Chapter 5

That night after dinner, Quintus had the campers suit up in combat armor like they were getting ready for capture the flag, but the mood among the campers was a lot more serious.

"Right," Quintus said, standing on the head dining table. "Gather 'round."

He was dressed in black leather and bronze. In the torchlight, his gray hair made him look like a ghost. Mrs. O'Leary bounded happily around him, foraging for dinner scraps.

"You will be in teams of two," Quintus announced. When everybody started talking and trying to grab their friends, he yelled: "Which have already been chosen!"

"AWWWWW!" everybody complained.

"Your goal is simple: collect the gold laurels without dying. The wreath is wrapped in a silk package, tied to the back of one of the monsters. There are six monsters. Each has a silk package. Only one holds the laurels. You must find the wreath before the other teams. And, of course...you will have to slay the monster to get it, and stay alive."

Y/N could already sense a bit who she was about to be paired up with. "Hey beautiful," Harris walked towards her smiling. She clicked her tongue at the cringy nickname and said, "Thank god you're with me. I can't handle the stares anymore."

He chuckled and put an arm around her shoulder, slowly pulling her closer. "And does that include him?"

Y/N looked into his eyes, followed the direction he was looking in, and saw the obvious pair of eyes looking at them. "No, we are just friends now. And have decided to start over, forgetting everything," she said and smiled at Percy, who seemed to be in a trance. Was he even looking at them or was he just zoned out? It was surprising how he can be zoned out with a partner like Annabeth, who wants her plans to be perfect and win the game. But well, it's Percy.

While Y/N started chatting with Harris, holding his hand that was hanging over her shoulder, Percy was busy glarin- ahem, observing them. He couldn't just smile back at her at the moment when he was too focused on how close they were standing. Y/N's face was literally inches away from Harris's face. One accidental push from someone and they would literally kiss each other.

Although that won't be required going by the way Harris is eyeing her.

"You look constipated seaweed brain," Annabeth said, "Can you stop being so embarrassing and quit staring at them like an idiot?"

He could sense the disgust in her voice. Well, he knew how embarassing he was being and in any other normal situation, he wouldn't even think about looking at them this way after being discovered by them...or anyone. But somehow...he just didn't care.

Let them look. Let them know how he's irritated.

"You're being creepy," Annabeth sighed, "I get you find him annoying but you can't be possessive about someone who isn't yours in the first place."

This seemed to get his attention, finally breaking away from the trance he was in. "Don't be ridiculous. You act like you're not possessive of her."

"I am, but I know my limits."

"Oh yeah, sure you do," Percy scoffed. It was pretty annoying to think about how he now has to spend time obeying all of Annabeth's orders.

Well, that wasn't the worst part either. It felt like the whole world was against the idea of clearing out the misunderstanding Y/N had with Annabeth and him.

[ TIME SKIP ]

Well, he was certainly right about the world being against him.

The roof slid open and Percy saw the night sky, stars blazing. It was a lot darker than it should've been. Metal ladder rungs appeared on the side of the wall, leading up, and he could hear people yelling their names.

"Percy! Annabeth!" Tyson's voice bellowed the loudest, but others were calling out too.

He looked nervously at Annabeth. Then they began to climb and made their way around the rocks. They ran into Clarisse and a bunch of other campers carrying torches, including Y/N. She looked distressed.

"Where have you two been?" Clarisse demanded.

"We've been looking forever," Y/N said.

"But we were gone only a few minutes," Percy said.

Chiron trotted up, followed by Tyson and Grover.

"Percy!" Tyson said. "You are okay?"

"We're fine," he said. "We fell in a hole."

The others looked at him skeptically, then at Annabeth.

Shit.

It looked like something else. Like he wandered off with Annabeth to spend some time alone or something. He looked at Y/N immediately to observe her reaction. Thankfully....she wasn't eyeing them suspiciously like the rest of them.

"Honest!" he clarified. "There were three scorpions after us, so we ran and hid in the rocks. But we were only gone a minute."

"You've been missing for almost an hour," Chiron said. "The game is over."

"Yeah," Grover muttered. "We would've won, but a Cyclops sat on me."

"Was an accident!" Tyson protested, and then he sneezed.

Clarisse was wearing the gold laurels, but she didn't even brag about winning them, which wasn't like her. "A hole?" she said suspiciously.

Annabeth took a deep breath. She looked around at the other campers. "Chiron...maybe we should talk about this at the Big House."

Clarisse gasped. "You found it, didn't you?"

Annabeth bit her lip. "I—Yeah. Yeah, we did."

A bunch of campers started asking questions, looking about as confused as Percy, but Chiron raised his hand for silence. "Tonight is not the right time, and this is not the right place." He stared at the boulders as if he'd just noticed how dangerous they were. "All of you, back to your cabins. Get some sleep. A game well played, but curfew is past!"

There was a lot of mumbling and complaints, but the campers drifted off, talking among themselves and giving Percy suspicious looks.

"This explains a lot," Clarisse said. "It explains what Luke is after."

"Wait a second," Percy said. "What do you mean? What did we find?"

Annabeth turned toward him, her eyes dark with worry. "An entrance to the Labyrinth. An invasion route straight into the heart of the camp."

After the explanation, the rest of them started going back to their cabins as well.

Y/N turned around to leave along with Harris when she felt a tug on her arm. This was happening way too often.

"What?" she asked, trying to put her best smile.

"It wasn't intentional," Percy said.

"You don't need to explain it to me," Y/N said.

Percy looked at Harris who was still standing close to her.

Annoying.

He pulled her arm to bring her closer to himself, eyes fixed on Harris, he said, "We need to talk. I have to tell you about the dreams I've been having. Just us. No outsiders."

Y/N felt embarrassed. Harris shouldn't have to deal with this situation. She tried to free her hand from his grip but heard him say, "Well, you can take your time Y/N. It's getting late anyway." She watched him walk away to his cabin. It felt like someone placed a rock in her heart.

Snatching her arm away, she asked, "Why do you act like an asshole with him?"

"I don't know," Percy tried to calm his nerves but failed, "His face just manages to bring out the worst in me."

"Shut up," she asked, "What did you wanna talk about?"

Oh. Right. The dream. He filled in the details and watched her reaction.

"So...that's the same Labyrinth Nico was talking about right?" Y/N asked.

"Yes," Percy said. He was trying his best to be decent but these days, especially today, he was way too tired to force himself to be decent. Maybe it was how just when he was about to enjoy her attention, Harris seemed to crawl and snatch it away like a little bug. So he blurted out the first question pestering his mind.

"Are you and Harris a thing now?"