Crimson Frost (16 page)

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Authors: Jennifer Estep

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic

BOOK: Crimson Frost
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Chapter 16
Linus shuffled some papers around on the table, while the others did the same. Everyone except for Raven, who seemed to be reading another one of her celebrity gossip magazines. At least, I thought I saw a bright, glossy cover hidden in among the stacks of papers in front of her. She noticed me watching her and gave a little shrug. Good to know she was taking this so seriously.
While the Protectorate got ready to start, I stared up at the domed ceiling. Maybe it was a trick of the lights, but the hand holding the set of scales looked particularly prominent today, almost like the hand was straining to punch through the stone above my head. As I watched, a soft
creak
filled my ears, and the scales began to tilt to one side, as if I’d already been found guilty. It fact, it seemed like the scales were dropping lower and lower, almost as if they might erupt out of the ceiling and crash down on my head, crushing me where I sat—
I blinked, and the carving was just a carving once more, and the scales were perfectly balanced. Sometimes, my Gypsy gift made me see things that weren’t really there, like the pictures that always seemed to come to life in my myth-history books, but those tilting scales had been creepy, even for Mythos. I shivered and dropped my eyes from the ceiling. Or maybe I was just especially freaked out because of what was at stake right now—my life.
Finally, all the papers were shuffled, and all eyes turned to me. Grandma Frost tightened her grip on my hand, letting me know that she was there for me no matter what. I gently squeezed her fingers.
Linus banged the gavel once more. “Let us begin,” he said. “Bring out the basket.”
Basket? What basket?
Raven got to her feet, walked down the dais steps, and headed over to one of the cells. She punched in a code, and the glass
whooshed
back. The old woman stepped into the cell, bent down, and picked up a small wicker basket that I hadn’t noticed before. She turned and carried the basket over to the stone table where I was sitting. Raven glanced over her shoulder at Linus, who nodded at her to go ahead.
The old woman took the top off the basket, stuck her hand inside, and brought out a snake.
I let out a gasp and lurched back in my chair.
“Easy, Gwendolyn,” Nickamedes said in a low voice. “This is just part of the process. Don’t worry. You have nothing to fear.”
“Now,” Linus said. “Shackle the girl to the table.”
“Shackle me?” I asked. “Why?”
He ignored my question. “Ajax, if you will.”
Coach Ajax grabbed something from under the table. He stood up, and I realized that he was holding a set of handcuffs attached to a long chain. Ajax came over to the interrogation table and put the cuffs and chain on top of it. The harsh
clink-clink-clank
of the metal rattling together made me wince.
“Hold out your hands, Gwen,” the coach said. “Please.”
I bit my lip and looked at Grandma and Nickamedes. They both nodded, indicating that I had to do this. I reluctantly held out my hands, and Ajax clinked the handcuffs around my wrists, then secured them and the chain to the stone ring in the top of the table.
I drew in a breath and waited for my psychometry to flare up and show me all the awful memories of everyone who’d worn the cuffs before me—but nothing happened. I got an idea of the cuffs being made, and Ajax handling them with a sense of regret, but that was it. No other memories, no other feelings, were associated with either them or the chains. My breath hissed out in relief.
“I made sure they were brand new,” Ajax said in a low voice. “And not the ones we used on Preston.”
I nodded, grateful for his thoughtfulness. I’d been in Preston’s head plenty of times, but I had no desire to feel what he had when he’d been shackled to the interrogation table, to experience all his rage and hatred of me.
Linus gestured to Raven, who stepped forward with the snake. Before I could open my mouth to ask what she was doing, the old woman held the creature out, and the snake sank its fangs into my right wrist.
“Ouch!” I shrieked. “It bit me!”
I yanked my hands away from the snake as far as I could and stared down at my wrist. Two drops of blood trickled out of the puncture marks and spattered onto the table, but the stone soaked up the crimson liquid like a sponge. I expected the wounds to start throbbing, but to my surprise the bite didn’t hurt all that much. Instead, it felt more . . . uncomfortable, like a couple of IV needles had been slipped into my skin. I was also aware of a cool sensation flowing through my body, like some sort of medicine had just been injected into my veins.
Raven placed the snake on the table right in front of me. For a moment, I thought it was going to bite me again, but the creature ignored me, as though its job was done. I hadn’t noticed it before, but a small circle had been carved into the stone. The snake settled into the groove like the creature was familiar with it, like it belonged there. Its body curled around and around until its head finally came to rest on top of the table—an inch away from my fingers.
“That is a Maat asp,” Linus said. “Named after the Egyptian goddess of truth. Over the years, the Pantheon has discovered that the asp’s venom has an unusual property. It acts as a sort of truth serum and encourages people to answer honestly—or suffer the consequences.”
Well, I guess that explained the cold sensation that continued to spread through my body. “Consequences?” I asked. “What consequences?”
“If you tell the truth, the venom is harmless, and your body will flush it out in a few hours,” Linus said.
“And if you don’t tell the truth?”
“Every time you tell a lie, the venom heats up a little more in your veins, like liquid fire, until it can feel like being burned alive from the inside out,” he answered. “It’s quite painful, from what I’ve seen.”
So they were going to torture the truth out of me. Trial by fire, indeed. Great. Just great.
“The asps themselves also have an unusual ability,” Linus continued. “They can sense whether or not someone is telling the truth, and they act accordingly.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“When someone tells the truth, the asp will do them no harm,” he said. “But when someone lies, the asp gets quite agitated. The more a person lies, the more agitated the asp becomes until it strikes out at the person who is lying. That second bite acts as an immediate trigger for the poison already in your veins. Death is often thought of as a blessing. Those lucky—or unlucky—enough to survive a second bite from a Maat asp often wish they hadn’t.”
“And why is that?” I couldn’t help but ask the question.
“The side effects are quite brutal and include everything from permanent paralysis to rotting limbs,” Linus said. “The effects vary from person to person. No one knows exactly why, except that ironically enough, the punishment usually fits the crime. For example, if a Reaper is caught stealing artifacts and lies about it, the asp’s bite will usually make a finger or two rot and fall off. Sometimes, a Reaper’s whole hand or arm. Like I said, most Reapers who survive that second bite wish they hadn’t—or that they’d just told the truth to start with.”
I eyed the snake. I’d been face-to-face with Nemean prowlers, Fenrir wolves, and even a Black roc, and the Maat asp seemed like a harmless little garden snake in comparison to the massive size of the other mythological creatures. In fact, the asp’s shimmering blue and black scales made it look quite dainty and pretty, almost like a jeweled bracelet you could wear around your wrist. The creature blinked sleepily at me, its eyes the same deep, vivid blue as its scales. Its black tongue flicked out of its mouth, tasting the air. I wondered if it could sense my fear. The emotion was probably radiating off me like anger had off the other students for the past few days.
“As long as you tell the truth, you’ll be fine, Miss Frost,” Linus continued. “Keep in mind that you lie to us at your own peril.”
Yeah, I’d gotten that message loud and clear. I swallowed and looked at Grandma Frost, who patted my shoulder.
“It’s okay, pumpkin,” she said. “That itty-bitty snake can’t hurt you because you’re innocent. Soon, these fools will realize it too.”
Linus arched his eyebrows at my grandma, who gave him a serene smile in return. He shuffled a few more papers around on the table before looking at me again.
“Now,” he said. “The first accusation against you is that you murdered another student. Jasmine Ashton, a Valkyrie in your second-year class. According to the charges, Jasmine found out that you had stolen an artifact called the Bowl of Tears from the Library of Antiquities back in the fall. She was attempting to stop you from sacrificing another student, Morgan McDougall, to Loki, and you killed her for it. Is that correct?”
Is that correct . . . correct . . . correct . . .
His words echoed in my head over and over again. It was almost like he was speaking a foreign language because it took me several seconds to process the words. To realize what he was really saying—and what he was actually accusing me of.
I shook my head. “No—no way. I didn’t do any of those things. That’s not what happened—not at all. Jasmine is the one who stole the Bowl of Tears, not me. I was the one who realized that she was planning to sacrifice Morgan. I was the one who stopped her, not the other way around.”
“And why would Jasmine want to kill Morgan?” This time, Inari was the one who spoke. “According to our reports, the two Valkyries were friends—best friends.”
“Because Jasmine found out that Morgan was messing around with Samson Sorensen, Jasmine’s boyfriend,” I said. “And because Jasmine was a Reaper and that’s what Reapers do. You guys should know that better than anyone.”
“Keep the editorial comments to yourself, Miss Frost,” Linus said. “We are not the ones on trial—you are. You would do well to keep that in mind.”
I clamped my lips together to keep from telling him what I really thought about him, the Protectorate, and this stupid trial.
“But you don’t deny that you killed Jasmine by shoving a spear through her chest?” Agrona asked.
I hesitated. I wasn’t the one who’d actually killed Jasmine—Logan was. The Spartan had saved me that night, first by killing the Nemean prowler, a big, black, panther-like creature, that Jasmine had sicced on me and then by killing the evil Valkyrie herself. I didn’t want to get him in trouble, especially not with his dad, by telling the Protectorate what had really happened. I didn’t want Logan dragged in here and facing the same sort of torture that I was—but I didn’t want to die by snake bite either.
The Maat asp raised its head, and its tongue flickered out of its mouth again, almost like it was about to test the truthfulness of my words. I couldn’t lie, not with the snake an inch from my hand and the cold venom running through my veins, just waiting to ignite.
Desperate, I looked around the prison, as if the empty glass cells would give me some idea how to get out of this mess, but of course they didn’t. Neither did glancing at Grandma Frost, Nickamedes, or the hand-and-scales carving. Finally, my gaze dropped to the cuffs and chains, which made me think of Preston. He used to scream and struggle whenever I came down to the prison to peer into his mind with my magic. Vivian had told me what had upset Preston so much was knowing there was nothing he could do to hide the truth from me.
The asp and its venom might be deadly, but for all its power, the snake didn’t have my Gypsy gift, my psychometry magic. All it had to go on were my words—just words and not any of the memories and feelings behind them. An idea popped into my mind, a way I could get through this—and keep at least some of my secrets to myself.
“Answer the question, Miss Frost,” Linus said.
No, I couldn’t lie—but maybe I didn’t have to.
“I fought with Jasmine,” I said, choosing my words carefully and sidestepping the question. “I had to or she would have killed me instead. And Morgan too.”
The asp eased its head back down, apparently satisfied with my answer. Okay, well that told me a little something about the rules of the game. Outright lying was a no-no, but omitting certain facts was just fine.
Magic. For all the ways it was supposed to be foolproof, it always seemed there was at least one loophole you could wiggle through, and I fully intended to exploit this one.
“But why did you destroy the Bowl of Tears?” Sergei asked. “It was a priceless artifact, one of the Thirteen Artifacts used during the final battle of the initial Chaos War. It was irreplaceable, yet you smashed it as if it was nothing more than a common dish.”
“I smashed it because Jasmine was kicking my ass, and the bowl was somehow feeding her power,” I said. “I thought if I broke it, that might stop whatever magic mumbo jumbo she’d started—and it did.”
The members of the Protectorate stared at me, doubt and disbelief filling their faces. Linus, Sergei, and Inari all stared at the asp, obviously expecting it to lunge forward and sink its fangs into me again, but a minute passed, then another one, and the snake stayed still on the table.
“Let’s move on,” Linus finally said.

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