Chapter Text
“Eyes FORWARD! Back STRAIGHT! How many times do I have to remind you, your highness?!”
Princess Coral gritted her teeth and made an attempt to straighten her back more than it already was. Any straighter, and my spine will snap in half, you ridiculous woman, she fumed internally, and then I’d only get shouted at for lying on the floor, wouldn’t I?
But she’d promised her father she’d at least try to get along with Madam Dodds, and unfortunately that meant participating in her scheme to end up looking like a lamp-post when she walked. What even was this lesson! It wasn’t as though it was Dodds’ only skill, anyway – she’d taught Percy, Coral’s older brother, mathematics from age five. A slow smirk crept across the princess’s face. Percy had loathed her, and the two other women that taught them, from day one. The pair of them had nicknamed the evil tutors ‘The Kindly Ones’, in a hideously ironic moniker.
Madam Dodds rapped Coral’s knuckles sharply with the ruler gripped in one fist. “Now honey, what did we say about FACES STAYING BLANK?”
“That a blank face means a blank mind behind it?” Coral half mumbled.
“What was that, honey?”
“Nothing.”
Coral screamed internally. What was she doing here, for Gods’ sake? Didn’t anyone realise there was a war on? A frankly ridiculous war, granted, but surely there were better things she could be doing than walking practise?
She’d gone to her father, King Poseidon, and try to accuse him of sexism. His defence was to claim Annabeth was one of his top advisors, her opinion perhaps the highest valued in all of Neptune.
Well, maybe that was because nobody would dare to try and tell Annabeth to do anything. Not after she’d so openly defied her mother to be with Percy. And, oh, maybe he so valued her opinion because her mother was a tactical genius?
But perhaps she shouldn’t have called him a sexist. Then maybe this recent pursuit of ‘turning her into a lady’ would have fizzled out by now like all the others. Now, he was determined to keep making her do this out of complete stubbornness. It might be weeks before he quit.
“…are you even listening to me your highness?!”
Coral snapped out of her daydream and panicked. “Ah… yes?”
Madam Dodds inhaled sharply, eyes – thin and mean – glinting. “Then what was the last thing I told you?” Her voice dripped with icy sarcasm.
Schist.
Coral plastered an awkward grin on her face. “…straighten up and fly right?”
Madam Dodds fixed her pupil with a steely glare. “Your highness, I understand you don’t care for my company, as neither did your brother. Much good an education did him, anyway. It seems that sitting quietly for just one hour was consistently too much of a struggle for him. It’s clear he was merely so burdened by an abundance of schooling- “
Coral’s temper flared. It wasn’t Percy’s fault he couldn’t concentrate for a long time! He couldn’t help it! How dare this stupid little woman insult his intelligence!
“An abundance of schooling is clearly a burden you’ve never had to face, Madam Dodds,” she fumed, face flushing, “if you’re so obtuse that you don’t understand that anyone diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is physically incapable of sitting still for an hour. Obviously, since the only thing you seem to be able to teach me is how to walk properly! And another thing- “
But the evil tutor was already pushing her out of the room.
“OUT! OUT OF MY STUDIO!”
“Oh, I’m going, Madam. I’m gone. Goodbye!”
Coral was half-shoved into the hallway. Madam Dodds poked a furious head out from around the door.
“And I will be informing their majesties of this behaviour!”
A final slam as the door was thrown shut.
Coral stood, mouth agape, staring at the polished surface of the door. Dam! So now, not only would the wretched woman get away with insulting Percy, she was also going to complain to King Poseidon. And then she wouldn’t get to explain her side of the story, she wouldn’t be allowed to attend the next meeting, and she’d probably get stuck with yet another week of this drivel.
Well, if she was going to have any hope of peace, she’d better get it in now.
The princess of Neptune stormed down various hallways and staircases until she finally came to the doors that had been familiar to her since she was five years old, engraved with seashell patterns and encrusted with small pearls. Her bedroom. Her sanctuary, where it was expressly forbidden to enter without knocking and never before nine, where you risked a punch in the throat if you did.
And which was usually empty, and should by rights be… if it weren’t for one annoying older brother rifling through her wardrobe for no discernible reason.
“OUT,” she demanded.
“Seashell, do you ever clear this thing out?” Percy wondered over his shoulder.
“I said OUT. And you're a fine one to talk about tiding your room.”
“If you didn’t keep stealing my boots I wouldn’t be in here. I’d be off on my merry way with the horses and you could sulk about The Kindly Ones in peace, couldn’t you?” Pausing his search for a second, Percy gave his sister a customary impish grin before burrowing even further into the cupboard.
Coral thought back. She suddenly had a brief memory of trying to work out an algebraic equation, getting mad, and pushing her bottle of ink off the table… onto a pair of brown, knee-high riding boots. Which, admittedly she had stolen.
“If you didn’t have such tiny feet, I wouldn’t have to keep stealing your boots, would I?” Coral retorted, stretching what she hoped was a natural grin (but was probably bordering on horrific) and racking her brains for what she had done with the boots. Were they in her cupboard? Buried within her old toy box?? Had she taken them to be cleaned???
“Did you check the stables?”
“Why would they- oh, I’ve got them now. Wait a second -?”
Dam.
Percy sat back on his heels, an ink-splattered boot in each hand, with an expression on his face that spoke of heartbreak only few experienced in their lifetime.
“Don’t look so shattered. You’d think I killed Annabeth with that expression!”
“These were my favourites,” Percy informed her, voice traumatic. “Look what you’ve done to them!”
Coral huffed and flopped onto her bed, her fiery hair spread over the mattress like a halo. “I didn’t intend to spoil them. I didn’t wake up one morning with the only note on my calendar being ‘destroy Percy’s boots’.”
Her brother stared down at her with what was perhaps the saddest expression she’d ever seen. “You have to get me new ones.”
“Will you give me more war intel first? I need cheering up.”
“That means you have to help me with Annabeth’s birthday present as well. Please. She has all the books. I have no ideas.”
“Fine. Close the door first.”
Percy shut the door and lay down next to his sister. He was a bit taller than Coral, with unruly dark hair that was perhaps the antithesis to her neater auburn strands, but both siblings shared the same shade of sea green eyes, the ones that often made them look like they were plotting something.
“So what do you know?”
The older brother let out a tired huff. “The last thing I heard, Dad and King Zeus- “
“The one from that kingdom called Jupiter?”
“You know a lot of kings called Zeus who our father has been waging a cold war with for the past few years, do you?”
Coral flushed slightly. “Ahem. Continue.”
“Zeus is blaming Dad for that failed coup that tried to overthrow him a few years back. He- “
Coral rolled her eyes. “Oh please. Perseus, that’s old news. Anyway, it can’t have been Dad to blame. Zeus even caught that lord – uhhh, Apollo I think? – that was responsible.” Coral paused, seeing the look that had come into her brother’s eyes.
“It was just Apollo, wasn’t it?”
Percy cleared his throat.
“Percy?”
“Well, that… is what I thought at first. And officially, what happened.”
“…But?”
A huff. “Zeus says he has evidence that Apollo had naval help.”
“Which Jupiter doesn’t have much of.” Coral nodded. Jupiter wasn’t as oceanic a kingdom when compared to Neptune. That made a little more sense. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean Dad commissioned them. It might have been a rebel group.”
“Which is exactly what I thought. And what I thought was the truth. But then Dad sent a message back not that long ago, saying that maybe Zeus should take a look at,” Percy made finger quotes “‘those closest to you… particularly your wife. You’ve angered her a lot recently, haven’t you?’”
Coral pulled a face. “Her name’s Hera, right?”
Percy scoffed. “Yeah. And a complete b- ah, witch. But that’s not the point. Dad said he had letters from Hera, that said he’d cheated on her. A lot, apparently.
“And I realised – well, Annabeth realised, but she told me and it was a great point – how could Dad have known Hera was to blame? How could he have known Zeus had affairs? Apparently, his own son didn’t even know.”
Coral’s breath hitched. It couldn’t be true could it? For the past three years they’d all operated under the belief that Zeus just wanted to get his petty little hands on their home, that he was a liar. It wouldn’t surprise her if it were true that he regularly cheated on his wife.
But was their father responsible – or, at least, partially? Was he possibly at fault? And then there was the knowledge to unpack that if it was true, he hadn’t trusted any of them with that knowledge.
For three dam years!
“…Seashell, you in there? Coral? Speak to me.”
Oh. Percy was talking.
“How can you be so calm about this?!” she exploded, sitting up suddenly. “You find out you’ve perhaps been lied to for the past three years, and your reaction is ‘Huh. Neat,’?”
Percy looked offended, propping his head up on an arm. “Excuse you, I panicked earlier. A lot. I was curled into a tiny ball on my bedroom floor for thirty minutes.” He gestured erratically at Coral’s wardrobe, the contents of which were still spilling onto the floor, casualties of Percy’s quest for his boots. “Piper found me on the floor and told me to find something to do. Ergo, boots. Which did not stop me panicking, by the way, when I discovered the way you’d massacred them!”
Coral rolled her eyes, burying her face in her hands. Her brother was ridiculous, and surprising, but sometimes also a little smart. Not least of which being his use of ergo in the right place in a sentence.
“And Pluto?” she mumbled into her hands. “What have we done to annoy King Hades? Poisoned the crops? Murdered his favourite horse?”
“Dad wouldn’t kill a horse,” Percy answered, completely serious. “No, I think Hades is just mad Zeus and Dad ignore him.”
“I’ve noticed that,” Coral admitted, pulling one lock of her hair absent-mindedly. “I mean, he’s the smallest of the three kingdoms, but they own all those jewel mines. They’re by far the richest.” She dragged a hand down her face, collapsing back on her mattress again. “So no dark family secrets there?”
Percy scoffed, rolling his eyes. “If I find out any more, you’ll be the first to know. Aww, come here.”
Coral was enveloped in the sort of hug he only gave her when she was truly miserable, a tradition that had begun when they were both tiny. “I wish I hadn’t asked now,” she muttered into his shoulder.
Percy huffed a laugh above her head, which faded away with the arrival of a worry. “How much do you regret it? You aren’t gonna run away to Jupiter, are you? Leave the best big brother in the tri-kingdom area behind?”
Coral patted his back. “No, you’re fine. If it is true, I understand why Dad did it. By all accounts (except his own), Zeus is an awful person. I could get behind a coup. I just wish we’d known about it.”
“I know.”
That was it. All the pair of them could do for now was accept that their father still saw them as children, who couldn’t do equations and complained about walking lessons. That he didn’t know his heirs were highly competent adults… who had spent a good hour between them panicking about being lied to.
Ah well. That was a flaw they could work on tomorrow.
For now, brother and sister simply enjoyed their time together.
The ink-splattered boots lay, temporarily forgotten (until later that night, when Percy would remember and start to gripe again) on the floor.