemed to wilt, as though they couldn't stand to be that close together. I sucked in a breath, wondering if something was wrong, if they weren't going to bloom because we were here and we needed them so badly. But as soon as the flowers wilted, a silver light began to burn in the center of each one of them, and the purple and gray streaks on the petals burst into cold flames. For a moment, the colors swirled together, a starry mix of silver, purple, and gray that grew brighter and brighter until I had to close my eyes and look away from the intense light. Then, as quickly as it had begun, the colors and lights abruptly faded away.
I opened my eyes - and was amazed at what I saw.
Somehow, the three small flowers had fused together into one large, beautiful blossom. The petals were now a shimmering silver and had a vaguely metallic look to them, almost as if they would ring like a bell if you tapped on them with your fingernail. White, purple, and gray streaked down the petals, as well, the colors clustered together like they were one stripe. It was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen.
Nobody spoke for several moments.
"It's incredible," Daphne finally whispered.
"That it is," Covington said, a strange, almost envious note in his voice. "That it is."
We all fell silent again.
"Well," I said, stepping forward and carefully tugging the flower - vine and all - free of the rock wall and the gryphon's beak. "I don't care how beautiful it is. All that matters is that it did what it was supposed to. Now we can use it to help Nickamedes."