Hello! Here's the next chapter, sorry it's taken so long to get it up but I've been really busy. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. A few people have been asking when Percy is going to make an appearance and I'm gradually getting closer to it, I promise. But I keep on getting ideas of things to write before he turns up so I keep pushing it back. But it won't be long now, I hope.
Here it comes. He’s going to break up with me. He’s going to tell me that he doesn’t feel the same way and that we probably shouldn’t see each other anymore. That’s how it always goes after the crazy confession of love, right?
“I love you too, Isabelle Olympus.” Alex said in a voice barely above a whisper. It was so quiet that I almost thought I’d imagined it. That was the kind of thing I would do. Imagine a fairytale ending to protect myself from the painful truth.
“Sorry, what did you say?” I asked, needing the clarification that I had actually heard him say what I thought he said.
“I said that I love you too.” Alex admitted whilst chuckling, obviously seeing the shock that was written on my face.
“Really?” I asked, still not quite believing this. Just a second ago I thought that I had ruined our entire relationship in one sentence but now I’m starting to think that I haven’t.
“Yes really.” Alex said with a big grin on his face as he stood up from the table, walked around to my side and kneeled in front of me, talking my hands in his. “I’ve been in love with you for a while now, I just didn’t know how to tell you. I was actually building up the courage to admit it to you later on this evening, but you beat me to it.”
“Sorry.” I giggled shyly.
“There’s no need to apologise. I’ve known for a long time now that you’re braver than me, so it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that you were the first of us to build up the courage to admit your feelings.” Alex said still with that smile on his face that made me feel like I was the only girl in the world.
“I’m not braver than you.” I protested.
“Yeah, you are. There’s no way that I could do half of the things that you’ve done.” I was about to disagree with him, but he carried on, not giving me a chance to interrupt him and deny it. “You can walk into Olympus and stare down all of the gods, you can shout at Hades, you can stand up in front of one hundred little kids and not only hold their attention but also gain their respect as well, you can handle all the crap that people have put you through in the past and never once complain. You are brave, Izzy, a lot braver than you give yourself credit for.” Alex said so sincerely that I knew he meant every word he’d just said. Just looking at this gorgeous boy and knowing that he thought all of those wonderful things about me had my eyes tearing up.
“You make it sound as though I’m some perfect angel.” I chuckled , whilst shaking my head and dabbing at my eyes.
“You are. I don’t know what I did to deserve someone as amazing as you but I’m thankful everyday that you saw something in me that you liked.” Alex said, looking at me with some expression that I didn’t quite understand. Was it awe? No, it couldn’t be awe, why would he look at me in awe?
“I’m not perfect Alex. I’m far from it. I’m just a young girl, whose struggling her way through all the many jobs she has to do and trying to do each of them perfectly, but I know that I never do any of them to the standard that I really should. I’ve only been running camp for a few months and I already feel like ripping my own hair out just to relieve some of the stress I feel. I know that all my parents expect me to be a brilliant goddess but I never feel like what I’m doing is enough. That thing with Connor has left me with so many insecurities and don’t even get me started on my parent issues.” I rambled trying to make him see that I’m not flawless because if he believed that I was he would only be disappointed later on, when he found out the truth. I know that if any of the Aphrodite girls were here they would be screaming at me to shut up and not give him any more reasons not to be with me, but I felt like if I didn’t tell Alex these things I would be cheating him.
“Stop putting yourself down, you’re only seeing the bad in yourself, and half of the things you’ve just said aren’t even true.” Alex said frowning at me.
“Yes they are. They’re all true.” I persisted, but he brought his hand up to cover my mouth.
“No. They really aren’t. Do you want to know all the brilliant things that I see when I look at you?” Alex said, removing his hand from my mouth but giving me a look that said ‘you’d better listen to me right now’ “You’re beautiful.” A bright red blush spread across my cheeks at these words, and my gaze dropped down into my lap. “You’re trusting”
“Naive” I corrected, earning myself a glare.
“You’re kind.”
“A pushover.” I interrupted once again.
“You’re funny.”
“I’m sarcastic.”
“Will you stop putting yourself down?” Alex asked exasperated. “I think you’re amazing and I love you.”
“I love you too.” I said quietly.
“Come on, let’s go back to camp.” Alex said with a big grin on his face, and held out his hand to pull me up.
We were walking back to my cabin when we spotted Dionysus walking towards us with a huge smirk on his face.
“Sooo,” He said dragging the word out. “What have you two been up to? Nothing I wouldn’t approve of, I hope.”
“Dad!” I whined, embarrassed. “We just went out to dinner!”
“I’m just saying.” He said holding up his hands in surrender. “You suddenly disappear for two hours and no one’s telling me where you’ve gone except that you’re with him. What else am I meant to think?” He said suggestively.
“Dad shut up! Alex just took me out on a date to stop you spying on us all the time!” I cried out, my cheeks flaming.
“Well someone’s got to keep an eye on you two. We know what kids get up to these days.” Dionysus said sounding like a proper dad.
“Please.” I begged, desperately. “Please stop talking.” Dionysus seemed to find my pleading hilarious as he threw back his head and laughed. “This is not funny.” I said whilst hiding my face in my hands.
“Oh but it is.” He chuckled. I glanced over at Alex to see that he too had bright pink cheeks and was looking at the ground as though he was hoping it would swallow him up. “Calm down lad, we’re not going to kill you. You know the deal we made. Just stick to your promise of not hurting our daughter and we won’t have a problem.” Dionysus added, obviously noticing Alex’s discomfort.
“I’m not going to hurt her.” Alex said firmly and with such conviction that I couldn’t help but smile at him. He loved me. This amazing, strong, brave, handsome god loved me. I still found that strange to wrap my head around but I was going to love getting used to it.
“Yeah, sure.” Dionysus replied disbelievingly. They had trusted Connor and that went wrong, so they weren’t about to do it again. “Anyway, Chiron called whilst you were out having ‘dinner’, he wants you to call him back ASAP. He said that it was urgent.” Dionysus said casually.
“And so you decided to have a long conversation about my romantic life rather than giving me the urgent message.” I said incredulously.
“Yep.” Dionysus said with a large grin on his face before he walked off towards his cabin.
“He’s ridiculous. It’s like he wants this camp to fall apart.” I said shaking my head at Dionysus’ retreating figure.
“You know that he doesn’t. He just likes to wind you up.” Alex said as he wound his arms around my waist from behind and rested his chin on my shoulder. “I guess that that’s my cue to leave then, if you’ve got some important phone call with Chiron.”
“Yeah, I guess. Ugh, I’m not looking forward to this. It’s too late at night to be having a serious conversation.” I groaned, whilst detangling myself from Alex.
“Good luck.” Alex said as he leant forward and gave me a peck on the lips. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” I replied grinning.
“I don’t think that I’ll ever tire of hearing you say that.” Alex admitted with a broad grin.
“I love you.” I said once again to humour him. “But I’m going to have to go, I need to talk to Chiron.” I added reluctantly. I didn’t want to leave him. I didn’t want this night to end, not so soon after admitting that we loved each other. But I guess duty calls.
“I didn’t have you pegged as the type to love them and leave them, Izzy. I’m shocked. And to leave me to be with another man as well! I’m hurt.” Alex cried dramatically.
“Oh shut up!” I said giving him a light shove before turning and heading in the direction of Chiron’s cabin.
I relaxed into the chair behind the desk as I dialled Chiron’s number, hoping that he would still be up.
“Where have you been?” Was the first thing I heard when he picked up. He was obviously still awake then.
“What?” I asked, startled.
“Where have you been? I told Dionysus to get you to call me as soon as possible, we’ve had a major problem here.” Chiron growled angrily.
“I’m sorry, I was out with Alex. I only just got back, what’s the matter?” I asked panicking slightly. Was somebody hurt? Did they need me there? What was going on?
“We ran into some trouble at the museum today. You remember that teacher I was talking to you about? The one that I thought was really strange and didn’t like. Well, she turned out to be a Kindly One and she tried to kill Percy, the demigod we’re here watching, but he managed to kill her and now we’ve had to do some pretty serious work to cover our tracks and make sure that the kid doesn’t remember what happened.” Chiron rambled out in one breath. He said it so quickly that I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.
“Did you say that a Kindly One was in your school posing as a teacher and just tried to kill that boy you think is special?” I asked, not quite believing my ears. Why would a kindly one be in a school? They were goddesses of vengeance and served Hades in the underworld.
“That’s exactly what I said.” Chiron confirmed.
“But what was she doing there? What did she want with the boy? What does Hades want with the boy?” I asked, confused.
“I’m not too sure . . .” He trailed off.
“But you have an idea.” I finished for him.
“Yes, I do. Before Percy stabbed her, she said ‘it was only a matter of time before we found out’. I think she was looking for the master bolt.” Chiron admitted quietly.
“But that’s ridiculous. Why would Percy have the master bolt? He doesn’t even know what he is.” I exclaimed. “But that does imply that he’s a child of one of the big three. If they’re sending Furies after him, then it’s a big deal. And that probably means he’s not a kid from Hades either.” I added thoughtfully.
“That’s what I was thinking.” Chiron agreed.
“So Percy doesn’t remember anything about the Kindly One?” I asked.
“No, that’s the thing, he does. He remembers it all. It’s just everyone else who is convinced that the replacement, Ms kerr, has been their teacher the whole time. Percy is really confused, I think he thinks everyone is playing a trick on him.” Chiron sighed.
“That, or he thinks he’s crazy.” I suggested, I know that I would if I was in his situation.
“That is a possibility. But it’s better than him believing that he really did kill Mrs Dodds with my pen. The less he knows about himself, the less monsters he’ll attract.” Chiron pointed out.
“True, but I might prefer that to being crazy.” I chuckled quietly, it wasn’t much of a choice, was it? Either you know the truth and be attacked by monsters constantly, or you think that you’re crazy and that you have strange hallucinations about algebra teachers.
“Anyway, we’re managing over here. What’s it like at camp?” Chiron asked nervously. I knew he was expecting me to say that the place was falling apart so I gave him what he wanted.
“Actually, it’s not going so great. The Ares kids got into a fight with the Hermes lot and it got so out of hand that they ended up setting the Hermes cabin on fire. But don’t worry we managed to get that under control before anybody was hurt . . . too badly. We also had an accident at the archery range. That one was messy. But we got that fixed up again too. The only thing that we’re still working on is re-catching all the Pegasus horses. One camper thought that it would be funny to let them all loose, and the majority of them are still flying around somewhere as they are quite hard to catch once they’re in the sky. But I’m sure they’ll all turn up again. I only hope that they don’t fly over New York again, it was hard enough to explain away the last time.” I said with a giant smile on my face. I could just picture Chiron’s expression of shock and terror as he took in what I said.
“WHAT?!” Chiron basically shouted and I couldn’t stop myself from cracking up.
“Oh gods! That was hilarious! I can’t believe you bought that!” I said in between my laughs.
“Ha ha ha. You’re hilarious.” Chiron said sarcastically.
“I think so.” I agreed, even though I knew he wasn’t being serious.
“How are things really?” Chiron tried again.
“Everything is fine, the place is running smoothly. I know you don’t want to hear this, but we can get by without you here.” I teased him.
“I know, it’s just that I worry when I’m not there.” Chiron admitted.
“I know, but we’re surviving.” I said whilst unsuccessfully trying to stifle a yawn.
“You’re tired, I’ll let you get to bed now.”
“”Thanks, I’m shattered. Good luck with the things at your end. You’ve only got to make it through a couple more weeks and then it’s summer and Percy will probably be coming here.” I said trying to make Chiron feel more positive.
“I think that I’m going to need all the luck I can get. I think this Percy is going to keep us on our toes.”