Touch of Frost (Mythos Academy #1)(28)
Author: Jennifer Estep

"You’re supposed to block my blow and try to hit me back. Not drop your sword every single time I hit you." Talia Pizarro rolled her eyes at me. "Geez, Gwen. You really suck at this."

"Tell me something I don’t already know," I muttered.

At the start of gym class, we drew names to see who would fight whom. Talia had the misfortune of being my sparring partner today. She was an Amazon with ebony skin and short black hair who was almost six feet tall. Talia also happened to be the captain of the girls’ fencing team and could make a pincushion out of me with her sword if she really wanted to. Like all the other Amazons, she was gifted with supernatural quickness. Talia looked like a blur when she moved. One second, she was in front of me. The next, she’d hit me with her sword six times already.

"Let’s go again," Talia barked. "You might not get anything out of this, but I want to be able to pass my advanced weapons test next week."

Oh yeah. There were tests, too. I was actually being graded on how well I could chop off someone’s head or put an arrow through his eye. I’d prided myself on my perfect 4.0 GPA at my old school, but gym was one class at Mythos that I was definitely going to fail this semester and every other one. Students were required to take gym and all the weapons training that went with it every single semester until they graduated. Yippeeskippee.

Since Talia was looking at me with murder in her eyes, I sighed and picked up my sword again. I also used the lull in the action to look over to my left, where Morgan McDougall was sparring with her own partner, another Valkyrie girl.

Gym was the only class that I had with Morgan, and I’d been watching her all period long. Maybe it was nothing or maybe I was just crazy and grasping at straws, but I felt like there was some connection between Jasmine’s murder and that ripped-up photo of Morgan and Samson. Something obvious that I just wasn’t seeing.

I wasn’t the only one interested in Morgan. Half the guys in the gym kept sneaking looks at her, since Morgan filled out her tight, white T-shirt quite a bit better than most of the other girls did theirs. And Morgan totally knew that the guys were watching her. Ten minutes ago, she’d accidentally-on-purpose spilled water all down the front of her shirt, plastering the fabric to the black sports bra that she had on underneath.

Morgan and her partner finished their latest round of combat. Then, Morgan looked down at her diamondencrusted watch, said something to the other girl, and slipped out one of the side doors of the gym.

My eyes narrowed. Class wasn’t even halfway over yet. So where was the Valkyrie going?

"Hold this," I said, passing my sword to Talia and hurrying after Morgan.

"Hey! Where do you think you’re going?" Talia hissed, but I paid no attention to her.

It wasn’t like I even needed to be in gym class. I wasn’t descended from a long line of mythological warriors, and I certainly didn’t have anything to do with the Pantheon, Reapers, or the Chaos War. But I did want to find out what had happened to Jasmine, which was something that spying on Morgan might actually help me with.

I kept to the edges of the gym, so I wouldn’t draw attention to myself and the fact that I was trying to sneak outside in the middle of class. Since everyone else was absorbed in beating the crap out of each other, nobody noticed me.

Not even Logan Quinn, who was on the other side of the gym. Logan and Oliver Hector, another Spartan, were getting some pointers from Coach Ajax. The big, burly coach barked out some instructions, and the two guys bowed to each other before falling into crouching positions. Ajax held up his hand, then dropped it, and the two Spartans went at each other.

Smack-smack-smack!

The two staffs blurred together as Logan and Oliver fought, each turning, twisting, and doing his best to smash the other’s skull in with the blunt weapon. The fight lasted maybe thirty seconds before Logan did some kind of fancy move, used his staff to sweep Oliver’s feet out from under him, and darted forward, putting the edge of his staff against the other guy’s throat. Winner: Logan Quinn.

Ajax barked out something else and clapped his hands, apparently happy with his star pupil. Logan smiled and stepped back casually, elegantly twirling the staff in his hand like it was a cheerleader’s baton instead of a deadly weapon. Of course, he would love gym class. Beating up people was something that he seemed to excel at. Especially if you believed all the rumors about Logan and how wild, violent, and crazy he and the rest of his Spartan friends were.

And he looked good doing it. Logan wore a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, exposing the muscles in his arms. The deep blue color of the shirt also brightened his icy eyes, making them seem like they were almost glowing in his face, even all the way over here on the opposite side of the gym. Logan raised up the end of his T-shirt to wipe the sweat off his face, exposing his flat, muscled stomach.

For a moment, I stopped, completely mesmerized. Just … wow. All that and washboard abs, too. Ones that put Samson Sorensen’s to shame. I wondered if all the other Spartans at Mythos were as dangerous and sexy as Logan was or if he’d just been blessed with all the bad boy charm-

An arrow thunking into the target behind me snapped me out of my reverie. I shook my head and moved on. I wasn’t here to ogle Logan. I had a Valkyrie to spy on.

I hurried on and slipped out the same side door that Morgan had. The door led out to a small courtyard that connected the gym to the indoor swimming pool that was also part of the academy’s massive stone sports complex.

In addition to a variety of hyacinths and lotus trees, the courtyard featured a round fountain with marble nymphs that sprayed water up into the air in a continuous stream. Like all the other academy statues, the nymphs seemed a little too lifelike to me, as though they were a breath away from leaping out of the water and stabbing whoever was closest with their sharp pointed tridents. Through the long tendrils of their seaweedlike hair, their sly, narrowed eyes all seemed to turn in my direction, watching me. Creepy. Especially since they were all naked. Yucko.

I scanned the courtyard, but I didn’t see Morgan anywhere. Had she gone over into the pool area for some reason?

A soft giggle caught my attention, and I walked forward. A low voice murmured something, and the giggle came again, a little louder and a little flirtier this time. I slipped into the row of trees that lined one wall of the courtyard and followed the sound over to the far side, where a tall, twisting lotus spread its wide branches over the entire area. I drew in a breath and peeked around the tree.

Morgan McDougall and Samson Sorensen stood about twenty feet away from me, up against the back wall of the courtyard, half-hidden by a low bush.