GOLD RUSH ↬ p. jackson x reader {book one}

I GET MY PAMPER ON

I WAS IN NEED OF A MANICURE, OR SOMETHING GIRLY TO MOTIVATE ME TO LIVE ON.

Now that we were in the Sea of Monsters, the water glittered a more brilliant green, like Hydra acid. The wind smelled fresh and salty, but it carried a strange metallic scent, too-as if a thunderstorm were coming. Annabeth had fished Percy out of the water and found his knapsack, bitten in half by Scylla's teeth. Most of the stuff had floated away, but he still had a bottle of multivitamins on him, and his sword. Classic dumb hero with his trusty weapon

He woke up in our rowboat, adorned with a makeshift sail stitched of gray uniform fabric. He immediately tried to sit up, but Annabeth and I had decided it was my job to calm him whilst she was tacking the wind.
"Rest," I said. "You're going to need it."
"Tyson ... ?"

I paused, chewing on my lip. After a moment of some silence, I shook my head timidly. "Percy, I'm really sorry." We were silent while the waves tossed us up and down. But I had organised what to say. I looked into his sea green eyes, which looked more like the distant ocean on a rainy day. My favorite kind of day.

"He may have survived," I said halfheartedly. "I mean, fire can't kill him."
Waves lapped at the boat. Annabeth showed him some things we'd salvaged from the wreckage— Hermes's thermos (now empty), a Ziploc bag full of ambrosia, a couple of sailors' shirts, and a bottle of Dr Pepper.

We sailed for hours. No matter which way we turned, the sun seemed to shine straight into my eyes, and I couldn't decide whether it was a blessing or a curse. We took turns sipping from the Dr Pepper, shading ourselves with the sail as best we could.

By Annabeth's estimate, we had less than twenty-four hours to find Grover, assuming my dream was accurate, and assuming the Cyclops Polyphemus didn't change his mind and try to marry Grover earlier. That was all the info I had gathered from the conversation.

"Yeah," Percy had said bitterly. "You can never trust a Cyclops."
Annabeth stared across the water. "I'm sorry, Percy. I was wrong about Tyson, okay? I wish I could tell him that."

After a lot of disassociation, Percy's voice dragged me back to the harsh heat of global warming and the pit in my stomach at the sight of the ocean. "Annabeth, what's Chiron's prophecy?"
She pursed her lips. "Percy, I shouldn't—"

"I know Chiron promised the gods he wouldn't tell me. But you didn't promise, did you?"
"Knowledge isn't always good for you."
"Your mom is the wisdom goddess!"
"I know! But every time heroes learn the future, they try to change it, and it never works."

"The gods are worried about something I'll do when I get older," he guessed. "Something when I turn sixteen."
I remained quiet. But part of me knew. I knew things, parts of things, that were left unsaid. I knew that the gods would offer Percy immortality, and that he refused for some reason. I knew that there was an even bigger prophecy, involving these guys and some people from another place. I had learned to keep my mouth shut.

There was a strange phenomena I had noticed. Whenever the Oracle of Delphi spoke a prophecy, it was always something I'd already felt in my bones. Words I'd scribbled in my notebook, highlighted in the latest book I'd read— words that had won me my recent Scrabble matches. A half-blood of the eldest gods; Shall reach sixteen against all odds; And see the world in endless sleep; The hero's soul, cursed blade shall reap; A single choice shall end his days; Olympus to preserve or raze.

Those exact lines. Back at school, we'd done a crash course on iambic pentameter. And that was the result. I shuddered.

Annabeth twisted her Yankees cap in her hands. "Percy, I don't know the full prophecy, but it warns about a half-blood child of the Big Three— the next one who lives to the age of sixteen. That's the real reason Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades swore a pact after World War II not to have any more kids. The next child of the Big Three who reaches sixteen will be a dangerous weapon."