Disclaimer: The characters you recognise are Rick Riordans. The plot of the Selection belongs to Kiera Cass. Any images you see do not belong to me.

Enjoy

"Annabeth!" Percy cried as the knife went through his chest.

I watched forzen to the spot, as blood bubled out of his mouth as Percy fell to the ground. His hand strethech out towards me, blood coating it.

"No! No, no, no, no!" The blood was pounding in my ears as my hands started to shake.

My feet moved towards Percy as I started to cry heavily-

"Annabeth!"

I jumped up from the bed, my hands shaking around me as sweat trickled down my forehead. My eyes focused as my breathing started to even, Percy's face washed over with worry.

"Percy?" I looked around confused. "Wha-how-"

"You're in my room," He rubbed his hand up and down my arms. "You came here a couple of hours ago... remember?"

I blinked, my memory coming back to me. I was having trouble getting to sleep so I decided to sleep with Percy. This was my first nightmare of the night.

I looked back at Percy and noticed that his hair was sticking up in every direction. His hands were cold as they made their way up and down my arms and he was... shirtless.

I recoiled back. "You're shirtless."

His eyebrows scrunched together in confusion as he looked down at his bare chest. I stopped my eyes from looking too. "Um, yeah. It's summer, do you expect me to sleep with a shirt when it's really hot?"

I pouted and looked away. "It's distracting."

Percy laughed. "It's distracting? Is my shirtlessness glorious to you?"

I scrunched up my nose. "Not glorious exactly."

His laugh died as he swept a piece of hair behind my ear. "What was it about?"

My lower lip trembled as I tried to keep the tears at bay. "You were stabbed."

"By who?"

"Didn't get that far." I shrugged.

"Where was I stabbed?"

I looked at him curiously. "Is that relevant?"

He nodded. "Of course it is. I want to know if I would have survived!"

I rolled my eyes. "You were stabbed in the heart, Seaweed Brain," I wiped a tear from my cheek. "You wouldn't have survived that."

He squeezed both of my shoulders. "The thing is Annabeth, I wasn't stabbed. I survived. You survived. We both did."

I nodded, closing my eyes briefly before climbing back into bed with Percy. We quickly fell asleep to the feel of each other's chests rising and falling in time.

I snuck out of Percy's room before he could even wake up. It had been a couple of days since the Report, and I was yet to wake up without Percy's face next to mine. Sometimes he would come to my room, other times I would go to his. We talked about our nightmares, then feel asleep together. I loved it. I made me think more about how this could be my future- waking up every morning to his messy black hair and his sleepy yawns, his incoherent grumbling as he claimed he needed more sleep and the smell of him not lathered with soap and deodorant.

My maids waited for me to get back when I wasn't in my bed, and talked with Percy as he struggled to wake up when they found him in my bed. No one seemed to know about it, which I was happy about. I did not not rumours going around that we were sleeping in the same bed, they could, no would, be twisted to sound like we were doing things we most certainly were not.

Will had said a day ago that we only need to see him after breakfast every second day, to which both Percy and I sighed in relief. To us, it seemed like a waste of time and energy, but I knew it was important to both of our healths. Will also warned me. With the two assignment due dates looming closer that Sarah had given me, I was becoming more and more stressed. I hid it. Percy knew, obviously, because he can read me like an open book, and Will knew because my body was showing signs of stress. Dam that.

With the New Asians coming tomorrow, the Italians the day after, I had been meeting with Reyna and Katie almost twice daily. There was so much to plan. The food, the cutlery, the flowers, the decorations, the drinks, the security, the list went on and on. We also had to decide on the colour of the curtains, the napkins, everything under the gods dam sun. But, you also had to be careful of what colours. Red may be too bold and represent anger, but purple shoved Illèa in your face, as it was our national colour. It was tiering. I decided pretty quickly that if I became Queen, I would pay someone else to do this job.

After getting dressed and prepped for the day, I heard a knock on the door.

I swung it open and let a groan escape my lips. "Again?" I whined, eyeing the stacks of paper in Katie's hand.

She shrugged, smiling as she pushed past me. "Just little things now, we've organised all the major stuff."

I closed the door behind me and started to walk over to where Katie was setting up, but I had to turn around and open the door for there was another knock.

I let Reyna in with a tight lipped smile. She returned it with a scowl.

"Are we seriously doing this again?" She muttered to me as she walked past.

I didn't respond but closed the door and sat down next to the two of them.

"Okay," Katie smiled. I think she was enjoying this too much. Her favourite part of the whole ordeal was picking the flowers, which had taken her a day and a half. But, from the description she gave me, I knew they were going to look spectacular. "Let's go over everything. The Italians will arrive just before lunchtime, and us three will great them when they arrive. We'll show them to their rooms so they can freshen up. Once their done, we'll be having an afternoon tea on the rooftop-" We had originally decided to have the tea in the gardens, but Piper slipped that they were doing that for the New Asians, so we changed our plans so it looked like we didn't copy them. "-with desserts and other foods from both Italy and Illèa. Afterwards, we'll give the family some free time to catch up with friends here at the palace and then dinner will commence just before sunset. For the entree we have a light minestrone soup, followed by the traditional Illèan main and then Chef Hestia's famous pear pie for dessert."

Katie sighed, checking over her check list. "We have to finalise napkins, table clothes, cutlery and music."

"Well, why don't we have white table clothes and napk-" Reyna put forth her idea.

"No." I interrupted.

Both girls perked up, they're faces showing confusion.

"Why?" Katie asked.

"I've known Nico my whole life, and trust me. We want as little white as we can." I tried to put as much command into my voice as possible so no one would question my view.

No one questioned it

"A light purple then?" Reyna asked. "We don't have much purple, if I remember correctly."

I nodded. "That sounds good."

Katie scribbled it down on a piece of paper. "I'll send that right off."

She called out for Justine, and she came walking in from the bathroom. "Yes, miss?"

"Could you please take this to Dylan Wright and ask him to place an order for light purple napkins and table clothes? It says it all on the note."

Justine's gaze flicked to me and I gave her a small nod. She beamed at Katie. "Pleasure's all mine, miss."

Katie sighed after the door closed behind Justine. "Your maids are awesome, Annabeth. Mine stoped calling me miss ages ago."

"Possibly because you told them to stop?" Reyna asked, sceptically.

Katie's shoulders slumped. "Yeah, but it makes me feel special when people call me that."

I rolled my eyes. "How about music?"

"I think a mixture of Italian classics and Illèan classics." Katie said. "Make them feel comfortable with their music but also show them that our music rocks."

"No pop or rock music though," I pointed at finger at her accusingly. "Classical music. Only."

Katie sighed but wrote down a note. "Live band?"

Reyna nodded. "It'd make it feel more homey and like we've organised more."

Katie's tongue poked out between her teeth as she concentrated on writing down our thoughts.

"Finally, cutlery. This also includes plates and glasses and tea cups."

I bit my lip thinking. "If we use the really good stuff, it will look good but what if someone breaks it? They've been in Percy's family for generations."

"Yeah, no to the fancy fancy stuff." Katie agreed. "The stuff we use is nice."

Reyna nodded, thinking. "We could possible use the same stuff we use at our meals, but maybe upgrade on the tea cups. I had a drink of tea in the Women's Room and the handle was chipped."

"From love," I reminded them thinking back to when I was a little girl and had tea parties with Sally. They would quickly become a meeting where Sally talked about politics and I talked about my opinions on said politics. "From love."

"Have either of you realised that there are only three of us?" Katie glanced at both of us. "The other group have four."

"Yes," I said. "But we also have an extra day. Even thought we'll be busy tomorrow, we still have more time then them."

Reyna nodded. "I did notice it too, but I thought we had some pretty goods minds in our group to make up for the luck of another one."

Katie blushed at the compliment. "I'm just good with flowers."

"So not true. You've organised both of us as well as the majority of things." I raised my eyebrows, slightly impressed now that I had thought back on the last couple of days.

Katie had organised both Reyna and I to get together, and took charge. Any three of us would have been good leaders for this project- I knew a lot about Royalty and the works, and Reyna was strong, responsible and confident to handle the job. I was a little to preoccupied with working myself back into normal like, and the stress would have been to much for my mental and physical health. Reyna would have done it, but I think she would much rather worry more about the battle side of being Queen rather than the fancy tea and hosting side. So, Katie had taken charge and it had benefited us greatly.

"I don't see the point of most of this, but you've definitely opened my eyes of the whole job of being Queen." Reyna nodded in agreement.

Katie rolled her eyes. "You two both would have been suited for the job. Now that we're done, I might go and see some of the gardening staff and help out."

Reyna was the last to leave. Before she left, she stood at the door, thinking. She stared at me for a moment then asked, "Why no white?"

I gave her a sad small smile. "Bianca in Italian means white."

Reyna nodded in understanding, making the connection between the name and the late Princess of Italy. She thanked me and left, to which I closed the door and breathed a sigh of relief.

Which was short lived as I looked over at my desk and realised that I still needed to think of a topic on which I was going to write a speech about.

My first thought was the caste system. It was old, and it was no good. The lower caste weren't happy, the evidence of this was my and Percy's kidnapping. Kronos had managed to manipulate the minds of people in the lower caste because they wanted, actually needed, help. They thought that Kronos was going to help them. But I couldn't just declare to the world that the caste system was absolute garbage, as the backlash from that would be deafening. So, I needed to think of a topic that had something to do with empowering the lower castes, without making it to obvious.

I had talked to Piper about it, who had already started up a draft of her speech. She was writing about body image, and how all adds were filled with girls who were sticks and boy who were extremely muscly. She wanted to write more diverse adds, and in magazines interview people who had accomplished something amazing, not just because they had a good jaw line or nice curves. She wanted to help people love their bodies, which I thought was pretty cool. Piper was beautiful, and she confined in me that she was extremely self-conscious. I was happy for her that she found a topic that was brilliant and she related to it personally.

Yesterday I tried to ask Percy what I should do. He told me that he wasn't allowed to interfere as we had to do it all on our own. So were maids and guards and other palace staff as I tried talking to Hazel, Jason and Grover. Luke had been no help either, saying that I needed to find something that I was passionate about and that would help the lower castes.

I sighed in annoyance and plopped down on my desk chair, staring at the blank piece of paper. I picked up a pen and played with it with my fingers.

I bit my lip and thought. What was something that could empower the lower castes and make their lives better?

An idea hit me like a brick to Jason's face.

Education.

If the lower castes had better education, they would be able to get jobs that were out of their caste levels. By getting a better job, they would have more food, water and money to pay for their children to have better education. Then their children would get better jobs and then they would earn more money. It was a never ending cycle, and it was a perfect idea.

There were empty blocks of land in every major city, owned my twos and sometimes threes. The government could easily buy and then build a small public school that could educate lower caste members. It was all pretend, though. I was just making a speech about it, not actually enforcing it, but as I thought about it, the more convinced I was that it would work. If it went on long enough, the caste system would sort of dissolve by itself. I decided that if I became Queen, I would totally implement this.

I spent the next two hours working on my draft of my speech. It started out too long, so then I had to shorten it. I had to work out money problems and try and word it correctly. I wanted it to be as believable as it could be.

My headache was starting to throb when there was a knock at the door, which I welcomed with open arms. I needed a distraction right now, my brain felt like fog inside my head.

I opened the door and was greeted by the sight of my best friend.

"Hello there, Seaweed Brain."

He smiled back at me. "Hello there, Wise Girl. May I come in?"

I opened the door wider for him to come into my room, but was really a shared space between Percy and I. Both of our bedrooms had become that since our night trips.

"What's up?" I glided over to my desk, fixing up the papers and pencils that were scattered everywhere.

"Uh," Came the confused response from my bed. "The sky?"

I shot a glare over my shoulder at the boy lying down on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. He didn't see it which annoyed me a little.

"Let me rephrase that," I turned around and sat down next to him. "How are you?"

He flopped an arm over his face, resting his forearm in front of his eyes. "Terrible, my love, for I have been separated from you for far to long."

I smiled, rolling my eyes as I shoved his shoulder. "Really?"

"No," He sat up straighter. "Just with everyone coming to visit I'm a little stressed."

I placed an arm around his shoulders as he leaned his head on my shoulder. "Why don't you tell everyone to back off?"

He chuckled. "Not that easy when you need to run a country."

I scrunched up my nose. "That's no good," I leant my head on top of Percy's, hearing the blood pumping through his veins. "You don't need to be stressed Percy. It's just Frank and Nico, plus their parents. They know how hard this has been for you, for us, so they won't question you if something goes wrong. Rather, they'll help you and hug you. The only thing you need to be stressed about it not spilling food on yourself."

Percy groaned and pulled away from me, crossing his arms over his chest as he glared at me. "It happen one time, Annabeth! When I was ten years old. One time!"

I ruffled his hair. "But it was hilarious. The poor maids scrubbed that shirt for days before finally giving up and throwing it away."

He didn't respond with a sassy comeback like I thought he would, but rather planted a hand on the back of my neck and brought my lips to his. Our lips moulded together as we kissed, our bodies connecting. Our shoulders, our chests, our hips. It was like I was his other half, just like the Greek Myth. Just like when he told me he was in love with me.

All to soon he pulled away. "I have to go."

I closed me eyes, leaning my forehead against his chest. "Really? We were just getting to the good stuff."

I imagined his lips tugging up in a smile. "Mum wants to talk to me about our Royal visitors to come."

"What's more to discuss?"

He shrugged as I pulled back from his warm and tight embrace. "Just stuff about security and the like. I think they're going to have more guards stationed, just incase of Rebels."

"They don't exist anymore." I whispered.

"I know, but with three important Royal families under the one roof, we can't really not take precautions."

I nodded in understanding, placing my lips against his. He kissed me back eagerly but I pulled back with a smirk. "I thought you had to leave?"

He pulled a hand through his hair, sighing. "I do."

I beamed at his words and he kissed me again, words floating around in my head. You may now kiss the bride.

"Are you ready for tomorrow?" I asked sitting down next to Piper at dinner, hoping she would give me a hint to as what they were planning, but her lips remains sealed.

"We're ready, but I can't fight the nerves," She placed her pressed white napkin on her lap as a servant dished the plate of vegetables and tofu in front of her. "They've haven't settled knowing that Drew will be there. I feel like she's going to say something really bad."

I nodded, my mouth watering from the smell of my smoked salmon as it was placed in front of me. "But just think of the possibility of her being eliminated because she said something hurtful to an ally."

Piper grinned, liking that possibility.

It was then my brain processed the information of the fish in front of me. I looked up concerned to Percy, watching as his gaze slid over all the girls eating their fish. He was frowning. His gaze met mine and he stabbed his piece of meat, holding the chicken breast up for me to see, clearing glaring at me.

"Fish are friends." He mouthed at me.

I made sure he was looking when I took my first bite.

I love Percabeth so much.

Self promo: Do you like my witting? Why don't you check out my short love story called, "The Story Of How I Saw Blue". People who have read it said that Xavier and Mackenzie are adorable and that they loved it!

Did you enjoy today's chapter? This one was shorter but the next chapter is over 4,700 words so... yeah.

I'm going camping. I'm just about to leave for the week. Where I'm going has really poor WiFi so I won't be able to check my notifications as often as I normally do.

So, Peeps in the 3k chat on 37- "Twelve Minutes." Can we keep the conversation slow? I don't wanna return next week and have over 2k notifications. Thanks, lovelies.

How's life? How's January? I'm realising that I have to go to school soon and I'm not ready for that crap.

Love you! Thanks for reading and make sure you comment and vote!

- Squirrel