This Dark Night ― Percy Jackson & Annabeth Chase¹

epilogue

JUNE 7, 1999

IN A SMALL TOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE COUNTRY, where honeysuckle grows without care and ivy covers the brick of every house it can find, a goddess walks.

She has never been here, nor has she even meant to come. It's a quaint little place that anyone else, god or mortal, would pass through without a second thought. But there is something here that draws her in, like a bee to a flower.

Or, rather, like a mouse into the den of a serpent.

It's a warm summer here—not too humid or too dry. Nearly every store on this downtown street has some sort of greenery or floral pieces decorating the fronts. Each one she passes blooms in an instant, brighter and taller in the presence of the goddess who breathes life into them.

The people she passes offer her smiles free of charge, and the goddess offers them gifts in return. The teenage girl who flashes her dimples will always know her worth; toddler who waves at her will never be afraid of the dark; the elderly couple who give near-identical smiles will die years from now within hours of each other, never having to live too long without their other half.

This small town is the sort of place families move to and plant roots that lasts generations; a place where everyone knows each other's name, where they work, what they like to order at the diner near the outskirts of town. The goddess has no roots, nor does she intend to plant any, but she thinks this would be as good a place as any to dig in.

She is no stranger to fate, so when she feels the strange urge to stop, she does so without question—even if the urge feels unfamiliar, murky, maybe dangerous.

She is no stranger to fate, but she is a stranger to the evil that stirs her in this moment.

Her feet stop in front of a flower shop, with glass for front walls and a hand-painted sign: Judy's Floral Arrangements. She thinks she hears a whisper, too faint for her to catch the words. She imagines it's the Fates, urging her forward, toward something new.

The goddess walks through the door.

It isn't busy inside. There are only four others in the shop—an older woman who must have been an employee or perhaps Judy herself, judging by her apron and the arrangement she was working on; a middle-aged woman browsing through some kind of catalogue with a toddler perched on her hip, half-asleep with his face buried against his mother's shoulder; and a man who must have been in his mid-twenties, with a pair of tortoise-shell glasses that look just a bit too big for his face.

There's another whisper, but this time, she understands it: Go to him.

She does.

She walks alongside a wall of carnations, touching a few of the more sickly-looking buds and watching them liven up under her fingertips. She strides slowly to the display the man is standing in front of. He looks confused, his glasses having slipped down his nose. She thinks he's handsome, his aura a strange but inviting mixture of light and dark—like he could wield a sword, but only in defense of another.

He reminds her of someone.

He's studying a readymade bouquet of red tulips, and the goddess can't help herself.

"Declaring your love for someone?" she asks.

The man jumps, clearly startled, though the goddess's voice is as gentle as a spring breeze. "Oh, um—no, no," he says, laughing nervously. "Definitely not. Why?"