Killer Frost (Mythos Academy #6)(53)

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.

And there was nothing I could do to stop it.

“How does it feel knowing that you’re going to be single-handedly responsible for the destruction of the pathetic Pantheon?” Vivian hissed in my ear. “What will all of your friends think of you then? What will your Spartan boyfriend think of you when he realizes that you’ve doomed every single person the two of you care about to a short, painful, miserable life? Not so heroic now, are you, Gwen Frost?”

I ignored her cruel words and focused my attention on the candle and that black spark still burning in Loki’s hands.

Come on! I thought, as if I could get the laurel leaves to work just by yelling at them in my mind. Come on! You’re supposed to be killing him. Not healing him.

But all I could do was stand there and scream and scream inside my head.

Seconds passed, then a minute, then another one, and another one. But still, the candle kept burning, kept making Loki stronger—

Suddenly, he let out a surprised, almost strangled gasp, and a treacherous bit of hope erupted in my heart, cutting through the utter despair.

My gaze zoomed to the candle. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I thought I could actually see the silver laurel leaves glinting within the wax, burning almost as bright as the black spark flickering on the wick. I blinked, and I realized that the flame had actually changed from one moment to the next.