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Three days.
Seventy-two hours.
Four thousand, three hundred and twenty minutes.
Two hundred and fifty-nine thousand, two hundred seconds.
That was how long Percy Jackson has been missing. And Rory could feel every single one of those seconds pass. Each one was like another piece of her heart breaking apart.
It had only been four months since the Battle of Manhattan. After all they endured over the years, they couldn't even get one single year of peace. Truly, what did Rory do in her past life to deserve all this suffering? All she wanted was at least one year of normalcy. She finally got to live in the mortal world with her best friend, and only a train ride away from her boyfriend. And when she returned to camp, she had siblings to come home to, a cabin to call her own.
But apparently that was all too much goodness for the Fates. They had to take something away. Something Rory loved more than anything else in the universe.
Percy just disappeared in the middle of the night. He left not a single trace of what could have happened to him.
The morning after he disappeared, Rory was inconsolable. Annabeth stayed by her side all day, while Chiron ordered a search party. Grover got a group of nature spirits to scout all of New York. Every which way came up empty. Annabeth got in contact with Thalia and the Hunters of Artemis, who were looking for Percy as they traveled the country
The only thing that Rory could think about was her poor Percy. Who knows who took him and why, where he was, and what he was going through.
Now here Rory and Annabeth were — traveling to the Grand Canyon in search of a boy with one shoe, who was supposed to be the solution to their problems. With them was Butch, a son of Iris, to control the pegasi.
Annabeth tapped her fingers nervously against the side of the chariot, while Rory stared straight ahead.
"We'll be there in a few minutes," Butch said.
Annabeth nodded, acknowledging the fact.
Meanwhile, for Rory the words went in one ear and out the other. Her eyes were trained on the four grey pegasi in front of her. Annabeth placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.
For as broken as Rory felt inside, she knew that Annabeth was mad. She wanted to kill the person who took Percy away from them.
The chariot began to descend beneath the clouds.
Rory had never seen the Grand Canyon before. To be fair, she had only been in the west a few times, and all of those were on quests, so they never really had time to sightsee... though that never stopped them before.
