Percy Jackson: Night In The Land Beyond The Gods

"Being a disowned half-blood is worse."

Frank's POV

I squeezed Hazel closer to me, practically willing my heat onto her as the temperature seemed to drop by about ten degrees. Annabeth's question loomed dauntingly in the air above us, the words cold and angry. The voice of someone who no longer cared about the consequence.

Percy, who was the focus of her stormy glare, had a smirk on his face. It was small enough that Annabeth couldn't see it from the other side of the room, but the rest of us knew it was there.

"Well, what do you want to know," Percy shrugged casually, but a slight stiffness in his posture suggested that every move was calculated.

Woah... I sound like a child of Bellona or Athena.

By the door, the real daughter of Athena fiercely glared at him, and I felt glad that I wasn't on the receiving end of her stormy gaze. Her fists were clenched by her sides, her teeth gritted as she spoke.

"What I want to know," she started, "Is how you can still control water, and why you then decided to block the door with ice."

She wasn't asking him, she was telling him. And that's probably what made the difference between her looking threatening, or her looking like a simple innocent child of Athena curious about him. She meant business, and gods be cursed if she didn't get her answers.

Percy laughed nervously, "It's a, um, long story."

"We've got time."

"So you should all know Poseidon disowned me by this point, and if you haven't then clearly you haven't been paying attention... but he's the reason my power over the sea doesn't work – or, over time, to the extent it used to." Percy's smirk faded as he looked at each of us.

"But if he disowned you, shouldn't they not work at all?" Leo fidgeted as we all looked at him.

"Well, that should have been the case... had I not been a son of the sea – albeit a disowned one – and had I not have gone to Alaska." Percy paused, "Disownment is actually a longer process than you would care to believe, in as much honestly as I care to give you all, so because I went to Alaska, the land beyond the gods, his disownment of me somehow didn't finish, leaving me as... as who I ended up being today, some not-quite-half-blooded demigod with messed up powers that half the time don't even work."

His voice almost cracked at the end as he sat down by the table, his shoulders slumped.

Beside me, Hazel had a frown on her face and looked distressed. She had always looked up to Percy so much when they'd first met, yet here they both were today and so much had changed since that very first day.

Her tone was sincere as she spoke to him, "What do you mean? Your ice and water control looked fine earlier."

"It might have looked all right, but trust me when I say that you have no idea what I've been through... do you know what it's like to be stuck in a place with people who at first despised your very blood – even though they blood no longer flows through you? Do you know what it's like to be defenceless when the weapon you've always had is no longer yours to control? When you try using it anyway and you get landed with some pathetic curse?"

He was miserable, sounded truly miserable when he finally said it, "You may think that being a half-blood sucks, but no matter how hard it may seem to you, being a disowned half-blood is worse."