Okay. The prophecy. I'd been gnawing on it for ninety seconds and I had developed OPINIONS.
Five shall go west to the goddess in chains.
West. Always west. Prophecies are obsessed with west. Three thousand years of doom in iambic whatever and not ONE oracle has ever gone, hey, you know what, mix it up, send these kids northeast. No. West. Toward the parking situation. Toward California, where the bad guys keep all their real estate, because evil apparently has excellent taste in coastline.
One shall be lost in the land without rain.
Lost. I love prophecy-lost. Lost like Zoe's going to set a Hunter down on a counter and wander off. Pat the cloak. Check the chariot cupholders. I swear I came in with four of these. Lost like there's a bin at the front of a temple — sandals, a water bottle, one (1) demigod, please claim by Friday.
The bane of Olympus shows the trail.
The bane of Olympus. Bane. First thought — full credit for the speed of the correction — the Batman one? No. Anti-Olympus bane. Bane of. Fine, tracks.
Except which. Because that narrows down nothing. Olympus has a backlog. Typhon, father of monsters, walking disaster event. Half the things in the woods. Every Titan with a grudge and a calendar. And the big one nobody at the council would say out loud, the Crooked One, who — between us — is pretty obviously Kronos.
Anyway. This one's showing the trail. Pitching in.
Most helpful bane Olympus has had in years.
Campers and Hunters combined prevail.
Sure. Combined. You want the professional man-haters — no offense, Hunters, you've earned the title, you wear it well — to team up with a camp full of ADHD dyslexic disaster gremlins who can't sit through a campfire without setting something on fire, and you want them to prevail. Together. As a unit.
Yeah. That'll hold up. Strap it to a van. Point it west. Godspeed.
The Titan's curse must one withstand.
Couldn't tell you. Not a clue. Big capital-letter words clanking around being Important. I nodded like I got it. I did not get it. We were all nodding. Nobody got it.
One shall perish by a parent's hand.
And there's the closer. The showstopper. The one where the Oracle drifted across a frozen field reeking of snakes and dead flowers, sailed straight past a son of Poseidon having the meltdown of his young life, ignored every breathing soul at Camp Half-Blood, floated up to Zoe, and announced — out loud, to her face, IN RHYME — that someones own father was going to—
—
Huh.
Yeah, no. That one's not funny.
And I tried. I always try. Make the joke, crack the bit, get the laugh — it's the only thing I know how to do when everything's on fire. Which, half the time, I started.
This time there was nothing to make. I looked. There was no joke in it.
So. Comedy scraped off, down to the metal:
Five walk west.
Two don't walk back.
And we were, to put it in technical terms, completely fucked.
Great.
Loving the winter.
What you do with a feeling like that — completely fucked, two friends pre-sentenced, a goddess in a box somewhere — is you put it in a drawer, and you walk to the meeting, because that's what the adults do and I was doing a tremendous impression of an adult.
The walk was the worst part. Single file off the frozen field, up to the Big House, breath hanging white in the dark, nobody saying the thing.
Up front: Zoe. Flag still wadded in her fist. Eyes pointed west like the dark out there owed her money.
She already knew.
One shall perish by a parent's hand, and she hadn't flinched. Hadn't blinked. Just turned and faced the way she'd have to walk.
I put that in the drawer too. The drawer needed a bigger drawer.
The rec room. Again.
Four hours since I'd last stood in it. Last time the headline was manticore took Annabeth, Artemis gone, no quest, and the floor show was me bear-hugging a son of Poseidon to keep him off a wine god.
Now there was a quest. A prophecy. The same ping-pong table, sitting there like it might cough up an answer if we stared hard enough.
Mr. D at one end. Magazine. The patience of a god who could end the meeting with a snap and was declining out of spite.
Chiron beside him — folded down into the wheelchair. Fake legs, lap blanket, the whole human costume. Four hours ago he'd been all hooves and tail. Now he'd packed the horse away. Centaur in a war room reads as cavalry. Old man in a chair reads as settle down, children. I clocked it. Said nothing. We all have our coping wheelchairs.
Far end: Zoe, straight as a drawn arrow. Bianca di Angelo welded to her shoulder — twelve hours a Hunter and already orbiting the lieutenant like a moon that picked its planet.
The rest, head counselors. Silena Beauregard. The Stoll brothers, sitting too still — the way they only sit when the crime's already done and they're waiting for it to ripen. Beckendorf, arms like load-bearing architecture, broadcasting would rather be at the forge. Thalia, damp from the creek, mad about the creek. Grover, chewing a soda can into modern art.
And me. At the end.
"What's the Titan's curse?" Silena. Chin up. The table looked at her; she held it. "Line three. You're sending people to withstand a thing nobody here can name."
"It will be a Titan," Zoe said. "And it will be a curse. Knowing more would not make thee braver."
"I'm saying two campers should go. Backup. It's a war council, not a—"
"Art thou volunteering?" Zoe asked. Pleasant as frostbite. "I had not pictured a daughter of Aphrodite in the snow. Wouldst thou hunt? Or only be seen hunting?"
Silena went scarlet, half out of her chair. Beckendorf laid one arm across her without looking up. A Stoll murmured easy.
She sat.
"The quest is Zoe's," Chiron said. "She names the questers."
Zoe didn't waste air.
"Phoebe. Bianca. Myself."
Three. All silver. You could feel her draw the circle and leave everyone else standing in the cold.
Chiron folded his hands. "Three is thin for what waits west. The Oracle said five." A beat. "I'd recommend Thalia."
The room dropped a degree that had nothing to do with the Hunters.
Zoe looked at Thalia. Thalia looked at Zoe. Daughter of Zeus, lieutenant of Artemis. Two storm fronts two days from colliding.
"...Accepted." Like the word cost her a tooth. "She is no camper-soft thing. She will do."
"High praise," Thalia muttered.
"Take it," I muttered back. "Warmest thing she's said all week."
Four.
And the fifth slot sat there. Open. Glinting.
Percy and I went at the same time.
"I'm going—"
"Put me in—"
We stopped. Looked at each other. Two idiots winding the same spring from opposite ends of the table.
Percy got there first.
"They have her," he said, fast. You want me at camp while a van drives off to—"
"Tell me." Mr. D didn't look up. "This great passion. Is it the chained goddess and the fate of Olympus." Page turn. "Or the blonde girl."
The room went quiet.
Percy didn't answer.
That was the answer.
You could watch him reach for it — the mission, Olympus, the gods — and come up empty. Everyone at that table knew it was about one person. And a quest you take for one person gets six people killed.
"Sit down, Peter Johnson." Still hadn't looked up. "You'd drown the lot of them in your feelings before California. The answer is no."
Percy's ears went red. He sat. Looked at no one.
The counselors found the woodgrain riveting — the small mercy of not watching a kid lose out loud.
Then it was me.
"Two of five don't come back," I said, before the door could shut. "I'm hard to kill, I've got a fire problem finally aimed at something useful, and I am spectacularly bad at sitting on a hill while people I like drive west into a thing that already counted out who dies. Put me in."
"Thy archery will be tested within the hour," Zoe said. "We need not speculate."
"Not the point. Noted. Hurtful. Put me in."
She looked at me a beat too long. Something moved behind her eyes and was gone before I could grab it.
"No," she said. "Not thee."
Just that.
Not thee.
And — wait.
She didn't reach for the rule. The rule was right there — the whole no-males thing she lives by — and she skipped it. Said Not thee instead. Two words with my name cut into them. A different temperature than the wall she'd have used on anyone else—
No. Not tonight. Ten minutes and a public archery death between me and a bed. I did not have the processing power to take the tone of a no apart syllable by syllable.
"Right," I said. "Boy rule. Got it."
She didn't correct me.
But she wasn't done. She turned to Chiron and said the line that made it official — the one that bounced us both in the same breath.
"I will take the satyr before I take either of these boys. Grover is the fifth."
Grover stopped chewing the can. "I — really?"
"Thou art a satyr. Thou dost not count as a male hero." A pause. "It is the kindest thing the rule has ever done for anyone. Do not waste it."
Chiron inclined his head. "Agreed. Zoe, Phoebe, Bianca, Thalia, Grover. Five. West. At first light."
I sat down.
Done.
And here's where my brain caught fire.
Not the fun kind. The kind where two of five don't come back and Not thee and one shall perish by a parent's hand all run at once, every gear grinding the same three facts, the engine revving with nowhere to go — redline, smoke, needle buried.
I needed it to stop.
So I grabbed a Diet Coke.
Context: Mr. D had snapped a forest of wine into a dozen sweating cans ten minutes back — restrictions, underage, the usual — and nobody had touched them. They radiated wrong. A god made them out of spite and the corpse of good wine. You'd drink from the lake first.
I cracked one.
Loud. A gunshot in a church.
The table swiveled. Didn't care. My head was on fire and the can was cold. I tipped it back, took a long pull — the good kind, the kind that hits the back of the throat and reminds you you've got a spine — and came off it with a sound I did not plan and could not have stopped for money.
"Aaaah."
Silence.
I lowered the can.
Every face aimed at me like I'd bitten the head off something alive. Beckendorf rigid. Silena's mouth open. A Stoll whispered "he drank it" — the voice you'd use for he touched the cursed idol, run.
Bianca looked queasy. Thalia looked like she was downgrading several files on me at speed.
And Mr. D—
Mr. D put the magazine down.
Looked at me. A long, terrible moment. Wearing a face I'd never caught on him and eventually placed, with horror, as pleasure.
"Finally," he said. "Someone with taste." He nudged the cans an inch my way. A god granting a province. "The dragon may stay. The rest of you are philistines and I hope the road is wet and long."
"Thanks. It's genuinely good, though."
"It is NOT," Thalia hissed.
"Cold, wet, made by a god. Three for three."
Mr. D — I swear on my lizard heart — almost smiled. Caught it. Lifted the magazine. But it was done. Somewhere in the vast spiteful ledger of Dionysus I'd been moved one column over — ants to tolerable ant — and I had no idea that night what the column was worth.
My brain had stopped smoking. Turns out the cure for an overheating engine is a cold can of god-spite and a room full of people looking at you like the monster.
Whatever works.
"One more thing." Chiron's voice cut the room before anyone could stand. Not the gentle one. The other one. "No duels tonight."
My soul left my body and ascended.
"Sir," Zoe started, "the challenge was issued. The matter of honor—"
"Can wait until you are not leaving on a quest at dawn." He looked at her, at Thalia, then — pointedly — at me. "You walk west tomorrow into a prophecy that has already buried two of you on paper. You will not spend your last night cracking each other's ribs over a dinner boast. You will sleep. That is not a suggestion."
Nobody argues with that voice. It's three thousand years old and it has outlived everyone who ever tried.
"Thank you," I said. With feeling. Cathedral feeling. "Chiron. Sir. From the bottom of my heart — I am never calling your training Demon Centaur again. Rehabilitated. Wiped clean. Saint Chiron."
"You called me what—."
"BED," I said. "Look at me go. Model camper. Goodnight."
And everybody actually went. That's how you knew it was real.
Hunters peeled toward Cabin Eight. Percy drifted out with his shoulders up around his ears. Thalia threw me a look on the way past I couldn't parse and didn't try to — no sleep, one cursed Coke, the giddy relief of a man pardoned at the gallows.
Free. No archery humiliation. No spear humiliation. A bed and the merciful dark.
I made it almost to the door.
"Hey. Dragon boy."
Silena Beauregard, leaning on the doorframe, arms crossed, smiling. Worst smile I'd seen all night. Mr. D's smile meant he found you tolerable. This one meant she'd solved something and was deciding how slow to enjoy telling me.
"Silena. Great council. Whatever that smile is, I'm not qualified for it. Goodnight—"
"Sit down, dragon boy."
"I have a strict policy against that smile—"
"Sit."
I sat.
"Let's review your night," she said, "because I watched it and I don't think you did. You and Percy threw your names in at the exact same second. Twins. Adorable." A finger. "Percy, Dionysus swatted down — the blonde girl, sit, no. Fine. Predictable. A god couldn't be bothered." Second finger. "But you. Zoe didn't pass you to anybody. Didn't reach for the rule — and she has a rule, she'd just have said it. She looked at you for four seconds — I counted — and said not thee. Two words. Made special. For you."
"That's the rule with extra steps."
"It is NOT the rule with extra steps." Pleasant. That was the scary part. "I'm a daughter of Aphrodite. Reading a room is the thing I'm built for, the way you're built for being on fire. And that one told me a story."
"Aphrodite kids see crushes in cereal—"
"Thalia." Third finger, rolling right over me. "Watched the whole thing. When Zoe said not thee, Thalia looked relieved. Half a second. Then furious she'd felt relieved. Then she looked at you and didn't know why, which made it worse." Hands spread, magician at the end of the trick. "Two girls. One room. Both tangled up about the same oblivious idiot. And the idiot drank a Diet Coke and made a god laugh and clocked none of it."
And that's when the Coke came back up.
Not all the way. Just a cold carbonated ghost rising up the back of my throat to taunt me — hi, remember me, the spite drink, here's your spine reminding you it's still in here. I swallowed it back down. It did not want to go.
Because two wires had touched that should never, ever touch.
The boon.
Those whose hearts align with yours will be drawn to you. Parvati. Minute ten of this entire second life. Me, bashful, whispering for it like a kid asking his mom for an extra cookie. A harem, if you will, though not in any crude sense. I'd said yes. I'd said thank you. I'd nodded along when she said with love comes responsibility, child, like that was a thing that happened to other people.
And here was the responsibility.
Of every soul on this green earth the boon could've drawn my way — bakers, librarians, nice normal people who do not own weapons — it had reeled in Zoe Nightshade. Three thousand years old. Lieutenant of Artemis. Has, on the record, shot me. And Thalia Grace. Daughter of Zeus. Throws lightning recreationally. Has wanted to put me on my back since the day we met, and would enjoy it.
That's not a harem. That's a zoo. That's me, in the enclosure, going here kitty kitty at a tiger and a lion and taking live bets on which one devours me first.
My whole back went wet. Instantly. Cold sweat, full sheet, soaking through.
Oh no. Oh no oh no. The two of them? THOSE two? I petted the predators. I asked for this. I VOLUNTEERED. What is WRONG with me — FUUUUUUUUCK—
Okay. Okay. Calm down, boy. Calming. Calming. Breathe. In. And—
foooh.
Okay.
So. Tallying it up honestly: this is insane. Catastrophic. Medically inadvisable. A crime in the eyes of at least one god, possibly several.
However.
Counterpoint.
And here my own traitor heart pulled up two pictures, unprompted, like it had been waiting.
Zoe. Full Hunter silver, moonlight on the circlet, that cold unbothered grace, looking at me down a drawn arrow like I was a problem she hadn't decided how to solve. And something in my chest went stupid and warm and flipped, clean over, no permission asked.
Then Thalia. Full battle mode, spear lit blue, grinning — that wild storm-grin she gets when the fight's going her way — and my brain just... stalled. Buffered. Stood there holding the image like an idiot holding a live wire and enjoying it.
Lieutenant of Artemis. Daughter of Zeus.
And some small, doomed, profoundly stupid corner of me sat up, looked at both of them, and went: ...okay but be honest, that's kind of a flex.
I hated that corner. That corner was going to get me killed.
"You okay?" Silena said. "You went a really interesting color."
"Great. So great. Never—" The ghost rose again. I swallowed the spite drink a second time. "—better."
"Mm." She didn't believe me. No reason to. I was sweating through my shirt in a forty-degree room.
"You're wrong," I tried. Thin. "Zoe hates me a normal amount. Thalia's my rival. That's sports. You're reading cereal."
"Okay," Silena said. "I made it up. Goodnight." She stepped out of the doorway, easy, no fight.
Which is how I knew I'd lost.
"Aditya."
I stopped.
"Whatever it is — and it's something — two of those five aren't coming back. That's not a tea leaf. That's the Oracle, tonight, out loud." The teasing gone. The blunt gone. Just the thing underneath. "You should know what you've got before it drives off. In case the prophecy's right about which two."
Footsteps. The door. The cold. Gone.
And I stood alone in the rec room with a dozen empty cursed cans, a soaked-through back, and a brand-new horror Silena Beauregard had pried out of my skull and set on the table where I couldn't unsee it.
Let me lay it out the way she left it.
The lieutenant of the Hunters of Artemis. Three thousand years old. Man-hating by sacred oath. Has shot me on at least one documented occasion.
The daughter of Zeus. Walking thunderstorm. Recreational lightning. Sky-given temper.
And me. The snag in the loom. The thread the Fates can't touch. Carrying Karna's bloodline and a fire that burns from the inside out — and using all of it, apparently, to get two of the deadliest women alive to look twice at me.
What could possibly go wrong.
I went to bed. Sleep didn't come — took one look at the guest list, lieutenant of Artemis and daughter of Zeus and me, and noped straight out. Couldn't blame it. I'd have left too.
Just a dumb boy in a soaked shirt, reading the fine print on a menu he'd ordered from in his first ten minutes of being dead.
Oh — and when sleep finally graced me with its sweet embrace?
It came with the worst fucking nightmare of my existence.