𝑨𝑺𝑯𝑬𝑺 • 𝑃𝐸𝑅𝐶𝑌 𝐽𝐴𝐶𝐾𝑆𝑂𝑁 ²

FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE
—dumb promises

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—JUDITH was perfectly content with moping around the rest of the day in the Ares cabin, chucking Sherman's throwing knives at her bed post. Her brother would kill her for touching them, but she needed to take her anger out in a small and efficient way without drawing attention to herself; mutilating a wooden beam seemed like the best solution. Ellis was the only one in there with her, and luckily, he didn't know of the embarrassment she had just endured in the sword arena. If he had, he would milk it for all it was. He was a little preoccupied with trying to find his missing Corinthian helmet.

"You didn't take it, did you?"

Judith plucked the little blade from where it had embedded itself in a notch on the post. "No, why would I take it?"

"I don't know. Why would you do anything that you do?" Ellis groaned, gesturing to her stoic assault on the bed as a point.

"Did you leave it out in the woods last night?" Judith offered. There was a pause in the rattling and a scuttle of his footsteps.

"Maybe." And just as he reached the door to the cabin, he said one more thing. "Oh, lover boy is here." He snickered and ran out. Judith chucked a shoe in his direction without looking over.

There was a thump and hiss of pain. "Ouch, what was that for?"

Judith sat up quickly, realizing it really was 'lover boy,' — more commonly known as Percy Jackson. Her eyes looked for where her boot had hit and realized she had bashed him right on his shoulder. He rubbed at it with a scowl. "Oops." Percy just shook his head at her lack of apology. It was so very Judith. "What are you doing here?"

"Just thought you needed to vent probably," he said, standing tensely in the middle of the fierce cabin. His eyes shifted to the hog head above the door and grimaced at the darts sticking out from its snout. "I've worked on my punching."

Judith thought about their scuffle the other night and how much she'd actually enjoyed it. Nobody outside of cabin five ever sought out a wrestling match, so he'd been ... different, and not a bad one like she'd originally predicted. And despite her chest screaming at her to say yes so she could release some pent up energy, she shook her head and flicked one of Sherman's daggers at the bed again.

"Fighting in the cabin is frowned upon and I am not going back to the arena."

"Suit yourself," Percy said. He shuffled a bit and Judith turned her eyes to him expectantly, just knowing he had some sort of question to ask her, like always. "Odikinesis. Chiron said your 'Odikinesis' would be dangerous. What's that mean?"

She should really just kick him out. She hated his invasive questions. But Judith just flopped backwards on her bed, forgetting about the knife in the wood for a moment. "It means I get angry and make other people angry as well. It means I start fights left and right without meaning to. And, according to Chiron, it means that I obviously have a plot to sabotage the quest."

"Oh, gotcha." Percy awkwardly shuffled around on his feet. "But it hasn't been a problem in the past. Why would he bring it up now?"

Judith was not — she simply refused to have the puberty talk with Percy Jackson. She was not about to tell him that Odikinesis and adolescence went hand in hand. She couldn't fight off the blood rushing to her face. "It's only started developing now." She quickly changed the subject. "The argument you and Annabeth had earlier was because of me. I started a fist fight with my siblings over something stupid the other day. It's been happening more and more often."