Pampered by the Villainous Tyrant King

Chapter 46

A/N: I own nothing but plot. Enjoy!

**********************************

Annabeth sat straight up on the bed, her mind no longer groggy. "What did you say, Lucy? Assassinated?"

Lucy nodded, her eyes teary.

Annabeth's heart pounded. There was no way that it was true, was it? Percy had been perfectly healthy and alive when he left the palace.

"No. Don't tell me that it's true!"

Stay calm, Annabeth steeled herself. This was a mistake. She was just too tired and still recovering from her wound. Clearly, she had heard Lucy wrong. The king was merely attacked at most.

But one look at the true desperation in Lucy's eyes told Annabeth that her worst fear was true.

She stumbled out of bed, nearly falling to her feet before Lucy caught and steadied her. Just as she had started to recover, she was feeling lightheaded again as her body caught up to her mind in shock.

No, Annabeth thought, no. It was impossible. She clutched her chest as her heart felt pained. Why was it hurting so much?

Lucy couldn't support Annabeth any further as her knees gave out, collapsing to the floor.

"Your Majesty!" It was Sir Nico. "The nobles have begun gathering at the Great Hall. It is mostly the nobles of the dowager queen's faction."

This quickly? Someone had to be keeping the faction informed if they arrived at the Great Hall before Annabeth, the queen of Eldoris did.

"I-I fear that they are planning to oust you from the throne and put one of their own on the throne."

Annabeth's gray eyes blazed in fury as hot tears welled up. No doubt this was a trap set by the dowager queen.

But she couldn't believe it. Percy had overcome all the traps so far only to die now?

Percy had jokingly said that he would be back by the time the kiss mark on her neck would fade. The last coloration of the pink mark had faded when Annabeth went to sleep that night. And she didn't even get to tell Percy that she... Percy had mouthed three words to her before he left. Words that Annabeth could never say back now.

Too late Annabeth regretted. She had been lying to herself that she was not in love with the Eldoris king all this time, claiming that she had only liked him very much. After all, this was in Clarisse's story, not real life. It was a mechanism for Annabeth to protect herself from when she felt she would go back to her original world, to her home in New York. She would have to leave Percy eventually.

A couple days before, she had surmised that the night she had that dream, she had actually been back in the modern world. Perhaps if Annabeth wanted to or concentrated more, she could have pulled her consciousness and gone back to her modern life and everything she knew. But a part of Annabeth didn't want to, choosing to remain in this dangerous world. Because he was there.

If she could, Annabeth would want to return to the past and tell Percy again and again how much she loved him. But she had no powers, no magic to help her. She was just a nameless extra mentioned in passing in this stupid story who was always supposed to die.

Annabeth pulled herself up from the floor, suddenly fueled by angry determination.

So what if she didn't have magic powers. So what if her character was meant to die. Magic didn't exist in the modern world, but Annabeth still had her wit. She had survived this long without anything but her intelligence, and damned she was if she had to admit that her wit was useless.