The Path Of Glory (Annabeth Chase x Male Reader)

21. Question Of Treason

Y/N, Annabeth and Percy were the first heroes to return alive to Half-Blood Hill since Luke, so of course everybody treated them as if they had won some reality-TV contest. According to camp tradition, they wore laurel wreaths to a big feast prepared in their honor, then led a procession down to the bonfire, where they got to burn the burial shrouds their cabins had made for them in their absence.

Annabeth's shroud was so beautiful—gray silk with embroidered owls—Percy told her it seemed a shame not to bury her in it. No need to spell it out, he now bitterly regretted to have said something so stupid.

Being the son of Hera and the son of Poseidon, Y/N and Percy didn't have any cabin mates, so the Ares cabin had volunteered to make their shrouds. They had taken two old bedsheets and painted smiley faces with X'ed-out eyes around the border, and the words LOSER 1 and LOSER 2 painted really big in the middle.

Funny to burn.

As Apollo's cabin led the sing-along and passed out s'mores, Y/N was surrounded by old Hermes cabinmates, Annabeth's friends from Athena, and Ethan's and Grover's satyr buddies, who were admiring the brand-new searcher's licenses they had received from the Council of Cloven Elders. The council had called their performance on the question "Brave to the point of indigestion. Horns-and-whiskers above anything we have seen in the past."

The only ones not in a party mood were Clarisse and her cabinmates, whose poisonous looks told Y/N they would never forgive him for disgracing their dad.

He loved telling the story to anyone that wanted to hear whenever one of them passed nearby.

Dionysus's welcome-home speech wasn't enough to dampen his spirit. "Yes, yes, so the little brats didn't get themselves killed and now they'll have even bigger heads than usual. Well, huzzah for that. In other announcements, there will be no canoe races this Saturday. . . ."

Y/N moved back into cabin two, but he didn't feel so lonely as before going on the quest. He had friends to train with during the day. The Hephaestus had even built him a bed for the cabin. At night, he lay a little time awake, the big statue looking over him. It wasn't so suffocating now.

On the Fourth of July, the whole camp gathered at the beach for a fireworks display by cabin nine. Being Hephaestus's kids, they weren't going to settle for a few lame red-white-and-blue explosions. They had anchored a barge offshore and loaded it with rockets the size of Patriot missiles. According to Annabeth, who had seen the show before, the blasts would be sequenced so tightly they would look like frames of animation across the sky. The finale was supposed to be a couple of hundred-foot-tall Spartan warriors who would crackle to life above the ocean, fight a battle, then explode into a million colors.

As Y/N and Annabeth were spreading a picnic blanket and Percy bringing snacks, Grover showed up to tell them goodbye. He was dressed in his usual jeans and T-shirt and sneakers, but in the last few weeks he had started to look older, almost high-school age. His goatee had gotten thicker. He had put on weight. His horns had grown at least an inch, so he now had to wear his rasta cap all the time to pass as human.

"I'm off," he said. "I just come to say . . . well, you know."

Y/N, Annabeth and Percy tried to be happy for him. After all, it wasn't every day a satyr got permission to go look for the great god Pan. But it was hard saying goodbye to the Red Baron.

Annabeth gave Grover a hug. She told him to keep his fake feet on.

Percy asked him where he was going to search first.

"Kind of a secret," he said, looking embarrassed. "I wish you could come with me, guys, but humans and Pan. . . ."

"We understand," Annabeth said. "You got enough tin cans for the trip?"