❝Stay safe, Cap,❞ Percy whispered to his best friend. ❝I'll . . . see you at the end of the line one day.❞
In which a relationship evolves between a handsome god and a distraught girl, shortly after the death of her twin brother.
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This book follo...
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THE very next morning Lilly was already up, and on deck when a cruise ship passed by the Argo II. The ship blared their horn as if to say hello, then it blew again. Several tourists stood on the balconies waving and snapping pictures. Lilly wondered what their own ship appeared to be to the mortals.
Within seconds, her friends were rushing to the deck hastily dressed except Coach, since he was pulling the night shift.
Gleeson plugged his ears as well as the daughter of Hermes. Having better hearing than others didn't seem so pleasing to her anymore. "Do they have to be so loud?"
"They're just saying hi," Frank said to the satyr.
"WHAT?" Gleeson yelled back.
The ship passed them, heading farther out to sea, but the tourists kept waving as they went.
"Bye!" Leo called, raising a smoking hand.
"Can I man the ballista?" Gleeson asked.
"No," Valdez said through a forced smile.
Lilly gazed at her drowsy friends, asking herself how they woke up so late? Her thoughts soon came to an end when they saw a mountain far off in the distance. On one side, limestone cliffs were dropping into the sea. On the other side of the mountain, it was covered in plentiful amounts of vegetation.
"The Rock of Gibraltar," Annabeth said in awe. "At the tip of Spain. And over there—" She pointed south, to a more distant stretch of red hills. "That must be Africa. We're at the mouth of the Mediterranean."
Gazing at the Mediterranean, she began to think of her ancestors that used to travel this sea. But there was something terrifying of this sea— there were monsters and gods scattered throughout Europe she's never faced. The monsters would be more difficult to defeat. Would she ever return aliveto see her half-brothers? She hoped so . . . She wanted to have a chance to say goodbye.
"What now?" Lilly asked the group of teenagers. "Do we just sail in?"
"Why not?" Leo said. "It's a big shipping channel. Boats go in and out all the time."
Annabeth gazed at the Rock of Gibraltar. "In the old days," Annabeth said, "they called this area the Pillars of Hercules. The Rock was supposed to be one pillar. The other was one of the African mountains. Nobody is sure which one."
"Hercules, huh?" Percy frowned. "That guy was like the Starbucks of Ancient Greece. Everywhere you turn— there he is."
