I tightened my grip on Vic, still suspicious, but Vivian put her hands up to her head and kept rocking back and forth on the floor, her golden eyes fixed on something far away that only she could see—all of the horrible memories I’d shown her.
And I realized that the fight was over, and Vivian was no longer a threat. I let out a breath. Somehow, I knew that the Reaper girl would never be a threat to me ever again.
“Gwen?” Logan asked, coming up to stand beside me. “Aren’t you going to . . .” He made a slashing gesture with his own sword.
“No,” I said. “Because we don’t execute people who are down and out. That’s the Reapers’ thing. Not ours. That’s what they do. Not us.”
I stepped away from Vivian, but I didn’t move away from the center of the library. Because I knew who my next target was going to be—Loki.
Agrona raced over, picked up Lucretia, and bent down next to her protégé. She started to touch Vivian, but the Reaper girl flinched and pulled away from her, mumbling more nonsense words to herself.
“What did you do to her?” Agrona whispered, watching Vivian rock back and forth on the cold marble.
“She wanted to play in my head,” I said in a harsh voice. “So I showed her exactly what was in there.”
Agrona gave me a sharp look. “You showed her your memories?”
I smiled. “Just the bad ones. Believe me, I have plenty of those, thanks to you guys.”
Fear flickered in her green eyes before she could hide it. “You must have overloaded her brain. You’ve . . . you’ve destroyed her mind.”
I looked down at Vivian and shrugged. “Probably. But it was the same thing she wanted to do to me, and no less than what she deserved after everything she’s done.”
Maybe it would have been kinder if I’d killed her after all, but I didn’t say that. I could tell that was what Agrona was thinking—and my friends too. But I wasn’t in a merciful mood, not now, when the real test was still to come.
“Enough of this nonsense!” Loki hissed. “Attack! Attack! Attack! And this time, don’t stop until you’ve killed every last one of them!”
I’d known that was what he was going to say, and I didn’t hesitate. Even as my friends leaped out from behind the stacks to engage the Reapers, I pushed past Agrona and ran straight at the god. I raised Vic high, brought the sword up, around, and down, and slammed the blade into Loki’s chest—right where his heart would be, if he even had one.
Triumph filled me. I’d done it. I’d beaten Vivian, and now, I’d killed Loki too.
The god looked down at the sword buried in his chest. Then, he raised his head and looked me in the eyes.
He laughed.
He just . . . laughed and laughed, right in my face. “Oh, you stupid, stupid girl,” he sneered, his foul
breath kissing my cheeks like a rotten gust of wind. “Did you really think you could kill me with a mere sword?”
“Hey!” Vic snapped. “I’m not just any mere sword, pal!”
I yanked the sword free and stepped back, but I wasn’t ready to give up. Not yet.
I stabbed Loki again and again, slicing Vic every which way I could across his chest, his neck, even his arms and legs. All the while, he kept right on laughing at me, amused by my frantic struggles. No blood poured out of his wounds, and it seemed like I was slicing my sword through air instead of into someone’s body.
All around me, I could hear the shouts and screams of the fight, but I didn’t dare turn to look at how the rest of my friends were faring against the Reapers. For a moment, Logan and Agrona stepped into my line of sight. Agrona slashed at him again and again with Lucretia, but Logan easily blocked all of her blows, then whipped his sword up and buried the point in her heart. Grim satisfaction filled Logan’s face as Agrona dropped to the floor—dead.Loki laughed again, and I pushed away all thoughts of Logan. I yanked Vic out of Loki’s chest and stood there, panting and trying to get my breath back after my last frenzied attack. The god tilted his head to the side, his neck crack-crack-cracking as he studied me, his two red eyes burning into my violet ones.
“You know, what you did to that girl was quite impressive,” Loki purred. “Perhaps Agrona made a mistake trying to get me a Spartan body. Perhaps what I’ve really needed all along was your body, Gypsy.”
He stretched out a hand toward me. The thought of him infecting my body, my mind, my soul, the same way he had Logan’s was so horrifying that I almost leaped back.
Almost.
Self-sacrifice is a very powerful thing, especially if you do it of your own free will. Once again, Nike’s voice whispered in my mind. And it didn’t stop there.
You have free will, Gwendolyn, just like every creature, mortal, and god does. Remember that because it’s the most important thing I’ll ever tell you.
Never forget that because it’s the very thing Loki and his Reapers are trying to take away from you—your right to choose your own fate.
One after another, I remembered bits and pieces of all my conversations with Nike, all the times she’d come to me, all the cryptic things and riddles she’d said. And suddenly, I knew what I had to do. Maybe I’d known it somewhere in the back of my mind all along and just hadn’t wanted to face it until now.
I couldn’t kill Loki. He was a god, simple as that. Immortal. Eternal. Forever.
But I wasn’t.
I wasn’t a god, and my body wasn’t immortal, eternal, forever, or anything even close to that.
No, it was—I was—decidedly mortal. And utterly killable.
So when Loki stretched out his hand toward me, I let his fingers close around my throat, even as I stared up into his burning red eyes. I saw so many things there. Hate, rage, disgust, but most of all, I saw triumph—triumph that he’d finally succeeded in finding a way to defeat Nike once and for all. Not by killing me, but by corrupting me with himself.
What he didn’t realize was that the same triumph was reflected back in my own eyes.
So I tightened my grip on Vic, closed my eyes, and let the evil god’s soul infect my own.
Chapter 29
It was—Loki was—horrible.
Absolutely, completely, utterly horrible.
His soul slammed into my body like a bolt of lightning, frying me from the inside out. I could hear him laughing in my head, and my vision immediately went Reaper red. The only thing that wasn’t that awful color was Vic’s lone, purplish eye. Everything else just looked . . . bloody.
All the while, I was dimly aware that I was screaming—screaming and screaming as Loki infected every single part of me. I thought I’d known what Logan had gone through when it had happened to him, but seeing his memories hadn’t prepared me for the intense, unending pain and the sheer, utter agony. But I concentrated on the cold, hard feel of Vic in my hand, and I let Loki do his worst to me.
“Yes,” I heard the god murmur in my mind, or perhaps I was the one who was saying the words out loud. I couldn’t quite tell. “Oh yes. This Gypsy girl’s body will do quite nicely.”
I screamed again as he dived even deeper inside me, burrowing down farther and farther, drilling into every single part of my mind, my body, my heart and soul, until I could almost see the bright purple spark at the center of my being start to take on an ugly red tint. I was aware of Loki’s hand falling away from my throat, and his body dropping to the floor, since it was nothing but an empty shell, now that he was inside me.
“Gwen! Gwen!” I thought I heard Logan screaming my name, but his voice sounded dim and distant, as though both of us were underwater.
Eventually, the pain died down to a more manageable level, although I could still feel Loki inside my body, rifling through my insides like they were index cards, and murmuring to himself, or perhaps both of us, as he took stock of me.
“Yes, yes, young and strong,” he purred. “Oh, the things I’ll be able to do in your body, Gypsy. Nike will rue the day she ever dared to stand against me. It will be such a pleasure using you a
gainst her.”
I let him rant. It was all I could do to keep breathing—in and out, in and out—and not lose myself completely in the foul god’s rotten core. Even so, I could feel it eating away at me like acid. Slowly, I managed to turn around and realized that the fight had stopped and everyone—Reaper and Protectorate alike—was staring at me with wide eyes and gaping mouths.
“Gypsy girl?” Logan whispered in a horrified voice, slowly creeping toward me.
I could see a burning reflection in his blue gaze, and I realized that my eyes must be red—as Reaper red as his had been that day at the auditorium when Agrona had tried to put Loki’s soul into his body.
I tried to smile at Logan, tried to let him know that everything was going to be okay, this was all part of my plan, that it had to be this way, but it hurt too much, so I quickly gave up. Besides, I knew what I had to do now, and time was running out. Another minute, and Loki would have complete control of me. There would be no coming back from any of it.
Not for me—not for anyone.
Of course, I didn’t plan on coming back anyway, but if I was going to die, then I was determined to take Loki with me.
Everything felt odd and clumsy and large and heavy, as if my hands suddenly weren’t big enough for my body. But then again, it wasn’t really my body anymore— it was his.
So it took a lot of concentration and a couple of tries to bring up Vic and turn the sword around. I cut my right palm on his sharp blade, but it was a small, dull ache compared to the rest of the pain burning through my body.
I raised Vic up. His eye was still the same purple as before, and I focused on that soft twilight shade, letting it center me for what I had to do next.
“I’ll miss you, Vic,” I whispered, although it wasn’t my voice coming out of my mouth anymore. “I love you.” A single tear streaked down Vic’s hilt. “I love you
too, Gwen.”
I pointed the sword’s tip inward at my chest. In front of me, I saw Logan’s eyes bulge as he figured out what I was going to do. He ran toward me, trying to stop me, but he was going to be too late.
But he wasn’t the only one who finally realized what I was planning. Loki stopped his soft murmuring, and his burning red eyes popped up into my mind, blotting out everything else, and peering at me as if I was doing a most curious and worrisome thing.
“What—what are you doing?” Loki’s voice flooded my mind again, rising to a sharp screech on the very last word. “You—you can’t do this. Stop! I command you! Stop!”
I let out a long, loud, crazy laugh that echoed from one side of the library to the other and rose all the way up to the domed ceiling before it abruptly bounced back down again. I positioned Vic so that his tip rested against my heart. His point pricked my skin, drawing a bit of blood, and I focused on that small flash of pain. Suddenly, I could feel claws scraping down my insides and seizing onto the tendons and muscles in my arms, tearing, ripping, and trying to get me to drop the sword. But I tightened my grip and held on.
“You will stop this madness at once!” Loki hissed again. “I demand that you stop right now!”
I laughed again.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said. “That’s where you’ve always been wrong. This whole time. All these centuries. You can’t stop me. You can’t stop me from doing one single thing, especially not this.”
“And why is that?” he hissed.
I smiled, even though he couldn’t see me. “Free will.” Then, I rammed Vic’s point into my heart as hard as I
could.
There was a bright, blinding flash of pain. Then . . . nothing.
Chapter 30
I sucked in a breath and sat bolt upright.
At least, that’s what I thought I did. One second, I was slamming Vic into my chest and feeling all the pain of the mortal wound I’d given myself and the warm blood that slicked down my hands. The next, I was standing in the middle of the Library of Antiquities, still holding Vic.
I looked down, but I wasn’t bleeding anymore. In fact, I was perfectly clean, and my clothes showed none of the wear and tear from the battles out on the quad. I brought my hand up to my chest, and I realized that I could feel a third mark slashing over the other two scars already over my heart. The wound throbbed, but the pain felt dull and far away.
“Here we go again,” I muttered.
“Yes,” a soft voice called out. “Here we go again.” My head snapped up, and I realized that I wasn’t
alone.
A lone figure stood in front of me. Her long white gown seemed as crisp and fresh as new snow and draped around her strong, slender figure in perfect fashion. White wings rose up over her back, forming a heart shape above her head, and her hair was curled into bronze ringlets that fell past her shoulders. But it was her eyes that I could lose myself in. Beautiful, beautiful eyes that were a mix of purple and gray and lavender and silver that blended together to form one amazing twilight shade.
Even though I was dead, or mostly dead, or whatever I was, I still recognized her. Nike, the Greek goddess of victory.
She smiled, stepped forward, and clasped my hands in hers, and I felt a wave of cold power blast off her and flow into me.
“Hello, Gwendolyn,” Nike said.
I focused on the goddess, trying to make sense of things. “So I’m dead this time, right? Dead-dead. For real? Forever?”
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 you
r 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.”
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