a story as endless as the ocean . pjo / allie jackson

1.1 and lead us not into temptation

1.1 I Get a Full-Body Spa Treatment and Luke Gets... Well

I woke up in a rowboat with a makeshift sail stitched of gray uniform fabric. Luke sat next to me, attempting to paddle.

I tried to sit up and immediately felt woozy.

"Rest," he said, reaching out to stop me seconds too late. Like I'd been too late to help my baby brother. Only my one was way worse. "You're going to need it."

"Tyson...?"

He shook his head, looking genuinely upset, reaching over to me and smoothing the hair at the top of my head down. "Angel, I'm sorry. So sorry, baby."

We were silent while the waves tossed us up and down.

"He may have survived," he suggested half-heartedly, though he obviously doubted it. "I mean, fire can't kill him."

I nodded, but I had no reason to feel hopeful. I'd seen that explosion rip through solid iron. If Tyson had been down in the boiler room, there was no way he could've lived.

He'd given his life for us, and all I could think about was how I'd been so irritated by his need for my comfort around the ghosts aboard the CSS Birmingham. And Clarisse, what about her? Had she managed to survive the explosion?

Waves lapped at the boat. Luke showed me some things he had managed to salvage from the wreckage— Hermes's thermos (now empty), a Ziploc bag full of ambrosia, a couple of sailors' shirts, and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. He'd fished me out of the water and found my duffle bag, the only one of the three that had survived. I still had Hermes's bottle of multivitamins, and of course, I had Riptide and Shaker. Plus, my phone and credit card were there, which I was immensely glad for. I had no battery and nowhere to use my card, but at least I wouldn't have to get new ones.

We sailed for hours, barely speaking as I focused on directing the boat. Now that we were in the Sea of Monsters, the water glittered a more brilliant green, like Hydra acid. The wind smelled fresh and salty, but it carried a strange metallic scent, too— as if a thunderstorm were coming. Or something even more dangerous. I knew what direction we needed to go. I knew we were exactly one hundred thirteen nautical miles west by northwest of our destination. But that didn't make me feel any less lost.

No matter which way we turned, the sun seemed to shine straight into my eyes. We took turns sipping from the Dr. Pepper, shading ourselves with the sail as best we could. And we talked about my latest dream of Grover.

Our best guess gave us less than twenty-four hours to find Grover. And that was assuming that my dream was accurate and that Polyphemus didn't change his mind and try to marry Grover earlier.

"Yeah," I said bitterly when Luke pointed that out. "Because you can never trust a Cyclops, right?"

Luke sighed and stared across the water. "I'm sorry, Angel," he admitted. "I was wrong about Tyson, okay? He was a good kid. I wish that I could apologize and tell him that."

I wanted to stay mad at him, but it wasn't easy. We'd been through so much together. He'd saved my life more times than I could count. It was stupid of me to resent him, especially when it was really myself that I was upset with.

I looked down at our measly possessions— the empty wind thermos, the bottle of multivitamins, a useless phone and credit card. I thought about Tyson's innocent sweetness. He had trusted me, and I had let him down when he needed me most. Why did the people I love always get killed? First my mother, then my brother.

Maybe the Fates had cursed me for some reason. Maybe I had been reborn, but I was such an awful person in my first life, the Fields of Punishment weren't enough suffering, so they had given me a life of tragedy to ensure I repented. Well, if that was the case, it had worked out perfectly.