Kiss of Frost

Maybe it was dark and twisted of me, but I liked knowing other people's secrets. I liked the power that the knowledge gave me, especial y since I didn't have any of the wicked cool fighting skil s the other kids at Mythos did. Knowing other people's secrets was sort of an obsession of mine-



one that had almost led to me getting kil ed a few weeks ago.



It was also the reason I held on to Oliver's notebook now.



I'd total y expected the boredom and the frustration I'd sensed. Those were both emotions I'd felt many times before when I'd touched other kids' notebooks, computers, pens, and al the other ordinary, everyday objects they used to do their schoolwork.



But that warm, soft, fizzy feeling? Not so much. I knew what it was though: love. Or at least like- serious like.



Oliver had a major, major crush on someone, enough to write about that person in his notebook, and I wanted to know who it was. Since, you know, secrets were my own form of crack.



I concentrated on the notebook again, on that soft, fizzy, hopeful feeling, and a hazy image started to form in my mind, someone with dark hair, black hair-



"I said that was mine," Oliver growled, yanking the notebook out of my hand and breaking my connection to it.



The half-formed image abruptly vanished, along with that warm, fizzy sensation. My fingers grabbed for the notebook, but I only came up with empty air. Another second, and I would have seen who Oliver's mystery crush was. But the Spartan held the notebook up out of my reach, then grabbed his bag and shoved the notebook inside it. He was in such a hurry that he ripped the side of the bag's fabric. Oliver glanced up at me to see if I'd noticed.



I smirked at him in the same cocky, knowing way he had smirked at me a few minutes ago, when he'd been making fun of my T-shirt. Oliver's face darkened.



"What are you two doing?" Kenzie asked, coming out of one of the side doors and drinking from a bottle of water in his hand.



"Nothing," Oliver muttered, shooting me another cold look.



I rol ed my eyes and ignored him. Since coming to Mythos, I'd almost been run through with a sword and mauled to death by a kil er kitty cat. Dirty looks didn't faze me anymore.



"Where's Logan?" I asked.



"He'l be back in a minute. He said to get started without him," Kenzie said, his black eyes flicking back and forth between me and Oliver, wondering what was going on.



Oliver turned and stalked down to the other end of the bleachers, taking his bag along with him. Kenzie gave me another curious look, then went over to Oliver. The two of them started talking in low voices, with Oliver stil glaring in my direction.



The Spartan was clearly angry at me for touching his precious notebook and teasing him about who his mystery crush might be. Whatever. I didn't care what Oliver thought about me.



Besides, he'd started it by making fun of my T-shirt. I might not know how to sling a sword, but I could throw verbal daggers with the best of them.



After about a minute of talking, Kenzie and Oliver broke apart. They both headed toward the archery target, and Kenzie gestured for me to fol ow them. Apparently, I hadn't pissed them off enough to make them forget about the rest of our training session. Too bad.



Sighing, I got to my feet, ready to show the Spartans that I sucked just as much at using a bow as I did at swinging a sword.



Chapter 2



Thwang!



For the fifth time in as many tries, my arrow weakly thumped against the target, then bounced off and fel to the gym floor.



"No, no, no," Kenzie said, shaking his head. "How many times do I have to tel you? Using a bow is just like using a sword.



You can't be timid about it, Gwen. You have to pul back the string and let the arrow go like you real y mean it.



Otherwise, you're not going to get enough power to make your arrow go through your target."



"Yeah, Gwen," Oliver sniped. "You want to kil Reapers, not make them die laughing at you."



I ignored Oliver's snide comment, focused on Kenzie's advice, and blew a loose strand of hair off my face. "Power.



Mean it. Right."



I'd been practicing for the last fifteen minutes with a long, curved bow, while the Spartans had looked on and cal ed out advice. Surprisingly, my aim was decent enough to let me hit the outer rim of the target, but I had yet to actual y have an arrow stick in it. They al kept bouncing off. Kenzie claimed it was because I wasn't pul ing the string back far enough and giving the arrow enough force to penetrate the target. I thought it was because I was just as bad at archery as I was at swordplay. I got good grades.



Why did I have to be coordinated, too?



"Here," Kenzie said, handing me another arrow. "Let's try again."



Kenzie shook his head at Oliver, who snickered. I sighed and nocked the arrow.



One of the gym doors squeaked open, and Logan stepped back inside. But he wasn't alone-Savannah Warren was with him.



Savannah was a gorgeous Amazon, with intense green eyes and a mane of red hair that blazed down her back in a sunset of ringlets. She also happened to be Logan's current squeeze-one in a long, long line if you believed the gossip around campus.



Logan had a reputation for being one of the resident man-whores at Mythos Academy-the kind of guy that girls just couldn't resist and didn't real y want to anyway. He certainly looked the part with his piercing, ice blue eyes; thick, ink black hair; and muscled body. He practical y oozed bad-boy charm, even when wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants like he was now. One of the rumors that had gone around campus back in the fal was that Logan signed the mattress of every girl that he slept with at Mythos, just so he could keep them al straight.



Logan stood in the gym doorway, smiling down at Savannah.



The Amazon toyed with his shirt, sliding her hand back and forth across his sculpted chest. My fingers tightened around the bow, and ugly, jealous anger burned in the pit of my stomach.



Logan and I had almost had a-a- thing a few weeks back.



A freaking moment. Okay, several moments. The Spartan had gotten into the habit of saving my life, first when a Nemean prowler had tried to turn me into catnip, and then later on when a Valkyrie had wanted to kil me for messing up her evil plans. Bad-boy charm I could deal with, but saving my life? Twice? That was a little tougher to forget. I'd fal en hard for Logan as a result, even going so far as to ask him out.



He'd turned me down flat.



Logan had claimed that I didn't know what Spartans were real y capable of, that I didn't know what he was capable of, and that he wasn't the hero I thought he was.



Whatever. If he didn't like me, he could have just said so.



Instead he'd given me some lame excuse that he had a deep, dark secret that would scare me off. I'd once picked up a girl's hairbrush and had seen her stepfather sexual y abusing her. I was wil ing to bet Logan's secret wasn't nearly as horrible as that, but nothing I'd said had convinced him otherwise. Nothing I'd said had convinced him to take a chance on me-on us.



"Gwen? You want to shoot that arrow sometime today?"



Kenzie said. "We've only got fifteen minutes of practice time left."



"Sure," I muttered, turning toward the target.



Savannah's soft laughter drifted across the gym, making my anger burn a little hotter. If I'd been a Valkyrie, like my best friend, Daphne Cruz, princess pink sparks of magic would have been shooting out of my fingertips. That's what happened whenever Daphne got pissed about something



-and I was plenty pissed at myself right now for stil caring about Logan when he'd made it perfectly clear he didn't feel the same way about me.



I raised the arrow up to eye level and peered down the length of it at the target. Part of me was thinking about Logan, but the other part was thinking about Daphne and how she would have turned around and put an arrow in the Spartan's ass from al the way across the gym. Daphne was great with a bow. In fact, she was one of the best shots at Mythos and the captain of the girls'



archery team. An image flickered in my mind then, one of Daphne using the bow, instead of me-



"Any time now, Gwen," Kenzie said in an impatient voice.



"Yeah, come on, Gwen, while we're al stil young," Oliver sneered.



My anger flared up to supernova level at Oliver's snarky tone, so much so that I didn't think-I just let go.



THUNK!



The arrow hit the target dead center-perfectly in the middle of the black bul 's-eye. And this time it stayed there instead of thumping off and fal ing to the floor.



Beside me, Kenzie blinked. "How did you do that?" I frowned. "I don't know."



I real y didn't. Yeah, I might have been hitting the target al along, but only the outside edge, and none of my other arrows had even come close to sticking in it. But this one?



It had practical y skewered the target, with only the back half of the shaft now visible.



"Wel , whatever you were doing, do it again," Kenzie said, passing me another arrow.



"If you even can," Oliver chimed in.



I nocked another arrow and tried to remember what I'd just done. I'd been thinking about Daphne, of course, but it felt like more than that. It had almost seemed like I was ...



channeling her somehow. Or at least my memories of her.



My psychometry let me remember every single person and every single object I'd ever touched. Once I flashed on someone or something, those vibes, feelings, and emotions became part of me. I could think about those memories and cal them up at wil , replaying the images over and over again in my head with perfect color, picture, and sound every single time. That was one of the cool things about my magic. But the flip side to it and one of the not-so-cool things was that sometimes the memories just came out of nowhere and flooded my mind whether I wanted them to or not.



Either way, it was like having a photographic memory, only a lot freakier-especial y given some of the bad, bad stuff I'd seen.



But they weren't real y my memories. When I'd let go of the arrow, I'd been thinking about Daphne's memories, what she'd done and how she'd felt. I'd picked up her bow in her dorm room last week and had gotten a whole bunch of flashes of the Valkyrie competing at various archery tournaments.



I thought about Daphne again, this time real y focusing on her, picturing her at one of the competitions-how she'd held her bow, how she'd lined up her arrow and pul ed back the string, the electric thril of victory she'd felt every time her arrow had hit the target dead center. Then I lifted the bow and concentrated on my own shot.



Once again, my own arrow zoomed straight into the center of the target.



"Al right," Kenzie said, clapping his hands. "It looks like we're final y making progress with something." He grinned at me, and I returned his smile, even though I could see Oliver scowling behind him. I stil didn't understand exactly what I'd done, how I'd used Daphne's memories to help myself, but at least I'd hit the target again.



Yeah, it was kind of weird, but in a good way. It was certainly better than a lot of things I'd experienced since coming to the academy.



I turned around to see if Logan had noticed my success



-and saw him French-kissing Savannah in the gym doorway. The Amazon had her arms around his neck, and Logan had his wrapped around her waist, pul ing her even closer to him.



They kissed for another few seconds before Savannah drew back.



She grabbed the front of Logan's shirt and yanked him out of the gym. I didn't know where they were headed, but it was obvious what they were going to do-sneak in a make-out session before morning classes started.



Cold, bitter, aching hurt frosted my heart, piercing it the way my arrow had the target a few seconds ago.



"Gwen?" Kenzie asked, his voice soft and kind.



For once, even Oliver was quiet, instead of stinging me with some barbed remark.



Not everyone at the academy knew about my massive crush on Logan, but it had no doubt become painful y obvious to Kenzie and Oliver, since they'd watched me train with Logan for weeks now. Plus, they'd just seen my reaction to him leaving me behind to go tongue wrestle with another girl.



"I'm fine," I snapped, hating the fact that they knew how much I cared about Logan, hating the fact that I stil felt this way in the first place. "Let's keep practicing." Kenzie handed me another arrow. He didn't say a word.



Neither did Oliver.



Stil channeling Daphne's memories and my own anger, I put five more arrows dead center into the target before training time was over.



"Yo u have to come to Winter Carnival, Gwen. It's a Mythos Academy tradition. Everybody wil be there." I ignored Daphne and stabbed another miniscule piece of fruit in the delicate, white china bowl in front of me. The fruit was a vibrant yel ow color, with a strange, pointed shape. Definitely not kiwi. Maybe a star fruit? I brought it up to my nose and sniffed, but al I could smel was the sharp, sweet tang of the honey-vanil a-lime dressing. The weird fruit didn't look like it would kil me if I ate it. Then again, a lot of things at the academy seemed far nicer than they real y were.



Across from me, Daphne cut another dainty bite of an egg white omelet topped with chunks of fresh, buttery lobster; sauteed spinach; and thick crumbles of Feta cheese. The Valkyrie was actual y eating lobster for breakfast-and enjoying every single bite of it. Yucko.



Lobster was actual y one of the tamer things served in the dining hal . Caviar, escargot, and veal were among the daily offerings for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, along with tons of other fancy, froufrou foods. Even the regular dishes



-like lasagna, fried chicken, or the fruit salad I was eating



-always featured weird ingredients, strange sauces, and bizarre toppings. But the other kids loved al the exotic foods, since they'd grown up eating the expensive entrees with their obscenely rich parents. The Mythos students scarfed down snails the way kids at my old public high school had inhaled greasy pizzas, crispy fries, and thick cheeseburgers.