Midnight Frost

myself down and forward, reaching, reaching, reaching for Vic—
    A black boot came down on top of the sword, stopping it from skidding any farther along the floor. My head snapped up, and I realized it wasn’t a Reaper looming over me—it was Rory Forseti.
    “Geez, Princess. Kind of hard to fight when you’re on your knees on the floor, isn’t it?” Rory sniped.
    I let out a breath and scrambled to my feet. “You scared me.”
    Rory’s eyes dropped to Vic. “Apparently so.”
    She leaned down and grabbed the sword. Instead of handing Vic back to me, she held up the weapon, studying the hilt. I tensed, wondering if maybe she really was a Reaper after all—and if she was about to use my own weapon against me.
    Vic’s eye snapped open, and he regarded Rory with a cold, suspicious glare. “What you looking at, chickie?” he asked.
    Rory jumped and almost dropped the sword. Her eyes bulged, and all of the color drained from her face. Vic had just given her a good scare. I snickered.
    That snapped Rory out of her fright. She glared at me. Still, it took her a moment to work up the courage to raise Vic once more and peer even closer at the weapon.
    “There’s—there’s some guy’s face in the hilt of your sword,” she said, an awed note in her voice.
    Vic rolled his eye. “Well, aren’t you the observant one?”
    I held out my hand. “His name is Vic, he talks, and he belongs to me.”
    “Yes, if you don’t mind, chickie, hand me back to the Gypsy,” he said. “I want to get the rest of my nap in, just in case we run across any more Reapers today.”
    Eyes wide, Rory stared at Vic a moment longer before carefully passing him over to me. I took the weapon from her and slid the sword back into the scabbard strapped to my waist.
    We stood there, staring at each other, and I studied her again. Black hair, green eyes, round face, pretty features. I wondered if she looked like her mom or her dad—my uncle.
    “What are you doing here?” I asked.
    She shrugged. “I snuck out of weapons training in the gym. I was bored.”
    Of course she was bored. Rory was like Logan, Oliver, Kenzie, Nickamedes, and Coach Ajax; she didn’t need a weapon to fight—or kill. She’d already proven that on the train when she’d whaled on all of those Reapers with just a crossbow and then the broken bits of it.
    Rory kept looking at me, her eyes scanning my features just like I’d done to her. I leaned against the shelf closest to me and stared right back at her. There were so many things I wanted to ask her—about her parents, about my dad, about why all the other kids had looked right through her as if she didn’t even exist. But I decided to play it cool, so I kept my mouth shut, even though I wanted to know all of her secrets—all of our family’s secrets—just the way I always did.
    “So you’re the famous Gwen Frost,” she finally said.
    “And you’re a Forseti.”
    Her mouth tightened. “You got something against the Forsetis?”
    “That depends. You got something against me?”
    Her scowl deepened. “Why would you say that?”
    “Because it seems like you think you know everything there is to know about me, and I don’t know anything about you.” I drew in a breath. “Except for the fact that we’re cousins.”
    Rory didn’t bat an eye at the news. “Yeah. So your dad and my dad were brothers. So what? It’s not like that makes us family. Not really.”
    “But don’t you want to know about me?” I asked. “About my dad? About the rest of my family?”
    She let out a bitter laugh. “Not if they’re anything like my parents. And besides, I know all about you already. Everybody’s been talking about you for weeks now. Ever since we heard about that Reaper attack at the coliseum near the North Carolina academy. Supposedly, you’re some kind of great warrior, Nike’s Champion, and all that.” She sniffed. “I haven’t been impressed so far.”
    My eyes narrowed. “Is that why you saved my life on the train? Because you weren’t impressed? Because you didn’t think I could defend myself?”
    Her eyes glittered with a cold, hard light. “I saved your life because the Reapers wanted you dead. Anything they want, I want the opposite.”
    “Really?” I asked. “Then why did the other kids talk about you like you were working with the Reapers when we got off the train? Why would they think that when you had just helped me and my friends defeat a bunch of them?”
    She tilted her