Killer Frost (Mythos Academy #6)(68)
Author: Jennifer Estep

She gave me a mysterious smile. “That remains to be seen. But you have done exactly what I asked of you, and I couldn’t be more pleased.”

I raised my eyebrows. “So you wanted me to stab myself in the chest with Vic all along? You know, you could have just told me that. It would have saved me a lot of heartache.”

The three wounds on my chest throbbed. I winced. My words were true in more ways than one.

“Yes, I suppose it would have,” Nike murmured. “But things had to happen this way, Gwendolyn. You had to get to this place and time of your own free will, and so did he.”

Nike dropped her hands from mine and stepped to one side. I blinked and blinked.

Because Loki was here.

He was on his knees in the middle of the library floor. But he didn’t look like the ruined, rotten figure that I knew. No, he looked as he must have centuries ago, before Helheim, before the Bowl of Tears, before everything.

Because he looked beautiful.

Golden hair, alabaster skin, piercing blue eyes. All of that had been restored to him, and both sides of his face were as smooth as any of the statues that lined the second-floor balcony. A long white robe rippled around his body, instead of the black one I’d always seen him wear before. The bright, pure color only made him seem that much more perfect.

He was perhaps the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, even lovelier than Nike herself. But the longer I looked at him, the less his features dazzled me and the more that I saw the cruel cunning in the sly shimmer of his eyes.

Loki glared at me, his mouth turned down into a sullen pout, before his hate-filled gaze moved over to the goddess. His eyes blazed with rage, but they remained the same blue as before and didn’t turn that awful Reaper red I’d seen so many times in my nightmares.

“What is he doing here?” I asked Nike.

“He’s here because you killed him,” she replied. “Just as you were meant to do all along with your magic.”

“My magic?” I frowned. “But I thought I was supposed to use the silver laurel leaves that Eir gave me to kill Loki. Not my magic.”

Nike shook her head. “The leaves and the candle severely weakened Loki, enough for you to allow your psychometry, your touch magic, as you call it, to pull his soul into your own body—a mortal body that you then sacrificed for the good of all your friends.”

“Self-sacrifice is a very powerful thing, especially if you do it of your own free will,” I murmured, thinking about the words Nike had once said to me.

The goddess beamed at me. “And you made the ultimate sacrifice when you gave your life to stop Loki. You have proven yourself worthy of being my Champion, of being the Champion of all Champions.”

“You and your damn trickery.” Loki spat out the words, still glaring at Nike. “I should have known it was too easy, thinking I could take over your Champion’s body and finally complete my victory. Well, I won’t stand for it. Take me back. Put me back into my own body. I demand it. Now.”

“You’re simply upset that I beat you at your own game,” Nike said, her voice as cold and harsh as I’d ever heard it. “You gave up your immortal body of your own free will, Loki. There is no going back to that body or the mortal realm for you—ever.”

“Do you mean . . . is he . . . dead?” I whispered. “Like me?”

Nike shook her head. “Not exactly.”

“But you told me I had to kill him. That’s what you and the Reapers have been saying all along. That I was going to kill Loki. Why go through all of this if that’s not what I actually did?”

“In a way, you did kill him,” Nike said. “You killed his body, and without it, he can never return to the mortal realm.”

“But how will his being . . . here . . . wherever here really is . . . help?” I asked, throwing my hands out wide in frustration. “Can’t he just escape again and go back to the mortal world? And then we’ll have to go through this all over again.”

Nike shook her head again. “No, Gwendolyn. He can’t escape. Not this time. He cannot leave this realm, not as long as he is wearing that.”

She pointed at Loki, and I noticed a thin silver bracelet gleaming around his right wrist—one that was very familiar. I glanced down at my own wrist, but the mistletoe bracelet that the laurel leaves had been attached to was gone. He was wearing it, and he kept glaring at it and grimacing, as though the mere sight of it pained him greatly, along with the feel of the silver actually touching his skin.

“The bracelet was transferred to Loki since you were wearing it when you killed him,” Nike said, answering my silent questions. “Mistletoe has very powerful properties. It’s what Loki used to trick another god into killing Balder, the Norse god of light, so long ago. And it is what will keep him here where he belongs, along with other things.”

“What other things?” I asked.

“Blood,” another voice called out. “My blood.” Suddenly, Raven was there, striding down the main

aisle toward me, Nike, and Loki.

“What is she doing here?” I whispered to Nike. “You’ll see.”

Raven stopped, her white hair and gown swirling around her in a way I’d never seen them do before. Her black eyes locked with mine.

“You always wondered what I was hiding with my wrinkles, Gwendolyn,” she said, her voice light, sweet, and pure. “Well, let me show you.”

Raven held her hands out wide, her palms up, as though she were somehow drawing the air in around her. And I watched while her hair slowly blackened, her wrinkles melted away, and her skin smoothed out and tightened up, as if she were growing younger instead of older. The only thing that remained the same about her were the old, faded scars that marred her hands and arms. In a moment, she went from a mysterious old crone to a gorgeous goddess. And suddenly, so many things about her made sense to me, including her real identity.

“Sigyn,” I whispered. “You’re Sigyn, the Norse goddess of devotion. Loki’s wife.”

Another thought occurred to me, and my gaze flicked up to the second floor, where her statue was. “That’s why your statue in the library seemed so hollow and empty that one time I touched it when I was searching for the Helheim Dagger. Because you were in the mortal realm all along instead of being . . . here.”

Wherever here really was.

Sigyn smiled. “Yes, Gwendolyn. That is exactly right. I have spent centuries in the mortal realm, watching over the members of the Pantheon, the Protectorate, and the academy students.”