~ { Shadow and Beauty } ~

The Ice Palace

{Leo}

Festus didn't like the angel guys. He swooped to a halt in midair, wings beating and talons bared, and made a rumbling sound in his throat that Leo recognized. He was getting ready to blow fire.

   "Steady, boy," Leo muttered. Something told him the angels would not take kindly to getting torched.

   "I don't like this," Jason said. "They look like storm spirits."

   At first Leo thought he was right, but as the angels got closer, he could see they were much more solid than venti. They looked like regular teenagers except for their icy white hair and feathery purple wings. Their bronze swords were jagged, like icicles. Their faces looked similar enough that they might've been brothers, but they definitely weren't twins.

   One was the size of an ox, with a bright red hockey jersey, baggy sweatpants, and black leather cleats. The guy clearly had been in too many fights, because both his eyes were black, and when he bared his teeth, several of them were missing.

   The other guy looked like he'd just stepped off one of Leo's mom's 1980s rock album covers—Journey, maybe, or Hall & Oates, or something even lamer. His ice-white hair was long and feathered into a mullet. He wore pointy-toed leather shoes, designer pants that were way too tight, and a gods-awful silk shirt with the top three buttons open. Maybe he thought he looked like a groovy love god, but the guy couldn't have weighed more than ninety
pounds, and he had a bad case of acne.

   The angels pulled up in front of the dragon and hovered there, swords at the ready.

   The hockey ox grunted. "No clearance."

   "'Scuse me?" Leo said.

   "You have no flight plan on file," explained the groovy love god. On top of his other problems, he had a French accent so bad Leo was sure it was fake. "This is restricted airspace."

   "Destroy them?" The ox showed off his gap-toothed grin.

   The dragon began to hiss steam, ready to defend them. Jason summoned his golden sword, but Leo cried, "Hold on! Let's have some manners here, boys. Can I at least find out who has the honor of destroying me?"

   "I am Cal!" the ox grunted. He looked very proud of himself, like he'd taken a long time to memorize that sentence.

   "That's short for Calais," the love god said. "Sadly, my brother cannot say words with more than two syllables—"

   "Pizza! Hockey! Destroy!" Cal offered.

   "—which includes his own name," the love god finished.

   "I am Cal," Cal repeated. "And this is Zethes! My brother!"

   "Wow," Leo said. "That was almost three sentences, man! Way to go."

   Cal grunted, obviously pleased with himself.

   "Stupid buffoon," his brother grumbled. "They make fun of you. But no matter. I am Zethes, which is short for Zethes. And the lady there—" He winked at Piper, but the wink was more like a facial seizure. "She can call me anything she likes. Perhaps she would like to have dinner with a famous demigod before we must destroy you?"

   Piper made a sound like gagging on a cough drop. "That's... a truly horrifying offer."

   "It is no problem." Zethes wiggled his eyebrows. "We are very romantic people, we Boreads."

   "Boreads?" Jason cut in. "Do you mean, like, the sons of Boreas?"

   "Ah, so you've heard of us!" Zethes looked pleased. "We are our father's gatekeepers. So you understand, we cannot have unauthorized people flying in his airspace on creaky dragons, scaring the silly mortal peoples."