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Dear Hestia's Lullaby

I make it to the open throne room door and I lean on them taking deep breaths, I look back over making sure he can't see me. He looks sad but like it was inevitable, he also looks relieved. My hands go to the place where my heart is. I feel like screaming in pain.

Another dagger stabs my torn apart heart. Tears are running down my face.

I look around the throne room it's dark except for the hearth. The world around me is turning blurry.

The hearth.

Hestia.

I stumble over there, constantly tripping over my feet and when I'm half a meter away from the hearth I collapse. My head is ringing. I can feel tears falling down my cheeks. Gentle hands take my face in their hands and point my chin up.

I see a thirty-year-old Hestia, looking at me with concern and love. She heard the conversation, the a logical part of my head whispers.

Stop crying Perci. You have to be strong. For camp. For the gods. For your friends. For the world. I yell at myself internally.

They can't see you break.

Hestia sees me slowly stop sobbing. She sees me put up my walls hiding the shattered soul. When I'm almost done collecting myself she speaks.

"Perci," she says softly, "It's okay to cry, you don't have to be strong right now." She brings me into a hug, my forehead on her shoulder. "You can let it all out, I won't judge, I'm right here, I won't leave."

At those words, my walls fall.

And I sob.

I weep.

Heart-wrenching sobs.

I weep for all those lost.

For Silena

For Beckendorf

For Luke

For Leo, the idiot who sacrificed himself.

For little Amy a child of Hecate, torn apart by a hellhound.

For Gabriel son of Ares, head chopped off.

For Zara daughter of Aphrodite, who saved a group of young demigods from a drakon.

For everyone. I remember all their names. Everyone I couldn't save.

My heart feels like it's been stabbed.

I can't get enough oxygen.

My wailing echoes throughout the throne room.

Hestia just holds my while a weep. And in that moment I see my mother. My sweet lovely mom. I hug Hestia closer, burying my head into her shoulder. My sweet lovely mother, who I wasn't strong enough to save, yet another name on my long list, one of the first.

She's there keeping me from taking Riptide and stabbing it through my chest.

My heart wrenches. I hold onto Hestia like me life depends on it.

The sobs punched through, ripping through my body, my heart beating.

I screamed in pain.

The pain of my broken heart. It feels like my heart is being pulled out of my chest. Everything around me was null and void. My sobs and screams of pain so loud the throne room was vibrating. It was the only thing you could hear

My heart stretched and pulled, ripping itself apart than stitching itself together.

Sobs heaved out of my mouth my lungs. And the sound only increased.

And Hestia, dear Hestia only rocks me and continues to sing the lullaby. Quiet tears falling down her face. So sad that the heroine of Olympus had so little hope and was so so broken.

And slowly, so so slowly my sobs quiet down and I fall asleep on Hestia's shoulder, To her sweet, sweet lullaby.