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The next few months passed by in a blur, but a very nice blur. My parents seemed to accept the fact that I was now with Alex, even if I did still hear a few grumbles and some not so subtle threats aimed at Alex if he ever hurt me. But the idea of Alex hurting me seemed ridiculous, he was too sweet to ever want to hurt anyone, especially me.

Alex was a brilliant boyfriend, he would pop up in camp unexpectedly to take me on romantic dates. They would always be surprises and no matter how much I begged him to tell me where we were going, he wouldn’t give in, saying that the anticipation will only make it better (He was right, of course, but I’ll never tell him that). So far he’d taken me to a fancy restaurant in New York, a cafe in Paris, to watch the sunset on a deserted beach and to a beautiful park with a picnic. I know that that list is filled with clichés but I can happily say that I loved every single one of those clichés and I can’t wait for another one. Yes, Alex is a little cheesy and romantic, but I love that. It makes me feel special in a way that Connor never did. When he smiles at me I feel like I’m the highlight of his day.

The Aphrodite girls demanded details from me about our dates every time they saw me and I had taken to trying to hide from them at all costs. Chiron seemed to find it hilarious when I came to him begging to trade my archery session with the Aphrodite girls for his Ares and Athena sword fighting sessions as well as taking his bed time duties, just to avoid them. It’s not that I don’t appreciate what they did for me, it’s just that I wanted some privacy in my relationship and that whenever they interrogated me, they always got more from me than I really wanted them to. They were very skilled at getting information, it’s probably why most Aphrodite children end up being journalists in magazines of some sort, they can be very persuasive.

Before I knew it, summer had ended, it was approaching the winter solstice and most kids went back home leaving only a few still in camp. Chiron had arranged a trip for those left at camp to go to Olympus whilst the Olympian gods had their annual meeting. There weren’t many that stay at camp all year round and the place becomes eerily quiet when they’re all gone. I find myself missing their annoying constant chatter and I would even put up with listening to the Aphrodite girls chatter about how Alex and I had appeared on the cover of The God, The Bad and The Ugly. Again. It seemed to be an increasingly common occurrence now that they had discovered we were dating. The hype around Alex and I was even bigger than it had been with Connor as of course now that I had been jilted in love I was so much more interesting and the magazines jumped at any opportunity to interview one of my parents for their view on Alex, which I’m sure you can guess wasn’t always complementary. They had been quite disappointed that our names didn’t join in the way that they liked, ‘Cozzy’ had been a neat little name for my relationship with Connor, but the best they could come up with for Alex and me was ‘Allabelle’.

I was a little worried that all these threats and the constant attention would scare Alex away but he never wavered or even blinked an eye. He just told me that I was worth it all and that if he owned the magazine he would put me on the front cover every week too. Of course after that I went bright red from embarrassment.

There were only about ten kids left in camp, including Luke, I had been watching him closely these last few months and I think he was starting to notice it. I didn’t know what I could do because as Hermes had said, it’s going to happen no matter what I do. I felt so helpless I am his goddess and I can’t help him. There were times when I wanted tell Alex everything and lean on him, get his opinion on what I should do, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t do that to Luke, Alex would judge him on something he hasn’t even done yet, I won’t let that happen, I want to protect him from judgement for as long as I can.

I was quite looking forward to showing the kids Olympus, but I had a feeling that the meeting might be a bit of a disappointment to them. Usually they just consisted of petty arguments and fights between the gods rather than anything really important. I know that Annabeth in particular was hoping to see political debates and vital decision being made at a standard that was way above what she was going to see at the winter-solstice. The only consolation for her that I could think of was that Athena never took part in the stupid quarrels, but I didn’t think that it would be enough for Annabeth.

I knew how she felt, I too thought that for immortals that are thousands of years old, they’d be a bit more mature and responsible. However that isn’t the case, they can act worse than the kids at camp. You’d think seeing as how they’re gods they’d be better role models for their children but instead they only inspire arguments between the cabins. It’s ridiculous! I don’t want to be like that, I try to be a good influence on the kids, but with the whole Connor drama I don’t know if I’m any better than they are.

The time before the trip to Olympus seemed to fly by extremely quickly and before I knew it I was guiding the few campers we had into the empire state building with Chiron who had disguised his real legs in a wheelchair (a clever bit of machinery by the Hephaestus cabin). Of course Chiron and I had been here before but to the others it was all knew and to see them looking around in wonder and confusion was quite amusing.

“I thought we were going to Olympus.” Clarisse asked as we got in the elevator, obviously not understanding.

“Oh we are.” Chiron chuckled lightly, not giving her any more information. I sighed and was about to explain and put Clarisse out of her misery, as what Chiron had said seemed to only make her more confused, but Annabeth beat me to it.

“It’s at the top. The lift will take us there.” She explained, bouncing slightly from excitement. I knew that Annabeth had read everything that there was on Olympus, she was fascinated by the architecture and couldn’t wait to see it for herself.

Chiron inserted a security key into a slot on the elevator control panel making another button appear with the number 600 on it. Chiron pressed the button and the lift started to move with an annoyingly catchy tune playing quietly in the background, which I was positive I would be humming for the rest of the day.

Eventually the lift stopped and the doors slid open to reveal Olympus, there was a collective gasp from behind me as the kids took in the sight. And it was a sight, the colourful market selling everything you could think of, the temples and beautiful buildings, the gardens. No one could deny that the place was stunning. And then all havoc set in, the youngest of the kids with us, Emma, obviously saw something that caught her eye and charged after it by herself. I lost sight of her in the crowd before I could even call out for her to come back. The others immediately followed her lead and sprinted out into the bustling town looking for something that interested them, melting into the crowd and disappearing, leaving me standing helplessly and shocked in the elevator.

Oh Styx! We haven’t even been here two seconds and we’ve already lost all of the children! I turned to Chiron for help and was surprised to see that we hadn’t lost all of the children, Luke was still standing in the corner where he had been earlier, just looking out at Olympus. I couldn’t read the expression on his face, but I think that awe was in there somewhere, mixed up with hurt. That wasn’t a good sign. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that Luke didn’t run away like the others did, he was nineteen after all. But something was telling me that it wasn’t his age that stopped him from dashing into the home of the Olympian gods.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath turning my attention to Chiron, hoping that he didn’t see the way that my eyes rested on Luke beforehand. Chiron didn’t know about the prophecy and I wasn’t going to snitch on Luke to him, he didn’t need to know.

“What do we do?” I asked desperately, we now had about nine children lost somewhere in Olympus with no way of calling them back. Chiron looked just as shocked as I was, we hadn’t expected them to run off like that.

“We’ll just have to chase after them and get them back.” Chiron sighed, getting out of his wheelchair, shaking out his real legs.

“I’ll help.” Luke said, seeming to have come out of the trance he had been in a second ago.

“Thanks, but you don’t have to, we’ve been here before. You can look around if you want.” I suggested, not wanting him to waste his trip.

“It’s ok, I don’t mind.” Luke said, and I noticed the cautious almost wary look he gave the town, like he didn’t want to go in it alone. What was that for? But I didn’t mention it as we split up to look for the kids. Chiron went in the direction we last saw Emma and Luke and I headed for the market.

“So how are you Luke?” I asked as we wondered slowly around scanning for any of the orange camp half-blood t-shirts.

“I’m fine.” Luke said stiffly.

“I meant how are you really?” I sighed at the poor attempt at the lie, which made him seem really innocent and much younger.

“I’m . . . okay, I guess. Just stressing over stuff.” Luke admitted, and I could tell that that was the best I was going to get out of him, so I just nodded.  “How about you?” Luke smirked whilst bumping his shoulder into mine.

I’m great, I thought sarcastically to myself, my parents threaten to kill my boyfriend practically on a daily basis, I’m worrying about you the whole time, I have reporters asking me questions about my relationship every time I step off of camp grounds and now I’m chasing after lost demigods in Olympus. How could life get any better?

“I’m good.” I said, which earned me a raised eyebrow from Luke. “I am good, I’ve just got a lot on my mind at the moment.” Luke nodded to that, understandingly.

I wanted to keep the conversation going, to maybe get more out of him, but just then we spotted Clarisse having an argument with a man behind a market stool. It looked like he was accusing her of stealing, which made me smirk slightly, trust Clarisse to get into trouble within two minutes of arriving at Olympus. 

We eventually rounded up all of the kids and I let Chiron deal with the punishment for running away, but I think I heard something about early morning training sessions that would make them wish that they were never born. Chiron didn’t usually get angry but I could tell that he had been worried when they all ran off, he cared about them and he had been scared for them. So really they should take the punishment as a compliment but I don’t think any of them saw it that way.

We walked around the rest of Olympus together and Chiron never let any of them out of his sight whilst he pointed out interesting features. I nodded to Chiron before slipping quietly away to the throne room, Chiron and I had agreed earlier that I would go ahead of the others to where the meeting was to try and calm down the fights that were inevitably happening. We didn’t want the kids to walk in and find their parents at each other’s throats, it definitely wouldn’t be a good example for them. I walked in to find all of the gods sitting in their thrones watching Zeus and Poseidon who were standing nose to nose shouting at each other.

“Air disasters are way more spectacular than water ones!” Zeus roared loudly about an inch away from Poseidon’s face, but he didn’t even flinch.

“No way! I have the titanic! An unforgettable story and iconic film! What do you have?” Poseidon shouted back. I couldn’t hold in my sigh. I mean come on! They were acting like two year olds not two thousand year olds.

“Mother Rhea liked me better than you!” Zeus cried out in reply.

“No she didn’t! I was her favourite!” Poseidon screamed back.

“Oh gods! Seriously!” I intervened. “Are you actually arguing about this?” Their heads snapped in my direction and the anger that was blazing in their eyes simmered down slightly when they noticed it was me. “A group of demigods are on their way up here in a few minutes and is this what you want them to see? You two having an insignificant quarrel over who was your mother’s favourite?” They both looked down slightly ashamed and returned to their thrones, like naughty school boys being told off by their teacher. Hermes and Apollo seemed to find this funny and started sniggering quietly. I turned on them next quickly shutting them up. “And you guys have to behave too, as it is your children who are coming.” I glared realising I was probably the only person in the world who could get away with talking to the Olympian gods like that, anyone else would be dead before they finished the first sentence. Sometimes I felt like I wasn’t only in charge of the demigods but also their parents, trying to keep them in line was often harder than it was their children.

Just then the door to the throne room opened again and in walked Chiron with the campers following nervously behind. It was clear that they weren’t comfortable around all the gods and I didn’t blame them, they had probably only met their parents a couple of times at most and never any of the others. Not to mention that the tension in the air was impossible to miss. Poseidon and Zeus were still giving each other glares when they thought I couldn’t see them, causing me to roll my eyes at their childishness.

Chiron cleared his throat, obviously noticing the tension and started to point out the architecture and spurt out facts about the room, effectively gaining the campers’ attention. Quiet chatter broke out amongst the gods as they talked to each other, and thankfully whilst the tour passed through the throne room no other arguments began.

The tour moved on quickly as both Chiron and I didn’t want to give the gods time to find something else to argue about, because it was only a matter of time before they did find something. We carried on moving showing the kids everything we could think of and by the end of the day the disastrous start was almost forgotten. Chiron tried to remain angry with them but he melted once he saw Emma asleep on my lap when we stopped to eat our packed supper. She looked so cute, no one could stay angry at her.

I smiled down at her as she yawned and rolled over, she was exhausted. Chiron made a motion at me showing that it was time to go, I gently picked Emma up so as not to wake her and carried her towards the exit with the others.

“Well, that could have gone worse.” I sighed, relaxing into the coach chair on the way back.

“Hmm.” Chiron murmured not completely agreeing with me.

I didn’t even have time to reply to that before the ground shook violently making the bus sway slightly, followed by a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder. The kids started screaming and Emma was crying screaming for her mummy. I didn’t have a clue what had caused it but I knew one thing, the gods were angry.