The Shadow Summoner | Book Three - PJO Universe

fifteen

UNEXPECTED TWIST

If their hearts had been in it, Apollo would have died.

They staggered towards Apollo, yelling RAWR, while occasionally glancing over their shoulders to make sure the torch-bearing demigods hadn't set fire to their life sources.

Ariana, being the more practical one of the two, grabbed Apollo and shoved him behind her.
She dodged the first two palm-tree spirits who lunged at her.

"I won't fight you!" Apollo yelled.

A sturdy ficus jumped on Apollo from behind, forcing Ariana to throw her off. "We're not enemies!"

A fiddle-leaf fig was hanging back, perhaps waiting for her turn to get Apollo, or just hoping she wouldn't get noticed.

Her demigod keeper noticed, though. He lowered his torch and the fig tree went up in flames as if it had been doused in oil. The dryad screamed and combusted, collapsing in a heap of ash.

"Stop it!" Meg said, but her voice was so fragile it barely registered.

The other dryads attacked Apollo and Ariana in earnest. Their fingernails stretched into talons. A lemon tree sprouted thorns all over her body and tackled Ariana in a painful hug.

"Stop it!" Meg said, louder this time.

"Oh, let them try, my dear," Nero said, as the trees piled onto Ariana's back. "They deserve their revenge."

The ficus got Ariana in a chokehold.

Apollo's knees buckled under the weight of six dryads. Thorns and talons raked every bit of exposed skin.

Apollo croaked, "Meg!" His eyes bulged. His vision blurred.

"STOP!" Meg ordered.

The dryads stopped. The ficus sobbed with relief and released her hold around Ariana's neck. The others backed off, leaving the two lovers on their hands and knees, gasping, bruised and bleeding.

Meg ran to them. She knelt and put her hand on Apollo's shoulder, studying his scrapes and cuts and his ruined, bandaged nose with an agonized expression.

Ariana would have been overjoyed to get this attention from her if they hadn't been in the middle of Nero's throne room, or if she could just, you know, breathe.

Her first whispered question was not the one she had been expecting: "Is Lu alive?"

Ariana nodded, blinking away tears of pain. "Last I saw," she whispered back. "Still fighting and she looked badass.

Meg's brow furrowed. For the moment, her old spirit seemed rekindled, but it was difficult to visualize her the way she used to be.

Ariana had to concentrate on her eyes, framed by her wonderfully horrible cat-eye glasses, and ignore the new wispy haircut, the smell of lilac perfume, the purple gown and gold sandals and - OH, GODS! - someone had given her a pedicure.

Ariana tried to contain her horror.

"Meg," she said. "There's only one person here you need to listen to: yourself. Trust yourself."

Ariana meant it, despite all her doubts and fears, despite all Apollo's complaints over the months about Meg being his master.

She had chosen them, but they had also chosen her. Ariana did trust her - not in spite of her past with Nero, but because of it.

She had seen her struggle. Ariana had admired her hard-won progress.

Ariana pulled her gold rings from her pocket. She recoiled when she saw them, but Ariana pressed them into her hands.