After taking a much-needed nap back at our camp, I woke up to find that everyone else was asleep, as well.
Except for Nico.
His bedroll was empty.
Crud! He's slipped through my fingers and run off, I thought. Not for long.
I stood up and started sprinting down the path that led to the stream where I'd talked to Phillip, careful not to wake anyone else up, though I didn't have doubts that Sophia and Leo may have been following me. Nico couldn't have gotten too far.
And indeed he hadn't. I found him crouched by that stream, letting the water run through his fingers. It was the first time he looked truly content and calm.
"There you are," I stated out of nowhere, making him jump. "I'd thought you'd run off." I stood behind him, looking down at him.
Silence.
It was like that for at least two minutes, until he finally stood up and turned to face me.
"Why would you think I ran off?"
"Oh, no reason." I backed a step.
We were close and it was awkward.
He arched an eyebrow. "Well, I didn't."
I mentally breathed a sigh of relief, until he started interrogating again. "What would make you think I ran off?"
"Nothing." I reassured. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I mean, it's not like I wouldn't -"
To my great surprise, he kissed me, shutting me up immediately.
"Just stop talking."
I was frozen to the spot. What was life? What was air? What was my name?
I don't know what caused me to do what happened next. It was an impulse, I swear. But I raised my hand and smacked him. Right across the face. It wasn't even that hard, it just stunned him enough to make him stumble back into the stream.
"You - you.." I made strangling motions with my hands, trying to find my words. "You.. dunce! Kissing a lady without her permission! The nerve of some people!" I stepped over him and marched off, my fists balled, not daring to look back.
What the heck was that? Not even I could process what he'd done or what I'd done. At the moment I was just as stunned as he was. He probably wouldn't talk to me for a week, but at the time I didn't care. I couldn't even think. I kept touching my lips to make sure it was real and had actually happened.
Oh, no. What would Percy say?
I didn't care at the time. I just continued marching without any aim. I continued marching madly when a reached a vast green field. I finally stopped there and took deep breaths to calm my nerves. I reapeated 'dunce' over and over in my head until I saw something peculiar.
A plume of smoke rose high above the trees. It appeared to be three or four miles away at the least.
Enceladus.
Could it really be him? After all that time, was the climax of the quest right at our feet, just a few miles away?
My whole quest flashed before my eyes: the time Percy dragged me across the cabin floor, the time we accidentally fell out of Argus's van, the time we met Aphrodite, the time we obsessed over fandoms, the time we lost Ren, the time we lost Phillip, to the present..
It had all seemed to go by so fast.
And now here we were, at the very last step.
