The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)(40)

Piper pulled her knife. She stepped into view. Meg followed her lead, summoning her swords and standing shoulder to shoulder with the daughter of Aphrodite. I, foolishly, stood at their side.

‘Medea.’ Piper spat out the word with as much venom and force as she would a dart from her blowpipe.

The sorceress pulled the reins, bringing her chariot to a halt. Under different circumstances, I might have enjoyed the surprised look on her face, but it didn’t last long.

Medea laughed with genuine pleasure. ‘Piper McLean, you darling girl.’ She turned her dark rapacious gaze on me. ‘This is Apollo, I take it? Oh, you’ve saved me so much time and trouble. And after we’re done, Piper, you’ll make a lovely snack for my dragons!’





16


Let’s charmspeak battle

You are ugly and you suck

The end. Do I win?





Sun dragons … I hate them. And I was a sun god.

As dragons go, they aren’t particularly large. With a little lubrication and muscle, you can stuff one inside a mortal recreational vehicle. (And I have done so. You should have seen the look on Hephaestus’s face when I asked him to go inside the Winnebago to check the brake pedal.)

But what they lack in size, sun dragons make up for in viciousness.

Medea’s twin pets snarled and snapped, their fangs like porcelain in the fiery kilns of their mouths. Heat rippled off their golden scales. Their wings, folded against their backs, flashed like solar panels. Worst of all were their glowing orange eyes …

Piper shoved me, breaking my gaze. ‘Don’t stare,’ she warned. ‘They’ll paralyse you.’

‘I know that,’ I muttered, though my legs had been in the process of turning to rock. I’d forgotten I wasn’t a god any more. I was no longer immune to little things like sun dragons’ eyes and, you know, getting killed.

Piper elbowed Meg. ‘Hey. You too.’

Meg blinked, coming out of her stupor. ‘What? They’re pretty.’

‘Thank you, my dear!’ Medea’s voice turned gentle and soothing. ‘We haven’t formerly met. I’m Medea. And you’re obviously Meg McCaffrey. I’ve heard so much about you.’ She patted the chariot rail next to her. ‘Come up, darling. You needn’t fear me. I’m friends with your stepfather. I’ll take you to him.’

Meg frowned, confused. The points of her swords dipped. ‘What?’

‘She’s charmspeaking.’ Piper’s voice hit me like a glass of ice water in the face. ‘Meg, don’t listen to her. Apollo, you neither.’

Medea sighed. ‘Really, Piper McLean? Are we going to have another charmspeak battle?’

‘No need,’ Piper said. ‘I’d just win again.’

Medea curled her lip in a good imitation of her sun dragons’ snarls. ‘Meg belongs with her stepfather.’ She swept a hand towards me as if pushing away some trash. ‘Not with this sorry excuse for a god.’

‘Hey!’ I protested. ‘If I had my powers –’

‘But you don’t,’ Medea said. ‘Look at yourself, Apollo. Look what your father has done to you! Not to worry, though. Your misery is at an end. I’ll squeeze out whatever power is left and put it to good use!’

Meg’s knuckles turned white on the grips of her swords. ‘What does she mean?’ she muttered. ‘Hey, Magic Lady, what do you mean?’

The sorceress smiled. She no longer wore the crown of her birthright as princess of Colchis, but at her throat a golden pendant still gleamed – the crossed torches of Hecate. ‘Shall I tell her, Apollo, or should you? Surely you know why I’ve brought you here.’

Why she had brought me here.

As if each step I’d taken since climbing out of that dumpster in Manhattan had been preordained, orchestrated by her … The problem was: I found that entirely plausible. This sorceress had destroyed kingdoms. She had betrayed her own father by helping the original Jason steal the Golden Fleece. She had killed her own brother and chopped him into bits. She had murdered her own children. She was the most brutal and power-hungry of Hecate’s followers, and also the most formidable. Not only that but she was a demigod of ancient blood, the granddaughter of Helios himself, former Titan of the sun.

Which meant …

It all came to me at once, a realization so horrible my knees buckled.

‘Apollo!’ Piper barked. ‘Get up!’

I tried. I really did. My limbs would not cooperate. I hunched over on all fours and exhaled an undignified moan of pain and terror. I heard a clap-clap-clap and wondered if the moorings that anchored my mind to my mortal skull had finally snapped.

Then I realized Medea was giving me a polite round of applause.

‘There it is.’ She chuckled. ‘It took you a while, but even your slow brain got there eventually.’

Meg grabbed my arm. ‘You’re not giving in, Apollo,’ she ordered. ‘Tell me what’s going on.’

She hauled me to my feet.

I tried to form words, to comply with her demand for an explanation. I made the mistake of looking at Medea, whose eyes were as transfixing as her dragons’. In her face, I saw the vicious glee and bright violence of Helios, her grandfather, as he had been in his glory days – before he faded into oblivion, before I took his place as master of the sun chariot.