𝐂œ𝐮𝐫𝐬 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐬é𝐬 [Percy Jackson]

30

At first, Percy thought he was still asleep.

Annabeth was standing by his berth, smiling down at him.

Her blond hair fell across her shoulders. Her storm-gray eyes were bright with amusement. He remembered his first day at Camp Half-Blood, five years ago, when he'd woken from a daze and found Annabeth standing over him. She had said, You drool when you sleep.

She was sentimental that way.

"Wh—what's going on?" he asked. "Are we there?"

"No," she said, her voice low. "It's the middle of the night."

"You mean..." Percy's heart started to race. He realized he was in his pajamas, in bed. He probably had been drooling, or at least making weird noises as he dreamed. No doubt he had a severe case of pillow hair and his breath didn't smell great. "You sneaked into my cabin?"

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "Percy, you'll be seventeen in two months. You can't seriously be worried about getting into trouble with Coach Hedge."

"Uh, have you seen his baseball bat? Hadrian said he whacked him with it"

"Seaweed Brain, I just thought we could take a walk. We haven't had any time to be together alone. I want to show you something—my favorite place aboard the ship."

Percy's pulse was still in overdrive, but it wasn't from fear of getting into trouble. "Can I, you know, brush my teeth first?"

He wasn't sure if it was his imagination, but Annabeth seemed to turn a little pink.

For a trireme, the ship was huge, but it still felt cozy to Percy—like his dorm building back at Yancy Academy, or any of the other boarding schools he'd gotten kicked out of. Annabeth and he crept downstairs to the second deck, which Percy hadn't explored except for the sickbay.

She led him past the engine room, which looked like a very dangerous, mechanized jungle gym, with pipes and pistons and tubes jutting from a central bronze sphere. Cables resembling giant metal noodles snaked across the floor and ran up the walls.

"How does that thing even work?" Percy asked.

"No idea," Annabeth said. "And I'm the only one besides Leo who can operate it."

"That's reassuring."

"It should be fine. It's only threatened to blow up once."

"You're kidding, I hope."

She smiled. "Come on."

They worked their way past the supply rooms and the armory. Toward the stern of the ship, they reached a set of wooden double doors that opened into a large stable. The room smelled of fresh hay and wool blankets. Lining the left wall were three empty horse stalls like the ones they used for pegasi back at camp. The right wall had two empty cages big enough for large zoo animals.

In the center of the floor was a twenty-foot-square see-through panel. Far below, the night landscape whisked by—miles of dark countryside crisscrossed with illuminated highways like the strands of a web.

"A glass-bottomed boat?" Percy asked.

Annabeth grabbed a blanket from the nearest stable gate and spread it across part of the glass floor. "Sit with me."

They relaxed on the blanket as if they were having a picnic, and watched the world go by below.

"Leo built the stables so pegasi could come and go easily," Annabeth said. "Only he didn't realize that pegasi prefer to roam free, so the stables are always empty."