Page 101 of Artemis' Bow
Walking into the nearest bedroom, I toss my bags on a chair and rifle through one to find a new shirt. The one I’m wearing is shredded down the back and I’m shocked it didn’t rip off completely in the middle of the battle.
I grab clean clothes and head into the en suite to quickly shower and change. My stomach rumbles again and the scent of fresh Mexican food hits my nose as I turn off the water and reach for a towel.
My stomach complains loudly again, and I rush to dry off and get dressed. Pulling open the door to the living area, I come face-to-face with Jayden. He smiles at me and wraps his arm around my back, pulling me over to the couch, then sits me on his lap.
“It’s better so everyone has somewhere to sit.” He grins.
“That’s a lie, but I’m not complaining.” I kiss his cheek.
The others all trickle into the room after freshening up and take seats around the coffee table. Thad hands me a plastic bag with more food in it than I can probably eat but I happily take it. I pull out two tacos to give to Jayden, but he shakes his head.
“Those are for you, love.”
“Okay,” I say, not sure if I can eat all of this but my stomach protests again and I shrug, biting into the crunchy goodness.
We all eat in silence for several minutes. Before long, I have eaten everything in the bag. Raven and Kira stare at me in wide-eyed disbelief.
“What? I told you I used a lot of energy.” I shake my head.
I set the empty bag on the table in front of me and glance at Dax. “What happened?”
“We left after the other team,” he starts, and I nod.
I’m not sure what that has to do with anything until he goes on.
“We were on the route you gave us to Chicago and had been on the road for two days before they attacked.” He glares at the coffee table like it stole his lunch money.
“What attacked you? That route should have been clear,” I say, glancing at Adrian who shrugs.
“Not what, who. The other team attacked us on our way to Chicago.” Kira wrings her hands.
“What?” I yelp and jump up from Jayden’s lap. “What do you mean the other team attacked you?”
“They pretended like they were lost but they were nowhere near going in the direction you sent them. I noticed somethingoff with my brothers. It was like their eyes and voices were blank and devoid of their own personalities.” Dax shakes his head.
“They cut us off in the street and told us they lost their map and were lost, but then they attacked us, and we lost our map in the scuffle. There was something wrong with them.” Kira rubs her temples. “It was like they were being controlled.”
“Mind-control again?” I ask, throwing my hands up in the air.
“Not all of them,” Draven says. “Mia didn’t have the same magical signature on her as the others did.”
“Of course she fucking didn’t. That bitch betrayed us,” I snarl. “This is all Chiron’s fault. I told him we didn’t need to send any other teams out, but he wouldn’t listen. I also raised concerns about that psycho being on a team but again he didn’t listen.”
“She’s not smart enough to pull this off on her own, B,” Raven says. “She had to have help, powerful help. My guess is that when she didn’t get her way, she reached out through Iris.”
“Probably but she has information on our battle training and the students who don’t really want to fight or train. They could use that shit to their advantage.” I kick the wall lightly, wishing I could punch that bitch in the face.
“You know they will use everything they have at their disposal against us, Beth,” Kira says. “But we will use everything we have as well. They won’t get away with this.”
“That’s not everything,” Olly says.
“There’s more?” I ask. “How can there be more?”
“Yeah, we were lost in the middle of nowhere without a map for a day or two, who can tell with the sun always out, and then Olly had a random vision.” Dax flexes his fingers.
“Olly had a vision?” I tilt my head to the side. “Have you ever had a vision before?”
“No, that has never been one of my gifts.” Olly shakes his head. “It was a dire warning that something bad was going to happen to you if we didn’t get here. There was a map to where we found you embedded in my brain.”
