Time seemed to have stopped in the Olympian throne room. The appearance of Eris—with her chaotic beauty and smile that promised destruction—had transformed an already explosive situation into a potential cosmic catastrophe. The silence was so dense that Percy could hear the crackling of static electricity emanating from Zeus, who seemed to be experiencing the divine equivalent of a brain short-circuit.
"Fascinating," murmured Eris, her changing eyes surveying the scene with malicious delight. "So many centuries of tradition, so many millennia of divine balance, undone by a simple apple. Again." Her laughter bubbled like poison in honey. "It never disappoints."
Hera was the first to recover her composure, her indignation manifesting in a golden aura that made the marble columns creak.
"This is intolerable!" she snapped, her voice reverberating with barely contained fury. "Not only has a minor goddess manipulated the entire Olympian Council, but she has turned a sacred ritual into her... her... personal little game!"
Athena, whose gray eyes had acquired the hardness of tempered steel, nodded stiffly.
"The scale of this manipulation is unprecedented," she declared, and Percy couldn't help but notice a hint of professional respect in her tone, quickly eclipsed by irritation. "Using us as pawns in her elaborate game..."
Aphrodite, surprisingly, had stopped ranting. Instead, she observed Percy and Artemis with an expression that oscillated between morbid fascination and something disturbingly close to tenderness.
"And to think that for millennia I tried to pair you with everything from satyrs to titans," she murmured, addressing Artemis. "And in the end, you yourself orchestrated your fall."
Artemis, who remained motionless holding the golden apple, shot her an icy look.
"Don't confuse strategy with 'fall,' Aphrodite."
Zeus, finally recovering his voice, struck his bolt against the floor with such force that the entire hall trembled.
"ENOUGH!" The veins in his neck stood out like high-tension cables. "Artemis! You, among all my daughters, the huntress, the eternal virgin! How dare you manipulate the Council like this? How dare you use Olympian goddesses as pieces in your... your... perverse courtship?"
The word "courtship" made Percy choke on his own saliva. He looked at Artemis, expecting an immediate denial, but the goddess simply arched a perfect red eyebrow.
"Perverse, father?" Her voice was soft, almost innocent. "Aren't all divine courtships, by nature, elaborate manipulations? Didn't you yourself transform into a bull, a swan, and a golden shower to get what you wanted?"
Zeus turned such an intense shade of purple that Percy feared the king of the gods might suffer the first divine heart attack in history.
"THAT IS DIFFERENT!" he thundered.
"In what way, exactly?" replied Artemis with lethal calm.
Before Zeus could respond—probably with a lightning bolt directed at everyone present—Eris clapped with childish enthusiasm.
"This is infinitely better than I expected!" she exclaimed. "When I left my little golden apple at the party, I barely aspired to a repetition of the old drama. But this..." she made a gesture encompassing the entire scene, "This is pure innovation! The huntress becoming prey, the judge falling into the trap, all rules subverted..." She blew a kiss toward Artemis. "You have a natural talent for my domain, dear."
Artemis slightly inclined her head, accepting the compliment with a queen's grace.
Percy, meanwhile, was trying to process everything that had happened. Each new revelation was like another piece of a puzzle that formed an increasingly disturbing picture.
"Wait a minute," he finally said, pointing at the apple in Artemis's hands. "All of this was planned. The lost invitations, the party, the apple, the judgment..." He looked at the goddess of the hunt with growing incredulity. "You've been manipulating me from the beginning?"
Before Artemis could respond, Ares let out a laugh that resonated like metal against metal.
"The seaweed brain finally understands something!" exclaimed the god of war. "The question is: what are you going to do about it, little hero?" His smile was as cruel as an open wound. "Cry? Beg? Run?"
Percy gave him a look that would have frozen the Styx.
"None of the above, glue-face." He turned to Artemis, ignoring the animal growl that Ares emitted. "I want answers. Direct. Now."
An astonished silence ran through the hall. No one, not even the most fearless heroes, addressed an Olympian goddess like that. And yet, something in Percy's posture, in the determination etched in every line of his face, conveyed an authority that not even the immortals could completely ignore.
The tension was so palpable that Dionysus, in a rare moment of discomfort, transformed his usual Diet Coke into something considerably stronger with a snap of his fingers.
Artemis studied Percy with the calculating patience of a predator who had tracked its prey across millennia. Her silver eyes didn't just observe him but dissected him, categorized his reactions, calibrated her next move with surgical precision. The silence in the hall stretched so long that it threatened to break like the string of an overwound bow.
When her lips finally curved upward, it wasn't so much a smile as a declaration of victory. The expression contained such predatory satisfaction that all the immortals in the hall instinctively reclined in their thrones. Even Ares, the god of bloody war, shifted uncomfortably.
"Well, Percy Jackson," she said, with the dangerous melody of dangerous moonlight on knife blades, "it seems we have reached the decisive moment."
Without breaking eye contact, not even blinking, Artemis raised the golden apple between them. The fruit caught the divine light, pulsing with a hypnotic glow that seemed to beat to the rhythm of Percy's increasingly frantic heart. With deliberate and unbearable slowness, she turned the apple, examining it as a jeweler might appraise a particularly valuable gem.
"Such a small thing," she reflected, "to cause so much chaos."
Percy swallowed with difficulty, his throat suddenly as dry as a desert. Something in her posture, in the coiled tension of her movements, screamed danger to every cell in his body. Yet he remained rooted to the spot, caught in a primitive freeze response that not even his battle-hardened reflexes could override.
Artemis brought the apple to her lips with the ceremonial gravity of a priestess performing an ancient rite. Then, with her eyes still fixed on Percy's, she parted her lips and sank her teeth into the golden flesh with an audible crunch that resonated through the chamber like thunder.
The juice, not just golden but somehow radiant, dripped from the corner of her mouth in a single gleaming rivulet. Time seemed to slow down as her tongue darted out, catching the drop in a movement so sensually precise that Aphrodite herself gasped sharply. The goddess of the hunt, who had rejected all romantic overtures for three thousand years, was making such a deliberate display of intimacy that several minor gods spontaneously evaporated from their seats.
Zeus gripped his master bolt with such force that bluish-white electricity crackled between his knuckles.
With the fluid grace of a hunting hawk, Artemis withdrew her arm and threw the bitten apple directly at Percy's chest.
Percy, operating on combat instincts rather than conscious thought, snatched the apple from the air. His fingers closed around it before his brain could process the implications of what had just happened.
The silence that collapsed was so absolute, so cosmically heavy, that it seemed to bend the very fabric of reality around them. Not a breath, not a heartbeat, not even the eternal flames in the braziers dared flicker.
Hermes dropped his caduceus.
The twin snakes were too shocked to complain.
"Oh, sweet... merciful... mother... of..." Apollo stammered from his throne, his normally perfect complexion paling to the color of freshly made parchment. His eyes had opened so dramatically that they threatened to escape his face entirely. "Did she just...? Did you just...? Did they just...?"
Percy stared at the apple in his hand, the perfect half-moon of divine teeth marks imprinted in its golden skin.
"What?" he asked, his voice embarrassingly close to a squeak. "What have I done now?"
The strangled sound that emerged from Aphrodite could have shattered every glass surface on Olympus. Her form flickered so rapidly between her various aspects that she seemed to be phasing in and out of reality itself: from Marilyn Monroe to Helen of Troy, to Cleopatra, and back at microsecond intervals.
"SHE ACCEPTED!" The goddess of love finally shrieked, her voice hitting notes that caused several of Hephaestus's mechanical creations to spontaneously disassemble. "SHE ACCEPTED THE PROPOSAL!"
Percy's expression went from confusion to horror in slow motion, like watching a train wreck in extreme time-lapse.
"What proposal?" he croaked, cold sweat beading on his forehead and trickling down his spine in icy rivulets.
Athena closed her eyes as if suffering physical pain. When she opened them, she fixed Percy with a gaze that managed to convey both clinical detachment and deep secondhand embarrassment.
"In ancient Greece, Jackson," she explained with the forced patience of a quantum physicist explaining basic addition to a particularly dense rock, "throwing an apple to a woman constituted a formal marriage proposal." She paused, visibly struggling with the cosmic absurdity of having to explain this. "If she caught it, this indicated preliminary acceptance. If she bit the apple and returned it..."
"And you caught it," interrupted Apollo, his voice oscillating between abject horror and uncontainable glee. "You just completed a binding engagement ritual. In front of the entire Olympian Council. With witnesses. Divine witnesses." His jaw moved silently for a moment before he managed to continue. "My sister, THE Artemis, virgin goddess for THREE THOUSAND YEARS, just agreed to marry you."
The emphasis he placed on "you" carried approximately fourteen layers of incredulity.
Percy felt the blood draining from his face so rapidly that he was surprised it didn't visibly pool at his feet. He looked at the apple as if it had transformed into a live grenade, then at Artemis, then back at the apple.
"I didn't, never, don't..." he stammered, his legendary battle-ready reflexes abandoning him completely in the face of matrimonial danger.
Ares's laughter began as a low rumble, like distant artillery, before building into a full-fledged barrage that physically shook the foundations of the throne room. Tears of malicious joy streamed down the scarred face of the god of war.
"THIS IS BETTER THAN SPARTA!" he roared between gasps. "The great Percy Jackson, defeater of Titans, bane of Giants, savior of Olympus... brought down by FRUIT!" His laughter crescendoed to such intensity that his throne began to smoke at the edges. "The ultimate warrior, ambushed by POMOLOGY!"
Poseidon appeared to be experiencing all five stages of grief simultaneously, his expression going from shock to denial, to anger, to bargaining, to acceptance, and back to shock in rapid succession.
"Perhaps," he said weakly, "there has been a misunderstanding?"
"There are no misunderstandings." Artemis's voice cut through the chaos like moonlight through darkness. "The ritual is ancient and binding. Percy Jackson offered the apple, whether knowingly or not is irrelevant to the magic. I accepted." Her smile was so self-satisfied that it verged on feline. "The golden apple has fulfilled its purpose... exactly as I calculated it would."
This last statement hung in the air like a suspended blade.
"As you... calculated?" Percy repeated slowly, until final, horrible understanding dawned. "You... planned this?"
For the first time, Artemis allowed a flash of genuine emotion to cross her face, a brief moment of triumph so raw and personal that even Zeus looked away, uncomfortable witnessing something so nakedly vulnerable from his eternally distant daughter.
"Percy Jackson," said Artemis quietly, but somehow her voice reached every corner of the vast hall, "did you really believe that the most skilled huntress in creation would leave the capture of her most valuable prey to chance?"
The implications crashed over Percy like a tsunami. Every event, every decision, every seemingly free choice he had made, all of it calculated, anticipated, and accounted for by the goddess who had just claimed him as effectively as if she had mounted his head on the wall.
"The perfect trap," he whispered, "isn't one you escape from. It's one you willingly walk into."
Artemis's smile was the most terrifying thing Percy had seen in his life, and considering his life, that was saying something.
"Precisely," she nodded, with evident pleasure in every syllable. "And you, my reluctant fiancé, have just sprung it beautifully."
"THIS IS PRICELESS!" roared Ares between fits of laughter. "The great hero Percy Jackson, savior of Olympus, the one who rejected immortality, has fallen into the oldest matrimonial trap in the book!" He leaned forward, wiping away tears of genuine mirth. "And with the one goddess who would never touch a man!"
"Past tense," pointed out Hermes, who had been unusually quiet until now. "'Would never touch' seems to have become 'specifically wants to touch Percy Jackson.'"
A furious blush spread across Percy's face as he desperately tried to find a way out. He looked imploringly at his father, but Poseidon seemed to be experiencing some kind of traumatic shock, his trident visibly shaking in his hand.
Zeus had gone from purple to a spectral white.
"My daughter..." he murmured, his voice strangely weak. "My huntress... engaged to a demigod..."
"Technically, father," intervened Artemis with disturbing serenity, "the engagement is only the first step. The wedding would come after."
The word "wedding" was like a whiplash that jolted Percy out of his stupor.
"ENOUGH!" he exclaimed, his voice reverberating with more authority than he himself had expected. "This is absurd! There can't be an engagement if one of the parties doesn't know what they're doing. And I definitely didn't know I was proposing marriage to you!"
He turned to Artemis, his green eyes shining with a mixture of confusion, indignation, and something deeper that he himself couldn't name.
"Why?" he asked simply. "Why all this? Why me? You, who have rejected gods and heroes for millennia..."
Artemis's expression changed, her mask of control momentarily sliding to reveal something surprisingly vulnerable.
"Do you remember when you held up the sky for me, Percy Jackson?" she asked, her voice softer than anyone in the hall had ever heard it.
Percy nodded slowly, the memory of the crushing weight so vivid that he could almost feel it again on his shoulders.
"Hard to forget," he responded, trying to keep his tone light and failing miserably. "Not every day you carry the firmament."
"In three thousand years, Percy Jackson," continued Artemis, ignoring the astonished murmurs of the other gods, "no one had made such a sacrifice for me. Not god, not titan, not hero, not mortal. No one."
She took a step closer to him, and Percy noticed that her silver aura seemed to pulse with each beat of a heart that shouldn't be so human.
"I've been watching you since then," she confessed. "At first with curiosity, then with interest, finally with... something more."
"The dreams?" asked Percy, suddenly remembering the nocturnal visions of silver forests and lunar eyes that had haunted him for months. "Was that you?"
Artemis nodded, a slight smile curving her lips.
"A gift," she confirmed. "Better than the nightmares of Tartarus, don't you think?"
Percy let out a sigh that he didn't know he was holding.
"Anything is better than those nightmares," he admitted.
Something in the frankness of that exchange seemed to disconcert even the most cynical gods. Aphrodite brought a hand to her heart, her expression oscillating between surprise and almost childlike delight. Even Ares had stopped laughing, observing the scene with a frown as if trying to decipher a particularly complex battle strategy.
Eris, for her part, observed everything with the satisfied expression of someone who has set in motion a perfect chain reaction.
"So this elaborate plan," continued Percy, trying to maintain his focus despite growing emotional confusion, "The party, the apple, the judgment... it was all to reach this moment."
Artemis shrugged with predatory grace.
"Immortals have time for complex plans," she responded. "Some court by transforming into animals; I prefer a more... strategic approach."
"Court?" repeated Percy, the word almost getting stuck in his throat.
Artemis's smile widened, revealing that slightly more pronounced fang that Percy had noticed earlier.
"Do you prefer 'seduce'? 'Woo'? 'Hunt'?" Each alternative sounded more dangerous than the previous one on her lips. "The result is the same, Percy Jackson. I have chosen you."
Zeus seemed to be regaining some of his normal coloration, though now he oscillated between ghostly white and an alarming red.
"This is... this is..." he seemed unable to find an adequate word for the situation.
"An unprecedented divine crisis," completed Hera, her voice icy. "The virgin goddess getting engaged to a demigod. What's next? Hades organizing children's parties? Ares opening a meditation and yoga center?"
"Hey, don't drag me into this," protested Ares, though Percy noticed he no longer seemed to find the situation as hilarious as before.
Percy ran a hand over his face, trying to organize his thoughts. His entire life he had been trapped in divine games, manipulated by prophecies, dragged from one crisis to another. But this... this was a completely new level of Olympian madness.
"Let me see if I understand," he finally said, addressing Artemis directly. "You've been watching me for years. You planned this whole situation, manipulated the other gods, orchestrated a fake judgment, all so that I would choose you and then accept an engagement that I didn't even know I was proposing."
Artemis seemed to consider for a moment, then nodded.
"A fairly accurate summary, yes."
Percy couldn't help it. Despite the gravity of the situation, despite the furious gods surrounding him, despite the apparent marriage engagement he had gotten himself into unknowingly... he burst out laughing. Not a nervous or hysterical laugh, but a genuine, deep guffaw that emerged from some primary place where the absurd and the sublime met.
"Of course," he managed to say between laughs. "Why would I expect anything remotely normal? A date? A conversation? No, that would be too simple. It had to be a conspiracy of mythological proportions."
To everyone's surprise, including Percy's, Artemis smiled. Not her usual predatory smile, but something warmer, more genuine.
"Dates are for mortals, Percy Jackson," she responded, and Percy would have sworn there was a hint of shyness in her voice. "Gods court with more... creativity."
"Creativity?" Percy raised an eyebrow, recovering some of his usual sarcasm. "Is that what you call manipulating all of Olympus? I hate to think what you'd consider excessive."
Instead of being offended, Artemis seemed to enjoy his response.
"Our chemistry will be explosive," she declared with a smile that made Percy simultaneously feel a shiver of alarm and an inexplicable wave of heat.
Zeus, apparently having reached his tolerance limit, rose from his throne.
"This is completely unacceptable," he declared. "Artemis, you have sworn eternal virginity. An oath on the Styx cannot be broken, not even by..."
"On a technicality, father," interrupted Artemis calmly. "I swore to reject conventional marriage and traditional female roles. I never swore that I couldn't choose a companion on my own terms, under my own conditions."
Athena, who had been observing the exchange with growing interest, nodded slowly.
"It's true," she confirmed, ignoring Zeus's betrayed look. "I have reviewed the exact text of her oath. Artemis committed to rejecting the yoke of patriarchal marriage, not to avoiding all forms of union."
"A divine loophole," murmured Percy, genuinely impressed despite himself. "You planned even that."
Artemis simply smiled, neither confirming nor denying. She didn't need to; the truth was evident in the satisfaction she radiated.
"This doesn't change the fact," intervened Poseidon, finally recovering his voice, "that my son has been manipulated into an engagement he neither sought nor understood."
"And how does that make it different from any other divine marriage in our history?" asked Aphrodite with genuine curiosity. "Honestly, as manipulations go, this has been quite elegant. No one was transformed into a cow, no one was kidnapped in a whirlwind, no one was tricked into eating pomegranate seeds..."
Hades, who had remained silent in the darkest corner of the hall, emitted a defensive grunt.
"That was a misunderstanding," he muttered.
Percy looked at the apple in his hand, then at Artemis, his mind working at full speed. All his life he had been dragged by currents stronger than himself: prophecies, quests, divine wars. Always reacting, never really choosing.
And now, in the most elaborate trap he had ever faced, he paradoxically found himself facing the first truly his own decision.
"I disagree," he finally said.
The entire hall froze. Artemis tilted her head slightly, her expression suddenly indecipherable.
"With which part, exactly, Percy Jackson?" she asked, her voice so neutral that it was impossible to detect any emotion.
Percy held her gaze.
"With you having manipulated me," he clarified. "Yes, you orchestrated events, created circumstances, even influenced my dreams. But in the end, when I held that apple, when I had to choose between Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, or something completely different... that choice was mine."
A surprised murmur ran through the hall. No one, absolutely no one, expected this response.
"Explain yourself," demanded Zeus, his voice a mixture of incredulity and reluctant fascination.
Percy took a step toward Artemis, holding the bitten apple between them.
"You might have manipulated circumstances, but you couldn't have manipulated what I saw when I looked at you," he said, his voice firmer with each word. "You couldn't have fabricated the truth that I perceived: that, among all the gods, you are the only genuinely free one, the only one who truly lives on her own terms."
Artemis observed him with an intensity that would have made any other mortal retreat, her silver eyes shining with an emotion that Percy couldn't name but instinctively recognized.
"So yes, all of this," Percy gestured encompassing the hall, "was an elaborate trap. The Trojan Horse of engagement, if you will." A crooked smile curved his lips. "But the irony is that it worked too well. I not only chose the goddess who planned everything, but I did it for reasons that go beyond her plan."
He took another step toward Artemis, so close now that he could distinguish the golden flecks in her silver irises.
"So the real question, Lady Artemis," he said, his voice barely a whisper audible to the others, "is not whether I fell into your trap. It's whether you fell into your own."
Artemis's eyes widened imperceptibly, and for the first time in the entire confrontation, Percy had the satisfaction of seeing genuine surprise on her face.
"What do you mean?" she asked, and Percy detected a slight tremor in her voice.
"You planned all this to capture me," responded Percy, surprising himself with his audacity. "But in the process, haven't you captured yourself as well? The huntress, suddenly bound to the only trophy she truly desired."
An absolute silence descended over the hall as everyone processed what they had just witnessed: a demigod challenging not the power or authority of a goddess, but the very narrative she had constructed.
Artemis remained motionless for what seemed like an eternity. Then, slowly, a smile spread across her face, not the calculating smile from before, but something wilder, more genuine.
"Three thousand years, Percy Jackson," she finally said. "Three thousand years waiting for someone who would not only endure my hunt but understand its true meaning." Her gaze swept the room, briefly resting on each of the stunned gods. "And it turns out that someone is a son of the sea with a particular talent for doing the unexpected."
Poseidon, from his throne, emitted something between a growl and a choked laugh.
"The unexpected is practically his natural state," he commented, and Percy detected unmistakable pride in his voice.
Zeus, apparently resigned to the fact that the situation had completely escaped his control, sank heavily into his throne.
"This will set a dangerous precedent," he muttered, though without the fury Percy expected. "A virgin goddess engaged... Olympian oaths questioned... the divine hierarchy subverted..."
"Change is the only true constant, father," responded Artemis. "Even for immortals."
Eris, who had observed the entire exchange with growing delight, clapped again.
"Wonderful!" she exclaimed. "Simply sublime! A perfect plan that works too well, huntress and prey caught in the same net..." She turned to the other gods. "Don't you see? This is cosmic poetry."
"It's a diplomatic disaster," corrected Hera.
"It's a fascinating sociological experiment," opined Athena.
"It's the most twistedly romantic love story since Helen and Paris," sighed Aphrodite, wiping away a genuine tear.
"It's madness," growled Ares.
"It's inevitable," declared Apollo, with the distant authority of one who perceives the future. "Some threads of fate cannot be cut, only redirected."
Percy, still holding the bitten apple, looked at Artemis.
"So what's next?" he asked, surprised by the calm in his own voice. "Do we get married at sunset? Face Olympian fury together? Run away to the forest and live on wild berries?"
Artemis's laugh, clear and musical, took everyone by surprise, including Percy.
"Always so practical, Percy Jackson," she responded. "First, we survive this audience. Then..." her eyes shone with promise and danger in equal parts, "we have an eternity to figure it out."
Percy felt a shiver run down his spine at those words. "Eternity" was not a term that demigods used lightly.
"Eternity?" he repeated, his brain finally processing the implication. "Wait, are you suggesting...?"
Artemis smiled enigmatically.
"A god cannot marry a mortal, Percy Jackson," she said simply. "It would be... inappropriate."
The implications of that statement fell over the hall like an avalanche. Percy looked at Zeus, then at his father, then back at Artemis, his mind spinning with possibilities he had never really considered.
"This requires formal deliberation by the Council," declared Zeus, recovering some of his authority. "Immortality is not granted lightly, not even to heroes who have saved Olympus."
"He already rejected it once," pointed out Hera.
"Circumstances have changed," replied Artemis. "And I believe we will find that my hunter has much to offer the pantheon."
The choice of words—"my hunter"—did not go unnoticed by anyone. Percy felt his face burning, but he did not correct the goddess.
Eris, apparently satisfied with the chaos sown, made a mocking bow.
"My work here is complete," she announced. "A simple apple, and the Olympian order totters again." She winked at Percy. "Thank you for the entertainment, hero. Your wedding promises to be the event of the millennium."
With these words and a laugh that reverberated long after her departure, the goddess of discord vanished in a cloud of black smoke.
Percy looked at the apple in his hand, then at Artemis, then at the circle of gods who observed them with expressions ranging from indignation to morbid fascination.
He had survived the Labyrinth, Tartarus, titans, and giants. He had borne the weight of the sky and endured the bath in the Styx. But as he stood there, holding a bitten golden apple and facing the prospect of an engagement to the goddess of the hunt, Percy Jackson had the unsettling feeling that his greatest challenge was just beginning.
And most disturbing of all: he wasn't sure he wanted to escape this particular trap.
The huntress had found her prey, and the prey, against all odds, seemed curiously willing to be captured.