Kiss of Frost (Mythos Academy #2)(15)
Author: Jennifer Estep

"Al right, al right," I groused again. "I’l talk to Metis tomorrow, and I’l go to the stupid Winter Carnival with you.

Just don’t expect me to like it."

Daphne grinned, and then stuffed another cookie into her mouth.

I stuck to my regular schedule the next day, Thursday; weapons training, bright and early, with Logan, Kenzie, and Oliver; breakfast in the dining hal with Daphne; then a ful day of classes. I eyed al the other students, wondering which one of them might real y be a Reaper, but no one paid me any more attention than usual. Which is to say, nobody noticed me at al . I wasn’t exactly one of the popular kids, and I certainly wasn’t pretty enough for the guys to check me out that way. Most people-like Helena Paxton and her snotty friends in the library last night-just thought of me as Gwen Frost, that weird Gypsy girl.

Final y, sixth period rol ed around, and I slid into my seat in Professor Metis’s myth-history class. Carson’s desk was right in front of mine, and he turned around to talk to me.

Carson was Daphne’s boyfriend, but he was my friend, too, since I’d helped hook them up in the first place. He was just an al

-around nice, sweet guy with a tal , lanky, six-foot frame and dusky brown hair and skin. He also happened to be a total band geek, and was the drum major for the Mythos Academy Marching Band, even though he was only seventeen and a second-year student, like me. Carson was a Celt, and had a magical talent for music, like some kind of warrior bard, although I’d never real y asked him about it, what kind of power he had, or what he could do with it.

"Are you excited about the Winter Carnival?" Carson asked, pushing his black glasses up his nose and peering at me with his dark brown eyes. "This wil be your first one, right, Gwen?"

"Yeah," I muttered. "And I’m just thril ed to death about it."

Carson frowned, picking up on my sour mood, but before he could say anything else, the bel rang, signaling the start of class. A few seconds later Professor Metis stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. Metis was of Greek descent, like so many of the kids and profs at Mythos. She was a short woman with a stocky body, bronze skin, and black hair that was always pul ed back into a high, tight bun. Today she wore a heavy fisherman’s sweater that was the same color green as her eyes behind her silver glasses.

"Good afternoon, everyone. Please open your books to page 251," Metis said. "Today we’re going to focus on some of the creatures that aided Loki during the Chaos War, and some species that the Reapers stil use today." I winced. Monster talk, in other words. Definitely not my favorite subject. Reapers were bad enough, but they were just people in the end. Okay, okay, people with magic, weapons, and seriously bad attitudes, but stil , just people.

It was the monsters-the mythological nightmares the Reapers trained to do their evil biddings-that real y creeped me out. I’d been face-to-face with a Nemean prowler, and I’d seen exactly how big, long, and sharp the kil er kitty-cat’s teeth and claws were. It was like a black panther on steroids. Prowler super-, superdangerous.

Gwen not so much. That was al I real y needed to know.

But there was no getting out of class, so I cracked open my myth-history book to the appropriate page.

"Now," Professor Metis began, "you al know about the Reapers of Chaos, those who serve the evil god Loki, and how they and Loki tried to enslave everyone centuries ago.

Their actions resulted in the long, bloody Chaos War, which had almost destroyed the entire world. Eventual y, the members of Pantheon banded together to battle Loki and his Reapers. Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, defeated Loki in single combat, and she and the other gods trapped him in a magical, mythological prison far removed from the mortal realm."

Metis looked at first one student, then another, making sure we were al paying attention. "We’ve also talked about how the Reapers are trying to free Loki, so the god can plunge the world into a second Chaos War… ." As the professor started her lecture, I once again thought about Jasmine Ashton and how she’d been a Reaper, along with the rest of her family. Before she’d died, Jasmine had told me there were other Reapers at the academy-

something that made my stomach quiver with dread even now. It was bad enough to know Reapers existed in the first place. It was another scarier thing to realize you went to class with them and had no idea who they were-or when they might decide to try and kil you.

Reapers were the reason why al the kids were at Mythos to start with. The students were the descendants of al the ancient warriors who’d helped defeat Loki the first time around, and they were here in case the god ever got free again. Al of the Mythos students had been training since birth to learn how to use whatever skil s or magic they had, so they could fight Reapers. Of course, I wasn’t a warrior like the other kids-not exactly-but I had my own magic: my psychometry, given to me by Nike herself.

I’d recently learned that al my ancestors had served Nike in some way, including my Grandma Frost and my mom, Grace. As a result, the goddess had gifted us with magic, which is what makes us Gypsies. My grandma had told me there were other Gypsies out there, other people with magic from the gods, but I’d never met any of them. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to either, since Grandma Frost had told me that not al Gypsies were good-some were just as evil as the gods they served.

Now, I was Nike’s Champion, picked by the goddess herself, and trying to carry on my family’s tradition, with no real clue how I was supposed to keep Bad, Bad Things from happening to me or anyone else.

"… the more you know about the creatures that the Reapers use, the better you’l be able to protect yourself and your loved ones from them," Metis finished the opening part of her lecture.

I shook off my troubling thoughts and focused on Metis’s words. For the next half hour, the professor talked about monsters

-lots and lots of freaking monsters. Wyverns, basilisks, dragons, yetis, even gigantic birds named Black rocs. She cal ed them al

"creatures," like she was being political y correct or something, but real y, they were monsters. Anything that had fangs longer than my fingers and that could breathe fire was definitely a monster.

"And on the next page we have one of the more interesting creatures-the Fenrir wolf," Metis said.

Books rustled as everyone flipped over to the next page, which featured a pen-and-ink drawing of the largest wolf I’d ever seen. Everything about it was just big-big eyes; big paws; big tail; and, of course, big, big teeth and claws. Al the better to eat me with. Because what kind of monster would it be if it couldn’t rip you to pieces and chew on your bones?