Kiss of Frost by Jennifer Estep Read Free Book Online Page A

goddess. I didn’t know if she actually heard me or not, but it made me feel a little better. Like maybe Nike was up there watching over me. Like maybe I was really worthy of the magic and trust she’d given to me.
    Like maybe I really could do some good as her Champion.
    I turned and headed for the center of the library. A long checkout counter split the main floor into two and separated one side of the enormous domed room from the other. A series of glassed-in offices lied behind the counter, while the open floor in front of it featured long tables for students to sit and study at. There was also a freestanding cart that sold coffee drinks, fruit smoothies, and sugary snacks. I breathed in, enjoying the warm, rich smell of the coffee mixing with the dry, slightly musty odor of the books.
    The curved ceiling of the library arched high overhead, and it always seemed to me like the building was much taller than its seven floors, like the library just kept going up and up and up until it touched the clouds. Other students claimed there were amazing frescoes painted on the ceiling, ones that depicted various mythological battles and gleamed with gold, silver, and jewels, but I’d never been up to the top floor to look for myself. From down here, all I could see were shadows.
    I’d barely put my messenger bag in a slot underneath the checkout counter when a door opened in the office complex behind me, and Nickamedes appeared.
    “You’re late, Gwendolyn,” Nickamedes snapped, crossing his arms over his chest. “As usual.”
    Nickamedes was the head honcho at the Library of Antiquities. If you were just looking at him, you’d think that he was cute, handsome even, with his black hair and blue eyes. For a fortysomething-year-old guy, anyway. But then he opened his mouth, and you realized just how uptight, prissy, and snobby he really was. The library was Nickamedes’s whole world, and he loved everything in here with an intense, devoted, detailed obsession. Well, everything but the students. Nickamedes didn’t really like anyone touching his precious books and artifacts, not even for class assignments.
    But the librarian was sort of stuck with me. Back when I’d first started going to the academy, Professor Metis had thought that working in the library would help me meet other kids and make friends. Not so much. Basically, I was Nickamedes’s free slave labor—and there was nothing he enjoyed more than bossing me around.
    Nickamedes had never really liked me and my smart mouth, but he’d come to actively hate me a few weeks ago. Jasmine Ashton had tried to kill me in the library, and, well, we’d torn up a lot of stuff during our struggle. Nickamedes despised anything that damaged his precious books. Seriously, the dude wouldn’t even crack one of their spines. I’d done far worse than that. I’d pretty much trashed the entire first floor. In fact, I was still shelving books from where I’d shoved a case of them onto Jasmine to try to keep her from running me through with her sword.
    “Well, Gwendolyn?” Nickamedes barked, tapping one of his long, pale fingers against his opposite elbow. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
    I rolled my eyes. I couldn’t exactly tell the librarian that I’d snuck off campus to go see my Grandma Frost, since that was against one of the Big Rules. But maybe I could sweeten up his sour mood. I rustled around in my bag, drew out the metal tin of cookies, popped off the top, and held it out to him. Surely the smell of chocolate would bring a smile to even his sharp, angular face.
    “Cookie?” I asked in a hopeful voice.
    Nickamedes’s expression just darkened. “You brought unauthorized food into the library, Gwendolyn?”
    I sighed, knowing that I was going to get the mother of all lectures now. Ah, well, I thought, biting into a cookie while Nickamedes glared at me. It had been worth a shot.

    Chapter 5

    After a five-minute, ear-blistering lecture from Nickamedes