ANTI-HERO, j.grace

TEN

As the daughter of the sun god, Klein Maddox had always been drawn to the warmth and felt the cold just a little bit more than the average demigod. She usually attracted heat from the sun, so much so that half the time the girl almost seemed to be glowing, but flying through the winter clouds felt like strolling through a dozen meat lockers.

Almost unwillingly the girl had started to doze off, forehead embarrassingly resting against the back to Jason Grace's shoulder. He didn't seem to mind - and if he did, he didn't say anything - but when the world passing beneath them began to glow with signs of life once more Klein all but jumped backwards.

When he turned around to glance at her, Jason's as amused to find Klein looking anywhere else.

"Tell me that's Quebec and not Santa's Workshop." Leo yawned from the front of Festus, and Klein almost found the question to be fair. The city beneath them was glowing with warmth but was dusted with snow. Bundles of buildings surrounded a castle - at least what they assumed to be a castle - with massive red brick walls and a giant square tower that was topped with a green gabled roof.

"Yeah, Quebec City." Piper nodded, "One of the oldest cities in North America. Founded around... sixteen hundred, or so?"

"Your dad do a movie about that too?" Leo lightheartedly quipped.

Piper pulled a face, the annoyed look an unhappy contrast with the makeup from Aphrodite's blessing, "I read sometimes, okay? Just because Aphrodite claimed me, doesn't mean I have to be an airhead."

"Nobody said it did." Klein responded, a displeased frown etched onto her features that furrowed her brows, "You don't have to be the child of Athena to rub a couple brain cells together."

"Please, you should hear the stuff they talk about in there. You-"

"-have known the Aphrodite kids a lot longer than you have." The Maddox girl interrupted, and she watched Piper straighten her shoulders, "Love and beauty doesn't make them idiots. That cabin's been through more than you realize - maybe turn down the whole internalized misogyny thing and give it a break."

With that, the air seemed to turn icier.

Piper barely withheld her scoff as she turned to face forward once more. The look on Klein's face was the same she wore when Chiron had left them in the Big House - one that had Jason surprised that the back of the McLean girl's head didn't burst into flames.

"So..." Leo drawled, "Not Santa's workshop?"

"It's a hotel." Klein replied, earning a curious look from the others on the dragon. She smirked as she responded "What? I read."

It was official - Piper McLean hated Klein Maddox. And Klein had taken a cheap shot with the 'I read' quip, of that much she was aware. She was also aware of just how obnoxious Drew Tanaka could be with her leadership of Cabin Ten, but that didn't make her an airhead. It didn't make any of the Aphrodite campers airheads.

Intelligence wasn't all math and being able to memories passages from books - intelligence could be social. It was observing, it was understanding, it was knowing. The Aphrodite campers knew everything - hell, they'd even organized an underground trading scheme for clothes and accessories.

They were smart. Silena was smart. Drew was smart. Certainly smarter than Klein had ever been with her naive hope in the heroes of the world.

Jason Grace didn't understand the Maddox girl. He didn't understand the negativity, the constant attempts to try and cut every down around her. And he was trying. He felt like the Klein Maddox he spoke to in the training arena was a completely different person from the Klein Maddox that sitting behind him on Festus - until she froze at the mention of the Titan War, and then it was like there was a lull in her barricade just long enough or him to catch a glimpse through.