Midnight Frost

with the ones I now had. How could such simple-looking leaves heal anyone? Or possibly kill a god? How was I supposed to use them? Were they the key to destroying Loki and ending the Chaos War? Or did they have some other purpose? And what was the mistletoe for, if anything?
    Those questions and a dozen more burned on the tip of my tongue, but Eir had already returned to the center of the clearing, with the gryphon walking by her side. The goddess bent her head again, and the wildflowers strained toward her once more. A smile curved Eir’s face as she started murmuring to them and the gryphon.
    “Come,” Nike said. “She has given you the only gift she can. Let us leave Eir in peace, as she has asked of me.”
    We walked back through the woods until we reached the cavern. Instead of going back inside, I stared at the bracelet, then at Nike.
    “You’re always playing some sort of game, aren’t you?” I couldn’t hide the bitterness in my voice.
    “What do you mean?”
    I threw my hands wide. “I mean—this. All of this. Me. My friends. Coming here. The Reapers poisoning Nickamedes. You planned it all, didn’t you? So I would come here, and Eir would give me the laurels and mistletoe.”
    She shook her head. “I did not plan anything, Gwendolyn. The Spartan librarian being poisoned was what was always going to happen. You and your friends made your own choices, and you used your own free will, just the way you always do.”
    I didn’t understand how some things could seemingly be predetermined, while my friends and I still had free will about others. Trying to puzzle it out made my head hurt, like always. Still, I kept staring at the goddess. There was more to all of this than she was telling me, and I let her see the questions and suspicions in my eyes.
    After a moment, she nodded her head.
    “I admit that I had . . . hopes you would prove yourself to Eir, that you would show her the goodness in your heart,” Nike said. “She had been . . . undecided about getting involved in the Pantheon’s fight against Loki. But you convinced her to give us a weapon that we needed, that you needed.”
    I stared down at the silver laurels once more. “A weapon? So is this how I’m supposed to kill Loki then? With these? I thought I had to find a spear or something—that mysterious shadowy thing that’s on the fresco on the ceiling of the Library of Antiquities that you showed me.”
    Nike shook her head. “You know I cannot tell you that, Gwendolyn. I can only give you the tools you need to fight Loki and his Reapers. How you use them is up to you.”
    “Of course you can’t,” I sniped. “Because that would just be too freaking easy. Because that would just make too much sense .”
    She kept staring at me.
    “Call it whatever you want,” I finally muttered. “It just sounds like gods and their games to me.”
    “War is nothing but a game, Gwendolyn,” she replied. “One with a winner—and a loser.”
    I didn’t tell her I was tired of being part of her games—and most especially the Reapers’ tricks. If Nike didn’t know that by now, well, she wasn’t as smart as she seemed to be—or as powerful. But there was nothing I could do but tuck the bracelet under the sleeve of my snowsuit. I would have to add it to my list of things to research. Sometimes I thought I spent more time in the library looking through books these days than Nickamedes did. My heart twinged at the thought of him. I wondered how he was doing—and whether he was even still alive.
    “I know you are upset with me, Gwendolyn,” Nike said. “But it is not easy, trying to win a war, especially against an enemy as foul as Loki.”
    I sighed. “I know. I just hate that I’m caught in the middle of it all. I never wanted this, you know?”
    “I know,” she replied. “I never wanted it for you either. But it is what must be done.”
    I frowned, wondering what she meant, but the goddess leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, the way she always did whenever our time together was coming to an end. It was a brief touch, just a whisper of her lips against my skin, but once again, the cold, fierce waves of her power washed over me, giving me the strength I needed to continue. And this time, the cold didn’t seem to vanish—instead, I felt it seep into the silver laurel bracelet, until it felt as if a string of snowflakes was encircling my wrist. But the sensation wasn’t unpleasant. If anything, it was a reminder of the