Kiss of Frost by Jennifer Estep Read Free Book Online

the rest of campus put together. Gryphons, gargoyles, Gorgons, dragons, a Minotaur, and other mythological creatures that I didn’t even know the names for. The statues covered the library from the bottom balcony, which wrapped all the way around the building, to the top of the roof, with its towers and their swordlike points. And they weren’t just simple stone figures. No, the statues all looked, well, violent, with big eyes, bigger teeth, and razor-sharp claws.
    Maybe it was my Gypsy gift, but I always felt like the statues were watching me and tracking my steps with their open, angry eyes, just like the sphinxes at the front gate. That if I so much as brushed them with my fingertips, the cold monsters would somehow spring to life, leap out of their stone shells, and rip me to pieces.
    It wasn’t a good feeling.
    I pulled my gaze away from the two gryphons positioned on either side of the gray stone steps and hurried into the building, through a short hallway, and past the open double doors that led into the library itself. Instead of walking down the wide, main aisle toward the study tables and offices, I turned and headed for a quiet area in the back.
    My spot, as I’d come to think of it, wasn’t much to look at. Just another patch of floor in between the tall bookshelves that filled the library’s many levels. Once, there had been a glass case here, one of hundreds that were scattered throughout the library and full of artifacts—weapons, jewelry, clothing, armor, and more—that had been used or worn over the years by various mythological gods, goddesses, heroes, villains, and monsters. Now, the case was gone, smashed to bits in my fight with Jasmine Ashton, although Vic, the sword who’d been inside it, was safe in my dorm room.
    But the empty spot where the case had been wasn’t the only thing of interest. I tilted my head, looking up at the person I’d come back here to see: Nike, the Greek goddess of victory.
    Well, it wasn’t really her , of course—just a thirty-foot-tall statue carved out of white marble. Statues of all the gods and goddesses from all the cultures of the world ringed the second-floor balcony. They were separated from each other by slender, fluted columns and stared down at the first floor of the library and all the students studying below. Every god and goddess you could think of was here. Norse ones, like Sol, Thor, and Freya. Greek ones, like Ares, Zeus, and Apollo. Egyptian ones, like Anubis, Ra, and Bastet. And tons more gods and goddesses who I’d never heard of before I’d come to Mythos.
    The only one who wasn’t represented in the circular pantheon was Loki, the Norse trickster and chaos god, and there was an empty spot where his statue would have been. Loki had done a lot of bad, bad stuff back in the day, like getting another god killed, trying to take over the world, and blah, blah, blah. They didn’t build statues of you when you were the equivalent of a comic-book supervillain.
    I’d met Nike a few weeks back, during the whole Jasmine situation. The goddess had appeared to me in the library and asked me to be her Champion, to be her hero here in the mortal realm, to help her fight Reapers of Chaos and other assorted bad guys.
    The statue looked the same as Nike had the night she’d shown herself to me—hair falling past her shoulders; a long, flowing gown covering her strong, slender body; a crown of laurels resting on top of her head; feathery wings attached to her back. The goddess was the embodiment of victory, and she was cold, hard, fierce, and beautiful, all at the same time.
    “Hi, Nike,” I said in a low voice. “Hope you’re having a good day up there on Mount Olympus or wherever you are. You know, eating lots of ambrosia, playing harps—things like that. Whatever goddesses do to have fun.”
    The statue didn’t do or say anything, and I didn’t really expect it to. Still, every time I came into the library, I stopped a moment to speak to the