Vercorix lumbered over and picked one.

“No, that’s for the television,” said Nero. “No, that’s the DVR. Yes, that’s the one, I think.”

Panic swelled in my throat as I realized what Nero wanted: the control for releasing his Sassanid gas. Naturally, he would keep it with his TV remotes.

“Stop!” I yelled. “You said Meg would decide.”

Meg’s eyes widened. Apparently, she hadn’t heard Nero’s plan. She looked back and forth between us, as if worried which of us might attack her first. Watching her inner turmoil made me want to weep.

Nero smirked. “Well, of course she will! Meg, my dear, you know the situation. Apollo has failed you yet again. His plans are in ruins. He has sacrificed his allies’ lives to make it this far—”

“That’s not true!” I said.

Nero raised an eyebrow. “No? When I warned you that this tower was a death trap for your demigod friends, did you rush down to save them? Did you hurry them out of the building? I gave you ample time. No. You used them. You let them keep fighting to distract my guards, so you could sneak up here and try to reclaim your precious immortality.”

“I— What? I didn’t—”

Nero swept his fruit platter off the sofa. It clattered across the floor. Grapes rolled everywhere. Everyone in the throne room flinched, including me…and this was obviously Nero’s intention. He was a master at theatrics. He knew how to work a crowd, keep us on our toes.

He invested his voice with so much righteous indignation, even I wondered if I should believe him. “You are a user, Apollo! You always have been. You leave a wake of ruined lives wherever you go. Hyacinthus. Daphne. Marsyas. Koronis. And your own Oracles: Trophonius, Herophile, the Cumaean Sibyl.” He turned to Meg. “You’ve seen this with your own eyes, my dear. You know what I mean. Oh, Lester, I’ve been living among mortals for thousands of years. You know how many lives I’ve destroyed? None! I’ve raised a family of orphans.” He gestured at his adopted children, some of whom winced as if he might throw a platter of grapes at them. “I’ve given them luxury, security, love! I’ve employed thousands. I’ve improved the world! But you, Apollo, you’ve been on Earth barely six months. How many lives have you wrecked in that time? How many have died trying to defend you? That poor griffin, Heloise. The dryad, Money Maker. Crest the pandos. And, of course, Jason Grace.”

“Don’t you dare,” I snarled.

Nero spread his hands. “Should I go on? The deaths at Camp Jupiter: Don, Dakota. The parents of that poor little girl Julia. All for what? Because you want to be a god again. You’ve whined and complained across this country and back again. So I ask you: Are you worthy of being a god?”

He had done his homework. It wasn’t like Nero to remember the names of so many people he didn’t care about. But this was an important scene. He was putting on a performance for all of us, especially Meg.

“You’re twisting everything into lies!” I said. “Just like you always have for Meg and your other poor children.”

I shouldn’t have called them poor. The seven torchbearers glared at me with disdain. Clearly, they didn’t want my pity. Meg’s expression remained blank, but her eyes slid away from me and fixed on the patterns in the carpet. That probably wasn’t a good sign.

Nero chuckled. “Oh, Apollo, Apollo…You want to lecture me about my poor children? How have you treated yours?”

He began rattling off a list of my parenting failures, which were many, but I only half listened.

I wondered how much time had passed since I’d seen Screech-Bling. How long could I keep Nero talking, and would it be enough for the trogs to disable the poison gas, or at least clear the building?

Whatever the case, with those blast doors sealed and the windows barred, Meg and I were on our own. We would have to save each other, because no one else would. I had to believe we were still a team.

“And even now,” Nero continued, “your children are fighting and dying below, while you are here.” He shook his head in disgust. “I tell you what. Let’s set aside the issue of fumigating my tower for the moment.” He placed the remote control next to him on the sofa, somehow making it seem like an incredibly generous concession that he would wait a few more minutes before gassing all my friends to death.

He turned to Meg. “My dear, you can choose, as I promised. Which of our nature spirits should have the honor of killing this pathetic former god? We will make him fight his own battle for once.”

Meg stared at Nero as if he’d just spoken backward. “I…I can’t…”

She wrung her fingers where her gold rings used to be. I wanted to give them back to her so badly, but I was afraid even to breathe. Meg seemed to be teetering on the edge of an abyss. I feared any change in the room—the slightest vibration in the floor, a shift in the light, a cough or a sigh—might push her over.

“You can’t choose?” Nero asked, his voice dripping with sympathy. “I understand. We have so many dryads here, and they all deserve vengeance. After all, their species has only one natural predator: the Olympian gods.” He scowled at me. “Meg is right! We will not choose. Apollo, in the name of Daphne, and all the other dryads whom you have tormented over the centuries…I decree that all our dryad friends will be allowed to tear you apart. Let’s see how you defend yourself when you don’t have any demigods to hide behind!”

He snapped his fingers. The dryads didn’t seem too excited about tearing me apart, but the children of the Imperial Household held their torches closer to their potted trees, and something in the dryads seemed to break, flooding them with desperation, horror, and rage.

They may have preferred to attack Nero, but since they couldn’t, they did what he asked. They attacked me.

IF THEIR HEARTS HAD BEEN IN IT, I WOULD have died.

I’ve seen actual mobs of bloodthirsty dryads attack. It’s not something any mortal could live through. These tree spirits seemed more interested in just playing the part. They staggered toward me, yelling RAWR, while occasionally glancing over their shoulders to make sure the torch-bearing demigods hadn’t set fire to their life sources.

I dodged the first two palm-tree spirits who lunged at me.

“I won’t fight you!” I yelled. A sturdy ficus jumped on me from behind, forcing me to throw her off. “We’re not enemies!”

A fiddle-leaf fig was hanging back, perhaps waiting for her turn to get me, or just hoping she wouldn’t get noticed. Her demigod keeper noticed, though. He lowered his torch and the fig tree went up in flames as if it had been doused in oil. The dryad screamed and combusted, collapsing in a heap of ash.

“Stop it!” Meg said, but her voice was so fragile it barely registered.

The other dryads attacked me in earnest. Their fingernails stretched into talons. A lemon tree sprouted thorns all over her body and tackled me in a painful hug.

“Stop it!” Meg said, louder this time.

“Oh, let them try, my dear,” Nero said, as the trees piled onto my back. “They deserve their revenge.”

The ficus got me in a choke hold. My knees buckled under the weight of six dryads. Thorns and talons raked every bit of exposed skin. I croaked, “Meg!”