Sunburn- phoebus apollo

--v. ill be alright its just a thousand cuts

RHEA JACKSON

Rhea could feel it before she saw it. 

She and the others had gathered in a small park at the edge of the mountain, and they were clustered at the guardrail, looking down at Manhattan. At first glance, nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary—but then Annabeth said what they were all thinking.

"I don't... hear anything."

And that was the problem, wasn't it?

Even from this height, they should have been able to hear the noise of the city—millions of people bustling around, thousands of cars and machines—the hum of a huge metropolis. New York was never silent.

But now it was.

"What did they do?" Percy's voice was tight and angry. "What did they do to my city?"

Rhea touched Michael's shoulder, and he stepped back to allow her a look through the binoculars.

It was just what she was afraid of.

In the streets below, traffic had come to a complete standstill. Pedestrians were lying on sidewalks or curled up in doorways, and nobody was moving.

Ice lined the bottom of her stomach. So her theory had been right.

It was time.

"Are they dead?" Silena asked in astonishment.

"No," Rhea said grimly, turning back to the others. A line of prophecy rang through her ears. This was always meant to happen. It'd been fated. "Morpheus has put the entire island of Manhattan to sleep. The invasion has started."

A chill lined her bones.

There were bad omens everywhere.

****

Whenever things broke, Rhea didn't cry. Instead, she'd take out a broom and clean up the glass. That was how she had to live her life, because dwelling on the destruction did nothing other than kill her inside—and Rhea didn't have a lot left inside of her to kill.

There had been many times in her life that Rhea had tried not to think on the war to come—but it was impossible, because she could feel the danger and the carnage slither through her brain, and she could see Death, clawing its hands out of the concrete and waiting to dig its nails through someone's ankles.

Because here was how Fate was written: in bloody footprints, in tattered armor, in dead things, in loose teeth. Ethan Nakamura was doomed and Luke Castellan would die and that was how the story would go. Forever and ever. The end. This was not a fairytale, and no children would be tucked into bed tonight to have good dreams.

And Rhea was used to it, but it still hurt to watch. She was unfortunate enough to have to see it happen twice, after all, and wasn't once already enough?

But she knew this better than anyone: human lives were not worth the same—Hermes's beloved son would die because the Fates said so, her friends would live because Rhea said so, and Percy Jackson would survive because the Great Prophecy said so. There was always something above them dictating their realities—some faceless master in control—and Rhea could see the puppet strings. She couldn't always secure them, but she could always see them cut.

Sometimes, it made her feel like a murderer.

But weren't they all? Percy and Rhea Jackson were both an Achilles tearing through a warzone, Luke Castellan was a monster leading hundreds of demigods to their deaths. There was no room for morality in a war, and Rhea would not spend her time hoping for any.