The letter arrived at camp in June, addressed to him specifically, in an envelope with no return address but with handwriting he recognized immediately.
He took it to Thalia's Pine. He sat at the base of the tree — the bark warm and living, fully recovered, the shimmer of it steady and deep — and opened it.
It was not long. Luke had never been someone who wrote long things; he was a talker and a fighter, not a correspondent. The letter was six sentences.
It said: I've been thinking about what you said. Both times. In the arena and on the hill. You said the difference between justified anger and burning things down was what you did with it. I have been thinking about whether I've made the wrong distinction. I don't have an answer yet. But I wanted you to know I'm still thinking about it.
There was no signature. There did not need to be one.
He held the letter for a long time. He thought about Luke Castellan — seventeen now, somewhere in the world with Kronos's forces, training people in his grievance as though it were a weapon to be handed to them. He thought about the six sentences: still thinking. Not recanting, not turning, not done with the path he had chosen. But not closed. The door was open a crack.
He wrote back. He wrote carefully, because this letter might be read by people other than Luke and he could not afford to be either provocative or dismissive. He wrote: I'm glad you're thinking about it. That's not nothing — for a lot of people in your position, the thinking stops. It takes courage to keep it going when you've committed to a direction. I'll be here when the thinking leads somewhere. It always does eventually, if you don't give it up. I haven't given you up either.
He sealed the letter. He gave it to Hermes's own communication system — a camp mailbox that served as an offering-point, which Chiron had told him could reach people even when addresses were unknown, if Hermes was inclined to deliver. He trusted that Hermes, who loved Luke in the complicated way he loved all his children, would be inclined.
He sat at the tree for a while after, in the summer evening. He thought: still there. A crack of light under the door. It might be enough. It might not be. He did not know, and not knowing was the correct state to be in, because the alternative was certainty in either direction and certainty here was not available.
He thought: keep the door open. Keep showing up. Keep being someone worth coming back to.
He thought: that is all I can do and it has to be enough and most days it is enough.