Chapter Text
Annabeth oh-so-helpfully hands him the solution of how to get her to camp, the very next Sunday.
Sort of.
They’re arguing about her health and getting her help, again. And Percy is frustrated. Again. He’s tired of getting nowhere, he doesn’t want to go through the motions again, and he’s sick of how she never seems to consider his side of things anymore. They’ve been at it for nearly two hours today alone, aggregate. It’s been more than twenty minutes in this latest go-round, and they’re both pissed off.
“Right,” he snaps in his latest response to her. “Because there’s no point in listening to me ever, I guess.”
She clenches her fists and looks him in the eye. Her voice has never been colder, despite how loud her shouting is. “Well it’s not like you’ve ever had anything valuable to add!”
Percy rears back, mouth open. A moment later, horror floods her expression and she slaps a hand over her mouth.
In the back of his head, Percy recalls being in Mount St. Helens. How the lava had only been warm at first, before the heat had set in. She’s said hurtful things in the past week or so. Some about the gods, like with Dad. Some about people they know, like how she drove Thalia away. A handful of the hurtful things she’s said have been about him. He’s been trying not to take them personally, but every dam has a breaking point.
Cold washes over him, eyes burning. He distantly hears the pipes creak in the walls in time with how his chest constricts, even as he fights to keep his shoulders straight and chin up.
Nothing of value to add? Is that really what she thinks of him? Forcing air back into his collapsed lungs brings so little relief the air might as well not have passed his lips. He scratches his nails against his palm, trying to focus on the tension of tightly curled fingers instead of the tears threatening themselves. It barely works.
Grinding back into motion takes longer than he likes. “Why do-” He swallows tightly, grateful for the moment of pain. He hopes it’ll make this feel more real. Or maybe less real. Maybe waking up in Piper’s old bed would be better. “How long have you thought that about me?”
She hasn’t moved an inch; he’s not even sure she’s breathing, with her stillness. He tries again. He needs to know if she meant it. He’s been trying to brush it off for the sake of her health; but he can’t, with this. He needs to hear her say she didn’t mean this one.
“You really believe I don’t add anything valuable to our relationship?” he asks again. His voice cracks, and with it a fraction of his resolve not to cry. He ducks his head, lightly covering his eyes with one hand, the other gripping his hip.
“No, no, no,” Annabeth murmurs. Then, louder, “I was angry!” She walks closer, feet shuffling to and fro on the sliver of floor he can see between his fingers. “I was reaching for something that would hurt, Percy, that’s all!”
He laughs. It’s a reflexive thing he has no control over. He doesn’t believe she didn’t mean it. And she didn’t apologize. Again.
She’s still speaking, and he couldn’t care less. She slapped him, and she’d meant it to hurt. And here they are again days later, after she’d admitted she shouldn’t have done it. Here she is, openly admitting she was trying to hurt him.
“I can’t do this,” he says to himself. He doesn’t let her get the sob shivering in him. Doesn’t let her win by seeing tears fall. Words rise with little conscious choice, painfully honest. “I can’t handle this. I don’t know how. I’m done.”
He still doesn’t listen, as she speaks more fervently. He takes another moment to breathe, trying to find any peace in the action, any strength to draw on. She touches his arm. The longer this drags out, the more painful it’ll be. So he braces; pushes the emotions down into some back corner to bother him later.
He’d promised himself. She had one last chance, he’d told himself.
He’s not as composed as he wishes, when he lowers his hand. Annabeth is a couple shades paler, one hand latched painfully in her scalp, shivering just badly as he is.
“I love you,” he says plaintive. If nothing else, he can tell himself he got to say it one last time. “But I can’t do this anymore. I know you’re sick, but Annabeth-” He takes a last hesitation. “I think it’s best if… I’m breaking up with you.”
He might as well have punched her in the diaphragm, for how she collapses in on herself. The rest of the color drains from her face, and her expression crumples into equal parts misery and denial. She starts shaking her head insistently, and he nods.
“You’re breaking up with me?” She asks, strained. Her tears quickly start and thicken. She chews on her lips in the way he knows means she’s biting down words.
“Annabeth,” he pleads tiredly. “I’ve been trying not to abandon you for weeks now! I’ve been trying to fix things, see your side of it and-” he cuts himself off as she breaks down fully. It starts as a bow at the waist, the hand not in her hair clutching at her chest. Then in and down, sobs starting quiet and getting progressively louder. She’s repeating “No,” over and again, through and between cries.
He takes a couple steps back, looking away from where she’s kneeling. Nothing valuable to add. He doesn’t believe she was lying. None of the horrible things she’s said have come from nothing. Drawn from opinions years outdated perhaps, or misconceptions she’s had about people. But never completely fabricated.
Which means she’s thought Percy is worthless at least once.
His sightless examination of the ceiling is broken by hands pulling on the arm on his hip. She uses her grip on him to stand again, hiccupping.
“Percy please,” she begs. “Please. No. I can’t lose you too! Not you too!”
“Annabeth. I can’t do this anymore.”
“I can!” She says desperately. “Just ask! I’ll do anything!”
Anything? How helpful.
Well, even if he’s not done anything else of value, at least he can use this. “Go get help at camp.” She hesitates, so he pulls away from her grasp. “You just said ‘anything,’” he says flatly.
He can’t do it.
He stares at the tears on her face, how her hands shake where they reach for him, rolls the painful aftertaste of his words around in his mouth. And he can’t hold his ground. Not completely.
He loves her.
Percy has loved Annabeth for a long, long time, and it doesn’t back off and let him think clearly now. Of course it doesn’t – love is never rational.
“You go to camp, and you get help,” he says a bit too shaky, “and I’ll… I’ll come back.”
“Come back?” She asks quietly, as though speaking too loud will shatter the offer.
I mean breaking up,” he says. He doubts the decision even before he explains. “It doesn’t have to be forever. If you get help at camp, I won’t tell people I’m single, won’t see other people while I wait for you.”
It’s just as much giving into himself as it is giving into her. The concept of living in a world without her is painful and frightening, and he has no idea what it would look like. She’s been a major part of his life since he learned about the Greek world, after all.
He’d promised himself one last chance before he broke up with her. But, his weeping heart begs, it doesn’t mean they can’t come back to each other later. It’s a sick echo of a similar thing he’d told Jason what feels like forever ago. He’s been looking for a way to get her to camp, and this might be how it finally happens.
He can’t believe this is how it finally happens. It seems impossible, the words he’d said leaving his mouth. He’d always thought, if they ended at all, it’d be her breaking up with him.
Annabeth weeps, and he lets her do it for them both. It feels as heavy as the sky he’d once lifted for her, keeping his head turned to the side, ignoring her pleas for him to stay. Ignoring how what little breath she has is spent on words adding him to the list of people who have left her behind. Luke, Thalia, Silena, Grover, even Piper. And now him.
It feels both balm and cruel, eventually sitting on the floor with her in his arms.
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They pretend to pack duffel bags at the same time, each using their side of their bed. His is completely disorganized, random clothes piled on top of the backpack with his schoolwork thrown on the bottom. Annabeth had agreed to go to camp, after her tears had finally, finally slowed. And after she’d confirmed and reconfirmed he will consider getting back with her, ‘after.’
“And you’ll visit-” she starts, breaking the uneasy silence.
“Iris Message.”
“-every Saturday?”
He sighs through his nose. He’s already said he would, so she only gets an angry glance. The hurt is settling deep, making anger a persistent, bitter taste in his mouth. It’s a different flavor than before – an undercurrent of insult instead of misery.
Will and Clarisse drove here in a camp van. He just buzzed them into the building, just a minute or two more before they can get out of here. He can’t bring himself to care if she’s packed correctly, only that she continues the farce. The Athena Cabin and Big House will have everything she needs; he just needs to keep her busy, keep her from changing her mind.
It seems such a simple solution in retrospect. Would Thalia have been injured at all if he’d stayed? Threatened their relationship to get her to go that morning? Maybe he wouldn’t have needed to break up with her.
The front door opens in the distance, Clarisse calling out. He yanks the zipper on his duffel closed. What’s done is done. There’s no good in ruminating. He does it enough about the wars, about the people who died.
Clarisse walks in. Percy can see, for a split second, how Silena might have trailed a half-step behind. He’s going to ruminate anyways. He knows himself well enough to admit it.
He spends the drive back to camp with half his attention on Will, giving him a rundown of her recent health and behaviors. He includes what he knows Annabeth is unlikely to disclose herself. His other eye is on Annabeth, in case she tries to get them smited again.
Clarisse is a good driver, but not dodge-a-Master-Bolt-knuckle-sandwich good. But Annabeth is quiet the whole way.
He lets them nudge her out of the car ahead of him, watch as they lead her away. There’s a lingering sense that he’s been cruel to her. Or maybe himself. It’s a confusing sensation to pair with the utter relief from knowing she’s not his responsibility anymore. Not to mention the hurt from earlier. No value to add.
Or the growing sting in his heart from breaking up with her. He remembers kissing her on the bottom of the lake, the day they started dating. Sixteen and imagining the rest of his life with her, he couldn’t have imagined today. Couldn’t have comprehended pairing the sentiment ‘I think it’s best’ with breaking up.
When he finally gets out of the car, he has no idea where he’s going. To her, tell her he didn’t mean it; to where Mr. D sits on the porch, side-eyeing him in silence; to his cabin to hide; to the arena to burn off emotions, sparring with other campers.
He should have expected it, when his feet take him to the lake. He walks, and walks, and walks. It takes longer than swimming, but the difference in time matters nothing.
The trip to Atlantis is a strange limbo. He feels as though he’ll shake apart into a hundred pieces if he thinks too much about anything. So, when he gets to the palace, he circles the outer edge until he finds the most deserted path he can.
When he reaches the arena he trains with Dad in – a destination he doesn’t remember choosing – it’s cold and lonely. Solaris’s quiet company barely changes the atmosphere.
He sit cross-legged in the very center and stares straight up, where the lack of a roof exposes him to the broad sea above. The blue of the vast stretch between him and the surface is beautiful. The color always has been. Subtleties he can’t number or describe convince him it’s possible to stare all the way to the surface, if only his eyes were keen enough.
It reminds him of the first time he’d looked at the stars and grasped, if but for a moment, the vast scale of space. How lonely their little blue dot is in the wide, ancient universe, according to science.
The godly stories of the constellations is much more palatable. As awful as the gods can be, at least they’re here. Close enough to touch. Not like the idea of starlight being so far away the light they give takes years and years and years to arrive. So long that the stars giving off the light he sees may well be dead already. It must be a cold journey.
How lonely is that? It’s sad.
He doesn’t hear Dad swim in. The first he knows is Dad’s broad back pressing up against his. His nose immediately stings. There’s no thought or hesitation behind how he spins to tuck himself under Dad’s arm, tight against his side.
He’s given to time to get comfortable there. Dad pulls him closer, into his lap, where he completely envelopes him in a hug. His arms are warm and strong.
Trying not to cry has been increasingly difficult. Dad’s hand cradling the back of his head and cheek pressed against Percy’s temple makes it a Herculean task. Dad murmurs soft reassurance, voice soft as silk, and that’s all it takes.
Once Percy starts crying, it feels like it’ll never stop. He should have noticed she was sick sooner. Should have figured out how to get her help sooner. Should have, should have, should have.
Trying really got him nowhere this time, huh? He feels utterly helpless, the emotion bouncing off what Annabeth had declared as truth. He’d really had nothing of value to offer with this problem, did he? Trying, trying, trying.
Trying; and failing. He tries to smother his face into Dad’s shoulder, tries to shut himself up so his sobs stop giving him a headache. The hand cradling his head braced his neck, though, turning his face outwards enough his gasping breaths are full and clear.
The whole time, Dad keeps murmuring to him. “I’m here, baby,” Dad hushes him, rocking him through the tears. “I have you. It’ll be alright. I’m here, darling.”
He doesn’t feel darling. He can’t stop crying, can’t even lessen it now. He still finds a way to speak through it.
“Why weren’t you here?” He asks, eyes screwed shut. “I know Amphi was lying,” he interrupts himself with his crying, “about why you were gone.”
Dad hushes him again, rocking him a bit more. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I didn’t trust myself near you, not when I knew she was going to hit you.” What a shit reason. Percy grabs the nearest bit of skin he can, pinching.
Dad twitches, then speaks more honestly. “I feared, if I came near, it would be balm enough you would tolerate more. You allow so little criticism of her. I feared any caution we advised would be encouragement to further plant your feet."
He hates that Dad knew Annabeth was going to hurt him on purpose. He hates how he can see the logic – Dad’s hand, sweeping across his back in firm strokes, saps tension from his body. He hates how he doesn’t know if he would have been able to admit he was wrong. The prospect of doing so with Rhode already is painful.
It just hurts.
Percy doesn’t continue the conversation. The longer he cries, the less strength he has, exhaustion crawling through every inch of him.
He’d broken up with her. He’d made her cry, put that hollow look in her eyes.
It’s not only that he cries over. She’d meant to hurt him, and she was successful. Worthless.
He hasn’t cried himself out like this in a while, and it’s as tiring as he remembers. He gives no protest or opinion when Dad carries him away, after his tears trail off. He welcomes the numbness that comes with the quiet. Part of him wishes he’d fallen asleep, but it’s just too early in the day.
The next time Percy’s drawn from the numb, from his head, he’s in one of the lounges the royal family uses. It’s a space he’s glimpsed once or twice before, full of soft seats to sprawl on, games and books packed along the walls, and various half-done hobbies. There’s a coral colony in the rafters, much like in Triton’s office, though smaller, and a half-painted canvas pinned to the wall he’s absently staring at.
He’s plastered against Dad’s side, with Amphitrite close on his other. They’re speaking above his head, though he doesn’t care to listen. Dad gestures with his free hand, and the motion tugs at the arm he’s keeping firm around Percy. Amphitrite hums at whatever Dad said, and she drums her fingers. She’s resting a hand on his lower leg, absent-mindedly rubbing her thumb in comforting circles.
He can hear Triton and Kym bickering over something nearby, out of his line of sight. Rhode is sitting with a young mermaid he’s not seen before, playing a board game. It looks a lot like chess, but with more pieces of different colors.
The new woman carried the same ethereal beauty and powerful presence of any goddess. She has her head propped on the heel of her palm, eyes firmly fixed on the board. Her posture is perfect, despite the angle she’s leaning forward. She wears a style of clothes he’s come to recognize as a marker of the royal family, and she has a circlet draped carelessly on her elbow like a cheap yard-sale bangle instead of a symbol of office.
Whoever this is, she’s just as much a Princess of Atlantis as Kym or Rhode are.
She has dark skin with a warm undertone, only a shade lighter than Hazel’s skin. It’s a pretty contrast with Rhode’s classic Greek olive skin. Her braids and makeup are immaculate, and her tail has the brilliant patterns and colors of an Emperor Angelfish, the deep navy blue and near glowing white.
Rhode has also switched the legs she’d had when they first met for her tail. It’s a reflective, glorious yellow, light bright sunlight. Her fins are the most drapey in the room, like a beta fish’s, flowing with the gentlest motions of the water. They darken from yellow through orange to brown on the tips.
Amphitrite switches her tail between species and styles and lengths as though it’s an accessory. Today, it’s long and narrow, with the bright colors of a ribbon eel. Dad’s more classic mermaid tail feels almost boring in comparison.
Percy swallows thickly, taking stock of himself. He feels sick, sore all over, and still tired. Tears sti inches from the top of his emotions, easy to call forth. No. Not with such an audience.
“When did you learn?” He asks, uncaring of interrupting. Dad and Amphitrite pause, looking at him.
“When did who learn what, Percy?” She asks.
“Dad said he knew Annabeth was going to hit me before it happened. How did you know?”
Dad hums lowly, carding his hand through Percy’s hair a couple times. The new woman, likely a half-sister he’s not met yet, snorts. Her eyes slide over lazily, her look filled with complete disinterest.
“Common sense, I imagine,” she says. While part of him bristles at the words, her tone doesn’t imply hostility. She’s bored, that’s all. “What I’d like to know, Patéras, is why you’re prioritizing some mortal’s heartache over finding Herophile.”
Kym breaks off bickering with Triton behind them, darting over their heads. She in the woman’s face in a flash, fists on hips.
“Benthesikyme!” Kym snaps. “Don’t be mean to Percy just because Herophile is ignoring you!”
Benthesikyme, apparently, returns to her game. “She never ignores my letters, even when we’re fighting. Don’t blame me for her silence towards us all.”
Amphitrite clicks her tongue, and the simple sound breaks up the glares. “None of us have heard from her in a while, true,” she says. “But I trust your father’s Foresight. If he says your sister will be alright, then she’ll be alright.”
Percy sits up a bit more. “What happened to her?” He asks. He doesn’t recognize the name, but a sister is a sister. Dad runs his hand up and down Percy’s arm warmly.
“Don’t you worry about her, Percy,” he says. “You have enough on your plate for today. Do you want to talk about it?”
He shakes his head immediately. Maybe if they were alone. It’s an ugly tangle in his head, and he has no idea where to start. At the moment, he’d rather go back to not thinking at all.
Thankfully, Dad doesn’t push. He just murmurs, “Well, I’m here if you ever want to talk.” He pulls Percy a bit closer and presses a kiss to his hairline.
Triton meanders over, sitting on the floor nearby with the biggest book Percy’s ever seen. The pages are thin as bible paper, and the text is packed tiny and tight across the pages. He stares at it, baffled as to what subject could possibly require such a tome. It’s a decent distraction. He spends who knows how long silently observing them all, letting Dad’s voice rumble through him.
He hears all about how Benthesikyme has just gotten back from months over in the seas of upper Africa and the Mediterranean, where she was mopping up the remaining sea monsters released through the Doors of Death.
Dinner comes far too soon for his appetite. It’s not as bad as he fears, though. Aside from the hand Dad keeps on his shoulder, he’s mostly left alone to pick at his food. The day is dragging on and on and yet feels too short at the same time.
He keeps coming back to something he’d thought earlier. Annabeth’s at camp, and not solely his responsibility anymore. But he’s been wondering for a while if there’s anything more he can do. Perhaps a change in schedule, taking a step back, will help him look at the problem a new way, find how to get rid of what’s making her sick.
He’s brought out of his thoughts by a shrimp colliding with his temple. Kym already has another in hand to throw, when he glares at her. She folds her arms on the table and grins at him. “So,” she asks, “what are you going to do with your brand-new freedom?”
He glares some more at how cavalier she is about his breakup. She just blinks unrepentantly. She he sighs and stabs at the shrimp in his own bowl. “I was thinking I’d split my time between here and my mom’s place. Help her out with the stuff that’s difficult because she’s pregnant. Paul can’t be home as often as he wants, with his work schedule.”
Kym makes a high, excited sound at this prospect. She beams at him, eyes almost literally sparkling. Dad’s hand on his shoulder tightens, and Amphitrite nods approvingly. Percy glances at Triton and Rhode. She shrugs, neutral. Then, she nudges Triton for a reaction. He flaps a hand absently, nose still buried in his ridiculous book. Benthesikyme ignores him, half asleep at the table.
Not the warmest welcome overall, but a far cry from the first time he’d come here. Dad is all but audibly gleeful, even as he keeps his comforting hand on him. And, while Kym is blatant in her opinion that Annabeth is good riddance, she’s still polite enough to focus on cheering him up and distracting him.
A while after dinner, Amphitrite finds him leaning on an open balcony alone.
“I don’t remember telling you lot I broke up with her,” he says once she’s mirroring his lean on the balcony rail.
She laughs softly. “Your father is nosy. Certainly nosier than he likes to let on.” She watches him steadily. “You know, you can come to us anytime.” Percy nods absently. She nudges his elbow with hers.
“I mean it, son.”
He turns to stare She cards his hair back from his forehead, expression soft and warm. She doesn’t need to tell him she loves him for Percy to feel it. It’s enough to let him wander back to his room for the sleep he didn’t think would come tonight.
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He knows his recent stress isn’t good for his nightmares. With how long it’s been since they were truly awful, though, he’s not braced for the nightmare he has.
He’s dreaming of Annabeth, because of course he is. Something is terribly wrong, and he needs to get up from where he’s sprawled on the ground. By the time he gets up and runs for her, she’s dangling by one hand from a cliff. The wind rips whatever she’s screaming from her lips, but the desperation is clear in her expression.
He reaches to pull her up and she grabs not his hand, but his wrist. As soon as she has a good grip on solid ground, she yanks hard. He unbalances and tumbles over the cliff himself.
The fall is viscerally real, wind wiping around him, stomach in his throat. The world dissolves around him, and he wakes up facedown on the ground again, where the whole thing repeats. By the end of it, Percy’s screaming at himself to stop letting her send him over the edge.
But his hands reach for her over and over again, and his own words echo in his ears. “We’re staying together. You’re not getting away from me, never again.” He recognizes when he says them, of course. Not even Hera or Dionysus could pull those memories from him.
The last time she pulls his wrist, he hears not what she’d responded with as they hung above Tartarus, but something older.
“I am never, ever going to make things easy for you, Seaweed Brain. Get used to it.” She says it not with the playful warmth she had originally, the day they started dating, but with the hard cold from today. This time, when he goes tumbling, the bright, open sky of the random cliff darkens and darkens.
His next inhale stinks of sulfur, and Percy exhales it in a piercing, desperate scream as he realizes where he’s falling. Again. Alone.
A moment later, the bang! Of a door being opened violently shatters the nightmare. Percy wrenches his eyes open, struggling to yank his arm from where it’s trapped. It takes a moment to orient himself and figure out what’s going on.
Percy is hopelessly tangled in his blankets, as pinned as if he’s wearing a straight jacket.
Solaris has his trident and shield in hand, gaze sweeping across the room for possible dangers. He looks back at Percy after another moment. Whose cheeks are growing pinker by the moment. He had, apparently, screamed out loud as well as in his dream, and Solaris had thought there was someone attacking him.
He focuses on untangling himself instead of explaining. Despite his hope that Solaris will resume his position at Percy’s door, his slightly webbed hands, now empty, come and steady him. Some wriggling and tugging later, Percy sits on the floor, freed.
He scrubs his face, half to his expression and half to wake himself up the rest of the way. He can tell without checking a clock it’s the depths of the night. “Sorry for disturbing you, Solaris,” he says quietly. It’s only his job to protect Percy from physical threats, not his own mind.
But Solaris shakes his head, sitting against the bed next to him, also on the floor. “No need to apologize, young prince.”
Percy nudges him. “No need? This isn’t in your job description.”
Solaris’s side eye is thoroughly amused. “And you got your hands on my job description, when?”
Percy scoffs at the implication, then sobers. “Why,” he asks slowly, “does your job include sitting on the floor with me after a nightmare?”
Solaris rests his head against the edge of Percy’s bed, considering him. He’s in partial armor, on his forearms and tail mostly. The pieces are a sort of leather covered in sea serpent scales, instead of the norma Atlantean metals. Percy know his normal armor is a compound of Atlantean platinum and blessed silver. Neither are metals found on the surface, and the platinum isn’t remotely related to the mortal stuff by the same name. His weapons and shield are made of the same stuff, and Percy’s long known it’s equipment provided as part of his position as a Royal Guard.
“I’ve mentioned before,” Solaris says. “I’ve been a Royal Guard for more than five hundred years now. Has your family spoken of the requirements of such a position?” He mirrors Percy’s shake of the head. “Hm.”
He quickly runs through a couple basis tests required to become a member of the Atlantean Army. It sounds a lot like what Percy’s heard about mortal militaries, for the most part.
To get from the Army to the General Atlantean Guard, it’s a career where innovative thought and good judgement are king. Apparently one or two of Dad’s top generals are always combing through the army for new candidates at any one time.
“What’s the difference between the army and the guard?” Percy asks.
“Assignments, authority granted, and career paths available, mostly. Most members of the army return to civilian life after their terms. The guard is for those who wish to remain in the service for a longer time.”
Percy hums, drawing a knee up to his chest so he can rest his cheek there.
“To get from the General Atlantean Guard to the Royal Guard,” Solaris says, “it’s about becoming trustworthy. The higher ups test random members of the General Guard, see if they’re willing to take bribes or sway their loyalty for some other reason. Not that I knew it was a test at the time.” His crow’s feet deepen with a badly suppressed smile.
“Oh no,” Percy says, sensing a story. He only realizes here, after minutes of quiet conversation, that Solaris means to distract him. It’s working; this is interesting.
“I was still a junior rank, when I caught the attention of one the higher generals. They stationed me in a rather unpleasant position on purpose, near one of the deep trenches by the eastern highways. Raiders semi-regularly use them to bypass our borders and attack nearby small towns for scraps. The smell of the whole area was awful.” Solaris wrinkles his nose at the memory.
“They sent me a royal guard as a partner, disguised as another of my own rank. Her job was to test whether I could be persuaded to betray the throne when given a good chance. Princess Benthesikyme and Prince Triton were visiting the small town I was stationed in, for a reason I no longer remember. It was a small enough town and a brief enough visit they expected their personal guards to be enough. An attack on them may have succeeded, if the attacking force swift enough and the royals poor fighters.”
“Which they’re not,” Percy says.
“Which they’re not,” Solaris agrees. He’s normally a quiet person, his professionalism impossible to strip from him. His causal manner captivates Percy’s attention, hungry for each scrap of emotion.
“I remained unresponsive to her out loud, speaking only of our shared job. I feared she would flee retribution if I shut her down. When they royals came, I hardly waited for them to settle in their rooms.”
“Oh no,” Percy says again, smile growing. “What did you do?”
“I dragged her into their rooms by the hair, along with written proof of her planned attack. I refused to obey Prince Triton’s orders to get out, not until I’d laid out everything I knew.”
Percy laughs brightly, and Solaris does too. “You dragged her by the hair?” He repeats. “Dude!”
“I know.”
“If she was a Royal Guard, that meant she was higher rank than you.”
“I know.”
They take a moment to compose themselves. “It was painfully embarrassing," Solaris says. "I’ve learned how to be less affected by my own awkwardness, as I’ve gotten older. Back then, I’d felt like I’d swallowed hot coals when the Princess started laughing at me.”
Percy pokes him. “Did Triton do the thing?”
“The thing?”
“Where he pinches his nose and-” Percy mimics a heavy sigh, ending in a grumble.
Solaris makes the same noise simultaneously. “Oh, of course he did.” Solaris pokes Percy back when he laughs. “They told me I passed her test with flying colors, of course. I was promoted to the Royal Guard, here in the capital, before I knew it.”
Percy lets him move the story along, despite his urge to continue chuckling over the moment of embarrassment. “You’ve said there’s a difference between the Royal Guard at large and the one who guard specific member of the royal family.”
“Yes, the retinues versus the Royal Guard. It’s mostly a difference in ranks.” Solaris stretches his arms over his head. “It took another couple promotions before Prince Triton got his hands on me. I’ve spent most of my time since in his retinue.” He looks at Percy again, and his sudden serious attitude pins him in place.
“All this to say. I know your brother well, Percy. My job is among the most difficult to get in the kingdom, precisely because this,” he waves a finger at how they’re seated,” is part of my job description.” He chases Percy’s uncertain gaze. “Your father and his family trust me to keep any secrets I become privy to. This isn’t the first time I’ve sat on the floor with your family during a difficult night, and it won’t be the last. Anything you share won’t be the first secret I keep, nor the last I take to the grave.”
Percy heaves a sudden deep breath, the urge to shy away from the invitation rising high in his throat. It hadn’t occurred to him before, that five hundred years was long enough to witness his family’s recent ups and downs. Not that Solaris might be willing to keep silent even faced with his King and Queen. He’d fully expected Solaris to tell Dad about his bruised cheek, despite asking him not to. ‘Take to the grave’ suggests otherwise.
“Would you have told Dad, if he’d ordered you to?” Percy asks. Solaris shakes his head solemnly.
“The King knows asking me to speak of anything you tell me in confidence is pointless.” He smiles warmly at the stare Percy’s giving him.
He twitches the leg he’s got stretched out, nudging Solaris’s tail with his foot. They sit quietly for a while, letting time pass them by.