The Tyrant's Tomb (The Trials of Apollo, #4)(45)

After a few hundred yards of torturous hiking, we reached a small stream.

“We’re close,” Lavinia said.

Hazel glanced behind us. “I’m sensing maybe a dozen behind us, closing fast.”

I saw and heard nothing, but I took Hazel’s word for it. “Go. You’ll move faster without me.”

“Not happening,” Meg said.

“Here, take Apollo.” Lavinia offered me to Meg like I was a sack of groceries. “You guys cross this stream, go up that hill. You’ll see Camp Jupiter.”

Meg straightened her grimy glasses. “What about you?”

“I’ll draw them away.” Lavinia patted her manubalista.

“That’s a terrible idea,” I said.

“It’s what I do,” Lavinia said.

I wasn’t sure if she meant drawing away enemies or executing terrible ideas.

“She’s right,” Hazel decided. “Be careful, legionnaire. We’ll see you at camp.”

Lavinia nodded and darted into the woods.

“Are you sure that was wise?” I asked Hazel.

“No,” she admitted. “But whatever Lavinia does, she always seems to come back unscathed. Now let’s get you home.”





Cooking with Pranjal

Chickweed and unicorn horn

Slow-basted zombie

HOME. SUCH A WONDERFUL word.

I had no idea what it meant, but it sounded nice.

Somewhere along the trail back to camp, my mind must have detached from my body. I don’t remember passing out. I don’t remember reaching the valley. But at some point, my consciousness drifted away like an escaped helium balloon.

I dreamed of homes. Had I ever really had one?

Delos was my birthplace, but only because my pregnant mother, Leto, took refuge there to escape Hera’s wrath. The island served as an emergency sanctuary for my sister and me, too, but it never felt like home any more than the backseat of a taxi would feel like home to a child born on the way to a hospital.

Mount Olympus? I had a palace there. I visited for the holidays. But it always felt more like the place my dad lived with my stepmom.

The Palace of the Sun? That was Helios’s old crib. I’d just redecorated.

Even Delphi, home of my greatest Oracle, had originally been the lair of Python. Try as you might, you can never get the smell of old snakeskin out of a volcanic cavern.

Sad to say, in my four-thousand-plus years, the times I’d felt most at home had all happened during the past few months: at Camp Half-Blood, sharing a cabin with my demigod children; at the Waystation with Emma, Jo, Georgina, Leo, and Calypso, all of us sitting around the dinner table chopping vegetables from the garden for dinner; at the Cistern in Palm Springs with Meg, Grover, Mellie, Coach Hedge, and a prickly assortment of cactus dryads; and now at Camp Jupiter, where the anxious, grief-stricken Romans, despite their many problems, despite the fact that I brought misery and disaster wherever I went, had welcomed me with respect, a room above their coffee shop, and some lovely bed linens to wear.

These places were homes. Whether I deserved to be part of them or not—that was a different question.

I wanted to linger in those good memories. I suspected I might be dying—perhaps in a coma on the forest floor as ghoul poison spread through my veins. I wanted my last thoughts to be happy ones. My brain had different ideas.

I found myself in the cavern of Delphi.

Nearby, dragging himself through the darkness, wreathed in orange and yellow smoke, was the all-too-familiar shape of Python, like the world’s largest and most rancid Komodo dragon. His smell was oppressively sour—a physical pressure that constricted my lungs and made my sinuses scream. His eyes cut through the sulfuric vapor like headlamps.

“You think it matters.” Python’s booming voice rattled my teeth. “These little victories. You think they lead to something?”

I couldn’t speak. My mouth still tasted like bubble gum. I was grateful for the sickly sweetness—a reminder that a world existed outside of this cave of horrors.

Python lumbered closer. I wanted to grab my bow, but my arms were paralyzed.

“It was for nothing,” he said. “The deaths you caused—the deaths you will cause—they don’t matter. If you win every battle, you will still lose the war. As usual, you don’t understand the true stakes. Face me, and you will die.”

He opened his vast maw, slavering reptilian lips pulled over glistening teeth.

“GAH!” My eyes flew open. My limbs flailed.

“Oh, good,” said a voice. “You’re awake.”

I was lying on the ground inside some sort of wooden structure, like…ah, a stable. The smells of hay and horse manure filled my nostrils. A burlap blanket prickled against my back. Peering down at me were two unfamiliar faces. One belonged to a handsome young man with silky black hair cresting over his wide sepia forehead.

The other face belonged to a unicorn. Its muzzle glistened with mucus. Its startled blue eyes, wide and unblinking, fixed on me as if I might be a tasty bag of oats. Stuck on the tip of its horn was a crank-handled rotary cheese grater.

“GAH!” I said again.

“Calm down, dummy,” Meg said, somewhere to my left. “You’re with friends.”

I couldn’t see her. My peripheral vision was still blurry and pink.