xxiii. chiron's cousin

*    *    *

"ONE ON ONE," PERCY CHALLENGES. "What are you afraid of?"

Um, what?

Agrius bursts onto the deck, his hand fisted around a rope that's looped around a pegasus' neck. It's beautiful, pure black with giant wings, and hooves the size of both of Thea's fists. It's magnificent. And it's terrified, eyes wide and more white than they should be.

"Sir!" Agrius calls. "Your steed is ready!"

Luke keeps his eyes on him. "I told you last summer, Percy. You can't bait me into a fight."

"And you keep avoiding one," he points out. "Scared your warriors will see you get whipped?"

It's a smart plan—Luke can't back down, he'll look like a fool if he did, and he would never catch up to Clarisse then—but Percy isn't anywhere near Luke's level of sword fighting, not after only two years. She knows that Percy knows that, that he's doing it so they can escape.

She'll be damned if that happens. She won't leave him behind. She can't.

"I'll kill you quickly," Luke decides, raising his sword. It's longer than Percy's, made with two kinds of metal. With a whistle, one of his men tosses him a leather-and-bronze shield.

"Luke," Annabeth says, "at least give him a shield."

"Sorry, Annabeth," he says, grinning wickedly. "You bring your own equipment to this party."

The shield will lower his mobility, but it doesn't matter. He's nearly a decade ahead of Percy's own training. Even if he had a broken hand, he would still manage to beat Percy.

Luke lunges and Thea holds her breath as the sword goes under Percy's arm, ripping through his shirt and grazing his side. He tries to counterattack but it bounces harmlessly off the blond's shield with a clang.

"My, Percy," Luke chides. "You're out of practice."

Oreius grabs Charlie and Thea again, Agrius with Grover and Annabeth, and they struggle to no avail. Thea can only watch in horror as Percy is slashed deep in his thigh and crawls toward the pool. Luke advances slowly, almost casually, his sword tinged with red.

"Let me go!" Thea screams, biting at the bear-man's arm. He grunts with pain, but his skin is too thick to do any damage. "Let me go, you asshole!"

"One thing I want you to watch before you die, Percy." Luke looks at the bear twins, his sword still dripping blood. "You can eat your dinner now, you two. But spare Althea, we need her for now."

When they bare their teeth, all hell breaks loose.

Thea casts a spell with a hoarse shout, and Luke's sword stabs into his own foot as he wails, struggling to remove the sword that now weighs nearly two hundred pounds. Two arrows stick into the bear twin's heads—something that is not her doing—and all four of them fall to the deck floor as the twins dissolve.

Luke's warriors have no time to get over their shock as Centaurs gallop up the stairwell and onto the deck. There are dozens of them, most dressed like they're on their way to a rave in such a strange assortment Thea has to blink twice to make sure it is real. She barely has time to get out of her own shock, too, before a large hand is grabbing the back of her jacket and hauls her upward.

She screams, flailing and kicking, and her foot makes contact with something vaguely flesh-like.

"Ah, please, I'm Chiron's cousin!"

Thea focuses and realizes it is, in fact, a centaur. He bears no resemblance to Chiron—he's black, and his horse-half is Palimino—but she takes his word for it and he sits her onto his back.

"My cousin," she says, gripping onto him with her legs. "Did you see him? He was right by me, he was—"

"Francisco took him," he assures her. "Don't worry. Hold on, there's a big drop."

"A big—a big what?"

Within seconds, he's galloped across the deck and over the side railing, ten stories down to the concrete below. He barely even stumbles from it and continues forward, away from the nightmare that is Luke's ship.

*    *    *

THEA HAS GATHERED with her friends when they arrive at the field the centaurs eventually stop at. Percy takes some ambrosia and is getting better, there are no injuries on the others aside from a few scrapes and bruises, and Clarisse is on her way to Camp Half-Blood. Things had gone better than she expected.

Much better, since she's talking to a very handsome centaur. He's the one who carried her, his name is Thomas, he's fifteen (almost sixteen, as he says), and has dreads that are speckled with flowers, which is one of the prettiest things Thea has ever seen.

"Chiron told me about you," he says as Thea twirls one of his arrows around her fingers. "You're . . . different than I expected."

Her fingers stop moving the arrow. "Excuse me?"

"No!" he says, rushing to fix his words. "Oh my gods, that came out terribly. I meant that he—well, he describes you like a teacher would his student. That you're smart, good with a sword, that you are well-acquainted with magic. Which is true, but you're—different? Shit. This makes no sense, does it?"

"No, it does," she says as she tries to hide her smile and fails. "You're cool, too. I like your hair, it's pretty. Is it hyacinth?"

Thomas beams. "Yes! They smell wonderful, and it looks nice. It doesn't help with hair growth like some plants, but it's pretty."

"Do they not dry out?"

"Nope, it's one of the perks about being a centaur. Nature loves me." He smiles and gestures with his hand to her. "What about you? I'm sure you have perks from your parents, too. Hecate's very powerful."

"Oh, Hecate's not my mom," she says. "She's my great-grandmother. She did give me the ability to do magic, though. My mom was just a legacy of Hecate." She pauses and fiddles with the arrow again. "My dad is, uh, I don't really know who he is. It seems like everyone but me does. But it's fine, I don't need him anyway."

"It's okay to be hurt by it," Thomas assures. "My mother isn't here, either. She's one of those powerful Tree Nymph types, one that has been around since the gods were born. And it doesn't feel nice, but it's just how things are."

Thea hands his arrow back to him. "You're right, it isn't great. 'Sorry about your mom."

"Nah, it's okay," he says. "I got her back by spray painting her tree with a—well, let's just say it's a certain body party you wouldn't want on your tree."

Thea chokes on her laugh and hits him playfully across the knee. "Oh my gods, you painted her tree?"

"As mortals say, it was 'for the child support.'"

She laughs harder than she has in days.

A/N:
omg we're coming to a close on this book,,,,
also thomas was not a planned addition but
he's adorable and i love him