Free Dark Frost by Jennifer Estep

touching stuff in his room—or wherever the images led me—until I did.
    While Daphne went into the living room to call her parents and tell them what had happened, Grandma Frost and I headed into the kitchen. With its sky blue walls and white tile, the kitchen was the brightest, cheeriest room in the house. But today, even it seemed cold, dark, and somber. I pulled out a chair and slumped over the table.
    “I made an apple pie while you were at the coliseum,” Grandma said. “Do you want some, pumpkin?”
    She gestured to a tin she’d put on the counter to cool. The pie sat in between a couple of cookie jars—one shaped like a giant chocolate chip cookie and the other like a blue snowflake. The snowflake jar had been my Christmas present to Grandma, as per our holiday tradition of giving each other something with a snowflake on it. Sort of a natural thing to do when your last name was Frost. This year, Grandma had bought me a long, dark gray wool scarf, gloves, and a matching toboggan, all patterned with glittery silver snowflakes.
    “Pumpkin? The pie?” Grandma asked again.
    “No, thanks. I don’t think I could eat anything right now.”
    Grandma Frost had some mad baking skills, and I had a serious sweet tooth, but even the warm, sugary pie couldn’t tempt me today. It just seemed wrong. To do something as simple as eat dessert after what had happened.
    “I know, pumpkin,” she said. “I don’t feel much like eating myself.”
    Grandma sat down at the kitchen table and clasped my hand in hers, just the way she’d done to Logan earlier. I closed my eyes and let the warmth of her love fill me up and wash away the awfulness of the day.
    “Does it ever get any easier?” I asked in a soft voice, opening my eyes. “Knowing how the Reapers hurt other warriors? Seeing ... what they do to people? After facing down Jasmine and Preston Ashton, I thought I knew what the Reapers were capable of. But today at the coliseum, it was just ... horrible.”
    Grandma shook her head. “I’d like to tell you that it does get easier, that you get used to the blood and violence, but I’d be lying. All I can do is be here for you, Gwen. I’ll always be here for you, no matter what—you can count on that.”
    I thought about my mom and how she’d told me the same thing. That she loved me no matter what and that she’d always be here for me, too. But my mom had been taken away from me, brutally murdered by the Reaper girl.
    My mom’s death wasn’t going to go unpunished.
    I didn’t care what I had to do, but I was going to find out who the Reaper girl really was—and then I was going to kill her. Maybe that made me no better than the Reapers, but I didn’t care. Not after what I’d seen today, not after the Reaper girl had laughed in my face about murdering my mom.
    But I forced myself to push those dark thoughts away, at least for now. Today, I was in Grandma Frost’s kitchen, and that was what I wanted to focus on. Tomorrow, I’d go back to Mythos Academy and start my search for the Helheim Dagger, but for today, we were safe. I was going to enjoy the calm while it lasted.
    Grandma and I sat there in the kitchen, just holding hands, for a long, long time.

Chapter 6
     
    Daphne finished her call to her parents and came into the kitchen, but none of us felt like talking or eating. The Valkyrie was still tired from her magic’s quickening and healing Carson, so she took a hot shower and went to bed even though it wasn’t even eight o’clock yet. Grandma did the same, and so did I.
    I wiped the steam off the bathroom mirror and stared at my reflection. Wet, wavy brown hair, a few freckles on my winter-white skin, and eyes that were a strange shade of violet. I’d washed off all the blood that had spattered on me during the attack and thrown my clothes in the trash, but the awful memories were still there, lurking just below the surface of my mind. I shivered and dropped my gaze from the mirror.
    Since I couldn’t