Chapter Text
Percy Jackson was an enigma. Even before she’d met him, before she’d realized what he was to Apollo, Artemis had known that he was…different.
To kill a Fury in one strike with no training, to slay the Minotaur only months later—still with no idea of his heritage—those were no small feats.
He beheaded Medusa, escaped Echidna and the Chimera with his life, tricked Procrustes into his own trap, drew first blood on Ares of all gods.
Any one of those feats would’ve been enough for the legends—was not Theseus well remembered for slaying the Minotaur? Perseus for beheading Medusa?—and yet, by all accounts, the boy was oddly humble.
An uncommon trait for a boy—a son of one of the most powerful Olympians, no less.
Artemis had paid little attention to him past the odd rumor—Apollo and Hermes were insufferable gossips, honestly.
And then that night on the cliff, chasing after the Manticore, Artemis had locked eyes with Percy Jackson and felt her twin’s touch lingering beneath his skin.
Artemis had done what she could for him, had tried to protect him, and when he’d been pulled off that cliff, she’d felt her brother’s grief as if it were her own.
In the rescue that had followed she’d been too preoccupied with the loss of her lieutenant to properly examine the boy, and now she found herself increasingly curious about the prophet that had Apollo so…
She shifted in her spot atop a branch, sharp talons digging into the wood as she cocked her head. She’d been following him as a falcon for close to an hour now, watching him trek through the woods and stop to speak with the naiads in the creek warmly and exchange soft words with the dryads in the trees before continuing on his way. He didn’t appear to have a destination in mind, content to meander along the paths and soak up the sunlight as it broke through the leaves. He’d been tense when he’d entered the woods, his shoulders stiff, his knuckles white from the way they were clenched around his pen sword—Zoë’s sword, Zoë’s Anaklusmos—but the further he walked the more his muscles loosened.
Percy hadn’t made any outward indication that he knew he was being watched, but Artemis was no fool. She was the goddess of the hunt, and she knew when she’d been spotted by her target.
Giving up on the subterfuge, she flapped her wings and soared off the branch. He turned as she approached, looking entirely unsurprised when she morphed in midair and landed silently on bare feet.
“Perseus,” Artemis greeted evenly.
“Lady Artemis,” Percy dipped his head, his eyes uneasy but his stance relaxed. Aware of what she was capable of, of her usual views on men, but also aware of how unlikely she was to hurt him simply by virtue of his position. He didn’t ask why she’d been following him, didn’t presume to guess the reason why—though he likely had a good idea already as he’d proven to be quite perceptive.
“Walk with me,” she said, beckoning him to her side. Percy matched her step for step, not speaking a word as she led him through the woods. She knew the moment he caught what she’d done, the slight pause in his gait and the hitch in his breath at the unfamiliar forest she’d transported them to, bending space around them until they emerged in a small forest several states away from the woods he’d originally gone for a walk in.
“I informed Chiron and Dionysus that I would be taking you out of camp, and I have no doubt they will tell your friends,” she said, and his shoulders loosened slightly, though he seemed a lot more nervous than he had in the woods surrounding camp.
“Do I make you nervous, Percy?”
Percy bit his lip. “A little bit,” he admitted. “But it’s not just you. I don’t really…I don’t leave camp much these days.”
Artemis knew—Thalia had told her as much in one of the times Percy had come up in conversation, quietly divulging all her worries surrounding her cousin.
He just gets so anxious every time he’s outside the borders of camp, like he thinks the Titans are waiting just behind the corner to take him away, she’d whispered. Lee said that sometimes he can barely get him out of the cabin.
“I understand,” she said, though she didn’t. Artemis was the goddess of the hunt and the wilderness, and she wasn’t sure she could fathom being uncomfortable in the untamed wild. Percy gave her a look like he knew she was lying, but he didn’t call her out on it.
“You needn’t worry, though. You will come to no harm while with me.”
Apollo would be most cross with me if you were injured on my watch, she didn’t say, but Percy seemed to understand regardless, his lips twitching up in a small grin.
The two of them emerged in a small clearing with two dozen small tents cropped around a blazing fire, and immediately Percy’s nerves rocketed back up at the sight of the young girls lounging around.
“You will come to no harm while with me,” Artemis reminded him. “My Hunters do not act without provocation.”
His mouth twisted as though something she said had amused him, but they were spotted before she could question him about it.
“My Lady!” Phoebe stood up, her bright eyes narrowing when she noticed who stood next to her. A flurry of whispers greeted them as they walked further into the camp, her companions leaning in close to each other and casting suspicious glances at Percy.
“Sisters,” Artemis said. “This is Percy Jackson, my brother’s favored prophet and the son of Poseidon.”
Even more whispers. None of them looked pleased.
Thalia broke through the crowd before the silence could become uncomfortable, stepping forward with a wide grin that only made the other girls’ unhappiness more jarring.
“Kelp Head! The fuck are you doing here?!”
Thalia pulled him into a firm hug, ruffling his hair lightly when she let go and ignoring the frowns she was receiving from her sisters.
“No idea,” Percy shrugged. “Lady Artemis just kinda showed up in the woods, told me to walk with her, and brought me here.”
“And you’re…” She trailed off. “Okay with…being away from camp?”
He shrugged again, though Artemis noted that he did seem to be more relaxed with Thalia by his side, the familiar face working to soothe his nerves.
“He’ll be joining in the hunt this evening,” Artemis told her Lieutenant, drawing shocked gasps from the majority of the Hunt—Phoebe, in particular, looked completely flabbergasted.
Artemis understood their surprise. The last boy, other than her twin, to join in on her hunts had been Orion himself, and her older hunters remembered well how that had ended.
For Artemis to allow a boy to hunt with them again—a son of Poseidon, no less—was enough to have them looking at Percy with new eyes. He seemed uncomfortable with their gazes, shifting on his feet and drawing his shoulders in.
“I hope you’re not expecting him to shoot anything,” Thalia remarked wryly. “Cause I have it on good authority that he’s hopeless with a bow.”
Percy’s cheeks flushed, and Artemis could see her sisters preparing for the son of Poseidon to bluster arrogantly and deny Thalia’s words—she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t somewhat expecting it herself. Orion had never taken teasing or criticism well, she remembered.
“She’s right,” he said sheepishly, seeming ignorant of the way the Hunters raised their eyebrows at his easy admission. “I’ve had a standing ban from archery at camp ever since the fourth time Chiron had to fish an arrow out of his tail.”
“Uh huh, and why don’t you tell them where Chiron was standing every time you hit him?” Thalia smirked, and Percy ducked his head.
“Behind me,” he muttered, and Naomi—one of Artemis’s older hunters, having been with her for several hundred years—couldn’t contain her laugh, though she was quick to slap her hand over her mouth. Thalia had no such reservations, throwing her head back with a loud cackle.
Percy showed no offense at their amusement, though his blush steadily crept down to his collarbones, betraying his embarrassment. He looked over at Artemis, a glint of nervousness in his eyes, and she couldn’t help comparing him to the wolf pups on their first hunts—wide eyes looking up at her for approval, eager and anxious in equal parts, wary of mistakes but excited for the chance to try.
Hmmm. She was beginning to see why her twin had grown so attached so quickly.
“Proficiency with a bow isn’t required on my hunts,” she told him. “Though the lack of a ranged weapon means you’ll need to get in closer for a kill.”
It would be more difficult, she didn’t say, but he seemed to put that together himself. His eyes sharpened, narrowing ever so slightly. If he hadn’t been sure before, he definitely was now.
This was a test.
“Are we hunting anything in particular?”
Artemis felt her lips stretch into a grin. “I don’t suppose you carry any silver weapons, do you, Perseus?”
Percy blinked at the supposed non sequitur, but he was quick to make the connection. “Werewolves?”
“The Titans have them sniffing out demigods and either recruiting or killing them before the satyrs can reach them,” Thalia explained. “We’ve been hunting this pack for a while, and all signs point to them camping just a few miles west.”
Percy’s eyes darkened at the mention of what the werewolves were doing, and Artemis knew she’d chosen the correct time to bring him on the hunt. She would see what he was truly capable of tonight.
“I don’t carry anything silver,” he said.
“I expected as much,” Artemis told him. “Come with me. The rest of you—prepare to move. We’ll keep our camp here for the night.”
Percy followed her on near silent feet, and she took a moment to wonder how he’d learned that particular skill.
People were not born quiet. They taught themselves quiet.
Artemis had learned silence in the footsteps of panthers, in the slither of a snake’s belly against the ground, in the gliding of an owl’s wings, in the creeping of tigers and the stalking of wolves.
Percy Jackson was no hunter, for all that he moved like one, and she wanted to know where he learned—when he learned—how he learned.
Hopefully this hunt would tell her.
Failing that, she would pester Apollo until he caved—which he always did, for the record, no matter how vehemently he claimed otherwise.
“You may borrow anything you wish,” she said when they reached their destination, sweeping a hand out to the wall of glistening silver weapons in the armory tent.
Percy’s eyes were wide with wonder at the choices presented to him, but he was still cautious in his approach.
For someone who’d quickly gained a reputation for his lack of respect for gods, he was proving to be quite the opposite to her. She wondered how much of that was a want to prove himself to his patron’s twin and how much was just a knowledge of her reputation.
Percy’s feet seemed to pull him over to one specific weapon, as she’d suspected they would.
Artemis waited as he brushed his fingers across the tines of the weapon, still razor sharp after all these centuries.
“You had this made as a gift.”
“For Orion,” she confirmed. “It wasn’t finished when he was killed.”
When he was killed.
What a cowardly way to say when I killed him.
Percy turned to look at her, his eyes resting somewhere above her shoulder, a familiar blankness in his gaze that reminded her of Apollo’s. She wondered what he was seeing—that horrible day or something else—before he blinked and seemed to come back to himself.
Percy plucked the trident off the wall with ease, the weight settling in his palms the same way she’d once imagined it would for Orion.
“We should go,” he said. “If we’re fast enough, you’ll gain another sister.”
“And if we’re not fast enough?”
He tilted his head. “Then you’ll lose one,” he told her simply.
They were on the move within a minute.
Artemis drove her hunters fast—faster than she usually would with an inexperienced hunter in their midst, but Percy seemed to keep pace with minimal effort, following in Thalia’s footsteps with a gleaming silver trident strapped to his back.
He shared few similarities with his brother—Orion had been a giant, taller than any human could be and broad in the shoulders where Percy was slim and lanky, his eyes a mechanical red where Percy carried his father’s colors—and yet for a moment all Artemis saw was his ghost.
She shook the image away, focusing on the approaching werewolf camp and signaling for her hunters to slow. A single gesture had Thalia crouching by her side, Percy a single step behind.
“Take half and circle around,” she murmured, and her Lieutenant nodded before sending a questioning glance at Percy. “He stays with me.”
Thalia dipped her head, clapping Percy on the shoulder before taking half of the group to the other side of the camp. Percy slid into the empty space she left without even seeming to think about it, and Artemis noticed Phoebe narrowing her eyes at the action.
Artemis waved her off, tilting her head to the side to appraise him.
“Tell me what you see,” she instructed, and his face changed. It was subtle, but she caught it.
“Not with your abilities,” she amended. “With your eyes.”
Some of the tension bled out of his shoulders, and he turned back to the camp.
Artemis waited patiently, watching his eyes flick over the vague shapes around the fire. She’s done her own reconnaissance of course, but she wanted to see what he could pick out.
“Thirty-four werewolves. Three are stationed on the outskirts as guards, two are watching the girl. The rest are either sleeping or eating.”
“So only five that we have to worry about seeing us,” Artemis said. “And the girl?”
“She’s right by the fire so she can’t sneak away as easily, but she’s not bound or hurt. Guess they think she’s not much of a threat with so many of them,” he said slowly. “Take out the guards and that should give your frontline fighters enough time to reach the main group and protect her.”
“You think they’re fast enough to reach the wolves before they take her out?”
“I think I am,” he smiled, all sharp edges and harsh lines, the first sign of confidence he’d shown. She appraised him for a moment, trying to decide if it truly was confidence or arrogance.
Hmmm.
Not arrogance.
She turned her gaze back to the young girl hunched over next to the fire, and even from the distance she could see the angry light in her eyes.
Oh, yes, Percy had been correct. Artemis could recognize the look of a hunter—she would gain another tonight, she knew.
“Very well,” she agreed. “Her life lies in your hands, then.”
Percy’s shoulders straightened, and he slipped the trident off his back.
“Ready when you are.”
Artemis gave it another minute before she was sure Thalia and the others had circled around and signaling to the hunters at her side. One raised a ram’s horn to her lips, blowing out a short and clear call, and the others let loose a volley of silent arrows.
Percy didn’t even wait for the arrows to fly to move forward, zipping in between the trees to emerge in the center of the small clearing before the wolves even realized their perimeter had been breached.
Artemis didn’t bother drawing her own bow, content to watch her hunters and Percy do the work—she could’ve wiped the wolves out with a single breath, but that wasn’t the point of this night. This hunt was a test.
Silver flashed in the low light of the stars and the crescent moon as Percy took out three of the werewolves in quick succession, carving a path through their pack as he made for the young girl by the fire.
One of the monsters went to lunge for the unarmed demigod, and Percy, without a moment of hesitation, launched his trident halfway across the clearing to spear the beast in the chest before it could reach her.
Now unarmed, Percy rolled under a monster’s snapping jaw, and she saw his hand lash out for something on the ground.
Something like shock ran up her spine when Percy came back up with one of the arrows her hunters had shot. An arrow made for a poor weapon when wielded in a hand, Artemis knew, and she prepared to draw her own bow—test or not, she wouldn’t allow Percy to be injured when she could prevent it.
She let her hands fall back to her side when he quickly adjusted his grip on the shaft, placing his hand just below the tip and using it to slit one of the beast’s throats—a slicing motion rather than a stab that would’ve either broken the shaft in two or had too little power to be anywhere near effective. In the next breath, Percy reached the girl, who’d wasted no time in plucking up the silver trident he’d saved her life with.
She was inexperienced with the long and heavy weapon, unable to properly utilize the razor-sharp prongs and instead swinging it around her like a club.
Percy didn’t bother asking for it back even though it put him at a distinct disadvantage, choosing instead to simply play defense around the girl and let the hunters take out the rest of the monsters.
It wasn’t a strategy she would’ve chosen, nor was it one that would work for very long, but Percy must’ve weighed the time it would’ve taken to get the girl to give up the weapon against the time he thought it would take the hunters to kill the remaining werewolves and decided it wasn’t worth it.
It wasn’t something Orion would’ve done—even at his best, he hadn’t been content to let others do what he thought he could handle, hadn’t trusted them to watch his back the way Percy seemed to even though he didn’t even know all of their names.
It wasn’t something most male heroes would do either—voluntarily leaving others to take the glory of the kill, falling back to defense thoughtlessly even though he could’ve easily taken the trident back and handled the monsters on his own.
The last monster fell with a strangled yelp, and Percy straightened up cautiously before deeming the threat dealt with and dropping his makeshift weapon. Thalia was the first in the clearing, kicking through piles of monster dust as she made for her cousin.
“You two good?”
Percy wrinkled his nose. “Cut my palm on the stupid arrowhead,” he complained.
“Get over it,” Thalia said dryly, ignoring Percy’s muttered why would you even ask if you clearly don’t care about my answer and turning a critical eye on the young girl.
“A couple bruises, but that’s it,” she said, her knuckles still tight around the silver trident in her hands. “They said they didn’t want to damage me too bad because they thought I could be of some use.”
Several of the surrounding hunters made varying noises of disgust, and Artemis slipped in between the small crowd.
“What’s your name, child?”
Blonde hair, gray eyes—shrewd and cunning and intelligent.
Athena's.
She seemed to know enough about who she was to also know who Artemis was, and her eyes went wide in fear and awe.
“I’m—I’m Hayden, Lady Artemis. I was being escorted to camp by a satyr when this group caught us and killed him to try and convince me to join their cause.”
Artemis smiled kindly at the dark anger in Hayden’s voice—she would do well in the Hunt.
She had scarcely finished her offer before the young girl was taking her up on it, and Percy met her eyes as Hayden knelt to take the oath of the Hunters.
Gain another sister indeed.
It was only when they’d started the trek back to their campsite that Hayden seemed to remember the weapon she clutched in her hands wasn’t her own, and she turned somewhat uncertainly to where Percy was walking next to Thalia.
“Do you, um, do you want this back?”
Despite her words, it was clear she didn’t want to relinquish her grip on the trident, and Percy seemed to clock her reluctance instantly.
“Keep it,” he said easily. “I’ve already got a trident—just needed that one for a bit cause it’s silver.”
Hayden’s eyes lit up with happiness, and she bounced on her feet. “Can you teach me how to use it?” She asked excitedly, and Percy blinked.
“I…yeah, sure. I can teach you what I know, at least.”
She practically squealed before remembering herself and glancing awkwardly around at her new sisters, not nearly comfortable enough in their ranks to act so young even though she couldn’t have been older than thirteen.
Percy’s eyes narrowed before Artemis caught a flicker of mischief in them. Hardly a second later, Thalia was tumbling to the ground with a yelp as Percy swiped her feet out from under her. The son of Poseidon danced away with a gleeful cackle, flipping Thalia the bird as he raced through the trees. Thalia got back to her feet, wiping mud off of her face and taking off after her cousin.
The two of them engaged in a childish and yet somehow violent game of what looked like tag but also seemed to involve a ridiculous amount of flung dirt and twigs and even one or two shoes.
The sight made Hayden relax, content in the knowledge that she wouldn’t be judged for her childish glee if the Lieutenant of the Hunt could tackle her cousin into the dirt and then get smacked with a face-full of leaves without reprimand.
Both Thalia and Percy were covered in mud by the time they reached the camp, and Artemis stopped them before they could step foot inside the perimeter.
“No tracking mud all around our clean campsite,” she told them, feeling a little like a mother wolf scolding two young pups for play-fighting with the looks the two of them gave her. “There’s a river a couple hundred feet that way. Go wash off and then you can join us for dinner.”
Thalia groaned theatrically but led Percy back into the woods so they wouldn’t look like mud monsters while eating dinner, and Artemis shook her head in silent amusement when the two of them nearly got into another fight just by walking next to each other.
She knew that Percy had engaged Thalia in an attempt to make Hayden more comfortable with acting childish, but the messing around had also served to make him more relaxed around the group.
He’d hardly looked over his shoulder at all since knocking Thalia to the ground, and Artemis knew that was partially why Thalia had been playing up the game as well, content to act childish if it meant Percy no longer stepped through the woods like he expected the monsters to be hiding in every shadow.
The two of them entered the camp in the middle of Hayden’s official welcoming into the Hunt—a closely guarded ritual among Artemis and her sisters that involved taking the blood of a freshly killed deer that would later be cooked over the fire and drawing the symbol of a crescent moon on their forehead and each of their cheeks. It was a way of tying together Artemis’s most prominent domains—that of the wild and its animals and the moon—and pronouncing the Huntress as an integral and permanent part of those domains.
No man aside from Orion had ever borne witness to the ritual.
Percy lingered on the outside of the crowd as Artemis placed the finishing touches on Hayden’s forehead and a raucous cheer went up amongst her sisters. Hayden stepped back into the ranks with a proud smile on her lips, and Phoebe raised her ram’s horn, blowing out a clear call that resonated through the air and had the timber wolves howling.
Artemis drank in the noise happily and let her Hunters celebrate for another minute before raising her hand to call for silence.
She could sense their quiet confusion when she bent back down, wetting her hand in the blood of the doe once more.
It was only when she stood up and waved Percy Jackson forward that they understood, and a flurry of shocked gasps went up. Percy himself seemed too stunned to move, and it took Thalia pushing him forward gently for him to remember how to walk.
The Hunters parted wordlessly for him, their eyes piercing him like hawks, but he paid them little mind, his gaze locked on hers.
She wondered if he understood the significance. If he knew that she’d done this to a man only once before, if he knew how that had ended, if he knew—
Artemis waited for him to stop in front of her, tilting her head back to meet his eyes—most of her family would’ve changed forms to match his height, and yet Artemis saw no point in that frivolity. Height meant little to her. She was just as dangerous in this form as she was as an adult, so why should she bother to cater to others’ expectations of what power looked like?
“My twin and I differ in a great many ways,” she started softly, her voice echoing through the air. “And yet, if there is one thing in which we are of one mind it is this: what’s mine is his, and what’s his is mine. He cares for my Hunters as his own in my absence, and thus I, too, will take you under my care in the same way he has. He has laid a powerful claim on you—taking you under his wing, under his protection—and now I shall do the same.”
Artemis drew her own symbol on his cheeks first and then painted a scarlet sun on his forehead. A beam of moonlight stretched down into the clearing, turning the slivers of white in his dark hair silver and giving him an ethereal glow similar to her own Hunters. The blood on his skin stood out starkly as he tipped his head back and let the glimmer of the Huntress constellation shine down on him.
The air was silent for a moment, and then Thalia let out a whoop, crashing forward to tackle him in a hug. The rest of the Hunters followed her lead, though some were more hesitant than others.
She could still see the flickers of distrust in the eyes of her oldest companions—it would take more than a night to work through the typical district they had toward men, to forget the horrors that Orion had wrought upon them at the end.
But Artemis had accepted him, had approved of him, and that would go a long way to tempering their distrust.
They celebrated long into the night, welcoming both Hayden and Percy with an abundance of singing and dancing and stories.
The Hunters trickled away in small groups, curling up in cuddle piles beneath the stars—a newer tradition when they welcomed Hunters these days—a way for them to include Zoë in the night and let her watch over them from her place in the sky.
Percy flopped down just inside the circle of warmth from the fire with Thalia leaning up against a log just beside him, and Artemis made her way over to join them.
They sat in silence for some time, simply watching her chariot pull itself across the night sky, and Artemis was almost startled when Percy spoke.
“Can you hate someone and still care about them?”
She turned her head to look at him, finding his gaze still locked on the stars.
Could she hate someone and still care about them?
His constellation was just barely visible above the trees around the edge of the clearing, and she remembered as clearly as the night it had happened placing those stars in the sky.
Artemis thought back to the giant she’d welcomed into her ranks, to the young boy who’d impressed her so with his prowess that she’d completely missed his faults until it was almost too late. She remembered adjusting his form until he hit every shot with perfection, remembered standing over a pile of bodies, each with a single arrow placed with terrifying precision in the center of their chests and realizing that she’d taught him how to do this. She remembered kneeling at his side and teaching him the dangers of the wild creatures that fell under her domain—the fierceness of the wolves, the hunger of the bears, the cunning of the hawks, the deadly speed of the scorpions—remembered piercing his back with the poisonous stinger arcing out over her own back.
She remembered their first hunt, watching him take down a deer and turn to her with such pride, remembered the way he’d fallen to his knees and looked up as scorpion morphed back into goddess, remembered the look that had crossed his face as he realized who had killed him. She’d watched him stand over their dying prey countless times before, and she could never forget the night she’d stood over him as he lay dying from her poison and Phoebe’s blade.
And Artemis hated him—oh, how she hated him.
Hated how she’d ignored the signs, how she’d missed the calculating light in his red eyes every time he looked at the others, how she’d explained away the arrogance that grew with every hunt and the bloodlust that rose with every kill.
Hated how she had realized too late that the kind, respectful hunter she’d taught at her side was little more than a mask for the monster beneath.
Hated how sometimes she still couldn’t tell if he’d always been that way or if he’d slowly been twisted beyond all recognition. And did it even matter?
Orion had slaughtered nearly all of her Hunters in a blind rage because she’d rejected him. It mattered little whether he’d always been a beast or whether he’d gradually morphed into one under her tutelage. What mattered was that he’d been one, and that she’d killed him as one.
And yet still, monster or not…
“I do,” she said quietly, her eyes locked on the shining form lingering just above the trees. Artemis had placed him in the stars the very night she’d killed him—an eternal reminder both of the giant she’d raised and the monster she’d killed—putting a scorpion on the other end of the sky so that even in the stars he couldn’t escape her. Artemis would chase him until the end of time—night after night, year after year, she would never let anyone forget what had become of Orion the Hunter.
“So do I,” Percy admitted, and she turned her gaze on him. Slowly, as though each word were pulled from him like thorns in his palms, painful and yet relieving all at once, Percy unraveled the mysteries that shrouded him.
He talked of a small apartment and a horrible man, of learning to mask footsteps and slink in shadows. He talked of cruel words and swinging fists and terror and rage.
Quieter, he talked of cold shackles and bare feet and bloody arms and clawed eyes, of lingering fear and twisted dreams.
Even quieter still, he spoke of immortal sorceresses and unwanted touches, of unheard prayers and filth clinging to his skin no matter how hard he scrubbed.
Neither Artemis nor Thalia breathed a word no matter the atrocities Percy unveiled to them, letting the horrors wash over them without a sound. Only when he finally fell silent, wiping away salty tears as they mingled with the dried blood on his cheeks, did Artemis speak.
“You’re very strong to have survived all that and still turned out good.”
And then, sensing that to acknowledge it any further would be more than he could handle, she turned to a tried-and-true distraction method.
“Has my brother ever told you about the time he tried to prank me and ended up caught in his own trap?”
Percy sucked in a breath, looking away from the night sky for the first time in hours as his face filled with mischievous glee.
Eventually, the moon began to dip below the tops of the trees, and Artemis knew her twin would soon discover what she’d been up to. She made no effort to hide it even when the sun peeked above the horizon, shining the soft rays of dawn over the clearing and illuminating her camp in golden light.
She was alone by the fire when he appeared, watching her Hunters go about their morning routine with a small smile on her face. He plopped down on the log next to her, radiating enough heat that any mortal would come away with burns, and Artemis just hummed.
“Brother,” she greeted pleasantly, not taking her eyes off of where Percy and Thalia were engaged in a playful game of tag with the wolf pups, laughing and shrieking and rolling in the grass happily.
“Sister,” he said mulishly. “Have fun on your hunt?”
“Very much so, yes.”
She could feel his glower increase and had to bite her lip to keep from smirking.
“That prophet of yours really is something.”
A low growl.
“I’m so pleased that I got to take him on his first hunt.”
Something that could only be described as a whine burst out of Apollo’s throat, and Artemis finally lost her battle with her laughter.
“—can’t believe you took my prophet on his first hunt and didn’t even invite me,” he was complaining when her giggles subsided enough for her to make out his words, prompting another round at the pout on his face.
“It wouldn’t have been a test if you were there,” she said eventually. “I needed to see what he did without his patron by his side.”
“And?” He asked immediately, his annoyance fading away as nervousness came to the forefront. “How did he do?”
“Very well,” Artemis smiled over at her brother. “He has the makings of a fine hunter. Fast, agile, strategic. And a team-player to boot—gave up the glory to protect the demigod and let her keep his weapon so she’d feel more safe.”
His shoulders loosened at the quiet approval in her voice, and his eyes flashed with pride. Artemis knew he hadn’t been worried, per se—the likelihood of her disliking someone he was so fond of to the extent that she harmed them was practically nothing, after all—and more likely than not his nerves were just a lingering fear from all of the atrocities Percy had been forced to survive.
They watched Percy and Thalia play with the pups for a while longer in silence, and then Apollo’s breath hitched.
“You blooded him?”
Artemis could understand his surprise—while she had tested and approved of a great many of his prophets, never before had she accepted them to the extent that she marked them with her own symbol in blood.
“What’s mine is yours, and what’s yours is mine,” she said simply. “You’ve not laid a claim so powerful on one not of your own blood in all of our lives.”
“He’s different,” Apollo agreed softly, his eyes caught on where a trio of pups had dragged the wheezing boy to the ground and were climbing all over him like a wriggling blanket of fur as Thalia stood to the side and cackled. His power curled around her for a moment—a trickle of his true form bleeding out where only she could see—and warming her shoulders with a heat that the moon hardly ever felt.
Thank you, the light seemed to whisper to her, and she let her own power reach out in acknowledgement, moonlight sliding over his fingers soothingly.
“He’s been struggling lately,” Apollo admitted out loud. “I’ve been…worried.”
“Thalia mentioned as much,” she said. “And I noticed it myself when I took him out of the woods at camp. Always looking over his shoulder, wary of every shadow and broken twig and loud noise, unable to truly relax even though logically he knew I would protect him should something happen.”
She’d seen it in her Hunters countless times before, when they were still too new to really trust in their own abilities and those of their sisters, when they fell asleep with a dagger clutched in their palms even though they knew the wolves were keeping guard, when they placed themselves against the walls in every room because they couldn’t quite make themselves believe the others would watch their backs.
“He hasn’t smiled like that in months,” Apollo murmured. “Like…”
“Like a kid,” she finished. “Playful, carefree, no longer carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.”
Percy looked up, still giggling, and then caught sight of them both by the fire. Even from halfway across camp, Artemis could see the way his entire face lit up when he saw Apollo.
Like a wolf pup, she thought to herself with some amusement. Percy was practically bouncing on his feet as he made his way over to them, his shoulders loose and relaxed, his smile easy, his eyes bright, one of the wolf pups curled up in his arms like a baby.
“‘pollo!”
Apollo’s smile was practically blinding as he pulled him into a hug, careful not to jostle the pup in his arms, and Percy seemed to melt into his chest.
“I hear you had a fine first hunt,” Apollo said, no small amount of pride in his voice, and he perked back up.
“It was really fun,” he admitted, almost shyly. “Especially all the dancing and singing afterward. And they’ve got a lot of cool stories.”
Apollo’s grin turned soft at the edges, and he swiped his thumb over the flaking sun on his forehead. “I’m glad you enjoyed it, though I would’ve liked to have been there for it.”
He sent a grumpy glare her way, but Artemis just gave him a smug smirk back.
“I think you being there to hold my hand the whole time sort of defeats the purpose of the test,” Percy said dryly, poking at the furrow between his eyebrows.
“But your first hunt,” Apollo whined. “It’s not fair that Arty got to be there for it and I didn’t.”
“Deal with it,” Artemis stuck her tongue out, only realizing afterward that she must’ve been infected with Percy’s childish glee if she was resorting to such measures.
He pouted, glancing back and forth between the two of them several times before accepting defeat.
“There, there,” she consoled him teasingly. “We’ll invite you on the next one. Maybe.”
“Maybe?!”
Percy hid his laughter in the fur of the wolf pup, though his shaking shoulders betrayed him, and Apollo sent her a halfhearted scowl—he wasn’t really annoyed, she could see, too happy with how relaxed Percy was to be anything else.
“Whatever,” he grumbled, pulling Percy closer like he thought she was going to steal him—which…was an idea. Artemis did so love making her twin jealous—and it would make her uncle pout as well, which was just an added bonus.
Apollo must’ve seen the mischief in her eyes because he gave her a possessive glower.
“No stealing my prophet,” he growled, and Artemis let out a contemplative hum that did little to convince him.
Percy looked back and forth between them for a moment before his eyes lit up with a chaotic sort of glee.
“Hey, ‘pollo…”
“Hmm?” Apollo didn’t look away from her, still staring suspiciously as she smiled at him.
“How long did it take your eyebrows to grow back when you burnt them off with Greek fire trying to prank Artemis?”
He whipped around to look at Percy, who was blinking innocently, before slowly turning back to face her with betrayed eyes.
“You.”
Artemis gave him an impish grin that had Percy giggling, and Apollo looked like he regretted everything he’d ever done.
“I’m never going to get a moment’s peace ever again,” he said in resignation. Percy beamed up at him before holding up the wriggling wolf in his arms so the pup could lick Apollo’s cheek in consolation.
“I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything different,” he sighed. “You’re impossible not to like, even for notorious man-haters.”
Percy’s cheeks pinked at the praise, deepening when Artemis only made an agreeing noise.
They stayed in the Hunter’s camp for a while longer, the time filled with playful teasing and gentle ribbing, but eventually Apollo whisked Percy away to take him back to camp—and he was most certainly going to take the opportunity to spend some quality time with Percy and his kids before their father noticed—and Artemis let them go with little more than a put upon sigh and a promise to steal Percy away again soon.
She instructed her Hunters to pack up the campsite, intent on moving out soon to track down the nearest monster hideout, but she spared a moment to sneak into her uncle’s cabin at camp and leave her gifts on the bedside table.
She hoped Percy liked the pair of daggers—every aspiring hunter needed a good set, after all—but she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t most looking forward to his reaction to the shirt proclaiming him to be firmly Team Artemis.
Mostly, she hoped he got the unspoken message to wear it on the next hunt and give Apollo a jealous aneurysm.
Oh, yes, Artemis thought to herself with a devious grin as she and her Hunters set out into the woods. She was most certainly looking forward to that day.