Midnight Frost

photo of us would look on my desk next to the ones I had of my mom and Professor Metis.
    I sighed, and my hand crept up to the necklace around my throat. Six silver strands wrapped around my neck, the diamond-tipped points joining together to form a snowflake in the middle of the delicate, beautiful design. A Christmas gift from Logan. One that I almost always wore, despite the bad memories associated with it—the ones of him attacking me.
    For a moment, my chest ached, and I let go of the necklace and massaged a spot right over my heart. Two scars slashed across my skin there. One was from Logan’s attack, while the other had been made by Preston Ashton, a Reaper boy who’d stabbed me. Daphne and Professor Metis had both used their healing magic to try to get rid of my scars, but it hadn’t worked. Metis said that sometimes powerful artifacts left behind marks that would never, ever fade—just like my memories of the battles would never, ever disappear.
    I also had two marks on my hands—one from the fight with Logan, while the other was where Vivian had cut me with the Helheim Dagger when she’d used the artifact and my blood to free Loki. The strange thing was that the marks on my hand exactly matched the ones over my heart—right down to their size, shape, and the odd, off-center X they made as they slashed over each other. I wondered how many more scars I would get before Loki was dead—or I was.
    Thinking about Vivian, Preston, and the other Reapers made anger bubble up in my chest, burning away my melancholy. But the truth was that I wasn’t just angry at the Reapers—I was pissed at Logan too.
    I knew that he had felt he had to leave Mythos, that he thought he couldn’t trust himself not to hurt me again, that he needed some time to sort out everything that had happened. In my head, I knew that. But in my heart, it felt like he’d abandoned me—like he’d left me to fight the Reapers and face the nightmares alone.
    I let out a bitter laugh. Maybe I wasn’t angry so much as I was jealous. Because if I never saw another Reaper again, it would be too soon. But there was nothing I could about that—or anything else.
    Nothing at all.
    So I slid the photo of me and Logan into the frame, then hugged the silver to my chest, as though it would ease my anger, as though it would soothe the hollow ache inside me, as though it were a shield that would protect me, as though the small bit of metal would keep my heart from breaking any more than it already had.
    It didn’t, of course, but at least I felt that I could breathe again and that the walls weren’t closing in on me. So I sat there on Logan’s bed, holding the photo of us, for a while longer.

Chapter 3
    I made it back to my dorm right before the ten o’clock curfew, but I didn’t sleep much that night. Every time I started to drift off, I would jerk awake, worried that I’d have another nightmare about Logan and the Reapers. Finally, I gave up trying to sleep, wrapped myself in my comforter, curled up in the padded window seat, and stared out into the dark of the night. That way if Vivian and the rest of the Reapers attacked, at least I’d see them coming.
    But no Reapers appeared, the sun came up, the way it always did, and I had to face another day.
    Weapons training with my friends Oliver and Kenzie in the gym. Morning classes. Lunch with Oliver and Alexei. Afternoon classes. A quick visit off-campus to see my Grandma Frost. Same-old, same-old, right up until it was time for me to go work my shift at the Library of Antiquities.
    Normally, I would have been sprawled across my bed, reading through my latest stash of comic books and eating some sinfully sweet treat that Grandma Frost had baked for me. But right now, I was in another dorm room, one where the walls, the ceiling, and the curtains were all pink. I shifted on the bed, wrinkling the comforter, which was also, you guessed it, pink. Sunlight streaming in through the lace curtains slanted across the bookcase in the corner, highlighting the volumes there. Even her myth-history books had pink covers on them. How had she managed that?
    I didn’t consider myself a tomboy, but I certainly was no girly-girl, and being around so much pink made me a little queasy. If I didn’t have nightmares already, I certainly would now. No doubt the next time I dreamed about Logan killing me, he’d be wearing a pink leather jacket. I snorted at the thought.
    A pair of fingers snapped in front of my