The Path Of Glory (Annabeth Chase x Male Reader)

94. The Last Note Of Summer

Y/N's face was the last thing Ethan saw before he got shot. His last memory would be that face. It would be Y/N pointing his gun at him, pulling the trigger.

There was no remorse or grief on Y/N's face—only a hard, icy stare of resolution.

Pain flashed like a tornado, and Ethan collapsed on the ground, gazing at Y/N. He clasped his hands over his chest, feeling at the wound.

"How could you?" he croaked, his voice hoarse, his vision already blurry. Y/N just stared back, silent behind his mask. "I—I thought we were friends. . . ."

Y/N shook his head, sighed, and said flatly, "Friendship has nothing to do with it."

Ethan could feel his mouth twisting with pain and despair. "Y/N—" he rasped with what little air was left inside his lungs, and his eyes closed.

Darkness became his world, and dullness, absolute dullness, surrounded him till everything disappeared. Death . . . it came for him . . . he could sense its hooded shape gliding over him. . . .

Suddenly a foot tapped against his arm, and a voice jolted him out of his daze. "Quit being so overdramatic, Ethan."

He opened his eyes. Annabeth was looking down on him.

"D-did he send you to the Underworld, too?" he asked, horrified.

She rolled her eyes, then pointed to the bright red splotches on their coveralls. "Ethan, it's just paintball."

* * *

Camp went late that summer. It lasted two more weeks, right up to the start of a new school year.

A lot of stuff was going on. Grover had taken over the satyr seekers and was sending them out across the world to find unclaimed half-bloods. So far, the gods had kept their promise. Now demigods were popping up all over the place—not just in America, but in a lot of other countries as well.

"I'm starting to think Grover's a demon," Ethan admitted one afternoon as he and Y/N were taking a break at the canoe lake. "He's always writing and receiving letters, sending orders all over the world. He's almost blown our travel budget—and believe me, if he could, he would do it."

"What about you?" Y/N asked.

Ethan grinned. "I'm making the most out of my life. Being a lord of the Wild has its perks. The second I sat as a member of the Council of Cloven Elders, my popularity skyrocketed. But hey, I'll let Grover run for the Council's presidency. I don't want to overdo it."

He chewed on a tin can as they stared across the pod at the line of new cabins under construction. The U-shape would soon be a complete rectangle, and the demigods had really taken to the new task with gusto.

Nico had some undead builders working on the Hades cabin. Even though he was still the only kid in it, it was going to look pretty cool: solid obsidian walls with a skull over the door and torches that burned with green fire twenty-four hours a day. Next to that were the cabins of Iris, Nemesis, Hecate, and several others. They kept adding new ones to the blueprints every day. It was going so well, Annabeth and Chiron were talking about adding an entirely new wing of cabins just so they could have enough room.

The Hermes cabin was a lot less crowded now, because most of the unclaimed kids had received signs from their godly parents. It happened almost every night, and every night more demigods straggled over the property line with the satyr guides, usually with some nasty monsters pursuing them, but almost all of them made it through.

"It's going to be a lot different next summer," Ethan said. "Chiron's expecting we'll have twice as many campers."

Dark thoughts flooded Y/N's mind. He managed to push them away—most of the time, it wasn't that easy. "Yeah," he said, "but it'll be the same old place."