Midnight Frost

feet away from me. “We’re never going to find the ambrosia. All I see are white flowers. Not to mention all the ones that are cream, ivory, eggshell, and every other white and off-white color.”
    “We have to keep looking—for Nickamedes.”
    Daphne’s eyes darkened. “I know. I’m just worried we won’t be able to find it.”
    “We’ll find it,” I said, trying to make my voice more confident than I really felt. “We have to.”
    We kept looking. Alexei, Oliver, and Rachel reappeared, all of them carrying an armload of firewood. A few minutes later, Rachel started a fire in a stone pit close to the tents. I took a break from the search to go warm up. I turned this way and that, letting the heat from the crackling flames soak into the front and back of my body, before diving into the flowers once more.
    Another hour passed. By this point, camp had been made, and we were all searching for the ambrosia flowers. But no one was having any luck.
    “Anything?” Ajax called out, his voice tight with frustration.
    We all shook our heads. He sighed and crouched back down, peering over the flowers in front of him and comparing them to the image on his phone, like the rest of us were doing.
    I finished sweeping a section and stood up to stretch out my back. I was close to the right edge of the courtyard, and my heart sank once again as I looked out at all of the plants and vines. We hadn’t even covered half of the courtyard yet. We could search for a week and still not come across a single ambrosia flower—and Nickamedes didn’t have that kind of time left.
    I sighed and leaned against a half-crumbled wall. At least, I tried to. I winced as something sharp dug into my back, poking me even through my purple snowsuit and all the layers I had on underneath. I turned around and realized it wasn’t a wall I’d been leaning against—it was a statue of the goddess Eir.
    I straightened up and stepped back. “Whoops. Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to block your view or anything. I can imagine how much you like to look out over your flowers.”
    Of course, the statue didn’t respond. Instead, it seemed to stare at me.
    Somehow, the goddess’s head had turned in my direction until her empty stone eyes were firmly fixed on me. I sighed. Every statue stared at me. That was just a part of my life at Mythos. I’d thought that I’d quit being creeped out by it, but apparently not. Or maybe my unease was because a goddess was looking at me—a goddess whose ruins I was standing in right now. It wouldn’t surprise me if her eyes suddenly popped open, and a series of poisoned darts shot out and slammed into my chest. That was what always happened in the movies.
    I held my breath for a moment, but Eir kept staring at me. Apparently, I wasn’t going to get pumped full of poison darts after all. Good. That was good.
    The goddess looked at me a moment longer—and then her head began to move.
    Seriously, the stone—it just—the statue just turned . One second, Eir was peering straight at me. The next, a series of small scrape-scrape-scrapes sounded. By the time I blinked again, the goddess was looking in the opposite direction. Not only that, but I swore that I saw her raise her hand, her finger pointing toward the back corner of the garden—almost like she wanted me to go see what was over there.
    I eased away from the statue. The goddess kept pointing toward that one spot, although her head swiveled back around in my direction. After a moment, her eyes narrowed, as if she was upset that I hadn’t already followed her instructions. Once again thinking of poisoned darts and other nasty traps, I decided to do what she wanted. Probably not a good idea to anger a goddess when you were in her house. Or at least standing in what was left of it.
    “Okay, okay, I’m going, I’m going,” I said. “Give me a second.”
    I maneuvered around to the other side of the statue. Then, I leaned down so I could get a better look at the spot where she was pointing. Once I had a bead on it, I headed in that direction.
    Everyone else was still busy searching for the flowers, so no one noticed me walking along the crumbled right wall of the courtyard. Every so often, I glanced behind me, but the statue of Eir kept pointing in the same direction. Finally, I reached what seemed to be the right spot. I crouched down, my eyes sweeping over the patch of flowers in front of me. Thick stands of vivid purple lilac mixed with some sort of