The red-eye from Los Angeles to New York was the smoothest flight in the history of aviation.
Percy didn't know that for a fact. But he was pretty sure. There wasn't a single bump the whole way. Not one. The plane slid across the dark country like a skate across ice. The pilot came on the intercom twice, sounding baffled, to say that they'd caught an unusual tailwind and would be arriving forty minutes early.
Ezra spent the first hour gripping the armrests so hard his knuckles were white, staring out the window at the clouds like he expected a lightning bolt to come through it any second. Then he spent the second hour slowly relaxing. By the third hour, he was asleep with his head on Grover's shoulder, snoring.
Annabeth sat in the window seat with the Shield of Ares wrapped in its blanket under her feet, and the Master Bolt inside it. She didn't sleep. She just stared at the clouds and thought, the way she always did, and every so often glanced over at Percy.
Percy slept like the dead.
And while he slept, the System worked.
[The Host is at rest.]
[VESSEL RANK-UP INITIATED.]
[E → D.]
He dreamed of thread. Gold thread, winding and winding on a great dark spindle, the way it had on the first night, in the Spindle Room. But this time the spindle was bigger. And there was more thread on it. Much more. And the thread wasn't only his. There were other colors woven through it now. Sea-green. Storm-gray. Satyr-brown. The black of the Underworld, and the pale gold of a girl with a forget-me-not ring. And three bright threads, red and blond and dark, running straight and steady from a city by the sea.
The thread wasn't just his anymore. It was holding other people up.
[VESSEL RANK: D.]
[Shadow Army capacity: 9 → 13 (12 + 1 Bound Slot).]
[All stats +5.]
[HP and MP pools expanded.]
[Faith toward Rank C: 106 / 8,000.]
[Great Sage has gained access to additional processing threads.]
[Great Sage notes: The Host's thread is no longer only the Host's.]
Is that bad? Percy asked, in the dream.
[Great Sage does not know.]
A pause.
[Great Sage thinks it is not.]
They landed at JFK at dawn on the twentieth of June. The summer solstice.
The Empire State Building rose up out of the Manhattan skyline as their taxi crossed the bridge, gleaming silver-gold in the early sun. Percy looked up at it through the taxi window and felt something twist in his chest.
The last time he'd seen Olympus, in his first life, the gods had sentenced him to Tartarus.
It's a different world, he told himself. Different gods. Different me.
His hands were shaking anyway.
"You okay?" Annabeth said quietly, next to him.
"Yeah," Percy said. "Just tired."
She looked at him for a long moment, the way she always did lately, like he was a puzzle she'd figure out eventually if she just kept at it. Then she did something unexpected. She reached over and took his hand, and squeezed it, once, and let go.
She didn't say anything. She didn't have to.
The guard at the lobby desk looked up from his newspaper with a bored expression.
"Six hundredth floor," Percy said.
"There is no six hundredth floor, kid."
Percy put the Shield of Ares on the desk. He unwrapped the blanket. He opened the hidden hollow behind the boss, just a crack.
Blue-white light spilled out across the lobby, and every hair on the guard's arms stood straight up.
The guard looked at the light. Then at Percy. Then at the light again. Very slowly, he folded his newspaper, reached under the desk, and slid a single key card across the counter.
"Elevator on the left," he said faintly. "Don't touch anything on the way up."
The elevator music was terrible. It always had been, in every world.
And then the doors slid open, and they stepped out onto Olympus.
Annabeth stopped dead.
She'd been here before, Percy knew. Or she'd seen pictures, read descriptions, dreamed about it. But nothing was like the real thing. It was a mountain in the sky, floating above Manhattan on a cloud. Palaces of white marble and gold cascaded down its slopes. There were gardens and fountains and temples, and streets winding between them full of nymphs and satyrs and minor gods. Music drifted from somewhere. The air smelled like honey and sunlight.
Annabeth's mouth was open. Her eyes were moving over every building, every column, every arch, like she was memorizing it.
"It's beautiful," she whispered. "It's perfect."
"Someday," Percy said, "you're going to make it better."
She looked at him sharply. He just smiled and started walking.
They climbed the long winding road toward the great palace at the top of the mountain. People stopped to watch them pass. Nymphs whispered behind their hands. A pair of minor gods leaned out of a window. A muse stopped in the middle of a song. Word had gotten here before them, Percy realized. Everyone knew.
The doors of the throne room were three stories tall and made of solid gold. They swung open on their own.
The throne room of Olympus was the biggest room Percy had ever been in. In either life.
Twelve thrones stood in a horseshoe around a great central hearth, where a small girl in brown sat tending the flames. Most of the thrones were empty. The gods were gone, back to wherever they spent the solstice before the council. But two were occupied.
On the central throne, a great seat of solid platinum, sat a man in a dark pinstriped suit. He was huge, twenty feet tall at least, with a close-trimmed gray-black beard and stormy gray eyes. The air around him was charged and heavy, and every so often a tiny spark of static crawled across the arms of his throne. He looked proud and fierce and dangerous, like a storm about to break.
Next to him, on a throne that looked like a fishing chair carved out of coral, sat Poseidon. He was wearing the same Hawaiian shirt as he had on the beach. He looked at Ezra as they came in, and his sea-green eyes softened.
Zeus looked at Percy.
And Percy looked back.
[Divine presence detected: ZEUS, King of the Gods, Lord of the Sky.]
[Relationship status: Father (Adoptive). Affection: High.]
The four of them walked across the throne room. They stopped at the foot of the platinum throne. Ezra and Grover and Annabeth knelt. Percy knelt too.
Then he lifted the Shield of Ares and opened the hollow behind the boss, all the way this time.
The Master Bolt blazed out into the throne room of Olympus.
It lit up every corner of the hall, so bright that for a moment there were no shadows anywhere. It hummed so loud the floor shook. The little girl at the hearth looked up and smiled.
Zeus rose from his throne.
He shrank as he came down the steps, the way gods did when they wanted to be close to mortals. By the time he reached the bottom, he was only about eight feet tall. He stopped in front of Percy and looked down at the Master Bolt, glowing in its hollow. For a long moment he didn't move.
Then he reached down, very carefully, and picked it up.
The bolt flared, joyfully, like a dog seeing its owner. Thunder rumbled across the whole sky over Manhattan. Outside, through the open columns of the throne room, the clouds piled up in great white towers and then broke apart again into brilliant sunshine.
Zeus closed his eyes. He held the bolt against his chest like a man holding something he'd thought he'd lost forever.
When he opened his eyes, they were looking straight at Percy.
"Stand up," he said.
Percy stood.
"Tell me," said the king of the gods. "Everything."
Percy told him.
Not everything. He'd learned a long time ago, in another life, never to tell a god everything. But he told him enough. The quest. The Furies. Medusa. The hellhound in the Mississippi. Ares in Denver, and the shield, and the bolt hidden inside it. Hades, and the Helm. The beach in Santa Monica, and the god of war.
And the pit.
When he got to the pit, he slowed down. He made himself look up into his father's stormy gray eyes, and he told him about the voice. About the cold that had pulled at the bolt on his back. About the laughter coming up out of the dark.
"It's Kronos," he said. "He's waking up. He's the one who whispered to Ares. He wanted you and Uncle Hades and Uncle Poseidon to go to war, so you'd tear each other apart, and then he'd climb out and..." He swallowed. "And eat everybody. Again."
The throne room was very quiet.
Poseidon had gone still on his coral throne. His sea-green eyes were dark and troubled.
Zeus's face didn't change. But the air around him did. It went cold, and heavy, and the static on his suit crackled.
"Kronos," he said, "is in pieces. In the deepest pit of Tartarus. He cannot wake."
"He talked to me," Percy said.
"You are a child. Exhausted. Half-dead, by the look of you. The Underworld plays tricks on the minds of mortals." Zeus's voice was firm. "It was an echo. Nothing more."
Percy looked at him.
He thought about arguing. He thought about it hard. In his first life, nobody had believed him either, not until it was almost too late. Not until the Titans were at the doors of this very room. And he knew, with the cold certainty of somebody who'd seen how this story ended, that arguing wouldn't change anything. Not today. Gods didn't change because a kid told them to.
They changed because the world made them.
"Okay," he said quietly. "If you say so, Dad."
Zeus's eyes flickered at the word.
Poseidon was watching Percy with a strange expression. When Percy glanced at him, the sea god gave him the smallest, slowest nod. I heard you, the nod said. Even if he didn't.
It was something.
And then Zeus said, "Hold out your hand."
Percy's stomach dropped.
"Your right hand," said the king of the gods. "The one with the ring."
Percy held it out. The bronze band with its thread of silver sat on his middle finger, looking very small and very ordinary.
Zeus looked at it for a long time.
"You touched my bolt," he said.
It wasn't a question. Percy didn't pretend it was.
"Yes, sir."
"Twice."
"...Yes, sir."
"And the second time, on the beach, you did something to it." The stormy eyes narrowed. "I felt it. Even from here. A pull. As if something were learning it." He leaned closer. "What did you do, boy?"
Behind Percy, Annabeth had gone rigid. Ezra had stopped breathing. Grover's knees were knocking together so hard Percy could hear them.
Percy thought about lying.
Then he thought about Poseidon, on the beach, saying I want the truth. And about Hades, in his dark palace, saying those are the ones I trust least. And about a voice through a statue at night, learning how to say my son.
"I didn't take anything," he said. "Your bolt's right there. It's all yours. Every bit of it." He swallowed. "But I learned it. A little. How it's made. How it holds together. And I made one of my own."
He lifted his hand. He thought about it.
The ring rippled, and unfolded, and became a bolt.
It was small, next to the real thing. A foot and a half of crackling blue-white light, capped in pale bronze threaded with silver. It hummed, softly, in his hand. Not the furious white roar of the Master Bolt. Something wilder. Bluer. Like a storm rolling in over the sea.
Zeus stared at it.
The Master Bolt in his hand flickered, almost curiously. It leaned toward Percy's bolt, the way a big dog leans toward a puppy.
And the king of the gods began to laugh.
It started low, a rumble deep in his chest, like thunder a long way off. And it got louder, and louder, until it was booming off the marble walls of the throne room. The whole sky over Manhattan rolled with it. Poseidon stared at his brother like he'd lost his mind. Even the little girl at the hearth looked up, startled.
"One percent," Zeus roared, wiping his eyes. "One percent of my bolt! A mortal! A mortal boy, who's been my son for a month, took one look at the weapon the Cyclopes forged to cast down the Titans, and made his own!" He laughed again, enormous and delighted. "Do you know how many of my children have tried that? In all of history? Do you know how many have ever even understood it?"
"...No, sir?"
"None!" Zeus bellowed. "Not one! Not Heracles, not Perseus, not any of them!" He clapped Percy on the shoulder, so hard Percy nearly fell over. "Ha! Let Poseidon brag about his boy and his tidal waves! My son learned the sky!"
"My boy," Poseidon said mildly, from his coral throne, "is the one who threw Ares into the ground so yours could do it."
"Details," said Zeus, waving a hand.
Ezra made a small, strangled noise. When Percy glanced back, the son of Poseidon was staring at his father with his mouth open. Poseidon was looking right back at him. And on the sea god's weathered face was the same look Percy had seen once, long ago, on the deck of a ship in the middle of a war.
Quiet, and enormous, and proud.
Ezra's eyes went bright. He looked down at the floor quickly.
Percy looked away too, to give him the moment. And he found that he didn't feel jealous at all. Not even a little.
[DIVINE FAVOR: Zeus regards the Host with pride.]
[Title acquired: HEIR OF THE STORM.]
[Note: Zeus has acknowledged the Unclaimed Bolt. It will not be confiscated.]
[Great Sage notes: That went considerably better than Great Sage projected.]
You and me both, Percy thought weakly.
Afterward, when the others had been sent down to the gardens to eat ambrosia and stare at the view, Zeus walked Percy out onto a terrace at the edge of the mountain.
It was quiet out there. Just wind, and clouds, and far below, the gray grid of Manhattan, tiny as a map. The king of the gods had shrunk down to human size, more or less. Six and a half feet, in a dark suit, with his hands clasped behind his back. He stood at the marble railing and looked down at the city for a long time without saying anything.
Percy stood next to him and waited.
"You called me Dad," Zeus said finally. "On the beach. And again in there."
"Yeah," Percy said. "Is that... okay?"
The god was quiet for a moment.
"I have had many children," he said slowly. "Heroes. Kings. Monsters, some of them. Most of them called me Lord Zeus. Some of them called me Father, in a temple, with an offering in their hands, wanting something." He was still looking down at the city. "I cannot remember the last time one of them called me Dad. Like that. Like it was ordinary."
Percy didn't know what to say to that. So he didn't say anything.
"I do not remember deciding to claim you," Zeus said, quieter. "Did you know that? I've thought about it a great deal this past month. There was a storm over your camp, and a boy on the ground with a hound on top of him, and I simply... knew. That you were mine. Like I had always known, and only just remembered." He frowned at the clouds. "It should trouble me. It doesn't."
[Great Sage notes: The weave is holding.]
"For what it's worth," Percy said, "I'm glad it was you."
Zeus looked at him sideways.
"Are you?" he said. "Truly? I am not a gentle father, boy. Ask any of my children. Ask my wife."
"I know," Percy said. "But you came down out of the sky when that hellhound had me in the river. You didn't even know why. You just came." He shrugged. "And you talk to me. At night. Through the statue. Most kids at camp would give anything for that."
The king of the gods was silent for a very long time.
Then, slowly, awkwardly, like a man who didn't quite remember how it was done, he put one big hand on top of Percy's head. He left it there, for a moment, heavy and warm and crackling faintly with static.
"Go home, my son," he said gruffly. "Your camp is waiting. And your mother, I imagine. Eat something. You look terrible."
"Thanks, Dad."
"And Perseus."
"Yeah?"
The stormy eyes glinted.
"The next time you decide to learn one of my weapons," said Zeus, "ask first."
Percy grinned.
"No promises," he said.
Thunder rolled across the whole sky over Manhattan. It was a laugh.
[DIVINE BLESSING RECEIVED: THE SKY-FATHER'S HAND.]
[Once per day, the Host may call the weather within one mile. Lightning spells cost 10% less MP while under open sky.]
The Camp Half-Blood van picked them up at the foot of the Empire State Building at noon. Argus was driving, all hundred of his eyes looking very pleased with them. All the way down Long Island, Grover kept pulling a laminated card out of his pocket and staring at it and putting it back.
It said SEARCHER'S LICENSE in gold letters, with a seal at the bottom shaped like a lightning bolt.
"He just gave it to me," Grover kept saying. "Zeus. Zeus gave me my searcher's license. He said the satyr who walked into Hades and out again has earned it. He said—" His voice cracked. "Percy, he said Pan would be proud."
"He's right," Percy said. "He would be."
Grover burst into tears for the fourth time that day. Annabeth patted his back without looking up from the sketchbook she'd bought at JFK. She'd been drawing Olympus since the minute they'd sat down. Columns and arches and terraces, pages and pages of them, in fast careful pencil. Some of the buildings Percy didn't recognize. They weren't on Olympus yet.
She was designing.
Ezra sat in the back row by himself, looking out the window at the Long Island Sound going by, all green and blue and glittering in the June sun. He had a small silver trident-shaped fishing lure in his hand, and he was turning it over and over in his fingers.
After a while, Percy went and sat next to him.
They didn't say anything for a long time.
"He said he's proud of me," Ezra said at last. Very quietly. "My dad. When you were out on the terrace. He came down to the garden and he sat next to me on a bench and he said it. Just like that. I'm proud of you, Ezra." He swallowed. "Nobody's ever said that to me. Not once. Not my whole life."
"You earned it," Percy said.
Ezra shook his head slowly.
"No. I didn't. Not really. You did all of it. The Fury. The hellhound. The Gorgon. You walked in front of me the whole way, man. You fought Ares. I just stood there and did what you told me." He looked down at the lure in his hand. "Before this quest, I thought I was gonna be the big hero. Son of the Big Three. The chosen one. Everybody'd look at me and know I was special." His mouth twisted. "I was kind of a jerk about it."
"Kind of," Percy agreed.
Ezra snorted. "Thanks."
"But you stopped a flood in the Tunnel of Love," Percy said. "By listening to it. And you threw the Pacific Ocean at the god of war, and didn't drown a single person who wasn't him. And in the boat on the Styx, when I was falling apart, you sat next to me and didn't say anything." He looked at Ezra. "Nobody told you to do that. That was all you."
Ezra looked at him for a long moment.
"I want to be like that," he said. "Like you. Not the lightning. Not the shadows. The... other stuff. The walking in front of people." He hesitated. "Will you teach me?"
Percy thought about a boy in another world, in another life, standing on a beach with a pen in his hand, scared out of his mind. A boy nobody had taught. A boy who'd had to figure it all out on his own, and got so much of it wrong.
"Yeah," he said. "I'll teach you."
[FAITH: Ezra Coleman's faith in the Host has deepened. +50 Faith.]
[Note: Ezra Coleman's thread has changed course.]
[The Fates are watching.]
They heard the camp before they saw it.
The van came up the long dirt road toward Half-Blood Hill in the late afternoon, and before it even reached the top, there was a sound. A roar. Like a stadium, like a crowd at a ballgame. Argus stopped the van at the crest of the hill under the big pine tree, and the four of them climbed out into the golden light, and looked down.
The whole camp was waiting for them.
Every single camper. Every satyr. Every nymph. They were lined up along both sides of the path from the hill to the Big House, hundreds of them, cheering and shouting and waving. Somebody had made a banner out of a bedsheet that said WELCOME HOME HEROES in glitter paint, with a lightning bolt and a trident and a goat and an owl drawn on it in bright colors. Somebody else was setting off fireworks in broad daylight. The Stoll brothers had climbed onto the roof of the Hermes cabin and were banging pots and pans together.
"Oh," said Grover faintly. "Oh, wow."
They walked down the hill.
It was like walking through a wave. People grabbed them, hugged them, slapped them on the back, shouted their names. Somebody put a crown of laurel leaves on Annabeth's head. A pair of Demeter girls covered Grover in flowers until he looked like a walking garden. The Apollo cabin had started singing something that sounded like a victory hymn, and was mostly in tune.
And Ezra.
The campers mobbed Ezra. The son of Poseidon. The hero of the quest. The boy who'd brought the Master Bolt home. They lifted him up on their shoulders and carried him down the path, cheering, chanting his name. Percy saw Ezra's face over the crowd, red and stunned and grinning.
And then he saw Ezra lean down and shout something to the boys carrying him. They stopped. They put him down. And Ezra turned around, and pushed back through the crowd, and grabbed Percy by the arm, and dragged him out in front of everyone.
"Him," Ezra yelled, over the noise. "Not me! Him! He did all of it! He fought a Fury! He fought a god! He fought Ares and won!"
The crowd went quiet. Hundreds of faces turned toward Percy.
The mortal kid. The son of Zeus, kind of. It was complicated.
And for a long, strange second, nobody said anything at all.
Then somebody at the back started clapping.
Percy looked. It was Clarisse La Rue.
She was standing at the edge of the crowd with her arms crossed and her electric spear on her back and her cabin behind her, all of them big and scarred and scowling. She was clapping slowly. Deliberately. Her eyes were fixed on Percy.
The crowd parted for her as she walked up the path. She stopped in front of him. She looked him up and down: the frost burns, the cracked ribs, the static hair, the bronze ring.
"You beat my dad," she said.
"Kind of," Percy said.
"With a lightning bolt."
"...Yeah."
"On a beach. In front of witnesses."
"I mean, it was mostly Ezra's tidal wave—"
"Shut up, Jackson."
Percy shut up.
Clarisse stared at him for a long time. Her jaw was working. And then something happened to her face. Something Percy had seen, in another world, maybe twice in all the years he'd known her.
She grinned. A real grin. Fierce and wide and delighted.
"He's going to be unbearable for a century," she said. "You know that, right? He's going to come to camp in my dreams every night and complain about you. About the mortal kid who put him in the sand." She shook her head. "Best thing that's ever happened to me."
She stuck out her hand.
Not to shake. Forearm to forearm, the way warriors did it. The way Eira had done it in the frozen cathedral.
Percy took it.
"Whatever you're doing," Clarisse said, low, so only he could hear. "Whatever this is. The thing you've got going on behind your eyes, the stuff you don't tell anybody. When you need people for it..." Her grip tightened. "Ares cabin's in. All of us. You hear me?"
"I hear you," Percy said.
[FAITH: Clarisse La Rue has chosen to follow the Host. +90 Faith.]
[FAITH: Cabin Five (Ares) has chosen to follow the Host. +160 Faith.]
[LINKED QUEST UPDATED: THOSE WHO STOOD BESIDE YOU.]
And then the whole crowd was cheering again, louder than before. And this time it was his name they were shouting. All of them. Ares cabin and Hermes cabin and Apollo and Demeter and Athena, all the unclaimed kids from Cabin Eleven, the satyrs and the nymphs. PER-CY! PER-CY! PER-CY!
He stood in the middle of it, in the golden light, with Clarisse's hand on his arm and Ezra grinning beside him and Annabeth and Grover laughing. And he didn't know what to do with his face.
In his first life, he'd come home from this quest to cheers too. And it had felt good. Of course it had. But this was different. Then, they'd been cheering for the son of Poseidon. For what he was.
Now they were cheering for who he was.
[FAITH: Camp Half-Blood believes in the Host.]
[+412 Faith.]
[Faith toward Rank C: 818 / 8,000.]
[MAIN QUEST COMPLETE: THE LIGHTNING THIEF.]
[The Master Bolt has been returned. The Helm of Darkness has been returned. War among the Big Three has been averted.]
[+200,000 EXP]
[LEVEL UP! Level 71 → Level 73]
[Reward: Camp Half-Blood Standing — HERO.]
[Reward: Patron Blessing Gacha x3.]
[Reward: ???]
The celebration went on late into the night.
There was a feast at the dining pavilion, and Percy ate three plates of barbecue and two of the blue pancakes that the wood nymphs had made special, just for him, without being asked. He didn't ask how they knew. There was a campfire so big the flames went up thirty feet, and changed colors with the mood of the singers, from gold to orange to a deep, happy purple. There was a game of capture the flag that nobody really played. It was just an excuse to run around in the dark and shout.
Chiron found him on the edge of the firelight, sitting on a log with Lupe asleep in his lap. The cub had come trotting up the hill from the woods just after sunset, looking very pleased with herself, smelling faintly of Cerberus.
The old centaur looked down at him for a long moment with his dark, ancient eyes.
"You did well, Percy," he said quietly.
"Thanks, Chiron."
"Better than well." Chiron's tail flicked. "I have trained heroes for three thousand years. I know what it looks like when a boy grows up on a quest. I have seen it many times." He paused. "It is something else entirely to see a boy who seems to have already grown up, choose to be a boy again for the sake of the others."
Percy looked up at him sharply.
Chiron only smiled, very faintly, and touched his shoulder, and moved off into the dark.
The Iris message came through a little after ten. Percy had snuck down to the beach with a drachma from the camp store, away from the noise. He threw the coin into the spray of a wave in the moonlight, and said the address, and waited.
The rainbow shimmered. And then he was looking into the living room of a little apartment on the Upper East Side.
It was crowded. His mother was on the couch, in her pajamas, with her hand pressed over her mouth and tears running down her face. Paul was sitting next to her with his arm around her shoulders. And crammed in around them, in a heap of pillows and blankets and open pizza boxes and, for some reason, a large rolled-up nautical chart, were Rachel Elizabeth Dare, Nancy Bobofit, and Matt Sloan.
"PERCY!" all five of them yelled at once.
He laughed. He couldn't help it.
"Hi, Mom," he said.
Sally Jackson cried for a while. Percy let her. Paul kept saying, I told you he'd be fine, I told you, in a voice that made it clear he'd been every bit as scared. Percy told them as much as he could. Which was not very much, and was more than enough to make his mother cry again.
Then Nancy shoved her face so close to the rainbow it nearly broke.
"Okay, enough with the mushy stuff," she said. "Business."
"Nancy—" Sally began.
"Sorry, Ms. J. But he's gonna want to hear this." Nancy held up a thick spiral notebook. It was already half full of numbers, in her neat, cramped handwriting. "We have a company."
Percy blinked. "Already?"
"Rachel's dad," Rachel said, leaning in over Nancy's shoulder, her red hair everywhere and her eyes shining. "I did what you said. I went to him and I said I wanted to learn the business. I wanted to start something. Mine. With my friends." Her voice wobbled. "Percy, he cried. My dad. He's been waiting my whole life for me to want something he could help with. He had his lawyers draw up the papers the same night."
"Argo Holdings, LLC," said Matt. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor with a laptop balanced on his knees, looking more serious than Percy had ever seen him. "Registered in Delaware. Rachel's the president, because her dad's name opens doors. Nancy's the treasurer, because she's terrifying. I'm, um." He pushed his glasses up. "Chief Legal Officer. Technically. Bow Tie Guy is doing all the actual legal stuff. His name is Mr. Pemberton, by the way. And he's really excited. He's never had clients who pay up front in full before."
"Argo?" Percy said.
"Rachel picked it," Nancy said. "Something about a ship full of heroes. I don't know, she got all spooky about it."
Rachel smiled at him through the rainbow. Behind her eyes, just for a second, something flickered green.
"It's the right name," she said softly. "I just know."
"And the islands?" Percy asked. His heart was beating faster.
Matt unrolled the nautical chart across the floor of the apartment. Long Island's East End, with two islands circled in red marker.
"Gardiners Island," he said. "Privately owned by the Gardiner family since 1639. Three-thousand-something acres. They've refused every offer anybody's made for it for a hundred years. Including Rachel's dad. Except..." He grinned. "There's a third cousin. In Connecticut. Who hates the other two. And who owns a big enough share of the family trust to force a sale, if she wanted to. Mr. Pemberton's meeting her next week."
Percy thought about a god in a delivery uniform on a rooftop in Las Vegas. I'd tell her to start with the third cousin in Connecticut.
He started to laugh.
"And Plum Island?" he said.
Matt's grin faded a little. "That one's harder. The government owns it. Department of Agriculture. There's a lab on it. Animal diseases, really secret stuff. They're not going to sell it anytime soon." He hesitated. "But Mr. Pemberton says there are rumors. About moving the lab somewhere else, someday. Maybe not for a few years. And if they ever do, the government will have to auction the island. And when that happens..."
"We'll be ready," Nancy said firmly, tapping her notebook. "With a bid nobody can beat. And paperwork that looks completely normal. I've been practicing my normal."
Percy looked at the three of them, crowded together on his mother's living room floor around a map of two islands. Rachel with paint on her fingers and green in her eyes. Nancy with her notebook and her fierce, practical scowl. Matt with his laptop and his glasses and his brand-new seriousness.
In his first life, they'd been the kids who bullied him. Or the kid he'd met on a dam, too late to matter much. In this one, they'd picked him. Every time.
"You guys," he said, and his voice wasn't quite steady. "You guys are amazing."
"We know," said Nancy.
"Come home soon," said Rachel.
"Bring snacks," said Matt.
[LINKED QUEST UPDATED: THOSE WHO STOOD BESIDE YOU.]
[Stage 2: Argo Holdings founded. ✓]
[LEGENDARY QUEST UPDATED: CITY OF THE UNCLAIMED.]
[Stage 1: Foundations (0/2 islands acquired). Leads found: 2/2.]
[Time remaining: 4 years, 11 months.]
It was nearly midnight when he walked back up from the beach.
The campfire was burning low. Most of the campers had gone to bed. A few stragglers were still sitting around the embers, talking quietly. Percy started across the green toward Cabin One, where a twenty-foot statue of his father would be waiting to say my son in the dark.
And he saw Luke.
Luke Castellan was sitting on the porch steps of the Hermes cabin, alone, in the dark. He had his elbows on his knees and his head down. In his hand, he was turning something over and over. Percy couldn't see what. But the moonlight caught it once. Something metal. Something small.
He looked up as Percy came closer. And for one second, before he smiled, his face was something else. Tired. Hollow. Lost. The face of somebody who'd been listening to a voice in his dreams for a very long time, and was starting to believe it.
Then he smiled, and it was gone.
"Hey, hero," Luke said. "Heard you put Ares in the dirt."
"Ezra helped," Percy said.
"Sure he did." Luke's smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "Congratulations, man. Seriously. You did something none of us ever could." He looked down at the thing in his hand. "Must be nice. Having a dad who shows up."
Percy stood there in the moonlight.
He thought about a god on a rooftop in Las Vegas, looking out over the Strip. Keep talking to him. Whatever happens. Even if he stops listening. Especially then.
He thought about the way this story had ended, last time. A scorpion in the woods. A sword in Luke's hand. A war. A boy who'd chosen wrong, and then, at the very end, chosen right, and died for it.
He sat down on the step next to Luke.
Luke looked at him, surprised.
"Your dad talked to me," Percy said quietly. "In Vegas. On a roof."
Luke went very still.
"He asked about you," Percy said. "That was the whole price. For carrying some letters for me. He just wanted me to tell him how you were doing." He looked out at the dark camp. "He knows he messed up, Luke. He knows you're angry. He said you have every right to be."
Luke didn't say anything. His hand had closed tight around the thing he was holding.
"I'm not saying you have to forgive him," Percy said. "I'm not saying anything, really. I just thought you should know he asked."
They sat there together in the dark for a long time.
Then Luke said, very low, "Why are you telling me this?"
Percy thought about it.
"Because I made a promise," he said. "And because I think somebody should've told you a long time ago."
Luke looked at him. In the moonlight his face was very young, and very tired. The scar down his cheek stood out pale and silver.
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"Can we..." He stopped. Started over. "Tomorrow. Maybe. Can we talk? About... stuff?"
"Yeah," Percy said. "Tomorrow. On the bench by the lake. I'll bring donuts."
Luke let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
"Okay," he said. "Okay. Tomorrow."
Percy got up. He walked on across the green toward Cabin One. When he looked back from the doorway, Luke was still sitting on the steps of the Hermes cabin. He was looking down at whatever was in his hand. He was turning it over, and over, and over.
[Great Sage notes: Luke Castellan's thread is fraying.]
I know, Percy thought.
[Great Sage notes: It has not yet broken.]
I know. He closed the cabin door behind him. That's why I'm going to be on that bench tomorrow.
The great statue of Zeus loomed up in the dark at the center of the cabin, its stormy eyes catching the faint light. The air hummed with static.
Welcome home, said a deep voice, very quietly, in his head. My son.
Percy smiled.
"Night, Dad," he said.
He lay down on his bunk with Lupe curled up on his chest. He was too tired to even pull up the blanket. He looked at the ceiling, and pulled up his status one more time, just to see it. Just to remember how far he'd come.
Name: Perseus Jackson
Vessel Rank: D (Faith toward Rank C: 818 / 8,000)
Level: 73
Classes: Fighter (Lv 73) · Monk (Lv 46) · Sorcerer (Lv 24)
Advancement: Knight-Errant I · Way of the Open Hand I · Storm-Born Ascendant I
Titles: Son of the Sky · Heir of the Storm · Thread-Walker · Knight of the Siege Perilous · Godsbane · Unmirrored · Bane of the Labyrinth · Warden of Half-Blood Hill · Namer of the Unclaimed
Patron Blessings: Hestia · Apollo · Hecate · Zeus (The Sky-Father's Hand) · Unspent Gacha Pulls: 3
HP: 2,240 / 2,240
MP: 640 / 640
STR: 87
AGI: 89
VIT: 85
INT: 41 (Thread-Worn: 29)
WIS: 50 (Thread-Worn: 35)
CHA: 57
HONOR: 11
Weapon: Proteus, the Shifting Blade
I. Blade: Bronze Xiphos · Arondight · Empty
II. Spear: Lance of Camelot · Empty · Empty
III. Bow: Empty · Empty · Empty
IV. Ward: Pridwen · Shield of Ares (Echo) · Empty
V. Fist: Empty · Empty · Empty
VI. Heavens: The Unclaimed Bolt · Empty · Empty
Shadow Army (9 / 13): Asterion · Gorrath · Fang · Chi-Chi · Lazarus · Gloop · Thing One · Thing Two · Rime
Active Quests: City of the Unclaimed (Legendary) · Those Who Stood Beside You · The Children Who Waited
He looked at it for a long time.
Then he closed it, and closed his eyes.
For the first time since a bus on a highway in New Jersey, Percy Jackson slept without dreaming of anything at all.