Epilogue to the Accord – Quiet After
The dawn kept rising, yet the three did not move. The cliffside air smelled sharp and clean, pine-scented and threaded with the faintest salt from seas far below. The council chamber already felt like another world, one where thunderclouds still pressed against every breath. Here, there was only open sky, the steady rhythm of wings above as Kaal kept his silent watch.
Artemis shifted first, drawing her knees up and resting her chin atop them, silver hair spilling over her shoulder. Her bow lay forgotten beside her, an unheard-of thing for the Huntress Eternal. She closed her eyes, tilting toward Percy's shoulder. "For centuries," she murmured, "I thought solitude was strength. That to need was to fail. Now, for the first time, I find strength in leaning."
Percy brushed his thumb across her knuckles. "And I find strength in being leaned upon."
Athena gave a soft laugh, though it was threaded with something uncharacteristically raw. "Trust her to make it sound poetic. Trust you to make it sound simple." She leaned in closer, resting against Percy's other side, her head near his chest. "And trust me… to admit I envy both."
Percy glanced down at her, brows raised. "Envy?"
Athena's gaze flicked up, bronze eyes glittering. "That she leans so easily. That you answer so easily. I am still learning both."
His hand lifted, brushing a strand of bronze-dark hair from her face. "Then learn with us. There is no race here."
For a long while, there was only breathing, only warmth pressed shoulder to shoulder, heartbeat to heartbeat. Kaal's feathers rustled faintly, a low purr rumbling in his throat that vibrated through the stone beneath their feet.
Artemis stirred again, her voice lighter now. "Do you realize the irony? Huntress. Scholar. Keeper of time. None of us made for softness. Yet here we are—finding it."
"Not finding," Percy corrected softly. "Making."
Athena's hand traced an idle pattern across the fabric of his cloak, her lips quirking at the edge. "And making, it seems, is harder to break than finding."
The three of them shared a laugh then, low and quiet, but real.
As the sun climbed higher, warmth spilling over them, Artemis lifted Percy's hand and kissed his knuckles—an intimate, unguarded gesture that no one on Olympus would ever have believed her capable of. Athena, not to be outdone, rested her forehead against Percy's temple, her breath a whisper: "Do not forget—your eternity is ours now."
"And yours is mine," Percy said, voice barely above the wind.
The words didn't need thunder. They didn't need lightning. They didn't need an audience. They hung between the three of them, truer than any decree Zeus could have made.
Time itself seemed to pause—not because Percy willed it, but because it chose to honor the moment.
When at last they rose from the cliff, the sun stood high and strong, gilding their figures in light. They walked back toward Olympus not as rebels, not as supplicants, but as something steadier: chosen, bonded, crowned.
And above them, Kaal wheeled once more, crying out with a voice that split the sky—a song not of war, but of promise.