ONE LAST TIME . . . heroes of olympus

15.5

KATERINA WOKE UP the next morning to someone knocking on her door. Again. In less than a day.

She groaned and rolled off of the bed, which hurt because she was still injured. Of course she forgot. She slowly got up, grabbed the square of ambrosia she'd put on her bedside table to eat in the morning, and popped it in her mouth as she trudged to her front door.

She opened the door to see Jason and Piper, flowers in the latter's hand.

"And you couldn't have done this in a more reasonable time?" Katerina ran a hand through her hair that probably looked horrible.

"It's ten, Rina," Jason told her.

"I don't get up before eleven unless it's for a mission," she accepted the flowers from Piper, furrowing her eyebrows at them. "Speaking of, you know I'm leaving soon. I can't keep these alive for long."

Piper shrugged, shoving her way into Katerina's apartment once again. "So?"

She rolled her eyes, but she turned and put the flowers on the kitchen counter, leaving the door open for Jason to walk in.

"I don't think I have a vase," she said. "Is it bad for flowers if you put it in an empty wine bottle?"

"Don't put the flowers in a wine bottle," he scolded, closing the door behind him.

"Then find another thing to put it in, since you two are so comfortable with inviting yourselves into my personal space," Katerina stared at the flowers some more — a blend of vastly different kinds of flowers that were the brightest thing in her apartment. Well, that and the presences of Piper and Jason. Then, before they could speak, she turned and walked into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.

She wanted to scream in her pillows, but they would probably hear that and she didn't want them to hear how they were affecting her because she's embarrassed. Instead she went to her bathroom and freshened up, changing into loose and revealing clothes because it hurt when you wore tight clothing with injuries, she found out yesterday when she'd picked out her outfit. But it had been too late because Jules had bust into her apartment before she could change so here she was.

Katerina forced herself to leave her room, opening the bedroom door and instantly having Jason and Piper's gazes on her.

Piper frowned. "Why do you have so many bandages?"

Katerina looked down at herself. "It looks way worse than it was before," she said nonchalantly, walking over to the island, where the flowers had been put in a glass jar she didn't know she'd had. You learn something new every day. "There's good spies and bad spies, malyshka, you know this."

"Malyshka?" Piper's voice cracked, and Katerina realized that she'd used her old nickname for her. Old habits die hard.

Like most things that happened to her, she ignored it. "That guy I fought in the bank — he's a bad spy. His band of thieves tried to steal my last job from me and Jules," she scoffed, leaning against the counter. "There was a fight, and luckily I came out with the bag. I did not come out unharmed."

She watched as Jason stood up from his spot perched on the arm of her loveseat, walking toward her until he was next to her, brushing a finger against a scar above a bandage, making her suppress a shiver. "Do you want help?" he asked quietly.

"No." She shook her head firmly. "It's fine. Demigods heal quickly, especially ones related to Apollo. And I had an ambrosia square when I woke up."

"Where did you get ambrosia squares from?" asked Piper, "if you're not here and you're not home — um, California."