I stood there in the middle of the chaos, that numb feeling spreading through my body.
“Quickly!” Nickamedes said, hobbling around and trying to get everyone’s attention. “Get the injured and the wounded into the back of the library! This way! This way!”
Grandma Frost was with him. Her eyes met mine, and I could see the relief in her face that I was okay. She clapped her hands together. “Do what Nickamedes says. Now!”
The two of them waved their hands, urging the others to follow them as they hurried into the back section of the library. Everyone who was able put their arms under the shoulders of the wounded and helped them in that direction.
“Gwen?” Alexei said, touching my arm. “Are you okay? Do you need to be healed?”
“Why would you say that?” I murmured. “Because you look half-dead,” Oliver said.
I snapped out of my daze and stared down at my own body, which was covered with dirt, blood, bruises, and shallow cuts. I’d been so caught up in the fight that I hadn’t even noticed my injuries before now. None of them was serious, but still, all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball on the floor and cry. But I couldn’t do that.
“Gwen?” Alexei asked again.
“I’m fine. What about you guys?”
“I think we’re all okay,” Logan said, coming to stand beside me. “Just some cuts and bruises, for the most part.”
One by one, my gaze swept over my friends. Logan. Alexei. Oliver. Carson. All of them covered with just as much dirt, blood, and sweat as I was. Oliver had a knot on his head the size of a goose egg from where a Reaper had slammed the hilt of his sword into the Spartan’s temple. A cut dripped blood on Logan’s cheek, while one of Alexei’s eyes was starting to blacken from where someone had hit him. But Logan was right. We’d all been lucky to escape with minor injuries—so far.
Carson, miraculously, didn’t have a scratch on him, and some of the dreaminess seemed to have leaked out of his gaze, along with the strange magic that had darkened his eyes. Still, he kept a tight grip on the horn, and I wondered if he was thinking about what else he might do with the artifact.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Carson looked at me, his eyes dark with sadness. “He killed them all. Loki. I made them come to life, I set them free, and now, they’re all gone. Just . . . gone.”
I thought of how the statues had shattered one by one, then how all of the others had crumbled to dust with a wave of Loki’s hand. I put my own hand on his shoulder.
“I know how you feel,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.” Carson reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose
above his black glasses, as if he was trying to hold back tears. “I know that it’s stupid. That people died out on the quad today—good people. But I can’t stop thinking about the statues . . .” He glanced down at the horn he was still holding. “If I’d known that they were going to be destroyed, I never would have started playing in the first place. I never would have even picked up the stupid horn that day at the coliseum. I wish I’d never even seen it.”
“Maybe the statues being destroyed was what was always supposed to happen,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
I shrugged. I didn’t really know, but it was something Nike had said to me more than once. I’d hoped that Carson would find some comfort in the words, but his face seemed as troubled as before. I didn’t know what to say to him. I didn’t know what to say to anyone right now.
“Come on,” I said. “We should help the others and find Daphne and my grandma.”
He nodded, and we headed toward the checkout counter. Logan, Oliver, and Alexei stayed behind with Linus and the guards.
I noticed Morgan McDougall trying to hop around on a bum ankle, so I went over and put my arm under her shoulder. The Valkyrie leaned on me, a few sparks of green magic hissing out of her fingertips.
“You okay?”
“Never better,” Morgan quipped. “You know, for being in the middle of the most epic fight ever.”
I grinned at her black humor and helped her to the back of the library.
Nickamedes was already there, along with Metis, who was healing the most seriously injured. She went from one warrior to the next, the golden glow of her magic bathing the wounded in its soft, warm light. Nickamedes followed her, hobbling around on his cane and helping her as best he could. Metis finished with a particularly nasty wound in a guard’s stomach and staggered back from the table, but Nickamedes was there to catch and steady her. Metis looked at him a moment, then hurried on to the next person who was injured. Nickamedes followed her again. Raven was there, too, trailing both of them, carrying rolls of bandages that were the same ghostly white as her dress.
My eyes swept over the study tables, and I finally spotted a splash of pink among all the blood. Daphne had come down from the second-floor library balcony and was holding hands with Savannah, who had an ugly cut over her right eye. A rosy golden glow moved from Daphne’s body into Savannah’s, and I watched while the gash over the Amazon’s eye seamlessly healed.
“You good?” Daphne asked.
Savannah nodded, and Daphne got up and started to move to the next person. But she caught sight of Carson trailing along beside me and Morgan, and stalked over to us.
“What were you doing?” she hissed at him. “What were you thinking, strolling out into the middle of the quad like that? You could have been killed, you idiot!”
Carson gave her a sheepish grin and held up his artifact. “Um, the horn made me do it?”
Daphne grabbed the front of Carson’s robe, drew him forward, and pressed her lips to his. A cascade of sparks erupted all around them, bathing them in a soft, princesspink shimmer.
“Wow,” Morgan drawled. “Maybe you guys should get a room.”
Daphne wrapped her arms around Carson’s neck and kissed him even harder.
I helped Morgan over to one of the empty chairs so she could sit down and take her weight off her ankle. Then, I went over to my grandma, who was holding the hand of a Protectorate guard who’d been laid out flat on one of the study tables.
“Is he going to be all right?” I asked. “No,” she said.
And I realized that the guard was staring at the ceiling, his gaze glassy with death. Grandma sighed, then leaned forward, and gently closed his eyes. She turned to me and opened her arms. I let out a choked sob and stepped forward into her embrace. We stood like that for a long time, rocking back and forth, drawing what strength we could from each other.
“I have to go,” I finally whispered. “And see what the plan is now.”
She nodded, and we both drew back. Grandma cupped my face in her hands. She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my bloody forehead before moving over to help Metis and Nickamedes.
I returned to the front of the library. By this point, all of the injured had been taken to the back, and all of the warriors that were more or less in one piece were milling around the study tables.
There weren’t many of us left.
Maybe thirty warriors were at the tables, clustered around Linus, Sergei, Inari, and Ajax. Thirty warriors to try to defeat Vivian, Agrona, Loki, and the rest of the Reapers out on the quad. It wasn’t enough.
We weren’t going to be enough.
My heart sank, but I forced myself to look up at the second floor, where Nike’s statue was. The goddess’s face was neutral, although her lips were turned down, almost as if she felt the same weary, aching sadness that I did. And I couldn’t help but wonder if Loki would wave his hand and destroy her statue as easily as he had the ones outside. My stomach clenched at the thought, but there was nothing I could do about it.