The Reapers already had their long, curved swords out, ready to use them, but Grandma and I didn’t give them any trouble as they marched us over to the far side of the room, out the balcony doors I remembered, and down a set of stone steps. After that, we left the backyard of the mansion behind and trooped out into the woods beyond.
Daphne was right. It looked different in the day than it had that terrible night when I’d realized how thoroughly Vivian had tricked me. The woods were only woods now, filled with trees and leaves and rocks and snow, and not crawling with creepy, eerie shadows the way they had been back then. Of course, the Reapers and their swords surrounding me and Grandma Frost on all sides weren’t really an improvement, but at least I could tell where we were going now—and we were headed straight toward the Garm gate, just as I’d suspected.
Still, as we moved deeper and deeper into the woods, my gaze flicked up to the trees that towered above our heads, but I didn’t see any Black rocs roosting in the tops of the sturdier oaks and maples, peering down at me as though I was a worm they wanted to gobble up.
“What happened to all your rocs?” I asked. “You seemed to have a ton of them on the road the other day, but I haven’t seen a single one since I’ve been here. So disappointing.”
I made my voice sound as innocent as possible, although my question was anything but. I had a very specific reason for asking about the Black rocs, and where they might be lurking, and the answer might determine whether or not Grandma Frost and I made it out of here alive. Still, I made myself look totally bored, as though I didn’t really care one way or the other about the answer and was simply mocking the Reapers for kicks.
Vivian shot me a dirty look. “We’re still rounding them up, thanks to you.”
Which was exactly what I wanted to hear.
I grinned. “Aw, so sorry to make more evil work for you to do, Viv.”
Her golden eyes narrowed, and her hand dropped to her sword, as if she’d like to pull Lucretia and attack me right now. Yeah. I knew the feeling.
But Vivian controlled herself, and so did I, and we kept walking.
It didn’t take us long to reach our destination. We left the path behind, stepped into a large clearing in the middle of the woods, and there it was.
The Garm gate.
Once, it had been a smooth, circular, unbroken slab of black marble that had been set into the middle of the forest floor. A hand holding a balanced set of scales had been carved into the very center of the stone.
But that was then, and this was now.
The black marble was cracked, jagged, and split two ways from where Loki had used the Helheim Dagger to escape the prison that the other gods had placed him in so long ago. I rubbed my chest, which was suddenly aching, thinking of the scars there, the ones that were shaped like a weird X that slashed over my heart, the same X shape that had ruined the marble before me. The stone couldn’t recover from Loki tearing through it any more than I could forget about my scars and how
I’d gotten them from Preston and Logan.
My gaze drifted over to a particular patch of stone, one close to the center of the jagged tears. My heart twisted as the memories washed over me. Nott had been killed right there, when Vivian had stabbed her in the side. I’d cradled the Fenrir wolf’s head in my hands and stared into her eyes as she’d slowly died. It had been one of the worst moments of my life.
And this was shaping up to be another one.
Because a familiar figure was standing in the exact spot where Nott had died. His back was to us, but I would have recognized him anywhere. He slowly turned at the sound of our footsteps echoing across the stone and faced us head-on.
Loki.
Chapter 18
Somehow, I held back a shudder and forced myself to study the evil god.
Loki was wearing a black Reaper robe that rippled around his body like water, as though the material were made out of some especially fine silk, instead of the more mundane cotton the other Reapers wore. He looked the same as I remembered him the last time we were here at the Garm gate, the same as I’d seen him dozens of times in my dreams—my nightmares.
One side of his face was smooth, perfect, and utterly gorgeous, with its aquiline nose, great cheekbone, alabaster skin, and bright blue eye. His long hair was a beautiful gold that flowed down and brushed the top of his right shoulder. But the left side of his face was completely horrible, smashed and twisted together, as though it had been made out of the same wax as Sol’s candle—wax that had been melted down into something almost unrecognizable as a man’s face. The hair on that side of his head hung in thin, matted, black and crimson strings, while that eye was red—that awful, awful Reaper red.
Loki was almost seven feet tall, but his shoulders were slumped forward and uneven, and parts of his body stuck out at awkward angles, because he had been forced to stay in one cramped position in Helheim for so long. Perhaps it was my imagination, but he seemed weaker than I remembered him being before, thin and brittle, as if he would shatter if he moved too fast. I wondered if it was because the ritual with Logan hadn’t worked, and Loki’s soul had been forced back into his own twisted, broken, ruined body.
Agrona was standing by his side, one of her hands resting lightly on his left elbow, almost as if she was ready to support him should he stagger.
This time, I couldn’t hide my shudder. Loki might be weakened, but I could still feel the power rolling off him in thick, malevolent waves. I couldn’t imagine actually being that close to him, actually touching him, but for Agrona, no doubt it was some sort of great honor.
The other Reapers spread out, forming a circle around us, with me, Grandma Frost, Vivian, Agrona, and Loki in the center. I looked past the Reapers into the forest beyond, but if Oliver and Daphne were out there somewhere, they were hidden too well for me to spot them. “So,” Loki began, his voice smooth and seductive. “This time, I’m faced with not one, but two Frost scions.”
I reached down and gripped Grandma’s hand. Neither one of us said anything. What exactly did you say to the . . . the . . . the thing that had defined so much of your life? The evil that you’d fought against so hard and for so long? That you had sacrificed so much trying to stop? I didn’t know, but Grandma raised her chin in defiance and met his hateful, two-toned gaze with her own steely violet one.
Loki paused, as if he expected Grandma to say something, but then, he shook his head. I could hear each and every one of the vertebra in his neck crack-crack-cracking, and the sharp motion made him wince and hunch over. It took him a moment to straighten back up.