The Forbidden Daughter | PJO Book One

sixteen

RACHEL CHUCKS A HAIRBRUSH

Jumping out a window five hundred feet above ground is not usually Ariana's idea of fun.

Especially when she is wearing bronze wings and flapping her arms like a duck.

Ariana and Percy plummeted toward the valley and the red rocks below. She was pretty sure she was going to become a grease spot in the Garden of the Gods, as Annabeth yelled from somewhere above her.

"Spread your arms! Keep them extended."

The small part of her brain that wasn't engulfed in panic heard her, and her arms responded.

As soon as she spread them out, the wings stiffened, caught the wind, and her descent slowed.

She soared downward, but at a controlled angle, like a kite in a dive.

Experimentally, she flapped her arms once. Ariana arced into the sky, the wind whistling in her ears.

"Yeah!" Percy yelled.

The feeling was unbelievable. After getting the hang of it, she felt like the wings were part of her body. She could soar and swoop and dive anywhere she wanted to.

"Land!" Annabeth yelled. "These wings won't last forever."

"How long?" Rachel asked.

"I don't want to find out!" Annabeth said.

They swooped down toward the Garden of the Gods. Percy did a complete circle around one of the rock spires and freaked out a couple of climbers.

Then the four of them soared across the valley, over a road, and landed on the terrace of the visitor center.

It was late afternoon and the place looked pretty empty, but they ripped off their wings as quickly as they could.

Looking at them, Ariana could see Annabeth was right. The self-adhesive seals that bound the wings to their backs were already melting, and they were shedding bronze feathers.

It seemed a shame, but they couldn't fix them, and couldn't leave them around for the mortals, so they stuffed the wings in trash bins outside the cafeteria.

Percy used the tourist binocular camera to look up at the hill where Daedalus's workshop had been, but it had vanished. No more smoke. No broken windows. Just the side of a hill.

"The workshop moved." Annabeth guessed. "There's no telling where."

"So what do we do now?" Ariana asked. "How do we get back in the maze?"

Annabeth gazed at the summit of Pikes Peak in the distance. "Maybe we can't. If Daedalus died...he said his life force was tied into the Labyrinth. The whole thing might've been destroyed. Maybe that will stop Luke's invasion."

"No," Nico said, "he isn't dead."

"How can you be sure?" Percy asked.

"Children of Hades know when people die. It's this feeling we get, like a buzzing in our ears." Ariana explained, then raised an eyebrow. "I swear I explained this on our last quest."

"What about Tyson and Grover, then?"

Nico shook his head. "That's harder. They're not humans or half-bloods. They don't have mortal souls."

"We have to get into town," Annabeth decided, "our chances will be better of finding an entrance to the Labyrinth. We have to make it back to camp before Luke and his army."

"We could just take a plane." Rachel said.

Percy shuddered. "I don't fly neither should Ariana or Nico."