The Last Olympian: Apollo's Daughter

There are Three Rules

Skyler's POV

"Architect of the gods huh?" I asked Annabeth as the four of us trickled out of the palace.

Annabeth blushed and nudged me. "Says the medical student of the gods."

I rolled my eyes with a snicker. "I'm still pretty sure none of it is credible to an actual medical school."

We were about to start down the marble stairs when I spotted Hermes in a side courtyard of the palace. He was staring at an Iris message in the mist of a fountain.

"I'll meet you at the elevator..." I said softly, breaking off from the three.

"You sure?" Percy asked softly. He searched my eyes then shook his head and smiled. "Your mind's already made up isn't it?"

I nodded and he placed his hand on my cheek for a second then nodded towards the courtyard. "Go on...Firefly-"

"I will punch you."

"It'd be worth it."

Hermes didn't seem to notice my approach. The Iris-message images were going so fast I could hardly understand them. Mortal newscasts from all over the country flashed by: scenes of Typhon's destruction, the wreckage our battle had left across Manhattan, the president doing a news conference, the mayor of New York, some army vehicles riding down the Avenue of the Americas.

"Amazing," Hermes murmured. He turned toward me. "Three thousand years, and I will never get over the power of the Mist...and mortal ignorance."

"I'm gonna take that as a compliment but I'm pretty sure it wasn't one."

"Oh, not you. Although, your boyfriend... turning down immortality?"

I looked at my feet and smiled.

Percy could have been a god... He could have been immortal. "I never said he was smart," I said with a small chuckle.

Hermes looked at me curiously, then returned his attention to the Iris message. "Look at them. They've already decided Typhon was a freak series of storms. Don't I wish? They haven't figured out how all the statues in Lower Manhattan got removed from their pedestals and hacked to pieces. They keep showing a shot of Susan B. Anthony strangling Frederick Douglass. But I imagine they'll even come up with a logical explanation for that."

"That might take some time." I said, "How bad is the city?"

Hermes shrugged. "Surprisingly, not too bad. The mortals are shaken, of course. But this is New York. I've never seen such a resilient bunch of humans. I imagine they'll be back to normal in a few weeks; of course, I'll be helping."

"You?"

"I'm the messenger of the gods. It's my job to monitor what the mortals are saying, and if necessary, help them make sense of what's happened. I'll reassure them. Trust me, they'll put this down to a freak earthquake or a solar flare. Anything but the truth."

He sounded bitter. George and Martha curled around his caduceus, but they were silent, which made me think that Hermes was really really angry... I swallowed my fear and took a step towards the god and the fountain. "Hermes...I owe you an apology."

Hermes gave me a cautious look. "And why is that?"

"I thought you were a bad father," I admitted. "I thought you abandoned Luke because you knew his future and didn't do anything to stop it..."

"I did know his future," Hermes said miserably.

"But you knew more than just..." I swallowed, "You understood what he would do in the end. You knew he'd make the right choice... But you couldn't tell him, could you?"