Chapter Text
In my dream I stood in the great halls of Helios. Now you might be wondering how I knew that, for the palace wasn’t golden, or adorned with images of a hot ball of gas that would make someone want to fall to their knees and shout, ‘Praise the sun!’ In fact, the palace was an oppressive, suffocating thing made of obsidian as black as night with no windows to speak of. The air was so thick and cloying it was as if I was at the bottom of the ocean, or enduring the kind of humid summer day that makes you really sit with the fact that billionaires are destroying the planet just so they can fly private jets and buy their eighth yacht.
The only source of light came from the god himself. He loomed above all others, sitting atop a silver throne twice as tall as I was. His skin was as yellow as a child’s drawing of the sun. Only instead of a cheerful smile and an ironic pair of sunglasses, his eyes were like two miniature suns of their own. I could sense there was something different about this god even through the strange, murky, unrealness of the dream. Helios hailed from the Golden Age, before Kronos birthed (and then promptly ate—yuck!) his sons and daughters. He came from a time when mortals had no gender and lived in blissful ignorance, tending to their fields without silly concepts like society, or money, or class. It was a queer dialectical Marxists’ wet dream, only ruled by a raging fascist.
Which I guess still made it a queer dialectical Marxist’s wet dream assuming they were a tankie. Horseshoe theory goes brrrr! amiright?
Aw, fuck. Where are my manners? Hi chat! Welcome back to my Youtube channel! Did you miss me? :p I missed you so much, you have no idea! There’s a lot I could catch you up on, but we can deal with the boring shit later. For now, let’s lock back in on my super important dream.
Where was I again? Right, the halls of Helios. Like every dream I had (which was fewer than it should have been, thanks to daddy dearest), I had no control over my limbs. I floated alongside a beautiful woman with curly brown hair and green eyes that were drawn in concentration. She made her way through the throng of nymphs and gods whose names had been lost over the millennia, and knelt at her father’s feet. It was one of the many facts that I knew without anyone needing to tell me. I wasn’t sure if it was an Apollo thing, or if it was because of her, but I supposed I was grateful. I wouldn’t be like Percy, bumbling around having to ask every immortal deity I met what their name was and why he should care about them. Yes, yes, he’s very cute and endearing without trying!
“Father,” Circe said, in a meek voice that was not becoming of the badass bitch witch I remembered so fondly, “is it possible to make a mortal a god?”
I glared at her. “Holy foreshadow, Batman.”
Helios frowned into his cup, clearly irritated. “You know it is not, unless it is in their stars already. Not even I can change the laws of the Fates.”
He did not sound particularly pleased about that fact. Circe was even less so; she rose with a deeply troubled expression and practically sprinted away, either ignorant of or purposefully ignoring the mocking whispers that followed her. I had no choice but to drift after her (and I may or may not have clicked my tongue and hit her with a ‘or nah!’ as we went, but that’s between me and the witch) as she ran through the creepy dark halls until we reached another chamber. This one was quite unlike the great hall of Helios; here, at least, there were some gods-damn windows, only they provided us a view not of the sky or the earth but of the ocean floor. I couldn’t look for long; the monsters and beasts that drifted by were of a time before gods, before mortals, before AI-slop memes. Not even Triple T could compare to the unreal things that swam in the depths.
A woman as tall as Helios sat on an oaken stool on a great dais. Her robes were puddled blue at her feet, and around her neck was wrapped a water-serpent like a scarf. She weaved from a golden loom that gleamed with its own light, her beautiful face creased in concentration. She was old, that much was obvious, but she was not withered. Her power was different from that of Helios. It spoke of something constant, something eternal, in a way that no other immortal had inspired in me.
Circe knelt at her feet. “Grandmother. He will die.”
The Titaness—Thetis, I somehow knew—did not look up from her river-stone green yarn. “Of course he will. He is a mortal, that is their lot.”
“It is not fair,” Circe sniffed. “It cannot be.”
“Those are two different things.”
Circe shook her head. “You must help me. Great goddess, will you not take him to your halls and make him eternal?”
“No god can do so much.”
“But I love him,” Circe said. “Glaucos is different.”
“Real,” I murmured under my breath. Then I shook my head; in the past, Circe had been able to interact with me when I dreamed of her. “You can’t save him. Choose the bear, girl!”
But Circe ignored me. “There must be a way,” she implored her grandmother.
Thetis sighed. “Do you know how many nymphs before you have hoped the same and been disappointed?”
“Is there not some—I do not know the word. Some bargain with the Fates, some trick, some pharmaka—”
The sea snake around Thetis’s neck uncoiled and flicked a black tongue out. “You dare speak of that?” she hissed, low and angry.
Circe’s face was wide with shock. “Speak of what?”
Thetis rose to her full height. “Child, I have done as much for you as may be done, and there is no more. Go from here, and let me never hear you speak of that wickedness again.”
Circe’s face twisted in defeat, and then the scene changed into a blistering bright and sunny day. “Jesus—motherfuck, Circe, have some pity on a mortal!” I cried as I blinked bright spots away from my vision.
She ignored me, for she was too busy ogling the mortal standing opposite her as if he had hung the moon. Or should I say the sun?
Sorry.
Anyway, it was midday and hot, the soil beneath our feet dry and cracked. “Come,” Circe said. “A perfect sleeping spot to ease your weary bones.”
The man—who am I kidding, we all know it was Glaucos—plodded along sullenly, and complained that he could not be away from his ship for long. He had wild black hair and skin bronzed by the sun and scarred from a life at sea, his teeth stained from the brine. I personally didn’t know what Circe saw in the guy, but then, I was a lesbian, so men as a general rule are a no go for me.
Circe coaxed him down among a field of yellow flowers and watched him eat the food she prepared with an attentiveness that bordered on outright creep status. Once he had finished all his food like a good little boy he yawned, curled into the flowers, and fell asleep. The moment his eyes closed Circe leaned over him and brushed the flowers so they draped over his bare chest.
“Change,” she said. She ripped some from their roots and dropped them over his chest, blew out her breath so the scent and pollen would drift over him. “He must be a god. Change.”
Nothing happened. Circe’s face twisted, anguished. She pushed herself to her feet and wandered the hillside, her eyes darting quickly across the ground. I did not know what she was looking for, but after what felt like hours she returned to where Glaucos lay and wept. After a good long cry (like I said: real, girl), she seized a handful of the flowers and ripped them by their roots. She tore the petals and broke the stems into pieces. Damp shreds of yellow, green, and brown soon stained her hands, sap bleeding across her skin. The scent rose raw and wild, acetic as old wine.
That was when we both noticed the humming. It was so quiet one could have mistaken it for the sound of their own mind, but the more I focused, the more obvious it became, dark and persistent like a beehive full of malcontent. Circe’s green eyes looked not at her mortal lover but at the horizon, where the sun had dipped beneath the crest of the earth. Her father, I remembered. His movement across the sky was at an end.
I felt a laugh try to bubble its way out of my throat. ‘I see all. I know all,’ my father had said last winter. No fucking wonder! He was the god of the sun! He saw everything beneath him from his chariot! He was like James Dolan, and Earth was Madison Square Garden. Gods, remember when Republicans used to call China a totalitarian dystopia because of their surveillance state and social credit system? Even John Boehner, the utter boner that he was, would not have stood for this if he were in office! Tell your representative to vote against age verification laws! We live in a technocratic hellscape! Fuck Peter Thiel!
Ah, sorry about that. If there’s one thing I hate more than bad transit, it’s fascist technocrats and creepy losers like gods of the sun. Which… Huh, I thought as I watched Circe frantically crush a handful of flowers into her hands, ripping apart stems and flowers, mashing them together and spitting into her hand for good measure. Since when did we have that in common?
Once the mess in her hands was good and goopy she held it over Glaucos’s lips, which had fallen open as he dreamed, and squeezed. Sap leaked and gathered on his tongue. A stray bead landed on his lips, and she slid it onto his tongue with her finger. Even though I am, remember, super fucking gay, I couldn’t deny there was something hot about it. Especially when Circe leaned over him and whispered, “Your truest self. Let it be.” Talk about a based woke queen!
A shadow moved across his skin. Circe leaned back on her haunches and watched with rapt attention. His skin rippled and changed, brown, then purple, spreading like an old bruise until his whole body was deepest sea-blue. I had to look away when his hands transformed into crab claws and barnacles burst onto his chest and arms like crusty zits. I was hoping for a gender reveal, not a fishona reveal!
“Glaucos,” Circe finally whispered. “Wake up.”
I turned around at the same time he opened his eyes. No longer were they crinkled with age and mirth, black as coal. They were like the toil of the sea, a violent, inhumane, violent shade of green. He leapt to his feet, towering over Circe and I like a storm-surge, a sea-god in the flesh. “Circe!” he cried. “I am changed!”
“No shit, Sherlock,” I grumbled as the scene changed once again. When it reformed Circe and I stood in a watery halls of a king, made of a certifiable rainbow of abalone and pearls set with gold and wave-wrack treasures. Circe approached where Glaucos held court to a sea (heh) of naiads and gods, still looking at him like he was the one and only love of her life.
“Oh, poor girl,” I whispered. “He’s a sigma male podcast bro now. It’s Joever.”
She didn’t seem to notice me. She pushed forward through the crowd until she reached where he lounged on his throne, smirking the smug smirk of a man on a podcast where he sits around with other men and talks about how much they hate ‘bitches and foids,' then wonder why none of them are getting their dicks wet.
“It is well,” he was saying. “I sent a wave to smash my father’s boat, and the shock killed him. My mother I blessed. She has a new husband and a slave to help her with the washing. She has built me an altar, and already it smokes. My village hopes I will bring them a good tide.”
“And will you?” I searched through the crowd and found the speaker and, well—chat, if a dreaming girl could gasp underwater, I would have. Her face was round, open wide with rapt attention, more beautiful than all others.
“We will see,” Glaucos began, then his smirk shifted into something dark and unsettling, “It depends on what they offer me.”
Once everyone else had left, Circe approached him. “Is your father truly dead?” she asked, hesitant, a slight waver to her voice that still took me by surprise considering what I knew of her future.
“Of course. He deserved it, for his blasphemy.”
He polished a trident, a gift from Poseidon himself. It surged with power, the water around its prongs bubbling with energy. Circe looked at it, then at her lover, who was a power unto himself. Annabeth would have said more about him because she was a gods-damned nerd, but even I could tell he was not some lesser god. He was in the good graces of Poseidon, a lord of the sea with his own halls, his own immortal admirers, and his own mortal worshipers.
“That round-faced nymph,” he said abruptly. “The beautiful one. What is her name?”
Circe shook herself out of her thoughts, her smile still soft and innocent. “Do you mean Scylla?”
“Yes, Scylla,” Glaucos said. “She moves like water, does she not? Silver as a flowing stream.”
“Oh, you sweet summer child,” I whispered to myself.
Circe finally glanced at me. “We all must begin somewhere," she said gravely.
I surged awake like an action hero coming to on a beach after a shipwreck, comical inhale and all. It was such a jarring experience that I startled, a mess of flailing limbs and fluffy blankets and pillows until I fell out of my bed and onto the ground with a low groan. “Phoebe?” Annabeth murmured, still half-asleep. “Another nightmare?”
I fought down a grimace. Chat, how I missed the days when my father blocked all of my dreams so I wouldn't cuss him out! “Something like that,” I murmured darkly.
As consciousness returned to me, I couldn’t shake the strangeness of the dream. I could still smell the acetic mixture of flowers, the brine of the old sea god. Why had Circe shown me that? I didn’t need a lesson in how much men sucked! I was such an expert in it, I could shill out a lesson about hating men on Skillshare.
Apparently, though, the universe disagreed with me, for a strange ping! at the window had me bounding to my feet. Our dorm was far less crowded now that Thalia wasn’t rooming with us anymore, but that didn’t mean it was neat. My blankets and pillows joined Annabeth’s usual pile of candy wrappers, old papers, and discarded clothes. I had to step over her basketball uniform and my guitar to reach the window, which we had left partially open since spring settled onto campus.
That’s right, fuckers. It was April, and I was back at school. Back to eighth grade. Chat. I am SPARING you by not telling you what it was like. The smell alone was enough to make me long for another go-around the Underworld. Annabeth and I were still well-liked by our peers because duh, we are beautiful girlies with big brains and hearts, but the dramatic hormonal fervor of an eighth grade prep school was suffocating.
You might remember that, in canon, Annabeth went back home to San Francisco following the quest. This time around she only went home for a few weekends and all of spring break. A tiny voice in the back of my mind hoped it was because we were such great besties. An even louder voice, however, wondered if Chiron thought it was more important that Annabeth keep an eye on the loose-cannon than the swirling mists of Mount Othrys.
Annabeth rolled back over and grumbled something about how annoying boys were. It wasn’t the first or the last time a group of little shits tried to convince us to sneak out to get up to some mischief on campus, so I couldn’t blame her. I tore open the curtains and prepared to yell some well-thought out insults and came up short. For there, standing beneath the window like the love interest of an early 2000’s campy rom-com, was a literal man. Only in the movies they didn’t carry a white flag, or have a sword clasped at their side, or sport a nasty scar that seemed to bleed in the golden light of the wrought-iron lamp beside him.
“Yuck!” I cried, closing the curtain.
“Are they peeing again?” Annabeth sighed.
Just for a moment, I debated lying to her. Things had been going so well! Now there was a predatory fascist on campus, and everything was fucked!
Alright. That’s not entirely true. Kronos predates the rise of fascism by like, a million years or something. But come on. If Charlie Kirk were a demigod, he would have been slurping all over Kronos’s dick and calling him daddy to #pwn the libs. If that’s not an indicator of fascism, I’m not sure what is.
Once I would have gone along with this insanity because it was what happened in canon… But now that I knew canon was as made up as the myth of the American Dream, I wondered if it would be best to ignore it. Ultimately, though, I didn’t want to take control of Annabeth’s life like that. A witch and a puppet-master… I was not about to accept the fanon Dumbledore accusations!
“Uh, no,” I replied. “You should come look.”
“I really don’t want to see what they’re doing now.”
“Annabeth.”
Something in my tone of voice must have given something away, because she sighed and joined me at the window. That meant I got an intimately close look at her honest reaction: pupils dilated, breath caught, face flush… Then she scowled, the moment of vulnerability hidden beneath a mask. “What is he doing here?”
I shrugged. “Um… Are you going down there?”
She stared at me. “Are we going down there, you mean?”
“Oh. I thought…”
I didn’t know what I thought. Luke was here for Annabeth, obviously, so why would I tag along? Annabeth hadn’t exactly been the fuzziest roommate since I came out as a witch and she held up the weight of the sky? That I didn’t make deals with fascist pigs? It turned out I didn’t need to respond, though. Annabeth grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me away from the window. “C’mon.”
We quickly changed out of our pjs and into combat gear (jeans and t-shirts). Annabeth clasped her dagger to her side while I reached into the box under my bed. “Alohomora,” I whispered, purposefully not looking at Annabeth when the box glowed with black flames and clicked open. A moment later I had one of my revolvers in a holster at my side. We nodded at one another, then snuck down the hall and out the back door with the broken fire alarm.
We met Luke at the center of campus, beside the huge fountain with a statue of Emma Willard (daughter of Athena, obviously) that loomed over us with a look of disapproval I’m positive I wore as well. Not that it mattered all that much; from the moment we snuck out of our dorm, Luke and Annabeth only had eyes for each other. It was about as creepy as you’re probably imagining.
To describe it without any personal biases: a nineteen year old had snuck onto a middle school campus in the dead of night to speak with a fourteen year old.
Like—yurgh! It made my skin crawl! I wanted to pull out my phone and call Chris Hanson. I really wanted to knee Luke in the balls so hard he threw up. But Annabeth was, against all odds and logical reason, hopeful. She was still doing her best to hide it under a withering glare, but her eyes shone with the same emotion as when Chiron offered to look over her homework and projects, or when Percy actually managed to say something emotionally mature instead of 14 year old boy nonsense.
Something about that itched my brain oddly, but I didn’t have time to ruminate on it.
“What do you want, Luke?” Annabeth demanded, hands on her hips.
He didn’t respond right away. He looked at Annabeth like she was a memory; like something he had already lost. Which was… tragic. Still really fucking weird and gross, but it was undeniable all the same.
“I made a mistake,” he said in a sudden rush, like if he didn’t get the words out now, he might lose the nerve to ever try it again. “I was an idiot to join Kronos. He’s…” Luke swallowed heavily, like his mouth had gone bone-dry. “I can’t do it anymore.”
Annabeth’s eyebrows had risen the longer he spoke. “What are you trying to say?” she asked, slow and delicate.
“Run away with me,” he said. “It’ll be like the old days. We can find Thalia, and we’ll help Grover find Pan, just like we always said we would. The Titans and the gods can fight this war without us. What have they ever done for us?”
For a single moment, I saw Annabeth seriously consider Luke’s proposal. This idealized future as selfish as a billionaire’s doomsday bunker and unrealistic as the sixth sequel to an action movie. It only lasted a breath before it closed off. Not hardened, just… Dimmed. I was seized with a sudden confidence that we both realized what Luke would see if he ever visited the Sirens, and what it meant:
Luke didn’t know how to build. He ran.
The exact opposite of Annabeth.
“Why should I trust you?” The bluster was gone from Annabeth’s tone, the last feeble gusts of a great storm rapidly fading from her gray eyes. “A lot’s changed since the old days. The last time I saw you, you tricked me into holding up the weight of the sky.”
Luke’s despair was haunting to see in the flesh. “Please.”
Annabeth hesitated. Her right arm tensed, like she was considering reaching for her dagger. Luke's dagger. Fuck, chat: THE dagger. I stared at it, wide-eyed and more than a little nauseous. Which unfortunately meant the little gremlin voice in the back of my head really wanted me to say something stupid so I wouldn't think about the end of the world. I wanted to tell Luke to crawl back to his sugar daddy at least once before he went all Quirrlemort on us, and not in the fun Starkid way. The phrase ‘dumpstered your ass in San ‘Francisco' was also appealing.
I didn’t, though. Annabeth had the least patience for my antics, yes, but more importantly… She needed to do this herself.
“Go.” Her back was straight, her words angered but clear. “I’m not coming with you.”
Overhead, thunder rumbled.
Luke’s face twisted harshly. “If you aren’t going to join me, then you shouldn’t let me leave, Annabeth. He’s going to use me like a stepping stone. This is the last chance you’re going to get to stop me.” He threw his peace flag into the fountain and unsheathed Backbiter.
I hissed as I drew my revolver. “None of that,” I declared. Beside me, Annabeth had her hand on her dagger, but her hand shook. I knew she could never fight Luke, even though she knew what he had become.
“This doesn’t concern you, daughter of Apollo,” Luke replied tightly.
“What the fuck? You drew a sword on me!” I waggled my revolver around. “Now scram. You aren’t going to fight each other.”
Luke twitched, like he was thinking of trying to pull a Deadpool and deflect my bullets with his sword. Then he scoffed, jammed Backbiter back into its scabbard, and marched away.
We watched him until he reached the edge of campus and the shadows enveloped him. Then my arms reached for Annabeth and she collapsed into me, shoulders shaking violently with suppressed sobs. I don’t remember much of the walk up to our room, nor the hour or so that followed. Annabeth was inconsolable. She alternated between tears of rage and sadness, wailing and hiccuping and… It changed something about our friendship.
I’m sure most of you know what I’m talking about. Even best friends—which I hesitantly believed Annabeth and I were—can go years before one of them breaks completely in front of the other, showing the full breadth of what hides beneath the mask we all wear when we aren’t alone. Not to be too fucking dramatic or anything, but like… You know, right? How falling apart can be the thing that brings you close together?
I felt it then, when I held Annabeth tightly as she grieved for everyone who wasn’t there: Luke, Thalia, Grover, her family, her mother… I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to feel so hopelessly alone.
Try as I might, I couldn’t replace the gaping hole that had been chipped out of her. That didn’t mean I shouldn’t try, though. So I held her, murmuring gentle words into ear and running a hand through her hair, not complaining when a particularly thick glob of snot bubbled out of her nose and fell onto my favorite pair of pajamas…
“Why the hell did you lie to us?” Annabeth said through sobs.
“Uh—what?”
Not my best reaction, sure. But I had expected us to have a heart-to-heart about her older brother/first crush, not me. Annabeth pushed me back with the palm of her hand. “After Circe’s Island, why didn’t you tell us?”
She glared at me with red and running eyes. I didn't know how to respond right away; we had already talked about why I hid my magic from everyone last winter, hadn't we? But then I thought about the last few months. Things hadn't been bad between Annabeth and I, necessarily, but something had definitely shifted. I guess neither of us wanted to address the distance that had formed between us. It reminded me of the first summer we met, when Annabeth thought I might be the traitor.
With that thought in mind, I spoke honestly. “You guys were all terrified of magic. You made it sound like Circe liking you was a death sentence. Annabeth, why should I have told you?”
“Because we’re your friends, you idiot!”
Then she was hugging me, and after a moment’s hesitation, I hugged her back just as tightly. “I’m sorry,” I blubbered, and thought, Oh, I’m crying too. “I shouldn’t have.”
“Duh!”
We cried for a little longer, snotty and messy and united. At some point I had the idea of turning on a movie, and Annabeth made popcorn, so we sat for a while munching on Orville Redenbacher’s and watching 10 Things I Hate About You.
Eventually, though, I grew aware of Annabeth’s mind stewing. She had a certain face when she was thinking deeply about something, and her foot tapped irregularly when she was particularly deep in the trenches of a thought spiral. Which, while concerning, was so positively Annabeth-coded that I decided was a good thing.
“What did he mean, ‘a stepping stone?” she asked.
On screen, Kat Dennings was reading Sylvia Plath. I nodded in approval before I turned to Annabeth. “I don’t know,” I replied, like a liar. “What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t like it.” Her voice was small. “It doesn’t bode well.”
“That’s an understatement.”
She hit me on the arm. “This is serious!”
“I know that!” I retorted. I settled back against her shoulder and sighed. “We should tell Chiron. If Kronos has something planned… We’re running out of time.”
Annabeth shifted beside me. It was a small thing, but there was a weight to it. She looked like she was torn about saying something. I had a sneaking suspicion I knew what it was, and after a few minutes of indecision I was proven correct. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
“Alright.”
She looked like she wanted to hit me, which was a usual reaction to my nonchalance regarding the end of the world. “Last winter, when you were… You know…”
“Sleeping off my magical bomb trick?” I supplied.
Annabeth’s expression could turn someone to stone. “Yes. That.”
I popped a handful of popcorn into my mouth. “What about it?” I asked while I chewed.
I listened intently as Annabeth told me about Clarisse’s quest into the Labyrinth, about how she found Chris Rodriguez, the son of Hermes who joined Kronos and was driven insane by Daedalus’s maze. Unlike canon, however, Annabeth also told me about what else Chris had to say.
“He kept saying that Kronos’s army was growing,” she whispered, as if the idea was so horrible she couldn’t believe it. “And it’s not just monsters.”
“Demigods?”
Annabeth nodded. “Children of the lesser gods have been approached by his minions over the last two years. It sounds like… It sounds like Luke started laying the groundwork when he was the head of Hermes Cabin. There were so many unclaimed kids in there, it must not have been hard.”
“Fucking fascist evangelicals,” I murmured.
Annabeth didn’t look impressed by my commentary. “Phoebe… What if the reason we can’t find Nico is because he went into the Labyrinth? And… If Luke is exploring it… What if Nico—”
“He won’t.” My voice was steady with conviction. “We’re going to find him.”
Because Bianca slay-queened her destiny or whatever, everyone’s reaction to the missing camper was a lot more involved. In canon, Chiron had largely washed his hands of the child of Hades. Now, Artemis and Chiron both promised they would keep a close eye out for him. However, it wasn’t like they had the resources to commit to a fully search and rescue mission, what with Titan of Time setting up his comeback tour or whatever. But now that Bianca was alive... I didn't consider it. This was a fix-it fic, gods-damn it! Bianca would live, and Nico would be a happy little gay boy married to Will! Rule #3, remember?
“You think?” Annabeth asked.
I shrugged. “I mean, I’m not confident, but a girl can hope, can’t she?”
Annabeth looked at me, long and hard. Then her expression shifted into something coy that I did not like, and I knew our super-serious conversation was over. That was the thing about teenagers; we could only handle so much world-ending traumatic shit before someone had to make a stupid joke.
“Uh huh,” Annabeth said, way too casual and way too knowing, “just like you hoped that red-head who toured last month would kiss you behind the gym?”
“I'm—I don't know—What?” My heart beat violently in my chest.
“Oh, please, I’m not stupid. You never offer to give tours, and you two were gone for hours. Every time I saw you, you were making puppy-eyes at her.”
And to my horror (and, somewhere, joy, because it meant that Annabeth was no longer crashing out over incel-predator and fuckboy loser Luke Castellan or the end of the world), she mimed making kissy faces at me. I crossed my arms. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Uh huh.”
I side-eyed her. “Devious of you to bring this up when you just cried so hard snot bubbled out of your nose.”
“Terrain is decisive,” Annabeth laughed.
“Don’t tell me that’s from Art of War or some shit.”
Annabeth developed a fascination with rubbing her finger along the blanket.
“Oh my gods, you are such a nerd!”
“Don’t laugh!” she protested. “I snot-bubbled at you, and you’re laughing!”
“Oh, when Percy hears about this—”
Despite crying for nearly three hours, Annabeth punched me so hard I woke up with a bruise.