Lost

41

"I love you," I whispered into Annabeth's ear as I held her tighter, tears still streaming down both of our faces.

After what seemed like years, we pulled apart, our hands still intertwined and seemingly unable to separate.

"Did you find my letter?" asked Annabeth eager as her grip on my hands tightened. "Is that how you got here? Is that how you found me?"

I closed my eyes and took a deep breathe. Her letter...there was much more to it than I'd thought. She'd given me the address to the warehouse? "No, I...I didn't. The letter...they found it in the woods. It only said that the war wasn't over, and that 'A' was back."

Annabeth furrowed her eyebrows and shook her head furiously. "No, no! I had a whole letter wrote out. I explained everything about Arachne and even the warehouse address that'd I'd overheard them mention. And I was practically killed for eavesdropping—"

Before she could finish rambling, which I knew could take a while, I pulled her into a kiss, which seemed to pretty much silence her.

When we pulled apart I explained everything that had happened, what I had done to find her from our trip to California to our trip to Rome. She sighed wistfully when I mentioned her family, and her grip on my hands tightened.

The battle had pretty much ended and things had started to settle. I felt bad for letting our friends handle everything, but they didn't need our help.

Now all the demigods were concerned on how to get back to camp, and I couldn't help but be to blame.

"Can we get out of here soon?" Annabeth whispered as she shivered. I quickly wrapped an arm around her and nodded. "I've been here for so long...I'm just growing sick of it..."

My heart dropped as I desperately started to think about what we could do to get back to camp. Artemis and all her followers had already left, so we were on our own, no help from any immortals.

"I can help shadowtravel," Nico volunteered as he'd been listening into our conversation. "I can take two people right now."

Will instantly shot up and shook his head angrily. "No, no way! You can't shadow travel us all home, you'd die!"

Nico narrowed his eyes before reluctantly agreeing with Will. "Fine, but have you got any better ideas?"

Before Will could reply, Nico grabbed him and vanished in thin air, Will protesting as he disappeared.

I chuckled. "I hope they come back. Although Will will probably murder Nico when they get back to camp."

My suspicions had been wrong as Nico quickly appeared again and shadow travelled back Hazel and Frank. He then repeated this with Leo and Calypso, then Reyna, and then me and Annabeth.

"Where did Will go?" Nico asked as we appeared in the Big House. The room we'd appeared in was empty.

"The border doesn't stop shadowtravelling?" Annabeth questioned.

Nico shrugged. "Didn't stop me. Wait, Hazel and Frank aren't here, either. No one is. Did they leave the Big House already?"

We all headed out of the Big House and onto the porch. As we peered over the camp, my heart dropped.

Near the Athena Parthenos were what seemed like all the remaining campers, all of them wielding weapons. Our friends had joined them.

And the worst part was that the Athena Parthenos was absolutely covered in spiders.