Crimson Frost (Mythos Academy #4)(9)
Author: Jennifer Estep

The coach turned, held out his hands, and stopped someone else from coming through the door behind him. "Sorry, Logan. This is as far as you and your friends can come. Don’t worry. This won’t take long."

Behind Ajax, I saw Logan standing out in the hallway. A few pink sparks of magic crackled in the air beside him, telling me that Daphne and probably Carson were out there as well.

The Spartan stood on his tiptoes and looked over Ajax’s shoulder at me. "Gypsy girl!"

"I’m okay!" I called out in a shaky voice. "I’m okay!"

Logan, Daphne, and Carson all started talking at once, yelling at me that things were going to be all right, but Ajax ignored them and shut the door, cutting off their protests.

For a moment, everything was silent.

Then, Linus shook his head and turned to Nickamedes. "I hoped by sending him to school here that you could keep him out of trouble. But apparently, that hasn’t happened."

Nickamedes stiffened at his words. The librarian was Logan’s uncle on his mom’s side of the family. In fact, Nickamedes looked like an older, more serious version of Logan with his black hair and blue eyes.

Linus kept staring at him. "Larenta would be so disappointed in you for not protecting Logan better than you have."

Anger blazed in the librarian’s eyes, his hands clenched into fists, and he took a menacing step forward, like he wanted to punch Linus. I knew the feeling.

"Don’t you dare bring Larenta into this," Nickamedes snapped. "I still don’t understand what my sister ever saw in you, you pompous, arrogant-"

"Enough." Metis stepped forward and put her hand on Nickamedes’s shoulder. "That’s enough. From both of you. Arguing amongst ourselves isn’t going to solve anything."

"No, it won’t," Linus agreed. "Glad to see you still have that level head on your shoulders, Aurora."

Metis grimaced, but she nodded, accepting his faint compliment. Still, unless I missed my guess, she didn’t like Linus any more than Nickamedes did. I wondered why, what had happened between all of them, and if it had anything to do with my mom.

"But I still say that you’re making an enormous error," Metis said. "Gwen is not working with the Reapers, and she certainly did not free Loki on purpose."

"Yes, it’s the on purpose part that troubles me the most," Linus murmured. "That’s what I’m here to get to the bottom of."

He started to walk over to me, but Metis planted herself in front of him.

"You march into my office this morning with no warning that you were coming to campus. Then, you tell me that you’re here to arrest and put one of our students on trial for conspiring with the Reapers," she said, her hands on her hips. "You don’t tell me who the student is, but leave me and the others to find out at the assembly along with everyone else."

"So?" he asked. "All of those things are within my right as head of the Protectorate. You know that, Aurora. As for why I didn’t tell you who the student was, it’s come to my attention that you’ve become quite . . . fond of Miss Frost. I didn’t want you to do something foolish like warn her and give her a chance to escape justice."

Metis went completely tense and rigid, and it took her a moment to unclench her jaw. "So I want answers," she snapped. "Who made these accusations against Gwen? Why? What proof do they have?"

"You’ll find all that out soon enough," Linus said. "Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to explain things to the girl so that she doesn’t cause us any more trouble in the meantime."

Metis opened her mouth as though she was going to keep arguing, but after a moment she pressed her lips together and stepped aside. There was nothing she could do or say that would get him to change his mind. I knew it as well as she did.

Linus headed over to the table, followed by the others. Only Raven remained at her desk by the door, still reading. Every once in a while, she would glance in our direction, apparently wondering if the drama here would be as good as what was in her magazine.

Linus sat in the chair across from me. Sergei, Inari, and Alexei arranged themselves behind him, while Metis, Nickamedes, and Ajax trooped over and stood off to my right on my side of the table. Linus plucked a pair of reading glasses from a pocket on his shirt. He put them on, then reached into the folds of his gray robe. This time, he drew out a piece of white parchment, which he unrolled and spread out on the table between us.

"Gwendolyn Cassandra Frost," he said, reading from the parchment. "You are hereby charged with crimes against the Pantheon, including, but not limited to, conspiring with other Reapers of Chaos to kill your fellow students at the Crius Coliseum, stealing artifacts from the coliseum, absconding from the academy with the Helheim Dagger, and most serious of all, using the dagger to release Loki from Helheim. How do you plead to these charges?"

For a moment, I simply couldn’t speak. It was like I’d been sucker punched in the stomach by a Valkyrie, and all the air had been driven out of my lungs. My mouth opened and closed, and opened and closed again, but no words came out. I couldn’t utter so much as a freaking syllable. I hadn’t done any of those terrible things-not a single one of them.

Sure, I’d been at the coliseum, but only because I’d been trying to complete an assignment for Metis’s myth-history class. Everything else that had followed had been the doing of Vivian Holler, another second-year Mythos student. The Gypsy who was Loki’s Champion. The girl who’d murdered my mom.

I didn’t know where Vivian was right now, since she’d escaped with Loki the night she’d freed him, but I could almost hear her laughing. Somehow, someway, she had managed to convince the Protectorate that I was to blame for everything she’d done, all the lies she’d told, all the people she’d hurt, all the kids she’d killed. I knew Vivian was a good actress, but this was above and beyond even for her. Bravo, Viv. Another masterful performance.

I started to tell Linus all about Vivian, but Metis beat me to the punch.

"These charges are utter nonsense," she said. "Gwen is not a Reaper. The three of us know it, along with Raven, and you would too, if you’d spent any time with her. If you’d even bothered to ask us, before you decided to stage that ridiculous display in the amphitheater."

Nickamedes and Ajax nodded, backing up Metis. At her desk, Raven waved her hand, seeming to agree as well, although she kept right on reading her magazine.

"And the Protectorate will decide for itself what the girl is and isn’t, and what she has and hasn’t done," Linus said in his cold, calm voice, the one that infuriated me more and more with every word he spoke. "Obviously, the three of you cannot be objective where she’s concerned. And neither can my son."