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tsarisfanfiction · 9 months ago

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Laurels and Labyrinths

Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians Rating: Teen Genre: Friendship Characters: Lee Fletcher, Clarisse La Rue, Annabeth Chase, Michael Yew Being paired with Clarisse for Quintus' war game? Not a problem. Annabeth and Percy going missing? A problem. Otherwise known as: the war games in chapter 3 of BOTL from Lee's pov. Once again, I attempt something short and it ends up being rather longer than planned. There is a whole pile of headcanons snuck in here, from Apollo kids getting tired at sundown, to the harpies not attacking Apollo kids because they're the healers and have potential reasons to be out after curfew, and various other things in between. Also the logic that Lee knows about the Labyrinth from being the healer brought in to try and help Chris. Reminder that there’s now a discord server for all my fics, including this one! If you wanna chat with me or with other readers about stuff I write (or just be social in general), hop on over and say hi!

“Your armour’s crooked, Will.”

“Tha- hey!”

Lee turned around to see Will tilted awkwardly as Michael tugged on the straps, straightening out his breastplate – or what would be straight, once Michael let go and Will could straighten up again. Will wasn’t much taller than Michael – yet – but it was already enough to be noticeable. Confident that despite appearances Michael would get Will’s armour sorted out, Lee just allowed himself a small grin at the sight before he turned back to securing his own straps tightly and checking over the rest of his siblings.

Quintus hadn’t said what, exactly, these war games he wanted all the campers armoured up for were, but if it didn’t involve the suspicious crates that had disappeared from the arena during the day, Lee would be very, very surprised. He knew he wasn’t the only one to think that; most of the confused mutterings he’d overhead since the breakfast announcement had mentioned them at one point or another, until every camper had at least heard about the crates, even the ones that hadn’t seen them.

Lee just hoped that there wasn’t another drakon involved. He was still tired from chasing off the Aethiopean drakon at three in the morning – it had not wanted to be chased off, either, and if it wasn’t for the protection of the camp borders, Lee was well aware it would’ve tried much harder to kill him and his siblings, rather than just being stubborn to chase off. He was also aware that Michael was also grumpy from the lack of sleep as well as not being able to kill the creature, and the knowledge that it was almost certainly sent by Luke to scout out their weaknesses.

Well, at least they’d proven that they could still defend their camp, although Lee had his own concerns he hadn’t dared share with any of his siblings.

Clarisse hadn’t wanted to bring him into the know, but she wasn’t a healer, and both she and Chris had needed one. Will’s aptitude for healing was constantly improving, but this wasn’t something to put on the shoulders of a then-eleven year old, so it had fallen to Lee, instead.

Knowing that the Labyrinth still existed, and seeing the damage it could cause to demigods, was one thing. Add in the creeping feeling that if it connected to everywhere important as well as several seemingly-random locations, there was almost certainly an entrance within camp borders, somewhere, and if the scouting monsters outside of camp were any indication, Lee bet Luke was looking for it? Well, Lee was not looking forwards to Quintus’ war game.

Glancing over towards where cabin five were pulling on their own armour and arming themselves to the teeth, he could see Clarisse tensely checking her straps. He clearly wasn’t the only one – and a brief look towards Annabeth straightening Malcolm’s helmet in a fidget she didn’t usually indulge in told him that all three of the in-the-know campers were in agreement.

Still, Lee couldn’t just pull his cabin out of the war game, even though Quintus wasn’t as terrifying as Tantalus had been and might even let him. Doing that would signal to the rest of the camp that there was something very wrong, and they couldn’t afford the panic. Instead, he had to give his siblings one more check – Will’s armour was now straight, as Lee had known it would be, and Sam, who had been in camp for all of a few weeks and still painfully new to anything combat-related, now had his helmet on as an extra precaution – before herding them to where the adult demigod was waiting for them.

The campers gathered in a loose crowd, more-or-less grouped by cabin, although there were a few strays mingling – notably Beckendorf and Silena, and Lee wasn’t an Aphrodite kid but even he was getting fed up of waiting for those two to stop dancing around the subject and get together already – and waited for Quintus to explain what he wanted them to do.

“Gather round,” the assistant activities director instructed. None of them got too close to where he was standing on the head table, because Mrs O’Leary was scavenging around and no-one was interested in getting bowled over by an enthusiastic hellhound, even if she wasn’t trying to eat them, but the crowd shuffled a little in response anyway. “You will be in teams of two-”

Immediately, everyone started talking. Michael grabbed onto Will and glared daggers at anyone else that even looked their brother’s way, and Lee sought out Miri with his eyes, ignoring the arguments breaking out as multiple people wanted the same partner and would fight for them-

“-Which have already been chosen!” Quintus shouted about the clamour. Everyone silenced for a moment before letting out a chorus of complaint which went ignored as he kept talking. “Your goal is simple: collect the gold laurels without dying. The wreath is wrapped in a silk package, tied to the back of one of the monsters. There are six monsters. Each has a silk package. Only one holds the laurels.” No prizes for what was in the crates, then, although Lee would’ve liked to know what monsters Quintus had lined up for them. He hoped none of them were drakons. “You must find the wreath before the other teams. And, of course… you will have to slay the monster to get it, and stay alive.”

Around him, campers started talking again, excitement tinging the air. Lee had to admit it did sound like fun, even if they couldn’t choose their own partners. Quintus had never shown any signs of wanting the demigods he was partly responsible for dead, so the monsters he’d brought in wouldn’t be beyond their abilities to deal with, Lee was pretty sure – especially if they were going to be working in pairs, and he doubted they’d all been matched with their perfect fighting partner. If it wasn’t for the ever-present background Labyrinth worry that had been plaguing him since Clarisse and Chris’ return to camp in the winter, he’d probably be just as excited as Michael, who had bared his teeth in a grin at the concept even though he was clearly still annoyed about not being able to choose his own partner.

This sort of game was right up Michael’s alley, after all.

“I will now announce your partners,” Quintus said, bringing the murmuring back into silence. “There will be no trading. No switching. No complaining.” From the way Michael was bristling from where he was stood so close to Will that their arms were pressed together, Lee suspected the last order was a lost cause. Hopefully, Quintus had a good enough idea of camper dynamics to know who not to put together.

If Michael ended up with Clarisse, the monsters were going to be the least of anyone’s worries.

Quintus cleared his throat and unrolled a scroll – a long scroll, because it was far enough into summer that all the expected returning campers had shown up again – and began to read.

“Charles Beckendorf and Silena Beauregarde.” Both of them looked delighted, and around Lee, campers started perking up again, because if Quintus was paying enough attention to put those two together, maybe the rest of them were also paired with friends or partners. “Travis Stoll and Connor Stoll,” made it seem even more likely, and the brothers high fived each other as campers started drifting towards their preferred partners again, in anticipation of the trend continuing.

“Clarisse La Rue and Lee Fletcher.”

It didn’t. Lee grimaced at Miri, ignoring Michael starting to grumble unsavoury things about the daughter of Ares. At least Quintus had known better than to pair them together. Clarisse stepped away from her siblings, and made eye contact with Lee, jerking her head in a clear get over here message. Michael’s grumbling got louder, only to be cut off by his own name.

“Michael Yew and Drew Tanaka.”

The daughter of Aphrodite screwed her face up in disgust, and Lee’s brother glowered at her in return. It wasn’t a bad match-up, Lee mused as he finally made his way over to join Clarisse. Drew’s charmspeak wouldn’t affect Michael, and she was a decent enough melee fighter to go with his ranged attacks. As long as they actually co-operated.

He saw Michael leave Will’s side to join her with bad grace. Their matching scowls almost made Lee chuckle.

“They’re going to get each other killed,” Clarisse huffed next to him. She didn’t sound particularly cut up about it.

“They’d better not,” he muttered back as Quintus continued calling out pairings, which were met with a variety of reactions. Will got partnered with Malcolm, which was not the worst possibility, even if Lee would really have preferred for Will to not be involved in the war game at all. At least Malcolm was smart enough to not throw the pair of them straight at the monsters – or really competitive enough to care. Maybe that pair would just linger at the forest edge like sensible pre-teens.

Lee could hope.

The pairing finally finished with the curious duo of Tyson and Grover – the only satyr to be included, presumably for his friendship with Percy – and Quintus reminded them all that they weren’t allowed to complain before letting them head towards the woods.

It wasn’t dusk yet, but the sun was far enough across the sky that Lee suspected it would be after dark by the time they were done, and wasn’t particularly pleased about it. They didn’t currently have any Apollo campers young enough that the setting sun was an automatic sleep signal, but none of them liked being active after sundown, let alone in combat – and definitely not two nights in a row.

“I’ll take point,” Clarisse said gruffly, as they arrived at the edge of the wood. Lee nodded.

“I’ve got your back,” he promised her. “Let’s get this over with.”

She made a noise of agreement, surveying the shadowed woods in front of them intently, and Lee remembered that he wasn’t the only one that feared a Labyrinth entrance somewhere within the camp’s borders. Clarisse had no more reason to feel comfortable with the war game than he did.

Working with Clarisse wasn’t difficult, in combat. Lee had done it several times over the years in Capture the Flag, both as head counsellors and also when they were younger, to say nothing of when they’d had to organise the camp defences the previous summer. If there was something Clarisse knew, it was combat, and she stalked through the woods on high alert, electric spear silent in her hand. Lee shadowed her on light feet, not letting himself focus on any one thing, but spreading his attention around them in case they were flanked or approached from behind.

In the gradually fading light of dusk, the woods began to take on an ominous feel. Branches rustled in faint breezes, in conversation between the dryads that tended not to leave their trees, with the movement of almost a hundred demigods trying to move quietly, and in some cases failing.

Knowing that the noises could mean allies – or in this case, campers and not monsters – Lee forced himself not to shoot at any movement until he knew what it was. Unlike Capture the Flag, and other games where their opponents were each other, none of the Apollo kids had blunted arrows tonight. He couldn’t afford stray shots.

Ahead came the sound of skittering on fallen twigs, and Clarisse threw her hand up silently in a clear command to halt. Lee stopped where he was immediately, nocking the arrow he’d held loosely in his hand onto the string but not drawing, not yet. That hadn’t been a demigod or a dryad noise, and probably wasn’t the wind either, which meant monster but until he could see it, he wasn’t risking full draw.

Clarisse made another sharp hand signal, exaggerated in the dusk. Cover me. Then she crept forwards, fingers flexing around the shaft of her spear, poised to ignite the crackling electricity the moment she needed it. Lee stayed a little way behind her, padding forwards silently with his bow ready to draw and fire in an instant in his hands.

The skitter came again, closer, louder, faster-

Clarisse let out a shout of victory, silence shattering as her spear surged to life and she abandoned stealth to leap into action, fluid experience ducking her underneath a flailing scorpion tail – pit scorpion venom flashed through Lee’s mind, the discolouration of Percy’s hand, the revelation that Luke betrayed them, but he pushed it aside to deal with later, when Clarisse wasn’t dodging the giant scorpion (not a pit scorpion) and its attacks.

Scorpions were armoured, which was a pain in the half-light when Lee couldn’t see its weak spots so clearly, but they were in pairs for a reason and he wasn’t leaving Clarisse to take the creature on alone. He waited until she was down low, out of his line of sight, before letting fly with the first arrow, catching it in a chink between head and body armour.

Just like the drakon the previous night, armoured and needing to be shot at in the dark, that wasn’t enough to bring it down, and with stealth abandoned, Lee didn’t hesitate to yank more arrows from his quiver, the shafts whispering against the leather before nocks clicked into place on the string and he fired again. In front of him, Clarisse threw herself inside the scorpion’s guard, thrusting the spear forwards with enough strength that it impaled the tail and rendered it useless, before drawing her knife and stabbing at one of the gaps in its carapace.

Lee let more arrows fly into more gaps, too, and with one last grunt from Clarisse as she drove the knife in deep, the scorpion burst into dust, covering Clarisse.

Its silk-wrapped parcel likewise disappeared with a small explosion, leaving nothing behind.

“Not that one, then,” Lee commented as Clarisse spat out monster dust from her mouth and drank a swig of water from her water bottle.

“One down, five to go,” she replied, bending down to retrieve her spear and looking it over with a critical eye. Seemingly satisfied that it hadn’t been damaged by the scorpion’s tough exterior, she slammed the butt down onto the ground. “Laurel leaves or not, we’re killing them all.”

Lee didn’t disagree. While he knew the two of them were unlikely to be the ones finding and killing all six of the monsters – Percy Jackson was somewhere in the woods, along with Annabeth, and Michael, and the rest of the Ares and Athena cabins, and really all the demigods were trained for killing monsters – they couldn’t leave until they knew their woods were safe again.

Well, for a certain degree of safe.

“These things aren’t quiet,” he said, kneeling down to retrieve his arrows and check if any of them were bent. Some were, but not to the point of being unusable, so he put them all back in his quiver. “Not when they’re fighting.”

Clarisse nodded, looking around. “This one was alone,” she said. “The noise hasn’t drawn any more to us.” She started walking, changing direction and striking out further away from the setting sun, into the darker, deeper parts of the wood. “So we’re going to them.”

Lee followed without complaint.

They’d started off at the edge of the forest, tracking around the camp’s forest boundary, but now Clarisse was leading them further into the heart of the demigod-claimed territory. Quintus had probably released them from somewhere in there, near the creek they always used as the territory divider in Capture the Flag. Lee hoped he had, because that was familiar territory for all but the newest campers, and familiar terrain in combat helped, especially for the younger and less confident fighters.

As they headed further into regular demigod territory, they began to pass other pairs. Most of the younger kids hadn’t gone far into the forest, unnerved by the dense trees in the creeping darkness, and Lee was glad for that. Having now faced one of Quintus’ monsters, while it hadn’t been much of a challenge for him and Clarisse, the less experienced demigods would struggle.

At one point, they passed Michael and Drew. The daughter of Aphrodite had the tell-tale dust in her hair and was furious about it, shouting at Michael about something or other. From the brief snatches he caught, Lee surmised she didn’t like that she was the front line fighter in their duo, and that Michael was not covered in monster-dust because he’d been shooting from up a tree.

Neither of them were wearing golden laurels, and bringing Clarisse close to Michael while Michael was tired and grumpy and already dealing with Drew’s temper was a recipe for a disaster that Lee wanted no part in, so he forged past them without acknowledging their existence. To his relief, Clarisse likewise ignored the pair, holding her head up and deliberately not even glancing their way as she continued on her path towards what was hopefully more monsters to kill.

They ended up at Zeus’ Fist, and found three more of the scorpions at once. They were skittering around the rock pile agitatedly, as though there was something there that they wanted, and all Lee could think of was cornered demigods, even though he couldn’t see any sign of any.

Clarisse growled. “Shoot them, Lee!” she ordered as her spear crackled into life and she threw herself at the trio of eight-legged, skittering monsters. Lee didn’t need to be told twice, nocking arrows and drawing his bow back. With more scorpion than Clarisse in his sights, it was easier to let fly and trust that he wouldn’t hit her, although the steadily-darkening sky made it harder to spot the cracks in the scorpions’ armour. Clarisse’s spear gave off a faint red glow as Ares’ power coursed through it, enough to throw deeper shadows into the gaps, and Lee used that as a guidance as he steadily emptied his quiver into the three monsters, targeting joints to try and restrict their movement as Clarisse stabbed and slashed with her spear in one hand and her knife in the other.

Not for the first time, Lee suspected that Clarisse was the best melee fighter in the camp, potentially barring Percy when he got wet. It was hardly a surprise, but that didn’t make it any less awe inspiring to watch as she slowly but surely wore down the three scorpions. It wasn’t an easy battle for her – even with Lee’s supporting fire and the arrows wedging themselves in limb joints, she was still taking hits, although her armour deflected the worst of them – but there was no doubt that she was going to win, eventually.

Lee’s quiver emptied, the downside of dealing with three scorpions at once when each of them could get turned into a pincushion and still stay standing, and he set his bow to the side, drawing his knife and stepping closer to the fray. He wasn’t a melee fighter, really, but if he could even play distraction for a few seconds, that would help Clarisse.

“I’ve got this!” she snapped as he ducked under a flailing tail, and promptly proved her words by stabbing the scorpion closest to him through the head with her spear. A surge of electricity and Lee found himself covered by dust, a small, silk-wrapped parcel dropping down neatly into his hands. Remembering the previous one, he went to drop it before it went boom, only for the silk to shift and expose gold. Instead of dropping it, he stuffed it into his quiver and dropped to his knees in the middle of the dust pile, scooping up his arrows and frowning when he realised most of them were damaged in some way or another. Only two were still useable, and he scrambled back to his bow, nocking both arrows at once as he ran back into the fray.

A few years ago, on one of his trips out of camp, he and some of the other campers had found themselves at the movies, on edge for monsters trying to kill them but likewise fascinated by the movie they’d ended up watching. Lee was pretty certain he’d technically been too young for the rating, but some of the older demigods had snuck him in anyway.

The elf – Lee did not remember the character’s name – jumping on top of an elephant’s head and firing two arrows point-blank into the top of its skull had stuck with him. Typically that was far closer to a monster than archers were supposed to get, and the laws of physics dictated that by dividing the force between two arrows, both would’ve been fired weaker than usual, but Lee was a son of Apollo, and while he wasn’t as much of an archer as Michael, his father was still the god of archery, and that came with a few perks – like occasionally ignoring the laws of archery physics.

Lee sprung onto the back of one of the scorpions, the one behind Clarisse as she attacked the other with a fresh degree of ferocity, and ran forwards, ducking the tail that lashed towards him as he made his way to its head and aimed down.

The explosion of dust in his face also made him lose his footing as nothing substantial was beneath him anymore. He stumbled to the ground as Clarisse vanquished the other one with a cry, breathing heavily but seemingly unbothered by the dust covering her skin.

“One left,” the daughter of Ares said, proving that she had noticed Michael and Drew earlier.

Lee, too, wanted to keep going, but, “I’m out of arrows,” he admitted, picking up the other arrows from where they’d been dropped after the scorpions had dissolved. All of them were bent or even broken; the two he’d killed one of the scorpions with had shattered entirely.

Clarisse scoffed. “That’s the problem with you archers,” she said. It was something Lee had heard her say many times to Michael, who had always taken it as a personal insult and reacted accordingly, usually with arrows. Lee was not quite so temperamental as his younger brother, and simply drew his knife again.

“I still have this,” he said. She didn’t look impressed, even though her own knife had already been liberally used to kill giant scorpions. “Oh, and this.”

He rummaged through his quiver and stepped up next to Clarisse, plucking out the silk-wrapped parcel and wrestling the golden laurels out.

The younger girl gave him a nonplussed look as he deposited it on her head.

“Your kill, your laurels,” he said, and she rolled her eyes, but reached up and positioned the laurels more firmly in her hair.

“Whatever,” she said. “We have one more scorpion to hunt-”

Rustling in the nearby trees had both of them slamming back-to-back, Lee’s bow abandoned on the ground and his knife clenched in his fist as Clarisse’s spear crackled to life behind him.

Another scorpion? It was already weird that three of them had been together like that – surely there shouldn’t be a fourth one in their vicinity.

It wasn’t another scorpion, and Lee felt the tension drain from Clarisse’s body as her spear stopped crackling. Other demigods, then. He moved around until he could see them; it was Sherman, with his Quintus-mandated partner Jake following on behind him.

Clarisse’s younger brother immediately noticed the golden laurels gleaming in the rapidly-fading light and his shoulders slumped.

“Of course you got it,” he said. “Pairing you two up was just unfair.”

“How many have you killed?” Jake asked them, looking at Lee’s strewn and broken arrows.

“Four,” Clarisse said shortly, and the younger boys both whistled through their teeth. “Drew and the short bastard-”

“Clarisse,” Lee sighed, and her jaw tightened.

“-Michael got another one, which makes five.”

“We got one, too,” Sherman said, and now Lee was looking he could see the silvery dusting in his dark hair, “so that’s all of them.”

Lee’s shoulders slumped in relief; he hadn’t been looking forwards to hunting a giant scorpion with a knife as his only weapon. “That means this game is over,” he said. “We should get back so Quintus can recall everyone else.” He glanced up at the sky, where the sun chariot had all but disappeared and the first of the stars were starting to make their presence known. “It’ll be curfew soon, anyway.”

All four of them were old enough to understand that even with the camp’s defences still active, they didn’t really want any campers left in the woods after curfew, when night had fully set in and there were no more traces of Apollo’s light.

Lee set about gathering up the remains of his arrows; just because the shafts were broken didn’t mean the heads weren’t reusable, and maybe some of the less severely bent shafts could be straightened again. Jake and Sherman joined him; a glance towards Clarisse showed her scanning the deepening shadows of the trees, standing as still as a sentinel and no doubt keeping watch in case there was something that shouldn’t be in their area of the woods.

With three of them on the case, it didn’t take long to retrieve all the visible arrows. Lee’s quiver looked a sorry sight as he slid in the last handful of damaged arrows and straightened up again.

“Let’s-” he started, only to be cut off by a familiar horn. It wasn’t the dinner conch, but it was the summoning sound Chiron used to call all the stragglers in after Capture the Flag was over. Either they’d hit a time limit, or Quintus had somehow determined that the laurel had been claimed.

Lee wasn’t sure which option he preferred, but it didn’t really matter when it got all four of them jogging back towards camp, away from Zeus’ fist and the dust of slaughtered scorpion-like monsters.

There were several unsurprised eyerolls as the other campers caught sight of the laurels in Clarisse’s choppy and messy hair – the new, shorter hair suited her a lot better, Lee thought, although after so many years it was still strange to see Clarisse with short hair. The general consensus seemed to match Sherman’s initial assessment – of course Clarisse was the one to win.

Michael was eyeing the laurel with a scowl as he ditched Drew and slunk up next to Lee. “Why’s she wearing it?” he huffed, thankfully quiet enough that Clarisse, who had gone to round up her cabin as they reappeared, didn’t hear.

Lee shrugged at his younger brother. “She killed that one.”

“That one?” Michael demanded, eyebrows shooting up. “How many did you fight?”

“Four.”

“Fucking Hades,” Michael swore, shaking his head. “Could’ve left some for the rest of us.”

“One was plenty, you bastard,” Drew muttered, passing them on the way to reconvening with her siblings. “Do you even care how long it takes to get monster dust out of your hair?”

“No.”

Lee couldn’t help a fond chuckle as the daughter of Aphrodite rolled her eyes and stalked off, muttering “of course he doesn’t. If he’d just let us at his hair…”

Michael’s step to the side, subtly putting Lee between him and the gathering of Aphrodite kids, almost made him smile again. They’d both heard, several times, that Michael had nice hair if only he’d treat it right, according to the Aphrodite cabin. Neither of them were quite sure what they meant by that, and Michael was in no hurry to find out, either, even if Lee was secretly curious.

One by one, the rest of Lee’s siblings started reappearing from the woods. Sam looked pale, and Tris’ eyes were half-lidded with exhaustion, and the rest of the cabin were in varying stages of tiredness. Two late nights in a row was not fun, and while Lee hadn’t seen any nasty injuries from the returning campers, he was sure there would be a few people with scratches that they’d be expected to deal with before bed. Will yawned as he separated from Malcolm, the older boy gripping his shoulder briefly, and more or less walked into Michael, resting his forehead on his shoulder.

“Can we go to bed now?” he mumbled as Michael patted his head.

“Once Quintus and Chiron say so,” Lee promised him, scanning all of his siblings for signs of injury. “Everyone okay?” he asked, raising his voice enough to be heard over the mutters and grumbles of his tired siblings. Aside from him and Michael, he knew none of them had actually fought the scorpions, so they’d spent the past hour or so of fading dusk wandering around the forest on edge with nothing exciting to show for it. No wonder they were all crashing now the game was over.

Camp was now fully lit with torches, and the ever-present glow of the hearth. Their dad’s chariot had long since returned to its temple, and Artemis’ was only giving a sliver of light tonight. Apollo kids were not night owls and it was getting late by their standards, especially the younger ones.

Even Michael was looking a rather tired, the drakon messing up his sleep last night combined with another late night tugging at him, too. Lee wasn’t quite fighting yawns, but he couldn’t deny he was also thinking fondly of his waiting bed.

Tyson and Grover were the last pair to stumble out of the forest, both immediately separating and circling around opposite sides of the gathering of demigods. Grover headed for where the Athena kids had clumped together, while Tyson looked around before saying, “where’s Percy?”

Everyone silenced, and the entire focus of the camp landed on the Athena cabin, because if anyone would know the answer to that, it would be Annabeth, but Annabeth wasn’t there, either. Grover stopped still, and frowned.

“I can’t feel Percy,” he admitted, four words that sent the whole of camp reeling. Not everyone knew about the empathy bond he had with the son of Poseidon, but everyone except the very newest campers knew he and Percy were close.

Even the newest campers knew the disappearance of their resident Big Three Kid didn’t bode well. Lee couldn’t help but remember the first time it happened, Percy and Luke nowhere to be found until suddenly Percy was in his infirmary with pit scorpion venom and Luke was gone.

Why did he keep remembering that, tonight? He shook his head and stepped forwards, the same time Clarisse did.

“We’d better find those idiots before they go off on another stupid quest without leave,” she grumbled, and Lee remembered the second time Percy disappeared – this time with Annabeth. No-one had ever got the full story out of that incident out of them, but it was a common theory that they’d overlapped with Clarisse’s quest to get the golden fleece, even if none of them had ever said as much.

Clarisse’s voice was just a little too annoyed for Lee to think there wasn’t something personal in the accusation, though.

“Not all of us,” he cut in, to say his own piece. “It’s way past curfew and the younger campers need to go to bed.”

“Annabeth’s missing!” one of the Athena kids yelled. Lee couldn’t see which one, but the voice was young.

“Now, now,” Chiron said, trotting forwards into the centre of attention, Quintus walking beside him. “They may have just gone deeper than everyone else and are taking longer to return.” After Grover’s declaration, Lee didn’t think anyone believed that. “And if there is a problem, it is not your jobs to sort it out.”

“You can’t expect us to stay back and not look for them,” Travis called from the throng of cabin eleven, echoed by Connor.

Chiron raised a hand as more demigods began to clamour, but it was Quintus who spoke.

“A compromise,” he suggested. “Chiron, how about enlisting the help of our head counsellors?” His gaze landed on Lee and Clarisse, their weight old and heavy, before he looked up at the centaur. “Some experienced help.”

More protests exploded from the younger campers, and the Athena cabin, whose head counsellor was the one missing, and Chiron sighed.

“Very well,” he said. “Head counsellors, select one of your siblings to help you, and another one to take charge of getting the rest of your cabins to bed and staying there. Quickly, now.”

Lee glanced at Clarisse, and caught her glancing back at him, his suspicions reflected in her eyes. Disappearing mirrored appearing, after all.

It was barely a moment, before they turned back to their respective cabins. The choice of who was coming with him was obvious, and Michael stepped up before he could even say anything. Really, Lee should make him the one in charge of the cabin – they all knew he would be the one to succeed Lee once he went to college in a year’s time, after all, and needed the practice – but he was their best archer and spent more time in the woods than most. He’d be best suited to the search party, even if it meant having to work with Clarisse.

“Lawrence, I’m leaving the cabin to you. Make sure everyone goes to bed,” Lee said. Lawrence was one of the oldest campers, older than him, and due to go to college in the fall. He’d also arrived at camp the same year as Michael and lived there ever since, making him one of the more experienced demigods, too – and everyone loved him. “I’m also out of arrows, so if anyone’s got any..?”

“I got it,” his brother agreed, scooping Sam and Tris under his arms. “Right then, sleepyheads. Bed time for you guys. Will, Alice, that includes you two. Grab them, Morton, and give Lee your spare arrows. Anyone else with arrows, do that, too.”

Lee accepted the various arrows from his siblings, passing the ones that were a bit shorter than he could comfortably use to Michael, whose quiver could always do with more, it seemed. Once both of them were once again armed to the teeth – and relieved of their broken and bent arrows – they left Lawrence to wrangling the tired cabin and went to join Chiron.

Most of the other head counsellors were already there. Clarisse had Sherman by her side, both of them looking impatient at the wait, while Drew sneered at Michael from beside Silena. Lee glanced over at the rest of the Aphrodite kids to see Miri corralling them back towards their cabin. She sent him a short wave when she caught sight of him looking, and he grinned back.

Michael, like any self-respecting little sibling, made disgusted noises under his breath, which Lee ignored with years of practice.

Unsurprisingly, Malcolm had elected himself as the head counsellor for the Athena cabin in Annabeth’s absence. He wasn’t the oldest, or even the most experienced, but he was the one that everyone already knew would inherit the position when Annabeth inevitably went to college one day. He had, at least, had the good sense to pick one of his older and more experienced siblings as his partner, though. Beckendorf was accompanied by Jake, Katie had picked Miranda, and Travis and Connor and Pollux and Castor had obviously picked each other. Lee hadn’t expected anything different from cabins eleven and twelve.

Grover and Tyson finished off the official search party, still keeping their distance from each other but adamant that they were going to be involved, anyway. No-one was going to tell them no.

“We’ll split into two groups to cover more ground but keep safety in numbers,” Chiron told them. “Clarisse and Sherman, Lee and Michael, Silena and Drew, Pollux and Castor, and Tyson – you’ll be with me.”

“And the rest of you are with me,” Quintus said. “And Mrs O’Leary, of course.” The hellhound let out a massive whoof that made them all jump.

Quintus’ search party looked a little discomforted at the reminder they were going into the woods accompanied by a hellhound, even if she was a friendly one. Lee was privately glad that he wasn’t in that group.

Chiron gave all of them torches and whistles, “in case anyone gets separated, or to let the other group know if we find them.” Lee looped his whistle around his neck, while Michael tangled the string around his quiver strap.

Going back into the woods late at night, when there was only the light of their torches and the faint strains of moon- and starlight to show the way, was disconcerting. Lee didn’t like it, and from the tenseness of everyone else’s shoulders, nor did anyone else. Stealth was no longer a priority, so Clarisse’s spear was constantly crackling, lighting up with red sparks that made her still-worn laurels glisten as though they were on fire.

“Percy!” Tyson bellowed suddenly, almost deafening them. Lee had to grip Michael’s arm to stop him firing an arrow at the cyclops, trying to pretend his other hand wasn’t halfway to raising his bow on instinct, either. “Annabeth!”

“Oi, Jackson! Wise girl!” Clarisse echoed after a moment, and one by one they all took up the call as they wove their way through the trees, hooves and feet alike making noise on the undergrowth. Regular animals scattered, and in the distance they heard answering echoes of the same names from the other search party, who had entered the woods at the other edge of the barrier.

It was a similar pattern to the one Lee and Clarisse had taken whilst hunting the scorpions, although they hadn’t had anyone the other side to complete the pincer movement.

Despite being a single search party, as they moved they started to spread out, never losing sight of each other’s torches, but covering a greater area as they combed the undergrowth, in case the missing demigods weren’t-

Weren’t capable of calling back.

Lee refused to think of why, didn’t let himself think of pit scorpions and half dead sons of Poseidon limp in the infirmary, but made sure to check every darker pocket of shadows with his torch, just to be sure. Above him, he could hear Michael slipping along tree branches, his torch providing far more light from the skies than the distant moon and stars and his voice joining the calls. He was the only one of their party that could really navigate the trees so easily – not just for his size, but because Lee had known for years that despite his brusqueness with the other demigods, Michael had long since got on the good side of the dryads and was allowed to clamber through them like a monkey, so long as he didn’t damage their trees – and Chiron had swiftly agreed that the additional viewing angle would only help.

For once, Clarisse hadn’t made any snide or antagonising remarks about Michael’s tendency to hide in trees and sneak around, which had only proven how concerned she actually was about Annabeth and Percy’s disappearance. Lee couldn’t quite kid himself into thinking it was just because Clarisse was worried it meant there was a Labyrinth entrance, and that they’d found it – ever since the fleece quest last summer, she’d been a little less outrightly hostile to Percy, and she and Annabeth had always been more of a butting heads rather than hating each other’s guts relationship. Lee had known the younger girls long enough to know that they respected each other, when it came down to it.

Lee’s torch picked up a scattering of dust, recent enough to have not been blown away by what wind made it through the trees, and the beam from Clarisse’s torch, next to him in their line, crossed it. They both paused, and looked at each other.

“The scorpions,” Clarisse said, her voice a little hoarse from the shouting. It was almost drowned out by the yells of their companions, but she was looking at Lee.

“They wouldn’t be killed by those,” he protested, and she grunted, slashing her spear through the air.

“I’m not an idiot,” she snapped. “Think, Lee.”

Lee blinked at her, glancing back at the scattered dust. Around and above them, the rest of the search party kept marching forwards.

“I’m not following,” he admitted. “What about them?”

She rolled her eyes before stomping forwards again, breaking their search pattern. Lee hurried to follow, because none of them were going alone. Behind him, he heard Drew curse as she spotted their torches headed in a different direction. “Oi, wrong way!”

Clarisse ignored her. “The first one was by itself,” she said. “So was the one Drew and Michael killed, and Sherman and Jake.”

Lee suddenly realised where she was going, and where they were headed. “But the other three were together.”

“Took you long enough,” she huffed.

“They weren’t facing us,” Lee continued to recall, hearing their names also being called, and the frustrated grunts of Michael in the trees above them as he caught up with them. “They’d been following something else. But there was nothing there, was there?”

“Enough of the damn universe revolves around Jackson,” Clarisse snorted. “Why wouldn’t half the damn monsters?”

“What are you two going on about?” Michael shouted down at them.

“Fuck off,” Clarisse snapped at him.

“Clarisse,” Lee scolded immediately, before glancing up at the torch dimly illuminating his younger brother in the trees. “We’re going to check Zeus’ Fist,” he told him. “Tell Chiron.” He didn’t leave it a question, because if he did, Michael would say no, and then he’d be stuck mediating between Clarisse and Michael whilst trying to find missing demigods, and at what had to be well past ten at night by now, Lee was far too tired to be dealing with their arguments.

“Tell him yourself,” Michael groused, because Lee wasn’t the only overtired Apollo kid on the search, and Michael got irritable even with him sometimes, and Lee was not dealing with this.

“Michael!” he snapped. “Go tell Chiron, now.”

Above him, the torchlight stuttered, and Lee felt a flash of guilt because he never snapped at Michael, but then it turned around and the dark silhouette of his younger brother headed back towards the bulk of the search party.

Clarisse whistled. “I didn’t know you had it in you, Lee.”

Lee groaned. “Clarisse. It is stupid o’clock at night. We spent a good hour earlier chasing and killing giant scorpions. Now there are missing demigods. Michael and I were up last night chasing off drakons at stupid o’clock in the morning. I am past tired, and we’re both worrying that the Labyrinth is involved even though neither of us can say it in front of the other campers.” She stiffened. “Do not push me right now.”

That was the wrong thing to say to an Ares kid – the default response to do not push me with them was always what are you going to do about it, and Clarisse had never been the exception to that rule. Lee braced himself for the inevitable jibe.

It didn’t come.

“You too?” she asked instead, her voice quiet in a way that Clarisse wasn’t, except when the Labyrinth came up. Lee didn’t know what, exactly, she’d been through when she’d explored it, but he remembered the injuries she’d come back to camp with. The scar on her chin was the only one visible in polite company, but there had been several, worse, wounds that were now knotted and ugly scars under her clothes. The thing with being the camp’s head healer was that Lee saw these things.

“I hope it isn’t,” he admitted, keeping a careful eye on the torches now following them from behind, because even if it was only senior campers, he didn’t want them overhearing this. Clarisse wouldn’t, either. “But…”

“Grover could reach Percy from the fucking Sea of Monsters,” Clarisse said, roughly, and adding more weight to the theory that their paths had crossed on the fleece quest. “If he can’t reach him now, it’s something worse than that.”

And it’s in our camp, she didn’t say, but Lee heard it loud and clear, anyway, and there wasn’t anything he could say to that, because he didn’t think she was wrong, but admitting out loud that she was right…

Well, there was a reason she didn’t say it.

Hooves pounded the ground behind them, and Lee turned around as Chiron caught them up. “You shouldn’t be wandering off without telling us,” the centaur said, disapprovingly.

“Lee sent Michael to tell you,” Clarisse muttered. The tree leaves above them rustled, but Michael didn’t say anything else. The guilt at snapping at his younger brother gnawed a little bit deeper.

“I know,” Chiron said, but he still didn’t sound happy. Then again, Lee had sent Michael with a message and no company, although he trusted the trees to keep Michael safe better than anyone would’ve been on the ground. “Why Zeus’ Fist?”

“There were three scorpions clustered together there,” Lee said, before Clarisse could. “They looked like they’d been chasing something, but there wasn’t anything there. We didn’t pay attention to that at the time, but…”

“But you now think that might have been Annabeth and Percy,” Chiron sighed. “I see. I can’t say I would be surprised; Percy does attract more monsters than the rest of you.”

Not for the first time, Lee was glad to not be a Big Three kid. He’d seen Thalia’s death when he’d been ten – and subsequent resurrection last summer – and all the chaos Percy had been falling into since his arrival two years ago, and was quite content with not being at the heart of all of that. It was bad enough getting involved on the periphery.

Percy and his pit scorpion-stung hand in the infirmary while nothing Lee could do helped continued to haunt him.

The rest of the search party kept calling the missing demigods’ names, but Lee and Clarisse kept forging forwards, waiting until they were in earshot of Zeus’ Fist before readding their voices to the now-hoarse calls of the others.

They almost ran straight into Grover, who was also shouting for Percy and Annabeth, completely separated from the rest of his search party. Chiron didn’t say anything about it, but Lee could feel his disapproval at the satyr striking off alone, especially as with his empathy bond he probably had a better chance at guessing where Percy had last been.

His presence did at least support his and Clarisse’s theory, though.

“Annabeth!” he shouted, as his torchlight picked up more scattered monster dust, the edge of Zeus’ Fist casting a sharp shadow through it. “Percy!”

Somewhere ahead of him, Tyson roared the names again.

Lee called again, walking closer to the pile of rocks and ending up next to Clarisse once more.

Annabeth and Percy almost collided with them, looking completely unharmed – to Lee’s relief – and confused.

“Where have you two been?” Clarisse immediately pounced, her agitation and frustration finally reaching boiling point.

“We’ve been looking forever,” Lee added, mostly to stall Clarisse’s momentum before she really let loose. They did not need Clarisse exploding in the middle of the night. Lee did not need Clarisse exploding in the middle of the night.

“But we were only gone a few minutes,” Percy protested, which was categorically wrong, because Lee was pretty certain they’d been gone for at least two hours at that point. Thankfully, Chiron appeared behind him, and Lee gladly stepped back to let someone else deal with the younger demigods now they were found and not hurt.

They’d better not be hurt.

Tyson seemed happy to jump in and confirm it; Percy liked Tyson too much to lie to him, or so Lee hoped.

“We’re fine,” the son of Poseidon promised. “We fell in a hole.”

Lee had been playing Capture the Flag around Zeus’ Fist since he was ten and finally deemed old enough. There was no hole there big enough to hide two demigods so completely for so long. The rest of Percy’s explanation made sense – Lee could attest to the three scorpions together, given the laurel one of them had been carrying was now perched on Clarisse’s head, all but forgotten by everyone in the chaos of Annabeth and Percy’s disappearance – but his idea of the timeline was so far out it was…

Concerning, if Lee was honest. Missing time usually suggested some form of amnesia, but neither demigod were showing any signs of injury at all, let alone amnesia-inducing injury, and, well. Luke worked for Kronos, now, and Kronos wasn’t just the titan of eating his children.

“You’ve been missing for almost an hour,” Chiron said, which Lee couldn’t believe. It had felt like so much longer, but maybe the centaur was only counting how long they’d been actively searching for? Lee was still certain it was at least twice that. “The game is over.”

Grover muttered something about Tyson sitting on him, which stopped them winning. Lee hadn’t even noticed them nearby, so he wasn’t quite sure what the satyr was talking about.

Clarisse, unsurprisingly for Lee, given he already knew her concerns, but more surprisingly to his fellow demigods judging by the confused noises he could hear from the others behind them, focused in on the other concerning bit, the one that wasn’t time-related.

Or maybe it was.

“A hole?” she asked, sounding to Lee like she didn’t really want to know the answer, but also needed to.

Annabeth’s deep inhale told Lee all he needed to know. Her glance around at the gathered audience of demigods all staring at her cemented it.

“Chiron… maybe we should talk about this at the Big House.”

Clarisse’s gasp cut through the silence, the daughter of Ares not able to not react to the confirmation she (and Lee) had been dreading. “You found it, didn’t you?”

Annabeth’s verbal confirmation was enough to get the other campers demanding to know what was going on, and Lee was both glad that it was only half the head counsellors, and some other experienced campers, and frustrated that they were either going to need to explain it to everyone, or find a way to diffuse the curiosity – which was not going to be easy.

Lee got the distinct feeling that Michael was burning a hole in the back of his head for not joining in the confused questions, and was not looking forwards to dealing with that, especially as he also had to apologise for snapping at him, and both of them were too tired for serious, sensible, conversations this side of sleep.

Chiron raised his hand and slowly, the rest of the present campers faded into disgruntled silence. “Tonight is not the right time, and this is not the right place,” he said. Lee fully agreed with that, suddenly very disconcerted by the fact that he had spent the past seven years playing Capture the Flag right by a Labyrinth entrance. Having seen Chris, and Clarisse, he had no desire at all to fall into it, even if it was apparently possible to escape quickly enough you didn’t even realise you were there.

Except, no, Annabeth had realised where she’d been, and she’d been researching it thoroughly, so of course she’d known how to escape. Most demigods, especially those caught unaware, probably wouldn’t have done.

Lee had the sudden urge to get away from the pile of rocks and never, ever come back. Chiron, thankfully, seemed to be in agreement, as he told them all to go back to their cabins and go to sleep.

Sleep sounded amazing, but as one of the very few demigods already in the know, Lee couldn’t just leave, especially if Annabeth and Clarisse were going to start discussing it once everyone else had gone.

“Lee?” Michael asked him, clearly suspicious, but Lee could not deal with talking to Michael about it right then.

“Listen to Chiron,” he told him, keeping half an eye on Clarisse and Annabeth, who had drawn closer together and were muttering between themselves. He needed to be involved in that. “We’ll talk in the morning, Michael.”

“But-”

“Please, Michael,” he all but begged. “We’re both exhausted and it’s going to be a long talk, which I can’t have right now.”

Michael’s eyes burned into him, but eventually he caved, to Lee’s immense relief. “You’re telling me in the morning,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. Lee smiled gratefully.

“Everything I can,” he promised, knowing that Michael probably still wasn’t exhausted enough to miss the massive loophole he was leaving himself, but hoping he would trust him just a little more. “Go on ahead and get some sleep.”

Michael scowled at him, but after a moment obeyed, turning away and joining the exodus of the other demigods back towards the cabins and their welcoming beds. Lee watched him go, hearing Chiron blow the whistle to dismiss the other search party, before joining the muttering, concerned huddle that was Annabeth, Clarisse, Percy, Grover and Tyson in time to hear Annabeth filling Percy in on the Labyrinth.

He shouldn’t have been surprised that Grover and Tyson had already been drawn into the loop.

Chiron came up behind him. “We will discuss this in the morning,” he said, firmly but not unkindly. “Off you go.”

Lee was more than happy to leave the clearing, and the woods, but when they reached the open area of camp, he hung back as Percy and Tyson retreated into cabin three and Grover disappeared off as well.

Chiron escorted the rest of them to their cabins, one at a time, but Lee knew that the girls were going to reappear as soon as the centaur was gone. He obediently ducked inside the door of cabin seven, pleased to see that all of the younger kids were asleep, although the older campers were having a quiet conference – centred around Michael, who was presumably telling them that Annabeth and Percy had been found, and hopefully not telling them anything else. They caught sight of him and waved him over, but he shook his head.

“They’re safe,” he said quietly, glancing back out the window near the door to see Chiron’s shadow slowly traipsing away from the cabins and back up the hill, “but I’ve got to go out again before I can go to bed. Don’t wait up for me.”

“Lee, you’re exhausted,” Lawrence protested. “You barely got any sleep last night, and you’re not getting much tonight, either.”

“I’ll survive,” Lee promised. “And I won’t be long.” He and the girls could only dodge the harpies for so long.

Chiron’s shadow disappeared, and immediately he saw the door to cabin six crack open again. He couldn’t see the door to cabin five from the window, but Annabeth headed straight for the Ares cabin, so he knew Clarisse was making her own reappearance.

He slipped back out the door himself, darting across the short distance between the two cabins, and rejoined the girls.

“Go to bed, Lee,” Clarisse ordered, but she couldn’t raise her voice, and Lee was not letting the younger demigods cut him out of the loop now.

“What happened?” he asked Annabeth. Her face scrunched up.

“Percy summed it up,” she said. “When the scorpions cornered us, we fell into the rocks. It was pitch black, no light at all, and I had to grab him to stop him wandering off. Then I found the Daedalus symbol and pressed it, and the entrance re-opened so we could climb out. It really didn’t take any time at all.”

“Time moves differently in there,” Clarisse confirmed. Lee hadn’t known that, but if anyone was going to know that, it was the one that had spent time exploring it. “That… shit. That was definitely it. And if Luke doesn’t already know about it, it’s only a matter of time before he does.”

Lee remembered, again, the day Percy came to him with pit scorpion venom and Luke vanished into the woods, and his stomach curled unpleasantly.

“He already knows where it is, from this side,” he said. “That’s how he left.”

In the faint moonlight, Annabeth looked completely washed out, but it was Clarisse that finished the thought.

“He’s trying to find the entrance from the inside,” she growled. “Chris-”

Her voice broke off, and neither Lee nor Annabeth finished her sentence out loud. None of them needed to.

That was what Chris had been sent in to look for – if not the string, at least the route back to camp from wherever Luke and Kronos’ army were waiting.

“That drakon was a distraction,” Lee sighed, but Annabeth shook her head.

“Two-pronged attack,” she said. “If they can find a weakness in the barrier now Thalia’s not- Or a backup plan, if they can’t navigate the Labyrinth.”

Lee still couldn’t reconcile the Luke he remembered with the Luke that was actively trying to attack their camp. It just didn’t make sense. But Chris had proven that something was coming, and Luke and Chris had been good friends, for all that Chris was unclaimed. For him to throw Chris away like that…

The Luke Lee knew clearly didn’t exist anymore.

“We have to tell Chiron, in the morning,” he said. “This is…”

“Tomorrow will be a full war council,” Annabeth said, confidently. She looked at Clarisse, and Lee did the same. The daughter of Ares’ lips were thin where they pressed together tightly. “After this, Chiron can’t keep it from the other head counsellors.”

And that meant that everyone was going to find out about Chris.

Clarisse growled. “I know,” she said.

“Patient confidentiality still holds,” Lee promised her. “They don’t need to know any details.” He hoped he didn’t imagine her relaxing slightly, but it could easily have been a trick of the moonlight.

“Just the threat of the Labyrinth,” Annabeth agreed. The words, said out loud, made Lee shiver.

They were out of their depth, now. This was more than three demigods could handle.

“We can’t do anything about it right now,” he said. “And the harpies will be along soon. Try and get some sleep, girls. We’ll need both of you sharp in the morning, for this.” He looked over at Clarisse. “I’ll drop by Chris before breakfast,” he told her.

“Have you worked out how to cure insanity?” she snapped back, and he sighed.

“No,” he admitted, “but that doesn’t mean I’m giving up on him.” Even if all he could do was make sure Chris wasn’t in physical pain, wasn’t hurting himself in his insanity, he’d keep doing it.

Clarisse looked at him, for once looking like the fifteen year old she was, young and scared. It was a vulnerability Lee only knew he was seeing because she was tired, too. Not just physically, but emotionally, too. Ever since Chris had appeared in Arizona, she’d been struggling, and this seemed like the final straw for her.

Lee was impressed she’d held it together for so long. He was older, and only tangentially involved – brought in because they needed a healer, and now the only one of their trio that had never been in the Labyrinth – and he already felt like he was about to break under the stress, knew he’d started cracking if he was snapping at Michael and constantly cycling back around to Luke’s betrayal again. How Clarisse had held herself together for so long, he had no idea.

“Get some sleep,” he said, not gently because even now, Clarisse would not take well to gentle. “I’ll see you in the morning.” He glanced up at the moon, now high in the sky, and realised with a sinking feeling that tomorrow had arrived. “Later in the morning,” he corrected.

“Whatever,” Clarisse mumbled. Her hand travelled up to her head, gripping the laurels that still sat there, forgotten and ignored. Their victory hadn’t even been mentioned, with everything else, and Lee suspected it never would be. She pulled them off, and caught Lee out when she reached up and dropped them on his head, instead. “I’ll be there.”

She disappeared back inside her cabin before Lee or Annabeth could say anything else. The boar’s head above the door glowered down at them, and without an Ares kid, it suddenly felt wrong to be standing there.

“Bed, Annabeth,” Lee prodded. She was looking up at the laurels now in his hair, no doubt wonky – they felt like they were about to fall – but Lee was too tired to bother fixing them. “Your brain needs to be in working order at the meeting.” When she didn’t immediately move, her thoughts seemingly taking her elsewhere, he gripped her elbow lightly and began to steer her across the green, towards her own cabin. She moved without resistance, but didn’t jerk away until they were almost there, coming back from wherever her mind had gone.

“Thanks, Lee,” she said. “We don’t say that enough.” Lee gave her a quick, one-armed hug.

“You’re not in this alone,” he reminded her. “Now, go get some sleep.”

She scrutinised him with eyes that were somehow still sharp, despite the late hour. “You need to sleep,” she retorted. “Weren’t you up at three o’clock last night?”

Lee sighed. “Yes, yes I was,” he said. “So if you could get inside your cabin so I can be reassured that you, too, are in bed and safe so I can do the same, that would be great, thanks.”

“You’re not my big brother,” she pointed out.

“No,” Lee agreed. “But I’m the head of the infirmary and do not want to be dealing with a sleep deprived Annabeth in the morning. So, shoo.”

He wasn’t sure what part of that finally got through to her, but she did, finally, slip back in through her cabin door, leaving him alone outside – and not a moment too soon, as the tell-tale sound of wings filled the air.

“I’m going, Calaeno,” he promised as one of the harpies landed in front of him. She glared at him, eyes piercing even in the dark.

“Bed,” she ordered, one of her wings coming to loop around him. “Past curfew. No infirmary.”

“I know, I know.” Lee let her walk him back across the green and towards his cabin door. Being an Apollo kid had advantages, like blanket permission to be out after curfew, for reasonable reasons. The harpies wouldn’t attack him, although they’d force him back to his cabin more peacefully – like now.

“Stay until dawn,” Calaeno told him firmly. “Camp safe.”

She and her sisters had not taken kindly to the drakon the previous night, either. If it had come inside the barriers, Lee had no doubt that they’d have attacked it with the same ferociousness the campers were always threatened with.

He stumbled across the threshold, pushed over by the harpy’s wing, and the door was shut firmly behind her. Blindly, he groped his way to his own bunk, not even bothering to change and barely remembering to kick off his shoes before he face-planted his bunk.

The mattress gave way weirdly, as though there was already something on it, and more grasping found a small figure curled up asleep on his bed already. Lee couldn’t see in the dark, and wasn’t going to turn on a light, but he was pretty certain it was Michael. No doubt, his younger brother had tried to wait up for him, but he hadn’t so much as stirred at Lee’s ungainly arrival.

Good. He needed the sleep.

So did Lee, and it was hardly the first time he’d ended up sharing his bunk with a sibling – not even the first time said sibling had been Michael – so he didn’t bother to try and get his younger brother back to his own bunk. Instead, he just nudged him over slightly, so that he could get his own head on the pillow – ow, golden laurel leaves were not comfortable – and closed his eyes.

Tomorrow – today, after the sun rose – was going to be full of awkward conversations and more emotional stress, Lee knew.

Right now, he needed sleep. Thankfully, it came quickly.

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