Spartan Destiny

by Jennifer Estep

  Chapter Fifteen

  I woke up in the Eir Ruins.

  One moment, I was passing out and sliding down to the cavern floor. The next, I was lying flat on my back, with something soft and silky touching my nose. I wiggled my nose, trying to get away from it, but the sensation kept returning, as though someone—or something—was attempting to tickle me awake.

  I opened my eyes to find a winterbloom looming over me, almost as if it was checking to make sure that I was still alive. I smiled at the flower, then reached up and gently stroked its white petals. That seemed to make it happy, and it quivered in thanks for a moment before turning its petals to the purple pansy beside it. The flowers bent their heads together, as if they were whispering about me.

  I slowly pushed myself up and realized that I was sitting in the main courtyard at the Eir Ruins. Thousands of wildflowers with sapphire-blue, emerald-green, ruby-red, opal-white, and amethyst-purple petals ran from one side of the courtyard to the other, weaving between all sorts of green vines and even a few small trees. Crumbled heaps of stone marked where the courtyard walls had once stood, and the gryphons, bears, rabbits, foxes, and other animals carved into the surfaces seemed to wander from one rock to another and back again, as if they were slowly doing laps around the courtyard.

  To my surprise, thick gray clouds blanketed the sky overhead, and a light snow was falling, giving everything a white, crystalline sheen, including me. Small flakes of snow had already covered my clothes, although, strangely enough, I didn’t feel cold. I could also see each and every individual flake, like miniature winterblooms that had bloomed all over me.

  A broken stone fountain stood in the center of the courtyard, along with a small stream that snaked in one side of the fountain and trickled out the other. It too was covered with a light layer of snow, as was the woman sitting on it.

  Sigyn.

  The Norse goddess of devotion was perched on the rim of the fountain, and her long white gown swirled around her body almost as if the motions were timed to the gusts of snow that were blowing over the courtyard. I had always thought that Sigyn was quite lovely, but right now, she seemed particularly ethereal, with her luminous black eyes and the tiny flakes of snow that glittered like frozen stars in her long, wavy black hair.

  Even though it was the last thing I wanted to do, given how horribly I had failed her and everyone else, I sighed, got to my feet, and walked over to the goddess.

  Sigyn patted the stone, and I sat down on the rim of the fountain beside her. For a long while, the two of us stared at the courtyard, watching the snow quietly drop onto the wildflowers.

  Finally, I couldn’t stand the silence any longer, and I turned toward the goddess. “I guess you know what happened at the academy. How Covington poisoned everyone with red narcissus venom.”

  “Not everyone,” she said. “You managed to escape, along with Babs.”

  “Just because of the healing magic that you gave me. If I didn’t have that, I would be another one of Covington’s Reaper zombies.”

  Anger and frustration surged through me, and I lashed out and kicked a rock that was half-buried in the snow. The rock skipped across the clearing like it was made of water, instead of wildflowers, before finally landing.

  The flowers bent down to peer at this new rock in their midst, then turned their petals back to me, almost reproachfully.

  I winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you guys.”

  That seemed to mollify the flowers, and they pivoted their petals toward each other, as if they were talking among themselves again. They were probably whispering about how spectacularly I had failed my friends.

  I looked at Sigyn again. “What am I supposed to do now? How can I fix this? How can I save everyone and stop Covington?”

  The goddess stared back at me. “What do you think you’re supposed to do?”

  More frustration filled me that she was answering my question with one of her own, but I let out a breath and forced myself to think.

  “The smart thing to do would be to call Linus Quinn, tell him what’s going on, and have him send some Protectorate guards to surround the academy. I should call Gwen too.”

  Sigyn arched an eyebrow. “But?”

  I let out another breath. “But Covington is probably questioning my friends and tearing the Bunker apart searching for the Narcissus Heart. And when he realizes that none of them knows where it is and that it’s not in the Bunker, he’ll…” My voice trailed off, and it took me a moment to force out the awful words. “He’ll probably start hurting my friends. I don’t know how long it will take the Protectorate guards to surround the academy, but it will definitely take Linus Quinn and Gwen hours to get here from New York and North Carolina. My friends could all be dead by then.”

  Hot tears stung my eyes, although I forced myself to blink them away and keep talking.

  “And you know what the worst part is? Covington will hurt my friends just to punish me. Just because I escaped, and they didn’t. I’m the one he really wants. Ian, Aunt Rachel, everyone else, they’re all just collateral damage.”

  Sigyn nodded. “Yes, Covington is a cruel man that way. But even cruel men can be defeated. You’ve already thwarted him by hiding the Narcissus Heart. Yes, your friends have been poisoned and captured, but if Covington had gotten his hands on the Heart too, then all would have already been lost.”

  “I realize that, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. Not when I know how much my friends and everyone else at the academy must be suffering right now.”

  “It’s never easy to see our loved ones suffer,” she replied. “But you’re lucky, in that you still have a chance to save your friends and stop Covington.”

  “So this was his plan all along. Use the red narcissus venom to infect everyone at the academy and then use the Chloris Amulet and the Narcissus Heart to control them. The Midgard always thought that Covington was raising a new army of Reapers to battle the Protectorate, but instead, he created his own army out of a bunch of innocent people.” I couldn’t keep the anger, disgust, and bitterness out of my voice. “You told me once that what he planned to do was worse than Loki trying to control everyone. You were right. Loki wanted to make people serve him, but Covington completely took away their free will. They have no choice but to obey him.”

  Sigyn’s eyes dimmed with sadness. “Unfortunately, just when I think I have seen the very worst sort of cruelty imaginable, someone comes along and devises something that is even more heartless, dastardly, and evil.”

  We both fell silent, staring at the flowers and the falling snow again.

  As much as I would have liked to sit with the goddess and brood about everything that had gone wrong, I couldn’t do that. I had to do something to save my friends, so I turned to her again.

  “Tell me what to do,” I pleaded. “Tell me how to save my friends, destroy the Narcissus Heart, and defeat Covington. Please, please, just tell me what to do.”

  Sigyn shook her head, causing a few flakes of snow to fly out of her hair and land on my hand. Unlike the rest of the snow in the courtyard, these flakes stung my skin with their coldness, but the sensation was oddly comforting. It reminded me of the healing magic that she had given me.

  “I can’t tell you what to do, Rory. No one can. Unlike your friends, you still have your free will, so all I can do is advise you. But even then, all I can say is this: your instincts were right, and you already have everything you need to save your friends and defeat Covington.”

  I barked out a harsh, humorless laugh. “It seems to me like Covington is the one who has everything. He has my friends and Serket’s Pen and Fafnir’s Dagger. Not to mention the fact that he’s probably poisoned everyone at the academy by now. There’s no way I could get close enough to hurt him, much less actually kill him. Not without getting cut down by my friends or torn to pieces by monsters or swarmed by his army of zombie students.”

  “Killing Covington isn’t the only way to defeat him,” Sigyn sa
id.

  I opened my mouth to ask what she meant and to plead with her again to tell me how to defeat him, but Sigyn got to her feet and held out her hand, signaling that our time together was at an end.

  I took her hand, which wrapped around mine like a ring of the coldest frost imaginable, and the goddess pulled me to my feet. She stared into my eyes, a serious expression on her beautiful face.

  “Just remember that no matter how bad things get, no matter how hopeless everything seems, you still have free will, you still have the power to make your own choices,” Sigyn said. “One of the things I admire most about you, Rory, is that you always keep fighting for what is right. That is what makes you a true Champion, more so than any magic, weapons, or artifacts.”

  After everything that happened, she still considered me to be her Champion, and she still thought that I could save everyone and stop Covington. The goddess’s quiet, steady belief touched me, but I couldn’t stop the doubt from bubbling up in my stomach again, right along with my worry, fear, and dread.

  I wasn’t sure that I believed in myself, but Sigyn was right about one thing: I had to keep fighting. There was no alternative, not for a Spartan like me. Win or lose, we always fought to the very end of the battle, to our very last breath. My parents had often told me that it was our Spartan destiny. That was what my mom and dad had done by trying to leave the Reapers, and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I did anything less. If I didn’t do everything I could to rescue Ian, Aunt Rachel, and the others.

  Sigyn let go of my hand and stepped back. “Good-bye, Rory,” she said in a soft voice. “Battle wisely, and battle bravely. That is all anyone can ask of you, especially me.”

  The goddess clasped her hands together in front of her body and bowed her head to me. The snow that had been gusting over the courtyard whipped up into a frenzy, swirling around her with ferocious intensity, as though she was standing in the middle of a blizzard. A silver light flared in the middle of the sudden storm, burning so brightly that I had to shut my eyes against its intensity.

  As quickly as it had appeared, the light faded, and when I opened my eyes again, the goddess and the snowstorm were gone, and I was alone in the courtyard, with only the wildflowers to keep me company.

  A wave of weariness washed through my body. Sighing, I trudged over and sat down on the ground in the spot where I had first woken up. The winterbloom that had peered at me before turned its white petals toward me again. I was so tired that I lay back down beside the flower. The winterbloom leaned over and pressed its petals to my cheek, almost as if it was giving me a reassuring pat and telling me that everything was going to be okay.

  The soft touch of the petals soothed me, as did the lovely scent of the winterbloom and the other wildflowers mixed with the clean, fresh snow in the courtyard. My eyes slid shut, and I drifted back to sleep…if I had ever really woken up in the first place…

  “Rory? Rory, wake up!”

  A loud, urgent voice snapped me out of the dreamscape ruins or my own sleep or maybe even both. It was hard to tell sometimes. Either way, I sat bolt upright.

  At first, I didn’t remember where I was, but then I saw the glowing, golden walls and smelled the pine needles and the dried grasses on the ground. I was safe in the gryphons’ cavern. I drew in a couple of deep breaths, trying to get my pounding heart under control, and glanced to my right.

  Babs was still propped up against the rock. She opened her mouth like she was going to yell at me again, but once she realized that I was awake, she let out a relieved sigh instead.

  “What happened? What’s wrong?” I mumbled, my voice thick with dreams and sleep.

  Babs let out another relieved sigh. “You passed out and toppled over. That’s what happened. I thought your healing magic was supposed to prevent things like that.”

  “It usually does. Ian must have cut me deeper than I realized. Or maybe all the running and fighting finally caught up with me, along with the blood loss.”

  I looked at my right forearm. While I’d been unconscious, my magic had kicked in and healed my wound, and my skin was smooth and whole again. The wounds on my back from Balder’s talons had healed as well. Not only that, but I felt better, calmer, stronger, like I could keep on fighting, despite everything that had happened.

  Part of that was my healing magic, but a big part of it was also my talk with Sigyn and the goddess saying that I still had a chance to save everyone, that I could still defeat Covington, and that all hope wasn’t lost yet. Or maybe it was all one and the same, since my healing magic had come from her.

  “How long was I out?” I asked.

  “Maybe fifteen minutes?” Babs said. “Not too long.”

  I glanced around the cavern, but it was empty except for us. “Where did Balder and Brono and the other gryphon go?”

  Babs’s hilt vibrated, as if she was trying to shake her half of a head. “I don’t know, but I heard some more basilisk caws outside the cavern. The creatures sounded like they were getting closer. The gryphons left right after that, so I think maybe they went to throw the basilisks off our trail and give you enough time to heal.”

  I nodded. That made sense, although worry still flooded my heart. I hoped the gryphons could lead the basilisks away without getting hurt by the other creatures.

  Babs bit her lip and gave me a worried look. “So what are we going to do now?”

  I didn’t hesitate. “Save our friends and everyone else—or die trying.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The first thing I did was get to my feet, strip off my torn, bloody clothes, and step into one of the warm springs in the back of the cavern.

  I didn’t have any soap, but I quickly washed off all the blood, dirt, sweat, and grime of the previous fights as best I could. Maybe it was just psychological, but cleaning myself up made me feel better, like I was washing away my previous mistakes and starting with a fresh slate, so to speak.

  During the frantic flight from the academy, I had managed to hang on to my messenger bag, which contained a fresh set of clothes that I hadn’t bothered putting on after gym class earlier today. So I shimmied into a clean T-shirt, jeans, and socks and pulled my black boots back onto my feet. Once that was done, I sat down again and took stock of my weapons and supplies.

  Such as they were.

  I still had Babs, of course, but I had lost the chimera scepter when I had fallen off the roof. The gold scepter was probably still buried in the grass somewhere around the library, if the Reapers hadn’t recovered it. For a moment, I cursed myself for losing the artifact, but I moved on to what I had left.

  I rifled through my bag, but it only contained my usual school supplies—myth-history and other books, several pens and notepads, a half-empty bottle of water, and a plastic bag filled with some dark chocolate and cherry cookies that Aunt Rachel had made yesterday.

  My stomach rumbled, reminding me how long it had been since lunch. Besides, I needed to keep up my strength and energy, so I ate the cookies and drank the water. Then I rummaged through the rest of my bag, searching for my phone, which always seemed to sink to the very bottom, underneath all the heavy schoolbooks. But instead of a plastic case, my hand closed over something hard and metal. What was that? I pulled the object out into the light.

  Aphrodite’s Cuff gleamed in my hand.

  With everything that had happened, I had forgotten about the cuff, including the fact that it was still in my messenger bag. The artifact looked the same as when I’d stolen it from the Bunker—a wide gold cuff with a large heart-shaped diamond in the center.

  I turned the cuff around in my hands, thinking about how it supposedly protected the wearer from other people’s magic and artifacts, just like Freya’s Bracelet on my wrist did.

  I sighed. I thought I’d been so clever stealing the artifact from the Bunker, but I’d never gotten a chance to use it, and Covington had poisoned my friends anyway. I started to set the cuff aside and continue searching for my phone, but I found
myself staring at the gleaming gold and the diamond heart and thinking back over everything that had happened.

  Don’t make the same mistake I did. Don’t shut out your friends. They care about you, and they can help you through this. All of it.

  Logan Quinn had said that when he found me swapping out the cuff for a fake in the Bunker. Had that only been two days ago? So much had happened in the last few hours that my talk with the other Spartan seemed like it had taken place eons ago. Still, the longer I stared at the cuff and the more I thought about Logan’s words, the more my mind started to churn with ideas and the more determination filled my heart.

  “It doesn’t look like much, does it?” Babs said. “Especially considering what we’re up against.”

  I laid the cuff on the ground next to her. Just because I hadn’t used the artifact when Covington had attacked, that didn’t mean I couldn’t use it now. “Actually, I think it’s going to be quite helpful.”

  Babs frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Logan Quinn told me not to shut out my friends, to let them help me stop Covington.”

  “So?”

  I looked at her. “So that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I can’t beat the Reapers by myself. I should have known that all along, but I was too stupid and stubborn to realize it before. I’m a part of Team Midgard, and Team Midgard is what is going to defeat the Reapers. All of us, working together, the way it should be.”

  “Okay,” Babs replied in a voice that indicated my thinking was anything but okay. “But in case you’ve forgotten, your friends have all been turned into Reaper zombies who want to kill you.”

  I rubbed my right arm where Ian had cut me. Even though my magic had healed the wound, my arm still ached. Or maybe it was more my heart that was hurting. “Believe me, I remember.”

  I looked at the sword again, then focused on the cuff sitting next to her. Babs and Aphrodite’s Cuff were the only artifacts, the only real weapons I had, besides my own Spartan killer instincts, my healing magic, and Freya’s Bracelet and its three charms on my wrist. Would that be enough? Would I be smart and strong and clever enough to save my friends and defeat Covington?