Chapter Three
Ian and Amanda were still staring at his phone when I finished my food, got to my feet, and grabbed my tray. I expected them to keep ignoring me, but Amanda looked up and waved at me.
“It was nice meeting you,” she called out in a warm voice.
“Yeah. You too.” My tone was far less genuine and much more surly than hers.
Ian opened his mouth like he was going to make some snarky remark and call me cupcake again, but I stared him down, and he apparently thought better of it. Chicken. I rolled my eyes, turned away, and left the dining hall.
But once again, the rest of my day didn’t get any better.
More classes, more homework, more kids gossiping about me.
Even gym class, my second-favorite class after myth-history, was a total bust. Coach Wanda, one of the few teachers who had always treated me fairly, even after the ugly revelations about my parents, had been replaced. Our new teacher was a man in his early thirties, with black hair, dark brown eyes, and a charcoal-gray tracksuit that highlighted his lean frame. A silver whistle hung around his neck, and a clipboard dangled from his hand.
“My name is Coach Takeda,” he said.
I eyed him, wondering what kind of warrior he was. Not a Roman or a Viking, since he didn’t seem to be either exceptionally quick or strong, but he gave off an air of quiet, controlled power. Probably a Samurai, given his perfectly straight posture and the way he was holding that clipboard like it was a sword that he was about to brandish at us.
Takeda stabbed his clipboard toward the far end of the gym, where a series of orange cones had been set up in elaborate patterns. “We’re going to start with some agility drills.”
“Agility drills?” I muttered to myself, since no one else would talk to me. “Really? What’s the point of that?”
I hadn’t spoken all that loudly, but of course Takeda heard me. He looked at me, his face perfectly calm and devoid of any emotion.
“Do you have a problem with agility drills, Miss…” He ran his finger down the sheet on his clipboard. “Forseti?”
I sighed, knowing what was coming next. “No, sir.”
Takeda gave me a thin smile. “Good. Then you can run laps around the gym while the rest of us get started. Ten laps should be enough to stretch out your legs. Perhaps then you’ll look a little more fondly on my agility drills.”
Of course, all the other kids thought my punishment was absolutely hysterical, and they all started snickering. At least, until Takeda turned his gaze to them. He didn’t do or say anything, just kept staring at them with that same calm expression he’d given me, but it was plenty intimidating. One by one, all the other kids shut up, lest they be forced to run laps with me.
Takeda made a shooing motion with his hand. “If you would be so kind as to start running, Miss Forseti.”
I sighed again, but I had no choice but to shuffle forward and do as he commanded. Takeda was right. By the time I got done running all those laps, I wished I had kept my mouth shut and gone along with his stupid agility drills. They would have been far less tiring.
Gym was my last class of the day, but I was so sweaty from running laps that I ducked into the locker room and took a shower before changing back into my regular clothes. I texted Aunt Rachel and told her I was heading over to the library to grab a snack and get started on my homework. She texted me back, saying she was still working in the dining hall, prepping for tomorrow’s meals, and she’d see me at home later tonight.
I left the gym and walked across the quad to the Library of Antiquities, which soared five stories into the air, making it the tallest building on campus. The center section of the library was a large square tower, with three attached wings sticking out from it like the spokes on a wheel. Two stone gryphons perched on boulders on the sides of the main steps, and I stopped and nodded at each one of them.
I wanted to be polite, since I had seen what statues like these could do at the North Carolina academy, but looking at the gryphons also delayed my going inside the building for another moment. Thanks to my parents, the Library of Antiquities was something else I had a love-hate relationship with at the academy. So I focused on the gryphons and tried to ignore the hurt and loss stabbing through my heart and the sick dread churning in my stomach. The same emotions assaulted me every time I went into the library.
Just like the Fenrir wolf earlier, these two statues winked back at me, almost as if they could sense my turbulent feelings and were trying to comfort me. I nodded at them both again, then let out a long, tense breath and headed into the library.
I walked down a hallway and stepped through a set of open double doors into the main space. A wide aisle ran from the doors all the way over to a long checkout counter in the center of the library. Wooden study tables were clustered in the open spaces in front of and behind the counter, while a large silver coffee cart was parked off to the side. Shadow-filled stacks spread throughout the rest of the first floor, each tall shelf housing hundreds of books. Glass display cases also gleamed here and there among the aisles in the stacks.
The library had been chiseled out of the same lovely dark stone as all the other campus buildings, although in here, you could see the thick exposed logs that made up many of the walls and supports for the upper floors. Colorful rugs decorated with a variety of Native American symbols and gods, including Coyote Trickster, covered the floor, looking like runes that had been carved into the stone. Overhead, the ceilings of the three outer wings all flowed into the square ceiling of the center tower.
Gwen always claimed that frescoes were painted on the library ceilings, showing people, weapons, artifacts, and battles. But to me, the ceilings—especially the tower ceiling—looked like they were made of bright bits of stained glass that had been stitched together with silver thread. Sapphire-blue, emerald-green, ruby-red, opal-white, amethyst-purple. All the different jewel-toned colors and delicate shapes reminded me of the wildflowers at the Eir Ruins.
Before my parents died, I had loved to sneak off into the stacks, find a quiet spot, and lie down on the floor, using my messenger bag as a pillow so I could study the ceiling to my heart’s content. Sometimes, if I had stared at them long enough, the stained-glass shapes seemed to move, like a phantom breeze was blowing over the wildflowers and making their petals slowly sway back and forth. Watching the flowers had soothed and given me a sense of peace. I still thought the ceiling was beautiful, but my enjoyment of it had greatly diminished, given all the other dark, ugly things that had happened in here.
Besides the ceiling, the library’s other most impressive feature was the enormous stone fireplace that was close to the checkout counter. It was more than thirty feet wide and made of the same blackish boulders as the rest of the structure. Given that it was September, no flames crackled behind the tall iron grates, but it was still the busiest part of the library. Overstuffed chairs and couches flanked the freestanding fireplace, front and back, and every single seat was taken. Now that classes were over with, students had flocked here to catch up on all the juicy gossip, as if they hadn’t already been texting about it all day long.
I stood in the doorway, studying everything. I had always loved books and artifacts and history, and the Library of Antiquities was full of those things. The library used to be my favorite place on campus, and I had spent hours wandering the aisles, finding books to read, and examining the artifacts on display. There was always something new and wonderful to discover.
But now I was torn, just like I was about so many other things at the academy. On one hand, I still loved the library. The quiet stacks, the interesting artifacts, even the faint musty scent of paper that filled the air. But on the other hand, I hated the library for one simple reason.
My parents had been murdered here.
I stared at a spot in front of the checkout counter. That’s where Covington, the former head librarian, had stabbed my parents in the back, and that’s where they had been lying when I raced into the library that awful, awful day. I didn’t get vibes off objects, not like Gwen did with her psychometry magic, but the memories were so strong that they rose up in my mind and blotted out everything else.
In an instant, all I could see was my mom and dad crumpled on the floor, their eyes open wide with shock and pain. All I could hear was the faint whisper of their black Reaper cloaks fluttering back and forth in the air-conditioning, looking like death shrouds draped over their bodies. All I could smell was the coppery stench of their blood oozing across the floor, staining the stone a sickening scarlet…
A Roman guy hurried past me, and his backpack accidentally clipped my shoulder. The faint nudge snapped me out of my trance, and the images faded away, although not the pain they left behind.
Nothing ever took away that heartache.
These same memories haunted me every single time I set foot in here. And I wondered, like I always did, if I could really go over, sit down at a study table, open my books, and pretend everything was fine. That my parents hadn’t died a few feet away.
More hurt and loss stabbed through my heart, while more of that sick dread twisted my stomach. Not for the first time, I wanted to whirl around, run out the door, and never set foot in the library again, but I forced myself to take in slow, deep breaths and hold my ground. I couldn’t avoid the library, not even for a few days, given the massive amounts of homework my professors dished out on a weekly basis. Besides, Covington and my parents had already taken so much from me. They weren’t taking the library too. I wouldn’t let them take that too. So I pushed the memories back down to the bottom of my brain, squared my shoulders, and strode forward.
“What’s she doing here?” A snide voice caught my ear.
I glanced over at the fireplace, and I realized that all the other kids were staring at me again.
“Isn’t it bad enough that we have to sit through classes with her?” Kylie, the blond Valkyrie from lunch, continued. “Does she have to come to the library too?”
In an instant, everyone started whispering about me, and once again, I wanted to turn around, leave the library, and never come back. But Spartans never ran away from a fight, not even one like this that I could never, ever win, so I gritted my teeth and walked down the center aisle, as though I didn’t hear any of the cruel taunts. Besides, I really did need to do some research and get started on my term-paper outline. I took pride in getting good grades, and I wasn’t going to flunk my first myth-history assignment of the semester because of some stupid gossip.
So I went over to one of the computer stations close to the checkout counter, typed in the titles of the books the professor had given us as starting points, and printed out their locations. But the other students had beaten me to them, and all the copies of the first few books on the list had already been checked out. Still, I trudged from one side of the library to the other, trying to find something that would help me. Every time I left the stacks and walked by the fireplace, a fresh round of whispers rippled through the groups of kids, but I ignored the harsh murmurs and marched on.
Since all the books on the first floor were already gone, I pushed through a door, climbed the stairs, and stepped out onto the second floor. Like all the other Libraries of Antiquities, the second floor featured a balcony that wrapped all the way around the library, boasting a pantheon of statues of the gods and goddesses of all the cultures of the world, everything from Greek to Norse to Egyptian and all the others in between.
Zeus, the ruler of the Greek gods, with his lightning bolt clutched in his hand. Odin, the ruler of the Norse gods, with his two ravens perched on his shoulders. Bastet, the Egyptian cat goddess, with her claw-tipped fingers. I moved past those deities and dozens more. Just like the stone gryphons outside, these statues also studied me, although none of them gave me a friendly wink or an encouraging smile. But I didn’t mind their silent scrutiny. At least I couldn’t hear their thoughts about me, whatever they might be.
All the other students were lounging around the fireplace, so it was much quieter up here, and I was the only one on this floor. I sighed with relief. Now that no one was watching me, maybe I could relax and focus on my homework. Besides, up here, I didn’t have to keep walking by the spot where I had seen my parents’ bodies.
A few minutes later, I finally found one of the myth-history books on my list and slid it out of its spot on the shelf along one of the walls. I grabbed a couple of other volumes, enough to get started on my outline, and headed toward the exit so that I could go downstairs, check out the books, and take them home.
I was almost to the door when a bright gleam of metal caught my eye.
A glass display case sat at the end of one of the bookcases along the wall. The case was one of hundreds in the Library of Antiquities, which got its name from all the, well, antiquities that were housed inside. Weapons, armor, jewelry, clothing, and more were displayed throughout the library, all of them used and worn by gods, goddesses, warriors, and creatures over the centuries, many of them possessing magical powers and properties.
I had spent a lot of time in the library over the past year, and I didn’t remember seeing this case before. Curious, I walked over and peered through the glass.
A silver sword that glimmered like it had been freshly polished lay on a bed of dark green velvet inside the case, along with a black leather scabbard. I glanced around, but I didn’t spot an identification card inside the case or a metal plaque attached to the outside that would tell me whom the weapon had belonged to, what battles she had fought with it, and what magic it might have.
Swords were a dime a dozen in the library, and I had started to turn away from it when another gleam of metal caught my eye. I stepped forward, peered through the glass again, and took a closer look at the sword.
Was that…a face…engraved in the metal?
For a moment, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but they weren’t. A round bulge of an eye, a pointed cheekbone, a sharp, hooked nose, a curved chin. All those things joined on the sword’s hilt to form a face—a woman’s face, judging from her heart-shaped lips and the delicate eyebrow etched into the metal. Surprise jolted through me, and I held my breath, wondering if the sword’s eye might pop open and the woman inside the metal might look up or maybe even talk to me.
Nothing happened.
The sword didn’t talk, blink, yawn—nothing. It was like the weapon was, well, just a weapon, albeit one with a very pretty face. Disappointment filled me. Gwen had a talking sword named Vic, who was totally bloodthirsty. Ever since I’d met Vic, I had thought it would be so cool to have a talking sword of my own, but of course, something that amazing could never happen to me.
Sometimes I felt like nothing good ever happened to me.
Sighing, I hoisted the heavy library books a little higher into the crook of my elbow, turned away from the sword, and looked up—and found myself staring at a goddess.
I was standing directly across from Sigyn, the Norse goddess of devotion and the former wife of Loki. Unlike all the other statues, who were standing proud, straight, and tall, Sigyn had her head bowed, and her hair trailed over her shoulders, almost as if she were trying to hide her face behind the long locks. And her expression…it was so sad and mournful and full of regret that it made my own heart ache in response.
Loki had tricked Sigyn into freeing him from the prison the other gods had placed him in long ago, and countless people had suffered—died—because of her mistake. Gwen had told me about Sigyn, how she’d masqueraded as Raven, an old woman who did odd jobs around the North Carolina academy, and how she’d spent years watching over the students there and shielding them from all the evil things the Reapers did on Loki’s behalf. Sigyn seemed to be one of the few goddesses, perhaps even the only goddess, who fought her own battles here in the mortal realm, instead of asking a Champion to do it for her.
I admired the goddess for trying to make things right, for trying to clean up the mess she’d made, for trying to help and protect the people who’d been hurt by her mistake. Those were some of the reasons I’d decided to write my term paper on her.
But the main reason was that I knew exactly how she felt.
I had trusted my parents, believed in them, loved them, and they’d still done all these horrible things. My parents had always told me to help people, to be a good warrior, to fight against the Reapers, when they had done the exact opposite. I just didn’t understand why my mom and dad had been Reapers, why they had thought it was okay to bring pain, death, destruction, and suffering to so many innocent people. I felt like I didn’t know them at all—that I’d never known who they truly were.
And now they were dead, murdered, and I would never know the answers to my questions. Why my parents had been Reapers, why they had tried to leave the group, what kind of future they had really wanted for me. Not knowing made me sadder than anything else. All the questions, all the doubts, had cracked deep down into my heart, splintering away my love and respect for my parents and leaving this jagged, hollow crater behind, this aching emptiness that I could never fill, no matter what I did—
The door to the stairs banged open. I whirled around, expecting an attack, but a Valkyrie and a Roman stumbled through the opening, giggling like crazy. They lurched to a stop, and the Valkyrie looped her arms around the Roman’s neck, stood on her tiptoes, and pressed a loud, smacking kiss to his lips. Gold sparks of magic streamed out of her fingertips and flashed in the air all around them, making them look like a fairy-tale couple experiencing true love’s kiss.
I rolled my eyes. More like true lust’s kiss. In addition to being a place to hang out and gossip, the library was also a popular spot for kids to make out. Couples would often sneak away from the fireplace and the study tables, find a shadowy spot back in the stacks, and play tonsil hockey for hours on end. These two must have had the bright idea to come up to the second floor, where it was even darker and more private.
I had zero desire to witness their make-out session, and I was a little annoyed that they had interrupted my peace and quiet. So I loudly cleared my throat, letting the Valkyrie and the Roman know they weren’t alone. The two of them yelped in surprise and jerked apart, their heads snapping in my direction.
“Isn’t it a little early to be sucking face?” I sniped. “It’s still the first day of school. Usually, people don’t start hooking up until at least day two.”
The Valkyrie slapped her hands on her hips, gold sparks of magic hissing all around her fingertips. “Well, at least I have someone to make out with. You, Rory Forseti? You’d be lucky to get a prowler to kiss you. C’mon. Let’s get out of here.”
She grabbed the guy’s hand, and they both turned around, went back through the door, and clomped down the stairs. I grimaced, trying not to let the Valkyrie’s words get to me, but she was right. Everybody hated me, guys included. I didn’t have any friends here, much less an actual boyfriend, and I never would.
An arrow of hurt shot through my heart, but I ignored the sting, went over to the balcony railing, and looked down. On the first floor below, kids laughed, talked, and texted in the chairs by the fireplace, while others stood in line in front of the coffee cart, nibbling on cinnamon rolls, cheese Danish, and other pastries while they waited for their espressos and cappuccinos. A few truly dedicated students hunched over their laptops and textbooks at the study tables, concentrating on their homework. They all looked so relaxed and carefree. The tension, worry, and threat of Loki and his Reapers had finally been lifted, and everyone was happier than they had ever been.
Everyone except me.
Now that I had the reference books for my term paper, I should go downstairs, check them out, and leave the library. But the second I set foot on the first floor, all the kids would start watching me again like they had before. My breath escaped in a long, weary sigh. I couldn’t take any more harsh, accusing glares. Not right now, anyway.
I would much rather stay up here by myself than listen to the other students’ snarky whispers and cruel snickers. So I set my books aside and plopped down on the floor in front of Sigyn’s statue.
“I guess it’s just you and me now,” I said.
I stared up at Sigyn, hoping that she would open her eyes, nod her head, or give me some other indication that she knew what I was going through. That she would give me some small sign of hope, friendship, or at least encouragement like the animal statues outside had with their winks earlier. But Sigyn remained utterly still, her face frozen in the same sorrowful expression as before. I waited one minute, then two, then three, but the goddess didn’t respond, so I sighed again as I cracked open the first reference book and pulled a pen and a notepad out of my messenger bag.
The first day wasn’t even over yet, but I could already tell it was going to be a long, long school year.