Trials of Apollo 5

office building across the street. It’s one of his properties. When we burst out
this door, his surveillance team should get some good footage of us on the
roof.”
“Remind us why that’s a good thing?” I asked.
Lu muttered something under her breath, perhaps a prayer for her Celtic
gods to smack me upside the head. “Because we’re going to let Nero see
what we want him to see. We’re going to put on a show.”
Meg nodded. “Like on the train.”
“Exactly,” Lu said. “You two run out first. I’ll follow a few steps behind,
like I’ve finally cornered you and am ready to kill you.”
“In a strictly playacting way,” I hoped.
“It has to look real,” Lu said.
“We can do it.” Meg turned to me with a look of pride. “You saw us on
the train, Lester, and that was with no planning. When I lived at the tower?
Lu would help me fake these incredible battles so Father—Nero, I mean—
would think I killed my opponents.”
I stared at her. “Kill. Your opponents.”
“Like servants, or prisoners, or just people he didn’t like. Lu and I would
work it out beforehand. I’d pretend to kill them. Fake blood and everything.
Then after, Lu would drag them out of the arena and let them go. The deaths
looked so real, Nero never caught on.”
I couldn’t decide what I found most horrifying: Meg’s uncomfortable slip
calling Nero Father, or the fact that Nero had expected his young
stepdaughter to execute prisoners for his amusement, or the fact that Lu had
conspired to make the show nonlethal to spare Meg’s feelings rather than—
oh, I don’t know—refusing to do Nero’s dirty work in the first place and
getting Meg out of that house of horrors.
And are you any better? taunted a small voice in my brain. How many
times have you stood up to Zeus?
Okay, small voice. Fair point. Tyrants are not easy to oppose or walk
away from, especially when you depend on them for everything.
I swallowed the bitter taste in my mouth. “What’s my role?”
“Meg and I will do most of the fighting.” Lu hefted her crossbow.
“Apollo, you stumble around and cower in fear.”
“I can do that.”
“Then, when it looks like I’m about to kill Meg, you scream and charge
me. You have bursts of godly strength from time to time, I’ve heard.”