A/N: We changed their ages to both being thirteen. It makes the story work better. Thanks for your understanding.
Chapter 4
Kynan's Perspective
Virtually against our will, Lissie and I were herded out like cattle to the edge of the forests where campers were suiting up in armor. If everyone hadn't been laughing and joking around the whole time, it might've felt like we were all headed off to war (or to recreate some iconic, Ancient Greek battle, whichever you prefer).
The two swords I'd been admiring earlier had been brought out from the armory, as well as a basic set of armor that I knew would make me look like a complete dork. Lissie's weapons of choice and a set of armor had been brought out for her as well.
"Do you have any idea how to put these on?" I asked Lissie, tugging at my armor in confusion. Thankfully, she looked equally perplexed. It was nice to know I wasn't the only person around here who couldn't put on some armor in thirty seconds flat.
"Are you kidding me? These are impossible!" Lissie exclaimed. "How is everyone putting these on so fast? Are they part-time Stormtroopers or something?"
"If so, then I'd pick a lightsaber as my weapon," I remarked, struggling with one of the straps.
"You two look like you need a hand." Turning around, I was confronted with a cheerful-looking blonde guy and a dark-haired, dark-eyed boy who practically radiated evil. A shiver ran down my spine.
My voice caught, rendering me unable to answer. Lissie piped up, coming to my rescue. "If you're not busy, yeah."
The blonde guy moved to help Lissie with her armor (great, one more boy I'll have to keep an eye on), leaving the dark-haired boy to help me. Instead of physically showing me how to put on the armor, like the blonde guy did for Lissie, the dark-haired boy simply said, "Just fasten the buckles at the sides."
"You must be today's new campers. I'm Will, Apollo head counselor, and this is Nico, head of the Hades cabin," the blonde guy, Will, said, straightening up from helping Lissie with her armor.
"I'm Lissie," she introduced herself pleasantly, "I have no title. It's a little sad, really."
"How about head counselor of petty crimes, New York division?" I murmured sarcastically. I hadn't really intended for her to hear me, but I couldn't help a smirk when she scowled at me.
"Assbutt over here is Kynan," Lissie said. The eye-roll was so strong, you could hear it in her voice. "He's a prostitute. Just thought you ought to know, in case he tries to solicit something with you for a few bucks."
Will and Nico looked somewhat taken aback, and understandably so.
"Would you stop introducing me like that?" I half whined, half pleaded with Lissie. There was no real point to protesting, she would do whatever the hell she wanted and there was nothing I could do about it.
She sneered at me. "As long as it keeps annoying you, no can do, sweetheart."
Now Will and Nico just looked entirely unsure what to make of our relationship. The situation had begun to get awkward, with Lissie and I sassing each other's faces off and them standing to the side watching and wondering if I really did sell my body for a living. Lissie's title for me had started to make me wonder how much I was worth. I liked to think it was enough to get me at least another armful of CDs.
Luckily, the tension was shattered by Chiron's voice beckoning us all to gather around him. The crowd of demigods moved like a single giant mass, us among them.
"Now, you all know how much I hate reading off which cabins are on which team now that we have so many. Please stay with your cabins; your head counselors know which team you're on. The red team will be led by the Ares cabin, and the blue team by the Athena cabin. We'll begin in twenty minutes!" Chiron announced. The second he finished, the crowd melted into motion, with demigods moving in every direction.
"Where's our cabin?" I asked bluntly. Both Lissie and I were too short to see over anyone, which made it hard to find the rest of the Hermes cabin. Not to mention, we were both comparatively lightweight, and got bumped around easily by other campers.
"How am I supposed to know?" she snapped back. "I'm even shorter than you!"
". . . True."
"Hey, Lissie, Kynan! This way!" Connor Stoll's voice was like a blessing.
"Thank the gods," Lissie grumbled, darting toward Connor as quickly as lightning. Huffing in annoyance (what was it with this girl and leaving me behind?), I squeezed through the crowd after her, barely avoiding the ends of a few assorted weapons. Lissie, on the other hand, swerved around oncoming campers like a freaking ballet dancer.
Lissie and I stopped in a group of campers belonging to the blue team, which consisted of the Athena, Poseidon, Apollo, Hermes, Hades, Hecate, Tyche, and Hypnos cabins. I was immediately comforted by the presence of Percy and Annabeth. They appeared to be the blue team's leaders.
Annabeth was detailing a battle strategy to the other head counselors on the team. From the edge of the group, where Lissie and I stood, it was impossible to hear what she was saying. Thankfully, the meeting was short, and Travis Stoll appeared in front of us after another moment, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
"You two are going to help guard the flag, okay? Since it's your first game, we don't want to risk you guys getting hurt, especially since you haven't had any training yet," Travis announced with a smile.
"Guarding the flag? Seriously? That's like saying, 'Guard the Impala while we go slay demons!'" Lissie complained and I nodded vigorously.
Percy trotted on over, most likely just hearing a snippet of our conversation. "Ah, Jason told me all about your nonstop pop culture references." She grinned, evidently proud of herself. "Hey, I had to stand guard my first time too. So, it isn't too bad or unusual." With his need to hand over some friendly advice exerted from his system, he retraced his steps to go join Annabeth again.
Nobody else but Percy had taken notice of her noisy complaints, so disgruntled, she leaned over to me and hissed in my ear, "Screw that. They'll learn real quick: driver picks the music, and shotgun shuts his cake hole." That Supernatural reference must have been her attempt at a metaphor. It was amusing, but hardly poetic.
Now, it probably wasn't the most intelligent thing to egg Lissie on, but I was a little righteously indignant myself. So, I concurred, "Agreed. We both lived on the streets, we know how to fight."
"Damn straight!"
We played along at first- allowed them to settle us into the right positions, listened to them drone on and on about basic self-defense techniques, and we stoically kept our big fat mouths shut. And for Lissie, that final challenge was damn near impossible.
It was all dramatic when Chiron blew the obnoxiously loud conch shell thing-y (really, a regular, boring old whistle would work just as well) and everyone charged into battle like instead of some summer camp, they were a bunch of bloody-thirsty Spartans. Talk about taking a game way too seriously.
Lissie and I were left in a whole big windstorm of dust, all on our own. And when they meant "guard the flag," they weren't being all that honest, let me tell you. Those liars actually meant the general area only somewhat close to the flag, where the flag wasn't actually in our line of sight and we were essentially guarding a pile of shrubbery.
"Why're we here again?" Lissie grumped, fiddling for the thousandth time with the straps of her armor just for the sake of boredom. "C'mon, we're not that useless. We can do something."
"Apparently not," I sighed in return. I prepared myself for a long stint of bitching and moaning from my sole companion, and a whole lot of nothing from everything else.
Before Lissie could add anything else to the conversation, the sound of a twig snapping set us both on edge. "Do y'think someone's there?" I hissed into her ear, gripping my swords with sweaty, essentially useless hands.
"Only one way to find out." Lissie ditched our guard post (and me!) to follow the noise like a rambunctious puppy catching the scent of a bunny rabbit. She would probably not appreciate the comparison, so I chose to keep my muses to myself.
Hmmmm . . . I had two options. Follow the plan-less sass-master and possibly find myself in danger as well as abandon my only job, or maintain said job and succumb to unbearable boredom. Sue me, I picked the first one.
"Lissie, wait up!"
A half hour later later, I was hardcore regretting my impulsive decision. Turns out, the rustling we heard probably belonged to a rabid squirrel or something, but definitely not to a human being of any kind.
This would be all well and good if we hadn't gotten lost. "This looks familiar," I murmured as we passed a certain tree marker I'd sworn we'd seen only ten or so minutes prior.
"It all does," she bit back, a gleam of unmistakable fear in her greenish eyes, "all the trees look the friggin' same. It's getting dark. We're so boned."
"You got that right."
"Say it- since Jason isn't around to give us his bitchface- we're fucked."
"Yep, we're fucked," I conceded. This was not entirely our fault. We should've gotten a better tour if they didn't want us to lose ourselves in the woods, or better yet, not host this whole Capture the Flag nonsense in the forest anyway.
Blowing out a sigh of frustration, I planted myself on a large rock. My feet were begging for a break from walking around the forest (and by that I mean tripping over roots, slashing away shrubbery, and avoiding basically anything and everything that moved), and all I could do was hope Lissie was as tired as I was and wouldn't wander off without me.
"This is not how I planned to die!" Lissie yelled dramatically at nothing in particular, and I rolled my eyes to the heavens. "I wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, not 'cause I got lost in a stupid forest and died of dehydration or starvation, or more likely, boredom!" Evidently, she had tired herself out, and curled up into a little ball on a particularly springy patch of moss.
Now, because I was feeling tired and bitchy, I replied with, "Lissie, I'm pretty sure you can't actually die of boredom." Bantering with her was sure to keep me from dying of boredom anytime soon, although I was certainly in for half a dictionary of sardonic comments.
"Most people can't, but I assure you, I can," she shot back without a beat of hesitation, mercilessly ripping out handfuls of the moss at a time just to amuse herself. "Being entertained is as important to me as water, I tell ya. I'm just special like that."
"You're 'special' in a lot of ways," I sighed. I wasn't really sure if I meant it as a compliment or an insult. Maybe a bit of both.
She craned up her neck and narrowed her eyes at me. "Kynan, are you attempting to insinuate something?"
"I'm always insinuating something. It's better than dying of boredom."
"Maybe, maybe not. I'll get back to you on that one."
"You almost sounded like you had a plan on when you were going to figure that out." I picked up a stick and entertained myself for about 0.2 seconds by stripping the bark off it.
"Well, I don't know, Kynan," she bitched back at me, throwing her arms up in the air in a bout of frustration, "we're sitting in the middle of goddamn nowhere, so I really don't have anything better to do. If you have a better idea, do enlighten me."
I was momentarily stumped. I tossed my stick into a bush. "You're awfully consensual. Have you been breathing in some kind of messed up air in this fucked up forest?"
Lissie sat up, her nose scrunched up in thought. She propped herself against the tree and pondered it over. "I dunno, actually, do ya think somebody's smoking some marijuana or something? Maybe that's it. Or who knows, maybe there's a meth lab nearby. I don't know what to expect from this place."
"I'm as confused as you are." She'd better appreciate that. I was unlikely to admit my confusion ever again in her presence. Although what was slightly more amazing was that she had admitted confusion to me in a non-sarcastic tone.
She bumped her head against the bark of her tree in a steady, almost comforting rhythm. "Do you think they'll find us before we die?" She didn't sound all that concerned, just a little impatient, if anything besides indifferent.
"They're probably too caught up in their game to notice we're gone," I admitted, then added, worriedly, "We're going to die out here, all alone in the middle of a goddamned forest full of weird stuff and weird people in a camp on the tip of Long Island Sound. And this morning all I was worried about was buying my mom's CD and maybe finding a cheap hot dog vendor."
She hummed in agreement, stretching out her limbs and cracking her neck obnoxiously. "I was just worried about finding money for my next meal, maybe a decent place to sleep." For once, her countenance was serious. "You were just my next victim . . . nothing personal, y'know. I didn't, like, target you. I was just real hungry, and I didn't have any money, and you were flaunting it, so . . . I guess the potential for dying puts everything in perspective, huh?"
"Yeah. And hey, don't worry about the money. You gave it back, and I understand. I should've known better than to flaunt my money, especially when it's so hard to come by in the first place."
I found myself thinking about my backpack. It was back at camp, with all my mom's CDs and my music player in it. I guess I'd kind of expected that I'd die with that thing on my back, since the streets of New York City were a dangerous place for a runaway kid, but now that I didn't have it, I felt like a huge part of me was missing. I'd wanted to have that backpack, containing the last physical memories I had of my mom, with me at the end.
A half-smile tweaked up her lips, and she covered a giggle with her hand. "I only gave it back because we were about to die that time, too. And you could've flaunted it all you wanted. It still didn't mean I had to take it from you. You . . . didn't deserve that." I noticed that, through all of this, she had still never apologized, but I almost didn't want her too. It would be like her apologizing for us meeting in the first place, and I wasn't sorry about that. Even with her non-stop attitude and relentless insults.
I was busy sorting through my thoughts, so she startled me out of a trance of sorts when she asked without any pretenses, "Do you miss your mom, Kynan?"
I looked directly at her. She was looking at me too, and I suddenly felt as if she could see everything about me just from looking at my face. If it had been anyone but her, I would never have admitted what I did next. "Yeah. A lot."
She smiled again, but not a real smile, not a smile that met her eyes. It was a bitter, painful smile, like she had lost herself in a swarm of bad memories. "I know how you feel. I miss my mom, too. So much. And it never stops. I don't think it ever will. I don't know if I want it to. I don't want to ever forget her . . . she was all I had, and now . . . Now, I have nothing." A thin sheet of moisture covered her big, round eyes and a single tear rolled down her cheek, splashing down on her chest armor.
My feet moved on autopilot, carrying me over to sit beside her before I realized what I was doing. Although, I didn't regret moving closer to her. I wanted to comfort her, reassure her somehow that things were going to be okay. It didn't matter that things weren't going to be okay. Tough things were easier to bear when there was someone to bear them with you. Between years of solitude and meeting her today, I understood that in a whole new way now.
"She didn't deserve to die, Kynan," she whispered, putting an enormous amount of effort in forcing the rest of her tears back. "She wasn't like me. She was good." A nostalgic, then despairing look crossed her face and another tear fell- her self-restraint proved futile. "She drowned in a storm. I was there, too. It was so horrible." Realization dawned inside of me; that was why she was afraid of the water. "She was finally getting what she deserved, living out her dream of having her own art studio, something she worked so damn hard for, and she just . . . died. She never got to see her studio. She never got to live out her dream. It's not fair!"
Finally, her last wall crumpled into a pile of dust and she burst out sobbing. I reached out and, taking a leap of faith, pulled her toward me until her head was leaning on my shoulder and my arms were around her back. "I'm sorry," she cried into my shirt. "I'm sorry for dumping this all on you, for being so . . . weak. I thought I could handle it all- it was five years ago, after all. But I miss her now just as much as I missed her then. I want her back, Kynan. More than anything in this entire world. But, you know more than anybody- we don't always get what we want. I never do, at least."
"Lissie, you're not weak," I said, stroking her long, silky hair soothingly. "Fuck, you kept this to yourself for five years. If I'm not wrong, this is the first time you've talked about it."
"You're not wrong. Dammit," she joked feebly, leaning away from me to rub furiously at her eyes, "I hate it when that happens."
I put a hand on each of her shoulders, directing her to look me in the eyes. "Listen, you can cry all you want. I'm not going to think any less of you for it. And if there were anything in this world I could do to bring your mom back, I would. Promise me one thing though, please. Don't keep this to yourself. I know you just shared a lot of stuff with me, but the pain never truly goes away, I know. So next time you need to break down, I want to be there for you again, like this. For as long as you continue to let me, I'll be here for you."
"I know and . . . I promise," she replied strongly, laying her hand on the side of my neck in a gesture that surpassed the realms of casualty. I felt myself leaning into her gentle caress. "I know if you could bring her back, you would, Kynan, and I know you're here for me. I don't know why I know, but I do. And I know I barely know you, but . . . That means more to me than I can say. You being here, talking to me . . . Nobody's ever done that for me before. Thank you. Really, thank you. And I feel the same way about you. If you want to talk to me about anything, now, or a month from now, or a year from now, assuming we don't die here," I chuckled along with her, "then I'll be here. I swear it . . . sweetheart."
I took a deep breath. You know what you need to do. It's only fair.
"About two years ago was the last time I saw my mom in person. She was stuck in a crappy record deal, so she had to do a lot of concerts, and I didn't get to come to very many of them. Her boss tried to keep the fact that she had me a secret, like her already having a child would somehow attract fewer fans. But, I was allowed to come to this concert and watch from backstage. I was so excited. . . ." My chest felt tight. I drew in a shaky breath before I continued, and Lissie gathered one of my hands in both of hers, squeezing tightly.
"She got into doing the first song, and I was sitting on top of a spare speaker off to the right of the stage, watching. I think she always started with this song because it was the one I helped her write. I hadn't heard her sing it at a concert before, but it was amazing. Anyway, I wasn't paying much attention to anything else, so I didn't see her manager come up. He asked me if I was enjoying the show. I turned around, and he was . . . not human. I don't know what he was, but he was clearly going to attack me. I just didn't want him to ruin my mom's show. He'd already ruined so much for us. I grabbed a microphone and hit him over the head with it. He went down and kind of, disintegrated. I didn't know if there were more, but he'd seemed like he was after me. I figured if I ran, I could draw them away from my mom, and maybe she could finish her show in peace.
"So that's what I did- I ran- and oh God Lissie, I wish I hadn't run, because I can't stop running now. Maybe if I'd stayed, we could've figured something out, found a way for us to stay together. I've regretted running away every day for the last two years, but I'm terrified to go back, because . . ." My throat closed up. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping to at least slow the stream of tears. "Because once you've run too far, there's no way back."
Lissie's glimmering eyes were as wide as Saturn's moons, and I had no time to prepare myself for her lunging forward and wrapping her arms around my neck like her life depended on it. Her hands clutched at my hair, and she pressed her forehead against mine. "Oh, Kynan . . . You were brave. You are brave. What you did was selfless. You don't need to run anymore, sweetheart. You don't ever need to run again. It's you and me now, okay? It's you and me, and that isn't going to change. I'm not going anywhere, and neither are you. We'll be the two Musketeers. Oh, sweetheart . . . you don't need to run anymore."
So, the two of us were sobbing, clutching at each other like we were each other's last anchor, in the middle of a forest. And we were lost, so damn lost, and probably going to die of dehydration or starvation or whatever. But there was one thing I knew for absolutely certain. We were not going to die of boredom.
Well, this all escalated quickly. Just this morning, I thought she was nuisance at best, a hooligan at worst, and now she might as well have been my new best friend. It wasn't all that hard, because I didn't have any other friends, but still. Rapid progress right there.
Everything was different now, and I just had to roll with the punches. Lissie stiffly stood up as our moment swiftly turned awkward once we realized how, er, close we'd gotten. "So, um, do you need to go punch or kill some stuff to regain some manliness?" she joked, and I rolled my eyes. Balance was restored to the world.
"Should we try and find our way back to camp again? Maybe we'll be more lucky this time," I offered.
She wasn't opposed to it, but still, ten minutes later, we were more lost than ever. Hopefully, they'd at least find our bodies soon enough. . . .
"Help me!" It was faint, but we both heard it, and we were on our feet before another second passed. "Help, I can't fight them off!"
Lissie had bolted forward before we could even consider forming a game plan. Well, that was our plan. Charge, and hope for the best. It was awfully difficult to run in such heavy armor, though. "Do we have any idea what we're doing, or where we're going?" I panted after her.
"No, but that's half the fun!" she yelled back, surmounting a steep grassy hill to overlook a clearing. As I joined her side, my jaw dropped.
Not at the boy who had presumably shouted for help, he was mostly unimpressive. He was a scrawny little thing, no older than fourteen but carrying the stature of a boy much younger. From what I could see, he had downey, thin wisps of blond coating his pale head.
No, I barely noticed him at all. What I did notice were the giant freakin' ants rising from ginormous mounds of dirt, approaching the boy. For some reason, I could accept the gods and satyrs and nymphs and pegasi fine enough. Sure, it all came with Greek Mythology. But enormous ants? Nada. I drew the line at bugs as large as cars.
"What in the name of Leonardo DiCaprio are those?" Now was not the time to question her choice of actor, the boy was about to be mauled by giant ants. That had to take priority. I would confront her later.
Figuring Lissie would follow me whether I told her to or not, I raced down the rise, half a step ahead of her. I tried to regain some manliness by whipping my swords out as I ran and leaping into action. Unfortunately, the Fates would not have it so. My second sword got caught, and my attempts to pull it out before I reached the bottom of the hill only threw me off balance, resulting in me rolling down the hill like the grand klutz I was.
Lissie really should've known better than to run so close to me, because she didn't have enough time to get out of my way as I tumbled down the hill. My legs knocked into hers, and she wavered, but much to my dismay, did not join me in my mortifying experience of rolling down the hill into battle.
My arrival at the bottom of the hill had two positive outcomes. One, I stopped rolling down the hill and was saved from further mortification at this moment. Two, Lissie and I's arrival startled the giant ants so much that they momentarily forgot about trying to kill the other boy.
Unfortunately (was there some kind of requirement saying every moment in my life had to come with a downside now? Really, I could do without that package), the ants' attention was completely focused on us now, and I was laying flat on my stomach, wondering how I'd gotten lucky enough not to impale myself on the sword I had managed to pull out of its sheath.
"Uh, hey guys, maybe we could hold off on the whole 'I attack you, you attack me' thing until I get back on my feet?" I inquired, blinking up at the two giant ants looming over Lissie and I. The third ant held the other boy in its pinchers.
"Well, there goes our element of surprise," Lissie lamented and my cheeks burned bright crimson.
"Hey now, it's not like I asked to trip my way into battle," I defended myself, scrambling around in an attempt to get to my feet.
"You could've at least had the common decency to fall onto the ants, and maybe knock over one or two, but no." And just like that, it was like our beautiful, heartfelt conversation of emotional breakthroughs never happened. Thanks a lot, Lissie.
The ants stared down at us as if they were debating in their psychic insect language whether they should kill us right away or save us for a Sunday roast. They didn't take too long.
One shot out its pincher right into Lissie's gut, drawing waterfalls of blood from the brand new gaping wound, and hurtled her right into one of the geysers. No warning, no nothing. Bam, and she was gone. She didn't even have the time to cry out as she landed in the boiling hot water. She didn't even get to reflect over the fact that her life was hanging on the balance before it was violently cut short. Lissie had to be . . . dead.
I think I screamed her name. Really, I was panicking so much that I could've gotten stabbed and not noticed for another couple of minutes. All I could focus on was her.
She's dead. Lissie's dead. She's dead, she's dead, she's dead.
People didn't survive getting stabbed and tossed like rag dolls into giant holes in the ground filled with boiling hot water. Lissie, the girl I'd met just this morning, who'd stolen the most precious thing I owned, had somehow become a very important part of my existence in a matter of hours, and had now been ripped away from me, with absolutely no warning.
I moved without thinking, pulling my second sword from its sheath, and swinging both blades toward the neck of the nearest ant. Golden ichor sprayed across my face and breastplate as the ant's head lolled away from me; not completely dead, but not very alive. Another blow fueled by rage and grief severed its head from its body with a decisive shink.
"Kynan?" I couldn't be sure if I was imagining the voice or not. It was hard to tell if it was real- if anything was real. I was sort of drowning under water, just sinking so low I couldn't even see the surface anymore, and the voices were from above. I couldn't be sure if my brain was lying to me or not. "Kynan, we've been looking for you two for hours . . . where's Lissie?"
It sounded like Percy. I ducked under another ant's pinchers and looked to the top of the hill. There stood Percy, Annabeth, Will, and Nico. A breath of relief forced its way out of me. Then an ant pincher dealt me a solid blow to the midsection, and I put my attention back on the fight and . . .
It was probably too much to hope that Lissie was alive, but that wasn't going to stop me from hoping anyway.
I couldn't find it in me to respond. I was too busy trying to slash ribbons through the ants, so they could feel even a fraction of the pain Lissie must've felt in the boiling hot water. I must've been sliced by the ants more than a few times, and blood on my hands made the handles of my swords slick, but no physical pain could register beyond the thoughts of Lissie that consumed my mind.
They were shouting my name. At least I thought they were. I mostly forgot they were there. And no, I didn't pay an ounce of attention to the blond sapling hiding behind a tree trunk.
That was when it happened. My hopes rung true, my faith held strong. Whatever Olympian gods might've been looking out for me answered my prayers. The girl who, by all standards of life, I shouldn't have cared about in the slightest was . . . She was alive.
And for the love of the gods, she was beautiful. Her feet were perched on the edge of the geyser, and the tendrils of steam rose around her like a heavenly shroud. Her long, black, aqua-streaked hair was drifting lazily behind her in the gentle breeze, as if so majestic it remained unaffected. Her milky skin was glowing with radiance, and her sea-green eyes held such power and strength that my limbs froze in place.
"I'm back, bitches." Lissie lifted up her hands, and the geyser exploded. But that wasn't even what drew in my attention in the most. For the gods' sakes, she just made a geyser blow up, and that wasn't even what I was looking at. Lissie was smiling, and just a minute ago, I never thought I would see her smile again.
I turned and did my best to shield myself from the rain of boiling water. I didn't have time to think, She's alive, she's okay. Instead, my thoughts were more like, Ow, that's pretty hot.
The ants had keeled over dead, sending little tremors through the ground, when her return sunk into me. I barely registered the fact that I was shaking like a leaf in a storm. Despite the obvious safety hazards, I ran straight toward her and that geyser that should've stolen her from me.
"Lissie!" Her name wrenched itself from my throat, mangled and desperate from the emotional rollercoaster I'd just braved. My swords fell where the last ant had exploded into golden ichor, forgotten.
She emerged from the geyser, calm and stately as a queen stepping off her throne. "Miss me?"
I couldn't decide if I wanted to slap her for scaring me like that or hug her because she was alive, so I just stopped in front of her, chest heaving. I was saved the decision by the call of a conch horn from the crest of the hill.
I had a vague recollection of Percy, Annabeth, Will, and Nico appearing on that hill during battle. Turns out, Chiron and most of the rest of the camp had joined them, and now stood staring down at us as if we'd sprouted wings. And if we're being honest here, I see no reason why they'd be shocked at people sprouting wings.
"Kynan, look!" Lissie pointed above my head, and a small gasp of wonder escaped her lips. "There's something floating above your head. I think it's a sun."
My eyes were glued to a glowing symbol above her head, and I pointed to it wordlessly. A trident the color of the ocean. That meant . . .
Chiron stepped forward, in all his centaur glory, and everyone knelt before us. "All hail the son of Apollo, and daughter of Poseidon."
A/N: This is like my fav chapter so far? Yeah this one was a ton of fun for Goldie and I to write. :) Thanks for sticking with us you guys!