Touch of Sibyl

Chapter Thirty.one

*Thwang!*

For the fifth time in as many tries, my arrow weakly thumped against the target, then bounced off and fel to the gym floor.

"No, no, no," Ken said, shaking his head. "How many times do I have to tel you? Using a bow is just like using a sword. You can't be timid about it, Ava. You have to pull back the string and let the arrow go like you really mean it. Otherwise, you're not going to get enough power to make your arrow go through your target."

"Yeah, Ava," Otis sniped. "You want to kill Chitauries, not make them die laughing at you."

I ignored Oris's snide comment, focused on Ken's advice, and blew a loose strand of hair off my face. "Power. Mean it. Right."

I'd been practicing for the last fifteen minutes with a long, curved bow, while the Spartans had looked on and called out advice. Surprisingly, my aim was decent enough to let me hit the outer rim of the target, but I had yet to actually have an arrow stick in it. They all kept bouncing off. Ken claimed it was because I wasn't pulling the string back far enough and giving the arrow enough force to penetrate the target. I thought it was because I was just as bad at archery as I was at swordplay. I got good grades.

Why did I have to be coordinated, too?

"Here," Ken said, handing me another arrow. "Let's try again."

Ken shook his head at Otis, who snickered. I sighed and nocked the arrow.

One of the gym doors squeaked open, and Zac stepped back inside. But he wasn't alone—Samantha Warren was with him.

Samantha was a gorgeous Amazon, with intense green eyes and a mane of red hair that blazed down her back in a sunset of ringlets. She also happened to be Zac's current squeeze-one in a long, long line if you believed the gossip around campus.

Zac had a reputation for being one of the resident manwhores at Mythical Academy—the kind of guy that girls just couldn't resist and didn't real y want to anyway. He certainly looked the part with his piercing, ice blue eyes; thick, ink black hair; and muscled body. He practically oozed bad-boy charm, even when wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants like he was now. One of the rumors that had gone around campus back in the summee was that Zac signed the mattress of every girl that he slept with at Mythics, just so he could keep them all straight.

Zac stood in the gym doorway, smiling down at Samantha.

The Amazon toyed with his shirt, sliding her hand back and forth across his sculpted chest. My fingers tightened around the bow, and ugly, jealous anger burned in the pit of my stomach.

Zac and I had almost had a-a- thing a few weeks back.

A freaking moment. Okay, several moments. The Spartan had gotten into the habit of saving my life, first when a Nemean panther had tried to turn me into catnip, and then later on when a Valkyrie had wanted to kill me for messing up her evil plans. Bad-boy charm I could deal with, but saving my life? Twice? That was a little tougher to forget. I'd fallen hard for Zac as a result, even going so far as to ask him out.

He'd turned me down flat.

Zac had claimed that I didn't know what Spartans were really capable of, that I didn't know what he was capable of, and that he wasn't the hero I thought he was.

Whatever. If he didn't like me, he could have just said so.

Instead he'd given me some lame excuse that he had a deep, dark secret that would scare me off. I'd once picked up a girl's hairbrush and had seen her stepfather sexually abusing her. I was willing to bet Zac's secret wasn't nearly as horrible as that, but nothing I'd said had convinced him otherwise. Nothing I'd said had convinced him to take a chance on me-on us.