𝐇𝐞𝐫 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐨 • 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐲 𝐉𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬𝐨𝐧 ²

𝐗

AFTER A COUPLE HOURS of off and on sleeping, I found myself creeping into Percy's room.

I snuck closer to his bed, admiring the sleeping boy.

Carefully, I muttered, smiling down at him. "Percy."

"Wh—what's going on?" he asked. "Are we there?"

"No," I said, my voice low. "It's the middle of the night."

"You mean... You sneaked into my cabin?"

I rolled my eyes at him. "You turn seventeen in two months, Perce. You can't seriously be worried about getting into trouble with Coach Hedge."

"Uh, have you seen his baseball bat?"

"Besides, Fish Face, I just thought we could take a walk. We haven't had much time to be together alone. I want to show you something—my favorite place aboard the ship."

"Can I, you know, brush my teeth first?"

"You'd better," I said with a small laugh. "Because I'm not kissing you until you do. And brush your hair while you're at it."

For a trireme, the ship was huge, but it still felt cozy to me—like my dorm building back at the military school, or any of the other boarding schools I'd gotten kicked out of. Percy and I crept downstairs to the second deck,

I led him past the engine room, which looked like a very dangerous, mechanized jungle gym, with pipes and pistons and tubes jutting from a central bronze sphere. Cables resembling giant metal noodles snaked across the floor and ran up the walls.

"How does that thing even work?" Percy asked.

"No idea," I said. "And I'm the only one besides Leo and Annabeth who can operate it."

"That's reassuring."

"It should be fine. It's only threatened to blow up once."

"You're kidding, I hope."

I smiled. "Come on."

We worked our way past the supply rooms and the armory. Toward the stern of the ship, we reached a set of wooden double doors that opened into a large stable. The room smelled of fresh hay and wool blankets. Lining the left wall were three empty horse stalls like the ones they used for pegasi back at camp. The right wall had two empty cages big enough for large zoo animals.

In the center of the floor was a twenty-foot-square see-through panel. Far below, the night landscape whisked by—miles of dark countryside crisscrossed with illuminated highways like the strands of a web.

"A glass-bottomed boat?" Percy asked.

I grabbed a blanket from the nearest stable gate and spread it across part of the glass floor. "Sit with me."

We relaxed on the blanket as if we were having a picnic, and watched the world go by below.

"Leo built the stables so pegasi could come and go easily," I said. "Only he didn't realize that pegasi prefer to roam free, so the stables are always empty."

"What do you mean, come and go easily?" he asked. "Wouldn't a pegasus have to make it down two flights of stairs?"

I rapped my knuckles on the glass. "These are bay doors, like on a bomber."

Percy gulped. "You mean we're sitting on doors? What if they opened?"

"I suppose we'd fall to our deaths. But they won't open. Most likely. But that's what I'm here for."

"Great."

I laughed. "I've missed this."

"You and I? Or scaring me?" He mused.

"You. You and me. I've missed just us." I muttered, fiddling with my camp necklace. The beads were joined by a ring, which held poison, and a red coral pendant Percy had given me when we had started dating

"I've missed us too." He murmured back, his hand on my cheek.

I leaned over and kissed him: a good, proper kiss without anyone watching—no Romans anywhere, no screaming satyr chaperones.

"Nova," Percy said hesitantly, "in New Rome, demigods can live their whole lives in peace."

My heart turned guarded. "Percy, you belong at Camp HalfBlood. That other life—"

"I know," Percy said. "But while I was there, I saw so many demigods living without fear: kids going to college, couples getting married and raising families. There's nothing like that at Camp Half-Blood. I kept thinking about you and me... and maybe someday when this war with the giants is over..."

I was definitely blushing but I was hoping he couldn't tell. "Oh."

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

"No!" I said, quickly, grabbing his hands. "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.

"I was having a nightmare when you woke me up," he admitted."

He told me what he'd seen.

"Nico is the bait," I murmured. "But we don't know exactly where they're holding him."

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

"They have those pomegranate seeds. They're from Persephone. They allow you to go into a coma-like state, where you require less oxygen. She gave them to the three of us last time we visited." I bit my lip, hoping to change the subject.

Percy seemed to pick up on that. "How are they? Hades and Persephone?"

I laughed softly and he grinned at me, his eyes glittering. "They're good. Better now that we've visited. Dinner the last night we were there was so weird though."

"Yeah?" He asked, playing with my curls and I nodded my head.

"Yeah, so we were eating dinner right?"

"Mhm." He didn't seem to be wanting to focus on the story rather focus on my eyes and lips.

"It was all nice until Persephone somehow brung up their sex life."

"Eww." Percy wrinkled his nose and I laughed.

"She told Dad that their sex life was boring so to go have sex with a mortal. It was so weird. So we possibly might be getting a new sibling." I shrugged.

I managed a faint smile. "Some romantic evening, huh? No more bad things until the morning." I kissed him again. "We'll figure everything out. I've got you back. For now, that's all that matters."

"Right," Percy said. "No more talk about Gaea rising, Nico and Caelan being held hostage, the world ending, the giants—"

"Shut up, Fish Face," I ordered. "Just hold me for a while."

We sat together cuddling, enjoying each other's warmth. Before I knew it, the drone of the ship's engine, the dim light, and the comfortable feeling of being with Percy made my eyes heavy, and I drifted to sleep.

When I woke, daylight was coming through the glass floor, and a boy's voice said, "Oh...You are in so much trouble."