~ { Shadow and Beauty } ~

Hazel And Kiara Officially Hate Everyone

{Percy}

Percy was afraid he'd said too much. Maybe he'd scared her with his big dreams of the future. She was usually the one with the plans. Percy cursed himself silently.

   As long as he'd known Annabeth, he still felt like he understood so little about her. Even after they'd been dating several months, their relationship had always felt new and delicate, like a glass sculpture. He was terrified of doing something wrong and breaking it.

   "I'm sorry," he said. "I just... I had to think of that to keep going. To give me hope. Forget I mentioned—"

   "No!" she said. "No, Percy. Gods, that's so sweet. It's just... we may have burned that bridge. If we can't repair things with the Romans—well, the two sets of demigods have never gotten along. That's why the gods kept us separate. I don't know if we could ever belong there."

   Percy didn't want to argue, but he couldn't let go of the hope. It felt important—not just for Annabeth and him, but for all the other demigods. It had to be possible to belong in two different worlds at once. After all, that's what being a demigod was all about—not quite belonging in the mortal world or on Mount Olympus, but trying to make peace with both sides of their nature.

   Unfortunately, that got him thinking about the gods, the war they were facing, and his dream about the twins Ephialtes and Otis.

   "I was having a nightmare when you woke me up," he admitted. He told Annabeth what he'd seen.

   Even the most troubling parts didn't seem to surprise her. She shook her head sadly when he described Nico's imprisonment in the bronze jar. She got an angry glint in her eyes when he told her about the giants planning some sort of Rome-destroying extravaganza that would include their painful deaths as the opening event.

   "Nico is the bait," she murmured. "Gaea's forces must have captured him somehow. But we don't know exactly where they're holding him."

   "Somewhere in Rome," Percy said. "Somewhere underground. They made it sound like Nico still had a few days to live, but I don't see how he could hold out so long with no oxygen."

   "Five more days, according to Nemesis," Annabeth said. "The Kalends of July. At least the deadline makes sense now."

   "What's a Kalends?"

   Annabeth smirked, like she was pleased they were back in their old familiar pattern—Percy being ignorant, she herself explaining stuff. "It's just the Roman term for the first of the month. That's where we get the word calendar. But how can Nico survive that long? We should talk to Hazel and Kiara."

   "Now?"

   She hesitated. "No. It can wait until morning. I don't want to hit them with this news in the middle of the night."

   "The giants mentioned a statue," Percy recalled. "And something about a talented friend who was guarding it. Whoever this friend was, she scared Otis. Anyone who can scare a giant..."

   Annabeth gazed down at a highway snaking through dark hills. "Percy, have you seen Poseidon lately? Or had any kind of sign from him?"

   He shook his head. "Not since... Wow. I guess I haven't thought about it. Not since the end of the Titan War. I saw him at Camp Half-Blood, but that was last August." A sense of dread settled over him. "Why? Have you seen Athena?"

   She didn't meet his eyes. "A few weeks ago," she admitted. "It... it wasn't good. She didn't seem like herself. Maybe it's the Greek/Roman schizophrenia that Nemesis described. I'm not sure. She said some hurtful things. She said I had failed her."