You'll Learn to Love Me

Chapter 71: Jason Gets Stabbed (Woo, Matching Stab Wounds!)

"Dearest." the woman held out her arms.

Jason's Mist disguise burned off. His posture straightened. His walking stick turned back into an Imperial gold gladius. Though there was something new in Jason's eyes. Fear.

"Mom?" he managed. Laylana dropped the jug on the table, pulling herself away from the grasp of any of the ghouls that tried to get ahold of her.

"Yes, dearest." The woman's image flickered. "Come, embrace me."

"You're – you're not real."

"Of course she is real." Michael Varus said. "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 looked dazed until Piper spoke up. "Jason, look at me." She stood twenty feet away, holding her ceramic amphora. Her smile was gone. "That isn't your 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 the arai, 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, don't trust her." Laylana warned.

"You left me," Jason told his mother. "That wasn't Jupiter or Juno. That was you."

The woman stepped forward. The worry lines around her eyes, the pained tightness in her mouth reminded her of Thalia. 

"Dearest, I told you I would come back. Those were my last words to you. Don't you remember?"

Laylana was worried now. Jason looked more and more pained as it went completely silent around him. Across the table from where Jason was, Antinous raised his goblet. "So pleased to meet you, son of Jupiter. Listen to your mother. You have many grievances against the gods. Why not join us? I gather these three serving girls are your friends? We will spare them. Well, except for that one, the daughter of Erebus of course. You wish to have your mother remain in the world? We can do that. You wish to be a king –"

"No." Jason said, his voice shaky. "No, I don't belong with you."

Michael Varus regarded him with cold eyes. "Are you so sure, my fellow praetor? Even if you defeat the giants and Gaia, would you return home like Odysseus did? Where is your home now? With the Greeks? With the Romans? No one will accept you. And, if you get back, who's to say you won't find ruins like this?"

Jason scanned the palace courtyard before coming back to Michael Varus. "You were a legion officer," he told Varus. "A leader of Rome."

"So were you," Varus said. "Loyalties change."

"You think I belong with this crowd?" Jason asked. "A bunch of dead losers waiting for a free handout from Gaea, whining that the world owes them something?"

Around the courtyard, ghosts and ghouls rose to their feet and drew weapons.

"Beware!" Piper yelled at the crowd. "Every man in this palace is your enemy. Each one will stab you in the back at the first chance!"

The crowd believed her immediately. They looked sideways at one another, hands clenching the hilts of their swords. Laylana felt a sense of pride looking at how far Piper had come since she met her in December.