ENTRAPPED ₂

96

MADELEINE KNEW IMMEDIATELY THAT IT WAS JASON'S AND THALIA'S DEAD MOTHER. She didn't know how she knew, but she did.

Madeleine had never seen photos of Beryl Grace. Thalia had kept her carefully private, only mentioning her in brief interactions with Madeleine, when Madeleine had mentioned her own dead father. She was, perhaps, one of the only people in the world that Thalia had trusted enough to even speak Beryl's name.

Madeleine knew that she had dropped Jason at the Wolf House from Ethan, who had heard the story during his quest with Jason, Piper, and Leo. She knew, from Thalia, that she had run away very soon after that, and that was how she had found Luke and eventually Annabeth. She knew that Beryl Grace had been a movie star driven too far, an alcoholic, a glamorous woman that caught Zeus's eye not once, but twice. Madeleine knew that Beryl Grace had been nothing like her own father. She knew that she had died in a car accident, drunk, a few years ago, after Thalia had returned from being a tree. She knew that the news had deeply shaken Thalia, despite how much she pretended it hadn't.

And she knew that Jason, who was always lacking a home, worshipped his absent father and his ghostly mother. She knew this, if anything in the world, was the best way to kill him. Madeleine was a strategist, a fighter, a manipulator. She knew how to kill someone.

Beryl Grace wore a flowery green-and-red wraparound dress, like the skirt of a Christmas tree. She wore colored plastic bangles on her wrists. Her hair was an over-teased corona of dyed blonde curls. She smelled of lemons and aerosol. She looked every inch the gorgeous 2000s movie star that Madeleine could imagine stealing Zeus away from Hera.

Her eyes were blue like Jason's and Thalia's, but they gleamed with a fractured light, like the way Chris Rodriguez had looked when Clarisse had pulled him from the Labyrinth. Madeleine prayed to god Dionysus would banish Beryl with the same power he had healed Chris with, but nothing happened. Madeleine knew she had extracted too many favors from the god, but watching Jason go through this was miserable.

"Dearest." Beryl held out her arms.

Jason almost fell. His Mist disguise burned off. His posture straightened. His walking stick turned back into an Imperial gold gladius. He looked so young as he studied his mom, like he was a toddler again, abandoned at the Wolf House. Madeleine ached so badly for him it was a physical, tangible thing. She had thought she collected grief better than most people, but Jason was giving her a run for her money.

"Mom?" Jason managed. He sounded like he was going to cry.

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

"You're―you're not real."

"Of course she is real." Michael Varus smiled coldly, watching Jason. "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."

Madeleine surged toward Varus. She could hear the manipulation in his words, thick and coated, and she knew Annabeth and Piper could hear it too but Jason was much too far away. Before she could attack him, though, Varus thrust up a hand, and an invisible wall slammed Madeleine back. For a moment, her vision blurred, and she was back on Mount Olympus, and Luke―no, Kronos―was making her watch as he hurt Annabeth.

No. No. That wasn't real. That wasn't now. She needed to shake herself out of it. She needed to be strong, for―for Annabeth. No, for Jason. Jason.

She settled her gaze back on the son of Jupiter. He was visibly shaking, his face drained of color, his sword hanging uselessly at his side. The suitors crowded around him, watching, waiting for their entertainment.