Of Thorns and Ignorance

The world kept going.
But some hearts didn't.

Three years after Lou Dela Cruz and Piper McLean's deaths, Percy Jackson and Eunice Sanchez are still learning how to live inside their grief.

Percy spends his days teaching at Camp Half-Blood - pretending the laughter of new campers doesn't sound like hers. Eunice hides in lecture halls and library corners, studying myths about gods who never learned how to let go. They've both moved on, or at least they tell themselves they have.

Until the dead stop staying dead.

Somewhere beyond the mortal world, Lou and Piper wake in the afterlife, caught between divine mercy and cosmic punishment. When Aphrodite intervenes, the two are sent on a desperate mission to beg Zeus for a second chance, a bargain that shouldn't exist, a love story that refuses to end.

They make it back.
But not the same.

New bodies. New faces. Old souls.
And a rule from the gods themselves: they can watch, but never interfere.

Now Percy and Eunice are haunted by strangers who feel too familiar, and Lou and Piper are forced to see what love looks like when it's had to survive without them.

Because some miracles aren't meant to heal, they're meant to hurt.
Because coming back to life doesn't mean getting it back.
Because the gods always take what they return.