Chapter Text
Luke stands in front of a surf shop midway down Delray Beach’s main street. He knows this is Delray Beach because he’s been here before, unfortunately.
“Thank the gods, man!”
He startles at the sound of Grover’s voice, and turns to find his friend standing on the deserted sidewalk behind. Dawn sunlight illuminates him in a hazy golden glow, emphasising the weirdness. “What’re you wearing?” Luke asks, looking him over from head to hoof, incredulous. For some ungodsly reason, Luke’s subconscious dreamt up Grover in several layers of extra long white beach cover ups, obviously bought at the store in front of them. One of those sweat bands sporty people wear when playing tennis and a gauzy something that might be a kids’ play fishing net make the approximation of veil.
Altogether, it’s the wedding getup from Beach Tartarus. Though Luke always knew Florida was secretly hell, this proves it.
Dream-Grover ignores the question. “You’ve got to help me!” he says. “I—”
A piercing cry rips Luke out of his dream. By the time he’s aware he’s awake, he’s already sitting upright beside Silena in their dark UES bedroom with the amazing blackout curtains that keep out that dawn. In the other room, the twins are both crying, because they do just about everything at the same time.
“Babies,” Silena says with a sigh, as she leans away from him to turn on the light. He closes his eyes against the sudden brightness. “Better than alarm clocks.”
At least their babies are. Luke has no idea which god blessed them with good fortune, or if for once, they really were just lucky, but the twins are so remarkably well-behaved that they even tend to sleep (most) of the night through—at least now that they’re thirteen months. It’s a bad sign when they don’t, like a few weeks ago, when they had ear infections, but it took a checkup from Lee before Luke and Silena realised it wasn’t just colic.
That was a bad time for grades. Her professors were understanding. His were not.
“What were you dreaming about?” Silena asks, once the full morning routine is done, and the twins are in their high chairs with their Cheerios in front of them. Xanthe eats each one individually, daintily; Evan likes to crush them with his palm, make a mess, and eat the crumbs. This would be more of an issue if the Cheerios were lunch or dinner, but Luke and Silena still need to caffeinate in the morning, so don’t have the energy to correct such rude behaviour.
Today, the coffee seems to take an exceptionally long time to brew. “That I was in Florida with Grover,” he answers, half-listening to the twins babble random words and sounds to each other. They’ve managed mamma and dadda, and a few others, but not their names yet. “He was in a wedding dress.”
She laughs. “Oh honey,” she says. “You’re that worried about finals?”
“Yes!” It was definitely a stress dream brought on by his worry over his Ancient Philosophy final. He only took the class for an easy A, just to discover that mortals are so woefully ignorant about everything that he has to parrot his professor’s incorrect interpretations of the text to pass.
“You’ll be fine,” Silena says, with complete confidence. “And so’s Grover. Well, at the very least, he’s not in a wedding dress in Florida.”
“Oh no way,” Luke says, as one of Evan’s Cheerios ricochets and smacks the wall. “I mean, that’s too strange to be real even by our standards, isn’t it?”
For the most part, the people at camp—at least those who are there all year round—aren’t stupid, so they all know who at least Nico’s real dad is. It’s just not something anyone, even Mr. D and Chiron, ever openly acknowledge, so Agi’s surprised when Chiron cuts her and the di Angelos off on their way to the dreaded Arts & Craft area, and says, “Nico, please follow me. I am in need of your particular…expertise. Bianca, Agi, you’re free to continue your lessons.”
Except that these lessons are Arts & Crafts, so inevitably, they follow along.
For some reason, Chiron leads them (Nico) to Thalia’s tree. Agi can see that there’s something wrong with it instantly: the needles on the lower boughs are browning, and rather than clear sap, what’s oozing from between the flaky bark is a sickly yellow. If a mastic started doing that back home, everyone knew it meant the pine was dying.
Then there’s the weather. Past the camp boundary, rain lashes the bay and the shoreline of Long Island across the water, but those grey clouds shouldn’t be fringing past the pine’s pointed crown like that.
“How is the tree dying?” Bianca asks before Agi can, staring at it. She says it in English; like Agi, the di Angelos have improved a lot over the past year. “I thought our uncle made it.”
“He did,” Chiron says grimly, as Agi’s gaze wanders back from the needles to that sap, “and so it should not be. Nico, I won’t pretend to be well versed in how it will work, but I suspect if you lay a hand on the tree, you’ll be able to feel the state of the soul inside.”
“Our cousin’s?” he says, head tipped back to look at the centaur. “You mean, if the tree dies, she’ll die too?”
“It’s what makes sense,” Chiron says, “unless by some miracle, the tree’s death means she’ll return to human form. This is unprecedented.”
And nothing unprecedented, he doesn’t say, is good at a time when they’re at war.
Other than the attack on Piper, which was really an attack on Agi, nothing’s happened, but everyone can feel the general sense of anticipation. So far, the only ones who’ve been able to act have been the Hephaestus kids, who decided to make everyone “camp cell phones,” so that whenever anyone leaves, they have a quick way to communicate with them that doesn’t require finding a rainbow. This is important, because the Search for the Oracle has already started.
But none of that explains a dying tree.
Nico walks a few steps forward and stretches out his hand. Right before he makes contact, Agi moves before she even realises she’s doing it, grabs his arm, and yanks him back.
Her heart pounds from a sudden flood of adrenaline. “It’s poison,” she says, as they all turn to stare at her. She knows it with the same certainty that she knew in Persephone’s garden. “You can’t touch the—the—the yellow.” She doesn’t know how to explain about sap in English, or really anything about trees at all.
“You can feel that?” Chiron says, still staring.
“I need to sit down,” she says instead of answering, and does just that, right there on the grass. Her whole body shakes.
After a moment, Nico sits beside her. “Are the roots safe?” he says, like this is completely normal. She nods, not positive, but there’s no sap, so she assumes so. Hesitantly, he reaches out, lays his hand on the nearest root, and furrows his brow. The rest of them wait in silence. The tree creaks in that menacing way sick trees do. Finally, he says, “She’s dying.”
Well. Great.
There’s a beat of quiet, where Chiron is lost in his private misery and the rest of them in horror, before Bianca says, “Could our mother help? It’s a soul inside a tree.”
Chiron releases a long sigh that is, somehow, particularly horsey. “If she could,” he says, “then we wouldn’t be standing here today. Perhaps had your uncle chosen a daisy rather than a pine, things would have been different. Agi,” he adds, returning his attention to her, “how did you sense the poison?”
“I don’t know,” she says honestly. “I didn’t feel anything with the scorpion.” But, she thinks to herself, she’d been half out of her mind then from fear and Charmspeak and post-enchanted sleep. “Maybe it comes from the ocean?”
“That’s not impossible.” He is not happy about this. “It would likely mean the old alliances have already been reforged. Now, I must request you keep this to yourself, at least until the campfire, by which point I will know if this is worth real concern.” His tone implies what he thinks of this. “You may tell Annabeth, as I know you will anyway, but perhaps do so in the privacy of your cabin.”
Obviously, this means Annabeth and Piper, but the three of them innocently swear to follow orders to the letter. “What about Luke?” Agi says. She’s standing again, that odd moment of shakiness having subsided to something manageable. “He deserves to know too.”
“And Mr. D or I will call him when we have more answers,” Chiron says. “Tell that to Annabeth too, lest she decide to contact him herself. This is important, but so are his finals, and he needn’t take them with bad news rattling about in his head.”
Though Bianca and Nico clearly don’t disagree, Agi understands—she’s been to real school, unlike them, who forgot, even if they had. Tests are scary enough, even without learning that your ex-girlfriend-turned-tree is probably dying.
Together, Agi and her cousins trudge back to camp. As Chiron didn’t tell them that they needed to return to class, they decide this is an excellent excuse to skip the rest of Arts & Crafts, and hide in the cabin instead until lunch/midday break, when they can steal their friends. The moment they’re inside, Bianca throws herself on her bunk and says, “I don’t understand why a tree needs to be so terribly different from a flower. They’re both plants.”
“Yeah,” Nico says, frowning, “but it’s like biology. They’re different families or orders or something.”
“Or it’s just that pines don’t flower,” says Agi, who grew up surrounded by pines, so knows all about them. She and Nico sit side-by-side on his bunk, which is across from Bianca’s.
“True,” she says. “Pomegranates grow on trees.”
Because everything with Persephone comes back to the pomegranate.
“But why would they want to kill Thalia?” Nico says. This is, after all, the important question. “She’s already a tree. It’s not like she knows the difference.”
Bianca says something in Venetian. When Nico just frowns again and shrugs, she reaches under her bed for the Italian-English dictionary, flips through, and says, when she finds what she’s looking for, “To hurt…oh, here.” She hands the book over, indicating the word morale. “I doubt that’s pronounced how I think it is. But that.”
“Maybe,” Agi says, as Bianca takes the book back, “but the only people who knew Thalia were Annabeth and Luke, and Luke’s not even here.” Everyone must learn the story at some point, but usually as a secondhand account. Thalia Grace’s Last Stand is more of a myth than her own father is.
“Is the tree part of the boundary?” Nico says, staring off toward the door, like he expects to see the pine through the wood. “I mean, does it make it work?”
Agi thinks of the storm clouds edging past the crown, but still says again, “Maybe.” The tree’s only been there for a few years, so why would it be? “Annabeth will know.”
On cue, the gong sounds, signalling for midday break.
The three of them scramble up and out of the cabin, easily locating Annabeth and Piper coming back from The Dreaded Archery Practice, which Aphrodite and Athena’s cabins have together. Mornings during the school year are for “Demigod Lessons,” and the afternoon for Traditional Classes, so understandably, they’re talking about their separate math quizzes later when Agi and the others head them off. “We need to talk to you,” she says, blocking them on their way to the dining pavilion. “Right now. It’s important.”
“But food,” Piper says, motioning to the great exodus of the other year-rounders toward the pavilion.
“But it’s important,” says Agi, before taking Annabeth the arm and pulling her in the direction of cabin three. As expected, Piper follows.
Also as expected, Annabeth does not take the news that her sort-of sister is dying well.
“I need to tell Luke” is the first thing she says. As expected.
“Chiron’s telling Luke,” Nico says. “He said to tell you that.”
“But after Luke’s finals,” Agi says. They and Bianca sit on her bed; Piper and Annabeth sit opposite on Nico’s, struggling to accept all of this.
“Oh,” says Annabeth. “That makes sense.” A little crease forms between her brows. “Drew didn’t even know Thalia. None of them did. Why would they want to kill her?”
When Piper reaches out for her hand, Annabeth noticeably squeezes back. If it hurts, Piper’s good enough not to show it. “What if it’s just to damage morale?” she asks, which solves the mystery of how to pronounce a word Agi and the others would have said as mo-ral-ay.
Annabeth shoots that down that fast as Agi had. “Thalia’s not, I don’t know, real to anyone but Luke and me and Grover,” she says, “so it’s not like Drew or Al would think of it to be petty. And I doubt a Titan cares enough about any individual demigod enough to consider the one that’s not walking around a good target if he wants to send a message to her father. It would make more sense for him to figure out how to attack my mom or his wife or something.”
It’s so matter of fact how she says it that Agi is profoundly glad Annabeth and her brother are not with Drew.
There’s a beat of awkward silence as they all take in the possibilities before Nico says again, “But is she connected to the boundary?”
“What do you mean?” Piper says. “Like, is she the key that makes it work?”
“That would be stupid,” Annabeth says. “The boundary was already here. If her dad did that, he would’ve made us more vulnerable.”
“But Thalia would be more important,” Bianca points out, like that’s all the reason Zeus would need, which probably isn’t wrong.
As it seems significant, Agi tells the others about the clouds she noticed. She tends to notice things about the weather; tourists who learnt basic phrases in Greek and thought that made them fluent always wanted to make small talk about it, so just to be annoying, she’d mention something weird, like how the clouds were out of place.
Annabeth actually groans and buries her face into her hands. “I’m not going to say it,” she says. “I’m not.”
Translation, presumably: Zeus is very stupid.
Before she gives into temptation, the gong sounds again, warning everyone that there’s fifteen minutes left of their break. “We should eat,” Bianca says, taking Nico by the arm and dragging him up as she stands, as if he wouldn’t have gone anyway. Neither of them ever misses a meal, which is probably a side effect of growing up during WWII.
Despite their low spirits, Agi and the others follow. They all have Traditional Classes after this, after all, and no one’s risking those on an empty stomach.
When Luke and Silena show up to talk about The Thalia Crisis, they’re good enough to bring the babies. Lee and Katie and Ethan all show up too, of course, but they’re not nearly as important as Evan and Xanthe.
“Why aren’t they walking on their own?” Travis says, as he and Agi and everyone else crammed into cabin ten watch the twins practically race each other across the room, but only by clinging to the furniture. Piper and Bianca both hover behind them, like they think they’ll be held personally accountable if the babies fall. “I thought babies were supposed to by now.”
“No, this is normal,” says Annabeth, the only one here with siblings young enough that she must remember them at this age. “My stepmom was obsessed with her kids being the best at everything, so she complained a lot when my brothers hadn’t started walking and talking early.”
Incredulous, Connor says, “And your dad’s still with this woman?”
Malcolm’s face pinches. “Mom doesn’t have the best taste in men,” he says before Annabeth can, reminding everyone in the room that they’re all accidents.
Abruptly, Xanthe and Evan both decide it’s time to crawl now. If that was a race, Agi can’t say who won, but she also doesn’t think it matters. They don’t seem to care anyway, and that’s what’s important in the end.
Everyone stays in cabin ten with them for a while, until they need changing; mysteriously, all the boys evaporate into smoke at that, including Nico, the traitor, so Agi and her friends are handling those gross matters alone when Luke and Silena return. “We’ll stay in cabin two tonight,” he says, after they shower the rest of them with thank yous for, in Silena’s words, being such good aunties. As Agi’s only twelve, it’s weird to think of herself as an aunt, but she’s willing to accept it, since the twins managed her name before anyone but “Annie.”
“What about the babies?” asks Annabeth, who takes her duties as an aunt very seriously.
Luke and Silena exchange a wary glance. “Mr. D is lending us ‘family heirlooms,’” she says, as she picks up Xanthe and Luke does the same with Evan. “Gods, I hope that means the cribs he used for the boys, not whatever BCE contraption any baby deity slept in.”
“Did they even have real cribs back then?” Piper says, which is a good question, though no one can answer it. Knowing Mr. D, though, they’ll find out soon.
“What did they say about Thalia?” Annabeth says. “Do they know what to do about it?”
Xanthe starts to cry, which starts her brother crying. As Silena sighs, and Bianca springs to her feet to fetch the babies’ bag, Luke says, “Golden Fleece still seems like the only answer—thanks, Bi—but there’s something going on with the satyrs. More than one’s gone missing over the last few weeks, so the Council’s had to refocus its energies on trying to find out what’s going on.”
“What about Grover?”
“Well, he hasn’t sent a distress signal,” Luke says, as he and Silena set the babies on a towel on her old bed with a snack, “so for now, we have to assume he’s fine.”
“Or he’s lost in Florida in a wedding dress made of beach slips,” she says, which makes no sense to Agi and the others, but he laughs like it does to him.
After a moment, where they wait for an explanation, and the happy couple doesn’t feel the need to offer any, Luke says, “The satyrs will try to put together some sort of pattern in the leads they’ve had over the years, so Chiron can issue a quest to Katie, Lee, and Ethan. Mr. D’s worried it’s still in Greece, though, so Agi, you might be going along as translator.”
Back home? Something like joy flashes through her, brief but so intense that in that second, she doesn’t even care why she’ll have to go, or about the edge in Annabeth’s voice when she says, “But that’s not fair!” Then reality hits: a dying tree-cousin who’s practically Annabeth’s sister. The guilt Agi feels over her own excitement is real.
But that’s not the only issue. “I thought I shouldn’t fly again,” she says doubtfully. “And my stepfather’s probably reported me missing by now. What if I’m stopped? Or not allowed back in America?”
“You’re fine, Agi,” Silena says, though for some reason, she and Luke look at each other, not Agi. “Your uncle would allow it for the sake of his daughter. And we took care of the rest.”
“Took care of it? What—”
“Agi,” Luke says, in a weird tone that even wipes the pout off Annabeth’s face, “it doesn’t matter. You’d be fine.”
Horrified, Bianca says, “You didn’t kill the man, did you?”
“No,” he says, before something catches his attention out the window. “Gods, I think it is whatever the hell baby deities slept in. Come on, Sil.”
In a whirlwind of no time at all, he and Silena pack up the twins’ things, sweep the babies into their arms, and leave with barely a backward glance.
The morning after Luke learns his first girlfriend is about to die for a second time, he’s stuck in yet more traffic on the 495 with his wife and their children when the call comes asking them to come back. It’s from Annabeth, who actually bothers to remember things like road safety, so she phones Silena. “We need you,” she says. For some reason, she’s whispering, so her voice is garbled through the speaker phone; to hear her better, Luke turns down the AC. “Chiron and Mr. D and his aunt are all gone. Mr. D and her were recalled, and Tantalus—that Tantalus showed up with an eviction notice for Chiron from Grandad.”
Luke jerks the car hard to a stop to avoid hitting the car in front of them. In the back, the twins both hiccup with the threat of an oncoming wailing. “But that doesn’t make sense,” he says, glancing briefly at Silena, just to find his own bewilderment mirrored on her face.
If asked to list the reasons why Zeus is an asshole, Luke could ramble on for days. But he’d have to pull some incredibly sketchy bullshit to circumnavigate Hades’ eternal sentencing. Not to mention, Tantalus would never be a spy for Zeus, and certainly not someone who would ever give a damn about seeing Thalia saved. And everyone knows Zeus considers that important.
Also, Hestia has never been recalled. Ever.
“Has he done anything so far?” Silena asks, turning her attention back to the phone as Luke tries to focus on the road. At least the promised tantrum in the backseat hasn’t come yet.
“Not really,” Annabeth says, “but he keeps saying how he’s looking forward to making ‘necessary changes’ around here, and he knows about Piper and Nico somehow, because he said if they come near him, he’ll evict them from camp.”
“What about the questing party?” Luke says, fighting down his panic at the same time he tries to focus on easing into the left lane. ADHD, driving, and learning bad news is not a good combination. “Have they left yet?”
“Yeah, just before this happened,” she says. “Not Agi. They’re heading toward Arizona or New Mexico or something.”
He spares a moment to share another glance with Silena. They’ve settled since their talk last year, and though he can’t say if her feelings about Thalia’s potential revival have changed, they’re on the same page about any danger to camp. “We need to figure out a safe babysitter,” she says after a moment, “but we’ll come back after that. Might take a couple of days, though. Stay out of his way for now.”
When they hang up, Annabeth sounds a little less shaken. It’s interesting; whether she realises it or not, once things settled between Silena and Luke, Annabeth’s trust of Silena increased exponentially.
“This makes so little sense,” she says, as she drops the phone back into the cup holder, “that I’d say he’s under the influence of Charmspeak. Drew couldn’t do that—Piper couldn’t do that. The last mortal alive was Charmspeak strong enough to work on a major god was fucking Medea, so either she’s back from the dead somehow, or another god did this.”
“But mortals can’t be brought back from the dead,” Luke says. It’s basically the first thing every demigod learns. “And gods can’t attack other gods.”
The first raindrop hits the windshield as Silena says, “Oh really? Like how they can’t turn their kids into pine trees to save their lives?”
“Point taken.” The last of rules the gods aren’t meant to break stretches on even longer his list of reasons for why Zeus is prick. “What do we do about a babysitter?”
They’ve never left the kids overnight before, let alone longer than that. Already, the idea of it twists Luke’s stomach into knots, but his family is at camp too—his sister and his brothers and his myriad of cousins. It would be different if Lee, Katie, and Ethan hadn’t left, as the other demigods in the area at the right age where they’re old enough to be responsible, but young enough to spare time to solve imminent disasters. But then, neither Luke nor Silena can trust their own parents to watch the twins, which is most young parents’ usual option. A summer-only camper’s mom or dad might help, but the nearest one either of them knows lives in Western Mass. And anyone who’s not aware of their world just isn’t a viable option.
For the rest of the painfully long drive, nearly all of which is done in stop-and-start traffic, they debate how to handle this. It’s as they’re crossing the Queensboro Bridge that Luke (mostly) jokes that they can ask their parents to secure them a satyr for help—maybe Grover, who’s obviously not stuck in Florida somewhere in a makeshift wedding dress. Silena takes to the idea with alacrity. After all, she argues, he was already in a wedding dress, so he should probably practice for the life stage that comes next.
But when they finally reach home, the mythological being flipping through fashion magazines on their sofa is the nephele called Mellie, Gleeson Hedge’s wife. “Oh look how sweet!” she says, ignoring Luke and Silena entirely when she descends on the babies. They’ve never met a cloud nymph before, and are enchanted so quickly so it’s just unfair. “You must be Xanthe, and you’re Evander. We’ll have so much fun!”
In just a second, she has both in her arms, and doesn’t seem to care a bit that they’re tugging on her wispy white hair. Dumbfounded, Luke says, “Sorry, but why are you—who sent you, Mel?”
“Your uncle,” she says, between bouts of oh yes, but you are the cutest babies and what beautiful eyes you have. “He has a seat on the Council of Cloven Elders, you know. Really, it’s just a technicality, but the disappearance of the satyrs is a personal concern.”
“Do you mean Grover’s missing?” Luke says, as his dream suddenly takes on a far less funny air. Beside him, Silena drops the baby bag with a thud. Luke, who’s holding the food that nicked from camp, sets his load down more carefully on the top of the low bookshelf.
“And my husband,” Mellie says, though she sounds remarkably unbothered by this. The post-storm sunlight streaming through the half wall of windows cuts through her semi-translucent body. “He’s not dead, though. I’d feel it if he was dead. So would you, of course, Luke. I can smell the empathy link on you.”
“Empathy link?” Silena repeats, voice strangely high. “Grover initiated an empathy link with my husband?”
This is clearly significant, though Luke has no idea why. “What is it?” he asks, which finally draws a less than cheerful reaction out of their guest, as she freezes. Her silver eyes turn on him, unnaturally wide.
“Oh gods,” Silena says. “I’ll—well, fuck, I can’t, can I? Darling, it’s a mental connection that allows for dream-based contact between two people. Nature spirits can initiate it. The only demigods who can are my mother’s children. But when one half of the link dies, so does the other.”
“What the fuck?” is all Luke can think to say.
“Language,” says Mellie, as if the babies haven’t heard this before.
Luke had a stretch of a few years where the thought of dying hadn’t overly bothered him, but that stage of his life is distinctly past tense. All demigods are in a constant state of at least low-level risk, it’s true, but he never thought the person to wrap the noose around his neck would be his best friend.
But freaking out right now won’t help solve anything. Reluctant as he and Silena are to leave the twins, it seems as if they officially have no other choice, so they discuss babysitting expectations with an immortal nymph, before packing up for a longer stay, deciding more traffic just isn’t worth it, and heading instead for the train.
Jason has one goal in life: become Praetor of the Twelfth Legion and reform the Senate. The first thing he’ll do is fire Octavian.
“You won’t get the chance if I do it first,” Reyna says darkly, glaring at the augur’s back from where he’s probably just pretending to interpret the ravens flying overhead as an omen of doom For the Drama. All Jason and Reyna had wanted was to sit on the sunny patio of their favourite cafe and enjoy the fact that the semester was done in peace, not watch Octavian have a fit of religious ecstasy. It’s so sickening even the glorious aroma of freshly brewed coffee isn’t enough to offset Jason’s disgust.
“Only if you’re raised on a shield,” he says, glancing away from the spectacle and back to his friend. Though he’s never met her mother—never met any god but Lupa, for that matter—he imagines that this is when Reyna looks most like her. Scowling, her dark hair pulled back tight, the tshirt showing off the wiry muscle of her arms. “Real elections aren’t until I graduate.”
Not just anyone can become a praetor. Whether through election or they’re raised on a shield in valour during battle, they need to have completed a polisci degree at NRU. Well, not so much if they’re raised on the shield—there’s wiggle room there. But they at least need to be working toward the degree. Not that any of this matters. There hasn’t been a major battle in…well, long before living memory. And just because ever since Bryce Lawrence’s return, Jason’s had a bad feeling that’s about to change doesn’t mean it actually will.
So, elections it is. Reyna’s entering her sophomore year in September; Jason will be starting as a freshman. Thankfully, Lawrence missed so many lessons last year that he’s technically still in high school, because the weird sort of pity/hero worship he’s managed to garner since his miraculous return might mean he would be in the running for the position himself, if he and Jason graduated at the same time.
It’s bizarre. Revisionist fucking history or something, he swears. Has everyone but him and Reyna just forgotten the time Lawrence was investigated under suspicion for the torture and murder of unicorn foals when he was twelve?
He appears just as Octavian pretends to swoon, catching him so perfectly it must have practised. As always, Larry and Michael are at his sides. “What did you see, Octavian?” Jason hears Larry ask, but loses sight of the group as the onlookers press in closer.
“Darkness!” Octavian calls, his voice high and broken, twisting on the warm breeze that deserves more than this powerplay. Jason doesn’t know what Octavian and the others are trying to achieve, but it’s something. “Darkness coming from the east!”
With a loud sigh, Reyna rubs her temples and says, “Why doesn’t Apollo strike him down yet?”
“No idea,” Jason says, trying to ignore the excited murmur breaking out in the piazza and all around the other occupied tables. Can’t a couple of friends enjoy the sunshine in peace? He just finished his English final. “He was never this, I don’t know…something before.”
“Blatant?”
“I guess.” Toeing the line of hubris, more like. While the gods and New Rome were never in direct contact, Jason, as a demigod and not legacy, could always feel that they were at least paying attention. Though he can’t explain this feeling, either, lately he’s had the strangest sense that whatever that connection is has been cut off.
Somehow, Lawrence has to do with it. And Octavian knows it.
For a long moment, Jason and Reyna are quiet, listening as the murmuring around them coalesces into a real plan of action: fortify the borders, keep everyone inside, increase the War Games from once a month to twice. If Octavian is telling the truth, it all makes sense. But if he’s not, well.
That’s a problem.
Neither Jason nor Reyna are rule-breakers. She keeps to the law out of a sort of fear of repeating the past, he knows; for him, it’s just not his personality to break formation. So it says a lot about their trust in each other and their distrust of whatever hysteria is sweeping their home that when he says, “We need a quest,” she just answers, “Let me do the talking.”