Page 23 of Poseidon's Trident
“I’m not going back to no-man’s-land. Those damn dryads there are mean.” Raven crosses her arms.
“C’mon,” I say. “Maybe we can catch her in the quad before she gets behind the building.”
We race through the halls and luckily don’t encounter Cross or anyone else in the admin building. My skin is still crawling with the knowledge that someone here is working with the unknown enemy to kill me.
“Where’s Rebecca?’ I ask a random student but she shrugs.
“Let’s go to the dining hall and get some food. Rebecca always finds us when she wants to find us.” I sigh.
As we’re walking through the quad, the wind picks up and the trees sway overhead. The wind swirls almost like a tornado, knocking me into Raven. The clouds roll in faster than I’ve ever seen, and freezing rain slams into me immediately after.
“I can’t wait until these storms stop,” Raven yells over the howling wind.
“I know. Let’s get inside before it gets worse.” I rush to the doors of the dining hall and wrench them open.
We stumble into the dining hall soaking wet. I scan the room but don’t see Rebecca anywhere. She must be dealing with something like the cracks that opened up all over the academy. We go through the line and get to my table, but I notice Thad isn’t with us anymore.
“What is he doing?” I ask, turning to Thad’s table.
He’s sitting alone at the Poseidon table. I set my tray down and Jayden stiffens as he grabs my hand.
“Beth, let it go,” Jayden growls.
“You know he’s a part of this. He went into a fucking volcano to stop it from erupting.” I sit down in my seat.
“He has been more help than Draven was and we aren’t even on a mission yet.” Raven points her fork at Jayden.
“He also has a thing for you.” Jayden narrows his eyes.
“We’re just friends, Jayden.” I shake my head. “He hasn’t tried anything since his cocky stunt the first day we met. He’s all by himself over there and we need his help so be nice.”
Jayden’s shoulders stiffen as I wave Thad over to my table. Adrian walks in at the same time and heads to us as well.
Thad glances between me and Jayden and for a second, I think he’s about to refuse, but then he picks up his tray and stomps over, sitting on the other side of Raven, far away from me.
“Did you need something?” he asks.
“Yeah, sit your ass down. We need to figure out how to tell Rebecca that the academy is in danger, again.” I stab a piece of chicken with my fork.
“She’s not going to like it. She was less than pleased when we had to be the ones to find the shield,” Raven says.
“It has to be us,” Adrian pipes up.
“Did you have a vision?” I ask, sitting forward.
Adrian grimaces. “It’s all doom and gloom unless we go.”
“Well, that’s comforting,” Thad mumbles.
“So we just have to lay out the facts for her. If earthquakes like today happen again, then the volcano is going to erupt. Everyone will be trapped inside the wards and it will destroy the academy, our home,” I whisper.
“That about sums it up.” Raven takes a bite of her food and chews it slowly.
Mine is sitting like lead in my gut. We have to hurry. It seems like we’re always on a race against the clock. The storms started getting weird weeks ago. Why didn’t we go to get the trident when there was still enough time to make a plan?
“This sucks. Why is it always at the last possible second? Why can’t we ever go before the stakes are so high that there’s no hope to stop it?” I hang my head.
Jayden squeezes my shoulder. “It’s not impossible. We have stopped the other disasters and we’ll stop this one too.”
