DESTINY ↳ WILL SOLACE

9. I Am Offered A Quest

CHAPTER NINE

I Am Offered A Quest

I don't own Percy Jackson.

The next morning, Chiron moved her to cabin three.

She didn't have to share with anybody. She had plenty of room for all her stuff: the Minotaur's horn, one set of spare clothes that Luke had stolen her the night before, and a toiletry bag. She got to sit at her own dinner table, pick all her own activities, call "lights out" whenever she felt like it, and not listen to anybody else.

And she was absolutely miserable.

Just when she had started to feel accepted, to feel she had a home in Cabin eleven and that she might be a normal kid—or as normal as one could be when they were a half-blood—she had been separated out as if she had some rare disease.

Nobody mentioned the hellhound to her face, but she knew that everybody was talking about it behind her back, as Will had kindly informed her. Grover told her that Will had yelled at anybody who talked about it in front of him, which made her feel a little better about the situation, but not by much. She knew the attack had scared everybody. It sent two messages: one, that Percy was the daughter of the Sea God; and two, monsters would stop at nothing to kill her. They could even invade a camp that had always been considered safe.

Annabeth still taught Percy Greek in the mornings, but she seemed distracted. Anytime Percy said something or asked a question, Annabeth scowled, like Percy had just poked her in the eyes. After a couple of days, Percy learned to just keep her comments and questions to herself and not bother Annabeth, but then she ended up having to pester Grover about the questions she never ended up asking Annabeth.

After lessons, Annabeth would walk away muttering to herself: "Quest... Poseidon?... Dirty rotten... Got to make a plan..."

Even Clarisse kept her distance, though Percy didn't know if it was because she was truly scared of her, which didn't make any sense, or if it was just social suicide to talk or associate themselves with Percy. Probably the latter, though Percy strongly suspected that her siblings had convinced Clarisse to not go after her. She shot Percy venomous glares that made it clear she wanted to murder her for breaking her magic spear, and Percy found herself wishing that Clarissewould yell at her or punch her or something. She would've rather gotten into fights than be ignored every day.

Everybody else followed in her example. Everybody who got within ten feet of her apparently had to find something else to do and ran off. Cabin eleven was too nervous to have sword class with her, though she didn't know why, but her lessons with Luke became one-on-one. He was one of the only people who didn't care about her parentage, and pushed her harder than he had ever pushed her, and wasn't afraid to bruise her up in the process.

"You're going to need all the training you can get," he promised, as they were working with swords and flaming torches. "Now let's try that viper-beheading strike again. Fifty more repetitions."

Luke, however, had to train other kids, and the one-on-one lessons were taking up his free periods, so Will had stepped up to help her too.

The first time she had seen him waiting for her in the arena after Luke had told her that someone had also agreed to help her, she had turned around and marched right back out.

"Percy!" Will had called, running after her. "Wait!"

She had, but only because she hadn't wanted to look mean, because there had been people walking past them and were stealing curious glances.

"What?" she had snapped. "Come to convince me to annoy Clarisse so that you, Luke, and Annabeth can win another game again? God, I can't believe I thought you were being nice to me because you were nice! Serves me right for being that gullible, huh? At least Luke had the guts to apologize! And what's your problem with him, anyway? He's been a lot nicer to me than you've been."