MELANCHOLY [1]

TWENTY-EIGHT

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twenty-eight
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VIA STEPPED OVER THE THRESHOLD and turned around, only to see Jason collapse.

"Woah, Jason!" Via caught him. "What's wrong?"

"This place..." Jason shook his head. "Sorry... It came rushing back to me."

"So you have been here," Piper said.

"We both have," Thalia said, her expression grim. "This is where my mom took us when Jason was a child. She left him here, told me he was dead. He just disappeared."

"She gave me to the wolves," Jason murmured. "At Hera's insistence. She gave me to Lupa."

"That part I didn't know." Thalia frowned. "Who is Lupa?"

An explosion shook the building. Outside, a blue mushroom cloud blew up, raining snowflakes and hail like a bomb blast made of ice instead of fire.

"Maybe this isn't the time for questions," Leo suggested. "Show us the goddess."

Once inside, Jason seemed to get his bearings. The house was built in a giant U, and Jason led them between the two wings to an outside courtyard with an empty reflecting pool. At the bottom of the pool, just as Jason had described from his dream, two spires of rock and root tendrils had cracked through the foundation.

One of the spires was much bigger—a solid dark mass about twenty feet high, and to Via it looked like a stone body bag. Underneath the mass of fused tendrils he could make out the shape of a head, wide shoulders, a massive chest and arms, like the creature was stuck waist deep in the earth. No, not stuck—rising.

On the opposite end of the pool, the other spire was smaller and more loosely woven. Each tendril was as thick as a telephone pole, with so little space between them that Via doubted she could've gotten her arm through. Still, she could see inside. And in the center of the cage stood Hera.

The last time Via had seen her, she'd been sitting in the throne room of Olympus, proud and regal, as if she'd been the one who'd won the Titan War instead of the demigods.

Now, however, Hera wasn't proud or regal. She looked like a shadowed version of what she used to be. She didn't radiate power or glow, but looked like a regular mortal woman.

Leo dropped down into the cage and said something to Hera. She crossed her arms in annoyance and snapped back.

Via and Thalia stepped next to him, a look of hatred and distaste in each of their faces.

Thalia sighed, "We tried everything we could think of, but maybe my heart wasn't in it. If it was up to me, I'd just leave her in there."

"You're not the only one who feels that way." Via murmured.