The Mark of Athena

She smiled. “Come on.”



They worked their way past the supply rooms and the armory. Toward the stern of the ship, they reached a set of wooden double doors that opened into a large stable. The room smelled of fresh hay and wool blankets. Lining the left wall were three empty horse stalls like the ones they used for pegasi back at camp. The right wall had two empty cages big enough for large zoo animals.



In the center of the floor was a twenty-foot-square see-through panel. Far below, the night landscape whisked by—miles of dark countryside crisscrossed with illuminated highways like the strands of a web.



“A glass-bottomed boat?” Percy asked.



Annabeth grabbed a blanket from the nearest stable gate and spread it across part of the glass floor. “Sit with me.”



They relaxed on the blanket as if they were having a picnic, and watched the world go by below.



“Leo built the stables so pegasi could come and go easily,” Annabeth said. “Only he didn’t realize that pegasi prefer to roam free, so the stables are always empty.”



Percy wondered where Blackjack was—roaming the skies somewhere, hopefully following their progress. Percy’s head still throbbed from getting whopped by Blackjack’s hoof, but he didn’t hold that against the horse.



“What do you mean, come and go easily?” he asked. “Wouldn’t a pegasus have to make it down two flights of stairs?”



Annabeth rapped her knuckles on the glass. “These are bay doors, like on a bomber.”



Percy gulped. “You mean we’re sitting on doors? What if they opened?”



“I suppose we’d fall to our deaths. But they won’t open. Most likely.”



“Great.”



Annabeth laughed. “You know why I like it here? It’s not just the view. What does this place remind you of?”



Percy looked around: the cages and stables, the Celestial bronze lamp hanging from the beam, the smell of hay, and of course Annabeth sitting close to him, her face ghostly and beautiful in the soft amber light.



“That zoo truck,” Percy decided. “The one we took to Las Vegas.”



Her smile told him he’d gotten the answer right.



“That was so long ago,” Percy said. “We were in bad shape, struggling to get across the country to find that stupid lightning bolt, trapped in a truck with a bunch of mistreated animals. How can you be nostalgic for that?”



“Because, Seaweed Brain, it’s the first time we really talked, you and me. I told you about my family, and…” She took out her camp necklace, strung with her dad’s college ring and a colorful clay bead for each year at Camp Half-Blood. Now there was something else on the leather cord: a red coral pendant Percy had given her when they had started dating. He’d brought it from his father’s palace at the bottom of the sea.



“And,” Annabeth continued, “it reminds me how long we’ve known each other. We were twelve, Percy. Can you believe that?”



“No,” he admitted. “So…you knew you liked me from that moment?”



She smirked. “I hated you at first. You annoyed me. Then I tolerated you for a few years. Then—”



“Okay, fine.”



She leaned over and kissed him: a good, proper kiss without anyone watching—no Romans anywhere, no screaming satyr chaperones.



She pulled away. “I missed you, Percy.”



Percy wanted to tell her the same thing, but it seemed too small a comment. While he had been on the Roman side, he’d kept himself alive almost solely by thinking of Annabeth. I missed you didn’t really cover that.



He remembered earlier in the night, when Piper had forced the eidolon to leave his mind. Percy hadn’t been aware of its presence until she had used her charmspeak. After the eidolon was gone, he felt as if a hot spike had been removed from his forehead. He hadn’t realized how much pain he had been in until the spirit left. Then his thoughts became clearer. His soul settled comfortably back into his body.



Sitting here with Annabeth made him feel the same way. The past few months could have been one of his strange dreams. The events at Camp Jupiter seemed as fuzzy and unreal as that fight with Jason, when they had both been controlled by the eidolons.



Yet he didn’t regret the time he’d spent at Camp Jupiter. It had opened his eyes in a lot of ways.



“Annabeth,” he said hesitantly, “in New Rome, demigods can live their whole lives in peace.”



Her expression turned guarded. “Reyna explained it to me. But, Percy, you belong at Camp Half-Blood. That other life—”



“I know,” Percy said. “But while I was there, I saw so many demigods living without fear: kids going to college, couples getting married and raising families. There’s nothing like that at Camp Half-Blood. I kept thinking about you and me…and maybe someday when this war with the giants is over…”



It was hard to tell in the golden light, but he thought Annabeth was blushing. “Oh,” she said.



Percy was afraid he’d said too much. Maybe he’d scared her with his big dreams of the future. She was usually the one with the plans. Percy cursed himself silently.



As long as he’d known Annabeth, he still felt like he understood so little about her. Even after they’d been dating several months, their relationship had always felt new and delicate, like a glass sculpture. He was terrified of doing something wrong and breaking it.



“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just…I had to think of that to keep going. To give me hope. Forget I mentioned—”



“No!” she said. “No, Percy. Gods, that’s so sweet. It’s just…we may have burned that bridge. If we can’t repair things with the Romans—well, the two sets of demigods have never gotten along. That’s why the gods kept us separate. I don’t know if we could ever belong there.”



Percy didn’t want to argue, but he couldn’t let go of the hope. It felt important—not just for Annabeth and him, but for all the other demigods. It had to be possible to belong in two different worlds at once. After all, that’s what being a demigod was all about—not quite belonging in the mortal world or on Mount Olympus, but trying to make peace with both sides of their nature.



Unfortunately, that got him thinking about the gods, the war they were facing, and his dream about the twins Ephialtes and Otis.



“I was having a nightmare when you woke me up,” he admitted.



He told Annabeth what he’d seen.



Even the most troubling parts didn’t seem to surprise her. She shook her head sadly when he described Nico’s imprisonment in the bronze jar. She got an angry glint in her eyes when he told her about the giants planning some sort of Rome-destroying extravaganza that would include their painful deaths as the opening event.



“Nico is the bait,” she murmured. “Gaea’s forces must have captured him somehow. But we don’t know exactly where they’re holding him.”



“Somewhere in Rome,” Percy said. “Somewhere underground. They made it sound like Nico still had a few days to live, but I don’t see how he could hold out so long with no oxygen.”



“Five more days, according to Nemesis,” Annabeth said. “The Kalends of July. At least the deadline makes sense now.”



“What’s a Kalends?”



Annabeth smirked, like she was pleased they were back in their old familiar pattern—Percy being ignorant, she herself explaining stuff. “It’s just the Roman term for the first of the month. That’s where we get the word calendar. But how can Nico survive that long? We should talk to Hazel.”



“Now?”



She hesitated. “No. It can wait until morning. I don’t want to hit her with this news in the middle of the night.”



“The giants mentioned a statue,” Percy recalled. “And something about a talented friend who was guarding it. Whoever this friend was, she scared Otis. Anyone who can scare a giant…”



Annabeth gazed down at a highway snaking through dark hills. “Percy, have you seen Poseidon lately? Or had any kind of sign from him?”



He shook his head. “Not since…Wow. I guess I haven’t thought about it. Not since the end of the Titan War. I saw him at Camp Half-Blood, but that was last August.” A sense of dread settled over him. “Why? Have you seen Athena?”



She didn’t meet his eyes.



“A few weeks ago,” she admitted. “It…it wasn’t good. She didn’t seem like herself. Maybe it’s the Greek/Roman schizophrenia that Nemesis described. I’m not sure. She said some hurtful things. She said I had failed her.”



“Failed her?” Percy wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. Annabeth was the perfect demigod child. She was everything a daughter of Athena should be. “How could you ever—?”



“I don’t know,” she said miserably. “On top of that, I’ve been having nightmares of my own. They don’t make as much sense as yours.”



Percy waited, but Annabeth didn’t share any more details. He wanted to make her feel better and tell her it would be okay, but he knew he couldn’t. He wanted to fix everything for both of them so they could have a happy ending. After all these years, even the cruelest gods would have to admit they deserved it.



But he had a gut feeling that there was nothing he could do to help Annabeth this time, other than simply be there. Wisdom’s daughter walks alone.



He felt as trapped and helpless as when he’d sunk into the muskeg.



Annabeth managed a faint smile. “Some romantic evening, huh? No more bad things until the morning.” She kissed him again. “We’ll figure everything out. I’ve got you back. For now, that’s all that matters.”



“Right,” Percy said. “No more talk about Gaea rising, Nico being held hostage, the world ending, the giants—”



“Shut up, Seaweed Brain,” she ordered. “Just hold me for a while.”



They sat together cuddling, enjoying each other’s warmth. Before Percy knew it, the drone of the ship’s engine, the dim light, and the comfortable feeling of being with Annabeth made his eyes heavy, and he drifted to sleep.



When he woke, daylight was coming through the glass floor, and a boy’s voice said, “Oh…You are in so much trouble.”



Chapter 14



Percy had seen Frank surrounded by cannibal ogres, facing down an unkillable giant, and even unleashing Thanatos, the god of death. But he’d never seen Frank look as terrified as he did now, finding the two of them passed out in the stables.



“What… ?” Percy rubbed his eyes. “Oh, we just fell asleep.”



Frank swallowed. He was dressed in running shoes, dark cargo pants, and a Vancouver Winter Olympics T-shirt with his Roman centurion badge pinned to the neck (which seemed either sad or hopeful to Percy, now that they were renegades). Frank averted his eyes as if the sight of them together might burn him.



“Everyone thinks you’ve been kidnapped,” he said. “We’ve been scouring the ship. When Coach Hedge finds out—oh, gods, you’ve been here all night?”