𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐃 𝐑𝐔𝐒𝐇 [Jason Grace]

78

𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐡𝐞 𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐡𝐞𝐫. He recognized her dress— a flowery green-and-red wraparound, like the skirt of a Christmas tree. He recognized the colorful plastic bangles on her wrists that had dug into his back when she hugged him goodbye at the Wolf House. He recognized her hair, an over-teased corona of dyed blonde curls and her scent of lemons and aerosol.

Her eyes were blue like Jason's, but they gleamed with fractured light, like she'd just come out of a bunker after a nuclear war— hungrily searching for familiar details in a changed world.

"Dearest." She held out her arms.

Jason's vision tunneled. The ghosts and ghouls no longer mattered.

His Mist disguise burned off. His posture straightened. His joints stopped aching. His walking stick turned back into an Imperial gold gladius.

The burning sensation didn't stop. He felt as if layers of his life were being seared away, his months at Camp Half-Blood, his years at Camp Jupiter, his training with Lupa the wolf goddess. He was a scared and vulnerable two-year-old again. Even the scar on his lip, from when he'd tried to eat a stapler as a toddler, stung like a fresh wound.

"Mom?" he managed.

"Yes, dearest." Her image flickered. "Come, embrace me."

"You're— you're not real."

"Of course she is real." Michael Varus's voice sounded far away. "Did you think Gaea would let such an important spirit languish in the Underworld? She is your mother, Beryl Grace, star of television, sweetheart to the king of Olympus, who rejected her not once but twice, in both his Greek and Roman aspects. She deserves justice as much as any of us."

Jason's heart felt wobbly. The suitors crowded around him, watching.

I'm their entertainment, Jason realized. The ghosts probably found this even more amusing than two beggars fighting to the death.

Even Piper's voice couldn't cut through the buzzing in his head. Her words felt like jumbled garbage. Jason thought he heard his name, but he wasn't sure.

"Jason," Said a different voice. Deeper and more commanding, as if Dante wouldn't accept Jason not looking at him. So he did.

Dante's disguise had burned off too. His hair was back to its normal dark waves, his eyes, brown and blue— bore into Jason's.

He stood twenty feet away, his smile was gone. His gaze was fierce and commanding— impossible to ignore.

"That isn't your mother." Piper said as soon as Jason looked away from the ghost of his mother. "Her voice is working some kind of magic on you— like charmspeak, but more dangerous. Can't you sense it?"

"She's right." Annabeth climbed onto the nearest table. She kicked aside a platter, startling a dozen suitors. "Jason, that's only a remnant of your mother, like an ara, maybe, or—"

"A remnant!" His mother's ghost sobbed. "Yes, look what I have been reduced to. It's Jupiter's fault. He abandoned us. He wouldn't help me! I didn't want to leave you in Sonoma, my dear, but Juno and Jupiter gave me no choice. They wouldn't allow us to stay together. Why fight for them now? Join these suitors. Lead them. We can be a family again!"

Jason felt hundreds of eyes on him.

This has been the story of my life, he thought bitterly. Everyone had always watched him, expecting him to lead the way. From the moment he'd arrived at Camp Jupiter, the Roman demigods had treated him like a prince in waiting. Despite his attempts to alter his destiny— joining the worst cohort, trying to change the camp traditions, taking the least glamorous missions and befriending the least popular kids— he had been made praetor anyway. As a son of Jupiter, his future had been assured.