The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo #5)(95)

It felt good to do something so routine—something I’d done millions of times before. (Taking care of horses, I mean. Not getting kicked in the groin.) I still didn’t feel like my old self. I didn’t really want to feel like my old self. But being in my stables felt much more comfortable and familiar than being on Olympus.

I split myself into separate Apollos and sent one of me on my daily ride across the sky. I was determined to give the world a regular day, to show everyone that I was back at the reins and feeling good. No solar flares, no droughts or wildfires today. Just Apollo being Apollo.

I hoped that this part of me would serve as my steady rudder, my grounding force, while I visited my other stops.

The welcome I received at Camp Half-Blood was uproarious and beautiful.

“LESTER!” the campers chanted. “LESTER!”

“LESTER?!”

“LESTER!”

I had chosen to appear in my old Papadopoulos form. Why not my glowing perfect god bod? Or one of the Bangtan Boys, or Paul McCartney circa 1965? After complaining for so many months about my flabby, acne-spotted Lester meat sack, I now found that I felt at home in that form. When I’d first met Meg, she had assured me that Lester’s appearance was perfectly normal. At the time, the notion had horrified me. Now I found it reassuring.

“Hello!” I cried, accepting group hugs that threatened to deteriorate into stampedes. “Yes, it’s me! Yep, I made it back to Olympus!”

Only two weeks had passed, but the newbie campers who had seemed so young and awkward when I first arrived now carried themselves like demigod veterans. Going through a major battle (sorry, “field trip”) will do that to you. Chiron looked enormously proud of his trainees—and of me, as if I were one of them.

“You did well, Apollo,” he said, gripping my shoulder like the affectionate father I’d never had. “You are always welcome here at camp.”

Ugly weeping would not have been appropriate for a major Olympian god, so that’s exactly what I did.

Kayla, Austin, and I hugged each other and wept some more. I had to keep my godly powers firmly under control, or my joy and relief might have exploded in a firestorm of happiness and obliterated the whole valley.

I asked about Meg, but they told me she had already left. She’d gone back to Palm Springs, to her father’s old home, with Luguselwa and her foster siblings from Nero’s Imperial Household. The idea of Meg handling that volatile group of demigods with only the help of LuBeard the Pirate made me uneasy.

“Is she well?” I asked Austin.

He hesitated. “Yeah. I mean…” His eyes were haunted, as if remembering the many things we’d all seen and done in Nero’s tower. “You know. She will be.”

I set aside my worries for the moment and continued making rounds among my friends. If they felt nervous that I was a god again, they hid it well. As for me, I made a conscious effort to stay cool, not to grow twenty feet tall or burst into golden flames every time I saw someone I liked.

I found Dionysus sitting glumly on the porch of the Big House, sipping a Diet Coke. I sat down across from him at the pinochle table.

“Well,” he said with a sigh, “it appears some of us do get happy endings.”

I think he was pleased for me, in his own way. At least, he tried to tamp down the bitterness in his voice. I couldn’t blame him for feeling salty.

My punishment was over, yet his continued. A hundred years compared to my six months.

To be honest, though, I could no longer consider my time on Earth to have been a punishment. Terrible, tragic, nearly impossible…yes. But calling it a punishment gave Zeus too much credit. It had been a journey—an important one I made myself, with the help of my friends. I hoped…I believed that the grief and pain had shaped me into a better person. I had forged a more perfect Lester from the dregs of Apollo. I would not trade those experiences for anything. And if I had been told I had to be Lester for another hundred years…well, I could think of worse things. At least I wouldn’t be expected to show up at the Olympian solstice meetings.

“You will have your happy ending, Brother,” I told Dionysus.

He studied me. “You speak as the god of prophecy?”

“No.” I smiled. “Just as someone with faith.”

“Surely not faith in our father’s wisdom.”

I laughed. “Faith in our ability to write our own stories, regardless of what the Fates throw at us. Faith that you will find a way to make wine out of your sour grapes.”

“How deep,” Dionysus muttered, though I detected a faint smile at the corners of his mouth. He gestured to his game table. “Pinochle, perhaps? At that, at least, I know I can dominate you.”

I stayed with him that afternoon, and he won six games. He only cheated a little.

Before dinner, I teleported to the Grove of Dodona, deep within the camp’s forest.

Just as before, the ancient trees whispered in a cacophony of voices—snatches of riddles and songs, bits of doggerel (some of it actually about dogs), recipes, and weather reports, none of it making much sense. Brass wind chimes twisted in the branches, reflecting the evening light and catching every breeze.

“Hello!” I called. “I came to thank you!”

The trees continued to whisper, ignoring my presence.

“You gave me the Arrow of Dodona as my guide!” I continued.