How Do You Say Gods- Last Olympian

24: BLACKJACK GETS JACKED

Jason finally had to be prodded into continuing rather than rereading all of the last one another six times by Nico actually insistently poking him and reminding, "man, do you ever want to move on with your own life?"

"Right, yeah," Jason nodded, but nobody was fooled it was a reluctant hand that finally turned the new page. He was going to go back. He was going to keep that passage safely tucked in his head where nobody could take it again. He didn't know what it meant to him yet, but he knew it was important.

"Let the guy nerd out, what's there even left to go over," Alex shrugged, slouching in her seat and fiddling with the ends of her hair.

Magnus deliberately signed the name Rachel to her, a pretty big chunk of Percy's life that may or may not be insane in her adulthood.

Alex winced and nodded in apology for temporarily forgetting about the lively art girl in the mix of all that. She hoped Percy went up to Hades and demanded with another oath he get his shit together and fix that curse before it ruined any more lives. He probably might have without incinerating Percy on the spot after all the nice things said about his son if they were lucky.

"Blackjack Gets Jacked?" That was a pretty big thing to catch Jason on the right track.

"By who!" Percy flared up immediately. "No one takes my pegasus!"

Annabeth soothed him back gently into his seat with the casual off comment that Blackjack was safe wherever he was, this wasn't a repeat of that cruise ship incident.

Nobody had any wisecracks for that, they liked the winged horse.

... on our way out, I spotted Hermes in a side courtyard of the palace.

"This, does not have the potential to end well," Magnus said with an uneasy frown at Percy, then the book. Nice guy he was, his notorious past of pissing off the gods, and his last major interaction with this god was him flip-flopping between wanting to kill Annabeth and then needing a hug...now Percy had just been witness to his beloved son's death that he'd apparently known was coming. Couple all that in with Percy not being the most stellar guy for any emotional situation, and Magnus was already wondering again how this guy was alive when Kronos being gone should have finally eradicated that.

It hadn't even been one chapter!

..."You sure?" Then she studied my face. "Yeah, you're sure."

Jason really wanted to take those two and lock them in a room and study the outcome. It would probably be his death, but it might be worth it. They were just the most fascinating combination of each other's confidence and flaws.

Hermes didn't seem to notice me approach.

"Can you sneak up on a god?" Alex asked with way to much interest.

"Yes," Thalia sighed with the kind of confidence of one who knew a few to many stories about what happened to people who did. Alex's grin did not drop one bit, of course.

...I will never get over the power of the Mist, and mortal ignorance."

"There's a compliment somewhere in there about the resilience of our race," Jason grinned.

"Half our race," Alex muttered, though it was hard some days to define which half annoyed her more, the human part or the godly part.

... "It was the right choice." Hermes looked at me curiously, then returned to the Iris-message.

"You know, it's not a great sign when a god, this god in particular, has better focus than you Percy," Thalia chuckled.

"Huh?" He asked without interest, still back wondering if Hermes had called him ignorant. Or mist. Either way, it was probably insulting, all for not wanting to be immortal.