"Do you know the story of how I came to be this way?" Medusa smiled delicately, her beige, netted hat protecting her deadly eyes from Ciarda who stared at her with a sneer. "I do!" Grover added, his mouth stuffed with cheese-drenched bread.
"Do you?" She cocked her head, bells tolling. "Thank you for the lunch offer but I believe that we should go," Ciarda lifted her dagger from her pocket and spun it in her hand. She thought about all she knew of Alecto, how she would fight the monster waiting for them.
"Athena was everything to me. I worshipped her. I prayed to her. I made offerings - she never answered. Not even an omen to suggest she appreciated my love," Medusa kept talking to them after Grover realised he might not know her story as well as he thought.
The familiar feeling of anger radiated off Medusa and to Ciarda - who was very good at noticing these feelings, with her father being the God of Battle Spirit - she knew their lunch was beginning to go downhill.
"I wasn't like you, Sweetheart," She spat at Annabeth. Ciarda decided that it was safer to deal with Medusa for as long as they could and catch Alecto off guard. The La Rue had begun to feel protective of this group, she needed to keep them alive - that was what the Oracle told her to do.
Her job wasn't completing the quest to find the masterbolt, it was making sure Percy kept his life. Although, so far, nobody had questioned her on what her prophecy said, only what Percy's had narrated to him.
"I was you. I would've worshipped her that way for a lifetime. With silence. But then one day, another God came and he broke that silence. Your father." Medusa looked at Percy, his sea-blue eyes still trained on the floor.
"You can look at her," Ciarda mumbled, stabbing a pale green macaron violently with a two-pronged fork.
Her other quest-mates stared at her. "YOU LOOKED?" They all asked incredulously. Ciarda shrugged, continuing to mess up the pretty pudding on her plate.
"It seems that it isn't just you who doesn't know proper etiquette. Please, ignore my acquaintances, continue," She smiled sarcastically. Medusa showed her teeth with a small-lipped smile. She nodded as if to say, 'Very well'.
"The Sea God told me that he loved me. I felt as though he saw me in a way that I had never been seen in before. But then Athena declared that I had embarrassed her and needed to be punished - not him. Me." Medusa's voice broke.
Ciarda swallowed, looking down at her ruined macaron. She wouldn't wish that upon anyone.
"She decided that I would never be seen again by anyone who would live to tell the tale." Medusa finished her story. No matter the pity she felt, Ciarda still refused to trust her.
"That isn't what happened," Annabeth crossed her arms defiantly, standing back up. Ciarda glared at her warningly, the spears and swords, that ornamented the tearoom, began to lightly vibrate.
Percy watched them subtly, his eyes watching Ciarda. "You told me you liked them," He explained, stabbing his knife into a doughnut and sliding it onto her plate. "Custard." He smiled when the weapons stopped shaking.
"How-" She looked up at him in confusion. "I heard you saying you craved them to Annabeth," He sheepishly responded, scratching his neck.
Thankfully, his interruption had calmed the two other women. For a moment. But Annabeth decided she wasn't done. "My mother is just, always."
"The Gods want you to believe that, that they are infallible. But they only want what all bullies want. They want us to blame ourselves for their own shortcomings."
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𝐖𝐀𝐑 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐒 | percy jackson
Adventure"do i look like i give a shit if he's poseidons son?" water from the fountain splashed into her face, dripping from the dark ends of her hair "the fact she's ares daughter means shit all to me" and soon enough percy jackson was scanning the room as...
