eye bright against the white marble all around us. “Look around,” Vic said, still keeping his voice low
so that I was the only one who could hear him. “Everyone’s wondering what you’re doing.”
I glanced around again and realized he was right. All of the other kids had been doing their own thing, but now, more than a few had turned in my direction, wondering what I was doing staring at some boring old artifact. If only they knew that this boring old artifact might mean the difference between whether we all lived, died, or spent what was left of our lives as Loki’s slaves. “Okay, okay,” I grumbled. “I’m leaving. But I want
to go on record as saying that this is a Bad, Bad Idea.” Vic rolled his eye. “Well, obviously. But there’s noth-
ing we can do about it tonight, so why don’t you quit worrying and go see the Spartan in the infirmary?”
He was right. There was nothing more I could do here, and I did want to check on Logan. So I pushed away from the glass wall, went around the checkout counter, and headed for the doors that led out of the library.
Still, right before I left the main space, I couldn’t help but glance over my shoulder one more time. For a moment, it seemed like the candle glowed with a brilliant inner light, making it burn as bright as a star underneath the smooth glass. I blinked, and the light was gone. The candle was simply a candle again.
I shivered, dropped my gaze from the artifact, and left the library.
Chapter 8
Despite my unease, the night passed by in a quiet fashion. Metis gave Logan, Sergei, and everyone else who’d been more seriously injured in the Reaper attack a clean bill of health and let everyone leave the infirmary bright and early the next morning. After weapons training in the gym, Logan and I wound up in the dining hall to eat a quick breakfast before trudging to our morning classes.
Like everything else at Mythos, the dining hall was way more upscale than what you’d find at a regular high school. White linens and fine china covered the tables, instead of plastic trays and sporks, while paintings of mythological feasts decorated the walls, and suits of armor stood guard in the corners. But the dining hall’s most interesting feature was the open-air indoor garden that lay in the center of the room, complete with statues perched among the almond, orange, and olive trees planted in the black soil and the curling tendrils of the grapevines that wound around, through, and over everything. Since this was where all of the students chowed down, the statues were mostly of food and harvest gods, like Dionysus and Demeter, instead of the fierce mythological creatures that adorned the outsides of the buildings. But once again this morning, the statues had strangely neutral expressions on their stone faces, instead of cocking their heads to the side and leaning forward, as though they were listening to all of the student gossip, the way they usually did.
“Still worried about the candle?” Logan asked, cutting into my thoughts.
I dragged my gaze away from the statues. Last night, I had filled Logan in on Sol’s candle and his dad’s plans to leave it on display as bait for the Reapers. “Why do you think that?”
He gestured with his fork at my plate. “Because you’ve barely touched your peach waffles.”
“Are they peach?” I groused. “I couldn’t really tell with all of the whipped cream flowers on top of them.” That was the other way in which the dining hall had little resemblance to a regular cafeteria—the food was far fancier than the usual boxes of cereal and bottles of milk you’d find at breakfast time at any normal school. Instead, the Mythos chefs were standing behind a series of cooking stations along one of the walls, whipping up made-to-order, gourmet waffles, omelets, and other delicacies that featured everything from creamy feta cheese to buttery lobster to crispy pancetta. I wasn’t particularly hungry this morning, so I’d grabbed the first thing I’d come to on the breakfast line that looked like regular food—peach Belgian waffles. Although the chefs had still managed to add their own froufrou twist to the waffles by decorating the tops of them with mounds of whipped cream swirled into the shape of fancy flowers and curlicued leaves, all dusted with bits of orange, lemon, and lime zest. In fact, there were so many flowers and leaves on the top of the waffles that I almost thought I was eating a frosted birthday cake, minus the candles.
Thinking about birthday cake and candles made me focus on Sol’s candle, sitting in the library, waiting for some Reaper to come along and steal it right out from under our noses—
“My dad knows what he’s doing,” Logan said, interrupting my thoughts again. “He won’t let the Reapers get the candle.”
“I know he’ll do his best,” I replied. “And so will all of the other Protectorate guards. But Vivian and Agrona take scheming to a whole new level of evil. They always have a plan within a plan within a plan. You should know that better than anyone.”
Logan grimaced, then reached up and rubbed his throat with his hand.
“I’m sorry,” I said, regretting my snarky words. “I
didn’t mean to remind you—”
“That I tried to kill you?” he said. “It’s okay, Gwen. Trust me. I don’t need you to remind me of that. It’s not like it’s something I could forget—ever.”
Oh no. He only called me Gwen when he was being dead serious—or when I’d struck a nerve. Logan’s attack was like an invisible live wire sparking in the space between us, one that brought sharp, stinging jolts of pain and misery whenever we got too close to it. That distant, haunted look filled his icy eyes again, the one that had been there on and off ever since Agrona had snapped that gold collar full of Apate jewels around his neck at the Aoide Auditorium. The one that always seemed to come back just when I thought it was finally gone for good. The one that always seemed to come between us no matter how much we tried to pretend that everything was fine.
I let out a breath, leaned over, and gripped his hand. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m just worried right now about everything. Vivian, Agrona, the Reapers, the candle, Loki. It’s like your dad said. Everything seems to be coming to a turning point. But I don’t know what that turning point is or if things will even go the way we want them to.”
Logan looked at me, his gaze sharpening. “I know there’s a lot going on, but are you sure that nothing else is bothering you? You’ve been really distracted these last few days. Ever since we came back from Colorado, actually.”