Disclaimer: I don't own Trials of Apollo.
TOApril Day 2: Heavy Are The Resting Laurels
Kayla wished she didn't know what the aftermath of battle was like. She wished she didn't know how victory didn't feel like a victory, when there was still so much to do, so many injured to help and rubble where there hadn't been rubble before.
Unfortunately, this wasn't even her first time. Or her second.
The only thing she could say about this time was at least the battlefield wasn't their job to clean up, unlike the last time, when Gaia and her army – and the Romans, too, and she didn't think she'd ever forgive Octavian's memory for that – had churned up and destroyed the area surrounding camp. Nero's Tower could sway and collapse and rot for all she cared. That wasn't their responsibility. It certainly wasn't Kayla's.
Chiron had called it a field trip. She wasn't sure if she agreed with that. Admittedly, it was a far better and more controlled introduction to mass conflict than she and Austin had got, two years earlier with the fate of Olympus resting on the result of a siege in Manhattan, but it still wasn't gentle. Gracie wasn't crying now, but her eyes were rimmed with red and her cheeks sparkled with crusted salt. She'd caught Jerry rubbing at his eyes with his wrist earlier, too.
Whatever it was called – field trip, skirmish, battle, war – it was over, and they were headed back to camp, carrying some of their number on stretchers and packing them in the minivans.
None of her siblings were old enough to drive. They all piled in with cabin four, Miranda behind the wheel and more young, brand new campers with tear-stained faces huddled as close as they could get to the front and their sisters.
Will and Austin had taken control of their younger siblings, leaving Kayla on guard, because she was better at guarding than healing. That left Kayla free to observe, to watch the other campers, to see the one child of Demeter not joining the huddle at the front of the vehicle.
Meg was staring straight ahead, sat firmly in the middle of the van as far away as possible from all the windows – inconveniently so, because she was blocking some empty seats and it would be an exercise in futility to move her. Even Will hadn't tried.
Maybe on another day, Kayla would have sat next to her, pushed the other girl out of the way to claim a seat in the row. Not now. Not after a battle, and the need to stay close to her siblings, even if she was the guard rather than the comforter. The youngest three had claimed the back seats, and Austin and Will were bracketing them.
Kayla sat the row in front, bow across her lap. She didn't have many arrows left, not ones that were still in a condition to fire, rather than ones awaiting repair, but she had enough.
She wondered if Apollo had enough.
Technically, they hadn't lost anyone. No-one from camp had died, this time. If anything, their numbers had grown, with Nero's demigods not quite prisoners of war, but not quite new campers, either. Kayla wasn't entirely sure why Meg wasn't with them. She supposed that was probably Chiron's decision.
But even though the numbers of campers hadn't lessened, there was still one, heavy hole in their returning numbers. They didn't know where Apollo was, where he'd disappeared to when he'd gone down the stairs and not reappeared again. Chiron hadn't let them follow, hadn't let them look.
All they knew was that he had gone to face Python.
And that he wasn't expecting to come back.
Kayla hoped, hoped, it was Lester he wasn't expecting to come back, but that Apollo would. That this would be the end of the mortal punishment and he'd win and regain his godhood, be the golden haired young adult from her dreams rather than the mousy-haired, acne-ridden teenager Will's age she'd been seeing.
She hated that they didn't know. She hated that it wasn't certain, that he might not come back at all.
And she hated that there was nothing she could do about it.
Thanks for reading!
Tsari