Spartan Heart

by Jennifer Estep

  Mateo shook his head. “She liked you just fine.”

  Zoe snorted again. “No, she didn’t. Amanda knew that I wasn’t nearly as gung-ho about this little operation as she was.” She slouched down in her seat. “Coming here wasn’t my idea, remember?”

  “It doesn’t matter whose idea it was,” Ian growled. “Only that Amanda is dead. You were supposed to watch out for her.”

  “I did watch out for her!” Zoe snapped back. “I used my lockpick gun to open that library door so we could go inside like we planned. It’s not my fault that I had to leave her, run around the building, and let you in through another door. I’m not a magician. I can’t be in two places at once. Besides, Amanda is the one who decided to forget about the plan and head into the library all by herself without waiting for backup.”

  Ian’s lips pressed together into a tight, thin line. Takeda remained expressionless, while Mateo looked back and forth between everyone.

  “And let’s face facts,” Zoe snapped again. “I’m not a great warrior. Even if I had been there, I couldn’t have done anything to save Amanda. Not against a freaking chimera. I didn’t even think those things were real.”

  She threw her hands up into the air, and blue sparks streaked out of her fingers like fireworks exploding over and over again. Valkyries always gave off more magic when they were upset or emotional. Zoe shot an angry glare at Ian, then one at Takeda, as though the two of them were responsible for her being here. Maybe they were. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder what all of them were up to and why Takeda thought I should be part of it.

  But I didn’t want to stick around and find out.

  Once again, I glanced around the room, wondering which hallway might lead to an exit, but I didn’t have any better idea than before. Besides, I couldn’t leave my hiding spot without them seeing me. They had gone to a lot of trouble to bring me here and heal me, and they probably wouldn’t let me leave without a fight. I had no doubt that I could take out Zoe and Mateo, but I wasn’t so sure about Ian, since his Viking battle ax was lying on that desk, along with all those other weapons. Not to mention Takeda. Who knew what fighting skills and magic the Samurai might have?

  I might be a Spartan, but I wasn’t reckless, and I was in no hurry to die, no matter what Babs claimed. Part of being a warrior was knowing when to fight—and now was not that time. Not when I was outnumbered four to one and had no idea how to escape. Besides, the other warriors couldn’t stay down here forever. I’d wait for them to leave and then slip away quietly.

  “It doesn’t matter who was supposed to be where,” Takeda said. “We can’t change what happened to Amanda or the fact that our mission isn’t over. Now that the Reaper has an artifact, the situation is even more dangerous, and we could use Rory Forseti on our side.”

  Ian’s face hardened. “We don’t need her.”

  Takeda stared at him. “If Rory had been working with us tonight, if she’d had some advance warning, if she’d known what was really going on, she might have been able to save Amanda.”

  Ian’s lips pressed together again, and he didn’t say anything else. Neither did Takeda. Zoe kept glaring at the two of them, while Mateo drummed his fingers on his keyboard. Hello, dysfunctional dynamic. Whoever these people were, they might be on the same side, but they were most definitely not a team.

  Takeda was the adult and obviously the boss, given his air of command and authority. Mateo seemed to be a computer guru, and Ian was definitely a fighter like me. But what did Zoe do with all those tools? And why were the four of them here? What artifact had the Reaper stolen from the Library of Antiquities?

  More and more questions swirled around in my mind, but I had no way to get any answers. At least, not without revealing myself to them, which was something I didn’t want to do—

  “I want to see my niece right now!” a familiar voice called out.

  My heart lifted. Aunt Rachel was here.

  A low voice murmured something to her in response, although I couldn’t make out the words. More footsteps scuffed against the floor, and Aunt Rachel stormed into the room. She glanced around, stalked over to Takeda, and slapped her hands on her hips.

  “I want to see Rory right now!” she demanded.

  “Ah, Ms. Maddox,” Takeda said in that same annoyingly calm voice. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  She moved even closer to him, anger staining her cheeks a bright red. Aunt Rachel didn’t often get mad, but when she did, watch out. If I had been Takeda, I would have stepped away from her, but he didn’t know her like I did.

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me before.” Her was voice lower and more dangerous this time. “I want to see Rory right now. And if I find out that you have harmed one single hair on her head, then I will break you into pieces.”

  Takeda’s face remained blank, but he did step back and bow his head to her. “Follow me, and I’ll take you to your niece.”

  “Um,” Mateo said. “One small problem. Rory’s not in her room.”

  He hit a few buttons on his laptop, and a picture of the empty infirmary room popped up on one of the monitors on the wall.

  Aunt Rachel whirled back around to Takeda. “Where is my niece?”

  I winced at her sharp, demanding tone, the one that always told me I was in serious trouble. Aunt Rachel was about to blow. I had to stop her before she did something she might regret, so I stepped out from behind the shelves and walked forward where everyone could see me.

  “I’m right here,” I called out.

  Startled, everyone turned in my direction. Aunt Rachel ran over and swallowed me up in a tight hug, which I returned with one that was equally fierce.

  “I was so worried about you,” she whispered in my ear. “I got your text and rushed over to the library, but when I got there, the place was surrounded by the Protectorate, and they wouldn’t let me inside. I tried texting you again, but you didn’t answer me, and I thought—I thought—” Her voice choked off, and her arms tightened around me, telling me how worried she had been.

  Guilt rippled through me. With everything that had been going on, I hadn’t even thought to check my phone after I’d woken up in the infirmary.

  “I’m fine,” I whispered back. “They healed me, and I’m fine. Despite the chimeras.”

  Aunt Rachel drew back, her green eyes wide. “Chimeras? What chimeras? I thought you were going to stay on the balcony, where it was safe!”

  “I did stay on the balcony. At least until the chimeras showed up. They attacked me and killed Amanda, another girl, one of them.” I waved my hand at the others.

  Aunt Rachel stared at me a second longer, then whirled around to Takeda again. “Chimeras? Typhon chimeras? In the Library of Antiquities? You told me that Rory had been attacked by a Nemean prowler.”

  Takeda shrugged. “Well, chimeras are part prowler. I didn’t want to worry you any more than necessary. And as you can see, Rory is perfectly fine.” He paused. “In fact, I was just discussing her future with the rest of my team.”

  Ian started shaking his head no-no-no, still not wanting me to be part of this mysterious group. Mateo looked from Takeda to Aunt Rachel and back again, his fingers tapping out a nervous, uneven pattern on his keyboard. Zoe leaned back in her chair and grinned, entertained by all the drama.

  Aunt Rachel stabbed her finger at Takeda. “If you think for one second that my niece is going to be part of—of—of whatever this is, then you have another think coming, mister. Rory is coming home with me where she belongs.”

  “We all know that there is only one place where Spartans truly belong: on the battlefield,” another voice cut into the conversation.

  For the third time, footsteps sounded, and a shadowy figure appeared in the hallway. The shadow grew closer and closer, morphing into a tall, thin man wearing a gray cloak with a symbol stitched on it in white thread, a hand holding a set of balanced scales.

  Blond hair, blue eyes, a sword belted to his waist. I recognized him. I had fought side
by side with him during the Battle of Mythos Academy.

  Linus Quinn, the head of the Protectorate.

  Chapter Seven

  Linus Quinn strode into the middle of the room, his gray cloak swirling around his body.

  He shook hands with Takeda, eyed Ian and the other kids, and nodded to Aunt Rachel. Then he turned and studied me from head to toe. Linus’s blue eyes lingered on the sword hooked to my belt, but after a moment, he nodded to me as well.

  “Hello, Miss Forseti,” he said. “You’re looking well. All things considered.”

  “Mr. Quinn.” I nodded back at him, then crossed my arms over my chest. “You mean the fact that a chimera killed a girl and almost clawed me to death? Yeah, that was a great surprise for the first day of school. I thought the Library of Antiquities was supposed to be a safe place now, but I see that it’s just as dangerous as ever.”

  Linus winced a bit at my snarky tone, but he couldn’t deny the truth of my words.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Where are we? Who are these people? And what does everyone want with me?”

  Linus’s lips curved up into a small smile. “I see that you have the same sarcastic attitude as your cousin Gwen.”

  I shrugged. “It must run in the Forseti and Frost families.”

  Zoe leaned forward, her face creasing in confusion. “Wait a second. Gwen? As in Gwen Frost? She’s related to Gwen Frost?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “So what?”

  The Valkyrie’s hazel eyes lit up with admiration. “So Gwen Frost is a hero. Like the greatest hero ever.”

  I sighed. Zoe wasn’t the first person to have this sort of reaction when she found out that I was related to Gwen. I loved my cousin, really, I did, but I wouldn’t have minded if she had been just a little less heroic. It was a lot to live up to. Since, you know, Gwen had basically saved the entire world.

  Mateo stared at me with a similarly incredulous hero-worship expression, but Ian snorted. Seemed he wasn’t a Gwen Frost fan. His loss.

  “Rory is a hero in her own right,” Linus said. “She and her aunt were both instrumental in helping Miss Frost and the Protectorate defeat Loki and his Reapers. They helped save us all, and you should treat them with the proper amount of respect.”

  He gave Ian a pointed look, and the Viking actually winced a bit.

  Linus stared at Ian a moment longer, making sure that the Viking got his point, then gestured at the table in the center of the room. “Let’s all have a seat, and I’ll bring Miss Forseti and Ms. Maddox up to speed.”

  Aunt Rachel glared at Takeda one more time, but she pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. I took the chair next to her, with Ian sitting across from me. Zoe and Mateo left their desks, moved over, and plopped down beside Ian. Takeda took the seat at the head of the table, but Linus remained standing.

  Mateo grabbed what looked like a TV remote from the center of the table and handed it to Linus, who hit a series of buttons on the device. A second later, photos began appearing on the monitors on the wall.

  Images of the Battle of Mythos Academy.

  My heart clenched as shot after shot of the North Carolina academy popped up on the screens. The grounds, the main quad, the inside of the Library of Antiquities. All littered with dented weapons, shattered statues, and bloody bodies.

  So many bodies.

  Reapers and Protectorate members lay crumpled next to each other on the ground. Their torn black and gray cloaks were draped over their bodies like makeshift shrouds, while their swords, staffs, and spears were stuck point-first in the grass like crude crosses marking where they had fallen. But they weren’t the only ones who had died. So had kids, professors, and other people who worked at the academy, and their bodies littered the quad like broken dolls, along with those of the Eir gryphons and other creatures that had taken part in the battle.

  The photos took me right back there to that awful day. In an instant, the briefing room vanished, and I was in the midst of the fight. Yells and screams echoed from one side of the quad to the other and back again, along with the violent, continued clash-clash-clash of weapons crashing into each other. I was yelling too, swinging my sword at Reaper after Reaper, cutting down as many of them as I could, even though they just kept coming and coming and coming…

  Aunt Rachel reached over and grabbed my hand, pulling me out of my memories. No doubt the same ones darkened her own thoughts. I squeezed her hand back, grateful that she was here. We might be Spartans, but that had been a battle unlike any other, and I would never, ever forget it—and all the people and creatures who had died so that we all might finally be free of Loki.

  Linus hit some more buttons, and the battle scenes faded away, replaced by shots of people moving around the quad, cleaning up the destruction. Gwen appeared in several of the photos, hauling away debris with the help of Logan Quinn, her boyfriend and Linus’s son. Gwen’s other friends, including Daphne Cruz and Carson Callahan, also showed up on the screens, along with Professor Aurora Metis, Gwen’s mentor, and Nickamedes, the head librarian at the North Carolina academy.

  Seeing them all again made my heart squeeze tight with longing. They were my friends too—my only friends—and I missed them all terribly. More than once, I had thought about transferring to the North Carolina academy, but Aunt Rachel’s job was here, and I didn’t want to leave her. Besides, I had foolishly thought that things would be better, that the other kids might give me a chance—a real chance—after I had fought alongside Gwen and the others. But of course things hadn’t worked out that way, not at all.

  “As you all know, the North Carolina academy was decimated by the final battle with Loki and his Reapers of Chaos,” Linus said. “A lot of progress was made over the summer, and the school year started as usual, but the cleanup still continues at the academy.”

  “So what?” Aunt Rachel asked. “Rory and I know how damaged the academy was. We were there, remember?”

  “Yes, I remember,” Linus said. “And your bravery was one of the reasons we were able to win, along with the help of the Eir gryphons that you brought to the academy.”

  Aunt Rachel sat up a little straighter, and so did I. It was always nice to be recognized. Everyone else at the table nodded at us, acknowledging our contributions as well, except for Ian, who rolled his eyes. What was his problem? I didn’t even know the guy, and he already hated me. Well, the feeling was quickly becoming mutual.

  “Unfortunately,” Linus continued, “what we didn’t realize at the time was that not all of the Reapers were killed or captured.”

  He hit some more buttons, and several security-camera images appeared on the monitors. Each one showed Reapers sprinting across the grounds, climbing over the wall that ringed the academy, and running away.

  I frowned. “I had heard that some of the Reapers had escaped, but I thought the Protectorate was working to round them up and put them in prison.”

  Linus nodded. “That’s true. After Loki was defeated, the Protectorate knew there was still work to do, still Reapers to apprehend. But we wanted everyone to get on with their lives as best they could, so we’ve downplayed the danger as much as possible. Ever since the battle, we’ve been quietly hunting down the rest of the Reapers. But I’m afraid we’ve had our work cut out for us.”

  “What do you mean?” Aunt Rachel asked.

  “The Reapers all obeyed Agrona and her lieutenants, but now that she’s dead and the others are in prison, there’s no one left to keep the remaining Reapers in check.” Linus rubbed his head, as though it were suddenly aching. “Many of the Reapers have become bolder and more violent than ever before. Slaughtering mythological creatures to sell their fur, teeth, and talons on the black market. Kidnapping wealthy mythological citizens and holding them for ransom. Murdering Protectorate guards. Some Reapers have even been stealing from regular mortals, robbing banks, jewelry stores, and the like.” He sniffed, indicating how low-class he thought that was.

  What he was saying made sense, but
it certainly didn’t make me feel any better. Then again, I imagined that Linus felt worse and had more guilt about the Reapers than anyone else, since Agrona, his former wife, had only married him so she could spy on the Protectorate. Linus had finally discovered the horrible truth about Agrona but not before she had almost turned Logan, his son, into her Reaper puppet.

  “But I thought that things would be better once Loki was gone,” I said. “That the Reapers would collapse without him. That we would all finally be safe.”

  Linus shook his head. “I had hoped that as well, but it hasn’t turned out that way. In fact, things have gotten far worse than we ever imagined they would.”

  “Worse how?” I asked.

  “From what we’ve learned over the past few months, a secret group has existed within the Reapers for years, people who were never really interested in freeing Loki but just used the other Reapers as a way to hide their own evil actions,” Linus said. “These Reapers didn’t participate in the final battle against the god, even though they were at the North Carolina academy.”

  “So what did they do?” Aunt Rachel asked.

  “Their goal was something far more sinister: stealing as many artifacts from the Library of Antiquities as they could while everyone else was busy fighting.”

  Linus hit some more buttons, and yet more security-camera photos popped up, this time showing Reapers smashing into glass display cases in the library, grabbing the weapons, armor, and other objects inside, and leaving with them.

  “Given the overall destruction at the academy, we didn’t uncover the thefts for several days,” he continued. “By that point, this secret group of Reapers had completely vanished and had gone back underground to resume their normal lives in the mythological world the way they would after any battle. Only this time with the bonus of powerful magical artifacts.”

  Images of weapons, armor, and more appeared on the screens, flashing by one after another. The Reapers hadn’t just stolen a few trinkets—they’d swiped dozens of artifacts from the library. A shiver slid down my spine. A single artifact could cause plenty of damage in the wrong hands. I didn’t even want to think about all the people and creatures the Reapers could hurt and kill with this many artifacts.