Midnight Frost

and fighting techniques. Ajax started demonstrating some moves, and soon, they were all grappling and tossing each other around. That left me sitting by the fire with Rachel. She stared at me for a long time.
    “Is there something you want to say to me?” I finally asked.
    She shrugged. “You don’t look much like a Forseti. Tyson, Rory’s dad, had light, sandy hair and blue eyes. So did your dad.”
    I reached up and tried to smooth down my brown hair, but it only frizzed back out again. “Everyone says I look like my mom. Violet eyes are smiling eyes. She used to say that a lot.”
    Rachel smiled a little. “She sounds like a nice woman.”
    “She was. She was the best.”
    “What happened to her?”
    “She was murdered by Reapers.”
    Rachel winced. “Oh. I’m so sorry.”
    I nodded, accepting her sympathy. “What was . . . what was my dad like? Did you know him?”
    Rachel shifted on the rock she was sitting on. “No, I didn’t know Tyr all that well. Not as well as I knew Tyson. Then again, I never dreamed that he was a Reaper or that my sister, Rebecca, had followed him down that path. So maybe I didn’t know him at all—or her.”
    She laughed, but it was far from a happy sound. She fell silent for a moment, then looked at me again. “From what I remember, Tyr seemed like a nice guy. He was always making a joke, always trying to get everyone to laugh, even Tyson, who wasn’t much for smiling or any sort of humor.”
    “What happened?” I asked. “My Grandma Frost told me that my dad had a falling-out with Tyson. Do you know anything about that?”
    Rachel shook her head. “No, I’m sorry, but I don’t. One day, Tyr left, and he never came back. That was when I started to notice how angry Tyson was all the time—and how angry Rebecca seemed to be, as well. But then Rebecca found out that she was pregnant with Rory, and things were better for a long time after that. Rebecca and Tyson . . . they really did love Rory, despite what they did.”
    She choked on the last few words. Memories darkened her eyes, and I knew she was thinking about her sister, the fact that she’d become a Reaper, and all the people she’d hurt and killed.
    “Just because you love someone doesn’t mean they’ll never hurt or betray you,” I said. “Trust me. I know that better than anyone.”
    Once more, I thought of Logan and that horrible, awful moment when he’d turned around at the Aoide Auditorium and I realized that his eyes were Reaper red. That Vivian and Agrona had done something terrible to him. That I might be too late to save him. It had been one of the worst moments of my life. And now, Logan was gone, and that hurt too. Because this time, he’d left of his own free will, and not because of some Reaper magic mumbo jumbo. He’d gone because he’d wanted to, leaving me with nothing but nightmares.
    Rachel gave me a wan smile. “Sad, isn’t it? How true that is. That love can hurt so much sometimes.”
    I didn’t say anything else. There was nothing else to say. We’d all been wounded by the Reapers, some of us more than others, and we all had to deal with it in our own way. Still, I scooted a little closer to Rachel, and I stayed by her side until the others finished their sparring and joined us.
     
    It grew darker and colder as the sun set and the hours slowly passed. Everyone else snuggled down in their sleeping bags, but unlike the others, I was too on edge to sleep. So I sat by the fire, hunched over as close to the flickering flames as I could get. I’d offered to keep a lookout while the others got some shut-eye. We hadn’t seen any sign of the Reapers, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there somewhere, waiting for the right time to strike. I also kept an eye out for the baby gryphon and the mysterious shadow. But if they were around, they were as invisible as the Reapers were.
    Finally, my phone beeped at eleven forty-five, telling me it was time to wake the others. Everyone moaned and groaned a little, but they all got up. We fished some flashlights out of our bags, clicked them on, and headed to the back corner of the courtyard.
    The ambrosia looked the same as before—a tiny patch of white flowers somehow blossoming in the middle of the rock wall.
    “Are you sure that we have to pick it at midnight?” I asked. “Because it looks the same to me as it did this afternoon. Small and kind of puny.”
    “That’s what Metis said,” Ajax replied. “That it has to be picked