Changing the Future

Chapter 5

I appeared in the throne room of the gods, my stomach churning violently from the sudden transportation. Sure, I'd jumped through a portal and accidently shadow-traveled once, but the form of wind travel that some of the gods used was not good for my stomach. But there was no way I was going to lose my lunch in front of the gods, so I held my stomach and kneeled in Zeus' direction. 

He was wearing a dark blue pinstriped suit, and his black hair came down to his shoulders. He had a gray and black well-trimmed beard, and while that may have made him look somewhat normal, his shockingly blue eyes and proud, stern face scared the living daylights out of me. As he bristled at my direction, I could smell the ozone in the air, and much to my chagrin, I saw little sparks jumping between my fingers.

Stop it, I thought to myself, glaring at my hands while keeping my head low. Zeus probably already wanted me killed a few days ago when I intervened to save Thalia, but all I could wish for at the moment was that he would hear me out.

All around the throne room, the gods looked at me in curiosity, like I was the newest specimen they'd gotten to observe under their microscope. They'd even summoned Lord Hades, who was staring at me in confusion from Hestia's hearth.

Right when I thought my ADHD would get the better of me, Zeus told me in a thundering voice, "Rise, young demigod."

I slowly got to my feet, keeping eye contact with him as I let my arms dangle to my sides, trying to convey innocence. I mean, I was innocent anyways. It's not like I had a choice in who my father was, or else I would've asked the Fates to make me a daughter of Poseidon in a heartbeat. That would've been nothing compared to who I thought my father was.

"Who are you?" the goddess directly to the right of Zeus, Hera, asked.

While I wanted to smack the Queen of Olympus upside the head for everything she had done to the seven, I bit my tongue, reminding myself that the events in the books hadn't come to pass yet.

"My name is Andromeda Collins," I told them, keeping my voice steady without sounding prideful. "I'm fourteen years old, and I recently arrived at Camp Half-Blood. I don't know who my godly parent is as I grew up an orphan and ran away from the abusive couple that adopted me."

Okay, let me explain the fourteen-years-old thing before anything else happens. While I had been sixteen back on my Earth, Salina told me that by jumping through the portal, my age could be screwed up. Nothing dramatic, like I wasn't going to go from sixteen to four or to eighty-three, but my age could differ within a three year range. When I kept lookout one night on our way to camp, I had asked Salina how old I was, and she told me the portal had made me fourteen years old on this Earth.

"You're positive you don't know who your parent is?" Athena asked me, her gray eyes staring so intensely at me that I was waiting to burst into flames. Ooh, bad wording. I didn't need to go supernova again anytime soon.

"I haven't been claimed, Lady Athena," I told her respectfully. "And I don't even know if my mother or if my father is the reason I'm a demigod. The orphanage I grew up in couldn't identify anyone as my parents, but they took me in anyways and raised me as their own child. The only thing that was left with me was a blank piece of paper with my name written on it."

"Andromeda," Zeus mused, "just like the wife of Perseus. It's not a common name, as I'm sure you know, so whoever your mortal parent was knew enough about us to give you such a name."

"I figure I was named Andromeda as she and her husband had a happy ending, something of a rarity in the ancient times," I replied, slightly surprised at how laid back Zeus was being. But I knew better. All it would take was one word out of place and he would fry me with the Master Bolt without a second thought.