He nodded. “Exactly right, Miss Frost. If what you and Nickamedes say is true, then the Reapers will have no choice but to try to steal the candle from the library. As you’ve said, they’ve run out of options trying to heal Loki from his time spent in Helheim. So they’ll come after the candle, and we’ll be waiting for them when they do.”
I shook my head. “No. No way. It will backfire on you. Things always do when the Reapers are involved. Vivian and Agrona will find some way to get their hands on the candle, no matter how many guards you put around it or how clever your trap is.”
Linus’s face darkened, and anger shimmered in his pale blue eyes. “And Agrona and Vivian are precisely the reasons I’m doing this. The two of them are the leaders of the Reapers. If we manage to capture or kill them, then we can stop the second Chaos War before it ever really gets started.”
Loki’s face loomed up in my mind the way it had so many times over the past few weeks. One side of his face so smooth and perfect with its rippling golden hair, chiseled cheekbone, and piercing blue eye. The other side so ruined and melted with its limp strings of black hair, smushed skin, and burning red orb. All put together, his features were horrible and twisted, the stuff of nightmares. But they weren’t nearly as rotten as his soul—and the evil god’s burning desire to kill or enslave every single member of the Pantheon, starting with me.
Sure, capturing or even killing Vivian and Agrona would severely hurt the Reapers, but there was no stopping the coming war—not until Loki was dead. And I knew that letting the Reapers so much as look at the candle would lead to nothing but trouble.
“But you don’t understand—” I started.
Linus made a sharp motion with his hand, cutting me off. He straightened up to his full height, his gray Protectorate robe elegantly hanging off his shoulders as though he were some sort of ancient king, imposing and in command.
“I’m sorry, Miss Frost, but my decision has been made,” Linus said. “We’re putting the candle on display as soon as possible. The Reapers can try to steal it at their peril.”
I argued with Linus some more—okay, okay, until I started to lose my voice—but I didn’t change his mind. The Protectorate leader saw this as a way to finally turn the tide against the Reapers, and he wasn’t about to pass it up. Part of me understood where he was coming from, but the other part of me thought he was just being stupid. If he was smart, if the Protectorate was smart, then Linus, Nickamedes, and Metis would figure out some way to destroy the candle for good, so that Loki could never, ever get his hands on it. Not put it out in the main part of the library for all the Reapers to see— and start plotting a way to steal it and take it to the evil god.
But there was nothing I could do, and an hour later, I found myself leaning against one of the walls of the library’s office complex, watching Nickamedes hand a glass case over to Raven, who was one of the more unusual staff members at the academy.
Raven was an old woman with a face full of wrinkles and long white hair that seemed to melt into her floorlength white gown. In contrast, her eyes were as black, bright, and shiny as a Black roc’s, while faint, white scars marred her hands and arms, as though she’d been in a fire long ago. Today, she had a black leather belt bristling with hammers, screwdrivers, and other tools slung low around her hips. It matched the black combat boots she always wore. Apparently, putting together artifact cases was another one of her many odd jobs around the academy, like running the coffee cart in the library, sitting in the infirmary, or watching over any Reapers who were being kept in the prison at the bottom of the math-science building.
Raven was stronger than she looked because she lifted up the heavy glass case with no visible effort and carefully set it on top of Sol’s candle. Raven secured the glass to the wooden stand, locking the artifact away. She dusted off her hands, turned, and realized I was watching her. She paused a second, then nodded at me. I nodded back. I’d never heard Raven utter so much as a single word, and a nod was about as friendly as she’d ever been to me. I always meant to ask Nickamedes or Metis if they’d ever actually heard her speak, or if she even could speak, but I’d never gotten around to it.
Still, I stared at Raven as she walked past me. For a moment, her face seemed to flicker like, well, a candle flame, as though she was wearing a mask of wrinkles, and there was a younger, prettier face lurking underneath her old, wizened features. I blinked, and the image was gone, snuffed out like that same candle flame, and Raven was simply Raven again.
Nickamedes moved off to talk to Linus, who was standing in front of the checkout counter, talking to some of the Protectorate guards. But I stayed where I was by the offices, my gaze still locked on the candle. I couldn’t believe how innocent, how ordinary, it looked sitting there on its black velvet stand.
Linus had decided to place the candle in one of the most visible sections in the entire library, right in the middle of the main floor, close to the checkout counters. When I’d first come to Mythos, another artifact case had stood in that exact same spot, one that had held the Bowl of Tears. A Reaper named Jasmine Ashton had tried to use that powerful artifact to get revenge on Morgan McDougall for messing around with Jasmine’s boyfriend.
Seeing Sol’s candle in the exact same spot gave me a creepy sense of déjà vu. Because Jasmine had almost succeeded in using the Bowl of Tears to sacrifice Morgan to Loki and kill me the night of the homecoming dance. And now, here was another powerful artifact, sitting right out in the open, just begging the Reapers to come and steal it.
I glanced around the library, my gaze taking in the other kids hunched over their books at the study tables, browsing through the stacks, and standing around the coffee cart, waiting for Raven to unbuckle her tool belt and get back to fixing their lattes, espressos, and hot chocolates. Everything looked perfectly normal, perfectly ordinary, perfectly innocent, but I still couldn’t help but wonder if the Amazon texting on her phone a few feet away was telling Vivian that the candle was on view. Or if the Viking leaning against the checkout counter fiddling with a tablet was e-mailing the information to Agrona. Or if one of the members of the Protectorate gathered around Linus was dreaming up a way to kill all of the other guards and take off with the candle.
But the really frustrating thing was that there was nothing I could do about any of those things—not until Vivian, Agrona, and the other Reapers decided to strike. “Come on, now, Gwen,” a low voice said. “Staring at the candle won’t change anything. If you ask me, you’re simply attracting more attention to it. And yourself too.” I glanced down at Vic, who was hanging from my belt as usual. The sword stared at the candle, his purple