You'll Learn to Love Me (Leo Valdez x OC)

Chapter 12: Erebus Finally Acknowledges Laylana... Sort of

They began to haul ass up the mountain. Piper and Gleeson trudged ahead, with Leo and Laylana in the middle and Jason behind them. They decided to leave Jason alone, he looked to be struggling from what Laylana could see. Instead, she looked at Leo.

"You okay?" She asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just a bit guilty for ya know, melting the bridge." Leo shrugged. "What about you? Are you okay?" 

"I'm fine," Laylana fiddled with the hilt of her dagger. "Thanks for the warning. About the fire with the wolves." 

"It's no trouble." Silence enveloped them as they continued to climb the stairs. "Hey, can I ask you something?" 

"You don't need to ask before you ask me a question, Leo." 

"Well excuse me," Leo chuckled before his face dropped. "Did I... ever scare you? With the fire, I mean. Because I swear I never mean to scare you, and I would never hurt you or anyone with it." 

Laylana went quiet for a bit as they trudged through the snow. "You scared me a bit at first. But, Leo, you proved to be a person I can trust. I wasn't lying when I said that to Piper. Not to mention I'm pretty sure you were the first one to notice my hesitance about Festus, and you even asked if you could do anything to make it less scary. Not a lot of people would do that for someone they didn't know."

Leo felt his heart flutter as she smiled at him. Even covered head to toe in winter gear, looking a bit ridiculous with the hood over her head, she looked beautiful to him. He mentally hit himself. There was no time for feelings to get in the way now when they had less than 24 hours to spare. Maybe after it was done he'd ask her on a date.

"Well, for the record I'll try and keep that under control. And warn you before I use it." Leo tried to hide the way his face had turned red. If anything, he'd blame it on the wind. 

"Thank you,"  Laylana paused. "What a pair we are. Darkness and fire."

"Hey, at least you can stop my fire if it gets out of hand." 

"Do you think that would work?" Laylana drew some shadows to her, so they coated her hand. Leo produced a small fireball in his own palm, letting her take the first move. Although the shadows on her hand protested, she imagined  them covering his fire. They slowly spread from her hand to his, covering it and extinguishing it completely. 

"Well, if I get in another state of incontrollable arson, you can stop it at least." 

"I'll keep that in mind." Laylana moved one step closer to him, which barely anyone noticed as she did it unconsciously. But when Piper glanced back to look at them, she noticed.

Finally they arrived at the top of the island. Bronze walls marched all the way around the fortress ground. Twenty-foot-high gates opened for them, and a road of polished purple stone led up to the main citadel—a white-columned rotunda, Greek style, like one of the monuments in Washington, D.C.—except for the cluster of satellite dishes and radio towers on the roof.

"That's bizarre," Piper said.

"You can say that again." Laylana grimaced. She hadn't had great experience with mountains before. It always seemed to end in a big fight. 

"Guess you can't get cable on a floating island," Leo said. "Dang, check this guy's front yard."

The rotunda sat in the center of a quarter-mile circle. The grounds were amazing in a scary way. They were divided into four sections, each one representing a season. The section on their right was an icy waste, with bare trees and a frozen lake. Snowmen rolled across the landscape as the wind blew, so Jason wasn't sure if they were decorations or alive. To their left was an autumn park with gold and red trees. Mounds of leaves blew into patterns—gods, people, animals that ran after each other before scattering back into leaves. One looked like a green pasture with sheep made out of clouds. The last section was a desert where tumbleweeds scratched strange patterns in the sand like Greek letters, smiley faces, and a huge advertisement that read:watch Aeolus nightly!

"One section for each of the four wind gods," Jason guessed. "Four cardinal directions."

"I'm loving that pasture." Gleeson licked his lips. "You guys mind—"

"Go ahead," Jason said. 

While the satyr ran off to attack springtime, Laylana, Jason, Leo, and Piper walked down the road to the steps of the palace. They passed through the front doors into a white marble foyer decorated with purple banners that read Olympian weather channel, and some that just read ow!

"Hello!" A woman floated up to them. Literally floated. Laylana recognized her as a wind nymph, otherwise known as an aura. "Are you from Lord Zeus? We've been expecting you."

"Are you a ghost?" Jason asked rather bluntly.

"Jason, that is borderline racism." Laylana hissed at him, elbowing him in the gut. He nearly doubled over in pain. The aura looked insulted, her smile turning into a pout.

"I'm an aura, sir. A wind nymph, as you might expect, working for the lord of the winds. My name is Mellie. We don't have ghosts."

Piper cut in next. "No, of course you don't! My friend simply mistook you for Helen of Troy, the most beautiful mortal of all time."

"Little over the top but good." Laylana shrugged. Mellie just blushed.

 "Oh... well, then. So you are from Zeus?" she asked.

"Er," Jason said, "I'm the son of Zeus, yeah."

"Excellent! Please, right this way." She led them through some security doors into another lobby, consulting her tablet as she floated. "We're out of prime time now, so that's good. I can fit you in right before his 11:12 spot."

"Um, okay," Jason said.

The lobby was a pretty distracting place. Winds blasted around them. Doors blew open and slammed by themselves. Paper airplanes of all different sizes and shapes sped around, and other wind nymphs would occasionally pluck them out of the air, unfold and read them, then toss them back into the air, where the planes would refold themselves and keep flying. Harpies were also there, drifting around and bumping into things.

"Not an aura?" Jason asked Mellie as the Harpy wobbled by. 

"That's a harpy, Jason." Laylana pointed out. "We have them back at camp." 

Mellie laughed. "She's right. They're our, ah, ugly stepsisters, I suppose you would say. They're spirits of violent gusts, unlike us aurai. We're all gentle breezes."

She batted her eyes at Jason. "'Course you are,"