chapter thirty-six

─── water sucks, i want a new dad

          𝕾hips really were my thing.

The Queen Anne's Revenge responded to my every command. I knew which ropes to hoist, which sails to raise, which direction to steer. We ploughed through the waves at what I figured was about ten knots. I even understood how fast that was.

It all felt perfect—the wind in my face, the waves breaking over the prow.

But now that we were out of danger, all I could think about was how much I missed Tyson, and how worried I was about Grover. This was a lot of stress for me.

We sailed through the night. Luke stood with me, watching the horizon and both of us kept to our own thoughts for the most part.

More than once I spotted monsters. A plume of water as tall as a skyscraper spewed into the moonlight. A row of green spines slithered across the waves—something maybe a hundred feet long, reptilian. I really didn't want to know and this entire sea was giving me the creeps.

Why couldn't my godly parent be the patron of puppies or something?

A volcanic island came into view next and Luke hummed as the sea bubbled around the shore.

"One of the forges of the gods. I'd steer well clear," I nodded, directing the ship before I turned back to Luke.

"What did she say to you?"

"What?"

"Circe. I doubt you would have drunk a weird potion willingly, so what did she say?" Luke paused, chewing on his lips with a face I knew well. It was a 'something was said and it upset me and now I keep thinking about it.' "So, she did say something."

"Don't worry about it."

"I do though." I leant on the wall next to him, threading my hand through his. "You're quieter than usual and you're under a lot of stress. I want to help, if I can."

There was another stretch of silence, before Luke started to speak.

"You know my twentieth birthday was this year?" I nodded my head. We'd gone and had dinner in the city for it. "Well, Mr. D had a talk with me about leaving camp."

"What?" I snapped my head up, staring at him.

"I'm twenty and they need the space in Eleven for the new campers to stay. He told me that I needed to move out, so that there was more room for the others. I've overstayed my welcome," A weight left Luke's shoulders as he slowly began to tell me everything. It started with Mr. D asking him to leave camp, to the struggle that he was then going to face in the mortal world as he had no school diploma or college degree, the fact that Thalia's tree was poisoned and Annabeth would be left alone if that tree died and Luke had to move out, as well as the war that was coming. "So yeah, I'm stressed."

"I'm sorry," I muttered, leaning into him and wrapping my arms around his waist. He reciprocated the action, before I pressed a kiss to his jaw. "The reason you hate Cyclops'. It has something to do with how Thalia really died, doesn't it?"

"The night Grover was escorting us to camp, he got confused, took some wrong turns. You know Grover?" I nodded. I did know Grover. "Well, the worst wrong turn was into a Cyclops' lair in Brooklyn."

"They've got a Cyclops in Brooklyn?" I asked.

"You wouldn't believe how many, but that's not the point. This Cyclops, he tricked us. He managed to split us up inside this maze of corridors in an old house in Flatbush. And he could sound like anyone. He lured us, one at a time. Thalia thought she was running to save me. I thought that Annabeth screamed for help. It sounded like we were being tortured and killed, straight out of a horror movie."

"Gods..."

"The Cyclops tried to lure Annabeth with her father and she stabbed him in the foot, freed Thalia and we managed to get out," Luke shook his head again, sighing as a cold wind blew around us. "It was his fault we took so long getting to camp. All the monsters who'd been chasing us had time to catch up. That's really why Thalia died. If it hadn't been for that Cyclops, she'd still be alive today. She would have been happy at Camp Half-Blood."

We sat on the deck, watching the Hercules constellation rise in the night sky as I came to a conclusion.

"You and Thalia had a thing, didn't you?"

"What?" He yelped, and the tenseness was broken as I laughed at his shocked face.

"You did, didn't you?"

"How...? What...?" I giggled, pressing a kiss to his shell shocked face as I brushed past him to get some rest. "Why are you like this?"

"You're a good looking guy. Everyone has a crush on you, so I'm going to assume that Thalia did as well and you guys were alone together for so long that I'm sure you kissed at one point." I shrugged, not massively fussed about it. "I'm adding her to the list.

"Firstly, it's alarming that you know that from one tiny conversation. Secondly, not everyone has a crush on me," Luke protested, scrambling to his feet as I nodded. "Thirdly, get rid of the list Andi."

"No, it's funny and yes, they have massive crushes on you."

"Oh yeah. Like who?"

"We've had this conversation, babe. Multiple times." Luke spluttered out an accusation, following after me. "When we begin to tell people we're dating, there's gonna be tears. I could bet on that fact."

"That's dramatic."

"I'm adding Thalia to the list." I stopped, grinning up at my much taller boyfriend as he glared. "So, was I right, did you kiss?"

"We did. Like, a week before she died and then you know, she died." Luke pointed out, before narrowing his eyes. "I don't like that you know so much."

"It's a talent." I beamed. "I'm adding the list to the folder of fun stories I have on you, like you got turned into a guinea pig, and your car got stolen despite being the son of thieves."

"So it's like that, is it?"

"Yeah. Got to keep you on your toes, old man."

"I'm really not that much older than you."

"Still a year and a half older."

"I will break up with you." Luke deadpanned, as I grinned once more. "Who needs stressful quests, when you have a girlfriend, who likes to bully you? I'll get more grey hairs from you than the titan."

"Ouch, wow, that hurts." I snarked in response, "and you wouldn't break up with me. You'd be too jealous of other guys trying to get with me."

"There's other guys?" Luke hissed, spinning.

"I have my own list. Apparently I've been three peoples gay or bisexual awakening since I returned to camp. I'm on a roll." I began to chuckle. "I have your competition on the phone."

"I'd kill them."

"The scary thing is, I can't tell if you're joking."

"Dead serious." Luke replied. "Point them out to me."

"No." I leant forward, bringing him down into a kiss, before laughing. "I've got you, the others are just side pieces. You're my main man."

Luke hummed, a scowl forming on his face as his eyes narrowed, before accepting another kiss. I continued to laugh before disappearing to find a relatively clean hammock to sleep in.

I didn't dream about Grover when I fell asleep in the hammock.

Instead I found myself back in Puck's stateroom aboard the Princess Andromeda. The curtains were open. It was night time outside. The air swirled with shadows. Voices whispered all around me—spirits of the dead.

Beware, they whispered. Traps. Trickery.

Yay! I thought.

Kronos's golden sarcophagus glowed faintly—the only source of light in the room.

A cold laugh startled me. It seemed to come from miles below the ship. You don't have the courage, young one. You can't stop me.

I knew what I had to do. I had to open that coffin.

I uncapped Riptide. Ghosts whirled around me like a tornado. Beware!

My heart pounded. I couldn't make my feet move, but I had to stop Kronos. I had to destroy whatever was in that box.

Then a girl spoke right next to me: "Well, Seaweed Brain?"

I looked over, expecting to see Annabeth or Clarisse, but the girl was neither. She wore punk-style clothes with silver chains on her wrists. She had spiky black hair, dark eye-liner around her stormy blue eyes, and a spray of freckles across her nose. She looked familiar, but I wasn't sure why.

"Well?" she asked. "Are we going to stop him or not?"

I couldn't answer. I couldn't move.

The girl rolled her eyes. "Fine. Leave it to me and Aegis."

She tapped her wrist and her silver chains transformed— flattening and expanding into a huge shield. It was silver and bronze, with the monstrous face of Medusa protruding from the centre. It looked like a death mask, as if the gorgon's real head had been pressed into the metal. I didn't know if that was true, or if the shield could really petrify me, but I looked away. Just being near it made me cold with fear. I got a feeling that in a real fight, the bearer of that shield would be almost impossible to beat. Any sane enemy would turn and run.

The girl drew her sword and advanced on the sarcophagus. The shadowy ghosts parted for her, scattering before the terrible aura of her shield.

"No," I tried to warn her.

But she didn't listen. She marched straight up to the sarcophagus and pushed aside the golden lid. For a moment she stood there, gazing down at what-ever was in the box.

The coffin began to glow.

"No." The girl's voice trembled. "It can't be."

From the depths of the ocean, Kronos laughed so loudly the whole ship trembled.

"No!" The girl screamed as the sarcophagus engulfed her in a blast of a golden light.

"Ah!" I sat bolt upright in my hammock, crying out as I almost knocked my head with Luke's.

"Woah, Sleeping Beauty. It's only me," He calmed, hands on my shoulders as he began to check for injuries. "You were having a nightmare. Anyway, you have to get up."

"Why?" I slumped back down again

"Land," he said grimly. "We're approaching the island of the Sirens."

I could barely make out the island ahead of us—just a dark spot in the mist.

"Well, that looks cheery," I muttered, as Luke appeared with a pot of candlewax in his hand. He took two clumps, moulding them into earplugs as I did the same. Stuffing them in my ears, I willed the Queen Anne's Revenge to skirt around the vicious looking rocks that would shred the hull given half the chance.

The silence was eerie, and I reached for Luke's hand, both of us holding onto each other as we waited for the ship to get round the rocks. I urged the boat to go faster, not liking the wood and fiberglass in the water.

The Sirens' voice vibrated in the timbers of the ship, beating along with the rush of the blood that flowed through my ears. I winced momentarily, before tightening my grip around Luke's hand. For some reason, I kind of wanted to hear what they had to say, to hear what they would sing to me but I resisted the urge as we continued past.

I didn't want to know what they believed I truly wanted.

After an hour, when the island was no more than a blurry blob in the distance, Luke and I pulled our earplugs out, happy to hear sound that wasn't blood rushing though my ears. The fog had burned away to a blue sky, as if the island of the Sirens had never existed.

"Well, that was boring," I murmured, cracking the muscles in my back. "Glad we're past it though."

"So am I," Luke pressed a quick kiss to my forehead, before narrowing his eyes to the horizon. "We're coming up to land."

I turned.

Up ahead was another blotch of land—a saddle-shaped island with forested hills and white beaches and green meadows—just like I'd seen in my dreams.

My nautical senses confirmed it. 30 degrees, 31 minutes north, 75 degrees, 12 minutes west.

We had reached the home of the Cyclops.

"That doesn't really look like the place of great evil," I murmured, before both Luke and I slapped our hands down onto the splintery wood. Neither of us wanted to jinx it. "Well, time to do our jobs."

∘☽༓☾∘

Hiya,

So Luke isn't having a fun time cause poor bby needs to leave camp soon. Also Andi and he are sweethearts, and Andi loves to tease him. Luke defo has grey hairs, and it won't be from holding the sky.

Let me know what you think,

Love Li XX