Killer Frost (Mythos Academy #6)(44)
Author: Jennifer Estep

“Well,” he purred again, his gaze zooming over to Vivian. “At least you get another chance to finally correct your failure, your many failures to kill her, to kill both of them.”

Vivian ducked her head, as though she was ashamed. Agrona plastered a smile on her face. “Yes, my lord. Vivian can finally do that now. How wonderful of you

to point that out to all of us—”

He turned to her. “And you weren’t any better, with all of your pitiful attempts to kill the mother and grandmother. You never revealed your true self to them, and yet you still never managed to kill them, either one of them. Not to mention what a catastrophe the soul ritual with the Spartan boy turned out to be. A ritual that I am still suffering the effects of, thanks to you.”

Now, Agrona looked as chagrined—and frightened— as Vivian. And the rest of the Reapers didn’t look any more certain—or brave. Perhaps Loki had been a harsher, more ruthless master than they’d ever dreamed he would be. It would serve them right if he wanted to kill and enslave all of them too.

Agrona opened her mouth, probably to make some excuse, but Loki held up his right index finger, stopping her.

“The candle. Now.”

Agrona and Vivian both looked at me, and the

Reapers with their swords crept a little closer.

“All right,” I said, holding up my hands so they could see that I wasn’t trying to pull some sort of trick. “All right. It’s in my pocket.”

I reached inside my jeans, my fingers curling around the white wax for perhaps the last time. Once again, I felt that bright, burning flash of power, of health, life, and strength, but I forced myself to push the sensation away and focus on what I needed to do.

DIE, I thought with all the desperate anger in my heart, trying to send the silver laurel leaves one final message, one final expression of my own free will and what I wanted them to do. Kill Loki. Destroy him. Hurt him as badly as he’s hurt the people I love.

For a moment, the candle went as cold as ice against my fingers. But by the time I sucked in another breath, the wax was simply wax again. I didn’t know if it was the laurels at work, or my own imagination playing tricks on me, but I’d done everything I could. All I could do now was hope that I’d made the right choices—and that I hadn’t just doomed myself, Grandma Frost, and everyone else.

I slowly pulled the candle out of my pocket and held it out where they all could see it.

Vivian wrinkled her nose. “That’s it? Really?” “What did you expect?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought it would at least have some jewels or something on it. Most of the more powerful artifacts do.”

“Shut up, you stupid girl!” Agrona snapped.

She stepped forward and snatched the candle out of my hand. “This had better be the real thing, and not some sort of trick on Linus’s part.”

I straightened up. “It’s the real candle. Not a trick. I

wouldn’t risk my grandma’s life on a trick.”

Not on this trick, anyway.

Agrona took the candle, then turned toward Loki. She walked over to him and bowed low, holding the candle out and up over her head, presenting it to him like some sort of gift. I supposed that’s exactly what it was—a chance to restore him to his full health, strength, and power so that he could finally lead the Reapers in their second Chaos War against the Pantheon.

Loki took the candle from Agrona and held it up, examining it from all sides. I couldn’t keep myself from holding my breath, wondering if he’d notice the silver leaves embedded in the wax—and realize they weren’t part of the original candle.

“At last,” he murmured, both of his eyes brightening. “At last, I can return to what I was before . . . and become even greater than ever.”

His words sent a shiver down my spine, and worry surging through my body, but there was nothing I could do now but hope the leaves did what Eir had told me they could—destroy him.

Finally, finally destroy him and all the terror he wanted to unleash on the members of the Pantheon. On my friends. On my family.

Loki clutched the candle tight with both hands. I thought he might need Agrona or Vivian to light it for him, but apparently, that wasn’t how it worked. He stood there, his gaze fixed on the wick, his hands wrapped around it and the laurel leaves I’d pressed into the wax.

At first, nothing happened, and I started to wonder if the leaves would keep the candle from working, if one artifact could completely cancel out another like that. If that happened, then Grandma Frost and I were dead. Loki would order the Reapers to kill us where we stood.

But just when I was about to reach for Vic and try to fight my way through the Reapers, a single black spark sputtered to life on the candle’s wick. Despite its color, the spark was bright, as bright as a star burning in the middle of the day, so bright and so intense that I almost had to look away from it.

But I forced myself to watch as the spark grew brighter and brighter still, and Loki slowly began to change—to heal.

His body grew straighter and even taller than before, and several sharp crack-crack-cracks sounded, as if his bones were being wrenched back into the correct places after being out of joint for so long. Loki let out a long, loud, contented sigh, as if it actually felt good to have his body be pulled back into its proper alignment.

But more than his body, it almost seemed as if I could feel his very presence expand—and grow blacker and fouler at the same time.

When I’d touched Logan while he’d been under the influence of the Apate gems, while he’d been connected to Loki, there had been a solid wall of Reaper red in the Spartan’s mind, and that’s what I felt when I looked at Loki now. Bit by bit, piece by piece, Sol’s candle was making him stronger and stronger and restoring all the parts of him that had been chipped away by his centuries trapped in Helheim.

My heart sank. It was working—the candle and all of its powerful magic was actually making Loki stronger, just like everyone had feared.

The evil god let out a loud, wild, crazy cackle, and I realized I’d just made the worst mistake of my life.

Chapter 19

We all held our breath as Loki continued to cackle with glee. Me, Grandma Frost, Vivian, Agrona, the rest of the Reapers. We all watched him get better right before our eyes. I’d seen Metis and Daphne work their healing magic before, but it was nothing compared to this. Fresh waves of hot, pulsing, malevolent power surged off Loki with every breath he took.