Dark Frost (Mythos Academy #3)(34)
Author: Jennifer Estep

"You never made me a cozy bed like that," Vic said from his spot on the wall. "And I’m far more useful than a bloody wolf."

Nott stopped eating long enough to growl at him.

"That’s because you have a cool leather scabbard," I told the grumpy sword. "It’s your own little nest."

"Hmph!" Vic snapped his eye shut once more.

I sighed and went back downstairs, this time grabbing a bucket from underneath the sink in the common kitchen that all the girls in the dorm shared. I carried the bucket back up to my room, filled it with water, and let Nott drink as much as she wanted. Then, when most of the lights in the dorm had gone dark and everything was quiet, I snuck the wolf down the stairs and let her do her business outside the dorm before the doors automatically locked down for the night.

Finally, we were safe in my room. I thought about cracking open the gryphon book and getting started on the essay for Metis’s myth-history class, but instead, I found myself digging my mom’s diary out of my bag and curling up with it in bed.

Nott and Vic were both asleep, but I was too wound up to settle down, so I snapped on a light over my bed and started reading.

Today, I started my second year at Mythos Academy. … Those were the words on the diary’s first page. I snuggled down below my comforter a little more, ready for a long night of reading and hopefully forgetting about my own problems.

The diary went on from there, detailing the things my mom had done when she was seventeen and a second-year student at the academy like me. She wrote of her teachers and classes and how much she disliked Mrs. Banba, the moody economics professor.

I smiled, hearing my mom’s voice in her words, almost like she was here reading the diary to me like a bedtime story. It comforted me. I especially liked the pages that talked about her friendship with Metis. Apparently, the two of them had been quite the troublemakers during their days at Mythos. Mom even complained about getting a talking to by the Powers That Were at the academy after one of their stunts. A few photos had been stuck in the diary, too, mostly of my mom grinning at the camera or her and Metis with their arms around each other. I set those aside. I’d frame them later and put them with the other photos on my desk.

Still, as much as I enjoyed reading the diary, it didn’t give me any clues as to where my mom had hidden the Helheim Dagger. She never wrote anything about the artifact at all. The closest she came was when she mentioned an important mission she’d received from Nike. I thought she might have meant the dagger, and I scanned the surrounding pages, but she didn’t write anything else about the mission-not even if it had been a success or not.

But the diary did tell me one thing about my mom: She liked to doodle. Sketches and drawings could be found on almost every page, but they weren’t the usual hearts and flowers you’d expect to find.

Instead, my mom had drawn statues-all the statues that covered the buildings at Mythos Academy.

Gargoyles, Minotaurs, basilisks, dragons, chimeras, Gorgons. All those and more littered the diary, peeking out at me from the tops and bottoms of the pages or stretching down the spine. For whatever reason, my mom had especially seemed to like the gryphons that guarded the library steps. There were more drawings of the two of them than there were of all the other statues combined. Maybe my mom had been given an assignment like I had to research and write about the statues. That was the only reason I could think of for why she’d drawn them over and over again.

Despite the weird doodles and my frustration at not being able to find the dagger, just reading through my mom’s diary, just listening to her voice in my head and staring at her beautiful handwriting, made me feel a little better about, well, everything. Or maybe that was because I was holding the diary and soaking up all the images and feelings associated with it-everything my mom had felt and done. All the good times she’d had at the academy, and the bad ones, too. It was all a part of her and let me see my mom in a way I never had before, like watching old home movies of her as a teenager.

I didn’t want the feeling to end, so when I finally quit reading and turned out the light, I slid the diary under my pillow, curling my fingers around it. And I stayed like that until I drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 14

The next day was exceptionally average. Except, of course, for my aching heart. I made sure I was at the gym for weapons training ten minutes early, hoping to talk to Logan before the others arrived, hoping to tell him … something, anything that would fix this problem between us.

For once, the Spartan didn’t show up.

"Sorry, Gwen," Oliver said, slinging his bag onto the bleachers. "Logan texted me and said that he felt a little under the weather this morning."

"He’s not the only one," I muttered.

I knew the Spartan was avoiding me, and it looked like Oliver and Kenzie knew it, too, from the sympathetic looks they gave me. As if that wasn’t bad enough, we once again had an audience of first-year students, with even more kids than had been here yesterday. At least until they found out Logan wasn’t going to be training. After that, all the girls left.

I gritted my teeth and clutched Vic so hard my fingers went numb, just trying to get through the hour of torture.

The rest of the morning passed by in a boring blur of classes, lectures, and homework assignments until it was finally time for lunch. Carson had a special practice session to attend for the upcoming winter concert. The band geek was a Celt and had a magical talent for music, like a warrior bard. He automatically knew how to play every instrument he picked up.

So it was only Daphne and me at our usual table in the dining hall, although the Valkyrie just picked at her curried chicken salad croissant and ambrosia fruit salad.

"… and then he told me that I didn’t understand, that I would never understand, and basically broke up with me before we even got together. Can you believe it?" I muttered, griping about Logan.

I waited a second, but Daphne didn’t say anything. Instead, the Valkyrie stabbed another heart-shaped strawberry on her plate, although she didn’t actually eat it.

"And then Logan and I totally made out right there on top of one of the tables in the middle of the library," I finished. "In front of Nickamedes. What do you think of that?"

"Awesome," Daphne muttered. "Just awesome."

I waved my hand in front of the Valkyrie’s face, finally getting her to look at me. "What is wrong with you? You’ve barely said a word during lunch, and you’re not listening to me at all."

"Sure, I am," Daphne said. "It’s the same stuff you always talk about. You and Logan and your star-crossed relationship, and this big, important thing you have to do for Nike, because you’re her freaking Champion. Give it a rest, Gwen. You are not the absolute center of the universe. The rest of us have problems, too, you know."