that summer |percabeth au| ✔︎

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - Catch The Light

"Annabeth!" Candy flung open my bedroom door, tears in her eyes, and I rushed back to the present. Three in the morning, Amatheia Cove. Disjointed, disintegrated. "Were you...I thought I heard...singing?"

The sound of my voice—my old voice, the old me, rich and buttery and beautiful enough to give anyone chills—floated in the air, but my lips were closed. The laptop sat on my bed next to the mermaid dress, the video of my final performance looping.

Whoever shot this version had put it on YouTube. It had more than a million views, hundreds of thousands of likes.

"Okay, baby. Okay." Candy sat on the bed next to me, gathering me in her arms. "Don't try to avoid this pain. You've gotta feel it."

I thought about the sharp rocks at Thor's Well, spilling my blood into the mouth of the sea.

I wondered if Candy really believed that pain was necessary. Everything in me hurt so much, I didn't even know what was real. Did it hurt now? Or was it just a memory of hurt?

Soon after I'd first been told I'd never speak again, never sing, likely never utter a sound greater than a hoarse whisper, I decided I didn't believe them. I was so certain I'd beat the odds, find a way to heal through sheer will alone. I spent my mornings with private tutors, finishing school from home. In the afternoons, I listened to my favorite music for hours, drank hot tea and honey, rested, followed the doctors' orders precisely.

One month. That's how long it took before I really freaked out. I was so angry, so filled with rage. But when my body tried to scream, I felt only pain. Emptiness. A raw, tearing ache, again and again and again.

I was still angry when I'd come to the Cove, still filled with confusion and resentment and fear and grief. I'd feel the frustration surge up in all the little things, like finding a funny video online and wanting to call Katie over to check it out, only I'd have to get up and go look for her, physically touch her to get her attention. Things like knocking on the table to ask someone to pass the salt. Repeating my words, again and again, while people stared at my lips, trying to make sense of them, more often than not ending the conversation because it was easier than deciphering.

But those were the easy targets, the healthy ones. I could channel the frustration and anger there, let it simmer, watch it bubble over in my bed at night as I clutched my pillows and begged the tears to come.

They never did. But it was better than thinking about the real damage. The fact that losing my voice meant losing my future. My dreams. My plan A, plan B, all the way to plan Z. For me there was never anything but singing, never anything but traveling the stages of the world, my beautiful sister at my side.

It'd been more than four months since I lost my voice. All things considered, I thought I was doing okay. Maybe Grams didn't think so. Or Fred, or my older sisters, or Grams' nosey neighbors, or the island therapists everyone had wanted me to see.

But these last few weeks at the Cove? The time I've spent with Percy on the Vega, fixing up that old boat? Getting to know him and James, Katie, Artemis, Candy?

I'd almost thought it was possible to be happy again. Not now, but in the someday-maybe haze of tomorrow.

Even without a voice.

Grams' package undid all of that.

After Artemis found the dress, I'd made up some excuse, some sudden headache and exhaustion, ushering them out with extra chocolate. Desperate for an explanation, I'd opened the letter.

There was a video message from my sister, a clip she'd recorded onto a thumb drive, slipped inside the envelope. I could only watch a few seconds of it before turning it off, my sister teary-eyed and concerned, wanting to tell me some big important news that I just didn't want to hear.