Chapter Text
She grasps out a hand blindly. Fingers close around Percy’s backpack, and with a jolt, her arm is nearly torn from its socket. Pebbles scatter underneath her. She is dimly aware of Grover grabbing her leg. They slide toward the pit, harsh rocks tearing at the skin of her belly, pulled in by some invisible force. Grover stumbles.
Percy twists in the backpack. His hands scrabble for a grip on Annabeth’s arm. She can’t readjust her grip without losing him. Wide green eyes meet hers—and then he is ripped away. He hits the edge of the pit and vanishes. Sucked over in an instant. If she had blinked, she’d have missed it.
Annabeth is left with the backpack in her hand.
The force from the mouth of the pit dies down, as if surprised by the sudden meal. In the quiet, Grover has the sense or the terror to yank Annabeth to her feet and take off running.
Behind them, the pit suddenly roars. Angry air pulls at the backs of their shirts. They’re too far away to do anything but stumble.
Crowds of ghosts materialize around them, turning toward Annabeth as if hungry for the blinding blank pain in her mind. Their eyes are lifeless and judging. Grover keeps her running. They left Percy behind. That pit leads to Tartarus. Worse than death. Worse than punishment. Damnation in every sense of the word. What happens when a living half-blood falls into Tartarus? Annabeth doesn’t know and for once she doesn’t want to. Maybe Chiron will. He’s trained half-bloods for millenia. He’ll know. He’ll know what they can do.
They’ll get Percy back. Because if Annabeth loses another friend, she’s sure she’ll go insane. But first, the bolt. The bolt that was in Percy’s backpack. The bolt that the voice in the pit must have wanted. The backpack that was given to Percy by Ares. All these facts ricochet in Annabeth’s mind, but they haven’t come together in a picture yet. They will, though.
Hades’s throne room is imposing, dark, concentrated with power. Beside her, Grover taps his hooves on the floor. Annabeth feels the ache of Percy’s absence. Grover is a mute with terror, and Annabeth has to lead the conversation alone. She won’t give Hades the bolt.
Grover quakes under Hades’s demands, nervously gearing up for a fight, but Annabeth finds the pearls in Percy’s backpack pocket—one for Grover, one for her, one for Percy, one for Sally. Annabeth tells Hades about the pit, about the backpack and how Percy slipped away. And that, somehow, is enough to make the Lord of the Dead grow pale.
“Bring him back,” Annabeth pleads. “If that pit really leads to Tartarus, then you can reach it from the Underworld. It is your domain. You can bring him back.”
Hades’s eyes do not change when he looks at her. “No.”
Ares waits for them on the beach, but before Annabeth or Grover can even react, Sally screams at him for killing her son and for a moment Ares looks almost scared. He raises a hand—to slap her or kill her, Annabeth doesn’t know—but the sea rumbles angrily in a clear message. Sally is under Poseidon’s protection. Not even Ares is fool enough to disobey.
Annabeth hopes Poseidon will send them some other sign, but the sea is quiet.
Without Percy, they can take a plane to New York. It doesn’t feel like a blessing. Sally sits still as a stone next to Annabeth for the entire flight and Annabeth wants to die.
Annabeth goes to the women’s room after the flight, and when she takes too long, Sally comes after her, which makes her feel even worse. She barely knows this woman and all she’s done is hurt and disappoint her. Sally finds the stall Annabeth is hiding in and doesn’t go away until Annabeth unlocks the latch and lets her in. She takes one look at Annabeth’s puffy, tear-stained face and says, “Oh, honey.”
“I let him go,” Annabeth says. “I let him go, I let him go.”
“No, baby,” Sally says, and pulls Annabeth close, smoothing her hair. Her hands are warm and solid. “You did your best, baby, I know you did, and I love you for that. It is not your fault.”
When Sally says those words, Annabeth can almost believe them. She cries and cries and Sally doesn’t stop holding her until long after her tears have dried on Sally’s ripped blouse. Annabeth wonders if this is what it is like to have a mother.
Annabeth goes to Mount Olympus alone.
She tells the entire story to Zeus, every detail. He and Poseidon argue in ancient Greek—Annabeth catches the word Father and things start to make sense. Kronos, who wanted the bolt, who manipulated Ares, who pulled Percy into the pit. She keeps her head down, focused on the smooth marble floor she’s kneeling on, and tries not to let what she’s learning show on her face.
Poseidon is pensive on his throne for a long time, and Annabeth wonders bitterly if this is the closest a god comes to mourning.
“Yours lasted longer than mine did,” Zeus tells him, and Annabeth realizes with a shock that he means Thalia. It’s said so flippantly, so carelessly, that it’s enough to make her start crying, right there on the floor in front of the two most powerful gods in the Council. They look at her with surprise, and maybe a touch of curiosity.
Poseidon sends Zeus away. “Annabeth Chase,” he says.
“He’s your son,” she manages. “Sally’s boy. He could still be alive.”
“Gods do not enter Tartarus.”
“But half-bloods do?”
“If he is not dead yet, he will be soon.”
“Please,” she begs. “Please get him out.”
His eyes are remarkably similar to Hades’s. “No.”
Back at camp, she seeks out Chiron for comfort. The crackling fire, the leopard’s head, the ping pong table—she thought these would make her feel better, but the familiarity seems stale, bitter. She doesn’t feel like she belongs. She winds her fingers in the ping pong net, watching the cord leave lines in her skin, and Chiron leaves long pauses between his sentences like he’s urging Annabeth to fill them.
“He’s not dead,” she tells him. “Grover says so. He can feel it, with the empathy link.” She doesn’t mention that the empathy link has made Grover sick in the infirmary for the past three days, unable to sleep from the empathic adrenaline coursing through his veins. He feels everything that Percy does, and the second-hand terror and pain spirals on and on.
Chiron sighs. “Grover needs to cut the empathy link.”
“How can he?” Annabeth demands. “How can he, when it’s the only way we know that Percy is still alive?”
“He won’t be for very much longer, Annabeth.”
Annabeth stands up from the table, hands shaking. “How can you say that? How can—he can’t—”
“I’m truly sorry, Annabeth.”
“There must be a way,” Annabeth says, and her voice sounds pitifully desperate even to her ears. “There’s always a way.”
“Not this time.”
The campers treat her like glass that might shatter at a single word, and Annabeth is reminded of being seven years old, terrified, mourning, and alone. Back then, Luke never left her side. Now, it’s like he doesn’t know what to say. She sits with him on his bunk in the Hermes cabin for hours, and it’s like her presence has finally taught his siblings how to be silent. Luke brings her books to read, but she keeps losing her place, frustrated when the letters don’t make sense.
“It’s going to be okay,” Luke tells her after a particularly bad night when she throws her book down, restless. “I’ll make it okay.”
The camp holds a funeral for Percy. Grover manages to hobble out of the infirmary for the occasion, and he looks worse than Annabeth expected—red rimmed eyes and hair that sticks to the sweat on his forehead. His hands tremble when he burns the shroud the Ares cabin made for Percy. It’s nothing but a cheap white sheet, painted with skulls and smiley faces with x s for eyes. Annabeth glares at the Ares cabin so hard even Clarisse starts to look ashamed.
Grover finds her later, on the beach. He sits beside her, and without a word, his arms go around her and she curls up against him. He rests his chin on the top of her head.
“It’s happened again,” Annabeth murmurs.
Grover flinches. “What?”
“Know any Hades kids? Maybe I can collect a full set. Two for three right now.”
Grover’s chin trembles against her head. Annabeth knows she’s not being fair, knows that Grover is just as hurt by Percy and Thalia as she is, but a small sick part of her doesn’t care. She wants everyone to hurt the way she’s hurting now, but no one else was there and saw Percy slip over the edge in an instant. No one else even knew Percy for who he was. To the rest of camp, Percy is the son of Poseidon who showed up for a few weeks before leaving on a quest and never coming back.
The same way they only know Thalia as the daughter of Zeus who never made it across the border. No one else knows them the way Annabeth and Grover do. Annabeth thinks maybe that’s the joke the Fates are playing on her.
The only thing she can do is follow Percy’s advice, so she calls her father and makes arrangements to go home for the school year. She uses the phone in the Big House, and Chiron must have been listening outside the door because when she leaves, his eyes crinkle with encouragement. She goes to the sword arena and attacks the straw dummies with everything she has.
Luke takes her for a walk in the woods the day before her father and stepmother are due to pick her up. The woods are quiet. Luke has a new sword—Backbiter—and shows her how one side is steel and the other is celestial bronze. She doesn’t question why Luke wants a weapon that can be used against mortals. She lived on the streets. She knows.
“I really am sorry about Percy,” he says suddenly. “I know how hard it’s been on you and Grover.”
Annabeth shrugs. Her fingers pick at the gravel along the creek. Luke watches her with a hesitancy that is unlike him. “What?” she asks.
“I’m leaving,” he says, carefully. “Annabeth, I’m leaving camp.”
The words don’t make sense. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m leaving and I won’t be back.”
There’s no wind, no birdsong, no sound to distract her from what he’s saying. Even the creek holds its breath. Because this isn’t happening. This is not real. Her vision tunnels.
“You’re running away?”
“Not quite,” he says. “This isn’t… it isn’t quite like old times. But it could be.” He doesn’t ask, but the unspoken question hangs in the air.
Annabeth squeezes her eyes tight and then opens them. The woods are the same, and Luke is still looking at her. “You want me to come?”
“I do.”
“To find Percy?”
Luke’s jaw tenses. “Percy’s dead.”
“No, he’s not,” Annabeth argues. “He’s alive. Grover still feels the empathy link—”
“Grover needs to cut the empathy link before it drives him mad,” Luke says flatly.
“No, he can feel it—”
“Nothing is alive in Tartarus. Nothing lives down there. The suggestion that something does—it contradicts itself. A paradox. What’s that word?”
“Oxymoron,” Annabeth says. Her mouth is dry.
“Right,” Luke says. “You’re smart, Annabeth, you know he can’t come back. There’s no way out of the pit.”
She’s crying now. She’s been doing that a lot, lately. “I let him go, I let him fall. I should have—I could have held on tighter. Tried harder.”
Luke wraps an arm around her and holds her, tight enough to hurt. “It’s not your fault. You are not to blame.”
“I let him fall—”
“You are not to blame,” Luke repeats. “The gods did this. The gods let him fall.”
In his grip, Annabeth can’t breathe. She gasps for air but he doesn’t let her go. “What?”
“They could have saved him. They still could save him. But they didn’t, and they won’t.” She’s never heard that edge in his voice before, and his words keep coming. “It’s their fault. He was doing their bidding, even. Your whole quest was on behalf of the gods. On behalf of Poseidon. They needed you—needed Percy—and look how they’ve repaid you, Annabeth. They cast him to Tartarus, to a painful, certain death. They’ve cursed Grover to experience every piece of secondhand suffering. And you, Annabeth.”
Annabeth pushes Luke away, thoughts racing. Her heart thrums—out of fear? Thrill? Relief, to hear everything she’s wondered in the deep recesses of her mind brought to light?
“They let him die. Just like Thalia. They’ll do it again. Don’t think they won’t. All these years, I thought Thalia was an outlier, a tragedy. Chiron said so. But she’s just one part of a bigger pattern.”
“You can’t say this.”
“Why not? You’ll tell on me?” There’s no scorn in his words, just an honest question. “I’m leaving. I want you to come with me.”
“Where?”
“I have friends. Well, connections. People who are just as angry with our parents as we are. We can hold the gods accountable for what they did to our family.”
Our family. He means Thalia, she knows, but somewhere in that zoo truck heading west, that word had started to include Percy, too.
Luke. Thalia. Percy. Her family.
“I don’t want to leave Grover.”
Something ugly twists on Luke’s face. It would be indecipherable to anyone else, but Annabeth has studied Luke since she was seven years old. She knows every muscle in his face and every inflection in his voice, and she knows he doesn’t want Grover to come. She supposes it makes sense. Luke never bonded with Grover the way she did. He always held him at arm’s length.
“Please, Annabeth.”
“Who are your friends?”
Luke shakes his head like he’s exasperated with her. Another new expression. “Just—people. Who can help.”
But Annabeth is thinking about Percy’s dream, of the pit and the voice and the figure in shadow. And of the flying shoes that nearly dragged Grover into Tartarus. The shoes that were the reason Percy was anywhere near an entrance to Hell.
The shoes that Luke gave him.
She knows with absolute certainty.
“You’re the lightning thief.”
The side of his mouth twitches in either a smile or a grimace.
“The oracle told Percy he would fail,” Annabeth remembers. “Because of you.” He says nothing to defend himself, so Annabeth keeps going. “You gave him the shoes.”
“They were meant to bring the bolt to Tartarus,” Luke says quietly.
“To what in Tartarus?” Annabeth demands, but she already knows.
Kronos.
“Don’t say the name,” Luke warns. “Don’t draw his attention.”
Annabeth can’t quite speak. Anger? Guilt? “It was all you,” she manages.
“No, no.”
She’s climbing to her feet, trying to keep her balance because it feels like the ground is tipping underneath her. “You meant for him to fall. You—he fell because of you .”
“Because of the gods! Because they—”
“You cursed the shoes!”
“ I didn’t think he’d actually fall! I thought they’d save him. I thought there was no way in Hades the gods would actually leave him to rot .”
“So it was a test? A gamble? With his life!”
“No!” He runs a hand through his hair as if to steady his thoughts. Annabeth doesn’t remember ever seeing him like this, and a small part of her later will realize it’s because he’s losing control of the conversation, grasping at anything to keep her there, but her mind always moves faster. He’s scrambling. “I should’ve known,” he says, “and I’m sorry. Actually, horribly sorry. I should’ve know they wouldn’t care if they hadn’t cared about Thalia—” He can’t finish the thought, and Annabeth doesn’t want him to. “We can make it right, though. We can do it. You and me against the world. You know that’s the only thing that will last. Everybody else would leave you behind in a heartbeat. You know this. Your mother. Chiron. The gods. Don’t think Grover is any different. But I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Annabeth.”
Her head is pounding. “Kronos… he’s pure destruction. He’ll destroy everything. You can’t use him to hurt the gods. He’s the one using you.”
“I have it under control,” Luke says. He’s so confident Annabeth almost believes him. Wants to believe him, so badly.
Yours is not a true hero’s journey, Athena had told her, so many months ago on Olympus, when she’d tracked her mother down and begged for a chance to prove herself. You are a warrior and a scholar, but your hardest challenges will never be in the heat of battle . When Annabeth demanded to know what she meant, Athena only tilted her head. The Fates spin destiny into thread, she said. And we are weavers, you and me, are we not?
She didn’t understand then. She still doesn’t, not really. But she can see Luke’s path clearly, a thin line of thread leading away from her, and she’ll do anything to bend it back.
“Forget this,” she begs.
“It’s too late now,” he tells her. “Things have been set in motion. Stealing the bolt was only the beginning, if that. More like a test.”
“A test. That ended with Percy in Tartarus.”
Luke winces. “I thought you’d understand.”
And the worst part is that Annabeth does understand. She understands gambles and risks and misdirections. She’s played enough games of chess with Luke to know that he’s not afraid of sacrifice. The worst part is, if it wasn’t Percy, Annabeth might have joined him.
But it was Percy. Good, honest, ridiculous Percy Jackson, who’d been surprised when she called him her friend, who’d seen her cry over Cerberus of all things, who’d fit her into his quest without a second thought, simply because he’d known how badly she wanted to go.
“I guess I don’t understand,” she tells Luke, and her heart breaks.